Sebastian almost laughed.
“But I’m not doing that today, junior. I could. And I will, if I ever catch you and those buddies of yours riding your boards around here again. I will personally disassemble you, piece by piece, if I so much as see you riding a fucking tricycle down this street. Do you get me, junior?”
“Yes,” the kid whispered.
“Good. Same goes with talking to anyone about our conversation. Don’t even think it, junior. Make up whatever story you like, as long as it doesn’t involve me, or this little chat we’re having right now.”
The kid started to sob.
Sebastian left him there, bawling, and stepped out from the bushes. He glanced up and down the still-deserted road and brushed the dirt from his clothes.
The kid’s buddies would come back for him, eventually, once they’d realized that their cameraman had dropped off the grid. The kid would make up some story: no doubt something involving an impressive skateboard maneuver gone awry.
On some level, he admitted to himself, an unexpectedly satisfying encounter. There was even a small chance he’d turned the kid’s attitude around. But it mostly made him uneasy: another potential loose end, another variable in the equation.
He climbed back in the car and started the engine.
“Okay, boss?”
Finney’s window was down, through which the kid’s muffled sobs floated from behind the bushes.
“Yes.”
About half a mile along, at the bottom of the hill, the kid’s three friends were standing at the side of the road, staring back up the hill wearing varying expressions of pissed off. One was holding his phone to his ear.
Sebastian gripped the wheel tightly.
There were bad people in the world. He knew that. Bad people who did bad things for no good reason.
So when exactly had he become one?
Thick drops of rain were beginning to splatter across the windshield. He turned on the wipers, and in his head again ran through the plans he’d made for tonight.
Including the ones Finney did not know about.
RITA
“Rita?”
She knew the voice. She followed the sound of it out of the blackness and opened her eyes.
She was lying in a hospital bed, a different one, so she knew she wasn’t in the ER anymore. Darcy was in a chair next to the bed.
“Darcy. Hi.” Rita swiveled her head to meet her kid sister’s gaze. She was, she realized, feeling better. Marginally. Her head seemed heavy but didn’t hurt; her tongue felt thick but moist. Little things. She felt grateful for both. She would take whatever she could get.
Even though the room was dark (Was it night already? Same day, or the next?), Rita could tell Darcy had been crying. The light slipping under the closed door, and radiating from the control panel of the IV pump next to her bed, was enough for her to make out the streaks of tearstains on Darcy’s cheeks, like silvery trails on a sidewalk in the wake of a snail’s passage.
“Oh my God, Rita.” Darcy sniffled liquidly and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. The large gold ring perforating her right nostril wiggled from side to side and flashed in the anemic light. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Her eyes welled with tears, and she flapped her hands in front of her face. “Oh. My. God.”
Rita heaved a mental sigh.
Here we go.
Darcy had barely opened her mouth and already Rita was experiencing a familiar irritation that made her want to roll over and go back to sleep. Darcy was upset, and scared. Rita got that. But please. The drama.
Rita hid her exasperation under a blanket of self-control. It was misplaced, even selfish. What more could she expect? Darcy had never been a pillar of emotional support, or a safe harbor for weathering one of life’s storms. She wasn’t equipped for it, had in fact caused more than her share of nasty storms in Rita’s life and her own. Which was why she was now crashed in Rita’s spare room, without any plans other than to remain there until something better came along.
Still. The last thing Rita needed now was to deal both with her own problems and her infantile sister’s reaction to them. What she wanted most was someone who would listen to her crazy story, and believe her, and tell her everything was going to be okay, someone to help her find a way the hell out of this, preferably with her career and sanity intact. Or at least someone to pretend that these goals were achievable. But that wasn’t going to happen with Darcy.