by Callie Hart
David hates being called Dave. Hates it. I can see him in the Boxster’s rearview, still scowling about it now. West puts his foot down, swerving sharply, and suddenly there’s an eighteen-wheeler between our car and David’s. “Slow down,” I say. “You’re going to lose him.”
“I’m afraid that’s kind of the plan. David is weak shit, Tommy. Weak. He annoys Alex, and he seriously fucking annoys me. What good is he going to be to you at this meeting anyway? He’s going to say something dumb and piss Alex off, and then Alex will probably kill you both. Is that what you want?”
“I want you to slow the car down so he can catch up,” I growl.
“Not going to do that.” He shoots me a glance out of the corner of his eye that almost seems apologetic. “You can either fight me here and now, try and wrestle control of this highly powerful sports car from me without crashing it into a barrier or another vehicle, subsequently getting us killed. Or you let me take you to Alex and we can try and have this meeting run smoothly. Yes?”
I’m an excellent driver. Fucking amazing, actually. But these little sportsters are a nightmare. Twitchy fucking things. West is right: if I try and take control of the car right now, we’re probably both going to end up dead in a mess of blood, bone and mangled steel on the side of the road. “Anyone ever told you you’re a cunt?” I mutter under my breath.
“Repeatedly, actually. Which I don’t understand, because I’m the nice Bastien brother.”
My phone starts ringing. It’s David. I look down at the screen, groaning…
…and then I turn it off.
******
Alex Bastien is wrapping a length of duct tape around someone’s neck when we find him inside the abandoned warehouse close to the river. When we were kids, David and I used to come here and read old, faded copies of Penthouse we’d stolen from under the floorboards of our next-door neighbor’s potting shed. I was the one who showed Alex this place. It’s secluded, cut off from the other shipping and freight warehouses down by the water, and also difficult to get to unless you know that you can cut across the cracked, weed-choked, disused UPS airstrip that runs parallel to the river.
Alex looks up from the task at hand, and I see the guy he has tied to the chair in front of him has his hands cuffed behind his back, and a thick plastic bag over her head. The opaque plastic draws in tight around the guy’s head as he sucks in a worthless breath. He cries out, panicked and struggling, and Alex lashes out, bringing the butt of a gun crashing into his captive’s temple.
“I know you fucked her,” he says matter-of-factly when he sees me. He’s not surprised by my presence, it turns out. “I know you screwed her on the hood of that car of hers. I’ve got to say, Tommy, I’m not very happy about that.”
“But when are you ever happy?” I answer.
He rocks his head from side to side, the corners of his mouth pulling down—a “point-well-made” gesture. “If you’re trying to get back at me for marrying your sister, it won’t work. I don’t care about Nikita anymore.”
“I didn’t fuck her because I wanted to get back at you. I did it because she’s beautiful, and I’m attracted to her. And because she asked me to.”
“Fair enough.” Alex holds his gun out, handing it to West, who takes it from him. He picks up the roll of duct tape at his feet and tears off another long piece. Turning to the guy strapped to the chair, he begins to wind it around his neck too.
“Diligence is important,” he states. “Double checking your work, y’know?”
The guy’s face has gone purple through the thick plastic of the bag. He’s taped at the ankles to the chair legs, but his feet begin to kick and stamp at the floor—not the struggling attempts of a man trying to wrestle himself free, but the jerky, spasmodic movements of a man seizing as he dies. I look down at the floor, and there are three dismembered fingers lying there on the bloodstained concrete. They’re all from the guy’s right hand—his thumb, his index and his pinkie.
I suppose when I was a teenager, walking in on a scene like this might have freaked me the fuck out. Believe it or not, there was once a time when I wasn’t desensitized to blood, and murder, and death. It would be easy to say that Alex introduced me to such intense violence and cruelty, but the truth of the matter is that I’d already undergone my baptism of fire years before I met him. Alex was not the man who showed me death for the first time. He was merely its harbinger.
“I see you’re making friends,” I say. “Who is that?”
Alex wipes his cheek with the back of his arm, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. “It’s your cousin Rob,” he says, a little out of breath. “He wouldn’t tell me where Junior is, and you know how it goes. I don’t get what I want, I lose my temper.”
“What the fuck!” I rush forward, shoving him out of the way. I tear at the bag over Rob’s head, but my fingers can’t rip the heavy duty plastic.
“Here. Use this.” Alex holds out a knife—a seriously fucking cruel, serrated one. Its blade is covered in blood. I snatch it from him and cut through the bag as quickly as I can, yanking the plastic away. Rob drags in a desperate, ragged, endless gasp, his back bowing, eyes bulging…
Only it’s not Rob. It’s a guy in his late forties, grey stubble marking his jaw, a dark black blur of a very faded, old tattoo beneath his right eye, which is blue and not brown.
“Haha!” Alex crows. “Just fucking with you. Although someone had better tell me where Junior is soon, otherwise I really will start going after your family members.”
I bend over at the waist, hands braced against my thighs, breathing just as hard as the guy tied to the chair. “Sick fuck! Jesus, Alex.”
“Ah, come on. It was a joke.” He takes hold of the knife I’m still holding, spins it over in his hand, and then he plunged it point first into the guy still sitting on the chair. The poor bastard doesn’t have a chance to even cry out before he’s choking on his own blood, his eyes rolling back into his head. Alex spits in his face as he’s dying—one final, cold, cruel humiliation.
“Who was he?” I ask, only half wanting to know.
Alex pivots on the balls of his feet, facing me. He points the knife at me, smiling. “You should be thanking me actually. This piece of shit called your sister a whore. I was defending her honor.”
A landslide of confusion comes crashing down on me. “You did this for Genevieve?”
“Of course. She’s my wife. She may have her part to play in this grand charade, Tee, but she’s still that. My wife. Insulting her is insulting me. That simple.” The words coming from his mouth sound absolutely mad, but for all intents and purposes he remains calm. I’d forgotten how unnerving he can be at times. The guy on the chair, now very much dead, is fucking staring at me like this is all my fault and I could have prevented this somehow.
“I need my sister back, Alex. You coerced her into marrying you against her will.”
He cocks his head to one side, frowning. “Did I?”
“There’s no way she would have married you if you hadn’t threatened her. Or threatened our lives. She had no choice.”
“Choices. Threats. Needs. Wants. I am so fucking bored of this conversation already. Please go away and don’t come back until you have something interesting to say.”
“You know why you’re doing this, don’t you?” I snap. “You feel fucking guilty over what happened to Serena. You know her death is on you, and you’ve somehow convinced yourself that killing me or making me suffer will somehow make you feel better. It won’t, though. You already know that, too.”
West cringes, baring his teeth. “Oh, shit.” He backs away from the two of us, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to call the clean-up crew. I’m not getting caught in this crossfire.”
Alex is deadly still. His hand is poised in mid-air, frozen, on its way to doing something a moment ago but the action now completely forgotten. “You have the audacity to place blame at my feet for her death? When you were the one told to watch her
?”
I sigh, rubbing my hand over my face. “I’m not going through this with you again. You know in your heart Serena’s death had nothing to do with me. You know it, and I’m sick of running from a crime I didn’t commit. I wasn’t the one who murdered her, Alex. I wasn’t the one who cut her head from her body and had the fucking United States Postal Service deliver it to your doorstep. I loved her just as much as you did. I was just as devastated as you when she was killed.”
“BULLSHIT!” Alex’s shout rings out loud, echoing around the hollowed-out warehouse like a gunshot. “You never loved her.”
“Of course I did. I was around her every day for years. She used to hang out with Genevieve all the time. She was like my sister, too. And you were like a brother.” I hold my hand up, stopping him from interrupting. “We were a family, the Kendricks and the Bastiens. We used to have each other’s backs, and now look at us, still ready to kill each other years later and all because you can’t man up and handle your fucking grief, Alex. God!”
His eyes are shining brightly, his chin raised just a little. He absently touches his fingertips to the collar of his shirt, gently tugging at the material, then he looks away from me. “We were never a family,” he says quietly. “West and Vaughn are my family. The Kendricks always have and always will be the dirt under our boot heels.”
He turns around slowly, and walks away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NIKITA
O’Halloran’s is pumping. A loud Irish fiddle band is playing up on stage, transforming the normally sleepy cop/firefighter bar into a riot of music and laughter. I see Mitch sitting at the bar with Barrows, and I almost decide to turn around and walk back out again. It’s bad enough having to work with Barrows on a daily basis. I sure as hell don’t want to spend any time with him outside the walls of the Parish, when I’m not being paid to tolerate his shitty attitude and his smart mouth. Mitch swivels on his bar stool and sees me, though, and then it’s too late. He’s waving me over and there’s nothing for me to do but go and join them. Shit.
I sit down, and Barrows smirks as he places the beveled rim of his beer bottle to his mouth, taking a swig. He looks like he’s got a very entertaining secret. Mitch nudges me with his elbow, grinning. “What you want? A Coors Lite?”
“A regular Coors is fine.”
“Ohh, look what we have here,” Barrows says, laughing. “Tough girl. Are you sure you can handle a regular beer?”
I give him a stale, unimpressed look. “Shut up, little boy.”
His smile slides right off his face. “You can be a real bitch sometimes, Nikita. You know that?”
“Come on, guys. We’re just here to have a post-work drink and relax, not bicker amongst ourselves. Hey, man, can I get three Coors, please?” Mitch pays the bartender, and the whole time Barrows studiously picks at the label from his now empty bottle, refusing to look at me. Mitch hands me my bottle, holding his own up in the air.
“To really great friends. Right, Nikita?” He’s smiling, but there’s a strange hardness to his eyes when he looks at me. Maybe things aren’t as great between us as he tried to make out earlier on today.
“Right. To really great friends.” I chink my bottle against his, and then against Barrows’s bottle too, though that one takes effort. We’re barely unwilling acquaintances, let alone friends. The band plays on for a couple of songs, making it hard to speak. I finish my first beer, and Mitch gets us another round. Halfway through the second, I’m feeling a little lightheaded. The band eventually stops, and then the three of us sit and chat for a while. Unbelievably, Barrows ends up making me laugh. Mitch offers to get another round in, but I refuse, gathering up my jacket and my purse.
“I told you. Two’s my limit. I have things to take care of at home. And besides, three beers puts me in DUI territory.”
“All right. All right. I’m gonna walk you back to your car, though.” Mitch gives Barrows a loaded look, but my head is really fuzzy. I don’t read into it too much.
Outside, it’s humid and unbearably hot even though the sun went down hours ago. “Where are you parked?” Mitch asks.
I point to the parking lot on the other side of the road, and notice that my hand looks weird. It’s as though there are two of them for a second. “Whoa.” My legs feel kind of weak. Mitch puts his arm around me, taking hold of me.
“Steady there, Nik. I got you. It’s okay.” He helps me across the street, and I begin to realize through the fogginess settling over my brain that something isn’t right. These aren’t the side effects of two beers. I wouldn’t be feeling this unbalanced after six or seven beers. Which means…
I pull my arm free from Mitch’s hold, clearing my throat. “I’m okay from here.”
He huffs down his nose, his eyes narrowing. “No, you’re not, Nikki. You’re obviously drunk. Let me drive you home.”
“It’s okay. I’m going to call a taxi. I don’t want to ruin the rest of your night.” Reaching into my purse, I fish around inside, searching.
“I have your keys,” Mitch says. He holds them up for me to see. “I also have this.” His hand dives into his pocket, and when he pulls it out again he’s holding the small can of pepper spray I always carry with my just in case. Sighing, Mitch takes a step toward me, hanging his head. “I didn’t want it to be like this, Nik. I wanted things between us to be great, y’know? I thought we could…go on vacation together. Live together. Maybe even get married and buy a place together some day. Have kids. But then I find out you’ve been blowing me off? And you went home with that fucking criminal, Kendrick. Fuck, that really made my blood boil, Nikita. You can see where I’m coming from, right?”
Shit. Even with my body compromised, my mind so clearly drugged, I recognize that the man standing in front of me is about to get aggressive. “Mitch, give me my keys. Give me back my keys and go home. We won’t ever talk about this again.”
“That’s your go-to, huh, Nik? Let’s just not talk about it? Not unless we really, absolutely have to. And then you blow me off like I’m some seedy high school pervert loitering around the girl’s locker rooms, waiting to catch a glimpse of you naked or something. Well, I’m not. I’m a fucking catch, Nikita. I have women falling over themselves to sleep with me. But not you. You’re too damn good for me. You think you’re something special.” He hits a button on my car keys, and my car unlocks, lights flashing, the alarm beeping. “Get in the car, Nikita.”
“No. God, Mitch, what the hell is wrong with you?” I turn around, ready to try and weave my way back to the bar, but I slam straight into something…someone…and I reel backward. Barrows laughs, the sound echoing around the abandoned parking lot.
“Jesus, Mitch. You were right. That stuff works quick. Is she going to lose consciousness?”
“No. I didn’t give her that much. Where would the fun in that be? I want her awake for this.”
A little known fact about rape: it is not a crime of love. It’s a hate crime. It’s an act to belittle someone, to hurt them in the most intimate, humiliating, and embarrassing way possible. I already know this is what Mitch intends for me. Not only that, but he’s invited Barrows along for the ride. “You can’t... You won’t…” I say, slurring. My head is starting to spin like crazy.
“Oh, we can,” Barrows says, taking hold of me by the arms. “We really motherfucking will.”
******
TOMMY
The house sits in darkness. I sit inside the dark house, turning my cell phone over and over in my hands, waiting. Even after the day I’ve had, she’s been there, hovering at the back of my mind like a ghost, demanding my attention. The slope of her neck. The curve of her tits. The pale pink, fragile coloring of her perfect fucking nipples. The taste of her pussy on my tongue. Fuck. She’s going to get a shock when she comes home to find me lurking here in the shadows, but so fucking what? I know she’s been thinking about me, too. It’s impossible that she hasn’t. If there’s anything in this life I can be sure of, it’s that a woman
is thinking about me the day after I fuck her.
I wait.
David calls, but I don’t answer. I text him instead, keeping it brief.
I’m alive. Can’t talk now. Everything’s okay. I’ll be back at the house later.
He’s going to be furious that I let West give him the dust off before. He’s going to be even more pissed that I went to see Alex without him. West was right, though. David does tend to run his mouth in tense situations. It was better that I saw him by myself, even if the whole meeting was a waste of time.
Nikita pulls into her driveway at around nine thirty. Pretty late to be getting back from work, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve used my time sitting in the dark well. I now have a number of reasons for us to keep seeing each other, all of them valid, all of them irrefutable. A key turns in the lock. I get up from my seat and walk toward the door, ready to let her know I’m here immediately. I don’t want to surprise her and have her fucking shoot me with her—
What the fuck?
My mind goes blank.
A guy hurries inside the house, a guy I don’t know, and then Mitch Davis, the C.O. from the prison hurries in after him. Nikita is slung over his shoulder, lifeless, like a ragdoll. Mitch sees me first, and his eyes grow wide.
