Beneath the Burn (72 page)

Ice raced down his spine. He blanked his face and cocked his head.

“You walk in here with your shoulders back and purpose in your step, but in truth, you’re crawling on your belly, wallowing in your delusions of purpose. It’s only a matter of time before all the what-ifs and should’ve-beens lure you in and smother you.” Roy’s gaze turned inward, and his hand stroked the papers, back and forth.

A burn tunneled through his sinuses. Why hadn’t he snuck the damn gun in? Fuck the confession. He could’ve ended this with a trigger pull. He steeled his legs, his words powered with impatience. “You enslaved her twice. Raped her repeatedly. Your third attempt killed her.”

Roy hardened his glare. “As long as we live, she will haunt us with her burning eyes.” A tremble rippled through his fingers. He yanked them to his lap, looked up. “I considered the prospect that she’d escaped the fire, impossible as it was, and anticipated you falsifying her death.” He thinned his lips. “I see the romanticism in that now. Your eyes are weighted with reality.”

A buzz ignited in Jay’s head. He’d shared that hope, but it had crumbled when her remains were excavated. He slapped those thoughts away before they suffocated him, replaced them with the reason he was there. “You might as well have set that fire yourself. You killed her.”

Roy straightened his back and leveled his gaze. “Mr. Mayard, I am a very wealthy man. I own the largest enterprise in the world, homes on every continent, private jets, and more money than you could aspire to earn in multiple lifetimes. As you are aware, since I invested in your band’s label, I do not back losing schemes. It is unfortunate my most important asset—one you had temporary possession of—was lost in that fire.” He opened a desk drawer and placed a revolver beside the papers, barrel aimed at the chair Jay stood behind. “Have a seat.”

Resolution descended over him, pulling him toward the imminent outcome. Charlee was gone. Looking down the barrel of Roy’s gun would be numbing. If the hammer came down, the audio recording would capture Jay’s death. He moved around the chair and sat, chin raised and spine braced.

With one hand stroking the gun’s grip, Roy collected two glasses from the side cabinet and set them on the desk. He poured a finger of amber liquid in each and scooted one to Jay. “I nurtured her, pleasured her, and made her what she was. Tell me. What could you have possibly offered her?”

Lifting the liquor to his lips, Jay emptied the glass in a burning swallow that wasn’t close to rivaling the fire in his chest. “Happiness.”

Roy shifted his thumb over the gun’s hammer, cocking it with an empty expression. “Happiness is fleeting. An unquantifiable nonentity. Her
real
needs were met by
my
hand. She simply couldn’t live without me.”

Enough of the fucking mind games. “Is that why you kidnapped and tortured her?”
Admit it or pull the trigger, motherfucker.

Silent seconds lapsed. Roy’s finger traced the trigger guard. “If your eyes weren’t convincing enough, your impudence despite your position—” He glanced at the gun, back at Jay “—is evidence that she isn’t waiting for you. It is done.” He lifted the stack of paperwork and flipped it to face Jay. “A copy of my will. For the inconvenience caused to you and Nathan Winslow by the loss of Noah Winslow and Charlee Grosky, you are both coheirs to my empire. However…” He tossed back the scotch and set the empty glass to the side. “She will always be
my
beautiful girl, and I
will
possess her again in the afterlife.” He raised a revolver.

Jay flinched and his heart stopped, ready, waiting.

A cackle tumbled from Roy’s chest. “Relax, Mr. Mayard. I will acquire her on the other side before you get the chance.” He shoved the barrel in his mouth and squeezed the trigger.

The bang reverberated in Jay’s ears and shuddered down his spine. Brain matter spurted on the bookshelves behind Roy’s slumped body.

Footsteps stomped around him, voices shouted, alarms rent the dense air. A red light blinked in the ceiling. The recordings captured a suicide instead of a confession. It was over.

It should’ve loosened the fist squeezing Jay’s heart. He stood, moved to the wall, and braced an arm against it, anticipating the retribution to wash over him, to fill the vacuum with…what? Nothing would replace her loss. Not Roy’s billions or his death.

He pulled out his phone and said with a voice thick with spit, “Charter a jet, Tony. I’m going home. To Canada.” To scrape up what was left and rebuild. For what purpose? The hollowness inside him expanded, crushing his organs, consuming every dream.

Charlee ended her life knowing it would stop Roy from fucking with his. Had she considered how meaningless it would all be without her? He would’ve gladly spent a lifetime running and fighting if it kept her at his side, her hand in his.

As he strode from the room, his heart battled between grief and anger, his arms burning to hold her, his hands itching to paddle her ass. But he wouldn’t be able to do either. Never again.

95

They say the only thing certain in life is death. As Jay leaned his head against the window of the seven-passenger Beaver floatplane, he felt that certainty like a tumor in his chest. It rooted its stems through his heart and coiled branches around his lungs, constricting, strangling. Her death had no intention of letting go.

They also say death gets easier. He was much less certain about that. The plan was to spend the next few months oscillating between being pissed off at her and unproductively depressed. Maybe he would write a few angst-filled songs to express the utter helplessness of his mind.

Tony sat in the front, beside the contracted pilot, her hands folded in her lap. As the plane nosed down for descent, the vivid blues and greens of Birch Lake filled the horizon. The humidity in the air lay in a thin mist over the glassy water. Across the cove, his four-thousand-square-foot lodge stretched along the shoreline, interrupting the tundra of wild shrubs, sedges and pines.

Isolated and pristine, his corner of the thirty-five mile lake was only accessible by plane or boat. He’d ventured there twice since demolishing the original structures, but his last visit had been before he met Charlee.

The caretaker had moved into the guesthouse the year the construction completed. Thomas lived there year round, the only person who had resided on the property since Jay was six years old.

Dipping in for the landing, the floats skidded over the water’s surface, dispersing a flock of ring-necked ducks into the curling fog. When the plane drifted to a stop at the edge of his dock, he grabbed his duffle bag and guitar case and climbed out. Tony’s soft footfalls lagged behind.

The mustiness of dark rich soil mingled with nearby mint and the floral of woodland laurel, bathing his lungs. Charlee would’ve loved the authenticity of the land, and for a moment, he let himself imagine her walking along the dock with him, smiling as the scenery saturated her brilliant eyes.

Did her soul exist in an eternal place? He’d hoped so right up until Roy Oxford uttered his despicable final words. But could Jay cope with the alternative? The thought of her dwindling into an airy nothing was more than he could bear.

Cradled by the low-lying forest, he followed the rocky path to the cabin and stopped.

Two silhouettes darkened the floor-to-ceiling windows that plated the length of the cabin. He expected Thomas, but his curiosity about the other person prodded his boots into motion, drawing him toward the house.

The overcast sky muddled the details of the profiles moving past the windows to the backdoor. As he neared, the floatplane’s single engine sounded its departure and gravel crunched behind him.

He slowed his pace. “Tony, who’s here?”

Jogging to catch up, she adjusted a large tote on her shoulder. “Nathan.”

Though Jay had told her not to come, he wasn’t surprised she did and was even less surprised she’d want her lover there, too. Neither he nor Tony had seen Nathan in two weeks.

The backdoor swung open, and Nathan ran out, tugged her bag to the ground, and pulled her to his chest in an adoring kiss.

A storm of hunger and loneliness twisted brutally inside Jay. No way would he be able to share the house with the two of them. He swallowed thickly and forced his feet to move.

“Jay.” Nathan joined his side, his tone hushed with pity. “I’m sorry. That was…insensitive. Listen. We need to talk.” He put a hand on Jay’s arm, staring at it as if the world might come crashing down.

There wouldn’t be any detonations. The triggers were gone, and Jay was already standing on ground zero. “Can this wait, Nathan? It’s been a long trip.”

“No. It’s—”

The drone of a familiar two-stroke engine rumbled in the distance, growing rapidly louder, closer.

Jay set down his bag and guitar and moved to the side of the house in the direction of the sputtering. “Who’s on my dirt bike?”

The caretaker was in the house, so it wasn’t him. Jay glanced over his shoulder and caught Nathan’s thinned lips before they relaxed. Tony’s eyebrows pinched together, her eyes narrowed on Nathan.

What the hell was going on? The croak of the engine labored under whoever was racing it through the forest. The two-stroke was his most reliable bike. He’d had it shipped the twenty-two hundred miles from L.A. the night Roy swallowed the bullet. Three long days ago. “Who’s here, Nathan?”

The
put-put-put
of the exhaust popped over the hill, snapping Jay’s head toward it. The orange fender flashed through the woods on the zigzag trail. The rider swung the bike right to left, narrowly missing trees and shrubs, the foliage giving glimpses of a small frame, blue jeans, red hair…Red hair…Oh God, Oh god…Red hair.

He stopped breathing. A stinging sensation numbed his skin. He clutched his chest, strained his eyes, and realized he was lurching along the path through trees, sprinting toward the bike.

The rider rocketed around the bend ahead, the wind whipping the tangle of red hair behind huge blue eyes. She skidded to a stop, sliding the bike sideways along the trail.

“Oh my God. What the fuck is this?” His lungs burned with his whisper, and his tongue felt heavy, numbly expressing his confusion. “Are you real?”

She let the bike fall as she scrambled off it and launched at his chest. He stumbled back, breathless, dazed, arms around her too-thin waist, and tripped over a branch. His back hit the ground, her body draped over him.

Then her lips fell upon his, moving desperately, urgently, wet and salty with tears. She scattered kisses across his face, his cheeks frozen in shock. “I didn’t expect you until tonight.” She kissed the corners of his mouth, his chin, his nose. “I’m so sorry, Jay. I’m sorry. I missed you so much.”

He traced the smatter of freckles on her cheekbone, the satiny skin warm with life. “I don’t understand. How is this real?” He slid his hand through the hair draping her face and watched it fall through his splayed fingers, mesmerized.

She sat upright, straddling him, her jeans hanging from her bony hips. “Let’s go inside.” Climbing to her feet, she bent over the bike.

“Leave it.” He missed her weight instantly, slight as it was, and desperately needed it pressing against him to validate his sanity.

As they walked back to the cabin, he intertwined their fingers, staring at her, unable to look away for fear she would disappear. “You haven’t answered me.”

A smile lifted the edges of her mouth. “Colson didn’t know about the custom hatch in the bus?”

He tripped over something beneath his feet, his eyes locked on hers. “No one knew.” It was a hiding place for his gun, and no one outside of the security team carried one. “You hid in the storage compartment?”

“I escaped through it with a gas mask, thermal imaging goggles, and a fire extinguisher.” She held up her arms, his hand still laced with hers. “Didn’t even get a burn.” She smiled, lowered her arms. “Though I wouldn’t have minded matching scars.” She brushed her ear where the bullet had grazed her. Then she reached for the backdoor and held it open. “I worried if Colson knew about the hatch, Roy would figure it out.”

He followed her inside, the tingling in his body residing, though he was far from lucid. “The remains…they removed a body.”