by Bryan Smith
She put the shotgun in the back of the truck and returned to where Billy lay bleeding in the street. He held up his good arm when he saw she was aiming the gun at him, his eyes brimming with tears as he begged for his life.
Still conscious of the need to act with ruthless efficiency, Jessica nonetheless took an additional moment to further weigh her limited options. Killing him now would be the simplest solution. It would allow her to work faster, among many other advantages. But there was still a potential upside to holding a hostage. He could be used as a bargaining chip under circumstances. Or as a human shield.
Billy sniffled. “Please don’t kill me. Please…”
Jessica took a closer look at his wounded arm. “You’re lucky. That’s a through and through wound.”
His face contorted in pain. “What does that mean?”
“The bullet passed all the way through your bicep. It’s not inside you. That would be worse.”
“But you’re gonna kill me anyway, right?”
“Depends.”
Billy grimaced. “On what?”
“On whether you can behave. That means no more escape attempts and no more being stupid. Because being stupid again will get you killed. You need to understand that you can’t outsmart me and you can’t overpower me. Can you accept that or do I need to put a bullet through your head?”
“What choice do I have?”
Jessica knelt next to him and placed the suppressor against his forehead. “That’s not the subservient tone I was hoping to hear.”
Billy’s voice rose in pitch and his breathing quickened. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Shit, I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you say, I promise! Please don’t kill me.”
Jessica slapped her free hand into his upraised one and said, “You’re getting up now.”
Billy’s eyes got big. He wasn’t ready for that. “Wait--”
Jessica didn’t wait.
She surged to a standing position, hauling the wounded man to his feet. He cried out and sagged against her for support. Jessica jabbed the gun against his abdomen and made him back away. He stood trembling in the middle of the street, his wounded arm held limply at his side.
“There’s a drugstore up the street.” She tilted her chin in the direction of the CVS, which was at the far end of the block. “We’ll break in and see if there’s anything we can scavenge to take care of that wound. But first we need to get the dead meat out of the street.”
Billy frowned as he glanced at the dead man. “Shit. He’s a big bastard.”
“I know. That’s why I need your help.” Jessica stowed the gun in the truck and approached the corpse, smiling at Billy’s puzzled expression. “Trust me, I’m just as dangerous with my bare hands.”
:”I believe you.”
“Good. Now get over here.”
Using only his good arm, Billy took hold of one of the dead man’s wrists. Jessica got a good grip on the other one using both her hands. Working together, they managed to drag the body out of the street and down a narrow alley between a gas station and a shuttered beer joint, where they then managed to wedge it behind a Dumpster. Billy was breathing hard and his face was bright red by the time this task was completed.
An impulse to snap his neck and leave him where he fell came and went. It was what her father would have advised. She didn’t do it at least in part because of the reasons she had already considered. But there was one more factor involved. Billy was young and good-looking, albeit in a slightly scruffy way.
She wanted to do things to him—whether he wanted them done or not. There was a time when she would have been horrified just to have entertained such a thought. The memory of being raped by Hoke, a deceptively charming Nashville session musician, was never too far from her mind. But she’d changed so much—and endured so much—in the years since then that she was, in many ways, no longer the person she’d once been. She had a darker, coarser personality, one that did not immediately reject formerly repulsive notions.
Also, she hadn’t been properly laid in months, which by her usual standard felt like a lifetime. On top of that, all the excitement of the day had her riled up. Violent conflict got her hormones roiling like nothing else, another thing she’d discovered during her first adventure in Hopkins Bend.
But now wasn’t the time to have her way with him. There was too much to do. The look on Billy’s face told Jessica he sensed some of her thoughts, though likely not all of them. After another moment’s hesitation, she lead him out of the alley.
They drove the cruiser back to the sheriff’s office and parked it in the rear lot, leaving it where anyone who came looking for the dead man might reasonably expect to find it. After confiscating a few possibly useful items from the cruiser—including a pair of handcuffs and some more ammo for the shotgun—they returned to the truck on foot.
Sweat was running in rivulets from Billy’s brow by the time they reached the truck. He had held up well through all that she’d asked of him, but the pain was becoming too much. Jessica drove them over to the CVS and parked at the back of the building. The rear entrance was chained and padlocked.
Billy whimpered. “Shit.”
Jessica retrieved her purse from the floor and rooted through its contents until she found a vial of pills. She set the pills on the dash. Some more rooting around produced a half-pint bottle of Popov vodka. The bottle was full, its seal unbroken. She had a dim memory of acquiring it the night before during a stop at a liquor store with Zelda and the doomed fat man. The memory of the beautiful assassin gave her a chill.
The deadly bitch was still out there somewhere, probably on the hunt.
Jessica shook two pills out of the vial and dropped them in Billy’s hand. “Take those.” She twisted the vodka bottle’s cap, breaking the seal. “Wash them down with this.”
Billy’s expression was wary. “What am I taking?”
“Oxycodone.”
Billy popped the pills in his mouth and washed them down with two big gulps of vodka. He flinched when Jessica started plucking open the buttons of his shirt. “Whoa. Wait. What are you doing?”
“I may not be able to get into this building. Even if I can, there’s no guarantee I’ll find what we need, so I’m rendering first aid with what we have, which isn’t much.” Jessica kept working at the buttons as she talked. “I need a closer look at this wound, so the shirt has to come off.”
Billy seemed to understand and helped by shrugging his shoulders out of the blood-stained blue work shirt, cringing and crying out as she tugged it away from his body. Jessica couldn’t blame him. The exit wound looked nasty, a mass of shredded meat that was still leaking blood.
She splayed a hand against his stomach, gently probing the taut musculature of his abdomen with her fingertips. “You have a nice body.”
Billy gaped at her. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you? I’m in serious fucking pain here. I thought you were gonna help me.”
“In my experience, fucking the pain away works about as well as anything else.”
Billy laughed. “Girl, you’ve lost your damn mind. It’s taking all I’ve got not to scream like a baby. I’m pretty sure fucking ain’t gonna help. And anyway, I’ve got a girlfriend.”
Jessica gave him a challenging look. “So? That’s never stopped me before.”
Billy’s expression turned fiercely defiant. “I’m no cheater.”
“We’ll see about that. I’m also pretty good at taking what I want. But we’ll come back to that later. In the meantime…”
Using a pocketknife from her purse, Jessica cut strips from the relatively clean parts of Billy’s shirt to use as makeshift swabs and bandages. She doused one of the larger pieces in vodka and used it to disinfect the entry and exit wounds. Billy was squirming and tears were leaking from his eyes by the time she wrapped up the wound. Jessica gave him two more of the Oxycodones and he washed them down with several more big gulps of vodka.
Jessica picked up the gun.
Billy s
ucked in a breath and shrank back against the door. “No!”
“Relax, I’m not gonna shoot you.” She cocked an eyebrow in a meaningful way as she took the keys from the truck’s ignition. “Not yet. Though if I were you I’d cut down on the attitude. I already warned you about that. Next time you don’t get a warning.”
Jessica used the handcuffs she’d liberated from the Sheriff’s cruiser to fasten Billy to the steering wheel. He wasn’t likely to go anywhere, but Jessica figured a little insurance couldn’t hurt. She got out of the truck and looked in at him through the open window. “I’ll see what I can do about getting into this place. You got a crowbar or anything else that might be of use?”
Billy nodded.
A quick search of the truck bed turned up the crowbar. It had some serious heft to it. She hopped out of the back of the truck and turned her attention to the drugstore’s rear entrance. The rusted padlock yielded to a single bullet from Jessica’s gun. She went to work with the crowbar after pulling the chain away from the door handle and tossing it aside. Getting the door open required some significant exertion, but she finally broke the interior lock. The door came open with a groan of metal.
Jessica poked her head inside.
A trash-strewn hallway led away into darkness. Her nostrils twitched. Something smelled bad in here. It was a smell of decay. Something was dead inside the CVS, but the odor wasn’t strong enough to be from anything recent. After staring into the darkness for a few moments, Jessica went back to the truck for a flashlight. Once she verified the flashlight was working, she entered the store.
After a last brief hesitation, she moved farther into the hallway and the death smell got stronger as the darkness deepened.
13.
Getting the chair situated beneath her took more doing than Daphne anticipated. The dead girl’s slide to the floor had caused it to scoot backward some. She was able to hook a big toe beneath the edge of the chair and begin to drag it forward, but one of its legs got hung up on the heel of the Lexus’s outstretched foot. This necessitated having to swing herself back and forth a few times. With each forward swing, she would try to nudge the chair back a little and then try to drag it a few inches to the right. This wasn’t easy, because she had to be careful not to kick the chair out of range.
She was eventually able to get the chair clear of Lexus, but in the process she had turned it so that it was facing her at an angle and had moved it just far enough that it was almost out of reach after all. But with a loud grunt of exertion, she was able to swing herself far enough forward to hook her big toe under the nearest corner of the chair. It began to skitter rapidly forward on the backswing, but there was yet another complication as it began to fold in on itself. Daphne jerked her foot away with a squeak of dismay, narrowly averting catastrophe.
Kate grunted. “I don’t get why you’re trying so hard. That chair won’t get you out of here and you’re still gonna be hanging from a chain.”
Daphne flexed her back and shoulder muscles and swung herself forward with slightly less force this time. She was able to put a foot on the chair’s seat and push it down flat again. Then with one more swing and drag she was able to get it centered beneath her, at which point she was able to stand on it. She sighed in relief. “This is why I was trying so hard.”
Her feet weren’t quite flat on the chair—her heels were about an inch above the seat—but she was able to stand using her toes and forefoot muscles. This created some tension in her calves that might later lead to some soreness, but for now the dramatically reduced stress to her shoulders and arms made for an acceptable tradeoff.
“How nice for you.”
Daphne heard envy and even a bit of bitterness in Kate’s voice. On one level, this was understandable. The woman had been here several days longer and deserved some kind of relief from her suffering. But Daphne felt only the smallest twinge of guilt at knowing how glad she was that she was the one who had the chair and not her sister in captivity.
I’m a selfish bitch and I always have been. So be it.
But she also didn’t want to alienate the one ally she had in this nightmare. “I’m sorry, Kate. I wish I could do something for you.”
“You can kick that chair over here. How about that?”
Daphne didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought. Selfish bitch.”
This echo of her thoughts sparked anger in Daphne. “I earned this fucking chair.” She glared at the other woman, her rage as she turned toward Kate causing the chair to wobble beneath her. “That bitch molested me and then I killed her. You think I don’t deserve something for that?”
Kate laughed. “Oh, she molested you? All I saw was a little foot worship. Big deal.”
Daphne’s rage intensified and she was right on the edge of firing back at Kate when she realized what a useless waste of energy this was. She had the prize she had fought so hard to acquire, meager though it was, and it was too easy to imagine throwing it away in a fit of fury. So she closed her eyes and willed her racing heart to slow.
An ensuing silence stretched out for several uneasy minutes. It was punctuated only by the low humming of appliances and the occasional creaking of the beam overhead. This period lasted long enough for Daphne’s thoughts to grow fuzzy and begin to slip toward unconsciousness, a thing she hadn’t imagined possible a short while ago. She kept her eyes closed and relaxed as the mental fog thickened. An increasingly faint voice at the back of her head insisted she should remain awake and scheming, but this voice was easy to ignore in light of the overwhelming evidence that there was no way out of her predicament.
Her eyes snapped open when she heard the sobbing.
Daphne turned her head and saw Kate’s chest moving with the hitching of her breath. The woman sniffled and looked her way when she sensed the scrutiny. “I’m s-sorry, Daphne. I shouldn’t have been so rude. I’m just…so, so desperate.”
She tried to go on but her voice broke and she was unable to continue.
Daphne felt a twinge of compassion. Selfish she undeniably was, but she wasn’t inhuman. “Maybe we could share the chair.”
There was a note of pitiful hopefulness in Kate’s voice when she said, “Really?”
“Yeah, we could take turns with it. I’ll use it another fifteen minutes, maybe, and then I’ll try sliding it your way.”
This prompted more tears from Kate, along with effusive professions of gratitude and additional apologies for her earlier behavior.
Hearing the woman’s monumental relief made Daphne feel good about herself, a rare thing despite her lifetime of self-love. “We’ll take half hour turns, okay? Give or take. That sound good to you?”
“Yes. Thank you. Only…do you think I could have my first turn now? I know you said you wanted a few more minutes, but my arms hurt so fucking much. Please?”
Daphne shrugged away a queasy pang of regret. She didn’t want to do this. Not really. And if she’d hesitated even a little longer, she might have reneged on the offer. But that didn’t happen. “Okay. We need to be careful sliding the chair back and forth. It could get knocked over or folded up real easy.”
With a last regretful sigh, she lifted her feet off the seat and maneuvered them into position to begin pushing the chair. She moved it only a few inches over at first and for a moment one of the legs got stuck on an uneven ridge in the concrete floor. But she rotated her pelvis and pushed harder. The chair’s legs bounced over the little ridge as it shot a few feet in Kate’s direction.
“Think you can reach it now?”
Kate twisted a hip and extended a leg toward the chair, her face contorting with the strain. “It’s too far.”
Daphne had been watching her closely and now had a deeper sense of how much Kate’s ordeal had weakened her. Her foot had been shaking uncontrollably while extended. Seeing this deepened the reluctant sympathy she felt for the woman even as it caused more second thoughts.
Still time to change my mind.
&nbs
p; The chair would be out of range if she gave it just one more nudge in Kate’s direction. Right now she could likely just manage to swing herself over, hook a foot beneath the chair back, and drag it back into position beneath her. What stopped her was Kate’s ceaseless sobbing. Daphne had never heard anything quite like it. It was how she imagined a condemned person might sound in her last moments before being taken to the execution chamber.
Fuck.
Daphne rotated her lower body again and swung herself toward the chair as hard as she could manage. Her foot connected with the back of the chair and sent it sliding toward Kate again. This time it came to a stop almost directly beneath the other woman. Kate set her feet down on the seat and cried out in joyous relief.
Daphne heard a loud crack as she went into a twisting backswing. She gasped in surprise and turned her face upward. Hearing this made her wonder how strong the beam that supported the pulley-suspension system really was. It was as thick as a utility pole and was supported at either end by posts of a roughly equivalent girth. The lack of an additional support beam in the middle struck her as an obvious flaw. Over time even a piece of timber as apparently sturdy as the one overhead might weaken to the point of splintering without sufficient support. Years or decades of stress caused by holding up footless whales like the guy hanging on the other side of Kate would take a significant toll..
She might be able to hasten the splintering process by swinging back and forth as hard as she could. The prospect stirred some tentative excitement in her, but this was tempered by the knowledge that she couldn’t be the first person imprisoned here to ever think of this idea.
But it was still worth a shot.
Before she could begin the experiment, Daphne realized Kate’s sobbing had given way to quiet laughter.
