Locke 2 (Blackwater Boys #4)

Thirty-One

Kali

O ctober in this town was more underwhelming than Blackwater. At least Blackwater had a living, bleeding pulse. Black, sure, but it meant there was life everywhere. Pockets of people all over the beast of a town. Crowds of them. The dirty and the clean. The sinful and the innocent. A mix of people, blending their buttoned-up and buttoned-down styles against the backdrop of graffiti-covered walls and the toll of church bells.

Georgewel was the opposite.

It continued to look cute in October. All places should look dreary in October, and there should be a creepy element to it, too. Halloween was around the corner, after all. But Georgewel continued to look cute and wholesome, and it was bothering me.

Because it was a lie.

George wasn’t wholesome.

Not when Lenny was gone, and his Pokémon cards had been left behind and his home was hidden away in a neighbourhood Georgewel pretended didn’t exist. They seemed to have shuffled all the desperate people together so that they did not coexist the same way they did in Blackwater.

It was cold and dark. Lenny’s home looked sad, not a single window glowing like the neighbours around it. There was a car parked in front of the townhome. There was a man smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, his hip pressed against the car. He was staring down at a phone when Locke parked the car behind the man. Jem was sitting in the backseat. We stared at the man for a few moments. He noticed us, too, but he pretended to be absorbed in his phone.

So, this was the landlord, Sid.

He reminded me of my own landlord.

Why did they have to look so greasy here?

“Jem,” Locke said, breaking the silence. “You know what to ask?”

“Blah, blah, information,” Jem replied. “Too easy.”

Without another beat, he opened the door and slid out. Within seconds, he was standing before the man, chatting away like they were the best of buds. Locke watched them, his voice dropping lower. “You sure you want to go in, little lion?”

“Of course.” My voice sounded too chirpy. Unconvincing.

“You’re nervous.”

“Scared,” I admitted.

Locke nodded once, whispering, “I was, too.”

He looked at me. Really looked at me. His brows pulled together as he studied me. Concern shone in his eyes. It was a look I wasn’t used to seeing in him. “Kali…”

If he tried to talk me out of it, it might work. I shook my head. “Locke, I want to see.”

His mouth closed. He didn’t look happy, but he nodded once. That he didn’t try to convince me or order me behind because he didn’t agree with my decision, made me feel respected and seen. It was not what I expected from him. Up until this very point, I had expected him to tell me to stay in the car.

“You won’t force me to stay?” I asked, unable to keep that curiosity to myself.

“No,” he returned, adamantly. He looked gobsmacked I’d even asked the question. “Did you think I would?”

“You’re forceful in other ways.”

He shook his head, frowning. “You’re your own person…but you can be that way by my side.”

“You never once wavered about that?” I wondered. “About me belonging to you?”

“Never.” The simple word was loaded with so much conviction, I felt foolish for asking.

He opened the door, and I did the same. The landlord glanced at us, his body stilling at the sight of Locke. I glanced at Locke, trying to imagine how he looked to a stranger. That fucking suit. The hard face. The giant, tall body that towered over most. The way he moved, confident and unafraid. His cold eyes, dead when he wanted them to be, or burning with danger.

Yeah, I got why the landlord wanted to shit his pants. He looked away, staring back at Jem as though that was a better option. But I’d learned about Jem while I was in Blackwater, and from the stories Charlotte had exchanged briefly with me in the short time I knew her. I’d seen glimpses of it in the way his mood changed abruptly, replaced by a dark edge that was unnerving.

Jem was the snake you planted in your enemy’s garden. He slithered and schemed, always ready to strike when least expected. That damn smile was loaded with dark intent. I knew he was dark and twisted in his own way. At least I knew Locke’s darkness. I’d tasted it, learned about it. But Jem… What was his darkness? When he wore his mask, the very one he was using on the landlord, he scared the shit out of me more than when he let that mask drop.

“You want him on your side…” Charlotte said once. “He’s the perfect ally, but the worst enemy. ”

How did she get through to him? What was their history that he might be “polite” to her like he was to that damn secretary? I wondered if I was just unapproachable and unlikeable. I wondered, too, what his other side could be if I had gained his trust, and he liked me the way he liked Charlotte.

I forced my focus away from Jem and those thoughts. Right now, I had to do this very ugly thing.

I had to see that bedroom.

The door to Lenny’s townhouse was unlocked. Locke opened it and strode in, his movements brisk, like he wanted to get this over with. He clenched one hand tightly while he held a flashlight in another. I stepped in, searching for a light switch. When I found one, I flicked it on and off.

Locke heard and spoke without looking back at me. “She didn’t pay the electric bill.”

When did they shut it off? For a second, I feared Lenny might have lived in darkness before he disappeared. I swallowed the unsettling thought down and followed Locke. I pulled out my phone and switched on the light, shining it around the barren room as he settled his back against the wall beside the corridor. His eyes settled on me. He watched me as I inspected the tiny home.

My shoes crunched over strewn garbage. My nose wrinkled at the foul smell of bad food. There was mould, dirt smudges and deep cracks on the walls. A pile of canned food and more trash.

I creeped down the hallway, my sight set on Lenny’s bedroom. Locke had gone over it in fine detail. I knew what I would find when I pushed the door open, my eyes latching onto the lock mechanism as it swung away. A lump formed in my throat as I entered. Locke had followed, but his body stopped outside of the door.

He refused to come in.

I understood why. He’d tried to prepare me, but nothing could have.

Melancholy hung in the air around me as I took in the room and thought of the little boy that sat in the classroom, his empty eyes searching for me in the mornings. This was what he came home to. Even if the room had been filled to the brim with toys and furniture, it didn’t take away from the fact that there was a lock on the damn door.

A fucking lock.

Coldness settled into my bones. My teeth chattered as I absorbed the room, feeling that despair grow. The closet was utterly barren, but I couldn’t imagine it had stored much clothing. He’d often worn the same few outfits. I flashed my light at the window and walked toward it. I looked out at the small patio yard that was fenced in. It, too, was utterly barren, and I couldn’t imagine there had been life out there at all.

I took a big step back and looked away, but it didn’t stop the ugly emotions from slamming into me.

“Aurora…” I whispered, my eyes heavy with tears.

I sensed her beside me. For once, I would have given anything to feel her hand wrapped around mine.

“My room was not like this,” she assured me, listening to my buried thoughts. “I promise.”

I flashed the light on the small mattress on the floor. Lenny’s colouring book stuck out from under his pillow. A flash of his smiling face tore through my mind. It was hard to swallow. To imagine him so delighted in the colouring book, no wonder he’d looked like he had been given a present when I’d seen him the next day.

I flashed the light on the wall next and my legs wobbled.

It was too much.

The unsettling face stared back at me, and I felt too weak to stand. A shuddering breath escaped my lungs as I crouched down on the floor and tried to gather myself.

I reached my hand out. Praying to feel hers. Praying for her voice. But I couldn’t feel her right now. Not as I tried to pull the air into my lungs. My phone rattled in my hand, the light all around me now. I shut my eyes, trying to bring myself back down to earth, but I was swallowed up in grief and mistakes.

“I should have told you to run…”

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry.

My hand continued to reach out to her—

Warmth encompassed it as a large hand wrapped around mine. My heart burst. For a second I imagined it was Aurora, and I pretended it might have been, and my heart felt so full. Tears slid down my cheeks as Locke’s body crouched before me. His forehead pressed against mine as he held my hand tightly. He squeezed it, as if letting me know he didn’t intend to let go.

I opened my eyes and stared into his. Stormy and dark. Eyes that you could look into and never reach the end of. “It should have been me , Locke. Not her. I should have told her to run…”

“He would have found her,” he whispered, his voice gruff.

“No, he would have found me.”

“You don’t know that.”

I shook my head. “I do. She depended on me. Lenny depended on me, too. I saw it in his eyes…his silent plea. I felt something was wrong, and I should have fought for him—”

“We’re fighting for him now.”

I wiped away my tears, feeling embarrassed as the seconds turned to minutes. All the while, he watched me, his wide eyes searching my face. All that vulnerability was bleeding out of me. He must have known how hard it was for me to let him see me this way because his eyes gentled and his throat bobbed. He closed his eyes, allowing me some respite from his intensity, but that didn’t help. My wounds were cut wide open, and I was bleeding profusely.

I had to calm down.

I sucked in breath after breath, stabilising myself. I’d learned the way to bury it. To close my eyes and imagine her bedroom, us sitting around her little round table. She served me imaginary tea from her teapot, and I sipped as she sat down on the little chair, staring at me from across the table, smiling widely at me, her baby teeth sparkling and bright.

My heart slowed, and I stopped shaking.

I finally stood up. Locke came up with me, his hand still gripping mine. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wincing. “I can keep doing this. I can. I just…I had a moment.”

He listened intently as I stumbled over my words. He had feared this might be too dark for me. I was worried I had proved him right.

He finally let go of my hand and moved around the room in slow paces. He circled it, aiming the flashlight every which way. I stood still, my eyes following him. His face was far from gentle now. That mask of lethal calm was gone. Replacing it was a haunted look that I imagined mirrored mine.

“There’s no going back,” he finally said. “I tried very hard to. I thought I could erase the past and replace it with my own narrative, but that’s a deception that cracks and falls apart over time.” He looked at me, and his voice was firm. “You can’t go back, Kali. It’s done. It happened. You have to make peace with that, or this cycle will never end.”

I could have sworn he was talking to himself as he said this to me. His nostrils flared, and he seemed angry by that fact. He walked out of the room, leaving me standing there alone, my tears drying on my face.

I spun around again, flashing the light back to the eerie face on the wall. A thin bearded face with dark hair, large eyes, thin lips and shoulders that were green. Why was that green so relevant?

“A man in a green trench coat took him,” whispered Aurora.

The light shook in my hand as I committed the face to memory.