Escape Theory

CHAPTER 19




The last remnants of daylight were fading from the sky. The night was taking over, ushering the brighter colors off stage. Devon leaned back on the bench against the cement wall of the Palace. But the beauty offered her no comfort and with all the graffiti vying for wall space around her, she felt as if she were in a bathroom stall. Trapped. It was hard to imagine that seventy years ago soldiers sat here, scanning the ocean for incoming enemy activity. It seemed ironic. This used to be a place of safety, security. And now it was for rebellion and secrets, the worst of all, murder.

Tires twisted on the dirt path above. A door slammed. Devon checked the six pack of Gersbach beers at her feet, the notebook in her lap. Everything was in place.

“Babe? You down here?” Eric’s voice called. He was getting closer. Devon exhaled long and slow. Looking calm and confident was key. This was her session. She was in control here.

Eric rounded the corner and stopped when he saw Devon. “What are you doing here? Where’s Maya? She was meeting me here.”

“I know. Maya called you. But I’m the one meeting with you.” Devon stood up. “Have a seat. Pop a beer.” She slid the cardboard pack toward Eric with her foot. The glass bottles clinked together.

Eric tucked his hair behind his ears and glanced around. “Nah, Maya wouldn’t do that. Where is she?”

“Well, she did. And she’s not here. Maybe you two have more trust issues than you thought.” Devon sat back down and crossed her legs.

“Excuse me?” he said. “What’s this about, Devon? You wanted to have a beer with me in honor of Hutch or something?”

“I’ve got something for you.” Devon tapped the hard edge of her notebook. “Heard you were itching to get a look at my session notes.” Eric eyed the notebook in her lap. “Figured, if you were gonna pay someone to steal them from me, we could just cut out the middleman. I make a little cash; you get what you want. That is what you want, isn’t it? To find out what everyone’s been saying about Hutch. About you.”

The crickets filled in the silence as Devon leaned down and pulled a beer from the six-pack. With one deft move, like she had seen Raven do, she snapped the metal cap off with a pop of her hand and the bottle against the stone bench. Devon took a long pull from the bottle like Eric’s answer didn’t matter to her. The beer tasted sour and the bubbles were thick in her throat. Just try not to hurl in front of him.

Eric broke the silence with a short laugh. “Listen. You could get suspended for being out here, doing what you’re doing. You should walk back up that hill and check yourself into your dorm like a good Keaton kiddie.” He stood, arms crossed, towering over Devon. Okay, maybe staying sitting down wasn’t the best idea. “Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”

“Probably not. Want to explain it to me?”

“It’s not in your notes, I can tell you that.” Eric reached down and grabbed a beer and used a lighter to snap the cap off. He took a sip and looked out over the distant ocean. “Besides, I don’t need your notes to know what happened. Hutch committed suicide. We had some family stuff go down and he was upset.”

“Upset that he was set to inherit everything? Or, was it you that was upset?”

Eric glanced at Devon and then turned his gaze back to the horizon. “You spoke to Reed? He tell you how he was going to betray my dad and me? How I only found out about it by accident?” Devon didn’t answer. She let him fill the silences, as she was trained. “Yeah, he wasn’t even going to tell us. His lawyer’s secretary screwed up this summer and gave me the wrong envelope with Reed’s revised will in it. Reed wanted to give all the land to Hutch to make sure it becomes a nature preserve or some shit like that. He has no idea how much money we could make if we just let the Dovers drill. He’s sitting on a goldmine and what does he want to do with it? Keep away the one person that is willing to pay him for this stupid land.”

“You’re smart,” Devon said.

Eric turned to her. “What?”

She lifted her shoulders. “It’s a smart move if you want to get in with the Dover family. I mean, you’re looking at a potential statutory situation with getting Maya pregnant, but bringing something the Dovers want to the table could help your cause.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t going to matter. Reed wouldn’t budge. And that same week Maya found out … we found out she was pregnant. I lost it when she said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it. You know it’s my life that would get screwed too. I’m the one that’s supposed to become this great doctor. And then, to find out Hutch was helping her get the pregnancy test? How much more could he turn against his own family? Against me? That’s not how brothers are supposed to act. I was raised knowing this land would one day be mine. And in one week Hutch takes the land and tries to turn my girl against me?” Eric tossed his bottle over the hillside. “He probably killed himself because he couldn’t live with the betrayal.”

Still clinging to the lie. “Reed is dying. That’s why he changed his will. He’s going to be gone in a matter of months.” Devon looked at him, calm and assured.

“How do you know that?” He tucked his hair behind his ears again. “That’s true? Shit.” He shook his hands out and flexed his fingers like he was warming up for a fight.

“That’s why he had those pills in his house. The ones you found and slipped to Hutch in a beer like the one you just finished. Did you regret it all? Because, you still sent that text to everyone in his phone book, so you were probably around to watch your own brother die at your feet. What do they call that? Fratricide? It’s a good SAT word.”

Eric said nothing. The hairs on the back of Devon’s neck rose as he stood still looking at the view below. How could he not react? How could he not fill this silence?

Finally Eric spoke. “My knee was killing me. I was at Reed’s. We were arguing, and the pain was making it all worse. I found the Oxy in his bathroom. I put it in my pocket to take with me back to the city. I was going to go back to the city that night, but I called Hutch to try to talk it out again. He wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t going to listen, but he agreed to meet me here. I waited for him, and I don’t know why, but I started crushing up the pills and put them in his beer. I didn’t wake up wanting him dead that day. Really. This wasn’t easy for me. I loved my brother.”

Eric turned and looked at Devon, his eyes exploring her body up and down. She suddenly felt gross, exposed much too casually to someone so foul, so dangerous. He kept his eyes set on her as he reached for another beer. But in one swift move, he darted toward her and yanked her to her feet by the front of her shirt. He spun her around and broke his beer bottle against the wall of the Palace. He was strong, even stronger than he looked. Devon’s arms flailed behind her, but she merely slapped and pecked at Eric. He held the broken bottle to her throat.

“What’s to stop me from shutting you up right here? I killed my brother, you really think I wouldn’t hesitate to kill some nosy little bitch?”

“People know I’m here,” Devon whispered. Her voice quavered. “They’ll know it was you. Maya will know. Please.” She tried to dig her nails into his arms, but they didn’t break skin. He didn’t flinch.

“Oh, that’s not a problem. I’m thinking that you were so distraught over Hutch’s suicide, everyone knows it, everyone’s seen you obsess about him, that you came down here where he killed himself and slit your wrists. It’s romantic but it’s also a slow death. Gives me enough time to text your suicide note.”

Devon was crying now. She tried to kick his legs behind her but caught air.

“The common misconception about slitting is to go across like this,” Eric used the glass and cut a thin line across Devon’s wrist. The blood sprung to the surface, as if making a jailbreak from her skin. “But really, the way to do it is to cut upwards, severing the artery like this.” Eric dug the glass into the center of her wrist. Devon screamed. But the glass didn’t go any further. Eric let go and Devon fell to the ground.

Above her, she caught a blur of someone wearing a white hat. Grant? He pulled Eric away from Devon and punched Eric in the center of his jaw. Eric’s head spun from the impact. It moved so fast it looked like it could spin a full rotation.

“Leave her alone,” Grant choked out, his voice thick. “You’ve done enough.” He punched Eric again and Eric fell to the ground.

“You suddenly going to do the right thing?” Eric said as he wiped at the blood running from his nose. “She’s never going to be into you. Don’t you get it? It’s my brother she’s wanted this whole time.”

Grant’s chest heaved. His right hand was clenched, ready to strike again. He looked at Devon, still sprawled on the ground clutching her wrist. “Yeah, well, Hutch was a better guy than you or me.” Eric stood up.

“Give it up. You’ve taken too much money from me to suddenly switch sides. Let’s go.” Eric turned to walk away dismissing Grant as a credible threat.

Grant looked at Devon again. And then he stepped forward and leveled Eric with another right hook. “I should have done that when he asked me to steal from you.”

Eric lay on the ground, passed out and bloody. Dirt streaked across his face. Devon could feel shards of glass on the ground digging into her thighs but the pain was remote. Nothing seemed to hurt. Her wrist bled and she held onto it, watching the blood ooze down her arm in long tendrils. Grant sat down next to her. He looked at his own hand, the skin on his knuckles torn and already swelling.

“How did you know …?” she began.

Grant shook his head. He was still breathing heavily. “Maya told me you were down here. I didn’t trust Eric.” Grant spotted the notebook on the bench. “You were really going to hand those over?”

“What do you think?” Devon said, trying to smile despite the pain. Grant flipped the notebook open. The Four Seasons room service menu was inside. Grant smiled.

“Nicely played, Miss Mackintosh.” He smoothed back a strand of hair from Devon’s cheek.

“Devon?” Raven’s voice called from behind the Palace. “You down there?”

Devon mustered a tentative, exhausted smile. “The cavalry,” she said.

Raven and Bodhi ran down the hill, flashlight beams waving. “We’re fine,” Devon called.

Raven crouched next to Devon and examined her wrist while Bodhi stood over Eric. “I think you’ll live,” Raven said.

Devon looked at Eric lying near her feet coming back from his knockout. “We get it?” Raven pointed to a corner of the Palace bunker. A small camera was wedged in the corner.

“We got it. Good work, Counselor. Oh, and I should tell you. You know how we jammed the camera in your therapy room? Yeah, well, we didn’t really jam it, we just re-routed the feed to our monitors at Reed’s.”

“You got all my sessions?”

“Yeah, fascinating stuff.” Raven shrugged.

Grant rubbed Devon’s shoulder. “Looks like I’m not the only one screwing with your confidentiality around here.” He stood up and helped Bodhi zip-tie Eric’s wrists together.

“This is for you, by the way.” Raven pulled a thumb drive from her jacket. “Copy of the confession. Might want to give it to Maya. She can hear it from Eric this way. Figured she deserved to know.”

Devon looked at the small drive. The adrenaline was still coursing through her body. She felt tears running down her cheeks. “Thanks,” she murmured. “Being here with him made me think about Hutch. He was just trying to do the right thing.”

Raven sat in the dirt and wrapped an arm around Devon. Despite her bloody wrist, Devon buried her head in Raven’s shoulder and sobbed. The tears came in a pulsing wave. “I miss him,” she said.

“Me too,” Raven said, holding her tight.