Page 35 of Wicked Things
“Or what? You’ll kill Sloane?” She remains silent, a quiet intensity pouring from her. “Where is she?” I demand. “And how the fuck do you think you’re gonna get away with this?”
“Sloane’s safe. She’s being watched over quite closely. It turns out we have a friend in common. Our mutual friend was very happy when they were reunited with your lovely girlfriend. I’ve never seen anyone so excited before. We’ll go down and see them soon. In the meantime, we’ll get down to brass tacks so to speak. You want to know what I’m playing at. You want to know why I took Sloane. Well, here. I’ll tell you. I took her because she stands in my way. The past few months, I’ve taken control of Julio’s territories in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. I’ve spread further east than Julio dared. And now I’m looking to the north. Seattle. San Francisco. These cities will be mine, Zeth, no matter what.”
Seriously? She wants the same thing Roberto wants. What the fuck is wrong with these people? None of them seem to be listening.“I don’t care if you want to claim Seattle,” I say. “I don’t care if you decide to stage a coup and burn the fucking city to the ground. You’ll have to war with the Barbieri for it, but I think you already know that. Go and head fucking kill each other for all I care. Just leave me and mine out of it.”
With infinite slowness, Alaska shakes her head from side to side. “No, Zeth. You don’t understand. I want to be queen of the east coast. But not only that. I want you to be by my side. I wantyouto be my king. And to do that, Sloane needs to vanish. She can’t be around any more to distract you.She needs to die. That is the only outcome of this situation. Especially since…” She falters, her expression flickering with rage. “Especially since she’s now pregnant with your baby.”
Every second she’s been talking, I’ve been picturing what she’s going to look like when the light fades from her eyes and she passes from this life and into the next. I’ve been imagining how fucking fantastic it’s going to feel as I pin her down and hold her in place as she dies. She’s fucking delusional. At some point since I saw her last, she’s actually gone and misplaced her mind. And now she’s talking about murdering Sloane, along with the baby, so she and I can be together?
“No need to look so troubled,” she says. “I love children. I’m still young. And Julio had to make me get four terminations over the years while I was with him, so I know I’m capable. You can still be a father. Just with me, instead of her.”
I blink at the woman standing opposite me. Can she hear herself? Does she have any idea how fucking insane she sounds? She seems far too mellow and calm right now to truly have a grasp on what’s happening. It’s like she’s medicated up to her eyeballs or something. “I’m going to give you one chance to tell me where she is, Alaska,” I tell her. “And if I find her with more than a hair out of place, I’m going to do far worse than kill you. You’re going to endure a living nightmare of pain and humiliation.”
She cocks her head to one side, her auburn curls shining like red ribbons under the floodlights. “Humiliation? You think I’m even capable of being humiliated anymore? After everything I went through at the compound?” She grimaces, her voice hoarse as she tips her head back and laughs. “I don’t think so. Did you know, Julio let kept me for himself all those years I was trapped out in the desert with him. He was so mad when he had to trade me with that sick Villalobos fuck, so to make himself feel better he allowed each and every one of his boys to take a turn with me before he gave me up. He watched, smoking one of those disgusting fucking cigars, drinking his beer, while one after another his men came and sank their dicks inside me. They spat on me. They came all over me. They pinned me down and squeezed my tits, bit my skin, spanked me, raped me repeatedly over and over again. Julio was a smart guy. By the time it was all over, he didn’t care about me anymore. He thought I was a revolting piece of trash, and he didn’twantto keep me any more. So I think, unfortunately for you, I’m all tapped out on the humiliation front these days.”
If I were a bigger man, I’d feel a tinge of something like pity for Alaska right now. Like all of Julio’s other women, I’m sure she had no choice in being at the compound. She was probably snatched from the street due to her unusual, admittedly beautiful appearance. Julio always did go for redheads.But… Does her suffering make it okay for her to cause suffering to others? No. No fucking way. My mouth is filled with the taste of copper. Blood. I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek.
“Sloane is underground, tied to a bed in the control room that monitors all of the stadium bells and whistles,” Alaska continues. “She hasn’t been harmed yet. I wanted you to be here, to see it, to witness it with your own two eyes. That way you’ll never doubt what happened. That she’s gone.”
I’m really fucking struggling to keep my cool here. She’s not making this easy at all. If she thinks for one second I’m going to stand by and watch Sloane be murdered, she has another thing coming. I am ready to fucking die before I allow that to happen. I want to feel the sickening crack of Alaska’s neck breaking beneath my hands. I want to hear the gurgling, choking sound of her suffocating as I cut off her air supply.
Such dark, dark thoughts.
Still, I bare my teeth at her, my hands itching by my sides. “Lead the way then. Let’s get this over with.”
******
Narrow, twisting walkways seem to stretch on forever beneath the stadium. Alaska is strangely trusting, walking ahead of me, not even worrying enough to occasionally look back over her shoulder at me as she navigates a pathway towards our location. If I were her, I’d be guiding me at gunpoint, safely from behind, but she didn’t bat an eyelid when she descended first down the steps into the darkness below. Flickering lights blink and hum angrily overhead.
It takes mere moments for Alaska to halt in her tracks, pointing at a heavy steel door. “Go ahead. Open it,” she says, gesturing to the handle.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to find in here, but my skin feels cold and clammy. I hold my breath as I jerk open the door and push it back to reveal…
My head spins.
I look to Alaska, trying to understand what’s going on here. Why Agent Denise Lowell is sitting on top of an unopened beer keg next to a gurney. On the gurney, a stark white sheet is draped over the shape of what appears to be a…a dead body.
My throat is instantly dry.
Lowell’s suddenly smiling, her face alive with happiness. It’s a terrifying sight to behold. “Mr. Mayfair! So glad to see you could make it.” She sounds like a fucking Bond villain. My eyes are fixed and locked on the gurney next to her; I cannot look away. Is it Sloane? I feel gutted from the inside out. It can’t be. It fucking can’t be. The body is…it’s too small. Too short. Too narrow at the shoulders.I take a step forward, and Lowell raises her arm, removing the safety from the gun she’s holding in her hand. “Don’t,” she warns. “I have every fucking right to shoot you in the head right now, you piece of shit. If you so much as take one more step in my direction…”
“What the fuck?” I snarl at Alaska. “Where is she? Where’s Sloane? And why the fuck isshehere?”
Alaska saunters past me in the room, sighing. “Denise has been helping me for the last month or so. We’ve become quite good friends, haven’t we, Dee Dee?”
Lowell’s eyes flash with anger. “Don’t call me that.”
“Oops. Sorry.” Alaska pulls a face, cringing. “Still. It’s been kind of fun having a contact at the DEA to help me transition into my position of power. And having someone who can arrange a little misdirection here and there is, let’s face it, very convenient.”
“So you made a deal with the devil in order to avoid being arrested by the cops?”
She taps the end of her nose with her index finger, and then points it at me. “She’s obsessed with you and your girlfriend, this one. Made me promise she’d be the one to kill the girl.”
“I made you promise more than that,” Lowell hisses. “I made you promise I’d get to do it while he watched. And here we are. I’m one very happy girl.”
I refuse to say anything. I won’t engage either of them in this ridiculous game until they show me who is beneath that sheet. I fold my arms across my chest, and I wait. With every second that passes, I lose another small piece of my mind.It can’t be her. It can’t be her. It can’t be her.
“Aren’t you going to scream and shout?” Lowell sneers. “I thought you’d be a little less calm about this whole situation.”
