Page 37 of The Lies We Believe

Luckily, the garage window was unlocked. I flicked the latch and pushed it open enough to drop my bag down. After one final glance around, I slipped out and closed it behind me. I slid my arms through the straps and tightened them around my shoulders. I didn’t know how long it would take me to get back into town, but knowing I had some supplies was enough for me to trust the plan I had would work. It had to fucking work. I’d only get one shot.

The boundary fence was low on this side of the house, so it was easy enough to climb it and get into her yard. The drop on her side took me by surprise, but a bush broke my fall and the rest of the undergrowth gave me enough cover to get to the end of her property unseen. I could hear her talking to someone on her back deck. Guilt ate away at me as I clambered through the post and rail fence at the back of her yard by the woods. Banehad recently had a six-foot solid fence installed on his for my protection.

I scoffed at the idea. The only thing I needed protection from was him. The devil couldn’t reach me, so he took the most precious thing I had out of my life. I wouldn’t go willingly to my grave. I would make every second count, because even though Bane turned his back on me, I wouldn’t turn mine on him. Everything I did from here on out was for him.

It wasn’t long before I came to the end of the row of houses and reached the sidewalk. I paused, taking in the surrounding streets, and tried to regulate my breathing before heading in the opposite direction to the one Bane had taken me on his bike. Every step hurt. I was already raw, but it rubbed salt on my open bleeding wounds. I could suffer for him, to help bring an end to the suffering Black Dahlia brought to so many like myself.

A craving crawled under my skin that I hadn’t felt since my eyes fell on Bane in that interrogation room. The scent of tobacco smoke drifted on the gentle breeze as the golden sun in a cloudless sky mocked me with its brightness. At the bus stop, a man sat in a heavy coat, with a cigarette between his lips, staring intently at his phone.

“Hey.” My voice sounded like I’d swallowed glass. “Can I bum a smoke?”

The guy looked up. He was younger than I expected but had a refined air to him. His brown eyes narrowed for a second as he inhaled, the cherry burning a fiery red. “Sure.” He held out the packet to me, flicked the bottom to make one pop forward, and passed me his lighter.

“Thanks,” I mumbled around the tip as I placed it between my lips and lit up. Taking a deep inhale, my eyes fell closed as the thick toxic smoke filled my lungs, pushing its venom into my veins.

“No problem, kid,” he said in a gruff, no nonsense voice. “You got somewhere to go?”

I grunted in response and chewed the inside of my cheek as I toed the cracked pavement, unwilling to answer his question. Why couldn’t he be like everyone else, too wrapped up and consumed in their own lives to notice mine spilling around me in a pool of blood?

“I’m not some kind of stalker.” He huffed a breath, smoke billowing between his lips. “You just look like you’re running.”

I snorted. “Story of my life.” My voice cracked and broke, just like my shattered heart. I inhaled a long drag and rolled my lips inward to stop the flow of words and palpable pain that wanted to spill from me.

“Don’t talk much, huh?” I shook my head. “Spent time in the foster system, I assume?” He took my silence as agreement. “Me too, kid. It might suck now, but if you want to, you can make it out and stop the cycle from repeating.” He ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. “I left at eighteen, with only the dollars they gave me to my name. Now I run shelters across the state.”

I blinked up at him in his sneakers, jeans, and big thick coat. I couldn’t see it if I was being honest, but he laughed like it was no skin off his back. Probably wasn’t—we had to grow a thick skin early in the system or it’d chew you up and spit you out before your age ended in teen.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He snorted. “It wasn’t easy. I worked my ass off to get where I am.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a card, passing it to me.

Better Together was embossed on the thick white card along with the name Alan Rothschild. I flipped it over a couple of times, noting the phone number scribbled on the back before shoving it in my pocket. I could feel the weight of his gaze on me, but I ignored it and took another inhale.

“Keep that with you. Never know when you might need it. My name is Alan, by the way. Stick with me, and I’ll make sure you get to town. I’m assuming you don’t have any money?” Without waiting for me to answer, he handed me a new packet of smokes and a lighter. My heart flipped from this random act of kindness by a total stranger. “Come on kid, let’s go,” he said just as the bus pulled to a stop at the curb in front of us.

Holme Oaks was bustlingand vibrant, the main strip filled with hoards of shoppers and friends. But like any metropolis, behind the glittering facade, you could find the darkness that existed around every corner. Blood money flowed just below the surface. Extortion, racketeering, and every addiction under the sun walked hand in hand with glowing white smiles and million-dollar haircuts. You just had to know where to look, then follow the breadcrumbs to the places where the sun never shone as sin owned your soul.

I’d never walked around downtown, but all towns felt the same. It didn’t matter where you were in America—whether in a small town or a sprawling city—it was never hard to find the places where the broken and the addicts drifted, clinging to the shadows.

For my plan to work, I had to be exposed long enough to be seen, so I stopped by a coffee shop on the way and grabbed an XL Americano before taking a side alley and leaving the world most knew behind. There were always districts that lived in the shadows, even on the brightest days, where the shop facades had barred windows, cracked glass, and the bullet holes. Sidewalkswere broken and weed ridden, unattended and overused. Litter, broken bottles, and used needles hugged the curbs and built up in building entrances. The old industrial units that had yet to be repurposed were where I was heading for the night. They wouldn’t take me in the cold light of day, not when they could be seen. The stench of urine and rotting food replaced clean air and the delicious scents drifting from artisan shops selling handcrafted delicacies.

A faded tarp covered a hole in a wall. I’d spent long enough on the streets to know this marked the entrance. I pulled it aside and stepped through into hell on earth, where the living prayed for death and the dead begged for life. The stench of desperation and discontent was smothering. Small fires flickered faintly in the darkness, surrounded by groups of people while others lay passed out on stained mattresses with needles still in their arms and vomit drying on their lips. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as a woman’s screams rendered the air, but no one ran to her rescue. It was a regular occurrence in drug dens like this. If you had no money, you used whatever means you had to pay. It began with stealing, but when the monster of addiction had you firmly in its grip, you’d sell your soul for another hit. What was a beating or rape when oblivion was but a few seconds away?

What did it say about me, that I felt more at home, more at ease in this environment than I did at Bane’s? He kept his clean, ordered white on white house perfectly maintained, but it made me realize the gulf standing between us. I felt like the filth on the bottom of his shoes; a pretender, an actor playing a role, expecting to be thrown back onto the streets before I could blink.

Beams of light seared my eyes as I trudged in the opposite direction of the screams, exhaustion settling into my bones. In our own way, we were all just trying to survive, to make it from one day to the next in places like this, chasing oblivion, a fleetingmoment of reprieve, of happiness. But death stalked us all from the shadows, counting down the seconds until he could claim us.

“You’re new,” a voice snarled from the dark corner. “No one comes in here without my knowing. Pay the levy, or I’ll take a payment of my choosing.” A sneer curled the man’s lips, revealing rotten teeth as he stepped into the muted light.

Without answering, I shoved my hand in my pocket and pulled out a fifty, holding it up so he could see it. He reached for it, but I stepped back, only to walk into a wall of muscle. Glancing up over my shoulder, I saw two men who looked like they could rip my throat out with their bare hands. The confidence I’d had in my plan evaporated, and my heart thundered up my throat. “I-I.” I clutched at my throat. “Just need...t-t…l…la…low…night.”

Rotten Teeth looked me over, then nodded to the guys behind me. “Take him.” The bald guy behind me put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, eyeing me like I was his favorite snack. His yellowed tongue teased his bottom lip, and I shuddered at the implication. “But first, payment.” I held the bill out in front of me as Rotten Teeth reached out a gnarled hand, his black-tipped fingers snatching it from my grasp and stuffing it into his inside pocket. “This gets you one night. If you bring the feds to my door, there ain’t nowhere you can hide from me.”

With my arm wrenched painfully behind my back, I was forced through puddles of filthy sewage, the foul stench making my nose bleed. Each step felt heavier as my guilt weighed me down and my resolve crumbled. The farther we went, the darker and more oppressive the air became. My skin crawled, every nerve alight with disgust, and my stomach twisted in revolt. Rats darted through the heaps of rotting garbage lining the path they pushed me down, their slick bodies vanishing into shadows as our waterlogged footsteps echoed through the cavernous, crumbling warehouse. A suspicious-looking bag covered in ducttape was half buried under rubble, and I thanked the gods I was led away from it. I’d spent enough time with dead bodies to last me a lifetime. I might not have known who was in there, but I couldn’t do another night with one.

“This is yours.” Baldy pointed to a two-foot square dry bit of cement. A pile of cardboard boxes lay a few feet away, strewn across rubble where the wall had collapsed. “Pretty boy like you won’t last an hour in a place like this.” He huffed and leered at me.

Little did he know, I’d spent nearly two years on the streets. I knew exactly what I’d have to do to survive. I spun around and flicked the pocket knife I’d lifted off him open and pushed it against his gut. His eyes widened in shock, but all it did was intensify the way he looked at me.

Holding his hands up, he took a step back and licked his lips. “I’ll be seeing you later.” His words hung in the air, a threat as much as a promise. I watched him walk away. I wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight or any night, but with nothing else to do, I grabbed some boxes and made a makeshift bed to keep my mind occupied instead of thinking about the colossal mistake I was making and the guilt encircling my heart.

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