Pepito’s phone rings and he wanders off to answer it, leaving Jase and I open-mouthed and staring in delighted horror at the scene of Donny’s ass rape.
“Wait,” Jase says to me. “So, if we’re Pumpkin and Honeybunny, that makes him the Gimp, right?”
I look up at Jase, something heavy moving off my chest. Revenge. I haven’t felt it in a long while, and it feels so goddamn good.
“That’s why I love you,” I say, squeezing his hand as Donny tries to kill us both with the power of his eyes alone. “Because I know you’ve watched that movie as many times as me.”
He laughs.
I laugh.
Behind the ball-gag, Donny screams.
And it’s fucking beautiful.
“We should leave them to it,” I say, tugging at Jase’s hand. Donny shakes his head, screaming louder as the dude reaming his ass picks up his pace, slamming into him fast and hard.
I raise my eyebrows at Donny. “You think that’s bad?” I ask him. “Try being passed around seven guys until you’ve been fucked almost to death. Then scream, you little bitch.”
He lunges forward like he wants to kill me, but it’s useless. All he does is give his rapist more traction to pull him back, impaling him.
Jase laughs again as we leave the room, stepping into the refuge of the hallway where Luis and a dejected-looking Agent Dunn wait.
As Jase closes the door behind us, Agent Dunn narrows her eyes at me. “You two are fucking crazy,” she says, shifting her gaze to Jase. “Fucking crazy.”
“Oh, lady,” I reply, “you have no idea.”
Shortly after, Luis gets a call. We’ve got a plane waiting, at an airstrip ten minutes’ drive away.
It’s time to roll.
It’s time to get Elliot’s girls back.
Even if it kills me.
TWELVE
Luis injects something into Donny’s ass cheek before we leave, and waits until he’s slumped unconscious over the table in the rape dungeon before redressing him and hauling him outside between himself and Jase. It’s night, something that startles me since I didn’t even notice the change. The temperature has dropped significantly, and I feel goose bumps spring up on my arms as I walk behind Agent Dunn, ready to pounce on her if she tries anything. She’s been cooperative … a little too cooperative, if anything. She’s been turning paler and paler during this entire ordeal, and I feel like soon she’s going to be solid white.
I think of Elliot as Pepito personally drives us to the air strip. Seems he and Luis have history, which is possibly why the guy has been so accommodating. I’m still suspicious, but surely if he were going to try something on us, he’d have tried by now? Whatever his true motive is, I don’t let him out of my sight. We’ve been told we can have our weapons back when we get to the plane, and I’m really hoping he’s not lying to us.
Elliot. I wonder what he’s doing. He must be going mad, pacing the house. Maybe Grandma is trying to placate him in her gentle way. Or maybe she’s cleared out. Maybe he’s sent her somewhere safer.
We’ll see soon enough.
True to his word, Pepito tosses our guns and clips in the grass as he screeches off, leaving us in the dark. Jase and I both scramble for our guns, weapons that don’t even belong to us but to two CIA agents who made a grave mistake thinking they could contain us.
The flight in the small, plush private jet is maybe six hours. Jase and I take turns to doze, sitting next to each other in the back of the plane. Donny’s out for the count and heavily restrained in his own seat. Luis is up front with Agent Dunn, and of course there’s some dude flying the plane in the cockpit.
The entire journey, I keep wondering how many hours I have left on this earth.
It makes me sad to think there might not be too many.
THIRTEEN
The sun is rising as we land, and unbearably bright by the time we make the short car trip from the small airport to Elliot’s grandmother’s house. My stomach lurches as I remember traveling this same road six years ago, a passenger who should never have left her hospital bed alive.
And now I’m here, again, and Dornan Ross is still controlling us all like goddamn marionettes.
When I finally walk into Grandma’s house, it’s to the sight of a broken man.
“Elliot,” I say, rushing towards him. I drop my CIA-issue jacket on the floor, stumbling past furniture to get to him.
His expression is wild. He obviously hasn’t slept in days, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. I wrap my arms around him, but for the first time, he doesn’t reciprocate.
No. He stiffens.
He pushes me away.
My heart breaks. I take a step back. Of course he’s going to hate me. I’m the source of his eternal despair.
I don’t like that I’m that person.
I scan the empty kitchen. “Where’s Grandma?” I ask, dread and suspicion rising inside my chest like a sharp, painful bubble.
He just stares at me, his jaw clenched.
“Elliot,” I implore him, hearing my voice wavering. No, no, NO.
He shakes his head minutely. “Don’t.”
I look down and see the blood on his hands. It looks like he’s tried washing it off. It looks fresh.
Fuck.
“What happened?” I whisper.
This can’t be happening.
“You’re a smart girl,” he says coldly. “What do you think happened to her?”
“No,” I moan, and it’s the low groan of a distraught animal faced with the death of her family member. Something inexplicable breaks inside my chest — I feel myself crumbling in the wake of this latest blow.
My father. Mariana. My daughter. Grandma. He has taken almost everyone, and I know he plans to finish the rest of us off. I just know it.
“Just tell me,” I beg, my hands wringing together, my face slicked wet with my tears. So many tears.
He launches at me with a rage I’ve never seen before. “Don’t you fucking cry!” he screams, grabbing me by the shoulders. For a moment I’m taken off guard, hands up to push him back. But I go limp when I see the devastation on his face.
He’s lost everything because of me.
And I hate myself for it.
I can’t help it, I’m bawling. “I’m sorry,” I sob, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Shut up!” he roars. “You’re sorry? I’ll show you sorry.” He takes my hand roughly, tugging me towards the back door. I know what he’s going to show me.
“No,” I protest. I can’t, not now. I can’t see what he did to her.
Elliot lets go of me, but he’s not done with me yet. He charges me, picking me up in a stronghold so my arms are trapped within his bear grip. “Let me show you the price of vengeance,” he grinds out, dragging me out through the back door and down the stairs to the backyard.
I blink in the harsh sunlight, at first not sure what I’m looking at.
Oh, yes. A pile of fresh dirt. Three identical holes dug into the unwieldy Nebraskan dirt, edges rough but defined, and they’re deep. It would have taken hours to dig them.
“Go!” Elliot yells, dropping me suddenly. I land on the ground, my ears buzzing, a hot, dizzy feeling creeping up the back of my neck.
“Hey!” Jase yells from the porch. “What the fuck?”
Elliot pushes me again, closer to the edge of one of the three holes in the ground. I’m crawling on my hands and knees now, my palms burning against the hot sand beneath them. “Look!” he demands, and I do look.
The winds are fierce today, and they have taken the stench of death away. But when Elliot shoves my face down into the makeshift grave, I gag on the smell of rotting flesh.
Oh, God.
The smell invades my nostrils, putrid and sweet. I can taste the decay on my tongue. And the sight isn’t much better than the smell — flies, so many flies, crawling upon what remains of the poor woman who took me in all those years ago. The woman who held me when I cried, the woman who let me
mope around and feel sorry for myself for years upon years. The woman who hid me away from the world even after her grandson gave up on me and left.
I’m going to be sick.
I retch violently, and Elliot lets go of me. I crawl back just in time to be sick next to the hole where Dornan has dumped Grandma’s body. I retch and retch until I’m throwing up clear bile, liquid that burns my throat.
It’s almost a welcome relief, though. I would rather taste the acid from my stomach than the smell of a decomposing corpse on my tongue.
Jase is suddenly next to me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he yells at Elliot. Elliot laughs, an empty sound so terribly devoid of anything that it makes me shiver.
“Me?” he yells. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? After everything she’s done, you’re still defending her?”
I tilt my watery gaze up at Jase. He looks torn. I can tell part of him wants to comfort me, and the other part wants to smash Elliot into the dirt. Which isn’t fair.
Everything Elliot is saying is right. This is my fault.
Everything is my fault.
Jase straightens beside me, his fists squeezed tight at his sides. I grab hold of one arm and pull myself up, tugging on him insistently.
“Don’t,” I whimper. “Don’t do it. Don’t touch him.”
He gives me an incredulous look and wrenches his arm out of my grip, charging towards Elliot.
They’re going to kill each other.
A gunshot rings out into the clear morning, all of us turning simultaneously to see where it came from.
Luis, the fucking gunslinger extraordinaire, is standing on the porch, an unconscious Donny at his feet, still hog-tied from the plane ride. Agent Dunn sits at his feet, mute as always.
“You trying to attract attention?” Jase yells, forgetting Elliot and charging up to the porch.
“Enough,” Luis barks. “We need to leave. Now.”
Elliot ignores him, turning back to me with a face full of hatred.
“I signed her death warrant the minute I brought you here. It was always just a matter of time, right Julz?”
I can’t breathe. I can’t talk. And that smell … I’m never going to be able to stop breathing it in.
Luis clambers down the stairs, rushing over to the edge of the hole in the ground where flies buzz over Grandma.
“We need to go,” Luis urges again.
“Go where?!” Elliot yells. “I’ve been waiting here for two days for Dornan to fucking call me and tell me where my girls are!” He kicks at the dirt, and I can’t help but notice his Converse sneakers spattered with blood. “With my dead fucking grandmother!” he howls. He turns back to the hastily dug grave, sinking to his knees in front of it.
“Why didn’t you cover her up?” I ask.
He tears his eyes away from the ground to meet mine. “And miss the phone call?” he asks.
The phone chirps loudly inside.
“Fuck,” he says, scrambling to his feet and running inside, as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone run. He disappears inside and the phone stops chirping.
Jesus, I hope he didn’t miss that goddamn call.
I follow him inside, rushing past Jase and Luis. Agent Dunn is sitting on the stairs, looking dejected. Donny is unconscious.
And then there’s Elliot.
He’s on the phone at the kitchen counter. It’s one of the old-school phones that’s mounted to the wall. From where he’s standing, over the sink, he can see the three holes Dornan has dug to taunt him.
I move closer to him, stepping loudly enough to let him know I’m here, but not so loud that the person on the other end of the line might hear me. I stop at the far end of the bench, staring painfully at the space beside the kitchen table where Elliot and I shared our first kiss all those years ago. If things seemed bad then … holy mother of god, they’re so, so much worse now.
Elliot turns and clicks his fingers. “Pen,” he hisses. I scan the room, my eyes settling on the battered notebook and pen that Grandma always kept on the refrigerator when I lived here.
Nothing’s changed.
Except that, you know, she’s dead. Murdered. Laying in a hole in the ground outside.
I rush to the pen and notepad, ripping them from their magnetic holder on the front of the refrigerator and practically throwing them at Elliot. He scribbles something down, staring at me vacantly after he’s finished.
I peek at the piece of paper he’s written on, at first not recognizing the pattern behind the string of letters and numbers. And then I see. They’re GPS coordinates.
“How do I know they’re still alive?” he says suddenly. My skin bristles uncomfortably at the anguish behind his words. I edge closer, so I’m standing beside him, our eyes locked as the unmistakable sound of a child’s voice filters down the line.
“Daa-ddy,” she says, her little voice painfully sweet. “Daddy, where are you?”
Then, static.
“Kayla?” he says urgently into the receiver. “Kayla!”
But she’s gone.
He turns to face the sink again, smashing the receiver back into its hook. An incredible, searing pain begins in my chest and spreads outwards as I place a tentative hand on Elliot’s arm. He looks down at my hand and I wonder if he’s going to push me away.
“We’re getting them back,” I say quietly. He looks at my hand on his arm for one beat, two, and then he sinks to his knees beside me, wrapping his arms around me tightly. Shocked by his sudden change in attitude towards me, I hesitate slightly, unsure of what to do. Love him, a voice inside my head urges. Be there for him like he was there for you all these years.
His face pressed into my stomach, I wrap my arms around the man who saved my life and pull him closer to me, welcoming the pain of his fingers clinging to me, pressing into my flesh. I stroke my hands through his hair, some small attempt at comforting him as I feel his tears bleed through the thin material of my dress and into my skin.
FOURTEEN
Jase and Luis cover Grandma’s body up with blankets before piling dirt over her. I’m on the porch, sheltered from the hot sun, a gun in one hand in case Donny or Agent Dunn decide to move and my other arm curled around Elliot’s waist. He won’t speak. He just stares off into space, his eyes red, his stance rigid, his expression dream-like. He looks a little mad.
At this stage, I think we all do.
Once she’s buried, there’s nothing else to do but leave. I still can’t reconcile the fact that the faceless body in the dirt is Grandma, but it is. Dornan killed her. And then he dug three graves. The message is pretty fucking clear. Behave or the other two graves will be filled with the bodies of Elliot’s daughter and her mother. When I think about it like that, I want to be sick all over again.
Before they started hefting dirt over Grandma’s still corpse, Luis plugged the string of GPS coordinates into his phone and came up with a hit.
Dornan’s directed Elliot, and us by default, into a section of Death Valley called Furnace Creek.
Death Valley. Because that’s not foreboding or anything.
Fuck.
We reconvene in the living room briefly. Gather ourselves, get our bearings — oh, yeah, and grab plenty of weapons. Elliot’s got a small artillery in the garage, and we’re each bestowed with a loaded pistol and plenty of ammo. I’ve managed to score a more appropriate outfit from one of my storage boxes in the garage – a white tee and jeans with black boots. I’ve kept the CIA jacket as part of my outfit. I don’t know why, but for some reason, it makes me feel like a badass to wear it. The purple dress I throw in Elliot’s rag box. If we make it out of this alive, he can polish his fucking mustang with it.
It’s while we’re checking our clips and dispersing extra ammo into our pockets that I hear the cars. They’re driving fast. And, before I can even finish turning towards the large bay window that overlooks the front yard, there are three unmarked police cruisers on the front lawn.
“We got comp
any!” Jase yells, pulling Agent Dunn down to the ground beside him. I hit the deck as well, looking up to see Elliot and Luis have done the same. Donny is still largely unconscious, making a few grunted noises now and then, but nothing I care to waste effort on trying to decipher.
“We have to get out of here,” Elliot says, his eyes ablaze. We’re all lying on our stomachs on the floor, heads up just enough to see each other, when there’s a knock on the door.
“Police, open up!” a low voice booms.
CIA? I mouth. Jase shrugs, but Elliot shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “Whoever it is, I can’t let them hold me up. I have to get to the girls.”
“Go out the back way,” Jase urges Elliot. He glances at me. “You too, Julz. We’ll hold them off as long as we can. You gotta get to the airstrip. We’ll meet you there.”
I can tell it kills him to say it, but he’s being smart. If we all get held up by the heat at the door, we’re screwed and Elliot’s girls are as good as dead.
“Go,” I say to Elliot, who nods and starts army-crawling through the living room to the kitchen. I follow him on my hands and knees, ducking low in case the cops out front decide to start peppering the house with bullets. We both reach the back door, and Elliot leans against it briefly.
“If there’s someone out there,” he says quietly, “you fucking shoot them. Do not shoot me. You understand?”
I want to tell him this isn’t my first rodeo, but I bite my tongue. In the end, I just nod.
He glances around one last time before reaching up and yanking the door open. There’s nobody there, and we both crawl onto the deck out back, guns ready.
Things are moving so fast, I don’t even have time to acknowledge how terrified I am. There’s a good chance these people want us dead.
And then, we’re made.
Three cops sprint around the side of the house, guns pointed at us. We’re not just outnumbered, we’re also at a distinct disadvantage, having no cover, unlike the cops who are sheltering behind the base of the deck, their guns pointed up at us.
Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series Page 58