Frowning, I filled up the wheelbarrow just the way that I’d seen Bruno do it just yesterday. It took me twice as long as him to fill it up, and three times as long to push it through the muck toward their pen.
However, when I got there, I saw that one of the small pigs was out.
Small being kind of a misleading word, seeing as ‘small’ still meant ‘over a hundred pounds.’
“What are you doing out?” I asked the little pig.
The pig snorted at me, then walked up to the wheelbarrow and nudged it.
Assuming that meant ‘feed me now, bitch’ I pushed the wheelbarrow the rest of the way toward the enclosure where I’d seen him dump the feed into the trough yesterday.
Just as I was about to upend the wheelbarrow, I felt the hair on the back of my neck start to stand on end.
Having a sort of sixth sense since I was younger—my brothers liked to sneak up on me and scare the absolute shit out of me every chance they got—I knew that there was someone behind me.
And it wasn’t Bruno, because he would’ve announced his presence.
Carefully acting like I wasn’t aware of him, I dropped down onto my haunches just as I felt something swing over the top of my head.
The two-by-four that’d been in the man’s hands swung and hit the fence right where my head would’ve been had I not ducked.
Turning around and aiming for the nuts—again, something that I’d learned on my brothers to do—I punched hard and viciously.
I heard an audible pop when my fist met the man’s nut sack.
He tried to back up, but the pig that was out chose that time to get pissed that she wasn’t getting fed, and directed her anger at the man that’d done the distracting.
She went for the man’s heels, causing him to trip.
The board landed at my feet as he went down onto his knees next to the trough where I’d been about to dump the food, upending the feed that I’d been about to dump.
The baby pig was happy.
The other pigs?
Not so much.
That’s when I saw where the smaller one had gotten out.
Because just as I noticed it, the heftiest pig in the bunch pushed his way right on through the too-small hole and went straight for the feet.
I picked the two-by-four up and slammed it down hard against the man’s head.
He went out like a light in the middle of the feed.
Pig after pig pushed out of the fence until not a single one remained inside.
That’s when I noticed that they weren’t just eating the feed.
They were now nibbling on the man’s body.
I watched, in utter horror, as the biggest pig in the bunch leaned over and practically ripped a piece of the man’s flesh off of his face.
A huge, hulking pig-sized bite mark was taken directly out of the man’s face.
I backed away, stunned into silence, as another pig followed suit.
“Oh, shit,” I said as I started to run back toward Bruno’s house.
I didn’t realize that the barn was so far away from the house until I had to run—and let’s just say, I wasn’t a freakin’ runner.
Never had been, and never would be.
And the mud under my feet made it even harder to stay upright.
But eventually I did get to the back door.
I took my shoes off and immediately went to the sink to wash my hands clean of the mud.
Because priorities.
The moment that I was clean, I went in search of Bruno, finding him nowhere on the first floor.
I hauled ass for the second floor where he’d pointed out was his home office, and all but slammed inside.
He looked up from his computer with a frown.
He saw my face and immediately knew that something was wrong.
“What happened?” he asked, taking in my clothes.
I was wearing nothing but his t-shirt, that was now slightly wet from rinsing my body of the smelly mud.
“There was a m-man that was outside. He tried to hit me over the head with a two-by-four, but I ducked and he hit the fence. Then I punched him so hard in the balls that I think I ruptured his testicle. Also, I rendered him unconscious by beaning him over the head with the same two-by-four he dropped. Then the pigs started to eat him!” I cried.
Bruno cursed and started to hurry as fast as his own poor little body could take him—which admittedly wasn’t all that fast because he first had to arm himself to the teeth, get dressed, and call a friend.
When he was done arming himself, speaking with his friend, and in a pair of sweatpants, a simple white t-shirt, and his muck boots, he turned to me.
“You come with me,” he ordered. “I haven’t been watching the security cameras, so there might be more. Didn’t think that they could find me here so fast.”
I wasn’t staying behind. That was how women died in horror movies.
Which I told him, causing him to chuckle.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Always stick together.”
His strides were purposeful as he all but marched his way out to where I’d left that man.
Each second it took to get there had my heart rate ratcheting up another fifteen beats per second.
By the time we got to the point where I could see the pigs—all fighting over something on the ground—I could swear I was in cardiac arrest.
Bruno’s shoulders were bulging in the shirt he was wearing, and I could see the play of his tattoos through the t-shirt.
I was so focused on him that when we finally arrived at the scene of the crime, I didn’t first notice that there was something really, really wrong.
There was no screaming—like I expected—and honestly, the pigs weren’t even making much noise other than the occasional snort.
“Fuck me,” Bruno croaked.
That’s when I chose to look around his big hulking body at what lay ahead.
There was nothing left but a femur bone and blood that was quickly being spread around by the pigs that were rolling in the mud.
A femur bone that two massive pigs were playing tug of war with.
It’d been a max of fifteen minutes since I’d left him.
Fifteen minutes for fifteen pigs to consume a man’s body completely.
Clothes and all.
Bruno pulled his phone out of his front pocket and tapped a few numbers before placing it to his ear.
“Yeah.” Bruno paused and placed his phone on speaker. “I’m gonna need one of y’all to see if you can find a vehicle. Possibly more. But… shit.”
“What?” I heard the man on the other end of the line.
“Hunt, tell Lynn he was right. Pigs will eat humans,” Bruno muttered.
There was a long, silent pause and then, “I fuckin’ told you, man!”
“I know,” Bruno grumbled.
“You do?” Hunt asked at the same time that I said, “You do?”
Bruno looked down at me, then nodded. “In between the walk out here and seeing this mess in front of me, I had a quick flash of everything that I’ve been missing. I need to get us somewhere safe, and then I’ll call and tell you what I know.”
Bruno kept looking around like he expected someone to fall out of the woodwork at any second.
And now that he was looking, I could see thousands of places for someone to hide.
“Speaking of,” Hunt said into the quiet of the moment. “I was able to access how they found you. She has a computer that’s linked to her social media pages. She posted, and her IP address was flagged. I’ve blocked that access now, and there’s no way in hell they have another person that can find you. That was just a fluke that they had someone like me.”
Bruno looked at me over his shoulder before shaking his head and returning his gaze back to the woods beyond.
“Not taking that chance with her life,” he grumbled. “We’re heading out at zero two hundred. I need someone to come here and feed my animals…”
�
�I’m not getting near those murderous swine,” Hunt declared. “But Six already said she would be there. Lynn said she wasn’t coming anywhere near there if you didn’t have the fence fixed. So you may want to get that done before…”
“He’s not doing that,” I protested. “He can barely walk upright at this point. You get your fat, lazy asses out here and help him, or I’m going to call my family, and y’all can go fuck yourse…” I trailed off when Bruno’s hand covered my mouth.
“Okay then.” Hunt sounded like he was smiling. “I guess we’ll all be there to help you get those murderous swine back into their pens before she lets her family loose on us.”
They would let loose on them, too.
I knew they would without a shadow of a doubt.
All any of us Pena girls had to say was ‘help’ and they would come running.
“Okay, well then we’ll be there in thirty.” Hunt paused. “I’m so damn excited to actually come out there. You told me time and time again that…”
Bruno hung up on the man, causing me to snicker.
“Hunt’s an acquired taste,” Bruno muttered darkly.
CHAPTER 16
Know everything happens for a reason but, what the fuck?
-Text from Belle to Bruno
BELLE
I’d met Lynn and Six.
I hadn’t met the rest of them.
Trick and Swayze. Hunt and Wyett. Crockett and Zach—though I’d seen Zach before when I was younger. Not so much as an adult.
Then there was Trouper and Beckham—Beckham I knew through my dad. Her dad and mine worked together on the SWAT team. And though Beckham and I hadn’t exactly run in the same circles, we still got along well, so I wasn’t totally a ‘newcomer’ so to speak.
There was Sin and Blaise—again, with Blaise, I knew her like I knew Zach.
And finally there was Laric and Catori—Catori, like Beckham, was a family friend. Though she was older than me. Laric I had met this past year when my now sister-in-law, Dillan was having trouble.
Still, I felt totally and completely out of place when they all descended on Bruno’s place looking as if they were seeing something spectacular that they never hoped or prayed to see.
“Holy shit,” I heard one of the ladies say. “He’s holding her hand.”
I looked down at Bruno’s hand—which hadn’t let me go since we’d gotten in the door of his place. Then I looked up at the group that was congregating in the living room.
“Take your fuckin’ shoes off for Christ’s sake,” Bruno grumbled as Sin took a step into the main room.
Sin looked down at his shoes, then sighed. “They are lace-ups.”
“I don’t fuckin’ care,” Bruno muttered.
While they were all distracted with the shoes, I all but yanked my hand out of Bruno’s and headed for the chair in the very corner of the room, that was all but in the shadows, and planted my ass there with my knees up against my chest.
I was overwhelmed.
And when I say overwhelmed, I mean, I’m about to start freaking out any second.
Bruno, the man that could read me better than my own family could, looked over as I had that thought and frowned.
“This is the best house I’ve ever been in,” Six breathed. “Bruno, how could you keep this place from us?”
Bruno continued to keep his gaze on me, his eyes taking in every single detail.
He got up and moved then, sitting down on the ottoman so that he was penning me slightly into the corner of his living room.
But now, with Bruno sitting on the ottoman in front of me, he’d effectively blocked me from the room with his hulking form.
I could instantly breathe.
And when he reached back and placed his hand on top of my foot, I smiled and leaned into his back, my face going to the spot right between his shoulder blades that felt like they were made for my cheek to rest.
“How about we stop worrying about his house and get to talking about why he has an assassin after him,” Trick grumbled.
“I’m more interested in getting those pigs back inside their pen,” another man said, but since I wasn’t able to associate his face with his voice, I couldn’t remember who he was.
“We go out there and get those pigs back in,” Bruno said. “And we’re going to get dirty. They’re well satisfied at this point and don’t really have a desire to leave at the moment. So they’ll be fine until we can have our discussion and then go out there.”
“Ewww,” Six gagged. “That’s so gross.”
“We’ll discuss the pigs later,” I heard someone else say. “Let’s talk about the assassin who somehow found your place, why you have an assassin in the first place, and how the hell we can help find those kids.”
Bruno grunted, and I felt the vibration against my cheek.
“I was out for a ride on the bike, trying to clear my head after the op last week, when I got behind this panel van. I’d been behind it for what felt like an hour when I realized I needed fuel. Since it was the only place in the area, I went ahead and pulled off along with this van. When I went inside for something to drink, I came back out to the guy in the panel van doing something in the back of the van. When I got closer, I heard a kid whimpering and something hit the van so hard that it sounded like whatever it was inside didn’t want to be there.”
I closed my eyes as I felt my stomach roll.
Just the thought of that happening, to any kid, was devastating.
“Then what happened?” Lynn asked.
“I confronted him,” Bruno continued. “Things happened, he took off with the gas nozzle in his van, and then I got on my bike and followed him. I was close, about to call it in, when another van came from out of nowhere and plowed into me.” He paused. “I think that was the van that was found at the scene. The one without all of those kids inside. That was the one that the cops were questioning me about. The guy who hit me hit the steering wheel wrong and broke his neck. The guy in the van that I’d been chasing backed up and nearly ran over my head. He got out, made sure I couldn’t get up by kicking me in the face, dazing me, and then checked on the van. But by that point, we’d already drawn a crowd so he couldn’t stay. But I remember the guy’s face. I can get a sketch artist to mock him up.”
“The guy you fed to your pigs was a one-man show,” Hunt said.
I leaned slightly to the side and peeked over Bruno’s shoulder at the room as they discussed what they would all do next.
After Bruno gave them every piece of information he could remember, down to the license plate of the van even, they all went out and helped get the pigs back into their pen.
And, by looking at them, you wouldn’t know that just a short hour ago, they’d eaten a man alive.
They looked so cute and pudgy. Not lethal at all.
“I never would’ve expected this to be true,” Swayze mused as she looked at the pigs.
It was like herding a pack of cats.
None of them wanted to go back into their enclosure.
And they were feisty as well as adamant that they did not, under no circumstances, want to go back in where they belonged.
Apparently, it was a whole lot more fun outside the pen than inside. Go figure.
When the smallest of the bunch headed in my direction, I made kissy faces at her and started to walk toward the pen.
I attracted not just that one’s attention, but all of their attentions.
As I moved toward the pen, they all started to fall into line behind me. Even the fattest of the bunch came running from the trees to follow.
Bruno’s eyes were lit with a smile as I made my way into the pen and they were able to close the fence behind me.
“Wow,” Hunt said jovially. “She’s the murderous swine whisperer.”
Everyone laughed at that, even Bruno.
“I’ll bet it was because she was the one partially responsible for feeding them their Thanksgiving Day meal,” Six suggested.
I snorte
d. “If that’s the case, then they’re welcome. Kind of. Should I feel bad?”
“He was going to kill you,” Hunt said as he pulled something up on his phone. “By the way, Bruno, I hacked into your system. It’s pretty good, but not the best. I’ll fix the faults for you. Look at this. You can see that he woke up halfway through being consumed alive.”
I didn’t bother to go looking at the video.
In fact, I chose to walk toward the gate at the other side and let myself out.
CHAPTER 17
How antisocial am I? If I swipe my card at a gas pump, and it tells me to ‘see cashier’ I’m going to leave.
-Text from Bruno to Laric
BRUNO
“I made sure to hide your trace,” Hunt said as he and his wife walked to the door. “You’re booked in as Mr. and Mrs. Aryus.”
I offered Hunt my hand. “Thanks, but I’ll probably just leave that as a decoy and find somewhere else to hole away.”
Wyett, who’d stayed back slightly, looked over my shoulder at who I assumed was Belle.
“She going to be okay?” Wyett asked quietly. “Meeting everyone all at once like that is a bit…”
“Overwhelming?” I offered up the word that I knew she was going to use but didn’t.
Wyett grinned. “That word is really kind of an understatement. Six is overwhelming at the best of times. Six, being protective of her first best friend, is overwhelming times infinity.”
That wasn’t a fuckin’ lie.
Six was a little pain in the ass today, and that surprised me, because most of the time she acted like she didn’t care anymore, when I knew that she did.
Six held a mean grudge.
I’d left her way back when, thinking I was protecting her, when in fact it hadn’t protected her much at all.
But my young brain, at the time, hadn’t realized that. All I’d thought was that I was protecting my best friend.
And, in the process, I’d broken her trust in me.
“Yeah…” I said to the two of them. “Thanks for the help.”
Hunt held up a fist and I knocked it with my own before the two of them left, leaving me to go back inside and see what kind of damage Six had done with Belle.
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