Page 7 of Nasty
“You’re very quiet,” Fix said. “Sure you don’t want to go back and wait in the truck?”
I stuffed my hands into my pockets, setting my jaw. “No. I already told you. I want to look this fucker in the eye. I want him to tell me why he did this. And then I want to watch you make him bleed.”
“You’re not going to watch me kill him.” Fix’s tone brooked no argument.
“Iwill, Fix. You can’t stop me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he retorted. “But the last time you watched me hurt someone, you passed the fuck out. You don’t have the stomach for that level of violence.”
“If you think for one second I won’t watch you punish the person who intended to cause me harm and fucking crow with delight while you’re doing it, then you don’t know me at all.”
A thoughtful frown flickered at his brow. “Perhaps you don’t know yourself. Murder’s never easy. No matter who it is, whether they deserve it or not, witnessing someone losing the only thing they really,trulypossess, is always going to stick in your throat. If a person can watch another die and feel nothing but self-righteous satisfaction, then that person’s probably a fucking sociopath.”
There was no judgment in his voice, but I could hear the reprimand there just fine:you don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it means to kill a man. You’re in way over your head, Lafferty.
Each of those statements were correct. I had no experience in this arena, and I sure as hell didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but, sociopath or not, for better or for worse, I knew what I was capable of. And in this instance, I was going to tamp down the bile at the back of my throat, and I was going to set aside the panic that had been crippling me of late, and I was going to make sure justice was done.
We kept walking. It seemed as though Fix knew where he was going, despite the complete lack of street signs to demark what was left of Centralia. The tourists had likely stolen them all. Fix grunted next to me, then pointed to our right. A squat, single story building with a spackled, dingy fascia crouched on the other side of what had once been a parking lot but was now a shopping cart graveyard. The sign above the building read:
Centralia Luxury Suites. Rooms available!
“Looks like our kind of motel. Wanna check and see if they’re lying about those rooms?”
I scanned his face and immediately regretted it. Every time I looked at him, my stomach managed to coil itself into another knot; at this rate I was never going to untangle my insides. He was so breathtakingly handsome. Rugged, yet edged with a subtle softness that took me unawares every single time. The sinful smirk that appeared to have taken up permanent residence on his face, regardless of all the crap that had happened in the past week, made me feel so conflicted that I didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. “I’d rather saw off my own right arm than spend another night in a shitty motel with you.”
“Brava. You almost sounded convincing there.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Nope. You just told a big, fat fucking lie.”
“Really. And how do you presume to know when I’m lying, Fix?”
His eyes sparked with amusement. “I used to sit confession. I’ve had upward of a thousand experiences where people told me half-truths or blatant falsehoods. It was amazing how people would still try to convince me,and themselves, that they’d done nothing wrong, when the sole purpose of sitting in that booth was to absolve themselves and clear their consciences. Also, my dick is an excellent lie detector.”
My cheeks exploded with warmth. “Let’s keep your dick out of this, Marcosa.”
He laughed. “That’s the problem. You don’t want to keep my dick out of this. You want my dick in this. Inyou,specifically. It can hear the need in your voice, and my dick wants you to know that it’s more than happy to oblige.”
“If you say one more word about your penis, Father Marcosa, I’m going to tear the damn thing off.”
The smile on Fix’s face faltered, then slowly faded, right along with the mirth that had been dancing in his eyes. There had been a carefree bounce in his step, too, probably because he knew just as well as I did that this trip had been a complete waste of time and nothing bad was going to happen, but now it seemed as though he were suddenly having trouble lifting his feet from the ground. I’d said the wrong thing. And it wasn’t the threat to his manhood that had soured his mood. It was the fact that I’d called him Father Marcosa.
“This way,” he said, taking a right down an unmarked side street. As soon as we rounded the corner, we both stopped dead, though. There was…nothing. No houses remained on the street. Not even the foundations were visible amongst the fractured concrete, the tires discarded amongst the grass, or the heaped mounds of dirt. If there had ever been any buildings here, they were long gone now.
Fix scowled at the scene before us, his eyes assessing everything with an analytical professionalism that probably came in handy when he was working a job. “There,” he said, heading over to the other side of the road. I followed after him, peering around him to see what he’d discovered. Using the toe of his boot, Fix pushed a tuft of grass out of the way, revealing a length of concrete curb behind it, painted with numbers. Six-two-six-two-zero. That was what it looked like anyway; the third number in the sequence was mostly missing, the concrete having crumbled away. It could have been an eight, maybe. Or even a zero.
“House number,” Fix announced. “Thiswasa residential street at some point. I guess that confirms it, then. The IP address Carver’s email came from might have been routed here somehow, but Carver himself sure as shit ain’t here.”
I shouldn’t have been disappointed or mad, but I was both. I wanted to take action, and I wanted to make this guy pay for what he’d set in motion. I knew how reactive I was being. A few more days on the road would probably give me more time to think this through reasonably, and I would feel relieved not to have found Carver. Standing here surveying the empty street, however, I felt bitterly cheated.
“What now?” I asked. “He’s not here. So how do we find this guy?”
Fix carried on down the street, searching up and down the concealed curb, deep furrows creasing his brow. “We go back to Seattle. You go back to work, and you forget this ever happened. I’ll find this guy on my own and make sure he never bothers you again, Sera.”
“No!” My shout rang out, cutting through the still afternoon air. A cat streaked across the road ahead, darting into the grass, nothing more than a flash of white and orange. Fix stopped what he was doing, straightening up, and then turned to face me. He was wearing a black t-shirt under a black leather jacket. His jeans might have been black once upon a time, but they were more of a faded, washed out grey now. There was a darkness to him that had nothing to do with his clothes, though. The darkness that radiated from him on occasion, sinking through my skin and into my bones, turning me inside out, resided in his eyes, and it was a frightening, terrible thing to behold when that darkness was turned on you without warning.
“Enough,” Fix growled. “We’re done with this nonsense. I know I owe you. I know you have the right to feel angry, and hurt, and scared, Sera. I know you want revenge—”
