Page 61 of These Monstrous Ties
He hadn’t known, he said. Although that could very well be bullshit. He hadn’t known, but he had stuck around. Meanwhile, he’d left me naked in an asylum, full of bruises and a permanent scar.
My fists clench and I reach for the black zipped bag behind my seat.
Nicolas catches my arm.
I shrug him off but don’t grab the bag, narrowing my eyes at him instead. “We can’t sit here all night.”
His brows flick up. “I know. But what do you want to do? After Julie is dead?”
I don’t know why, but it suddenly occurs to me that Lucifer doesn’t know my real name. If he has one, I don’t know his either. Which is good.
I want to stay Lilith. It’s the only way I’m going to get through this.
“What do you meanwhat do I want to do?”I snap. “I want to get the hell out of here and go home.” But I see the red wagon again. I know what he’s asking. I just don’t want to deal with it.
“Sid, look, I know you hate this guy. You should. He’s a piece of shit for what he did to you. All the Unsaints are pieces of shit. But that doesn’t change the fact that inside that nice little white house is a baby sleeping soundly in a crib or a tiny bed and we’re about to murder his mom. So I’ll ask you again.” He grounds the steering wheel in his hand, I watch as his knuckles blanch. “What do you want to do afterward?”
I throw up my hands. “You and Jeremiah should have thought about this beforenow. We can’t kidnap the kid. We won’t live that down without spending time behind bars.”
He snorts. I know what he’s thinking, but the truth is, murder is easier to get away with. For us. Kidnapping a baby…no police station in America will let that shit go. And Jeremiah will kill us if we bring a kid back into the hotel.
Nicolas drums his fingers on the steering wheel, staring at the house in the rearview mirror, thinking. I have no answer. This should have been planned better, but I was so eager to get back at Lucifer, to keep my brother pacified, to prove myself, that we’d made this drive without working out all the angles.
This was a mistake, and we can’t afford to make mistakes. I already made enough of those as it is, according to my brother.
“If you don’t want to do this,” I taunt Nicolas, “we can always go back home and tell Jeremiah we pussied out.”
Nicolas frowns. “I’m not scared of your brother, kid.” I actually believe him, although he’d be the only one, save for me. Most days, though, if I’m being honest with myself, I’m scared, too. “We’ll deal with the mom, then we’ll call 911 from inside the house, and then we’ll go. First responders will deal with the kid.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt. As if that settles it. As if that makes sense. Murdering in the night is beneficial because it will give us much more time to get the hell away from the victim’s house. Calling the cops while we’re stillinsidethe home seems like a horrible idea. But I also don’t have any better ones.
“Okay,” I agree. “I guess we gotta do what we gotta do.”
I open the car door, close it quietly. On the other side of the SUV, Nicolas does the same. Suddenly the vengeance I’d imagined taking against Lucifer is a lot more complicated than it should be.
I open up the rear door, Nicolas opens the opposite one.
“Which?” I ask, glancing at the black bag.
Nicolas shrugs. “Gun is quicker. Knife is more painful.” His eyes flick to mine. “Which do you want it to be?”
“I want to get out of here.”
Nicolas nods. “Got it.” He unzips the bag, tosses me a pair of gloves. When we both have them on, he hands me a Glock, and I take it by the grip. He gets the same, and then we duck out of there, pressing the doors closed to avoid any unnecessary noise.
We stand outside of the pool of lights for a moment, looking the house over before we make our way in.
“The back?” he asks me.
As if I know.
But I nod. He’s letting me think this through. Letting me feel in control. There are lights around back, and we could have just as easily went in through the front. But most homeowners take more precautions with their front doors. As if criminals won’t have the audacity to scuttle around to the back.
Criminals have the audacity to do most anything when they’re already planning to break into a house in the middle of the night.
We circle around the house on opposite sides, keeping out of the pool of light until we absolutely have to step in it. I take the side of the house away from the shed. I don’t want to see the fucking red wagon again.
We meet in the backyard, both nodding that the coast is clear. Here, there’s a forest beyond the backyard, an endless landscape of trees that goes God knows where. The back porch is smaller than the front, just a few steps leading up to a screen door. There’s an aboveground pool with a tarp over it, and a few toys scattered across the lawn.
