CHAPTER 93
Chapter Title: Something You Did
Cole Jones
By the time I hit Main Street, night had already swallowed the town whole. The rain from earlier had slicked the pavement, turning the asphalt into a mirror of shadows. Up ahead, the neon lights from Delish bled across the puddles like liquid sin, pulsing in red and violet—the kind of glow that promised pleasure and delivered trouble.
Tonight was my night. My event.
Months of prep, one scandalous theme—Velvet and Vice. A reimagined NYC sex club, but classier. Tasteful shadows. Champagne, candlelight, the illusion of danger without the mess. Crisfield had never seen anything like it. Emma thought it was “too much.” I called it branding.
I should’ve been there already—charming sponsors, VIPs, pretending to care about their small-town morals—but my phone buzzed.
Allison: I'm back.
For the first time all week, my pulse quickened for something other than stress. I pulled over and reached for my phone.
Me: I need party favors. But not at Delish.
Allison: Same spot. 10 mins.
Relief bloomed in my chest. I hated buying from that twitchy loser Bobby—always late, always sweating. Allison was different: clean, fast, quiet. My best friend. And God knew I needed something to keep me upright tonight.
I turned away from the glowing Delish sign, taking the back route toward the cemetery —our usual meet-up spot. The streets got darker fast, the hum of the party fading behind me, replaced by the steady drone of cicadas rising from the wet grass.
By the time I reached the old gates, the lamps had thinned to nothing but fog and the faint orange glow of a flickering bulb. The iron bench sat beneath the old oak, slick with rain and waiting.
No Allison.
I sat, checked my phone, typed here—but before I could hit send, movement flashed to my left.
Hands. Rough. Unforgiving.
A hood yanked over my head. Fabric scraped my face, suffocating and dark. I thrashed, but something sharp bit into my neck—a sting, cold and burning all at once. My body went slack, the world spinning into black.
Somewhere in the distance, a voice—low, distorted—murmured something I couldn’t catch. Then boots on wet concrete. Then nothing.
When I woke, my mouth tasted of salt, the air thick with the sharp scent of the ocean.
My vision swam back in broken fragments—the blur of boardwalk lights, the curve of the railings, waves crashing somewhere below. My wrists felt heavy, useless. Numb.
And then—
“Cole?”
Emma.
She was there, standing in the downpour, her hair plastered to her cheeks, her voice trembling like glass about to break.
For a second, I thought I was dreaming—hallucinating.
“Emma,” I rasped, forcing air into my lungs, forcing my body to move. “Run.”
She didn’t move. "What?"
A man in black stood in the mist. Faceless. Still. A silhouette with no humanity left in it.
I tried again, louder this time, my throat raw. “Run!”
Then she turned, eyes wide and terrified, fixed on something behind her.
The man lunged, cutting through the rain like a shadow unchained. In one swift motion, his hand clamped around her waist, jerking her backward before she could even scream.
For what felt like forever, the world didn’t move. Just the rain. The surf. The pulse in my skull.
Then instinct took over. I pushed up from the bench, legs trembling, blood roaring in my ears. My body screamed in protest, but I didn’t care.
I moved—straight toward her—toward the blur of movement where she was fighting him off.
“Let her go!”
The shout tore out of me before I even knew I was moving. I barely made three steps when something slammed into my side—fast, brutal, and perfectly aimed.
The impact knocked the air clean out of my lungs. The second guy—dressed head to toe in black—hit like a linebacker. His shoulder drove into my ribs, his full weight behind it, and the sound that escaped me wasn’t human.
The world spun sideways. My feet left the ground. Then crack—my face met the deck, cheek colliding with wet planks and splinters.
A flash of white pain exploded through my skull. Wood groaned. Something inside me might have too. Salt filled my mouth, mixed with the copper taste of blood. My knee twisted beneath me, a sharp, tearing scream of pain that blurred my vision. For a second, I couldn’t even breathe. Just rain—cold, relentless—hammering down, pooling beneath my cheek like the ocean itself wanted me drowned.
The world tilted and bled color—neon lights smearing through fog in streaks of pink and green. The carousel’s music was gone now, but its ghost still spun behind my eyelids.
I knew that tackle.
Clean. Textbook. Shoulder low. Hips driving.
The bastard had played before.
He knew what he was doing.
He knew me.
Blood dripped from my nose, mixing with rain. My breathing came in harsh, shallow bursts that echoed in my skull like surf crashing on stone.
I tried to push up, palms sliding against slick wood. My arms shook under my weight, muscles screaming in protest, but I didn’t care. I lifted my head, scanning the fog.
Emma.
Then sound came back all at once—like a wave crashing over me.
Her voice.
The surf.
The scrape of boots.
A van door slamming open.
“Emma—don’t you touch her!”
The words clawed out of my throat, wet and broken.
“Stay down,” the second man growled—voice muffled beneath the hood and mask, rough as gravel in the rain.
I didn’t listen.
My nails tore at the boards as I clawed forward, splinters biting under my skin. The wood was slick, the air thick with mist and salt. Every muscle screamed, but I dragged my useless leg behind me anyway. Emma was just ahead—a blur through the haze, limp in the first man’s arms like a broken doll. Her head lolled, hair darkened by rain. The van’s engine coughed awake, its headlights slicing clean tunnels through the fog.
I was almost at the edge of the boardwalk when the second man drove his knee into my spine. The air punched out of me in a violent burst. Pain flared white-hot, spreading through my ribs like a live wire. I hit the deck hard, gasping, the taste of salt and blood thick in my throat. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. All I could do was watch.
The first man carried Emma to the van and laid her inside with practiced ease. He patted down her pockets, methodical, like he’d done this before. Then he turned to his partner—the one pinning me—and tossed a set of keys. They arced through the mist, catching a flash of the dying boardwalk bulb before landing in the second man’s gloved hand with a dull clink.
“Take her car,” he barked, tossing a bag that landed beside me with a heavy thud. Rain plastered my hair to my face. The bag soaked through almost instantly, a dark mass of canvas and secrets. “Rendezvous point. Floor it. She got a call out—her old man’s probably mobilizing half the coast already, including FBI."
His boots thudded against the pavement—calm, efficient, terrifying in their rhythm.
“I bought us time,” the first man said, yanking the passenger's door open. The van’s dome light flickered over his mask before vanishing. “Bomb at Lace and Timber went off five minutes ago. Cops’ll be chasing sirens there. But we don’t have all night. Plates and a drill are inside the bag.”
My fingers brushed the bag’s edge. The canvas was rough beneath my skin, the smell of metal and oil faint but unmistakable. I felt the weight of whatever they’d packed inside—tools for vanishing. For erasing evidence. For making sure no one ever found us again.
The second man’s grip loosened as he shifted to stand. I tried to twist, to reach for anything—but he slammed a boot into my shoulder, rolling me onto my back. The world tilted. Rain hammered the boards. The van’s headlights turned the mist into a sheet of white.
I caught one last glimpse of Emma—her hair spilling over the van’s seat, her wrist limp against the door frame. Then the door slammed shut, and the sound tore through the night like a verdict.
The van peeled away, taillights glowing red through the fog until they vanished completely.
The second man grunted—a shadow wrapped in black. His face was hidden behind a balaclava, those dark goggles reflecting the pier lights like oil slicks. He moved with the silence of someone trained to disappear, every step precise, deliberate.
His hand shot out, gripping my collar. He yanked me upright like I weighed nothing. My bad knee buckled, white-hot pain shooting through it. I dangled there, half-conscious, the rain dripping from my hair, blood pattering from my nose onto his boots.
“Wait—no, please—please,” I gasped, choking on copper and salt. “You don’t have to do this. I can—whatever you’re being paid, I’ll double it. Triple it. Name your price. I’ve got money—trusts, offshore, whatever you want. Just let us go.”
His hand clamped tighter on my arm, fingers like iron bands. He leaned in close enough for me to smell the mint on his breath. Then he laughed—a sound low and jagged, swallowed almost entirely by the crash of waves beneath the pier.
“This isn’t about money, Jones.” His tone hardened—old wounds, old hate. “This is about something you did.”
Before I could breathe, he shoved me sideways. I slammed into the side of Emma’s silver Civic—her stupid, reliable Civic she refused to sell even after her dad bought her an Audi. Metal bit into my shoulder, pain sparking white behind my eyes. The trunk creaked open with a long, mechanical groan that sounded almost human.
Then he threw me in.
The world flipped, metal and rain and pain colliding. My shoulder hit the spare tire; my head bounced off the lining. I tasted blood again—sharp, hot, real. The lid hovered half-closed, the sky just a slit of storm-lit gray. Rain drummed on the metal like a countdown.
“Please—wait,” I rasped, voice breaking. “You don’t understand. It wasn’t—it wasn’t our fault.”
He paused.
For the first time, the storm seemed to still. The hiss of rain filled the silence between us, sharp and steady.
I swallowed hard. My throat felt raw, like every word clawed its way out. “Divine—she didn’t want the scandal. Henry Williamson had just launched his campaign. Teen abstinence. Family values. All that bullshit.” My voice cracked, the memory burning its way up. “It would’ve ruined everything if the truth got out. Couldn’t have his golden boy as a statistic.”
I stopped—air catching in my lungs.
“It would’ve made him look like a hypocrite.”
The man’s head tilted slightly, rain tracing silver lines down the edge of his hood. The movement was small, almost mechanical—but I saw it. The tension rippling through his shoulders. The shift in his breathing—faster now, heavier, like he was holding back something sharp and ugly.
He didn’t move. Not for a long, suffocating moment.
The rain fell, rolling off his jacket in steady rivulets that pooled at his boots. The boardwalk lights flickered, throwing ghostly halos through the mist. Then his voice came—no longer mocking, no longer amused. It was lower now, measured, the kind of voice a man uses when he’s already seen the ending.
“What did you just say?”
I forced my head up, fighting the weight of exhaustion pressing down on me. I tried to find his eyes behind those dark goggles—those cold, mirrored lenses that reflected only rain, fear, and my own ruined face staring back.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I stammered, the words tumbling out fast. “Divine didn’t want his campaign ruined. So she made it disappear. She made her disappear. We didn’t have a choice. None of us did.”
He stood there, statue-still, just looking down at me.
And for a moment, I thought—maybe. Maybe he’d let me go. Maybe the truth had cracked something open.
My palms slipped helplessly across the slick metal, searching for anything—something—to hit him with. But he moved first, slow and measured, one gloved hand curling around the trunk lid.
“Please,” I rasped, my voice breaking in half. “I didn’t know. I didn’t—”
The lid began to lower.
“Yeah,” he muttered, voice low and trembling with something that wasn’t quite anger—or maybe it was too much of it. “You should’ve thought about that before.”
The trunk slammed shut.
The world went black.
Rain hammered the roof in relentless rhythm. My breathing came ragged, every exhale bouncing off the cold steel walls. Then came a new sound—the shrill whir of a drill. Metal against metal. The vibration shuddered through the car’s frame, through my bones. Then it stopped.
Silence.
The engine rumbled to life. The vibration deepened, the air growing warmer, heavier. The car tilted slightly—movement—then steadied. Tires splashed through puddles, the sound of asphalt and storm replacing the ocean’s roar.
I pressed my forehead against the trunk’s cold lining, the taste of blood still on my tongue. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
“Emma,” I whispered into the dark. The name barely made it past my lips. “I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes, and the words cracked apart. “I tried. I swear I tried.”
Outside, the rain blurred the world into gray. The ocean’s voice faded behind us, swallowed by the hum of the road and the distant thunder stalking the coast.
And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t tell if I was still heading somewhere—or if the light ahead had already gone out.