by Bryan Smith
Seated on the edge of her living room sofa, she looked at the gun still clasped in her right hand. It didn’t look like much. It wasn’t a big gun. But in this case looks were definitely deceptive. She had seen what it could do.
Fuck it.
She opened her mouth wide and slid the short barrel inside. Only fear of dying and what might (or might not) come after death made her hesitate. Some people said suicide was a sin and that you went straight to hell for it. Lana had never given the notion of hell’s possible existence any serious consideration. It just seemed so ridiculous. But having a gun in her mouth put a different spin on things. What if she was wrong about hell? She had been wrong about many things in her life. Why not this too?
She pulled the gun out of her mouth and heaved a big sigh.
In the end, it wasn’t fear of eternal damnation that stayed her hand. The baby was awake again, staring up at her with those big blues eyes from the car carrier at her feet. She just couldn’t blow her brains out in front of him. Or, whatever, maybe some part of her was looking for any excuse at all not to commit suicide.
The baby didn’t look scared or traumatized. Just innocent and curious. The look on his face triggered her first tears of the afternoon. Alice and Blaine deserved what they got. They were adults. They had known what they were doing was wrong. But the cute little complication in the baby carrier didn’t deserve any of this. It wasn’t his fault his mother was a worthless whore. Still, his life had changed forever thanks to Lana’s rash actions—and probably not for the better.
A knock on the door made her jump and almost drop the gun. “Lana, you in there, darlin’? It’s Big Ted.”
A big, hopeful grin spread across Lana’s face. Ted’s presence at the door meant there were no cops on the way, at least not yet. It might only be a temporary reprieve, but she was grateful for it.
She carefully set the gun on the coffee table and got up to go to the door. When she opened it, Big Ted smiled broadly at her around the unlit stogie wedged into a corner of his mouth. “Come on in.”
Ted tipped back his cowboy hat and entered the apartment as she stepped aside for him.
She closed the door and followed him into the living room.
Ted stood with his hands on his hips as he stared down at the baby in the carrier. He made a clucking sound as he shook his head. “Shit. Poor little fella.”
Lana took up a position next to him and looked at the baby too. “Yeah. I done fucked up his life forever.”
Ted snorted. “What little is left of it. Go grab me a pillow, sweet thing.”
“Why?”
Ted gave her an incredulous look. “So I can smother the little cocksucker. What do you expect me to do with him? We can take him out on my boat later and drop him in the ocean. Over and done with.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”
“You can’t kill him. I’d rather go to jail.”
“Seriously?”
Lana nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, shit.” Ted took the cigar out of his mouth and scratched the back of his neck. “That makes things a mite more complicated, but coming up with an alternate solution ain’t necessarily undoable.”
“Good. Because killing him is a deal breaker.”
Ted put the cigar back in his mouth. “There are things I could possibly do, but first I need to get a feel for the full scope of what we’re dealing with here. Show me the bodies.”
Lana led him down the hallway to the bedroom. The bedroom door was closed for some unknown reason. Closing the door on the scene didn’t negate the reality hidden inside the room, but then she hadn’t been thinking logically for a while. Though Ted already knew what was waiting on the other side of it, she nevertheless hesitated for the briefest instant when her hand closed around the doorknob. There was a strange tingly feeling in her gut that reminded her of childhood. It was the one she used to get when her parents were about to discover something naughty or just plain wrong she had done.
The deep lines around Ted’s eyes crinkled. “You gonna open the door, sugar?”
Lana let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry, just not in a hurry to see this again. It’s…pretty horrible.”
Not really, she thought. But for some reason I need you to believe I think it’s horrible.
Ted smiled and touched her shoulder, giving her what he meant as a reassuring squeeze. But the touch was a little too intimate for that. She half-expected his hand to slide away from her shoulder to grope some other part of her body, but for the moment he refrained. “I understand, girl. I really do. But the sooner we can start dealing with this unpleasantness, the sooner we can put it behind you.”
Lana made herself smile. “I know. Thanks for caring. It means…a lot.”
She tried to summon a fake tear—or at least a sniffle—to garner more sympathy, but her eyes remained dry.
Ted squeezed her shoulder again. “Happy to help. You’re a special gal, I knew that the second I laid eyes on you. Now let’s see what’s what.”
Lana let out a breath and opened the door. Ted was right behind her as she entered the room. He removed the cigar from his mouth and let out a low whistle. The bodies remained where they had fallen. She hadn’t touched them. Blaine was facedown on the bed, but the hole at the small of his back and the ruin the second slug had made of his head were plain to see. Alice was flat on her back on the floor, her unblinking, dead eyes staring up at nothing.
Ted grunted. “Damn. That one had a pretty good rack on her.”
“I worked with her. She danced at the Booty Boutique too.”
Ted’s brow furrowed. “I thought them titties looked kind of familiar. Fakes, huh?”
Lana nodded. “You can tell by the way they don’t spread out when she’s on her back.”
“Huh.” Ted glanced at her. “Your titties fake?”
“I have naturally bodacious breasts.”
Ted chuckled. “Nothing better than a legit pair of great tits.”
Lana agreed, but she was eager to move the conversation along. “So…as you can see, I made one hell of a mess. I hate to be a doubting Thomasina, but I don’t see how you can make this go away.”
Ted’s default joviality gave way to an unexpected earnestness. “I hate to break it to you, darlin’, but this ain’t my first rodeo.”
Lana frowned. “Meaning what?”
Ted’s eyes twinkled in a way that chilled her. There was a certain shady vibe criminal types who patronized the Booty Boutique gave off, one she was usually able to smell on them as soon as they came in range. She hadn’t caught that vibe off Ted before—possibly because he was more skilled at concealing it than most—but it was certainly there now. “Meaning this won’t be the first time I’ve made bodies disappear.”
Lana smiled. “I see. That’s good to know.”
It was strange. She knew now she was dealing with a genuine bad guy, a dangerous man by definition. But, rather than disturbing her, she found the knowledge reassuring. A for-real villain who knew his way around effective corpse disposal and crime scene cover-up was exactly the kind of dude she needed in her corner right now.
“So…how does this happen? What’s next?”
“What happens is I make some phone calls and get my people on this.”
Lana frowned as she again studied the scene. She didn’t see how it could be covered up without stripping the place to the bone and replacing everything. And that was just the aesthetic side of things. Getting two adult bodies and a bunch of blood-soaked crap out of the apartment without attracting a lot of unwanted attention seemed like a time-intensive, logistical nightmare.
In fact, it seemed fucking impossible.
Ted patted her shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, girl, but trust me, my people are pros. They’ll work fast and by the time they’re done, you’d never guess anything happened here. I’ll give you my word on that.”
“What about the kid?”
Ted shrugged. “Not really my area of expertise, but I can
get in touch with some folks who should have no problem placing him somewhere.”
Lana thought about that as she chewed on a thumbnail. “I don’t know how I feel about that. Can’t he just anonymously be passed off to next of kin?”
Ted took her by a wrist and pulled her close, wrapping his big arms around her. The move didn’t surprise Lana, nor did it bother her much. She had been expecting something like this all along. A favor this big wouldn’t come without a sizeable price tag, after all.
“Trust me, this is the way to go. It’s better if these dead folks and the little one just disappear never to be heard from again. People will assume the three of them ran off together somewhere. That’s what we want. But if the baby gets left behind, it turns into a big goddamn mystery with a whole lot more questions from the po-lice.” He said it like that, emphasizing the first syllable with a corndog drawl she now recognized as partly an act. “Just let me take care of it all and you won’t have a thing to worry about. That’s a promise.”
Lana allowed herself to settle into his embrace, smiling wickedly as she pushed her large breasts against his chest. “There anything I can do to help, Teddy?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been through enough. We’ll clear out once my people get here and give them room to do what needs doin’.” He tucked the unlit cigar in his blazer’s front pocket. “But there’s something else you can do for me before I make my calls.”
She shifted her weight some and angled a thigh against the erection tenting the front of his trousers. “Does it have anything to do with that?”
“It’s got everything to do with that.”
His hands went to her ass and gave her buttocks a rough squeeze as he pulled her harder against him. She responded with a hungry, lustful growl. Ted was a rather large gentleman and wasn’t precisely movie star handsome, but he had come willingly to her rescue, an act that seemed to have supercharged her libido. Before she knew it she was standing on her tiptoes and shoving her tongue into the big man’s mouth. He made a muffled sound that might have been a surprised laugh, but after that her ministrations elicited something closer to a tortured squeal.
Lana clawed at him and pulled at his clothes until the two of them fell backward onto the bed. Ted’s cowboy hat came off his head as he tried to rise up. A look of repulsion played across his features. Lana almost got mad before realizing he was reacting to the proximity of Blaine’s corpse. She belatedly realized her bare arm was touching Blaine’s leg. The revelation should have filled her instantly with disgust, but it did not. Instead it drove her arousal to an even higher level.
She grabbed Ted’s hat and flung it across the room before seizing the lapels of his blazer. “Get your goddamn clothes off and fuck me, Big Ted.”
Ted looked pale. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I want more. But wouldn’t you rather do it somewhere else? Like out in the living room?”
“You wouldn’t believe how wet I am right now, Teddy.” Lana pushed at his chest and he raised his torso higher as she slithered backward, splaying herself across Blaine’s legs. “I want you to fuck me right here next to my cheating dead boyfriend.” She pulled off her top and tossed it aside, then began to wiggle out of her shorts. “In fact, I want you to fuck me on top of him.”
Lana knew what she was doing was sick and wrong. Justifiable homicide or not, clearly there was something wrong inside her, something deeply and fundamentally fucked up, something that had always been there, lurking in the darkest shadows of her obviously deranged mind. There was no other way to explain this impulse. Recognizing this might have troubled her any other time, but for now she only wanted to embrace it, to revel in her inner darkness and this profound perversity.
A fleeting look of disgust twisted Ted’s features, but then it was gone and he was shrugging off his blazer. “You dirty little girl. I think I’m in love with you.”
Lana peeled off her panties and slapped them against his face. “Say that again.”
He fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, hurrying to get it off. “I love you, Lana. I love the fucking shit out of you.”
She laughed and spread her legs as she repositioned herself atop Blaine’s body, waiting with feverish anticipation as Ted shed the rest of his clothes. And then he was on top of her. On top of both of them. Then he was inside her. She screamed and screamed as the bed shook and the headboard slammed against the wall. The screams became one long, uninterrupted expression of insane ecstasy, almost like a kind of music, the tortured rhythm of the bedsprings providing a thumping backbeat to her operatic singing.
Chapter Nine
Some Fucked-Up Shit that Happened on the Road, Part Two
They were on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, when Echo announced she needed to take a piss. Dez gave her a ration of shit for not getting out of the car at the last stop and threatened to keep going until she felt like stopping. Echo countered with a threat to drop her shorts and piss all over the backseat, which effectively ended the short-lived debate. Dez hit the turn signal lever and pulled off at the next exit, where she pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a Stop N Go store.
The three of them got out of the Impala and went into the store. Dez infuriated Echo by getting to the women’s room first and closing the door in her face with a smirking expression.
Echo shot an incredulous look at Lana, who was over by a row of coolers checking out the array of beverages on display. “Can you believe the nerve of that bitch? I’m this close to pissing myself and she pulls that shit. Fucking unbelievable.”
Lana shrugged, not looking at her. “Just how she is. Shit, you’re lucky she stopped at all.”
Echo made a loud sound of frustration and stamped a foot on the floor before slamming the base of a fist against the closed door. “Hurry up, Dez. Don’t be a goddamn hour in there just to spite me or you’ll fucking regret it. That’s a straight-up promise from me to you, bitch.”
A dim sound of feminine laughter issued from the other side of the door. Echo screeched and was about to bang on the door again when she glanced to her right and frowned at the closed men’s room door. Normally she didn’t like to use the men’s rooms in convenience stores because they grossed her out, but this was an emergency situation. She felt like she might explode at any second.
Fuck it.
She opened the men’s room door and let out a startled gasp, taking an immediate step backward. A young man in his late teens or early twenties sat on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles, but he wasn’t taking a shit. A skin mag—one of the raunchier ones by the look of it—was open on the tiled floor in front of him, and he had a hand wrapped around a throbbing boner. At first he looked angry at the intrusion, but his expression changed when Echo’s curvaceous femininity fully registered.
The young man’s face contorted in a way that made him look like he was having an attack of some kind. He groaned like a movie zombie as he abruptly ejaculated, shooting a silvery stream of seemingly jet-propelled come that struck the opposite wall. His shoulders sagged and he slumped backward against the upright seat cover, his chest going up and down as he panted like a runner at the end of a sprint.
Echo made a loud sound of disgust. “You fucking pervert! What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of sick fuck jacks it in a public bathroom?”
The man had recovered enough from those first moments of post-orgasm insensibility to direct an accusatory glare at her. “Ever hear of knocking? You might want to try it next time.”
Echo barked an incredulous laugh and shook her head. “You’re gonna blame me for this, you perverted motherfucker? Seriously?”
Lana was still over by the coolers, but now her head turned in Echo’s direction. “What’s going on over there?”
“I just watched a skinny perv shoot his wad in a public bathroom.”
“Is he cute?”
Echo glanced at her, scowling. “Shut up if you don’t have anything helpful to contribute. And no, he’s not.”
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br /> The guy in the bathroom picked up the skin mag, calmly folded it and tucked it under his arm as he stood and pulled up his pants. He zipped up and flushed the toilet, then moved over to the sink and started the hot water tap to wash his hands. As he lathered up, he glanced at Echo’s oblique reflection in the mirror above the sink. “You’re just saying that because you’re pissed at me. I know I’m handsome.”
Echo laughed.
The man rinsed the soap off his hands, turned off the water and shook off the excess moisture before pulling a wad of hand towels from the dispenser mounted on the wall. He directed a smirking glance at Echo as he dried his hands. “Admit it. You’re just mad I didn’t hold off long enough to stick it in you.”
Echo stared at him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing as a fresh welling of anger simmered inside her. A lot had happened since leaving Casey and her old life behind all those months ago. She wasn’t the same person she had been back then. A wild life on the road with her dangerous new friends had changed her forever. Copious amounts of blood had been spilled. And a lot of people—mostly men—had died by her hands. This smarmy little son of a bitch had no idea what he was provoking. It was equivalent to poking a snake with a sharp stick.
Time to learn the hard way, little man.
She stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind her, being sure to turn the lock. The man’s first reaction was a surprised frown, but then he began to grin, his hawk-like features making the expression look almost cadaverous. He looked her up and down, licking his lips as he admired her long legs and bountiful curves.
“I knew it. You got a load of the B-man’s tube snake and just had to get some of that for yourself. Am I right?”
Echo smiled but said nothing.
She slipped her purse off her shoulder, pulled it open and began to root around inside it.
The man tossed the wad of towels in the trash and moved a step closer. “I’m gonna need at least a few minutes before ol’ Mr. Snake is ready for action again.” He smiled in that smarmy way of his and came another step closer. “But I could go down on you. Would you like that, baby?”
