Chapter 51 Caulder
Caulder
Did Lucas just say what the hell I think he just said?
Did he just say Emerson approached him to fake an attempted murder?
All of us turn to Emerson to see if this bullshit can possibly be real. He’s still smiling, still holding that knife, making my skin crawl just looking at him. I should’ve known, I think over and over again. I should’ve known he was responsible.
“Well, not how I would tell the story,” Emerson says. “But he’s got the main points.”
“Wait,” Kaitlyn says, a dark edge infiltrating her tone. “You mean…you hired a killer? Or this was a fucking setup?”
Lucas winces while Emerson chuckles.
“Well, both, sort of,” Lucas says. “I mean, he didn’t hire a killer to actually kill people. But he hired…Well, he hired me to help make it look like someone was trying to kill us.”
“What are you talking about?” Avery asks.
“He wanted it to look like someone broke into the house and attacked us,” he says. “I…I was supposed to be the victim that got knocked out. And he was supposed to survive, obviously, and live to tell—”
“But you were knocked out,” I say. “I tried to get you to wake up for hours. And you were covered in blood. You had a gash.”
“The gash was real,” Lucas continues, glancing at Emerson. “Emerson cut me so it would look real. He cut himself, too. He knew where to do it, since he volunteered at the hospital. And then we just added a shit ton of movie blood, the really good stuff. But we went a little overboard…”
“Again,” I say. “You were unconscious. Don’t tell me you let Emerson knock you out.”
“Sleeping pills,” Kaitlyn says, surprising me and making us turn to her. “Javi found them. And he said they were some strong shit. Just one would’ve knocked you out.”
“Javi knew?” I ask.
Kaitlyn shakes her head. “He had his theory, but it wasn’t…finished. Just that he didn’t trust Emerson and thought the sleeping drugs were suspicious.”
“It was only supposed to be something dramatic he could write about,” Lucas says. “It was supposed to be something unique to—”
“But people actually died,” I say, the words coming out of my mouth as if my throat’s coated with sawdust. “Javi actually died. And Mr. Jay. Emerson, how do you explain that?”
Emerson sighs. “It got away from me, I admit.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Lucas says, and his eyes are wide and regretful as he looks at me. “I swear, Caulder. None of that was supposed to happen. Something had to have changed…Or maybe Emerson lied to me when he came upstairs. There was something…off.”
Lucas looks at Emerson, who simply smirks.
“Wait, you were upstairs?” I ask. “This whole time?”
“No,” Lucas says, running a hand through his dreads. “No, of course not. I didn’t…Fuck, I don’t know if I’m telling this right.”
“He’s lying,” Marlene says, shaking her head. “All he does is lie.”
“He told me he’d been working with his tutor for college apps.
They told him that his ‘junior lifeguards’ work wasn’t compelling enough to write about.
That he needed to dig deep. Well…Volunteering at the hospital wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t ‘splashy’ enough. ‘Everybody does that,’ he said. ‘I need to stand out.’ ”
Kaitlyn makes a noise in her throat like she’s trying not to gag.
“He said he wanted to stage a break-in with injuries that made it look like whoever came here wanted to kill us,” Lucas continues, still glancing at Emerson. “He said I was the ‘obvious’ choice for the first victim—”
“Racist piece of shit,” Kaitlyn mumbles. I don’t disagree. Emerson only smiles.
“And that he would ‘compensate me handsomely’ if I went along,” Lucas says.
He looks around at everyone, then settles his gaze on me. And as pissed as I am at him, I see the Lucas I used to play with almost every day. The one who knew me—and who I knew—better than anyone.
“I’m seeing a flaw, though,” Kaitlyn says, holding up her hand. “How would you make it look like it was a real attack and not some…low-rent theater bullshit?”
“He said his dad’s connections in entertainment would get us the materials we needed to make it look real enough, and we’d obviously have to actually cut ourselves also,” Lucas says.
“He said the whole no-internet, no-cell-service thing would do half the work for us. He’d also stage some creepy atmosphere—like the record-player thing.
And while everyone else was panicking and running around, all I had to do was sleep and, once I woke up, go along with his story and say I was knocked out. ”
Lucas sighs and looks at Emerson. “There were so, so many holes in his plan. I tried to point them out, honestly. If I was taking a drug and covering myself in fake blood, how would I convince the ambulance that showed up? What if I woke up early, when you guys were around me? But Emerson didn’t want to hear it.
His plan would work because he wanted it to.
And if there were problems, he’d throw money at them. ”
I feel sick, but I know I need to ask the next question.
“But again, people actually started dying,” I say, turning to Emerson. “Mr. Jay died. Unless that was fake, too?”
Emerson laughs again, his grip on the knife still strong.
“Oh no,” he says. “That was very real. And that story…I think we should turn to Marlene, shouldn’t we?”