Fatal Beauty Page 8

  It hits her suddenly, everything. Every stupid impulsive step that led to this moment.

  “Are we being stupid?” she asks, rolling to her back.

  There’s a silence, stretching so long and heavy that she thinks EJ is sleeping. “Yes,” comes the whisper, almost lost, and Charlie sighs.

  EJ rolls toward her, curling into Charlie’s side, one arm lightly wrapped around the other girl’s stomach and Charlie is still, tense, her heart pounding—wondering if EJ is doing this on purpose, if this is another one of their many games.

  No. Games are for other people, for Jacobs and Tre and silly, temporarily useful boys like Pax. For the disposable. But games have never been for the ones who stay, and in their world, that is a tiny number.

  Only the two of them.

  Slowly, the tension drains out of her, and she gets used to the weight of EJ’s arm on her, the soft play of fingertips against her ribcage and tickle of breath against her shoulder.

  She thinks, once, that she feels the brush of EJ’s lips, but then she’s exhausted, and everything is fading to that, smudged around the edges, until it’s all black.

  Chapter 17

  EJ is in the kitchen, standing on one foot with the other braced at her knee, hair in a messy bun on top of her head. Cheese, onion, and peppers form fragrant, diced piles in front of her, and she’s stirring eggs as bacon pops in a pan next to her.

  “Where is Pax?” Charlie says, slipping past her and pouring a cup of coffee.

  “He had an early meeting, said he’d be back around ten. So I thought I’d have breakfast ready when he got here.”

  Charlie’s arches an eyebrow and EJ flushes. It still amuses Charlie to catch her in a rare, domestic moment, but EJ enjoys it. Enjoys the mindless task with visible results, and the tiny act of creating.

  And she got to play with sharp pointy objects.

  “How long did you give him?” she asks, redirecting Charlie’s attention to something other than her domestic goddess efforts.

  “Forty eight hours.”

  A fission of fear snakes through her but she nods agreeably. It’s a reasonable amount of time, and Charlie’s accounts would be enough to keep them in money without Jacobs immediately being able to track it.

  “Did you give him everything?”

  Charlie scoffs. “I’m not an idiot, EJ. I kept two hundred in cash.”

  She nods again and pours eggs onto a plate. Charlie is still watching her, and it’s somewhere between the speculative, hungry looks she catches when Charlie’s had too much wine, and the impatient, demanding one she perfected before she was talking in full sentences.

  She wants the history. All the complicated sordid details.

  “Jacobs is dangerous. You understand that, yes?”

  “He brought me three coolers worth of fiancée. I do understand that he’s a big bad motherfucker that we don’t want to screw with.”

  “Right. Well. I just stole his car, and it’s been his prized possession since he was fourteen.”

  Charlie goes still, and EJ sighs, turning off the stove and pulling the bacon off the heat. She comes to the table and Charlie sits across from her, one leg crossed under her.

  “I should have told you last night. The monsters are less terrifying in the dark,” EJ mutters. Charlie is quiet, waiting.

  “Do you remember when we were growing up, and I moved away for a year? You might not—we weren’t close.”

  “I remember it,” Charlie says, the only admission she’s ever made to being aware of EJ before six months ago.

  “Mom married a real estate baron in Dallas. They went to college together, I don’t remember all the details. So we moved. It was husband number five, I think. Things with him went south, fast. Mom could and would deal with a lot for the social status of whoever she was married to at any given time, but she drew the line at criminal activities. I met Jacobs then.”

  Charlie’s eyes widen and she can feel the other girl working it out. So she fills in the gaps. “I was ten, that summer. Jacobs was sixteen.”

  That lingers between them, and she can feel the tiny ripples of shock and concern. Silly little bitch, concerned for that long ago girl.

  “The first time I saw Jacobs, I was at a park. Mom was busy with Louis, and I was alone. I was alone a lot that year. Things were already beginning to go south even though it had only been a month or so, and I think I knew it was going to end faster than the others. But that afternoon, I was alone, and wishing I was anywhere but fucking Dallas. And I saw him, talking to some older kids. He reminded me of home. The way he owned everything around him, the way he effortlessly got them to do what he wanted, and made them think it was their idea. They were too fucking stupid to realize he’d put them exactly where he wanted, doing what he wanted.” A tiny smile tilts her lips up and she laughs. “But I noticed, and I laughed. That’s what made him notice me. And that was it. Then end and the beginning, and nothing was ever the same. Jacobs saw me. In every way that mattered—we saw each other.”

  Charlie inhales sharply, because it’s said so simply. So utterly honest and heartbreakingly vulnerable. EJ stares at the table, trying to put that familiar wall up between them.

  It isn’t working, though. It hasn’t worked with Charlie in months. Maybe because, like Jacobs in that park, so many years ago, Charlie sees her.

  “I left, not long after. Before he was done toying with those idiots I had seen him with. I think he scared me, even then. So I left and I went home and I thought that’d be the end of it.”

  “Why wasn’t it?”

  “Because when I went down stairs for dinner that evening, my mother and Louis weren’t there. But he was.”

  Her gaze flicks to Charlie. “Louis had a son. One who spent most of his time with his mother.”

  “Jacobs is your brother?”

  Her voice is shrill and disbelieving, and just a little bit disgusted.

  “Stepbrother. For a year,” EJ snaps, her eyes flashing to Charlie’s. “And we were always more than that.”

  “You were ten, EJ. That’s fucked up on so many levels.”

  “Right,” EJ scoffs. “Because you gave it up to the little virgin you were dating when you went to prom.”

  “Fuck no,” Charlie laughs. “I was thirteen and fucked one of Hayes’ teammates. But I wasn’t fucking someone six years older than me when I was ten. He wasn’t my stepbrother.”

  “Do you want to imagine all the ways Jacobs took advantage of me or do you want to know what actually happened?” EJ asks pointedly and Charlie makes a vague motion with one hand.

  “We talked, after dinner. He wanted to know why I had laughed. And when I told him, he looked at me like I was some kind of rare butterfly—something he’d never seen, that he didn’t know what to do with.”

  “He left after that night, and I didn’t see him for a week. And then he moved in. I didn’t ask why, and I didn’t get an explanation—but Louis was furious. He brought the Nova with him, and I would do my homework in the garage while he worked under the hood. It’s the only time I’ve ever known Jacobs to get his hands dirty, when he was working on the damn car. And he taught me things. About his family, and mine, and how to get away from the plans Mom was making. He taught me to play chess and made sure I wasn’t alone all the time. He taught me how to steal, and even better—how to make other people steal for me. How to make sure, when I did something that wasn’t quite legal, I wouldn’t be caught. My mother was gone the week of Christmas—Louis was trying to keep her from leaving him, so Jacobs and I sat in the house for days. He’d smoke weed and get drunk and we’d order shitty delivery and watch movies that gave me nightmares. He taught me how to get what I want—how to manipulate a pizza boy into thinking I was just a lonely kid whose mother forgot to leave some cash for the food. It didn’t matter that I could pay. It was a lesson, like everything with him was. I think Jacobs saw himself in me, but the self that he was before he learned how to lie. He saw the kid he was before he start
ed walking down the road that led him to whom he became. And I saw someone who didn’t see me as a pretty bride in training.”

  “And you fell in love with him,” Charlie murmurs.

  EJ hesitates. She wants to deny it. But she can’t. It’s the one thing she’s never been able to deny, the thing she’s been fighting to run from since she was a kid. A kid wrapped up in the one thing she shouldn’t want and couldn’t walk away from.

  “Didn’t matter, though. Jacobs knew—he wasn’t an idiot. But I was a kid, and we were related, even if only by a marriage that was falling apart. He wasn’t going to cross that line, even if I was pushing him to. Then Mom left Louis, and I was back in Charleston, and that was it. Everything was the same and everything was different.”

  Charlie shifts. “I remember that,” she says softly. “You came home and you were different. Not unhappy, not really. But—restless. Like you wanted something you had found somewhere else and we couldn’t give it to you in Charleston. You still played the part, when we were in school and at the Burningtree, but it was like—you were awake.”

  EJ gives Charlie a startled, searching look and Charlie offers a weak shrug. “I paid attention.”

  “Clearly,” EJ says, dryly.

  “That change—it was because of Jacobs?”

  “Some. And because—it was my fourth stepfather. I was getting a pretty clear picture of what Mom wanted for me. And it’s not what I wanted. But. Most of it was Jacobs. After I came home, I couldn’t be happy with being a mean girl in our little bubble world, and even when I pushed the boundaries—there was only so much I could do if I didn’t want to burst the bubble.” She shrugs. “I was bored out of my fucking mind.”

  “If your mother left Louis, why are you still working with Jacobs?”

  “He moved to Charleston when I was fifteen. He was twenty one, had a trust fund and his Nova and Louis was in jail for money laundering. He didn't tell me much, but I knew he was into some shady shit--but he was smart about it. Not like Louis. He got an apartment and started renovating some of the property Louis had owned in Charleston, and we started right where we had left off."

  Charlie's eyes flash and EJ smirks. "Not sex. I figured out pretty quickly that he wasn't interested in that—he was fucking his way through the girls who worked in his clubs, and I was his friend. He had me working with him as soon as he hit the city. I’d tell him when a party was happening and he’d show up with party favors. He’d feed me dirt on whose parents were frequenting his clubs and I’d blackmail them. They never expected me to waltz into their office with pictures of them getting beaten in a club or fucking a girl their daughter’s age. It always got their attention really damn fast." She smiles, a tiny, nostalgic thing. “And I was with Jacobs. I think we could have done nothing and it would have been enough, for me. Instead, he came back and gave me the world outside the bubble.”

  "You were a kid," Charlie hisses.

  "Stop being so pissy and offended on my behalf." EJ snaps. "We weren't normal. We didn't fit into the stupid, neat, little boxes. It was messy and important and life changing--he was my best friend and my teacher, and I was his family. The only one he had left. Him and Mom got along really well--they had even when Mom was married to Louis. So it was right. It was natural."

  "So how did you go from that to what you are today?"

  "I grew up," EJ says simply. "And so did he. We were kids. Playing an adult game, and confident we knew what the hell we were doing. But we grew up. He went away for a year, to finish school, and when he came back, we were both different. I grew up and he couldn't keep looking at me like I was a child. He was harder, colder. I was furious and wanted nothing to do with him and was sleeping around just to get him out of my head. And he--Jacobs knew. He’d always known."

  "The night everything changed," EJ's voice goes soft and distant. "I was at a charity thing with Mom. The one for cancer research that Koonts heads?" Charlie nods. She knows exactly which event EJ is talking about, a big fluffy affair with too many flowers and shitty food. "I was drunk and angry and Jacobs showed up halfway through. He ignored me. Flirted with every woman in the damn place, but ignored me completely. And when I finally stumbled out, so drunk and angry I could barely see straight, he was there."

  She's quiet, and then, "He didn't even say anything. Just dragged me behind a pillar and went down on me until I could barely stand. Then he took me out of there. He fucked me in the parking garage, on the hood of the Nova. Changed my world. It was what we'd been pointed at since that first afternoon in the park." She makes a face. "Even when we're running from shit that other people decide for us, some things are inevitable. Jacobs and me fucking each other and hurting each other? That was always inevitable."

  "What happened after that?" Charlie whispers.

  "He took me home. Dropped me off and I didn't see him again for six months." She laughs, and it’s bitter. “The next time I saw him, he needed me more than I wanted him, and it made things even, for the first time.”

  “For what?”

  “The car. He needed to put it in my name. And I wanted to do something, anything that would shake up the endless days of polite conversation and playing tennis at the Burningtree. He agreed to let me in, not the game we’d been playing, but the real shit. So I put the car in my name.”

  “Why would that matter, though? I don’t understand why the car was so important.”

  She shrugs. “It’s his baby. One of the few things that Jacobs cares about. And putting it in my name keeps it safe from search and seizure. If things go bad with him—and it’s not a matter of if, but when—the car is safe. Everything in the car is safe.”

  “You weren’t joking when you said you have a complicated history with him,” Charlie says.

  EJ is quiet—still. Thinking.

  “Do you love him?” Charlie asks.

  “The car is safe,” EJ murmurs. She’s staring into nothing, and Charlie watches her, a tiny frown on her face. EJ jerks out of the chair and grabs the keys to the Nova. “The car is safe,” she shouts at Charlie, and then she’s out the door, running and Charlie is scrambling to keep up.

  She catches up on the staircase to the parking garage. “Want to tell me what the hell we’re doing?”

  EJ huffs. “Why does the car need to be safe? Why keep it in my name and away from search and seizure laws, unless there was something in it?”

  Charlie’s eyes widen, and she grabs EJ’s arm. Jerks her around to face her. “What the hell did we just steal from him?” She demands.

  A hysterical laugh bubbles in EJ’s throat and she shakes her head, a spastic motion as fear rolls in her belly. “I don’t know. But I think we need to find out.”

  Chapter 18

  Charlie stares at the little, wrinkled envelope. It could be any package, sent from any state to EJ and tossed in the Nova and then forgotten. It’s that unremarkable.

  It took almost three hours to find it, and she had to stop twice, to placate Pax when he returned. EJ came in the second time, and met Charlie’s eyes wordlessly across the living room before she vanished into the bedroom. A shower started a few minutes later.

  She isn’t sure she’s ready for another bombshell. This morning—finding out everything she had about EJ and Jacobs—had been enough. But there will be more.

  EJ steps up next to the bed, smelling of orange blossoms and something rich and undefinable. She’s wearing a pair of tiny shorts and a black bra and pulling a plain white tank top on.

  “Open it,” she says, tugging her hair into a ponytail.

  “You open it,” Charlie says. “It’s your brother who hid it in your damn car.”

  EJ makes a small noise. “Really hung up on that little technicality, aren’t you?” she mutters, grabbing the envelope. She shakes it out and three things fall out—a passport, a plain black thumb drive, and a cell phone. They stare at them for a long moment, and then EJ hisses a curse. She sits down on the bed, hard, and flips the passport open. She pales, and her
hands are shaking.

  “We have to go. Now.”

  “We can’t. Pax hasn’t finished.”

  “Then he comes with us,” she says. She stands, and shoves the passport and thumb drive into her pocket. “Tell him, and see if you can find a charger for this.”

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell is happening?” Charlie snaps.

  EJ laughs, “Yeah. We didn’t just steal his car. We stole the fucking keys to the kingdom. He won’t give us a pass because it’s me and he’d never hurt me. Jacobs is going to send everything he has after us and if that doesn’t bring me to heel, he’ll come himself, and you need to move your ass because I’m sure as fuck not going to be here when his hired guns come knocking.”

  The words are spoken simply, with no inflection. Just a matter of fact that makes Charlie’s skin crawl.

  “We need him, EJ.”

  “Fine. Stay here. Let him work his magic and move the money. And when the guys with guns show up, you’ll be here, but you know. You’ll have lots of money.” She gives Charlie a shaky smile as she stands. “You’ll be dead, but, money!”

  She sounds slightly hysterically and Charlie blinks at her. Whatever this is, it scares EJ, in a way she hadn’t been scared before. “Ok. He comes with us. We’ll figure out what to do with him when he finishes setting up the accounts.”

  “Good. Move your pretty little ass, Charlie,” EJ says, and turns her attention to the computer in her lap.

  Charlie watches her for two seconds, and then she shakes her head and leaves her there.

  Pax is in the home office. His blonde hair is ruffled, a halo of white around his head, a hard set to his lips. A Bluetooth hangs from one ear and he’s nodding as he types into a computer.

  “That’s fine. Just tell her that the market will bounce back—we all take the occasional hit and the dip isn’t so serious that she needs to panic. Remind her that her investments had a banner year last year—if she needs any more hand holding than that, set up a phone conference with my assistant. I’m going to be out of the office the rest of the day.”