Page 13 of Black Hearts
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’m back to being a statue.” He flicked the used cigarette out of the window, narrowly missing my arm, and when I glared at him he shrugged.
I returned to the car and looked up nearby motels. Five minutes away was the one Rave was talking about, and I drove us there, parked us near the lobby, and went inside. Will and Bennet stayed in the car again; no use in everybody seeing all of us. Could never be too careful.
An older woman worked behind the counter, with graying hair and glasses hanging low on her nose, and she was busy reading the paper when I walked in. Like, the actual paper. She vaguely reminded me of the manager of the motel Bennet and Juliet had stayed at, only this woman smiled at me when I walked in.
“Hi, there,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a room,” I said, leaning on the counter. “I heard from my brother you run a pretty nice place here.”
“Your brother?”
“Rave.”
“Oh, that boy? What a sweet one he is. Always offering to help me take out the trash.” She chuckled, and I hoped she meant the actual trash and not, you know, something more figurative, like a body. “You need a room, too? I can give you one right next to his—we do rent by the week here, though.”
I flashed her my smile. “That’s fine. How much?” After she told me, I paid her for a week up front, though I hoped, prayed to whatever twisted god was listening in that we wouldn’t need a full week.
Every single hour that went by without Juliet by my side was an eternity.
She gave me the key, and I went outside. I got in the car and brought us closer to our room. The room itself wasn’t anything special; two twin beds and a pull-out couch, though neither option looked very comfortable. If we had our way, none of us would spend a minute inside that room sleeping.
We were here for Juliet, so we were going to get her. The how part was what tripped me up. We’d only get one shot at getting her out of that house safely, so we had to be sure. We couldn’t trust Fred to keep her safe anymore; he would probably hurt her with the intention of distracting us so he could get away from us—and that wasn’t something I wanted to encounter.
“So, what’s the plan, then?” Will asked, plopping himself on the edge of one of the beds. I’d barely had time to close and lock the door before he leveled the question at me.
I tossed him a look, going to close the thick, hideously-patterned drapes before turning toward him and Bennet. Bennet had taken to leaning against a wall, folding his arms over his chest, while Will simply looked eager.
I think all three of us were eager to get Juliet out of there.
“I want to scope out the house, get closer. See if I can see anything inside,” I told them. “But I can’t go slinking around the house, peering through windows, while the sun is still up.”
“Can we wait that long?” Will asked.
It had taken us a few hours to get here, so by my best guess, the sun still had a few more to go before it started to set. As much as I didn’t want to wait, I knew we had to be smart, calculated. We couldn’t go barging in and hope for the best. “We only get one shot at this. We need to do it right, for Juliet’s sake.”
“And if the fucker already killed her?” Bennet questioned, though the words came out more growly than anything else. “What then?” His bruising from Markus’s beatdown had begun to heal; his eye hadn’t been swollen for a few days. He wasn’t quite fully healed, but he was getting better, which was good. I needed him at his best, just in case.
“Then we handle Fred how Markus should’ve handled him years ago,” I muttered, imagining all the ways I could end Fred’s life. For me, it would be personal. Knowing everything he’d taught Juliet, everything he imprinted into her brain, how she blindly believed him for so long, that he was all she ever saw, made me a certain type of furious I just couldn’t explain.
Like I wanted to douse him in gasoline and flick one of Rave’s cigarettes his way. Like I wanted to take a knife and skin him alive, see how long he could last. Like I wanted to inflict every unimaginable pain upon him all at once, and it still wouldn’t be enough to pay back what he did to Juliet.
I didn’t care about those other girls. I didn’t care about what he did to her mother. The only thing I cared about in this great, wide world was Juliet Osborne. I wished it wouldn’t have taken me so long to realize it.
Will was the one who spoke next, “Do you think Doc told Markus that we left?”
“Sooner or later, whether Theo tells him or not, he’ll find out.” It was my turn to fold my arms over my chest and frown. “I don’t know what he’ll do. Hell, he probably won’t be able to do anything, even if he wanted to, not with our father there.”
Bennet grunted. “Wonder how long the asshole will stick around this time. When was the last time he swung by the house? Three years ago? More?” The way he scoffed, it was very clear he held no warm feelings for the elder Scott. “He doesn’t give a shit about any of us. He only came because—” He stopped himself.
And then it dawned on me, just as it had surely already dawned on him.
“Stella said he made Markus hand her over to Fred, and Markus didn’t stop him, which meant our father knew what was going on,” I said. “I don’t think Markus would’ve told him the extent of it all, which means…”
“Someone else did,” Will finished. “And the only person who had anything to gain by tattling on Markus is Fred.” He flashed one of his million-dollar smiles, the kind of smile that had surely gotten him far in his old life. Charismatic and commanding. “Good thing we’re here to take care of him. He won’t benefit from ratting Markus out for long.”
How could Fred have contacted our father, though? Did he have his contact information from when he was in charge, before Markus took the helm? It was the only logical reason this was happening, and yet it seemed so far-fetched—then again, maybe I just didn’t want to believe it. Maybe I wanted this to be a bad dream and nothing more.
But it wasn’t.
