Page 30 of Watch Your Back (Devil’s Backbone #2)

“ I ’m going to have to kill him,” I declared for what was possibly the fiftieth time already, and we’d barely started our drive to Hastings. “That’s the only solution. I have to beat him with a marble duck.”

“Too soon,” Heath groaned from the back seat of my car. He was squashed in there like a sardine but had insisted I take the passenger seat since Royce had begged to drive again.

I turned in my seat to flash him a grin. “Sorry. Okay, then I’ll stuff sixty-seven tiny ducks down his throat and make him choke on them. Death by duck just seems really appropriate.”

“Just deny him sex,” Royce suggested with a sly smile. “He’ll very quickly learn his lesson.”

“I’m on board with that idea,” Heath agreed enthusiastically. “And am more than happy to keep you plenty satisfied so it’s not a hardship on you.”

“You’re such a gentleman, Heathcliff,” Royce teased, glancing at him in the mirror.

I laughed, shaking my head. “You guys are cruel. Death by duck seems more humane.” But it didn’t fix the problem.

I was homeless thanks to Carter’s stubborn sense of entitlement.

He’d known perfectly fucking well I wasn’t going to be okay with this, so he’d waited until it was absolutely too late to do anything about it.

I’d spent far too long the night before trying to reverse his actions, but it was all to no avail.

It was the weekend, and the campus admin wouldn’t get my emails until Monday morning, which was when my room’s new occupant would be moving in.

So unless I wanted to try to have her evicted—which would be a dick move since she was an innocent bystander in this mess—I didn’t have many options.

“I can’t make Nate sleep on the couch forever,” I grumbled aloud. “I’ll have to find somewhere else.” But Prosper City was way out of my price range, and the waitlist for the dorms was insanely long. Hence my room getting snapped up so quickly.

“Carter can figure it out,” Royce said, reaching out to pat my knee reassuringly. “It’s his responsibility. And in the meantime, you can come sleep with me again. My bed is like double the size of your dorm bed, so we wouldn’t even need the pillow wall.”

I smiled and tried not to blush thinking about all the mornings I’d frantically rebuilt the pillow wall after waking up tangled up in Royce’s arms while he slept soundly. “Thanks, roomie, that’s a great idea. Nate looks half-dead from lack of sleep at the moment too. The sofa bed must be awful.”

Heath gave a thoughtful hum in the back seat.

“I think it’s less about the sofa bed and more about the fact he’s waking up at every little creak and sound throughout the night, worried one of us is being sleeper-cell activated.

And when Lady is snoring and scratching and whining, it means he isn’t ever really sleeping. ”

That made me feel even worse. I shook my head firmly. “Well then, that’s that. He’s getting his room back tonight, no arguments.”

Heath changed the subject, asking about one of my assignments that I’d been working on, and I shifted gears into my academic mind to answer him. It wasn’t until we stopped for gas a while later that I fully realized Royce’s hand was still resting comfortably on my knee. I liked it there too.

The drive to Hastings took us a little over three hours, then we needed to wait for visiting hours to start and spent way too long signing in as guests.

I asked Royce at least a dozen times if he was sure he wanted me to actually come in with him, since Heath wasn’t coming in with us, but Royce insisted he wanted me there.

When we were finally granted access—after an invasively thorough pat down—I recognized Royce’s mom without even needing him to point her out.

She was definitely where he got his looks from, because even in prison scrubs and no makeup, she was beautiful.

Her platinum-blond hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, and her green eyes sparkled when she saw her son.

“Royce, sweetheart,” she said as we sat down on the other side of the glass. “It’s good to see you. And you must be Ashley?”

“Hey, Mom,” he replied with genuine warmth. “Um, yeah, way to be a creep before you’re introduced, but yes, this is Ashley.”

Startled, I glanced at Royce with confusion. “You told your mom about me?” He’d mentioned on the drive up that he spoke to his mom every week by phone and visited once a month, but I hadn’t expected that I’d been a topic of conversation along the way.

His mom laughed, but it was a kind laugh.

“Oh, honey, you’re all he talks about these days.

It’s so nice to finally meet you, though.

I’m Kathryn, but you can call me Katie.” She gave me a wink, and I struggled to see how this woman was in jail for life after being found guilty of murdering six people. She seemed so…normal.

Then again, Ted Bundy hadn’t seemed like a serial killer either, right?

Royce had turned a peculiar shade of pink and gave a weak laugh as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Mom, don’t be a shit stirrer. I tell you about all of my friends.”

Katie nodded slowly, eyes wide. “Right, yes, of course. All your friends.” Then she gave him an exaggerated wink, and Royce made a strangled sort of noise in his throat.

“I can imagine my son has given you next to no information about me, Ashley, so you’re most welcome to ask questions if you’d like.

I’m excited to get to know you as well!”

Meanwhile, Royce looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole, so I grabbed his hand in mine out of view and squeezed his fingers. “Um, yeah, he really hasn’t said much,” I admitted, “but I don’t want to waste your visit time. I know you only see each other once a month.”

Katie shrugged, and Royce shifted his hand in mine to lace our fingers together. I could tell that this wasn’t easy for him, despite how chill he seemed with her.

“Yes, that’s true. But it’s also nice to meet someone new.

We don’t get a lot of that in here. Royce mentioned you’re focusing on social studies at Nevaeh?

How are you liking that?” She seemed genuinely interested, and I found myself nervously talking about my degree and the classes I was enjoying the most and the least.

Katie smiled when I mentioned my political history professor, Dr. Harris. “Oh, you’re kidding me. He’s still teaching? Does he still spit on the front row during lectures?” She shuddered, and I gaped in surprise.

“You went to Nevaeh too? I didn’t know…and yes, oh my god, the spitting is insane! Front row basically needs raincoats.”

She snickered with amusement. “Yes, I was a student there…” She shot a pointed look at Royce, who responded with a one-shoulder shrug of apology. “If I didn’t already know the lengths Michael went to trying to pretend I never existed, I might be offended, Royce.”

He sighed, his fingers tightening on mine for a moment. “Sorry, Mom. Old habits die hard.” Then to me, he quickly explained, “My father doesn’t tolerate any mention of my mom. If not for my Uncle Henry—Mom’s brother—I’d never have been able to know her at all.”

Stunned, I tried to pull my thoughts together. For one thing, Royce’s dad sounded like an absolute piece of shit who had probably been beating him as a kid. But at the same time, I had a hard time matching that concept up with Katie.

“Did you meet Michael at Nevaeh, Katie?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to pick open old wounds.

She pursed her lips, all traces of warmth washing out of her eyes. “Yes. We were in a club…of sorts. I was a freshman, on scholarship. He was one of the inner-circle postgrad students.”

“Oh, you were in the Devil’s Backbone?” I asked, not second-guessing my question until both Katie and Royce flinched. Then she turned a furious glare on her son, who seemed to slink down in his seat a little bit.

Somehow, I suspected I shouldn’t have said that.

“Royce…” she sighed. “You promised me.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “You know how they are…and with all of us as legacy children, it was?—”

She waved a hand, cutting his excuses off.

“I’m well aware. I just hoped… It doesn’t matter.

Yes, Ashley, we were in the society together, and before you think it was some tragic love story, it wasn’t.

We flirted a bit, but Mike flirted with a lot of girls.

My darling boy here was just the by-product of way too much vodka at one of those ridiculous duck events.

” She offered a smile his way to soften that little blow.

I frowned, trying to piece it all together. “So…it was a one-night stand? And then…?”

“And then a week later I was being arrested for the murder of six society initiates,” she said in a cool, matter-of-fact voice.

“People I was friends with, people I had no prior disagreements with, and people I would never have thought about hurting in my wildest dreams. And yet, when I was put on trial the prosecution somehow had video surveillance footage that showed me butchering them all with an ax while they slept.”

My jaw dropped. “Holy shit .” It was the best I had.

Katie gave a sad smile. “Yeah. Pretty much. There was no arguing with that kind of evidence, and everyone just figured I’d blocked it out in my mind because of how violent it was.

Or that I’d had a temporary mental breakdown or something.

Either way, here I am. But for what it’s worth…

I know I never would have done such a horrible thing. Not of my own free will.”

That. That right there sent a chill down my spine. I glanced at Royce and he was already looking back at me with the same recognition in his eyes. I swallowed hard, my heart racing in my chest… Had Katie been one of the first hypnosis victims twenty-four years ago?

How old was Dr. Fox, though? Katie was only in her early forties by my math, and Dr. Fox had seemed like he was into his sixties. Maybe he was a teacher back then too?

“You didn’t have any professors called Dr. Fox, did you?” I asked with dread.

She frowned, thinking. “Not that I remember? It was a long time ago, though. Why?”

Royce squeezed my hand, and I shook my head.

“No reason. Sorry. So, Royce was born in prison? That definitely explains his blatant disregard for rules.” I said it with a teasing smile, a lame attempt at lightening the mood, but she went along with it and shifted our conversation to how she managed to forge some semblance of a relationship with her only child while serving a life sentence.

It was full-on. When our time was up and we left, my heart weighed a thousand pounds for the childhood Royce had endured. It once again validated why he was so close with the other boys and why Max seemed to play the guardian role in all of their lives—someone had to.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Royce said quietly as we made our way back out of the prison still hand in hand.

I leaned into him, releasing his fingers so I could loop my arm around his waist. “Anytime, friend.”

He inhaled sharply, then let it out with a heavyhearted sigh as he murmured “friend” under his breath with an almost heartbreaking edge of disappointment.