by Jack Kilborn
Donaldson bounced off the dashboard, smacking his sunburned nose hard. During the momentary disorientation, he was aware of Mr. K throwing the car into park, unbuckling his seatbelt, and pressing a thin-bladed knife under Donaldson’s double chin with one hand, while digging the .38 from Donaldson’s front pocket with the other.
“You should buckle up,” Mr. K said. “Seatbelts save lives.”
Mr. K stuck the knife into his breast pocket, belted himself back in, then hit the gas. The tires screamed and the Continental shot forward.
“I’m bleeding,” Donaldson said, his hands cupped around his nose. He knew it was a stupid, obvious thing to say, but he was still dazed and trying to buy some time.
“Tissues in the glove compartment.”
Donaldson dug them out, feeling more ashamed than hurt. This guy had gotten the better of him much too easily. As he mopped the blood from his face, Mr. K pressed a button to open the passenger side window.
“Throw the used ones outside, please.”
Donaldson went through ten tissues, tossing each one onto the road whizzing by. Then he ripped one more into pieces, balled them up, and shoved them into each nostril, staunching the trickle. He kept an eye on Mr. K the entire time, alternating between watching the man’s eyes, and watching the .38 pointed at him.
This is a real bad situation.
“I don’t enjoy repeating myself, but you hit that dashboard pretty hard, so I’ll ask one more time. Did you kill the driver before you stole the Pinto?”
Donaldson knew he was screwed, but he didn’t want to get himself even more screwed.
“You a cop?” he asked, not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
The barest flash of mirth crossed Mr. K’s face. “No. But your biggest worry right now shouldn’t be getting arrested. Your biggest worry should be the hole I’m going to put in your head if you don’t answer me.”
The gears began to turn in Donaldson’s head. How the hell do I get through this? Talk my way out?
“You won’t shoot me,” Donaldson said, surprised by how calm he sounded.
“No?”
“You’d ruin your car.”
Again, a faint hint of a smile. “It’s not my car. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Mr. K thumbed back the hammer on the pistol.
Donaldson contemplated his own death—the first time in his life he ever had—and decided dying would be a very bad thing.
“I killed him,” Donaldson said quickly.
Mr. K seemed to think about this. He nodded slowly. “Was it someone you knew?”
“No. Jumped him in a parking lot in Sarasota. Wouldn’t have wasted the bullet if I knew what a piece of crap his car was.”
Donaldson watched Mr. K’s eyes. They betrayed nothing. The two of them might as well have been talking about the weather.
“How’d it feel?” Mr. K asked.
“How did what feel?”
“Killing that man.”
What kind of freaky talk is this? Donaldson thought, but all he said was, “I dunno.”
“Sure you do. Did it feel good? Bad? Numb? Did it get you excited? Did you feel guilty afterward?”
Donaldson thought back to the day before. To holding the gun to the man’s ribs. Seeing the shock in his eyes when he squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. Watching him flop to the ground in a way that had struck him as funny. The holes in his chest had made sucking sounds, blowing tiny blood bubbles.
“Excited,” Donaldson said.
“Did he die right away?”
“No.”
“Did you stay and watch him die?”
“Yeah.”
“How long did it take?”
It’s so strange that we’re both so calm about this.
Donaldson shrugged. “Few minutes, I guess.”
“Did you do anything else to him?”
“Like what?”
“Did you hurt him first?” Mr. K raised an eyebrow. “Rape him?”
Donaldson scowled. “Do I look like a queer to you?”
“What does being a homosexual have to do with it? You had a human being at your mercy. That excited you. I’m asking if you capitalized on that opportunity. If you made the most of it.”
Donaldson thought about it. The guy had been at his mercy. He’d begged for a while when Donaldson pulled the gun, and that was kind of a turn-on.
“I didn’t rape him,” Donaldson said.
“Could you have raped him?”
Donaldson licked some dried blood off of his top lip, let the salty, copper taste linger on his tongue. “Yeah. I could’ve.”
This answer seemed to satisfy Mr. K. He was quiet for over a minute.
The road stretched out ahead of them like a giant black snake.
Empty swampland and blue skies as far as Donaldson could see.
I can’t believe I’m telling him this stuff. Is it because he’s threatening to kill me?
Or because he understands?
“How’d you know?” Donaldson asked.
“Know what?”
“That I stole that car?”
Mr. K offered a half-smile. “I saw the gun in your pocket when you stopped, along with your clumsy attempt to hide it. You should get an ankle holster, or stuff it in your belt at the small of your back. You obviously aren’t a Florida native, or you’d have a tan already. That means you flew in or drove in. If you flew, you probably would’ve had a rental car, and those are usually new. That Pinto was an old model. When you first got in, I noticed the powder burns on your shirt, and under your rather oppressive body odor, you smell like gunpowder.”
Donaldson was impressed, but he refused to show it. He knew a lot about being victimized. One way to stop being a victim was to stop acting like a victim.
“I asked how you knew about the car, not my gun,” Donaldson said, sticking out his lower jaw.
If Mr. K noticed Donaldson’s display of bravado, he didn’t react. “Your loose jeans didn’t jingle when you sat down in the car. When people abandon their vehicles, they take their keys with them. So I assumed it wasn’t yours.”
Donaldson appraised Mr. K again. This was a smart guy.
“How about you?” Donaldson ventured. “Did you kill the owner of this car?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“He’s tied up in the trunk. I’m taking him someplace private.”
Donaldson worded his next question carefully. “Do you want to kill me?”
Mr. K drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Donaldson counted his own heartbeats, trying to keep cool until Mr. K finally replied.
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Is there anything I can do to, uh, persuade you that I’m worth keeping alive?”
“Maybe. The Pinto owner you killed. He wasn’t the first.”
Donaldson thought back to his father, to beating the old man to death with a baseball bat. “No, he wasn’t.”
“But he was the first stranger.”
This guy is uncanny. “Yeah.”
“Who was it before that? Girlfriend? Family member?”
“My dad.”
“But you didn’t use a gun on him, did you? You made it more personal.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you use?”
“A Louisville Slugger.”
“How did it feel?”
Donaldson closed his eyes. He could still feel the sting of the bat in his palms when he cracked it against his father’s head, still see the blood that spurted out of split skin like a lawn sprinkler.
“I felt like Reggie Jackson hitting one out of Yankee Stadium. Afterward, I even went out and bought a Reggie Bar.”
Mr. K gave him a sideways glance. “Why buy candy? Why didn’t you eat part of your father? Just imagine the expression on his face.”
Donaldson was about to protest, but he stopped himself. When he broke Dad’s jaw with the bat, t
he old man had looked more surprised than hurt. How would he have reacted if Donaldson had cut off one of his fingers and eaten it in front of him?
That would have shown the son of a bitch. Bite the hand that feeds you.
“I should have done that,” Donaldson said.
“He hurt you when you were a child.” Mr. K said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yeah. He used to beat the shit out of me.”
“Did he sexually abuse you?”
“Naw. Nothing like that. But every time I got into trouble, he’d take his belt to me. And he hit hard enough to draw blood. What kind of asshole does that to a five-year-old kid?”
“Think hard, Donaldson. Do you believe your father beat you, and that turned you into what you are? Or did he beat you because of what you are?”
Donaldson frowned. “What do you mean what you are? What am I?”
Mr. K turned and stared deep into his soul, his eyes like gun barrels. “You’re a killer, Donaldson.”
Donaldson considered the label. It didn’t take him long to embrace it.
“So what was the question again?”
“Are you a killer because your father beat you, or did your father beat you because you’re a killer?”
Donaldson could remember that first beating when he was five. He’d taken his pet gerbil and put it in the blender. Used the pulse button, grinding it up a little at a time, so it didn’t die right away.
“I think my dad knew. Tried to beat the devil out of me. Used to tell me that, when he was whipping my ass.”
“You don’t have the devil in you, Donaldson. You’re simply unique. Exceptional. Unrestrained by morality or guilt.”
Exceptional? Donaldson had never felt like he was exceptional at anything. He did badly in school. Dropped out of college. Never had any friends, or a woman he didn’t pay for. Bummed around the country, job to job, occasionally ripping someone off. How is that exceptional?
But somehow, he felt that the description fit him.
Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been trying to be normal all of these years, but I’m not. I’m better than normal.
I’m exceptional.
“How do you know this stuff?” Donaldson asked.
“The more you understand death,” Mr. K said, “the more you appreciate life.”
“Sounds like fortune cookie bullshit.”
“It was something I learned in the war.”
“Vietnam?” Donaldson had been exempt from the draft because he didn’t pass the physical.
“A villager in Ca Lu said it to me, before I removed his intestines with a bayonet.”
“Was he talking about himself?” Donaldson asked. “Or you?”
“You tell me. Did you feel alive when you killed your father, Donaldson?”
Donaldson nodded.
“And when you killed the owner of the Pinto?” Mr. K continued.
“Goddamn piece of crap car. I wish I could kill that guy again.”
“How about someone else in his place?”
Donaldson squinted at Mr. K. “What do you mean?”
Another half smile. “The man in my trunk. If I gave you the chance to kill him, would you?”
This bonus excerpt is from the new eBook Break You by Blake Crouch, the next installment in the Andrew Z. Thomas series. It features Luther…
Published February 2011
At long last, the next installment in the Andrew Z. Thomas trilogy…following the events of DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS, Andy Thomas and Violet King are hiding out in the wilds of northern Canada, where Violet has a four-month-old son and a burgeoning romance with Andy. On a cold, rainy night at their cabin in the woods, the promise of an idyllic life that seems just around the corner is shattered when a man from their past, a monster of pure malevolence, returns. What he has in store for them will challenge their understanding of evil and stretch the fibers of their love to the breaking point.
Excerpt from Break You…
Yukon, Canada
Autumn 2004
Andy
Early October.
A cold, midnight rain pattering against the tin roof above our heads.
“We should be drinking whiskey,” Violet said. “Something to warm our bones.”
I set another birch log on the fire and crawled back onto the bearskin rug where Vi had sprawled with her wineglass.
“You’re already cold?” I asked.
“I’m a southern girl. I’m always freezing.”
“Hate to say it, but that doesn’t bode well for you this winter.”
“How cold does it get here? Worst case scenario.”
“Fifty below. Sixty on a bad day.”
“I won’t even get out of bed.”
I sipped my wine, glanced at the fireshadows flickering in the rafters over the loft—what had once been my office now converted into Violet’s bedroom and her four-month-old Max’s nursery. He slept up there in bliss, the warmest spot in the cabin, where the heat of the fire gathered.
I studied the firelight flush across Violet’s face.
I’d shunned it, fought it, tried to ignore it, but there was no denying what I could feel in the pit of my stomach. I was falling…hard…for this woman.
“What is it?” Vi said.
“Nothing.”
“No…you have this look.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smirked. “Are you crushing on me, Andy?”
I blushed through to the tips of my ears, wondering if she could see the color in the lowlight.
“Little bit, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s completely understandable. I’m adorable.”
I laughed, my eyes closing only for a second, and when they opened again, Violet had leaned forward and I could smell the wine on her breath.
Her green eyes were flecked with black. This I hadn’t noticed before.
“Violet—”
“I want this.”
“You’re sure? Because if you have any doubt—”
She shut me up with a kiss.
Soft.
Melting.
Melding.
I could’ve lived there.
We came apart, the corners of my mouth electrified with the taste of her. I ran my hand over the curve of her hip, wondering how far we were going to take this.
“I haven’t,” I said. “Not in a long time.”
“Haven’t what? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing, I just—”
“Wait.” She recoiled. “You think we’re going to sleep together?”
“No, I just thought—”
“I’m kidding, we are.”
“Why do you torture me?”
“Because it’s so easy?”
She set her wineglass on the floorboard and pulled me on top of her.
“Tell the truth,” she whispered. “How many times have you imagined this moment?”
I smiled, feeling her thighs against my ribs.
“You’ve been through a lot, Vi.”
“We both have.”
“It hasn’t even been a year.”
“It’s been long enough for me to know who you are. Stop trying to talk me out of this.”
So I kissed her, my hands running over her body in some kind of wonder. The fire raged behind us and the rain intensified. I had imagined this moment, many times, since the beginning of summer at least and still it didn’t feel anything like my fantasies. I loved her now, and that made everything better.
“Do you want to move over to my bed?” I whispered in her ear.
“Yes, please.”
And still I could barely bring myself to separate from her. Such a sweet and perfect place.
I got onto my knees and helped her up.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
I would’ve undressed her right there in the firelight if it hadn’t been so cold. I wished we’d done this in the summertime.
“I’m just go
ing to run up to the loft for a second,” she said. “Go get under the covers in your bed and warm it up for us.”
I stood and moved across the cold floorboards toward the nook under the loft where my bed sat in darkness.
The wine had gone to my head, everything so pleasantly humming.
Violet climbed the ladder toward the loft.
My heart pounded under my sweater.
Reaching the bed, I tugged back the covers, wondering if I should be naked waiting for her, or if maybe there wasn’t something slightly sleazy about that.
I crawled under the blankets and opted to play it safe, stay dressed for now.
I could hear Violet moving around directly above me in the loft, the boards creaking, thinking how many nights had I lain here in the dark listening to her movements, hoping she was feeling what I was, that she might decide to creep down the ladder in the middle of the night and join me in bed. A part of me still didn’t quite believe that it was about to happen.
It was cold under the blankets, and I was drawing them up to my chin to keep in the heat when Violet shrieked.
I bolted up.
“Andy!” she screamed.
I jumped out of bed, rushed over to the ladder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, climbing.
“He’s gone.”
I stepped into the loft.
Dark up here and nothing to see except where the firelight reflected off surfaces of metal and glass.
“Who?” I asked, but I understood the moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw Vi leaning over into the crib, shuffling through the blankets.
“Max,” she said.
“There’s no way he could have crawled out?”
“He’s four months, Andy. He can’t even roll over.”
I turned on a lamp and moved toward her.
“You put him down after supper, right?”
She nodded, wild-eyed, her pupils dilated, chest billowing.
“He went down fast. Ten minutes. Then I came down and we were talking by the fire for what? A couple hours?”
“Yeah.”
Vi was physically shaking. “This isn’t right, Andy. This isn’t right.”
I stepped around the crib toward the only possible exit from the loft—a two-by-two square foot window just under the pitch of the roof.
“Is it open?” she asked.
I knelt down, studied the hasps. “No. But it isn’t locked.”
“Was it?”
“I’m ninety percent sure it…fuck.”