Page 26 of Ripple Effect: Ep. 1

She looks around the vehicle, no doubt, appraising whether it’s worth how much she could make off me, and tips her head forward, allowing me to secure the blindfold to her eyes.

“It doesn’t come off until I take it off, we clear?”

“Yes.” Her too-pink lips stretch with a smile. “This is kinky. Different. I like it.”

Kinky isn’t the word I’d use to describe my methods, but I smirk as I pull the car out onto Van Buren, in the opposite direction of the squad car.

“So. Where are you taking me, Friend?” Her hand slides down my thigh, and I capture it before she reaches the painful hard on that’s had me feeling like a goddamn porn star the last few days.

Her muscles tense in my palm, a reaction that ripples down my spine.

I set a kiss to the back of her hand and place it on the console between us. “Somewhere quiet.”

An alert flashes across my phone, drawing my attention down to the red warning on my screen, and I smile while clicking the button to dismiss it.

It’s rare that I arrive home so early in the evening, but I find my usual haunts far less enticing to the needs intensifying inside my body right now.

10

Dylan

I glance down at my phone that reads nine o’clock. I’ve watched the man long enough to know that he won’t be rolling up to his home until sometime after eleven. Two hours to get in, grab the cash, and get out. It almost warrants an easy stroll.

For good measure, I’ve followed him home from the old diner two nights this week and camped out in the abandoned lot next door. Used the cash he tossed me for a cab to follow close behind. The rest I used on a two-week supply of Oxy from Chanel’s old dealer, along with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter that’s kept me from starving to death.

During the day, I’ve kept a lookout for Layla, not finding a single trace of her. I want to believe she’s okay. That maybe she ran into some nice shelter volunteer who took her in and gave her a safe place to stay. I have a feeling that’s not the case, but I can’t think about that right now.

I’ve scoped the perimeter of the graystone where he lives, noting that it appears to be empty, from what I can see anyway. Empty, as in, no crazy psycho roommates. No telling whether or not the guy has a bunch of bodies stored down in the basement, and I hope to God I don’t stumble upon some gruesome graveyard of acid-ravaged corpses.

At least no one will catch me sneaking in.

My muscles tremble and my nerves feel as if they’re bouncing around inside of me like livewires. Where there are nerves, there’s pain, so I pull the orange unmarked bottle from my satchel and pop the top, dumping the pill into my palm. It sucks having to forego the buzz of parachuting, but the slow release will keep the edge off and let me stay alert.

I grab a nail from my pocket, one I found outside the construction site down the road from the animal shelter, along with a Phillips screwdriver that I stole from one of the rigs. I’ve only broken into a house once before—a place on the corner where I grew up, rumored to be haunted. It was a bet that Billy Wicks dared me to take and I ended up spending the entire night inside.

My mother was pissed when I snuck in the following morning, but a quick hit and she fell back into her catatonic state of bliss and forgot the whole thing the next day.

Wedging the nail through the small holes in the screen, I pop the lock open on both sides and tug the screen out, setting it down behind the bushes beside me. I’ve only done this on the windows that slide horizontally and thank goodness, this is one of those. Slipping the screwdriver beneath the frame, I wedge it behind the locking mechanism. Using the heel of my palm, I slam my hand against the screwdriver once, twice, three times pops the plastic sheath off the lock and I slide the window over.

A hose spigot offers enough leverage for me to climb up the wood siding and pull myself into the window.

Streetlights outside provide a small bit of light, illuminating the rich wood tones inside. The house is nothing that I imagined it to be. It has an air of long passed aristocracy in the carvings, paintings, and tapestries. Like stepping into another world. I can almost see women in glittery-fringed flapper dresses and dapper men smoking cigars, perhaps reminiscent of the homes before the neighborhood went to shit.

I drag my hand over the thick walnut bannister and the door ahead catches my eye. Turning the knob, I push through and enter an old-fashioned office, complete with a credenza and bookshelves, lined with books, closing the door behind me. Long burgundy drapes conceal what I assume is a wide picture window that spans the length between both bookcases along the wall. I flip on the light, make my way toward the shelves that beckon my inner nerd, and tug the spine of an antique hardback with a thick binding, where the cover reveals Moby Dick. Another is Robinson Crusoe and Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Stories like these used to be my escape before the drugs. I scan the library for books on how to properly murder a victim or disembowel a man in record time, but find nothing. Assuming he actually reads these books, he’s got one hell of a collection.

Another glance at my phone shows it’s just after nine, yet a sudden urgency tugs at me to stop admiring the décor and get down to business, looking for the cash. His desk is clean, organized, and reminds me of something out of my grandmother’s era with its sturdy wooden frame that would probably take four exceptionally brawny men to move it out of here. The first drawer reveals pens, perfectly lined, pre-sharpened pencils, small cases of paperclips, and staples.

“Holy anal personality disorder, Batman,” I mutter. I’m surprised he made as much of a mess as he did at the factory.

I should be nervous, rifling through this man’s personal things, having watched him pour acid onto a man’s body as unaffected as if he’d poured water over a dying plant.

Something happened when I left that factory, though, completely overshadowed by my missing dog, but present, just the same.

The realization that I’d been spared by a clearly dangerous man sank in. Slow and without reason, that fact bubbled to the surface and my traitorous brain, likely in an effort to overthrow my sense of denial, decided that perhaps the man he killed was comparatively worse. After all, he was the one who’d picked me up. He took me to a dark and empty factory, held a gun to my head, and vowed to fuck my corpse.

Not the stranger who killed him—the same man who told me that he would’ve let me walk.

No, something happened in the last few days that could probably qualify me as a mental patient—I found a way to justify what happened. To make sense of something that didn’t make sense at all—why he’d simply let me go. The guy he killed must’ve been the lowest of low, and I was just scratching the surface when acid-boy happened to stumble upon us. I guess in some twisted, totally messed up way, this dangerous and scary killer saved my life.