Page 7 of The Fix
As if.The mere thought of them moving to Palisades Park was a big fat joke.
“How are your applications coming?” she asked.
“I’ve barely started. They’re not due until after Christmas.”
“Never too early to get on the ball.”
“I’ve been on the ball my whole life, Mom.”If I took your life management advice, I’d be a high school dropout working a dead-end job, waiting for a rich asshole to marry.But he didn’t say that. It would hurt her feelings, even though it was true.Becauseit was true. His thoughts made him feel guilty, and he offered a smile. “I’ve got it under control.”
“I know you do. You must have your father’s brains because I know I’ve still got mine.” She laughed at her own joke and then gave him a kiss on his cheek and went bouncing out of the room, glass in hand. Rex gave her back a tired shake of his head. Hemighthave his father’s brains, but he had no idea and neither did she. She didn’t even know the guy’s name—only that he’d stopped in Virginia long enough to have a few drinks and knock up one of the locals before heading out of town.
Rex sat down at the table with a sigh, staring at his mom’s stubbed-out, half-smoked cigarette. He wasn’t surprised she was drinking again. Her “sobriety” never lasted long. And he could practically guarantee that things would quickly go afoul with thisfinanciershe spoke of. They always did. But in the meantime, he’d have to deal with the guy, who was almost certainly greasy in any number of ways. His mom had a type, and it included massive amounts of pomade and questionable ethics.
She was better than all the men who had come and inevitably gone. Too bad she was the only one who didn’t know it.
Rex yawned. He’d have to stay up, though, now that he knew his mom had a date. He’d stay awake until she got home to make sure she was okay. And then he’d help her to bed because she’d probably be three sheets to the wind.
Rex opened the laptop and began logging on to the school site where the draft of his essay was saved. His “potential” was out there, and he meant to move toward it.
He put his hands on the keyboard as his mom’s music started blasting from her room—Gloria Gaynor attesting melodically that she’d survive.
He turned his head for a moment and gazed out the window at the backyard, no more than a dirt lot scattered with weeds and surrounded by a short chain-link fence.
You’re Rex, right?
Sure, he would do his due diligence toward ensuring he had a bright future ahead of him. But couldn’t he also improve himself in the meantime? Why wait? He controlled his own destiny, didn’t he? That meant next year, but it also meant tomorrow.
He pictured Cami Cortlandt, the way her face lit up and her eyes sparkled when she laughed. And he wondered what she was doing right that second as he was sitting across town, staring at his barren yard and picturing her smile.
Chapter Five
Every muscle in Cami’s body was tensed with fear. Her heart pounded as she listened to the garage door lifting and her father’s distant whistling as he strolled toward the house, where he’d enter into the mudroom the same way she had.
She wanted to screech in terror, to warn him, but she was helpless to do anything but wait and pray that he’d be able to fight the two men off that she knew lay in wait just beyond the door.
But then she had an idea. It was Elle’s bedroom that was over the mudroom, not hers, but she was just down the hall and maybe ... She lifted her butt off the mattress and then slammed it down again, repeating the movement so that the bed came off the ground and then pounded back to the floor. Cami did it again, and then again, tears blurring her vision and sweat breaking out everywhere on her body. She heard her dad’s whistle falter as his steps slowed, and she sucked back a sob that had no way to escape, scared that she was at risk of choking herself. But her dad had heard the commotion and, at the very least, was maybe a little more on guard now. Maybe it would be the thing that would mean the difference between those men taking him purely by surprise and him suspecting something was off.
Suddenly, Trig raced into the room, obviously having climbed the stairs so quickly and quietly that she hadn’t heard him coming. He flew at her, slamming his body over hers so that her movements stopped, the bed remaining solidly on the floor.Oh God, I can’t breathe. I can’tbreathe.His chest was over her face, his arms clamped around her body, and she was helpless to move, struggling merely to take in air through her nostrils. All she could do was listen as her dad’s footsteps resumed before the downstairs door opened. Then her body jolted when she heard him yell in surprise. There was a loud scuffle, and despite her lack of oxygen, Cami screamed behind her gag, the sound emerging as a soft buzz, muffled further by Trig’s shirt.
There was one final loud slam, and then all noise ceased from below. In her head, Cami was still screaming, though she’d lost the capacity to force air from her lungs, the only oxygen being pulled into her body a tiny trickle through her nose. Inky dots clouded her vision, expanding and leaking into one another. But then suddenly Trig’s body was off hers, and she leaned her head back, pulling in as much air as she could, the ink clearing as light seemed to explode all around her.
Oh please. Please let the other monster be lying dead on the kitchen floor.But if he was, wouldn’t her dad have called their names by now? Trig moved slowly and quietly across her room to the door, leaning around it to peer into the hallway and over the stairs, obviously not wanting to call AJ’s name and alert her dad to his presence if AJ was in fact unconscious.
“Trig?” AJ’s voice rose from downstairs, and that scream rose in Cami’s mind again. Hot tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes and ran into her ears as Trig let out a sharp exhale and exited her room.Oh Dad. Oh Dad.Was he the one lying dead on the kitchen floor? Or had they just knocked him out like they’d done to her and probably Elle and their mother too? Her sweet sister and mom, who she knew were experiencing the same devastation as they lay tied up in their rooms, wailing silently behind their taped lips.
Cami heard Trig and AJ talking downstairs but couldn’t make out the words. She heard the sound of what she imagined was a body being dragged and then their voices from farther away, coming from the study down the hall, if she was tracking them correctly.
A few minutes later Trig came back in the room. She braced as he moved swiftly toward her, lifting his hand and slapping her across the face once and then again. Pain exploded behind her eye, and she whimpered, pressing herself into her pillow in a useless attempt to avoid another blow. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, his breath sour and tinged with the smell of cigarette smoke even through the thin paper of his mask, “If you do something like that again, I will put a bullet in your pretty head, is that clear?”
Cami nodded, a jerky movement that made her eye throb where she’d been hit. Her stomach roiled, and for a moment she feared she’d be sick and that the tape would ensure she’d aspirate on her own vomit.Breathe. Breathe.
“Good. Daddy is taken care of. He won’t bother us, but he will listen to what we do to his women. That’s the whole point after all.” He laughed as he pulled a phone from his back pocket and opened it before turning it toward her.No. Oh no.Needles poked the underside of her skin. It was her father, tied to the chair in his study, tape over his mouth, blood running down his cheek from a cut over his eye, his head lolling on his shoulder.
Trig put his phone away and stood back, and though she saw the pull of his mask as he smiled, his eyes remained mean. “First, though, I’m hungry and a man has to eat.” Then he turned and walked out of her room.
She lay there for several minutes, the sounds of the men rooting through their cabinets drifting to where she was. She heard the clink of beers and the sound of the microwave door opening and closing. She tried to listen for her mother or her sister but didn’t hear a sound from either of their rooms. She pictured them there, lying bound to their beds like she was, terrified and listening to the noises from below. Waiting to find out what horror would happen next.
“You check out the one in the leggings?” she heard one of them ask the other from below. “She’s hot as fuck.” Cami felt vomit in the back of her throat. He was referring to Elle. Fourteen-year-old Elle.
