Page 119 of One Eye Open (The BlackWater)

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“You want to know my secrets then fine. Get dressed.” He said. “Maybe if you learn some of mine you might reciprocate.”

She felt her face turn from a scowl to one of shock. Was he actually going to do it? Actually tell her what he’s been hiding since the beginning?

She gulped down the rest of the coffee and clambered out of the bed hoping that the shower would help set her head properly.

“Where are we?”Maddie asked looking around. They’d driven for hours. In silence. Maddie staring out the window feeling her hangover slowly start to ease as Cole focused almost obsessively on the road ahead.

And now they were here. Wherever the fuck here was.

She got out of the car and looked over at Cole. His face looked hard, unreadable. Whatever this place was she had a feeling she was about to learn something pretty dark about Cole’s past.

He sighed locking the car and then grunted for her to follow as he walked up the narrow, worn, gravel track that was barely wide enough for them to put one foot in front of the other without brushing against the long wet weeds either side.

She followed him, still looking around, still not talking. It felt like there was some tense, almost angry energy around them both and she didn’t know what to say to dispel it.

The track began to slowly rise before eventually plateauing out over a huge cavernous whole below.

“What is this place?” Maddie asked and Cole turned facing her.

“This is where I killed someone.” Cole said.

“What?” She said shocked.

“I went to school near here. Me and Brandon did. It was a private school, one of the best in the country, the best money could buy. I thrived but Brandon didn’t. For some reason he got picked on, bullied. I stepped in where I could but I wasn’t always there to help him.”

“What happened?” Maddie asked.

“One day I came back from training and some of the older boys had brought him up here. Him and his friend Amy.” He said. His eyes were flashing dangerously now and Maddie gulped at the sight of it. “She wasn’t from the school. She was a local girl.”

“What did they do?”

He met her eyes then looked down into the abyss below them. “They attacked her, assaulted her, made Brandon watch the whole thing and then they tried to make him do it too. To get him to assault her.” He said. “He refused so they decided to beat him. I found him half-conscious in the middle of them all.”

“And then?” Maddie said. Her voice sounded so quiet.

“I have a temper Maddie. A nasty temper and if I don’t control myself, if I lose it, then bad shit happens.” He snarled “I saw red and I attacked them right back. I pushed one of them, a boy called Josh. He fell backwards, he fell of the top. The other boys fled.”

“And Amy?” Maddie asked.

He shrugged. “She has brain damage from it. She suffers from epilepsy and she’ll never live a normal life.”

Maddie screwed her face up. “What happened to the boys? The others that did it?”

“Their parents brushed over the whole thing. The school did too. They said it was an accident. A load of boys playing and that things had gotten out of hand.”

“And Josh?”

“I killed him. The school told his parents he fell, the police report said the same but I did it. I did it on purpose. He was the ringleader and I wanted him dead.”

“It sounds like he deserved it.” Maddie said.

Cole winced. “He was fourteen Maddie. We were kids.”

“And he attacked that girl.”

“Did he deserve to die for it?” He asked.

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