Fatal Beauty (20 page)

Part 5:

The End

Las Vegas Police
Department, Interrogation room B.

Detective Blackmon:
Tell me about your
relationship with Ella Jane Munro.

Charlotte Brooks:
Have you found her?

Detective Blackmon:
(silence)

Brooks:
How long have I been here?

Detective Blackmon:
(silence)

Brooks:
The strong silent type
doesn’t work for you, sugar. You’ve already been far too chatty for that shit.

Detective Blackmon:
Tell me about Ella.

Brooks:
What do you want to know?
She’s my best friend. She held me together. She’s a bitch and a sociopath, and
she’s the best person I’ve ever known.

Detective Blackmon:
You sound like you’re in
love with her.

Brooks:
(crosses arms) Have you
ever had a best friend, Detective? Has your wife?
 

Detective Blackmon:
(silence)

Brooks:
That’s what I thought.
Don’t put words in my mouth. Of course I love EJ. But I’m not in love with her.
And right now, I’m pretty pissed.

Detective Blackmon:
Why is that?

Brooks:
Stop fishing, Detective.
You aren’t very good at it, and I’m tired.

Detective Blackmon:
Tell me why you’re pissed
at EJ.

Brooks: (
silence). None of this was
supposed to happen. I don’t even know how we got here. It doesn’t make sense.

Detective Blackmon:
Tell me.

Brooks:
It was an accident. That’s
the thing—all of it was a fucking accident. None of it was anything we planned.
We only ever planned one thing—

Detective Blackmon:
What did you plan?

Brooks
: (Silence)

Detective Blackmon:
Oh for fucks’ sake, tell
me. What the hell did you plan?

(Door Opens)

Male Voice
: Sir, my client doesn’t
have to answer any of your questions. And if you don’t mind, I’d like a moment
with her.

Detective Blackmon:
I do mind. Who the fuck
are you? Who let you back here—she isn’t charged with anything, she doesn’t get
a fucking lawyer.

Male Voice:
If she isn’t charged,
she’s free to go. (
at
Brooks) Get up. We’re leaving.

Detective Blackmon:
Now wait just one
goddamned minute!

Male Voice
: Sir
do
you intend on charging my client? (Silence) I didn’t think so. Time to piss or
get off the pot, son. Now we’re leaving.

Chapter 32

“Get up, Charlotte.”

She’s staring, and it doesn’t make sense, not really, that her father
is standing here in a police station in Las Vegas. He looks rumpled, his suit a
little worn and wrinkled by travel. But he’s imperious, every inch a defense
attorney as he bullies his way out of the interrogation.

Blackmon is glaring at her, and she glances at the handcuffs on
her wrists, holding them up with a little jingle.

“For fucks’ sake,” Travis growls. “How long has she been
restrained? If she isn’t being charged, this is gross negligence.”

“Calm down. She got violent earlier and was restrained for her own
safety.”

She feels the look her father slides at her, but she doesn’t
acknowledge it. What time is it? Where the fuck is EJ? Are they right? Is the
blood in the hotel room EJ’s? And if it is—she swallows hard, shoving down the
pain and panic that’s clawing to get free.

EJ is fine. She is, because she has to be.

It takes less time than she anticipated to get out of the police
department. Hayes and her father are making promises to keep her close by for
questioning and she’s quiet between them, ignoring the furious stares from
Blackmon.

He thinks it was a plan. All of it. She wants to laugh at that, a
hysterical noise clawing in her throat to break free. She swallows that noise
down and keeps pace with Hayes, ignoring the feel of Blackmon’s eyes boring
into her back as her brother escorts her outside. The cops are staring at her,
and whispering and she wants to stop and scream at them, wants to demand
information about EJ. But Hayes is relentless, and her father is flanking her,
and neither will tolerate her slowing.

Jasper is standing in the lobby of the police department, huge
dark circles under his eyes as he paces restlessly back and forth, waiting
for—what? What the hell does he think she’s going to be able to give him? She
catches his eyes as Hayes pulls her along, and sees the leap of excitement
there, the wild hope and she shakes her head, once, a tiny motion.

Daddy, at her side, catches it, and his gaze narrows on the other
man.

“Where are we going?”

“I got a room for us at the Luxor,” Hayes says, and she nods as
they step outside. She’s moving by rote, barely aware of what she’s doing as
Hayes tucks her into the back seat, waiting for Travis to settle next to her
before Hayes shuts the front door and slides behind the wheel.

“What the hell are you doing, Charlotte?” Travis breathes and she
glances out the window. Watches with blind eyes as the city slides by in a wash
of lights and people and fountains. She can feel her father fuming next to her
and the unasked questions from her brother, but she doesn’t address either of
them.

“Do you know the FBI wants to talk to you about Anthony Jacobs?
How the hell do you even know that piece of scum?”

A tiny smile twists her lips. How would her father react if he
knew that Jacobs had fucked his precious daughter? She shoves that thought
down. Of all the stupid things she’s done in the past few
weeks,
that
might be the one she doesn’t regret.

In the hotel room, her father stares at her, and Hayes leans
against the wall. “Tell me what happened,” Travis says.

She shakes her head and he swears. “Charlie, it’s time to quit
acting like a child. I just pulled you out of an interrogation room. What about
this seems like a game?”

She laughs, and it’s a high pitched noise that rings panicked and
hysterical. “It’s all a fucking game!” she almost screams.

Travis stares at her, and she shakes her head. She’s shivering,
and she can’t stop.

“Where is EJ?” she asks abruptly.

Hayes breaks first, glancing at Travis for a cue. That’s her
brother. Always looking to dad for approval.

She glances away from him, looking at her father. He won't meet
her gaze, and that alone confirms it. "You know. What Blackmon wouldn't
tell
me.
What is it? Where is she?"

"You don't want to know, sweetheart." He says, and looks
at her. There's worry and concern in his eyes--the pit bull lawyer is gone, if
only for a few minutes, and she's staring at her Daddy, the man who always
protected her.

It's going to break his heart but she says, "You can't
protect me from this, Daddy. Tell me the truth."

*

The water is swirling around the drain, and she's crouched on the
floor. She doesn't know how long she's been here. It doesn't matter. Her father
and brother are waiting on the other side of the door, but--

She squeezes her eyes shut, pushing the thought away. It hurts to
think.

It hurts more to remember. Her father's voice, steady and calm.

The Nova was found this morning, around nine. While Blackmon
questioned her. There had been bullet casing and one body.

A female body.

Ella
.

She shoves that thought down. There were a lot of explanations—or
maybe not a lot, but there were some, and EJ wasn’t dead. She was too smart for
that shit—Jacobs wouldn’t kill her.

Unless she emptied out his millions and threatened to run. If she
threatened to kill him. What would he do then?

She shudders and shakes her head. Because she can’t afford to
think like that.

There comes another knock on the door, and her father’s voice.

“Charlie. You need to come out.”

She doesn’t want to. But he’s right. She can almost hear EJ’s cold
and amused smirk. Her dry order to get her shit together. So she stands up and
with shaking hands, she turns the water off. She dresses quietly, and secures
her hair in a tight ponytail on her head. Applies makeup quickly and quietly.

When she emerges from the bathroom, it’s almost as if she hadn’t
just spent the past hour sobbing in the shower. Hayes is drinking, and she
walks past Travis to take the drink from him.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and his gaze darts to hers. She doesn’t
need any more explanation than that, and his gaze tightens just a little before
he shrugs. Nods once.

It was an exceptionally shitty thing to do, drugging her brother.

“Tell me what the hell you’re doing here and what kind of trouble
you’re in.”

She nods and licks her lips. “Promise you’ll let me tell it, all
of it. And then you can yell, if you want.” Travis frowns but he nods. It’s
startling how much the threat of his yelling doesn’t bother her.

“I killed Tre.”

*

She talks for what feels like hours. Until her throat aches and
Hayes calls down for food and more alcohol. She tells them all of it. Tre’s
abuse and the night that everything went wrong. Calling EJ. Jacobs and his
help. The week in Nola. Everything that happened—the only thing she leaves out
is the detail about fucking Jacobs, and the night with EJ.

And she doesn’t tell him about the fake IDs and the millions they
stole from Jacobs. For reasons she doesn’t want to think about, she isn’t ready
to share that.

“But EJ is dead.” She chokes on that, the word sticking painfully
in her throat.

“So it’s over.” Travis says, and her father sounds old. Ancient,
almost. Older than he had before today. He’s watching her with something in his
eyes he’s never seen. “You can go home, and put all of this behind you.”

Charlie hesitates, and his gaze turns dark. She nods. “Yes,
Daddy.”

She curls on her side, unable to eat, and unwilling to stare at
her father while he is so disgusted.

They think she’s sleeping. They have to think she’s sleeping.
“What do we do?” Hayes asks.

“We put as much on EJ and Jacobs as we can. She can skate with a
self-defense plea.”

“But—Dad. How did this happen?” Hayes asks, and he sounds so
bewildered she almost wants to laugh.

If EJ were here, she would.

How do you become this? What created a girl who will kill and fuck
and blackmail her way to everything she’s ever wanted? They would blame it all
on EJ.

Charlie smiles, a tiny thing that no one will see.

How do you become this?

It is like so much else in life.

It just happens.

Chapter 33

If she were asked to look back, with the hindsight of everything
that had happened, she would say that it all began six months before Wallace Bryce
Talbert went missing. The day Ella Jane Munro sold Llewellyn
Koonts
a hit of blow in the locker room of her father's
country club.

That is where it all began. How do you become the girl who is
wanted by the FBI, hands stained in blood? This. This is how it happens.

But if she
were
asked to
look back, she would have smiled, sweet and southern charm, and she would have
lied.

Because the truth—no one would ever believe that...

*

Vanderbilt University, Five Years Ago…

“I’m bored.”

Charlie glanced at EJ, a smirk turning her lips. The girls are
sitting in a small, almost empty café, just off the campus of Vanderbilt. She
hadn’t expected to find a face from home, not here. And she hadn’t expected to
befriend Ella Jane Munro. But it had happened, despite her and EJ.

“What do you want to do?” Charlie asked, lazily.

“Let’s play a game,” EJ says.

EJ, she learned quickly, loved games. She lived for them. “What?”

“Seduce a boy whose heart you can break,” EJ says, a sly smirk on
her face.

And there it is. So typically EJ she can’t quite be surprised. She
grins. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

Her smile turns coldly calculating. “Paxton. I want you to break
his heart.”

Charlie’s smile stutters, and she wants to say no. But EJ is
watching, too intent, and she knows better.

EJ doesn’t take it well when Charlie goes off script.

“Fine,” Charlie agrees and EJ makes a happy little noise, clapping
as she bounces in her chair.

Her approval shouldn’t matter so much. It never had, before
Vandy
. And at home, it still doesn’t. They exist in
separate worlds in Charleston, and they both seem happy with the arrangement.

She reaches for her phone and she can feel the pleased smirk from
EJ as she types the message to
Pax
.

*

Kiawah Island, Two Years
Ago….

EJ was late.

Charlotte stares at the cottage, and she can’t help but being
furious. It’s dark and still, despite her careful planning to get here an hour
after EJ.

Even knowing that there won’t be one, she checks her phone for
messages.

This is Jacobs’ fault. Again. And EJ will arrive, but when she
does, she’ll be furious, shaking with the pent up rage that only Jacobs can
pull from her.

“Bastard,” she snarls, shoving out of the car.

It was never something they had consciously decided. But keeping
their friendship a secret had happened, so easily and naturally, it was almost
scary. They saw each other more, now that they were both living in Charleston.
But seeing EJ at the club and ignoring her when they ran into each other out
shopping—that was easy. People expected it, because it’s all they had ever
done.

And they were happier without being analyzed by the stuck up
bitches who swarmed them. The cottage had been her idea. Two hours outside
Charleston, and secluded, they had never seen another soul near it, and they’d
been staying here once a month for the past year.

But today—EJ was late.

She wants to be furious, but she knows her best friend, and that’s
not what EJ will need, when she gets here. So Charlie walks inside, tossing her
bag on the bed and starts a fire. Cleans the dusty kitchen and busies herself
bringing the cottage to life, pouring wine.

When EJ finally arrives, the sky has turned dark, and she’s
shaking with unshed tears.

Charlie watches from the window as she climbs out of her car, and
walks, too slowly, to the door.

She moves in a way that is brittle, almost broken, and Charlie has
a flash of fear. What the hell did Jacobs do to her?

EJ makes a low noise when she sees Charlie, a sound that will
forever remind Charlie of a wounded animal, and Charlie moves, her glass of
wine forgotten as she catches EJ as the other girl stumbles. They hit the
ground, hard, and EJ is sobbing, big ugly sobs that are terrifying because they
are so damn broken.

It takes an hour to pull the story from her.

Jacobs had met Peterson. And he approved. “I can’t do this,” EJ
gasps.

The man her mother had been trying to marry her to for the better
part of a year. Jacobs had been the reason she kept saying no. If Jacobs was
giving him her blessing, there was no reason to delay the marriage.

No reason except that EJ was shaking and furious and so fucking
miserable that she could barely breath.

And it infuriated Charlie. “Fuck Peterson,” she snaps. “And fuck
Jacobs, too. What do you want?”

EJ stares at the ground for a long time, so long that Charlie
begins to think she won’t answer.

“I want a castle in Ireland. And I want to bring that fucker to
his knees.”

Charlie smiles as EJ meets her gaze, and there is nothing sweet or
innocent in that smile. “Then let’s make that happen.”

*

Charlie is naked, and lying on her stomach. “He has to think we’re
vulnerable. That we have no option but to come to him for help.”

EJ, propped across Charlie’s back, makes a low affirmative noise. “But
what convinces him of that?”

She sits up, and it makes EJ move.

“Tre. We kill Tre.”

EJ’s eyes go wide, and she makes a startled noise. “Why the hell
would we kill Tre?”

“Because he’s beating me,” Charlie says simply. “And you’ll give
me the bruises to prove it.”

EJ is staring at her, and there is something in her gaze that
makes her want to fidget or fuck her.

Or both.

“You want me to beat you. And then kill your boyfriend.”

“If we called Jacobs, with a body to move, what would he do?”
Charlie asks, patiently. EJ stares at her, and she huffs. “He would get you
away from the danger. Real or imagined—he’d move us both to New Orleans while
he handled it.”

EJ considers that. She’s right. Jacobs has been quietly protecting
her for years, since they were children in Dallas.

“And NOLA is where we need to be. It’s where the Nova is.”

“Are you sure that the information will be in the car?” Charlie
asks.

EJ smirks and crawls forward, until Charlie falls back and she’s
hovering over the other girl. “Yes. Now shut up.”

“Why?” Charlie smirks, head tipped back.

“Because you’re hot as fuck when you’re plotting, babe,” EJ purrs.
She crawls up Charlie’s body and Charlie catches a dark nipple with her lips,
as her fingers find EJ’s hips, and slip lower, sliding deep into her wet heat.
EJ groans, and Charlie smirks. Kisses a path down her body, her fingers fucking
EJ as she swirls her tongue around her clit and draws a shudder from her. When
she replaces her fingers with her tongue and teeth, and digs her nails into the
soft skin of her thighs, EJ falls, bracing herself on the bed, her hips
writhing.

She screams. And even now, two years after the first time they
fucked, in a frat house with a drunken AZK brother passed out between them,
Charlie loves making EJ scream, loves watching her fall apart. She loves that
when they’re together, and she’s pushing her to the brink with teeth and tongue
and fingers, when she ties EJ up and fucks her slow and easy, when she marks
her thighs and breasts with hard fingers and hot wax and the sharp sting of a
flogger—Jacobs doesn’t own her. In these stolen moments, EJ is hers, and she
isn’t forced to share her with anyone.

*

Las Vegas, Nevada.
Now…

The hotel suite is still and silent. Charlie sits on the counter
in the bathroom. The phone is silent and still next to her, and she’s smoking.
The joint will likely piss off her father, but it won’t matter soon anyway.

It buzzes softly, and she slides off the counter.

Jasper: I’m downstairs.

She doesn’t look at the suite. She just pockets her phone and
leaves everything else behind.

No one stops her as she walks out of the Luxor. Whatever Detective
Blackmon is doing, it’s not trailing her. She smiles a little—Travis Brooks had
done exactly what she knew he could. Bought her just enough time to get out.

Jasper is sitting behind the wheel of a huge truck, and she rolls
her eyes a little as she climbs in. “You couldn’t find something a little less
obvious?”

He shrugs, and puts the truck in gear. “Your shit’s in back.”

She reaches for it and surveys the contents briefly. Cash,
passport, phone, a change of clothes. A black thumb drive.

Everything she needs. It takes so little, to destroy one life and
build another.

Jasper looks at her as they pull up to the airport. “What happens
now?”

She smiles. “Go home and pretend you never met a pretty girl in
Las Vegas, sweetheart. Enjoy the cash and forget I ever existed.”

He swallows hard as she kisses him, but his expression is flat and
his eyes are dead when she pulls away. He’s the best kind of tool. The kind
that doesn’t mind being used and thrown away. She smiles and slides out of the
truck.

There is a plane to catch.

*

Kiawah Islands, Seven
Months Ago…

“You know we can’t control everything,” EJ says, quietly. It’s
dark now, and they’ve finally moved from the bed to a spot on the porch.
Charlie is rolling a joint, and pauses in the middle of it.

“What do you mean?”

EJ is still and serious, staring into the gathering darkness.
“Jacobs is dangerous. Even for me to cross, it’s going to carry some heavy
consequences. Are you ready for that?”

Something about her tone makes Charlie nervous but she nods. “Yes.

*

“I heard a rumor today,” EJ says, dropping onto the porch step
next to Charlie. She doesn’t look away from her toe nails, her brow furrowed in
concentration as she applies a coat of shiny red.

“What is that?”

“There’s trouble in paradise for Charleston’s favorite couple.”

Charlie straightens and smiles, a slow thing. “Tell me more.”

“Tre is having an affair?”

“Fuck no. The boy would never think about cheating on me. But—when
I suggest a threesome and take a few carefully planned photos---well. The
evidence is there and it’s pretty damning.”

EJ laughs, “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

Charlie shrugs. “It needs to be convincing.”

“Speaking of convincing—I think it’s time for us to become
friends.”

They’ve been planning this for almost a year and a half. Hiding
money. Plotting. Talking through every fucking thing that could go wrong—and
there were so many things that could go wrong. But this—lying about Tre, and
publically befriending EJ—this is where it all really starts.

“You know it has to sell, right? So we pretend like we’ve never
met. You don’t know anything. We aren’t close,” EJ says, the same thing she’s
said so often.

“We don’t fuck once a month,” Charlie quips, grinning.

“No,” EJ says quietly. She cocks her head at Charlie, gaze
searching. “This is stupid and dangerous. You know that, right?”

Charlie nods, and cranes her head back. EJ leans down, and brushes
a kiss over her lips, soft sweet. It’s a goodbye. Everything changes when they
leave this cottage.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, suddenly. In all the things
they’ve asked, all the plans they’ve made, all the lies Charlie has started to
spin—she has never asked this. Never asked why.

“Honestly?” Charlie asks and EJ nods.

She knows why she is. Because of Jacobs and his infuriating
refusal to see her as an equal, because her mother has all but signed her
marriage license to that fucking pig Peterson, because when she thinks about
living here for the rest of her life, it makes her want to panic.

“I want to see if we can,” Charlie says.

EJ blinks at her. Of all the things she expected, that isn’t the
answer she thought she’d give. Charlie smiles at her and stands. “All in,
baby.”