Not since college, I think dully, but it seems like an answer I shouldn’t admit out loud.
I think about where he left the gun, on the table to my right, but there’s no way I could get there first. Not with Beatrix in the way, with Sebastian’s body parked a good three feet closer. Better to keep quiet and wait.
Sebastian’s scowl says he knows the answer. “That’s what I thought. So you keep on living your American dream up here in country club fairy-tale land, but enjoy it while it lasts because life can turn on a dime. Believe me when I say there’s no safety net to catch you when you fall. For people like me, life is not something to enjoy but to survive. Your American dream is my nightmare.”
“It’s true, I can’t possibly understand what you’re going through, and I can’t be your safety net, but I can help you get one. Think what you want about Cam and me, but we have influence. People listen to us. If we call up the news stations and make a stink about what is happening to you and your daughter, we can change your situation. We can start a GoFundMe and make sure everyone who comes through the restaurants knows about it. We can help.”
“A GoFundMe, like we haven’t tried that,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Last time I looked there were six of those things, and maybe we scrounged up enough money to pay for three months of treatment, and then what? On the fourth month her body rejects the lungs, and it’s a death worse than what she’s going through now.”
“There has to be something I can do.”
Sebastian shakes his head, gestures to the empty chairs on either side of me. “You can stop acting like you give a shit and get in the damn chair. Cam will be here any minute.”
The panicky feeling returns, a vibration in my bones, a hot itch just under my skin. “Sebastian, please. Please let me help you.”
I stare up at him, and it’s so obvious to me now, the violent loathing in his eyes. The ugly anger, a hatred that all afternoon I thought was meant for me, but it’s not really. It’s for Cam. And the second he gets here, the instant he barrels up those stairs and into this room, the bullets will start flying.
And Sebastian won’t be aiming for Cam.
He’ll aim at me. At Beatrix.
An eye for an eye. Our daughter for his.
Today—all of it—it’s about getting even.
C A M
6:54 p.m.
“Where’d your colleagues go?” I squint into the rearview mirror, hoping to pick out the two big bouncers in the car on my bumper, but the rain is really coming down now. There’s nothing but glare in the glass. “Is that them behind us? I can’t tell.”
Nick twists around on the passenger’s seat, checking the back window. “Not unless they suddenly turned eighty and white. They passed us ages ago.” He wriggles his cell from a pocket on his leather jacket. “Lemme see where they’re at.”
While he makes the call, I stare into the line of traffic snaking up Peachtree Dunwoody and my heartbeat goes berserk. Two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic going well under the speed limit, with nothing on either side but bushes and ditches. I’m stuck, nowhere to go but forward.
Come on, come on…
Nick pulls his cell away from his ear. “Darius says they’re almost there. He also says we’ve got a problem. That video footage you’re watching? He’s watching it, too. Apparently, those nanny cams of yours are streaming on YouTube, maybe some other places, too.”
I think about what this means—that someone hacked into the video feed, that others might be watching as well—but my mind moves like sludge. I can’t do the math, can’t ferret out if this is a good thing or bad. What I know for sure is that I need to get to the house and fast.
“Darius wants to know our ETA.”
I glance at the clock. I have six minutes left, when I’m more like seven or eight from home. I shouldn’t have pulled over to check my phone. I should have handed it to Nick, let him do it, but I was too stubborn, too much of a damn control freak. George and the others are right; I really am my own worst enemy.
“Tell them we’re going to be cutting it close, that they should wait for us in the backyard. He’s in the media room, so tell them to watch the window above the patio. And for God’s sake, no bullets. My wife and daughter are in there, too, and I can’t risk it, not even if it looks like a clean shot.”
I check the footage on my phone, balanced in a palm at the top of the steering wheel. I’ve been flipping between the three cameras, watching Jade park herself on the chair next to Beatrix and coax a conversation out of an unmasked Sebastian. Stalling.