Taboo 5 Read online

  He instinctively reached his hand up, shading his eyes from the hurtful glare. His lashes blinked off the drowsiness of the variety of drugs he was on and he stared at me.

  He was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. His body looked weak, weaker than ever before, so I knew he hadn’t been eating again. I went right up to him and took out a piece of chocolate from my pocket and I offered it to him.

  After a bit of hesitation, he accepted my offer. There were tracks made by tears still on his face and I used my hand to try to wipe them off. Then, I sat across from him on the spotless, clean floor and waited.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” his big brown eyes threatened to shed tears again. “If he finds out…”

  “I have a proposition for you,” I cut him off.

  He looked terrified. “Whatever you want from me, Trey, I can’t give it to you, so don’t bother wasting your breath.”

  “Please just listen to what I have to say…”

  He started to get agitated and kept glancing at the door. “No…” he said, first just the one time and then he started saying it over and over like a chant. When his anxiety started to get worse I had to physically subdue him. “Hey!” I said, holding him and trying to get him to calm down. He started to breathe heavily but I continued to hold him. “Ryan, hey.” I ran a hand over his head. His soft dark hair was a little sweaty. I looked in his eyes. “He can’t hurt you,” I said. “You have my word.”

  He pushed me away. “Yeah?” he scoffed. “Isn’t that what you said the last time we tried to take him down?” He was screaming at me. “That’s how I ended up in this prison!”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” I screamed back. I know, not my finest moment.

  “Alive!” he said. “Everyone thinks I’m dead!”

  I knew I had to calm down if I wanted to get my point across. “Look, I know how terrible it’s been for you, but it was the only way!”

  After a long pause, he looked away. “You didn’t come once,” he was shaking. “You didn’t…”

  “Ryan… I couldn’t risk him catching me…”

  “You’re risking it now, aren’t you? When you want something from me!”

  I realized I’d hurt him. “I’m sorry for what you had to go through,” I said. “But right now there are lives at stake. Others who’ve been going through the same that he put you through and they don’t have a way out if we don’t help them. Ryan, everything that man did to you, now is the time to give it back.”

  “If you’re done giving your spiel I’d like for you to leave.”

  There was a stiffness in him that chilled me to my bones. I realized I didn’t know him anymore. That he had become a different person. Not just because he was refusing to help me, but it was in the way he spoke and carried himself. He was a total stranger to me and maybe it was my fault. I started to leave. “Ryan, I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t around. I know I should have been there, you were my friend! I can’t change the past. I can’t pretend to know your suffering. All I can do is apologize,” I continued, “and one way or another, I’m going to get to Weldon and I’m going to bring him down. And when I do, I promise I will come for you. I just… need you to be patient.”

  I waited for him to speak but then opened the door. “Goodbye, Ryan.”

  “Wait!” he called out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Weldon isn’t evil,” he said. “He’s the Devil. He can’t be brought down.”

  “We’ll see about tha—“

  “No,” Ryan shook his head. “No, you don’t understand,” he stared at me. “He is the Devil. You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.”

  PRESENT DAY

  TREY

  “Fuck you,” Weldon’s insult didn’t exactly come as a total surprise. But it did remind me of the phrase Ryan had used to describe him.

  You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.

  “Are you sure that’s how you want to play this?” I wanted to give him one last chance. But Jake didn’t look patient at all. “Tell me where you’re hiding Colton!”

  I had to silently rebuke him. I turned to Weldon. “The poison is spreading in your father’s body,” I said. “Every second you delay getting him the antidote, is a second that will take him away from his grandchildren.”

  Weldon raised his head and scoffed. “You didn’t think I was that dumb, did you?” he said. “The minute I noticed his symptoms, I sent the sugar packets in his room for testing. My people must be done preparing the antidote by now. My father’s going to be fine!”

  The look of dejection on my face must have been obvious because Weldon seemed to revel in it. “That’s right Trey,” he said. “I used those sugar packets to kill Ryan. I knew you’d want some kind of poetic justice!!!! Oh, the fun I’m going to have ripping your head slowly out of that body… it’s going to be worth all of this bullshit!”

  This time I gave Weldon my full attention. “Here’s the thing, Weldon. You see the look on my face? It’s sadness. It’s… it’s dejection, it’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.

  I swallowed. “Weldon, the poison wasn’t in any of the stuff Jackie bought.”

  I gave him a second to come to terms with what I was about to unleash on him. “Pseudo-nitzschia,” I said. “The poison that’s usually found in some sea creatures. These organisms get mixed with seafood and the poison is so potent it can kill a healthy person in a day. Seafood, Weldon, the kind you might find at a Chinese Hut.”

  I watched the color drain from Weldon’s face. The gravity of the situation was starting to put it’s weight on him and I could see him struggling. “You can’t possibly…”

  “You’d be surprised what you can achieve when you pay cash to a minimum wage poor sap who has a sick child he needs to take care of,” I said. “Suggesting the place to Jackie was surprisingly easy considering she still has some seriously unrequited feelings for me.”

  Weldon looked speechless. “I can’t believe you’d do something like that…”

  “Someone wise once told me,” I said. “You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.”

  When nothing seemed to make sense to him, he started groveling. “Trey you’re not a murderer… you can’t do this!!! Please!!! Jackie… think of her! Think of the kids!”

  “Kids?” Jake laughed. “Now you’re worried about the kids? After decades of running a business that thrived on ruining lives!”

  “The only way you can save your father,” I said. “And have a chance of getting out of here alive, is if you tell us. If Colton’s lost to us, there will be nothing stopping us from ending your family one by one!”

  “You heard what he said,” Jake cut in. “Just tell me where you’re keeping him!”

  Weldon turned to Jake this time. “Do you have a clue, who it is you’re working with?” he said to Jake and it was obvious he was talking about me. “You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him! You think he’s some hero? He poisoned Ryan on my orders, and if you want to know what he’s really like when you’re not in the room, Jake all you have to do is grab the surveillance video that’s in a pen drive on my desk.”

  I didn’t know what Weldon was going on about but I was certain he was doing this to drive us apart. One look at Jake told me he was doing a good job of it. “What video, Trey?” Jake asked me. “What’s he talking about? Who’s Ryan?”

  “Ryan is… was… my boyfriend,” Weldon said. “He’s dead now because of the poison Trey devised especially for him. Does that sound heroic to you?”

  “Jake,” I said. “I was just following orders. His orders. Because my sister was sick and needed my help and that’s the only reason he’s made me do all of it… but she’s dead now! And he can’t hold it over me anymore!”

  “Right,” Weldon mocked. “A sister who conveniently pops up when Trey does ba
d things and conveniently dies when he wants to take the fucking moral high ground!”

  Jake was looking at me suspiciously and that wasn’t all. I could see there were things going on in his brain that he couldn’t control. I knew I could have told them both Ryan was alive and it was only because of me but in case this didn’t go down as I planned, I didn’t want Ryan to suffer because of my decisions. That’s the only reason I left him out of everything. He had helped me enough. I couldn’t possibly ask him for anything more. If Weldon ever got a whiff that he was still alive and holed up some place all hell might break loose.

  “What video?” Jake wanted to know.

  “I knew you were smart Jake,” Weldon said, clearly using the tiny leeway he had found.

  “Shut up!” Jake raised the butt of his rifle and hit him with it. “Where’s my brother?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Weldon said. “If you bring me that video, I’ll tell you where Colton is, you have my word.”

  “Why?” Jake cried. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “You need to know the truth, Jake. That’s all.”

  “He’s just doing this to stall us!” I screamed. “Jake, you need to be rational!”

  “Let’s just get him the video,” Jake said and stepped out the door. I had to look at Weldon’s smug face for the rest of the hour that I had to sit in that room with him.

  “Ryan’s still alive, isn’t he?” Weldon said, out of nowhere.

  Fuck, had I said too much? But I couldn’t give in, I had to keep up the act. “What’re you talking about?” I scoffed. “Ryan died all those years ago!”

  “Don’t worry, Trey. Your secret is safe with me,” Weldon said. “But I’m curious. Where have you been keeping him all this time?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said flatly.

  “Ryan doesn’t have any friends,” Weldon said. “I made sure of that ages ago. So, it had to be one of your friends who helped. There’s no other way he could have possibly fooled me!”

  “Once again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Weldon smiled a little. “It’s good,” he said slowly. “It’s all good. Because when I’m slicing your throat and Jake’s and little Colton’s… I will need something to top it all off! You know? Make the victory all that more exciting! And Ryan will be that something! I will tear him apart… limb from limb… I will just hear him scream… until he can’t. Now that, Trey, is poetic.”

  My hands seemed to work of their own accord as they slammed heavily into Weldon’s bruised face and broke bones in his cheek on impact. The sound was incredibly satisfying and so was the resulting scream from Weldon. “Maybe you’ll win this,” I said. “Maybe in the end I will find that I was never good enough to fight you but I will always have this… how you screamed like a fucking girl at the mercy of my hands!”

  This shut him up.

  TREY

  Jake lunged at me and I wasn’t expecting the almost freakish strength he suddenly had, adrenaline most likely. I couldn’t believe Weldon’s luck. He found a way to drive us apart. I knew this wasn’t something that we could come back from if Jake truly believed what he was seeing. “Jake, you don’t actually think this is me, do you?!” I said. “I only did it because I knew they were taping Colton and I wanted them to think I was just like them. That I wasn’t going to be a friend to him. You think he would have let me see you or him, if I hadn’t pretended to be one of them?”

  “Why should I believe anything you say?” Jake laughed.

  “We can’t play into his hands, Jake. You have to remember I’m your only way out, and if what you just saw, is true then you have even more reason to get Colton out of this place!”

  Jake was not stupid. I just hoped he would choose to be smart in this case, but I could see in his eyes how much he hated me. It stung but it was the cost of doing business. If he wasn’t ever going to talk to me again, I was content with that if we didn’t lose sight of what was really important.

  “You’re right,” Jake said, and I could almost hear the loud snap in Weldon’s head. “Getting out of this mess should be our priority. Let’s not lose focus,” he stared at me and then walked up closer. “Just know that the minute my brother and I are out of this mess, it’s over between us. You and I will go our separate ways.”

  The snap resounded a lot closer this time, inside my own heart. But I didn’t let it show. “Sounds fair.”

  Weldon clearly wasn’t done. “You’re going to let a man who just confessed to being a pedophile, call the shots?”

  But Jake was ready for him. “If he was a pedophile, he would be taking your place,” he said. “Not trying to bring this operation down!”

  “You don’t know that he’s going to do what he says,” Weldon raised his voice. “Maybe replacing me is exactly what he plans on doing!”

  “If that happens,” Jake said, this time directly to me. “Then he’ll suffer a worse fate than you, I’ll make sure of that.”

  He pulled the drive from the laptop and dropped it in his pocket. “First things first, Weldon. Where is my brother?”

  “Colton’s my only leverage,” Weldon said. “I need assurance of my family’s safety before I can give it up.”

  “Your father’s an old man,” it was my turn to speak. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be wasting time. The sooner we get Colton the sooner we can give your father the antidote.”

  “Just let me talk to my father,” Weldon said. “Take a phone, let me see how he’s doing.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” I started to say but Jake interrupted me. “Deal.”

  “Jake, you don’t think he’s going to actually give you Colton if you do this for him?” I said, well aware of the reason behind Jake’s confidence.

  “We’re not monsters like him,” Jake replied.

  You don’t bring down The Devil. You rise up to him.

  I wish Jake understood what he was doing had to have repercussions in the long run because it would look like weakness to someone like Weldon. I wish I could make him understand but I knew him too well to force him to rise up. That act would have to come from his own will, if it ever did appear. I wasn’t ready to make him come to this forcefully but if things went awry amidst the chaos then I was afraid neither of us would be left with much of a choice. In order to talk with Jake, I came out of the room and he followed me outside. We locked and shut the door so Weldon couldn’t hear us.

  “Are you okay?” I wanted to know.

  “I don’t know where my brother is and now I have to run through hoops to get Weldon a meeting with his father,” Jake said. “To answer your question, no I’m not okay!”

  I hesitated for a long time before I could find the words to speak. “Jake… the things I said to Colton it was only to mislead them,” I explained. “You have to trust me.”

  “Can we talk about that later?” Jake said. “We have more pressing matters at hand, don’t you think!” He took out the phone I had bought for him, no one could trace us on it. He used the burner phone to look at all the contacts I’d added into it after the purchase two days ago. “I have your number,” he said. “I’ll head to the hospital now.”

  “If something happens you give me a call!” I said but Jake was already gone.

  JAKE

  This wasn’t happening.

  I know I’ve been saying this for some time now, but I keep feeling like I’m being hurled into things that aren’t supposed to be here—like I was supposed to live a different life yet somehow these fucked up versions of it keep popping up and I’m helpless. A part of me felt it might not be real. But I couldn’t think about all that. I tried not to think about that video I saw, because thinking about Trey… and Colton… made me mad. All that was for later. Right now, I had a simple task—have Weldon see his father so he knows the older man is okay and then nothing will stop me from getting to Colton’s whereabouts.

  But it was when I reached the hospital room that Weldon
’s father was in, that I received the ultimate blow.

  The atmosphere surrounding the room was filled with darkness. I could almost feel the pressure in my chest and knew something was wrong the minute I entered the general area of the private room. There was a familiar face on the bed, that of Weldon’s father, the man who had been nice to me and in all the shit that was going on it had seemed like a fucking life line. Surrounding him, was a horde of doctors and orderlies and another familiar face—Jackie. She wasn’t crying though, so I knew it couldn’t be that bad…

  “I’m sorry Jackie,” one of the doctors said. “We did everything we could but we couldn’t save him. I’m really sorry.”

  And that’s when I realized I was looking at a dead man.

  Weldon’s father was gone.

  But Jackie wasn’t crying…

  “I don’t understand,” Jackie said. “I thought he was getting better!”

  “He was,” the doctor responded. “We did a toxicology scan yesterday and it came out positive for Pseudo-nitzschia. It’s a toxic organism found in seafood but the probability of it happening to someone in the US is next to nothing.”

  After that there were more words exchanged but I couldn’t listen to any of it. Nothing made sense so I rushed out of the room, unseen, and hurried outside. In the miserable light of the fading twilight, I dialed Trey’s number, but my hands were shaking. “Did you do this, Trey?” I asked the minute I heard his voice.

  “Do what?”

  “Did you… are you going to make it look like Weldon’s father is dead… are you trying to hurt him? Is that it?”

  “Jake…”

  “You told me you lied about the poison so Weldon would think his father is in danger.”

  “Jake, what happened?”

  “They… the doctors… they said he’s dead. How’s that possible? They said it was some weird organism… Pseudo-nitzschia… which is what you said you gave him…”