RICHARD (A BAD BOY ROMANCE) (32 page)

Chapter 16

Tanya

“Man,
when someone puts in a call, you guys sure do come a-
runnin
’,
huh?”

Tom
Stoggins
smiled at me. He was one of Gunner’s best
friends in the department, apparently, and here to keep an eye on me until my
stepbrother could get back. I guessed Gunner had gone easy on the details—it
wasn’t like him to broadcast a torrid affair with his stepsister to all his
friends.

I
wondered how much he knew about the other thing, though. About my stalker and
all the
threats
he’d made.

Poems about roses and
flying worms. Shit, dude, could you vague that up for me?

“Hey,
when a brother asks for help, might as well be the tones
soundin
’,”
he said, and I stepped aside to let him in. “Nice digs you got here. Guess if
you
gotta
hole up somewhere on account of a crazy
stalker, this would be the place.”

“The
room service is what sold it,” I said, locking the door behind him. “But the
view’s not bad, either.”

“Whoa!”
Tom trotted to the window and stare wide-eyed over the city. “You sure you
can’t rent out your stalker? Nice hotel room, gets me away from the wife and
kids_.
_._._I’ve had worse gigs.”

“You
want a mimosa?” I asked him. “I was thinking of having room service come up
again_.
_._._”

“Oh,
none for me, doll. Thanks,” Tom said, flashing me a winning smile. “I’m good.”

I
put the paper menu away and slipped my hands into the pockets of my shorts. I’d
heard Gunner talk a little about Tom, though I’d never met him. From all the
stories he told, I figured the guy would’ve been older. But he was about
Gunner’s age, or maybe closer to my own. And he talked like one of those guys
from the FDNY—that stereotypical accent, the hardness of his words. Dude was
weird. Like some kind of paradox.

Maybe
that was why Gunner liked him so much. My stepbrother sure did love complicated
shit.

“Hey,
there was this guy out there,” Tom said, squinting at the sidewalk below. “Came
up to me on my way in. He was real weird. Like the kid in high school used to
write poetry about all the girls who wouldn’t suck his cock and then stash it
under his bed.” He turned and looked at me, hands on his waist just above his
belt. “You think that could’ve been him?”

A
chill slithered down my spine. I hadn’t seen the guy’s face—at least, not that
I knew of—but Tom’s description fit when I imagined he was like: some
hypersensitive, entitled, Elliot Rodgers type. From both life as a woman and
working as a stripper, I knew one simple truth: lonely men were usually the
most dangerous.

“Maybe,”
I answered. “This
guy_.
_._._my
stalker_.
_._._he’s
really into poetry. Some guy called Blake.”

“
William
Blake?” Tom said with a laugh.
“Oh, shit. Yeah. That guy’s one of my favorites. Learned about him back in
college—they don’t teach real art like that in high school.”

He
cleared his throat, then very dramatically recited,

“I
was angry with my friend;

I
told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I
was angry with my foe:

I
told it not, my wrath did grow.”

Tom
chuckled once he was done. “How about you, Tanya? You ever been pissed at
somebody?”

I
frowned. There was something stirring in my guts—a sense of unease, of
suspicion and distrust. Was William Blake really that popular? Maybe he was,
but for a firefighter? Really?

And
he
just_.
_._._knew all that off-hand?

“
I_.
_._._guess so,” I answered, taking a step away from him.
I tried to make it seem casual, like I wasn’t eyeing the spot I’d laid my
burner phone.

“You
guess so?
” Tom stared at me, his face
scrunched. “No, no, Tanya. You’d remember anger. It’s that thing that strangles
you in the night. Haunts your dreams. Taints your memories. That hangman’s
noose that just won’t let go.”

When
I didn’t answer, he sighed, kind of like I’d disappointed him. He paced in
front of the window, shaking his head.

“It’s
like a poisoned tree. You let it grow and fester inside you. Feed it with your
hate. Any fruit it bears might be sweet, but ultimately, it’s poisoned, too. It
can only cause hurt and pain.” He stopped moving and stared at the ground.
“Took me a while to figure that last one out, but now that I know, I
ain’t
gonna
forget. I had plans
for my anger, but now I think I’ll have to change ‘
em
.”

I
smiled at him as I turned away just enough to put my left hand out of his view.
“I’ve known a lot of that, sure. I mean, my dad—well,
Gunner’s
dad—was a real bastard.
Is,
” I corrected myself. I was starting to slip—to stutter. “
Is
a real bastard. Far as I know.”

“Oh,
yeah?” Tom seemed interested in me again, though his eyes were distant, glazed.
“What’d he
do
to you?”

I
inched toward the end table. “The usual. Screaming. Yelling. Telling me I was
no good. That I’d never amount to anything. How I was useless. How nobody would
ever love me. Blaming me for my stepbrother takin’ off on
us_.
_._._”

Tom
narrowed his eyes. “He beat you?”

“Gunner,
more than me,” I divulged. “But yeah. Sometimes. Never where anyone could see,
though. Then everyone would know what kind of drunk, piece of shit monster he
was.”

I
was so close to the table. Just inches away. But I couldn’t just reach out and
grab the phone. I had to make it look like I was doing something else.
Something innocuous. And since I was barefoot, the old
tyin
’-my-shoes
trick wasn’t
gonna
cut it.

Instead
I took a hairband out of my pocket like I was going to tie my wild locks back
into a ponytail. Then I let it drop to the ground and bent to pick it up with a
little “oops.”

Eye-level
with the phone now. I’d just have to scoop it into my hand when I stood.

“I
had a dad like that, too. Seems like these days, everybody does. Mom wasn’t
much better, though. But she liked to hurt me in a different way.”

“I’m
sorry,” I replied, reaching for the phone.

“Anything
sexual?” Tom asked me after a pause. “He ever,
y’know
_.
_._._touch you,
while you were
sleepin
’? Play with your tits? You
ever wake up with his cum on your face?”

My
stomach turned so violently I thought I would puke. “No. Jesus, no.” I
swallowed my bile and grabbed the tie with my right hand and the phone with my
left, standing back up. “It wasn’t like that.”

“You
sure?” he pressed me. He gave me an appraising look. “C’mon. You’re
tellin
’ me Daddy never fucked you?”

Keep calm. Play it cool.
It was easy enough to think it—lots harder to pull off. My hands were shaking.
My stomach was a mess. Tom was playing with me—if this even
was
Tom. Maybe it had been Tom all
along, my brother’s best goddamn friend, but I had no way of knowing. And he
knew that, the bastard.

He
was the cat. I was the mouse. He had all the power here—the size, the killer
instincts, the claws. Best I could hope to do was outrun him. He seemed to
sense my thoughts, stepping between me and the door. I felt a bead of sweat
form on my nape, sticking to my hair.

“Never,”
I told him, shooting him another quick, but shaky smile. “Jim was an asshole,
sure. But he
never_.
_._._”

Tom
frowned. “Huh.” Then he cocked his head. “So where do you think you get it
from, then? The whole sex thing.
Y’know
, with
Gunner?”

He
shocked me so bad that instead of gently lifting the phone cover, I snapped it
open. That
click
might as well have
been a gunshot. I saw his eyes dart to my hand.

Clumsily,
I tried to cover it with a, “
What_.
_._._?”

But
Tom was on me with an open-hand slap, one that got me right in the cheekbone
and made me see stars.

You
ever been hit like that before? It spins your fuckin’ head. Boggles the mind.
Takes you off guard. Off balance. My vision was blurry and at the same time,
way too sharp. Colors were too bright. My neck hurt from the way my head
twisted at the impact, a warm pain that bloomed all the way up into my skull.

“Fuck—”

I
tried to pull away, tried to jam Gunner’s number into my phone, but Tom grabbed
my arm and slammed my wrist into the table. A new arc of pain sizzled through
my bones. I held tight to the phone, curling my fingers around it.

“No!”

He
struck me again, but when my grasp didn’t break, he brought my hand to his
mouth and bit. Hard. Right on my knuckles. I screamed when he broke the skin,
dropped the phone, and came at him with my right hand, the one with the
bandages on it. I was operating on animal instincts. I didn’t think about the
consequences. When I slapped him, it only hurt me worse, and that moment of
hesitation when the pain took me over gave Tom enough time to grab my hand and twist
it, bringing it to my knees.

“Help!”
I screamed. “Somebody, help—”

And
then he slugged me—a good one, right to my jaw. He might as well have hit me
with a Mack truck.

There’s
a nerve there, in your jaw. One that keeps the lights on upstairs—or shuts ‘
em
off, if you’re not very lucky. One good hit and it’ll
knock you right the fuck out.

As
I hit the floor right at the feet of the man who was
gonna
kill me, I couldn’t help but feel like the unluckiest girl in the world.

Chapter 17

Gunner

Chelsea
lived in a rundown apartment complex on the east side of town, which Simon was
able to discover due to a domestic violence report she’d filed three months
before. From the restaurant the two of us headed straight across town, where I
was hoping to get a few answers.

“Do
you think she’s home? I mean, she might be at work,” Simon said as we climbed
out of my car.

“Well,
let’s hope she’s here. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

That’d be a change of
pace_.
_._._

The
two of us entered the dilapidated entryway, with its shabby wallpaper and
crusty carpets. Simon and I walked past the unmanned front desk—something that
would have meant the pinnacle of class back in the day. From what I could tell,
this place hadn’t had anything resembling a receptionist in years.

“No
accounting for taste,” Simon muttered as he pulled his coat a little tighter
around him. I shook my head and pushed him a little to signal that he needed to
pick up the pace.

We
mounted the stairs, heading all the way up to the fourth floor. Something about
that place gave me the creeps, almost like something was in the air, making
everything seem oppressive and claustrophobic. The fuckin’ walls were closing
in, and I hated every minute of it.

Near
the end of the hallway lay Chelsea’s apartment, 410. The dingy brass letters
could hardly even muster the faintest glimmer underneath the fluorescent
lighting. Everything about this place seemed to exude hopelessness. In a way,
it reminded me of the hospital.

“You
want to knock, or—?”

I
pushed Simon aside as gently as possible, rapping my knuckles against the
peeling red paint on the door. Everything grew a little quieter, as though the
entire floor were holding its breath as Simon and I waited for someone—anyone—to
answer.

“Who’s
there?” came a clear, feminine voice from the other side of the door. “If this
is Mr. Caputo, I don’t need to give you rent for another week.”

“It’s
not your landlord,” Simon said. “You know Tanya?”

The
scratching of a deadbolt being undone reached our ears just before the door
jerked open. The door groaned, the wood swollen so much that it had almost
sealed shut.

“What’s
wrong with Tanya?” The woman on the other side asked. She blinked those big
baby blues at me and wrinkled her nose. “Is this about the—”

“Tanya’s
fine,” I said, moving in front of Simon. “My name is Gunner. I’m Tanya’s
brother.”

“Holy
fuck,” she said, her doe eyes going even wider. “She never told me you were
hot!”

Simon
let out a caw of laughter from behind me, while all I could must was an eye
roll. This was my baby sister’s best friend?

And
why the fuck hadn’t she told her I was hot?

“Can
we come in? We need to ask you a few questions.”

“This
is about the guy right? The one from the club—with the mask?”

“The
same,” Simon said.

“
Gimme
a second.”

The
door slammed shut for a moment, at which point the scraping continued as
Chelsea undid the chain from the top of the door and—with another groan of
protest—it swung it wide to let us by.

“I
almost didn’t believe her when she’d told me about it. I mean, who fuckin’ does
something like that,
y’know
? That’s some
Law & Order
-grade shit right there.”

Simon
and I gave one another a quick look before turning back to Chelsea as she
closed the door behind us, putting all of her locks back in place.

The
inside of her apartment was, surprisingly, very nice. The walls were freshly
painted, the floors were tiled, and the smell that had bothered me so much out
in the hallway was conspicuously absent.

“Are
all the apartments this nice?” I asked, looking around.

“Nah,”
she said, grinning, “But the landlord is a regular, so he let me get away with
a little renovating in exchange for a few private shows.”

“Right,”
I said, doing my best to leave my
judgement
at the door.
To Simon, I added, “She’s a stripper. Not a hooker. Put your damn wallet away.”
And then to Chelsea again, “You work with Tanya?”

“Yup,
for a long time now. We even moved clubs together.”

“So,
you two are around one another a lot?” Simon asked.

“Sure,
we go out all the time when we’re not
workin
’. Blow
off a little steam at the clubs, and whatnot.”

“What
about your brother?” Simon pressed. “Does he know Tanya, too?”

At
the mention of her brother Chelsea froze. She almost looked like she’d been physically
stuck as she considered the question. Her face went ashen, but her cheeks
turned rose red. She was embarrassed and terrified all at the same time.

“How
do you know about my brother?”

“He’s
got quite a record,” I said, my eyebrows raised. “Restraining orders, arson
charges? I mean, he sounds like a pretty troubled guy.”

She
folded her arms and drew away from me. “I thought you were a firefighter? What,
do you moonlight as a cop or something?”

I
held up my hands in mock surrender. “I just want to find out who’s trying to
hurt my stepsister, Chelsea.”

Too
late. She was already on the defensive.

“Connor’s
just a
little_.
_._._different. He was always a weird
kid—he didn’t get along with everyone when he was growing up.
Y’know
, he was one of those ‘outsider’ types.”

I
sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose in frustration. She was trying to protect
him, which wasn’t helping me get any answers.

“Chelsea,”
Simon cut in, answering my prayers, “you filed more than one of these
restraining orders. I know that he’s your brother, but I think deep down you
know that he’s a little more than just ‘troubled.
’_”

She
turned, walking into the kitchen and out of sight of the two of us for a few
moments. A few seconds later we heard the clattering of a cutlery drawer before
she came back into view, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in her hand as she plopped
down at her dining room table.

Simon
and I looked at one another for a moment before making our way over to her as
she opened took her first spoonful of Phish Food.

“Connor’s
just_.
_._._” she began, taking another moment to
compose her words while she mulled over the ice cream in her mouth. “He
ain’t
normal.
”

“What
do you mean?” Simons asked, sitting down across from her at the table. “
Normal’s
a pretty
broad generalization. Not everybody fits
normal.
”

“Especially
not you,” I muttered, giving him a nudge and a look that said,
C’mon, dude. Don’t make me be your Bad Cop.

“He
was never really
been
like other kids,
y’know
?” she elaborated. “He was always
doin
’
shit that didn’t seem crazy, but just felt a little off. The way he’d look at
you, or the way he’d just not speak for days at a time. He liked to hover,
too.”

Chelsea
punctuated her exposition with another scoop of ice cream.

“But
it got really fuckin’ weird after Dad left—piece of shit.”

Christ, does everybody have
a deadbeat dad?
“Weird how?” I asked her.

“He
got this obsession with being ‘the man of the house,’ like now that Dad was out
of the picture, he had to take care of everything. He started getting really
controlling over a lot of shit, like how I looked and dressed when I went out
with friends.” She shook her head, resting it on her palm. “That fucker even
tried to ground me once. Can you believe that? My
younger brother
tried to ground
me.
”

“What
happened when you said no?” Simon asked.

Chelsea
didn’t answer for a long while, her eyes locking onto the reflective surface of
her empty spoon, as though trying to gain some kind of confidence from her own
reflection.

“He
tried to ‘punish’ me,” she whispered, her teeth clenched. “He took me by my
fuckin’ hair and threw me on my bed. And then he started to undo his pants.”

She
might as well have punched both Simon and I in the gut. Everything in me wanted
to leap back in time and rip that fucker’s head off. “He raped you?”

“No,
but he sure as hell tried to. Piece of shit couldn’t even get it up—what a
fucking joke. I ran as fast as I could and never looked back.”

“You
left Connor there with your mother?”

“An
abusive bitch, that’s what she was.” Now Chelsea seemed a little remorseful—if
only a little. “God only knows what happened between them after I left. I moved
in with friends and Connor stayed with her. I was eighteen, and as far as I was
concerned, they were perfect for one another.”

“Tell
us about the arson,” Simon said, trying to steer the conversation toward
Connor’s other criminal activity.

“Yeah.”
She nodded, eyes still locked on her reflection. “He tried to set this old
theatre on fire, but he got caught before he could light the place up. Connor
was nuts about drama and the arts. Mom always called him a faggot whenever he’d
bring it up. Those were the times I actually felt bad for him.”

“Did
he have a history with fire?” I asked. “Did he get burned when he was a kid?”

“Oh,
sure, lots of times. That was how our dad would punish him when he’d been
bad—he used to put his hand on the stove, or put his cigarette out on Connor’s
arm. Upper arm, though. Where nobody could spot it. The stove thing stopped
when Connor’s school called.”

Chelsea
sighed and shook her head, wiping away a few errant tears that had begun
streaming down her face.

“_‘
Fire fixes everything,’
he’d say. Fuckin’ bastard.”

“Do
you remember the last time you saw Connor?” I asked her. My heart was racing, I
hoped that maybe this would be the lead that would get us closer to him—closer
to finding out where this freak was hiding.

I
knew it was him. It had to be. And as bad as I felt for Chelsea, as much as I
understood how badly she wanted to protect him, when I found her brother, I was
going to
tear his motherfucking throat
out.

“Last
time I saw him was at mom’s funeral. I didn’t say a single word to him the
entire time. He just stared right at me while the preacher was talking, with
this_.
_._._” She gestured vaguely, disgusted. “This
weird-ass smile on his face.”

“And
you haven’t seen him since? Do you know where he lives?”

“No,
and I never wanted to find out. Last I heard he didn’t even have a job—but what
do I know? A lot can change in a year.”

Simon
leaned forward on the table. “It’s important that we find Connor, Chelsea—we
think that he’s got everything to do with what’s been happening to Tanya. She
needs your help on this.”

Chelsea
ran her fingers through her hair, lost in her thoughts for a few moments before
looking up at me with a half-hearted shrug.

“The
only place I remember Connor ever hanging out was at that theatre—the one he
tried to torch back in high school. If he’s anywhere, he’ll probably be there.
Corner of 32
^nd
and Marathon. You can’t miss it. It’s a fucking
eyesore.”

“It’s
better than nothing,” Simon said, shaking his head. Chelsea hadn’t been as
helpful as I’d hoped, but knowing where Connor hung out was better than leaving
empty-handed.