Page 31 of Capitol Matters (Marionette #2)

Twelve years earlier

The sun glared down on me where I stood before the vending machine with a ratty dollar bill in my hand. It was midday at the Lazy Daze Motel, and no one was around. Smoothing the crumpled bill against my leg, I considered the options currently stocked in the machine. Donovan wouldn’t eat anything spicy, so the hot fries and fire blasted chips were out. Candy guaranteed a stomachache, leaving only the pretzels we were both sick of. But, with the older guys all nursing hangovers, there would be no other offerings until late tonight or tomorrow morning.

Stuffing the money into the bill slot spurred immediate rejection. The dollar was tattered with dog-eared corners and creases that didn’t feed smoothly into the machine. I tapped my foot and tried again with the same results.

“Fitch Farrow?” a male voice asked. “Is that you, son?”

Startled, I scuttled into the shadow beside the vending machine before spinning around.

A nondescript black sedan parked in the lot behind me. I hadn’t even heard it pull up. A suited man stood behind the open driver door, gaping at me with wide eyes.

I stared back at him while my heart thrashed in my chest.

The investigator scanned the area before he approached, hunched forward with one hand extended like a lion tamer entering the beast’s cage.

“Are you hurt?” he called over.

I shook my head but didn’t budge. My suddenly knocking knees wouldn’t let me take a step.

The motel room two doors down swung inward, revealing Grimm wearing the same disheveled clothes from the night before and his long hair in tangles. He squinted at the brightness outside, then spotted me.

“Goddamn it, boy,” he slurred. “You’d better get back in your room, or I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.”

I hugged my arm around my chest, reminding myself of the bruises that proved he wasn’t bluffing.

“I need backup.” The investigator’s voice drew my attention to where he stood, fumbling with a walkie talkie. “He’s here.” While one hand clutched the radio, the other made its way to his duty belt to free his pistol from its holster.

Grimm muttered a curse. “What are you waiting for?” He gestured to the investigator. “Kill him already.”

Panic swelled in me as I looked back and forth between the two men. The investigator aimed his gun at Grimm, who lingered in the doorway.

The investigator was right to call for aid. He was outnumbered, and the decision to stand and fight could be his last. I could help. I could knock Grimm back and run to the patrol car. But escape would mean leaving Donovan behind, sitting on the bed in our motel room, waiting for me to return and finish our game of Go Fish.

“I said kill him!” Grimm barked.

I’d forgotten how to breathe; going dizzy in the heat with the dollar bill stuck to my sweaty palm.

The investigator got on the walkie again, rattling off what sounded like an address. Help was on the way, but it couldn’t get here fast enough.

“Fitch?”

Grimm emerged from the shelter of his room to stand on the sidewalk with both hands raised. Except it wasn’t Grimm anymore. Head to toe, every appearance had changed to match my father’s. He had a swoop of blond hair the same as mine, suntanned skin, and hazel eyes full of light.

The sight drove a whimper from me, and I feared my knees might give out entirely.

It’s a trick.

A disguise.

Dad’s dead.

“He’s gonna hurt me, Fitch.” Did the voice sound like my father? I couldn’t remember. “I need your help.”

The investigator kept his gun leveled at Grimm—my father.

I blinked hard, trying to convince my heart of what my brain knew.

“Put your hands up!” the investigator commanded.

My father—Grimm—obeyed while looking my way piteously. “Fitch, please,” he begged. “Don’t let him kill me.”

“Don’t talk to him!” the investigator told Grimm. Then, to me he added, “You’re all right, son. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

But he had changed, too. No longer the suited man who’d somehow found me after months of waiting. Now he looked like Vinton, and his bald head gleamed in the sun as he bore down on my father.

“Get on the ground,” Vinton growled.

My father trembled as he did so, kneeling with his hands clasped behind his head.

This wasn’t an arrest. It was an execution. I’d seen it. I’d seen the aftermath of my father’s body sprawled on the dining room floor with bits of his brain stuck to the rug. I’d seen my mother beside him, lifeless and empty, her glassy eyes staring at nothing.

“Fitch!” my father cried out. A desperate plea.

Clapping my hands over my ears, I let the moldy dollar bill flutter to the pavement.

I couldn’t help. Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t watch it happen again.

The pistol fired, and my father flinched away, but the bullet hadn’t gone into him. Instead, Vinton toppled over backward, leaking blood from a hole in the back of his skull .

I hit the ground, too, knowing what I’d done but unsure how. Like my first murder, this one happened too quickly. Scattered thoughts pieced together into action.

I made an investigator—it wasn’t Vinton; never had been—shoot himself in the head.

A wail escaped me, and I doubled over, sinking onto the sidewalk. Breaths came and went in gasps.

I hoped Donovan hadn’t heard the crack of gunfire. More than that, I hoped he didn’t come out and see that I had killed the wrong man.

Someone stood over me, casting a long shadow. Tears flooded my eyes as I looked up to see my father smiling warmly.

“That’s my boy,” he said.

I threw myself onto him, hugging his legs while my body shook with sobs. He smelled like old booze and sweat. Nothing like my father, but I clung on anyway. Long after the illusion faded.

The docks were crowded with ramshackle buildings like this one: hollow, brick and metal structures with broken windows and piles of debris scattered around. Ocean salt crusted everything, and the air stunk of diesel fuel from the tanker ships harboring nearby.

Broad daylight didn’t feel like the time to be doing this. Wicked, seedy things were meant to happen at night, when evil flourished. Imagining the gang loading the kidnapping victims into cars and driving them here at nine in the morning seemed awkward and contrived. I had a vague hope of finding the five people alive, but corpses were much easier to move. I knew that from experience.

Most of the warehouse’s entrances and exits were boarded over. Donovan and I had nearly circled the building before we found a door obscured behind a stack of wooden crates. I caught my brother’s attention with a wave, and we veered toward it.

As we walked, Donovan broke what had become a lengthy silence.

“Fitch, I’m sorry.”

I rolled my eyes. “You mentioned that.”

Picking up my pace put a gap between us that my brother hurried to close.

“I feel like you’re mad at me.” His voice was quiet enough that I struggled to hear him over the squawking of the seagulls overhead.

When he spoke again, it sounded like a question he meant only for himself. “Is this my fault?”

I stomped one foot in an abrupt halt. Turning toward my brother found him far more composed than he’d been at Lock n’ Roll. He wasn’t crying, at least, but he looked so wounded I couldn’t ignore him.

“Donnie, we’re good,” I said. “I don’t blame you, okay?”

He nodded, then pushed his umber brown hair off his brow.

“Like I said before,” I continued. “Let me do the talking.”

He sighed. “I always do. ”

Sliding past the piled crates, I pulled the door open outward. Dust motes took to the air, aglow in the light as they drifted into the building’s dark interior.

The warehouse soared three stories tall and spanned about 5,000 square feet. But, while some of these buildings were broken up into sections for offices or separate garages, this one consisted of a single, cavernous space. Metal I-beams crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling, illuminated by a grid of cracked windows that formed the upper border of the walls. The cement floor was lined with fissures and dotted with puddles of musty rainwater.

It smelled like rust and fresh death. The latter stench stemmed undoubtedly from the pile of bodies heaped in the nearest corner. The five abductees formed a disjointed stack with arms and legs poking out at every angle. One figure moved among them: a slim, teenage girl with powder pink hair and a bloody foot hanging out of her mouth like a dog’s chew toy.

Maggie spotted us and paused amid the smorgasbord, long enough to wave. I returned a weak smile and two-fingered salute despite my roiling stomach. Donovan had fallen back, stopped barely inside the door and gaping at the mass grave. I wondered briefly if his desire to keep me away from here was fueled by his own wish to stay clear of this.

Peering across the expanse of the warehouse, I didn’t have to try hard to find the gang. Similarly, they had no trouble seeing me.

A pair of dilapidated sofas and a wooden spool table formed a makeshift living area. Grimm had one couch to himself, and Avery occupied the other. Vinton loomed over Grimm’s shoulder while Ripley reposed in a lopsided folding chair.

All heads swiveled toward Donovan and me, but no one moved until Grimm rose from his low-slung seat. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his expression was serene. Eerie calm blanketed everything from Maggie’s soft munching to the dull stares given by the other men.

I pulled my attention away from Grimm’s approach long enough to find a pair of vented doors on the far wall. My recollection of this place was distant but vivid. It was where I first met the gang—where we were formally introduced, since there was no time for that in the wake of my parents’ murders.

Grimm held me prisoner here and debated my fate loudly for days, often in front of me. I’d been bound and gagged, locked in the water heater closet, then left while the men attended to more pressing matters.

It was here I bargained for my brother’s life after being certain he’d died on our living room floor. Here I’d sworn myself into the service of the Bloody Hex.

Marionette was born here. An identity carved out of terror and pain so deep and dark it swallowed everything that came before.

I once thought I would die here. Standing now with Donovan creeping up from behind me, that possibility existed again.