I also keep an eye on Jude while his body goes through a physical and mental breakdown. Of all the boys, Jude is the easiest to deal with, but he’s also the worst at helping me. If it were Dino in here with me, it would be a completely different game.
At the thought of the redhead, my insides become knotted and twisted, and the darkness tries its hardest to surface. It’s a torment I’ve come to dread. But I can’t lose focus. I’m on a job. So, I shut down all thoughts about him and think only of the task at hand.
“We need to get him alone,” I say to Jude after a few days of studying Bateman. I do have the drugs all powdered up. It would be easy to spike his coffee, but then what if he collapses in the middle of the day?
“Not if he’s on the night shift,” Jude offers when I say this to him.
That could work.
“Have you been dosing Byron like I asked?” Giving Jude the pills was a test. If he’s taken them himself, we have a problem.
“What do you take me for?” he snaps, and then he sighs, scrubbing his face with his hand. “How did you know they would work on him?”
“My father used to induce the same state in me.” I’ve been there, in that place where your body is unable to move, but your brain is in overdrive, many times. I was always aware of what he did to get me out of it, even if I couldn’t administer it myself.
Jude’s face is a picture of horror.
We finally decideto wait until Thursday night to kill Bateman. It’s risky. But leaving it so late means that we have more time to plan and less time for things to go wrong. But it also means I have one shot at this. Jude is grumpier and rattier as the days go by, which makes me change my mind about him being the easiest—Lorcan is easier to deal with than Jude any day of the bloody week.
But dwelling on the boys who aren’t here doesn’t help matters.
And I, point blank, refuse to think of Dante at all.
Thursday comes around in the blink of an eye, which is something to be said for all the days rolling into one. Jude pretty much retreated to his room at the start of the week and hasn’t yet emerged.
I knock on his door and listen to the sound of him moving about. Eventually, the door creaks open enough for me to see a withdrawn and sullen-looking Jude. His jaw is covered in stubble, and his eyes are dull and red.
He needs a goddamn shower.
“It’s time,” I say through the crack.
“Fuck, already? I’m still fucking dying here.”
I suck in a breath and shake my head. This is not how I expected things to go. I’m so very disappointed. Jude blinks a few times, hazel eyes bleary and bloodshot as he takes me in.
“Give me ten minutes. I need to go to the communal bathroom.”
I nod at him. “I’ll wait in the TV room.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jude appears. His hair is damp and hanging over his face, and his eyes are still puffed. But at least he’s in fresh scrubs, and he’s not hurling his guts up, which is the indication I got the first time I came to find him a couple of days ago.
“Can you do this?” I ask him as he takes a seat at the table behind the sofa with me. There’s no one in the TV room because it’s pizza night, and most of the kids are in the canteen getting their fill of pepperoni and cheese. There’s a game show on TV that I turned the volume up on before Jude showed.
“I’m here aren’t I?” he rasps, drinking a carton of juice he must have picked up on the way. “I fucking would give anything for a nice cold beer, right about now,” he snorts.
I forget how long Jude has been stuck inside. I give him a level look. “Lor said he could get you out.” I shrug.
Jude looks over at me. “I wanted to see if you’d come to rescue me,” he says, but he doesn’t laugh or smirk. It’s like he’s empty inside. Dead.
Like Dino.
I shove that poisonous thought away and grimace at Jude. “Are you sure you’re okay because I can do this alone?” I don’t need anyone.
He grunts, finishing his juice in one go. “Just tell me what the plan is.”
“Bateman does the rounds at ten, and then he grabs a coffee in the kitchens. I’ll distract him. You put this”—I slide the plastic wrap of powdered drugs over to Jude—“in his coffee when he’s not looking.”
He stares at the baggie with desperate eyes. For a second, I think he’s going to snatch it and inhale the goddamn thing there and then, but his features harden. He takes it from me gingerly instead, as though it might bite, and shoves it into his pocket.