Violent Delights

by Helena Maeve

  Just a little farther. I would be safe if I made it just a little farther.

  I ducked behind a thick oak trunk, my stomach clenching like a fist, and crouched low. I listened for the stomp of heavy footfalls. There were none. No one was coming. If I strained my gaze, I could more or less pick out the headlights of the car, the yellow beams interspersed with bursts of movement as Pruitt and Lawrence conferred as to their next move. Why weren’t they chasing me?

  Long beats ticked by at a glacial pace, a counterpoint to the stammer of my pulse. Ashley’s cell had been switched off during the flight—I let myself believe that was a good thing, that it meant I would have battery enough to call the police.

  I forgot that his cell, like mine, locked with a PIN.

  “Very clever,” Pruitt shouted into the wood. A flock of birds startled. I nearly dropped the phone. “You got away, you little bitch. You think you can hide out there, wait this out?”

  I shivered, cold and panic winding around me like a shroud.

  “What about your boyfriend, huh?”

  My parentage aside, I was a city girl through and through. The only gunshots I’d heard in my life came from the other side of the TV screen. But I couldn’t feign ignorance when the coppice echoed with the blast of a shotgun.

  I clamped a hand over my mouth to drown out a shriek. Pruitt wasn’t fucking around. He was going to kill me. He was going to kill Ashley.

  “Show yourself or the next one goes through his head,” Pruitt yelled. I had no doubt that he meant it.

  “Dad, what the fuck…?” Lawrence’s voice was thick with tears, but his bewilderment did nothing to endear him to me.

  He’d started this. He’d turned us over to that madman.

  I scrubbed a shaking hand over my face. Fear quaked through me. I couldn’t stay here and hope they didn’t find me. I couldn’t run.

  I couldn’t let it end with Ashley’s death.

  “You’ve got fifteen seconds,” Pruitt barked. “After that…” I heard the threat loud and clear.

  With my last inch of strength, I pushed myself up from the dirt, shoes sticking to the mud. It went against my every instinct to put one foot in front of the other, but my mind was made up. I soldiered through the sting of prickly weeds underfoot, doing my best to avoid the worst of the shrubbery.

  I hit the SOS button on the cell phone screen just as Pruitt’s countdown reached seven.

  “I’m here.”

  He whirled around to face me, shotgun at the ready. Behind him, Lawrence stared at us both with wide-eyed disbelief.

  “I should put a bullet in you right now,” Pruitt gritted out. “You’re a goddamn abomination. Shoulda died a long time ago.”

  “Okay,” I rasped. The headlights burned my eyes. “Do it.” I held up my empty hands in surrender. “Point blank, like in the movies… I’m the-the only one who knows what you did. Shut me up and this all goes away. Lawrence never has to know.”

  My brother frowned, but with his features mostly drenched in shadow, I only noticed it when he stalked closer, a two-step false start that carried him into the glow of headlights where we were. One big happy family.

  “What’s she talking about?” he gritted out.

  “Lying, as usual. She’s her daddy’s daughter.”

  Of course, Kane’s ghost was right here between us, present in spirit if not in body. I thrust out my chin. “I’m also my mother’s… Or doesn’t that count for anything?” I didn’t say it for Pruitt, but staring down the barrel of a shotgun had me feeling more than a little bit aware of his volatile temper. Just because he hadn’t pressed the trigger yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  Lawrence flexed his hands at his sides. Did he regret Tasing me, I wondered? In his shoes, I might have done the same. I knew what it was like to live in a sociopath’s shadow. At least I didn’t have to see my father every single day, pretend we were family.

  “No, I want to know,” Lawrence bit out, rounding on me. “Is this about the diary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk!”

  I flinched, but didn’t dare move for fear of Pruitt letting his finger slip. Spittle flew out of my brother’s mouth when he shouted. We must’ve inherited wrath from our mother because I recognized that urge to scream and hurt others. I’d felt it often enough since I left Topeka. I dropped my hands to my sides. I was no match for two men in their prime. Pruitt could probably strangle me with his pinkie if he put his mind to it.

  That was my predicament. But I could make it difficult for Lawrence.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder how Mom was able to get away from Kane in the first place? How she managed to stay away long enough to have you?” I asked, my voice quaking.

  A vein throbbed in Lawrence’s forehead. He looked like a man on the edge. “What’re you saying?”

  “She needed protection. She couldn’t go to the police because she knew she’d be charged with collusion. So she went to the only person Kane wouldn’t touch… His accomplice.”

  A pair of hands grabbing me by the shoulders wouldn’t have rattled me as bad as Pruitt’s disbelieving snicker. “You’re gonna try to pin this on me? I never laid a hand on my wife!” He glared, teeth bared like some hellish fiend.

  “Maybe not… But you did kill other women. You and my father worked together. That’s why Mom was keeping a tally. That’s why you’ve hated me all these years. I remember.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Lawrence whirl around to face his father. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew what it was like to be desperate for a lie. I’m sorry, kid. It was too late to take back. I wouldn’t if I could. I was more concerned with the rifle still aimed at my chest.

  “Is it true?” Lawrence breathed, so quiet his voice was little more than a whisper.

  Pruitt gawped. “You gotta ask me that?” The shotgun flagged—not enough for comfort, or to make me feel as though I’d earned a reprieve, but it was something. If anything, we had just crossed the Rubicon. There was no turning back from this.

  “It adds up, doesn’t it?” I shrugged when Pruitt glowered at me. “You’ve kept us apart as long as you could because you didn’t want Lawrence to know… And you were afraid I did. You thought I had Mom’s diary. You let my father take all the blame and you pretended to be a victim, when you’re just as bad as he is.”

  “Kane’s a fucking monster. He killed Laure—”

  “And you’ve been playing the grieving widower ever since! I haven’t read all of my mother’s journal, but something tells me that when I do, I’ll find a whole other side of you, Harry.”

  “You think you’re walking away from this?” he barked and took aim.

  This is it. I braced myself for the blast. We were close enough that if he fired, he could shatter my skull in one shot. I hoped his aim was better than his ability to persuade.

  “Stop.” Lawrence stepped between, a particularly effective human shield. Over his quaking shoulder, I saw Pruitt’s expression slacken, jaw dropping in disbelief. “Is it true?”

  “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

  “Answer me!” Lawrence shouted as loud as his father, but his wrath came from a place of helplessness. He was the child facing off against a parent he could no longer trust. I’d seen them together—how defenseless Lawrence became when Pruitt showed up, how unfair it was for a kid like that to be torn down by a father who didn’t deserve him.

  Pruitt lowered the shotgun. “’Course it’s not… You think I’m capable of murder?”

  “If you’re not,” I said, emboldened, “then what are you doing here?” I scraped a bloodied foot against the ground and shuffled forward until I could take Lawrence’s hand in mine. He was shaking hard enough to come apart where he stood. He startled when I grasped his fingers. I wasn’t surprised that he mistrusted kindness. He’d been hurt enough. “Let’s go home?”

  “You ain’t taking him anywhere!”

  “Dad…” Lawrence sobbed. “I have the keys. What’re you go
nna do? Shoot me?”

  I watched Pruitt’s resolve crumble right before my very eyes. He might have been an abusive son of a bitch, but he’d poured too much of himself into Lawrence to kill him. Me, I was disposable.

  I tried not to gloat as we rounded the truck, Lawrence bound for the driver’s side, me for the passenger seat. I made myself avoid glancing into the bed of the pick-up. One bite at a time—that’s how you eat a whale, Laure. It was too tempting to avoid one last glance at the man who’d blamed me for my mother’s death. I flashed Pruitt a smile—the kind with teeth, like my father’s mugshot.

  “Fucking bitch,” he muttered under his breath and wheeled around. Too late.

  The stock of the rifle slammed into my jaw, exaggerating the angle of my head as I spun with the blow. Impact rang in my ears like a foghorn. The ground rose up to meet me in slow motion. I choked on the blood in my mouth, dizzy with pain and the shock of being struck.

  Say what you will about my father the serial killer, but Kane had never been violent against me. He had the others for that.

  I had a brief, fleeting thought that Harry Pruitt was going to shoot me in the back of the head and be done with it. Maybe he’d kill Lawrence afterward, or maybe not. Maybe Lawrence could learn to forgive.

  Blood and bile rose up in my throat as I scrabbled for the ditch on the side of the road.

  I should never have come out of the woods. I was going to die here.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Pruitt bit out sharply. He slammed his boot into the meat of my thigh. A futile animal noise squeaked from my throat.

  “Dad!” Lawrence’s voice reached me from somewhere distant, a clarion call from another life.

  “Run,” I bit out. “Run.”

  Something heavy landed on my back, bearing me down into the clay dirt. It took Pruitt’s puffing exhales in my ear to realize that he was straddling my ribcage. My lungs burned as I struggled to breathe. I kicked out with my shredded soles, but couldn’t make contact. I couldn’t pull myself out from under Pruitt or shake him off.

  I yowled when he took my by the hair, yanking my head back hard. I realized dimly that if he had a knife, he could slash my throat. I’d seen too many thrillers to believe that could be a painless death.

  Pruitt shoved my face into the ground before I could panic. I inhaled my own blood, my vision blurring. Woods and starry sky pitched and yawed like the churning seas as he dragged my head back again. No, I realized, no throat slashing. He would smash my skull open.

  A thunderous, terrifying blast echoed from somewhere behind us. The grip in my hair relaxed at once. I had time to take a single breath as Pruitt fell forward limply, slamming me down.

  I scrabbled out as best I could, a scream building in my throat when I saw the blood on my hands. It wasn’t mine, despite the gushing streams that slicked across my lips and chin. It couldn’t be mine, because there Pruitt lay, a red stain seeping slowly into his shirt while ten, fifteen feet away, Lawrence held his father’s shotgun against his shoulder, shaking like a leaf.

  “Is he…?” His gaze flickered to mine. “I just… I wanted him t-to stop. I just wanted him to stop,” he said, voice dropping a tremulous octave. “He’s not—is he?”

  He looked at me, so plaintive, so full of pain, that I couldn’t lie to him.

  “I’m sorry,” I lied.

  Lawrence made a sound like a wounded animal. “Fuck. Fuck.” Agitation built in him like a revving engine. “I killed him. I fucking…”

  I stood on shaking knees, trying to placate. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I shot him!” Lawrence yelled back. He’d lowered the shotgun, but he still held it firmly in hand. Was there another bullet chambered? I knew too little about guns to feel confident that the danger had passed.

  “You were trying to help me,” I pointed out. “I-I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.” If it wasn’t for him Pruitt would never have stood above me with a gun, but pointing fingers wasn’t going to get me out of this alive.

  I levered slowly to my feet, my knees locking so I wouldn’t come crashing back down again. “It’s okay. You did the only thing you could…”

  “It’s not,” Lawrence sobbed, the fight draining out of him. “It’ll never be okay.” He raised the shotgun.

  Out of nowhere, Ashley slammed the Taser into my brother’s flank hard and held it in place until the cartridge discharged completely. I winced, all too familiar with the pain.

  Lawrence crumbled at his feet, a shock of raven hair drooping into his eyes. He was out for the count.

  “You okay?” Ashley rasped.

  I nodded unsteadily. Also unsteady were my footsteps as I crept around Pruitt’s prone, unmoving body and his son’s unconscious form to put my arms around Ashley. It hurt to hold on too tightly, but I didn’t care. I clung like it was going out of style.

  We staggered against the car, both of us quaking with fear and pent-up exhaustion. My blood smeared across his shirt collar and his across my cheek. Neither of us cared.

  “I thought you were dead,” I mumbled into the curve his mouth, my words tinged with relief. “I thought—”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Ashley said, hacking out a cough.

  Whether his knees gave out first or mine, I couldn’t say. The mud-stained bumper of the car served as a better backrest than any designer ergonomic chair into which I’d ever parked myself.

  In the black, shadowy void that separated us from the rest of the world, the shriek of police sirens made for the sweetest lullaby.

  * * * *

  Special Agent Valenzuela was waiting in my room when I crept out of the en suite. The toilet flushed behind me. I didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed.

  “What do you want?” I volleyed instead, stumbling to the bed. I had a vague idea of what I might look like, walking barefoot around a hospital room—no makeup, no perfume, my hair a wilted, unruly mess. One of the nurses had helped me pick out the jeans and shirt I’d changed into, but I refused to let someone else dress me.

  The FBI would just have to deal.

  Valenzuela cleared her throat. “First of all, to apologize.” She was without her snarky partner today. I hated to admit it, but part of me was glad. My story had been picked apart and glued back together so many times in the past twenty-four hours that my head hurt. When the overture didn’t make any impact, she went on. “I hear you’re getting discharged?”

  “Broken noses aren’t exactly life-threatening.” I’d been more worried about Ashley, but his CT had come back clean. He’d been released with painkillers and orders to take it easy for the next couple of weeks.

  As for the type of care Lawrence needed, he wasn’t going to get it in a hospital.

  Valenzuela nodded and stuck her hands into her pockets. “Where will you be staying?”

  She made it sound harmless, like she was merely curious, but I doubted an FBI agent gave a damn about my situation. She was a cop. They always had ulterior motives.

  My father had taught me that.

  “My reservation at the Marriott should still be good.” I tugged my sneakers on, but left the laces undone. Bending was hard work. Every time I felt the blood rush to my head I was transported to that dirt road, Pruitt on my back. I blinked away the memory. “Why? Do you want me out of the country already?”

  Valenzuela held up her hands in mock surrender. “Just making conversation.”

  “Well, don’t. I already gave a statement. Doesn’t sound like I’m being charged with anything… So unless there’s something you want, the door’s right there.”

  “Why did you come back?” Valenzuela asked, so even keeled I knew it was what she’d been after since she set foot through the door.

  “My brother. He reached out to me after news of the body in the backyard hit the airwaves… I think he had some suspicions about his dad.”

  Valenzuela quirked a smile. “And you wanted to investigate?”

  “What I wanted was to help him get a
way,” I shot back. “Does that sound like motive?”

  Hardly a flicker of emotion showed on her features. “Possibly.”

  I whirled around, thrusting my hands out. “You’ve got me! It was my plan all along to get kidnapped, beaten and nearly murdered… All so I could orphan my brother. Behold my brilliant plan.”

  “Is there a reason you’re so hostile toward law enforcement, Ms. Reynaud?” Valenzuela folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not the enemy. If anything, I would like to help you.”

  “How? By questioning my motives?” I zipped up my anorak—an ugly, shapeless thing the nurse must’ve grabbed out of our suitcase by accident. Just about the only thing it had going for it was the fact that it smelled of his cologne. “Here’s what I know about law enforcement. I get hounded and suspected… And treated like I’m nuts. And you come in twenty years late to dig up the bodies.”

  “Lawrence seems to believe his father was Tracey Kane’s accomplice.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any,” I answered, shrugging.

  “You don’t believe that to be the case?”

  I hated Valenzuela’s brutish face. I hated her for picking at me like a vulture when I was already down. I curbed my dislike long enough to answer. “I don’t believe it’s my job to figure out what really happened decades ago… Is my brother being charged with murder?”

  “That depends on the DA.”

  “But the Bureau has some authority there.”

  Valenzuela neither confirmed nor denied this.

  I expected nothing less. “What do you want?” I wasn’t going to let Lawrence take the fall for Pruitt’s death. He might have pressed the trigger, but I’d riled his father up. I’d pushed his buttons until he’d snapped.

  Valenzuela leaned a shoulder against the wall. “What else do you remember from your childhood? Any more…buried treasure?”