***
Finished, Travis set the needle aside. The tattoo now read “rationem IIII.” He shined the flashlight on it and showed it to Tucker.
“What do you think, Daddy?” he said. “Fourth mark look straight to you?” He turned his forearm over, studied his work, then nodded in approval. “Looks fine. And in case you haven’t figured it out just yet, this last one here?”—he pointed to the mark he’d just made—“That’s you. It’s a tally mark, Daddy—you being number four. First three were the sons of bitches at Hattenworth who made my life particularly difficult during my stay. Caught up with them in the swamp, of all places. Now that I did enjoy. Took much, much pride in that one.”
He stood. Waved the flashlight all around the dark library. The beam illuminated brief glances of Travis’s aftermath: Johnson; one of the other CO’s legs poking out from behind a bookshelf; a blood spatter on a row of books.
“Hell of a mess,” Travis said. “I’d say they’d have themselves some explaining to do come morning, but it looks to me like they might be taking themselves a personal day.” He smiled. “Even shut the cameras off in here to cover their asses, the dumb sons of bitches. All they did was make it easier for me.” He waved the flashlight over the aftermath again. “Should be interesting to see how the news folk eventually spin it. I mean, they can’t really pin anything on you, can they, Daddy? What with you all tied up like this?” He paused a moment. “I suppose I could untie you. Let them hold you accountable. Three COs drag you down here for some fun, and you go and turn the tables. Doubt you’d even get any legal bother, it being self-defense and all… And of course them being dead as hell and unable to testify to nothing. Inmates sure would respect the hell out of you. More so.”
Travis squatted next to his father and placed a hand on him. “I’m curious, Daddy: If I cut you free, would you go about donning my hat? Seek a reckoning of your own for what I just done to you?”
No frown from Tucker this time. Naked, bleeding, bound, he stared at his son with a face that held no discernable read.
“What if I told you I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, Daddy?” Travis said. “Not about forgiveness—no. I do forgive you. You already know what this was about. You had a bill past due that needed paying. And now you paid it.”
He stood, rubbed the back of his neck, and groaned like a man rolling out of bed. “The thing I wasn’t so truthful about was my tattoo. It’s not finished. You see, I’m fixing to make a diagonal slash through these four—” He held out his forearm and used a finger to mime his words. “Make it a tidy five.”
Now Tucker frowned again.
“Who you think that fifth one is, Daddy? One of the Daigle boys? The father or the daughter from up north that got away from you…?” He paused, casually looked around the library before placing his gaze back down on Tucker. “Harlon?”
Tucker’s eyes went wide. He mumbled something into his gag.
“You heard me right. I did all kinds of digging after I left Hattenworth, Daddy. I’d love to stay here and tell you about every last bit I dug, but I’m sure you understand I’d be pressing my luck for time. Suffice it to say, Harlon is alive, and he’s got a visit coming his way.”
Travis shined the flashlight on Johnson’s corpse. “Don’t suppose you’d be up for putting on his uniform and strolling out with me? The two of us meeting up with Harlon? Father and son?” He brandished his forearm again, the tattoo. “Hell, something that grand would be worth ten slashes, wouldn’t you say?”
Tucker nodded. He did not mumble into his gag this time. He didn’t need to. His eyes projected a desire louder than any voice could.
Travis smiled. “Figured you might. I do love you so, Daddy.” He rolled his father onto his back as best he could, given his binds. “Now, hold still.” He brandished the knife. “Look me in the eye.”
Tucker did.
Travis set the knife aside and choked his father to death with his bare hands. They never broke eye contact the entire time.
Afterwards, Travis cut and pocketed his father’s binds, then placed the knife in his hand.
***
Travis Roy left Clarke Correctional Institution the way he’d entered—without bother. A “fellow CO” even waved to him on his way out.
Time to see Harlon.
Chapter 13
South Florida
Miami
It was past midnight. Everyone was drunk and paired up: Stacey in Bryan’s lap by a small high table in the corner of the club; Leigh and Tommy seated next to one another at the bar; and Mick and Morgan on the dance floor, periodically trying their hand at moves they had no business trying even in a sober state, inevitably falling into each other, giggling, righting themselves, smooching, and then trying again.
Stacey shifted her weight on Bryan’s lap. He groaned.
“Am I too heavy?” she asked.
He pulled a face. “You think I’m taking that bait?”
She laughed and bounced on his lap. He groaned again. “You are, however, crushing my nuts,” he said. He budged her an inch to the left. “Much better.”
Stacey laughed again, leaned in, and kissed him. She stayed close when their lips parted, nose to nose. Her dark eyes, glassy and drooped from booze, looked into his adoringly.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Tell you what?”
“You know.”
“As long as we’re on this Earth,” he said.
“Tell me the whole thing.”
He caressed her cheek. “As long as we’re on this Earth, we will always be together. Don’t pinch my nipple.”
Stacey burst out laughing, nearly falling off his lap. Years ago, Bryan had expressed to her how perfect they were for one another by saying that as long as the two of them were on this Earth, they would always be together. Stacey had swooned, loving it, and since then he repeated it often.
Not long ago, lying naked after sex, her drawing absently on his chest with a few fingers, she’d asked him to say it. And he did—just as Stacey was fiddling with one of his nipples, seemingly about to pinch like a cat often nips while purring. And so “As long as we’re on this Earth, we will always be together” occasionally became “As long as we’re on this Earth, we will always be together. Don’t pinch my nipple.”
They kissed again. Bryan brushed an errant lock of her hair out of her eyes and said: “Have I told you how proud of you I am?”
She smiled, the small, candle-shaped light on their table reflecting in both eyes. “Yes.”
“I really am, honey. You’ve worked so hard, overcome so much. I am so, so proud of you.”
She kissed him. “Thank you, baby. You have no idea how much your support means to me. I know it’s not fair to say something like this, as it puts far too much responsibility on you, and at the end of the day the responsibility is mine and mine alone, but I know in my heart that the reason I’ve been clean for as long as I have is because of you.” She paused a moment, drunken mind trying to find the right words. “I just—the wanting does pop up from time to time; I won’t lie, but…all I have to do is think that if I use again, I could lose you. That stops the need dead in its tracks. I just love your fucking guts. Thank you for having my back.”
“I will always have your back, honey. Now and forever.”
She kissed him again. Switched gears. “You up for some sexy time later?”
“If I stop drinking, I am. If we keep going, it’s going to be like threading a needle at high wind.”
This time she laughed so hard she fell off his lap.
***
Leigh gulped her shot, pounded the little glass on the bar, and then let out a satisfied gasp.
Tommy looked on in amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman drink so much and still be upright,” he said.
“We’ll be horizontal soon,” she replied.
Tommy’s eyebrows went up. “What do you mean?” he asked hesitantly, taking a pull from his beer bottle.
&
nbsp; “I mean you’re getting laid tonight.”
Tommy choked on his beer. “Huh?”
She put a hand on his shoulder and spoke as though lecturing him. “You’re not particularly attractive, Tommy,” she said.
Tommy recoiled a little. “Gee, thank—”
“Let me finish,” she continued. “You’re not particularly attractive, but it’s been my experience that unattractive men are better lovers. Maybe it’s an overcompensation thing. I don’t know, and I really don’t give a shit. Do you give a shit?”
“I do not,” Tommy quickly replied.
“Good. Then let’s have one more drink and then go home and fuck.”
Tommy nearly fainted.
***
Morgan and Mick took a break from the dance floor and sat at a small table far away enough from the DJ so they could hear themselves talk without shouting.
Still breathing heavy and grinning from the exhilaration of dancing, Morgan spoke in pauses, catching her breath between each statement.
“So what do you think?” she asked. “About coming with us?”
Mick—no neck and cauliflower ears from a lifetime of grappling; a thin white scar a couple of inches long running diagonally through one of his thick eyebrows, the result of an inadvertent headbutt during an amateur mixed martial arts bout—sat back in his seat and let out a long sigh.
“Eh…” he said.
“Oh, come on…” she whined. “It’ll be fun.” Her strawberry blonde bangs were now sweaty and clinging annoyingly to her brow. She frowned, wiped them away, and then quickly regrouped with a salesman’s smile and a new pitch. “Maybe they’ll let us be in the documentary. How cool would that be?”
“I don’t want to be in a documentary.”
“Please, please, pleeease? We’ll drive separately.”
“Eh…”
Morgan sat back and huffed. “You never want to do anything.”
“What?”
“All you want to do is train, eat, and watch movies.”
Mick snorted and waved an arm around the club. “I came out tonight, didn’t I? I even danced.”
“Only because you’re drunk.”
“That’s the only reason any straight guy dances.”
She huffed again. Folded her arms.
Mick sighed. “Ahhh…shit.”
“Yay!” Morgan jumped into his lap and kissed him.
Chapter 14
South Florida
Deep in the Everglades
At night and from a distance, the big shack appeared to float over the black water, the lanterns within like a gathering of fireflies.
Access to the dwelling came through endless channels, through endless snares of vegetation. So far up the river, so deep within its ecological maze, it was a home too remote to be happened upon by tourists…and one too rich with legend for the odd local who was capable of finding the way.
Rumor had it the Roy family lived there.
A curious rumor considering the nationwide status of the infamous family—the aftermath of the notorious “Swamp Massacre” from years ago had seen them either sent away or sent to hell.
All except for Harlon Roy, that is. His body had never been found.
Assured by the surviving families who’d endured the massacre that Harlon had been paralyzed and left for dead along a shoreline of approaching alligators, it was simply assumed his body had been taken by the congregation of gators and consumed until nothing was left.
But such an assumption was tantalizing fuel for legend around most parts. No body meant possibility. And not just for the prospect that Harlon had somehow survived, but that he was now holed up with extended members of the Roy family. Extended family members that served as one of the more popular subjects for local bar lore’s equivalent of the campfire ghost story. A popular subject even years before the “Swamp Massacre” had even occurred.
Put simply, there were The Roys…and then there were The Roys.
Mean, nasty, willing to kill if provoked, The Roys were the ornery gators you steered clear of in the swamp.
Mean, nasty, willing to kill without provocation, The Roys were the gators that every Everglade Ahab swears exists. The type that kills because they developed a taste for it. Because they enjoyed it.
And that’s where Travis Roy was heading now. Because unlike every whiskey-eyed local who swore Harlon Roy still lived and was indeed holed up with those fabled, extended members of the Roy family, Travis actually knew it to be true.
Travis also knew that like the mythical gator that kills for fun, there was nothing mythical about him. He was going to enjoy this immensely.
He only hoped his aunt Trudy and whoever the hell else lived there (and it could be quite a few; the damn thing appeared huge compared to most swamp shacks commonly seen along the river) would understand his reasoning for what he was about to do. His reckoning. If not, he supposed things would get ugly. So be it.
Travis killed the engine, killed the light, and paddled the rest of the way in the dark, those floating lights in the distance his beacon.
Chapter 15
With the exception of its considerable size, the shack was a shack in the truest sense of the word. All necessity, no luxury. The way it should be. Luxury softened the spine. To survive out here, in terrain as treacherous as the wildlife that inhabited it, a soft spine meant a quick death.
To the far right of the big shack sat the porch—a large, weathered square of wood and screen that hung out over the river, supported by three enormous cypress trees long since carved into support beams.
Within that back porch sat the Roys, a solitary lantern hung from above, their primary light source. Its yellow glow, ghostly as it was in the murk of the porch, would have done them no favors had it been something more efficient. Much like the uselessness of a soft spine out here, so too was the futility of appearance for appearance’s sake.
“You fixing to hold that forever, Harlon?” Cooper Roy. Midfifties. The patriarch of the clan. Short and powerfully built, head completely bald and never without a sheen of sweat.
Harlon grinned, took a final pull from the sizable jug that held their whiskey, then passed it over to Cooper.
“Fucking cripple,” Cooper muttered, taking the jug.
Harlon placed both hands on the wheels of his chair and tilted himself back, teetering there like a child popping a wheelie. He kept grinning, as though there might be someone to impress in the room.
“I’d like to tip that thing all the way over, see if you’re still grinning then.”
Harlon let his wheelchair flop back down with a thud. His grin was gone. “Seems to me like you haven’t had enough to drink, Coop.”
“Oh, I’ve had plenty. And I expect that’s the reason it’s easier to talk to you as such.”
Harlon frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means maybe sometimes I get damn tired of hearing you moan about not being able to do this and that ’cause of your condition.”
“Amen to that.” Trudy Roy. Late twenties. Tall and too thin, yet clear wiry strength in her veiny arms. Hair long and dirty blonde and pulled tight into a ponytail. She had one good eye, the dead one never replaced with anything artificial, only a small empty hole of flesh—a perfect display of the futility of appearance for appearance’s sake. “But what can we do? He’s family, after all.”
Cooper Roy shot his daughter a look. “And you think that’s news to me, girl?”
Trudy splayed a hand. “I’m just saying, is all.”
Cooper grunted. “Maybe I am drunk. Because it sure as shit seems like my daughter’s preaching the same to me like I done preached to her when she was still pissin’ the bed.”
An ear-shattering screech of laughter split the room. Darla Roy, twelve, daughter of Trudy and Wayne, small and skinny, natural blonde hair dark and stringy with neglect, capered about the porch. “Pissed the bed! Pissed the bed! Pissed the bed!” she sang and twirled, dancing her way behind h
er uncle Harlon’s chair.
“I didn’t mean no disrespect, Daddy,” Trudy said. “Harlon’s for sure a pain in the ass, but he’s still family, right? Our hands are tied.”
“I do plenty ’round here,” Harlon broke in. Behind his chair, Darla continued to bounce and sing under her breath. Harlon turned over his shoulder towards her. “Fuck off!”
Darla flicked Harlon in the back of the head and began a new song: “Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!”
Harlon growled and reached behind his chair to get a hand on his niece. Darla stood strategically out of harm’s way, darting in and out with more flicks to her uncle’s head, her new song now replaced with screeches every time one of Harlon’s hands got too close.
“Darla Roy, that’s enough,” Trudy warned.
Cooper grinned over at his granddaughter. “Leave the girl be, Trudy,” he said. “She’s just having a bit of fun, ain’t that right, baby girl?” He patted his lap.
Darla leapt out from behind Harlon’s chair, him unsuccessfully swiping after her, and hopped onto her grandfather’s lap. Cooper kissed his granddaughter on the cheek and bounced her on his powerful knee, spiteful gaze on Harlon the entire time. Harlon spit and looked away.
“You keep spoiling her as such, and she’ll never mind Wayne and me again,” Trudy said to her father.
“Little shit don’t mind you now,” Harlon said.
Trudy whipped her head towards Harlon. “I wonder if you’d say such a thing if Wayne were back.”
“I’m back.”
All heads turned towards the screen door. Wayne Roy entered. He was not alone. He held a man out in front of him with a pistol to his head. The man was tall and sinewy with bruising beneath both eyes from what was obviously a broken nose. Yet despite the man’s rough exterior, he was still clearly the junior of Wayne’s thirty years. Clearly the junior of everyone in the room save for Darla.
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