INK: Vanishing Point (Book 2) (29 page)

“Did you go to Confession?”
He sounds like a broken record.

“Mom died of cancer and Elise
killed herself. How could any of that possibly be my fault?” My
voice reaches an upper register and I’m losing control. Tears
threaten at the corners of my eyes. He remains silent. I slam my open
palm on his desk. “How!”

“Because, Shayleigh, if we had
been a family and pulled together for each other, maybe they both
could have survived their illnesses.” And there it is. He
blames me. Mister never home, mister works eighty hours a week.

“How dare you,” I spit
through gritted teeth. “You. Were. Never. Here.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but before
he can, I spin around and head for my bedroom to get my stuff and get
the fuck out of this Goddamn house.

“Shayleigh, do not walk away from
me when I’m talking to you.” He chases me to my room.

I gather my bags, but he’s
blocking the doorway. “Get out of the way.”

“No, you think I’m going to
let you run off again so you can have everyone all upset? Wrong.”
He remains in the doorway.

“Dad, move or I’ll move
you,” I say with as much earnest as I can.

“You’ll move me?” He
raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

My hands are trembling with fear. It
moves up my arms to my body until my entire frame is shaking in
terror.
I’m trapped
is all I can think and feel. “Get out of my way.” I
scream wildly and knock into him.

His expression is riddled with shock and
remorse as he recovers from me knocking him out of the doorway by way
of bulldozing through. He wasn’t expecting it or I never could
have done it. I immediately feel like the biggest piece of shit on
the planet for pushing my dad. But feeling trapped in like that isn’t
going to work for me. I felt like I was going to explode.

“Where are you going, Shayleigh?”
he calls after me.

“Away.” I say it low and
steady.

“Shayleigh, I’m sorry. Let’s
talk about this. Please stop.” He’s chasing me through
the kitchen to the back door.

“No.”

He follows me down the back steps and to
the car. “Please don’t go.” His voice is quiet and
defeated. “I need you.”

His words stop me dead in my tracks.
Never before has anyone made that type of proclamation. He needs me?
I turn around to face him. “Dad, I’ll be back tomorrow. I
don’t think it’s a good idea for me to stay.” I
throw the bags in the car and get in.

Driving away from him is one of the
hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I feel like I can’t
trust him. When he had me cornered in the room, I nearly lost it. I
can’t have that. I need to maintain my mental strength. Tears
stream freely down my face, and, as if in response to my sorrow, rain
pelts the windshield.

The clouds usher the darkness of night
on faster than normal, which has me spooked. I want to run into my
studio to get my supplies, but thoughts of Bailey having been here
last time run rampant with my imagination. I dig through my backpack
until I find my taser. Armed and ready, I run into my studio with
fear of the unknown and unseen chasing me like a dark demon.

Haphazardly, I scoop up my pens and ink
bottles. I run for the door, my breathing shallow yet labored. “Shay,
get a grip on yourself.” Taking another deep breath, I walk out
the door. Once I reach the car, I realize I didn’t get a
Bristol board to draw my panels on. “Shit!” I slam my
hand on the steering wheel.

Well, you can never have too much
Bristol; a quick run to the art supply store is on the list of things
to do. The further away from my house I get, the more the fear that
nearly crippled me subsides. Of course I was sure to take the long
way around so I didn’t have to drive by Gary and Alice’s
house. Once I hit downtown Melbourne, I run into the art store to get
my Bristol boards. Since I have nowhere to be, I take a few extra
minutes looking at pens and charcoal.

Once I’m back in the car,
beachside is apparently calling to me, and without realizing it I’m
on the Melbourne Causeway heading east. Stopped at the light where I
would turn to go to the park, I look down the winding road. Part of
me wants to go there, but I know this isn’t the time. They will
look for me there.
Why can’t
they just leave me alone?

A honk from behind rattles me back to
attention. I wave and go through the light. Driving down A1A, I’m
trying to decide what hotel to stay in. I pass by the motel where we
found Elise, and a chill spears through me.

The Radisson Suites comes into view, but
I just can’t talk myself into spending that much, so the
Oceanside will have to do. Moderately priced and pretty damn clean,
it’s a winner. After I check in, I unload my bags into the
room. I get settled in pretty quick, turn on the TV and determine
there isn’t shit worth watching. The sliding glass door affords
a view of the beach. The rain is still coming down pretty hard, and
it’s obscuring the shore. There’s only a brief show of
whitecaps in the distance that break through the darkness of the
night.

There’s an overhang on my balcony,
so I decide to break open the pack of clove cigars I picked up at the
smoke shop in Orlando. They are really cigarettes, but apparently
clove cigarettes are now illegal, so they’ve been repackaged as
cigars. I inhale the smoke deeply and slowly. Instantly, I feel just
a little relaxed. The smoke is erotic in my lungs and I let it out
slow and watch it mingle in the air with the mist from the rain. I’m
mesmerized by this for the duration of the cigarette and want
another. “You know what will go with this?” I say to
myself. “You guessed it, some of that Mike’s Hard
Lemonade.”

What happened at my dad’s is
weighing pretty heavy on me. But I’m not going to call him. I’m
not even going to turn on my cell phone unless I need to make a phone
call; otherwise, I’m sure there’s just a ton of messages
from Eli trying to “talk me off the ledge.” “Fuck
him.”

I catch myself doodling with the hotel
pen and pad between swigs of lemonade. “Well, Shay, time to get
to it.” This is what I’ve been avoiding, but I know I
have to get this out. Laying out a single sheet of Bristol and
readying my pens, I close my eyes and breathe for a moment to bring
myself back to that place. I take another drag off the cigarette and
blow it out, watching it curl. There’s a breeze that’s
coming in through the open sliding glass door, and it feels damp,
just like that place I was trapped in. My pen makes contact with the
paper, and I draw it out.

Shay

Time for another smoke. My lungs may
fall out or at least try to run away to save themselves. Fuck it.
It’s my life, and those little bitches can stay put. I put my
hands on my chest as if to confirm I’m in charge. I lean on the
balcony and watch the fat raindrops driving down from the heavens
like the tears of the dead.

My new panels are just too surreal, I
can’t look at them. Honestly, they’re giving me a serious
case of high anxiety. A six-pack isn’t enough to relax me from
those memories. But getting them out is the best thing for me. Even
still, I feel a peace. I’m finally alone, without so much noise
in my head from Eli, Dad and Aiden.

“Aiden.” It slips from my
lips like a whisper, and a tear sneaks down my cheek. “Time for
another drink,” I announce to myself, heading for the mini
fridge with the cigarette still in hand.

A knock on the door.
What was that?
I peek up over
the top of the mini fridge and eye the door like it’s going to
morph into something else. I’m staring straight at it as if
daring it to make the sound again. It does.

With drink-in-hand, I peer through the
peep hole to see a very wet McNab standing on the other side. “Fuck.”

“Shay, open the door please,”
he asks.

While taking a drag off my cigarette, I
open the door, but I don’t let him in.

He coughs from the smoke I blow in his
direction. “Hey, kid. You okay?”

“Yup.” I lean against the
doorframe and take a drink.

“Can I come in please?”
There’s something in his eyes that I can’t resist, even
though I really want to just go back to being alone.

I step aside as a gesture for him to
enter. “Since you said ‘please.’”

He slides by me, careful not to make
contact. I resist the urge to be playful. For some unknown reason I
don’t feel like I can be in charge
and
playful. Stupid.

McNab walks all the way into the room
and checks out the drawings on the bed without picking them up. He
moves them around to get a better view of the pages obscured under
others. “You’ve been busy.”

“Yup.”

“So what’s going on with
you, kid?” He stares straight into me with those emerald-cut
eyes.

My gaze falls to the floor while I shrug
one shoulder, causing the strap of my tank top to slide off.

“Chatty tonight, huh?”

“Not really,” I say.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and
the hair stands up on the back of my neck. “Whoa, uh uh. No
phones, or you’re out.”

McNab holds his hands up in surrender.
“I’m just turning it off.” As if to confirm his
proclamation, the phone makes a power down noise. “So is this
where you were?”

Seriousness clouds my demeanor and I nod
without looking at the pictures. “It was pretty awful.” I
acknowledge him with another nod and take a drag off my cigarette.

“You want to talk about it?”
His tone is laden with genuine sympathy.

“No.” I thought he was
supposed to be observant.

“You’re going to need to
sometime.” He walks toward me, hesitating the closer he gets.

“Not now.” I walk straight
for the sliding glass door to get some air.

“When you’re ready, I’m
here,” He offers, following behind me.

“You want a lemonade?” I
ask, knowing he’ll say no.

“Sure. In the fridge?”
Huh,
didn’t see that coming
.
He grabs a bottle from the fridge and pops the cap off with his belt
buckle. I look down at his belt buckle. “You know it was a
twist off, right?”

“Yeah, but the way I did it was
much cooler. I have to do something to recover from drinking chick
beer.” He winks at me.

“I didn’t think I’d be
entertaining,” I say, leaning back on the balcony.

He joins me outside and sits in the
lounge chair. “New duds?”

“Yup, I took myself shopping. I
couldn’t very well go walking around in Aiden’s skin
forever.” I never take my eyes off the shore.

“Clothes.” McNab corrects my
slip.

“Yeah, clothes.” I take a
drink.

“Nice boots.” He raises his
eyebrows.

“Wanna fuck?” I smile.

“What?” he asks, seemingly
wounded by my words.

“Wanna fuck?” I look at him
like he’s the crazy one.

“Um, I’m flattered, but–”

I stop him right there. “No,
McNab. ‘Nice boots, wanna fuck.’” I look at him
expectantly and he just shakes his head perplexed. “It’s
a saying.” I think about it for a second, “Or an
aphorism. Oh I don’t know fuck it. I’m an artist, not a
linguist, Jim.”

“Ah, a Star Trek reference,
that
I get.” He stands up and joins me at the railing.

We’re silent for a good long
while, and I light another cigarette. “So where’s your
little bag of tricks? You feel safe being near me without all your
holy water, sage, talismans and shit?”

“I have protection.” A
crooked smile pulls at the corner of his lips.

“So we’re back to the boots
thing, huh?” I push into his shoulder with mine, and he
immediately tenses up. “Sorry, I forgot. ‘Nobody touches
McNab.’”

“S’okay, kid, I’ll cut
you a little slack.” He bumps back into my shoulder, but I
still feel the tension.

The silence goes on for a good while
longer. McNab never takes a drink from his open bottle. It feels like
a solid ten minutes, and I can’t remain quiet anymore, no
matter how badly I want to. “So I suppose you’ve got Carl
out in the parking lot digging around in my head.” My entire
body sags in defeat.

“Nope, just me,” he answers.
“No one even knows I left.”

“Really?” I look up at him
with what I know must look like giant doe eyes.

“Really.” He turns to face
me. “Shay, what you went through…no one should ever have
to go through that. I’m here as a concerned friend, just making
sure you don’t need anything.”

“I’ve got everything I
need.” The waver in my voice betrays the lie.

“For now you do. I’m
convinced of that.” He maintains eye contact with me. “But
I want you to know that Eli and Harry are both beside themselves with
worry…and regret.”

I run my fingers through my hair and
expel a breath before I speak. “Good.” That’s not
really what I wanted to say, so I correct it fast. “Eli is so
hell-bent on worrying about what’s best for me, he forgot about
me
.”
I put my hand on my chest for emphasis.

“I know. It pisses me off too. But
he loves you. So does your dad.” A laugh pulls through McNab’s
chest. “You should consider that they are so much more lost
than you could ever be.”

“Well no shit,” I huff. “My
dad thinks I did it.”

“No he doesn’t. He has an
obligation to investigate every angle, and honestly, I think we can
all agree that you are involved in this.” He takes his first
drink from the bottle.

“Yeah, I’m smack in the
middle of a pile of bodies.” My eyes close involuntarily,
probably to keep the waterworks from starting up. “I could
never do those things.”

“I know that.” He gives me a
sideways head tilt. “And so do Eli and your dad. But that
doesn’t change the fact that they are trying to protect you
from that ‘pile of bodies’ and the investigation that
goes along with them.” His tone changes to indicate his
disapproval. “They really are looking out for you, and the odds
are not in your favor.”