by L. Wilder
“Just bandage it for now. I’ll get my dad to fix me up when he gets here.” She quickly applied the bandages to the front and back wounds, then secured them both with medical tape. Once she was done, I told her, “My dad will be here soon. You need to go get your stuff together.”
Her voice was trembling with worry as she replied, “Okay.”
“It’s going to be okay, Madison.” I stood up and kissed her briefly. “I’ll get things sorted here, and then I’ll come meet you at my folks’ place.”
She nodded, then headed down the hall to the bedroom. I didn’t want to take the chance on Dad seeing anything when he arrived, so I grabbed a hold of Charlie’s feet and hauled his body out of the kitchen and moved him out back; then, I grabbed the asshole lying out on the driveway and dragged him out into the grassy field beside the shed with his friend. Once I’d finished that, I went back inside to clean up any evidence of blood. Fuck, I was exhausted, and my shoulder was throbbing in agony. I honestly didn’t think I could move another inch, but there was no choice. Thankfully, the kitchen and living room rugs absorbed most of it, so I shoved them into large bags and tossed them both out, leaving very little left to be wiped up off the floor. By the time I was done, Madison had finished packing and came into the living room. When she walked over to me, I noticed that she was carrying a clean t-shirt. “You might want to put that on before your dad gets here.”
“Thanks, babe.” I could see the anguish in her eyes as she helped me ease it over my head and carefully around my injured shoulder. Hoping to distract her, I said, “You could tell your folks that you were up in the mountains with your hot-stud-of-a-boyfriend and were otherwise detained.”
“And I couldn’t call to at least let them know I was alive?”
I smirked as I told her, “You were tied up.”
“Jasper!”
“Okay. Okay. That probably isn’t the best idea.” I chuckled. “But, seriously … you could go with something like that. I have an associate who has a place up in the Catskills. Maybe tell them that you were upset about your father’s affair, and you went there to think things over?”
“But, how would I know about the affair?”
“Maybe a friend told you … she saw them together and took pictures?”
“Yeah. That could work. At least that sounds plausible.” I could see the wheels turning in her head as she considered what I said. “Yeah. I could definitely work with that.”
“Good.”
When I heard my dad’s truck pull up, I grabbed Madison’s bags, and she followed as I started for the door. By the time we made it outside, Grady and Dad were already halfway up the driveway. My father’s eyes were full of worry as he handed me his medical bag and asked, “Is everything okay?”
As I took the bag from his hand, I replied, “It is now.”
He watched as I reached inside for a couple of pain killers. As I tossed them in my mouth, he asked, “What happened?”
“It’s safer if you don’t know.” I grabbed a few extra bandages and placed them in my back pocket, before closing the bag. Once I was done, I turned my attention to Madison. “Just get her back to the house, and Grady and I will be there by morning.”
“You sure I can’t—”
“Just get her home. That’s all I need … and thanks, Dad.”
Dad looked over to Madison as he asked, “You ready to go?”
She nodded, and we both followed my father back to the truck. After I put her bags in the back seat, I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers. Before she got in the truck, she looked up at me with big, puppy-dog eyes and pleaded, “Please be careful.”
“I will. Don’t worry.” I kissed her once more then helped her inside the truck. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She never took her eyes off me as Dad started to back out of the driveway. Once they were gone, Grady came over to me and asked, “You gonna tell me what the fuck happened here tonight?”
“I wouldn’t even if I could.” I put Dad’s medical bag up on the hood of my SUV as I told him, “You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that I did what I had to do to keep Madison safe.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“I need you to help me clean up a mess … and no questions why we’re doing it.”
With Grady following close behind, I started walking towards the back of the house. When we got to Charlie’s lifeless body, it took Grady a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. His eyes were wide, and his voice was three octaves higher when he shouted, “What the fuck, man?”
“I told you, no questions.”
“Are you fucking kidding me!” He motioned his hand towards the ground with all the dramatics he could muster. “This dude is dead.”
“Yeah, he is, and he isn’t the only one. Now, grab his feet and help me get him to the truck.”
“Just wait a goddamn second, Jasper! I need a second to wrap my head around this shit!”
“There’s no time, Grady! We’ve only got six hours until sunrise. Now, move your ass.”
Doing as he was told, Grady grabbed Charlie’s feet and helped me carry him over to the SUV. I opened the trunk, and we tossed Charlie inside, then opened the back doors to pull down the seats. With Grady mouthing off behind me, I ambled over to the shed to get the other two assholes who were lying dead in the high grass behind the house near the shed. When he came up on the bodies, he shouted, “Holy fuck, Jasper! There’s what … three of these guys? You kill them all by yourself?”
“Actually, there’s four.”
“Holy shit, Jasper! Who the fuck are these guys?”
“How many times I gotta say it? No fucking questions!” I reached down and grabbed the larger of the two men, grunting as I reached for his hand. When Grady grabbed his feet, I told him, “I know this is a lot to take in, but I asked you here because I thought you could handle it.”
“I can.”
“Good.” Once we’d placed the body in the SUV, I turned to him and said, “Go grab a few cinderblocks and some baling wire, then meet me back at my truck.”
Without any verbal response, he turned and started towards the shed. I was about to go get the next body, when I noticed I was bleeding through my shirt. Since we didn’t have much time, I took the extra bandages from my pocket and quickly placed them on top of the others, hoping they’d hold until we got to my folks’ place. Once I was done, I went over and grabbed the other guy by the shed, dragging him by myself over to the truck. With a great deal of effort, I managed to get him in the back with the others. I was getting close to gathering them all, but I still needed to deal with the giant motherfucker on the porch. When Grady returned, I had no choice but to ask for his help.
As he tossed the cinderblocks into the back, I told him, “Gonna need your hand with one more.”
“Fuck man. You’re killing me here.”
“We’re just getting started.”
“Damn. I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” When we got over to the last body, Grady looked down at him and fussed, “Holy shit, man. This dude’s a giant.”
“Stop your whining and grab his feet.”
Grumbling under his breath, Grady helped me load the last body into the trunk. From there, we backed the SUV up to Dad’s old Jon boat and put it on the hitch. Minutes later, we were driving towards Bolivar Road. We hadn’t gotten far when Grady looked over to me and asked, “Where exactly are we going?”
“Down to the Hatchie River Bottom … We’ll toss the bodies there and let the gar and snapping turtles take care of them.”
“Damn, Jasper,” he huffed. “I always knew you were a badass, but this is taking it to a whole new level.”
“It is what it is.”
“What exactly is it that you do up there in the mountains… ’cause you never come home anymore. You’ve all but closed yourself off to the rest of the world, and then you suddenly show up out of nowhere with this g
irl. You don’t tell us shit about what’s going on, and now we’re driving down the fucking road with four dead bodies in the back of the truck!”
“You’re right, but think about it, Grady. You know me … I’m still your brother”—I looked over at him with a stern expression—“and I’d never kill anyone unless there was no other alternative.”
“So, these guys in the back of the truck … are they the reason why you and Madison were on the run?”
“More or less.”
“Is it over now?”
“She’s no longer in danger, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good.” Grady turned to me, studied me for a moment, then said, “Does that mean you’ll have time to help me out with the situation at the club … ’cause I’m not sure what the hell to do about it. Never had to deal with men like them. They aren’t fucking around.”
“Gonna need a couple of weeks to sort things with Madison, but after that, I’ll be back to do whatever you need.” I turned and looked at him as I asked, “You think you can hold them off until then?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
When we finally pulled up to the Hatchie Bottom, Grady followed me around to the back end of the truck where we tossed the bodies and cinder blocks into the boat. As soon as we got the boat into the water, we set to work on disposing of Charlie and his friends. Thankfully, we were done and headed back to the lodge just before sunrise. After we’d scrubbed down the boat and put it back into the shed, we both searched the entire perimeter of the house, making sure I’d left no evidence behind. Luckily, the storm had finally come in, and the rain would help wash away any remaining blood. I finished cleaning up inside, then loaded the remaining luggage and supplies into the back of my truck. Once we had the place looking like it had when Madison and I arrived, I locked all the doors, and Grady and I started home. As we were backing out of the driveway, Grady looked over at me and noticed that I’d bled through my t-shirt, he asked, “So, what’s the plan? You gonna get that looked at?”
Realizing for the first, I’d never even used the medical bag Dad had brought for me, I turned to him and replied, “I’ll get Dad to patch me up when we get back.”
“From the looks of it, it’s gonna take more than a band-aid to fix what you’ve got going on.”
“It’ll be fine.”
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as said, “So, you’re gonna be leaving out as soon as we get back to the house?”
“Pretty much. I’ll need to get a few hours of sleep before we leave for New York.”
“You going to be staying there with her?”
“Just until we get a few things sorted.”
The second Madison contacted her parents to let them know she was alive, she would be lambasted with questions—questions that neither of us had the answers to. We’d have to play it safe, come up with a story that was believable, and stick to it. It would take some time for the dust to settle, and I planned to be there with her until it did.
18
Madison
Explaining to the police where I’d been for the past couple of weeks was more difficult than I expected. The lead detective treated me like a criminal, asking question after question. While he bought my story about my father’s affair and needing to get away, he couldn’t understand why I hadn’t at least tried to reach out to my parents to let them know I was okay. He also had a hard time believing that I hadn’t seen the reports about my disappearance on TV or in the newspapers. I explained, once again, that I was devastated by the news of my father’s affair, which wasn’t a lie. I also told him that I had no idea how I should handle things with my mother, which also wasn’t a lie. I told him I needed time to think, and the only way I could do that was to get away and block out the rest of the world for a while. Even though I stuck to my story and never wavered once, the detective could tell I was keeping something from him. He kept calling day after day, hoping that I’d slip up. Thankfully, after a week or so, he finally started to let up, accepting the fact that I wasn’t going to tell him anything more than I already had.
When it came time to explain things to my parents, I gave them a completely different story than I had the detective. I wasn’t ready to discuss my father’s adultery with them, so I’d told them that things weren’t going well with work and I was unhappy living in New York. I explained that I needed some time away to clear my head. I went to a friend’s cabin in the mountains to think about what I was going to do, and after being there a few days, I met Jasper. I convinced them that I was so swept away that I wasn’t thinking clearly and apologized profusely for making them worry. While they didn’t understand why I hadn’t come to them and told them how I was feeling, they eventually accepted that it was something I needed to do on my own. I hated lying, especially to my mother, but I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the situation with my father’s affair. That realization didn’t hit me until later in the week.
Mom had gone out with Jasper to run some errands, leaving my father and I alone in the apartment. I’d done my best to avoid of him. I was too angry with him to even want to be around him. He was sitting on my sofa reading the newspaper when I said, “I know about Sydney. That’s the real reason why I was at the cabin.”
Lowering his paper, he looked over at me with his eyes narrowed. “Sydney? Sydney, who?”
“Don’t, Dad. I’ve been through too much for you to deny it,” I fussed. “I can’t believe that you would do that to Mom. After all she’s done to support you, this is how you repay her!”
“Madison, I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“I’m talking about Sydney! The student that you had an affair with! The student that you got pregnant! Is this ringing any bells for you?”
“You’re mistaken. I didn’t have an affair with Sydney.”
“Don’t try to deny it, Dad. I saw the pictures of you two together … pictures of you kissing … pictures of you in her bed!”
“But how?”
I crossed my arms and looked down at him with disgust. “It doesn’t matter how I found out, Dad.”
“It was a mistake. A horrible mistake.”
“Your horrible mistake almost cost me my life!” I snapped.
“Cost you your life?” He gasped. “What are you talking about?”
“Sydney’s father hired someone to murder me to get back at you after she killed herself.”
“He did what?”
“That’s right! I almost died because you turned your back on that girl when she was pregnant.” Rage consumed me as I shouted, “You weren’t man enough to do the right thing!”
“But how? None of this makes any sense.”
“Let me break it down for ya.” I crossed my arms and looked at him with utter disgust as I told him, “Her father lost it when he found out that his daughter killed herself. He just couldn’t take it. He wanted you to feel the pain he was feeling and thought killing me was the best way to make that happen!”
“Damn. I had no idea.”
“Of course, you didn’t. You were too worried about your own ass to think about anything else!” I shook my head and grunted with repulsion. “Maybe if you hadn’t been such an asshole, she and your unborn child would still be alive!”
“You don’t know the whole story, Madison!” Dad stood up and charged over to me. “She wasn’t my girlfriend! I didn’t have some sordid affair! I took her out a couple of times, but that was it. She was the one who made it out to be something more than it was!”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing. You broke your vows to Mom. That’s the only thing that matters!” I inhaled a deep breath, trying to rein in my anger before I told him, “You have to tell Mom.”
“No, Madison. It’ll just break her heart,” he pleaded.
“She has a right to know, Dad. You have to tell her.”
“I get that, but I swear … that girl me
ant nothing to me.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you betrayed her trust, Dad.” I wiped the tears from my cheek as I told him, “You tell her, or I will.”
“Please, Madison. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not the one who did this, Dad. You are.” As I started towards my bedroom, I told him, “It’s up to you to fix it.”
I slammed my door and fell face down on my bed, letting my tears fall as I thought back over everything I’d been through because of the mistakes he’d made. I lay there crying for over an hour and would’ve stayed there longer if Mom and Jasper hadn’t returned. After Jasper and I helped Mom put away the groceries, Dad went over to Mom and said, “I think it’s time that you and I head back home.”
“But Madison has been through so much. She needs us—”
“Mom, I’m fine,” I interrupted. “I know you need to get back to work. Summer break is just a few weeks away. I’ll come for a visit as soon as you get out of school.”
“You promise?”
As I reached out and hugged her, I replied, “I promise.”
“Okay, then. I guess you’re right.” She grabbed her purse before hugging me once more. “If you need anything, I’m just a phone call away.”
“I know, and I appreciate that.”
Mom turned her attention to Jasper as she said, “You take good care of her.”
“I will. You have my word.”
On their way out the door, my mother leaned over to me and said, “I really like him.”
She’d asked a hundred questions about Jasper, including how we’d met and if things were serious between us. I think she already knew the answer to that question, but we still talked about it. I hated that I couldn’t tell her the truth but knew I didn’t have a choice. Regardless, she was happy to see that I’d found someone that I cared so much about. I smiled as I told her, “I do too.”
“I’ll call you when we get home.”
“Okay.”
Before they left, Dad came over and gave me a hug. “I love you, Madison. I’m sorry about everything.”
