"Rob, what, where are you going?"
"Away from here!"
"You’re not going to help? What about the money?"
"Not enough," he fired back, careening down the hallways of my apartment at breakneck speed.
“What about the victims here?"
He stumbled, running into the hallway wall, but he rallied quickly. “I’ll send their families a nice flower arrangement!”
That sounded especially callous, but given that he wasliterally running awayfrom his demons,that was fear talking.
"What about the next victims, the ones you could have saved?”
He stopped dead. I nearly ran into his back and knocked him over. When he wheeled around to face me, he looked rattled. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you! I’m not the one killing people. Those deaths aren’t on me.”
"Not the previous ones, but we have a chance to stop him. If we don’t take it now…"
“No! No, I can’t.” He waved his hands, falling back against the front door. So close to the exit, and now he’d stopped in his tracks, out of steam. “For once in my life, once is all it took to learn my damn lesson. I got involved with this guy once, and my cousin… my cousin Tommy paid the price.”
What?
“I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, this guy found me, and Tommy died. This time I’m staying the hell out of it.” It took him a few tries to open the door, but he looked me right in the eyes as he delivered his goodbye. “See, Ialreadyhave blood on my hands from this. I can’t handle more.”
Rob left. He took his connections to the killer and any possible answers with him. He took my best chance of finding Lex with him, and I had to let him go.
Shit. I definitely screwed that up.
~
Rob
I found the nearest convenience store to buy some smokes to calm down but ended up getting a handle of whiskey instead. A nightmare from my past came back to haunt me. The biggest mistake I ever made and someone else paid the price.
Yeah, whiskey felt right.
Parked against the wall of the store, my hands were shaking so bad, sloshing liquor over the brown paper bag covering it. Super classy. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to forget how that voice invaded my head. And the ring of fire and everything it symbolized.
Everything had changed.
God, that voice in my mind today had been rasping and cruel. He hadn’t sounded that way when we met. Lex played the part of a down on his luck hero, a wizard hurt by the evil forces working against him and now he needed a hero of his own. He’d cast me in that role. And it sounded a hell of a lot better than my usual parts, trouble maker, problem child, disruption. Liar.
He talked of magic and told me I could help and I ate it up, blind to all the red flags an adult would spot a mile away, all the red flags Tommy saw.
After all these years, his voice changed and showed everything he’d been all along: calculating, cruel, evil.
And the cherry on top of this crap sundae? I was on the verge of having a freaking nervous breakdown in a convenience store parking lot. You know that crazy guy who hangs around gas stations muttering to himself about conspiracy theories and asking for spare change? I was totally that guy.
People avoided me and gave me strange looks. The asshole at the nearest curb was the worst, laser glued to my misery like my ass was friggin’ must see TV. All leathered up with his motorcycle in tow, plus the five o’ clock shadow and serious muscles. The kind of guy you’d try to beat up in prison to prove you were the toughest shit around and nobody should mess with you. Of course nobody ever tried to teach him some manners.
"The show costs five dollars," I told the guy.
He snorted. “Overpriced.”
"Take it up with management."
Great, panhandling. Full crazy guy in parking lot status had been reached. A few gulps of my trashy whiskey in the brown paper sack helped me get over that sting.
