hold me closer

16

I furrowed my eyebrows, looking at Lydia, concerned. The tape clicked, telling me it ended. Lydia looked at him, then looked away. Brunski got up and took a box off of a shelf. It had a red cross on it.

"We get a lot of teenagers trying to break into our drug cabinets," he said, opening it. "Most of the time, they don't succeed. But you three look pretty clever to me."

I struggled again. The drugs might not work on me, but they would for Stiles and Lydia. I was not going to feel what they were feeling. There was no way in hell. And even if I did survive, Brunski still wouldn't let me go. Instead, I was sure he would get a gun.

"I'll admit, Stiles," said Brunski. "I don't have any unusual talents like Lydia, but somehow, I just knew we were gonna get a chance to do this again."

"No!" Lydia and I screamed. "No! No! Stop it!"

Brunski turned away from Stiles and put the needle into Lydia's neck. Then, I got scared by another voice. Out of nowhere, Parrish had come in.

"Drop it! Take your thumb off that needle and slowly withdraw from her neck," he demanded, pointing his gun at him.

"Young Deputy," he said. "You're just a kid. I bet you've never even fired a- "

His gun fired. Brunski fell to his side, eyes still open. Parrish freed Lydia and Stiles, then me.

"He - He killed my grandmother," Lydia said quickly. "He was controlling Meredith."

"He used her to create the Deadpool," Stiles concluded.

"And he killed her when she tried to help us," Lydia added on, looking at Parrish.

Brunski coughed up blood and laughed. "You... you think it was me?" he said weakly. "That I was controlling her? She was controlling me." He stopped speaking and his head fell to one side.

"Oh, God," I muttered. "It's not him. He's not the Benefactor. It's- "

"No," said a small voice. "And... he wasn't on my list. But he was a bad person."

:::

"What did she say?" Lydia asked as Olivia and Stilinski came inside.

"Hard to tell," Olivia replied. "There were words. I'm not sure there were actual sentences."

"Nothing," said Lydia, defeated.

"I think we need a psychologist," Olivia said, taking the phone.

"Or a medium," Stilinski said.

"Hello," I spoke with a small wave. "Mind reading, memory seeing power here."

Olivia set the phone down. "Right."

"Is she even competent enough to be charged with something?" Lydia asked.

"If Meredith is the Benefactor, then that means she was competent enough to trick Kate into opening the Hale vault; competent enough to blackmail Brunski into helping her; and competent enough to create a hit-list and payout money for its completion," Stilinski said. "This girl's practically a criminal mastermind."

"There's gotta be a reason why she would do this," Lydia said.

"I'm only interested in the why if it tells me the how," Stilinski said.

"You mean how to stop it?" I inquired.

"After what happened to Scott tonight, this thing's still going," Olivia said. "The payments could be automatic. And, as long as the killers are getting paid, that list is gonna keep getting smaller."