Page 46 of Cruel Charming Psychos (Necessary Evils 2)

“Breaking and entering, and theft are crimes punishable by prison time. Just because you have the key to my house doesn’t give you the right to everything in it.”

“And yet you’re here instead of filing a police report.” I laugh nervously. He could easily go to the police, just like he says, but he didn’t. “Something tells me that you don’t actually care about the monetary value of your vases and watches. It’s something else you’re after.”

“As much of a monster as you seem to think I am, you should know that I do have the capacity for caring about the safety of my oldest son. Regardless of the little shit you’ve turned out to be, I know that you wouldn’t last a week in prison, and I don’t want to bury another son. Funerals are much more expensive than you would think. They easily cost the same as a vacation to Mexico. Twenty thousand dollars doesn’t sound like much, but the opportunity cost of the lost capitalized interest is enough of a reason to make sure you don’t land in jail where you belong, thus saving me the cost of a funeral.” He lunges forward, grabbing me by the throat and slamming me against the wall. “Now tell me where the fuck my shit is.”

I claw at his hands, a pointless attempt at getting him to release me. He’s filled with rage like I’ve never seen.

“I guess it’d be easier for you to answer me if my hand wasn’t around your throat,” he says between gritted teeth, but only manages to squeeze harder. Then, he relents, letting go and taking a measured step backwards.

I caress my swollen throat. “A pawn shop on the seedy side of town. That’s where you’ll find your shit. You might want to take security with you. You wouldn’t last a minute on those streets. They don’t take well to pompous asses like yourself down there.”

“We will see about that,” he says as he storms out the front door with no formalities.

I reach into my pocket and grab the key, realizing that he isn’t after the vases and watches. This key opens something he doesn’t want opened by someone else and now I’m determined to know why.

ChapterTwenty-One

ADDISON

After going to grab some things from the motel, I got back to the hotel just as Nick returned from getting cash. He told me a story about how he broke into his parents’ home and pawned their expensive things. I didn’t ask any questions.

We put all of our things into a rental car and left our cars behind.

We have no set destination for now. All we know is that we’re heading west to find somewhere to keep Emily before coming back to the Hamptons one last time to wrap up some loose ends. Nick’s parents are furious at the both of us, but I can’t imagine they care enough to follow us too far out of the city. They don’t actually care about Emily. They simply care about keeping up appearances. When the dust settles down, they’ll claim that Emily ran away from home. They’ll paint her as a troubled teenager that lost her way. As for Nick, this is nothing they haven’t experienced before. They’ve shipped him off to boarding schools since he was a teenager. The Hamptons is hardly his home anymore. Nobody will bat an eye at his absence.

We’ve been on the road for a little under four hours and Emily is already begging us to stop so she can use the bathroom for the second time. Ever since her attempted suicide attempt and sobering up, she’s been downing water like no tomorrow.

Nick pulls into a rest stop on the side of the highway. The place is practically empty and sends an eerie chill down my spine. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been terrified of rest stops. Before the world fell apart, I remember going on a vacation to Ohio with my parents. They stopped at a rest stop and left me in the car by myself. An older man approached my window, so I locked the door and tried to hide, but he had already seen me. He begged me to let him in the car and when I refused in silence, he began trying to rip the car door open. My father came running out of the building and confronted the man, pushing him to the ground.

What I know now that I didn’t know back then was just why that man wanted in the car.

That was the last time I ever stopped at a rest stop.

I don’t have the urge to use the bathroom, but I escort Emily inside, protecting her from any would-be creeps that could be lurking in the shadows of the early evening darkness as the sun begins to retreat from the sky. Nick waits in the car.

The place reeks as if it hasn’t been cleaned in days. Flies hover just around the entrance and follow us inside into the dark, musty bathroom. The lights flicker on, triggered by motion sensors at the door. Emily goes into the stall at the end of the row as I wait for her by the door.

It’s quiet as she goes about her business until I hear her urine stream hit the water beneath her.

She calls out to me from the stall, perhaps her way of breaking the ice or filling the air with some kind of noise so that I don’t have to listen to her do her business. “This is kind of exciting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think I understand the question.”

“Packing up all our things in the car and running away. I always dreamed about this day and now it’s finally here.”

I’m not sure exciting is the word. There’s too much emotional baggage collected between the three of us for me to get excited about anything. “It’s a temporary solution.”

“What do you mean?” She flushes the toilet and exits the stall. “I’m not ever going back to that place. This isn’t temporary for me.”

“Our problems don’t go away just because we choose to run away from them. Look at me. I’m proof of that. I left New York years ago and the same troubles were waiting for me when I got back.”

“That’s because you chose to come back. I won’t make that same mistake.” She brushes past me and turns on the faucet to wash her hands. She looks into the mirror and catches my gaze in it. “When I was up in that bathroom, I wanted to die. In the moment, I believed that I could never escape. You and Nick…” She turns off the water and turns to me. “You guys both saved me and I’m forever grateful for that.” She throws her arms around me and embraces me in a tight hug. “We’re a family now.”

I stare into my own reflection in the mirror. The weight of guilt is too heavy a burden. How can this girl reasonably claim she loves me after everything I’ve done? After everything she’s done. The relationship between us should be too fractured to ever be repaired and here we are, a shoulder for the other to cry on. I squeeze her gently before breaking away from her embrace.

I force a smile. “I think I need to use the bathroom after all.”

“Do you want me to wait for you?”

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