by Bryan Smith
Maybe.
It was something she did now and then with high rollers when the money was right. She didn’t like it much, but she endured it as a means to an end. Between these occasional private arrangements and the money she made dancing, she did more than all right for herself. She was still very young and hot, but she wasn’t dumb. Her looks wouldn’t last forever. So she meant to stockpile as much money as she could while she could. And in the meantime, Blaine could keep working at getting somewhere with his music. She had faith in him. Not only was he very good looking, but he was also super talented. He was an amazing singer and could play practically any instrument. He was destined for stardom and she planned to be right there alongside him for the whole ride. And by then all the sacrifices she’d ever made would have been worth it.
She flipped the light switch up and eased the door shut, taking care to make as little noise as possible. If Blaine wasn’t feeling well, she didn’t want to disturb him. With that in mind, she stepped out of her heels before proceeding to the kitchen, where she shrugged her purse off her shoulder and dropped it on the counter. Then she padded barefoot across the cool kitchen tiles to the refrigerator. She pulled the door open and peeked inside at the contents, thinking she might prepare a light meal prior to catching a few winks of her own. She was reaching into the fridge for a jar of strawberry jam when she heard it.
The moan.
What the fuck?
For a long moment, she thought she’d imagined it. Other than the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of cool air issuing from a nearby floor vent, the apartment was quiet. Then she heard it again and knew she had imagined nothing. She gently closed the refrigerator and, treading as lightly as possible, walked out of the kitchen and entered the short hallway that led to the bedroom.
She stopped halfway down the hallway, held her breath and stared at the sliver of light visible through the closed bedroom door. Her heart was galloping. An incipient rage quickly gained momentum, making her chest feel tight. She tried telling herself not to panic, not to rush to judgment. Maybe Blaine was very sick and the moans she was hearing were merely a reflection of that.
Then the sound came yet again, escalating to a higher pitch this time, almost like a scream. By now she knew these were not sounds of sickness or misery.
They were sounds of pleasure.
Of ecstasy.
An unfamiliar sense of deadly calm descended over Lana as she turned away from the door and returned to the kitchen. She felt detached. Like a stranger inhabiting her body. She knew what she meant to do and felt nothing. No sense of horror. No internal debate of right and wrong.
Back in the kitchen, she opened her purse and got out her gun. The very one Blaine himself had given her as a birthday present for protection against the predators he always imagined were lying in wait for her outside the club at the end of a late shift. He loved her and didn’t want anything happening to her.
Only that love had been nothing but a filthy lie.
How else to explain what was happening now?
Back down the hallway again, pausing a last moment outside the door. Then she let out a breath and gripped the doorknob in her free hand. The frequency and volume of the orgasmic sounds increased dramatically as she twisted the knob and eased the door open. She poked her head in and saw Blaine rutting away atop a curvy blonde woman with long, toned legs and large breasts.
Lana stifled a gasp.
The blonde was Alice. Her friend. And co-worker. The one with the supposedly sick baby she’d had to unexpectedly rush to the emergency room. Lana felt slightly dizzy as she rapidly processed it all. The whole thing had been a plot engineered by these two betraying pieces of shit so they could get together and fuck. The one thing they hadn’t counted on was her early departure from the Booty Boutique thanks to a lull in business following the exit of Big Ted and his gang.
Lana’s hands were shaking as she moved farther into the room. The shaking was not a product of nervousness. It was the rage continuing to gain momentum. She knew exactly what she meant to do. What she would do. She wasn’t going to just wave the gun around and threaten them. And she had no interest in interrogating them. What did it matter how long this had been going on anyway? Whether it had happened once or a hundred times was irrelevant.
It had happened.
They had betrayed her.
And now they would pay for their indiscretions. She reached the edge of the bed and watched them a few moments longer. They were so into the act that they were oblivious to her presence. Blaine writhed and thrust against Alice with uncontrolled abandon, rocking the bed frame and causing the headboard to slam against the wall. Alice’s lovely legs were locked tight around him and her long, bright red nails were digging grooves in the flesh of his muscular back.
Lana raised the gun and aimed it at the center of Blaine’s back.
She waited.
Alice’s eyes came open and her head turned at last in Lana’s direction. Then she gasped and those blue eyes got very, very big. Blaine grunted loudly, obviously mistaking this for yet another expression of passion.
Lana locked eyes with Alice.
Smiled.
And squeezed the trigger.
The bullet punched a nickel-sized hole through the small of Blaine’s back. He screamed. They both screamed. Blaine arched his back and screamed some more as he tried to disengage himself from Alice. The next bullet drilled through the back of his head and exited through his forehead. A spray of blood and brains spattered Alice and the headboard. Lana’s man was dead. The man she’d loved more than anything. Dead. And she felt nothing at all that resembled grief or regret. All she did feel was that still-simmering rage. She had never even looked the cheating motherfucker in the face. Which was just as well. He didn’t have much of a face left now. The exit wound had seen to that.
Lana laughed.
Even in the midst of murderous violence, the thought struck her as funny. She discovered some interesting things about herself in those bloody moments. Things like the possibility that maybe she wasn’t really all that nice a person at heart. Maybe, in fact, she was kind of a bad person. Because who else but a bad person would laugh now?
Alice shoved Blaine’s corpse away from her and rolled out from under him. She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. Lana saw that the first bullet had passed all the way through Blaine and had entered Alice’s body. A bloody hole just below her navel was leaking blood.
Lana laughed again.
Double penetration.
Alice stared up at her with pleading eyes. She put her hands to her stomach and whimpered. “Please…” She tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly and she plopped back down on the edge of the bed. “Please…”
Lana sneered. “Stop begging. It’s not gonna help.”
She squeezed the trigger again and the next bullet went between Alice’s breasts. The one after that made a ruin of her face and ended her life. Only then did Lana lower the gun. The rage gripping her began to fade as she watched her dead friend’s body slide off the bed and flop awkwardly to the floor.
She stood there without moving for many long moments. She still felt nothing like remorse. Blaine was gone and it was as if his passing had lifted a mental veil she hadn’t known was there. She knew at once she had never really loved him. It was a thing she had fooled herself into believing because a great love was the kind of thing girls were conditioned into thinking they needed and wanted. The reality of Blaine came into stark relief in those moments. He was a slacker, earning barely more than minimum wage at his warehouse gig while expecting her to pick up the tab for virtually everything, including most of his music gear.
A sudden piercing wail from the other side of the bed made her jump. In the next instant she recognized the sound as a baby’s cry.
Aw…shit.
Lana kicked Alice’s corpse. “You fucking sick-ass bitch! You had your fucking baby in the room with you while you were fucking my fucking boyfriend!? What th
e fuck is your problem, you fucking whore?”
Each of these inquiries was punctuated with more kicks.
Alice, of course, answered none of them.
And the baby continued to wail.
Lana circled the bed and stared down at the creature. He was a wrinkly little thing in a Motley Crue onesie. She had given Alice shit about the onesie. Aside from middle-aged fat guys, who in their right mind listened to Motley fucking Crue in this day and age? Especially that goddamn “Girls, Girls, Girls” song, which they all had to hear multiple times a day every day at the Booty Boutique.
She set her gun down on the bed and knelt to extract the squalling brat from a detachable car seat. She cradled the little guy in her arms and began cooing to him as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had little practical experience with babies and suspected she would not be able to coax this one back to silence. Not unless she shot it. But she didn’t want to shoot the baby. Despite everything, she wasn’t quite ready to cross that line. So she kept cooing at him and rocked him gently in her arms. She was shocked as he fell silent and stared up at her with round, wet eyes.
She smiled. “Sorry I shot your mommy, baby. But she was a fucking whore and deserved what she got. One day you’ll understand.”
She returned the baby to the car seat and did some serious thinking. Time passed. What had happened in this room had been very noisy. She had expected to hear sirens almost immediately. But something like twenty minutes had gone by and there was nothing. It was a little strange, but not inexplicable. A lot of their neighbors kept odd hours and were frequently gone. It was possible no one outside the apartment had heard anything. After another ten minutes of waiting around, she was sure of it.
The law wasn’t coming for her.
At least not yet.
Which left her with bodies and a live baby to dispose of, as well as a hell of a mess to clean up. Except that she hadn’t the faintest idea how she might go about accomplishing those things.
Or…did she?
She leapt off the bed and hurried out of the room. The scrap of paper with Big Ted’s phone number scrawled on it was still in her purse. Before leaving the Booty Boutique, he’d reiterated his desire for that private date. But that wasn’t all. He’d leaned close to whisper something else, a remark that made her laugh and roll her eyes at the time.
“There ever anything you need, sugar, you just let me know.” She could still feel his hot whiskey breath against her ear. “And I do mean anything at all, no matter how big or small. You give Big Ted a ring and I’ll take care of you.”
Lana fished the scrap of paper from her purse and stared at it indecisively for a long, fretful moment. This was a crazy impulse. Maybe, in an odd way, even crazier than the murders she had just committed. She didn’t know this Big Ted person at all. Not really. Sure, he talked a hell of a big game, but a lot of guys like that did. And she had no reason to suspect there was even the remotest chance he might actually help her.
But Lana didn’t know what else to do. She gave a moment’s thought to going on the run, but figured the cops would quickly catch up to her after discovering the bodies. She was no experienced criminal. Until today she’d committed only the pettiest of offenses. You had to really know what you were doing to successfully live life on the lam. Lana just didn’t have the necessary skills.
Not then.
Despite her misgivings, a very calm inner voice insisted she take a chance on calling Big Ted.
So she delved into her purse again and pulled out her iPhone.
She braced herself with a last deep breath.
Exhaled it.
And called Big Ted.
Chapter Three
Nashville, TN
Present day
A lot of people were out and about as Casey Miller cruised down Broadway toward 2nd Avenue. They were mostly tourists cruising the many gift shops, bars and live music venues that dominated the area. At least it was the middle of the week. What he had in mind would be impossible on a weekend, when the milling throngs would achieve a density requiring the police to block off the street to traffic. But the area was nonetheless busy enough that he stood a good chance of not being spotted too soon. The “borrowed” car he was driving should also help matters. He was wearing dark sunglasses and had his unruly, long blond hair tucked under a black baseball cap. And though it was early summer, he was wearing a plain black hoodie with the hood pulled up and cinched tight around his face. It was a look any lawman might find at least vaguely troubling, but that was a risk he was willing to take.
Keely Miller’s life depended on it.
His sister was older than he was by a year, but their birth order may as well have been reversed. Given her troubles, it was hard not to think of her as the baby sibling. She had lost her way somewhere along the line. It had started with drugs. She had financial difficulties as a result and eventually wound up losing her job. Then she got pinched by the cops for petty theft. It was a first offense and she was lucky enough to get off with light probation. But these things weren’t the real problem. Legal and substance issues were things that could be dealt with via some pretty standard approaches.
The shit she was into now was a different deal altogether.
Casey eased into the turn lane where Broadway intersected with 2nd Avenue and turned on the left blinker, waiting patiently while the light turned red. The thing he had planned had to go off perfectly in order to succeed. And quickly. If he faltered at all or bungled any aspect of it, the mission would fail and Keely would remain in the clutches of those crazy assholes. The plan was simple—snatch his sister off the street, muscle her into the car and burn rubber out of there before anyone could do a damn thing about it.
But there was a complicating factor.
This would be his second attempt to grab her. The first had occurred out by the old ranch house compound outside the city limits where they all stayed when they weren’t out recruiting. He had gone there ostensibly just to visit. Their guard hadn’t been up that time, probably because he had been out there to see Keely previously. So he was able to get her in his car and start tear-assing away from the farmhouse. What fouled it up was the long drive back down the private access road out to the main road. He hadn’t known it at the time, but they had people in position as a contingency for exactly this type of scenario. Cars were blocking the way out before he got there. A big truck pulled into position behind him, boxing him in. Keely, who had been screaming at him and cursing him the whole time, promptly bolted from the car. The men who had trapped him brandished guns, keeping him there while Keely was hustled back to the farmhouse. These men said nothing to him. It wasn’t their place. But they made him wait right there until the head honcho came down from the ranch house for a word with him.
The man was maybe fifty. People like Keely adored him and treated him like a messiah. John Wayne de Rais had his followers believing a lot of dangerous things. A lot of doomsday nonsense. They couldn’t see the truth about him, but for Casey it was plain as day.
“You’re never coming back here again,” de Rais told him that day, smiling without any warmth in his cold, calculating eyes. “And, boy, you are never going to see your sister again. She belongs to us now. If you show your face around here again, my men will kill you and bury you deep in the woods.”
Casey didn’t reply. He knew he had to back off for a while and do some planning before making his next move. After the group’s leader waved his men off, Casey drove calmly away and returned to his house to do some serious thinking.
The light turned green.
Casey cranked the steering wheel to the left and eased into 2nd Avenue. Thick streams of people moved in each direction on the wide sidewalks. No one was paying him any mind. The car he had picked up was a dark-colored late model Honda. There were countless millions just like it. It would afford him an extra degree of anonymity that might prove crucial.
He spotted them a block down the street. Several of them loitered by a
bench at the edge of the sidewalk. Like Keely, they were all young. And mostly attractive, despite their attire, which was a mix of hippy and slacker motifs. It all added up to a general bohemian vibe, which was their goal, a second coming of the peace and love era at first glance. But it was a sham. Most locals knew this, but a lot of the people visiting this place were clueless. And every now and then some young new recruit would get seduced by their bullshit.
This was his third trip down the avenue this week. Cult members had been present every day, but Keely had not been among them. They rotated the recruiting crew on a daily basis. Casey kept his head down as he drew near them, but he observed the group of smiling young people from behind his dark sunglasses. His heart lurched as he spotted Keely among them. She was facing away from the street, engaged in an apparently spirited conversation with a tourist in a cowboy hat.
Keely clutched a stack of propaganda leaflets in one of her slender hands. Some of her friends were handing out leaflets too, while still others waved signs and engaged in obnoxious chants that conveyed vague messages of love and enlightenment while also exalting their glorious leader. One of the signs read, HONK IF YOU LOVE JOHN WAYNE.
Every now and then some idiot would actually honk, either a clueless tourist or some sarcastic local joker. The tourists didn’t know they weren’t honking to signal affection for the late cowboy actor. The “John Wayne” referred to by the sign was John Wayne de Rais, alias of the leader of the Order of Wandering Souls. The name of the group made it sound like they were advocating some benign stripe of neo-hippy foolishness. But Casey knew better. The truth was right out there in the open, for anyone with a brain to see. And it was a sick, sick joke. Most of de Rais’ followers were very young people. Gilles de Rais was the name of an infamous child murderer from the middle ages. Casey was no history buff. He knew this because he had looked the shit up. And when he’d made the connection, he knew right then he had to get Keely free of the cult no matter the cost.
