Calla Parker had plans.
She gazed across the street, to the little white house in desperate need of a paint job, fiddling absently with the bracelet at her wrist as she thought of love and loose ends.
Love, of all things. She swallowed an incredulous snort. Love was a problem, a thorn in her side that had lodged itself into her skin, down through the muscle and bone and into her marrow, dragging her forward and onward to its inevitable, brutal end. For love, there would be hell to pay.
But those pesky loose ends...well.
There would still be hell to pay for those, too. Only this time, she'd be the one collecting.
Calla crossed the street and approached the little white house. She'd been there once or twice before, for a pregame and another, far later night, poorly spent on the disgusting couch the boys who lived there kept shoved in the corner, because Olivia had insisted they drop by and drop by had turned into sleep over, and sleep over meant Calla on that filthy couch while Olivia lounged in her boyfriend's bed, the king of his very own castle.
Calla's eyes flickered to the upstairs window.
She had a knack for dethroning kings.
Three knocks on the front door—damn Cooper and his damn compulsions, the number three was starting to stick with her in the worst fucking way—and soon enough Calla found herself face to face with none other than Kevin Richards, whose already wary expression transformed into something very like fear when he spotted her there on his front porch.
"Kevin," she greeted cooly.
Kevin had apparently lost the ability of speech, because he just stood there and stared at her like a gap-mouthed fish, too stupid to understand the danger it was in.
Calla's more violent impulses had been curbed somewhat over the years, thanks to the relatively consistent schedule of savagery she'd been tasked to carry out by a dark god of her own making. Killing Kurt and the others had kept the beast sated.
Until the photo on her fridge and the warning written in red.
Now it was a snarling, irrational tangle of claws and teeth, its maw yawning wide as it tore her apart from the inside, demanding what it was owed.
LETMEOUTLETMEOUTLETMEOUT.
Poor Kevin.
Or maybe not. Poor Kevin had made his bed. Now he could settle down and lie in it. "We need to talk," she said when it became clear Kevin had absolutely zero intentions of ever moving again.
He swallowed. A sign of life, if not intelligence. "Um..."
That was the only word he could muster. Um.
"Why'd you do it?" she asked, hoping to speed things along.
His eyes immediately filled with tears. Fantastic, she thought, disgusted. "I'm so..." He gasped, clinging to the broken doorframe. "I'm so sorry."
They always are, right before I turn them into nothing at all.
"Why?" she demanded again. His tears meant so very little to her. But she had a part to play here, and play she would. So she let a crack of doubt slip through her facade, into her eyes, softening them a bit, and even in the set of her shoulders, which drooped as though the fight had left her all at once.
Kevin sniffled rather unattractively, swiping at his panicked tears as they attempted to slip down his splotchy cheeks. "I had to. I fucked up."
"Kevin, what are you talking about?"
She knew exactly what he was talking about.
He shook his head, refusing to look at her. "It doesn't matter now," he said miserably. "It's already over for me. I'm dead. When my dad finds out—" He choked on the words.
What the hell did the Director have to do with any of this? Calla frowned, genuinely confused. "When your dad finds out what, Kev?"
He slumped against the doorframe, defeated. He made a sound torn between a laugh and a sob. "I guess it doesn't matter now, huh?" He gazed down at his bare feet, miserable. If he was miserable from the cold or his own sorry ass decisions, she couldn't tell. Probably both. "I cheated."
The words coming out of his mouth were making less and less sense. Cheated on Olivia? Cheated at cards? Frustrated by his mindless muddling, Calla glanced over her shoulder. Kevin and his loser buddies had settled down in a relatively lousy neighborhood, likely because it was cheaper than dirt and no one really gave a shit whether or not the boys next door blared loud music at all hours, everyone was blaring music at all hours and what difference did one more set of rowdy neighbors make. So it was really no surprise that the roads were empty. Everyone was asleep, no doubt in an attempt to snooze off whatever hangover they'd inevitably wake up with, no matter how long they buried their heads under the covers and pretended otherwise.
She looked back at Kevin, prepared to wrench the truth out of him by force if necessary, parts to be played be damned. But he was already rambling again, a blubbering mess of tears and misery and God, she hoped whatever shit he had wasn't catching. She'd rather Michaels shoot her right between the eyes before she ever became that pathetic.
"My MCAT. I cheated, alright? That's how I got into med school." His lower lip wobbled. "Dad was so excited for me to get my results back. He couldn't wait to brag about how both his sons had gotten into the same program he did, and I couldn't stand it..."
Fresh tears welled in Kevin's eyes as he looked at her, swiping his sleeve across his nose to dry up all the tear-snot. "It's not like it was even that big a deal, but then I got this weird ass call from someone a few months ago. And no, I don't know who from, but whoever it was they knew what I'd done and they were going to tell everyone unless..." He tore at his hair again. Calla hoped he ripped it right out of his skull. "They wanted me to keep an eye on you, alright?" He cringed away from her curled lip. "God, at first it was just small shit, like telling them your work schedule or when you'd be out of town, stupid stuff Liv could tell me easy enough—"
"So Olivia was a part of this, then?" Calla asked quietly.
"What?" He froze, completely shocked. "No! Absolutely not. He had no idea..." He hesitated. "Not that I know of...fuck, I don't think so." He pressed his fist against his eyes. "I don't know. I don't know. I thought it was just some guy you'd fooled around with." Close enough. I did fool around with his son. "And it's not like the information was hurting anyone."
"Until you attacked Cooper."
His face fell. "I'm sorry. All I know is the same person called right before the holidays, but they didn't want information, they wanted me to do something awful, knock Cooper out and take him God knows where—"
"Take him?" Calla asked, alarmed. But Cooper hadn't been taken. Which meant—
"I couldn't do it," Kevin whispered. "I was a fucking mess, okay? Cooper's my boy, and—" He blanched at her expression. "I couldn't go through with it. I dragged Coop back into the apartment basically right after he passed out and prayed like hell he was okay and—"
"Well, thank you so much for your prayers," Calla said icily.
Kevin's face crumpled in on itself. "I'm so sorry." He drew in a staggered breath. "I guess that doesn't count for much. If it makes you feel better, I'm completely screwed anyway. I didn't do what that psycho wanted me to—" He looked at her abruptly. "Do you know who it is?"
She wanted very badly to bash his brains against the wall of that little white house. "No," she hedged, avoiding his eye.
He wasn't buying it, not even remotely, but that was the point. Calla had come here for confirmation, had known there was a very good chance Michaels had done to Kevin what he'd done to her. Which meant Kevin, fool though he was, remained an honest fool.
She held onto her anger for a few more glorious seconds. And then she let it go.
"What happens now, since you didn't..." She waved a hand, looking sheepish.
He shrugged. Still miserable. "Whoever it is," a questioning look for her benefit, "they threatened to send my actual results to the school board. And my dad, which is arguably worse." Calla agreed with him on that. "I'd guess he's gonna bury me alive when he finds out. And Liv..." He'd gone pale as death.
Calla was grateful she had basically no ability at all to empathize, otherwise she might have felt terribly about the entire situation, given Michaels was her problem and had only become his problem because she was in his life.
"Hey," he said quietly, shivering as the cold finally caught up with him. "Is Cooper...is he okay? I mean, there wasn't any permanent damage or anything, right?"
Anger threatened to needle its way back into her heart. "He's fine. Tired. But fine."
"Good." Kevin cleared his throat. "Calla..."
"Yes?"
"Tell Coop I'm sorry," he blurted before he could take the words back.
She sighed and stepped off the porch. "I will, Kevin."
"Calla?"
She paused on the porch steps. Looked back over her shoulder and waited, brow raised.
Kevin hesitated. Slowly, he said, "If Cooper's in some sort of trouble...I'm basically gonna owe him for the rest of his life. Or as long as it takes to make this right." He met her eye without flinching. "Call me if you need anything. Like, ever. No questions asked."
It didn't make up for it. It probably never would. But she nodded anyway like it meant something and left him lingering there in the doorway, shivering in the cold but unwilling to retreat back into the warmth of the house, not when he was still so busy punishing himself for circumstances Calla had dumped over his head without his even knowing.
She still wasn't fucking sorry. She didn't have the capacity for sorry, and she most certainly did not have the time for it.
She had big plans, after all.
Calla broke into a steady jog when she hit the sidewalk, the cold in her lungs a comfort, the steady burn in her legs as familiar to her as her own reflection. The exercise chased away the last of her anger. A relief. If the anger lingered, she would turn right back around and set that little white house on fire, consequences be damned. Perhaps the smoke would sweep aside the memory of Cooper, motionless on the floor of her apartment. She'd do just about anything to get that image out of her head—
There she was, thinking about love again. Love and loose ends.
Kevin was a loose end now, thanks to Michaels' obsession with her and their game that wasn't a game but a hellish reality she wanted nothing more than to escape from. Kevin and Blake and Mike. Vincent and Cooper. Ryan. Loose ends all. Boys who either knew too much or knew nothing at all and were even more vulnerable because of it. And Stephanie too, surrounded by white walls and white floors and white smiles with their white coats.
Michaels would kill them all.
But first he would kill Calla, who had loose ends of her own. And Astrid Baker was at the very top of that list.
Is she worth it? Calla mused, echoing Cooper's sentiments.
Yes, the beast hissed, while what sensibility she had left stewed in pointed silence.
The others, Mike and Blake and all the rest, would keep her secret, either for their own gain later down the road or out of sheer terror for what she might do to them otherwise. But not Astrid. She was a loose end and a loose cannon and she would blast Calla's life to bits the first chance she got, no matter what pretty, honeyed words she'd whispered in Cooper's ear.
That alone made her death worthwhile. Necessary, even.
Astrid. Michaels. One wrong step, and they would detonate. Unless of course that big, beautiful red panic button never had cause to be pressed.
Oh, such a careful, tricky game. Calla needed them to believe they had no cause to fear her, that she was less than a threat—a mere nuisance, quickly squashed.
She'd have to play the reckless fool.
Reckless—that was easy. Calla was reckless, reckless and brash and hot-headed and stuck in her own dark universe, which of course revolved around her, because why shouldn't it? With that terrible temper, foolishness was a mere hairsbreadth from her grasp.
And so she chased it, her pace steady as she crossed through Ithaca on foot, neighborhoods falling away under the tread of her worn sneakers, sneakers that had seen blood and dirt and perched on the cusp of shallow graves. She ran and ran some more, slowing only once she neared the address she'd memorized upon leaving her apartment earlier that morning.
If she followed this road, she would eventually pass through Ithaca's city limits. Quaint houses lined either side of the street, painted in shades of pastel that she was sure were meant to be quaint. A bonafide Mayberry.
Even Mayberry had its monsters, she supposed.
Michaels' house was at the very end of the row, a little blue square with white shingles and untrimmed hedges choked with overgrown weeds. A silver car was parked in the gravel drive.
So. The monster was home.
Hands crammed in her pockets, Calla braced herself against a nearby telephone pole, feigning interest in the ground between her feet. She had no way to check the time with any accuracy, not with her phone, buried under the covers back at her apartment, and certainly not with the sun obscured by an iron sheet of clouds. Leaving behind the phone had been a precaution. For all she knew Michaels had bugged it somehow, and wouldn't that just be her luck, to be found out by a little blip of technology in her pocket, loudly broadcasting her location for the world and Michaels to see.
Calla sighed, content to while away the remainder of her afternoon in the cold. Michaels would either leave the house or he wouldn't—
The door swung open.
Startled, Calla threw up her hood and meandered further down the sidewalk, glancing over her shoulder only once she'd heard the telltale grumble of a car engine starting up.
Slowly, oh-so slowly, the silver car in Michaels' drive backed out into the street. She held her breath as the car disappeared down the road, puttering along at an even, unhurried clip.
Calla paused there on the sidewalk. She couldn't believe her luck. She'd anticipated long hours out in the cold, perhaps spent over a stretch of days as she learned the detective's schedule.
Instead, he'd unknowingly handed her the keys to the kingdom.
What if he suspects? She scowled at the corner where the silver car had turned, slipping out of sight. What if he knows I'm here and he's waiting to see what I'll do?
Paranoid. She was so goddamn paranoid. Even if she had good reason to be.
Wary now, Calla eyed the perimeter of the blue house, straining to catch the gleam of a camera lens in the trees or perched on the corner by the gutters. Some indication that she was being watched. But there were no cameras, not so far as she could see, which admittedly didn't mean much. And if she was being watched, well—she reasoned it didn't matter much, not for what she was about to do.
Grimacing, Calla trotted across the road, her hood still drawn. No doubt she cut a rather sketchy figure in her dark clothes, her face shrouded, but that couldn't be helped. She tossed a single glance over her shoulder—oh, fuck it all—before cutting a path straight to Michaels' front door.
Shielding her eyes against the watery daylight at her back, Calla squinted through the square pane of glass that had been cut into the front door. It provided only a very small, somewhat distorted window through which she could see into the house. Not that there was much to see. No pictures on the wall. No furniture. Just a long, dark hall.
And the alarm system mounted on the wall just ahead. Close enough to touch, if only she could step over the threshold.
Jittery with nerves, Calla retreated back into the yard and, with one last glance down the street to ensure no prying eyes were around to wonder what the hell she was up to, she positioned herself against the side of the house, veiled from the street beyond by the overgrown hedges in the front.
The waiting game had begun.
Calla crouched low, ears attuned to even the smallest of sounds: the snapping of a nearby branch as the wind picked up; the passing of a car—she tensed, anticipating the crunch of gravel under tire, but whoever it was just kept driving; the distant, incessant bark of what sounded like a rather small dog. She processed each new piece of information and then discarded it.
She couldn't be sure how long she crouched there. Long enough to lose all feeling in her legs, her face numb with cold, fingers near frozen despite keeping them clenched firmly in the pockets of her hoodie. Fuck, it was cold. Cold and miserable and what a truly deplorable start to the new year, lurking in the shadows like a criminal—she was a criminal—waiting for her enemy—also a criminal—to return from grocery shopping or whatever the hell it was he felt he had to do on a Monday afternoon.
And then—there it was. Gravel cracked and split as a car rolled into the driveway on the other side of the house. Calla tensed, barely daring to breathe as the sound of footsteps reached her, but it wasn't until she heard the delightful creak of wood—someone climbing the porch steps—that she sprang free of her hiding place.
Michaels had just shoved himself inside the house, a plastic bag clenched between his fingers, when she said, "Fancy seeing you here."
He startled, which was gratifying, but only for a moment. Then he was glaring down at her from the threshold of his house, the bag still in hand. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked softly, eyes flickering over her shoulder, to the houses that lined the street, their windows like so many eyes gazing back out at them. Watching.
Listening.
"I came here to warn you," she said quietly, hoping to trigger that superiority complex of his. "If you ever touch Cooper again—"
The security system's screen—the same system she'd noticed earlier—began to flash.
Michaels just sneered at her. Smug, as usual.
She'd been banking on that.
Without seeming to think of it, he glanced back at the screen in the wall and quickly punched in a five-digit code. "How many times do I have to tell you that you aren't in any position to make demands, my dear?"
How sweet his blood would taste between her teeth when she ripped out his throat.
"Kill the professor," Michaels said, gripping the edge of the door—no doubt prepared to slam it right in her face. "Or I'll kill your boyfriend. It's really that simple."
She involuntarily reached out to caress the centerpiece of her bracelet. A second later, soft, reassuring vibrations bounced against her skin.
Cooper.
She crammed her foot in the door before Michaels could shut it in her face. "The professor will be dead by the end of the month," she insisted, all business. "I'll do it myself if he hasn't dropped dead between now and then."
Michaels just smiled at her. "By the end of the week, Calla. Or the next bullet in my gun's chamber is going straight between Cooper's eyes."
She pulled back her foot just as he slammed the door.
It felt like the worst sort of loss, like she was reeling out in space with no gravity to pull her back down, momentum dragging her further out into the black abyss, the stars cold and hateful, promising death.
Michaels' laughter ricocheted through her head. She'd wanted to tear out his throat. Still did, truth be told.
She always longed for such dark, awful things.
Calla forced herself away from his house. The further she walked, the more her head began to clear. She took one breath and then another, step after step, no longer wheeling through space. No, she was gazing down at a massive chess board with its many disposable pawns and brave knights, all of them wearing faces she knew—Vincent and Cooper and Astrid and so many others besides, most of them dead and gone, their moves spent.
She imagined Michaels perched across from her, his face set in the sure smile of victory.
That vision faded as she recited the string of numbers Michaels had entered to disarm his security system. A date, she realized.
Not a birthdate, as one might expect from a parent. A death date.
His son's death date.
Again and again Calla recited those numbers. Committing them to memory. Searing them onto the surface of her brain. She could see the next series of moves laid out before her so clearly, just like that chessboard..
A wild grin split her face.
Your move, Michaels.