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In this specific situation, I’m not entirely against it.
20
MARIUS
The address scribbled in my dramatic brother’s equally dramatic handwriting—he took calligraphy lessons with our mother, suck up that he is—brings me to a quiet, small town two hours from home.
I don’t see much of Lone Pine, because it’s the middle of the night, but what I see makes me add it to the short list of places I don’t want to return to. I didn’t know California could be this hillbilly.
I’ve been at the edge of this town a few months back, right before Thanksgiving; it’s where both Dez and Riley talked my brothers into getting pets. I dread to think how many blowjobs they had to promise for that.I guess that’s when everyone met Sarah for the first time. I don’t think we talked on that day.
But I looked. I always looked at her.
Instead of staying on the main street, I drive to a populated area with simple bungalows worth less my brother’s car.
It’s midnight, so I’m not surprised to find the entire street deserted, but at number 4712, there are lights on the second window.
Markus said the dick lives with his parents—I can hardly barge in. That’d leave witnesses.
Wait, what am I saying? I’m not killing anyone. My thing is finding someone’s weakness and putting pressure on the right spot to get them to do what I want.
I had to learn that. Markus is all viciousness, brute strength, and Magnus is a master manipulator. Between these two dicks, I had to become the shit-stirrer.
One look in the driveway, and I spot a car that no one living in this tiny house should be able to afford: a Mustang GT, pretty new by the looks of it.
That tells me as much about the ex-football player living with his parents as a two-inch-thick background check could have—though I want to get my hands on that, too.
I get out of my car and check the trunk. I tend to clean it up, but I find my jack handle. That’ll do.
There’s no security to speak of, so I walk up the driveway and make my way to the car.
I’m smirking when I draw my hand back and hit the passenger window as hard as I can. The alarm immediately starts to scream, but I hit it again, anyway. It feels pretty good.
I’m poised for a third impact, this time on the front windshield, when some guy my age rushes out of the apartment in his grayish-white boxers.
“Have you lost your mind!” he bellows. “That’s my fucking car!” His voice hikes up an octave at the last word.
Brandon Clark fits the description Markus gave me to aT; blond with shaggy hair, he’s not unattractive, but nothing about him stands out. He looks like he formerly muscular, but a distinctive beer belly’s fighting, and winning. Clothes might have hidden it, but in his rush to come, he didn’t bother to get dressed. If I googled washed-up quarterback, his picture would have been the first search result.
Is that Sarah’s type? She can do so much better.
“Glad I have your attention,” I say smoothly, leaning over the red door. “Marius Goltz. I’d say it was a pleasure, but—”
“What the fuck are you talking about? And why have you hit my fucking car, you psycho?”
So, this’s how Markus feels when I call him a psycho, huh? Proud.
“Sarah,” is all I say.
Given the way his entire face falls, he knows what he did; I might not have the details, but that expression is all I need.
The handle twitches in my palm, my fingers dying to swing it again, at his fucking face this time.
Lights flicker behind him as the door opens again, this time in front of an older version of him. Senior has less hair, most of them gray, and his belly’s mushier, but other than that, they’re almost identical, with the same dull facial features: a heavy jaw, a crooked nose, inset eyes.
“That lunatic’s fucking with my car!” he whines.
His father crosses his arms on his chest. “You can’t do that! He’s still paying it off, dammit. I’m gonna call the cops!” he says, running back into the house.
