Monster (24 page)

Yeah, I bet he was.
Once he got a look at her. Mother fucker.

“So you want her
to ferret out this leak?” I asked.

“Indeed I do.
Hopefully she won't be as,” he said, looking at the dead guy,
“disappointing as this gentleman here.”

“So I am supposed
to hold onto her until she finds your guy?”

“Or until I have
time to look after her myself. Which, unfortunately, is not today. I
have a meeting in the city that should keep me busy for the next
week. I will need you to hold onto her until then.”

A week. I had her for a
week. With Lex out of town. I could work with that. I could find a
way to get Shoot out and get us all the fuck out of town.

“A week?” I
asked, sounding bored at the prospect.

“Provided you can
undo whatever damage you have obviously done,” he said, waving
a careless hand toward Alex's stiff body. “She's of no use to
me like this. She's still like this when I get back, just go ahead
and get rid of her. Can't even have any fun with her when she's a
zombie.”

Fun.

Fun.

I swallowed the
bile and nodded. “I can do that.” I looked over at Alex,
shaking my head like she was a nuisance, then looked back at Lex. “I
can get her out of this sooner, you want me to put her on the case or
wait for your go ahead?”

“By all means,”
he said, splaying his hands that were stained red despite his
rubbing, “put her to use.”

I felt myself nodding.
“We done here?”

“It's no wonder
no one likes working with you,” Lex said, his head tilting.
“You are really a dreadful human being.” Coming from the
scum of the earth, well, I guess I could consider that a compliment.

“You're paying me
to hold onto the bitch. You want to dig at me about how I handle my
shit, it will cost you twice as much.”

Lex sighed. “One
week and I expect you to drop her off.”

“Where?” I
asked, fighting the urge to toss Alex over my shoulder and haul ass
out of there.

“My house.”

Shit.

He meant business with
her.

The kind of long,
drawn-out business I suspected her mother went through.

“Right,” I
said, nodding, moving to the door, snagging the sleeve of Alex's
shirt and dragging her with me. “See you then.”

Limp Dick Rick stood in
the doorway until I turned back behind me, raising a brow at Lex who
flicked a hand, and he moved out of the way.

Alex walked numbly to
the passenger side and climbed up. I got into the driver's and tore
off, not bothering to buckle. Just needing to get the fuck out of
there as soon as possible.

“Are we being
followed?” Alex's voice reached me, making me jump slightly.

“What?”

“Are. We. Being.
Followed?” she enunciated carefully, her words heavy with
something I couldn't place.

“No,” I
said with confidence. I had been paying attention, my mind running
the same way.

“Pull over,”
she said, watching the landscape become more desolate as we left the
town behind.

“It's rain...”

“Pull the fucking
car over!” she shrieked, shocking me enough to pull off to the
shoulder and throw the car into park.

Before I could even
turn to look at her, she was out of her belt and out of the door,
slamming it hard behind her.

I swung out of the car,
darting around it to find her bent forward throwing up violently
beside the front wheel.

Fuck.

I forgot about the
body. I know that was shitty and unfeeling of me. But it meant
nothing to me. Apparently, it meant something to her. It was one
thing for her to see the pictures of the things Lex had done. It was
a whole other to see it right in front of your eyes, to smell the
blood, to see it all over.

“Deep breath,”
I said, reaching into the backseat for a spare bottle of water as the
rain soaked through my clothes. “It'll pass.”

“You don't get
it,” she said, her voice acidic as she rinsed and spit the
water.

“I get it. That
was fucked up to walk in on. But it's over. We got out. We have a
week to figure out what we're gonna do and...”

“You. Don't. Get.
It,” she seethed, turning to look at me and there were tears in
her eyes.

“Explain it to
me,” I tried in a soothing tone.

“I
knew
him!”

“Knew who, doll?”

“The dead guy,
Breaker. I fucking knew him!”

Fuck.

I never stopped to
consider that there was like a hacker underground. They probably all
knew each other in a detached sort of way. “Babe... I know
hackers run in the same circles and shit but...”

“No Breaker,”
she said, shaking her head. She raked hands down her face like she
could claw the image away. “I mean... I
knew him
, knew
him.”

Fifteen

Alex

It was Glenn.

I followed Breaker who
followed Lex into the second room, knowing it was probably not a good
thing that we were being moved to a second location, but not having
much of a choice.

And the second that I
stepped through, my eyes fell to the chair.

And they found Glenn.

Glenn the sweet,
slightly overweight hacker who taught me almost everything I knew.
The only person on the planet aside from Breaker who knew even part
of my story.

The guy I used to have
sex with.

Weird, awkward,
passionless sex.

But still.

I knew what his lips
felt like on mine, what his body looked like. I knew his voice when
he was excited for me when I finally understood a concept he was
explaining or the way he said my name like a warning when he got
frustrated with my ever-present runaway temper. I knew that he hated
coffee and preferred energy drinks. That he thought crunchy cheese
curls were superior to the puffed kind. I knew that his mother still
bought him underwear for Christmas and his laptop cost four times
what mine did (and mine was expensive to the point of obnoxious).

I
knew
him.

And he was dead.

By Lex's hands.

Like my mother.

Used as a puppet and
bled dry.

Like my mother.

The
god damn son of a bitch took everything,
everything
from me.

“What
do you mean you knew him knew him?” Breaker asked, his head
tilted at me, water spilling down his face and dripping off his
beard. Funny
because I was blissfully unaware of
my own wetness.

“When I was out
on my own... looking for people to help me figure out the hacking
thing, I found Glenn. His name was Glenn,” I said, my voice
wobbling a little and I winced at it. But I couldn't help it. It kept
getting more and more shaky as I went on. “Glenn Gable and he
was just a couple years older than me. And he was good and patient
and he loved his mother and his hands were always warm to the point
of being clammy. And he thought crunchy cheese curls beat out the
puffed kind. Which is stupid. Puffs are way better. But he loved them
and he downed them with green energy drinks and he used to rub my
back when I would sit and stare at the computer all day every day
trying to learn what he was trying to teach me and...”

“You dated him,”
Breaker said, his voice soft. My eyes went to his, expecting to see
mockery there. Because Glenn wasn't super hot guy badass material
like Breaker was. But all I saw in Breaker's blue eyes was
understanding. Sympathy.

“Yes,”
I admitted, the tears that had been stinging my eyes finally winning
out and brimming over. “It wasn't good. But
he
was good to me and I cared about him.
And Lex
killed him
!”

“Oh baby...”
he said, his arms reaching for me and hauling me against his chest as
his arms squeezed me hard enough to make breathing difficult.

But in a weird way, it
still felt good. So I turned my face into his neck and I let the
tears come.

I wondered if Glenn's
mother would ever know what happened to him. Or if he would just be a
missing person and empty casket for her. I hadn't met her, but I had
seen pictures. She was an even heavier, feminized version of Glenn.
Same dark hair. Same roundish face. Same nice brown eyes. She looked
like the kind of woman who cried at greeting cards.

She wouldn't have
anyone to buy underwear for at Christmas anymore.

At that, I cried some
more.

And Glenn would never
get a chance to finally reach the final level in that video game he
had become obsessed with the day before Breaker took me. He had
bought a case of energy drinks so he could stay up for days and play.

I doubt he had even
gotten close to finishing before Lex picked him up.

At that, I cried even
harder.

“He's dead
because of me,” I cried, my words coming out high-pitched and
choked.

“Alex, you can't
think...”

“I'm
the one fucking with Lex's computers. It's me. He was hired to find
me. And he died because he knew it was me all along and he knew he
couldn't tell Lex that because he knew what would happen to me. He
died to protect
me!”

To this, Breaker had
nothing to say.

Because there
was
nothing to say.

There were no magic
words that could make that any less true. Any less painful. There was
no one left in my life who cared about me even in a detached 'we used
to date but it didn't work out' kind of way. There was no one. I had
nothing left.

“No one is left
to care about me,” I whispered against his skin, just loud
enough for me to hear.

But his arms squeezed
me tighter. “That's not true,” he said with certainty.

“Yes, it is,”
I sniffled, knowing I sounded pathetic and not particularly caring. I
earned the right.

“Doll, it's not
true,” he said firmly. “I care about you.”

“No you don't,”
I said, rolling my eyes even though he couldn't see me. “You
don't even know me.”

“I know enough to
give a shit, Alex. I might not see it all because you won't let me.
But I see you. And what I do see, I care about. I don't care that
I've only known you a couple days and it's too soon and it doesn't
make any kind of fuckin' logical sense. Especially since I don't give
a fuck about anyone but myself and Shoot, but I care and I am going
to try to get all of us out of this.”

His words sent warmth
through my insides, making me see for the first time how cold a place
I had been living in.

But that was exactly
the reason he couldn't care about me. I wasn't the kind of girl who
deserved that. I was the kind of girl who was surrounded by death and
torture and obsessions that brought nothing but misery to myself and
those around me.

He might have been bad
news, but everything I had learned about Breaker suggested he was a
good man.

And I couldn't drag a
good man down into my gutters to wade around in the muck with me. It
wasn't right.

I had to find a way out
for myself. And for him. And Shoot. Whatever it took. No one else was
going to die because of me and my mess.

I sniffled back a new
onslaught of tears, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. It
wasn't the time. To break down. To fall apart. I needed to push back
all that dark and lock it away for a time when everyone was safe and
away from my mess. Then I could let it out. Let it consume me if it
needed to.

“You alright?”
Breaker's voice asked and I felt myself nodding even though that
answer was a booming, deafening
no
. “Can we get back on
the road?”