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TRAP
* * *
Yesterday’s rain was the leading edge of a cold front—welcome to fucking October. My breath fogs as I cross the parking lot, heading home after a working Saturday. I’ve been thinking about what Throck said, about how Alix and I need to get our stories straight.
I have an idea.
Alix is out on the patio when I come in. She’s tucked into one of the chaise lounges, with a blanket pulled up to her chin. She’s got her arms wrapped around a giant stuffed panda, a prize I won for her at the county fair back in August, and she’s watching something on her computer.
She looks like a kid, maybe half her age. She went to see Leo yesterday. I don’t know what happened, but she barely said ten words to me all evening. She got up in the middle of the night and went to sleep in the guest room.
Fucking Leo Key.
I’m ready to cut off the freeloading cocksucker. Turn him out of his hospital room and put him back on the streets. He’s making Alix feel like shit, and he sure as hell isn’t getting us any closer to dealing with the Herzogs before their goddamn blackmail deadline.
But when he goes back to Crash, or meth, or heroin, or whatever other poison he wants to pump into his veins, he’s going to die. And I think that’ll hurt Alix more.
Fucking, fucking Leo Key.
I slide open the glass door. And that’s when I hear it: “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for my pony.”
It’s Alix’s voice, but it isn’t. It’s Alix, pretending to be a little girl. It’s Alix, flirting like a cheap whore, fawning over a man who’s telling her to suck his big fat cock.
The growl that rips from my throat is a lot more animal than human. I don’t even realize I’ve made a noise until Alix slams shut the screen on her computer.
“Hi!” she says, sounding perfectly normal. “I didn’t realize you were home.”
I see scarlet.
Those videos broke her. The things Herzog made her do destroyed her will. He raped her mind.
I can’t begin to fathom why she’s watching that shit. But even more than that, I don’t know how she can shut off her computer and greet me like everything’s okay.
Nothing’s okay. Nothing will ever be okay until I destroy the Herzogs. Get rid of them before they follow through on their threat to ruin the Diamond Ring.
But if I say that out loud, if I tell her what I’m thinking, if I let her know how many minutes of how many hours of every fucking day I think about getting revenge for what they did to her…
She’ll think I’m judging her. Think that all of this is her fault.
So I play the game. I sit on the end of the chaise. I pull her feet onto my lap and I tuck the blanket back in to keep her warm and I pretend she wasn’t just watching the video proof of the worst three years of her life.
“So here’s an idea,” I say.
“Yes?” Her chin rests on top of the panda’s black-and-white head. I feel like a pervert for even thinking what I’m about to say.
“I thought we might drive over to the train station.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She sounds confused. Which makes sense, because I’ve got a Lear jet, a Sikorsky helicopter, and a dozen high-performance cars at my disposal. A random train trip on the Northeast Corridor isn’t my usual idea of fun.
“Throck said we need to make sure our stories are straight,” I say.
“You told him what we made up?” She sounds shocked.
I shake my head. “We didn’t talk specifics.”
“But you and I both know the story.”
