Page 8 of Vile Bastards
“My savior,” he drawls, his body slumped, his head floppy as he turns it with great effort in my direction. “I knew you could follow simple instructions. Congratulations, Kelly. You’re not as useless as I thought.”
Shipman’s dark eyes lift to me as I stand there, torn with sudden uncertainty.
If I don’t do anything right now, he’ll kill Bohnes for me. I won’t even have to do it; it won’t be my fault. I’d free Scarlett from the impossible chain lashing her heart to a man who isn’t me. She could be mine and mine alone.
The temptation is maddening.
It’s a siren song, calling me across a stormy sea to steer my boat into the rocks.
“Do it,” Aspen whispers in my ear. I turn my head and there he is, standing right beside me, his suit dripping with blood, red spattered across his face. “Kill him. The girl deserves it, too, doesn’t she? She murdered me, Ash. And I know we’ve had our problems, but I’m your twin. Yours. You and me, we’re two halves of one whole.”
“You’re dead.” I state the facts firmly, looking Aspen right in the face. He smiles at me, and it’s grotesque, and then all I can think about is his body stuffed in that trunk, his kill-trophies glittering cuff links on the ends of my sleeves.
That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Him being dead. I’m supposed to be Aspen.
Aspen would shoot Bohnes. He wouldn’t even hesitate. He’d know it was his best and only chance to possess Scarlett Force with the deep, obsessive ache inside of me, an unrelenting whisper that pushes me to do things I’d never do, consider things I’d never consider.
I want her, and she wants me.
She wants Ash.
Scarlett never liked or wanted Aspen, never. I don’t want to be Aspen. The thought is overwhelming, almost enough to knock me to my knees. I want to be the opposite. I want to be Ash as much as I can because—more often than not—I’m going to have to be Aspen.
“You expected him to save you?” Shipman asks, and then he laughs. “I’ve heard stories about you, kid. But what a colossal error in judgment. Ash Kelly? He’s nothing but a waste of breath. His brother was the only one with brains in the family.” Shipman leans down and gets in Bohnes’ face. To his credit, Bohnes never loses his decorum.
He stares Shipman down, and then grins through the blood running down his face.
Just like the ghost-Aspen. The Aspen who isn’t here. The Aspen who tormented me and made my life hell.
“Where is Alexei Grove?” Shipman asks, and then I turn, ignoring the specter of my own madness and lifting up the Ruger. He notices a fraction of a second too early, diving to the ground and avoiding the first shot I fire off.
Bohnes is laughing now, but he can’t quite maintain a maniacal cackle. He starts coughing, curses, and then spits.
“Finish him off,” he commands, as if he has any right to order me around.
I ignore him, ducking behind a doorjamb as Shipman rises to his knees and takes aim from behind the dining table. The round buries itself into the wall across from me, whizzing past just inches from my face.
This is a mistake. I’m telling myself that, and I know it’s true: Shipman is too smart a man to have left things up to chance. If I kill him now, I have no doubt that he’s got a fail-safe plan in place, some phone stashed somewhere set to text my father at a certain time. A scheduled email. A well-paid informant prepared to call my father with the truth.
Those issues are neither here nor there.
It’s me and this man, embroiled in a fight for our lives.
I’ll worry about my father if I make it through the night.
“He’s heading your way,” Bohnes calls out, and I duck down on instinct, narrowly avoiding a pistol-whip to the face. I throw my body at Shipman’s legs, knocking him back but not down. He stumbles, but the move handicaps me far worse than it does him.
He kicks me hard in the shoulder, dislocating it and sending a shockwave of pain through me before the numbness sets in. I use my other arm to push back into a crouch, swinging my leg out and around.
I make contact with Shipman’s legs, but again, all it does is cause him to stumble.
The man won’t go down.
My mind flashes back to Halloween night, to the severed head in Scarlett’s hand. Bohnes is delivering on his promises, and here I am, with the opportunity to not only save myself from Shipman’s threats, but to free Scarlett from his menace.
And I’m failing.
“You’ve always been a failure, Ash.” It’s Aspen’s voice again, right there in my ear.
My eyes widen, and I grit my teeth, shoving up to my feet as Shipman fires his weapon again. There’s a flash of heat in my arm, but then my body is colliding with his and the pair of us are falling into a decorative side table.
