Page 60 of Locke

He scratched his head, letting out a long breath. “Well, what the hell do I know about you, Kali? I said we didn’t talk much, but you were tired sometimes from work and that you attended a class or two. That you did payroll and were hoping to get your PCP designation. You know, the more I spoke, the more I realized you’re not forthcoming about yourself, are you?”

Derek actually seemed peeved about this, like there was suddenly something wrong with me being quiet about my life to him. Even though he’d never paid it any mind before. Even though a stranger had broken into his safe place and hovered over him like the Grim Reaper. No, but I was the bad guy because I didn’t tell him about my life.

We were straying from the point.

Feeling bothered, I asked, “He asked you if I told you about the night at the club, didn’t he?”

Now it was Derek’s turn to look confused. “What night at the club?”

“Did he ask you if I told you I’d seen anything?”

He shook his head. “He just asked about you. Said nothing about a club…” His voice suddenly went quiet as realization dawned on him. He let out a sharp breath, his eyes bulging. “Are you talking about the shooting at the Labyrinth?”

I started to shake my head. “No—”

“God, was he part of it? Were you—were you there, Kali?”

“No, no, Derek, I’m just asking if he demanded an answer out of you about something I might have said—”

“Who was this man?”

Max Locke.

Max Locke.

Max fucking Locke.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

I didn’t respond and looked up at the news where, perfect bloody timing, another story aired about the shooting at the Labyrinth.

“The victim was 58-year-old Ronaldo Lopez who was gunned down right here exactly one month ago. Police are tight-lipped and the investigation is ongoing, but residents in Blackwater are dubbing his death a cold-hearted execution. His family is in mourning. His wife, Carolina, has spoken to Blackwater Now, tearfully calling him a loving family man who lived for his children. The successful entrepreneur was an avid activist for children welfare and had donated his time and money into building a Youth Centre and funding the popular kids summer camp retreats where he had personally ensured impoverished kids a place in the register.”

I should have felt dismayed by the death of Lopez, except…I knew better than most. Ronaldo had hurt Locke. When, I didn’t know. How, I didn’t know, either. Why, same fucking answer.

But it had to do with dark holes and that man in the trunk.

He killed me first.

Locke’s words echoed in my head, and with it, my curiosity blossomed, the urge to unravel him growing stronger.

I watched the screen, but my mind was back there again—in that stall with Locke hovering over me. At the cusp of death, I had never felt so alive.

I suddenly wanted to smack myself.

I was feet from Lopez’s dead body. Though I hadn’t seen it when I fled the bloodied bathroom, I heard his pleas before he was brutally snuffed out from the world. Had wiped his blood off my knees and arms. Had it coated on the bottom of my heels, and those heels were still somewhere on that road when I had fled from Locke.

These were memories I needed to put more effort in remembering.

And yet all I wanted to think about was why Locke wanted to know about me. Me. Some nobody in Blackwater. We may have been cut from the same cloth, but I was still irrelevant. And anyway, he hadn’t bothered with me for a month straight, and maybe that was what annoyed me the most. That he had wanted me so badly, and out of nowhere, I was let loose into the world again, not even by him but by the other Blackwater boy people dubbed dangerous.

What was Locke’s game?

He thinks you’ve talked.

But I didn’t think it was that.

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