Page 14 of Degradation
I wonder where all her stuff is. It should have come from the UK by now. I look around some more but find no pajamas, or even a bathrobe. So, I run across the hall and grab my robe from behind my door. I don’t wear PJs, so I pull one of my t-shirts out for her, too. I put them on her bed, and then another thought comes to me. I go back into my room, and I strip the covers from my bed, the tainted sheets that Laurie was on earlier tonight.
That fucking girl!
I remake my bed with some fresh ones quickly and throw the others in a pile in the corner to trash tomorrow. I don’t want them anywhere near me.
Trying to keep busy, I take out my phone and email my father’s exports guy to see if he’s heard where Daisy’s stuff might be. I’d have thought it would have come by air, but some moron might have put it on a ship.
After that, I pace, trying to think of something else to do to keep my mind occupied. I want to know what happened to Daisy tonight. I want to know everything. I need to see what the cameras saw.
I go to Blake’s room. He and Mav are already looking at his computer screen.
Mav turns when he hears me. ‘How is she?’
I shake my head. ‘She’s with Lu. I don’t know. She’s...overwhelmed. She needs rest. You need to bandage her up, though. She looks like she was ripped through a hedge backward. Her ankle is strained, too, I think.’
Mav nods grimly. ‘I’ll do it as soon as she’s cleaned up.’ He turns back to the computer. ‘We’re putting together her movements at the party from the cams.’
My jaw clenches as I look down at the screen. ‘Show me.’
‘This was after we saw her in the games room. She said she was going to the bathroom, remember? But she never came back. Looks like she played beer pong with David McAdams and then they were talking for a while. He gets kinda wasted, but she doesn’t really drink anything. Just a beer and it looks like it’s just to be social. She doesn’t seem like she enjoys it.’
‘She doesn’t like beer,’ Blake murmurs, not looking up.
I turn my attention to the feed from earlier. I watch McAdams stare after Daisy when she leaves him on the couch, his face a mixture of lust and alcohol haze.
‘And after that?’ I ask, adding McAdams’ name to the invisible and quickly growing list of people whose lives I might just destroy for her.
Officers Wilkes and Mullon are first for what I saw of their treatment of my...sister, and because they’re the easiest to deal with.
‘She goes back to the games room.’
‘But we weren’t there by then,’ I mutter, recalling that after pool, we got word that Sark was around and wanted to talk. We were trying to find him.
‘Marcus and the others were,’ Blake snarls.
Bile rises in my throat as I watch the screen. I see her freeze. They surround her. They’re touching her, pouring what looks like vodka from a square bottle down her throat while she chokes and sputters. They’re laughing, trying to get her on the pool table. She struggles. Rob hits her and she falls to the ground, and then Mav appears on the screen to beat the living shit out of them.
‘I didn’t know they’d done all that. No wonder she was freaking out,’ Mav says. ‘Those fuckers.’
‘Good thing you didn’t see everything,’ I remark, ‘or we’d be trying to get rid of their bodies instead of planning what we’re going to do to them.’
Mav grunts his assent.
‘What’s the plan?’ Blake says low. ‘I don’t care if Marcus’ dad is Joseph Banderville. They’re dead.’
His tone is devoid of emotion, but I don’t doubt it how serious he is. He thinks I don’t know exactly what he still gets called to do. But I know.
‘What happens after that?’
She runs through the party and that’s when the other guys show up. She takes one look at them and bolts up here.
‘She was trying to find you,’ Mav says, glancing at me.
‘But she found that bitch, Laurie, instead. Show me that. I want to know what she said to Daisy to make her run the way she did.’
Blake brings up the feed from my room during the party. I see Laurie come in. She walks around my room with a smile on her face, touching my shit. Then, she takes off her clothes and slides into my bed where she stretches and languishes with a low moan.
‘That girl is certifiable,’ Blake mutters. ‘Glad I didn’t fuck her.’
