Game Over Boys, page 92
As I think, I dial 911 again and again, studying the limo, trying to remember where Dakota was sitting. Not against the door like I was, but close to it.
She’s badly injured, Chas. She could be mortally wounded. Tess could be dead since she was the one by the door. Justin won’t have suffered enough no matter what happened to him.
The operator finally fucking picks up, speaking rapidly into the phone before I get a chance to speak.
“If you’re calling from the church, we have officers on the way. Stay where you are, remain quiet, and keep the line open.”
That’s how she answers the call.
“The church?” I turn and look in the direction of the lodge. I can’t see anything from here, but I can take a wild guess. Justin sent his killers to the wedding. My dad is in that church. Maxx’s family is in that church. “No.”
Goddamn it!
The need to help them tugs on me, mixes with my desperate fears for Parrish, my terror over Dakota and Tess. My insides churn like taffy, tugged in way too many directions.
“Sir, do you have an emergency?” the operator asks, thoroughly confused by my response.
I do my best to quickly and succinctly explain where I am and what’s going on, that Dakota and Tess are missing, that the Seattle Slayer is missing, that two FBI agents are dead, that someone is drowning.
“We have officers on the way,” is what she tells me.
“Chas!” I can hear Maxx yelling for me. There’s no resisting the frantic energy in his voice, the fear.
“We need someone to search for my wife!” I might be yelling at the operator as I run, but I need her to understand the severity of the situation. “If we don’t find her soon, he’ll kill her, too.” If he hasn’t already killed her. I won’t think like that. I won’t.
I don’t know what the operator says. Doesn’t matter. I’ve given her what I can.
I find Maxx on all fours beside the lakeshore, Parrish’s body laid out in the mud beside him. My childhood friend is blue in the face. Not moving. Not breathing.
If someone had to drown, it should’ve been me. I should’ve let Maxx help Parrish.
Without hanging up, I shove the phone into my pocket and slide down the side of the steep hill, stumbling to my knees in the muck beside Parrish.
Maxx is struggling to breathe, gasping and shaking, dark hair hanging into his face.
“He needs … CPR … help …” He shakes his head at me without looking up. “I can’t … breathe.”
He doesn’t have to explain any more than that. I tilt Parrish’s head back, pinch his nose, and offer five initial rescue breaths. Maxx takes over chest compressions as I count out thirty, give two breaths. Thirty compressions, two breaths. Thirty compressions, two breaths.
We look at each other, me and Maxx.
“Where’s Kota?” he asks me, but I still don’t have answers for him. I shake my head and give two more breaths when Maxx completes another thirty compressions. Please don’t take Dakota and Parrish from me. No matter what happens, I can get through it if I have them by my side. I know that I can.
I can handle anything if the four of us are together.
Maxx and I stare at each other now the way we stared at each other last night.
When Dakota was distracted with her family, we sat together with Parrish on her bed and waited.
“If this is her picking you, it’s okay.” Maxx’s voice caught in his throat, but he said it of his own free will. Meant it, too. I could tell.
“Don’t do that,” I replied, shaking my head and curling my fingers into the blankets on either side of me. Dakota’s blankets. I closed my eyes. One day, they’d be our blankets. That’s what I thought as I sat there, sandwiched between my best friends, and tried not to be excited that maybe … “Don’t act like you’re okay when you’re not.”
Of the three of us, I never expected to end up with Dakota. Oh, I wanted it. I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything in my entire life. But it didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem right because it was at the expense of my best friends’ happiness. I’m used to taking care of other people, putting them first. I like it—most days. I don’t mind taking the fall or bearing the brunt or dishing out dirty work.
Except … this was different.
Parrish sniffled, and I looked over to see if he was crying or something. Doubted it. That’s not exactly his style. But then he was. He had tears on his face, but his teeth were gritted as he glared at the floor, like he’d already come to a conclusion that he knew was right, but that he didn’t want to accept.
He turned his head to look back at me, and his eyes blazed with truth and rage and love all at once.
“Take care of her, Chas. You hear me? I’m wishing you well the way you wished us well the night you … when we first …” And then he put his head in his hands and was silent. Because without Justin, his love story would’ve been so different.
She wouldn’t be marrying me; nobody would be dying.
“Baka,” I teased, calling him dumb in Japanese. I picked up the language because it was available at school. There it was, and I took it, and I excelled at it. I love that, the way the human mind expands if we take care to encourage it. “This isn’t about you or me or X; it’s about Dakota. Only she can make a choice—if she wants to make one at all.”
Parrish dropped his hands to stare at me, but his expression never changed.
“If she wants you, Chas, I’ll be supportive. I won’t fight it. I won’t resent you. I’ll … be happy for you.”
That’s what he said to me. Now he’s lying here and dying, and I can’t do anything but breathe for him.
“Don’t die on me, you asshole,” Maxx is murmuring, still panting for his lost breath. “If she picks one of us after you’re gone, it’ll … it’ll feel like a win by default.”
I’d smile if the situation weren’t … this.
My brow knits and beads with sweat as we continue our work. I’m determined to keep going until the ambulance arrives, but I can’t shake the sick sense that I need to find Dakota. I have to go after her before it’s too late.
In my mind, I go over exactly what I’d do if I weren’t performing CPR. Steal a car and …. Drive where, Chas? Go where? How do I track her without a phone? How do I hack her with, well, a superior hacker watching me across the vast valley that is the internet? If I weren’t doing CPR right now, I’d still be thinking. I promise myself I’m not wasting any time in my search for Dakota by helping Parrish. Not that … I don’t want to choose between them. Ever.
This is why I’d never make her choose. I would never force that decision.
Parrish’s eyes flutter and both Maxx and I freeze, staring down at him in a stretched moment of stillness and silence. Jebal. Jebal. Jebal. I silently beg Parrish to wake up, and he does, like a miracle. He turns to the side and vomits onto the ground beside Maxx.
Parrish groans and coughs, gasping his inhales, choking out exhales, and trying to curse at the end of each breath.
“Shit”—gasp—“fuck.”
Maxx pats his back, momentarily distracted as he catches his own breath and tries to help Parrish do the same. Parrish, on the other hand, is looking right at me when I first hear the crunch of boots on gravel. I lift my gaze to the road and find a figure standing by the broken fence, gun in hand.
My mind empties.
And then it fills with pictures. Images of Dakota and the moments we’ve shared over these last few months. The love. The impossible-to-describe-can’t-be-contained-words-aren’t-enough-they-never-will-be-true-and-perfect love that I feel for her. It swells and expands in my chest as X shoves up to his feet, having finally seen what I saw. I guess it must’ve only been seconds between our realizations.
Doesn’t matter.
Seconds is enough.
I’m aware of red hitting Parrish in the face, and that’s it.
I’m not aware of anything else.
Parrish Vanguard
What? What?!I’m screaming inside my head, on my hands in the mud as I stare with wide eyes at Chasm’s body. He slumps to the side like he’s boneless, and I taste blood in my mouth. Or maybe it was the other way around. The order of events isn’t important. It’s meaningless.
The consequences are the same.
I remember Dakota describing the taste of blood to me in the dark of night, curled up against my side and holding back tears as we cuddled in bed.
“I could taste Maxx’s heart in my mouth, Pear-Pear. I could taste the person I love dying on my tongue.”
That’s me now. Tasting Chasm. Because … because … because …
My gaze swings rapidly up to the person at the top of the hill, at Maxx as he throws his body into the man, as they hit the ground and struggle for control of the gun. It happens much quicker than I could’ve possibly imagined.
X knows what he’s doing. He does Krav Maga. He was ruthless at Whitehall Prep. He drove those brats to their knees, sniveling and kissing his feet, worshipping him. He was poor and destitute by their standards, and yet he ruled over them. So, yeah, he gets the gun easily enough and then he—
There’s blood on the gravel as Maxx tucks the weapon into his slacks, turning and immediately making his way back toward us. That’s when I realize that it’s been several seconds and I haven’t gone to Chasm yet. How could I have possibly made him wait that long? How stupid am I?
I can barely move, and I’m still remembering what it feels like to breathe. I shift over to Chas, reaching out my fingers to brush the hair back from his face. My fingertips tremble as I touch him, as I try to understand what it is that I’m looking at. His lightning bolt bangs are red now. Why are they red?
“Does he have a pulse?” X asks me, falling beside Chas’ body and helping me to roll him onto his back. We’re both shaking as I lift my fingers to his neck, as I lean in to see if I can’t hear him taking a breath. I sit like that for far too long, so long that Maxx pushes me out of the way and checks for himself.
He looks up at me, and I look back at him.
“Don’t,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut as my lungs burn, my chest expanding and contracting of its own will. I’m choking on these massive inhales, and I’m spitting out water as the hot sun bakes my back. My suit is ruined, soaked all the way through and somehow unbuttoned all the way down the front. Not that it matters. Nothing matters. “Don’t, Maxx.”
“Parrish, we need to find Dakota,” Maxx tells me, and there’s a sob lodged in his throat that he won’t give into. Because he’s Maxx. Because he’s practical. Because we both saw Chas get shot in the head, but neither of us is willing to accept it. “We can take him to a hospital on the way.”
That’s how Maxx justifies it, like we have any power to do anything.
It’s in that moment that I realize how helpless I truly am, and vow to change that fact forever.
I will embody what it means to be a fucking Vanguard.
All along, the dark, seductive serpent that was Medina was inside of me. Now, it coils and writhes, and I know that I’m going to find power and have no shame in using it.
“Okay.” I help Maxx lift Chas’ bloody body, and I don’t think about how limp it is, how I’m pretty sure he’s dead, how there are tears running down my face. I don’t go there at all. We lay our friend out on the grass and take turns checking the cars, looking for one that still runs.
I find myself outside the box truck, staring at the driver as he groans from his place on the front seat.
And then I reach out, curl my fingers around the gun on his belt, and draw it out. I only take the time to switch off the safety before I’m pointing it at the side of his head.
“You don’t have to do this—” X starts, reaching out to stop me. It’s too late. I pull the trigger, and then I look back at Maxx, lowering the gun to my side.
“Help me move his body.” My voice is cool, cavalier, empty. I can only imagine what my face looks like. Blank. Ruthless. Dotted with Chas’ blood. I slip the gun into my pocket.
X says nothing, just grabs the man’s legs alongside me and drags him onto the grass. We head back to collect Chasm, and I climb into the passenger seat, helping Maxx maneuver our friend’s body onto my lap. Chas’ legs are curled on the bench seat, his head cuddled against my chest. I stare out the front windshield, breathing hard. I can see myself looking back at me, tightlipped and narrow-eyed and full of … hurt.
I’m hurting so badly that I can’t breathe. And then the tears are falling again, and the unfortunate fact of my existence flashes into white-hot and painful reality.
I feel it all.
I feel everything so deeply that it hurts. I don’t want to. I wish that I didn’t. In truth, all it does is make me miserable most days. For months at a time, I’d find myself in a fog of gray, listless and unmotivated and mean. I don’t know why. Maybe I was unhappy? Maybe I was depressed? Maybe I was even bored?
But then there she was. My stepsister. Mia. The bane of my existence. The balm to my apathy. Her hair was insane, and her mouth was beautiful, and I could barely fathom the creature peering back at me from the foyer. I wasn’t wearing a shirt; she noticed right away.
I am allergic to shirts—I admit it.
“Who the fuck are you? And what are you doing in my house?” I watched with pleasure as her eyes widened, as her perfect mouth parted in surprise. Here was a person so different from any other I’d met in Medina, someone with scuffed sneakers and a forced smile tight enough to crack her face in half. Honest to a fault, a girl capable of meeting my cruelty with cold reality.
We hurt each other.
We broke each other open.
We fell in love.
“As if, little sister. In your dreams.” But those words I spoke to her were a lie. In my dreams. She was in all of my dreams.
A sob escapes me as I clutch Chas tight, as Maxx climbs behind the wheel, as I grit my teeth and drip saltwater freely into my friend’s hair. I’m practically clawing at him now, digging my fingertips into his skin.
I didn’t want to bless Dakota and Chasm’s marriage, but I did it anyway. I did it because he’s the only person in the whole world that I would do that for. And now he’s … I look down at his bloodied face, and I’m not ashamed. I weep like a child, fat tears tumbling down my cheeks, jacket sleeve rubbing at my nose.
“What the fuck do we do?” Maxx whispers, because he doesn’t know any better than I do. I sniff and force the pain back, lifting my chin and letting that haughtiness roll over me. It’s always protected me from my own feelings, and I’m not about to give it up now.
“We drive fucking fast.”
He looks at me; I look back at him.
We’re both aware that we might be the only ones left.
Chas’ phone goes off in his pocket, and I draw it out with a shaking hand. I not only know his passcode; my fingerprints unlock the damn thing as surely as his own. That’s who we are, me and Chas.
I look down at the screen to see about a million notifications waiting. Maxx hits the gas as I thumb through them, finding Chasm’s social media trail, to his plea for help as I struggled at the bottom of the lake. One notification in particular grabs my attention.
It’s so strange that it takes precedence over everything else.
Dakota’s livestreaming? Now?
I click it.
I almost wish that I hadn’t.
There she is, smiling. Somehow, amongst all of this, she’s smiling.
“Boys … Parrish, Chasm, Maxx, I love you guys. Grandma, Grandpa. Maxine. Kimber. Ben, Amelia, Henry. Sally, Danyella, Lumen, Paul. I love you all.” She gives the screen a kiss that hits me like an arrow to the chest. “Who wants to help me catch a serial killer? This is the last time I’m going to ask.”
“Jesus,” Maxx whispers, his own eyes wide. I lift my gaze to his, and something silent and implicitly understood passes between us. He turns away and hits the gas so hard that we lurch back against the seats, gravel and dust churning as the box truck rattles toward Medina. Neither of us says anything more to one another. There’s nothing to say to make this better.
I study the house that serves as Dakota’s backdrop, trying to figure out where she might be. I know everybody in Medina, so it’s possible I might be able to recognize it. Chas definitely would. He’d take one look at the wood molding, the art on the wall, the floors, and he’d know whose house this is. If that didn’t work, he’d hack the feed and figure out where it was coming from.
I’m not that good.
I’ll have to figure it out by memory alone—that is, if I’ve ever been in this house. The thing is, Medina isn’t very big. With a population of three thousand, it’s a small town trapped in the shadow of Seattle. Its exclusivity means I know most people, most houses. Unless they’re not in Medina at all.
But where else would they go?
As I wrack my brain, a live horror show plays on the screen, a hell that I can do absolutely nothing about. I’m helpless again. I’m fucking helpless.
I watch Justin shoot Saffron. I watch Dakota stab him. I watch him hit her and send her flying.
On the inside, my serpent coils tighter and tighter and tighter, squeezing the life from my heart.
A text comes into Chas’ phone—from Delphine of all people.
Hurry, she says, followed by an address that I know immediately.
They’re at the house Justin bought for Tess back in the day, the place they lived as a family, where Dakota spent the beginning of her life as Mia. How did I not figure that out right away? My gaze drifts down to Kwang-seon’s pallid expression.
Hospital or house?
I stare at Chas, but even though I already know he’s gone, I can’t give up on him.
“Stop.” I say it forcefully, but Maxx doesn’t hear me. “Stop!” I scream it this time and he slams on the brakes, throwing both me and Chas into the dash. I shove my door open and scramble out from underneath his comatose body.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Maxx asks me, but not like he believes I’d ever risk our friend’s life out of sheer stupidity. I look back at him, hand clutching the handle of the door.
