In the Blood (36 page)

He was as sullen and whiny as any eleven-year-old. But he was fucking nuts, and that’s what made him dangerous—like those little African kids, high on drugs, carrying machine guns. Crazy, drugged, and violent as sin; it was a nasty, terrifying combination. I felt the rise of bile—it might have been anger or it might have been fear. So divorced from my emotions was I that I couldn’t tell which. But even so, there was an undercurrent of empathy for him. I understood him. I
was
him—if no longer, then once a long time ago.

“That’s cool,” I said. “I get it. I’m not that much older than you, you know. I’ve been through all the same shit.”

“I know,” he said. “Believe me. I know everything about you,
Lana
.”

And here I thought I was so good at keeping secrets, at hiding myself away from the world. Beck, Luke, Langdon . . . they had all figured me out.

“You can call me Lane,” I said.

“Lane,” he said, as though he were testing it out on the air. “That’s a really gay name.”

“So,” I said. “How do you want to play? You think of something and I guess what it is?”

“Don’t you know how to play twenty questions?” he asked.

“It’s been a while,” I said. No, I’d never played twenty questions.

“I’ll change the rules a little,” he said. “You can ask any question. It doesn’t have to be just yes-or-no answers. We don’t have all night.”

He sat on the edge of the grave, dangling his legs over the edge, kicking his heels against the dirt. He gazed up at the sky and seemed to be thinking. In the moonlight, he was an angel in a parka. If he’d sprouted wings and flown away, I wouldn’t have been surprised. “Okay. I’m thinking of something.”

I watched his face. It was perfectly still, carved from stone. But there was a flicker of something. I knew how lonely he was. I knew because I had been lonely like that, too, all my life.

“Just get me out of here,” I said.

“No,” he said. He was cool and certain. “Play with me.”

“Is it a person, place, or thing?”

“It’s a person,” he said. “But it’s also a state of being.”

“Male or female?”

He gave me a look. How ironic that I would ask, his face seemed to say. “Male. That’s two questions,” he said.

Beck said something unintelligible, and I looked down at her.

“Shut up!” he barked at her.

I don’t think Luke saw me jump. I knelt down to Beck, and she suddenly seemed so much paler, weaker. She was drugged, probably starved, dehydrated. I put a hand on her and her skin felt cool—that couldn’t be good, right? Shock or something like that? She opened her eyes at my touch and all I saw on her face was fear; it opened something up in me. I realized how deeply fucked we were, and bit back panic. The brain seizes in panic, and I was already out of my league. She reached for me and whispered something, but I could barely hear her.

“That’s cheating!” he said. He held the gun now and I could see that he was getting angry.

“She doesn’t even know what’s happening.”

“Yes,” he said petulantly. “She does.”

I stood to face him, and I could feel Beck’s hand on my leg. “Young or old?” I asked.

“All ages,” he said.

“Look,” I said. “Can we just end this? Why are you doing this?”

“Three, four, and five,” he said. His kicking grew rhythmic, and he was biting on the edge of his thumb. I began pressing my toe into the earth again. It felt like I was getting deeper. A few more inches, I thought, and I might be able to lift myself out of the grave. I thought I heard something on the air then. Was it a siren? The wind picked up and a light snow started to fall. I could feel Beck shivering. Were we going to die out here tonight?

“Do I know someone like this?” I asked.

“Quite a few, I’d say.”

“Am I like this?” A little deeper.

“You are, but you don’t know it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

Honestly? I had no idea what he was getting at. I mean, really, I was intellectually shut down. All I could think about was getting Beck and myself out of the hell we were in. Luke cocked his head, seemed to be listening to the night. I used his diverted attention to kick harder at the foothold and my toe slipped in deeper to the frozen ground. My hands were shaking from cold and fear.

“Where do men like this live?”

“Everywhere,” he said. “Anywhere.”

Beck was tugging at my jean leg but I was ignoring her. If I looked at her again, I was going to fall apart and risk Luke’s anger.

“Don’t look at her,” he said. “Look at me.”

His ankle was well within my reach. But if I pulled him into the grave, we’d all be stuck. The flakes falling from the sky were sharp and cold. The snow had already started to stick to the ground. If I was going to make my move, it would have to be one motion. I’d have to step up hard, grab his ankle, and push myself up and pull myself out at the same time. Maybe he’d be too surprised to shoot. How much experience could Luke have with guns?

I couldn’t even think of another question to ask. Luke and I locked eyes.

“Do you give up?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

I heard a moan from up above, and Luke looked toward the sound. Then he bounced up out of sight. Langdon’s arm slowly disappeared as he was dragged away from the edge.

“Luke,” I called, but he didn’t answer.

After a second I heard an ugly
thwack
. Then again. The sound of it made my stomach turn, but Beck was pulling at me harder. I bent down to her. This time I heard her. Her breath was hot in my ear as she whispered the answer.

I felt myself reel back from her. But even in my utter disbelief, I knew that what she said was the truth. Part of me had known it all along.

When I looked back, Luke was standing above me. He held the shovel in his hand, and there was a fine spray of red across his face and jacket.

“Next question,” he said.

I pretended not to notice that he looked like a horror-movie killer standing there, blank, empty, covered with blood. I tried to offer him a loving smile. Isn’t that what we all want, really, deep inside? Just to love and be loved? Well, maybe not everyone.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “Langdon used you. I get that none of this is your fault.”

He made a little noise somewhere deep inside his throat, and for a moment I thought he’d break down with relief. His face did a little wiggle, the corners of his mouth twitching. But then I realized he was laughing.

“Is that what you think?” he asked. “That
he
used
me
? That pathetic gay pedophile? No.”

I did it in one motion. I dug my foot in hard and lifted myself up high enough to grasp the edge and pull myself up. Luke already had the shovel lifted by the time I landed on the slick ground, but I rolled away before he could bring it down.

It landed with a thud, spraying dirt and sharp cold flakes of snow inches from my head. But I was up quickly. And in the next second, I was diving at him, throwing all my weight in his direction. I caught him by the waist and we both fell hard to the ground, Luke issuing a thick groan when my body hit his.

I had his wrists. The shovel had fallen out of reach, and the gun sat uselessly on the edge of the grave. He struggled at first, writhing beneath me, issuing a strangled yell of rage. But I held him down, and after a while he started to sob. Big, gulping, pathetic sobs.

“You’re right,” he said. “He did use me. He molested me and used me to get to you.”

“I know the answer,” I said, still pinning him.

“No, you don’t,” he wailed.

“I do. The answer is ‘brother.’ You’re my brother.”

He drew in a little gasp, all his fake wailing drying up instantly.

“She told you,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at me. “You cheated. You didn’t win.”

“No,” I lied. “I knew it all along.”

“I’m your
half
brother,” he said. He almost spat it at me. The tears left his voice and it was suddenly flat as glass. “We don’t have the same mother. Your mother is
dead
. He killed her because he wanted to be with
my
mother. But instead he went to jail—because of
you
.”

I felt like he was slashing me with razors. Every word out of his mouth had sliced me, too deep to hurt but not too deep to bleed.

“You little fucker,” I hissed at him.

Then he started to sob again, wailing something about wanting to know his father, wanting to go home to his mother, and how he hated me, hated me, hated me. And I saw that he was just a little boy. And then, because I’m a weakling and a fool, I started to feel bad for him.

Then, “If you’d kept your mouth shut, we’d all have been together. That was the plan.”

Another slash across my heart. I started to feel myself weaken—physically, emotionally. That drain opened up inside and everything started to pour out of me—my strength, my fight, my will to live. My world was too ugly. Why would anyone want to live there? When Luke twisted his hands away from my grip, I had no inner resources to marshal. Even the sound of Beck calling weakly from her grave wasn’t enough to put the fight back in me. It took nothing for him to flip me over and straddle my chest. Then he closed his hands around my neck and started to squeeze.

Was it true? Had my father killed my mother so that he could be with Rachel and Luke? If he’d gotten away with it, what had he planned for me?

Luke wasn’t very strong, so he wasn’t completely cutting off my air. But it still hurt, and that biological imperative to survive kicked in. I was gasping, seeing stars, and finally the lack of oxygen motivated
me to start prying his little fingers from my throat. But he had a death grip.

“Luke, that’s enough.”

I wasn’t sure where the voice was coming from. But then it rang out again, louder, more stern.

“That’s enough!” It was Rachel, her voice a shout that echoed off the trees. “Let your brother go.”

He released me and I sucked in air, felt the blessed filling of my lungs, and rolled over to start coughing and coughing.

He rose to face his mother, who approached us slowly. She looked around the scene, her jaw open in naked awe. “What have you done?”

She reached for his shoulders and gave him a little shake.
“What have you done?”
Her voice was a shriek, an absolute wail of horror and despair.

But Luke didn’t have a chance to answer, because those distant sounds grew suddenly louder. There were voices and lights in the trees, the whopping blades of a helicopter overhead, and suddenly our clearing was filled with a bright light from above. I crawled my way over to the grave where Beck lay, and she was so still and so white at its bottom. And Langdon was lying in a dark circle of blood.

My father would have said that boys don’t cry. But I did. For the first time since my mother died, I cried my heart out.

Cold still clung to the region as I left my building and climbed on my bike. Even as the end of February approached, the frigid temperatures held on tight. There was no sign of warmth. The groundhog saw his shadow and quickly retreated to his burrow. There were no crocuses pushing their way up through the persistent cover of white. It was frigid and gray as I rode my bike the short distance from my new condo in town to the Coopers’ house.

I was headed to the first of three sessions we would have before the Skype conversation I’d agreed to have with my father. Dr. Cooper wanted to prepare me, to get my head straight, my questions in order. She didn’t want me to be blindsided. I’d asked her to be present for the actual conversation and she’d agreed. Isn’t it amazing how much power our parents have over us? I was afraid even of his image on a screen.

I didn’t want to go to Florida to see my father. And Dr. Cooper said I didn’t have to, that it wasn’t my responsibility to give him what he wanted. But I had questions, a lot of them. And I needed answers. So I agreed to a Skype conversation that would take place in Jones Cooper’s office, a place I would never have cause to visit
again. I didn’t want to do it in my new apartment, the one I shared now with Beck, or in Dr. Cooper’s space. These were both safe havens where I was free, finally, to be myself and I wasn’t willing to give either of them over to the man who killed my mother, even if he was my father.

News interest in Beck and me had faded, though for a while we were mobbed by reporters when we left our new apartment. So I was grateful for the quiet street as I sailed down the hill. You can imagine the coverage: BAD SEED AND PSYCHO PROFESSOR KIDNAP COED! MISSING GIRL RESCUED BY CROSS-DRESSING BOYFRIEND! It was endless—we couldn’t turn on a television or pick up a newspaper without reading more of the story that was gripping the area and the country. Beck was constantly Googling us, and reading all the insane things people were writing and saying. Naturally, she thought it was a gas—or she pretended to think that, just to feel like her old self again.

But until the trials started, if they ever did, interest in us had died down. I never gave an interview, never reacted to the mob, kept my head down. I wore the same boring outfit every day, my androgyny uniform: jeans, white shirt, black peacoat, ski hat, Doc Martens. There was never an interesting picture of me to publish. And Beck behaved herself, too. Which surprised me, because I expected her to lap it up. But she was too shattered to have any fun yet. She still had nightmares, was taking an antidepressant. She’d started sessions with Dr. Cooper.

I’d left her behind, wrapped in a blanket on my couch, sulking. She didn’t want me to talk to my father, wasn’t happy with Dr. Cooper’s prep sessions either.

“What can he say to you?” she asked. “It can only set you back.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “I’ll be fine.”

But the truth was, neither of us was exactly fine. We were getting there, maybe, but it would be a while. Lynne, Beck’s mother, was staying with us until Beck seemed “more like herself.” She and Frank totally accepted us, which surprised me. But they were those type of hippie parents who tried to get behind whatever was going on. Frank was a bit aloof with me, but polite and respectful. Honestly, it’s the most you can ask of men sometimes. They’re so wound up, so buried beneath layers of “boys don’t cry,” and “pussy,” and “man up,” that they don’t even know how to feel about anything. I should know.