Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  Pierce found this alarming.

  Nearly as upsetting was a separate but related revelation. He soon came to understand his wife was rarely around during his former work hours. It didn’t take long to realize this wasn’t because she was spending time with the kids. If they weren’t at school, they were always off doing their own thing and had no interest in spending their leisure time hanging out with Mom. Her daily absence during those hours was something he’d never noticed, but once he started staying home all the time, it became too glaring a thing to miss.

  When he quizzed her about it, she gave vague answers about being out shopping, getting lunch with “the ladies”, or trips to the gym. He knew she had a gym membership and lady friends he knew next-to-nothing about, so these were valid reasons for being away from home. Even taken all together, however, did they really account for being gone eight to ten hours a day every damn day? He didn’t think so, but when he pressed her on the matter, she got defensive about it in the extreme. Lately she’d started calling him selfish for taking early retirement, but she wasn’t the only one mad about the new way of things. He’d recently instituted a new rule for the kids—be home no later than nine o’clock every school night, eleven o’clock on Fridays and Saturdays. Non-compliance would mean the suspension of their generous weekly allowances.

  The result? Everyone was mad at him now.

  And today had been the worst day yet. Piper and the kids kept bitching at him nonstop about this and that. They yelled and snapped at each other, too. It gave Pierce a headache he didn’t think would ever go away. They kept at it until he lost his cool and screamed at them loud enough to force a rare moment of blessed silence.

  Then it came to him. His brilliant goddamned idea. Only now it seemed considerably less brilliant than it had at conception. He decided they needed to get away from it all for a few days. Out of the city and off to the mountains. Out to the old cabin they hadn’t visited in a while. He still had the keys he’d used the last time, having failed to return them to Carl Weatherby Jr., one of the rotating collective of elder Weatherbys who took it upon themselves to look after and maintain the place. Carl had kept after him to return the keys for a while, but in those days Pierce had little time to trouble himself with what he considered trivialities. He was a busy man with a lot of responsibilities, after all. After a while, old Carl stopped calling and leaving messages, and not too long ago he’d learned of Carl’s passing.

  The keys were his now, as far as he was concerned, and he could make use of them whenever he wished. And today he wished to do precisely that. The fervency of this wish had waned some in the hours since hustling his family into the minivan after hurriedly packing up a couple days’ worth of clothes and supplies. He’d pitched it to them as an opportunity for a rare family adventure, a break from their daily norms. It would be a good thing for all of them. And, after all, it’d only be a couple of days. After that, they’d be allowed to return to their usual self-centered ways. Only maybe—just maybe—it’d be with a new and improved attitude toward, well, everything following their bonding experience in the mountains.

  The kids had warmed to the idea after some initial grumbling. It helped that he’d promised to upgrade their phones upon their return home. Of them all, it was Piper who seemed to harbor the most resentment about being made to come along. She’d been short with him several times during the drive and kept giving him sharp looks. By now he was about fifty-percent convinced she was having an affair with some unknown man. Maybe more than fifty percent. It would explain a lot.

  Pierce hit the brake when he realized he’d allowed the minivan to drift dangerously close to the drop-off on the left-hand side of the drive. “Shit!”

  Piper’s nose crinkled as she made a sound of disdain. “Oh, perfect. You’re going to plunge us to our deaths before we even get to the damn cabin.”

  Pierce squeezed his eyes shut and kept them that way a moment as he gritted his teeth. He was striving to find a calm center somewhere inside him, but it wasn’t easy with the way his wife was constantly harping at him.

  She kept at it.

  “Honestly, I’m astonished by your rapid descent into total incompetence. Is that the real reason you retired, honey? You sensed an early onset of dementia and decided to get out while the getting was good, before it could get worse and you started embarrassing yourself by pissing your trousers in board meetings?”

  Kelsey, their seventeen-year-old daughter, giggled at this remark.

  Her fifteen-year-old brother, Rory, gasped in apparent shock, although Pierce thought he detected a slight tinge of mockery in the sound.

  Pierce let out a breath and opened his eyes. He glanced at his wife, a wounded look on his face. “At this point, I’m starting to think I’d be doing us all a favor by taking a suicide plunge off the fucking ridge. This family is almost terminally dysfunctional.”

  Piper guffawed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You love yourself too much to do that.”

  He glared at her a moment longer, then his expression softened and he laughed. “You’re right. I do. Love the kids, too. You, though . . .”

  He trailed off, letting the obvious implication linger as an uncomfortable silence stretched out inside the minivan. Pierce made eye contact with his wife and this time he saw some hurt in her expression. He derived a nasty sort of satisfaction from seeing this. It made him feel dirty and mean. He didn’t like that at all, didn’t like to think he was that sort of person.

  His wife had tears in her eyes. She sniffled and wiped them away.

  He sighed. “Piper, I’m sorry. I’m just really stressed, that’s all.”

  Kelsey harrumphed in the back seat. “Worst. Dad. Ever.”

  Pierce was mentally scrambling for a way to defuse the situation. He was on the brink of ruining the trip already, and they weren’t even all the way up to the cabin yet. He was going to need a stiff drink when they got there. Maybe a few of them. He was on the verge of opening his mouth to spew more emptily placating words when the baby stirred and cried softly in his sleep.

  Pierce twisted around and peered through the gap between seats. One-year-old Vance Weatherby was strapped into his car seat between his much older siblings. He’d been blessedly quiet for much of the trip, but that couldn’t last forever.

  Kelsey looked up from her phone and sneered at him. “Oh, great, you’ve awakened the squalling beast.”

  Pierce yearned to snap something at the girl for being so disrespectful, but he held his tongue, not wishing to further inflame the situation, which was already hovering on the brink of disaster. He stared at the baby a moment longer and faced forward when it didn’t cry out again.

  He nudged the steering wheel to the right and got the minivan rolling again. No one said anything the rest of the way up the drive, not until they were approaching the last bend in the road and the top of the cabin became visible through the trees ringing the larger piece of land at the end of the ridge.

  Piper cleared her throat. “Fuck this. We’re going back home first thing in the morning. When we get there, I’m calling a lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings.”

  More gasps from the back of the van.

  This time there was no hint of mockery in the sound.

  Pierce was too temporarily stunned by his wife’s unexpected pronouncement to respond to it. His throat felt tight and something clenched in his chest. A wave of powerful emotion swept through him and now there were tears in his eyes. He felt helpless. Powerless. His family was abruptly falling apart and he felt incapable of saving it. He knew he didn’t want to lose them, even his probably unfaithful wife, and he also knew he would soon be begging her to change her mind.

  Before he could do that, however, the minivan came around that last bend and the cabin came into full view.

  Rory leaned forward from the back and poked his head between the front seats. “Hey, somebody’s already here.”

  Pierce frowned as he guided the minivan closer to the cabin. �
��I see that. Get back, please.”

  Rory ignored his father and leaned forward a bit more. “That truck looks old and creepy. Great, Dad. I think you’ve taken us into an Evil Dead or Texas Chainsaw-type situation. We’ll be dead at the hands of some backwoods hicks soon.”

  Pierce gave his son a little push to make him return to his seat and said, “Don’t be so dramatic. The gate was locked. This has to be someone we know.”

  Piper grunted. “That truck does look kind of familiar. I can’t quite place it.” She glanced at her husband, her face again registering deep disdain. “You did check to see if the cabin was being used this weekend before dragging us out here, didn’t you? I mean, even you couldn’t possibly be that fucking stupid. Could you?”

  A surge of anger swelled inside Pierce, but he pushed it back, still determined not to let it get the better of him. It was true he hadn’t gotten in touch with one of the geezers who took care of the place, but he didn’t want to admit the oversight. He’d be derided for it mercilessly by all of them and he didn’t think he could handle that.

  After pulling the minivan up alongside the truck and its attached camper, he put it in park and cut the engine, taking the keys from the ignition slot. “Sit tight here. I’m gonna check things out.”

  Piper rolled her eyes and groaned. “It’s not worth it. Someone is clearly using the goddamn cabin. You should turn this thing around and take us the fuck back home. And after that, you can check yourself into a hotel.”

  Pierce ignored that as he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. “This shouldn’t take but a minute. Whoever this is might even let us stay the night at least. There’s plenty of room inside.”

  He climbed out of the minivan, dropped the keys in his hip pocket, and started walking up toward the cabin even as his wife continued to yell at him. As he began to mount the steps to the porch, he heard a heavy thump from somewhere behind the cabin’s closed front door. It sounded as if someone had fallen to the floor, which was alarming. Maybe it was one of the old Weatherby guys, and he’d had a heart attack.

  Moving faster now, he went to the door and tested the knob. It was unlocked and turned easily in his hand. He pushed the door open and hurriedly entered the cabin, determined to offer help if one of those old guys needed it. This was in part driven by genuine concern for the well-being of one of his rarely seen elder relatives. There was also a part of him, however, that relished the opportunity to play the role of hero in front of his family. He wasn’t anything like an EMT by any means, but he had basic CPR skills. It was within the possibility he could save a life.

  He stopped in his tracks once he was fully inside the cabin, taken aback by the shocking sight that greeted him. A brown-skinned man was bound to a chair that had toppled over and was now on its side on the floor. In addition to his bonds, he had silver strips of duct tape over his mouth and presumably a gag of some kind behind the tape. The man’s eyes bugged out when he saw Pierce. He frantically attempted to tell him something that was indecipherable because of the tape.

  Completely mystified by what was going on here—but knowing it could be nothing good—Pierce inched carefully closer to the bound man. He felt a queasy twinge in his gut when he saw the screwdriver protruding from the man’s leg. A closer look revealed that someone had snipped off pieces of the man’s ears.

  Pierce put a hand to his mouth. “Jesus.”

  He was torn between still wanting to offer the man assistance and the option of backing out of this situation and getting far away from here as quickly as possible. The one thing that was absolutely undeniable was that something very bad was happening here. Something actively dangerous.

  He took a first step backward, knees shaking precariously as fear began to overcome him. Whatever brand of madness was going on here, he couldn’t let his family be exposed to it. He took another shaky step backward and now the man on the floor was whining behind his gag. His desperation was obvious and Pierce did feel bad about abandoning the man to his fate, but his family’s safety was the priority here.

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” he said softly, still hoping to avoid detection by whoever had done this horrible thing. “I’m getting out of here, but I’ll call the cops as soon as I’m on my way.”

  He started to turn toward the door and that was when he heard the pounding footsteps. Glancing up, he saw a young couple charging toward the wooden staircase at the far end of the second-floor loft. The woman was a stranger, but he recognized the man as a younger cousin from his side of the family. He was a Weatherby. Grant, that was his name. The woman was blond and long-legged, highly attractive. She reminded him strongly of a younger version of Piper, a well-bred rich girl. He didn’t notice she looked like she’d been smacked around until the couple came galloping down the stairs into the main room.

  Pierce was so surprised by this development he halted his retreat to the open front door, his face twisting into a deep frown as the woman veered toward the table in the dining area while Grant approached him with a strained smile on his face.

  He also looked like he’d taken a bit of a beating.

  Pierce held up a hand, palm turned outward. “Whoa there, kid. It’s Grant, right?”

  His handsome young cousin nodded, smiling broadly in a way that might have been disarming under other circumstances. “Sure is. And you’re Pierce, right?”

  Pierce nodded slowly. “Yep. You mind explaining why you have a tied-up Mexican on your floor? This doesn’t look good.”

  Grant grimaced and scratched the side of his neck. “That’s a long story, but there’s a good explanation. This guy broke in, you see. He was going to rob us and kill us, but we, uh . . . managed to subdue him.”

  The tied-up man made an emphatic noise behind his gag that sounded very much like he was saying, “Bullshit.”

  Pierce made a contemplative sound. “Uh-huh. Why does he have a screwdriver poking out of his leg?”

  Grant frowned. “Um . . .”

  He trailed off, unable, apparently, to elaborate further.

  By then his good-looking female companion had sidled up next to him. She had a hand behind her back, which Pierce found more than a little worrisome. He hadn’t kept an eye on her while talking to Grant, but now he suspected she was hiding some kind of weapon. Now he shifted his weight from one side to the other, preparing to make a mad dash for the door. Blood relation or not, it was clear Grant was up to some especially vile form of villainy here. Something for which there could be no good or understandable explanation.

  The woman came a step closer, still keeping that hand hidden behind her back. “You need to understand what really happened here, mister.” She smiled in a sexily distracting way, swaying her hips slightly as she came still another step closer. “It’s absolutely not what it looks like. This bad hombre tried to rape me, but he couldn’t get it up. He beat the shit out of me out of frustration. Beat the shit out of Grant, too, before we got the better of him. And, well, I know it’s wrong and all, but we were so upset. We decided to get a little revenge on him. You understand, right?”

  Pierce shook his head. “I’m not at all sure I do, young lady. Why don’t you show me what you’re hiding behind your back before you come any closer?”

  Her smile had a distinctly nasty edge to it now. “Afraid I can’t do that, gramps.”

  Pierce was about to retort when he heard a creaking sound from the porch behind him.

  Then he heard his daughter meekly say, “Daddy? Is everything all right in there?”

  Instinct caused him to start turning in her direction.

  In the same instant, the woman came rushing toward him and slammed the big blade of a hunting knife deep into his stomach.

  Out on the porch, Kelsey screamed.

  14

  LINDSEY RIPPED THE HUNTING KNIFE out of Pierce’s stomach and immediately rammed it back in again, this time higher up, closer to his sternum. The knife only went in about halfway this second time before striking bone. She tried pulling
it back out again but was forced to work harder at it this time because it was embedded in something, bone or tough muscle tissue. She screeched in frustration as Pierce screamed and flailed at her.

  The knife finally came out again and Lindsey directed her next thrust of the blade at his throat. Miraculously still on his feet, Pierce flinched away at the last second. Instead of a direct plunge deep into the center of his throat, the blade skidded along the side of his neck. The blade nonetheless sliced deep enough to cause bright red blood to repeatedly spurt out of the new hole in his flesh. Grant had a feeling the blade had nicked one of the big, super-important neck arteries. His uncle clamped a hand over the wound, but without the immediate assistance of a medical professional, he was probably doomed already.

  Grant had mixed feelings about that. In truth, he had mixed feelings about a lot of things. The image of a perfect relationship with Lindsey had been shattered, revealed as little more than a hollow, empty lie. He’d loved her completely and unconditionally from the start, had barely even given other women a second look since getting involved with her. She’d always swore she felt the same way about him, but all along she’d been fucking other people behind his back.

  The sickening images of all the things she’d done with his cousin and his cousin’s flamer boyfriend were seared into his brain. He had no doubt there’d been many other secretive trysts along the way. She’d made a fool of him and in a flash of instinctive, blinding rage he’d tried to murder her. There could be no coming back from that shit for either of them. Not now. Not ever.

  And now, after having shown up out of the absolute fucking blue, a family member was dying right in front of him. He hadn’t seen Pierce in a long time, probably well over a decade. They were cousins, but the age difference was such that Grant had always thought of him as more of an uncle. Though they’d never been close, he remembered liking the guy well enough. He’d always treated him well at those old family gatherings, never seeming to look down on him because he was younger. Being involved in his murder, even in the role of a bystander, made him feel kind of shitty, but there was no other choice to be made here. Lindsey had understood that immediately and was taking care of business while he stood here and watched with his mouth hanging open.