Page 24 of Z For Butterfly Man
“You won’t believe where. It’s at 462 Old South Road, Aquinnah.”
“Hold on a sec. Isn’t that the address for the decoy safehouse?”
“The one you told the detective she’d be at before shit hit the fan. Only the detective.”
“What the fuck? Tristan, if that motherfucker has anything to do with this—”
“I’m gonna kill him myself.”
“No. Tristan, you’re gonna get yourself out of that mess right now. Can’t you see? That place is tied to our firm,” his voice drops, “and it’s where you tried to frame him.”
Fabricating evidence that Ashford was Birdie’s stalker has been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. It’s what drove her away from me, and I’ll regret it for as long as I breathe.
“Brother, I got your back no matter what, but you gotta wake up,” Marcus says. “What if this whole charade is payback? He disables the GPS, leaves the car at the safehouse, the police find it there after the BOLO, and you end up a fucking suspect like he threatened this morning.” He pauses again. “Fuck, what if Birdie and Ashford are in this together?”
“What? No. She would never do that to me.”
“Are you shitting me? She broke up with you because of him, because of what you tried to do to him.”
I shake my head vigorously. “Because what I did was fucked up, but she didn’t tell him any of it.”
“How can you be so fucking sure?”
Because she loved me like I loved her. Because she protected me like I protected her. Because we shared darkness and secrets that would bind us to the grave. “She never said anything during the investigation. And if she told him the truth in private, he wouldn’t be using that safehouse to frame me. That location implicates him more than anyone. He’s the only one who knew about that place. Birdie knew it, and she was in the loop aboutthe backup tracker. She’d know that disabling the GPS alone wasn’t enough. This is Ashford’s doing.”
“Jesus, Tristan. He must have found out what you were trying to do to him, and now he’s looking for revenge.”
“He took her but staged the whole thing to pin her disappearance on me. He’s trying to take me out of the picture so she’d be all his.” I curse at the steering wheel. “Blake Abel said something I’ll never forget before he died. He said he started the Butterfly Man game, but he didn’t finish it. Someone else put that note on her pillow.”
“Tristan, if this is true, that means you were right all along. Detective Douche is the real Butterfly Man.”
CHAPTER 12
Birdie
The silence after the timer stops is agony. At least, the ticking is a countdown, a promise that something will happen when it reaches zero. This silence is just void. Indifference. An empty space where his footsteps should be.
Why is he not here yet?
The heat bleeds away immediately. It evacuates like it has somewhere better to be than trapped under my spine.
I wait. I count. One minute. Two. Five.
“Hello?” My voice cracks. “The timer is done. You said two hours.”
Nothing.
The cold reclaims the ground it has lost faster than I think. It starts at my toes, fingers and then works inward. My skin prickles with goosebumps. The table beneath me feels like ice.
Ten minutes. Fifteen.
My teeth chatter. I clench my jaw to stop them, but it doesn’t work. The shivering moves deeper, into my muscles, my bones. The primitive part of my brain screams that this is how people die.
He’s not going to let me die. This is psychological torture. Strategy. He’s breaking me down, making me desperate, pliable. When he finally comes back, I’ll be so grateful for his presence, so eager for warmth, that I’ll tell him anything he wants to hear.
I’ve written this scene a dozen times. The captor withholds comfort until the captive cracks, until their will fractures andthey start bargaining, pleading, offering pieces of themselves in exchange for basic human needs.
“Fuck you,” I mumble to the cameras I can’t see. “You sick fuck. You said two hours.”
