“D-December… t-twenty-fifth.”
“Yeah? And what did your sorry ass do to me?”
“A-a-rrested.”
“Uh-huh. Think about that next time.”
“T-Tate?” he asks while he shivers. “Dead?” He slowly lifts his shaking arms to hold his hands in front of the heat.
“Your torso should warm up first; stop blocking it with your hands.” I push his hands down when he doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t fight me. Instead, I run my free hand down his arms, trying to use the friction to bring warmth to them slowly. If warmth came to his limbs too quickly but not his chest, it could hurt him more than help him.
Jesse just leans against the car door and closes his eyes. He’s utterly exhausted, and I’m left with my mind reeling.
“You need a hospital?” I ask as I pick up one of his hands and start examining him. He’s got cuts and scrapes but nothing on the outside that wouldn’t heal on its own. But I have no idea what’s happening on the inside. I grab his wrist and check his pulse, thankful to see that it feels pretty strong.
When we reach my house, I rush around to his side and pull the car door open. He’s already feebly trying to get out, but I pickhim up, carry him inside, and set him on the cats’ heated bed before I hurry off to find our electric blanket. I toss it on him while the cats loom around him, wondering what this creature is who has stolen their bed.
“You doing alright? Otherwise we’re headed to the hospital.”
He nods. “I’m doing okay. Just exhausted. No hospital.”
While I’ve never used a thermometer, I find that Gabriel has one in the first aid kit, so I quickly get it out and stuff it in his mouth.
“Hopefully this isn’t the cat one,” I tell Jesse, who gives me a look and tries to spit it out. I force it back in as I call Gabriel.
“How are things going? Did you find them?” Gabriel asks.
“Less than ideal. Do you think you can come home?”
“Right now? Michaels has me doing five million things.”
“Yes, right now.”
That seems to make Gabriel hesitate. “Okay… can you tell me what happened? Now I’m worried.”
“Jesse went for a swim and I’m trying to defrost him,” I say as I check the thermometer and see that he’s not doing too bad. “Your rectal cat thermometer says that he’ll survive.”
“Well, as long as you didn’t get it out of the cat box, it should be the human one. I’m heading there now.”
I kneel in front of Jesse, who is looking a fraction more alive. “What the fuck was your plan?”
“N-No plan,” he says.
“Oh, no, you had a plan. If you don’t want to tell me, let me give it a try. Whitaker had Tate record you and put the video in your house, which he played for you to make you feel like your privacy had been completely shattered. Then he put up a camera to watch you to make you feel paranoid, and let’s not forget the head in the Christmas present. When Whitaker saw that we’d figured out the Christmas present for Lacey, he changed his plans. He decided that I needed to go since I kept ruining hisplans and was the reason one of his puppets got arrested. When you went to unplug the router, he texted to tell you that he had Lacey and that he was going to kill her unless you called the cops on me and told them that you suspected me of having a head in my trunk. He wanted to make you feel absolutely horrible about yourself by betraying someone who was supporting you. He wanted to alienate you, make you paranoid, and make you feel like he was watching you and picking apart your life.
“The look you wore when you came back from the router told me that things had changed. So when I went back into the house to get the box with the head in it, I made an identical box and tossed some of your weird bug books into it that I left outside your house, which the police later found to back up my claim that someone had swapped out the boxes. I told the officers to pretend like I really had put the box back there and ‘arrest’ me, in case Whitaker had someone watching. I also wanted it to seem like you did as you were told so that you can see that no matter what you do, Whitaker is not going to give you what you want. He’s just going to take and take until there’s nothing left of you. His promise to let Lacey go if you got me arrested obviously got you nowhere. So what did he ask you to do next in exchange for Lacey’s life?”
Jesse looks down at the floor and wraps the blanket tighter around himself before taking a deep breath. “Make something happen to Gabriel. I… I knew it was never going to end. I knew he was lying to me. I knew he was manipulating me. But getting you arrested wasn’t… the end of the world. I knew we could prove you weren’t involved and nothing would come of it. But hurting Gabriel? You know I couldn’t go that far.”
“So you thought if you grabbed one of Whitaker’s pawns, you could do a little trade. Lacey for Tate, right?”
“It didn’t go well.”
“Sure didn’t seem to,” I say.
His dark eyes search mine. “Is Tate dead?”
I watch him for a moment. “He sure is.”
