by Bryan Smith
He shrugged. “She’s manipulative as hell, for one thing. And the way she bosses you and Lana around bugs…well, I don’t get that at all. Are you afraid of her?”
Echo frowned. “You just don’t know her like I do. She’s my friend. My good friend. But she has control issues that have to do with shit that happened to her when she was younger. Being in charge makes her feel safe.”
Casey shook his head. “You’re just making excuses for the way she walks all over you.”
Echo glared at him. “Bullshit, Casey. I’ll stand up to her when I think it really matters.”
Casey planted his feet and stopped Echo in her tracks. He pulled at her hand, turning her toward him. “I want to talk about that guy she had me kill.”
Echo’s face hardened at the mention of Micah. It was a warning look, but there was a note of defensiveness in the expression too. “No.”
“That was some real horror show shit.”
Echo’s expression became a full-on glower. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I’m gonna lose my shit completely if I can’t talk about this. I need to understand.” He put a hand against her cheek, smiling at the way the little intimacy made her melt noticeably. “I’m not condemning you. I’ve been around you and your friends long enough to have a feel for the dynamics of the situation. I figure Dez goaded you into this murder business by playing on your anger at me. You met her the same day you caught me with Ella, right?”
Casey already knew this, but it was important to carefully lead Echo down a path that would put her own actions in the best possible light while at the same time painting a far less flattering picture of Dez.
Echo chewed on her bottom lip a moment before nodding. “Yeah.”
Casey nodded. “So she saw you were vulnerable and took advantage of that. She probably even exaggerated some of the shit she’d been through to make you sympathize with her. Am I wrong?”
A troubled look clouded Echo’s features. “No. At least…not entirely.”
Casey sighed. “She came along at exactly the right time with exactly the right story. She played you and manipulated you into killing that first dude with her. Once that was done, you were on the hook. Look, I get that you’re not totally innocent in this. I know you’ve done terrible things. Those are your own words. Again, I’m not condemning, just saying how it is. All the sick shit that happened to Micah, that poor bastard…that isn’t you, Echo. I know it’s not.”
A single tear rolled slowly down her cheek as she averted her gaze. “But that’s the part you don’t get. That is me.”
Casey shook his head. “I don’t believe that. You’re not a monster. Not really. Not deep down where it counts. That fucking bitch kept right on manipulating you and steering you down darker and darker paths. Tell me when I start to get any of this wrong.” He waited a beat, but Echo said nothing. “And she’s worked hard to keep you off balance with all the drugs and booze. The really terrible stuff has to be easier to deal with when you’re fucked up all the time, right?”
Echo’s chest hitched. More tears streamed down her cheeks. “Casey…”
He softened his tone, knowing he had struck a nerve. “I know you think it’s too late to turn away from this path, but it isn’t. You haven’t been able to see it because of all the insanity around you, but you’re free, Echo. You can do anything you want. Be any kind of person you want. You don’t have to live this kind of life. You and I could slip away tonight. Take one of the cars and drive somewhere far away. You’d never have to see Dez again and we could have a normal life…” He lifted his hand to touch her cheek again. “…together.”
She sniffled. “If only that were possible.”
“But it is possible. Don’t you see that?” He was trying hard not to sound exasperated, but it wasn’t easy. “All it takes is making up our mind to do it and then fucking doing it.”
Echo frowned. “But what about Keely? You’ve spent so much energy trying to rescue her. Could you really just walk away from that?”
Casey sighed. “You can’t rescue a person who doesn’t want to be rescued. It’s taken me a long time to accept that, but I think I finally have.”
“What about the video message? You said you thought it was made under duress.”
Casey shrugged. “Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really fucking know. But I do know she’s resisted all my efforts to pry her out of that crazy motherfucker’s clutches. Keely’s made her choices and it’s time I left her to them.”
Echo’s expression turned thoughtful. She glanced at the house, then at the dirt driveway beyond, which they could just glimpse from their current vantage point. She had a strange look on her face when she looked at Casey again. “Do you really think we could do it? Slip away without Dez being able to stop us?”
Casey was astonished. He heard real hope in her voice. And he had somehow inspired it with his impassioned words. So this was it. Letting her down wasn’t an option. Not anymore. “Baby, I know we can. Now that you’re with me again, I feel like anything is possible.”
Echo wiped away the last of her drying tears. She was smiling again, but this time it was with a confident glint in her eyes. “How do we do it? Get away, I mean.”
Though she hadn’t stated it explicitly, Casey knew she had decided to trust him. They were going away together. After everything that had happened between them, the development was nothing short of momentous. He was unable to restrain the big smile that spread across his face.
“Well—”
The smile froze at the sound of an approaching engine. He let go of Echo’s hand and took a few quick steps to his right for a less obstructed view of the front yard. A black box truck with no markings came roaring up the driveway and stopped with a loud squelching of brakes in front of the house. Black-clad men hopped out of the truck’s cab and ran to the back of the vehicle, where they hauled open the roll-up door and stepped back as more men in black swarmed out of the cargo compartment. These men wore body armor and black helmets with visors. They were armed with what looked like semi-automatic rifles.
Echo came to Casey’s side and gasped. “Holy shit.”
Casey nodded.
That about summed it up.
Some of the men fanned out and began to circle the house from the sides, while others disappeared from view as they approached the porch. Casey tugged at Echo’s arm and took a step back. “The woods,” he said, when she shot him a panicked glance. “It’s our only chance.”
“But my friends—”
He tugged at her arm again. “We can’t help them. Now, Echo, or we’re fucked.”
The truth was they were already fucked. They were unarmed and exposed, sitting ducks out here in the middle of a damn field. The line of trees that hadn’t seemed so distant moments ago now looked a million miles away. Fucked though they may be, Casey wasn’t about to stand around and be shot down like some dumb animal.
A burst of automatic gunfire crushed the last of Echo’s already faltering resistance. She turned with Casey and ran for the trees.
Lana did a line of coke and chased it with a slug of whiskey. One of the things she liked best about cocaine was how it allowed you to keep drinking for a long time without passing out. Her use of the drug had increased significantly since hooking up with Dez and Echo, who were easily the most avid coke fiends she’d ever met.
Luckily for all of them, Big Ted was more than happy to supply as much powder as they could handle. He had even gotten them into trafficking the stuff a while back, but that was only one facet of his partnership with the girls. They did some gun-running for him too. And why not? They did a lot of traveling anyway. It only made sense to become part of his network and make some good extra money doing what really amounted to pretty simple work.
The actual transactions didn’t take a lot of time—though they could, on very rare occasions, turn a little hairy—which left them with lots of downtime to fill bet
ween deliveries. On occasion they made appearances at some of the many strip clubs Big Ted had a stake in, which were primarily concentrated across the southern states. They billed themselves as “Tha Suicide Bombz” and performed an elaborate routine of their own devising. The act was heavy on kink and lesbian innuendo. Guns were often involved. The Neanderthals in the crowd went wild when one of the girls would go to her knees and perform mock fellatio on the barrel of a 9mm.
But even in the South there were areas where the strip joints were operated by people outside of Big Ted’s sphere of influence, Vixens in Louisiana being one example. That debacle was just the latest and most dire sign that things were starting to spin a little out of control. It was fun to run around doing a bunch of crazy shit, but lately they were all becoming more careless than usual. If they didn’t tighten their shit up soon, it’d only be a matter of time before it caught up to them.
Lana did another line of coke and kicked back in her chair to stare at Dez, who was staring out a window at the big back yard.
“Still watching them?”
Dez nodded but didn’t turn her head Lana’s way. “I wish I knew what they were saying. Conversation looks intense. Echo’s crying. Damn. That girl’s our weak link.” She shot a smirking glance at Lana. “Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”
Lana didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought.” Dez braced her forearms on the windowsill and returned her attention to the back yard. “I’ll tell you what else—I think that self-righteous asshole is talking shit about us right now. I bet you a million fucking dollars he is.”
Lana grunted. “I won’t take that bet. And do you really expect anything else?”
Dez shook her head. “No. And that’s exactly why I think we need to kill that motherfucker before he can go full Yoko Ono on us and break up the band.”
Lana’s brow creased as she took a thoughtful sip of whiskey. “I don’t disagree, but you’d have to be real careful about it and have a rock solid excuse, otherwise Echo’s gonna hate you and break up the band anyway.”
Dez sighed. “I know. It’s a goddamn conundrum.”
Lana didn’t feel any real hatred for Casey. He seemed okay, even kind of cool. He was hot too, with those chiseled good looks and that long blond hair that made him look like a Viking or romance paperback model. Given the chance, she would probably fuck the guy. But her attraction to him didn’t outweigh her desire to keep the gang together. Dez and Echo were the wild and crazy older sisters she’d never had. This year of traveling around with them and having a bunch of bloody adventures had been by far the best time of her life and she did not want it to end any time soon.
She made a contemplative sound. “I could seduce him.”
Dez glanced at her, arching an eyebrow. “Oh?” Her tone was noncommittal, but curious. “And how do you aim to do that? He’s obviously in love with Echo.”
Lana nodded, smiling. “Yeah, but he’s also a dirty little horndog. You can see it in his eyes every time he steals a look at one of us.”
Dez grunted. “Yeah. That dude lives for pussy. You can smell it on him.”
“Shit, this will be easy. I’ll fuck him and somehow convince Echo he forced himself on me. Maybe she’s forgiven him for fucking that other bitch behind her back, but I bet raping one of her best friends will be a whole other story.”
Dez opened her mouth to reply.
And that was when they heard the sound of the approaching engine. It sounded like a diesel engine, which was something they heard out here now and then, but Big Ted would have alerted them to the impending arrival of a shipment of product.
Lana followed Dez out to the living room, where they each moved to a different window and peered through slats in the blinds at the black box truck that pulled up. It looked nothing like the trucks Big Ted used to ship guns and cocaine, which always bore the markings of one of his companies. They both knew something serious was happening as soon as the men in black hopped out of the cab and ran to the back of the truck.
They leapt into action almost instantaneously. Lana got one of the windows open while Dez rolled the heavy M2 machine gun into position. Some of the mercenaries approached the porch while others fanned out around the sides of the house.
The poor bastards noticed the M2 too late.
Dez opened up on them, taking most of them out of the game in the first few seconds of the conflict.
Casey risked a glance over his shoulder as he continued flat-out toward the woods. He saw one of the black-clad men stagger and fall over, shot down by either Dez or Lana firing through a side window. Another of his comrades took multiple hits and did a morbid little death-jig before falling over too. It was a good thing Echo’s friends were armed to the teeth. They might not be able to hold back the greater force, but at least they were taking some of the bastards out first.
A few of the mercenaries—or whatever the hell they were—had reached the back of the house. One of them crouched beneath a window and removed a grenade from his equipment belt. That would probably put an end to the girls’ valiant fight. Though he didn’t care much for Dez, this was unfortunate, if only because the elimination of resistance would also remove whatever infinitesimally small sliver of hope he and Echo had of getting away.
Two more mercenaries peeled away from the group at the back of the house and started chugging across the field toward them. The one in the lead abruptly stopped and put his rifle’s stock against his shoulder, aiming the weapon at them.
Casey turned his head toward the line of trees.
It was less than twenty yards away.
An explosion from the direction of the house made him flinch at just the wrong moment. His right foot twisted beneath him the next time it came down and then he was falling, powerless in any way to impede his descent. He hit the ground with a heavy thud, a side of his face smacking against a patch of dry dirt. Someone was screaming at him. The sound was right in his ear. Echo. He felt her hands on his shoulders, pulling at him, urging him back to his feet. And though he knew there was now no chance at all of escape thanks to his ill-timed tumble, he braced his hands on the ground and pushed himself upright, still determined not to surrender so long as he had breath left in him.
Though he knew he should immediately resume the doomed escape attempt, he couldn’t help another glance back at the house.
He did a double-take as he noted some curious things.
The man who had been primed to toss a grenade through the back window was dead on the ground, parts of his corpse scattered about in bloody pieces. And the men who had been pursuing them across the field had stopped in their tracks and had turned back toward the house, staring at it in evident confusion.
What the fuck?
A small cloud of black smoke was rising from somewhere inside the house, which wasn’t surprising. It was an old house with a lot of old, dry wood inside it, the kind of place just looking for an excuse to go up in flames.
Casey stared at the back of the man who had been leading the charge across the field. His rifle was at his side now, pointed at the ground. There was no conscious decision to do what happened next. It was just animal instinct, a reflexive urge to take down a predator while his guard was down. Echo screamed at him as he took off running again, this time straight toward the unsuspecting mercenary. Casey gritted his teeth and willed her to shut up lest she alert his prey too soon.
But this concern soon proved irrelevant.
Casey realized the sound of constant gunfire had ceased an instant before another sound displaced it—the roar of a diesel engine. He came to an abrupt halt and stared in open-mouthed disbelief as the black box truck—now riddled with gaping holes courtesy of the high caliber bullets spewed by the M2 heavy machine gun—appeared around a side of the house and came charging across the field.
Casey couldn’t help it—he laughed.
These chicks are just not to be fucked with, period.
Lana leaned out the passenger side window
and sprayed bullets at the remaining mercenaries with a Mac-10 machine gun pistol. Two of them were cut down immediately, while the last one—the guy who’d taken aim at them moments earlier—turned tail and made a run for the woods. Unfortunately for him, Casey was right in his path. He tackled the man and drove him to the ground before he could react.
Casey ripped the rifle from the man’s hands and jammed its barrel up under his chin. He responded with whimpers and barely intelligible pleas for his life. The truck came to a stop about ten feet away. Doors popped open. Lana and Dez approached with savage sneers twisting their pretty faces.
Dez put her hands on her hips and glared at Casey. “The fuck you waiting for? Shoot that piece of shit.”
“I need to know something first.” He pushed the rifle’s barrel against the man’s chin, eliciting another mewling whimper. “Did de Rais send you? Was all this to get me?”
More whimpering.
Dez rolled her eyes. “This is a waste of time. If you’re not gonna kill him, I will.”
Echo joined the group arrayed around the prone mercenary. “Casey’s right. We need to know who sent these fuckers.”
Dez snorted. “Like it fucking matters.”
Casey ignored this exchange, focusing on the whimpering mercenary. “Listen up. I’m making a one-time offer. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you live. Word of honor. Tell me straight-up. Did John Wayne de Rais send you here?”
The man got his mewling under control and pushed up his visor. He looked Casey in the eye and said, “John Wayne sent us. He’ll send a backup team if he doesn’t hear from us within the hour.”
Casey squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
There was a moment of silence.
Then Dez laughed. “You lying son of a bitch. Word of honor, my ass.”
Casey grunted. “There’s no room for honor in a thing like this.”
Dez gave him an appraising look. “There may be hope for you, after all.”
Echo cleared her throat. “We should probably figure out our next move before that backup team shows up.”