Fury (25 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ethan

              The lump in my throat was so large I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My body trembled as I fled the alleyway for Slánaigh.

             
Just get home. You’ll figure this out. Just get home. Get home, Ethan,
I chanted to myself over and over until I reached my bike.

              As calmly as I could, I tried to remove the chain. It took five attempts before I got it right. My shivering hands finally steadied enough to put the key in the lock. My heart constricted in my chest and I labored to breathe.

             
Just get to Fin. Find Finley. Just get to her. She’ll fix this for you. She can fix anything.

             
I started the bike and tore out into the street, narrowly missing another driver. The guy honked his horn and yelled as he passed, making my blood pressure spike. I didn’t know how much more I could take before I lost consciousness. I needed her touch.

             
Get to her hands. Just get to her hands.

             
I rushed back to Slánaigh as quickly as possible without arousing suspicion. I peered down at my hands. Every time I passed under a lamplight, they illuminated the bright red blood staining them. I cried out in anguish, wishing I could cleanse them, wishing I could rinse them, wishing I could
absolve
them. Lady Macbeth in the flesh.
She has light by her continually; ’tis her command.

             
The nausea roiled in my stomach. I could smell the iron of their blood on not just my hands but on my clothing—
in my hair
. I shook from the release of the adrenaline. I felt confused, overwhelmed.

             
Their bodies. Their bodies. All those bodies. The blood! The blood! All their blood!

              I could smell and taste the gunpowder as it lingered in the air, see their dead, uninhabited eyes, hear their deafening screams, feel their bitter, empty, yet desperate souls cry out in their unexpected and unprepared deaths.

              I pulled as far as I could go into Slánaigh before shutting off the bike and hiking the remaining distance. I threw the bike’s stand out and ran flat out until I reached the cove. I pulled back the foliage, sick to my stomach, and rode the boat to my room. I entered my room and rummaged through my things for my soap and shampoo.

              When I had them, I quietly swam to the lagoon’s waterfall, undressed, and vigorously, almost hysterically unburdened my skin of the dead men’s blood. I laid my clothes flat against the rock floor, letting the fall of the water wash the blood from my clothes as well. I stood under that waterfall with its roaring, thundering ways, thankful for the reprieve from the guilt that racked my brain with loud, horrific accusations.

              Somehow I knew that light would soon be cresting the bay, so I swam back and dressed in my room.

             
Get to Finley. Get to Finley.

             
I sprang out of my room, not caring if it woke Father. He’d only think I left earlier than him, which I did often in my eagerness to see Fin. I shot across the beach and up the trail through the canopy of trees. I bounded up the staircase, and scaled the narrow wraparound porch until I came upon Finley’s room. I tapped on her window.

              A groggy Finley came up to it and shoved it open.

              “What are—” she began to say, but I cut off her words with a kiss.

I kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her neck. I kissed her everywhere there was skin to kiss with her hanging out of the window, a giggle sounded stuck in her throat.

              “Finally,” I breathed against her ear. I hugged her, fighting a burning sensation in my throat and eyes. “Finally,” I said again, my heart beginning to beat steadily once more.

              “Finley,” I told her, my voice breaking. I cleared my throat. “Finley, you fix me.”

              “We fix each other,” she told me with a rough voice, pulling back and smiling at me, her eyes puffy with sleep.

              “Fin, before the sun rises completely, will you do me a favor?”

              “Of course, Ethan. Anything.”

              I pulled my hair from its tie. “I need you to cut my hair.”

              Her eyes popped wide along with her mouth. “No,” she said. “I won’t do that.”

              I shook my head, the memory of the men’s blood rinsing copper red from my hair onto the rocks of the waterfall. “No, it has it to be done. Either you do it or I will.”

              “But
why
?” she asked, a hitch in her voice.

She ran both her hands throughout its length, making my heart ache.

              “Because I-I need it to be gone. It’s a reminder of awful things,” I told her, not needing to embellish any further. She was so accepting of me.
What if she finds out? What if she figures it out and she detests you for it?
I shook my head of the inconceivable idea.

She nodded her answer.

              “Thank you, Fin.”

              She stood to get whatever she needed, and I slid down the side of the house. I looked out onto the dark horizon, breathing in the salt air, desperate for the stability of the tide. I listened carefully and was rewarded with the steady waves.

              Suddenly Fin was there, climbing out the window barefoot, as usual, and sporting a T-shirt and cutoffs, her hair wavy and down around her shoulders.

              “My God.” The exclamation left my chest of its own accord. “Is it possible you’ve ever been more beautiful? Every time I see you, I can’t help but think the same thing, but I think this time is quite possibly the most beautiful I’ve ever remembered.”

              She smiled shyly, making me all the more enchanted with her. She slid a small wood stool toward me, set it behind my back, and sat. I saw her knees at my shoulders so I bent my arms slightly to hold her ankles as she worked. Her skin was soothing, warm, and alive. She ran her hands through the mass for a very long time as we looked out onto the moonlit bay. My chest ached as she did it, negating the effects of her skin, but I didn’t say anything. This was a pain I couldn’t share with her, refused to overwhelm her with. It was a cumbersome weight meant only to be carried by its inventor.

              When she was done, she combed it several times then tied it in a band at the back of my head.

              “Here goes nothin’,” she told the wind. She took a pair of scissors and deftly removed my hair just above the band. “Oh my God,” she whispered when she was done.

I turned her direction, my head already feeling so different, so light. It was such a foreign sensation, so alien and yet it felt
so right
. I needed an immediate change, to separate myself from
that
Ethan.

She handed me my hair and I took it in my hands, not sure what I was supposed to do with it. I laid it on the deck beside us wishing never to look at it again.

Finley took the sharp scissors and began cutting at my remaining hair. I had no idea what she was doing, nor did I ask. She rotated around me, making sure it was even, then sat back down and when she did, my hands found her ankles again. Not long after, I heard the click and buzz of a pair of shears. Every moment it took to cut my hair was gladly received, as it meant her gorgeous hands were on me at all times.

When she was done, the crack of the buzzing shears stopped, only the quiet waves and Finley’s and my breathing could be heard. She swiped at my neck with her slender hands, removing the excess hair stuck there. She blew across the back of my neck, sending a shiver throughout my body.

She’d made me forget my night. Just like that. Finley was the calm
after
the storm.

She reached down near her feet and brought up a mirror, placing it in front of my face for me. I hardly recognized myself. I grabbed it from her and held it up.

“I, uh, gave you an undercut,” she said, shifting around, sitting on her calves, and using her hand to flip the top half around. “I kept the top a little long so you could style it easily.” She paused, dropping her hands to the deck. “Do you, uh, like it?”

I set the mirror on the wood below. I lifted her on top of my lap and wrapped my arms around her waist.

“It’s amazing. Thank you so much, Fin.”

“You’re welcome, love,” she said, kissing the top of my cut hair. She ran her fingers through the new length over and over and over. We sat in silence and waited for the sun to rise and as it did, my heart sank back into my chest.

A new day
.

I would take the guilt of that night and carefully scar it over. I would always know it was there. I couldn’t help but notice its thick, abrasive mark, but the wound would no longer open, no longer bleed. I made sure of that.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Finley

             
I held Ethan’s hair in my hands, tucking it into an envelope to donate later. I didn’t know why he had me cut it, but I knew it had to be done. I recognized he needed it as some form of therapy. I accepted it as it was because I owed Ethan that in equal exchange. He had secrets he wouldn’t confide, I knew at least that, but I would wait for him to spill them when he was ready or when he wanted me to know.

              I stepped back out of my window and joined Ethan again. The sun had almost completely risen, the morning that serene and brief limbo between light and dark, a cross between suffering and relief, strangely. The only hope was in the awareness that light would indefinitely arrive to wash out the pained darkness. But in the interim, there was peace in that murky shine and we soaked in that place, that place without hope or fear.

Ethan

             
I worked that entire day alongside Fin on edge, despite the mask I wore, in full anticipation that the bought police would come tearing up the shell drive looking for me, but they didn’t. In fact, the four men who’d died at my hand and the two who’d died indirectly never even made the news.

              I had two theories on that.

They had yet to be discovered.

or

They had been discovered by Khanh and he’d gotten rid of the bodies himself. He would still attempt his fishing expedition without the help of his bought police.

For now.

But I won’t be falling for it
, I’d thought.
No, my days of retrieving little girls without the help of legitimate law are over. Six men died because of me, because of my eagerness to save those helpless girls.

But that’s exactly the point, wasn’t it? They’re
helpless
girls. Those girls still need someone. They still need rescuing. They’re so hard to find right now. Granted, it’s your fault they’re so difficult to track down, but what’s done is done.

              I fought with myself over the next four days. One minute determined to go back and the next condemning even the thought.

But each day that passed and there was no word from anyone about the deaths, the side of me that condemned the idea of stealing more girls quieted until it was muted.

              The fifth night I paddled the boat to the cove’s shore and hid it in the bushes. It was strange to feel the wind at the back of my neck, my hair gone now, my old life abandoned the second I’d made the decision to keep looking for girls. All except Finley, my lovely Finley. She was my permanent fixture.

              I almost tripped over my own feet when a thought came rushing toward my mind.

And what if you’re shot down by these men? You would devastate Finley. And even if you didn’t die, could you risk killing any more men? Even if they deserve death? How could you face her knowing you’d willingly sought out trouble, willingly risked killing someone again?

             
I shook my head of the thoughts. “No, no. She will
never
find out. I wouldn’t pour this on her.”

But can you live with yourself knowing you were keeping secrets?

             
“Yes,” I argued with myself, “I can do this. I can hide this one thing. I can handle it.”

              When I reached the bikes, I walked one halfway down the long drive before starting it up. I kept my hood down and reveled in my newfound purpose.

I was going to save children and earn Finley Dyer both at the same time.