Cole

 

When I left Alena’s house, I could still hear her voice ringing in my ears. Accusing me of being a liar, of using her. It tore at me, knowing what she thought of me. I hated knowing how hurt she felt, when there was nothing I could say to convince her of how wrong she was.

 

She wasn’t completely wrong, though, even though she was a little fast at jumping to conclusions. I did know something was wrong. I knew it had something to do with Skull and her sister. I didn’t know the whole story, though. And I hadn’t been trying to keep it from her to use her…but to protect her, and Skull.

 

That’s what it was all about. I wasn’t even concerned so much about the club anymore—I was still worried about losing power, about Skull being arrested and causing chaos for me. It was my job to protect my men, and that’s what I was trying to do.

 

But I was trying to protect him, too, and that was more important. Not my VP. My best friend. He had done so much for me. Sometimes his friendship had been the only thing I had in my life that wasn’t shit. When I couldn’t depend on grown-ups or the other kids at the home, I could still depend on Skull. And he could depend on me.

 

But was it fair to keep protecting him when I couldn’t depend on him anymore? He was a mess. He was falling apart. He had done something terrible. Could I keep covering up for him?

 

Now he wanted to talk to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. I couldn’t deny it if I heard it coming from his mouth. I need to talk to you about Sara. Come to my house when you get this. That’s what his text had said. And it wasn’t something we could talk about over the phone. We had to talk about it in person. It couldn’t be good.

 

If he told me he killed Sara, what could I do? I tried to come up with some kind of plan as I rode. First, I stopped at my house to put on a shirt. While I was there, I decided to shower and get my act together. I wasn’t in any huge hurry. All he wanted to do was confess to me. The world didn’t hang in the balance.

 

I was putting it off, and I knew it in the back of my head. I didn’t wanna hear Skull’s story. There was a picture of Skull and me on a bookshelf. One of the only pictures I had in the house, and he was in it. We had gone fishing up at some lake whose name I couldn’t remember anymore. We were just kids in the picture. No more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. Both of us holding up our catches, which seemed so big at the time. Really, they were only a little bigger than guppies. But from the smiles on our faces, we were proud to have caught them.

 

I remembered that kid. That Skull. He was brave and would always back me up in a fight. I had been alone in life until he came along. What had happened to him since then? I turned the picture face-down on the shelf. I couldn’t think about that kid anymore. The memories made it too difficult to do what had to be done in the present.

 

I couldn’t just accept what he had to say if he told me he killed Sara, and let it roll off my shoulders. Alena had nothing to do with it—I wouldn’t have been able to accept it if Sara wasn’t the sister of the woman I was sleeping with. A woman who hadn’t left my mind since the minute I met her. No, even without Alena, I wouldn’t have been okay with Skull killing a woman, no matter how much I cared about him.

 

It would have been bad enough if she wasn’t involved. With her, it was a whole other story. I cared about her, too, and I knew how much she loved her sister. And from what Alena told me about Sara, she was a good person. She didn’t deserve whatever had happened to her.

 

I almost wished Alena had never told me about her. It only made what I had to do even harder.

 

I wasn’t sure what I had to do, actually.

 

I rode to his house, sick to my stomach. The entire ride, I had to remind myself that the past was the past. This was what mattered, right now. I had to do what was best for the club.

 

What about Alena? Didn’t she matter? Which mattered more? Now I remembered why I had stayed away from relationships for so long. They only made life more complicated. I had enough on my plate without the memory of her hazel eyes burning into me.

 

I let the wind push my thoughts away. Riding always cleared my head, and I tried to let it do that while I sped to Skull’s house. I didn’t care about the speed. I sorta hoped the cops would pull me over. I was dreading the scene with Skull that much.

 

For once, they were nowhere to be found. Of course. The one time I was hoping to see them.

 

I got to Skull’s and saw his bike in the driveway. He’d gotten it from impound. At least he wasn’t out somewhere, raising hell. All he needed was to get busted for riding with a suspended license. There was no bailing him out from that. His ass would be in jail in no time.

 

I banged on the front door. No answer. I banged again, cupping my hands around my eyes to see inside through the window on the door. The place was a mess. Another one of Skull’s bad habits was relying on his women to do his cleaning for him. His latest woman wasn’t doing it, obviously. It looked the way I would imagine a frat house looking. It had been a nice little house, once.

 

I banged again, leaning on the doorbell at the same time. Finally, I heard shouting from inside. “Shut up!” A woman’s voice. She sounded strung out or drunk. Or both.

 

She flung the door open and blinked against the sunlight. She covered her eyes with her hand. “Whaddya want?”

 

She was a mess. My eyes didn’t know where to go first. The frizzy, matted hair, the stained clothes, the sores on her arms. I sighed. “Skull. I’m here to see Skull.”

 

She uncovered her eyes, squinting at me. Her face wasn’t much prettier than the rest of her. “He ain’t here.”

 

I shook my head. “What? He told me to meet him here. He texted me earlier. He wouldn’t have left without calling to let me know.”

 

“Yeah, well, he’s gone now. Guess you don’t know him so good.” She tried to shut the door, but I held it open. I pushed my way into the house. It wasn’t just cluttered. It was dirty. It smelled like stale food and rotting garbage. When had Skull become this person? This Teresa was obviously a junkie. Was she the only one doing drugs here, or was he doing them, too?

 

She pushed me, but I hardly felt it. “You can’t just come in here!” she shrieked. “You have to leave! He wouldn’t want you to walk in like this!”

 

I looked her up and down. “Who says?”

 

“I-I say,” she stammered. “I live here, too. And you can’t be here.”

 

“Yeah, I can,” I said. “Teresa, right? Where did he go?”

 

“I don’t know. Now get out.” She shoved me again.

 

I advanced on her, backing her into the nearest wall. “How could he have gone anywhere without his license?” I cornered her. She tried to get past me, but I wouldn’t let her. Something didn’t add up, and I wasn’t going to leave until she was straight with me.

 

“Just because you don’t have your license doesn’t mean you can’t drive anymore, you know,” she spat.

 

“What did he drive?” She looked at the floor. “Your car? He took your car, didn’t he?”

 

“So what?” She was mumbling now, swaying. I was losing her. She must have just shot up or smoked up, or whatever it was she did. I shook her a little, not enough to hurt but enough to get her brain working. At least, I hoped so.

 

“Where did he go? It’s very important. Think!”

 

She looked vaguer by the second. “I don’t know! Why won’t you leave me alone? I just wanna go to sleep…”

 

“You can’t sleep now. Get with it. Tell me what I wanna know and I’ll let you sleep. Tell me. Where did he go? He had to tell you something if you gave him your car.”

 

She started to cry. I wondered what he did to her to get her to give the car up. I didn’t see any bruises, but she looked like hell either way. As skinny as a rail, typical junkie. “He doesn’t have to tell me anything,” she said. “I love him. If he needs me, I do what he tells me to do. He needs me now. I wanted to help him. That’s all.”

 

Her eyes kept darting around the room, anywhere but me. She wouldn’t look at me. There was one corner she kept looking at. I looked, too.

 

Cans. Spray paint cans.

 

My head was spinning. I actually felt out of breath, like I’d been running. Spray paint. No.

 

“What did you do?” I asked, still looking at the cans. “What did you do?”

 

“I didn’t do anything…”

 

“What the fuck did you do?” I screamed in her face, pinning her to the wall. I didn’t touch her—I wouldn’t have touched her with someone else’s hands—but I made it impossible for her to move away from me. Now I was serious. I had to know how she played into whatever was happening.

 

She was cowering away from me. I wanted her to. I wanted to her to be scared, the tweaked-out bitch. It was the only way I could get her to talk to me.

 

“I know you did something. I know it.”

 

“I didn’t!” She was sobbing, with tears and snot running down her face. Her mascara dripped down her cheeks.

 

“Then why the red spray paint?” She put her hands over her face. I saw red all over her fingers. “It’s on your hands, too! Stop lying to me!”

 

“Stop! Please, stop!” She begged me from behind her hands. I punched the wall twice, leaving cracks in the drywall. I had to hit something, anything. I felt like the world was falling around me and I had to hit something because I couldn’t control what was happening, and I needed to be in control. I didn’t wanna believe Skull would do this, but it was too obvious now.

 

“Tell me. Everything.” I panted for breath, feeling like an animal. Wanting blood. Skull’s blood. My best friend.

 

“Okay! Please, don’t hit me,” she begged.

 

I stepped back, shaking myself. “I don’t do that.” I had been close, though. The closest I ever came to hitting a woman was right then. I was so disgusted by her, I could have done anything.

 

She was trembling so hard, she could barely walk to the chair just a few feet away. I gave her room to move, watching her carefully in case she tried to run away. But she couldn’t run if she could hardly walk. I didn’t know if it was fear or drugs making her stumble like she did. Probably both.

 

She sank into the chair and lit a cigarette. I waited until she took a deep drag.

 

“Tell me,” I prompted.

 

“Fine.” Another drag, another cloud of smoke. “I went to the bar where that girl was. That Alena girl.”

 

“Last night?”

 

“Yeah. Skull asked me to go after you brought him home from the police station. He told me he couldn’t go because she might see him and recognize him. Plus, the cops might have seen him. He didn’t want that. So he sent me, instead.”

 

“What did he ask you to do?”

 

“He wanted me to spray paint a message on her windshield. He told me which car to look for. He followed you to her house a couple of nights ago.”

 

I knew it. I didn’t wanna believe it before then, but I knew it deep inside. He was following me, and he probably got drunk and picked a fight with that cop because he felt pissed that I was at Alena’s house. Or afraid that I was letting her get too close to whatever truth he was trying to cover up. Probably that he had killed Sara.

 

“And you did it?”

 

“Of course I did. You know I did. God, why are you doing this to me?” She started crying again, but this time, she wasn’t so convincing. I felt like she was acting, trying to get me to feel sorry for her. She’d have to cry forever if that was what she wanted.

 

“What else did you do? Anything else?”

 

She cried harder. Now it seemed like she meant it for real. “I didn’t want to, I swear.”

 

There was a pit in my stomach. What could have been worse than the spray paint? “What did you do?”

 

“He made me do it!” She looked up at me with big eyes. “You have to believe me! I didn’t want to!”

 

I got down on my knees, in her face. “What was it? Tell me! Stop with the bullshit.” I shook the chair, wishing I could shake her. What a fucking mess she was.

 

“He made me call her. Today.”

 

I pulled away. That wasn’t what I expected her to say. “What?”

 

“I called her and…I pretended to be her sister.”

 

I always heard people say things like “my head exploded,” but I never understood what they meant until just then. There was so much pressure in my head, I thought it might burst all over the room.

 

I stood up. I couldn’t be anywhere near her. She was disgusting. “You told her you were Sara? How sick are you?”

 

“He told me to! He made me! You don’t understand. He wouldn’t let me…” She looked over at the coffee table, where all her drugs were spread out. I knew what she meant. He held them back from her until she did what he wanted. I didn’t feel sorry for her—it was too hard to—but I hated him for it. Using a person like that. He preyed on her weakness. Did I ever really know him?

 

I shook myself, getting back to the emergency at hand. “When did you call?”

 

“I don’t know…” She squinted at the clock. “Like an hour ago?”

 

“What did you tell her?”

 

She was spacing out, and I had to yell again. “What did you say?”

 

She shook herself, looking up at me. “I told her to go to the hotel…”

 

I was losing her. I got in her face. “Which one?”

 

“I don’t know. The one he goes to for business. Skull went there, earlier. That’s where he is now. He said…he had business to do there, and he…needed her to meet him there. But she wouldn’t, unless she thought her sister was there.”

 

That didn’t make any sense. “Business?” Skull didn’t have business. But she made it sound like he went there a lot.

 

She nodded. “Yeah, business stuff. I don’t know. It’s, like, a hundred miles away or something…” She leaned back against the chair cushions. Her eyes started to close.

 

It didn’t matter. I knew which one she meant. It was an old, rundown building just off the highway. One of those pay-by-the-hour places where hookers went with their clients. More of a motel than a hotel. I didn’t know what she meant by business, though. Since when did Skull have business to do that I didn’t know about?

 

I left her there, zoning out in her drug haze. The door slammed behind me as I got on my bike. Before I left, I pulled out my phone to text Alena. Please answer. Please, answer, I begged silently. I told her not to leave the house, to wait for me. But it was too late by then, and I knew it. She would have left as soon as she hung up the phone, maybe sooner. All I could do was hope she would turn around when she saw my messages. I didn’t want to tell her the whole truth in a text. I couldn’t break her heart again like that. She thought her sister was alive—I didn’t want to tell her someone lied to her.

 

Then I started the bike and drove in the direction of the hotel. I knew her. She was stubborn. Even if she got my messages, she would keep going if she thought Sara was alive and waiting for her. I had to get there as soon as I could. There was no way to tell what Skull had planned for her.