Insane is an understatement.
“The thing is, you weren’t alone when I saw you in that house,” Eric’s tone turned deeper. Darker.
Angrier.
“I saw you in the cemetery...with HIM,” Eric seethed, with extra emphasis on the word HIM. “The same guy who killed Conner. That’s right, I saw him that night. I watched from the bus station as he carried you out of the motel room. When I snuck in to search for Conner all I found was his lifeless body in the bathroom. And when I saw you again, in that cemetery and realized the two of you were together, I knew you’d played a hand in Connor’s death. Who knows, maybe you did it yourself.”
“I thought you were dead,” I muttered.
I wish you still were.
Eric pointed to himself. “I got high and jumped off a fucking bridge! I thought I was dead too! It was a miracle I survived. When I came to and I was still breathing I knew for certain then that I’d been spared for a reason. A higher power thought I was more useful here on earth. I got sober right after that and decided that part of God’s plan was exacting revenge for Conner.”
“I...I didn’t even think you liked Connor that much,” I said, my lips moving with slightly more ease. Conner and Eric were always arguing. About money or drugs or even whose turn it was to rape me.
“No!” he cried, slamming his fist through the wall, plaster fell in crumbles to the floor. He turned back around and stomped back over to me, sending one of his pointed toe dress shoes sailing into my stomach. I heard something crack and I couldn’t even fold in on the pain so I just had to lie there and take it. “You don’t get it. Connor was...he was more.”
“What?” I coughed. “Were you...in love with him?”
“I...” he started, pausing to take a deep breath to recollect himself. “That doesn’t matter. Not anymore.” Eric stormed over to a table at the far end of the room and picked something up off of it. It was only when he was crouched in front of me again that I could see the object he’d picked up was a black leather bound book. More specifically, a bible.
“You know, he’s going to come for me,” I said. “Preppy. He’s not going to let you get away with this. He’s probably almost here already.”
“I’m counting on it,” Eric answered with a calculating smile, seeming a lot less concerned than a man in his position should be. “You know that I’ve been fucking with him for years don’t you? I even blew up his car. By the time I was ready to try again, hopefully blowing something up with him inside, the news broke that he was dead and I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that I wasn’t the one to kill him myself, but then another miracle happened and not only was he alive but you had come back. My prayers had been answered.”
I tried to wiggle my fingers. I needed to get out of my restraints if I wanted any chance of escaping but they were still too numb.
“You see this?” he asked, holding up the bible. “This is what replaced Conner and my unnatural thoughts toward him. This replaced heroin.” He stroked the black leather cover lovingly. “I lost Conner, but I found someone much better.” He looked over to me. “I found Jesus.”
“So it’s not you, it’s Jesus who wants you to kill me?” I asked through the pain in my twisting guts. I wanted to keep him talking as long as possible to give Preppy time to find me.
HOW he was going to find me was another story.
I didn’t even know where I was.
Eric clucked his tongue and shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to kill you. Well, not right away. Now that I’ve found the Lord, I’ll need to exorcise your demons from your body first. Free them from your inner workings.” He held his arms out to the side and looked up to the ceiling with his eyes closed, breathing in deeply as if he were smelling something other than the mildew and dust permeating the room. He opened his eyes and lowered his gaze. “I’m going to save you, Andrea,” he whispered.
“You’re gonna save me, with that?” I eyed the bible in his hand.
He slammed it shut, stood and walked back over to the table. Eric rolled his eyes. “No, stupid girl. Not with the bible.” He picked up a knife with a thick black handle, its long serrated blade glinted against the light as he turned to inspect it, running a finger over the sharp edge. His smile fell, straightening into a flat line. He pointed the blade my way.
“With this.”
Preppy
I tracked Dre from the app on my phone, telling Bear where to turn until we found ourselves an hour from Logan’s Beach in a town called Estero Springs, driving the van through a gate with a sign that announced we were entering a State Historic site.
“I still can’t believe you GPS’d your wife,” King said.
“You can tell me what a stupid fucking idea it was after we find her,” I barked.
“Fuck, no. I’m gonna stick one in Ray’s neck the second we get home. Shit, maybe the kids too.”
“I lost signal!” I grunted, tossing my phone to the floor.
“What does that mean?” Kevin asked from behind me.
“It means that it stopped working,” I said.
“How?” Kevin asked. “It’s a chip in the back of her neck. The only way it would stop working would be if someone cut...”
Bear shot him a look and Kevin’s voice trailed off.
“She’s got to be around here somewhere,” I muttered as we parked behind a neat row of rounded trees. “Stay in the fucking van,” I ordered Kevin who was in the backseat. “Call us if you see anything coming or going. We moved deeper into the park. “The last trace was somewhere right in that direction,” I pointed north.
I pulled my gun. The unfamiliar terrain was the only thing stopping me from running full speed into the dark to find my girl.
King, Bear and I made our way quietly through the trees in the dark. There were a dozen or so small buildings around the perimeter of the property. “All of those houses are at least a hundred years old,” King said. “What the fuck is this place?”
“It’s the Koreshan State Historic Site,” Bear answered. “Some quack physician in the 1800’s started a cult and this was supposed to be his utopia. All because the motherfucker electrocuted himself one night and had an epiphany that the entire universe existed inside a giant hollow sphere. Wacky shit, huh? Guess most people thought so too, considering this place is now a state park that rents kayaks on weekends and hosts Mother’s Day brunch.”
“How the fuck do you know all that?” King asked.
“It says it right there,” Bear said, shining his light on a stone in the ground with a metal plaque fixed at an angle to the top.
“Did you hear that?” King asked. The leaves on a nearby rustled for a moment then stopped.
“Probably a snake or rodent,” Bear said.
“Shhhhhh girls. I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, pointing to a large two story yellow building beyond the clearing in front of us. I crouched down and used the beam of my flashlight on the ground so we could see any obstacles in our way without shining the light right through the windows and announcing our fucking presence to whoever the cocksucker was who had Dre.
I ground my teeth.
“How do you know that’s where she is?” Bear asked. “There’s a shit ton of buildings around here. Could be any one of them.”
“Because of that,” I said, lifting my light to the license plate of the familiar newer model Honda Civic parked along the side of the building. The trunk wide open and empty. The What Would Jesus Do bumper sticker glowing in the dark.
“I know who took her,” I growled.
“I called the brothers. They’re on the way. We’re gonna need more backup than your kid brother...” Bear’s voice trailed off in the distance because I was already halfway across the clearing.
I was going to get my wife.
Then I was going to burn East alive.
I’m coming, Doc.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dre
All the feeling in my body came
back at exactly the wrong time, right as Eric sliced his knife along the skin on the back of my neck where the scar from jumping from the trunk was still red. “AAAAHHHHHHHH!” I screamed as he dug his finger inside the fresh wound. He pulled out something small, blue, and shaped like a pill coated in my fresh blood. He laughed long and loud, before tossing it onto the floor in front of my face, crushing it under his designer shoe. “Looks like your husband tagged you with a tracker. Guess he’ll be here sooner than I thought,” Eric said, cracking his neck. “We better get started then.”
He turned back to his table, wiping the blood from the blade with a rag. While he worked he hummed “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.” He made his way back over to me with the blade gleaming once again. “This is going to hurt a lot.” He held up the knife above his head with both hands on the handle.
“No!” I screamed, trying to scoot back along the floor but I was still restrained and could barely wiggle, never mind move.
“In your name Jesus Christ I release the demons from the body of this sinner. I cast them from the dark out into the light!” He brought down the knife in one swift motion, straight into my shoulder. I felt the blade hit bone before coming out the other side, tacking me to the wood floor. I felt it all over again when he withdrew the blade, wiggling it around in my flesh to release its hold on the floor.
I was about to pass out. My vision blurred from the pain.
“Get the fuck away from her,” a very familiar voice commanded. When Preppy came into view radiating anger with his gun trained on Eric I thought it was all a dream or a hallucination.
Preppy stood there seething as his eyes darted between my gushing wound and the man holding the knife. If it was a hallucination, it was a damn good one.
Preppy was a mix of beautiful hatred and lustful revenge. He was already handsome with his burning amber eyes, sandy blond hair, a strong body full of lean muscles and tattoos that decorated every inch of his tan skin including the sides of his head, but in that room he looked like pure heaven with evil intentions and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. But standing there, nostrils flaring, I noticed a new kind of beauty in Preppy. Darker. More sinister.
Preppy’s face was twisted in anger. The cords of his neck were strained and tight. His chest puffed out in fury, heaving up and down against the fabric of his tight white tank top, the kind meant to be worn under a shirt. His suspenders were attached to his pants, but they weren’t on his shoulders, instead they hung down around each side of his thighs. The muscles of his forearms and biceps flexed under his colorful tattoos as he adjusted his grip on the gun in his hand.
Preppy was pure unadulterated power, crackling and zapping with energy like a wind vane struck by lightning. An electric aura of revenge encircled him as he maintained a focus I’d rarely seen from him unless we were naked. Which made sense, because there was something very sexual about the way he moved forward. The confidence, the rhythm. The way the sweat beaded on his temple before sliding down his face and neck. Erotic, yet frightening.
It was a dance of revenge and Preppy had taken the lead.
Eric cackled when he saw Preppy moving and responded to his move by slowly sliding the blade under my chin, piercing my skin with the tip.
Preppy froze and Eric looked triumphant that he had the upper hand.
That was until Preppy fired and Eric’s bicep exploded. He cried out and slumped to the ground.
“Fuck, Doc!” Preppy cried. He ran to me and frantically searched my face. He ran his hands over my body to check for more wounds. He tore off a strip of his shirt and tied it around my shoulder. I managed to tip my chin to tell him I was all right.
His eyes locked onto mine. “Are you sure? I need to hear you say it, Doc.”
“I’m sure,” I croaked out. “It’s not East. It’s Eric. Like Eric and Conner, Eric,” I said, the words taking everything I had to form.
“Fuck,” Preppy growled, glancing to where Eric was groaning on the floor. King and Bear appeared.
“End him,” Preppy said, shoving his arms under me and lifting me into his arms.
King and Bear strolled toward Eric, but they didn’t make it very far. The room shook, a high-pitched ringing sounded in my ears. The roof on the far side of the room collapsed, trapping King and Bear behind it.
Or under it.
“Fuck, we have to get you out of here,” Preppy shouted, climbing over debris with me in his arms.
“Preppy, wait!” I shouted with everything I had. He turned and his eyes followed to where I was staring at a red faced and angry looking Eric. His hand shaking.
A gun pointed at Preppy.
“You know, I don’t even like these things,” Eric said, shaking the gun from side to side with his right hand, his left hung straight and lifeless by his side. “But the weapon isn’t what’s important here. Ending your life is.” His lip twitched. “So a gun it is.”
Preppy slowly set me down on the rubble with my back against the wall. “If it’s me you want. It’s me you can have. Just let her go.” Preppy stepped in front of me shielding me with his body. He held up his hands in surrender.
His empty hands made me realize he didn’t have his gun. He must have dropped it when he picked me up. I searched around, spotting it just out of reach in the rubble.
Eric sneered at Preppy. “There is no OR, I want BOTH of you dead.” Without warning Eric shifted his aim to me and fired. That’s when everything shifted and became like watching a movie in slow motion. Even the POP POP POP from the gun sounded slurred and drawn out. Preppy leapt sideways, his body almost still in the air as he stretched himself out as long as he could, like an outfielder trying to catch a baseball. Only he wasn’t playing some game. He was shielding me.
And it wasn’t a baseball he caught.
It was a bullet.
Preppy landed on his side with an ‘UMPH’. The fabric of his undershirt grew red with his blood. I crawled over to him, barely noticing Eric approaching.
“We need to get you the fuck out of here,” Preppy ground out, sitting up. “No matter what happens you go to Bo. Take care of him.”
I was about to argue when he added. “Please, Dre. Just take care of our boy.”
Tan pointed-toe dress shoes clicked against the concrete. Eric crouched down in front of us. A look of satisfaction crossed his face when he realized he had us defenseless and cornered.
When another part of the roof collapsed nearby I used that moment of distraction to extend my foot and slide Preppy’s gun between my legs.
“I’d really hoped we’d have more time to get reacquainted, Dre. But it appears that Romeo over here is cutting our time short. Well, that and I kind of made the building explode,” Eric sang while staring hatred at Preppy. “Why don’t you move the fuck over so I can kill this fucking whore first without having to shoot through you...again,” he laughed. “Then I can send you to hell where you belong.”
Preppy chuckled. “Hell? Bitch, I just got back from there and I don’t plan on going back any time soon. So sorry, but you’ll be making this trip solo.”
“What you don’t understand is that it’s all too fucking late!” Eric shouted manically, pressing his gun against Preppy’s forehead. “This is just the rain. Soon, you’ll be drowning in the flood.”
“Listen, motherfucker. I love Bon Jovi as much as the next man, but let’s focus less on quoting the poignant lyrics of an iconic hair-band, and concentrate more on the fact that I’m about to cut you open, gut you like a fucking mullet, and feed your balls to my pig.”
“You can’t do shit!” Eric cried out. “I have the power of the Lord on my side and he says that you have to die.” Eric cocked the gun.
“I feel like this is really bad timing on your part,” Preppy started. “I feel compelled to share a little something with you. A motherfucking life lesson, if you will.” Preppy’s breathing became labored. “The greatest gift I was ever given, was death. Because only then did I learn what it meant to truly live.”
“That’s touching,” Eric said sarcastically.
I had to get the gun to Preppy. I would have fired it myself, but I had no shot. I didn’t want to risk not hitting Eric, or even worse, accidentally hitting Preppy. I finally managed to shuffle the gun between my legs. I pressed it up against Preppy’s back. He leaned back against me and Eric followed him over with the gun still at his head. Preppy folded his arms behind his neck, over my legs, like he was getting ready to tan at the beach, grabbing the gun in the process.
“And since my death was such a gift to me, I’m about to pay it forward and give that same gift to you.” Preppy shifted the gun from his back to his front while Eric was too busy focused on his words. “Now say ‘thank you’,” Preppy demanded, firing a shot off before he knew what happened. It hit him in the forearm, his gun flew across the room. He dropped to his knees.
“Say ‘thank you’,” Preppy repeated through his gritted teeth, cocking the gun once again and aiming for Eric’s chest.
Still nothing.
“Say fucking ‘thank you!’” Preppy roared, sitting up on his knees so the two men were eye to eye, only a few feet apart.
“Th-th-thank you!” Eric cried out in fear.
Preppy squeezed the trigger, hitting Eric in the thigh. A spurt of blood streamed from his leg onto the floor. Eric slumped to the floor.
“You’re fucking welcome,” Preppy said.
Eric sat back up, producing a smaller gun that must have been strapped to his leg. Preppy fired his gun first but nothing. He tried again and again. It was jammed.
Eric laughed long and loud. My heart was beating so rapidly I feared cardiac arrest at any moment. Preppy, still bleeding from his own gunshot wound on his upper chest, dropped back down to once again shield me from Eric’s bullet. “Remember what I said, Doc!” he called out as Eric aimed his gun at Preppy’s head.
“No!” I cried, reaching for Preppy but he turned around to face Eric. “Noo!”
I braced myself for the boom of the bullet meant for Preppy, but it never came. Eric stilled, dropping the gun. His mouth opened and blood poured over his lips, spilling onto and off of his chin like a bloody chocolate fountain.
Preppy, Part Three, The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater (King, #7) Page 14