Third Strike (Terror Unlimited Book 3)

by Jacob Rayne

  ‘I’m telling the truth. Look it up. I bet she’s done this before.’

  The cop nodded but continued to lead him out of the house.

  Ollie, an old school friend, was a solicitor, so he was the first person Thomas called.

  ‘I gotta say, this doesn’t look good, mate,’ Ollie said. ‘Neighbours have heard you arguing on several occasions now. Reported saying they thought you guys were on the verge of killing each other. And then you get found with your wife dead, her head stoved in with the baseball bat you kept under the bed. You gotta admit, it looks dodgy.’

  ‘I know that, but I swear I’ve been set up. There’s this crazy bitch at work who will stop at nothing to get me. She’s obsessed. She tried to cause problems between me and Kelly and it worked. I haven’t done anything with her, but the way things have been set up, it looks like I’ve been having an affair with her. And now she’s done this to punish me for rejecting her.’

  Ollie tried everything he could, but he was unable to take the blame off his client. The CCTV footage of the night in question had been wiped from the system, no doubt while Joanna was alone in the office. There had been no DNA found at the murder scene.

  Thomas wept as he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years.

  A few days into his sentence, Thomas was slumped in his cell, staring blankly at the wall, when one of the guards came in and told him he had a visitor.

  His eyes lit up at the thought of seeing his parents, hopefully with Jason in tow, or maybe one of his mates from the pub.

  He walked with a spring in his step for the first time since entering the jail.

  The guard swung open the door to the visitor’s room.

  His heart nearly stopped when he saw Joanna sitting there.

  He turned to leave, but the guards had already locked the door.

  ‘I wanted to come and see you,’ she said.

  ‘Why? You fucking put me here.’

  ‘I love you, Thomas. And, in time, you’ll come to love me. We will be the perfect couple.’

  He shook his head, incredulous.

  ‘No one else will want to visit you in here. Your family has disowned you, they said so on the news. You’ll never see your son again. I’m the only friend you have.’

  ‘You did this to me, now leave me the fuck alone. Do you hear me, you sneaky fucking slag? I never want to see you again.’

  He flung himself at the plexiglass as if possessed and began to beat at it, wishing it wasn’t there so he could take out his rage on the woman who had brought his whole world crashing down around his ears.

  He didn’t even hear the guards coming in.

  It took three of them to get him away from the glass. His fist mashed the nose of the fourth as they lunged for him.

  The rest was a blur as their coshes scudded into his head and body and limbs.

  ‘Ah, you’re awake,’ said the pretty blonde girl sitting by his bedside when his eyes finally opened a few days later.

  He started screaming and she looked taken aback for a few seconds, until the doctors calmed him down.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I’m here.’

  The doctor sent her out and carried out some checks on him. It soon became clear he had no recollection of the events that had led to his being in jail.

  The pretty blonde girl seemed to relish filling in the details for him.

  ‘I can’t believe I would do that,’ he sobbed.

  ‘You did, Thomas. I’m so sorry for you. You were under a lot of pressure at work and just snapped.’

  ‘But she was my whole world. Why would I have done that?’

  ‘You were having an affair with me. I guess you wanted to be rid of her without going through the divorce formalities.’

  She held him as he sobbed.

  She was the only visitor he had in all of his time in jail, missing barely a day of visiting.

  He came to depend on her, to look forward to seeing her.

  As the day of his release approached, they began to excitedly discuss moving in together.

  She was even more excited than he was at the thought of him getting out of jail. She showed him pictures in the paper of potential future homes.

  He couldn’t wait; her smile reaffirmed his worth in a life gone badly wrong.

  When he finally got out of jail, he hugged her with a force that tore the breath from her. She jigged excitedly on the spot, glad to finally have her obsession all to herself.

  ‘This is gonna be sweet,’ she said, her face lighting up with her grin.

  ‘I know,’ he said, his smile mirroring hers.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, tears of joy running down her face. ‘I’m so glad you’re finally mine.’

  He sobbed, holding her close, glad to be with the only person who still cared about him.

  The flat they’d rented together was a hovel, but Joanna reassured him that with a little TLC they would put their mark on it.

  ‘A regular love nest,’ she beamed.

  He smiled back.

  ‘Say, I’ve got a little present for you, to mark the occasion,’ she grinned.

  She pulled out a bin bag and handed it to him.

  He unwrapped it quickly, eager to find out what it was.

  His brow furrowed as he inspected the object in his arms.

  It was a baseball bat, still marked with faint blood stains.

  ‘Remember this?’ she beamed. ‘This is what freed you from your relationship with Kelly. This is what set us on the road that eventually brought us together.’

  Memories whirled through his head like miniature tornados, but the epiphany he felt he was due failed to surface. ‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’

  She smiled and kissed him. ‘I’m so pleased to have you all to myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I need to sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He lay in bed, wide awake, desperately trying to summon the memories of what had happened the night his wife had been murdered.

  Something felt off about the whole deal but he was still struggling to remember what.

  He was drifting off to sleep when, like drowned corpses re-surfacing from the deep, the memories returned.

  The skin-crawling unease as flowers and chunks of vase ground beneath his feet on his entry into the bedroom.

  Standing over Kelly’s corpse, seeing the bat on the bed, a grey-pink chunk of brain on the ‘U’ of the ‘Little Slugger’ logo across the centre of the weapon.

  The blood sprayed up the walls, in stark contrast to the fresh magnolia paintwork.

  A vast puddle of congealing gore on the bedspread.

  Finally he remembered taking the bat to work on his callout and leaving it there.

  He sat bolt upright, muttered, ‘Holy fucking shit, she did it,’ to himself and tried in vain to sleep.

  The next day, he got up early, and went into town for a drastic haircut and a shave. He got a spray tan, using a wad of cash he’d drawn out from the hole in the wall next to the barber’s.

  Whistling a happy tune, he walked back to the flat.

  ‘What have you done?’ She asked. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

  He cooked a romantic dinner, with candles, wine and soft music.

  She was touched, her pretty face lighting up at the realisation of what he’d done for her.

  After a few glasses of wine, they settled in front of the TV with Netflix. Their tastes were in sync.

  Roughly halfway through Silence of the Lambs, Joanna began nuzzling him hard and suggested they take their relationship to the next level.

  Thomas agreed, saying, ‘Fancy using these?’ and producing two sets of handcuffs he’d bought from the joke shop in town.

  Joanna looked a little puzzled.

  ‘I used them with Kelly a few times. She went wild. I think you’ll love it.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ she grinned.

  Wearing only smiles, they laid on th
e bed.

  ‘I knew you’d look good, but I wasn’t expecting this,’ she purred, her eyes running up and down his body.

  ‘You’re not bad yourself.’

  He gave her a kiss as he closed the handcuffs, fastening her right wrist to the metal bars of the headboard.

  Her left hand ran down his stomach to his groin.

  ‘You’ve got a nice big dick,’ she said, the glint in her eye obvious even in the dim light. ‘I can’t wait to feel it inside of me.’

  ‘In time,’ he grinned, grabbing her wrist and pinning it against the headboard while he cuffed that one there too.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve waited long enough?’ she moaned, arching her back.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said, pulling a blindfold over her eyes.

  ‘You’re so naughty,’ she purred.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I gotta take a piss,’ he said, shuffling off into the bathroom.

  He came back in with a different look in his eyes. The bat she’d given him was in his hands, which shook a little.

  ‘You took everything from me,’ he began, his voice faltering a little.

  ‘What’s the matter, Thomas? You can tell me.’

  ‘You’re the fucking problem,’ he said. ‘You hounded me. Killed the one person in this world who meant the most to me.’

  ‘But you killed her, Thomas.’

  ‘No, I remember now. I came home to find her body. You fucking framed me.’

  ‘I know you wanted me, Thomas.’

  ‘I didn’t. And I still don’t.’

  Her face dropped at this.

  ‘I’ve never felt anything but hate for you. In prison – before the coma, of course – all I could think about was getting revenge on you. And now here we are. You were stupid enough to fall for it too.’

  She opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘You killed my beloved Kelly with this bat. I think it’s only fitting that I use it to kill you.’

  With that he brought it down hard on her throat, bringing an abrupt end to the scream she had begun to voice.

  He brought it down on her on her ribcage next, sending a series of sickening cracks echoing round the room. Blood poured from her lips as pained whimpers punctuated ragged breaths.

  He smashed the bat down into her forehead, splitting the skin and spraying blood all over the crisp white bedsheets.

  ‘I hate you for what you did, Joanna. And I will never forgive you.’

  He brought the bat down again and again until her head was a splintered mess that oozed blood and gobbets of brain.

  When he was certain she was dead, he smiled his first genuine smile in years and climbed in the shower.

  After dressing, he got in the car and began the search for his son.

  About Jacob

  Repeated viewings of The Shining as a child have left Jacob with a love of the dark and the disturbing that really comes to life in his writing.

  He works to a soundtrack of blisteringly heavy music, and, like his beloved metal, his writing is brutal, uncompromising and intense.

  You can find Jacob on Facebook (Jacob Rayne)

  Twitter (@jacob_rayne)

  Website: www.rayneofterror1.com

  E-mail rayneofterror1@gmail.com

  And sign up for monthly (ish!) newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bciffz

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