Chapter Nine Cam
Finding Skeeter was more difficult than I anticipated.
Bugger was slippery as fuck, but it was nothing that a few bills to the right people couldn't solve.
And soon I was standing inside the lobby of a greasy motel, just waiting.
Word had it that he had breached probation. Gone near some old ladies or something.
I didn't even know that could be a condition of release, but here we were. He'd fled his group home and was hiding out with four other sick fucks. Probably all circle jerk to pictures of Aunt Edna baking cookies or some shit.
Fucking reprobates.
In he walked with his beady little eyes darting all over the place before finally landing on me, lounging on the cum-stained couch in front of the elevators. He tried to bolt, but I was faster. It was hard to run when you're a fat fuck, I guess.
"Oh... oh shit. Cam... please... I can explain..."
I threw my arm around him with a friendly smile, though something told me he didn't find it all that comforting when his face went white. "Ohhhhh, shhhh, Skeets. Shhhh."
"Please, Cam. I promise..." He was trembling as I led him down the hall and out the fire exit.
"Now, now. Don't cause a scene. We're just gonna have a chat. Where's your car?"
He shook his head vigorously.
"I'm not going to ask again." I smiled down at him, tightening my hold on the back of his shirt.
"I had to sell it! That's what I'm saying, I have a legitimate reason why—"
"Fine." I pushed him towards an old Camry. "Pop it and jump start. This will have to do." Scanning the car for alarms, I was pleased to note that it didn't even have license plates. Probably abandoned.
He did as he was told and within minutes, the door was open, the engine struggled to life and he was standing, waiting for his next order. Fucking perfect.
"Driver's seat, Skeeter. I'm in the mood for some smooth tunes on our little ride to nowhere."
"Pl—"
"Shhh, baby boy." I slapped his face before squeezing his cheeks, making his lips puff out in a kiss. I pushed him into the driver's seat before closing the door and rushing around to the passenger side. "Alright. Head towards the cliffs, good sir!"
God, I was in such a good mood, despite the fact that this lying sack of shit had only given us accurate information on one of the people I'd asked him to find.
Ed was dead. The Almines were still ghosts.
And Skeeter had the audacity to look scared when he should have been looking grateful that I hadn't let Lakey get to him first.
"Keep going. Stick to the speed limit. We're just two friends going for a drive."
Skeeter's hands were slick on the steering wheel. I could see the sweat on his knuckles, the way his fingers kept readjusting their grip. He thought he was going to die. He might be right. Depended on what came out of his mouth in the next hour.
The city thinned out as we drove. Buildings gave way to scrubland, scrubland gave way to coastal brush, and the road narrowed into the two-lane stretch that wound toward the cliffs.
I'd driven this road a hundred times. Lakey had driven it more.
This was her place. The cliff, the barrel, the ocean below that swallowed everything we fed it and never asked questions.
Twenty-seven bodies at the bottom of that water, give or take whatever the current had carried away.
Fish food. Crab bait. The ocean was the most efficient partner we'd ever had.
I texted Lakey: Bringing a guest. Cliff. 20 min.
Her response was immediate: Already here. Brought snacks.
Snacks. My girl packed snacks for an interrogation. I loved this woman with every corroded piece of my soul.
The drive felt long as fuck, but soon he was parked at the bottom of the cliffs. He stepped out and had a fleeting thought to run, if his demeanor was anything to go by. Good thing he straightened out and decided not to. It'd be boring to kill him right here.
"Come on, we got a bit of a walk up to the top." He walked slowly in front of me, huffing and puffing like he was a two pack a day smoker. "Damn, Skeets. Gotta work on your cardio. How the hell did you survive prison?"
He turned even more red than he already was and refused to look at me.
"Ooooh. You were the bottom, weren't you?"
He stopped and faced me, poking me in the chest with his sweaty little finger. "Shut the fuck up, Cameron. Don't think I don't know what you did in prison to survive. Pretty boy like you? Fucking jailbait."
The words hit a wall I'd built a long time ago. A wall with a specific door behind it that I didn't open. Not for anyone. Not even for Lakey. Month fourteen. The room with no cameras. The guard with the smile and the encouragement and the hand on the back of my neck. "You're doing so well, Cam."
I didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Didn't give this sweating piece of shit a single millimeter of reaction.
I'd learned that in juvie. How to take a hit to a wound no one could see and keep your face the same temperature.
Spider had taught me that. "Pain is information, not identity.
Someone hits the bruise, you smile. You smile and they don't know where the bruise is anymore. "
I whistled long and low. "Damn, you finally standing up for yourself? Good for you! Too bad your ASSumption is about to take a nosedive. I was fine in the slammer, butt boy. It was the guards that had the problem. Now move your ass, we're burning daylight."
Fine in the slammer. Sure. The lie came out smooth because I'd told it a thousand times.
To Lakey, to Spider, to my own reflection in mirrors that showed me a man who looked strong enough that nobody should have been able to hurt him.
But somebody had. And the box stayed shut.
And Skeeter's fat finger poking me in the chest was never going to open it.
He sputtered before his shoulders slumped and he kept walking. After a few minutes, we were at the top and Lakey was waiting, dressed in all black leathers. Damn, she is fine.
"Hey, doll. Have I got a treat for you." I smirked, shoving Skeeter in her direction.
"Oh my gawwwd, baby!" She squealed and ran into my arms, kissing me deeply before I put her down and we turned toward our betrayer.
Her face hardened as she looked at him. "Mind explaining to the class why your information was wrong? I should have killed you rather than let you out of my house, but I guess then I wouldn't have the chance to thrust my babies into your soft gut, huh?"
He held out his hands in a stop gesture. "Please. Just listen."
Lakey cocked her head, and he took that as a sign to continue talking. "I was approached by a man who paid me a lot of money not to disclose the location of the Almines. He didn't pay me for the Jones, didn't give a fuck about them."
"What do you remember about this man?" Lakey was intrigued.
"He was tall. Silvery hair, kinda. Creepy eyes. I dunno. A scar on his face."
She fell quiet. Not the quiet she used before a kill. The quiet she used when her brain was connecting wires that had been frayed since childhood. The quiet that meant something in her body remembered before her mind caught up.
Nudging her arm, I looked down at her. "What is it, Lakes?"
"Did this guy happen to give you a name?" She stomped up to him. "A name, Skeeter. Give me his name and I'll let you go free."
His face went white, once again. "No... no, he didn't give me his name. But I noticed the car behind him. It was a black SUV."
"Helpful." I muttered.
He pinned me with a look. "That's not all." He sighed and crossed his arms over his belly. "It had a cross on it."
A cross. On a black SUV. The cross… the same one we’d seen many times before, in flashes of memories we kept losing.
Lakey and I shared a look before she turned on her heel and marched away, grabbing her helmet and disappearing over the hill. I followed her, leaving Skeet to contemplate his life choices. He could run. Or not. Didn't give a fuck.
"Baby... what's wrong?" I asked, rubbing her shoulder.
"It's nothing." She was breathing hard, her hands shaking, and not from the cold.
"Fuck." She smashed her helmet against a tree, and it splintered the bark, sending pieces flying.
Then she hit it again. And again. Until the visor cracked and the outer shell split along the seam and she was holding two halves of a helmet in her fists, breathing like she'd sprinted a mile.
I let her destroy it. She needed to destroy something, and it was better than destroying Skeeter before we'd gotten everything out of him. When she was done, she dropped the pieces and stood there, her chest heaving, her knuckles white.
"Fuck it, we're going after them."
"Woah woah! Wait just a d—"
She turned around, her face twisted with a fury I hadn't seen since the night she killed Dr. Maren. "No! Cam. I think that was Father Christopher."
I fell silent for a moment, trying to process this information.
Father Christopher. The man Lakey had named in her flashback at the dinner table.
The man from St. Agnes whose heavy footsteps she could still hear in the hallway of her nightmares.
The man who'd been dead in her memory because people from your childhood were supposed to stay in your childhood, locked behind the doors you'd shut and bolted and piled furniture against.
But dead men don't drive black SUVs. And dead men don't pay hackers to hide foster families.
"Lakes... how is that possible? Why would he give a fuck about the Almines?"
"I don't know! Just... I have a gut feeling it's him and we need Skeeter because he can lead us to him!"
That was the question, wasn't it. Why the Almines?
Lakey barely remembered them. I barely remembered them.
They were the placement before Carmen's house, the one that lived in the fog of early childhood where memories were more sensation than scene.
But someone wanted them hidden. Someone with a cross on his car and silver hair and creepy eyes wanted to make sure we never found John and Janine Almine.