Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

I locked my doors and headed inside the building only to be struck with the need to check out every nook and cranny before ascending the stairs to my apartment on the third floor. I stepped with my back to the wall, constantly checking over my shoulder. If ever there was a time to carry a flashlight, it would definitely be at night.

After tiptoeing back into my room, trying not to wake Gemma, I opened my top dresser drawer and took out a picture. The picture. The one I’d obtained a few weeks ago and hadn’t looked at since.

I heard the toilet flush, and Cookie peeked into my room. The overhead light from the kitchen stove drifted around her, allowing me to make out her silhouette.

“Charley, is that you?” she asked, her voice rough and sleepy.

I wondered if she was still drunk. Angling the picture down so I couldn’t actually see it, I said, “No, I’m Apple, Charley’s evil twin.”

“Can’t you sleep?”

I sat on the edge of my bed. “Not really. I keep getting conflicting intel.”

She sat beside me. “About what?”

After a soft laugh, I said, “Are you going to be able to get up in the morning?”

She smiled. “I’m good. I get over inebriation pretty fast.”

“You were passed out on my kitchen floor.”

After an indelicate snort, she said, “Like that was the first time.”

She had a point.

“So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know what to think about Reyes.”

“Oh, honey, who does? He’s an enigma wrapped up in sensuality padlocked with a dozen chains of desire and topped off with a razor-sharp ribbon of danger. There are more layers to him than a billionaire’s wedding cake.”

My brows shot up. “Sensuality?”

“I know. It’s more than the fact that he is the hottest thing ever to walk the face of the Earth, but that part is just so hard to get past.” She noticed the picture in my hands. “What’s that?”

I bowed my head. “Do you remember when I went to the building I’d first seen Reyes in? That abandoned apartment building where that crazy woman was squatting?”

“Yes. She’d been the landlady when Reyes lived there. Back when you were in high school.”

“Exactly. Well, she gave me this.” I passed the picture to her, but held on to one corner and said, “I have to warn you, it’s really explicit.”

Surprise showed on her face as she took it and held it up to capture every particle of light the room had to offer. Her brows furrowed at first as she tried to make out the image; then they narrowed as dawning emerged. Slowly, the image came into focus. Her lids widened. Her mouth opened in a silent testament to her understanding. Then her eyes watered and she covered the lower half of her face with her free hand.

As though she were witnessing a car accident, she seemed unable to look away. I didn’t have to look again to know what horrors the image held. It had been branded into my brain the minute I laid eyes upon it.

The ropes. The blood. The bruises. The shame.

She finally spoke from behind her hand. “Is this—?” Her breath caught in her chest and she swallowed before beginning again. “Is this Reyes?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes slammed shut and she slapped the picture against her chest as though trying to cradle him. To protect him. I noticed a shiny trail spill over her lashes.

“My God, Charley. You told me, but—”

“I know.” I wrapped an arm in hers.

She hugged it to her and patted my hand.

I let her have a minute to absorb what she’d seen. To get her emotions under control.

The picture was, I believed, a trophy. According to Reyes’s sister, Kim, Earl Walker would take explicit photos of Reyes, then hide them in the walls everywhere they lived. And they were on the move constantly, so that could have been dozens of places. She said the pictures were blackmail, meant to keep Reyes in line. That could be, though I tended to think they’d be more like souvenirs. Keepsakes from his exploits. But why he would put them in the walls baffled me. If they really were trophies, wouldn’t he take them? Why leave them where they could be found—and had been, in Ms. Faye’s case—and used against him?

Then I realized that Earl probably wasn’t in any of those photos. They were all of Reyes.

In the picture Ms. Faye had given me, Earl seemed to purposely shame Reyes. That was the worst part of it. He’d tied him up and blindfolded him, though I’d had no trouble recognizing Reyes’s perfect form. His mussed dark hair. His full mouth. The smooth, fluidly mechanical tattoos along his shoulders and arms. The rope bit into his flesh. It reopened wounds that appeared to have been healing. He looked about sixteen in the picture, his face turned away, his lips pressed together in humiliation. Huge patches of black bruises marred his neck and ribs. Long garish cuts, some fresh, some half healed, streaked along his arms and torso.

I could never erase the image from my mind, though I’d considered trying electroshock therapy just to give it a try. It would have been worth it. And yet I kept the picture. To this day, I had no idea why I didn’t burn it the minute I got it.

“I can’t imagine what his life was like,” Cookie said, staring off into space.

“Me neither. He saved mine tonight. He fought off a demon that was hell-bent on ripping my throat out.”

She tensed in alarm. “Charley, are you serious?”

“Yes. I’ve been so angry with him, but all he’s ever done is save my life. Again and again growing up. I’m not sure I have the right to be angry with him.”