by Wolfe, Layla
For the first time in my life, I felt genuinely safe and secure. There was no fence around Sax’s property, but I couldn’t see the closest neighbor, either. I could have sunbathed nude and no one—well, maybe a few hikers—would have seen me.
It was ironic that I felt protected and sheltered right when all of my senses should have been on high alert. In retrospect, it was my own lack of awareness that was my downfall. I’d always sort of been lost in my own little dream world, another thing the nuns used to chastise me for. I was out back with a copy of Men’s Fitness—the only reading material other than mineral handbooks worth my interest around there—while evil lurked in the fucking bushes.
I was actually lying stretched out, my eyes closed, the upside-down magazine on my bare abdomen making a black and white imprint of a shirtless muscle man on my skin. I was drifting with images of Sax dancing in my brain. I still reeled with disbelief that I’d been collared by such a virile stud as Zane Saxonberg. He had that low, smoldering gaze I used to read about in romance novels. He had that dangerous aura that was balanced finely between brutality and kindness. I just knew he’d instinctively use the right amount of force in any given situation.
And his body. Ah, his body. My nipples poked the cups of my bra when I remembered him standing above me, his half-mast cock jutting from his fly, the beautifully carved six-pack of his abdomen. He had a healthy tan for an outdoorsman, a guy who probably went picking for rocks shirtless in the sun, or whatever it was mineralogists did. I even squirmed as I dared to imagine fucking him. We were taking our time building up to that, which was fine by me. Like I said, Sax had great instincts, unlike me. He knew it probably would have freaked me out if he’d come on like gangbusters. I was skittish, unused to being dominated by such a macho stud. He was wise to take it one step at a time with me.
I realized I wasn’t just hungry for Sax’s cock in my pussy. My stomach was growling, so I stirred myself, swung my feet off the ottoman, put them on the ground.
That was when Tony Tormenta whipped the gag into my mouth.
I was so taken by surprise, his brutality nearly decapitating me, that I just spun on my ass on the chair. I wound up banging my tailbone on the dirt as he made a vicious knot with the scarf at the back of my head. Of course, I didn’t know it was Tormenta until he became satisfied with his knot and came to kneel in front of me. I’d seen him coming and going from the Flag clubhouse, doing business with Leo, banging a few of my friends. He’d made a pass at me once but I, and the others, had explained to him I wasn’t exactly a sweetbutt. We had to let him down easy, so I guess someone told him I was a nun, and he immediately backed off.
His real name was Anthony Tataglia, so he was of Italian extract, and somehow had gotten mixed up with the Sinaloans. His Catholic beliefs probably explained why he’d backed off of me. He wasn’t wearing that fake gold tooth grill today, just a single overly large gold chain above his LeBron James jersey. And boy, did I suddenly wish he had worn the grill, because his real teeth were now revealed in all their twisted, rotten, gnarled glory. Maybe the grill had corroded them.
“We finally meet again,” he said, his very voice dripping with venom. He had to swallow his spraying saliva, that’s how profusely he was drooling. “Now how can you be a nun if you’re banging that asshole Zane Saxonberg? Do you mean to tell me your friends lied to me? Oh, wait. You can’t answer me. You’re gagged. And your friends are dead.” He tried to laugh, but wound up choking.
Well, my hands and feet weren’t bound, so I leaped for my beer bottle, grabbed it by the neck, and brought it smashing down on his skull. It had the effect of a leaf falling on a boulder, and of course it didn’t breal into smithereens like in the movies. Rage overcame his face, his hand shot out to grab me by the wrist, and he twisted my arm behind my back so painfully I was seeing stars. I hadn’t been in many brawls in my life, but it sure seemed like he’d already sprained my arm. And I hadn’t even given resistance my best shot. I was on my knees already. I’d forgotten I was dealing with a trained assassin, and one who loved his job to boot.
“Bitch,” he snarled in my ear from behind me. He was fumbling for something in a pocket that turned out to be a zip tie. He easily zipped both my wrists together. While he was occupied, I made another desperate breakout attempt. I was rewarded with a giant kong on the head with something extremely heavy, metallic. I realized later it was the butt of a pistol.
At first, with no hands to break my fall, I nearly crashed face-first to the pebbles. But my inner strength, which was quite powerful and firm, helped guide me to my feet, and soon I was running. Something that felt like hot jam ran down the side of my face, seeping into the corner of my mouth. I ran for my shitty little cage with the idea that I’d slam and lock all the doors and scream as loud as I could with the gag in place.
With my bound arms I could easily open the driver’s door. Closing it, however, was a different thing. And I was getting nauseous. Very, very nauseous from the blow on the head. Tormenta jogged up casually. He’d never been afraid I’d get away.
“Oh, Mi Dios,” he lamented, wrenching me by the shoulder. As he yanked me toward him, he also managed to grab a handful of boob, which he twisted nastily. “Oh, yeah. You’re the only one who’s gotten away from me. And I heard you’ve gotten up a big bounty for such a little guy as me. Who am I, puta? I’m nothing but a small-time businessman doing business with Leo Saxonberg. Why’d you girls want to waste fifty large on a tiny little baby gangster like me? Don’t you need your money for better things like abortions?”
I kneed him in the groin. I don’t know why I bothered. By now, my double vision and the feeling my head was encased in one big cotton ball told me that he’d given me a concussion. And yeah, sleep was starting to overcome me. My mother had never been able to beat me much because I was faster than her. It had been my sister who had given me a concussion. She’d borrowed my platform shoes without asking permission and we’d had a knockdown, drag ’em out fight in the hallway. She wound up kicking me repeatedly in the head with my own wooden shoes. Our careless mother put me to bed for a week. My head was like The Elephant Man’s.
That was how I knew concussions, and I knew I shouldn’t sleep. Suddenly I was passive as a lamb as Tormenta slammed me face-first into the hood of my car and worked on binding my ankles with a zip tie. I didn’t protest as he carried me up the steps to the back deck and into the sliding door which was wide the fuck open. I didn’t see any way out of this, not with a sprained, bound arm and a cracked head already dripping blood in a trail across the kitchen floor.
There was a peninsula in Sax’s kitchen with a few barstools for casual dining. Tormenta flopped me on one where I swayed like a lily in the wind. Strange images were already drifting into my head. I didn’t feel like I was truly rooted in my body. My spirit kept attempting to soar up toward the ceiling, giving me an even more unbalanced, dizzy sensation. Tormenta had to lean me back against the granite peninsula to keep me from toppling over.
I was vaguely aware that he had a knife in his hands, his weapon of choice. It was a stiletto blade, the sort he’d cut Cassie with. The sort he’d killed Brenda with… Remembering Brenda’s death made me sit up straighter, my consciousness rooted in my body, at last. Groggily I saw Tormenta pacing, slapping the blade against his palm.
I can’t be sure of Tormenta’s exact words. I drifted in and out of awareness, the haze surrounding me threatening to overtake me completely. Was I sleeping, or drifting into unconsciousness, or were they one and the same thing? It seemed that Tormenta sneered stuff like, “You sluts think you’re all God’s gift to man. You’re the lowest of the fucking low, the mud beneath my boots, the toe jam you scrape from between your toes when you haven’t showered for three weeks. You’re only good for cocksucking, and I can get a machine to do that, a fucking blow-up doll. I’m going to tell Leo to get rid of all his disgusting sweetbutts so we can do business man to man. You’re only good for working in my nail salons, in my hair wea
ving places, doing eyebrow threading. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with you. Send you out to learn to thread eyebrows. That’s all you’re going to be good for when I’m done with you.”
Survival instinct must have kicked in, because when he slashed at my face with the blade, I jerked my torso to one side. The blade cut through my trapezius shoulder muscle, a strange, mushy sensation as though he’d sliced the very meat of me. When it hit a bone, I cringed. That was the worst, when the blade scraped bone and sort of echoed and twinged down my entire arm. The zip ties were much too tight and cut into my wrists and ankles, keeping me rooted in the present. Religious training would have me take it like a martyr, turn the other cheek. Motorcycle club training would have me fight back, kick ass. But my hands and feet were literally tied, and my head felt like a tumbleweed.
“Qué cabrón!” Tormenta swore and jerked the knife free of my flesh. Warm blood spilled down my torso, soaking my bra cup, inspiring Tormenta to swipe the blade through my bra strap, exposing a tiny breast. “Ah, a perfectly blank canvas for my work. You are a friend of those two women I slashed, yes? You saw the work of art I performed there. On the second lady, I performed some grillwork right here”—and he whipped the blade across my tit—“and here”—another hashtag mark in the opposite direction—“and here”—now vertical stripes.
I started sobbing. Being marked for martyrdom might’ve been all right for the nunnery. But after all we’d done to protect ourselves, seriously? This guy was going to get away with murdering or at least maiming a third one of us?
In the middle of Tormenta’s gleeful handiwork, something cute, fluffy, out of place suddenly appeared at my knee. It was a puffy white tail, a sort of husky dog. He had run in from the open slider. His tail brushing my bare thigh was the kiss of an angel. He barked at Tormenta, but it sounded like a happy bark. Like “let’s play!”
“Ah, perro!” Tormenta sounded glad to see the dog. At least it stopped him from slashing me. I didn’t have much meat on my breasts. Already I could see the one, in a detached and emotionless way, oozing like a gritty, horror tic-tac-toe. “What’s going on, perro? Is this your perro?”
I didn’t know what the correct answer would be to protect the dog. For all I knew he was a dog murderer too. Why the hell not. Most serial killers started out killing smaller animals. I shook my head. No. It wasn’t my dog.
“Ah, good!” He was actually petting the dog’s head! Tormenta sat on the stool next to me, his knife forgotten in his hand, and he petted the dog! The dog even jumped up and put his paws on Tormenta’s knee.
That was when the kitchen door from the garage exploded inward. The three of us were so taken aback we jumped a few feet in the air, dog included.
The dog yelped and shot like a putt toward the back slider. Tormenta automatically jumped to cover my body with his—like he was suddenly protecting me?
Sax busted into the kitchen like the Incredible Hulk. To my injured brain he looked so massively pumped up on steroids, his eyes bulging like intestines, he looked almost cartoonish. I had to crane my neck groggily to see around Tormenta’s stupid fucking shoulder, and I realized he stood in front of me so Sax wouldn’t shoot him. This idea was confirmed when Tormenta shrieked out, “I’ve got your fucking girlfriend!” and ducked behind me, knife to my throat.
Sax’s Glock was at his side. His voice was a low boil. “You’re not touching my future wife, you scum-sucking shitpickle. You’ve done enough damage to the women of Arizona. After I kill you, I’m making your head into a dart board and hanging it in my clubhouse so all the sweetbutts forevermore can play darts with your low-IQ, uneducated face.”
The knife cut into my throat like butter, but I barely felt it. I just felt the trickle of blood between my breasts. “Not until I slice your ugly flat-chested girlfriend like a bologna.” Maybe I was too delirious by that time, but it sure seemed like he said “bologna.”
“Over my dead fucking body,” Sax said, simultaneously as he whipped his Glock in a split second to shoot Tormenta through the forehead.
Tormenta’s blade still pressed for one microsecond into my throat, and then fell onto of his crumpled body. I could breathe freely now, and the rush of air that came from my lungs threatened to topple me over, too. Suddenly the husky was back, jumping all over me, urging me to play more games, as I fell into Sax’s arms. He had to take Tormenta’s blade from his body to slice the gag and zip ties that bound me.
“Honey, honey, honey,” Sax kept murmuring, rubbing life into my arms. Suddenly Harte and Wolf were there too. Apparently they’d snuck around other sides of the house as backup to come through different doors, but wanted to leave the glory of the hit to Sax.
“God!” cried Harte, apparently unused to seeing blood. “Are you okay? Let me find some Neosporin or something.”
Wolf said, “We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” as Sax carried me to a more comfortable loveseat.
“Call Maddy,” Sax ordered. “I’ve got bandages in this guest bathroom, Harte. A roll of them, rubbing alcohol, and Neosporin. No hospital, Wolf, at least not for now. It’ll be a long explanation how we came to be in this predicament.”
“True,” said Wolf, kneeling at my side. “And we’ll be connected to those bodies on the Mogollon Rim.”
“You got them?” I said groggily, and it felt like I was smiling. “Were any of your men hurt?”
Wolf was eager to tell the tale of derring-do. “A sniper shot at all of us. Sax here has about ten bullet holes in his cut—see?—but not one scratched him! He doesn’t have a drop of blood on him! It’s a miracle.”
Sax chuckled as he poured some rubbing alcohol onto an absorbent pad. “This’ll sting. Harte, can you help sop up the trickles of blood? Yeah, like that. Maybe not ten bullet holes, maybe five in my cut. Oh, holy Jesus on a stick.” He’d been saying that around me lately. I thought it was cute, him trying not to swear. “Did something happen to your head too?”
“Concussion,” I said, my fingers feeling where the blood emanated from.
“Don’t touch. Yes, your old friend Santiago Slayer was there. He put himself in harm’s way to warn Tobiah, to warn all of us.”
Wolf sounded almost jovial when he said, “Got his fucking ear cut off for it, too.” Standing, he looked with a sneer at Tormenta’s body. Then he kicked it. And not lightly. Viciously, with the steel toe of his engineer’s boot. I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. He kicked it again and again, never losing his bemused smile. “You seriously going to make a dart board out of his face? I think that’d be hilarious.”
Sax said tightly, “The women would think so, too.”
“And Roman Serpico,” added Harte, mentioning the guy whose father had been turned into a soccer ball by Tormenta.
“Is my dog in here?”
A stranger’s voice cut through our brotherhood. With great force I managed to open my eyes. Some guy in a plaid shirt was standing in the sliding doorway. It seemed to me he was one of the hikers from yesterday—damn, was that scene only yesterday?
“Is this your dog?” said Wolf. “Yeah, come get him. He wants to play. As you can see, we’re not up to playing.”
The guy came forward. “Yeah, I know. I was hiking by when I saw some guy—oh, maybe this guy here—tying your girlfriend with zip ties and forcing her into the house. Sure didn’t seem like you were enacting a scene, you know?”
“We weren’t,” I said lazily. “He was a major fucking asshole.” Then I realized I said “was.” This stranger, probably one of our audience from yesterday, would see our guns, realize the culprit was dead, and be forced to tell the cops on us.
“Fuck,” said the hiker, “I hope you don’t mind, but I called the cops. I didn’t know what was going on, just that you”—he nodded at Sax—“weren’t here, your bike was gone, and some stranger was manhandling her. So just a warning, the cops are on their way. Don’t know how urgent I made it sound, just that I saw something that might be wrong.”
“No, that�
�s fine,” said Sax. They were finishing up wiping blood from me, and Sax squeezed a narrow ribbon of Neosporin onto my lacerated breast. “Wolf, Harte, just drag that motherfucker into the garage and put a bike cover over him. I’ll just tell cops we were playing. Make sure there’s no blood anywhere. I’m glad you did that, friend. If I hadn’t of gotten here, things could be hairy by now.”
“Hairy,” I echoed. I put out a hand to pet the white dog as the two other men slung Tormenta like a hammock and carried him off. The dog was cute. “I want a dog, Sax.”
Sax smiled. “You can have any dog you want, sister.”
“I like them big and fluffy, like this one.”
“All right. We can get a sidecar for him.”
“Her.”
“Her.”
“What happened to Slayer?”
“Well, Tormenta dropped him off halfway down the hill. We saw him wandering with his hand held to his head, poor guy. That’s why we were late. We would’ve arrived sooner, figuring Tormenta would come directly here. But we had to drop Slayer at the hospital. Tobiah stayed with him.” He was wrapping my boob like a sling around the shoulder, like a very tight sports bra. This wrapped the shoulder wound too. No more blood.
