Chapter 21: Sebastian - Hunter or Hunted

When I arrived at the funeral home and caught sight of Evan at the bar downstairs, I texted Gwen,

Love you <3

That was code for He’s here, house is empty, you’re good.

Paranoid? No, not at all. If we became suspects in Evan’s disappearance later, our text messages would be subpoenaed. Wouldn’t be good if they found we were texting about breaking into his place before the fact.

He looked as he had yesterday. Hunched over the bar in a suit and tie. An odd cross between Poor, pity me and See how dignified I am?

The part guys like him played.

I gave his shoulder a pat in greeting. More of a smack, really. All my life, I’d found it odd how fellow boys my age and friends of my dad’s bonded through aggression. But it was the norm.

“How you doing, man?” I asked, lowering myself to the stool beside him.

“Could be worse.” His words slurred, distillery-scented breath hitting me like a truck. “You a beer guy? Or a liquor guy? Ah, shit, it’s a funeral. Dan, get my friend here a shot.”

The older man behind the bar crooked a brow at me. As if to say, Shots? Shots before a funeral? “What’re you drinking?”

“Just an old fashioned. Whatever you got.” The judgmental quirk on his face subsided as I shrugged off my jacket and sat beside Evan. I gave the lineup of glasses before him a once-over. Two empty beer bottles and three empty short glasses. He held a glass of clear liquid. “What’re you drinking?”

“Vodka soda.” He belched, propping himself up on an elbow. “That’s Allie’s drink. Vodka soda or vodka cranberry.”

It wasn’t. Not really. No teenage girl knew what her go-to drink was at that age. They sipped whatever their nearly thirty-year-old boyfriend recommended.

But I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I landed on, “Mm.”

Sniffling, Evan swatted a hand across his cheek. “Where’s your girl at?”

“Went for a walk. Wanted to clear her head before all this.” The bartender set my drink in front of me. I gave him a nod of thanks and took a sip. “Funerals are tough.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice.” Glass at his mouth, Evan tilted it back. He drained it all, then clacked it to the cherry bar top. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s really gone.”

Between glances at his profile and a survey of his reflection in the mirror behind the shelves of bottles, I tried to discern his expression. He hadn’t looked directly at me once. That look, though—that swell in his lips, the pale, bleak color of his skin—suggested some real emotion. Whether it be grief or guilt, I couldn’t say.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it? Death.” Evan rubbed a hand over his mouth, wiping up the liquid at the corners of his lips. “Just here one second and gone the next.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, unsure what else to say, but certain of one thing. Evan was drunk, and he was chatty. If that was guilt in his eyes, it’d slip from his lips eventually.

“Everyone’s a mess, you know,” he said. “Even Ava was bawling upstairs.”

As most siblings would the day they laid their sister to her final resting place. “Grief’s a bitch like that.”

“She’s young though.” Slurring again, he raised his glass in the bartender’s direction, motioning for another. “They weren’t that close anyway.”

Was that where the guilt came from? The fact that he’d killed his girlfriend and was now grooming her little sister to take her place? “Yeah, she’ll get through it.”

“I just don’t want her to wind up like that, you know?” He finally looked my way, forehead wrinkled. “She’s a lot smarter than Allie was. She knows better.”

Knew better than to... what? Leave him? Kill herself? What the hell did that mean? “Right.”

“I mean, that’s how it was, you know?” Straightening up, he lifted a shoulder. “Allie needed me. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know how the world worked. She wasn’t—Well, you know. The brightest bulb. She needed help, and I helped her. I always helped her.”

It took a lot of willpower to maintain my poker face. “You protected her.”

“Exactly.” A hard nod, posture soothing. “I protected her. I took care of her.”

My dad always said that. Mom was too emotional. Too unstable. Too airheaded. She needed guidance. She needed to be led by a strong, manly man like himself.

But he was no leader. He was an insecure addict hiding behind a heroic god complex. Bossing her around, smacking her around, made him feel big and strong and important. Godly. Powerful.

Evan was the same guy in a different suit.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I lost my sister when I was a little older than her. Never really been the same since.”

Most people would feel a twinge of grief at that. Go silent and sip their drink, or swat a tear away. But not Evan.

His shoulders squared and something sparkled in those baby blues. Relief? Pride?

Joy?

Joyful at the never-ending grief Ava would feel for the loss of her sister?

“She’ll need me.” He nodded, eyes on his own in the mirror. “She won’t be able to get through this alone.”

Joy that he’d get to fill that strong-and-mighty role again. Happy at her fragile emotional state. That he could manipulate her into caring for his precious feelings through their shared grief.

If you could call this grief. He would. I’d call it exploitation of a child’s trauma.

“It doesn’t hurt that they look alike either.” Barely turning my way, he flashed a quick smirk and wiggled a brow.

Disgust roiled in my gut and adrenaline pulsed to my hands. No matter how hard I tried to contain the grimace on my face, I couldn’t stop the clench of my fists. My knuckles turned white, flashing the bone beneath.

When it took me too long to respond, his glance morphed to a gaze. His head swiveled to face me, waiting. Testing. Seeing how far he could push. If I would break and put those knuckles to use, or if I’d laugh along.

I needed more. I needed confirmation. I needed something more than admittance to his disgusting, misogynistic mindset.

Flexing my fingers to loosen the tension, I snorted a laugh I hoped sounded legitimate. “Who’s ever complained about a newer model?”

His laugh assured me it had. He raised his glass and clinked it off mine. As the laughter fell off, Evan raised a shoulder. “I never saw Ava that way. She was the baby of the family.”

Liar. He’d always seen her that way. Young, malleable, pretty. If Delilah hadn’t taken his bait, Ava would’ve. She was only a year younger. She had always been the baby.

She still was. Delilah had been too. “They grow up fast.”

Another laugh, this one more of a chuckle. “She and I got to talking after Allie left. I was asking if she knew anything, if they’d talked, and... I don’t know. One thing just led to another. She was lonely without her sister, I was lonely without my girl, and... I’m just glad we have each other through this.”

“Shit, I can only imagine, man.” Imagine bashing your head off this fucking counter.

“We’ll be alright,” he said, taking another sip from his glass, eyes on his own in the mirror again. I wasn’t sure if he referenced Ava, or the man whose reflection he stared back at. His jaw tightened again when he said, “Just sucks Allie wasn’t.”

“Yeah. It really sucks.”

The longer I watched him, the more he spoke, the harder it was to purity-preach to Gwen. This bastard deserved worse than the justice system would ever give him. What he was doing to Ava wasn’t even against the law. What he’d done with Delilah had been, but no one around him had stepped in to say so, to stop it. No one would stop this either.

“What would that feel like anyway?” He still stared ahead, eye contact locked with his own in that mirror, brows slightly creased. “Dying. Suffocating.”

If Gwen had it her way, he’d find out soon. “Peaceful, I’d think. Like falling asleep.”

“No, it’s not peaceful,” he said. “Quicker than bleeding out, but the thrashing.” He tugged at the sleeves of his suit. “The clawing. It wasn’t peaceful.”

What I’d expected. What, deep down, I’d known.

And yet, adrenaline soared down my arms again. Bile churned around my stomach, burning a violent path up my chest, igniting fire in my throat, blazing acid over my tongue.

“Th-that’s what it said online.” He looked directly at me, eyes a bit wider, words clearer than they’d been. “I looked it up, and that’s what it said.”

“Right,” I muttered. “But like you said. Faster than bleeding out.”

Almost undetectable, his shoulders softened. His eyes did too.

“Hey, Evan,” a voice called behind us. A young voice. A sweet girl. A child. Ava. That wrinkle in his brows, the one I’d noticed yesterday, that phony grief, returned as he looked at her over his shoulder. “The preacher’s asking to talk to the pallbearers. Are you busy?”

“No, I’ll be right there.” He downed his drink and stood. Once he was on his feet, he stretched out a hand. “Thanks for keeping me company, man. I’ll see ya up there.”

“Sure. Don’t mention it.” I reached out for his hand, and my heart pounded in my chest.

A thin red line, like a brush burn or road rash, peeked from beneath the suit cuff.

Evan’s eyes followed mine. He started to pull away, but I grabbed his hand and shook. Hard.

“Good luck.” I didn’t stop my jaw from stiffening this time. “I’m sure you’ll need it.”

For half a second, he squinted, then blinked hard.

“Evan?” Ava called.

“Yeah, I’m coming.” He had to wrench his hand from mine. He flexed his fingers as he started that direction, holding my gaze until he was at her side in the entrance.

I sipped the old fashioned again to wash that acidic taste from my tongue and dropped a twenty on the counter.

My phone dinged in my pocket.

Gwen

Meet me outside