Page 9 of Freaks
I was too shocked, too numb to feel it right now, but I knew what had just happened would haunt me for the rest of my days. I stood, my legs weak and unstable beneath me. My heart was barely beating, and my ears were ringing, but none of that worried me. A peaceful calm had fallen over me, dulling my senses. I didn’t feel the sting of my skin breaking as I brushed tiny fragments of glass from my white shirt, which was now soaked in blood and colored red, as if it had been tie-dyed. I didn’t see the slender, dark-haired figure standing in the doorway of Sam’s bedroom, covering her mouth with her hands. I didn’t hear the strangled sob that came out of Sam’s daughter as I made my way down the hallway, my body made of wood. I didn’t feel the blazing sun beating down on my tender skin as I walked all the way across town.
I barely even felt the throb of hatred that pulsed through me when I arrived home, walked through the front door, and found Sixsmith sitting on the floor in the living room, his back resting against the couch, surrounded by empty beer bottles. He let out a raucous bark of laughter when he saw the state I was in, and then shrugged. “It was only fair, Sera.” Taking a swig from his beer, his thin lips curved into the shape of a smug smile as they formed a seal around the beveled rim of the glass. “I took everything from the bastard. Figured I’d let him have one last fuck for the road.” He laughed harder, snorting as his head rocked back. “Looks like old Sammy boy got more than he bargained for, though.”
I waited for weeks for the authorities to come and take me away. I waited to hear about the murder in the news or it being gossiped about it in the hallways at school, but no one breathed a word of Sam Halloran’s gruesome demise.
In the end, the body had just…disappeared.
Three months later, I ran into Peter Fairley at the convenience store. He told me he’d taken care of the situation and Julia had gone to live with her Aunt in Texas. Turned out he hadn’t been completely spineless, after all.
Six months after that, the name Halloran had been forgotten altogether in the town of Montmorenci, as if the old Dutch thug had never even existed in the first place.
THREE
SERA
I’d witnessed many dawns.
The way the sun crept up over the horizon, stretching its fingers into the sky, banishing the darkness, was spectacular to watch. The world always seemed to still. As if it had momentarily ceased to turn just for those few minutes, while the first shafts of lifegiving light, the very first light of the coming day, washed over the earth and painted everything it touched a shimmering gold. The land, the sea, the sky—everything ached in its sheer perfection during those still, silent minutes.
Not this morning, though. The day broke into a storm. Rain hammered at the huge windows that overlooked the city, the sun barely forcing its way through the heavy, gunmetal grey of the pregnant clouds overhead. All was dark, the air buzzing with electricity and tension, and the crash and rumble of thunder in the distance filled me with a sense of foreboding that made me nervous.
I’d known Fix was going to The Barrows when I’d fallen asleep last night. He’d seemed so confident. So relaxed and at ease. I hadn’t questioned him, hadn’t given it another thought. But when I’d woken up and found myself alone in his bed, I’d started to worry. Rabbit had wanted Fix to go to this Barrows place instead of accepting a large amount of money. He’d implied that only certain people could go there, would beableto go there, which now made the place sound pretty damn dangerous.
I’d never cared where Gareth was. I’d never needed to know where any of my other previous boyfriends were at every hour of the day either, but things were different with Fix. He hadn’t just gone to run some errands and was taking longer than expected. He’d gone somewhere unsafe. He’d been gone for hours, and he hadn’t reached out to let me know he was alive. That complicated things.
I would have texted him, but I still didn’t have his number. How fucking stupid was that? I’d be keying his digits into my cell the moment he got back, that was for damned sure. Until then, there was nothing for me to do but wait, and waiting wasnotsomething I was very good at. I made myself a coffee, and then I sat at the dining table, stirring a spoon around a mess of sodden, mushy cereal, pretending I might eat it at some point, while I watched the heavens roil and rage out of the window.
Lower Manhattan looked like the backdrop to a sinister dystopian movie—I could imagine civilization descending into chaos and anarchy right before my very eyes. Planes took off and landed on the other side of the city, and ferries risked the choppy waters of the Hudson river, and all the while the rain came down harder and harder, exploding off the glass and rattling the windows with every squall of wind that buffeted the building.
At nine a.m., I decided I needed to distract myself and hunted down my phone, intending to message Sadie. As soon as I scooped the device up in my hand, however, I remembered Fix ordering me to remove the sim card. He’d flushed it, just in case this Carver person had hired someone really tech-capable and they could have used the small chip to track me down. He’d promised we’d get another sim for me later on today, but in the meantime, I was completely without any means of contacting the outside world.
Damn it.
What if Fix ended up dead at The Barrows? What if he didn’t fucking come back? My heart was climbing up into my throat as I stood from the table and jogged my way over to the front door. There was a keypad affixed to the wall, just as there was on the entry to the building down in the alleyway. Fix had given me the code, but I was damned if I could remember it now. Still, I tentatively took hold of the handle, turned, and pulled…
The door opened.
It wasn’t locked.
Ahh, Jesus. Did that mean it could only be opened from the inside, or would anyone be able to waltz right in if they came up here? I closed the door and pressed my back to it, my heart thrumming like the wings of a caged bird. This was a fucking nightmare. The door probably wouldn’t open from the other side if the code wasn’t entered. Fix was safety conscious. He would never have left in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and then neglected to make sure the penthouse was secure. I reassured myself of that as I paced up and down, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, chewing at my nails.
An hour passed.
I showered quickly, brushed my teeth and distracted myself by applying a small amount of makeup.
Another hour passed.
I was so jittery by the time I heard someone out in the hallway that I’d already figured out how to operate Fix’s M4; I was sitting at the table, and I had the butt of the assault rifle nocked against my shoulder, the muzzle aimed at the entryway, with my finger on the trigger. The door swung open.
The man standing in front of me wasn’t Felix. He was nothing like Felix. Just as tall, just as broad, but that was where the similarities ended. His arms were covered in tattoos, and his eyes glinted with a furious kind of malice that made a shiver skip up my spine.
It was him.
The guy Carver paid to murder me.
I hoisted the rifle up, quickly sighting the guy’s chest, I inhaled…
And the guy held his hands up.
