by Bobe, Jordan
CROSSING THE LINE
BY
JORDAN M. BOBÉ
CROSSING THE LINE
© 2012 BY JORDAN M. BOBÉ. All rights reserved. No part of this novel can be reproduced without written permission from the copyright holder, with the exception of excerpts used in reviews.
CROSSING THE LINE is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents are fictitious. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
THIS ONE IS FOR SYLINA SMITH.
YOU’LL ALWAYS BE ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS AND ONE OF THE STRONGEST WOMEN I’VE EVER MET.
I LOVE YOU, MINA AND BOO.
-Jordan M. Bobé aka Joben/Jaybo
FOREWARNING
The book you are about to read is intended for mature audiences only. It contains graphic descriptions of violence, including rape. If you suffered from abuse as a child or an adult there will be triggers in this novel that you will find unsettling.
NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN OR YOUNG ADULTS.
1
Spring break couldn’t have come at a better time. Anna allowed the sun to warm her pale skin. The water evaporated off of her skin quickly. It would take a lot longer for her hair to dry. Her thick red mane ran halfway down her back. It cooled her back while the sun baked her front.
She sat up and pulled her bikini top off. She tossed it aside and shivered as a soft breeze blew across her breasts. Her nipples grew erect and for a moment she felt embarrassed. She remembered then where she was. The chances of being seen in Porter Harvest, California over spring break were worse than winning the lottery. If the dense forest didn’t keep wandering eyes away the condition of the roads would scare them off.
She slid away her bottoms and looked down at her naked body. At twenty-two she felt like she was already growing an “old woman” body. She kept herself in as good of shape as she could, but her class load was increasingly heavier. She had made a serious mistake deciding to take on premed as her major.
And if the classes weren’t enough she had also gone through the worst break-up in the history of dating. It wasn’t bad because of a huge fight or a broken heart, it was bad because neither of them knew exactly why they were splitting up. They were the “perfect” couple that so many Lifetime movies portrayed. Both were smart and good looking. Both came from families with large fortunes. They never so much as argued and the sex was always awesome. It didn’t make any sense that they were no longer together.
Perfect wasn’t enough to keep them together. It was enough, however, to throw her into a deep depression when they split up. She had been eating a lot more and exercising a lot less. The end result was the college girl body was being replaced with that of a business woman. Her hips had widened, her buttock had taken on a healthy plumpness and her breasts had grown an entire cup size. She was finally finishing the process of growing up.
It wouldn’t have been depressing if it wasn’t for her closet. There were so many cute outfits that she no longer fit. She couldn’t bring herself to just throwing them away. She thought about giving them to a freshman or something. Surely a charitable act would make her feel better about all of the money she had wasted on the worthless garments.
She closed her eyes and sighed deeply, forcing the thoughts out of her mind. She had come up to the small mountain community to relax and forget about the issues she faced back at UCLA. She refused to spend the entire time moping. She only wished that she hadn’t insisted that it be an all-girl event. She could use a little casual sex. A hard fucking would take away a lot of the pent up tension that she felt.
She lied on her back and grinned up at the bright sky. Her sunglasses made her face look dwarfed. They were roughly the diameter of coasters, and that was without the thick pink and lime green frames.
Clouds passed by lazily overhead. She watched as they disappeared behind the thick canopy of the forest. The forest came to life with an orchestra of natural sounds. The chirping of birds, the clicking of squirrels, the calls of bullfrogs, and even the occasional thumping of a wood pecker digging its way toward a juicy meal.
The solitude of the lake was relaxing. The breeze coupled with the slow moving creek that fed the natural lake to cause a slight surface wave pattern that threatened to lull her to sleep. All of the tension from her life slipped away with the last traces of the lake’s cool water. She stretched out on the raft and smiled absently at the beauty of nature.
Then she heard something rustle through the brush near the northern side of the lake. It sounded too large to be any bunny or squirrel. She sat up and looked in the direction the sound had come from, but saw nothing. It wasn’t that surprising, really. A full sized dog could have been hiding amongst the reeds and cat tails and she wouldn’t have been able to pick it out. The vegetation was extremely thick on the undeveloped side of the lake.
Anna lifted her sunglasses, flinching at the sudden brightness that blurred her vision. She tried to decide if the black shape standing just at the edge of the forest was an optical illusion or a living creature. When it didn’t move for a full minute she decided that it was just a shadow cast by the trees.
Still, the peaceful quiet of her day had been ruined. She gathered her glasses and bikini into one hand and dove off of the raft. The years she had spent as a swimmer in high school were not so far behind her. Her body cut through the wave with the precision it had in her teenage years. She reached the shore within a few minutes and pulled herself up on the wooden dock.
Dripping wet again she brushed her red hair from her face and stared across the lake. It was hard to tell at the distance, but she was sure that the shadow had vanished. She tried to tell herself that she had imagined it as she climbed the stairs leading back up to the wrap around deck.
Tracy was sleeping on one of the plastic deck loungers. Her own exaggeratedly big sunglasses were cocked oddly on her nose, but still managed to cover her eyes. She was much more modestly dressed than Anna’s skimpy bikini. The white mom shorts and blue and gray tank top were both from Old Navy, a store that Anna was convinced tried to suck the sexy out of every possible garment.
Anna wrapped a beach towel around herself before nudging her friend awake with her right foot. Tracy yawned and stretched. She finally sat upright and wiped a film of sweat from her forehead.
“What’s up, Pebbles?” she asked.
“I was sunbathing out on the raft and I swear someone was watching me,” Anna said. “I got the creepiest feeling out there.”
“Come on, kiddo, there isn’t anyone anywhere nearby this property. We picked this place out on purpose, remember? The nearest house is two miles away. The town is three and a half miles down that terrible road. No one’s going to come all this way to spy on us, even if we’re the hottest pieces of ass to come to this county in the last fifty years.”
“I’m not joking around. I heard something and when I looked across the lake there was this weird shadow in the forest. When I got back to shore the shadow was gone. It was big enough to be a guy crouching down.”
“Well that settles one thing, then. I doubt he was whacking off. I don’t think it’s possible for a guy to come while he’s on his haunches. They would fall on their ass and spray their shit all over their shirt. So even if it was a person they were probably hiding out of embarrassment. They didn’t mean to come across you lying out in your bikini.”
“I wasn’t wearing my bikini.”
“You slut! Now I wouldn’t feel bad for you even if someone was watching. You should know better than to lay out with your tits out. Gingers burn to a crisp.”
“I’m not a ginger, just a redhead. Gingers look like ghosts all the time.”
“That’s like saying I’m not black, I’m African American. There’s no real di
fference between the two titles.”
Anna frowned and looked out at the forest while her friend laughed it up. She bit her lower lip with concern. Her eyes scanned the tree line, but she saw nothing to indicate that she was being watched. Still, she could feel the eyes on her even now. Someone was staring at her she just didn’t know where he was.
“In a few more hours there’ll be so many of us here that it won’t matter,” Tracy said. Anna realized she had continued to talk while Anna was busy scanning the forest. She didn’t bother having her friend repeat herself.
“I only hope that someone talked Marcy out of driving. She’ll wind up in Las Vegas on accident. That girl has absolutely no sense of direction,” Anna said. She never took her eyes off of the shadows of the forest.
“Last I heard Ivy and Chandra were going to be the drivers this time.”
“Well, that’s at least a little better. I still think Lynne and Gabby would have been the smartest choices. Neither of them have ever got so much as a parking ticket.”
“Yeah, but they also drive like grandmas. They wouldn’t have got here before Wednesday.”
“You got me there.”
Tracy stood up. She stretched out onto her tippy toes and extended her arms high above her head. A loud yawn came out of her mouth, stretching it wide. She was absolutely beautiful in every way and Anna could not ignore it. Her mocha skin was flawless. She was built long and narrow with petite features. She had all of the beauty of an African goddess.
“What do you say we get the party started early?” Tracy suggested. “We can smoke a bowl and take a couple of shots. Who would know but us?”
“Sure, sounds fun. I need to relax anyway.”
Tracy nodded empathetically. “You definitely need to relax, babe. I’ll pack the bowl. Do you want the pipe or the bong?”
“Pipe, I don’t want to get fucked up before everyone else arrives.”
Tracy bounced off toward the door. Anna turned her eyes away from the forest and for just a moment thought she saw something. She turned back and squinted at the distance. There was no sign of anything on the opposite shore, but she was sure for a moment there she had caught a glimmer off of something metallic like a pair of binoculars.
2
“This had better be the goddamn road or we’re going back there and cutting off that creeper’s nutsack,” Ivy snapped. She thumped her fingers on the top of the steering wheel as quickly as she normally did against her laptop’s keyboard.
“Jeez, Ivy, what’s gotten into you?” Lynne asked.
“We’re running late as hell thanks to taking the wrong exit off of the interstate. I do not want to be on these narrow, gravel roads when it gets dark. My luck I’ll run right into a fucking bigfoot or something.”
“That would be creepy,” Lynne giggled. “I don’t think there are any real bigfoots out here, though. We’ll be fine.”
“You say that because you aren’t the one driving. Where the hell did Anna come up with this place anyway? No one on the face of the planet knows exactly where Porter Harvest is. I mean, did you see that dude’s face when I asked at the first gas station. He thought I was fucking insane.”
“He thought you were insane because you were practically frothing at the mouth with anger,” Lynne said. She gave her friend an assuring pat on the leg. “You’re doing fine and we’re going to be there any moment now. The creeper said that it’s the only house on this road, right? We just look for the only driveway and we’re there.”
“What if he was lying? He could be sending us to one of his family member’s houses. Maybe they’re all like those creeps in the Wrong Turn movies. They’ll cut off our tits and rape us before they eat us.”
“I told you those movies were bad for you. That shit gets in your brain and you start rambling like a retard. There are no crazed inbreds out here. We’re in California, not Virginia. The worst that we might encounter is a has been star that’s been growing coke plants or something. And even that’s far-fetched, they all move to Florida to do that shit.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Yes, I am. I’m fucking hilarious.”
Ivy glanced over at her snidely and almost missed the narrow driveway on her right. A couple hundred yards up the road came to an abrupt turn and the forest took over. Ivy slammed her brakes and managed to just barely navigate onto the deeply rutted dirt driveway.
“I swear to God if someone comes running out of the forest wearing a skin mask and carrying a chainsaw I’m going to run his ass over.”
“Again we’re in California, not Texas.”
“I don’t give a fuck where we are, I’m not going to get dead by some psycho killer on spring break.”
“I’ll give you that it sounds like a really shitty way to spend our brief freedom being sliced up by a psychopath, but this isn’t a movie. We’re going to get to the house, it’s going to be beautiful and we’re going to have a great time getting shit faced and acting like we don’t have any finals to study for.”
They came to a fork in the road and after a moment decided to take the path to the right. After driving around a thicket of trees the road came back together. They drove for nearly three quarters of a mile before the house came into view. The forest had been driven back to give the three story lake house a yard. The house was immense, more like a mansion. It was no wonder that it carried such a heavy price tag.
There were eight trees in the yard, planted purposely so that hammocks could be hung from them. A small koi pond sat within throwing distance to the hammock utopia. There was a gazebo built a few yards away from the lake, about thirty yards away from the dock. An old rowboat and two kayaks were up on a rack to the left of the short dock.
“Wow, this place looks like a summer camp for millionaires,” Lynne smiled.
“Let’s hope no kid drowned in the lake twenty years ago,” Ivy commented.
“Okay, seriously, Ivy, no more horror movies for you. You’re starting to piss me off.”
Ivy pulled her Sebring convertible next to Tracy’s Mini Cooper and turned off the engine. She climbed out and let out an enormous sigh of relief. Lights came on over the front door and a moment later Tracy was bouncing down off of the deck to greet her friends.
The moment she was close enough that her eyes were visible Ivy slugged her playfully in the shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re smoking when I’m lost in the middle of the goddamn mountains.”
“You weren’t lost, just slightly misguided. Let me guess, you tried to follow directions on your GPS,” Tracy said.
“What else was I going to use? This place isn’t on any map printed in the last fifty years.”
“Well, there was the brochure with the map inside it.”
“What fucking brochure?”
“My bad,” Lynne said. She produced the brochure from her purse and handed it over to Ivy. If looks could kill she would have exploded beneath Ivy’s glare. “I didn’t look at it. I had no idea there was a map.”
“Ignorance is not a defense,” Ivy said.
Tracy, sensing the coming argument, stepped in. “It doesn’t matter. You made it and we’re free of obligations. That means a week of sunning, smoking and drinking. When all else fails get fucked up and forget everything.”
Ivy’s tension depleted almost instantly. She handed the brochure back to Lynne and offered the best smile she could muster. “I’ll forgive and forget on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You mix me all of my drinks tonight.”
“You’re going to use me as your personal bartender?” Lynne frowned, but it was mostly for show. She definitely didn’t want to spend her spring break arguing with one of her best friends.
“Be grateful that I’m not demanding blow jobs.”
“And now we’re all aware of Ivy’s penis,” Tracy laughed. “I knew this vacation would be a learning experience.”
All three of them laughed as they took the bags out of the trunk of the car. T
hey made their way to the house. Once inside Ivy and Lynne looked around in genuine shock. The house was not only breath taking outside. The great room spanned the entire length of the house. The vaulted ceiling held three crystal chandeliers that cast warm pools of light on the expensive designer furniture. There was a fireplace surrounded by a sectional sofa and two lounge chairs. Against the back of the sectional there was another sofa with a matching loveseat that faced a large flat screen television. Faux fur rugs were stretched across the hardwood floors, giving the room a rustic appearance. A bar fully stocked with liquor adorned the wall opposite the door. There were eight barstools, a large jukebox and a pool table in this area of the great room. Several neon signs displaying the names of different beers and liquors hung on the walls beside the liquor shelves.
A spiral staircase led up to the second floor landing. Anna stood looking down at her friends from a perch at the top of the stairs. She grinned and waved her free hand. A bottle of wine occupied her other hand. She raised the bottle in a salute after deciding a simple wave was not enough of a welcome.
“I hope you chicks are ready to get trashed!” she called down. “By the way I totally claimed the room over there. There’s a bad ass bath tub in the bathroom connected to it. You guys have got to check it out.”
“This place is amazing!” Ivy gushed.
“You don’t know the half of it, babe,” Tracy said. “There’s a hot tub on the back deck and the lake is really clean. Anna swam in it a couple of times today and there aren’t any creepy crawlies in it.”
“Fuck Cancun we’re coming back here every year,” Lynne said. “Who needs a bunch of oiled up guys checking us out when we can have this kind of fun and privacy?”
“Don’t knock on oiled up guys. I could use a little dick,” Ivy said.
“There’s plenty of dick to be had back at school. Out here it’s just us girls and that’s the way it should be.”