Blood to Dust (32 page)

I shoot Sebastian James Goddard three times.

Three bullets.

One in the chest, one in the face and one ends up eating a hole in his sleek ex-white vinyl couch. I stand there for long seconds after, letting it sink in.

I killed a man.

I killed a man who abused me.

I killed a man who killed my baby.

I killed a man who doesn’t look human anymore.

Still rooted to the floor, my feet immobile, I can’t stop staring at Sebastian’s face. Or what’s left of it. There’s a hole where his nose used to be, and dark red blood, slimy clots and other inner waste is pouring from it. It kind of looks like the inside of a minced meat lasagna after you tripped and it spilled all over the floor. What have I done? What has
he
done?

My baby.

Sebastian’s blood against the contrasting white of everything else in the room is beautiful. Almost picturesque. A calm smile starts making its way to my mouth. But I’m not happy. I’m in shock. Nate’s hand finds mine. He’s dragging me out the door, taking the stairs, and when he realizes how out of it I really am, he yanks me up and tucks me under his armpit, like I’m an envelope he needs to deliver, and paces down hurriedly. When we get to the truck, he buckles me up but stays outside.

“We need to run,” I mouth urgently.

“Padded walls,” Nate grunts. “No one heard. Be back in a second.”

Then he disappears between the building’s doors once again.

I hate that he is not next to me, paranoid by the prospect of being taken by Godfrey’s men again, snatched in the middle of the night, nothing more than a daily newspaper your neighbor can grab from your front porch. My fears, however, don’t materialize. A few minutes later, Nate jumps into the driver’s seat and speeds away from the crime scene after tossing something into the trunk. The gun is still clutched in my hand. I release it slowly, without even realizing that it drops to the floor of the car, still deep in trauma.

He drives to an office block I don’t recognize, but the minute I see the name Royal Realty glittering in gold over a big sign next to the names of the other corporations, I throw up on my knees. The Archers’ company. Why’s he doing this?

“Shit,” Nate mutters, and I hurry to clean my mess with paper towels I grab from my backpack. “You okay, Baby-Cakes?”

I nod, but it’s only so I won’t have to utter a lie. I’m not okay. I killed a man, and I’m not Nate. I’m angrier and more vocal about my hatred—I’m madness driven by revenge—but I’m not like him. He’s a dark, quiet killer. A peace. His abnormally beautiful face was given to him, and not by accident. It’s to disguise all the ugly things he is capable of doing without batting a pretty eyelash.

He’s not a bad man, but he is fair. Even when justice means doing something terrible. He turns to look at me, and my heart swells before shattering in my chest. I’m not going to survive parting ways with this guy, but do I really have a choice? Can he accept and love something so broken?

“I don’t think you should see what happens next. But if you do, wear your mask. This place is wired like the fucking Pentagon.”

He kisses the corner of my lips softly before slapping on his Guy Fawkes mask and jumping out, opening the trunk and taking something dark and round with him. I sit and watch him disappear into the underground parking lot of the building, jogging down the wide concrete road and sliding under the automatic barrier.

I think back to the first time I saw Beat’s Guy Fawkes mask. He said he chose it because it was the easiest mask to find, but I know the truth. Guy Fawkes represents chaos, anarchy, and dark deeds that are done behind closed doors.

He represents the part of our relationship I didn’t even know I craved before, but awakened a part of me that I didn’t know existed.

I can be a ruthless. I can kill. I can take from those who deserve to be punished.

The strength in knowing that, in some ways, he’s already fixed my soul is what makes me slide my mask on and push my door open. I walk into the parking lot. My small feet make very little sound, but this is Nate. He’s aware of my presence.

There’s something cinematic about the vision of his huge, muscular back as his fist clutches Sebastian’s short hair. I don’t know when he had time to decapitate my archenemy, but his pasty skin transformed from white to bluish in the short time he’s been dead. Blood drips from what’s left of his throat, but it’s more of an annoying trickle, like a broken faucet that
drip, drip, drips
.

The sound of Nate’s steps in his army boots echo off the walls of the empty parking lot. When he gets to a parking space that’s painted with Royal Realty’s title, he drops the head, letting it fall to the ground. Going down on one knee, he produces something small from his back pocket and arranges it neatly next to Seb’s head. I take a few breathless steps forward to see what he’s done.

It’s a small hourglass. Something he must’ve bought when we were in Los Angeles, while he was getting us some food.

Time
.

Godfrey Archer is running out of it.

I open my mouth for the first time since I killed Sebastian.

“I’m sorry I used the gun. I know guns are for pussies.”

Not sparing me a glance, his back still to me, he shakes his head.

“You’re brave. Too brave. You did what you had to do, and I respect the shit out of you. Got it?”

The need for him to tell me that he still loves me is devastating and sucks the oxygen right out of me. Sebastian’s death is the least of my worries right now. It’s what’s been revealed in this visit that makes tears chase each other down my cheeks.

I had a violent abortion at the hands of Sebastian and Godfrey when they found out about
the thing
.

“My world ended that day.” My voice is small and sad.

“I know. But you’re building a better one. A stronger one. You’ve got this, Baby-Cakes.”

Nate marshals me into another dingy motel room—all of them are starting to mold into one another in my head—while I stumble to keep up with him.

The thing about trauma is, you don’t really know the extent of it when you’re looking from the inside. On the outside, though, Nate must see something incredibly alarming, because he pulls me into his arms and hugs me so hard my bones scream in pain.

“I loved it,” I say quietly into Nate’s chest. His heart beats against my ear in a slow, steady rhythm. He’s got the heartbeat of an athlete. Just one more thing that makes him my peace. He exhales hot, peachy air into my hair.

“Promise me you won’t break. You did so well today. So well.”

“I’ve got no more strength.” I’m quivering so violently, I bump into parts of his body without even noticing. “I don’t have any more fight in me.”

He cups my face in his hands, so that I can’t escape his penetrating gaze. “Then I’ll give you some of mine.”

Shaking my head, I suddenly feel hot. So hot. Too hot. I hate this place. This room. This life. I worm out of his touch.

“They’re monsters, but they’re going to pay for what they did to you, all of them. One day when this is all over, one day, sometime in the future, you’ll have it all. I promise. A big swollen belly from the man you love.”

You
, I want to shout.
You’re the man I love.
Only we promised each other we’d say goodbye. Knowing I’m way too screwed up right now to face rejection, I still put myself in the most fragile situation I’ve ever been in. Rejection might kill me, but I have no choice.

I lift my eyes to meet his and my lips flatten.

“I want to come with you. Forget Iowa. Forget my stupid dreams. Can I come with you, Christopher Delaware?”

His gorgeous face pulls into a badass smirk and my heart stutters in my chest.

“Why, Miss Cockburn, I thought you’d never ask.”

I’m too exhausted, shocked and irritated to smile. But he picks me up honeymoon style and carries me to the dirty bed. We’re holding each other’s stares like neither of us believes we’re good enough for the other person to stick around. Somewhere underneath the painful reminder of my pregnancy. . .I’m at
peace
. I have a home now, and that’s with Nate.

We fall asleep like two dead people sometime after the sun breaks over the skyline. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad in my entire life. But also happy, and confused. Hopeful and hopeless. I’m a mess. I’m his mess. And that’s
something
.

That’s
a lot
.

And as I drift off to sleep I wonder. . .could it possibly be
everything
?

Blindsided by the whole pregnancy ordeal, I find myself staring at her as she snores softly, exhausted by life. Jesus fuck. This girl has been through and seen so much in her twenty-five years of life. Her baggage must weigh about five hundred tons. But I’ll happily shoulder whatever shit she carries in her heart if that means spending time with her.

She wants us to stick together. I want that too. Even though I know that, it doesn’t change the fact I need to piss out of the state, out of the country, before the end of the week. Today’s Sunday—one day after she killed Sebastian—and she doesn’t look ready to get out of bed. Actually, that’s a bit of a fucking understatement. The truth is, her face is buried in the pillow, crying, crying, crying. Amazingly, she doesn’t run out of tears.

“We need to get up.”

“I want to see my brother.”

“We’re killing Godfrey first.”

“No. I want to go to Vallejo, now.”

“No fucking way, Cockburn. Erase the idea from your head. We ain’t getting near that place until we finish Godfrey. It might be a set-up.”
It is a set-up
. She’s too distracted by grief to see it. “Pack up.”

“No. I need Preston.”

Goddammit.

I’m starting to suspect that she’s on the verge of depression. I can’t let it happen. She needs a dose of adrenalin, and since I can’t try to fuck my way into improving her mood, I have a better idea. An idea that can do us both a lot of good, even though it’s a very bad deed.

“Get the fuck up. We’re leaving.” I throw her backpack on the bed she’s buried in. She doesn’t respond, so I order her again. Still, nothing. I can understand her state of mind, even what she’s feeling. I lost my mother, after all, and couldn’t even attend her funeral. But we don’t have time for her sulking. She can sulk all she wants when we’re done. I grab her by the arm and yank her up, pulling her flush to my chest.

“You’re getting over it, hear me?” I growl in her face. She doesn’t look at me, just slumps her shoulders and lets me guide her to the door and into another car we stole to cover our footprints. This time I chose a Camaro. For our next act, we’ll need something fast.

We drive toward Danville, going east. At some point, she stops her sulking and turns to me. I can see how devastated she is by the way her cheekbones are sunken and her eyes are shut off. Prescott’s eyes used to glitter in the dark for me when I came down to the basement every night.

“Where to?”

“Blackhawk.” I twist to the backseat, still driving, and pull out the two masks from the Walgreens bag. At this point, the damn bag can write a fucking memoir about us. “Put it on after we go through the gates.”

Blackhawk is a gated community, but Prescott breezes right in. She’s a resident. Actually, I’d be able to walk right in too, considering I’m still technically employed there. But we’ll have to be quick when we run away, because rich people are pretty sensitive about getting their shit stolen.

And I’m about to steal some expensive fucking shit.

She rubs her face, looking up and sighing.

“What are you up to?”

“No good, just as usual.”

I’ve been sexually harassed for months. Not with the kind of brutality Prescott has been handed, but still enough to feel a tad less guilty about it.

We drive through the gates with no problem, and I leave the engine running as I park about a hundred yards from Mrs. Hathaway’s house. I learned her schedule during my time as her help and I know that today, she and Stan are playing tennis at the Simpsons’. It’s unfortunate that I have to do it on a sunny Sunday, the streets are relatively busy (though less so in the sleepy neighborhoods of Blackhawk) and it’s going to be a bitch to get away if things go south. I motion for Pea to sit her ass behind the wheel.