Fatal Beauty (16 page)

That feels like a lifetime ago.

Lews
grabs her ankles, and she
can feel him moving over her. Charlie screams, furious, and there’s a sharp
crack of skin against skin.

“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Jason snarls

Her stomach lurches.
Lews
grunts above
her, his big body pinning her as she stretches for the damn bag.

His hand is under her skirt, and fury makes her vision go red for
a second and she screams in rage, twisting and bucking against him. Charlie is
crying.

Lews
grabs her hair and slams
her head into the side of the bed.

Stars are spinning in her vision, and she can hear
Lews
muttering. “Stupid, superior, little whore. Always
thought you were better than us. Fucking show you what you’re good for.”

His hands are on her thighs, bruising hard as he pulls them wide,
and she can feel the cold air on her cunt. He’s ripped her panties away.

Far away, she can hear Charlie crying.
Lews
has his dick out now, and his fingers are digging into her, rough and invasive
and she comes to life, fighting and screaming.

Something slams into him and she screams as his fingers inside her
jerk, painfully hard before he falls off her as Mason crashes into him.

James is standing, shaking and furious, and she’s has a moment of
shock, staring at him. Charlie’s toy has yanked Jason off of her, an arm around
his neck but already the bastard is fighting him and
Lews
is starting to rise.

EJ stands and kicks him, her stiletto catching him square in the
face. She feels the give of his head, the disgusting crunch of his nose and the
snap of her heel as it embeds in his skin. He screams, and it galvanizes Jason,
his efforts at getting away turning frantic.

Charlie still hasn’t moved.

EJ grabs the gun and a pillow, and shoves it against
Lews
face. “The orders didn’t include rape, you piece of
shit,” she snarls and then she pulls the trigger.

Even with the pillow to muffle it, the gun is loud and
unmistakable and Jason goes still. His eyes are wide as she stalks toward him
with another pillow, disbelieving and she shoves the gun against his wet, limp dick,
and pulls the trigger. He screams and Miles drops him with an oath, stumbling
back as she steps on his throat.

“You fucking piece of shit,” she says. She’s shaking. So angry she
can’t even breathe. He’s howling and she lifts the gun, to end him.

“Don’t,” Charlie whispers. She’s still laying on the floor, curled
on her side, and it hurts a part of her to see Charlie looking like that. Blood
is dark on her skin, and she’s so pale she looks like a ghost.

There are bruises on her again, and that makes EJ’s hands tremble.

“Don’t, Ellie,” Charlie says again and she sits up. Spits out some
blood. “Leave him like that.”

“What the
fuck?”
Miles
screams, and EJ looks at him. Blinks. For a moment, she had forgotten they were
there. That they had ever picked up two random strangers to begin with. For a
single heartbeat, she considers shooting them. Instead she motions with the
gun.

“Get out. And don’t fucking call the cops, or I’ll shoot your dick
off next.” She says, glaring at Miles. He’s gone almost before she finishes the
sentence. James gives her a longer look, searching, and then he’s slipping out
the door behind him.

Charlie is sitting on the bed and EJ tosses the gun on the ground.
Jason has stopped screaming. She thinks, vaguely, that he’s passed out.

She grabs her purse and pulls Charlie up. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s
get you dressed.”

She closes the door to the bedroom behind them, grabs Charlie’s
arm. “We have to go,” she murmurs, kicking off her broken shoes.

“Why?” Charlie whispers. She’s crying again, silent tears
streaming down her face. EJ shoves their clothes into a bag and grabs Charlie’s
hand.

“Come on, baby. Stay with me,” she pleads.

The other girl is crying, silent, shaking sobs that are tearing EJ
up, but she’s moving, and that’s the important thing. It takes her almost five
minutes to get Charlie downstairs—taking the staircase to avoid the cameras in
the elevators. There’s no way to get out of this clean. She knows that. But the
boys will vouch that the shooting was self-defense and maybe by the time the
authorities put two and two together, they’ll be gone.

The Nova is in a self-park garage. She keeps her head down and an
arm around Charlie’s shoulders as they walk through the empty lot.

When she tucks Charlie into the backseat with a blanket to cover
her, and slides behind the wheel, it feels like coming home. And wrong.

So fucking wrong.

EJ shoves the thought aside and pulls out of the parking garage,
and points them to the west. She knows they’ll need to stop, soon. But she
wants out of New Mexico and the dead bodies she just left in that damn hotel
room. She wants away from the men Jacobs sent after her that would do this.

Her stomach lurches and she gags. Scrambles for a bag. She barely
makes it, before she throws up, so hard her eyes water and the car slows,
swerving a little as she tries to drive while she’s falling apart.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It’s a game. A fucking game
that should never be this real. She can feel
Lews
on
her, his hot breath against her skin, his fingers digging into her and she
wants to scream. Her stomach lurches again, but she forces it down.

Rolls down the window and tosses the bag out as she hits the
highway.

Jacobs answers on the first ring. “Ellie.”

“You sent
Lews
after me,” she says. And
then, furiously, “You sent fucking
Lews
after me.”

“Tell me you didn’t shoot him like you did Marco,” he says, tired.
“You forced my hand—killing Marco couldn’t go unpunished.”

“So you sent your mad dog to rape me?” she snarls her voice
shaking.

There’s a long moment of silence and then, very coldly, “What?”

“Jason raped Charlie. And
Lews
was—” she
chokes, and takes a breath. Forces it out, “He had his hands on me. Inside me.
Was that in your fucking plans, when you sent him to bring me home?”

“I’ll kill him,” Jacobs snarls.

“I’ve already done it.” She snaps.

“Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“Fuck you, Jacobs. How did you find me?”

“You stole from me, Ellie. Did you really think I wouldn’t have a
way finding it? When have I ever been that careless, sweetheart?”

She goes still, and then, softly. “You bastard.”

“Tell me where you are.” He orders. “Let me bring you in before
this gets even more out of hand. I can fix this.”

She shakes her head. A million miles away. With Charlie sobbing
silently in the backseat, and alone on a quiet stretch of road, she realizes
it. “You can’t fix this, Jacobs. It’s too much. We can’t go back to before—not
after tonight.”

He’s quiet and finally, she hangs up. Steering with her knees, she
pops open the back of the battery.

It’s there. A small silver disk on the battery. She would laugh,
except she can’t imagine laughing. Not after tonight. Not while she’s still
listening to Charlie sob in the back.

She peels the tracker of the phone and rolls down the window,
letting it drop into the night. A few miles later, she drops the phone. Then
she rolls the window back up and turns on the radio to cover Charlie’s sobs.

Chapter 23

They’ve
criss-crossed
Arizona. Charlie hasn’t complained or even
give an opinion. What EJ thinks is for the best—well, she doesn’t actually care
what EJ thinks is for the best, just now.

They stop every
night at a cheap hotel and EJ chatters about the news and the weather and the
music and whatever else she thinks will keep Charlie’s mind occupied, while
Charlie strips out of her sweat crusted clothes, pulls on soft sweat pants and
an oversized t-shirt before crawling into bed with a bottle of wine.

Once, she managed
to drink enough wine that she didn’t wake up screaming in the middle of the
night.

The first time it
happened, right after Santa Fe, her screaming brought the hotel manager banging
on their door and EJ cussing him out before they were tossed out.

Even Hotel Murder
had its standards, apparently.

Charlie leans her
head on the window, watching yet another stretch of Arizona desert falling past
the door. It’s been over a week since that night.

“Where are we?”

EJ, driving
silently, jerks the wheel, hard enough that Charlie’s head slaps lightly
against the door. She hisses, and EJ steadies the car before eyeing Charlie
warily. Her voice is rough and scratchy, and for the first time, she realizes
she can’t remember the last time she spoke.

It’s been days.

Since that night?
She shivers, and that empty pit of blank space yawns open in front of her.

She likes that pit.
It’s cold and dark and it’s deliciously numb.

“Outside
Flagstaff,” EJ says, snapping her back to the moment.

Charlie frowns at
her. Flagstaff. “We were here two days ago.”

EJ refocuses on the
road. Charlie stares at her for a moment, and when no explanation is
forthcoming, she reaches out and nudges her knee. “EJ. What the hell are we
still doing in Arizona?”

“You weren’t ready
for Vegas,” she says softly. “And I didn’t know what to do.”

“So we’ve been
driving around Arizona aimlessly for the past week?” Charlie asks, blinking.

 
EJ huffs, a quiet little noise of tired
displeasure.

"I didn't have
a lot of options," she says.

There is one,
immediate and so tempting it almost draws a whimper from her. She shoves down
the well of longing and straightens in her seat. "We had a plan."

Go to Vegas. Wait
for her guy to make the IDs while they quietly cleaned out Jacobs’ bank
accounts. And then run.

If she hadn't
fallen apart, they would be in Ireland now, tucked into a cozy castle in the
middle of fucking nowhere and safe from the crazy bastard chasing them. Safe
and free. A tiny noise is clawing at the back of her throat, begging to break
free, a sob she can’t indulge in.

“You could have
dropped me off in Phoenix at a hotel. Called Daddy. He would have come to get
me—I’d have been alone less than twelve hours and you’d be safe and in your
castle.

EJ blinks. Then
yanks hard on the wheel, hitting the gravel shoulder way too fast. The tail of
the Nova fishtails, tires throwing up grit and dust and Charlie screams as they
spin a little and she punches the brake, tossing them into a wilder spin as she
brings the car to a jarring stop.

EJ is out of the
car almost before it stops moving. Charlie blinks as she explodes out of the
car, all frantic, angry motion that is almost alarming in EJ.

Slowly, Charlie
climbs out of the car, wincing as her limbs stretch and regain feeling.

How long has she
been fucking sitting like that? Curled against the door, her head on her knees,
staring unseeing out the window.

A flare of disgust
hits her so hard she almost can’t breathe. And it’s too much, too much to think
about right now. So she stares at EJ, pacing along the side of the road, covered
in a fine coat of dust, and swearing steadily.

“What the actual
fuck, EJ?” Charlie says, pitching her voice louder than her friend’s ranting.

“I can’t believe
you’d suggest that. Are you fucking kidding me?” EJ snaps, glaring at her. “Do
you really think I’d do that to you?”

“I think you had a
plan and I fucked it all up. I wouldn’t have blamed you at all.”

And she might have
thanked her. She hates—even now—the idea of being the pretty polite doll her
father expects. But there, she was untouchable.

In Charleston, she
was a known quantity, and everyone there knew Travis Brooks would never have
tolerated anyone hurting his baby girl.

Her stomach
lurches. Except Tre had.

“You know better.
You’re a lot of things, Charlie, but stupid has never been one of them,” EJ
says, and exhaustion coats her voice, startling Charlie.

“Explain.”

“I wouldn’t leave
you. How could you fucking think, after everything we’ve been through, that I
would leave you?”

There’s something
deep and raw in her voice that pulls Charlie from all of the shit in her head,
and grounds her in the moment.

“EJ.”

“No,” EJ says,
cutting her off sharply and shaking her head. “That’s all kinds of fucked,
Charlie. I’ve been at your side for every single fucking thing you’ve asked. And
you think I’d cut and run
now?”

“This was never
about me,” Charlie says.

EJ recoils, her
face pale. She’s grungy, her short hair greasy and flat from a hat, her shorts
rumpled from driving—she looks like hell, and the disgust is back. How has she
missed this? How lost in her own head has she been that she’s forgotten EJ.

“What the hell are
you talking about?” EJ whispers.

“You’re doing this
because of whatever twisted shit is between you and Jacobs. I’m just along for
the ride. But you’d be fine without me. Better.”

“You are the reason
I’m here,” she says, her voice shaking. “Do you have any idea how many times
I’ve run from Jacobs and my mother?”

It’s the same
question Jacobs had asked, and it chills her in the Arizona sun. She squints
against the sun.

“Twelve. Since I
turned eighteen. I’ve left twelve times. And I always come home. Jacobs snaps
his fingers, sends Marco to fetch me, and I come. Because that’s what I was
supposed to do. Who I’m supposed to be—a pretty little doll for him to prop up
and see smile.”

“EJ, we’re fighting
the inevitable,” Charlie says.

“No.” It’s
whispered, but it’s forceful. Heavy with conviction and hope that startles
Charlie because she didn't think her cynical, cold friend could sound that
fierce and stubbornly hopeful. She quiets and EJ shakes her head, “We decide.
They don’t get to control our lives forever. It doesn’t matter what they
want—all our lives, we’ve been what they want us to be and miserable. Aren’t
you ready to be what
you
want?”

Charlie stares at
the grit of the road, leaning against the Nova.

“Why did you call
me that night?”

“Because that’s
what you do. When shit falls apart, you call the person you know you can count
on. The one who can fix it, or if they can’t, can hold you up while everything
crumbles.”

EJ’s head tilts.
“And you still think I’d walk away?”

“No,” she says
honestly. “I think you should. You’d be better off if you did. But desertion
isn’t really your style. If it was, you’d have gotten clear of Jacobs a long
time ago.”

EJ laughs, a tight
little noise that worries her. Charlie straightens away from the car and smirks
at her friend. “So. We’re in this together. What do you say we finish it and
get the hell
outta
dodge?”

“Dear god, yes,” EJ
says, and Charlie laughs. It feels strange and it hurts, a little, but in a
good way. In the way that says she’s going to be okay, in the end.

“Great. I’ll drive.
You look like hell.”