The Dirty Ones

Kiera huffs out some air. “I bet they’d be pissed if they knew we were spying on them.”

“Holy shit, I kinda knew that Sofia and Camille lived this close, but I never imagined they could see each other from across the street. It’s weird. And sorta kinky too.”

“Shut up.” She laughs, turning her head to look at me. But she goes back to the spying pretty much immediately. “Oooo, there’s Camille. Wait. Are they fighting?”

“It kinda looks like it,” I say.

They are. It only takes a few more seconds to realize that. Camille is walking around the room, pulling open drawers and closing them again. That room must be her office because there’s lots of drawers. And bookshelves. She starts pulling books out, throwing them down on the floor.

“What the hell?” Kiera asks.

“Shit,” I say.

“What?”

“Camille texted your phone. That’s why I woke up. She said she needed to talk to you.”

Kiera bounces up and off the couch. “Be right back.”

I listen to the sound of her padding footsteps as she goes down the hall, but things are getting heated across the street now. Bennett has Camille by the wrists, leaning down into her face, like he’s yelling at her.

Kiera comes running back in. “Call her,” I say. “Right now. Something is happening over there and whatever it is, it’s not good.”

Ringing. Loud, as she puts her phone on speaker.

Across the street we watch them stop their argument to look at something. The phone, I think. But they ignore it and go back to the fight.

Voicemail. “You’ve got me,” Camille’s voice purrs on the recording. “Now what are you gonna do?” Beep.

Kiera hangs up and tries again, but now Camille is throwing open her terrace door and walking out in to the freezing snow.

“What the fuck is happening over there?” Kiera asks, tossing her phone on the couch. “Come on, Sofia has a terrace too. We should stop them. Make them come over here and tell us what’s going on.”

Before I can say anything she’s throwing open the door to the terrace. Biting, cold December wind whooshes through the office, blowing papers off the desk.

“Camille!” Kiera yells. “Pick up your phone!”

Camille stops. Looks at her from across the street. I want to get up and go outside. I’m halfway into the process of doing this, when I see what she’s holding in her hand.

A gun.

Oh. Fuck.

I’m up. I’m outside. Ignoring the freezing snow as my bare feet cross the terrace and I stand in front of the thick spindles of concrete that act as a railing.

“Camille!” Kiera yells again. “What the fuck are you doing? Put that down!”

Camille is distracted and Bennett makes his move. He wrestles the gun away from her, but she takes it back. There’s a fight and Camille ends up on her bare knees in the deep snow. Bennett ends up with the gun.

“Go back inside,” Bennett calls. “I’m taking care of it!”

“Taking care of what?” I yell.

“Shut the fuck up!” someone yells from a window down below.

“Camille!” Kiera screams again. Because now Camille is standing again. Not only standing, but climbing up onto the ledge of her balcony, her short, white nightie flapping in the wind. “Camille! Get off the fucking ledge!”

“I can’t do it!” Camille yells. “I can’t do it!”

“Of course you can’t!” Kiera screams. “You’re gonna go back inside! Right now!”

The terrace door above us opens and then I hear Sofia scream. “Camille! What are you doing?”

“Camille,” Hayes’ deep, commanding voice calls. “Get your ass off that ledge or I swear to God, I will—”

But he stops. Mid-sentence.

Because she jumps.

Kiera and Sofia scream.

I yell, “Fuck!”

And Hayes is just quiet.

I want to say I didn’t hear the sound of a body crashing into the street down below, but I did.

And that’s when the gun goes off and we realize…

Bennett just shot himself in the head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – KIERA

It’s a living nightmare. One I can’t wake up from. One in which Camille’s body is destroyed by a twelve-story fall to the concrete below and Bennett’s brains are splattered on the side of her apartment. One where I cry, incessantly. Sofia too. We hold each other as the police arrive and begin the questions.

They take my phone. They go knocking on doors, trying to find anyone who can give another point of view. They ask us things like, “Why would they do this?” And we have no answers.

They start prodding us about our history and make assumptions that are true, but that they have no right to know about.

Connor looks lost. Reporters start talking about it on the news. “Early this morning Camille DuPont, great-granddaughter to the late matriarch, Helene DuPont, took her own life by jumping from her twelfth-floor penthouse in the Upper East Side. Her friend, lawyer Bennett Winthrop, shot himself in the head in the minutes following. Connor Arlington, rumored to be announcing his candidacy for the US Senate tomorrow evening at an event hosted by Dr. Louise Livingston, was present at the scene when it happened…”