Mystery : The Killer - Blood and guts: (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller, Murder) (ADDITIONAL BOOK INCLUDED ) (Suspense Thriller Mystery, Serial Killer, crime)

by Matt Troy

  Mystery:

  The Killer:

  Blood and Guts

  Matt Troy

  2

  Copyright © 2016 Matt troy

  All rights reserved.

  Table Of Content

  Copyright

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter3

  Free Book

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  Copyright 2016

  All Right Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Summary

  Muttering under my breath about the unfairness of being me, I rose slowly to my feet and after one last pointed glare at the occupants of the booth, made my way to where the dark-haired young man was sitting, staring moodily into a coffee. Even from here, I had to admit the guy was more than capable of pulling off the look. His features had a sculpted kind of perfection to them that nevertheless seemed a far cry from the stereotypical square-jawed, broad-shouldered Quarterback that so many people seemed enamoured with. More Johnny Depp than Brad Pitt, I guess. Wondering just why I was spending so much damn time dwelling on the guy's appearance, I got a grip on myself and slid onto the empty stool next to him. Not having a single clue what to do next, I decided to just turn to him with my most appealing smile.

  Blood and Guts

  Chapter 1

  Half-past nine saw us piled around a corner table, trying to make sense of the situation while avoiding eye-contact with the waitress who kept looking over at us expectantly. Deciding to cut right to the heart of the matter, I looked at my friends in the vain hope that somebody would be less traumatised by what was going on than I was. "Putting aside the question of where we are and how we got here, how the fuck are we supposed to manage in the States without any of our stuff? Does anybody even have a credit card?"

  "I've got a Switch card," Keiran offered and the twins nodded in agreement.

  I leant back against the booth's padding and sighed. "Debit cards don't work over here. It has to be credit." Not for the first time I cursed my parents for not allowing me a credit card. If they'd only forgiven me for that one little incident involving Amazon and shown a little trust, we could all be flying home right now. Or something. A thought occurred to me and I looked over at Matt who had yet to say anything. "Matt, didn't you turn 18 a few weeks ago? Managed to get a hold of a Visa or something yet?"

  Looking very uncomfortable, Matt nodded reluctantly. "But my parents said it was for emergencies only," he cautioned.

  I opened my mouth to form a suitably sarcastic reply, but Keiran beat me to it. "We're apparently stranded in the middle of a foreign country with no means of either supporting ourselves or getting back home. If that's not a fucking emergency, what is?"

  Matt blushed and reached into his back pocket. "Point duly noted," he muttered as he brought his wallet out and opened it. Our collected intake of breath caused the waitress to look over at us with another frown.

  "Jesus," Carly managed to croak out in a strangled voice. "Where the fuck did you get that from?"

  Looking equally puzzled, Matt began to pull the thick pile of green bills out of his wallet, but I pounced on him. "What are you doing? You'll get mugged or something! Put it away!"

  From her boyfriend's side, Kate frowned at me in disapproval. "Blake, for that to happen there would need to be someone nearby to mug us. And stop with the hissy fit, back home was probably more crime ridden than this neighbourhood."

  I slumped back and silently was forced to agree with the blonde. Everything about the area we were currently in seemed to reek of that wholesomeness normally confined to Dawson's Creek and other assorted imported shows featured overly verbose teenagers. There wasn't even a scrap of litter on the streets outside- let alone drug pushers and other assorted lowlifes. "I feel so out of place," I whimpered quietly. "It's so clean here. And sunny. And warm."

  "Shall we find a nice gloomy corner for you to mope in?" Kate demanded with an unusual touch of impatience. "Maybe go out and do a rain dance or two?"

  I refused to rise to the bait. "Might help," I muttered, sinking further into my seat. Another thought occurred to me and I groaned loudly. "Shit, don't they have really fucked up drinking laws out here? Like, you have to be collecting a pension or something before they even give you a drop?"

  Carly winked at me. "Now the lush is getting worried. Drinking age out here isn't 18, sweetie. You're going to have to wait until you're 21."

  "What about with a meal? Don't they do that whole glass with a meal loophole here?"

  Keiran shrugged. "You're welcome to try, but if you want my advice, get used to coke. Without the vodka."

  The waitress finally made her way over to our table, having obviously decided to force us to order something or kick us out. "Hey kids," she greeted in a cheerful tone of voice that really drove home how far away we were from London. "What'll it be?"

  "Umm," I tried to think of something, but my brain couldn't get over the fact that she was actually smiling at us. And making eye contact. "Could I get a coffee?"

  "Coffee sounds good," Keiran agreed.

  "Yeah, I think we'll all grab a coffee," Carly decided.

  "And maybe some chi-uh fries to share," Matt added.

  The waitress jotted down out order and gave us another friendly grin. "Those are some cute accents you got there," she commented. "You kids from England?"

  There wasn't much we could say to that. "Uh, yeah. That's right," Kate mumbled.

  Our waitress nodded and shoved her pencil behind her ear. "I'm guessing you'll be relations of Miss Swann. She invites you out here?"

  Keiran leapt in before I could ask who Miss Swann was supposed to be. "It's more of a surprise trip. No one's supposed to know we're here just yet."

  "Well in that case, your secret's safe with me. Your fries won't be long and I'll bring the coffee right over."

  We watched her wander back to the counter and all released the breaths we'd been holding. Kate plastered a smile on her face that wasn't convincing anybody. "Well, that went well, right?"

  I raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Hardly. We haven't been kicked out of the country yet, but we still have no idea what we're doing here or how we even arrived in the first place. This is something we could have learnt if someone hadn’t been so eager to get the waitress to leave."

  Keiran glared at me from his spot across the table. "Grow up. If I'd said anything else she probably would have started asking questions that we couldn't answer. Like why we're not having breakfast with this Miss Swann or where we know her from."

  "Keiran has a point," Matt conceded. "We need to play things by ear for a while, see if we can work out where we fit in to this whole mess."

  "I keep expecting some film crew to show up and tell us to get the hell off their set," Carly observed, having seemingly abandoned concern to the rest of us. "This place just doesn't feel real."

  "The money's real, I hope," Matt muttered. "Otherwise this is all going to go horribly wrong very quickly."

  "Thanks for the optimism," Keiran sighed.

  Showing an efficie
ncy to rival her enthusiasm, our waitress reappeared at that moment and proceeded to serve us all with hot, black coffee. Leaving us with some milk and sugar, she bustled back off. I hunched over my drink and after swallowing about half the beverage in the long swallow of the terminally addicted, felt more prepared to show some backbone. Looking around at my friends I cleared my throat and pushed my hair determinedly out of my eyes. "Right. Let's try and piece together what we know and see if it starts making sense. Starting from what we've discovered this morning, we appear to be in America. I'm guessing we're in some quiet suburb, district or small town due to the whole niceness of the place. For some reason, we appear to have cash – a lot of it and there's another Brit in town. A Miss Swann." I paused and looked around the table. "Is there anyone here who doesn't think finding out a bit about this bird could help us?"

  Keiran raised an eyebrow as he sipped at his own drink. "How? You going to get down on your knees and pray for some solidarity between Brits abroad?"

  "We don't need to go charging directly up to her," Carly mused, idly stirring sugar into her drink in quantities that made me wince. "We could just find out a bit about her. Who she is, where she works … that kind of thing. Then if it seems like she could help us, we can make ourselves known."

  "At the very least it'll give us something to do," Kate reflected. "Other than worrying about how to get home."

  "You're still overlooking the fact that none of us even know where we are," I felt the need to point out.

  Carly smiled at me and gave my shins a swift kick. Quite a painful experience when the girl in question has a fondness for steel-capped biker boots. Unconcerned with my intense expression of agony, the evil blonde continued drinking that sugared caffeine in such a way that made me really anxious to hide before the stimulants kicked in. "Seeing as Blake is so annoyed about us passing up the opportunity to find stuff out earlier, why don't we get the boy to see if he can subtly charm some details from our waitress."

  Matt snorted with laughter. "Subtle? Blake? Oh god, we're going to get thrown in jail."

  I scowled at the lack of faith I was seeing in my consummate charming skills and turned to wait for the waitress expectantly. "Laugh it up," I muttered. "I can do small talk."

  The waitress chose that moment to show up with a basket full of French fries and I decided to put my skills to the test. "This coffee's fantastic," I chose as my opening gambit. "That motel we're staying in only has terrible instant stuff."

  The waitress blinked. "You're not staying up at the house? Is this to do with the surprise visit?"

  I grinned and tried to look bashful. From the expression on my friends' faces I wasn't doing to well, but fuck them. I'd like to see any of them try and get us out of this situation. "You got it," I admitted with a wink, trying to ignore what sounded suspiciously like a groan from Keiran. "Can't go giving away our arrival." I allowed myself to pause for a moment, as though suddenly thinking of an idea. "Hey, you wouldn't be able to help us out a little would you?"

  Our waitress looked doubtful. "I don't really have much to do with the Norringtons…"

  I hurriedly cut her off with a reassuring smile. "Oh no! I just wondered if you had any idea where we would be best surprising Miss Swann … as you've probably guessed, we don't really know the area at all well."

  "Oh sure, hun." The waitress didn't seem to notice the round of stifled giggles that particular moniker provoked in my friends. "Well I guess she'll be mainly dotting around town today with the wedding preparations so just head down about a block or so and you'll reach Main Street. That's probably your best bet." With another smile at the group she turned to greet a young man who had just entered.

  I watched her leave with something close to disbelief. "How can someone be so …" I struggled for a word, "perky?" I turned to face the others and noticed I was being stared at as if I'd grown another head. "Well it's not natural," I defended.

  Carly rolled her eyes and smacked me upside the head. "Idiot, weren't you even paying attention while you were kissing up?"

  I glared at the girl as I rubbed my head and tried not to pout. "Yeah, this Swann lady is getting hitched to some Norrington guy with a lot of money and a big house."

  Carly widened her eyes and made encouraging gestures. "And? Come on, think!"

  "What? What are you all so worked up about?" I thought occurred to me and I narrowed my eyes at the group. "You guys are all thinking of that trashy novel from last night, aren't you? So what? It doesn't mean anything, this is just a coincidence!"

  "It's the only thing I can think of that ties us into our current surroundings at all," Matt reflected with a sigh and Kate nodded from her position beside him.

  I gawped for a lack of anything better to do. "Well yeah, there are some similarities, but … Come on! How does a book explain how we got here and - more importantly - how we get back home?"

  As the others considered my words, I noted Kate's attention slide to the other diner in the place. Her eyes widened momentarily and she reached out to tug at her boyfriend's sleeve. Matt was jolted out of his absent-minded eating and turned to look at her in concern. "What?"

  "Things have just got seriously fucked up," Kate said and we all blinked at her rare use of expletives. "Take a look at the other guy in the diner."

  Disregarding any thoughts of subtlety, we all turned and craned our necks at the figure who sat hunched over the counter. It appeared to be a guy of around our age, maybe a bit older. He was wearing a leather jacket and torn jeans, and seemed to have a relatively slim build. A dark head of hair was just visible and what looked like a ponytail brushed against the collar of the jacket. After a good stare, we all turned back to face Kate. Keiran was the first to speak.

  "It's some random James Dean-style biker boy. What's so weird about that?"

  Chapter2

  Kate shook her head and leaned forward, dropping her voice as though afraid people would hear. "I saw his face as he came in. It's that guy from the book last night. You know, the delinquent younger brother!"

  I racked my brains searching for the name. "Callum? Aren't you getting a little obsessed?"

  Kate glared at me. "I was the one bloody reading his part last night and I'm telling you, that's him!"

  I matched her stare head on. "And I'm telling you, you're wrong."

  Carly sighed. "Well there's one way of solving this. Someone go up and talk to him."

  All eyes turned to me, but I wasn't going to give in so easily. "What? Why me?"

  Carly grinned at me and made to shoo me away. "Just go up there and bat your pretty little eyes at him. He'll be putty in your hands."

  "Wha… what are you trying to imply?"

  "Blake!" Keiran gave me a warning glare. "Just move your arse and go and talk to him!"

  Muttering under my breath about the unfairness of being me, I rose slowly to my feet and after one last pointed glare at the occupants of the booth, made my way to where the dark-haired young man was sitting, staring moodily into a coffee. Even from here, I had to admit the guy was more than capable of pulling off the look. His features had a sculpted kind of perfection to them that nevertheless seemed a far cry from the stereotypical square-jawed, broad-shouldered Quarterback that so many people seemed enamoured with. More Johnny Depp than Brad Pitt, I guess.

  Wondering just why I was spending so much damn time dwelling on the guy's appearance, I got a grip on myself and slid onto the empty stool next to him. Not having a single clue what to do next, I decided to just turn to him with my most appealing smile. "This is going to sound so incredibly cliché, but do I know you from somewhere?"

  A quick glance was my only indication that the guy was even aware of my presence as he slowly raised his cup and drank some coffee. Replacing it on the counter, he spoke without even looking in my direction. "You're right."

  I felt I'd missed something. "Eh?" Oh how articulate I am. What a charmer.

  I still didn't merit anything more than that initial, cursory flicker o
f his eyes as the guy continued to focus intently on his drink. "You do sound incredibly cliché. Get some new material."

  The smile from earlier was abruptly replaced with one of my more indignant scowls. "That wasn't a chat-up line. Do I look like I'd be interested in you?"

  Ah, I finally got the guy to turn slightly in my direction, revealing a pair of eyes so dark, it was hard to tell pupil from iris. "You look like you'd be interested in anything with a pulse," he commented.

  I forced myself to keep calm, but even constantly repeating to myself the fact that this guy was obviously trying to get a rise out of me wasn't helping control my temper. "Perhaps you shouldn't go around putting everyone in the same category as yourself," I managed. "All I wanted to know was your name."

  One corner of the youth's mouth curved upwards into a humourless smile. In a fluid gesture, he tipped the last of his coffee down his throat and rose from the stool. "Whistle for it."

  Standing up as well, I glared as the teenager unconcernedly pulled some dollars from his back pocket and left them on the counter. "I'm sorry, I don't speak fluent dickhead," I sneered. "What was that in English?"

  The guy paused and glanced at me again out of the corner of his eyes and I could almost swear the bastard winked at me. "Learn dickhead then." Without another word or glance, he sauntered out of the diner.

  I stood rooted to the spot, fuming to myself when I became aware of someone standing by my shoulder. Trying to get my expression under control, I turned to see the waitress looking at me sympathetically. "Don't take it so personal, hun. Callum's like that to everyone. I'm sure a nice boy like yourself shouldn't have any trouble meeting people here."

  Gradually her words began to penetrate my brain. "What did you say his name was again?"

  The waitress looked surprised. "I'd have thought with you knowing Naomi Swann, you'd be acquainted with her future family by now. That's her future brother-in-law Callum Norrington."