by Penny Lam
“I was thinking the same thing, Shep.” He hung up.
Some part of me itched to call the cops instead. But with the warning Rick gave me and the memory of Jake’s face, I know they’ll arrest first and ask questions later. If they don’t shoot first, that is. Later will mean too late for Vickie. I don’t even think about the fact that it could already be too late.
So no. No cops. And whoever has tricked Vickie out there is about to discover why it was the worst decision of their life.
Vickie
“Put your wrists together, Whore.” Clay’s voice rumbles through me, his hate giving it power. I’m too scared to be a smartass because he’s got a large knife poking in my side. The sharp end is grazing my flesh just enough for me to feel a trickle of blood.
My wrists touch, and he quickly sheathes his knife and zip ties them together.
“Bet you wish you’d never shacked up with those assholes now, don’t you, Vickie?” Trembling,fear squeezes my throat too tight to talk. Clay doesn’t seem to mind. He’s happy to keep talking at me. “Lloyd never paid me the full amount back, you know. He and your whore mother spent some of it. He said I’d made a ‘non-refundable deposit’ on your cherry. Ten thousand dollars I won, and he gave me two of it back and threatened to hurt me if I came asking for the rest. How’s that fair?”
Now I’m mad. Not just at Clay, but at Lloyd and my mama. That’s the same crap they pulled with me. Lying about numbers and keeping the lion’s share for themselves. But they’re dead, and Clay has tied me up, so and I lash out at him, instead. “Anyone tell you life’s not fair?”
“Oh, so you got a mouth living with them, did you?” His fingers grip my jaw hard enough I imagine I’ll bruise tomorrow. If I’m alive tomorrow. “I bet you did,” he sneers. “I bet they taught you all sorts of things to do with that mouth.”
Refusing to dignify his remarks with a reply, my cheeks sting with hurt and anger. Why was he doing this?
“Your mom and Lloyd really pulled one over on me,” he goes back to what he apparently wants to bitch about. When my eyes dart toward the exit, his head shakes. No, you don’t, his eyes say. “But I showed them. Lloyd thought his muscle would scare me. I guess I should thank Buck and Shep for taking that advantage away from him.”
Like a punch to the gut, I understand what he’s saying. “You killed them.”
“No shit, Vickie. That blond must be real.” He fingers the ends of my curls lovingly, and it’s so similar to how Buck and Shep touch my hair that I think I might be sick. “It was your hair that I loved the most, Vickie. And that sweet, sweet cherry.” This memory makes his eyes narrow. “I’m sure that’s gone, too, like all my money.”
Clay backhands me hard, and I see stars as I fall to my knees. He sinks beside me and pulls me to his chest. Tears spring from my eyes, my cheekbone and jaw throbbing with pain. “Shh,” he says in my ear as he pets my head. “Now don’t cry-- you and I both know you deserved that. We had a deal, you and me, and you backed out of it.” His comfort is worse than the vitriol he was spewing. I sob harder, because the rock in my stomach is growing as I start to understand where this is headed.
His fingers brush some of my hair, now damp with tears, from my face. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I hurt you. I just needed you to understand that you hurt me.”
Sniffling, I nod. It’s an act of self preservation, I think. Clay’s actions are all over the place. His eyes are wide, his body constantly shifting and jittery. I suppose it’s a guess, but he’s acting like he did more than just pay to sleep with me. He’s talking like it would have lead to more. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Clay stills in my arms. “Thank you,” he says. The lilt of surprise doesn’t help me relax, but it seems to relax him. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to survive this. I don’t know what he’d planned when he’d lured me out here. But, heart racing, my brain is kicking in and trying to scramble for a way to keep me alive.
I left the note for Buck. Clay probably thinks I didn’t. After all, he lied and said he’d text Buck. There’s a flutter, competing with the rock in my gut, that says maybe he’ll find me in time. Or at least make sure Clay gets his. Because I know Buck and Shep, and they aren’t going to let anyone who hurts me get away.
“I tried so hard to get the courage to talk to you, Vickie.” Clay releases me and sits back on his heels. “You’ve always been so pretty. When you turned thirteen, you started looking like a woman and I knew I’d be in love with you. I’d just have to wait until it was time.” He tips my chin up with his fingers, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Lloyd had been bragging about you turning eighteen. He was going to auction you off, you see?” The fingers on my chin grip harder, and his eyes narrow to slits. “I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want that for you!”
“But you--”
A wash of shame passed over his features. “I did, but I did it for you. For us. If you’d just have gone with me, I’d have explained. You and I are meant to be together. I was meant to be your first.” A low growl comes from deep in his chest and he slaps me again, open handed. It stings and the loud pop of it makes it feel worse than it is. He slaps me again, and then once more.
“I can’t believe you ran straight to those two trailer park losers! Spread your legs for them! Not just one man, Vickie, but two! Two! I have a house. I was going to take care of you. But you had to go and ruin it!” His hand knots in my hair, and he jerks my head back so hard I fear for a moment my neck will snap. Instead, my muscles and spine scream in protest. “I’m going to have to claim you, Vickie. Over and over. It’s not going to feel good at first, because you deserve punishment. But after I’ve erased them from every inch of your body, we can try and move on together.”
“They won’t let you.” The angle of my neck makes my warning sound weak and raspy. “Buck and Shep-- they won’t let you take me away.”
His laugh makes a shiver run down my spine. “Please. Shep’s probably locked up already. I watched as the police combed your parents’ place. They think it was him. And Buck is nothing without Shep. Everyone thought it was him that saved Shep. That Shep relied on him. Please. Buck’s been Shep’s bitch since the day they met.”
“You’re wrong.” He hadn’t seen how Buck can wrestle power from Shep. Buck knows how to push Shep in just the right ways. The two bulls. Always equal. “Buck needs Shep, but not the way you think.” Buck didn’t need Shep to make him strong. He was that already. He needed Shep to remind him that there’s a need for love, a place for it, in the trailer park. That family didn’t mean flesh and blood.
“Shut up!” Clay hisses. “You think they love you? They just wanted to take what’s mine!”
I was never yours is on the tip of my tongue but I swallow it when Clay’s hand unconsciously fingers the handle of his knife. My face is beginning to feel stretched tight and I know that it’s swelling from his hits.
“No sassy remarks?” He jeers and pokes at me. “You are getting too big for your britches, Little Miss.” The knife flashes out and he hooks the waistband of my jeans. “Well, let’s just remind you what happens when you think you’re better than me.” I scream as the knife slides into my pants. It’s a hunting knife, serrated instead of sharp, and he’s forced to work it hard to slice through the tough fabric. Cool air hits my bare flesh.
“Oh.” He hums a bit. “That ass is even sweeter than I imagined.” Shoving me down, my face and chest catch on the dirt floor of the old tobacco barn. With my hands bound I can’t push myself up. I snort and scream into the packed dirt as his tongue drags up my bare hip. He slaps my ass hard. Unlike when Shep and Buck do it, there’s no teasing promise. It just hurts. I can taste the dirt in my mouth.
My sobs don’t cease as Clay positions himself behind me. Then he freezes. “Did you hear that?”
I can’t answer, my tears jagged and uncontrollable. I can’t hear anything over my choked cries and terror. Clay, though, seems sure he heard something because he’s up, fast as a rab
bit and just as nervous. “Stay there, you slut.”
Falling to my side, my exposed ass to the wall, I curl into myself, afraid. Clay melts into the shadows like he did when I first arrived, and I realize he’s setting the oldest trap in the book: Using bait.
Fear tangles around me, a net that constricts the more I fight it. “Run away!” I scream. “He’s got a knife!” Not ‘help.’ Because calling for help would drag whoever it was in here in a heartbeat. I’d be doing exactly as he wanted.
When a familiar voice rings out, time stops.
Buck
Shep’s waiting for me just inside the park. I don’t see his Camaro, so I know he’s hidden it somewhere. Smart. I’d had to hide the guns in a duffle as I left the trailer. There were still cops about, taking apart Anne’s trailer as they searched for evidence. I knew they were trying to find something to pin the murders on Shep. It was obvious in the way their eyes kept finding our trailer.
My mind’s been running over every awful scenario. I’m trying so hard to think of who could possibly have taken Vickie and killed her mama. Was it someone from the mine, trying to get back at Shep? Bill? Bill had a lot of reasons to hate Shep. More so now, because I knew he’d never look past his stump of a leg and realize Shep had saved his life.
I don’t have a lot of enemies. Maybe a few broken hearts in my past. Pre-Vickie. There were a lot of women. I didn’t treat any of them nicely, but by the way they used to scream my name, they didn’t want me to. I can’t imagine any of the girls I’d slept with doing something crazy like this, though.
Vickie? Could she have left anyone mad enough to hurt her? It feels unbelievable to me. She’s the sweetest, most genuine person I know. When we took her in, I was excited about the sex. I’m not an old man, not by any means. But there’s something about that eighteen-nineteen-twenty age that has me feeling nostalgic. It was when I was old enough to be more adventurous, but bills and life hadn’t chained me yet. Old enough to feel cocky, and young enough to feel free and a little crazy.
She brought that out in me. But then it had become more than sex. I think it did that first night as I helped her suck Shep off. It was like… it was like she’d opened a door in me and showed me that I could be me and still be grown. She made me feel like a man, and she made acting like a man feel like a good thing.
There were only three people I could think of that Vickie had problems with, and two of them were dead. Mikey, the third, had been playing pool. Yeah, I checked in on him on my way to the park. But he and his buddies were day drinking and talking shit at the local bar and pool hall. It wasn’t him that tricked Vickie.
Shep and I disappeared into the trees. Years of hunting together meant we knew how to be silent. Years of being there for each other meant we didn’t need to speak. I knew the pain, the panic he was feeling because I was feeling it, too.
As we moved, I handed him the rifle. He’s a better long shot than I am. I think it’s the patience. Shep can wait for hours and not move. I get too restless. I kept the shotgun. Close range, but it’d fucking hurt whoever it hit.
The way I’m feeling, I’m looking to inflict a lot of hurt.
It doesn’t take long to find Vickie’s trail. I mean, we knew where she was headed, but the fucker who tricked her out here may not lead her to the cabin. Shep nodded and I grunted. We were looking at her bike tracks through the broken ferns it’d left in it’s wake.
Before long we found her discarded bike.
But Vickie was easy to track. She hadn’t been trying to be subtle or stealthy. My nose flared as I started to experience the hype that comes from the hunt.
The tracks lead us straight to the cabin. We both freeze and stiffen at the sound of a loud smack and the muffled tears that follow. It’s Vickie, and my heart shifts into overdrive. Adrenaline pounds through me, and I am going to kill him. It’s not a question of it.
“Get closer. Try and lead him out if you need to, so I can get him.” Shep whispers before finding a flat place to lie down and get braced. It’s the if you need to that makes me want to kiss him. He wants this as much as I do, and he doesn’t care which of us takes care of it.
As I start to close, in Vickie’s scream rings out. “Run away! He’s got a knife!”
A knife to a gun show? Hell yes. “Vickie,” I bellow. “I’m here for you, baby girl.” Her wail of relief soothes me until it’s choked off. I hear a shuffle and see a flicker of the pink coat before Vickie emerges from the dark. There’s an arm wrapped tight around her and a knife at her throat, pressing in enough that if she breathes wrong, it’ll cut. When I see that her shuffling is from her pants, loose and shredded around her feet, I hiss. Red clouds my vision, and I know Shep’s seeing it too.
Clay. His mouth is twisted in victory. “Buck, bad timing, as usual. Once again you manage to step in when I was about to have my prize.”
“I’m generous like that.” Clay flinches briefly from the animal rage in my voice. “What’re you doing, Clay?”
“Getting what’s owed to me, Asshole.” He’s spitting, and his grip on the knife keeps tightening and shifting. It’s making me nervous as the blade flits across Vickie’s exposed, vulnerable neck.
“What’s that?”
“Vickie, Dumbass. And her stupid mom and pimp. And you and Shep. All of you tried to keep her from me, but she’s mine.”
Like hell. “Well you got all that except me. Shep’s in jail because of you.” Vickie’s sobs renew at this and I can’t tell her the truth to calm her. “But here I am.”
“Throw your gun down.”
“You won’t hurt her.”
But Clay surprises me. He moves fast, dragging the knife down Vickie’s cheek. The cut isn’t too deep, but the serrated blade makes it jagged and nasty. Her moans of pain almost cripple me, and I set the gun down and step away from it. “Okay, what now?”
“Now? I owe you a punch or two, I think.” Jesus, what a lunatic.
“Okay, so come hit me.”
Clay rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. Vickie, reach in my front pocket and grab another zip tie.” Her face turns green, but Vickie does what he asks. He makes sure I see how she has to dig for it. “Oh, careful. You’ll be getting plenty of my dick soon. No need to be greedy now.”
I know what’s happening. Moving slowly, I hold my hands in front, crossed at the wrist, until I’m close to her. But Clay stops Vickie before she touches me. “You think I was born yesterday?” No, but I think this morning you woke up a dead man. “Turn around. Arms behind your back.”
I do as he says. Clay thinks he’s being smart, but being smart would have meant never messing with my family. The zip tie is yanked tight after a couple of sharp insults from Clay. It’s biting into my skin, and my fingertips are already going numb. I step back, away from Vickie, and drop to my knees, making myself look as weak as possible. “Okay. Come and get your shots.”
Clay stoops and pulls off Vickie’s shoes. Then he uses the strips of her jeans to tie her ankles. “Don’t want you running off now, do we? Besides, now you can watch me stab him.”
Wielding the knife like he’s won the champion belt, Clay lunges toward me, grinning.
Crack.
The shot is loud, echoing easily. It’s the lightning, and the red bloom on Clay’s chest is the thunder that follows. He trips and his body skids in the dirt until it crumples near me. I know he’s dead by the time I stand.
Shep’s already up and running toward Vickie when another shot is fired. All three of us are like statues. The shout comes after. “Don’t move!” It’s Jake. I dare a glance behind me and see four cops weaving toward us through the trees, their guns trained on Shep.
Jake steps to me, and I brace myself. For what, I don’t know. He pushes Clay’s body over and grunts at the chest wound. “Well, that’s gonna make his confession hard.” My head is still buzzing with the past five minutes playing over and over in my mind, so that it feels like a lifetime.
“Shep, you got any other weapons on y
ou?”
“No, Sir. They’re all over there.” He nods to where he’d been planted with the rifle and the duffle bag beside him.
“Peters, call an ambulance. Black, untie Miss Sampson, please. Shep, you ain’t in trouble, but you will be if you move, got it?”
Shep nods but his wide, gray eyes are pinned on mine. I know my face reflects his own confusion. He’s not in trouble? Confession?
Jake gets behind me and cuts my hands loose. Rubbing them together, the blue fades fast and stinging feeling returns to my fingers. “Thanks, man.”
“Y’all just had to call, you know,” he mutters, still eyeing the dead body at our feet. “We had men following you, Buck.”
“Yeah, but you were hoping I’d lead you to Shep.”
He shrugs. “We were, until we found Clay’s footprints outside the Sampson trailer. Hope you don’t mind, but we took a look in your trailer. You and Shep are some big guys, you know?” I can’t even be mad about them busting in. The grin on my face is stretched as far as it can go. One look at Clay’s feet explains it. He wears a nine, ten tops. Shep and I are each easily size thirteens. “Got the call as y’all were disappearing into the woods. We weren’t sure where you’d gone, until we found the bike and heard the shouting. If we’d have seen Shep on the ground, we would’ve stopped you.” The words were there, but Jake saw Vickie’s state. Black had her up and had given her his coat to cover up with. The bruising on her face made me wince. Jake’s tone sounded like he was happy Clay ended up dead.
“What now?”
“Vickie’s gonna have to go to the hospital. Get cleaned up, get a rape kit.” Each step was a punch to my gut. Maybe Clay had found a way to get me, afterall. “You and Shep’ll come down to the station and give statements.”
“Can’t I go with her? I’ll come after, but--”
“Sorry, Buck. No can do. Murders don’t exactly wait in the law.”
Things moved fast. Shep and I didn’t even get to hug Vickie, to touch her at all. The ambulance came, and she was whisked away by paramedics. It felt like my own chest was bleeding. We’d saved her life, but what if we hadn’t saved her heart?