Chapter 27 #2
“He blackmailed me, Tar! If I didn’t do what he said, he would kill you. I didn’t even know it was Andy. I did what I had to do to protect you. You have to believe me.”
“I believe you.” I fight the urge to cry. “I love you, Jo-Jo.”
Andy’s hand comes down as swiftly as a slapshot traveling at record-breaking speed. My face snaps to the side, my cheek and jaw burning and throbbing with pain.
“Shut up! Both of you, shut the fuck up!”
I don’t say anything, but I glare at him. This asshole. I know he’s crazy, but if he thought he could come between me and Jodie, he’s completely delusional.
And like every psycho, he craves attention.
“What?” he yells. “Why aren’t you saying anything, huh, bitch?”
I probably shouldn’t provoke him, but I know he plans to hurt us. If there’s one chance in hell for us to survive this, I need to buy us time. I need to keep him talking. “You just told me to shut up.”
The hit I was bracing myself for never comes. Instead, Andy brings the flat side of his knife flush with my face. “I hope you know that Tim’s death and all this is all your fault, Taryn.”
“Why?” I fight the shudder that wants to work its way down my spine. He wants to scare me. Whatever happens, I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“All you had to do was give it up. Go out with me when I asked. I gave you a second chance after I broke up with Jodie, and you kept turning me down. And no one, NO ONE, turns down Andy Masters. I had to have you one way or another.”
He moves the blade down, tracing the line of my neck, all the way down to my collarbone.
It’s like a caress, but there’s nothing loving about it.
His eyes are cold, and what I see in them is pure, blinding obsession.
“I had a perfect plan the night of the party. My dealer had some really good stuff that would make you unable to say no. All I had to do was slip it into your drink and wait for my chance. But Jodie got involved again.”
“So it wasn’t Tim who drugged me?” The picture is starting to become clearer in my head.
Right now I would give anything to wipe Andy’s smirk off his face.
“Nope. That douche should have fucked one of the puck bunnies or a drunk Zeta like always. But he set his sights on you and your wingwoman got involved and introduced you to him.”
He says wingwoman like the word leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“So I had no choice but to give him some of what you had, too. At that point, all I had to do was wait. I watched you and Tim dance, and when you followed him upstairs, I was right behind you. Or should I say ahead of you? I snuck ahead of you and waited in Tim’s bathroom.”
Cold dread makes it hard to breathe. The question is on the tip of my tongue before I can even decide if asking it is a good idea. “Was it you? I know that night I had sex. But I can’t remember anything about it. Was it with you?”
“No.”
I have no business feeling as relieved as I do right now with a blade against my skin.
“I should have given that motherfucker more to make sure he couldn’t get it up. Do you know how pissed off I was? I was stuck in the bathroom while that idiot got to fuck you.”
Andy’s fury is almost a palpable presence in the utility room under the arena.
It isn’t hard to imagine the rest of what happened. “So that’s why you killed him?”
For a disconcerting moment, the mask of anger slips off his face.
His smile is almost sweet, even though his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“See? I knew I should have dated you. You’re way smarter than Jodie.
Yes, that’s why I killed him. He took what was mine.
Even jerking off in the bathroom while he was inside you didn’t take the edge off.
The fucker had passed out on top of you.
I had to roll him over before I could get to work. ”
There is something I don’t understand. If Andy killed Tim for fucking me, why not take what he wanted while I was unconscious? A part of me doesn’t want to know, but I ask anyway. “So you killed him and left?”
“No. I was so fucking mad that after I stabbed him, I hacked his head off. Do you have a clue how much strength it takes to cut someone’s head off?
Afterwards I was exhausted. I took a little nap to get my strength back so I could fuck you.
I had been waiting over three years; I wanted to enjoy it. ”
God, this guy is even sicker than I thought. “You slept on the floor with a dead body in the room?”
“Don’t be daft, Taryn,” Andy chuckles. “I expected a stupid question like this one from Jodie. You’re smarter than that. No, I got into bed next to you and held you in my arms.”
What would happen if I puked all over him? “You could sleep with a headless body in bed right next to you?”
Andy’s smile widens. “No, it was quite disturbing to be honest. That’s why I kicked the head down toward Tim’s feet. With it out of the way, I slept like a baby. Your tits are so soft, best pillows ever.”
“Fucker!” Nash yells. He’s been quietly listening to his former teammate’s unraveling. “Only a lowlife has to resort to drugging a woman to get her into bed with him.”
To my surprise, Andy doesn’t react. “You’re just jealous because in the end, I’m gonna get the girl.”
I wonder what he means by that. Is he planning to rape me?
“So what happened then?” I ask. “I woke up alone with Tim the next morning.”
“Or so you thought.” He tuts. “I slept way too well next to you. When I woke up, it was already morning, and you began to stir. I was worried you would begin screaming, like you did. There was no way to tell if someone would wake up. I didn’t have enough time to get out of that room without potentially being caught, so I had to hide. ”
This time there’s no way to avoid shuddering. “Were you still there when I woke up? Where?”
“Thank fuck for full-length blackout curtains, am I right? I hid right behind the curtains.”
That makes sense. There was just a small opening in the middle of the curtains that let out enough daylight to see. Andy must have moved them when he hid behind them.
“So you were still there.” It isn’t a question.
“I was waiting for you to calm down. You looked still quite out of it because of the roofie. I reckoned I would come out and finish what I started. I’m much bigger than you; you wouldn’t be able to fight me.
But before I could do anything, you had to go and call that bitch. ” He points his finger at Jodie.
Things could have ended very differently that day. It’s nothing short of a miracle that Jodie and I got away unscathed.
Knowing that I wasn’t raped brings me comfort even in this dire situation. There’s also the huge relief that now I know for sure that I didn’t hurt Tim.
But sorting through my feelings will have to wait. “So, what did you do? You waited until we were gone and followed us here?”
“That’s the gist of it.” Andy shrugs. “I put an air tag in your car while you two were packing your bags. Thanks for tampering with the murder scene and getting rid of my knife, by the way. You made things a lot easier for me. The cops didn’t even blink when I said I had been downstairs at the party until I passed out in my room. ”
I have a lot more questions about how Andy didn’t get caught.
Jodie asks one of them. “But you must have been covered in blood. Fuck knows there was so much blood. All over Taryn, all over me. How did you manage to fly under the radar?”
“Easy enough.” His tone is full of arrogance.
“I snuck out right behind you two and went to the locker room to shower. The athletic department keeps a skeleton cleaning crew even off-season since the ice rink is used by us and the ice skaters to train year round. I had been doing some extra skating drills in the mornings before our regular practice during the season, so I knew that the cleaners came at seven a.m. every morning. That took care of any blood in the shower. Besides, the cops weren’t looking at the athletic department as part of their crime scene.
Then I took a page from Jodie’s book and took my bloody clothes with me and dumped them somewhere in Arizona.
I caught up with you two right when you arrived here in Star Cove. ”