15
A week later, the first Friday after spring break, they sat in the Malibu outside the Varsity Club house. It was evening, and the house was bright with light. Inside, people dressed in jackets and ties and cocktail dresses ambled around with drinks in hand, occasionally accepting a canape from a server with a tray. Apparently, the Varsity Club spared no expense for their spring booster, which made sense when you were trying to convince these nutjobs, for another year, that there was literally nothing more important in the world than small-town college football.
Auggie was dressed for the occasion in a summer-weight wool jacket, a gingham shirt, and a tie that Theo had, without comment, redone in a neat double-Windsor. He dried his hands on his slacks. Discreetly.
“You don’t have to do this,” Theo said. “We can try talking to Chevalier again. We can talk to Somerset.”
Ok, Auggie thought. Maybe not so discreetly. “Chev refused to talk to us. And Somerset will listen to us, but we don’t have any proof. This is our best shot. And it has to be now, Theo, while people still think we’re broken up.”
“Technically, we never broke up.”
Auggie gave him a look.
“It’s important to keep that straight,” Theo said. He was dressed in a white shirt and black slacks, like the rest of the catering staff. “This is a shot in the dark. There’s no reason to believe—”
“Theo,” Auggie said and squeezed Theo’s hand. “I know it’s scary. I’m scared. But he’s not going to make another mistake, and there’s no direct evidence. Our best shot is to catch him in the act. I need you to trust me.”
Theo grimaced. His color was bad, with dark hollows under his eyes, and his knee wouldn’t stop bouncing. But he managed to sound like Theo when he said, “I trust you. And I’m going to keep an eye on his friend because I still don’t think he’s doing this all by himself.”
“Thank you.” Auggie kissed his cheek. “And see if you can score us some crab puffs.”
Theo gave him the stink eye.
“What?” Auggie asked with a grin. “I like crab puffs.”
“I’ll go in through the garage. Please be careful, Auggie.”
“It’s going to be fine.”
Theo studied him for a moment. Then he breathed out, “Mother of God,” got out of the car, and headed up the drive. Auggie gave him a five-minute head start. He dried his hands on his slacks again. He ran through his lines. He checked that the audio recorder was ready on his phone. He thought, for a moment, of what it would do to Theo if something bad happened tonight. It was almost enough to make him call the whole thing off. He opened the door, and his hand was shaking.
The spring night was cool, the air crisp, the smell of new grass mixing with the smell of still-thawing soil. When Auggie got to the front door, he had his story ready—the Varsity Club had hired him to do some social media promotion, including a series of posts about the spring booster. But nobody was standing at the door, and when Auggie stepped inside, nobody stopped him.
He remembered the house from the two visits before, and not much had changed—the expensive furnishings, the impersonal walls, the sense that this was a building and technically a house, and a very expensive one, but not a home. Tonight’s crowd was less rowdy than the one Auggie remembered from Homecoming night, but not by much. A red-faced man with a walrus mustache had clearly had one too many drinks. He was gesturing with what Auggie guessed was a gin and tonic, not noticing when he splashed the dark-skinned woman next to him, who kept wiping her arm and glaring at him. A white lady in a too-short dress kept bending over, nominally to check something in her clutch that she had set on a couch, and glancing back to see if a square-jawed Latino guy was looking. Two guys who had to be brothers, both well into the later stages of male adulthood, both big enough that they looked like they were straining the buttons on their shirts, were trying to sing the Wroxall fight song, but they kept starting in the wrong key, and the one with a winky eye kept stopping and shouting to try it again.
Among the crowd, which was primarily older, wealthy, and white, some of the Wroxall football players circulated. Auggie recognized them because they were young, well built, and ill at ease. A cute black guy who had to be a running back kept flinching and trying to get away from a blue-haired lady who was trying to pinch his ass. A massively muscled guy, probably a tackle, was attacking a tray of satay skewers while talking loudly, and with his mouth full, to a man in a suit that Auggie guessed had cost more than most of the furniture in the room. Emerging from the study, Andre—the quarterback and one of the team captains—looked like he had fully recovered from his fight from Theo, all those months before, the night they had tracked Jenice to this house. When he glanced over, Auggie looked down at his phone and kept moving. He didn’t know if Andre would remember him, let alone recognize him, but he wasn’t ready to take that chance.
Auggie kept circling the house, looking. He might have been wrong. He might have miscalculated. He smiled at people, and he took pictures, and he checked his phone. He didn’t see Theo, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything—the whole point was for Theo to blend in. Auggie tried to take deep breaths, but the house was hot, and it smelled like expensive perfume and boozy breath and the peanut butter from the satay. Sweat gathered at the small of his back, at his hairline, under his arms. On the next pass, he’d go outside and check the crowd on the back porch, maybe go out on the lawn to get some air.
When he cut through the study and into the living room, though, he saw Trace at the bar, and he stopped. The cornerback was dressed in a navy blazer, a gray-check shirt, and gray slacks. He had on a red tie, done in a knot that Auggie didn’t recognize but that managed to look chic and casual at the same time. His dark hair was spiked in its usual side part, and although his tan had faded over the winter months, it hadn’t vanished completely. He was ordering something, leaning across the bar, flashing a white smile to the bartender—an older woman in a white shirt and vest and sleeve garters, like she might have a riverboat gig later that night. She handed him a glass, and when Trace turned around, his eyes met Auggie’s.
Auggie smiled and offered a small wave. He held up his phone, snapped a few more pictures, and glanced at the screen. He messed with the filters just to give himself something to do. The noise from the party meant he didn’t hear anything until Trace was standing next to him, and when the cornerback spoke, his breath was juniper-hot where it brushed Auggie’s face.
“Hey.”
Auggie fought a grin at this little bit of genius from the first page of the straight-guy handbook. He glanced up, smiled, and said, “Hey.”
Up close, Trace was cute rather than handsome, with the kind of looks that wouldn’t follow him into middle age. He took a drink, the tumbler catching the light, his lips red against the crystal. When he lowered the glass, his dark eyes were fixed on Auggie.
“I thought I’d see you here,” Auggie said, letting a hint of a smile play at the corner of his mouth before he looked down at the phone again.
“Oh yeah?”
Auggie nodded.
“Glad I didn’t disappoint you.”
Auggie shrugged.
After a moment, Trace laughed. “All right, I’ll ask. What are you doing here? Solving another mystery?”
“Social media account manager.” Auggie wagged the phone as evidence. “The Varsity Club is looking to build their brand.”
“Is that right?”
Auggie played with the filters again.
“And you thought you might see me?”
“I thought I might.”
Trace leaned in. The heat and pine of his breath made Auggie close his own mouth. “Did you want to see me tonight?”
This time, Auggie offered a one-shouldered shrug, and he glanced up from the phone and then back down again.
With a quiet laugh, Trace put a hand over Auggie’s phone. He gently forced it down. Auggie made an irritated noise and raised his head.
Trace was smiling.
“Theo and I broke up,” Auggie said. In a rush, he added, “I didn’t know if you’d heard.”
The smile left Trace’s mouth, but it lingered in his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not. It wasn’t working. He didn’t respect me. And—and the sex, you know. There were problems there.”
Trace made a commiserating noise and leaned in slightly. It was a party, and although the house wasn’t exactly crowded, it was full. The way Trace’s hand brushed Auggie’s might have been accidental. The second time, though, his pinky hooked Auggie’s and tugged.
“I’m really sorry,” Trace said. “Did he hurt you?”
“What? God, no. He just, you know, couldn’t keep up. Because he was older.” Auggie sent up a mental prayer that he hadn’t accidentally started recording the conversation already. “It doesn’t matter; it’s over.”
Trace nodded, but what he said was, “I noticed he wasn’t in your feed anymore.”
“You still follow me?”
“Of course.” Voices swelled and ebbed between them. “I told you, the last time we were here, that I’d like to keep talking to you somewhere else, somewhere private. So, what about tonight, Auggie? Do I get a second chance?”
Auggie’s eyes cut away. “What about Imogen? I mean, you’ve got a girlfriend—”
“Don’t worry about Imogen. I told you: she and I have an understanding.” He took Auggie’s hand—only for an instant, and still low at Auggie’s side, but still a risk. His thumb bumped over Auggie’s knuckles. “Why don’t we go somewhere quieter? We can go for a drive.”
“Oh my God, I need a drink.” Auggie’s nervous laugh was only partially feigned. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that out loud. It makes me sound—I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Hang tight. I’ll get you a drink.”
“No, no. Um, I want to get it myself. You know? Because of last time.”
Trace gave him a look that was simultaneously hurt and understanding, and he nodded. “I’ll go tell Bobby I’m leaving. He’ll be pissed, but I get so tired of these dog-and-pony shows.”
“I didn’t see Bobby,” Auggie said. “I was looking for him because he’s the one who hired me, but I couldn’t find him.”
“He’s around here somewhere. Hang tight.”
After another bold squeeze of Auggie’s hand, Trace plunged into the melee of the party, and Auggie navigated toward the bar. The woman in the vest asked to see his ID, but she was nice about it. She had bleached the little mustache growing in on her upper lip, but Auggie could see it when she smiled and the light was right. She got him a rum and Coke, and she was nice about that too—nothing in her expression said what she was undoubtedly thinking about college drinks for college kids. He took a sip of the drink, making sure his mouth made contact with the glass, but that was all. He wanted to be able to prove this had been his glass if the police ever tested it, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He was about to turn around when a hand came down on his shoulder. A big, heavy hand. It caught him in a crushing grip, and Auggie let out a surprised yow before he managed to moderate his voice. That moment of reaction was all that the other person needed, and still holding Auggie in that strong grip, he shoved Auggie into motion, and Auggie stumbled to keep his feet. By the time his brain caught up with his body, he couldn’t break free—the rapid pace kept him off balance, and he couldn’t dig in his heels or twist away without falling, and that painfully hard grip kept him upright and moving.
Auggie risked a backward glance and saw Andre behind him. Some of his hair had come out of the man bun, and it drifted on the air in wisps. His twist-braid goatee looked longer than Auggie remembered, and his round face was unreadable. The linen suit and velvet shoes ought to have made the quarterback less imposing, but somehow, it only accentuated how much bigger he was than Auggie.
Then Auggie’s foot turned under him, and he would have fallen if Andre hadn’t been holding him. Some of the rum and Coke slopped out of the glass and ran down Auggie’s wrist. People were looking at them: a white lady touching her throat, a white guy checking his lapels, an Indian lady with a rhinestone bindi looking away in a hurry. But nobody said anything, and nobody interfered. Maybe this was part of the entertainment, Auggie thought wildly. Maybe every party, somebody tried to crash, and these people paid for the chance to see them get bum-rushed out of the house.
By the time they reached the kitchen, the party thinned, and Auggie had recovered himself somewhat. He dropped his drink on the counter and tried to catch a cabinet door. His fingers closed around the pull for an instant before Andre yanked his hand free.
“Hey!” Auggie shouted. A middle-aged white guy was trying to tuck in his shirt, apparently because he considered the kitchen private enough for the task. He looked up, and his face went blank when he saw them. “Hey, get off me! Let go of me! Theo!”
But Theo was nowhere in sight, and he didn’t come running. Andre twisted Auggie’s shirt and jacket around his hand, tightening them around Auggie’s neck, and the pressure made it hard to breathe and, therefore hard to cry out. With one hand, Auggie tried to loosen the garments around his neck. With the other, he slapped backward. The white guy was still staring, half the tail of his shirt still untucked.
“He’s spying on us,” Andre said to the white man. “Don’t worry; he won’t come back.”
The elastic fear in the white guy’s face relaxed, and he nodded and went back to tucking in his shirt. Then they’d reached the door to the garage. They had to come to a stop so that Andre could open it, and Auggie tried to use the chance to break free. Before he could, though, Andre used one hand to lift Auggie into the air, the shirt and jacket cutting into Auggie’s windpipe as his toes scraped the tile. He clawed at his collar. In his last clear moment, he swung his fist in a wide arc, and it connected with Andre’s chest. Andre didn’t even seem to feel it. Auggie delivered another blow, but black spots swam in his vision, and he couldn’t put any force behind it.
He was only vaguely aware of his feet dragging on the concrete slab as Andre hauled him across the garage. Then, bumping each tread and riser, he was half-carried and half-walked up the steps. Even with his brain screaming for air, Auggie knew where Andre was taking him: the love nest above the garage, the room where Suemarie Gilmore’s body had been hidden and God only knew how many girls—and guys—had been seduced and coerced and recorded. He tried one last time, kicking out, his feet catching the carpet, the wall, air. For a moment, he got enough leverage to press with both legs and drag Andre to a halt. Andre turned and, with what looked like casual disinterest, clubbed Auggie once on the head. Auggie’s world fractured.
When he could make sense of things again, he was lying on the bed in the tiny suite above the garage. Andre was standing over him. The quarterback was pounding on the wall with one fist, and his eyes were wide. He was talking—almost screaming—and Auggie realized he had missed some of it.
“—the fuck do you think you’re doing? Don’t you remember what happened the last time you showed up here uninvited?” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Now, you’re going to tell me everything—”
“We know what you’re doing,” Auggie said. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. Then he realized it was gone; he’d dropped it somewhere between the bar and here, without even realizing it. He tried to listen for Theo, but Andre was still shouting, still pounding on the wall. Auggie couldn’t hear anything else. And nobody could hear them, either. That was the whole point of this place. There could be a whole party going on down there, and nobody would have the slightest idea what was happening. “We know about you and Trace, about the struggle fucks, about the drugs, about Chev and Harley.”
Andre stopped mid-shout, his mouth open, a gold-capped molar glinting at the back of his mouth.
“That’s what it was, wasn’t it?” The words exploded out of him, a frantic bid to stall for Theo. “You and Trace got off on it—drugging these guys who were bigger than you, stronger than you, in positions of power, and then overpowering them, fucking them, raping them.” Auggie sat upright and got his back against the wall. “It wasn’t about the sex. It was about the power: you versus them, making them do what they didn’t want to do, the rush of having them completely at your mercy. It started with the girls, and then that got old, didn’t it? What happened? One night, Chev got drunk. Or he got high. Or he took too many pills. Probably a combo, right? And you saw your chance at something more interesting. How did it happen with Harley? He hurt his back when he played football, and he had a prescription for muscle relaxers. We saw it in his bathroom. Did you wait for the opening? Get him drunk and then let him pop a couple of pills? I bet they didn’t even remember, not when they were that out of it. They must have noticed the next day, but they were tough, macho guys. What would it look like, walking into the doctor’s office or the ER, telling people in a small town they were shitting blood because they’d gotten drunk and let somebody ass-rape them? If they could even bring themselves to believe that. But I’d bet they were happy to believe anything else first—they did all the hard work, convincing themselves it was just a bad case of hemorrhoids. How am I doing so far? Am I close? You had it all working perfectly until one night, Suemarie walked in on you, and she saw what was going on. Then Suemarie had to go. And then Harley had to go. And your little struggle fuck operation got out of control.”
Andre shook his head. “Man, you have no idea—”
Movement behind Andre caught Auggie’s eye; Trace stood in the opening where the short hallway connected with the bedroom. He was flushed, bright chips of color in his cheeks, and smiling. Something must have shown on Auggie’s face because Andre turned around.
“You have been a huge fucking pain in my ass,” Trace said.
And then he raised his arm to bring up a pistol he’d hidden behind his leg, and he shot Andre in the chest. Something hot and wet misted Auggie’s face. Blood, his brain told him. For an instant, he had a straight line of sight to the exit wound that had been ripped open in Andre’s back. Then Andre crumpled to the floor. Auggie reached up to touch his face, hand shaking, and his fingers came away red.
Training the gun on Auggie, Trace moved into the room. He studied Andre for a moment, and then he looked at Auggie.
“Well,” he said. “You got some of it right, anyway. But not the important bit.” Over his shoulder, he called, “Bring him in.”
Theo appeared a moment later. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and a bloody gash marked the side of his head. Blood had crusted on his ear, blackening as it dried. On the white shirt, it was a dark, muddled red. Imogen came behind him. Her color was bad, like she was about to be sick, but her face was stone, and the hand that held a pistol pressed to Theo’s side was steady.
“Put him in there,” Trace said, nodding at the closet—or, Auggie thought, more likely at the hidden room behind it. “Make sure he gets a front-row seat.”
Theo tensed. “No fucking way. You’ll have to kill me—”
“All right,” Trace said, bringing the gun around.
“No!” Auggie shouted. “No, Theo, it’s going to be ok. Trust me; it’s going to be ok. Trace, don’t hurt him.”
“He’s already been a lot of trouble,” Trace said. That was when Auggie noticed the swelling on the side of Imogen’s face, the speck of blood at the corner of her mouth. “Too much trouble.”
“That’s why you should keep him alive,” Auggie said. The words tumbled out of him, almost too fast to be understood. “Because he’s strong. He’s a lot stronger than I am. That’s what you like, right? When they’re strong? I’m just—I’m so much smaller than you.” The gun in Trace’s hand dipped. “And think of what it’ll do to him,” Auggie added. “Think of how it’ll fuck with his head, watching you, not able to do anything about it, knowing what you’re going to do to him next.”
It was like watching Theo die. The color leached out of him, and his eyes looked bruised, his lips almost blue. He said, “No.”
“Shut up,” Trace said automatically. He was considering Auggie. Then he looked at Theo. It was impossible to miss his erection.
“No fucking way—” Theo began.
Trace hit him twice with the pistol, and Theo dropped. He tried to get up, blood masking his face, and Trace hit him again. Imogen made a weak noise. She was bracing a hand against the wall now, and she was crying. Theo tried to raise his head. His eyes found Auggie.
Trust me, Auggie mouthed. Please, trust me.
“Help me get him in there,” Trace said, slipping the gun behind his waistband. “And make sure he doesn’t pass out; I want him to see everything.”
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