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15
Jessica
Manson carried me back to the garage, thrown over his shoulder. My head bobbed up and down, giving me glimpses of the other men’s faces. Lucas’s expression was fierce, so tense I wouldn’t have been surprised if sparks started shooting out of his eyeballs. Jason’s was tight and controlled, like he was about to attend the funeral of someone he hated. Vincent was smiling, the eerie expression punctuated by occasional shakes of his head.
“Let’s see what you got up to, Jessica,” Manson grunted, shifting me slightly as we reached the front of the garage.
“No, no, let’s not,” I said quickly. All the blood was rushing to my head, and I groaned, my stomach churning with dread. How could I have been so abysmally foolish? When they saw what was inside that garage, my ass was dead.
Vincent squatted down beside us, using a small key to unlock the rolling metal door. He grasped the handle and pulled, and every creak of the metal sounded like another nail being hammered into my coffin.
The collective gasps of shock as the garage was opened made me wish I’d let the dogs eat me out there in the trees.
“Lucas, go put the dogs in the house,” Manson said, his voicehollow. “They’ll cut their paws in here.”
Shattered glass covered the floor, sparkling in the fluorescent light. It crunched under Manson’s boots as he carried me inside. The cars were dented, the windows busted, tires slashed. Tools had been ripped off the walls and thrown to the floor, drawers had been flung open and their contents scattered.
“Holy shit,” Vincent said. “Holy fucking shit.”
Manson set me back on my fight, and for a brief moment, I wasn’t captive. Manson stood beside me, surveying the destruction with a slack expression as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. For nearly a minute, they stared, expressions of stunned disbelief frozen on their faces.
Suddenly arms gripped me from behind, pulling me back against a hard, broad chest.
“We’re going to have a nicelongchat about this, Miss Martin.” Lucas had returned, and his voice was so cold that I shivered. Manson and Vincent walked among the ruins, Manson rubbing a hand through his hair as he shook his head. Jason was rapidly typing on his phone, glancing up only occasionally as if taking notes on the damages.
“Thousands of dollars,” he said. “Fucking thousands of dollars in damage.” He whirled around, glaring at me. “You.You…” Any insults that came into his mind clearly weren’t good enough. He turned away and slipped out the open side door, which swung crookedly on its hinges. The alarm finally stopped blaring, and Jason was back a few seconds later.
“They cut the wires for the cameras,” he said. He swore under his breath, looking at me with disgust. “Looks like they tried to kill the security system completely, but the backup battery took over.” He leaned his hands against the trunk of his white Nissan, head bowed over the scratched, dented metal. “Fuck! God fucking damn it!”
“You did it now, Jess,” Vincent laughed bitterly. “Fucking hell.”
“I didn’t do it!” I cried. I jerked against Lucas’s hold on me, trying and failing to break it. I didn’t even know what to do if Ididget him to let go of me. Was I going to run all the way back home in the dark? Move out of Wickeston and pretend this night had never happened? Never leave my house again and hope they didn’t come knocking on my door?
I’d royally fucked up.
“Keep fighting me and this is going to get a hell of a lot worse for you,” Lucas hissed. “You’re not running away from this.”
“I didn’t damage your cars!” I insisted. “It was them. I didn’t do it!”
“Oh, right, of course,” Vincent said. “As always, it couldn’t possibly beyourfault.”
“No, it — I — Please don’t call the cops,” I said, stumbling over my words. What if I ended up in jail? What the hell would I tell my parents? What would I tell my boss? “I didn’t do it. I fucking swear I didn’t.”
The words died on my tongue as Manson turned around, glaring at me over the roof of his damaged Mustang.
“Don’t call the cops?” he said, his voice dangerously low as he stalked toward me. “No consequences for Jess, right? No fucking responsibility for your own actions?” He was right in my face now, inches away. Behind him, Vincent leaned against a large toolbox with his arms folded.
Manson reached into his pocket and wrenched out a cell phone, several models out of date with a cracked screen. He unlocked it and thrust it toward me. “Call them. Call the police. Believe me, you’d rather have them deal with you than me.”
Lucas let go of me as I took the cell in my trembling hands. The glares I was getting from the four of them could have melted steel beams as I opened up the dial pad, my thumb hovering over the 9.
I shook my head, pushing the phone back toward him.
“No.” I couldn’t meet his eyes, instead staring at the glass-covered floor, chewing the inside of my cheek. “I don’t want the cops involved. I’d rather…” I gulped. What the hell was I doing? The turning in my stomach didn’t feel like fear. It was something else, something strange. “I want to keep this between us.”
Manson’s eyes widened, his eyebrows disappearing beneath the hair lying loose over his forehead. Jason rubbed his hands over his face with a groan, saying, “I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe this shit.”
Vincent was laughing, a low chuckle that sounded truly maniacal. “So Jess wants to keep it between us. You come here, thrash our shit —”
