Remember Me (30 page)

“Just do what he wants,” Ian whispers.

“Exactly.” Jason steps in front of Bay. “Listen to your son. Transfer the funds and I'll go away forever.”

Money. If it's about money then why am I here?
My stomach hits bottom again. This is already bad, but it feels . . . worse. Or like worse is coming.

Slowly, I shift my knees under me, studying the room from the corners of my eyes. The furniture has been pushed close to the walls, leaving the four of us on the expansive, pale carpet. Ian is whimpering, Bay is swearing, and Jason looks like he would enjoy taking each of us apart.

I watch his hands. The dealer's knuckles are so white I'm wondering how he can even feel the Taser—and that's when I see something move outside the window. A shadow separates from the dark. I blink, blink again.

Not a shadow. A person.

It moves to the right. Not any person.
Milo
.

Relief turns my bones mushy.

Until Jason punches Ian. Once. Twice. Three times. The poor kid's scream bubbles in his mouth, drowning on blood.

“Please, Dad.” Ian's voice climbs higher, cracks. I cringe, eyes still on the window, praying for Milo to reappear.
“Please!”

Next to me, Bay stiffens. “Stop sniveling!”

It makes Jason pause, fist raised. He looks at the judge with a smile meant for murder. “I remember that. I remember you saying that to her—”

“Who?” Bay's scooting backward now, pressing into me.

“My mother,” Jason says. “You remember Tabitha, don't you, Bay? You screwed her enough. You screwed her enough to get me.”

Underneath Jason, Ian makes a gagging noise of disbelief and horror. “Dad?”

“There's no proof. She was unstable and whored around and there was never any proof—”

“
I'm
the proof!” Jason screams. “Remember me? The son you ignored? I'm the proof! You assholes just use people like us and throw us away. You did it with my mom. Your son did it with Lell.”

“He loved her,” Bay whispers. It's so quiet none of us should have heard it. “Kyle shouldn't have, but he did.”

“It wouldn't have lasted.” Jason steps closer, leaning down so his face is only inches from Bay's. “It never does for your kind. Did you enjoy being blackmailed? Did you enjoy being scared? Because I enjoyed doing it to you. I really did.”

Bay's face goes purple. “You'll never get a dime from me.”

Behind him, Ian pushes to his feet and sways. My heart leaps. If he's going to fight, I'll have to help. I'll jump on Jason's back or—

“Fuck this.” Ian wipes the blood from his face and pulls a Taser from the small of his back. “I've had enough of your hysterics. Let's just kill him here and make it look like a robbery. I'll inherit everything and you'll get half, Baines.”

47

“You're working with
him
?” The judge's question slides into a howl.

“Surprise,” Ian breathes, and cocks his head like he heard something, feels something.

We all do.

First comes the pressure. It's so dense I feel it in my head, my chest, my
bones
 . . . then comes the sound—glass shattering, drywall cracking—and the explosion shoves me forward. I hit the floor, face-first, my skull full of white light.

So that's where Milo went. Almost makes me smile.

Dimly, I'm aware of another explosion, a smaller one. Wait. Was it smaller? Or does it just
feel
smaller? My ears won't stop ringing. It's hard to breathe through the sudden smoke, but I haul ass anyway, grabbing for Bay.

He's already gone.

Jason kicks off the floor, running after him. I spin the other way and someone grabs my ankle, taking me to my knees. Ian. I lash out with my foot, connect with something soft. I ram my heel into it again. And again.

My ankle breaks free. I run for it, sneakers crunching on bits of glass. If I can get into the back garden, I can loop around to the road. I can do this.

“Wicket!” Ian screams.

I run harder, shouldering open what's left of the French doors and spilling onto the outside patio. My lungs burn. My eyes burn. I hit a wooden chaise lounge with both shins and crash to the ground.

Then I hear a siren wail.
Cops
.

It's to my right. Toward the main road.

Fastest way to get to them is across the front lawn and down the driveway. I stab one hand under me and push myself upright, racing down the stairs, cutting across the side garden . . .

Stopping dead.

Ahead of me, two figures grapple on the front lawn. There's a pop of light and a scream. Bay? Jason? I can't tell. Someone goes down, thrashing. Shit. I'd have to get past them to get to the road. I won't make it. That leaves . . .

The woods.

I could cut through the woods like I did before. If I run straight through, I could catch the cops on the other side. Between the underbrush and the darkness, I'd have coverage.

Of course, so would anyone else who's out there.

Fuck it. I sprint for the trees.

I'm almost there when I hear a snarl behind me.

“Got you now, bitch.”

Ian.

I push myself, breaking through the trees with both arms outstretched. My feet hit the dead leaves and I have to force myself to count how many seconds pass before he joins me.

Three . . . four . . . five . . .

He's in
.

I dive to my left and hit the dirt, tucking myself behind some brush like an animal. It might be appropriate actually. I feel like I've been run to ground.

“I know you're close, Wick.” Ian walks a few feet ahead of me. “I can hear your breathing.”

No shit.
I'm struggling not to hyperventilate. I mash my shirt against my mouth, trying to smother the sound, and my elbow rams into something hard.

A broken-off branch.

I run my fingers over it, feeling the sharpened edge. Not a Taser, but it'll have to do.

Ian shuffles closer, kicking the smell of dead leaves into the air. “Come on out, Wick. You did this before with Jason, remember? He told me all about it.”

The close-pressed branches and the ringing in my ears play hell with Ian's voice. I can't tell where he is. To my left? I think? I ease myself into a sitting position, look around. Not good. I went too far. I'm pinned by brush on one side and Ian on the other. I need to stand. I can't get a good swing if I'm lying down. But if I stand, he'll see me.

If I stay, he'll
find
me.

I push to my feet, staying close to a tree trunk, and pan the shadows, holding my breath until it's a pinch in my chest.

“Come on, Wick.”

There
. There he is. Ian's a few feet away, bent in half as he looks for me under a log.

“I know what you are in the dark, Wick. That's what made it so good. I saw you standing over Baines in the study. I saw your expression. You enjoy power. You're like me.”

“Bullshit.”

Ian straightens, hunting for the direction of my voice. “Liar.”

I press to my right, deeper into the woods, but I need a better position, one where I won't get slowed down by brush when I run.

“I saw you through the window,” Ian continues. He moves faster than I do, not worrying about the noise. He's getting closer.

“We both play weak because it suits us,” he says. “It's not because we are. Predators keep excellent cover. Too bad we recognize each other.”

“I'm not like you, Ian.”

“Shitty attitude coming from a girl who stinks of fear.” He inhales a long, deep breath. “You bitches all smell like it in the end.”

I push through the last bit of undergrowth. Ian's maybe fifteen feet away. There's no way I'll outrun him.

“Don't feel like talking anymore, Wick?”

I lift the branch to my shoulder. “Why'd you kill Lell?”

Ian's head lifts, twisting back and forth as he hunts for me. “Lell was like me too—like us. She denied it until the end of course. I knew she wanted my brother for money. Baines knew Kyle wanted Lell for the moment. We were all friends and I . . . used that. I whispered to Baines all about how he should do something. And then he did—he killed both of them.”

Ian pauses, taking a deep breath of night air. “I'm good at that, getting people to do what I want. Chelsea was like that too. She wanted money, power, to
get away
from here, and once she found those pictures, she saw her ticket—at my expense. She was my first and, God, how I enjoyed the cutting. Almost as much as I enjoyed burying Kyle. You want to know the best part?”

No.
I almost say yes though because he's drawing closer and, one way or another, this is going to end.

“The best part was that our father believed it was Kyle. By that time, he hated him so much it was easy getting him to believe his son killed Lell and took off.”

I shift behind another tree and a branch pops under my foot. Ian tenses.

And comes closer.

“I talked him through it,” he continues. “Just like with Baines, I explained how it had to be, and do you know what my father did? Nothing. Instead of searching for his son, he helped cover it up. It all made too much sense after all of Kyle's blackout rages and the doctor's warnings. People see what they expect to see—of all people, you should get that.”

I do and I ease back another step, feeling with the toe of my sneaker now, easing it into the leaves to minimize the noise.

“And then I got to thinking,” Ian says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Because now that Kyle was out of the picture, I was set to inherit everything and what would happen if I were to . . . speed things up?”

He'd be free of Bay
. I swallow and my throat catches. “And the ‘remember me' thing?”

“I thought it was a nice touch. Remember the girl you buried. Remember what you
did
. Dad knew someone else knew. He started to melt down and I got to watch. I broke him like he kept trying to break me.”

Ian pauses, scanning the woods. He's looking . . . looking. . . . He freezes. He
sees me
.

“This is going to happen, Wick.”

Yes, it is.
I clench the branch harder, force myself to wait, will my hands to stop shaking. They don't. I'm a breath away from crying. I don't trust myself to breathe. I'm afraid I'll sob. Then Ian moves sideways and I think I'm wrong. He hasn't spotted me at all. We're close—close enough to touch—but he's looking toward the road, like he thinks I'm heading there.

Wait for it. Wait for it
, I think.
You know how to play the role of prey.

And suddenly it's like Todd and my dad are both here, whispering my name. Ian leaps toward me and I swing the branch.

Connect.

His screams fill the air. I raise the branch again, start to bring it down, and pain courses through me, flying down my nerve endings.

It stops.

I'm facedown in the dirt now. Somewhere I can hear a low whimper and it takes me a second to realize it's me. A fist knots in my hair, yanking me onto my back, and Ian crouches down, pinning my shoulder with his knee.

Getupgetup! Don't let him get on top of you. You won't get up again.

Too late.
I want to laugh as he sticks his face close to mine, stares into my eyes.
I am always too late.

There's a bite of pain on the side of my face.
What
—a blade. He's pressing a knife into my cheek and blood runs down in a warm wave.

Ian rubs his thumb against my lips. “This isn't the way it was supposed to happen, Wick. I thought we could've had something good together. I get you—even if you don't want to see it.”

My hands scrabble in the dirt around us, finding nothing. No rocks. Not my damn branch. There has to be something.

Then Ian's hip touches mine and I feel the Taser's hard plastic corner.

“What do you think, Wick?” Ian draws the blade down toward my mouth. “Should I give you a smile before I go? Or can you smile for me all on your own?”

I can. I do. I smile at Ian as my fingers close on the Taser's handle. I twist it up
hard
, pressing it into Ian's stomach and holding down the trigger until the cops follow our screams.

48

What's worse than sitting in a cop car? Sitting in an ambulance.

Where the hell is Carson? I shrug off the blanket the EMTs gave me. Yeah, I haven't stopped shaking, but wearing it around my shoulders makes me feel like a flood victim.

“Miss?” The EMT stops checking my pulse and glares at me. He looks familiar. Name on his shirt says Morris. Huh. Either I hit my head way harder than I thought or this is the same EMT from five months ago.

“If you could just hold still?” Morris asks through gritted teeth.

“I'm fine. Really.”

“You're not fine. You might be after they get stitches into your cheek. I doubt it though. Your pupils are uneven. You're probably concussed—”

“I feel okay.”

“You Tasered yourself.”

“And also the bad guy.” I give Morris a stinging, bright smile and he ignores me, dumping extra bandages into a plastic tub he shoves under one of the bench seats.

“Stay put.” He points a finger between my eyes. “The detectives are going to want to speak with you before we go to the hospital. Do. Not. Move. Understand?”

Definitely the same guy from last time.

I roll my eyes. “Fine.”

Morris's hands flex once before he walks to the front of the ambulance, leaving me to stare at the gathering crowd and debate my next move or, rather, lack of moves. I have no idea how I'm going to explain this to Bren. None. Next to my thigh, something buzzes.