In His Sights

by Nikita Slater

  His language had always been bad, but it seemed to have deteriorated even more since she decided to go back to the farm. His state of edginess was worse than she’d ever seen and she was tiptoeing around him. They were virtual strangers again. She knew it was her fault, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to care. The state of numbness that wrapped itself around her like a cocoon since the kidnapping persisted.

  “This is far enough,” Lucy insisted, keeping her voice low so as not to antagonize him further. “The farm is only a few more miles up the road. I want to go the rest of the way on my own.”

  “Not. Fucking. Happening.” He said each word through gritted teeth.

  Lucy placed her hand over top of his and looked down at his long, broad fingers. “This is it, Mack,” she said gently. “I need you to let me go home. I’m safe now.” Her voice caught, and she blinked, wondering where the tears came from.

  She didn’t think he would let her go. Had they come all this way, just for him to insist that she stay with him? Then she felt the tension slowly ease out of him and his hand loosened on her arm until she was able to slip away from him. Before she opened the door to the truck, he spoke.

  “This is temporary, baby,” he said in a low voice, almost as though he were holding back tears as well. “You’re coming back to me… once you’re feeling better.”

  She didn’t say anything more. Anything else, any words of reassurance would be a lie. Instead she opened the door and slid off the seat onto the gravel road. The last thing she heard before she slammed the door shut was his deep voice growling, “love you.” She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.

  Immediately, the familiar feeling of dirt and rocks beneath her boots felt like home. She waited for Mack to turn the truck around and drive away from her before she began the trek toward her parent’s farm. She needed to be completely alone. To cleanse herself of the city and everything that had happened to her while she was there. Maybe if she somehow managed to get some distance, she would begin to heal.

  The first to greet her as she approached the edge of the property was their dog. He recognized her immediately and barked and leapt in excitement. Despite her depression and weariness, Lucy broke into a grin and dropped to her knees in the dirt to hug him close. He licked her face and chin, ecstatic to see the human that used to sneak him the best table scraps and find him the choicest places in the barn to sleep.

  “Have you been a good boy?” she asked, standing up to shade her eyes to scan the property for a sign of her father. Though she loved her mother, she preferred to greet her father first. She didn’t see him but assumed given the time of day he would either be in the fields or the barn. She glanced at her companion, then up at the sun shining warmly down on them. Her papa loved to work in the sun before it became too hot in the late afternoon. “The fields,” she decided.

  She found him about ten minutes later, deep in the corn fields. The stalks were about chest height at that time of year. He heard her coming first, her skirt swishing against the stalks, and then looked up to watch as she approached. Finally, a wide grin split him face and he held his arms out, silently welcoming his youngest home. Lucy smiled back, her heart lurching, happiness flooding her chest for the first time in days. She launched herself through the rows, careful to tuck her arms in. Very little hurt as much as a vicious cut from a corn stalk.

  Joseph caught his daughter as she ran full tilt into his chest. Laughter rumbled through his chest as they both stumbled back and he braced himself against his cart, taking her weight against him and holding her tight. She didn’t need to see his weathered face to know there were tears in his eyes. She’s seen him every single day of her twenty-one years except for the last six months. Though she’d loved the city, at least until her kidnapping, he’d always been in her heart. And she knew she was close to his as well.

  “Vader,” Lucy murmured against his neck, automatically reverting back to her birth language.

  “Dochter,” he replied, a smile in his voice.

  After another bone crushing hug he finally released her, holding her out so he could inspect her. He raised an eyebrow when his eyes lit on her hair, then his grin grew wide as his gaze touched on her stomach and hips.

  “I see you’ve had more to eat in the city than you did here. You are looking better fed than my horse,” he laughed and patted her shoulder affectionately.

  “Father,” she scolded with a grin. “You shouldn’t say such things! And I ate the same amount there than I did here… there’s just more sugary temptations in the city and less walking.”

  “I see,” he said with a nod, his gaze lingering on her multi-coloured hair. His grin turned rueful.

  Lucy fingered the wavy mass. “You don’t like it?”

  His face softened with the instant affection he always felt for his youngest child. “You are always beautiful to my eyes, daughter. Your mother though, she will have kittens when she sees what you’ve done to yourself.”

  “The hair isn’t all that’s new,” Lucy admitted, biting her lip. She lifted her hair past her ear and turned around to show him her new tattoo. She wondered for a moment if her papa would become furious like Mack. She only had a second to wait for his response.

  Emotion filled his voice as he gently touched the mark behind her ear. “Ah Lucy, my girl, it’s as perfect as you are.” Gently he turned her around until she faced him. Tears filled his kind caramel-coloured eyes as he smiled down at her. First, he touched her face next to her eyes and then her chest, just over her heart. “Stars in your eyes and a smile in your heart. Always a dreamer.”

  Lucy blinked back tears. Her father knew her in a way no one else could. Not her mother, not her sister, not her friends. Not even Mack.

  “Whatever you do, keep your hair down around your mother. She’ll stab you with a broom handle if she sees that mark,” he said gruffly, shaking his head.

  Lucy burst out laughing at the image of her mother snapping a broom in half and chasing her around the kitchen. “I’ll already be in the doghouse when she sees my hair,” Lucy agreed. She chose to remain silent on the subject of her belly piercing. She suspected neither of her parents would approve of that particular body modification.

  “Indeed,” Joseph agreed. “Let us go and get this over with. Perhaps Kathryn will be so pleased to see you home she’ll be willing to look past the treachery you have committed upon your precious hair.”

  Lucy laughed out loud and helped her father with the wagon. He didn’t ask her why she was home half a year early. He didn’t question her about her time in the city. He simply walked with her, allowing her to quietly soak in her home. The warmth of the sun bled across the landscape, gradually heating everything in its path. Where once Lucy despised the sticky layered feeling of her smock and apron, she now appreciated the weight against her legs as she walked next to her father. The rough texture of the wooden wagon grated against her palm, now soft from city living. The familiarity of these things was comforting. Her heart beat in her chest as her feet hit the dirt. She felt these things once more and she was grateful.

  Unfortunately, Lucy’s mother was less polite about interrogating Lucy. She wanted to know exactly why Lucy was back early and what evils the city had perpetuated upon her youngest daughter. Lucy made her responses as vague as possible and was able to deflect her mother with Joseph’s help. Lucy was pleasantly surprised by the relative warmth of her mother’s reception to her homecoming. Kathryn was not known for her finer emotions or ability to bond with her children. But almost from the moment Lucy walked in the door on her first evening back, her mother had her seated with a constant line-up of food until Lucy felt as though she would explode if she ate one more bite. She side-eyed her father at one point, silently begging him to intervene in her mother’s heavy-handed idea of coddling, but he simply looked down, a smile curving his lips and shook his head slightly.

  Kathryn was horrified by Lucy’s new hair, but managed to keep most of her disgust in, except for th
e occasional comment in between her constant criticisms of the city. Lucy rather thought Kathryn’s hatred of city life was hilarious considering Kathryn had never been to a city. Her mother had refused to go on Rumspringa as a teen, instead choosing to marry early and settle down. Of her two parents, Kathryn was more devout, more settled into the community. A part of Lucy always wondered if her father regretted his decision not to leave the community for good, but she’d never been able to bring herself to ask. Not because he would reprove the question. Joseph always welcomed her curious spirit. No, she didn’t want to bring up a potentially painful subject.

  Though they seemed to enjoy their Rumspringa, the majority of youth in the community came back home in the end, settling back into the community as if they never left. Lucy had always been curious as to why. Later as she snuggled into her bed, in her old room, her familiar old quilt pressed against her face, she realized that she understood. The city was perhaps a new and shiny place, filled with wondrous things. But it was also filled with horrifying and dangerous things. Dangerous people. Here in the community they were safe. They wouldn’t become collateral in a war they didn’t understand.

  As she drifted off to sleep, for the first time since being buried alive she didn’t dream of death. She dreamed of the man she was trying to leave behind. He held her close, wrapped in his arms, pressed against his broad chest and whispered in her ear. Of vengeance.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Shit.

  Was that the sound of crunching bones? He couldn’t tell over the screams of his victim and the whine of the backhoe. Fuck, he should’ve taped the guy’s mouth shut, but at the time he’d relished the idea that no one would hear the fucker screaming his last words.

  He swung his body sideways out of the operator’s seat and yelled, “Corny, shut the fuck up, I can’t hear what I’m doing up here!”

  He was pretty new to the mechanics of working a backhoe but seemed to be picking up the details quickly. It was a three-step process. Step one, dig the grave for the motherfucker that dared to touch his girl, moving the dirt to one side. Step two, place the motherfucker in the grave. Step three, bury the motherfucker alive so he could slowly suffocate to death on dirt as it filled his mouth and nostrils while he screamed.

  The flaw in Mack’s plan? He’d decided to use the backhoe to shove the guy in the hole to save time. Now, looking down at the somewhat mangled body, he decided he didn’t have the instant backhoe skills he thought he’d have to delicately place a human in a grave without crushing them. Perhaps he should work on that. Though judging from the screams, Cornelius was plenty alive enough to participate in step three of Mack’s plan.

  Mack dropped down off the backhoe and crouched next to Cornelius, studying his body. He winced at the carnage he’d caused. There would be no coming back from this, even if he’d felt a modicum of pity for the guy.

  “Sorry, about that man,” Mack said as the shouts died down into gurgles of pain. He placed a cigarette between his lips and lit up. He didn’t smoke often but had picked up a pack after Lucy left. “Though,” he murmured thoughtfully, eyeing the broken ribs poking through flesh and the bloody, torn rags of his shirt, “I’m not opposed to your suffering a little extra here, Corny. Heard a rumour from your buddy who I killed a few hours ago that you were the one that laid hands on my girl. That you slapped her before stuffing her in a fridge. This true?”

  Cornelius coughed up some blood. Mack took that as a yes and punched the guy in the face, snapping his head to the side. “There, now we’re even. Don’t you feel better, Corny?” When Cornelius didn’t say anything, Mack grabbed him by the hair and dragged his head back around. “Stay with me now, man. I need you awake and breathing for step three to really work.”

  Mack waited until Cornelius cracked an eye then stood, his cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips. He reached down, gripped the other man by the belt and the collar of his shirt, hefting him up and then dropping him into the hole Mack had dug with the backhoe. As soon as Cornelius hit the bottom he started screaming. Mack cracked a grim smile and took a few more drags before pitching what was left of the smoke into the hole.

  Perfect. Step three would be a success. Bury the man alive. Mack didn’t have a fridge handy so he was going to have to go old fashioned, dirt on top of human, but he trusted Corny wouldn’t mind.

  “So much easier with one of these,” he muttered, working the controls of the backhoe and lighting up another cigarette as he worked. Tunelessly he hummed the notes to ‘Radar Love’, one of Lucy’s favourite songs, while he worked.

  With Cornelius Vega’s untimely death, Mack got the last of the men involved in Lucy’s abduction, ensuring vengeance on anyone and everyone he could get his hands on in his city that had anything to do with her suffering the night of the King wedding. By taking out half the Mexican cartel stationed in the city he tipped the balance of power toward the Russians. Mack didn’t give a shit who landed on top as long as the jobs kept coming his way. And he didn’t think the Russians would care about his interference since his partner was married to the head guy, not that Sitnikov would be thanking him any time soon.

  There was nothing Mack could do about the men that took off with Maria, the woman who was kidnapped with Lucy. He had to trust that Niccolo DeLuca would finish business on the other end of wherever his woman was taken. Mack sincerely hoped DeLuca got his woman back in one piece. Otherwise there would be a war coming to their city and he wasn’t sure it was one Mack and the Russians could win. DeLuca had resources unlike any they could scrape up. He wasn’t a man they wanted as an enemy.

  Now that his business was finished, and Lucy was avenged, Mack was ready to forget. He was going to go home, get fucked up and forget her gorgeous face, curvy body and those caramel eyes that haunted him unlike anything in his life. Not his abusive mother. Not his treacherous, cheating bitch of an ex-wife. Not even the brutal things he’d experienced or participated in with the military. No, only Lucy seemed capable of reaching into his chest, touching the dead carcass of his unbeating heart and sparking it back to life.

  “Then she fucking left me,” he muttered viciously, wrenching the wheel of his truck on the gravel road, spraying dirt and rocks into the ditch as he turned onto his property.

  He wasted no time, walking in his front door and grabbing the neck of a whisky bottle in one hand and his rifle in the other. He didn’t even bother stripping off or showering the bloody deeds of his night away before starting on his forgetfulness. Too much fucking work and there was no Lucy around to nag at him about bad habits.

  He kicked the door open and headed toward the back of his property. Didn’t matter that it was nearly pitch black, hardly any moon to relieve the night. He had a pinpoint locator on his scope. He could shoot just as accurately in the dark as the light. The only thing that might harm his accuracy was the amount of whiskey he planned on drinking. Hopefully by that point he’d run out of bullets and maybe pass out wherever he lay down. Seemed like a fair plan.

  “Holy mother of god, you smell like a fucking ashtray that drowned in last night’s whiskey! And what is that brown stuff… that’s not… is that blood? What the fuck, Mackenzie?” a voice screeched in his ear, waking him up with a vengeance.

  Mack was halfway to reaching for his gun when his throbbing brain kicked into gear and he realized the voice with a tone that only dogs should be able to hear was actually his sister and not an enemy he could shoot. Damn. He lifted his head blearily off the couch and contemplated shooting her anyway just so she would stop making that sound and he could go back to sleep. Apparently, he’d decided to stumble back to the house for a soft landing after he finished shooting in the early morning hours, rather than pass out on the cold, hard ground. Twisting his head around he looked up at his older, scowling sister and thought maybe he should’ve chosen the outdoors. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

  She sighed dramatically, rolled her eyes, flipped flaming red hair over one shoulder and stalked towar
d his kitchen. Mack winced when he heard her banging around, then relaxed once he realized she was simply making a pot of coffee. He was willing to suffer through the noise if it meant he could have some caffeine when she was finished. God, his sister could be a real bitch when she wanted to be. He was actually surprised to see her. Though they loved each other, were even as close as siblings could be, they didn’t often see eye-to-eye and she rarely showed up unannounced.

  Mack pushed himself gingerly into a sitting position, shoving his hand through sweaty, blond hair, spiking it back on his head. He watched her warily as she flounced back into the living room and threw herself onto the couch beside him.

  “Motherfucker,” Mack groaned, reaching for his pounding head and glaring at her. She smirked at him, not even pretending she hadn’t just bounced him on purpose. The moment he regained any sort of strength in his limbs he was going to snap her neck like a chicken bone. “The fuck you want, Tawny?”

  The smirk slowly slid off her face, an expression of sad resignation replacing it. “It’s been a week, Mackenzie,” she said quietly. “I want to know where Lucy’s at.”

  He growled, low in his throat and dropped his head into his hand, elbow on his knee and massaged his forehead. “Told you already, Tawn. I dropped her back home. It’s where she wants to be. She’s none of our business anymore.”

  “Of course, she’s our business!” Tawny said sharply.

  Mack flinched. “Fuck, Tawn, watch your damn voice. I’m hurting over here.”

  She rolled her eyes and kept talking. “We love that girl. All of us! We don’t just dump and forget our loved ones, even if they need space. You saw plenty of traumatizing shit overseas, Mack. You needed space when you came home. Yeah, we gave you space, but me and Abel, we were always nearby when you needed us.” He tried to speak, but she cut him off, talking over him. “You saw men go into shock, yeah? You know what it looks like, hon! The emotions get all jumbled up. I think it was even worse for your girl because her mind just sort of splintered between her two lives; the safe but boring community that raised her and the exciting but suddenly dangerous city that hurt her. Is it any wonder she went running like a scared rabbit back to the place that birthed her?”