by Bryan Smith
Jade shot him in the head.
After that she put the barrel of the gun under Keely’s chin and smiled. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Keely. You are quite the ruthless little whore. Don’t think for a second I believe the lie you told about them.”
Keely sighed. “Just go ahead and kill me. Get it over with.”
Jade shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not yet. You see, now I’m thinking I want you to take that journey with the rest of us tomorrow night. Not because I’ve had a change of heart about you or any bullshit like that. No, ma’am. But I want you to spend your last moments of mortal life knowing that all the cold-blooded shit you did to save yourself was for nothing. In the meantime…”
She pulled the gun away from Keely’s chin and pointed it at her stomach.
“Get on your knees, Keely.”
Keely sighed. She was so over being abused in some way by practically every inner circle member she encountered. What perverse slugs these people were. But what choice did she have? She still didn’t want to die and was willing to do anything she had to do to put it off a little while longer.
Keely dropped to her knees.
Jade brushed the barrel of the gun across her lips. “Open your mouth.”
Keely whimpered and heaved a breath. And then she did as Jade instructed.
Jade pushed the barrel of the gun deep inside her mouth. “Look at me.”
Keely’s eyes rolled upward. She waited.
Jade had a strange look on her face. A perverse, intense excitement colored her features. “There was this act I saw performed at a strip club a while back. These gorgeous girls did this really fucking hot routine. A gun was involved. One of them—a raven-haired slut I’d sell my soul for—sucked on the blonde’s gun like it was a dick.”
Keely sobbed. The gun’s sight scraped against the roof of her mouth.
Jade laughed.
“That’s what I want you to do, Keely. That’s your way out of this barn alive.” She jabbed the barrel of the gun deeper into her mouth, mashing her bottom lip with the trigger guard. “Suck on it, bitch. Suck it good.”
Keely fought for several moments to get her sobbing under control.
When she finally did, she performed the act Jade commanded with an unrestrained faux-enthusiasm that both shocked and pleased her new tormentor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Some Fucked-Up Shit Dez Almost Did on the Road
The clusterfuck at Vixens was two days in their rearview mirror when the girls opted to crash at a fleabag motel shortly after crossing the border into Tennessee. This was a testament to how burnt they were after the endless days of not sleeping and bingeing on high-grade coke. A long overdue return to Echo’s house in Rutherford County was little more than two hours away, but they were simply incapable of making it even another mile down the road. They had run out of coke the day before and were crashing hard.
Turned out the only lodging right off the highway was a nasty pit called the Hoot N’ Holler Inn. The name would have amused the trio under better circumstances. They might have taken turns posing for pictures beneath the burned-out neon sign in the parking lot. But by the time Dez pulled the Impala to a stop outside the lobby, all any of them cared about was getting a room and sleeping for forty-eight hours.
The man behind the check-in counter was a middle-aged Iraqi or Afghani or some damn thing. This surprised Dez nearly enough to elicit a snarky comment. Based on the joint’s name, she had expected some big redneck Bubba to greet her. But she was too tired to poke fun at the guy or risk offending him with racist jokes, which she liked to do sometimes just for the pure obnoxious hell of it.
The Middle Eastern transplant hardly spoke as they interacted, keeping his utterances to the absolute minimum necessary to effect the transaction. This was fine with Dez, who never enjoyed conversing with foreigners or putting up with their ridiculous accents. He told her he needed a credit card to put on file until they checked out. The only credit cards she had belonged to dead people and were due to be discarded. She got past this requirement by opening her purse and throwing a big wad of cash at him. His eyes got big behind his thick-lensed glasses when she told him he could keep whatever was left over when they checked out in the morning (not that they had any intention of actually going through the checkout process).
Dez grabbed the room key from the clerk’s hands before he could argue with her and staggered back out of the lobby. A few moments later she had the car parked in front of room 119 and roused her friends long enough to get into the room. Lana was the first to come around. Echo was problematic. She never did become fully conscious, but she stirred just enough to allow her friends to drag her out of the Impala and into the room.
They left a handcuffed and gagged Micah in the trunk, never even thinking about him.
The room’s walls were stained and the carpet was shredded and filthy. There were two sloppily made twin beds and a boxy old Zenith television that didn’t work. No one much cared. Lana took Echo by an arm and curled up with her on the bed closest to the door. The spooning duo was asleep within seconds. Dez felt a stirring of resentment as she watched them occasionally shift their bodies, instinctually getting more comfortable as they fell into an even deeper state of sleep. She usually had her choice of one or the other as a cuddle partner, but this time she had been left in the cold. She considered dragging Lana away from Echo and into the other bed with her. Maybe she wouldn’t be happy about being rudely awakened, but in the end she would let Dez have her way. Just like she always did.
And like Echo mostly always did.
Dez had another cute term she liked nearly as much as “Dezsexual”. This one was “Dezocracy”. It was her name for the rules their little gang lived by, which boiled down to being sure to damn well do whatever Dez said. Her friends mostly wanted the same things she did, so this didn’t cause much strife. More and more lately, though, Echo was displaying troubling signs of independent thought. At some point she would have to be taught a lesson. Maybe even a permanent one.
Dez yawned and felt her eyes turn bleary. She was too tired for this shit. It was time to let her resentment go and get that long stretch of sleep. So she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the other bed, yawning again as she doubled the pillow up beneath her head and turned onto her side.
When she opened her eyes again, it was dark outside and the room was shrouded in gloom. A digital clock sat atop the dresser next to the non-functioning television. The glowing digits told her a little more than three hours had elapsed. She already felt better than she had in days. That burnt-to-a-crispy-little-cinder feeling was gone. She had an impulse to get up and fetch a bottle of whiskey from the Impala, but she knew she would be better off closing her eyes and allowing sleep to take her again. Her depleted energy levels had only been partially restored. Getting fully recharged while she had the chance was the smart way to go.
She banished the temptation of whiskey and turned onto her side again, her eyes fluttering as she stared at the dim shape of the other bed. Her eyes had adjusted some to the darkness and she realized there was something off about what she was seeing. At first she attributed it to a trick of the faint moonlight filtering through the closed window blinds, but a longer look told her something was definitely amiss.
She sat up and turned on one of the wall-mounted lamps between the beds.
She frowned.
Her eyes had not been deceived. There had been no trick of the light.
Echo was alone in the other bed, still sound asleep.
Dez got up and took a look around the little room. Lana wasn’t hiding out in the grungy bathroom or anywhere else, which could only mean she had slipped away while her friends were asleep. This didn’t raise any real alarms. One or more of them would often go out while the others slept. Dez suspected Lana woke up feeling restless after a couple hours sleep, much like she had, except that Lana had actually acted on the impulse to get out of bed. She was probably outside smoking or
taking a walk around the parking lot. The possibility rejuvenated her own impulse to get up and this time she didn’t suppress it. She walked out of the room and into crisp, cool night air.
She stood on the sidewalk and frowned.
Huh.
The Impala was gone.
She was still not at all alarmed. This was another thing that happened from time to time. It was a sometimes unavoidable consequence of only taking one car when they traveled. Still, it was disappointing. She hadn’t fully realized it until she was standing out there staring at the empty parking space in front of their room, but a part of her had relished the prospect of some private time with Lana.
After staring out at the mostly empty and litter-strewn parking lot for a few more moments, she went back into the room and stood over the bed where Echo was still so deeply asleep she looked comatose. She was so out of it she probably hadn’t noticed Lana disengaging herself from her and slipping away.
Dez sat next to Echo on the edge of the bed. She put a hand on her shoulder and pressed down, causing her to groan softly as she rolled onto her back. Her breathing remained regular and she failed to stir at all. For a while, Dez just sat there admiring the fine contours of Echo’s pretty face. Despite how annoying she could sometimes be lately, there was no denying how lovely she was.
She slipped a hand down the front of Echo’s shorts and let her fingers slide over her shaved pussy. A naughty smile played at the corners of her mouth as she considered tugging the shorts off to give her an oral wake up call. She slipped a finger inside Echo and wiggled it around a little. A frown replaced her smile as Echo again failed to stir.
She removed her hand from Echo’s shorts and felt a fresh stirring of resentment—until an entirely different kind of impulse struck her.
A check of the parking lot through the blind slats confirmed Lana was still nowhere in the vicinity. Dez hurried back across the room, grabbed the pillow from her bed and pressed it down over Echo’s face. There was a barely audible groan from beneath the pillow, but Echo remained oblivious. Dez’s nipples stiffened in excitement as she pressed the pillow down harder.
Her plan was simple. Hold the pillow down until Echo stopped breathing. She was so far gone there was no chance she would wake up before that could happen. Then, once it was done, she would turn the light out and crawl back into the other bed, feigning sleep until Lana returned and discovered Echo dead. Getting away with this would be so easy. Lana would never suspect her of killing their sister-in-blood. She had seen for herself the pitiful state Echo was in. An accidental death would be an easy sell. The only drag would be having to fake a believable amount of grief.
And, okay, maybe it would be a little sad, at least at first. She didn’t hate Echo. They’d had a lot of fun times together. But this Three Musketeers routine was getting old. Echo was becoming too assertive within the group, whereas Lana remained pliant and even sort of in awe of her. In light of that, going on as a duo for a while might be the best option all around.
Dez flinched as headlights appeared through the blinds and lit up the room. She pulled the pillow away from Echo’s face and tossed it back to the other bed. Echo’s features were completely slack for a moment and Dez held her breath as she watched her, but then she snorted and pulled in another deep breath.
Fuck!
She got up and moved away from the bed as she heard keys rattle outside. The door opened and Lana stumbled into the room with a lopsided grin on her face. Her eyes were bleary and her lipstick was smudged. She had been out drinking somewhere.
“Hey, Dez. What are you doing up?”
Dez smirked. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Lana kicked the door shut and dropped her purse on the table. “Woke and couldn’t sleep, that’s all. Decided to go out.”
“I see.”
“Are you mad?” Lana’s brow furrowed. “You sound mad.”
Dez crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”
Lana wobbled her way across the room, a smile forming on her face as she neared Dez. “Am I about to be punished? I’m sorry for being bad.” Her voice took on an exaggeratedly girlish, singsong tone. “I promise I won’t do it again.”
Dez pointed at the empty bed. “Take off your clothes and lie down.”
Lana smiled and complied with the command. This was nothing new. They had enacted similar “punishment” scenarios many times. Dez glanced at Echo while Lana undressed, watching her inhale and exhale several times.
And she thought, You got lucky.
This time.
She turned out the light and crawled into bed with Lana.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Man with the Plan
The man who was supposedly the answer to all their problems was more than an hour late arriving at the designated location, which was room 2035 at the Renaissance, a luxury hotel in downtown Nashville. Casey’s nerves were on edge well ahead of the delay for a couple of reasons. One was the proximity of the hotel to where he had made his botched attempt to grab his sister off the street. Innocent people had died that day as a direct result of his actions, including a couple of tourists who’d had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He felt bad about that and wished he could go back in time and undo the whole damn thing.
The girls were well aware of what had gone down a couple streets over, so they had a degree of insight into why he was so jittery. But there was another element contributing to his unease, something he hadn’t shared with any of them, including Echo.
He had spent a night in the Renaissance once before after meeting an elegantly dressed businesswoman in a 2nd Avenue bar. Her name was Carolyn. She was in town for a conference and was looking to take a walk on the wild side before heading home to Toronto. Casey was exactly the kind of handsome bad boy she wanted. It had been a reasonably fun evening, but in the end it hadn’t been much more than that. They were the proverbial passing ships in the night, very different people from radically different worlds. Casey might never have thought of that night again but for one thing—room 2035 was the exact same room Carolyn had been staying in that night.
Casey knew coincidences of that magnitude sometimes occurred. He had once happened across a list of some crazy ones online. It was mind-blowing stuff, including some incidents that were connected to major moments in history and others that involved ordinary people like himself. He spent a lot of time reminding himself of this while they lounged about in room 2035 and waited for “Big” Ted Wilkinson to show up.
Echo’s behavior wasn’t helping his nerves any. She was pacing almost ceaselessly, wearing a path in the carpet as she walked from one end of the room to the other and back again over and over. Now and then she would pause and drop into a chair, but these pauses were very brief, never lasting more than a minute before she popped back up and resumed pacing.
Casey couldn’t tell whether this was mere restlessness or a sign that she felt as anxious as he did. He suspected a combination. At least the other girls were taking things in stride. Lana was taking a bath. Dez was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds with a remote control in her hand. She had just used the remote to order a pay-per-view all-girl pornographic movie, something she had been threatening for hours. It wasn’t long before the sounds of cheesy soundtrack music and orgasmic moans were issuing from the Hi-Def television’s speakers.
Dez leaned back against the headboard and reached inside her panties.
She looked at Casey. “You don’t mind if I masturbate.”
It sounded more like a statement than a question. “Uh…”
Echo groaned. “She’s fucking with you again. She thinks it’s funny.”
Dez laughed. “It is funny.”
Echo had finally stopped pacing again. Casey joined her at the big window that afforded guests an impressive view of downtown from the twentieth-floor room. Echo folded her arms beneath her breasts and pressed her forehead against the window. “I’ve been here before, you know.”
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The statement was so unexpected it almost made Casey gasp. “What? In this room?”
If she says yes, fuck it, that’s it, I’m getting myself the hell out of this spooky bullshit.
She laughed, turning her head to look at him. “No. Shit, how freaky would that be?”
He forced a little laugh of his own. “Pretty…freaky…”
She shook her head. “I just meant that I’ve been in the Renaissance before. This was before you and I became a thing. Some high-roller guy from out of town came to the club and threw a lot of cash around. He was hot too, and most of those guys aren’t. So I let him drag me back here and have his way with me.”
“I hope he made it worth your while.”
Echo smirked. “You better believe it.”
Casey turned away from the view of the city and looked Echo full in the face. “So…how much do we know about this Wilkinson character? Can we really trust him?”
The door to the bathroom opened and Lana emerged from the steamy room wrapped in a white towel. Her hair was wet and her skin looked fresh and clean. “You can trust Big Ted. Guaranteed.”
She looked nothing less than absolutely scrumptious. There was something extra appealing about a woman fresh out of the bath. Casey was grateful for her opening conversational salvo. It meant he could look at her and pretend to be feeling something other than total lust. “I’m sorry, but all I’ve got is your word for that. I don’t know this Ted guy from a hole in the wall. For all I know, he’s setting us up somehow.”
All three women gave him a genuinely baffled look.
Lana narrowed her eyes at him. “Setting us up for what?”
“Well…” Casey raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He didn’t actually have an answer for this. “I don’t know. It could be anything.”
Lana shot a dubious glance at Echo before shaking her head and looking Casey in the eye again. “Do you know how paranoid that sounds?”