The Real Mrs. Price (32 page)

And she was right. Marlowe's appetite even came back.

“I cooked enough to last a week,” Belle announced.

Inside the refrigerator were containers filled with roast beef and chicken, vegetables, soups, and desserts.

“Girl, I'm hungry enough to eat all this in a day,” Marlowe said, grinning and licking her lips.

Before she could dig in, though, her phone rang. It was Lucy.

“I heard you made bail,” she said, sounding genuinely happy for Marlowe.

“Thank you for Lawrence,” Marlowe said reservedly. “But I didn't make bail. I don't know who paid it.”

“Yeah, well, he owed me.” She paused. “He said he didn't do too well, though.”

“It went as well as it could go under the circumstances,” Marlowe said with resolve. “People down here have their minds made up about me. Lawrence could've been Jesus Christ flying in on a cloud, and they'd have shut him down.”

Lucy laughed. “Well, I'm glad him being there helped. It was the least I could've done, Marlowe. Lawrence is a good lawyer. Keep in touch with him. Okay?”

“I will.”

“You take care, Marlowe, as best you can,” Lucy added.

“Thank you, Lucy,” she said before hanging up. “And you be careful.”

*   *   *

Marlowe and Marjorie had shared this room when they were little girls because they were both afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep without each other. Marlowe marveled at just how small it actually was now that she was a grown woman. But to those two little girls, this room had been more than big enough.

It was well after midnight. Belle had gone back to her place hours ago, and Shou was asleep, snoring loudly enough for it to shake the walls in this tiny house. Marlowe was tired, and she could easily fall asleep, but it wouldn't be a restful sleep. Lately, none of them had been. Marlowe would close her eyes, fade into a dark place, lie still and heavy like a stone, and then wake up feeling as if she hadn't really slept at all.

She had never had any fantasies about Plato and the fact that he was never meant to stay in Blink. He wasn't even meant to fall in love with her, but she had come to believe that he at least cared about her on some level. Not love. She didn't know if he was even capable of feeling love or being loved. But she thought she'd seen something in him, in his eyes, that last time they were together—vulnerability, wishful thinking, something that she mistook for longing for her.

“You like that romantic stuff,” Marjorie used to say, teasing her.

“So. Ain't nothing wrong with romantic stuff,” Marlowe would argue.

“It's stupid. Ain't it stupid, Shou Shou?”

Shou Shou would smile. “You only think so 'cause you ain't felt it, Marjorie. Once you feel it, it ain't stupid at all.”

And she was so right. It wasn't stupid when you were feeling it, but then again, Marjorie was right, too. It sure made you feel stupid when it was over. She'd twisted the purpose of who he was and what he'd come here for in her mind. She'd twisted the warnings that came from the bones and her dreams into what she'd wanted them to mean.

The spirit of everything he was had been buried so deep inside her that she felt marked, branded by Plato. And she'd loved every minute of the time she'd spent with him. She'd gotten drunk on him, on the flavor of him, and the sensation of him inside her. Plato was supernatural, and the effects of him on her, in her, were otherworldly. It scared the shit out of her that she had let him get that close to her. But he had always been waiting for an opportunity to get what he had truly come here looking for—that money and Eddie—biding his time with her until it presented itself to him and he could take it. Marlowe was a casualty in this war of his, nothing more than bait, and she had no choice but to come to terms with the fact that he never gave a damn about her.

She'd wasted herself on him just like she'd done with Eddie.

“No more, Marlowe,” she vowed quietly to herself. No more making a fool of herself over any man. No more giving. No more trusting. No more sharing her body, her soul, her innermost self with any of them bastards.

Learn something, girl. For once in your life, Marlowe. Learn from this and never let it happen again.

Heartbreak was a mean lesson, but a convincing one.

 

A Sacrifice

P
RICE WAS IN
N
ELSON,
T
EXAS.
He'd searched Marlowe's house while she was in jail and had even gone through her car looking for that drive and of course had come up empty. Plato counted on the fact that Price still held on to a belief that Marlowe knew where it was, but with her being formally charged for his murder, Plato knew that Price was running out of time. If she was convicted, then he was shit out of luck, and he'd never find it. Marlowe was his only hope. She was everything for a desperate bastard like him.

“I think I see him,” Roman said into Plato's earpiece. “Is it him?” he asked.

“Yes,” the woman answered shakily in the background. “Oh, God. Yes. It's him.”

Lucy Price must not have left town after all, Plato concluded.

“He's getting into a silver Corolla,” Roman explained. “I'm on him now.”

All the key players were here, strategically shuffling places on the game board.
Some men become ghosts before their deaths.
Plato was going to have to write that one down. He'd just come up with it, all on his own, out of nowhere, and he dug it. That shit was profound.

Price was a ghost to be ghosted. Dead man walking and all that.

Plato could've walked away and left Price to his own devices. He'd recovered the money, and ultimately, that was all that mattered. He could've left Price to die a slow, agonizing death, like a plant that was never watered, a dog that wasn't fed. But Plato had a debt to pay, and he always paid up.

His phone vibrated again. “He's back at Marlowe's,” Roman reported in. Long pause. “Looks like he can't get in. A key. He's trying to use a key and can't get in.”
Rustling
. “Fuck!” Roman growled in a low whisper. “Is that a snake? There're fucking snakes out here, man.”

Glass shattering in the distance.

“He broke the window.”

“Where are you?” Plato asked.

“I ran to the back of the house.”

“Lucy?”

“In the car parked on the back road. There're snakes. Shit.”

Plato waited.

“I hear his car,” he whispered. “He's starting up the car.”

The phone went dead. A few minutes later, it vibrated again.

“I think he went south. Going after him.”

“He went the other way,” Lucy said in the background.

“We'd have seen him if he had.” Plato could hear the agitation in Medlock's voice. His boo was getting on his nerves.

“I'm telling you, he went the other way,” she said emphatically.

Silence.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Tweedledee. Tweedledum?
Plato sighed.

He wondered if Marlowe still had dreams about him. Were they all dark? Frightening? She loved him. Plato was still wrestling with knowing that. She hadn't come out and said it, but she'd come close. She'd wanted to say it. That old woman had implied it. He wondered how it was even possible that she could. He'd purposefully made himself unlovable, unobtainable. Marlowe was a silly, little, foolish romantic who desperately needed to believe in knights in fucking armor.

Plato's phone vibrated a third time. “He's turning the corner,” Roman said before hanging up. “He's on his way to you.” He'd needed Roman to follow Price to make sure that he didn't stray from the script. Ed Price had played his part to perfection and did not disappoint.

*   *   *

Marlowe stirred from a restless sleep. Her heart was racing, her palms sweating. A sense of warning gnawed at her core. She sat up in bed, listening and waiting for something to reveal itself, but nothing did. Marlowe sighed and lay back down, closed her eyes, and tried to go back to sleep. Moments later, she sat up again and this time climbed out of bed and stepped out into the hallway. Shou Shou's snoring could still be heard coming from her bedroom. That old woman was as psychic as they came. If there were anything or anyone inside this house that wasn't supposed to be here, she'd have known it.

A dramatic tug at her spirit compelled her to the flight of stairs at the end of the narrow corridor. Marlowe stopped at the top, bent slightly, and looked into the dark space of the living room below. She couldn't see a damn thing, but that didn't mean anything. Marlowe flicked the switch on the wall, but of course no lights came on. Shou did the best she could to keep lighting in her house, but since she was blind, she personally had no need for it. Marlowe took one cautious step down the flight of stairs and then another and another until she stood at the base of them.

Someone was here. Fear gripped her and snaked up her spine. Marlowe froze at the sensation of being watched, and she shuddered. She slowly scanned every inch of darkness, peering intently and looking for any sign of movement, listening for any sign of who or what was in her aunt's living room. Eddie was here. Suddenly, headlights from a car outside caught her attention, and Marlowe turned toward the window, but as she did, she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head only to have it disappear again. Oh God! He was in this house.

The sound of glass shattering made her snap her attention back to the front door. The small window by Shou's front door had been broken. Marlowe watched in horror as a hand reached inside, found the lock, turned it to unlock the door, and slowly pushed it open.

Confused, she shook her head in disbelief. Her mouth gaped open in shock, ready to scream, but the scream caught in her throat. In the darkness, she saw him, standing in the doorway, the outline of someone, of—

“Marlowe.” He said her name.

She couldn't believe it. Eddie? It was … Eddie! But if he was outside, then who …

Just as he was about to cross the threshold into Shou's house, lights illuminated from outside, creating a dark silhouette of her husband and causing him to jerk around to look behind him.

A massive shadow appeared to come out of a dark corner of Shou's living room and swept cerily past Marlowe like a spirit.

“Go back to sleep, Marlowe,” he whispered, his breath warm against her face.

“No! No! Fuck, no!” Eddie yelled and backed up, as the ink-black shadow of Plato seemed to stretch out that long body of his and cover the distance of that room without taking a single step. His body seemed to blanket Eddie entirely and make him disappear out of that doorway.

“Plato?” she murmured, shocked, tentatively approaching the open doorway in time to see Plato draw back a massive fist and plant it hard into Eddie's face and then step over the motionless body and drag it down the steps.

Lucy jumped out of another car parked across the street.

“Lucy! Lucy, wait!” Roman Medlock called after her.

And then Lucy stopped. Plato stopped and looked at her.

“Lucy?” Eddie said groggily. “Lucy. Baby?” Eddie began to sob. “Don't … don't let him.” He struggled to break loose from Plato's grasp and reached for her. “Please. Don't— Help me! Please!”

Eddie cried like a baby until the moment when Plato leaned down and hit him again. After that, he didn't move.

Plato never looked up at Marlowe standing in the doorway watching this whole scene unfold like something she'd see in a horror movie. Lucy saw her. She paused. Took a step toward the house.

“Lucy,” Roman said, coming up behind her and gently taking hold of her arm. “We need to get out of here.”

Moments later, Marlowe backed into the house and slowly closed the door. And just like that, it was over.

*   *   *

Men's necks don't snap like twigs the way they do in the movies. Flesh, muscle, tendons, and ligaments surround bone, creating a component of the body that is certainly not as fragile as Hollywood portrays. To break a neck requires not only strength but knowledge of anatomy, technique, and a kind of raw courage and determination that can only come from a very primal place in the soul. That place buried so deep inside a man that decent men turn away from it, ignore it, and shudder at the very thought of facing it. Unfortunately for Ed Price, Plato was not one of those men.

Plato could've just walked away and left Price to wither and die on his own. Years from now, maybe he would come to regret this moment, when the pulling of flesh from bone, the snapping of vertebrae reverberating up his arms, would shake him awake at night and cause him to sit up in bed, dripping in a cold sweat and quaking in disgust and shame over what he'd had the audacity to do to another human being. But there were plenty of those kinds of memories stored up in Plato's head. And he'd deal with them all eventually.

Ed Price screamed, kicked, and fought until he couldn't, while Plato slowly, deliberately, and patiently stood fast.

 

In Another You

T
HE DISCOVERY OF
E
D
'
S BODY
in a Clark City ravine made national news.

“A body discovered off Highway 17 early this morning by a truck driver near marker 282 in Clark City has been identified as that of missing businessman Edward Price. It was first believed that Price had been killed more than a month ago and found incinerated in his vehicle near the town of Nelson, Texas. Marlowe Price, Edward Price's second wife, a woman he married while still married to his first wife, Lucille Price, was the prime suspect in that murder. Police are now speculating that Edward Price is responsible for the death of the unidentified corpse found in that vehicle. Evidence is still being collected here at the scene, but this investigation and the investigation into the murder of the unidentified man once believed to be Price is shifting quickly in a different direction.”