Laura popped her head around the doorway. “I’m finished smashing up the place,” she said, still breathing hard. “He can’t monitor anyone other than with his own eyes—and I’m more than willing to take care of that, too.”
“What about his phone, just in case there’s an app?”
“All sorted.” She gave the room, then me, a once-over. “What’s going on?”
“Might want to check out what Tim has over there. See if you recognise anything.”
I left the two of them and joined Owen and Kerger, immediately taken aback by how much damage Laura had done. Broken bits of plastic and glass littered the wood floor. The desk had been flipped on its side and belted until the wood splintered. Power points were kicked in, so he couldn’t plug anything else in. No wonder she was breathless.
“We found your stash,” I said to Dustin.
Rain pounded against the windows, and the sky had darkened to almost black.
He looked wildly from me to his bedroom door. “You’re making assumptions. It’s not—”
“What?” I lifted my brows, tempted to stomp him in the same way Laura had his belongings. “It’s not what we think? Someone planted them? What about the articles? Someone broke in and taped them to your fucking wall?”
“What are you talking about?” Owen demanded.
“He’s got women’s underwear in there,” I said. “Girls’, too. A drawer full of them. And some disturbing shit plastered on his wall.”
“These are Willow’s undies.” Laura’s voice rose from the bedroom. She came storming back into the lounge room, backpack in one hand and underwear in the other.“She thought she’d lost them.”
“You little fucking weasel.” Owen’s expression darkened, and he grabbed Dustin by the scruff of the neck, dragging him out of the chair one-handed. “You were watching us—watching mygirls—and you wereinour apartment?”
“You’ve got it wrong,” he said, his eyes darting from one person to another. “They belonged to dead residents. I’m not hurting anyone.”
When he tried to pull away from Owen again, Laura emptied her hands and stormed over to him, ramming her forearm against his chest.
“Stay there until we’ve figured out what to do with you,” she said. “You’re lucky you never touched them, or I’d castrate you on the spot.”
Dustin’s laugh bordered on hysterical. “Who do you think you are? You have no authority here whatsoever.”
“How about I call the cops?” I suggested, crossing my arms. “And if they don’t come in the next fifteen minutes, we play judge and jury?”
“You can’t touch me!” His eyes went wide with fear, and he was right to be scared. While the world collapsed around us, no one was watching. Varesh was right on the money. Here, now, we could do anything we wanted. “You can’t do a thing, you imbecile,” he shouted, his voice shaking.
My pocket pinged with one message after the other, the rapid fire pace taking my attention off Dustin.
As Tim returned from the bedroom, I pulled out my phone and found a string of texts from Sadie.
You can’t come home
You know why
Stay at my place. It’s probs not contaminated
A flash of lightning lit up the room, and rolling thunder followed.
I closed my eyes and dread washed over me.
Whenever someone brought the virus into the building, they quarantined in their apartment and kept the rest of us safe. During all these months, not a single person had caught it from another in the common areas.
This was Sadie, though, and it wasn’t the type of illness you could suffer through alone and come out alive the other end.
“I’ve gotta go.” I opened my eyes and knew exactly what to do. Picturing the days and weeks ahead had a preemptive exhaustion washing over me, and the issues with Kerger no longer seemed so important. “Whatever you end up deciding with this asshole, if you’re looking for majority rules, count me as a yes.”
Renewed energy had Dustin screeching and prying Owen’s hands off him.
