Damage Control: A Novel Read online

  “I think I’ll stay here.”

  “You’re a coward, Maggie. You always were. That night in the Jungle, all those years ago. You left my sister alone, drunk, drugged, passed out. You left her to a horrible fate.”

  I was scared at the way his voice had changed. I wanted the other Luke back, my desperate crush from childhood, who whispered in my ear, whose lips parted in that enigmatic, knowing smile.

  “Let’s face it,” Luke was saying, “we all abandoned Anabelle that night. There’s plenty of blame to go around. But finally I get a chance to redeem myself.”

  “The police should be here any minute.”

  “To hell with them,” Luke said. “We’ll save her ourselves.”

  And still I held back.

  “Come on, Maggie. Your old friend Anabelle needs you. She’s always needed you.”

  And so I got out. The wind whipped my hair and clothes. I followed Luke under the chain-link fence and into the empty streets with their shot-out lights, their drifts of sand, their weeds growing out of cracks in the fifty-year-old concrete.

  “Anabelle,” I called with Luke, our voices spiraling into a wail before being carried off by the wind.

  There was no sign of Anabelle. There was no sign of Tyler. There was just this suburban ghost town, the waves crashing on the sea, the smell of brine, the tang of pit barbecues burning down on the beach.

  A voice whispered at the edge of my consciousness as the jets screeched and the tide sucked the pebbles. If only I could make out the words. But it was just out of reach, echoing with faint, faraway laughter, taunting me with secret knowledge.

  Anabelle?

  What if she’d crossed the highway to the ocean, swimming out until she drowned? I pictured her body carried on the swell of the waves, arms spread like wings, orange crabs crawling in and out of empty eye sockets, long blond ropes of hair floating like seaweed, a million microscopic sea animals clinging to her curves, illuminating her in a phosphorescent shroud.

  I started to sweat.

  Nothing but blue skies, I hummed an old song, trying to calm myself. But the sky above me wasn’t blue; it was a heavy-water immensity the color of a bruise.

  Anabelle, I thought, as Luke shouted out her name. Where are you, Anabelle?

  In the distance, a cloud of seagulls rose flapping from the dunes, disturbed from their nocturnal roost.

  Below the circling birds, someone was running toward us. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The figure put hands to mouth and shouted at us, but the wind and the jets and the crashing waves drowned out all words.

  The figure drew nearer, and I recognized the familiar stride, and then at last I could see him.

  “That’s Tyler,” I said.

  Luke looked confused.

  “He’s alone,” I said. “Where’s Anabelle? What has he done with her?”

  Tyler was gaining steadily. In less than a minute, he’d be upon us.

  “Does he have a gun?” Luke asked, his voice deliberate.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “You scum,” Luke shrieked.

  Tyler was close enough now that I could make out some of the words.

  “. . . away from . . .” Tyler called.

  Luke gulped. “She got away from him.”

  “Please let her be safe,” I said, scanning the rolling dunes, willing myself to see a small blond figure sprinting to safety.

  Tyler seemed completely mad and agitated. As he approached, his arm went up. And now I could see it.

  “He’s got a gun.”

  “Get behind me,” said Luke.

  “Maggie,” screamed Tyler. His mouth continued to move, but his next words were lost in the smash of surf. When the echo died away, I heard him clearly for a few seconds.

  “Killer . . . Run . . . Maggie . . . He . . .”

  Then the roar of an incoming jet drowned him out. The decibels rattled my teeth and penetrated to the marrow of my bones. I wanted to flee from them both, but I was paralyzed and helpless.

  Tyler stopped running. He raised his arms to chest level and clasped his hands together, sighting us.

  “Put it down,” Luke shouted. “I’m warning you.”

  Tyler angled the gun to and fro. “Maggie, get away from him,” he shouted.

  “I’ll kill you, motherfucker,” said Luke and shot Tyler in the chest.

  “No,” I screamed.

  Tyler fell to his knees, clutching his heart. The gun dropped from his hand.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said.

  I stepped toward Tyler, then froze as Luke’s scared, urgent voice floated over.

  “C’mon, Maggie, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Ignoring him, I ran toward Tyler. His eyes were closed, his body splayed unnaturally on the sand.

  “You killed him,” I said.

  Staring at Tyler’s unmoving form, I didn’t see the gun-wielding maniac who’d tried to kill us. A wave of memory washed over me: his lean, warm hardness, the entanglement of limbs and lips and fingers, how I’d opened like a flower to his touch.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Luke sounded scared. “He was going to kill us.”

  Was that true? Why had Tyler told us to run? So he could pick us off more easily, one after the other? Or was he saying that Luke was a killer and I should run from him?

  Because for one tiny second, I almost had bolted. Before reason seized the upper hand and I darted behind Luke.

  “What about Anabelle?” I said nervously. “Shouldn’t we look for her?”

  Luke turned. “What?”

  “Tyler was trying to tell us something important. Anabelle could be lying here somewhere, dead or wounded. We can’t just leave.”

  “Anabelle’s not here,” Luke said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Just then, my phone beeped with a text. I pulled it out.

  “Who the hell is that?” Luke’s voice was flat and cold.

  I glanced down. “It’s nothing important,” I said, trying to shield it.

  “Let me see.” Luke lunged. A small bottle fell to the asphalt. Liquid trickled out.

  I smelled sage and cedar. This time I recognized it.

  Jules. By Christian Dior.

  And then it hit me. And I understood everything.

  I remembered where I had smelled Jules before. And I mean recently, not years ago on Luke’s sun-bronzed skin.

  I’d smelled it on Emily Mortimer’s scarf.

  Jules wasn’t widely available. In fact, it was little known and rare. I hadn’t smelled it on anyone in years. Certainly not on Emily’s boyfriend Jake Slattery. What were the chances that the dead girl knew someone else who wore this classic, practically discontinued French cologne? Plus, a man had to get awfully close for his cologne to wear off on a girl’s scarf.

  And with that, I grew truly frightened.

  “Well, well,” Luke said, holding my phone. “A text from your old Corvy pal Rachel Billings. Let’s see what it says.”

  Luke read: “SORRY I WAS SO VAGUE @COFFEE. NEXT TIME ILL TELL U THE REAL REASON LUKE & I BROKE UP.”

  Luke’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been asking questions about me.”

  “It’s just silly girl talk,” I said. “You know we all had huge crushes on you in high school.”

  Luke stared at the spreading puddle of scent on the asphalt. He shook his head. “I should have left that in the car.”

  He scanned my face. “You know.”

  I tried to keep my voice calm. “Know what?”

  The sides of Luke’s mouth turned down. “Anabelle told me you had a nice little visit with Rachel.”

  “Anabelle . . .”

  “Is safe and sound at my parents’ house, where she’s always been. But I knew I could lure you out if I said she was at Palisades del Rey. Where she used to play chicken and wish she was dead. You’d come, because you’d fear she planned to kill herself.

  “But turns out you’re not so smart after all. Because the
re’s one thing you never figured out, Maggie. And that’s what went down that night in Playa.”

  “I’m not smart at all,” I said. “In fact, I’m quite stupid. But I do damage control for a living. I know how to keep my mouth shut. Whatever your secrets are, Luke, I’d never tell anyone.”

  “It was supposed to be you,” Luke said softly.

  “What?”

  “That night in the Jungle.”

  My face must have betrayed my confusion.

  “I owed the Barracuda money,” Luke said. “He’d fronted me a quarter key to sell, but I partied too hard, blew it right up my nose. And the ’rents had me on a tight leash. Took away my ATM and credit cards. I couldn’t pull another burglary, I was eighteen and Lambert wouldn’t be able to fix it anymore if I got caught.

  “So I came up with a plan. The Barracuda liked them young, and I told him you were a virgin. I offered to deliver you on a platter if he forgave the debt. You and Anabelle were inseparable, so we planned to give you both roofies. Then Dan would take Anabelle for a ‘romantic walk in the moonlight,’ and Ivan would stand watch while the Barracuda screwed you. But the deal was that nobody touched Anabelle. The Barracuda agreed.”

  The bleak landscape of Palisades del Rey mirrored the ruined world inside my head.

  “I loved you,” I said. “I was sixteen and I loved you so purely and completely . . . I would have done anything for you.”

  Luke shifted from one foot to another and looked away.

  A memory flashed before my eyes, of Ivan walking into the bathroom and returning with drinks. Of the look that passed between him and Dan, of Dan nodding and saying that he’d “behave himself.” Then Dan took me to the beach and kissed me before I passed out. I’d come to and run back to the house. Wet and scared but okay. Dan had kept his word because he thought I was Anabelle.

  “What other choice did I have?” Luke said. “You were expendable. You’d never tell. You’d be too scared. You were so desperate to be friends with us. But then it went to shit.”

  Luke kicked a pile of sand and it scattered in the wind.

  “I told the Barracuda what you were wearing, see, and he told his friends. But you stupid girls had to go and change dresses. It wasn’t my fault. I’d planned the thing impeccably, and with you pumped full of roofies, I figured you’d barely remember.

  “Instead, the Barracuda raped my sister.”

  He began to cry. “I pimped her out for a lousy quarter key. You think I like knowing that?”

  I shook my head.

  “When I saw you out on the beach that night, you were so messed up I figured they’d changed plans and taken you down to the water. I was glad I could be there to comfort you. I knew you’d cry and cling to me, but eventually I’d make you feel better. You were like a kid sister to me, Maggie.”

  He stepped closer and brushed my face, light as eiderdown, with the back of his hand.

  I lowered my eyes and struggled not to flinch.

  Luke shook his head. “Then I realized you were wearing Anabelle’s clothes. That’s when I freaked out and asked if you were okay. Remember how I grilled you about that and asked where Anabelle was?”

  I nodded wordlessly.

  “Because if you were okay, that meant Anabelle wasn’t. It meant she was in that room with the Barracuda. Instead of you. That’s when I dropped you and started running.”

  Luke’s calm, almost hypnotic voice had a strange effect on me.

  The events he was recounting had happened a lifetime ago. But ever since that night, part of me had stayed frozen in time, in suspended animation, my heart encased in ice.

  For half my life, I’d believed that Anabelle’s rape was my fault.

  But as Luke destroyed my last illusions about him, the ice around my heart began to shiver and crack.

  Because his hateful words also brought a blaze of illuminating warmth.

  I didn’t need to blame myself anymore.

  And with that, something shifted deep inside me and I was free of a burden that had haunted me since the age of sixteen.

  “I hope you can see how you ruined things, Maggie,” Luke was saying.

  I met his cold, flat eyes without flinching. For the first time in my life, I saw him for what he really was, instead of what I’d always wanted him to be.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do see.”

  Luke gave a little snort. “I doubt that. You ruined things with my sister when we were kids and now you’re ruining them all over again. Why’d you have to call Raven?”

  Luke’s voice had taken on a plaintive whine, like a little kid.

  “That was a bad move, Maggie. Because after that night in Playa, I had a lot of anger inside me. So yeah, I used to play at choking Raven in bed. That’s what she was going to tell you. And you would put it together.

  “I didn’t mean to strangle Emily. We were just fooling around and it got out of control. Henry had no idea we were hooking up, but we’d met at one of his fund-raisers and hit it off. When I realized she was dead, I went to Henry in a panic, and after he finished cursing me out, he said he and Simon would handle it. And everything might have worked out if not for that reporter whose dad worked at the Mission Inn.”

  Luke gave a harsh laugh. “Emily was with me that night in Riverside. Henry and Simon cooked up the affair to shield me. Good ole Uncle Simon was furious, but he stepped up, because, after all, he had an alibi for the night of Emily’s murder and I didn’t.”

  “And when Randall got too close to learning the truth, you killed him too?”

  “That putz?” Luke paused. “I should have. Everyone in our family wanted him to fall off the face of the earth. Especially Dad. But I guess I lacked the guts.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

  I turned to face the ocean. Luke moved with me, his gun tracking me in lazy arcs.

  “Au revoir, Maggie. In your next life, stick to controlling the damage, not digging it up.”

  “Wait,” I pleaded. “Your dad wouldn’t want . . .”

  “Henry . . .” Luke said, throwing back his head. I thought he meant to laugh, but just then a thunderous wave slammed into the sand and his words were lost in a gush of blood.

  Luke fell.

  I turned and saw Tyler five feet away, crouching, half hidden, behind a sand dune, a gun in his hands, still aimed at Luke in case he tried to rise.

  For a moment my brain wouldn’t work.

  I’d seen Tyler lying there unmoving and dead.

  But now Luke lay sprawled and dead with half his head blown off.

  And Tyler was alive.

  Forcing my jellied legs to move, I staggered toward him.

  Tyler had saved my life.

  Laboriously, I made my way to him. It seemed to take a lifetime.

  Finally I stood beside him, my heart beating madly.

  Tyler’s breath came sharp and jagged.

  “I thought he’d killed you,” I said.

  Tyler grabbed my hand and placed it over his heart and I felt the thick cladding of metal over his chest.

  “I knew this would come in handy.”

  * * *

  “What do we do now?” I said, looking at Luke’s body.

  Tyler already had his phone out, pressing buttons. More than three.

  “There’s been an accident,” he said. “Luke’s dead.”

  I looked at the LED readout but it wasn’t familiar. In a few spare sentences, Tyler explained what had gone down. Then a familiar voice rumbled at the other end. Faraday.

  “Got it,” Tyler said, and hung up.

  He walked over to Luke’s body and squatted, inspecting it with the tiny flashlight on his key chain.

  He nodded and muttered, “It just might work.”

  Tyler retrieved Luke’s gun and shoved it into his waistband.

  Then he walked back to me.

  “Any idea whether he was right- or left-handed?” Tyler asked, inclining his head.

  An image came to me
of Luke playing tennis, walloping the ball with his powerful . . .

  “Left.”

  Tyler took off his shirt and carefully wiped down his own gun. Then, using his shirtsleeve, he placed his gun in Luke’s left hand as I screamed, “What are you doing?”

  Tyler didn’t answer. Carefully, he manipulated Luke’s stiffening fingers so that they left prints on the gun. Once he was satisfied, he slid the gun out of Luke’s hand and dropped it on the sand next to the body. Then he pocketed the small bottle of cologne, which miraculously was still intact.

  I turned away, unable to stomach it any longer.

  And then Tyler was at my side.

  “It’s done,” he said, a catch in his throat. “Let’s go.”

  He took my elbow like a well-bred young man at a debutante ball and led me away down the empty asphalt streets, avoiding the drifts of sand.

  “The wind will blow sand over our tracks but there’s no sense tempting fate,” he said.

  “You told me your gun is registered. Won’t the police trace it back to you?”

  Tyler smiled grimly. “That one’s safe at home. Faraday gave me a throwaway awhile back when we handled a case with some organized crime connections. I suspect they paid him partially in trade. He sent Sam and me for lessons at the shooting range.”

  “He gave Sam a throwaway too?” I said, seizing upon this odd fact.

  “A girl needs protection in this town.”

  We hiked over the empty streets, small nocturnal animals scurrying away at our approach. I felt naked and exposed. Any minute I expected flashing red lights and sirens to order us to the ground—until I realized that of course Luke had faked the 911 call. The jets howled and the tide roared and we moved like silent ghosts through the empty streets, back to Luke’s car.

  Tyler’s car was parked alongside. My colleague examined Luke’s car with pursed lips.

  “Did Luke drive tonight?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Tyler got a towel out of his trunk. He scrubbed off the handle of the passenger-side door, then opened it with his towel, leaned in, and wiped down the seat and the armrests.

  Then he turned to me. “Touch anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “We can go now.”

  He opened the passenger door of his car. “Up you get,” he said, helping me in because I was none too steady on my feet.