Vengeance (Private 14)

Slowly, Graham approached me with the water in one hand, the gun in the other. He crouched in front of me and held the glass to my lips, tipping it upward. The cold liquid filled my throat and actually did make me feel a bit better. I gauged my chances of knocking the gun out of his hand and getting to it before he did, all with my feet tied together and a cast on one arm.

Answer? Not good.

But at least my hands were free. That gave me the advantage of surprise. Hopefully I had a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

His nostrils flared and he glanced around. “Do you smell something burning?”

I lifted my shoulders. “Nope. And thanks.”

Graham looked down at the half-empty glass of water and suddenly appeared to be offended by it—like it illustrated some kind of weakness. He got up and dropped it on a side table, out of my reach, sloshing some liquid over the rim.

“Don’t know why I bothered. You’re gonna be dead soon anyway,” he said callously.

“Graham,” I said, my stomach twisting into knots. “Why are you doing this? I get Cheyenne with the crazy, but why you? I thought we were friends.”

“We could’ve been,” he said, clenching his jaw. “If it wasn’t for him.”

The word “him” was laced with venom.

“Josh? This is about Josh again?” I demanded.

His eyes widened incredulously. “He killed my sister!”

“He did not kill her!” I blurted, my heart pounding over my own recklessness. I couldn’t believe I was going to die for the two most obscure, insane reasons anyone could imagine dying for—some hundred-year-old supposed curse and the fact that a girl I never knew had dated my boyfriend two years ago, then taken her own life. “Jen killed herself. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s the truth! You’re going to kill me because Jen committed suicide? Do you not realize how crazy that is?”

Graham’s mouth flattened into an angry line and I saw his jaw working, tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. “You sound just like Sawyer,” he griped.

Sawyer. Sawyer was here somewhere. He wasn’t planning on hurting his own brother too, was he?

“Where is Sawyer, Graham?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even as I looked at the clock. It was now 12:20. “Is he okay?”

“Of course he’s okay,” Graham said with a scoff. “What do you think I’m gonna do, kill my own brother?”

He brought his hand, the one holding the gun, to his heart and pounded. Tears filled his eyes and I took a deep breath. He was becoming unhinged, and unhinged was not going to be good for me.

“I took that stupid phone he was using to warn you and we locked him here in one of the bedrooms until we could be done with this,” Graham said. “That’s how I got you here tonight. I texted you the directions from his dummy phone.”

So it was Sawyer all along. Sawyer was MT. Of course. It all made sense. He couldn’t come to me and tell me what was going on, or go to the police, without implicating Graham, so instead he’d tried to protect me anonymously—to protect us both. And what had he gotten for his efforts? He’d ended up jailed by his own brother and crazy Che

yenne.

“I just don’t get why he doesn’t get it,” Graham rambled, pacing away from me, his heavy shoes clomping across the gleaming wood floor. The second his back was turned I withdrew my hands from behind my back and yanked at the knot around my legs. But seconds later he started to turn around again and I had to hide my fingers after getting exactly nowhere. I bit my lip in frustration and tried not to let my desperation show in my eyes. “Josh Hollis drove Jen to kill herself. She was perfectly fine before he broke her heart. If it wasn’t for him, she’d still be alive right now!”

“I know you believe that, Graham, but please, think about it,” I said. “People in their right mind don’t kill themselves over breakups. They get makeovers, they find rebound guys, they post nasty videos about the guy on YouTube. Something had to be fundamentally wrong with her if she was going to—”

“There was nothing wrong with Jen!” he screeched, storming toward me across the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. “She was my best friend! I loved her more than I loved anyone else in the world. And Josh Hollis took her away from me. So that’s why I’m going to take you away from him.”

He pointed the gun at my head and cocked it. My heart stopped beating. His hand shook and his eyes welled. At any moment that thing could go off. At any moment my brains could be splattered all over the wall behind me. If there was ever a time to make a move, it was now.

“Think about Sawyer, Graham. If you kill me, he’ll never forgive you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “And then you’ll have lost your brother and your sister.”

“Shut up!” he said, bending and straightening his elbow, bringing the gun even closer to my skull. I wanted to reach out and grab it, but what if doing that made it go off? What if one flinch caused him to pull the trigger?

“You’re better than this, Graham,” I said, frantically rubbing my ankles together to try to free them from the twine. “Think about your father. Think about your brother. Think about your girlfriend.”

I tasted bile as I thought about Missy. Thought about how happy she would be once she heard I was gone.

Graham’s eyes narrowed. “You know, maybe I’ll just end you right now.”