I sit at my desk taking bets, but I’m distracted. I can’t get her out of my fucking head. I start to light a cigarette when the phone rings and I answer it.
“Go ahead.”
“That missing person’s report came in,” David pauses. I can hear the muffled noise from his police radio on the other end. “I cancelled it twice already. Can’t do it again. You’re gonna have to do something to make this disappear.”
I twist the cord between my fingers, scraping a film of nicotine from it. This is all I’ve been able to think of. What I’ll do with her. I can’t let her go because I fear Joe will kill her. To me, there’s only one logical solution. I inhale. “I need your help.”
“Yeah?”
Cradling the phone with my chin, I bury my face in my palms. I’m tired. I’m worn out from dealing with this shit, from all the fucking guilt I’ve had over her. “I need a body,” I say.
I hear David draw in a long breath. “A body, huh? How tall is she?”
“About five four…”
“She have anything on her that could ID her?”
“A necklace.” I bend a paperclip, then drag the end along the edge of the desk. “We’ve still got her boyfriend’s car too.”
“All right. You’re gonna have to help me though. Shit’s a lot of work.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll go around to some of the abandoned houses on the North side. Give me a few days and I can probably find a dead transit we can use.” I hear static from the radio calling for back-up, which causes David to groan. “I’ll handle it later. I gotta go,” he says quickly, and hangs up.
I open the desk drawer and pull out her necklace. There’s still dried blood in the tiny crevices of the chain. She’ll never really appreciate why I’m doing this, but that doesn’t matter.
Three days later, David and I cart the corpse through the pitch-black abandoned lot. I tuck the legs under my arm as I open the door to Euan’s BMW, and we set the body behind the wheel. David found her early this morning when he was on patrol, and by the look and stench of her, she’s been dead for a few days.
“This is sick, even for me,” I mumble, my fingers trembling as I pull Tor’s necklace from my pocket. I loop the chain around the dead woman’s neck and fumble to fasten the lock. A light breeze blows, causing the rancid smell of rotting flesh to waft up to my nose, and I gag. I have to step away to catch a breath of clean air before finally clasping the lock.
David tosses me a pair of pliers. “Pull out her teeth.”
“Are you serious?” I furrow my brow, then glance back at the corpse. “I’m not fucking doing that!”
“Dental records won’t match. You want them to believe this is her, the only form of ID you can leave is that necklace,” David pats the hood as he leans against the car, “and this car. You want to make people think she’s dead, this is what you gotta do.”
I catch another whiff of death and feel my stomach churn. I swallow the bile eating its way up my throat as I lean into the car, placing my palm on the woman’s chilled forehead. What’s underneath my palm no longer feels like skin; instead, it’s wet and waxy. I gag and cough, spitting out mouthfuls of saliva as I clamp the pliers over one of the few teeth in her head. It takes more force than I think to wiggle it from the socket. Each time I pull, the cracking noise it creates nearly makes me vomit.
I pull the last tooth and get out of that fucking car as fast as I can. This is fucking sick! I pace as David douses the body in gasoline. I hear him strike a match. I don’t look back. I just walk straight ahead to David’s patrol car. The entire drive back to my car, I fight the urge to throw up. I can smell death on me, and I don’t know that any amount of washing will get rid of the stench. I stare out the window and I wonder how in the hell I got to the point of desecrating bodies, but above
anything else, I wonder why in the hell she’s been put into my life.
I fold the newspaper and pick up the phone.
I hear the lull of the TVs in the background before anyone says anything. “Yeah,” Rich groans.
“Send Caleb down with the girl.”
“All right.”
I set the receiver down and light a cigarette. Leaning back in the chair, I take a long pull from the smoke and train my eyes on the door.
Within a few minutes, I hear footsteps on the stairs, and then Caleb walks into the room with Tor. Just looking at her causes a reaction in me: anger, guilt, need. I don’t fucking like that she makes me feel anything, and I try to look anywhere but her face. I trail my eyes over the pair of jeans she’s wearing, over the loose shirt that hangs from one shoulder. I cringe when I notice the long pink wound across her throat.
“Sit down.” I point to the chair in front of my desk.
She silently does as asked. There is nothing in her eyes. No fight. No fear. There’s a fragility about her that makes me want to protect her, and that’s some fucked-up shit right there.
“I need to tell you something.” I pause and look her over. What I’m about to tell her is going to send her over the edge. She looks so frail, and this is going to be hard for her to process. I am pretty much ripping away any sliver of hope she may have left. This will make her hate me even more than she already does because she won’t possibly understand that the sole reason I’m doing this is to protect her. Why would she believe that a man who held her captive would ever be trying to save her?
“If I could, I would protect you from this…” I trail off, waiting to see how she responds.
Her eyes set on me, cold and hard. “It would seem that the only person I need protection from is you and your family.”
I tried to help her the only way I know, but I guess revenge doesn’t work the same for everyone. She still blames me, still hates me. I narrow my gaze. “You think?” I arch my brow and shake my head. “Because I can assure you that Joe is a much bigger threat to you than I am.”
“Fine, enlighten me.”
I glance over to Caleb. “Get out,” I say. I don’t want anyone else in here because I know this is going to be awful.
He looks nervously at Tor before walking out of the room. The door softly closes behind him, and I rise, walking around my desk.
“You know…I visited Euan the other day.”
“Oh, did you have fun?” A wry smile pulls at her lips, and I can’t help but grin at the slightly sadistic glint in her eyes. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
“Tor,” I lean over her chair, gripping the arms, inching my way closer to her until the only thing I see are her gun-metal blue eyes. I gently sweep a stray piece of hair behind her ear. I trail my finger down her jaw, and her muscles stiffen, but she doesn’t pull away. My gaze drifts over her full lips before slowly rising back to meet her eyes. “Trust me, when someone fucks with something that’s in my possession. I. Am. Brutal.” Those last three words come out so low, so hoarse, I almost don’t even recognize my own voice.
Her eyes hold mine. I know she wants to ask me if I killed him, because there’s not much more that comment could have insinuated, but she remains completely silent. There’s no reason to tell her Euan’s dead, because in a moment that won’t even matter.
“I just want you to remember that I did this to protect you from Joe. He will kill you if he finds you because this didn’t go the way he planned.” I inhale as I slam down the front page of the Vanderbilt newspaper in front of her. “I’ve done what I had to do to ensure your protection.”
She eyes me before glancing down at the article. Her brows pinch in confusion, then her face washes white. “What...is this?” Her voice is a breathless whisper.
“You are dead as far as the rest of the world is concerned.”
She snatches the paper from the desk, her eyes frantically skimming over the write-up detailing her grizzly death.
“My sister,” she breathes, and in that moment I feel sympathy for her.
“I’m sorry. It had to be done. I had no choice.”
She sits there staring at the paper, and I wait for her to fall to pieces. The more she reads, the heavier her breaths become. She frowns, her lips forming a thin line. “You didn’t even tell me what you were going to do!” she shouts at me.
“Why would I?” I shrug. “You didn’t have a say in the matter?”
“You know what? Fuck you, Jude!” She stands and throws the paper down on the desk.
She’s angry as a hornet, and she has every right to be. I wet my lips with the edge of my tongue and reach for the cigarettes on my desk. Just as I pull one from the pack, she swats it from my hand.
“Fuck you!” she growls again. Her stance widens as she balls her fists by her side. She looks like she may be about to punch me. “You have cost me everything, and now you’ve cost me my life.”
I shake my finger at her. “No, I saved your fucking life!” I’m growing agitated, not necessarily at her, but at the fact that I’ve had to damage her even further.
Her entire body is shaking. “You have taken everything from me, including my freedom.”
I pick up a loose cigarette from the floor and light it. I hold the smoke inside my lungs as I glare at her. Letting the thick cloud roll from my lips. My chest tightens, I feel sorry for her, I feel guilty, and those are not emotions I’m much accustomed to. I pull in another drag from the cigarette and wait for her to completely break, because it’s coming.
Her expression morphs instantly from despair to rage. Rage I can deal with, tears not so much.
“Why would you do this? Have you not taken enough from me? You’re a selfish bastard!” she screams at me.
I put the cigarette in the ashtray. I lean against the desk, bracing myself with my arms. She doesn’t get why I did this. “I told you—”
“I’m not interested in your bullshit excuses! You have ruined my life. My sister thinks I am dead because of you! This was all just to protect yourself, so do me a favour and stop with the fucking lies.”
“If I hadn’t you would have ended up dead, and if you think what I’m capable of is fucking deranged, you don’t want to know what Joe would do to you! If you want to blame anyone, blame that shit-poor excuse of a man who handed you over to criminals in the first place. This is all his fucking fault. He ruined your life!” I shout. ”And he made a fucking mess of mine.”
“Fuck. You!” she screams, swinging her arm back.
Her palm hits the side of my face with a loud clap, and my head slams to the side. Heat floods my cheek where she struck me, stinging like a motherfucker. I inhale as I close my eyes, trying to breathe. I will fucking take it this once.
“Tor,” I growl in warning; my jaw tightens, my fists clench.
“How has this messed up your fucking life? You’re not a dead girl walking!” She grabs the ashtray from the desk and chucks it at the wall. Soot flies everywhere. We’ve skipped the crying and gone straight to irrational, apparently.
She stomps across the room. “You don’t have to think of your sister crying over your fucking closed casket.” She rips the painting off the wall, and smashes the frame over the desk. I jump to the side of the room as she hurls the mangled frame at me. “You haven’t just lost the career you worked eight fucking years for!” She takes the crystal decanter of whiskey and throws it against the wall.
“And you don’t have a foot long scar down your body, and a slit throat! I fucking hate you!” she screams manically, throwing the telephone at me.
This is how I would react, not how I expected her to react. I expected her to fall into a sobbing heap on the floor, not destroy my fucking house. I stand to the side of the room, lighting another smoke as I lean against the wall and watch her. If this is what she needs to come to term with things, so fucking be it. Eventually, she’s run out of things to break and grabs the cushions from the sofa, giving them an exaggerated throw in my direction.
There’s nothing left to throw. She’s standing in the middle of utter destruction, chest heaving and tears pouring down her face. Her knees buckle and she falls to the floor, sobbing. She looks so small and broken, and it pulls at something inside me that I thought had long ago been lost. Fuck, I should do something. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what to do here. I haven’t done anything aside from fuck a woman in the past ten years.
I toss my hands up. “What do you want me to do?”
“Leave!” Her chest is heaving. “Let me leave.” She looks utterly broken.
I drag my hands through my hair and pace. I glance at her, tears are streaming down her face. I don’t need her here, because she is a weakness. If Joe finds her, so be it. She doesn’t belong to me, but for some reason part of me feels like she should. Exhaling, I point toward the door. “Leave then. If that’s what you want, then leave. I won’t stop you.”
She stares at me, her expression falling blank.
“Believe me. You can leave, but Joe will find you. What are you gonna do, huh? Go to the police?” Laughing, I shrug. “You’ve no idea how corrupt everything is. If I have the police in my back pocket, believe you me, so does fucking Joe. The second you go to them, he’ll find you.” I fall silent, thinking of the shit he did to my mother and sister. “And the things you’ve unfortunately experienced here will pale in fucking comparison to what he will do. So if that's what you want, just go ahead and leave. I’m not fucking keeping you prisoner. The fucking debt has been paid. Go!” I realize I’m shouting.
She nods, walking past me cautiously, like at any minute she expects me to grab her and force her against a wall. As soon as she gets to the door, she runs.
I exhale, my eyes dropping to the floor. If she really leaves, she’s as good as dead.