"Actually I'm a cop. Was a cop."
"Jesus Christ. I don't even wanna know what you've got yourself into. What's your name anyway?"
"Franklin but some guys like to call me by my surname, Berger."
"Burger," he said. "Sure. I'll go with that. Well, Burger, I'll tell you what I told that German boy. You can stay here for a while and I'll feed you and whatnot until you can get your shit together to get on your way. But you gotta work for it. You'll be shoveling shit at a helluva rate."
Hearing him say that was the greatest relief of my life. I had a home. Sort of.And a job.Sort of. And I was safe. Maybe.
"Thank you," I said. "And what name do you go by?"
“Dan, Dan Cooper but some people like to call me DB.”
Chapter Eight
Lincoln
"I'll take it all."
"Oh, erm, well..."
"The clients yeah... But I can pay more."
She scratched the hair along the edge of her chin. It always struck me as strange that when women got to a certain age they started sprouting hair from weird places but never seemed to mind.
"I want it all," I insisted. "The Manson letters, the Ramirez drawings, the Gacy painting of Jesus. I need them all."
"Are you sure?"
"I'll give you whatever you want."
She was bright red with excitement.
"I'll have to call my clients," she said.
"You do that."
Before she could reach for her phone, a knock came on the door and we both froze.
"Cynthia? Bosworth? Are you guys in there?"
We both said nothing.
"I could hear you talking," said Schiele.
He had well and truly ruined the moment.
"I'll take it all," I whispered to Cynthia as she hurried to slide all of it back into her case.
Opening the door with a heavy heart, I saw Schiele, half drunk and angry glaring at me.
"Where have you two been hiding?" he asked.
"Cynthia wanted to see where the magic happens," I explained and waved a hand around the room. "So I thought I'd give her a tour of the premises."
"Aaw, Gustav it's wonderful," she cawed from behind me. "You gotta see this place."
Schiele was starting to look green and swayed slightly.
"What's the hell is that smell?" he asked.
"Drains," I said.
"Doesn't smell like drains. It's smells like-"
"Fancy another drink?"
He shook his head, grimacing as though he had shit on his top lip.
"I need to get outta here," he said but before he turned round, he caught sight of the icebox behind me.
"Having a party?" he asked.
All I could do was stare at him and hope he'd leave us alone.
"What's in there?"
"Nothing."
"No seriously. I think I can-"
"It's nothing."
Now Cynthia was staring at it too and I had to acknowledge that that smell was sickening. It was seeping into our hair, our clothes. You could taste it, almost reach out and grab it. I had been in here living with it for so long that I'd started to think it was normal but now, with Schiele's face drooping more and more by thesecond, I was starting to realize just how bad it was.
He knew what was in the box too. You didn't need to be an expert to know what the smell was, or why there would be so much ice in a box that size.
"What's going on here?" he asked.
The Tricephthial was under his arm and he held onto it for dear life. Something truly strange and frightening was happening in my lab but he couldn't quite place it.
"Nothing, "Isaid. "Cynthia was showing me her collection."
"I mean in the box. What's in the box? Under all that ice."
"Specimens," I said.
"What kinda specimens?"
I stared at him some more.
"I'm guessing specimens that you've beentryingto preserve long enough for this," he tapped theTricephthial at his side. "I don't know what the fuck you're doing down here but it's... it's.... Fuck Bosworth I don't even have a better explanation of it than to say it's evil. At this point I don't even want to know what you're doing."
"I'm trying to love someone again," I said.
His face crumpled up.
"You've lost your mind," he said. "Do you know how insane you look right now. You're standing there, barely a human, wasting away with your face all sunken and your skin gray. You're dying in front of our eyes and it's..."
For a second I thought he was on the cusp of crying but he gulped hard and turned to his wife.
"Cynthia, we're going."
She wasn't going to budge. I'd promised her all this money and she knew I was good for it. She wasn't going anywhere.
"No, Gustav. Linx and I have business."
"Linx?" he laughed then his face dropped again. "Cynthia I mean it. Move."
He strode into the room to grab his wife but stopped in his tracks once he reached the ice box. The smell was now so close and thick that he looked as though he could pass out.
"How can you two stand being down here?" he gasped, loosening his collar. "Come on Cynthia."
"I'm staying here," she said. "We have business."
She gave me a twinkly eyed look and bent down to show more of her cleavage. These two are weirdos, I thought. Fucking weirdos.
"Right. Thank you both for visiting. It's been adelight but I'm ready to say goodbye now. If you’d just hand over the Tricephthial I’ll make sure you’re paid right and-“
“Fuck off Bosworth.”
Cynthia and I looked at him, dumbfounded. Now, out of everyone in the room he looked the craziest.
"How dare you talk to our host like this?" she gasped. "He's been nothing but hospitable to us."
Schiele pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut.
"Cynthia. This is insane. Just grab your stuff and let's get going. Come on."
"I'm not going anywhere," she said, taking a seat. "I'm staying here with Linx. Do you know he actually appreciates what I have here? Doesn't think I'm some crazy person."
Schiele looked ready to explode.
"You're both crazy people and coming here was a mistake. Let's go."
"Look," I stepped in between them. "How about we all just calm down. We can have another drink and you can hand over the Tricephthial. Then when you're ready, I'll get the jet ready to take you back home. Sound's good, right?"
"Bosworth, if you think you're getting your hands on this you've actually lost your mind. I should never have come here, should never have brought it."
"Gustav stop being such a raging asshole and hand it over to Linx."
"Cynthia stay out of this."
"No!" she screeched at her husband. "You've been talking to me like shit and bossing me around the whole way down here. I can't stand it anymore. You're listening to me now. You do what the nice man says and hand over the... the whatever the hell is in that case."
"Nice?" spat Schiele. "Are you joking?"
"Just do it!" she screamed and lurched forward.
The two of them grappled with the case of Tricephthial, the two of them pushing and pulling at each other in a peculiar dance. The sight of tiny Cynthia trying to fight her tall, gangly husband amused me and I found myself laughing.
Then they both stumbled backward, sliding on the ice water. Schiele was the first to slip then Cynthia tumbled on top of him. Before I could move, there was ice cascading down the sides of the box and we were all falling to the ground. Etta's body quietly slipped down onto the floor beside us.
An inhuman scream echoed around the room. I turned to see Schiele's face twisted and open at the sight. Beside him, his wife smiled and crept closer.
No Rest For The Wicked
Jewels And Panties Series
Book Fifteen
Brooke Kinsley
© 2018 All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication ma
y be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses per law
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
"Erotica is literature designed to be read with one hand...”-Brooke Kinsley
Description
Left in the desert with nothing but death coming for him, Berger is saved by an unlikely hero. A mysterious man named D.B Cooper with a face lined with stories and a head full of secrets.
The two become unlikely friends, but soon they become more. Only a man could understand the things Berger has been through. Only a guy with a broken heart like his own could comprehend what living on the edge of society does to a man’s mind. Berger thinks he’s found someone who truly makes him feel safe, someone who can take care of him.
If only that bird in the attic hadn’t made that noise. If only he hadn’t gone up there and found the box.
The box no one was meat to see. The box of Cooper’s past.
The secret’s out.
Professor Schiele sees Etta; her decomposed body, the rotten, faded beauty of her face, the love Lincoln still has for her. Now he knows why he truly needs the Tricephthial and the thoughtmakes him sick.
But Lincoln will do anything to get it, even if it means taking a life to bring one back.
What he doesn’t know is that Schiele’s wife, Cynthia would do anything too, anything to see her husband finally out of her life.
With Lincoln’s mind unravelling fast, he has to decide whether there’ll be just one body in his laboratory. Or will there be two?
Chapter One
Berger
“You haven’t told me much about yourself.”
“Oh, there’s nothing much to tell.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
As the sun came up, Cooper had woken me up by slamming a frying pan against the wall repeatedly. It wasn’t the most pleasant sound but it did the trick. Now it was half six in the morning and I was standing in the middle of a group of chickens. They clucked and shrieked all around me as I dropped seeds down onto the ground. I yawned as I reached the bottom of the bucket.
“Tired already?” laughed Cooper.
“Exhausted.”
“You’ve only been up ten minutes. We still got the pigs to feed and muck out the horses too.”
“You have horses?”
“I have almost everything.”
“Almost,” I said, noting the strange intonation to the word.
“Almost,” he repeated.
For few minutes, we fed the chickens in silence. Overhead, there was the sound of the vultures waking up and cawing. The sun was still low in the sky, nothing but a yellow blip on the horizon. It felt ungodly being up so early. I yawned again and rubbed my eyes.
“Geez, you really are tired.”
“I had a long day yesterday.”
His face softened.
“That you did,” he said. “Guess there’s no shame in having an early breakfast. You look like you need it.”
He dropped his bucket and watched the chickens for a moment as though he was regarding children playing. There was real love in his eyes.
“You really love these little things, don’t you?”
“Like they were my children.”
“Shame you have to eat them.”
“Oh, I don’t eat them,” he said, leading me back over to the open gate. “They’re friends.”
“Friends…”
“Uhuh…”
His face was stony and serious. Weird guy, I thought. Although he was by no means the weirdest I’d known.
Back inside, I sat at the kitchen table watching him crack eggs into a sizzling pan. Coffee percolated beside him, the smell lifting my mood.
“You still haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said, his back turned to me.
I watched the movement of his nimble body. He was fit for his age and kinda big too like he was used to lifting heavy things and doing manual labor.
“What do you wanna know?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t drop the subject soon.
“Well, you’re here,” he said. “So you’ve got a story to tell.”
“I was going to die out there,” I replied. “I was ready for it too. Ready to meet my maker.”
He turned back round and handed me a plate of runny eggs covered in hot sauce.
“Don’t be so defeatist,” he said. “The maker isn’t in charge. You are.”
“I am?”
He shrugged and sat down across from me, his own eggs slathered in even more hot sauce so the yolks looked like bubbling lava.
“Sure. Who knows if we even have a maker?”
He thrust a forkful of eggs into his mouth and slurped on a slithering piece of white dripping in Sriracha.
“Eat up,” he mumbled with a full mouth. “It’ll go cold.”
“I don’t think anything goes cold down here.”
It was sweltering and the sun hadn’t even properly risen. Since I’d arrived, there was no difference between the heat of night and day. The air was permanently dried out and the land was scorched.
“Just eat up,” he said. “You look like you need to get some food in you or you’ll waste away to nothing.”
He reached out a fork and prodded me in the ribs.
“Ow! Son of a –“
“Just look at you. Body like a starving greyhound.”
“Jesus, no need to be so harsh.”
“True though, ain’t it? When was the last time you had a good meal?”
“Probably around the last time I had a meaningful kiss so forever ago.”
He gave me a pitying look and slid over a mason jar of coffee.
“Bless your heart,” he said. “You’re really pulling at my heart strings.”
The coffee tasted as good as swallowing down liquid gold. It burned my stomach and went straight to my veins so fast I could hear the blood rush into my head. Now I was truly awake.
“At least tell me this,” said Cooper. “What brought you here? Love or money?”
I had to really think about it. What the hell had I done with my life? How did I end up down here?
“Love pushed me away,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled and leathery but the eyes themselves were youthful and mischievous like a schoolboy’s.
“Love pushed you away, huh? How does that work? It’s supposed to bring people together.”
I said nothing and just sat with my head bowed as he eyed me suspiciously.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I left,” I sighed. “I thought I wasn’t good enough and I left and I’m so stupid I could just lie down and die with the shame of it all.”
“Is that what you were hoping to do last night before I found you?”
Thinking about it for a second, I wondered if I really was prepared for death or whether I was just delirious.
“I have no idea,” I replied.
“Hmmm…”
He shoveled the last of his breakfast into his mouth, slammed down his fork then leaned over the table. For a second, I was sure he was going to grab me by the throat, maybe even hit me. I was relieved then, if not comforted to realize he was trying to hug me. Well, hug me in a way that only a man can hug, with a back slap and an awkward chest bump. Still, it was strangely nice to feel the friendly, physical contact. Slapping him back, I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“You’re a real lost soul,” he said. “When you’re ready, you can tell me everything.”
Tell him everything, I thought. What was everything? A series of images
flashed in my mind; Lincoln, Etta, her mother, Broadwood...
"Yeah, maybe I will," I said, although I knew I never would. "Besides, I'm really not that interesting. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?"
He bristled in his seat. Clearly, he wasn't used to talking about himself and the thought made him uncomfortable.
"Ah, you don't wanna hear an old man like me blether about his life."
"Sure I do!"
His eyes met mine. There was a sparkle. A jolt fired through me as though we were having some sort of connection. Like we were bonded by a peculiar past and memories we wished we could forget. But still, he didn't want to talk.
"No, really. I don't have much to say."
"That's gotta be bullshit, right? You're down here, alone living some sort of weird life as a self-sufficient recluse. You bring in people like me and give them a home. You're just about the most interesting man I've ever met."
I had to add that he was just about the most interesting man I'd ever met because Bosworth was still at the forefront of my mind and he was the craziest, most twisted son of a bitch I'd ever known.
"Ah, you're just bein' nice," said Cooper.
"No, really. I reckon you've got a story to tell. A weird one."
"A weird one?"
"Or at least a wild one. Why else would you be down here? Not to mention there's that look in your eyes."
He squinted and looked down at his lap.
"Don't try to hide it. I know it. I was a cop."
He flinched and looked up. Any hint of softness in his eyes had vanished fast and I was now staring into his stormy irises feeling as though my eggs were gonna come back up. His fingers were clenched around his knife, his hand pulled so tight he was shaking with all the veins up his arms standing up.
"Woah, calm down, buddy. What's the problem?"
"Who told you?" he wheezed.
"Eh?"
"Who told you!"
He thrust the knife at me. It was blunt and had cut nothing denser than bread but he looked as though he knew how to use it. Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. How could this be happening again? Did I just have the uncanny knack of turning everyone around me homicidal?
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