by Marata Eros
I back up against the wall, identifying menace instantly, watching the two as though they’re playing a deadly tennis match.
Brad’s grin wilts around the edges.
Talker strolls toward Brad. “Put the gun to your head and blow yourself away,” he repeats as if Brad is slightly stupid.
“This isn’t part of the plan that Ricci outlined,” Brad replies just as condescendingly.
I have to give him credit, he sounds affronted.
I would have peed myself. In fact, that’s still an option.
The man draws a switchblade and puts it against Brad’s crotch faster than Brad can lift the gun.
Brad’s eyes bulge.
For a single, blistering moment of suspended time, I might laugh because all I can think of is Trudie’s coined term, nubby dick.
Then the moment is gone because Talker states in a low voice, “Put the gun to your head and blow your brains out, or I slice your dick off. Your choice, Bradford.”
My breath heats, and I can’t move it past my lips.
Brad hesitates and meets my eyes.
He’s obviously horrible, but maybe he doesn’t deserve this.
Slowly, so slowly, he lifts his arm and does what the man instructed him to do.
I would think he would rather be alive and figure out his penisless state.
In the end, no. The report of the weapon explodes in a muffled burst. The noise of the gun is louder, at half volume, and a low ringing begins in my ears.
I stifle a sob with my hand as Brad crumples in a pile of gore. His face is half-gone. A hole in his upper jaw reveals the gleam of teeth that look like tortured Chiclets in a mouth without lips.
“That was nifty as fuck,” Talker says, turning to me. “Are you going to cooperate this time, Angela?”
“No,” I say through gritted teeth, my eyes wide.
He gives a sage nod. “Figured.” Talker nods toward his men, and they come.
I’m trained in self-defense, one of the best—man or woman—in the classes I took for years. But I’m still no match for three men.
I thought I hurt from Tommy’s surprise attack.
They rush me, and I take the first in a leading foot strike to the knee, taking out his stride from underneath him, smashing the nose of the next, but the third gets one of my arms, then the other. I’m trapped.
Their attack is so brutal an onslaught that the one who initially gave them the green light makes them back off as if he’s addressing a pack of Dobermans after a bone.
This bone is hurting too badly to stay awake.
So I don’t.
I try to breathe but can’t. I lie gasping on the floor, figuring they’ve broken the ribs that were only bruised before.
Unconsciousness beats at me insistently until I can’t fight it anymore. My narrowing vision sees first Maryanne then Brad. Bright red narrowing to black as it covers my brain like a thin veil of reprieve from my fright.
Chapter 20
Lariat
Drab drapes tinged with brown bow forward under murky glass that is so encased by filth, there wouldn’t be a view even if the cloth was pulled back.
Thank fuck we don’t need to peep through windows. That’s more frontal than we would ever employ.
Our car is parked half a mile away in the open-twenty-four-hours-a-day Safeway grocery store that borders Renton like a wet dream. The highway that hugs the parking lot used to be named Benson Road, but now it’s SR 515, a congested stretch that has needed to be plowed into a thoroughfare for forever.
After conferring briefly, our group splits up. There’s something about four huge men dressed all in black that gets attention. And that’s what we don’t want tonight.
I look at this like a mission. And since there’s no real arrogance in a SEAL—we all believe we’re a step away from failing—that perspective keeps us sharp. As for Snare’s mindset, I couldn’t know. But the last time we were all together on a similar run, he felt so close to a brother in the war, I almost forgot he hadn’t served. He was a natural to all the brief coaching we gave him.
Snare has earned our trust, which is no simple feat. He has been through his own war in battles he couldn’t win. And when he finally won the war that mattered, he was released by his demons. The dad that had terrorized him his entire life and threatened the one woman he vowed to protect was gone.
But like us, Snare’s guard never retreats. His cautious nature is a default of experience. He can’t take away what he has lived no matter how much he wants to. It’s part of who he is.
Like now.
Noose hikes his jaw, and I see the movement in the dark because I’m watching for it. Wring has a jet-black beanie pulled low and gives a finger signal—move. It’s too warm a night for a cap. In the Pacific Northwest, weather cools to true autumn slowly. But Wring’s platinum buzz cut is a flag of notice even in the vague light pollution of Renton.
Noose moves forward with liquid grace, which is surprising for a guy as fucking big as him.
He’s at the back door of the rundown, 1950s, flat-roofed dump before I can blink.
We all follow, with Snare and I at loose center and Wring at the rear.
Noose pops the lock easily and slides through the threshold sideways. Three hearbeats later, he gives the signal for entry.
We stuff ourselves inside silently, and I flick a drop of sweat sliding from my temple to jaw. I swear it makes a plop sound when it hits the cracked and curling linoleum floor.
Noose had looked into this fuck. Jenkins should be at home.
He must be, judging from the blaring TV in the front room, not that speculation is fact.
Wring and Noose shoot me a glance.
I nod in return.
My kill. My plan.
I move forward, sweeping my rope, one of three, free of my pocket. The abrasive length swings with comforting weight as I slide along a wall that hasn’t seen paint in two decades.
I lean my jaw along the inside corner of the wall and search the dark interior of a living room that has a strobe-like effect from the distorted colors the TV is flinging around.
A chair with an indentation as permanent as a scar is parked like a fading anchor at the room’s center.
No one’s in it.
Shit.
I duck on pure instinct as the simultaneous slide of a shotgun registers in my brain.
A fraction of a second later, plaster disintegrates above my head in a powder puff that cannibalizes vision.
The guys behind me are silent, and I know that something alerted Jenkins.
No time to think. Shot projectiles go wide as I go low, sweeping my leg out blindly as I do and catching the man I assume is Jenkins in the kneecap.
Lucky strike, being as how I can’t see dick through the cloud of dust caused by the shot.
He howls, and Noose moves in. He aims for the guy’s head and nails him in the teeth with a perfect boot plant.
Jenkins’s jaw kicks back, his hand convulsing around the butt of the shotgun.
Wring is just there, yanking the weapon away at the butt.
We stand over Jenkins, his death in our faces, and he throws his hands defensively over his face.
“I didn’t say nothing!” he mewls like a little girl.
Noose shoots me a puzzled look, and Snare slaps Jenkins’s palms away so we can gauge his expression. “Hate to touch you, fucker,” Snare comments through tight lips.
Amen.
My knot swings loose above his face, and Jenkinsʼs eyeballs zero in on the bulbous end. Tied for size, the knot is as round as a golf ball and deadly as a flail.
“I never told nobody about her.” His voice is reedy and thin with fear.
It has been my experience that everyone sounds like that on their back when begging for their life.
Wring sinks down to his haunches. Out of the bunch of us, he has the least emotional investment. Snare was raised by somebody no better than Jenkins. Noose has a daughter, so he has a diff
erent perspective now.
I can’t get near Jenkins yet because he’s Angel’s childhood rapist. I’ll kill him too soon, and I want to make it slow.
Wring gets all that shit automatically and steps in. “What are you babbling on about, Jenkins?”
“I didn’t tell nobody,” the man blubbers, spittle escaping from the corners of his mouth.
“Didn’t tell anyone what?” Snare snarls from above him.
“About the girl.”
Angel?
“What girl?” Wring’s voice holds a thread of anger.
“Monroe. Who else?” he nearly wails.
Noose whips his face to mine.
I bend at the waist and grab a fistful of material by the fucker’s neck, dragging every bit of his one hundred eighty pounds upright.
He’s maybe five ten, and my nearly six five towers over him. “You talking about Angela Monroe?”
“Who else would I be talking about?” he squeaks within my taut hold. “I did what the boss told me.”
“What boss?” I ask in a hoarse bark, resisting the urge to shake him apart by the thinnest margin of control.
He flinches. “Ricci,” he whispers, his eyes searching my face for clues. Good fucking luck with that.
I give away nothing, releasing him before I choke him.
Jenkins staggers backward, and Snare pushes him into the wall. He slaps his hands against the wall and stares, wide-eyed and dazed, at the four of us.
“Talk. Now,” Noose says.
He licks his thick lips. “Ricci sent you guys to mess me up?”
“No.”
His eyes are beady and narrow. “Then who the fuck are you?”
All I can see is that stare over Angel as she struggled to get away… and never could.
My fist is suddenly flying, landing hard against his jaw. His face snaps back, colliding hard against the wall, denting it.
“Justice,” I growl.
*
“Please stop,” Jenkins pleads in a thready whisper.
Hard to talk with a partially crushed windpipe. It’s a real conversation dampener.
“Tell us about why the girl was here.”
Noose effortlessly tightens the knot with an expert quarter turn, and I know firsthand the pain is excruciating. After all, a man can’t learn the trade unless it’s turned on him occasionally.
Jenkins tries to dig the rope off his neck. An eye flick from me later, and Wring puts his full weight on Jenkinsʼs hand.
“This pain can stop if you promise to tell us stuff,” Snare says.
“Stuff?” I ask with a snort.
“Whatever,” Snare says, frowning.
Jenkins jerks his head in a nod then grimaces with the movement. Noose loosens the tie. His large hands are wrapped where they need to be to finish what he started.
But I have other plans for this fuck. In fact, I don’t have all the time to do all what I want to do.
“It’s been fifteen years, man.” His eyes are frantic between the four of us, begging us to understand. “She was payment. I took the girl instead of money. Old lady was on the foster list. She knew what I liked.”
The mensʼ faces take on identical ill expressions, all except Jenkins.
That fucking bitch he was married to hunted girls for him to rape. What kind of woman would aid a sick fucker like Jenkins?
“And?” Noose manages with raw disgust filling the one word.
“I offed the parents, made it look like an accident. Did a pro job. Got the Monroe girl for my efforts.”
Efforts. Orphaning a little girl then systematically tearing down her soul because of his sick impulses.
“Heard enough.”
Jenkinsʼs eyes widen. “Hey, man, I told ya what happened. What are you going to do to me?” His eyes ping-pong from me to the others.
The smile I level on him is the cruelest of my life. “Everything,” I answer.
The next hour is a blur of fists, blood, and retribution.
For me.
And definitely for Angel.
*
My knuckles are raw agony; the skin is torn clean off my dominant right hand. My fingers ache with the paces I put them through. A man who beats another to death does not escape damage.
It’s hard work, physical work—and I’m tired as fuck.
Exhilarated.
We went against everything we’ve been trained and documented Jenkins dispatch with photographic proof.
After carefully removing the special vessels from our packs, we poured what we brought with us over his body,
The chemical cocktail dissolves Jenkinsʼs body on contact. When the acidic mix eats away at the floor, the bloodied soup that had been Jenkins collapses into the shallow crawl space below.
Gasoline is tossed with precision on the lower floor like toxic rice at a wedding.
But this is no ceremony. Everything is a grim task.
We leave as silently as we came.
Wring strikes the match as we depart. The flame lights, standing up like a bright torch against the dark house, where we’d just made the world slightly better than it had been three hours ago.
Wring flicks the lit match, and it arcs, landing perfectly in the threshold of the battered door. It flares in a burst, seeking the line of fuel like a blue flame licking a highway.
Noose faces me, and for a heartbeat, the inferno illuminates his face, making him resemble a demon.
We turn and, without communication, yoke into the surrounding soft black of night.
*
“That was a thing,” Snare comments, flopping into Noose’s car.
We don’t reply.
After a few tense minutes of silence as Noose navigates us east toward the club, I ask, “You got the stuff we needed when I was working Jenkins over?”
“Yeah.”
I turn toward Snare, my eyes trained to the murk of the backseat from the front, cataloging his micro expressions. “You got a problem with how things went down?”
Snare shakes his head. “No.” He lifts a hand and lets out a rough exhale. “Yeah.”
Noose cocks his head from the driver’s seat, his eyes pegging Snare like a bug on a board. “Speak now or forever hold your fucking peace, brother.”
Snare is visibly shaken.
“What is it?” Wring asks, casually picking at his nails. There’s not one casual thing about any of us.
“You guys—what the fuck was that shit you used on Jenkins?”
Wring murmurs, “Bye-bye-gone—no evidence.”
“You don’t give a shit about Jenkins, do ya?” Noose asks with a sharp lilt, his light brows pulling together.
“Nah. Forget him as a human being. He raped a little girl as payment for murdering her parents. He deserved it. I just—fuck, that was so goddamned ugly.”
“Nope,” Wring says with calm precision. “That’s chemistry, my friend. And Lariat showed a bit of mercy.” He tips his blade up, the metal glinting softly from the occasional streetlamp that tosses light inside the car as it rolls toward the club.
Snare shifts his attention from Wring to me. “Because you only used your rope at the end?”
I shake my head, and Wring and I exchange a glance. I can feel Noose’s gaze on me instead of the road.
I know my eyes are pits of indifference inside my head, no effort needed. “No. Because I used the make-him-disappear juice when he was already dead.”
“Jesus,” Snare says, covering his face with a hand.
No one can say I don’t have compassion.
Jenkins’s murder would never give me nightmares—not ending him would have.
Chapter 21
Angel
The water is frigid in my face, as though someone is punching me with a block of ice.
My eyes snap open. Water droplets cling to my eyelashes. I can’t connect what my vision is telling me with what I’m seeing.
I’m strapped to a chair, every bit of me in some degree of pain.
Opposite me is a woman that looks to be a very well-preserved fifty.
I blink the water away, searching automatically for the thrower.
I find him.
Talker, the one who killed Brad, is holding an empty bucket in one hand.
I say nothing, and he smiles. His dark hair is slicked back from his face, and a bare bulb in the ceiling gives his pockmarked skin a slightly green pallor. “There she is. You finally joining us, Angela?”
I don’t reply, but my gaze goes back to the woman. I’m so hurt, I can barely breathe through it. Every inhale feels like breathing through crushed glass.
Ribs. Broken.
Face. Beaten.
I would assess the damage, but it doesn’t matter. Zip ties are wrapped around my ankles and wrists. My depth perception is off because one of my eyes is swollen shut. Marvelous.
I am so broken up, I try to muster fear and just feel tired instead. Maybe I can get him to kill me.
I think of Lariat, and instant sadness crushes me. I know it’s not logical that I can fall in love with another human being in less than a week. Since I was twelve, I’ve had to live mainly in survival mode. My experiences have raised the bar on my other senses. And I think I might have an advantage on some of humanity because of what I’ve been through.
Lariat woke something in me I thought I had lost.
Hope.
And now it’s gone. In its place is determination.
My one good eye moves back to the woman. Her face swims within my compromised vision.
Then I see it and stifle my shock badly. Her eyes are the same color as mine.
I’ve never met anyone with my eye color before.
I get asked all the time if my eyes are hazel, gold, or green. No one knows. I put hazel on my driver’s license, but it’s a lie. There isn’t a designator for my eye color. Gray is as exotic as they allow at the DMV.
And there’s no explanation that covers how weird it is to be beaten to a pulp and look across the room at the person I understand on an almost primal level to be my mother.
I grieved for a woman who wasn’t my mother.
“Here’s your big chance, Maria. Make good on it.”
The woman shoots him a glance of pure hatred.
I know exactly how she feels.
“Hello, Angela.” Her rich contralto voice washes over me, and suddenly, I want to cry.