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“Especially not you,” I muttered, giving him a nudge and a look that said, C’mon, dude. Don’t make me be your Bad Cop.
“He was never really been like other kids, y’know?” she elaborated. “He was always doin’ shit that didn’t seem crazy, but just felt a little off. The way he’d look at you, or the way he’d just not speak for days at a time. He liked to hover, too.”
Chelsea punctuated her exposition with another scoop of ice cream.
“But it got really fuckin’ weird after Dad left—piece of shit.”
Christ, does everybody have a deadbeat dad? “Weird how?” I asked her.
“He got this obsession with being ‘the man of the house,’ like now that Dad was out of the picture, he had to take care of everything. He started getting really controlling over a lot of shit, like how I looked and dressed when I went out with friends.” She shook her head, resting it on her palm. “That fucker even tried to ground me once. Can you believe that? My younger brother tried to ground me.”
“What happened when you said no?” Simon asked.
Chelsea didn’t answer for a long while, her eyes locking onto the reflective surface of her empty spoon, as though trying to gain some kind of confidence from her own reflection.
“He tried to ‘punish’ me,” she whispered, her teeth clenched. “He took me by my fuckin’ hair and threw me on my bed. And then he started to undo his pants.”
She might as well have punched both Simon and I in the gut. Everything in me wanted to leap back in time and rip that fucker’s head off. “He raped you?”
“No, but he sure as hell tried to. Piece of shit couldn’t even get it up—what a fucking joke. I ran as fast as I could and never looked back.”
“You left Connor there with your mother?”
“An abusive bitch, that’s what she was.” Now Chelsea seemed a little remorseful—if only a little. “God only knows what happened between them after I left. I moved in with friends and Connor stayed with her. I was eighteen, and as far as I was concerned, they were perfect for one another.”
“Tell us about the arson,” Simon said, trying to steer the conversation toward Connor’s other criminal activity.
“Yeah.” She nodded, eyes still locked on her reflection. “He tried to set this old theatre on fire, but he got caught before he could light the place up. Connor was nuts about drama and the arts. Mom always called him a faggot whenever he’d bring it up. Those were the times I actually felt bad for him.”
“Did he have a history with fire?” I asked. “Did he get burned when he was a kid?”
“Oh, sure, lots of times. That was how our dad would punish him when he’d been bad—he used to put his hand on the stove, or put his cigarette out on Connor’s arm. Upper arm, though. Where nobody could spot it. The stove thing stopped when Connor’s school called.”
Chelsea sighed and shook her head, wiping away a few errant tears that had begun streaming down her face.
“_‘Fire fixes everything,’ he’d say. Fuckin’ bastard.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw Connor?” I asked her. My heart was racing, I hoped that maybe this would be the lead that would get us closer to him—closer to finding out where this freak was hiding.
I knew it was him. It had to be. And as bad as I felt for Chelsea, as much as I understood how badly she wanted to protect him, when I found her brother, I was going to tear his motherfucking throat out.
“Last time I saw him was at mom’s funeral. I didn’t say a single word to him the entire time. He just stared right at me while the preacher was talking, with this...” She gestured vaguely, disgusted. “This weird-ass smile on his face.”
“And you haven’t seen him since? Do you know where he lives?”
“No, and I never wanted to find out. Last I heard he didn’t even have a job—but what do I know? A lot can change in a year.”
Simon leaned forward on the table. “It’s important that we find Connor, Chelsea—we think that he’s got everything to do with what’s been happening to Tanya. She needs your help on this.”
Chelsea ran her fingers through her hair, lost in her thoughts for a few moments before looking up at me with a half-hearted shrug.
“The only place I remember Connor ever hanging out was at that theatre—the one he tried to torch back in high school. If he’s anywhere, he’ll probably be there. Corner of 32nd and Marathon. You can’t miss it. It’s a fucking eyesore.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Simon said, shaking his head. Chelsea hadn’t been as helpful as I’d hoped, but knowing where Connor hung out was better than leaving empty-handed.
“We’ll get out of your hair, Chelsea,” I said with a sigh, motioning Simon to follow after me. I pulled out my phone to check the time and realized that I hadn’t checked in with Tanya like I’d promised. I needed to do that, especially now that we knew the fucker’s name.
“Just do me a favor, okay?” Chelsea asked, walking us out. “Keep Tanya safe. If Connor is doing all of this shit, I don’t know what he’s willing to do. He’s not the kid I remember.”
“I’m going to do my best,” I said, giving her a smile as she undid all of the locks and opened the door for me and Simon.
As the two of us stepped out into the hall, I dialed the number of the burner phone I’d given Tanya, putting it to my ear as we walked back down toward the lobby once again.
“So, where to next?” Simon asked, his eyebrows raised as he followed me down the first flight of stairs. The phone rang in my ear until it went through to the automated message. I frowned and tried again.
“We’ll check the theatre, I guess. It’s pretty much all we’ve got to work with, at this point.”
We descended a few more flights, and once again the phone rang straight through to the machine. I could feel my stomach starting to drop. I didn’t like this one bit.
“Tanya’s not answering the phone,” I said as we exited the lobby.
“Hey, maybe she’s just in the shower or something. Don’t panic just yet.”
I nodded, but something inside of me told me that something was truly, desperately wrong.
Simon and I climbed into his car, turning over the engine as his radio and police scanner both flared to life in unison—the latter bearing the exact news I didn’t want to hear.
Chapter 20
Tanya
I didn’t even have to open my eyes to know that I was on a stage.
I could feel the lights on my skin. Their heat. Their radiance. I knew I was glowing the way I always did at the Domino. At the Dollhouse. Anywhere they put me, I knew how to shine.
Shine bright like a diamond... shine bright like a...
There was a musical going on in my head. An amalgamation of every shitty stripper song I’d ever heard. I knew how to make it look like the stage was my home, like I’d been born to strip and tease. But it never really felt that way. It was never what I’d really wanted for myself.
Dreams were for rich girls, though. Girls like me didn’t dare to dream. They only ever turned into nightmares, and we couldn’t afford that kind of pain.
“I went to the Garden of Lo
ve
And saw what I never had seen.”
I blinked, slowly. Oh, fuck. My head. It was like a hangover, only worse—I hadn’t even had the chance to get drunk first. The darkness was spinning and spilling into the light, bleeding like a drop of ink in a cold glass of water. I couldn’t tell where the shadows ended and the light began—if they ended at all.
I took a deep, shuddering breath of the murk. A spotlight was on me. Everything else was dark.
Except for the glitter of eyes out in the audience. Just one pair behind a mask. Tragedy. Yet I knew the man who wore it was smiling.
“A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.”
Those lights were searing. I shut my eyes again and my head lolled back. I almost tipped over and hand to slam my feet down onto the wood beneath me to keep my balance. A chair. I was in a chair—tied to it. My wrists were bound. One of them was smarting. Throbbing. Broken. And the hand, my burned one, was bleeding.
“What the fuck,” I muttered. It sounded like I had a mouth full of marbles.
Tom—no, not Tom, my stalker—I was sure of that now—he stood up from his spot in the audience, weaving between the rows of red velvet chairs. They’d probably been pretty once, but moths and rats and time had worn them all down. Picked some clean. Left nothing but their wood and metal. Left nothing but their bones.
“And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door.”
Against my better judgment, I pulled hard on the cords binding my arms. I pulled and gritted and screamed until long, dark lashes opened up across my skin—bruises the color of the night. I cried and hung my head, digging my nails into the arms of the chair.
I glared, panting, as he mounted the stairs. “What the fuck do you want?!”
He was moving toward me. One foot at a time. So easy, so relaxed, like I wasn’t a hostage. Like I was nothing to him at all.
