Audition (North Security 4)

The laws of man evaporate. Red lights mean nothing. Drivers blare their horns. I don’t care. I don’t care. Bethany is the only thing that matters on the face of the earth. This is what she does to me. This is why I had to walk away from her five years ago. She turns me into this frantic, hungry, gaping hole of a human. I don’t care if the whole world explodes, as long as she’s safe. She’s kryptonite to me, and I’m dying.

I’ve had a twenty-four hour-watch on Caleb and Mamere. That’s how I know he didn’t take her to the apartment on Marigny or to her old house. We get Landon on the line, but no one there has heard from her at the theater. Where is she right now? Where, where, where.

My dark heart beats the question a million times a minute.

Think, I tell myself. If you were a sick fuck, where would you take her?

It’s not that hard to imagine. The line that separates me from a sociopath snakes like a babbling brook through my consciousness. At the moment there’s a drought. If I were stalking Bethany, if I really wanted to have her, really own her, where would I bring her? No, I’m asking the wrong question.

Caleb and Noah and I, we’ve grown up. For better or for worse.

Connor got put away. That was part of the deal that Caleb struck. He turned over his accomplices in exchange for freedom. Connor’s been in jail, rotting away, mostly the same as he was five years ago.

If the old me were stalking Bethany, where would I go?

The answer comes to me in a blur of sunlight and the loamy soil of a cemetery. Her brother practically paid us to stalk her under the guise of protection. We watched her run down the concrete steps. She dashed across the street in her leotard and sweatpants. To want Bethany is to want her dancing. They’re one in the same.

What better place to watch her dance than at her old dance school?

The space sits above a cigar shop that’s closed for the day, wrought-iron shutters thrown over the windows. I’ll burn this fucking place to the ground with him in it if anything happens. My chest seizes at the thought. Fuck. I can’t even think about it. There’s no time to think. There’s only time to throw myself out of the car. The damn thing’s barely in park. I leave the door open and run, my pulse a rolling thunder.

Access to the warehouse is around the back through a shitty plywood door. He’s locked it. Connor has locked the fucking thing. A thousand doors made of steel and concrete couldn’t keep me from her now. I put my shoulder into it. The building shudders. A dull pain on the second try. It barely penetrates my fury.

The door splinters, cracking in the center.

A sliver juts out and cuts through the fabric of my coat on the third hit. Blood. Pain. They don’t matter. I knock it off its hinges and step over the broken remains.

A narrow staircase. A thick layer of dust.

And the sound of Bethany crying.

Red clouds my vision. It’s bloodlust, as pure as I’ve ever felt it. I storm the stairs, gun in my hand. Safety off. Whatever he’s done, he’s going to pay for it. I was the devil’s son. Now I’m a goddamn avenging angel. The steps bow under my weight. This place is a relic of the past. It’s barely holding on. Hold on, Bethany. I’m almost there.

The final step brings the scene into sight.

Bethany, tied to the barre with a thick belt. A length of leather around each wrist. It’s a perversion of something that could be so sexy. But he’s not giving her pleasure. No. He’s meting out pain, twisting her body like she’s some kind of doll.

Connor has a foot on her upper back, arching her spine forward in an unnatural curve. She can’t get her arms loose. What the fuck is his plan? To kill her like this? To snap her neck with the heel of his shoe?

His eyes are bright with insanity. She’s like some kind of doll in a mad music box, and he thinks he can twist and twist the little knob to make her dance. How dare he touch her? I’m just as crazy as Caleb, because I think I have a right to her body, the right to protect her.

I take aim. Time slows. Squeeze.

I put a bullet in his forehead. Red sprays in a small, futile refusal. The shot echoes. Bethany screams. Connor falls in a rain of blood.

He falls away from her. Thank fucking God.

She’s sobbing when I fall to my knees next to her. The belts come apart in my hands, freeing one hand, then the other. Bethany falls forward into me, gasping for air.

I feel her for injuries, my heart pounding. Any moment I’m going to find it—the fatal gash, the handle of the knife, the slick opening of a gunshot. But there’s nothing, other than two bruised circles around her wrists and a raw circle between her shoulder blades from that fucker’s shoe.

I’m afraid to move her. Afraid that if I stand up, everything will shift into something dire and unrecoverable. The blood soaking into my pant leg from Connor’s body is what finally spurs me to my feet, Bethany in my arms.

She squeezes her eyes tight.

“You’re okay,” I tell her. I offer it as a prayer all the way down the stairs and out to the car. To the other cars. Somehow, Liam is here too, all our people surrounding us. Someone drives us back to my place. My pulse doesn’t begin to slow until the two of us are behind my locked door.

Hot showers. Fresh clothes. Bethany is silent and heavy-lidded. “You’re okay,” I tell her again, and lower her gently into my bed.