by Leo, Cassia
In the darkness, my mind wanders to what could possibly be on the flash drive.
Did Izzy copy the contents of the drive?
Has she already sent the files to a journalist?
Is there anything on there that incriminates me?
What will happen if I find the drive and I refuse to kill Izzy?
Images of my sister’s and nieces’ faces flash in my mind. When I’m sure it’s safe, I slide my arm out of Izzy’s grip, and I head back to the kitchen to call Santos.
“What the fuck?” he answers groggily. “It’s 3:30 a.m.”
“I know. We have to talk,” I reply, my heart racing with excitement. “There’s been a change in plans.”
19 King
Present Day
“It seems you two were really getting to like and trust each other?” Sooner remarks, to which I nod. “Now, let me see if I have this straight. You met Izzy at The Junk Drawer?”
I nod again. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay, so you immediately do the neighborly thing and help her fix some stuff around the house,” he continues, picking up his foam cup of water and putting it down when he realizes it’s empty. “She’s a young, pretty girl, and she just bought this fixer-upper. It’s her first house, so I understand the desire to want to help a girl like that. Maybe get close to her in the process?”
I listen as Sooner reviews Stanley’s notes from the interview as well as his own. He recites the story of Izzy and me like it’s some kind of innocent friendship that turned into more, clearly hoping I’ll stop him mid-sentence and confess I was there to kill Izzy and take the suitcase all along.
When Sooner gets to the part where Izzy confides in me that she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, he looks confused. “You mean to tell me Izzy felt comfortable telling you she was raped, but she didn’t feel comfortable sharing her real name with you? Is there a reason for that? Maybe something she knew that you’re not sharing with us?”
“She didn’t tell me her real name until the next day,” I reply.
“And now we’re back at the last time you saw Izzy, correct?” Stanley says, clearly annoyed by Sooner’s nice-guy routine. “When you two went hunting in South Mountains?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stanley tilts his head and narrows his eyes at me. “You expect me to believe she told you her real name, and that was the last time you ever saw her?” He waits for me to reply, but continues when he’s met with silence. “And now she’s mysteriously gone missing, leaving her blood all over the crime scene, which just happens to be right next door to your house? And I’m supposed to believe you weren’t involved?”
I continue to look him in the eye without revealing a hint of emotion.
Finally, he shakes his head as he begins to stand from the table. “You are one cold motherfucker,” he says, then without warning, he swipes the back of his hand across the surface of the table, sending my half-full glass of water flying across the room. “You fucking killed her! Admit it!”
I don’t move a single inch as Stanley leans over the table and gets in my face. Meanwhile, Sooner stares at his notes as if nothing is happening.
“We’re going to find your prints or your DNA at that crime scene, and you’re going away for a very fucking long time,” Stanley says, his nose inches from mine as he hovers over me. “Do you understand me, you fucking piece of shit? You and that other army degenerate, Edwin Santos, are going to be bed buddies for life in a federal penitentiary. That sound like fun?”
I wait a moment before I look up into his eyes and smile. “You want to hear about the day we went hunting, or not?”
He seethes in silence for a while, exhaling his nasty coffee breath in my face, before he finally sits back in his chair and nods at Sooner for him to pick up where he left off.
Sooner flashes me a smile that’s dripping with concern. “Tell us about when you two went hunting.”
20 Izzy
August 8th
I wake in Colton’s bed with an emotional hangover. My decision to tell him about the night Gene raped me felt right from the moment it occurred to me while I was out driving yesterday. It accounted for the fact that I was being followed, which meant I was caught lying about going to work. It also solved the mystery of why I was driving around for so long. If I’d been raped and I was just about to get a womanly exam from a possibly-male gynecologist, it would make sense for me to be a bit reticent.
Of course, the main reason I wanted to tell him was to see his reaction.
It’s one thing to keep a straight face as you fuck the pretty girl next door while surveilling her property, all under the guise of helping make her home safe and secure. It’s another thing to comfort her and truly be there for her when she confesses the second worst moment of her life.
And I didn’t detect a single moment of deception when I told Colton I’d been raped. In fact, since I made that confession, I think I’ve finally seen the real Colton, or whatever his real name is.
Last night, when we got in bed, I wanted to mount him straight away. But he insisted he needed to tell me more about himself and how he grew up.
He told me about growing up in Tennessee with an emotionally abusive father who abandoned him, his mom, and his sister when Colton was still in grade school. He talked about how his mom became an alcoholic — the fun kind, but an alcoholic nonetheless. He clearly adored his mother despite her addiction, just the way I did with my father. And he shared the pain of missing her funeral because Colton’s sister blamed him for their father’s abandonment, which they both believed caused their mother’s addiction.
“I sometimes wonder if my dad OD’d on purpose the day he died,” I whispered as I traced circles over his smooth chest. “Do you ever wonder if your mom crashed her car on purpose?”
His breathing was slow and steady in the silent darkness. “All the time.”
As I stare at the empty side of the bed now, I wonder how long Colton has been awake. I wonder who he was talking to on the phone last night when he assumed I was asleep. I wonder if any of this is real.
Maybe I’m waking up in my bed today. Perhaps I went crazy after I stole that money, and Colton is just a figment of my own broken imagination.
I pull the silky gray sheet up to my nose and inhale deeply, smiling at that intoxicatingly familiar scent.
He’s real.
But my smile fades almost instantly as I realize I have to confront Colton today.
* * *
Colton looks like he wants to tell me something important or ask me something very serious as he stares at me across the kitchen table. His eyes are locked on mine, and his mouth hangs open slightly as he clutches a steaming black coffee mug in his large hands.
Finally, I can’t take the suspense any longer. “What? You look like you want to ask—”
“Can I take you hunting?” he blurts out.
I look down at the dark amber tea in my mug, trying to take slow breaths as my heart begins to race. “Are you trying to get me alone in the woods with a shotgun so you can get rid of me?” I reply with a chuckle as I look up again.
He doesn’t blink as he stares at me for a long moment again, then shakes his head. “I said I’d protect you. If I’m going to keep that promise, I need to see how good you are with a gun.”
“Oh.” The word comes out of my mouth in a soft puff of air. He’s serious.
I don’t know if this is a ploy to get me alone. Maybe if I go into the woods with him, I’ll be walking into an ambush.
Or maybe, just maybe, he’s telling the truth, and he just wants to know if I can protect myself.
I let out a soft sigh as I realize this is my moment of truth. I have to choose whether or not I can trust Colton.
And as I look into his icy-blue eyes, I know I don’t really have a choice. I have to trust the man I love.
I nod as I swallow my fear. “Okay, I’ll go hunting with you.”
21 King
August 8th
&n
bsp; I stare at her for a while before shaking my head. “I said I’d protect you. If I’m going to keep that promise, I need to see how good you are with a gun.”
Her gaze drops again and a soft, “Oh,” falls from her lips.
She’s silent for a long moment, probably trying to figure out if I’m being sincere.
She nods before I can open my mouth. “Okay, I’ll go hunting with you.”
“Really?” I reply without thinking. “I mean, I know it sounds shady as fuck, but I think you’ll understand why it’s so important when we get out there.”
The side of her mouth pulls up in a hesitant smile. “I trust you.”
I reach across the table to grab her hand and pull it toward me, placing a tender kiss on her knuckles. “I don’t know if I deserve your trust yet, but I swear I’ll earn it if it’s the last thing I do.”
She squeezes my hand as her cheeks flush pink. “I’m going across the street to ask Edie if she can dog-sit Steve. I’ll be right back.”
Izzy bolts out of her chair and plants a loud kiss on my cheek. Then she grabs Steve’s bag of dog food and dog bed. I watch as she heads out the front door of my cabin with a spring in her step.
I hope I’m reading her enthusiasm correctly. Because if I’m wrong about Izzy, inviting her to join me in the middle of the woods with a loaded gun and telling her about all the ways I’ve deceived her over the last couple weeks seems like a surefire way to get my dick blown off.
* * *
“I don’t usually tell stories about my dad,” I say as I pull my pickup into a dirt clearing at South Mountains Game Land situated inside South Mountains State Park just thirty minutes south of my cabin. “But I need to tell you something he taught me during the one and only time he took me hunting before he split. It happens to be the same lesson I learned in boot camp, but I have to give credit where credit is due.”
She turns in her seat to face me. “I’m all ears.”
“You’re all cute,” I reply, smiling as she shakes her head at my bad joke. “Okay, here’s what you need to know: 1. Point your weapon at the ground when you’re not aiming at game. 2. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re poised to shoot. 3. Don’t aim at anything you’re not prepared to kill. That last one is important.”
Her brow is furrowed as she considers my instructions. “These rules apply to you too?”
“Absolutely.”
She shrugs. “Okay.”
“Wait!” I grab her hand before she can exit the vehicle. “You need to know one more thing. This is a restricted firearms location, so we’re not allowed to have centerfire ammunition here. That means we’re supposed to use rimfire ammunition, which is more difficult to reload. I don’t own any rimfire ammunition, so you’ll have to promise you don’t rat me out to the cops.”
She glances at my hand on hers and smiles. “I highly doubt you’ll be worrying about that after we leave this place, but okay.”
I laugh at this cryptic remark. “Just one more thing,” I say, and before she can ask me what, I grab her face and kiss her.
Her lips taste like lemon tea, and her tongue feels cool as it slides against mine. The soft moan that issues from her throat awakens my dick, and I echo the sound back at her.
We stay like this for a while, our mouths exploring each other as if it’s our first kiss. I resist the urge to slide my hand inside her jeans or under her bra. And she keeps her hands gripped tightly around the front of my gray camo-print T-shirt.
As I pull away slowly, placing a parting kiss on her chin, I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the chest. “I don’t want to stop kissing you,” I murmur.
She smiles as her fists remain clenched around the fabric of my shirt. “Then don’t,” she says, biting her lip as she flashes me a look that gets my dick painfully hard.
I shake my head as I let out a deep sigh. “Let me see you shoot that gun first,” I say, nodding toward the weapons in the backseat of the pickup. “Come on.”
She lets out a soft sigh as she reaches for the door handle. “I really hope neither of us dies.”
I try to ignore this comment as she hops out of the passenger seat onto the dirt. I study her face as I pass her the .380 she wielded in Smoky’s Bar. She tucks that in the crossbody holster I let her borrow, then I hand her a Ruger LCR9 revolver. After all, she needs to learn to shoot a man, not a deer.
“That one doesn’t have a safety, so be very careful with it,” I say as she reaches for the passenger door to close it.
She shrugs. “Yes, sir.”
I shake my head at her seemingly nonchalant approach to this exercise. She’s either bored by all this because she’s already taken plenty of gun safety lessons and spent lots of time at a shooting range, or she’s resigned to a decision she’s neglected to share with me. Please, Lord, let it be that she’s bored.
I don’t want to have to shoot Izzy.
I load up my usual weapons, and we head out into the wilderness.
At barely half-past eleven a.m., the summer sun is almost right above us. The light sparkles in Izzy’s brown hair as she’s welcomed into the woods by a grove of young oak trees. The sparse green canopy of leaves above us soaks the woods in full summer sunshine.
There’s nowhere to hide in this forest.
As I watch her walking farther away from our starting point, seemingly without a single misgiving about possibly leading me in the wrong direction, I begin to understand I may have been right about her. I think she may actually find this entire outing to be an exercise in futility.
I smile as I realize this is the girl I’ve been waiting for my entire life. A girl with the guts to singlehandedly steal $1.4 million from a criminal organization and abandon her whole life in the blink of an eye. This girl who can build a dozen boobytraps and learn to scuba dive in a couple weeks, but couldn’t fake a country accent if her life depended on it.
She’s a goddamn wizard, through and through. More than that, she’s my queen.
In chess, it’s the queen’s job to protect the king. And she may have the opportunity to do that soon. For now, it’s my job to protect her. I’ll sacrifice myself if it means keeping her safe.
I’m about to ask Izzy how far she plans to hike into the forest when she reaches into her pocket. Before I can get a look at whatever is in her hand, she spins around and points the revolver at me.
“Is this what you want?” she shouts, tossing something at me. “Drop your weapon, or I swear to fucking God I will shoot you right now!”
I glance at the forest floor to see what she threw at me, but I can’t find it before she barks another order at me.
“Drop it now!”
I maintain eye contact with her as I bend over slowly and place my .500 Magnum on the ground, noticing a black and yellow USB flash drive about five feet away. “I’m not here to hurt you, Izzy.”
“Oh, I already know you know my name,” she shouts, but I can see the revolver trembling. “So what’s your next move if I let you leave? Are you going to keep following me until you find me again? Are you going to make me dig my own grave? Huh? What’s the plan?”
My heart is racing as I watch her trembling hands holding the revolver that’s pointed at me. “Izzy, I was serious when I said that Ruger doesn’t have a safety. Can you please point it somewhere else?”
“Fuck you!” she shouts, and the gun goes off.
She’s momentarily dazed by the gunshot, and I use this to my advantage, rushing her before she can get off another round. I tackle her face-first onto the dry ground and easily overpower her. I wrest the revolver from her grip, quickly tossing it aside. Then I hold her arms behind her back as I grab her .380 out of the holster.
“You have any other weapons?” I ask, my mouth pressed against her ear.
“No,” she says, the power in her voice completely absent now. “And you’re hurting my arms. Please stop.”
I’m not falling for that.
“Don’t you lie to me,” I mutter.
“I don’t want to shoot you, Iz. I fucking swear to God. I did not come here to hurt you. Do you believe me?” I wait for her to respond, but all I hear is soft sobs. “I’m going to let you go, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you try that again. Understood?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, then I slowly loosen my grip on her arms as I take my weight off her back. “Easy. Don’t get up too fast.”
I keep my .500 Magnum pointed at her chest, my eyes trained on her hands as she pushes herself up from the ground. She slowly turns around, and the tears spilling down her cheeks make my stomach tense up.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Iz,” I reiterate. “My name is Kingston Jameson, but I go by King,” I begin. “I work for Congressman Richard Hunt, and that guy who OD’d in your room at the Area 69 Brothel — the one you stole the suitcase from — was Hunt’s son and my former best friend.”
She reaches up to wipe the tears from her face. “You’re here to avenge your friend?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m here to make sure you know how to shoot because Congressman Hunt has ordered me to kill you, but I want you to help me kill him instead.”
She looks skeptical of my assertion. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
I stare at her for a while, then I begin the process of disarming. I start by laying my .500 Mag on the forest floor, followed by my .44, my .38, and my hunting knife.
“I’m done lying to you,” I say, holding my hands out palm-up in front of me. “I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, but I’m in love with you Izzy Lake. I love your laugh. I love your smile. I love your badass nature. I love your awful country accent.”
She laughs through her tears now, and the sound is music to my ears.
“But most of all,” I continue as I slowly walk toward her. “I love your good heart and the fact that you trusted me with it when you told me about what your mom’s boyfriend did to you… I will never let anyone hurt you, myself included.”