Use Somebody (70 page)

“You think this is a game?” Gabriel demanded.

“Hey. What are you so cheesed about? We nicked the cash and got away. And bonus, we got the little broad, too.
Stoked
is what you jolly well should be!”

Finally sitting up, I found the passenger turned fully in his seat. He was grinning from ear to ear with a gun pointed straight at my face.

“Hiya sweetheart,” he said. I tensed. To my horror, he was no longer wearing the ski mask. He was handsome, like a younger version of Gabriel with longer hair. Even had the same striking blue eyes. And his voice… he’d been covering it up before. But the minute we got in this car, it flowed with the same British inflection.

Oh no. Could this be his brother?

Seeing his confidently unmasked face brought my fear to the surface. Now I could identify them both.

That’s when it hit me—I wasn’t walking away from this.

He smiled wider as the horror registered in my expression. “You’re a cute little thing, aren’t you? Wish I’d had Gavin’s job, watching your every move these last few months.”

I did not like this bold stranger or the salacious timber of his words. I met Gabriel’s eyes in the rearview mirror, pleading. There was humanity in him somewhere. I’d seen enough evidence of it over the last month to rule it out. Every time I felt threatened he had come to my rescue. I needed him to do it again now.

Gabriel’s blue eyes regarded mine impassively, then returned to the road. “The girl is none of your concern,” he added like an afterthought.

“And a virgin?” The other man’s eyes sparkled in delight. “You lucky git. You hit the jackpot with this mark. No wonder you finally needed a second mate for the job. Told you I could handle it.” His disgusting gaze raked over my body. I sank backwards into my seat, certain I was going to be sick.

Whatever remaining hope I still had in Gabriel was immediately extinguished. I couldn’t invent any reason on earth of how he was ever planning to help me after exploiting such an intimate detail.

It was official: everything he had ever said to me had been a lie. He was not my protector or even my ally. He was the enemy.

How could he do this?

I hated him.
I hated him.

Blinders gone, I looked out the window and away from them both. Anger like I’d never felt before was bubbling under the surface. He had used me to break into my workplace. To rob the bank. To kill an innocent man…

And I had given him everything he needed to pull this off. Closing schedules. Management shifts. Locations of security cameras and panic buttons. Even the damn vault locking procedures. All because he had been supposedly concerned about my safety.

I was no longer afraid. I was livid. He had used me. He was the exact opposite of the man he pretended to be. He was no angel; he was a monster.

Unable to help myself any longer, I shot an angry little glare into the rearview mirror. “Was that your master plan? Make me fall in love with you, break into the bank, then pretend like we were hostages together to point the finger away from you?”

Again, he met my gaze in the mirror. His blue eyes were flat and cold. The weight of his stare carried a profound threat. If I were smart, I would have heeded the warning. But I was beyond fear. I was beyond thinking clearly at all.

The man in the passenger seat laughed. “That was plan B. Initially, I was just supposed to slip past you two before you set the alarm. Too bad Gavin here cocked it up. I would’ve done a better job at keeping you distracted.”

I flushed, recalling the way he had pushed me up against the building and gave me the most intense kiss I’d ever received. I thought he was revealing his heart to me. But it was all just part of his ploy.

“Of course,” he continued, “Plan B mightn’t have ended well for lover boy, if you know what I mean.”

It felt like I’d woken up in the middle of some dark version of the freaking Truman Show. Looking back on our month together, little things began to click. Never taking any pictures of us together: evidence. Telling me stories about his so-called summer in Texas: alibi. Our relationship—my life—had become one massive conspiracy all for his greed.

I started laughing. Quietly at first, but I soon became quite loud. It was totally inappropriate. The whole thing was just so insane! How was a girl supposed to react when she found out the person she had fallen in love with was a liar? A monster?

There were so many ways he had deceived me, I couldn’t even count them all. I hadn’t even known his real name. I doubt he was even a student at my school, or that he had ever been to Texas. It was all so messed up. I was on my back, hysterical. They say nice guys finished last. HA! Nice guys ain’t got nothing on me.

“She’s cracking up, G. Want me to quiet her down?”

“Sod off,” came Gabriel’s command. There was a crunching sound followed by something hitting the floor. Had he thrown something at me? I looked around until I found it—the rearview mirror. He ripped the damn mirror off my car and chucked it at me!

I bolted up in my seat. “I bet you get off on screwing with my mind, don’t you?” I shouted. “Bad form!” Gabriel wouldn’t turn around and without the mirror, I was now unable to look him in the eyes. Instantly my laughter turned into uncontrollable sobs. They were right. I was losing it. “You’re going to kill me anyway. What are you waiting for?”

Gabriel’s shoulders were tense by his ears, but he did not speak.

The passenger looked on with mild amusement, as if I had all the ferocity a kitten. It only succeeded in twisting my gut.

“Maybe if you’re a good little girl, you won’t have to die a virgin.”

His deep chuckle sounded exactly like Gabriel’s and it brought on a wave of nausea. How had I ever thought the sound of that laugh was like music? I couldn’t stand it now. I couldn’t stand his perfect profile or his deep voice or his lying eyes, but above all that laugh was going to destroy me. And I couldn’t lift my damn hands to cover my own ears!

Helpless in this backseat, I did the only thing I could—I screamed at the top of my lungs and pounded my feet as hard as I could against the back of driver’s seat. Maybe I figured the only way to fight back now was to annoy the hell out of them.

An arm reached back and tried to still me. I lashed out and kicked him in the face. I had never been very athletic but the adrenaline must have given me strength. The force was enough that he dropped the gun and clutched his nose. Within seconds, it was gushing blood.

I fumbled with the gun at my feet, but Gabriel was faster. He reached back and grabbed hold, only my jaw got in the way, and as he pulled it up I was struck. He glanced back only a second before returning his focus forward, using one hand to steer and the other to restrain his brother, who was spitting me curses and threats.

Bound and unable to attend to my own injury, I glanced outside, hoping we had at least drawn attention to my discreet little Honda. The car swerved only slightly before he regained control. But it wasn’t enough. There was hardly anyone on this street and we were already miles away. No sirens. No hope. I screamed again in frustration. They were going to get away with this!

I needed to pound on the glass. To get a grip on something. To clear my cheeks of the blood and tears. But I couldn’t even lift a finger. I was so sick of having my hands restrained. I yanked on my arms until the cord tore my flesh and still I gained no freedom. Then I had the idea to at least get my hands in front of me. So I dragged the loop of my arms under my butt and pulled each leg through. It was a lot harder than I thought, but I did it. And sure enough, my wrists were ripped and bloody.

While trying not to draw attention, I picked up the only thing in the backseat—the mirror. The glass was cracked and smeared with blood, but it was the only thing I had access to. And it was solid.

Silent tears leaked out of my eyes. But I didn’t let myself hesitate. I knew I only had one shot.

So I lifted the object over my head, and swung with all my might.

* * *

[Present]

Vance was listening raptly, eyes bulging out of their sockets and mouth slightly agape.

“I didn’t know,” I explained. “I didn’t know anything about what they planned to do.”

“And you told that to the police, right?” he asked. It was the first thing he had spoken in a long time.

I nodded. “I told them everything.” Starting with the first night Gabriel offered me the shirt off his back and asked me to dance, and ending when I crawled out of the mangled car. I’d seen enough Law and Order episodes to know that once they opened an investigation, the best thing to do was cooperate. It only looked worse if you lied or left out information. So I spoke to the cops that very same night.

“I spent Valentine’s Day at the police station. A medic examined me, treated my cuts and washed the blood out of my hair. Then a detective came in to ask me questions, and I recapped the whole story.”

There were a few times I broke down, so we took a breather while I gathered myself. But we stayed until the wee hours of the next morning. I needed to get it all out. I even offered up my journal as evidence and to help with the timeline, along with a box of items they probably didn’t need, but that I didn’t want. A paper coffee cup. A jar of seashells. A black t-shirt. I agreed to help in any way I could and made myself available for follow up questions. I had no part in their master plan. Fuck if I let them drag me down with them.

I was too shook up to care about going to jail when I told them the crash was my fault. Angry tears were streaming down my face as I detailed the way I fought against them and attacked Gabriel with the mirror, then pulled the wheel so we tumbled and went head-on into the wall. The detective listened to me relive the events without batting an eyelash. In the end, they determined my actions were conducted in self defense. I witnessed them shoot an innocent man, they reasoned. Plus they kidnapped and threatened me at gunpoint. I had every reason to believe they would have killed me, too. Or worse. So I was within my rights to use deadly force to protect myself, and I wasn’t arrested.

But I knew better. I knew in my heart that I fought them out of anger, not self defense. When I attacked Gabriel, I wasn’t thinking about the threat against my life. I was thinking of hurting the person who had so maliciously hurt me.

Bloodlust.

There was violence within me. I traded it for my soul that night. And their blood on my hands was a constant reminder of the destruction I was capable of.

* * *

I returned to the picture depicting the smashed vehicle. I remembered being so happy to buy it at sixteen. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a brand new BMW like Lexi’s, or that it had a few rips in the seats. I loved that car.

“This was my car,” I shared with Vance. “A Honda Accord. I bought it myself at sixteen.”

“I remember it. From high school.”

I nodded and then looked up into his face. He was the most understanding, compassionate person I had ever known. But even now I wasn’t sure how he’d react to my last secret. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a coward, I could have been honest and let the truth push him away, instead of doing it myself.

My voice broke as I confessed the final part of my story, the truth that no one knew, save for the investigation officers and me.

“I’m the one who crashed it.”

Vance’s gaze shifted to mine. Immediately he interpreted the internal thoughts behind my confession. “You better not be saying what I think you’re saying, Scarlett Rose. You should have never been put in that position. You did what you had to do.”

I shook my head, not wanting to justify it away. I didn’t deserve it.

A hot tear escaped and rolled down my check. He reached out and rubbed it away with his thumbs. “Rosie… no.”

“You think Evelyn was a selfish girlfriend?” I met his gaze with watery eyes. “My last boyfriend and his brother are dead. And it’s because of me.”

As I finally spoke out loud the shameful truth that I’d been carrying all these months, the dam inside me broke. A year’s worth of tears streamed uncontrollably down my cheeks, mourning the fall of my hero, my abandonment of hope in this world, and the loss of myself.

Emotions that had been guarded behind a wall all this time finally emerged. They felt more raw and intense than ever before, as if they had become infected and magnified while buried deep within me. Guilt. Pain. Emptiness. Loneliness. Helplessness. Fear. So many tragically diverse feelings, physically crushing me from the inside out. They all came rushing back. My heart was pounding faster than my body could keep up. The grief burned deep in the pit of my stomach as I wept openly, brokenly.

He launched himself at me and clutched my face in his hands. I could feel his frustration in the desperation of his grip. It was the first time he had touched me since our horrible demise. My skin heated at the contact, but it did little to assuage the depravity and remorse I felt.

“Do you realize how brave you are? Don’t you regret fighting back for one second. You hear me?” His intensity shook me, as if he could make me believe it with sheer force of will. “He would have killed you.”

I shook my head again, rejecting his words, as the tears continued to fall. I could feel the heartbreak in his fingertips. I could see the compassion in his eyes. Everything about him made me so damn vulnerable. But he was powerless to save me this time. If only he hadn’t fallen for a girl who was so beyond redemption.