by catt dahman
After they went to the river, she painted, something she wasn’t very talented at, but if one squinted and turned his head just so, it sort of looked like her family. Donner and Hemming came back, dodging the rain and shaking water off once they reached the porch. Janice stared at their windbreakers.
“Your family?” Donner asked.
“What? Oh, Yes. It’s supposed to be. I’m not very good,” Janice said. “Where’s Bart?
“He’s fishing; he’s got a stringer going.”
“Will he be up soon?”
Donner shrugged, “Where are your boys?”
“In the cabin. We’ll cook out. I’ll have Deanna run to the neighbors and get them so we can cook out,” Janice said as she veiled her threat.
“Oh, there’s no need for a crowd. Finish painting. Did you take your pill?
Janice clenched her jaw, the familiarity bothering her. “I’ll just get Deanna.” She stood, but the men blocked her way. A tingle of fear thumped into her belly. Deanna came to the porch and caught the last of the conversation. “Run on over, Deanna, and get the Blakes.” Deanna knew the Blakes weren’t up there. Maybe she would understand.
Deanna, thirteen and all coltish legs, bounded from the porch, but a searing, burning pain yanked her back, and she thudded to the porch as Donner jerked her back by her flying ponytail. “Ouch,” she whined, rubbing her head and then her rump.
“Hey….”
“Shut your mouth, bitch”
Donner chuckled and said, “You must remain calm, Janice. Do you need another pill?” He wrapped a fist around Deanna’s hair and pulled her along to the inside.
Deanna whimpered and cast big, scared eyes at her mother, begging this to go away. “Mama?”
“Shhh. I’m going to give these men all the money we have here, our credit cards, and anything else they need,” Janice explained as she held out her hands, “look at my rings. They’re worth a lot.”
“I see.”
“And we’ll stay here and won’t report a thing.”
“Do you believe her? I don’t,” said Donner.
“Nah,” Hemming said, “she’s lying.”
“We won’t tell.”
“Well, we know Bart won’t tell anyway.”
“Where is he?” Janice demanded.
“In the river.”
Janice suppressed a scream, “Is he…is he dead?”
“He’s the deadest son of a bitch I’ve seen in a while. Now, don’t be getting all crazy. Do you need another pill, Janice?”
“I would like you to leave. Take the money and everything you wish but please go now.”
“I feel you’re trying to get rid of me,“ Donner said.
Both of Janice’s sons sat at the kitchen table, eyes on the action, shocked and afraid. They had been eating oranges and the clean, citrus scent made Janice sad. “What do you want?” she snapped.
Donner caught her with a back handed slap that cut her lips and hurt.
Brett jumped up, knocking his chair backwards onto the floor and called, “Mom?”
Timmy wasn’t allowed to use the knife they had been using to slice oranges, but he slid it close to himself.
“Whatcha doing, kid?”
“N…nothing.”
“Sneaking knives is serious shit. Gimme the knife.” The boy didn’t move. “Gimme it. Janice, tell your boy to behave and mind me.”
Janice nodded and said, “Hand the knife to him, Timmy. Give it to him now.”
Unsure, Timmy took the knife and held it out to Donner. The man gave him a wink and a funny grin and took Timmy’s hand and slammed it down right on the wooden table. Without a word, Donner rammed the knife into Timmy’s hand, right in the middle. The child screamed large, whooping cries.
Hemming pointed his gun at Brett, pressing against his eye so forcefully that the boy saw dancing black and white lights flicker. He wet his pants.
“That’s on my nerves,” Hemming said of Timmy’s shrieks.
Donner nodded and put a single shot into the child’s little head.
Janice tried to run to her children, but Donner shoved the gun into her mouth, bloodying her lips and breaking off two teeth. After he removed the gun, she spit out bits of teeth and bloody saliva. She cried silently for her children.
The men used cords to tie Brett to the chair. “How humiliating, ya got snot running down you face because of your crying, you pissed your pants, and you’re all tied up. How embarrassing.”
Tim had fallen to the floor, the knife ripped through his hand, and he was crumpled with his head bleeding out. Janice knew, despite the bullet trauma to his head, that Timmy was still alive because he was still bleeding. Brett watched his brother as the two men held his arms down and nailed them to the table; he bellowed with the pain.
Janice tried to run to her sons, but her legs went to jelly, and she wavered. Donner pushed her onto the sofa. “We can have fun with Deanna.”
“No,” Janice whispered.
Donner dragged Deanna to the bedroom, and Janice screamed over and over again; she wanted to rip these men’s eyes out and tear out their throats. She wanted them to suffer and die for this. She listened to her daughter screaming for help that wasn’t coming.
Janice sat while the men took turns in the bedroom. She offered herself instead, but they laughed. Deanna stopped screaming, and everything was quiet for a long time.
Hemming came out, and Janice jumped to her feet and said, “I want to see my daughter.”
“Did you hear that?” Charlie asked, in the cabin down the path.
“Yep, even over the rain. I’m going, and Todd and John will stay and watch over you, in case it’s a trap,” Kelly said.
Carla raised her chin, and said, “I have Charlie’s gun, and I am going, too. I’m tired of playing victim, and I’ve already proven I will act when needed.”
Kelly unbuckled his leg holster and handed Charlie a small gun. “Use it if you have to, but you have knives, too. No hostages. Be careful.”
The three slipped out the door. Charlie, Dana with her knives, and John stood guard in the house, watching for trouble and listening closely. Taryn and Bev rummaged for knives to hold.
Charlie walked to the porch, watching as the others ran towards the cabin.
“Around the corner,” she yelled at them.
Hemmings and Donner(Chris and Cody) ran around the side of the cabin and right at Todd; Charlie wished she had found them sooner and stopped them, but there was nothing she could do now. All around her, gunshots exploded.
Charlie groaned and managed to get a breath, dragging it in, despite the weight on her chest. “Can you get off me?”
Kelly stared at her for second and despite the situation, managed a grin, his teeth white against all the red; it made Charlie dizzy. Why he found this amusing, she didn’t know, but she batted at him and said, “You’re smushing me. I can’t breathe.”
“Better than being shot.”
“Get up. People are….” She struggled to figure out why no one was shooting and didn’t understand.
“It’s done. I had to knock you down so you didn’t get killed.”
“Oh,” she said. Once again, he had come to her rescue; she was losing track of how often he had saved her. He stood, giving her a hand. What she saw was a nightmare. “Kelly?”
He wrapped her in his arms and hugged her and said, “You have to stay with me. I need you, okay? We can be sad later.”
She followed him over to the man she had known as Chris and watched as Kelley jerked him over to the cabin’s post, making the men yelp with pain. Using a boot, Kelly kicked him in the ribs. “Charlie, tie him to the post, and don’t feel the need to be gentle. He’s gut shot and dying anyway. Bastard deserves it.”
Numbly, she took the rope and secured the man’s wrists, pulling the rope tight as she cursed him under her breath. She was dimly aware that Dana, Taryn, John, and Bev were outside, helping Kelly.
“They’re checking the cabin…sa
id to stay on guard.” Bev was crying as she helped Charlie finish tying the man. “He’s not going anywhere.”
Rain pelted them.
“Carla?”
Bev cried harder, “She was hit, Charlie.”
Charlie sank to the porch and let the rain soak her, not moving or speaking as Bev asked questions and talked. The other man was dead; Kelly had hit him, or maybe Todd had before he was hit. Someone had shot him. Her mind wasn’t working anyway. She felt freezing cold and numb anyway.
“Charlie?”
She was faintly aware that Bev and Dana were next to her, and Dana sounded worried; Kelly grumbled and gave orders and then scooped her up in his arms, muttering about shock and something else. She hardly paid attention as Kelly carried her to the bathroom in the cabin and removed her boots, and his boots and stepped into a hot shower with her; had he let go, she would have fallen.
“All the people dead because of me,” she said.
“You are not that omnipotent, Charlie. They’re dead because Mark Banner is an obsessive, cruel son of a bitch who hired henchmen who enjoy torture and games. Blame Sam who set all this is motion. It isn’t your fault.”
It didn’t help. She stood in the hot water, letting it sluice down her body and didn’t mind when Kelly slowly, as not to scare her, slid her pants off and then removed her top and let them land in the corner. He washed her hair gently and soaped her and then rinsed her. “I’m going to get out and dry myself and put on a towel so we don’t get everything wet. You have color back in your lips now.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll get you in a towel; then, you can remove your…um…underthings, and I’ll get you in bed and rehydrated. You were going into shock, Charlie.”
She followed directions and then slid under the covers, asking Kelly to stay. Dana looked in, nodded and left.
“Did Carla…suffer?”
“No, it was fast. I’m so sorry. I feel I failed you.”
“No, like you said, Mark Banner did this,” Charlie sighed, “except for the part about you that I hope we can change; I hope I kill him. I want to now. He wondered why I would do it? Now, we know. But then it’s circular and a paradox and hurts my head.” She leaned over on him as he was half-sitting on the edge of the bed and she asked, “Girlfriend? You don’t like me?”
Kelly chuckled, “Neither.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know why he was sitting in such a stiff way and wanted to be comforted with a hug.
Hearing the rejection she must have felt, Kelly sighed, “I have to tell you something, in case it goes south and I don’t make it. I’d rather you know because I’d be dead anyway, and it won’t matter….”
“That’s depressing.”
“True. See, I have been working for Stephanie Banner. It’s been a while. I found myself watching Mark and Sam a lot. I watched your home a lot. I ended up checking up on you and then watching you more than the job required.”
“That’s a little creepy.”
“I know. I’m sorry, but I did. And the more I did…I wasn’t there that way to save you for the fun of it or just because I was on a job. I saved you that day, and I came up here to make sure you were okay because I fell for you.”
“You what? You did?”
“I’m thoroughly embarrassed, trust me, but it’ll be short lived, pun intended, if things go as expected…if I die in a few days.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“Thanks. Now you know. I’ll let you get some rest….”
Charlie leaned more into him and said, “Don’t go.”
“I’m embarrassed as hell.”
She looked up at him. “Don’t be. Please.” In some confusion about why she was doing it and unsure of herself, she used one hand to touch his cheek. Her eyes were full of questions as she searched his face.
Kelly could face bullets and even time travel without too much concern, but this pretty woman and the idea of kissing her terrified him. He had made himself think of British Literature while he bathed her to keep from reacting to her nudity. As she stroked his cheek, he shivered with pleasure, looking into her eyes to find clues as to what she wanted. Slowly, he reached for her hair, wrapping a hand in it as he leaned over to kiss her.
The kiss was everything he had dreamed of a million times.
When they lay back side-by-side after making love, Kelly confessed, ”Watching you, I fell in love with you. Don’t say anything. I just had to tell you.”
“I feel something. In time….”
“Shhhh.”
She smiled and rolled over onto him.
They found a bottle of wine and shared it with the others, toasting to better times and a better future.
Part 2
Chapter 8
Kelly and John kept watch all night, trading off. Both were tired and miserable after having wrapped Carla and then Todd in sheets and setting them inside the other cabin. In that chamber of horrors, they found a woman who had been sliced horribly in a room where both her sons had been shot and killed. Seeing the children slaughtered made both men, tough as they were, tear up and shudder.
The second man, tied to the porch post, was left as he was. The women noted that they had left bodies all along their trail; they wished their friends’ remains could have been treated with respect. They couldn’t imagine the long line of crime scenes they were leaving.
When they found the girl, both men wished the hired killers hadn’t died so easily; the teen had been raped and cut up so badly that it was hard to imagine what she had looked like before. Her scalp hung over her face, and she was missing fingers.
Kelly muttered what he would like to do to the men, but they were dead and beyond his revenge. “I’d like to slice them to pieces.”
“What? Why?” Charlie and Taryn didn’t go into the room but waited as Dana and the men covered the girl with a sheet. No one repeated what he had seen.
Taryn was still disturbed by the somewhat glossed-over version she had heard. “But why? Why would they do that to a little girl? What does that have to do with Charlie?”
“Nothing. Mark Banner hires a certain type of men to do his dirty work, which tells you a lot about his character, huh?” Kelly held Charlie’s hand and rubbed her knuckles as he spoke. “He could have had you taken care of simply, but instead, he wanted one of his sick, twisted henchmen to have some fun first.”
“His fun caused four of my friends to die. Add to that the family over there, Todd, and the others; it’s like a list of victims.” Charlie brushed away tears with her other hand.
“They thought they were more ahead and wanted you ladies to blunder into that cabin and see all that. They wanted the thrill of seeing your reaction to the carnage,” John said.
Charlie took a piece of paper and scribbled, rolled it, and shoved it into the wine bottle. Kelly was going outside, and she asked him to toss it into the river for her.
“Why are you putting a message in a bottle?” He asked, a little amused.
“I don’t know. “ She showed him the message.
I am Charlie. I am attempting to alter the future, which is my present. If you are reading this, I failed. What I want to share is this: you can’t change what will be. Treasure each moment.
“You’re a nut,” Dana said, “and you and this future reality, it’s all insane.”
“Yes, it is. That’s why I am leaving a message in a bottle. It is very apropos.”
Kelly promised to put the bottle into the water, but still laughing about it.
After they ate, Kelly told them to listen to John but said he had a few errands. Charlie felt her stomach knot as she was scared to let him go; people all around her, everyone she cared about, were dying. As she stood looking out the window as he left, Dana came to stand close.
“You like him, don’t you? I mean you like him a lot?”
“Yeh, I do. I have great timing don’t I?” Charlie asked.
“Hey, if it’s there, it’s there. Stop over thinking
things, and go for it.”
Charlie nodded and said, “I will if we get the chance.” She was nervous after waiting fifteen minutes, scared after twenty minutes, and frantic after thirty, but John reassured her Kelly would be fine. Had he looked more certain, it might have helped.
“He’s back.” Charlie yanked open the door and let Kelly grumble about how unsafe it was to open doors without knowing who was there, but he still hugged her, inhaling her hair and crushing her to him. He groaned, making her see, against his damp, dark shirt, that his arm was blood soaked.
Dana went into action, barking orders but almost calmed by the familiar work of patching someone up. When she had the sleeve cut away, she complained and had him remove the whole shirt. Ignoring his sighing and wincing, Dana cleaned his arm thoroughly; her face was tense, and several times she shook her head with irritation.
“Good you wrapped it, but it’s not good, Kelly.”
“What do you mean?” Charlie demanded.
Dana said she didn’t understand much about bullets, but Kelly had one lodged in his shoulder. Leaving it in meant that the wound couldn’t heal, and he would continue to bleed and would be ripe for infection. On the other hand, if she removed the bullet, it would be without proper equipment or anesthetic, and infection still would be a threat.
“Someone shot you?” Charlie yelled, “what the hell? Why were you out getting shot? Now what? We have to get you fixed up and….”
Kelly asked for a minute alone with Charlie and waited until everyone else had moved back into the small living area. “Charlie, I want you to calm down. I can’t have you this upset when we have a mission, okay? I need you. Now, yes, I was shot, and it hurts like a son of a bitch, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“How do you know where my world ends?”
He smiled and said, “We will get out of this and mourn our losses, and then I intend to take you on a proper date.”
“Oh?”
“Yep, I have plans. So right now, I need your help. Dana is our resident doctor, and John can’t do things alone. So you are going to keep that trusty little revolver and help John, and we are going to be calm. Got it?”