Page 63 of We Are All Liars Here

Preston accepts a truth he’s been avoiding—

It’s fucking over.

A small sigh escapes him. He lets his head fall back against the headrest and, behind the dead stare he aims at the black road, his mind works.

The leather of the driver seat creaks only slightly, as though the Cadillac itself is scared to break the quiet between him and Trevor.

In the thick silence, Trevor waits.

His question lingers in the air, unanswered, unacknowledged. ‘Are you in or out?’

Slouched in the passenger seat, Trevor has his thick nose pinched between his ink-stained fingers. Spent an hour in the early morning in the drunk tank. The cops sometimes like to play the part of the “arrest” when there’s other folk around to witness, so they take his fingerprints and all that business, but there’ll be no record of Trevor’s latest drunken arrest to survive the day.

The ink on his fingers lasts longer than the records.

Harder to wash away, too.

“I’ll be the one.” Preston’s distant tone would sound cold to the likes of Trevor, who thinks he knows him so well, but to the likes of Billie? She would hear it, the separation he pushes between an early regret that brews within him and the harsh reality he doesn’t want to face. She would hear the emotion in his emotionless voice.

Trevor’s brow lifts. A silent, unspoken question. A ‘what the fuck do you mean?’

Preston only side-eyes him for a beat before, “I don’t trust you’ll know when to stop.”

At this, Trevor’s pursed lips crack into a lopsided grin. A smile that seems effortless and carefree, but look close enough and see the tight wrinkles at the corner of his mouth, and how the grin doesn’t quite seem to meet his blank eyes.

“Think I’ll kill your precious girlfriend?” Trevor teases.

Yes.

Maybe.

Whatever the answer is, Preston doesn’t voice it. Instead, he doubles down on his decision. “It will be me.”

“You know the plan is to kill them,” Trevor says, his grin faded and lost now. “All of them—they need to die for what they did to one ofours. That means Billie, too. Especially her.”

“I will decide what to do with her.” The warning in Preston’s sharp tone is matched by the cutting flash in his dark eyes, like moonlight ricocheting off puddles of ink. “Tonight, I’ll give her a scare,” he adds with a fleeting glance Trevor’s way, “when I go after Carmine. But no more than that until the night we finish this. Billie is mine.”

Trevor’s mouth flattens into a thin, grim line. ‘So you’re going to let some trailer trash skank get away with murdering our friend?’ That’s the response dancing on his tongue. But he doesn’t voice it.

Instead, he lifts his chin in an arrogant nod. “Save the best ‘til last,” he says with a sigh. “Kate and Billie. They’ll be shittin’ themselves at that point,” he adds. “I’ll make up some reason for them to come to mine, stay the night. Get a few people over, mess up the crime scene—and we’ll take the girls out that night.”

Preston isn’t under any illusions.Take the girls outdoesn’t mean dancing. It’s the planned end of their journey, the end of their lives. Lured into Trevor’s home, with the pretense of safety. Where Kate will die at the hands of Trevor, and Billie will face her fate with Preston—whatever her fate is.

Trevor’s lips part, as if to speak, but no words come from his mouth. Not when a flash of blinding white light rears up in the distance.

Silence blankets over the pair sitting in the Cadilac, parked on the side of the road, the road that winds all the way up to (what the locals call) Rich Hill.

Headlights flicker over the damp tarmac, heading towards them. And though those in the car couldn’t possibly hear Trevor and Preston’s conversation, neither of them speaks as it passes.

It’s only when the other car has passed, gone over the hill, and disappeared from the rearview mirror, that Preston turns to Trevor and asks, “What about Tonya?”

“I’ll grab her tomorrow. Need her ready for her big scene.” Trevor’s grin breaks out again, and this time it does reach his eyes with a sparkle. A glint of the excitement he gets from this business. Pretending his newfound bloodthirst has anything to do with Henry Maxwell, like Preston can’t see through the lie.

Preston shoots him a questioning frown.

Trevor explains, “I’ll put her in the old servant’s closet on the landing—the one with the false wall.”

Preston nods, a silent ‘yes’, and a weary look in his eyes.

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