But Cassie seems sated by the reassurance that she’ll most likely go into labor any moment now that her cervix is soft, that she’s already looking a little bit dilated.
She insists we pick up McDonald’s on the way home, giant sodas and hot fries and dirty double cheeseburgers. I want to tear into the food as soon as it’s passed to us in the drive-thru, but Cassie insists we eat on plates at home like civilized humans.
In fact, the more I think about it, Cassie’s very insistent about what we eat and when. I’ve passed it off as pregnancy and her trying to be a good housewife, but after Chris’s bombshell, there’s a deep feeling of worry starting to spread in me.
It’s like a cancer in my blood, snaking down my limbs and around my heart, and by the time we get home I’m reeling.
I’m starting to think about all the nights I’ve passed out on the couch, too tired to even make it up to bed.
All the mornings waking up to Cassie’s sweet face, laughing at me because I fell asleep again.
“Go wash up,” Cassie says, bumping my hip with her belly as she takes the tray of sodas to the kitchen. I wash up in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. You’re crazy, I think to myself. The test is at fault. You’re fucking paranoid.
I head back into the kitchen and the table is all set; our dinners placed neatly in the spots where we always sit. Me at the head of the table and Cassie tucked off to the side, next to me, her back against the wall.
“Damn,” I say, picking up my Coke. “I thought I ordered Sprite. You wanna swap?”
Cassie pulls her Sprite closer to her. “I’m not supposed to have caffeine.”
“Oh,” I say. Perfectly logical explanation. You’re paranoid, the little voice in my head repeats. You’re freaking out because of the baby.
I pick at my food, suddenly not hungry. When Cassie goes to pee, I throw half of my food away and cover it with other trash. Then, I tip my Coke down the sink before taking it back to the table. Cassie reappears just as I’m sitting back in my spot, stopping short when she sees my face.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You look like there’s something wrong.”
I shake my head. “I think I’ve finally realized that we’re having a baby.”
Her face falls.
“No, no, not like that!” I say, putting my hand up in protest. “I mean the birthing pool and the induction date and the fucking hot water heater. I can’t even blow the fucking thing up.”
“Oh,” she says, visibly relaxing. “Don’t worry. There’s an air pump that blows up the pool. We’ll have hours to get it full. You can use the stove to heat water if we run out.”
“Good,” I say, smiling, trying like fuck to appear like everything is normal. “I just want everything to be perfect for you. I know how much you want to have this baby at home.”
She smiles, sliding on to my lap. She’s so big that her belly sits between us, swollen and ready to burst. “We should go to bed,” she says, her hands on my chest. “Make up for the fact that we won’t be able to do it for like, a month after he or she is born.”
“We should,” I agree.
We go to bed. We do the deed. But unlike this morning, when we were laughing and I was trying not to choke on my mouthful of bacon at the same time, tonight I flip Cassie over, onto her hands and knees, and try to get done as quickly as possible. I’m almost about to come when I remember this is exactly how I saw her and Damon in the window, over a year ago, the night of her mother’s funeral. Before I can stop myself, I come inside Cassie, but with that image in my head, it feels fucking horrific.
Normally I would fall asleep immediately, as soon as my head hits the pillow. But tonight, I’m wide-awake. I feign sleep, aware that Cassie is still very much awake beside me, the glow from her phone illuminating the room slightly. I breathe slowly, I wait it out, and after about forty minutes, Cassie shakes me.
“Leo,” she whispers. “Are you awake?”
I stay “asleep.” She tries to rouse me once more, and I waver. What if she’s having labor pains? What if she needs something?
Before I can think anymore, she’s up and out of bed. It’s probably nothing. She’s so hugely pregnant that she can barely get comfortable, let alone get to sleep with the baby pummeling her with kicks. I listen intently, hearing her shuffling about in the kitchen. She’s always hungry. It’s nothing.
I close my eyes again as I hear her coming up the stairs. I wait for her to get into bed, but her footsteps continue past our bedroom.
And up to the attic.
Huh.
I don’t hear anything else, and she’s only gone for ten or fifteen minutes. I spend the time listening in vain for anything, but it’s dead silence.
When she comes back, she slides into bed. Nothing amiss. She probably went to find something. All her medical records are stored up there, and her old baby clothes. She probably just went to get something. I’m being paranoid.
“Leo?” she shakes me again. I know I should respond, but something in me tells me to stay still. She lies down beside me. The bed starts to rock slightly. Oh my God, is she doing what I think she’s doing? She is. She’s touching herself. My dick immediately gets hard, and I have to shift onto my side to stop it from being mashed into the mattress.
Beside me, Cassie stills. “Leo?”
This time, I groan in response. Moments later, hands are pulling my boxers down, my extremely pregnant girlfriend crawling up on top of me before I can crack an eye open. We don’t speak. She takes my hand and places my fingers against her clit as she guides me inside her, and it’s mere seconds before she’s coming against my touch.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Leo
* * *
CASSIE IS SHOWERING the next morning when I go up to the attic. It’s locked, no surprise there. No problem. I’ve got a power drill, and it takes me about three seconds to remove the lock and open the door. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find. Maybe nothing. Maybe a whole lot of dust. But something in my gut tells me I’m going to find something.
The room looks just like you’d expect an attic to look. Low, sloping ceiling. Things stacked in the corner in neatly labeled bins and boxes. Oddly, there’s a high stack of old milk cartons. And in the middle of the room, a plain pine storage box.
I want to know what’s in that box.
But it’s locked, another padlock that prevents me access. No matter. I study the lock, looking for a weak spot, and then I smash the whole thing off with the tire iron I brought up with me. It takes two or three hits, and I hope to fuck that Cassie’s shower drowns out the noise.
I drop the lock and open the latch. I don’t know what I’m going to find, but suddenly, I’m terrified. I open the lid before I can talk myself out of it, and what do you know, I’ve been sleeping under a box with a dead body inside it for an entire year.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
LEO
I recoil from the box, stumbling back until I find the wall. I lean against it, trying to breathe, my palm mashed against my mouth as I try not to scream this entire fucking house down.
Did I just see what I think I saw? A pine storage box in the attic that’s now somebody’s coffin. I bite my fist to stop myself from yelling, edging back to the box.
Damon King.
My lovely girlfriend was lying about the letters she got from him, unless she handed him the paper and pen herself. Because her stepfather hasn’t been fishing in early retirement or taking stress leave in the Ozarks. No. He’s been in our fucking attic this entire time.
I peer over the edge of the coffin, and just when I think things can’t get worse, I’m sorely proven wrong. Dead Damon opens his eyes and stares straight at me, his bright blue eyes the only thing I recognize about before. But this isn’t a horror movie, folks. He’s not a vampire waiting to rise from his coffin and drink my blood. He’s a man who’s been starved until his skin stretches painfully over his bones, his cheekbones sharp and jutting, his neck bulging w
ith veins, an array of chains and handcuffs restraining him. He’s got duct tape over his mouth, to keep him quiet I suppose, and without thinking, I rip that tape off.
If it hurts, he doesn’t show pain. No, the captive who’s been imprisoned in our attic opens his mouth and fucking laughs.
There’s something about his laugh — hollow and throaty and maniacal — that terrifies me almost to the point of a goddamn heart attack. I slam the lid of the box shut, but he’s still fucking laughing, the sound drilling into my brain like a sledgehammer. I open the lid again, just long enough to slap the tape back on his mouth, and then I slam it shut again.
“Leo!” I hear Cassie yell from downstairs. Damon’s in our attic. He’s in our fucking attic! I must be in fucking shock, my head swimming in a sea of what the fuck as I exit the attic and head down to the bathroom.
“Yeah?” I say, my voice sounding foreign, what the fuck has she done? Cassie doesn’t notice me, one hand on the shower wall as steam billows around her.
“Oh, shit,” I say, noticing the way she’s hunched over, her face scrunched up in pain. “Is this it?”
What the fuck have you done?
What the fuck have you DONE?
But I can’t ask her to please stop being in labor so she can explain to me why the FUCK there is a dude tied up in our attic, a man who looks like he’s been starved within an inch of actual death. If it weren’t for the eyes, I wouldn’t even recognize him, because he’d surely fit right into a concentration camp in wartime Nazi Germany.
“This is it,” Cassie breathes, straightening, as what I’m assuming was a contraction passes. And then she’s fine, normal, standing in the bath smiling at me. “We should start filling that birthing pool.”
Sure thing, Cassie. Whatever you want, babe. Whatever the fuck you want.
I help Cassie dress — yoga pants and a sports bra — and then we head downstairs. She has to stop halfway as another contraction rips through her, and holy shit I thought it would happen more slowly than this. Isn’t it supposed to be a gradual thing at first? Maybe my super sperm burst her cervix open last night when she climbed on top of me and went to town. Who fucking knows. I help her down to the sofa, sit her down, and take a spot across from her.
“You should start timing my contractions,” she says.
I nod. “In a minute. I need to talk to you about something.”
She raises her eyebrows, pissed. “I’m in labor.”
I glimpse the key dangling around her neck, the one I’ve since learned is a rip-off of those keys you buy that are engraved with taglines. You know, chicks wear these keys that say LOVE or TRUST or STRENGTH as some kind of fucking totem to remind themselves of. I always thought Cassie’s said Nomad. I’d tease her for it - you can’t be a nomad if you’ve never been anywhere - and she’d laugh.
But I guess the joke’s on me.
Because Nomad spelled backward is Damon.
THE BOY IN THE BOX
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
DAMON
That fucking bitch.
That’s the first thing I thought when I woke up in here, my head pounding and the room still spinning from whatever it was she put in my goddamn coffee.
Just when I thought she was starting to come around. I mean yeah, I know, she tried to kill herself, but that was because of Ray. Fucking Ray. I always knew I’d have to kill Ray one day. I just didn’t expect it to go down like that.
I certainly didn’t expect to have to seal him up in a barrel of acid and dump him into an abandoned mine shaft three hours away.
The first thing I saw when I woke up in that attic? Wood. Pine. I’m in the box. Fuck. I’m in the box. That cunt fed me poison and kicked me in the face and now I’m locked in a coffin.
I don’t know how long I’m in here for, but I bide the time patiently. I could rage and kick and scream, but I know she’ll be back. My little bird wants answers. And answers she shall get. Besides, I need to conserve my strength for when I beat her to fucking death for pulling this stunt.
She eventually comes back, the lid to my box opening with a thunk. She’s found the key to the padlock, and it shines in the overhead light against her skin.
“Have a nice nap?” she asks.
“Delightful,” I reply. “What’d you give me?”
She shrugs. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A cocktail. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d wake up at all.”
That makes me mad. I’ve spent the hours after I woke up studying my situation. Cassie’s smart — she’s cuffed my hands behind my back, so I can’t reach out and grab her when she leans her smug fucking face over the side of the box. My legs are shackled, too. I can feel thick chains around my ankles. Maybe this is my karma for putting Jennifer in here.
Then again, I don’t believe in karma. I believe we make our own fate. Cassie’s fate is going to be full of punishment once I break out of this fucking box.
“How’d you do it?” she asks tonelessly.
I laugh. “How’d I do what?”
She rears her fist back and punches me in the face so hard, her knuckles start to bleed. The force rings in my ears, and I can feel new blood on my cheek. Baby girl’s angry. She’s so pretty when she’s angry.
She’s stupid, too. Because she climbs into the box and straddles me, her knees draped across my hips. “Careful, sweetheart,” I say, forcing my hips up suddenly. “I might get the wrong idea.”
She hits me again, in the mouth this time. She smashes her fist hard enough into my head that I hear a tooth crack in the back of my jaw. “You’re gonna break a finger,” I mutter around a mouthful of blood. “And you’ll have to be more specific. How’d I do what?”
She watches, mesmerized, as I turn my head to the side and spit a bloody molar onto the box’s wooden floor.
I settle back, giving her my full attention. Somehow, I’m betting she thought this would go differently. She probably thought I’d be begging for my life.
“If you’re trying to scare me, sweetheart, you’d better try harder than this.” I rattle the chain that loops around my ankles for effect.
She blinks heavily. Once. Twice. This is not going as she planned.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” she hisses. “I want to know what you did.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, Cassie. Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning.”
“Which beginning? There are so many.”
“Did you kill Karen?”
Wow, straight to the point. I look at the ceiling, the time for joking over. Karen left a bad taste in my mouth, almost as bad as the taste she left in Leo Bentley’s mouth when he drank the dirty creek water that she rotted in until he found her. “No,” I say quietly.
“Bullshit.”
“I tried to cut contact with Ray when I moved to Gun Creek. He killed Karen to send me a message.”
She looks almost relieved, if a little dubious. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
I shrug. “I’ve got nothing to hide from you anymore, Cassie. I’ll give you a list of the people I’ve killed. Karen’s not on it, though.”
She looked tired. “Tell me about the accident.”
“Are we still calling it an accident?”
She just raises her eyebrows.
“Okay, fine,” I concede. Something squeezes inside my chest. I deserve this. And she should know the truth.
Tears well up in her pretty eyes, and if my hands were free I’d brush them away. I’d lick my tongue along her cheek and soak them all up.
“I already know what you did. Got Ray to drive up alongside Leo’s car and push it over the guardrail.”
“How’d you figure it out?” I ask her. “I mean now, really? Took you long enough.”
Her eyes burn with hatred. It’s sad that she hates me. I’ve only ever tried to keep her safe.
“Paint chips,” she snaps. “Paint chips and motive.”
It’s probably a terrible idea, b
ut I tell her what she wants to know. All of it. Maybe if she knows the truth, she’ll finally understand why I had to cut her mother out like a cancer all those years ago.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
DAMON
The heart wants what the heart wants.
That’s what Ray told me when I confessed my feelings for Cassie to him. I knew I shouldn’t have told him almost as soon as the words came out of my mouth, but if you can’t tell your darkest secrets to your murder buddy and adopted brother, who can you tell?
Right? Right.
Anyway.
I wanted Cassie from the moment I laid eyes on her that morning at the Bentley property.
Karen Brainard’s mutilated corpse, sawn in half with the precision of a High Street butcher.
One half in the well - plop! And the rest in the creek - splash. I knew as soon as I got the call on the radio that it was Karen.
I’d had my dick in her mouth less than twenty-four hours earlier, thanks to Ray, and now I’d be leading an investigation into her murder, also thanks to Ray.
A parting gift when I tried to evade him. Brothers stick together, he’d reminded me when he showed up at my door as if nothing had happened.
Karen Brainard was a warning.
You can never run away from your past. It will chase you through the night, and all into the next morning.
But I digress. Cassie. She looked older than sixteen, but not by much. Everybody wants the young, don’t they? I mean, that’s why Stephen Randolph took me when I was ten. Because everybody loves the young. Soft and pliable and ready to be warped into shape.
I couldn’t have her, could I? I was a sheriff. I was old enough to be her father. And I was supposed to be upholding the law, not breaking it to satisfy my dark desires.
But then I learned she had a mother. A mother who was only a little younger than me. A mother who was beautiful, just like her.