white cover flaps in the breeze swooping in under the garage door. I launch myself at the car.
I tear at the cover, my nails scraping on the paint beneath, my fingers tight with rage, with a wanting that will never go away.
I wish everything was different.
I wish he never died.
I wish she could be mine.
But wishing is for losers, and nothing will ever be the way I want it.
I fling the cover aside, revealing the gleaming beast beneath. The car my brother deserved. The car he dreamed of. I pick up a brick from a stack the groundskeeper left in the corner and throw it through the windscreen.
Glass shatters everywhere, scattering across the concrete and ruining the leather seats. It’s going to be a bitch to clean up, but I don’t even care. My shoulders heave. My heart stutters in my chest.
Something inside me is tearing open. I’m falling over the edge, and on the other side is only darkness and Mackenzie’s golden hair. I tear from the garage and fly through the house. My boots slam on cold tiles. Everything about this place is cold and dead to me now.
I run my hand over a table in the hallway, sending Felix’s track trophies flying. They scatter across the tiles – metal surfaces scratching and denting, glass dedications shattering into pieces.
“Noah?” Grace leans over the balcony, her face pinched with concern. I can’t bear to look at her. I storm down the hall, heading for the reception room where Dad’s voice booms. I hear a glass smash and someone swear.
I come up short, hesitating on the threshold. Dad’s not alone. He’s not raging into the void. He stands in front of the fireplace, in the shadow of my brother’s portrait. He faces off against a wide set man with broad shoulders practically bursting the seams of his pinstriped suit.
As I study the man’s face, another memory flashes in my mind. Dad had given his evidence at trial, sharing the toxicology report showing how Felix had died, and how the Malloys were responsible. It was the smoking gun that should have sent Howard Malloy to jail for his crime, but the judge dismissed it. We had the verdict – not guilty. Howard Malloy killed my brother and got away with it.
Mom withdrew into herself, and Dad… Dad had a heavyset man in a pinstripe suit over for dinner. They talked all night in the reception room, and I wasn’t allowed anywhere near them.
The next week, Mackenzie and her parents disappeared.
My breath hitches. I press myself against the wall, listening hard. Dad gave no indication he was aware of my presence. He keeps on berating the man.
“You fucked everything up last time, Brentwood. Now you’ll be able to put it right.”
“I’m not doing it,” the man snaps back, his voice rising with every word. “I don’t care what you do to me. I’m not going near that house again, and I won’t send one of my boys, neither.”
“You’re being ridiculous. This is a seventeen-year-old girl we’re talking about. How can she possibly—”
“You can’t know what I saw.” The man – Brentwood – rasps his words, his voice tight with terror. “You find someone else, Mr. Marlowe. That’s no sweet-sixteen beauty queen you’re facing off against. She’s a cold-blooded killer.”
40
Mackenzie
Gabriel has the Uber driver drop us off at the docks. Not the cool, hip docks on the south end of the boardwalk with all the restaurants and clubs, but the creepy, abandoned docks with the rotting boards and gross fish smell and spiders.
“Where are we going?” My foot slips on the wet boards. I grab hold of Gabriel before I go flying. “I said I wanted to party, not get stoned in a smelly fish graveyard.”
“You’ll see.” Gabriel leads me down a set of dingy steps. Waves lap at the pier on either side of us. I can see a weird light glowing beneath the water.
Goosebumps rise on my arms. This is just the kind of spot a serial killer would take me before he cuts out my heart and turns my tits into a pompom hat.
Gabriel gives three short raps on an enormous steel door. A small hatch slides open, and I can just make out a pair of glitter-soaked eyes beyond. Gabriel leans close and whispers, “Mermaid.” The door swings open, revealing a narrow, steep set of stairs heading down. The woman is nowhere to be seen.
A prickle of excitement mixed with fear rattles in my chest. We clamber down the