by Ryder Dane
“We’re going back to your friend’s place for the night and you can get your shit together for the trip to Braxton Hills. Race wants to meet you. Then we can go back to Juanita and we’ll get a place together.”
Kylie rolled her eyes. She didn’t bother trying to argue with him again. Once this business with her family’s estate was dealt with, she would decide what she wanted to do. She strongly suspected that she was actually in love with the bossy biker. If they had any hope of making a life together, he was going to need to show some respect for her, and shut the macho bullshit off when he was around her. She was sure that he would act the big shit around the other bikers and she was okay with that. When it was just the two of them was another story. He would get the same respect that he gave her. If he wasn’t willing to treat her equally, then there was no way that she would be able to live like that.
She saw how Naomi had to kiss Job’s ass when he walked into the room and took off his work boots for the night. The woman had gotten up from where ever or whatever she’d been doing and hurried to the kitchen to get him a cold beer. It had been a ritual and Kylie couldn’t remember a day that they hadn’t gone through the subservient woman scene. Job had slapped Naomi around a few times, but those times normally happened after Kylie had gone to bed and she didn’t see anything until the bruises showed through Naomi’s make-up.
No, there wouldn’t be black eyes in her future, at least not from the man that she trusted to love her. If Dutch was going to be that man, well, he was going to have to adjust his way of thinking. She would put up with a certain amount of the show off bullshit, but that was as far as she was willing to go. How she was going to convince him towards her way of thinking was anyone’s guess.
The trip back to the Thrift store was uneventful, and Kylie leaned onto the broad muscular back that she had missed when he was gone. She knew that she was pitiful. She was borrowing heart break because deep down in her guts she knew that she wasn’t good enough for him. From her own father, to the boy in high school that called her trash when she refused to suck his dick in the boys’ locker room while the coaches were busy in the gym. She must have some unseen mark that caused the male species to dump her.
That tiny niggling spark of hope kept the tears from falling. Maybe this time. Maybe she had found someone that thought she was worth treating decently and if she was lucky, he might love her like she thought she heard him say back in that hotel room. Every word was now written on her heart. If he was lying, she knew that she would be alone again.
Chapter 18
Teresa acted strange when they walked into the apartment. The men ordered take out, and when Kylie went to grab a soft drink from the fridge, she saw that someone had made a beer run. Two twelve packs sat on the top shelf next to the half-gallon of milk. The cans of pop were stuffed into a bottom drawer, so she fought with the sliding plastic to make it slide back where it belonged. The long arm reaching over her shoulder snagged two beers and almost hit the side of her head when they turned away. She jerked back and fell on her ass. Muff was frowning down at her as he tossed a cold one to Dutch. She picked herself up and gave both men dirty looks.
Teresa came from the bathroom and Kylie noticed that the woman wasn’t wearing a bra, and she had a skirt on that barely covered the bottom of the cheeks of her ass. She looked from Teresa to Muff and comprehension fell into her brain. Damn, Teresa had been a biker’s woman for years, and it looked like she was either falling back into the role of biker’s doormat, or she was fishing for a new biker. The skirt and lack of a bra to support her most valued assets told Kylie which option the woman was hedging her bets on. She hoped that Muff was worth the trouble for Teresa.
Dutch didn’t seem to notice the transformation from working woman to sex pot, and Kylie was thankful for that. Most men see a pair of large breasts and made asses of themselves.
They ate Italian take out and Kylie had red sauce splattered over her lips and on the chest of her tee shirt by the time she was full. She sat back in the chair and wiped her mouth with the paper napkin. “I’ve never tasted anything with so much flavor.”
It had been a pleasant dinner, but she was tired and excused herself, leaving the rest of them sitting at the table drinking beer and talking. Dutch had dropped his bags on her bed and she took them to the chair to get them off of the bed. One up ended and a small folding knife dropped to the floor with his fancy new phone.
The knife must have hit the screen when they dropped and she saw an address that was over on Florence Drive. The numbers drove her nuts until she got up out of bed and looked through the folder that she’d assembled filled with information on her family. The address was the one that had been the one that was listed on her father’s death certificate.
Thinking about her family depressed her, but what was Dutch doing with that address?
She sat at the foot of the bed and her weariness disappeared. She shoved the phone back into the leather bag, and put her folder away. She had plans to make, and if she did it right, she wouldn’t have to worry if Dutch would let her get the answers that she was looking for. She closed her eyes and rested, but no amount of sheep counting allowed her to sleep. Dutch came in and bucked down to his skin, but whether it was weariness or the amount of food and beer he’d consumed, he was asleep within minutes.
She hated to do it, but she would never sleep as long as the address filtered through her mind like it was doing. She got out of bed and grabbed her jeans and a long sleeved hoodie. She took the small case that held her identification and slid it into her back pocket. The cheap cell phone was always turned off anyway. So she left it sitting on the dresser. She looked at the knife that had fallen from Dutch’s bag. She had opened the blade earlier and discovered that it was Damascus steel and was razor sharp. She slid that into her front pocket and pulled several bills from her purse and counted half out to push into her short boot top. The rest went to her pocket. She wished that she could take the baseball bat that she kept by the back door, but it would look suspicious if someone saw a person carrying a weapon this late at night.
She crept out of the room even though Dutch was snoring loud enough to wake the neighborhood. If he was faking, he was damn good at it. She wanted to lay a kiss on his open lips but shook her head and left the room.
The noises coming from Teresa’s room left no doubt that they would be too occupied to give her grief about leaving. She worried about the click of the door latch, but no one shouted or yelled when she slowly closed the door behind her. The night was still, and she could hear the normal sounds of the neighborhood at three am. She slid down the handrail to the half way point and walked down the shorter flight checking as she got closer to the parking lot. She didn’t bother to head to the main road. She could make better time going through the alley and down through the service roads behind several businesses.
She came to Florence avenue and slowed down. She was nervous. Why after the way she’d run hell bent to get here, she had no idea. The homes on this block were nice, but they were not anything spectacular. The house was probably the oldest one on the block. It was dark brick and two storied. There was a gate surrounding the front yard, and Ivy was taking over everything in its path. There was a small light inside the house, but she could see nothing to indicate that anyone lived there. She thought about it and decided to try the door. It was locked and she shrugged. She wouldn’t have known if she didn’t try. Walking around to the back of the house, she stopped in her tracks.
Next to the garage was a tangled mass of metal that was overgrown with that ivy that was covering most of the house. She could see the, what was that? Stepping closer, she reached out a hand and touched the rusting metal bar. She jumped when a voice behind her told her that it was what was left of a motorcycle.
She slowly turned around and saw an older man wearing fatigues and a frown. He wasn’t being threatening, but she wondered what he was doing there. Not that she had any right to trespass either. Sh
e shrugged. “I’m sorry that I disturbed you. I will leave now.”
He laughed in a low tone, but she heard him, and for some reason she liked him. She held out her hand. “I’m Kylie Willard. My, my father owned this place before he died.”
The man nodded his head and took her hand. “Forrester, and now I can put the puzzle together.” He began to walk towards the house and she fell in beside him.
“I’m really sorry. I saw this address and couldn’t wait for daylight, I wanted to see the place that my family lived. It looks deserted and I can’t figure out why the lawyers would let this place go so badly.” She looked sideways at Forrester and shook her head. “I’m sorry that I am not making a lot of sense. If I get my hands on that lawyer, I swear I will force him to tell me what happened to my family and several other things that I need to know so I can move on.”
She stopped in her tracks and put a hand over her mouth. What the hell was she spilling her guts to this man for?
He stopped in the doorway of the house and opened the door for her to proceed inside.
“I’m not going to harm you, but you will get your answers if you step inside and go through the door to your left.”
She hesitated and he sighed but stepped back into the walkway. “If you want your answers, Houston is inside. He’s all yours and if you kill him just make sure that you don’t splatter the blood everywhere. It’s hell to wash old plaster walls like these. I’ll wait here until you call me.”
She knew that her mouth was hanging open, so she closed it but she stared at the man for a solid minute before entering the back door.
The kitchen was the first room that she walked into and the soft glow from the light on the old stove showed that the place hadn’t been updated in probably thirty years. Pushing the door on the left open, she peeked inside to see what was waiting for her and smiled when she saw Houston hanging from an open beam in the middle of the room. He was wearing boxers and a wife beater tank top. His hands were wrapped in several layers of rope and the gag in his mouth was held in place with Duct tape wrapped around his head. His toes touched the floor, but since they were bound at the ankles with an electric cord, she kicked his calf to wake him up.
“Hey there, time to wake up and tell me a story, and if I don’t like that story, or believe your version of that story, I am going to hurt you badly. Do you understand? Nod if you understand, because if you do not understand, I will tell you again.” His head bobbed up and down and she patted his cheek before she took Dutch’s knife from her pocket and cut the tape holding the gag in place.
“There now, you can tell me what I want to know, and I might let you live.” She took the knife and slid it under the thin material of his shirt. “You know I was dumped out in the middle of nowhere with a couple of people that were certifiably crazy. At least the man was.” She held the material and let the blade do its work of slicing through the cloth like butter. “This is a very nice knife, I might buy one for myself. Now. I will ask you questions and you will answer them or it will be painful for you.”
He tried to spit at her but there was no moisture in his mouth to use for that purpose. Fucking bitch was laughing at him. Just like her goddamned mother had laughed at him when he told her that he loved her. She was right, he didn’t love her, but he would have made a better husband than that fucker that she’d married. She might still be alive if it wasn’t for the brat standing in front of him.
“Go to hell and burn there with your parents and brother and his wife. You want answers, go ahead and ask. Whether I tell you what you want to know is another story. Once I get out of here, I am going to bury you in a pauper’s grave. Somewhere fitting for the spawn of a Willard and Georgia Wade. Go ahead, ask. I won’t tell you anything as long as you treat me like this. Cut me down and I will let you in on the entire story. I deserve to be sitting down so I can enjoy your anguish. Your dear old father was a dirty Judge and your mother was his whore.”
Kylie knew that the man was unhinged, but now she knew that he had motive to destroy her family. She asked, “Why, why did you want me dead and why did you kill my brother and his wife?”
The deranged man began to laugh. “No, that was the beauty of it all. They actually did have an accident. They died and I watched the bastard that you called papa wither before my eyes. It was glorious. He became a shell and I enjoyed every minute of his suffering.” The rope held him up but his laughter made his portly body sway and he giggled and snorted in his happiness.
“Why I wanted you dead, still want you dead? Georgia was too good for a young attorney. She caught the judge’s eye and walked away from the plans that I had for our future. She died from spawning you and she deserved to die. She bled to death, did you know that? And I watched them bury her. It was hard to see her go into the ground like that. I spent an entire year finding her and nurturing her. He came along and she left me.” He was spewing droplets of saliva, and turned his head to snarl at her. You will die, too. It is just a matter of time until they find you. I’ve offered five thousand dollars to the person that kills you.”
She knew that his reasons were fucked up. It made sense that he would ruin the entire family and even allow the house to fall into the ground.
“So, this is the way that you want to have it right? I am supposed to just stand around and let someone use me for target practice? You are crazy.”
“Crazy? You want to talk about crazy? Crazy is thinking that I won’t have you prosecuted for having your thug boyfriend grab me out of bed and tie me up like this. You’re going to jail, whore. I will make sure that I am the victim and you are the vindictive child whose father disinherited you for running away from home. Hahaha.”
She sliced through the skin of his belly but didn’t slide the knife in very deep. He screamed as the knife continued to cut three by three inch squares from his soft skin. When she scraped the first corner, he tried to laugh, but the feeling of his skin being sliced and pulled from the fat underneath and the muscles underneath that made him scream and continue to scream until she stuffed the gag back into place. She grinned and snapped her fingers before she turned back into the kitchen to find the garbage bags.
Forrester was smoking a blunt in the doorway and she waved at him as she rushed back to her victim.
*****
Dutch showed up as Kylie and Forrester were getting ready to cut Houston down. He walked inside the back door and Forrester knew that someone was there because he held out a hand towards her, waving her over behind the book case. He took a spot behind the door.
Dutch stood stock still eyeing the hanging corpse. There was a bloody mess under his body, but is wasn’t as bad as it should be. The pieces of curled skin decorated the plastic covered floor. He had to swallow fast to keep from puking his guts out in the middle of the mess. He looked up into the dead eyes and shook his head.
The text that he’d gotten from Forrester in the early morning hours hadn’t been seen until an hour ago. He wanted to kill the fucker himself and beat the information that Kylie needed out of the man. Now it was too late. Forrester was a meticulous sonofabitch. Skinning a man wasn’t easy. But this was particularly horrendous because the victim’s balls were so swollen that Dutch knew someone had pulled the sac down and twisted it just so. He had bled into his ball sack and probably internally, too. The stab wound into the Adams apple was a nice touch as well.
He didn’t turn around as he complimented Forrester on his handiwork. “Damn man, those slices are beautifully done. There’s not a lot of men that can skin a man like that and not make a bigger mess.” He turned around to talk to the man and saw Kylie with her bloody hands and a peaceful look on her face. “Kylie? Honey look at me. Are you alright?” She smiled as she turned her head and nodded.
“I am glad that you like my work. Job taught me how to do that when I was fourteen. I haven’t done it since, but I guess some things you don’t forget.”
She handed him his knife that was soake
d in Houston’s blood, and walked into the next room.
He looked toward Forrester who was standing with his hands visible and waiting for Dutch to speak.
“She did this? At the nod, Dutch looked back at the neat boxed lines visible running over the layer of fat and muscle. “Did she enjoy it?”
Forrester shook his head. “Maybe a little, but she whimped out on yanking his balls off, so I helped her deal with it without the mess. The fucker screamed so hard, he lost his voice. The plastic will keep the floor from having to be refinished, and when she puked she ran outside to do it, so there won’t be much if anything for anyone to find.”
Chapter 19
Dutch hadn’t said much once he had come back to the store. Kylie wondered what had gone through his mind when he saw what she’d done to the man that wanted her dead, as dead as the rest of her family.
Forrester had been keeping an eye on Houston for Muff, and he had trussed the man up as a gift for the bikers. As he’d told her, “It’s like it was the hand of fate. You came, and I knew that you needed to fight your battle.”
She had gotten her answers, even though most of them had been delivered with a wild hatred and snarled verbal abuse. The man had grinned and told her that the tangled metal in the back yard was the motorcycle that her brother and sister in law had died on. It was the last thing that he was able to verbalize. “I loved the look on his face when I dropped that wrecked death trap right in his back yard. That way he could enjoy the reminder of his loss every day of the rest of his life.”
She had taken the thin blade and stabbed him directly in the throat. Once he was dead, she pulled the blade free from the wound and was surprised that there was only a small gush of blood from the wound. Forrester had explained that you don’t bleed after you are dead. The grossly overfilled ball sack full of blood was something new to remember, and she had been thankful that Forrester had been there to help her make Houston suffer. It hadn’t killed him, but his last minutes on earth were pain filled, and that was better than him dying peacefully in his sleep. He had actually had a heart attack in the same moments that she’d stabbed his throat. It took some of the satisfaction out of his death, but she could live with it.