Jewels and Panties

by Brooke Kinsley

  No Rest For The Wicked

  Jewels And Panties Series

  Book Fifteen

  Brooke Kinsley

  © 2018 All Rights Reserved

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses per law

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  "Erotica is literature designed to be read with one hand...”-Brooke Kinsley

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  Contents

  Description

  Chapter One BERGER

  Chapter Two LINCOLN

  Chapter Three BERGER

  Chapter Four LINCOLN

  Chapter Five BERGER

  Chapter Six LINCOLN

  Chapter Seven BERGER

  About The Author

  Description

  Left in the desert with nothing but death coming for him, Berger is saved by an unlikely hero. A mysterious man named D.B Cooper with a face lined with stories and a head full of secrets.

  The two become unlikely friends, but soon they become more. Only a man could understand the things Berger has been through. Only a guy with a broken heart like his own could comprehend what living on the edge of society does to a man’s mind. Berger thinks he’s found someone who truly makes him feel safe, someone who can take care of him.

  If only that bird in the attic hadn’t made that noise. If only he hadn’t gone up there and found the box.

  The box no one was meat to see. The box of Cooper’s past.

  The secret’s out.

  Professor Schiele sees Etta; her decomposed body, the rotten, faded beauty of her face, the love Lincoln still has for her. Now he knows why he truly needs the Tricephthial and the thoughtmakes him sick.

  But Lincoln will do anything to get it, even if it means taking a life to bring one back.

  What he doesn’t know is that Schiele’s wife, Cynthia would do anything too, anything to see her husband finally out of her life.

  With Lincoln’s mind unravelling fast, he has to decide whether there’ll be just one body in his laboratory. Or will there be two?

  Chapter One

  Berger

  “You haven’t told me much about yourself.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing much to tell.”

  “That sounds like a lie.”

  As the sun came up, Cooper had woken me up by slamming a frying pan against the wall repeatedly. It wasn’t the most pleasant sound but it did the trick. Now it was half six in the morning and I was standing in the middle of a group of chickens. They clucked and shrieked all around me as I dropped seeds down onto the ground. I yawned as I reached the bottom of the bucket.

  “Tired already?” laughed Cooper.

  “Exhausted.”

  “You’ve only been up ten minutes. We still got the pigs to feed and muck out the horses too.”

  “You have horses?”

  “I have almost everything.”

  “Almost,” I said, noting the strange intonation to the word.

  “Almost,” he repeated.

  For few minutes, we fed the chickens in silence. Overhead, there was the sound of the vultures waking up and cawing. The sun was still low in the sky, nothing but a yellow blip on the horizon. It felt ungodly being up so early. I yawned again and rubbed my eyes.

  “Geez, you really are tired.”

  “I had a long day yesterday.”

  His face softened.

  “That you did,” he said. “Guess there’s no shame in having an early breakfast. You look like you need it.”

  He dropped his bucket and watched the chickens for a moment as though he was regarding children playing. There was real love in his eyes.

  “You really love these little things, don’t you?”

  “Like they were my children.”

  “Shame you have to eat them.”

  “Oh, I don’t eat them,” he said, leading me back over to the open gate. “They’re friends.”

  “Friends…”

  “Uhuh…”

  His face was stony and serious. Weird guy, I thought. Although he was by no means the weirdest I’d known.

  Back inside, I sat at the kitchen table watching him crack eggs into a sizzling pan. Coffee percolated beside him, the smell lifting my mood.

  “You still haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said, his back turned to me.

  I watched the movement of his nimble body. He was fit for his age and kinda big too like he was used to lifting heavy things and doing manual labor.

  “What do you wanna know?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t drop the subject soon.

  “Well, you’re here,” he said. “So you’ve got a story to tell.”

  “I was going to die out there,” I replied. “I was ready for it too. Ready to meet my maker.”

  He turned back round and handed me a plate of runny eggs covered in hot sauce.

  “Don’t be so defeatist,” he said. “The maker isn’t in charge. You are.”

  “I am?”

  He shrugged and sat down across from me, his own eggs slathered in even more hot sauce so the yolks looked like bubbling lava.

  “Sure. Who knows if we even have a maker?”

  He thrust a forkful of eggs into his mouth and slurped on a slithering piece of white dripping in Sriracha.

  “Eat up,” he mumbled with a full mouth. “It’ll go cold.”

  “I don’t think anything goes cold down here.”

  It was sweltering and the sun hadn’t even properly risen. Since I’d arrived, there was no difference between the heat of night and day. The air was permanently dried out and the land was scorched.

  “Just eat up,” he said. “You look like you need to get some food in you or you’ll waste away to nothing.”

  He reached out a fork and prodded me in the ribs.

  “Ow! Son of a –“

  “Just look at you. Body like a starving greyhound.”

  “Jesus, no need to be so harsh.”

  “True though, ain’t it? When was the last time you had a good meal?”

  “Probably around the last time I had a meaningful kiss so forever ago.”

  He gave me a pitying look and slid over a mason jar of coffee.

  “Bless your heart,” he said. “You’re really pulling at my heart strings.”

  The coffee tasted as good as swallowing down liquid gold. It burned my stomach and
went straight to my veins so fast I could hear the blood rush into my head. Now I was truly awake.

  “At least tell me this,” said Cooper. “What brought you here? Love or money?”

  I had to really think about it. What the hell had I done with my life? How did I end up down here?

  “Love pushed me away,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled and leathery but the eyes themselves were youthful and mischievous like a schoolboy’s.

  “Love pushed you away, huh? How does that work? It’s supposed to bring people together.”

  I said nothing and just sat with my head bowed as he eyed me suspiciously.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I left,” I sighed. “I thought I wasn’t good enough and I left and I’m so stupid I could just lie down and die with the shame of it all.”

  “Is that what you were hoping to do last night before I found you?”

  Thinking about it for a second, I wondered if I really was prepared for death or whether I was just delirious.

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  “Hmmm…”

  He shoveled the last of his breakfast into his mouth, slammed down his fork then leaned over the table. For a second, I was sure he was going to grab me by the throat, maybe even hit me. I was relieved then, if not comforted to realize he was trying to hug me. Well, hug me in a way that only a man can hug, with a back slap and an awkward chest bump. Still, it was strangely nice to feel the friendly, physical contact. Slapping him back, I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “You’re a real lost soul,” he said. “When you’re ready, you can tell me everything.”

  Tell him everything, I thought. What was everything? A series of images flashed in my mind; Lincoln, Etta, her mother, Broadwood...

  "Yeah, maybe I will," I said, although I knew I never would. "Besides, I'm really not that interesting. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?"

  He bristled in his seat. Clearly, he wasn't used to talking about himself and the thought made him uncomfortable.

  "Ah, you don't wanna hear an old man like me blether about his life."

  "Sure I do!"

  His eyes met mine. There was a sparkle. A jolt fired through me as though we were having some sort of connection. Like we were bonded by a peculiar past and memories we wished we could forget. But still, he didn't want to talk.

  "No, really. I don't have much to say."

  "That's gotta be bullshit, right? You're down here, alone living some sort of weird life as a self-sufficient recluse. You bring in people like me and give them a home. You're just about the most interesting man I've ever met."

  I had to add that he was just about the most interesting man I'd ever met because Bosworth was still at the forefront of my mind and he was the craziest, most twisted son of a bitch I'd ever known.

  "Ah, you're just bein' nice," said Cooper.

  "No, really. I reckon you've got a story to tell. A weird one."

  "A weird one?"

  "Or at least a wild one. Why else would you be down here? Not to mention there's that look in your eyes."

  He squinted and looked down at his lap.

  "Don't try to hide it. I know it. I was a cop."

  He flinched and looked up. Any hint of softness in his eyes had vanished fast and I was now staring into his stormy irises feeling as though my eggs were gonna come back up. His fingers were clenched around his knife, his hand pulled so tight he was shaking with all the veins up his arms standing up.

  "Woah, calm down, buddy. What's the problem?"

  "Who told you?" he wheezed.

  "Eh?"

  "Who told you!"

  He thrust the knife at me. It was blunt and had cut nothing denser than bread but he looked as though he knew how to use it. Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. How could this be happening again? Did I just have the uncanny knack of turning everyone around me homicidal?

  "I asked you a question, boy."

  "No one told me a fucking thing now put the knife down."

  His hand was shaking furiously, the knife flipping back and forth like a leaf in the wind.

  "Fucking cop," he whispered through gritted teeth.

  "Woah, seriously. I said I was a cop... WAS."

  The knife flipped back and forth some more and I tried to swallow down the raging anxiety within me.

  "WAS!"

  It must have been the terror in my eyes or maybe he just came to his senses but at last, just when I was sure he was either about to have a heart attack or kill me, he let the knife drop onto the table and slumped back into his chair. Deflated, he dragged a hand down the front of his face and let out a long sigh that seemed to never end until I realized he was crying. Tears streaked his dirty face leaving tide marks on his skin.

  "I'm so sorry," he sobbed.

  I was really starting to lose the will to live at this point. Couldn't I just have a normal day for once?

  "I mean it," he sniveled into his hand. "Fuck, life on your own really takes it outta you. Really makes you feel as though you're going crazy. You must think I'm a psycho. Just this crazy old guy who... who makes really bad eggs."

  He smacked his hand up against the rim of his plate and it went flying up into the air before smashing against the wall. The fragments were stuck to the tiles with yolk and hot sauce, sliding down slowly until at last, they reached the floor. Across from me, Cooper still cried. It was painful to watch a grown man just crumple and fall apart like that, torn apart by his own paranoia. It hurt just to see the way his shoulders heaved up and down as he cried into his filthy shirt.

  "Dude..." I said but he continued to cry.

  Either out of the excruciating sensation of awkwardnessor because I maybe actually wanted to comfort him, I stood up and bent down to hug him. But this time there was no back slapping or clumsy masculinity, I held him like I meant it and let his tears flowed into my shirt. He sobbed some more, clawing at me. It felt like cradling a child.

  "Hey, it's okay. I get it. You've been through some stuff."

  He whimpered in response.

  This guy is truly broken, I thought to myself. Poor man.

  "You can trust me," I said. "For what that's worth. Besides, you saw what a wreck I was when I showed up, no cash, no phone, no car, just the clothes on my back and a whole lotta sun burn. If I was still a cop I'd be hiding my badge up my ass right now and believe me, nothing ever goes up there."

  He laughed a little and looked up, drying his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he said for what felt like the hundredth time. "You must think I'm an old kook."

  "I do," I said, finally letting him go. "But I'm happy to be here and I'm all cracked up myself. We can be nuts together. Just two Americanos down in the desert losing their minds."

  He smiled and his eyes lit up. It was as though twenty years had been wiped from his face.

  He sniffed and wiped his eyes dry like a big kid realizing the scrape on their knee wasn't so bad.

  "That sounds kinda nice," he said. "Just two of us."

  I watched him for a moment, noticing how tired his movements were but at the same time, they were now more fluid as though the tension had been released from his old muscles. It struck me how sad he must have been. How lonely and afraid he was with nothing but him, this vast expanse of land and his animals. The chickens who were his friends.

  "By the way you make really fucking good eggs," I told him.

  "Ach!"

  "No really. Way good. And the hot sauce? It's a perfect touch. The cherry on the cake."

  "Oh stop."

  "I mean it!"

  He looked over at the fragments of porcelain scattered across the floor with yolk stains still stuck to the walls.

  "Fuck," he breathed. "I'm a mad man."

  "You're just a tired man. A lonely man."

  He nodded in agreement but kept his gaze stuck to the wall.

  "I'm lonely too. The loneliest person you've ever met."
<
br />   "But you're here now," he said. "We can be buddies."

  "We could. But I could be in a room full of people, a city full of people and still feel so completely alone."

  He turned to me and narrowed his eyes, cocking his head to the side with his hair sticking up on end so he looked like an inquisitive pigeon.

  "You remind me of someone."

  "Someone nice I hope."

  His eyes glossed over and he looked out the window out toward the chickens without answering.

  "You wanna meet the horses?" he asked.

  "Sure," I smiled. "Let's go."

  ~

  It felt like we'd been walking for miles but it was only five hundred yards from the house to the stables that were shrouded by the only trees in the region. The two horses were sleeping, their giant bellies moving up and down with each breath.

  "My boys," said Cooper. "This one is Reginald and this one is Mercy."

  "They're beautiful. And they're big fellas too."

  "I treat them well," he said, leaning over to pat the nearest one on the head. "You gotta treat them well. They deserve the best."

  "Are you a father?" I found myself blurting out at random.

  He looked a little bewildered at the question.

  "Me? A father? No. The only kids of mine with two feet are the chickens. Now, why would you ask something like that?"

  I walked away, scuffing up my boots with the sand.

  "I dunno. You just seem like the caring type. Like you'd be a nice dad."

  "A nice grandad maybe."

  "Yeah, totally."

  I hadn't thought about my own dad for a long while but suddenly he was in my mind and I had the strongest urge to see him although I knew I couldn't.

  "You have a nice dad?" asked Cooper.

  "I had one," I said. "He was awesome."

  "I take it you don't have him anymore?"

  For years I had learned to get on with things and keep my feelings to myself but now down here with just this mysterious man, I felt as though I didn't need to do a damn thing I didn't want to. I could let it all out, cry if I wanted to, hit things if I wanted to. I felt as though he would understand.