“The universe has found a certain someone!”
49
MCCARTHY
It takes 8,040 steps to walk through every room in my penthouse in an unbroken line with no crossover.
This is an average number.
Salinger wasn’t joking when he locked me in here.
As I showered on the terrace after being released from prison—because Whitman was insistent that I had lice and scabies—Salinger had my door taken off the hinges and replaced with a metal prison door with bars and a food slot and everything.
“What if there’s a fire?” I yell through the bars.
“Well, you’re not getting down from the window-cleaning hooks because I took your gear,” he snarls back.
I kick at the door.
Salinger slams his hand on it near my head. “I have your laptop, too, so don’t tryshit.”
“This is so fucked up,” I holler after him as he waits for the elevator to get called. “What, you’re going to keep me here forever? There’s a board meeting on Thursday.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You can’t give my company to Faulkner, that little shit.” I bang on the metal door. “Hey!”
Salinger steps on the elevator, the doors closing as he gives me the finger.
Damn it.
My terrace faces Glacier Lake. We’re a bit far north to have a view of the bay, but if I stand at the upstairs guest-bathroom window, I can see a sliver of it out through the skyscrapers.
Jenna’s out there.
They found the motorcycle parked at the pier. She’s probably at home, with her mom and her great-grandmother, the women gathered around her feeding her nettle tea and vegan scones and soothing her broken heart.
I rest my chin on the sill of the small window, try to convince myself this is for the best. Everyone I love gets churned into the earth, after all. They always get hurt.
Too bad I’m a selfish bastard and I still want her, even if it ruins her, even if it ruins me.
Selfish doesn’t cut it. I’m fucking evil.
And I like it that way.
I’ve earned the right to be, haven’t I?
“I’m not letting Salinger give my company to Faulkner. He can forget that. RDC is all I have left, and I won’t let him take it.” I say this aloud like anyone is listening.
It’s a habit I picked up from Truman hanging around so much, the little dog following me around constantly. I’dturn a corner and see him randomly staring at me from eye height when he climbed on a book case.
I can hear the jingling of dog tags faint in the house.
I stiffen for a moment.
I’m losing it. I’ve been locked up for only ten hours, and I’m already losing it.
“I knew I never should have gotten a dog.”
