Chapter Forty-Two - Lincoln
“Yes,” I say, answering Sheila’s call through my phone. Case is still playing his game in the corner. The sound effects are about to drive me insane and if I have to listen to one more Social Distortion song on the fucking jukebox, I might kill someone.
“We have a problem.”
“Hold on. Case!” I yell. And then I turn to Mac who is washing dishes nearby. “Turn that shit off. Case! Come here and listen, Sheila’s on the phone.”
Normally I’d just have her tell me, but I need to snap Case out of this shit. He can’t dwell. It’s not good. The past can’t be undone. All we can do is move forward.
Case pounds his fist on the arcade game glass as a sound announces the death of a pixelated life, then turns towards me. “What?”
I put the phone on the bar and press speaker. “Go ahead, Sheila.”
“Molly went to the asylum.”
“What?” Case and I both say together.
“Why the fuck would she go there? After all these years?” I ask.
“I tracked her car to Blue Corp first. I can only assume the Old Man gave her something to think about. She entered the parking lot of the asylum fifty-three minutes ago.”
“Is she still there?” Case asks.
“No, she just got back in her vehicle. But she hasn’t started up the car yet. She’s just sitting there.”
“He told her.”
“You don’t know that,” Case says.
“Please, Case. No visits in all these years and then today of all days, she gets an urge to talk to her mother? Do you have a visual on Atticus yet, Sheila?”
“No. Closed-circuit cameras behind the doors. He needs to get himself in front of one that’s connected to the internet. She’s still sitting in her car. It’s possible Atticus said something he shouldn’t have.”
“Fuck.”
“Call her,” Case says.
“And say what?” I throw up my hands. “‘Sorry, your life is a lie and everyone knows about it but you?’”
Case shrugs. “I don’t know. But if the girl I loved just learned the truth about her life, I’d call her and tell her every sweet thing I could think of to make her smile.” He turns away from me and goes back to his game.
“Keep an eye on her, Sheila. This whole day feels wrong. Everything is off.”
“You need to call her. She’s just sitting in her car. At the very least you should get her home and away from that creepy building. I’ll call Thomas and fill him in.”
The line goes dead and I let out a long sigh. Everything since I left Molly has gone wrong today.
The sound effects from the arcade game come back to life just as the jukebox starts up again. I pick up my phone, get up, and walk outside. I can’t take that noise anymore.
I lean against the building, my head bowed, just thinking about Molly. It is highly probable Atticus started talking in there. I should at least call her to see how much she knows. Maybe he told her something useful?
I tab her contact on my phone and listen to it ring. I’m just about to hang up after the fourth ring when she answers.
“Hello?” It comes off sad and lonely.
“Hey, gun girl,” I say, smiling as the words come out.
“Hey, Lincoln.”
“You OK?”
“Um,” she says, hesitating.
“I was just thinking about you. Wanted to check and see how your day is going.”
“Well…” She stops again.
Yeah, Atticus definitely told her something. “You want to know what I was thinking?”
I get nothing but some little breaths. My phone buzzes once, signaling an incoming video from Sheila, and when I tab it open, I can see Molly in her work car from the camera mounted on the rear-view. She’s crying. Tears are streaming down her face. “Molly?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says, holding the phone away from her, so she can take a deep gasping breath and not let me hear it. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and I’m suddenly transported back in time. Back when she was so small, she barely came up to my waist.
She was five and I was twelve and we had just met for the first time. I knew what an Omega was. Thomas had gone through a few of them by that time. And Case had his too. But I was the last of us boys to get one.
I walked to the conditioning room angry as fuck. I was ready to pound my Omega to death, just like Thomas had. I vowed I’d never let anyone have that kind of control over me. Ever.
I was seething with rage when I entered that room. One second I was ready to explode with anger and then…
“The first time I saw you, you were standing over by a window. You had on an orange dress. It was solid orange at the top, but the skirt part was little orange flowers. And it hung all the way down to the ground.”
“What?” Molly asks on the other end of the phone.
“And your hair was more blonde back then. It was long, the tips almost reached your waist. And you were so fucking small, Molly.”
She sniffles into the phone. “I remember you too. I was scared.”
“I was angry.”
“I thought you’d kill me. They said you’d try.”
Jesus. They told her that? “Thomas told me I’d only have one chance to stop the Omega bond and it was at the first meeting. So I was going to kill you. But you know what?”
“What?” she asks back in a whisper.
“You turned away from the window and the light, Molly, the light from the sunset you were looking at, it followed you. That’s what I thought anyway. One moment your back was to me and your body was outlined by the orange glow over the mountains, and then you turned. And you were the light. It came from you, Molly.”
“He never even gave me a name, Lincoln.”
Fuck. Atticus did tell her. And those few words say everything. Those few words are a list of all the truths she never wanted to know. They say, He never loved me. They say, I was nothing but a lab rat. They say, What did I ever do to him?
“I gave you a name, Molls. I gave you a name. Do you remember what you said to me when you turned around and became my light?”
She nods on the screen, but she is crying again.
“I walked towards you, and you said—”
“‘I’m yours,’” she blurts through a sob.
“And then I said—”
“‘You’re mine.’” She starts crying hard. The tears are streaming down her face and she’s covering her mouth, trying her best to stifle her sadness.
“I meant it,” I say.
“Me too,” she says back.
“You don’t need him.”
“I know. But it would’ve been nice to have the one thing most kids are guaranteed at birth.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. But we’re even luckier than those kids. Because we’ve got each other.”
She cries again and I let her. I just say, “Shhhh, Molly. Shhh, we’re fine. We’re fine,” over and over again.
After a few minutes she calms down and then she closes her eyes and rests her head back. “Do you still want to have dinner with me tonight?”
“It’s the only part of my day that matters.”
She opens her eyes and starts her car. “I’m going home.”
“I’m going to pick you up in an hour. Don’t dress fancy. No costumes tonight.”
“I don’t want to be a detective anymore, Lincoln. I don’t want to solve puzzles anymore.”
“You don’t have to be anything but mine, gun girl.”
“Will you stay on the phone with me as I drive?”
“I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me forever, remember? Equal and opposite in every way.”
“That’s the way we like it, right?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Molly. I’d rather die than take away the power you have over me. We only exist as a pair.”
We’re mostly silent as she drives home. Sheila splits my screen in half and shows me her progress on the tracking app and when Molly pulls into her driveway, I feel total relief wash over me. “Go inside and look around. I need to know you’re home safe before I can hang up.”
“OK.” She sniffs, shutting her car off. I lose the video feed after that, but I can hear her walking up to her house and the jingling of keys as she unlocks her door.
“What the—” she gasps.
I just smile.
“What did you do, bike boy?”
Her laugh makes my heart swell. “Not enough, Molly. Not nearly enough.”
“How many bags?” she asks.
Paper rustles. I picture her living room the way I left it a few hours ago. Thirty pink bags with glittery tissue paper sticking out of them, lined up on any empty spot I could find. “Only thirty. I owe you three hundred and thirty-five more. One for each night we go to bed for a year.”
She starts laughing. “Oh, my God! What the—”
“I told you, gun girl, if you were mine, I’d dress you up in pretty lingerie every night. You’re mine, Molly. And every night, when you lay your head on the pillow next to me, you will remember that.”
“I could never forget, Lincoln.”
“No,” I say. “Because I won’t let you.”
“I love you.”
“I started loving you the moment you lit up my life, Molly. Now open up all the presents and I’ll see you in an hour.”
We hang up after that and I’m just about to go back inside when Thomas pulls up in a limo. He doesn’t even wait for the driver to open his door, just gets out himself, glances over at me, points to M-Street Bar, and then disappears inside.
One hour. I meant it. And if Thomas has other plans, he can fuck off.
I’m thinking about getting out of the supervillain business.