Beard Up

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “Hello, Lynnwood.”

  I turned to find Van, the one man in this entire operation who I couldn’t kill because it would put the entire investigation in jeopardy, and stared at him.

  The gun in my holster underneath my shirt was burning a hole in my pocket. It took everything I had not to pull it and use it on the man who made it his goal in life to make mine a living hell.

  “Or should I call you Joker?” Van continued, not realizing how close he was to death. “That was what Lacy liked to call you.”

  My sister’s name, coming out of this piece of shit’s mouth, was enough to make my hand twitch.

  I could practically feel the gun in my hand. Feel my finger tightening on the trigger in response to that smug smile that was on his face.

  “What are you doing here?” Van leaned back into his chair. “Would you like me to call my wife in here for old time’s sake?”

  No, I most assuredly would not. His wife was a callous bitch, and I hated her. He knew it, too.

  “Where’s my nephew?” I rasped.

  I’d like nothing more than to put a bullet through this sick motherfucker’s skull, but this place was like a fucking maze. I had to know where Tunnel was before I could do a thing like kill him.

  Van picked up a remote from his desk and pointed it at the TV on the wall.

  The screen lit up, and my belly clenched immediately at what I saw.

  “We’re getting ready to burn the rest of his tattoos off at the moment,” he said. “You made it just in time. We’re just about to get started!”

  The actual joy in this man’s voice was enough to send my pulse skyrocketing with the need to kill him.

  My fists clenched.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “You mean this one?”

  The screen flipped to show Audrey, huddled on the floor, watching the man with a blowtorch holding it over her brother’s chest.

  “Or this one?”

  The second screen showed Mina, huddled in a corner, staring at the door with such hatred in the expression on her face that I wanted to pat her on the back for not backing down and giving in to her fears.

  Luckily, Sienna wasn’t there. That much, I knew for sure.

  Tunnel had seen to that.

  He’d paid for it, but he’d made sure that his baby girl was safe before they took him down.

  Fender, who’d suffered a gunshot graze to his throat, had called us the minute that the door had closed on him.

  Big Papa and the rest of the police in Mooresville had arrived three minutes and thirty seconds later, but other than a broken door, shattered glass and the gunshot-riddled front of the house, there was no one left but Sienna and a barely conscious Fender.

  “You know, this is only going to end one way,” I told him.

  I distracted him to attempt to keep his eyes off the screen. Why? Because I’d noticed that Tunnel’s hand came free from the rope he’d been working on, likely for the last couple hours that they’d had him.

  The moment he was free, he had the blowtorch in his hands, that his torturer was just getting lit and the guy’s head in the crook of his elbow.

  The blowtorch was on, and Tunnel aimed it at the guy’s eye, and within a few seconds, the guy had passed out from the pain.

  I enjoyed the show, laughing inside as Van’s son saved himself, leaving me free to do nothing but internally gloat while I waited.

  Chapter 27

  Ideas are born in the stroke of a beard.

  -Fact of Life

  Ghost

  I wasted no time in using the blowtorch to burn through the rest of the ropes.

  I had on nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs, and my ribs were killing me.

  Luckily, the man had only gotten the first line of skin just under my heart with the blowtorch, but it was enough. Even that felt like a red-hot lick of pain each time I took in a breath.

  Audrey was watching me with an awestruck expression on her face as I hurried toward her.

  “Your knee looks really bad,” she said as I hunkered down beside her.

  I used the blowtorch to cut the rope from the wall, and then used my fingers to untie her.

  Which hurt like a bitch.

  My fingers were all broken.

  They’d seen to that within the first five minutes that I’d been there.

  How I’d managed to get untied was beyond me, but I was running on adrenaline and a prayer, so maybe the man upstairs was guiding me.

  Whatever was going on, I didn’t waste any more time.

  I got up on my feet, walked over to the man who was on the verge of waking up slammed his head into the concrete.

  It wouldn’t do to have him waking up while I was trying to rescue my wife.

  I’d heard her screaming on and off for the last seven minutes.

  They’d conveniently put a clock on the wall for me to witness the time pass.

  It was a solid steel clock that looked like it could hold up through a tornado.

  Which was why I walked to the wall and grabbed it off the nail that it hung on.

  “What are you doing?” Audrey whispered as she walked over to the dead man.

  She knelt beside his body and started to work his shirt off.

  Something I should’ve done myself, but hadn’t been thinking straight enough to do.

  I turned to the door, which was ajar, and looked out first one way, then the other.

  Nobody in sight.

  But I could hear my wife.

  Could hear her angry growls.

  Which made me reckless.

  Luckily, I had a fucking metal clock to block the knife that I didn’t see coming at me until it was already headed for my face.

  The man’s knife hit the clock and then stopped.

  His hand, however, did not, and it continued down until it hit the clock, too.

  Unfortunately for him, the force of forward momentum caused his tightly grasped hand to run along the blade of the knife, slicing right through his hand.

  Blood spurted, and dripped onto the floor.

  I used his momentary distraction to ball my fist up and punch him straight in the throat.

  The man dropped to the ground, clutching his neck.

  I immediately brought my bare heel down on his face.

  His hands fell to the floor, one after the other, and he laid there limply with his eyes closed.

  I brought my heel down one more time, this time on his neck, and heard an audible crunch.

  “Fucking nasty.”

  I turned slightly to see Audrey at my back.

  “Pick the knife up. Search his body for anything useful.”

  She dropped to her haunches, and I started forward once again.

  I wasn’t worried leaving her there.

  We were in a long hallway, and we’d come from the very end. The man had appeared out of a side door that looked to be a small kitchenette area, but upon a quick glance, I realized it was empty.

  Continuing forward, I hurried toward the sounds of screaming, and came to a halt outside the door where I could hear my wife’s voice progressively growing louder.

  With one glance through the small window into the room, my blood boiled.

  With a low, almost animalistic growl, I entered into the room and headed straight for the man who was standing over my wife, huddling in a corner. He was taunting her, shaking his dick in her face, and I could see he was very close to using that pathetic excuse for a dick.

  He was leaning forward, rubbing it along her hair, and I lost it.

  Complete and total dissociation with my body.

  ***

  Mina

  “Get away from me!” I screeched. “Don’t touch me!”

  I repeated it, over and over again, as I prayed that what was about to happen wasn’t going to happen.

  I’d been given to this man, Josh, for good behavior on his part. That’d
been the exact freakin’ words Tunnel’s father had used as he handed me over, bound and gagged. Fortunately, I was still dressed.

  Josh was standing over me, rubbing his cock against my hair, and smearing it with fluids that I was hoping weren’t what I thought they were.

  He was telling me, in explicit detail, what he was about to do to me.

  And I had no other recourse but to huddle in the corner and pray that what was happening wasn’t really happening.

  But then I heard a roar.

  A loud, soul-wrenching, furious roar.

  One that was so deep and full of emotion that I looked up just in time to see Josh yanked back by his hair.

  By. His. Hair.

  He went flying, and landed on his back, with my angry, savage husband standing over him.

  Tunnel’s chest was heaving…and bleeding.

  I came up to my knees, but stayed where I was, while I watched what was happening in front of me play out.

  Tunnel took Josh by the throat and lifted him up as if he weren’t a two-hundred-pound man, and started to shake him. Josh was inches up off the floor before he’d even realized that he was in the air with my husband’s angry face only inches from his.

  “You should’ve listened to me the first time,” Tunnel said in such an even tone that had I heard him over the phone, I wouldn’t have realized he was mad. “But you didn’t, and now I’m going to take my time killing you.”

  Josh’s lips turned up into a grin despite his lack of oxygen.

  “Had your sister, too.”

  And that, people, is not what you say to a man who is already on the edge.

  “She was pretty. Your parents said I could, so I did.”

  Have you ever seen steam coming out of the top of a boiling tea kettle? Or maybe a tornado that comes up out of nowhere, impacting everything in its path and shredding it?

  That would be too nice of a description for what Tunnel did to Josh.

  I had to look away at one point, the sound of the sickening thuds of Tunnel’s fists hitting Josh’s flesh turning my stomach.

  Tunnel held him in place with one hand on his collar and used the other to pummel his face.

  “You know,” Tunnel dropped Josh, who fell immediately to his knees. “I was going to beat the shit out of you. But that would be too easy. With your confession added on top of what I caught you doing to my wife…oh yeah, you’re going down. You’re doing time, and I’m going to pay a man named Joe to do those exact same things to you every day for the rest of your life.”

  Ghost started fishing in Josh’s pockets and came up with a phone.

  “It was good, too.”

  Tunnel handed the phone calmly to me, and I handed it to Audrey.

  I didn’t want her to hear anymore.

  I’d, of course, understood Josh’s words.

  Hopefully Audrey hadn’t put two and two together, yet.

  But with one look at her face as I passed over the phone, I quickly realized that our smart girl brilliant, and had already put two and two together.

  Sure, she’d been the one to experience the rape, but she’d had no clue that her parents had played a part in that.

  At least, not until tonight, that was.

  But she calmly took the phone, and dialed, all the while keeping her hate-filled eyes on the man that was currently getting the shit beat out of him. Again.

  I vaguely heard Audrey talking to someone in low, even tones, but I never took my eyes away from what my husband was doing to Josh.

  Which was what cost me.

  I wasn’t paying attention until my head was wrenched back, and I cried out in pain.

  My gaze lit on a woman, Tunnel’s mom, and my mouth opened to scream.

  Before a single sound could even leave my lips, she had shoved her gun in my mouth.

  “Stop.”

  I froze, my eyes closing, as I realized that I should’ve paid more attention.

  I’d known, of course, that this wasn’t over.

  I’d also known that I’d seen her come out of that hidden doorway once today when she followed Josh in not even fifteen minutes ago.

  What I hadn’t realized was that seeing my husband beat the ever-loving shit out of someone would’ve held my attention so completely that I would miss a freakin’ door opening behind me.

  A cry of rage had me turning—as far as the gun in my mouth would allow—to see Audrey racing forward, a long pipe that Josh had been taunting me with earlier, in her hand.

  Tunnel looked up, moved out of the way just barely in time, and watched as his sister brought down that same pipe straight down on Josh’s goods.

  His cock, which was still hanging out of his pants, took the brunt of the hit, and I had to close my eyes at the severity of the wound.

  But it didn’t matter. The image was seared onto my brain, and I started to lose the fight with my stomach.

  All this fear, uncertainty and anger started to swirl together in my already churning stomach, and I lost my battle.

  I threw up.

  Puke went everywhere, but it landed mostly on the woman still holding me.

  Her instinctive reaction was to pull away, which was her fatal mistake.

  She should’ve just taken the puke shower like the badass she claimed to be.

  Instead, she backed away, still pointing the gun in my general vicinity, and glared at me.

  There was puke all over her. On her hands and on her shirt, all over the gun and her arm. It was even in her hair.

  I had a ripple of sick satisfaction at seeing her covered in my vomit before I saw a missile made of flesh and bone shoot past me and tackle the woman to the floor.

  The gun went off, but Tunnel was up and maneuvering his body so that the majority of his weight pinned his step-mother to the floor.

  With one well-placed punch, he knocked her right the hell out and then picked up the gun.

  He did exactly what she should’ve done, which was to hold it like he wasn’t scared of a little puke. Because if she had, she wouldn’t be passed out cold on the floor, lying in the vomit.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “She…fuck!”

  I knew. He hadn’t been aware that I was in danger, and I’d just come so close to the end that it was scary for both of us.

  I turned at the sound of another thwack, and quickly turned away.

  “Might want to take that away from her,” I suggested. “And tie your step-mother up.”

  He nodded.

  “The phone call get placed?”

  I nodded. At least I thought it got placed.

  “Good,” he grunted. “Take her shirt off and tie her up with it. Hands behind her back, legs too. Then tie those two together.”

  I did as I was asked, but ran out of room using her shirt, so I had to improvise with her belt.

  Once I had her trussed up well enough, I shoved her over to lay in front of the door.

  She hit with a small thump, and I turned just as I found Tunnel’s hand in mine.

  I had vomit and other stuff on me, and I wanted nothing more than to go take a shower in the peace of my own home. To see my child and hug her. To make sure that Fender was all right, even though I wasn’t sure that he would ever be okay again, especially since he’d taken a bullet to his freakin’ neck.

  It was highly likely that the man hadn’t survived that, and I wanted to just cry out my sorrow over the loss.

  A groan sounded from the woman in the corner, and I looked over my shoulder to see her eyes open.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  I wanted that more than anything in this world, but Candace was awake. Which I told him moments later.

  “I know,” he grunted. “Fuckin’ bitch.”

  I held my urge to bellow in laughter.

  “You’ll never get out of here alive. I have men all over.”

  Tunnel didn’t bother to tur
n to Candace, who’d obviously woken up.

  “You’re lying,” Tunnel said as he tugged me toward the small bathroom area that was set up in the corner of the stone cell we were in. “The house is already at half-capacity to make it look like you were truly ‘moving.’”

  I loved it when my man called her bluff. He was a fucking superstar.

  I loved it even more when she had nothing to say to that.

  “Here.”

  With the utmost care, he pushed me toward the sink, and started to wash my hair. He urged me to bend over the porcelain bowl, without words, guided my mass of hair under the faucet, and turned it onto high.

  He didn’t wait for it to heat up to a more bearable temperature.

  I was sure he could sense my unease, because he wasted no time washing it with the pump Dial soap that was on the ledge next to the sink.

  “Here,” Audrey said, holding out a towel.

  I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it from, but I didn’t care.

  I was just glad she’d have something for me to dry my mass of hair off with, otherwise it’d be dripping down into my face and down my back when Tunnel was done.

  “That’s good, Tun,” I whispered when he started to work the soap through my hair for a third time.

  He didn’t stop.

  In fact, he did it a full seven times, and I let him.

  “We should go,” Audrey said once Tunnel finally let my hair go. “I can hear voices.”

  Tunnel grunted.

  It was only when the door opened that I realized why he was so lax.

  It wasn’t anybody bad that was on the other side of the door. It was The Dixie Wardens. Both the Mooresville chapter and the Benton chapter.

  I could’ve fucking cried the moment that Silas’ familiar face popped into view.

  I sagged, and Tunnel scooped me up around the waist and pulled me in tight to his body.

  Which I immediately started to protest.

  “No,” I pushed away. “You’re hurt. I’m not allowing you to hold me until you get this seen to.”

  I’d allowed him to do my hair, but only because I knew that he needed to do it. Now that he’d done that, I wasn’t going to let him do another thing until he was seen by a doctor, or at the very least, a paramedic.