The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  So fast Daniel’s days of being an enforcer would be done before he had his next evening meal.

  Zeke yanked Rory’s ponytail in farewell and signed for her to wait for him to come for her. Then he stood with the other guard Marco, as Daniel saw Rory to her door.

  “Should’ve kissed your little sister goodbye, asshole. It’s the last time you’ll see her.” Marco said. “She is so fucked for what she did to Orrin. You don’t understand what he’ll do to her. You don’t understand what we’ll do to you.”

  He understood a threat when he heard one, he felt it neck to knee, muscles jerking, focus narrowing. Rory had reached her porch. He had to warn her, because waiting for him no longer looked like a sure thing. It was dark, and they were too far apart for her to clearly read a sign and he didn’t want to directly endanger her.

  He sang a few lines from a Foo Fighters song about rats being on parade and a mad charade. He sounded drunk and he heard her laugh. She’d work out the lyrics came from a song called “Run.” She’d know they were an instruction.

  She was already inside her cabin before Marco knocked him off his feet. He struggled upright to meet four other men. The only one he recognized was Chuck.

  “Stupid bastard,” Chuck said. “You know that graveyard you were so anxious to learn all about? You’ll get to see it tonight and it’ll be the last thing you do see.”

  Holy fuck. He’d miscalculated. He saw some kind of penance: hard labor, house arrest, a trial and ritual humiliation coming. He didn’t see this violence. He hadn’t properly measured the impact of trying to save one man and making another angry at having been disobeyed. Tres had wanted to call it over when he phoned in for support for Mike, but he’d wanted more time to collect all the evidence they’d need and convinced her he had it under control, persuading her to wait for another call. If he’d known Rory had found the inventory, that would’ve changed things.

  Punches and kicks he’d survive, but he didn’t know what else they planned, or what Orrin would do to Rory.

  “Have you got no goddamn loyalty to Mike?” He backed up, tried to get a cabin wall behind him, protect his back. He’d made a mistake believing he could break the rules and get away with it. Save one person at the expense of thousands. “You’d want my help if you were dying.”

  “There are fucking reasons why we don’t go out there. Mike knew it. You knew it. You had a way of talking with people in the decay when you agreed to renounce all contact. You broke that contract. Your sister’s life is trash and you are dead meat.”

  Too many of them to fight so he had to endure; a hail of punches and kicks which forced him to the ground, curling in on himself to protect his face, gut and junk. Fuck’s sake, this was bad, but if they’d wanted him dead they’d have put a bullet in him and the saving grace—Rory wasn’t forced to watch.

  The attack was shorter than he expected, bruising, some minor bleeding, no worse, but it wasn’t done. His body was ringing with hurt when they hauled him up, tied his hands and feet, blindfolded him, and shoved him in the back of a pickup.

  An hour, maybe longer, bumping around. No one riding the tray with him was talking. When he attempted to, they stuffed his mouth with cloth. Another hour, hard to tell. He might’ve passed out for a while. It was colder. He was shoved out, down on the hard ground in the dust, his ankles untied, but his boots yanked off, a bottle forced to his mouth, a slug to the guts to make him swallow a bitter brew, foul tasting. They were drugging him, dumping him. Rory was on her own.

  “Such a dumb fuck, city slicker.” The only voice he recognized, Chuck.

  “You don’t need to do this. I’m not a threat to anyone. I only wanted Mike to get the care he needs. I’ve got money. It will buy you a new life, somewhere better than here.”

  “You’ve got nothing we want, city boy. Too many black marks too soon. You’re nothing now. Just some idiot who wandered away from his work site, got himself lost.”

  “And eaten by coyotes.”

  “Or a bear. Bear could take him.”

  “Ohh shit, that’s gonna hurt.”

  “Hey city slicker, you wake up in pain and a bear is eating you, it’s not the drugs, man.”

  Their laugher was like knives. It hurt his ears.

  A hand to the back of his head, more of that bitter brew forced down his throat.

  “You are going to go out of your tiny noggin, miles from anywhere. Things you never knew existed are going to fuck you up and then thirst is going to kill you if the wildlife or the sun doesn’t. And your sweet sister. She’s ours now to fuck with now.”

  He couldn’t move his limbs, had they broken them all? He scrabbled in the dirt, managing to rub the blindfold off in time to see the truck departing. Rory would run. Get far away. He’d made a mistake encouraging her to come here. There were no bears. It was dark and cold, and his hands were stuck together behind his back and if he closed his eyes he saw swirls of color, and if he opened them they were still there, strange mists and shapes that were loud and fast and made him dizzy. He was tripping. What did they give him, something psychedelic? There was no time, just emptiness. He could hear voices calling him names.

  Had to try to hold on to reality or fuck knows.

  He was supposed to do something, something important, and he couldn’t remember what. His lips were numb, his whole mouth. He couldn’t feel his teeth. Tried to stand up and his legs weren’t there anymore. Neither were his hands. They were just gone into the swirls of color. Maybe they froze off. He was fucking cold. Shivering. And he was definitely seeing things.

  “Did you swallow it all?”

  Was that a bear? A talking bear. No. He peered at a shape that appeared. A cactus. Jesus, thorns like snakes. More trouble. He tried to get away, but without legs he was slow. He couldn’t remember what he needed to say to con his way out of this. “Could you repeat the question, Officer Cactus?”

  “Did you swallow it all?”

  Spit. Ah that’s what he’d needed to do. But maybe he’d already done it, because if his mouth and throat were full of foul mud he couldn’t be having a conversation with a cactus who sounded like Cal.

  “I swallow. I am a swallower. Ask anyone, okay. People appreciate a swallower but right now, no sir, Office Cactus, I did not swallow it all. I spat that nasty shit out.”

  “That’s good. They want you dead. They want it to look like an accident.”

  “There is something wrong with my head, Cal. I can’t die. Aurora Rae is waiting for me. They are going to hurt her. I have to get out of here. Do you know where I am? How do I get out? Do you think there are talking bears?”

  “You barfed, so you probably won’t die.”

  “Did you know my legs are not there anymore? They’re just gone. And I’m talking to a fucking cactus. Maybe I’m dead already.”

  “You’re not. You’re not going to die because Aurora Rae needs you to love her.”

  Ah, that was rich. Those snakes of Cal’s could hiss at him all they liked, he wasn’t taking crap about Rory. “Don’t you call her that, Officer Cactus. You had your chance and you fucked it up. If anything bad happens to her I will turn into a bear and I will eat the whole world and everything in it until she is safe.”

  He closed his eyes, didn’t want to look at Cal, or maybe his eyes were already closed. The sky was this enormous gaping wound. In places it touched the ground and created pools of blood. You could fall in there and drown. Don’t die. Don’t fucking die.

  “Are you there, Cal? Don’t leave me alone.”

  “I’m here. But you need to stop walking around and sit because you can’t see properly, and you could fall in a ditch and break a leg.”

  That was good advice from a fucking cactus. Amazing how a man could walk around without legs. “I don’t have any hands.”

  “They’re tied up, but you can break free.”

  Break free. That seemed a very hard thing to do. “Fuck me, if anything happens to Aurora Rae I am a dead man. Mom will run me t
hrough with a knitting needle.”

  “Her number zero. She’ll do it in your sleep.”

  “I won’t go to sleep. I won’t ever go to sleep. We were all so angry with you. Heartless bastard, what you did to Rory. How could you love her and not be in love with her? It’s impossible. I wanted to kill you. I was in agony for her and so freaking happy. Angry and happy, angry and happy. And then she dumped me. I think maybe I just ate my tongue. There is crap pouring out of my mouth.”

  “You didn’t eat your tongue. You’re vomiting the drugs up. That’s good.”

  “What would you know? The sky is bleeding on me and you’re a cactus.”

  “She didn’t dump you. She didn’t want you to have to choose and she needed time out.”

  “From you. Who do you think she came to, Cal, when it all went up in flames? She came to me. Right before she ran away for months. I fucking hated you for the longest time, but you were my brother before you were a cactus, so I fucking loved you too.”

  “You need to sit, Zeke. You’re tripping, that’s all. A bad trip. Ride this out without getting into worse shit.”

  “You are not the boss of me out here, brother. I will walk back to Rory. I’ll walk till I can’t walk anymore. I can see spaceships and I am fucking cold and there are things I don’t understand about the cosmos. Maybe there are legions of nude angels out there to take care of me.”

  “Sit down, Zeke. You don’t know where you’re going.”

  “Mom?” She was only a leopard spot tumbleweed, but he was still a little scared of her. She loved a good disguise. “Okay, I am sitting, because I still have an ass.”

  “I’m going to stab you with a knitting needle if you fuck this up and die. Cal is my soldier. My stoic one. Halsey is my professor, my serious boy. And you. You are my funny poet.”

  “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Aurora Rae loves someone other than you.”

  “Not that kind of poet. Always with the smart mouth. You have a dreamer’s soul and a strategist’s mind, Zeke. But you stopped dreaming for yourself. I want you to dream of all the good things you’ve been denied.”

  “I never denied myself anything, Mom. Not women. Not men. Not sugar. Not the good drugs. I had them all. I’m a swallower.”

  “You swallowed the thing you wanted most so you couldn’t have it. I might look like a humble tumbleweed, but I am your mother and I know these things. You swallowed your love for Rory because you thought Cal deserved her more.”

  “Cal deserved her more and she chose him. I don’t want to die. I want to see Rory’s baby.”

  “She wanted you both. You know why she chose Cal. And he knows you’re in love with her. Rory has to know it too. But you have to tell her what’s in your heart.”

  He didn’t know anything about that. His stomach pained like he’d already been stabbed with a thousand knitting needles. Mom and Dad had worked a lot. Cal had helped bring them all up. Acted like an extra parent. He was the responsible one. Rory was smart to choose him.

  “My heart is frozen. Cal is a cactus and Rory is the sun when you’re in a spaceship and you get up close and all those fires on the surface are so hot and beautiful.”

  Oh fuck, he was cold, down to his chalky bones, and he could die out here and that made him sad for all the times he’d swallowed down his real feelings, so many they were poisoning him now.

  “Mom. Don’t leave me.”

  That strange sound like cymbals, that was laughter. His own laughter. Mom was gone but not because she’d left. He was the one who left people. Made the decision for them. Expert level at goodbye. Got out before there were too many feelings involved because he couldn’t lie to people he cared about.

  “You lie to me all the time.”

  Oh fuck, Rory was here. She was an eagle and then a coyote and he was on his knees trying to dig himself out of the hole he was in. None of this was real, but his heart was somehow outside of his chest and he could see it was frightened to beat. He’d lied to her. Lied. Lied. Lied, with every touch that wasn’t a caress and every word that wasn’t a kiss. She chose Cal because he was the better man. She chose Cal when her dad dropped dead and she felt lost.

  She’d never chosen Zeke all the times she could have. She never would.

  “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

  She left him, because he was a pretender and she was the sun, and the wound in the sky rained on his face and asked if he was done, done, done. He closed his eyes and lay in the hole he’d dug without his arms and legs. His heart was a cold gray dead thing, and all the lines were crossed, his chainmail burning, because he’d asked Rory to stay when he had no right to and knew she should run far away from here, and all of his hoodwinking lies.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rory had laughed at Zeke playing the fool as she was marched back to her cabin, but he didn’t sing “The Pretender.” He sang “Run.” What did he know that she didn’t? Run. It wasn’t a lyric. It was an instruction.

  There was also no freaking way she was running without him. Right now, she wasn’t even walking anywhere because Daniel the brute had made himself comfortable on the porch with a shotgun across his knees and there was no other way out.

  “Why is he there?” Shavonne reasonably wanted to know.

  “I made Orrin angry?”

  “On purpose.”

  She almost laughed because Shavonne’s question sounded more like a statement.

  “Not good. Not good at all. That’s a lifetime membership of the black mark’s club. Why do I think you’re not worried about that?”

  She had far bigger problems. Run. She took Daniel down the first time because he didn’t expect it. He was armed, and he knew she had skills. She could wait him out, he had to sleep at some point, but she’d rather eat her own arm because running wasn’t something you did at your leisure.

  She stood with Shavonne peering out the shutters at the brute’s back. Shavonne didn’t need this in her life. “You should go to the nursery. He doesn’t have a beef with you.”

  “Uh-uh. No way. That guy is an asshole and this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me that wasn’t about my two babies since I got here.”

  “I need to get to my brother. You don’t need to be tangled up in this.”

  “Oh, I need to be. That is my porch and you are my cabinmate.”

  “You’ve known me a month and for most of that time you didn’t speak to me.”

  “It wasn’t personal. I’ll distract him, and you run for it.”

  “Who are you, Veronica Mars? How are you going to distract him?”

  Shavonne frowned. “How hard can it be? He’s a man.”

  Rory turned away from the shutters. “Please, you should go. I’m trouble.”

  “Here’s what we’ll do.” Shavonne put her hand up in front of Rory’s face to stop her interrupting. “I’ve got my special new mom rations. I have the ingredients for butter cookies. You go shower, make it look like you’re going to bed, also you stink of goat and not the decent soap kind. I’ll make that man wish for a cookie so hard he can’t think for salivating and when I take a plate out to him, you got your chance.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re going to need to be Jessica Jones and do so some freaky, punchy, mind-control shit.”

  It wasn’t a terrible plan. The cookies would be a distraction. She had to do something while they were being made and if doofus out there thought she was going to bed for the night, all the better. “What did you do on the outside?”

  “I was a high school teacher. I know how devious thinks.”

  “Do you miss it?” There was a whole lot of deprogramming coming for the Continuers.

  “I miss what being a teacher should be about. I don’t miss what it had become. We had four active shooter lockdown incidents at my school. I couldn’t take hiding in classrooms wondering if I’d get out alive, if my kids would, anymore. I had an inheritance, used it to co
me here, have a safer life.”

  Not everyone was going to be happy about Abundance being broken up. She had to find their money, so they could have it back and get another chance.

  “You bake. I’ll shower.”

  The cookie baking took longer. Shavonne had opened the kitchen window and the sugary smell was fantastic. Zeke would’ve been all over it. Rory had a bad feeling about what he knew that she didn’t.

  Meanwhile, on the porch, Daniel the brute was restless, out of his chair and shifting foot to foot while inside a tray of butter cookies was cooling and the kettle was boiling.

  “These are ready,” Shavonne said after a nibble. “Take one.”

  Rory shook her head, focused on the provisions she was shoving in her backpack, and said quietly so it wouldn’t carry, “After we do this, go back to the nursery. Be around other people. When they ask you what happened, tell them I forced you to help me.”

  “You mean don’t tell anyone I masterminded your escape.” Shavonne slapped her hands on her hips and eye-rolled.

  Rory grinned. Shavonne was nobody’s fool. She’d do fine back in the world, but the re-entry would be brutal. “Plate ’em up, mastermind.”

  Shavonne plated the cookies, and when she opened the door and offered them to Dan the brute and he leaned the shotgun on the wall to get at the baked goodness, Rory struck. She grabbed the gun by the barrel and swung it up hard, connecting with his chin and down he went with a spit spray of blood, out cold.

  “Damn, Jessica,” Shavonne said, taking a sip of the coffee. “Is he dead?”

  Rory toed what looked like a bloody tooth. Brute would have a new charm to his smile. “He might wish he was.”

  She set the gun down—armed, she might provoke an attack—and took off towards Zeke’s cabin. She’d need a strategy to disarm his guard, but if she could get close enough without detection, she could create a diversion and Zeke would do the rest.

  But it wasn’t an issue, no guard. She stomped up the steps and bashed on the door. If Zeke was singing Foo Fighters just to be amusing, she’d make him wish he was dead too.

  Cadence answered. “Hi. He’s not here.”