Fuck. Now they have me questioning my own brother instead of them. They have me doubting what I know, that Preston was the one talking to him the night of homecoming. Royal may not love playing the part, but he would never leave without saying goodbye.
“Ask yourself this,” Devlin says, turning onto a narrow street lined with small, rundown brick houses. “Why hasn’t your father filed a missing persons report? Why isn’t the FBI involved, if it’s really a kidnapping?”
“Because he’s not under twelve,” I retort with the answer Daddy gave me.
“If he was in danger, they’d still get involved,” Colt says in a reassuring tone. “He’s a minor.”
“Yeah, well, you probably fucked that up by paying off the local cops or something.”
“I can’t tell if you’re stupid, lying, or living in a pretty little bubble of denial,” Devlin says. “But the only reason the FBI isn’t involved is because your father told the cops that your brother ran away. You can think about that while you take a nice walk on the wild side.”
He pulls up at a cracked curb in front of a tan brick house with dirt darkening the bottom quarter of the walls.
“That house we just left?” Preston says, turning in the front seat to give me a pointed look. “That’s where our great-grandfather lived. That’s where our family comes from. This is where your family lived when they came to Faulkner.”
I take in the house, a seed of dread forming in my belly. Sure, Nonna said they’d fallen on hard times, but damn. The house is shit. The whole street is depressing. There’s a car parked in the next driveway with a trash bag taped over a missing window. An old guy two houses down sits on his porch in pajama pants, smoking a cigarette and resting a cheap beer on his shirtless, round belly. He looks me up and down with slimy eyes.
“This is where you came from, and this is where you belong,” Devlin says. “Now get out of the car.”
“What? No fucking way.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
“Wait, give me back my jacket,” Colt says. “And…. Anything else you have. Phone, keys, all that shit.”
“No,” I say, sitting back in the seat and crossing my arms.
Colt hops out of the convertible without bothering to open the door and hauls me over the top. He drops me on the ground on my back, and my head hits the concrete. Blackness swims in my vision. I can hear Preston laughing.
“Flat on her back where she’s most comfortable,” he says as Colt wrestles the jacket off me. “I bet you can use that skill to get yourself a ride out of here if you want it so bad. But you’ll just end up right back here in the end. The whores are always from this side of town.”
When Colt’s done, he jumps back into the car, and I scramble to my feet and lunge for the car. Devlin accelerates, and it shoots forward, just out of my reach.
“There are a few gangs on this side of town,” Preston says, his arm dangling over the top of the door as he grins at me. “I bet they’d pass a tight little body like yours around a few dozen times before they got tired of you. You could make some dirty money—the only kind your family knows.”
Devlin mutters something, and the car jerks onto the street and speeds away, leaving me standing there in sweatpants and a T-shirt, feeling grossly exposed as the man on the porch continues leering at me.
thirteen
Crystal
Fuming, I stomp along the street. I have no fucking clue where I am, but I know it’s a bad part of town. I have nothing on me, no phone and no money, nothing for anyone to steal. The only thing I have is my body, and Preston’s parting words circle in my head, increasing my panic each time I replay them. When I hear voices behind me, I turn to see a couple rough-looking guys standing beside a car set up on blocks. They see me looking and whistle, one of them grabbing his junk and catcalling. I flip them off and keep walking, but a few minutes later, I glance over my shoulder.
They’re about a block back, low-key following me. Well, shit. They’re not outright harassing me yet, but I have no clue where I’m going, and I’m betting they do. They probably know exactly where to corner a girl as obviously lost and defenseless as I am. Real fear replaces the anger that’s been brewing inside me since the Darlings ditched me, and I walk faster, glancing around in desperate hopes of seeing anything that looks like a slightly nicer neighborhood, one where someone might help me instead of wanting to drag me down to the bottom with them.
And then I see an old white church that makes my heart flip with relief. I’m not on the best terms with the higher power, but surely those assholes won’t bother me in a church. I’m almost running by the time I reach the gravel parking lot with dying grass poking up through the gravel at the edges. That’s when I realize I’ve been here before. I know this church, this lot with one car in it, the cemetery inside the low, chain-link fence. I came here with Dixie right before homecoming.
I run up the steps and try the door. The fucking church is locked.
I hear the crunch of feet on gravel, the triumphant snickering of the men coming closer. I hop down off the steps and run around the other side of the church. There’s nothing on this side but more fence and some huge shade trees. Fuck. This is worse than the parking lot. They’ve finally gotten me to a secluded spot.
I start climbing the fence when I spot someone inside the cemetery.
“Hey,” I yell, waving like mad even though the guy has his back turned. He spins toward me, and I wave harder, smiling like a maniac. He stares at me. I can’t really blame him. I’m perched halfway over the fence, trying not to impale myself on the pointy little triangles of wire that extend past the metal bar on top of the fence, frantically trying to get inside the cemetery before the two guys get close enough to grab me. Instead of looking scared, though, I’m grinning and waving like a lunatic.
“Oh my god, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” I yell, making sure the creepers can hear me, hoping they’ll believe that I know this guy and get lost.
I jump off the side of the fence, stumbling but managing to keep my feet. I run over to the blond guy and throw my arms around him. That ought to convince the assholes I know this guy.