Page 91 of Brother's Keeper
In the corner of my vision, Nash scrambled to stand and chase after me.
“Fitch?” he called out.
“Stay here,” I said, staggering a bit as I reached the driver’s door and flung it open.
Nash stopped and gave a sweeping glance across the cemetery around us. “Stayhere?” he echoed. “Why?”
“I need to be alone.” I dropped into the seat, leaking blood that I tasted on my lips.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He’d broken into motion again, closing the gap to me. When I grabbed the door handle to pull it shut, he caught the window frame and held it.
I glowered up at him. “I’m not gonna kill anyone if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“It’s not,” he replied, unmoving.
“Well, good.” A flip of my hand removed his, and I yanked the door closed.
“Fitch, what are you doing?” Nash’s voice was muffled by the glass and metal, then almost drowned entirely by the engine turning over. He pounded his fist against the window. “Where are you going? Fitch!”
“Call a cab or something,” I told him, but wasn’t sure he heard as I shifted into reverse. The coupe began to roll backward.
Daubing my sleeve against my nose, I turned out onto the grassy road that had brought us here. Seeing Nash in the rearview reminded me of leaving Donovan behind when I went to the Thatcher job. No one could say that I hadn’t tried to save him, or that I wasn’t trying now not to destroy Nash, too. I had little left to lose, andmaybe that was the answer: to face the world and whatever fate I was due with nothing but my own shadow behind me. At least that way I couldn’t ruin anyone else.
“Dumb boat,” I grumbledand tipped back the bottle of whiskey I’d saved from the otherwise barren cabinets inside theWave Goodbye.
It was a hell of a name. Still cheesy as fuck, but now more appropriate than ever.
The sun was setting, and the fire department was on its way. I stood on the dock several feet removed from the houseboat bobbing in its slip, engulfed in flames. My nose was bloody and running like a damn faucet, dripping fat drops onto my shirt between swigs of liquor.
Heat wafted off the floating inferno, warming me and my frantic neighbors as they raced along the boardwalk with buckets of water. I leaned against the railing with my back to the glittering ocean. Given another minute or two, I might wander up there and see how close I had to get to light my cigarette in the uncontrolled blaze.
I’d taken out my frustration on the interior of thehouseboat first, ripping fixtures off the ceiling and walls, breaking every VHS tape the previous owners left behind, shredding the mattress of Donovan’s bed and the couch where I, and for a while Maggie, had slept. When that level of destruction failed to soothe the beast of rage inside me, I got a better idea.
Gasoline wasn’t hard to come by. In fact, we kept a can of it on the top deck for trolling to and from the dock’s dumpsite. I wandered outside, inside, above, and below, trailing smelly fuel in a circuitous path. After that, I waved to the woman sunbathing on the boat next door, then struck my Zippo and sacrificed it to the cause. I practically skipped down the steps onto the dock and had been there since, watching the chaos unfold.
It made for quite a sight. Flames licked the sky and raised a billowing cloud of black smoke. People could see that shit for miles.
Let them gawk. Let them come. I’d always wanted to get caught.
Sirens wailed in the distance, racing nearer.
Despite my plans to unleash more havoc on the world by turning Maximus out, Nash insisted on drugging him first. He’d pulled the old man out of the cellar and away from me, dosing him with a potent mind wipe potion and then dropping him off at the edge of town.
Maximus may have had his memory alchemically scrubbed, but his daughter remembered everything. She could come for me at any point and give me the worst of what the Capitol had to offer. Imprisonment. Execution. Dealer’s choice.
I had a few strings to tie up before that happened, though. Namely confronting the only person I blamed more than myself for my disaster of a life: Grimm.
I’d done things out of order, having planned to release Maximus after Grimm was out of the equation. But there was more than onepath to the same destination. It was Grimm’s fault Donovan was dead. His illusion sent me after Maximus, and his lack of intervention allowed Jax and his cronies to exact their murder plot.
I had told Nash I needed to feel something that wasn’t emptiness. Revenge seemed as good an option as any to fill the void my brother left behind. I would burn this city and everything in it if it meant taking Grimm down. Then as I’d promised Holland, I would be at her mercy.
If the investigators didn’t come for me first, I would turn myself in. Without Grimm’s illusionary aid, I would receive the sentence I should have been given at my last trial. From there, it was a short journey to the guillotine on the Capitol’s stage.
If Donovan couldn’t get out of this town alive, then neither would I.
