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Chapter Eighteen

Nathan

The ride to the Fount’s staff quarters, a high-rise building with sixteen floors, takes me less than fifteen minutes on my Harley Davidson.

I fly off the bike and at once note that Tess isn’t anywhere outside waiting for me.

Where the fuck are the cops? Is John still in there with her?

I forgo the elevator and take the stairs three at a time until I reach the sixth floor. I’m about to kick in her door when it swings open, and a man jumps back in shock and partly to avoid me crashing into him.

It’s John Blackwell.

Blood drains from his face when he sees me, and he freezes in shock. I have no such hesitation. I grab him by the neckline of his shirt, looking around the apartment for Tess.

“Where is she?” I drag him with me as I take a few steps into the living room. “Tess?” I yell.

There’s no response.

“Where the hell is she, asshole?”

“You think I don’t know that you’re fucking my daughter?” is his only reply.

I tighten my grip on his neck and slam him into the wall with enough force to make his teeth rattle while I search him for any weapons he might want to defend himself with. “I asked you a fucking question!”

“She stepped outside to take a call,” John replies calmly.

I look toward the front door, about to drag him there when he gestures in the other direction.

“Not that way, she went through the door in the kitchen, over there.”

I drag him into the kitchen, throw him against the counter, and go to pull the back door open while he calls me a few choice names and rubs at the skin of his neck.

“Tess?” I call.

Silence.

Has she gone around the building to the front, then?

Out of the corner of my eye, I see John move toward the sink and dry heaves over and over. He spits, then turns the water on. Still, I watch him like a hawk, waiting for him to finish throwing up so that I can resume my chokehold on him.

As if the dry heaves aren’t a dead give away, something about his rigid posture is wrong and raises alarm bells. His muscles are tensing and locking together.

Thinking that he’s about to attack with a weapon, I mentally prepare for his strike, but I’m also curious to see what he thinks he can do to me. I’ve got over a hundred pounds on him, and a decent amount of that is muscle.

I pretend to look outside for any trace of Tess, but I notice the moment he slips a hand inside his back pocket and digs out a small bag of grainy material.

I know exactly what it is, and I see red.

I’m on him in a flash, shoving him away from the sink, my fist connecting with his nose. I feel a crunch as the cartilage gives way, and blood spurts out his nostrils.

“You sonofabitch. That’s it, isn’t it? Whatever the fuck it is you used to kill your wife and my brother in cold blood.”

He doesn’t see me. He’s not cowering or even holding onto his broken nose. Nor does he care that his cover is blown. All he seems to be preoccupied with is throwing that pack inside the sink of running water.

…They melt into oblivion in heat and water, and that’s when the games truly begin.

What the hell?

If there was any doubt as to his motives for being here, that action just erases it.

I drag him out of the kitchen, out of the reach of water and into the hallway, and then, I let my fists loose on him.

My initial plan is to incapacitate him, but now, beating him to a pulp feels too satisfying to stop. I feel two of his incisors cut into my fist before they loosen and cave in.

Still, I’m unable to make myself stop, and I start praying for the cops to show up before I kill the man.

Because all I see when I look at him is my twin brother’s frozen body in a wetsuit.

The sound of a loud, wet gurgle makes me stop long enough to listen. I can also hear that the bathroom tap is on as water flows steadily.

“Tess?”

John turns his head and spits out a tooth and a wad of bloody phlegm. “I suggested that she wait for you naked like the slut that she is, in a tub full of water.”

She’s been in there the whole time?

I push myself off of John and run in the direction of the bathroom, my heart in my throat.

I’ve seen a lot of awful things, but the sight that greets my eyes breaks me open.

The woman I love, submerged in a tub as though sleeping, the water above her beautiful face as still as the surface of a mirror. Her face looks peaceful, soft, while the rest of her body is limp.

No!

The rest of what happens is a blur.

I don’t remember carrying her out or laying her on the floor and starting CPR. Or the police crashing in minutes after that.

I don’t remember refusing to allow anyone else to take over her resuscitation or hitting the man who tried to drag me off her.

Not until the fog starts to lift from my brain do I realize that the officer I punched was Alvin Ling, a policeman and Marta, my employee’s husband.