“Yes and no. The lights? The threads I’m seeing? There’s three that won’t go away.” I keep my focus firmly above both the men. “They’re purple, and they’re attaching us. There’s one between Grayson and me. One between Axel and me. And there’s a third…it leads to the Thorne’s. I know.” I swallow thickly. “I know with certainty that it will take me directly to Darius.”
Axel doesn’t respond, I can see the understanding as it washes across his face. The comprehension that arguing with me on this is pointless. He isn’t going to win this fight. And heknowsit. He clenches his hands into tight fists.
“Darius knew what he was doing, and he did it to protect you. If you die Sunday. If anything happens to you. I hope you understand what it will mean. We may still be alive, but you are our soul. You will ruin us.” Axel spins on his heel, away from us. “Call her. Call the fuckingagent, but mark my words when this goes sideways, and itwillgo sideways, don’t expect me to play by the rules.” Axel slams the door shut behind him.
Grayson doesn’t say anything, he just unwraps from me. For a horrible second, I expect him to run from me too, but then he is offering me a hand. “Come on, Sunday, let’s go onto the roof. I’ll bring a blanket, we can watch the stars tonight.”
“You’re not going to leave too?”
“Axel isn’t going anywhere. He’s probably just outside the door, but he needs to calm down. He knows you’re right. Knows we need you to save Darius. But he hates it. We both do. But unfortunately we’re used to having to make impossible choices.”
Accepting his answer, I take Grayson’s hand and let him lead us up to the roof.
13
September 24th
Jane sits primly on the O’Brien’s living room couch.
“I wasn’t followed,” she advises. “The reporters don’t seem to have your home address either, or maybe they don’t expect you to be here. In the O’Brien’s home.”
I am settled across from her in an overstuffed armchair, Axel is perched on the left, but Grayson stands off to the side between us, his arms crossed.
They are my support, my guards, my family.
Mine.
“Before we start this and go into the details, I want to ask you a question first.” I level her with a stare. It has the full weight of my anger.
She doesn’t expect it and her eyebrows draw up in surprise. “They told you.”
“That you used my brother and my boyfriend as your puppets? That you put them in more danger than they had any right to be? Yes they told me,” I confirm.
Now knowing what I do, I fully and completely understand Axel’s deep-seated loathing of the woman before us. She sent two teenagers on a suicide mission with zero backup or safety. She is why Tripp and Auggie were killed. She may not have run them off the road, but she played an integral part. They never should have been involved.
“Did they tell youwhyAugustus and Tripp approached me?Whythey were so desperate for my help?” Jane leans forward in her seat. “That you were going to be sold?”
My heart beats in my chest, pounds up my throat, thickens my tongue. It takes a few seconds before I can speak again. “Not the specifics.”
Jane reaches behind her, tugging out a sheet of paper. “They purchase the girls and boys before you even graduate.” She unfolds the paper on the coffee table between us.
Ice and heat fight their way across my nervous system. It looks like a page from our yearbook…except that isn’t quite right.
My face is on there, and the picture is from my junior year. My yearbook picture. Except my name isn’t present, instead above my image is the wordmunchkinand below is a dollar amount.
A very high one.
But I’m not the only face, there’s Julia, Tiffany, other classmates I recognize, but not all of them. As if we were all hand selected and compiled onto this sheet.
“Your brother found this, he gave it to me,” Jane continues. “He knew what it meant. That you were on their list, that you had landed on their radar. You might not be purchased, but you weren’t safe. It was only a matter of time.”
My finger traces all the faces, most I know, but some I don’t. They appear older, their pictures not uniform as ours taken from the high-school are. “Where are these from?” I ask.
Jane folds the piece of paper back up, tucking it into her pocket before answering. “The college. This town isn’t that large, but the college nearby increases their options. It is a funneling system. If I had known that…maybe if I had gone before my daughter started there…”
Understanding snaps into place, how her daughter ended up in this mess. The Thornes throw all sorts of parties, for the high-school, for the college, for games, for events, for holidays. She ended up at one and it sealed her fate.
Before I chalked up all the parties to their rich and arrogant nature, a way to flaunt themselves, but now that the blinders have been taken off, I see them for what they are.
