Page 96 of Worse Than Wicked
Duke Dolce
As soon as we’re unpacked, Mabel opens Seeley’s pet carrier and sets out his food and water dishes. He crouches inside the cage, refusing to come out, glaring at us for forcing him to endure the indignity of another road trip. I don’t blame him. I don’t see why we ever left Faulkner.
Giving up on getting him to come out, Mabel stands and turns to Baron.
“I need the car,” she says. “I have something to take care of.”
“What?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her. “Going to give the damaged bumper to the police as evidence?”
I don’t know how Baron can ever trust her. This was my first time killing, and even though she thinks it was Baron driving, Baron who killed her, I still jump at every siren, every flashing light on the way here, even the ones that weren’t police. My heart stopped every time I saw a squad car in a town where we stopped for food or gas. I almost pissed myself when a state police drove in the other lane for a full two minutes on the highway.
Mabel frowns. “Why do you still act like I’m the enemy? We’re on the same team, Duke. We were all there. We’re all accomplices at the very least.”
“Because you still act like it,” I point out.
“How do I act like it?” she asks, planting her hands on her hips.
I glance at Baron, remembering her words. How tender she was sitting on my lap, lying with me. Asking me to do the impossible. She thinks Baron killed Dixie, so I still owe her. She doesn’t even have to ask. I already know what she wants me to do.
“Never mind,” I say.
Maybe if she takes the car, if she turns us in, she’ll do it in a way that implicates only Baron. No one knows we helped plan it. She could say he rammed Dixie’s car off the road while we screamed for him to stop. No one could say otherwise except Baron himself.
I shake the thought away. What has she done to me, that I’m contemplating getting my own brother, my twin, my other half, locked up?
It’s better than the alternative, my demon reminds me.
I can’t argue. He’s right. I can’t kill Baron, and if that’s what she asks of me, I’ve already failed. But if he was in prison, I wouldn’t have to.
And let’s be real, he’d be fine there. He’d thrive. Probably be running the joint in a week’s time, running drugs, arranging ‘accidents’ for the inmates dumb enough to cross him.
I wouldn’t survive a day. I’d be turned into some thug’s bitch, and then I’d run my mouth and get shanked.
What if that’s her plan instead? What if she says the same things to him when they’re alone?
He could do it.
Baron can do anything.
He wouldn’t like it, but he could kill me.
He’d do that before he’d send me to prison. Baron knows I wouldn’t last, and he wouldn’t want to let someone else take my life. If someone’s going to do it, he’d want it to be him.
“You can go in the morning,” Baron tells Mabel, hanging the keys by the door.
“He wants to go by the lawyer’s in the morning,” she says.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Baron points out.
“It’s Preston,” she says with a shrug, like that explains anything.
“We’ve been driving all day,” I argue. “Sit down. Chill. Have a beer.”
She sighs. “I can have him bring it here.”
“Bring what here?” I ask.
“The paperwork for Grandpa’s estate,” she says. “I have to sign a bunch of stuff before Summer House is officially mine.”
