Page 101 of Haven't Killed in Years
“Is she okay?!” I asked.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Elyse,” he whispered. “Elyse, wake up.”
I thrust toward him, but it was an empty threat. He stood back up before I could get anywhere close enough to harm him.
“She’s breathing,” he said. “She’s fine.” He shoved my shoulder to spin me around and take hold of the chain between my handcuffs. “Let’s go,” he said, slipping the knife back inside his jacket. He pushed me toward the back door. We were headed outside. Back to where it had all started.
Fifty-Eight
The backyard was asovergrown as the front, the grass so long it could be full of snakes or hypodermic needles. The fence was holding up well; it had a lean to it and the paint was all but gone, but it stood and provided cover from the woods behind it. I wondered which board was the loose one Elyse had watched us through.
The bones of their cheap metal swing set remained, the color of the rust matching the surface of Mars, chains hanging from the top bar, but the seats were gone, probably rotting unseen in the tall grass below.
He pushed me off what was left of the back deck and I started to resist. I dug my heels into the grass, forcing him to shove me forward in bursts.
Our destination was the swing set, and as we approached, he shoved me forward and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small key. He unlocked my left wrist, but only for a second so that he could turn me around and feed the handcuffs, behind my back, through the top triangle of one of the swing set’s rusty A-framesupports. I felt the cuff around my wrist again and heard the click. He let go of me then, but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
“There,” he said, stepping in front of me. “Now, you stay here and listen while I go in and kill them. I want you to know what it’s like to be stuck out here, helpless to do anything to stop what’s about to happen in there.”
It was so twisted, and not from his imagination. “You were awake?”
“Just enough.” He smiled. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open my eyes. But I could hear them.”
I did almost feel bad for him then for what he had gone through. No part of me wanted to listen to him kill Dominic and Porter. It would be worse than watching; he knew it would be worse than watching.
That was all he wanted. He wanted my reaction—to know how upset he was making me. He wanted everything that had happened to him to happen to me, as if his life were a curse and this was what it would take to break it.
Up until that point he had succeeded. He’d been patient. He had created a scenario where I’d let these people into my life. I’d broken all my rules, layered on excuses to justify why I needed to keep spending time with the three people trapped inside that house, when the reality was, I just wanted to be around them.
He’d manufactured this, drawn me out of hiding, pushed me out of my comfort zone, waited until I was in too deep. Now he could take away everyone I cared about like I had done to him. I knew what he wanted and I had to do whatever it took not to give it to him. It was the only thing left that I could control.
“Whatever, Cody,” I said, rolling my eyes, suppressing every emotion I could.
I saw his jaw tighten and I knew I was onto something. I had noticed how he’d reacted to Elyse using that name.
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “It’s your name.”
“Cody’s dead.”
“Oh, grow up.” I rolled my eyes again. It was my only move at the moment; hand gestures weren’t an option.
He narrowed his gaze and lowered his voice. “I’m going to kill them.”
“You said that already,” I goaded him.
“What about Elyse?” he spit back. “I’ll kill her too.”
He intended for that to be a blow and it was. I couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. Nothing seemed to be out of bounds, but I had to stay the course. “Okay,” I said.
“Why are you being like this?!” He stomped his foot. It was jarring how juvenile it was. It took me right back to that day. That day when he was trying to kiss me and I wasn’t interested and he didn’t like that.
“Cody…”
“I said don’t call me that!”
“Well, you called me Marin!” I shouted back at him. We were devolving rapidly back into the two little kids who’d fought that day in this same spot.
