Chapter 10
Ten
Like Real People Do — Hozier
CALLIOPE
T he second I got the message on the burner phone only one person knew the number of, dread unfurled in my stomach. Bitter. Rancid.
There were only two words in the message:
A gift.
Then coordinates.
Following the coordinates was foolhardy. Otherwise known as fucking stupid. But I knew Jasper had done something, and no way was I going to let my brain run away on me.
I was as smart as I could be. I drove to the next town over, rented a car using the credit card for a shell corporation I owned. It could still be traced to me if someone was looking close enough, but it was all I could do without actually breaking any laws.
My palms were slick with sweat and my stomach churned as I drove on back roads, following the GPS into dense woods where the road turned to dirt, the car bouncing as I hit potholes.
When the road ended, I squinted at my phone, trepidation licking up my spine as I got out of the car.
I was armed, a gun in the jacket I was wearing that stuck out on the warm summer day.
My boots squelched in the mud as my gaze darted around.
I seemed to be alone. Maybe I’d driven myself to my own murder scene.
So deep in the woods that no one would ever find me.
My heart thundered against my chest as I risked a glance to my phone to orientate myself before stepping off the dirt road into the woods.
A stupid idea. Really stupid. But I knew that if I didn’t go out there, Jasper would do something else closer to home. I was glad whatever this ‘gift’ was wasn’t anywhere near my family.
And I was about 80 percent sure I’d be walking out of here. There were no signs of humanity in the twenty minutes I walked through the dense wood, dread swimming through my bloodstream.
Then I came to it.
My gift.
Lying in a shallow grave.
Naomi Weathers.
Clara’s mother.
The woman who had been discharged from the hospital only a couple of days ago.
The woman who Jasper had murdered.
As a ‘gift’ for me.
Though I could barely hold it down, I forced my body not to vomit.
The last thing I needed was my DNA at the scene.
And I couldn’t be sure Jasper wasn’t watching from somewhere.
Tearing my gaze away from the body with the single bullet hole between the eyes, I scanned the trees for a dark figure.
Nothing. Then I looked to see if there might be a camera mounted somewhere. None that I could see, at least.
I wanted to scream. Cry. Curse the world. I felt hopelessly adrift with no lifeboat in sight. Calling the police was out of the question. Same went for my brother. I was alone in this. As I should’ve been.
Alone with the weight of my sins. With what I’d given to Clara and what Jasper had ensured I wouldn’t be able to hold as a good deed.
I’d unleashed him on Naomi to potentially save her life, but because of that, Clara would never know her mother.
Naomi might’ve gotten her shit together, grown a heart.
Jasper ensured she wouldn’t. He ensured that I’d carry that with me.
He had done it to sever my ties to Jupiter.
I didn’t know how much research he’d done about my life there, but he recognized that I wouldn’t be able to walk around and face those people with this knowledge.
He was closing off all exits that didn’t lead back to New York.
To him.
I swallowed bile, squeezing my eyes shut, self-hatred and regret washing over me in a repetitive, unyielding wave.
Oh, how I’d been able to distance myself from the consequences of my choices, my arrogance, my greed.
But now it touched the corners of my life, this body a harbinger of the rot I’d bring to Jupiter if I stayed.
My phone buzzed. Not my personal phone. The burner. Only one person it could’ve been. The person who left me this gift, this warning, this new stain on my soul. I wanted to ignore it. Fuck, how I wanted to ignore it. But that would only create more problems.
I put the phone to my ear, breathing evenly. I was unable to form words.
Jasper didn’t speak either. I could hear him breathing, though. Another game. Another power play. It was so fucking exhausting, I wanted to sink to my knees and give up. Surrender to Jasper.
My teeth ground together in determination as I stared at the unseeing eyes of a corpse.
“What the fuck did you do?” It took all my strength to keep my tone flat. I almost sounded bored.
“I got rid of your competition.”
My spine stiffened. “What competition?”
“For Beau Shaw’s attention,” Jasper replied. “I assume that you’re fucking him. That’s why you went so far as to ask me for a favor that would save his daughter.”
My body started trembling. How obtuse of me to think that Jasper wouldn’t research the woman I tasked him with finding. Wouldn’t discover the connections and come to the most logical conclusion. Plus, if you looked at it from the outside, Beau was more my type.
But Elliot was my type on the inside, in the cracks I didn’t even know I had. Where the light came in.
Not that Jasper would know that.
My mind quickly went over my options, considering the lies I could tell. Protecting Clara was the most important thing to do right then. And if Jasper thought I was fucking Beau, it put her in his crosshairs. No fucking way.
“I wanted to save a little girl’s life, Jasper,” I snapped, then I took a mental breath, knowing that Jasper wouldn’t accept a single noble motivation from me. “And I’m fucking her uncle, not her father.”
A risk. A deplorable one, taking one brother out of the viper’s crosshairs to replace it with another. Elliot was safer because he didn’t have dependents, because Jasper might do his research and mistakenly brush him off.
A pause. Birds sang, the breeze rustled leaves. I’d surprised Jasper. I’d pointed out that he was wrong. He didn’t like that.
“ Was fucking,” I continued, forcing my eyes to remain on the body with an intensity that would ensure her lifeless stare would follow me to my dreams.
“I was fucking Elliot Shaw.” I used my sleeve to wipe the sweat from my forehead “Not anymore. It was a one-time thing. When in Rome, and all that.” I forced a casualness into my tone, a verbal shrug.
“That’s how I learned about his niece. So you didn’t eliminate my competition; you killed a miserable woman who didn’t matter to me at all. ”
I gripped the phone so tight, I could feel the edges imprinting into my fingers. I hoped it scarred them, cut through to my bone so I’d forever remember this moment. To ensure that I didn’t make stupid, greedy decisions without thought of the consequences ever again.
I continued staring at the body.
“No great loss,” Jasper said after remaining silent for a long moment. “Since I was able to do some sightseeing during my trip. Jupiter really is idyllic.”
Every word was a threat, I could feel it. His tone was insinuating that he’d find a way to ruin something good and pure if I didn’t come to heel, if I didn’t walk down the path he’d paved with dead bodies and shady deals.
“Don’t worry about the body, the grave. I’ll take care of it. No one will find it. No one will tie you to this.”
There it was. Another threat. He knew I wouldn’t report this. Therefore, I was an accessory to murder. Did he have some kind of evidence that I was there? Some kind of insurance policy he could hang over my head? Maybe.
I wouldn’t put it past him. But my instincts told me Jasper had done this for sport. To send a message more than anything.
“How gentlemanly of you.” I spoke with a fake, ultra-sugary sweetness.
“Next time you think to get me a gift, don’t.
I can buy my own diamonds, cars, purses.
And if I have a need to have someone killed, I’ll do that myself too.
” The last sentence wasn’t technically a lie but one I hoped to fuck I wouldn’t have to prove to Jasper or myself.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jasper responded dispassionately followed by a loaded pause. I mentally cursed myself for not having the strength to hang up. The talons on that man dug deep. It was a process, ripping them from my insides.
“I miss you.”
My whole body jerked.
Jasper’s words were incomprehensible. He never spoke fondly, never expressed feelings he had toward me.
“I miss me too,” I told him truthfully. “The me I was before all this shit.” I looked down at the body. “I miss the you that you were before all this shit.”
Then I hung up.
I was very good at compartmentalizing. At shoving things into dark corners of my mind and refusing to think of them.
That’s the only way I’d survived. And I had to continue surviving.
Because I liked my life. And I loved my family, I would never inflict the pain my death would give them.
Not until the harm of my death was the safest thing for them to experience.
At that point, I was still fighting.
And in denial about my role in a woman’s murder.
“Sweetheart, I know you’re a grown woman, but this fridge looks like it belongs in a frat house.
” Her head peeked around the door. Dark brown hair, cut a little longer than a bob, smooth and styled.
Ice-blue eyes that my brother had inherited, a delicate face, wrinkled from a life of laughter and the stress endured as a mother of three.
“All you have in here are condiments and booze.”
“A frat house would bankrupt themselves in a day if they spent on booze and condiments what I did.” I swallowed my smile, sitting at the breakfast bar, sipping the coffee the woman in question had turned up at the door with.
“It’s a good thing I had the foresight to bring lunch.” She gestured down to the quiche she was arranging on plates. “Otherwise, we would’ve starved.” Her pointed and experienced gaze settled on me. “And you do not need to miss a meal.”
My mother spent a lot of time in Jupiter now that she had grandchildren here. Luckily, most of her time was spent with them, not one-on-one with me.