Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology

by Lane Hart

  I keep my guard up as I open the medicine cabinet and take down peroxide and bandages. “Dress your hands.” I turn to leave the room, but pause with the door open. “Do your business. Don’t waste time trying to escape. You’ll just ruin your hands more.”

  I grab a stack of old magazines from the counter and wedge them against the doorjamb as I force the door closed. Making sure it’s difficult for her to get out…or me to get back in. I sink to the floor, where I brace my back against the solid support of the wood. Then I count.

  One house. One cellar. One woman.

  One last devil to kill.

  I take stock, putting myself back in control.

  If I’m this weak now, how in the hell will I go through with it in the end.

  No—that’s different. A completely different scenario.

  And practice makes perfect.

  I check my watch, forcing my thoughts back on my purpose. Then the screaming starts.

  I spring up and turn the knob, but the door is jammed. “Shit.” I back up and kick it once, twice, before it cracks open. Makenna is balanced on the tub, beating against the walls as she yells for help.

  I step inside. There are no windows in here, and no neighbors. “No one can hear you.”

  She rounds on me, breathing hard from exertion. She’s holding a pair of scissors, the blades aimed at me.

  So much for the helpless act. I cross my arms, not amused. “You know, I do have a job. Things I have to do…other than babysit a deranged woman hell-bent on killing me.”

  “Then let me go. You’re not going to kill me. If you were, you’d have done so by now.” She jumps off the edge of the tub and takes a hesitant step forward, wet hair spilling over her shoulders. “I won’t make this easy for you. You can’t keep me locked up forever. There are only two options, Easton. Kill me, or let me go.” She raises her eyebrows in challenge.

  With a heavy sigh, I dig into my pocket and pull out the coin I always keep on me. The silver quarter was the only thing the cops found on my sister when her body was discovered. One fucking quarter.

  “What makes you think I won’t kill you?” I ask.

  She blinks. Holds the scissors higher. “You want revenge. For what, I don’t know. But it has nothing to do with me.”

  I hold the coin between my thumb and index finger. “You choose.”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “Yes, Mak. Make your call. You want to know what I did with your tawdry lover, make it happen. It’s all in your power. You want to be set free, then all you have to do is make a choice.”

  Her wide gaze flicks from me to the coin. “Heads, you tell me where Hudson’s body is, and tails, you set me free.”

  A laugh barrels from my chest. “I must come across as a big dumb fucker. Trust me. I’m not. There has to be leverage. It’s a gamble. Fifty-fifty. You have to sacrifice something.”

  Her swallow drags along her slender neck, her forehead creased in thought. “Fine. Heads, you tell me where Hudson is. Tails…” She glances up. “Tails, you kill me.”

  Fucking hell.

  I drag a hand through my hair, processing. She’s just watching me, waiting to see what I do. She doesn’t look at me the way others do. With that invasive, fearful stare, appall evident. Or like the ones who try not to look at all. Gaze cast everywhere else but at my scars.

  But she sees them.

  She judges based on how she thinks I got them.

  I slip the coin back into my pocket.

  An audible breath eases past her lips, and she lowers her weapon. “Why can’t you tell me? I’d rather you just kill me now than never know.”

  I step closer, and she doesn’t back away.

  She shakes her head. “Tell me!”

  I grasp the scissors. I let her struggle a bit before I pry them from her hand and set them on the counter, out of her reach. “All the evidence is there. You want answers, get them.”

  A shiver rocks her, and she sniffs back her anger.

  “What are you scared of, Mak? The truth?”

  “I said, don’t call me that,” she says through gritted teeth, suddenly fearless.

  I can’t tell if she’s really this tough, or just flat out crazy.

  “You have a cracked brain, you know that? Let’s go.” I grab her wrist, noticing her blistered hands.

  She pushes back. “I’m not going back down there…” Her struggle comes alive now, more determined. Nails dig into my forearm. I’m starting to look like a scratching post.

  “That is not one of your choices.” I hunch down to throw her over my shoulder, since this seems to be the only way to handle her.

  She grabs hold of my shirt, like she’s going to shove me against the wall, but I don’t budge. I almost laugh, except for the hostel glare in her dark eyes that spears me. “I’ll walk.”

  I hold my hands out in surrender. “Do one stupid thing…”

  “And you’ll kill me?” The challenge in her squared shoulders makes my pants tighten.

  I swear, she is either stirring a deviant fiend within me, or this woman is infecting my cracked brain. Maybe a bit of both.

  I anchor my hands to hers and, with a firm tug, remove her clenched fingers from my shirt. “There are things worse than death.”

  She gives her head a hard toss, clearing hair from her face. “Like locking a woman in a cellar?”

  A mocking breath slips free. “Maybe you shouldn’t consider it as being held against your will. What if it’s for your own safety?”

  Her gaze narrows. She tugs her towel higher, gripping it securely. “At least Little Red Riding Hood got to see the wolf trying to eat her. Don’t try to fuck with my head. There’s no way you can justify what you’re doing to me.”

  I grab the bandage and shove it in my pocket. “I’m the big bad wolf,” I say. “Yeah. That’s for damn sure. But there are bigger, badder wolves in the forest, Mak. And you let them catch your scent.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ghosts

  Makenna Davies

  When I was a kid, I watched my mother spiral out of control. She was a heroin addict. She called her sleeping spells—where she slept for days at a time, when she had enough supply—slipping into her other world.

  Other world.

  I used to lay beside her wherever she passed out. I’d pile all my toys around us and make our own little world, sheltering her from the bad things that might find us in the night. I would stare at her and imagine the other world she was inside—the one where I couldn’t follow. Because I was in the real world. Scared and alone and hungry.

  I would imagine a beautiful, foreign realm that was so tranquil and unearthly I couldn’t grasp its beauty. An underwater haven full of mermaids, or a sky palace with ethereal princesses.

  Then there was the other world I feared. The one that my mother never came back from. The dark void of nothing. As I got older, I imagined my mother there more and more. Resenting her for abandoning me—for being selfish. That dark other world haunted my nightmares.

  That’s how I see Easton’s endless cellar dungeon.

  The cave stretches on and on…a hellish dimension, a dark void carved into the earth, where no life exists. It’s the absolute aloneness I feel down here that steals my breath, that makes my heart feel as if its about to explode—the hollowness consuming.

  I stand perched on a spiral staircase, my hand clenched around the iron rail. Unable to move. My whole body one solid vein of ice.

  His back is to me, and I think if he speaks, his voice will break the hold, the dark spell he so obviously wanted this place to cast on me. So when his voice comes, it startles me.

  “It’s my work,” he says.

  This is not work. This is…obsession. Easton’s whole cellar is a welded maze of demons and dark visions from his mind. Cement sculptures of decapitation and disembowelment…like some shrine to medieval torture. Blown glass ornaments swirl with dark colors, orbs that hang from the rafters to showcase his work.
/>
  Along the completed walls, inlaid shelving houses other glass figurines. Demons and devils with snake tongues and bone antlers. Skulls. Lots of blown glass skulls.

  “This is hell,” I finally say.

  He turns to look at me, bracing his hands on the railing. “It’s my hell.”

  “Why?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, and I mentally fill in the silence: he’s ill. Mentally ill. He has to be—because what kind of mind envisions this level of torture, and then acts on it, murdering people in the middle of a ravine?

  How long has he been building this cellar?

  How many people has he killed?

  “I have to keep adding to it until it’s done.” He drives a hand through his dark hair, and I glimpse the white scars on his face in the black light. “But, revenge is an expensive lifestyle.” He tries for a sardonic smile that fails. “It’s art, Makenna. People still buy art. Don’t read too much into it.”

  I shake my head. This is so much more than just his art. This is the product of his sickness, his tormented mind. “Will it ever be done?”

  “That’s the hellish part,” he says, eyes flashing with a wild glint. “Revenge is like a drug. The more you feed that beast, the hungrier it grows. But, you’re going to help me with that. Come on.” He reaches for me.

  An searing ache throbs against my palm, and I pull my hand away from the rail, away from him. “I want to know what you bury here. What’s beneath all this art. What’s inside it?” I’m still a detective—I still can link pieces together and decipher clues. And my gut is telling me this isn’t just a cellar…it’s a catacomb.

  I direct the most lethal look I can his way. Not very intimidating from a woman draped in his towel, I’m sure. But there’s something here. I can feel it. Something so depraved he might even be lying to himself.

  The sounds I heard was him. He lives down here, day and night. There’s a cot in one corner, and a wall of tools. A ventilation system with exposed ducting runs across the rafters. He works here, he’s a beast sentinel that guards this cellar. It’s full of his secrets…and if Hudson’s body is here…

  “I’m retaining your services,” he says, surprising me. “Under extreme circumstances, that is. That means you work for me, as my PI. You take orders from me.”

  He makes a move to grab me, and I step up a stair. “I can’t help you, Luke.” I say his name, hoping to make some kind of breakthrough with him, hoping whatever rational thought that might still be there, I can reach. “Whatever you believe, it’s not the truth. You’re sick, and you’ve invented some elaborate fantasy about bad men and a revenge plot. But the man you killed? Royce Hudson? My partner? He was a good man, Luke. You took an innocent life and hurt so many people in the process.”

  “I’m sick,” he repeats. “You’d rather die than risk uncovering the truth. That’s pretty sick to me.”

  “You didn’t just hurt me. You killed me that night.” I shake my head, feeling helpless, disoriented. “What difference does it make whether it was then or now? My life was over the moment you stole Hudson from me.”

  He forces his way closer, powerful arms barricading me against the railing. “I think your brain is more than cracked. Every time I present proof, you block it, refusing to accept what it means.” He reaches into his pocket and produces my heart necklace. “Three years ago, a teen girl went missing. She turned up a Jane Doe in the morgue a month later. Beaten, tortured, mutilated…raped so badly the medical examiner couldn’t identify her. This was her necklace.” He thrusts the charm in front of my face.

  I try to look away, but his hand locks to my jaw, preventing any movement.

  “More than one heart necklace exists,” I say around clenched teeth. “That’s not proof. That’s assumption. And a huge leap to peg a detective for….what? Failing to find a missing girl?”

  I don’t remember the case. It wasn’t ours, but Easton could have gotten the details mixed up, confused.

  His eyes flare, frenzied, otherworldly in the ethereal light. I can feel the rapid beat of his heart firing against my jaw where his grip tightens. “Jules Easton was my sister. Not some missing girl.”

  He releases me, and I nearly stumble from the force. Hands trembling, I manage to pull my towel higher. “I’m sorry, but…”

  “Don’t.” Easton turns his back to me and descends the last two steps. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  His confession makes this underground realm of torture and pain all the more frightening. Loss broke me, but it’s ravaged him. I can feel for his loss…I can even empathize. But I can’t fathom…

  I shut my eyes at the thought. I can’t fathom murder.

  The feel of cold rain pelting my skin rushes my senses, a sudden outside glimpse of me holding my weapon aimed on Keller.

  In that moment, I wanted to end a life. I wanted revenge for everything.

  I searched for him…wanting, needing to know why. Needing to know what happened to Hudson, and to prove that I didn’t imagine his death—that I wasn’t “dissociative” like my psych eval claimed before I was removed from the department. Suffering some form of PTSD. I didn’t need to prove to them or anyone else what I knew.

  I had to prove it to myself.

  There’s a fine line between passion and obsession. I crossed it, and I’m standing before a man that spiraled down its pit. Literally.

  As I move off the staircase, I look down the wide corridor of the chamber. Concrete meshes with earth. A never-ending obsessive project.

  And I’ve delved so deeply into this case that I’m a captive to Hudson's murderer, held prisoner in his cellar where, before this ends, I will become some piece of twisted artwork.

  Who is more traumatized? More insane?

  I laugh. I can’t help it. Maybe I am dissociative. Maybe I do have a cracked brain. Who the hell is the crazy person here?

  I thought my investigation is what killed Hudson. That I brought Luke to the ravine that night. I’d been getting too close, maybe. That someone was sent to stop us, stop me—and Hudson was murdered in my place.

  But the more I unravel about Luke Easton, the more I question that theory.

  If he believes what he says…if he’s on some crazed revenge mission…then there are no answers. Bad things happen for no reason. Mother’s shoot up heroin and die, and detectives get attacked by madmen in ravines and die. And I’ve stumbled right over the edge into my own personal hell. The other world is all around me…and I’ve become just another lost citizen to its dark nothingness.

  “Makenna, breathe.”

  I feel his hands on me, bracing my back and shoulders. His voice is distant, buried under a torrent as the storm surges, dragging me under a crashing wave.

  I shutter my eyes, my chest on fire with need for air.

  Then oxygen blasts my lungs. I sense the press of his mouth to mine. My eyes flutter open as he gives me mouth to mouth. He forces another blast of air, and the feel of his lips sealed to mine makes me gasp in shock. He releases me, and I hunch over, dragging air into my closed lungs.

  “Don’t touch me,” I pant out. “Get away.”

  To my disbelief, he does, giving me space as I cling to the railing for support.

  When the world rights itself, I blink hard, clearing my vision and clipping unshed tears. My sight blacks, flickers. Before I fall, his arms have me cradled to his massive chest.

  I don’t fight it; I don’t have the strength. I let Luke Easton, the monster, the fiend, carry me into his cellar. Like some sordid fairytale.

  He kicks over my canvas bag, then lays me on the strewn clothes. Then he proceeds to bandage my hands. It’s so bazaar, how gentle he handles me, like I’m delicate, breakable. Yet my neck still displays the marks of his wrath—the proof he’s anything but gentle.

  And I’m not breakable.

  This is becoming psychological warfare. Who will crack first? Who has the power? Captor or prisoner?

  How much time do I have before he snaps, an
d I’m drug from this room and encased inside a twisted, cemented figure?

  He watches me a beat, mentally determining something as his forehead furrows in thought. He turns around, and I decide—no matter what the cost—I can’t be here alone. My only chance is through him. “Wait—”

  He does. He stops far enough away I feel safe. For now.

  “Don’t pretend.” I sit up, drape the towel over my legs. At the confused draw of his brows, I say, “Don’t be tender in order to manipulate me. You said you didn’t want to hurt me. But wanting doesn’t count. That’s a premature apology for what you know will happen.” He hasn’t moved, just stands there with his hands clenched, veins mapping his forearms. I say the next part quickly, to get it out. “And it’s for your benefit, not mine. So you can humanize yourself. I watched you murder in cold blood twice. You’re not human to me. You never will be.”

  He moves quickly, as fast as he did in the alley. He takes hold of the back of my neck and forces me to stand. I reach behind my head, trying to remove him, but his hold is welded to me like the cuff he used to shackle my leg.

  He drags me to the board. My feet barely keep pace, my bare toes scraping the rough concrete. “Look at this,” he says, breathing labored. “Look hard. I’m not the one pretending. I’m not the one denying the truth that is literally right in front of her fucking eyes.”

  He releases me, and I pull in a breath. I rub the back of my neck with a bandaged hand where it still feels like a vise squeezes. Through my teary panic, I blink in rapid beats to see the pictures pinned to the board.

  Hudson.

  He’s standing alongside Myer in what looks like a building entrance. I don’t recognize the place, and I don’t understand why, when I made a case to investigate MK Enterprise, Hudson was firmly against it—and yet he’s with the head of the company in this image.

  I shake my head. “I was investigating Myer,” I say. “My partner must have been following up on a lead.” Without telling me.

  I hear Easton’s frustrated huff behind me. “The date. Look at it. Your research only goes back for the past year.”