Fissure (29 page)

     That was an ironic phrase to use because that’s just like what I felt was taking place on me.

     Heaving a sigh, I opened the door, holding it open for Julia. “Be right back,” I promised, kissing Emma’s hand as I followed Julia out the door.

     “Be right here,” she replied as I closed the door behind us.

     Julia was already halfway down the hallway, walking with the disjointed movements of a zombie. I followed a few steps behind her all the way to Austin and Dallas’s room on the first floor.

     “Do you have a key?” I asked in front of their door.

     Twisting the handle, the door clicked open. “The Scarlett boys don’t have to lock their door. The first and last guy who borrowed a pen without asking ended up naked, tied to a tree in the middle of campus, and coated in honey and feathers.”

     I trailed Julia into the very college guy dorm room, right down to the beer posters featuring models bursting from their bikinis and the stale scent of body odor and laundry piled in the corner. “No one would dare step foot in this room uninvited unless they were prepared to face extreme public humiliation.”

     “Except for us,” I said, smiling tightly at her, as I shuffled through the few clean garments shoved into a dresser drawer.

     “Yeah, except for us,” she said, heaving down onto a bed. I’d guess it was Dallas’s due to the Dallas cheerleader poster above the bed on the ceiling, but that seemed too cliché even for a guy like him. “This is a night of firsts, right?” The few note laugh she let out was sharp and neurotic.

     “Jules?” I said, selecting the lesser outfit of two evils—boardshorts and a Stanford sweatshirt were only about a thousand times better than baggy jeans and a bedazzled muscle tee. “How are you holding up?”

     “Let’s see,” she said, clicking the heels of her shiny purple boots together like she wanted to catch the nearest tornado out of this dark land of Oz. “My friend looks like she was mauled by a tiger, I ignored that internal voice that’s been telling me since freshman year that something just wasn’t on the up and up with Ty’s and Emma’s relationship, and I failed my friend in all the important ways, so I guess I’d have to say I’m holding up about as well as a house of cards in a hurricane.” She sighed, tapping her heels together faster. “Thanks for asking.”

     “Jules,” I said again, slipping out of the clothes plastered to my body right in front of her because she was focused on staring two holes in the ceiling. The gothiest of goth men could have been twisting his nipple rings a foot in front of her and she wouldn’t have noticed.

     “This is all my fault, Patrick,” she whispered, her boot clacking diminishing. “I should have told someone. I should have confronted Ty. I could have asked her if my suspicions were right. I could have at least asked her,” she repeated in a self-incriminating tone.

     “Crap, Jules,” I said, cinching the shorts tight since Dallas’s or Austin’s shorts were size extra-beefy. “You feel like you’re to blame, and I feel like I’m to blame. And maybe we are in some way because we failed to act when we could have, but there’s no maybe about who holds all the blame for failing Emma in every way a person can.”

     “I should have kneed that guy in the balls every time the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when he was around,” she said, sitting up in bed, looking at me like she didn’t even notice I’d changed. “That would have been on a daily basis.”

     “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” I said, plopping beside her and squeezing her knee.

     “Damn straight,” she muttered, leaning her head on my shoulder in a way that felt child-like. “I hope Emma’s brothers save a piece I can take it out on.”

     The door exploded open right then, bouncing off the wall it smashed against. Three grim faced Scarlett brothers barged in, blood smatters creating patterns over their clothes and faces. They barely took any notice of Julia and me sitting on the edge of the bed, so I suppose it was safe to assume we’d been issued a get out of jail free card given the gravity of tonight.

     “We are finished. Ruined,” Austin said under his breath, sliding his hands behind his head and gripping it like he was going to rip his hair off.

     “Give it a rest, Austin,” Tex sneered over at him, looking up and down the hall before closing the door. “The only thing you lost tonight was a career in middle management. Dallas is going to lose any chance he had of working for the government as a certified genius who screws supermodels, and I lost any chance I had of playing in the big times.” Tex gave Austin’s chest a half-hearted shove. “So do me a favor and shut the hell up.”

     And this was the point I felt was a good time to interrupt. “What happened?” I asked, already deducing from their conversation and clothing they’d found Ty and delivered a message.

     Dallas’s eyes narrowed into mine. “Revenge happened.”

     “We messed him up good, man,” Austin said, pacing around the room with his hands still laced behind his head.

     “What did you do to him?” I asked slowly, looking to Tex since he seemed the calmest of the three.

     “Nothing that he didn’t deserve,” he sneered.

     I swallowed, continuing to look at Tex. “Did you kill him?” I was already at war with myself over which answer I wanted to hear. I didn’t want to arrive at an answer before Tex gave me his.

     “He had a pulse when we left,” was his answer. Seemed cryptic was going to be the tone of things tonight.

     “Yeah, barely,” Austin said, stopping to glare at Tex before resuming his pacing. “Who knows if he still did by the time the ambulance arrived.”

     “You guys called an ambulance?” I asked, wondering just how deep the Scarlett brother stupidity ran.

     Tex nodded once. “I’d rather face aggravated assault charges than manslaughter.”

     The mood of the room went from sullen to heavy. Suffocating heavy. The Scarlett boys had done just what I’d wanted them to do, what I’d wanted to do myself—ram Ty’s face so hard against the wall separating life from death that he’d regret every last strike he’d landed on Emma.

     The difference between me and them, though, was that I knew just how many hits a man could take to put him a toe from death before putting him a toe over. It was a skill that was an art, one that required an exorbitant amount of restraint and finesse, neither of which the three brothers before me possessed.

     They were going to be spending some time behind bars for either nearly killing or killing a man. Because of me. Because I’d let them go in my place. Because I stayed behind with their sister while they dealt out a mountain of revenge on the monster that had haunted her. They were going to lose everything they’d worked for since they’d been children in an abusive household because I’d failed to act when I knew I should have.

     “It was nice pretending we were going to end up doing something other than pressing license plates,” Dallas said, reaching into the mini-fridge and cracking open a beer. “I guess the piece of shit dad gene caught up with us after all.”

     Austin lurched in his face, slapping the beer Dallas was upending out of his hand. It smashed against the wall, causing an eruption of liquid.\

     “You’re making jokes?” Austin seethed, going red-faced. “You’re making jokes? Maybe you don’t like reaping the rewards of the hard work we put in growing up, but I do. I didn’t plan to end up wasting away my twenties in a jail cell.”

     “None of us did, Austin,” Tex said, not seeming phased that two of his brothers were about to throw down. “And Emma didn’t work her butt off to end up trapped under the hand of a guy like dad, either. Things change, life changes. Get over it.”

     “Did anyone see you?” I asked, shifting in spot, devising a plan on the fly.

     The brothers stared at me like they’d forgotten I was there.

     “Ty saw us,” Tex said, his jaw set. “He answered the door drunk, looked at us as if he was bored, and said, ‘What?’ like he knew exactly why we were there and wasn’t the least bit concerned.” Tex’s hands clenched open and closed over his knees. “That loser deserves what he got and I’m happy to accept what I deserve for doing it. I’d do again.”

     “Did you leave any fingerprints?” I asked, directing it at Tex since Austin was a wreck and Dallas was still jumpy from post-fight adrenaline.

     “Nope, just knuckle, boot, and bat prints.”

     “Where’s the bat?”

     Tex cocked his head behind him. “In the trunk of Dal’s car. Why? You planning on going to the batting cages tonight?”

     I ignored the sarcasm, knowing time was a luxury we were going to run out of soon. “Did any of you make any calls or texts from the time you left Emma’s room until now?”

     “No,” Tex answered, looking to his brothers. Both shook their heads. “We were a little preoccupied.”

     “Not even to Jackson?” I would be surprised if the oldest Scarlett had been left out.

     “Since he’s at a business conference in Chicago,” Tex said, “he wouldn’t have been a lot of help to us tonight.”

     “Did anyone other than the six of us know where you were going?” The other questions were important if my thrown together plan was going to work, but this was the one that mattered. The one that landed them in or kept the Scarlett brothers out of jail.

     “No,” Tex said, his voice irritated. “What’s with the twenty questions? You planning on majoring in criminal justice? Maybe law? Because we could use a good lawyer right about now.”

     Turning away from them, I crossed my arms, staring out the window at the rain as it continued to assault the world around us. Less than four hours ago, I’d been wrapped around Emma, knowing I wouldn’t have to let her go ever again.

     Well, as they say, that was then and this was now.

     “Okay, listen up,” I began, crossing my arms. “This is what you’re going to do. Julia’s dad is getting Emma patched up right now. Once the doc is done, you’re all going to get in Austin’s car and drive to my place. No detours, no stops, no bathroom breaks. You’re going to grab a change of clothes before you go and burn the ones you have on now. Emma will know a good place to burn them.” I let myself have one second of that memory—a bonfire, a girl, and an almost kiss—savoring it with a smile. “You only pick up the phone if I call. You only answer the door if it’s for me or if it’s for the cops. If they find you there and want to question you, let them in and tell them you have no idea what happened tonight. Say that Emma wouldn’t tell you what happened to her, so you drove her to her boyfriend’s”—I grinned again at my new title—“house, hoping he’d know what was going on.”

     Turning back to them, I found three blank faces. “You are not to say anything about Ty. Play dumb about anything Ty related.” I gave each of them a stern look, hoping they realized the deep crap hole we were in and would listen.

     Austin’s blank expression was the first to crack. “And what happens when Ty tells them the truth and the cops find out we lied? We lose all credibility and rot in jail a few years longer.”

     “Leave that to me,” I said. “I’ll take care of Ty.”

     I don’t know if it was my face or the way I’d said it, but that was all the explanation the brothers needed. No one looked even close to the tip of another question.

     “Jules,” I said, gripping my hands over her shoulders where she still sat huddled on the bed. “If anyone was to question you as to what happened tonight, what would you tell them?” It wasn’t coercion, and I wouldn’t bribe, plead, or beg with her to lie. If she didn’t want to lie, I would respect that and readjust the plan as needed.

     She shrugged, looking up at me with nuclear green eyes. “What happened tonight?” she asked innocently, like she didn’t have the foggiest.

     “I love you, Jules,” I said, kissing the top of her head.

     “Yeah, well, don’t forget,” she said, back to picking at her nail polish, so I knew the worst of the shock was over. “First name of your first born. That’s my price.”

     “First and last name of our first and second born,” I said, charging for the door, ready to get this done. “Tell your dad thanks for everything.”

     “Hey,” Tex called after me. “Where are you going?”

     I grinned—this part of the plan I was looking forward to. Immensely.

     “I’ve got to make a hospital visit.”

     The wonderful thing about ambulances, when you’re trying to figure out where someone ended up without asking a lot of questions, is that they take their passengers to the closest hospital. I didn’t have to make any calls pretending I was family, I didn’t have to call his parents pretending I was a concerned friend, I didn’t have to break into anything, or perform any cloak and dagger work—which was my favorite kind when it came to work, but it took time and that we didn’t have. All I did was walk through the sliding glass doors, give the elderly lady manning the front desk a wholesome-as-apple-pie smile as I glided by her, and press the third floor button when I stepped into the elevator.

     From everything I’d gathered from the Scarletts, if they weren’t even sure he was still breathing, he’d be in critical care, if not the ICU, after they finished sewing him back together in the ER. I also knew they’d be working on him for awhile because the damage a bat can do to a Mortal body when swung with the right degree of power and vengeance can be rather extensive.

     So I copped a squat in the waiting room and made a call. The twerp let it ring right up to the voicemail message.

     “S’up?” Joseph answered, sounding like a gang leader for the happy and cheerful.

     “I need you and Nathanial here,” I said. “Now. I don’t have time to explain, but I need my brothers here, and I need you to be ready to intimidate the hell out of someone. I’ll explain later.”

     The other end was silent for a second, and then, “We’ll be there. Text me your location,” he said, his voice as serious as Joseph could manage. “See you soon.”

     “Sooner,” I said, ending the call. Joseph’s word, just like any of my brother’s, was golden. They’d be here—I just hoped they’d be
here
in a few hours.

     I passed the next couple hours playing a mean game of chess with myself in my head. It was brutal, but I won.

     I made a stop at the vending machine, feeding it as many dollars as it had of those packages of soft, delicious cookies. I ate them all. When another hour came and went without a rolling stretcher holding the moaning remains of Ty Steel, I hit the deck and did one thousand sit-ups. I never tired, I never stopped thinking of Emma, I was never able to erase the image of her bloodied face from my mind.

     I wanted to call her, just to do a quick check-in to make sure she was doing all right and they’d all made it to my place, but I couldn’t risk it. Unless I absolutely needed to reach them for nothing short of an emergency, I needed to keep as much evidence off the prosecutor’s table as I could.

     I was about to drop and break into a second set of sit-ups when an elevator chimed, its door gliding open. A stretcher spilled out, pushed by a couple of nurses and escorted by a male and female who I didn’t need to be introduced to on a last name basis. I was looking at the man Ty would look like in another thirty years, brow set in a permanent line of supremacy, eyes wandering over everything like it was unsatisfactory, gut pinching over the belt, and fists half curled, always at the ready.

     Mrs. Steel looked like she’d just gotten back from a Mediterranean vacation a week ago and had just stepped out of the local country club’s supper club. Her face was as unpleasant as Mr. Steel’s, but it was because of the sadness that shadowed hers. That, and the clothes that covered too much of her body for the warm California air, led me to the conclusion that battery ran in the family.

     I didn’t bother to look away as they glided by the waiting room, knowing enough of them from two seconds of observation that they weren’t the type to pay any attention to riff raff.

     I listened to each rotation of the wheels, calculating the distance they were traversing so I could teleport into Ty’s room and not his neighbor’s. I’d have to wait until his parents left, for reasons that would be obvious soon enough, but something about their inconvenienced looks coming from the elevators told me they weren’t the not-leaving-your-side-for-sleep-water-or-food type.

     Two sets of steps sounded down the hall halfway into the late, late, late show. I didn’t wait for the Steels to pass the waiting room before standing up, preparing to undergo the best part of this plan. I hadn’t seen hide or hair of any other Haywards, but I didn’t let that worry me yet.

     Joseph said they’d be here, so they would. They’d never let me down, and they’d had two hundred and some years to do it if they wanted to.

     One blink later I was standing in front of Ty Steel’s quiet form. It was the first time I’d seen him like this and I thought it was a look that suited him. Sleeping, snoring, bandaged to the point he looked like a mummy, with more than half of his limbs splinted or casted. The Scarlett boys didn’t take payback lightly when it came to their sister. I wouldn’t have either.

     I let myself linger over their handiwork a while longer before setting out to do my own.

     Coming to the side of his bed, I covered my hand over his mouth and nose, not in an attempt to kill him, but to wake him. Lack of oxygen has a way of jerking the body awake.

     Jerk awake he did. His Frankensteined face grimaced with the sharp movement, but then he noticed who was hovering above him and his eyes couldn’t have opened wider.

     He tried to make a noise, but my hand caught his throat, trapping it and his airways between my thumb and index finger.

     “Listen to me, you sick f’er, and listen to me good,” I growled, wanting to hit him so badly now that he was right in front of me. I wanted to hit him for hitting Emma. I knew it was twisted, I knew it didn’t seem right in the don’t repay evil with evil world we were raised in, but what society failed to calculate in forming this saying was that the evil doers didn’t stop spreading evil unless the good guys took a stand and stopped them however they had to.

     Ty’s eyes were more swollen shut than Emma’s, but he was looking at me, he was paying attention. Holding a man’s windpipe at your mercy has a way of commanding attention.

     “I’m not who you think I am,” I began, wishing I had the time to tell him everything about who I was,
what
I was, so he’d piss himself to sleep every night forward. “I’m not a twenty-year-old, impressionable, idealistic, jerk off boy. I’m the guy who holds slime like you accountable. I’m the guy who tells low lives like you there are ways you can treat a woman and ways you cannot. I’m the guy who takes monsters like you out of the equation if they don’t listen.” I was shaking from the anger boiling to the surface and from holding myself back from finishing him. “So tell me, Ty, are you really listening?” I pinched his windpipe tighter, feeling the pulse dim, his face rainbow through the right shades of colors, knowing my two fingers held him less than a minute away from death.

     His head moved once. I took that as a yes.

     “You feel that?” I asked, another pinch tighter. “That’s me holding you a toe away from death. That’s me holding your worthless life in my hands. Would you like to continue living your life? Or would you prefer if I just put you out of your misery now?”

     Another next to imperceptible bob of the head.

     I didn’t let go that moment, nor did I the next, but waited for the involuntary gasping to commence. I didn’t want him to doubt my sincerity in making death threats.

Releasing his throat, I pulled my hand back and wiped it clean.

     “I just gave you a gift. Your life, which was mine, back. But now you owe me,” I said, arching a brow. “I don’t give gifts to filth like you without attaching expectations to them. So you’re going to have to earn that gift. You’ll be paying for it until the day you die—whether that’s sooner rather than later makes no difference to me. In fact, it would probably be a relief to know one of the boogeyman of this world was down for the count. Makes my job a helluva lot easier.” This was true on several levels: my job as a Guardian, my job as a boyfriend, and my job as a man who believed it was his job to protect women from the bad eggs of my gender.

     Ty’s eyes never left mine as he coughed and gasped his way to filling his lungs back up. I’d never seen fear in his eyes until now. I wanted to take a picture so I could show Emma what a quivering, helpless, scared little boy he’d been reduced to. But again, pictures, no matter how well you hid them or erased them, had a way of always ending up on the table of the lawyer on the other side.

     “First part of your payment plan is not mentioning the name Scarlett when you talk to the police. You are not to mention seeing them tonight, talking to them tonight, or the little fact that they f’ed you up. When they ask who did this to you,”—I leaned over him, making sure he knew this was one of the important things of all the important things I was “reviewing” with him—“you tell them I did this. I was alone, I was pissed, and paid you back for beating up my girlfriend by letting you feel the fat end of my bat. You will tell them what you did to Emma. You will tell them how long you did this to her.” The red was falling like a curtain over my eyes. “You will have them document every damn date, time, and detail of the abuse. You are not going to get the victim card when you get your jollies by creating them, you got me?”

     I didn’t wait for a response. If he didn’t tell them the truth, I’d come to him in the middle of the night and snap his neck. But I’d wake him first so he knew what was coming.

     “The second part of the life repayment plan is you are never—NEVER!”—I slapped him across his bandaged face to drill it home—“to come anywhere near Emma again. If I so much as hear of you walking in the same direction she is, I’m taking that gift I just gave you back,” I growled, lowering my face until my nose was a hair from his. “Capiche, mother-f’er?”

     Standing tall, I sensed something as familiar as it was relieving.

     “Emma’s brothers will be watching her, and if by some unlikely, statistical impossibility you get out of jail before I do, I’ve got brothers too.”

     The door clicked open then, on cue, and two forms ghosted into the room, stacking themselves behind me. And then a third.

     William nodded his head in acknowledgement as he took his place beside Joseph and Nathanial behind me.

     “And they’ll be watching you,” I continued, turning my attention back on Ty, fighting through the emotion lumping in my throat. “And by the way, I’m the merciful one in the family,” I said, tilting my head behind me to fill in the blanks.

     Angling myself their way, I winked at them. They stayed in character, looking like they broke men’s bones by day and hunted demons by night.

     God I loved my brothers. They’d taken the intimidation thing seriously. Varying shades of black clung to them, their jaws clenched rabid tight, and their eyes flashed with the deaths they’d had hands in. Nathanial was the most terrifying of course, that was his natural inclination, but William was a close second, and every-day’s-a-great-one Joseph was a distant third. But I had to award him some serious props. It was the longest I’d seen his mouth curled downwards—ever.

     Flicking the big toe of Ty’s splinted leg, I headed for the door. “Enjoy your pureed pop-tarts, sucker.”

     Three sets of steps fell into formation behind me, saying nothing else, which jacked the room with another hit of intimidation before we left.

     Down the hall, the elevator, and past the front desk, we didn’t exchange a single word. Silence was an easy conversation to have with my brothers. We said the most intimate things in silence and you never doubted the others were listening when you said something that needed saying.

     Only when we were sliding into the Mustang did Joseph pipe up; he always was the first one. If it wasn’t me. Silence didn’t suit Joseph and me like it did William and Nathanial.

     “So we made it,” he said, pushing on my shoulder as he slid into the seat behind me. “Mind telling me what we’re doing here?”

     I turned the key over in the ignition, screeching out of the parking lot. “You know how you like hearing every nitty gritty detail in an explanation?” I asked, busting into second gear.

     “Yee-ahh?” Joseph answered.

     “You’re not going to get it. Sorry, no time and not enough energy for it right now,” I said, to which I received two sighs, one heavy and one short, and a soft chuckle from the dark-haired older brother riding bitch next to me.

     I slid William a grin. “Let’s just say, like with most my stories, this is a long one, and you’re just going to have to make peace with the condensed version.”

     “Hey, cranky-pants,” Joseph said, sounding as irritated as the class sweetheart, “don’t mind us, we’re just the three brothers who left what we were doing in the middle of the night to get our butts to a critical care unit in California. No questions asked, no thanks even required.”

     “Your point?” I asked, looking at him in the rear view.

     “Don’t you have something to say?” he asked. “Something along the lines of appreciation?”

     “I thought you just said no thanks even required,” I snapped half-heartedly.

     “I wasn’t serious.”

     “Thank you,” I said like a smart-ass, attacking the asphalt leading up the on ramp. Something softened in me as the miles per hour ticked higher. Speed was my ultimate calming salve.

     “No, really. All jokes, wisecracks, and sarcasm aside, thank you,” I said, glancing at each of them. “I needed you here tonight. Thanks for showing up.”

     “We’ll always show up,” William said, clapping a hand over my shoulder.

     “I didn’t expect you’d be here,” I said. “I thought you’d be swatting away cat-sized mosquitoes in the middle of some jungle god forgot about, immunizing orphans or something.”

     “I was,” he answered. “We just got back earlier today. So your timing was impeccable for making a Hayward 911 call.”

     “And do I want to know how the three of you got here so fast?” I didn’t care, but I guessed it was a good story.

     I heard the grin in William’s voice. “You know that private jet you suspected I had?”