“Among other things.” I use the gun to gesture for Aubrey to stand. “On your feet.”
He groans, stretching languidly once he’s up to draw attention to the fact that he’s naked. “Is this the part where you take me out into the yard and shoot me like a sick dog?”
Every time Aubrey finds himself in a situation he is not in control of, he resorts to behavior like this. Fishing for information using questions that make it seem like he doesn’t care while everything about his demeanor conveys that he does. Knowing that he won’t stop talking until I give him something, I decide to gift him with the full truth.
“Oh, no, this is the part where you wash your face, brush your teeth, take a shower and get dressed for the day then go downstairs, put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.”
As much as I want to be the one to take Aubrey’s life, as badly as I want to beat him and bruise him and subject him to the same awful torture AJ faced, I know that I can’t. There cannot be any signs of foul play. Cal, Beck and I discussed our options at length, playing around with various possibilities.
Ultimately, we landed on a staged suicide. It’s the only way to be free of Aubrey and keep ourselves out of prison. It’s also the only way to trigger the chain of events that will allow me to take everyone else in his orbit out.
“No one is going to believe I killed myself,” Aubrey says.
He’s in the bathroom now, freshly showered with his toothbrush hanging from his mouth and a towel wrapped around his waist. I’m just as surprised by how long it took him to formulate a response to my instructions as I am by how well he’s following them. Cal and Beck haven’t even had to step in. They’ve been hanging back, standing just inside the doorway watching and listening but saying nothing.
“People take their lives every day, Aubrey. You’re not above suicide.”
“Sure, but why would I off myself when my life is so fucking good?”
White foam gathers at the corners of his mouth as he brushes, I wait for him to spit and rinse before responding. “The guilt got to you.”
“The guilt?”
“Yes, over what you did to AJ.”
“If you tell anyone about that, Gambit will have your head.”
I push my lips out into a faux pout, fluttering my lashes innocently. “Me?I’m not going to say anything to anyone.You’regoing to lay it all out in your suicide note. What’s not coveredthere is explained in the email you sent to all the major media outlets this morning.”
“I didn’t send any fucking emails.”
“Of course you did,” I insist, knowing damn well it was me. “They came from your private computer and your personal account. You even made sure to attach the most incriminating of Jordan’s files.”
His jaw drops, and I watch in delight as the redness of agitation blooms on his chest and begins to crawl up his neck while he sputters, struggling to form a coherent thought. I’m sure it’s overwhelming. I’ve thrown a lot of information at him all at once.
“Those files are gone,” he spits. “We destroyed the originals, and the only copies were on the computer we took when I dragged you out of that shit hole in Bethesda.”
“Oh, sweetie, you really believe that don’t you?” He glowers at me, and I roll my eyes, sick of explaining the most obvious things. “You’ve never been thorough, Aubrey, and you’ve never paid attention. All the years you’ve known me, and you never noticed where I put the things I want to keep safe.”
I’ve never been more thankful for that old laptop than I was the day I got back from Gambit’s and realized Aubrey hadn’t taken it. He hadn’t even seen it because Beck had the foresight to hide it, leaving the newer one out as a decoy.
Cal clear his throat. “Time to get dressed.”
Aubrey moves through the rest of his morning routine on leaden feet. I can’t tell if he’s given up completely or if he’s plotting an escape, and truthfully, it doesn’t matter because there’s no getting out of this for him. Once he’s dressed, I give Cal back his gun, so he can lead the march down to Aubrey’s office.
“So this is where it happens,” he muses, sinking into his desk chair with Beck’s hand on his shoulder.
I open the third drawer on the right-hand side and pull out the old revolver he’s had since his 18th birthday. Chip gave it to him, and he was supposed to pass it down to AJ. I never cared much for the tradition, but I think it’s kind of poetic that the thing meant to link generations of Taylor men together will be the undoing of one.
“It seems like the kind of thing you would do,” I say, carrying the small gun over to the couch he made me sit on when he took Cal and Beck away from me. They’re standing in front of his desk like they were that day, exuding power none of us possessed then because Aubrey had it all.
“Why would I do it now?” he asks suddenly. “If the guilt about AJ was eating at me, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to kill myself on the day he died?”
I stare at him for a full minute, wondering if he’s serious. If he has his head shoved so far up his own ass he can’t even be bothered to check a calendar. He looks back at me, growing annoyed the longer I go without speaking. When I finally find my voice, there’s incredulity laced through it.
“Do you really not know what today is?”
“You woke me up with a gun to the face. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to note the date.”
