by C. J. Lyons
“Hank made you shoot Jack.”
I could have stopped there, kept the rest of my secrets safe, but Sylva’s face floated across my vision, so I kept going. Someone needed to know the truth, and there was a good chance I wouldn’t be around after tonight. “No. That’s when the door opened and my mother came in, screaming that they couldn’t have me, to let me go. Hank swung—he was going to shoot her, but I—I yanked on his arm with all my strength, just as he fired.”
“And he hit Jack.”
“He hit Jack. When he saw what he had done, he turned the gun on me.” Hank’s face flashed red, twisted like a demon as it stalked across my vision. “We were against the wall, there was no room to run, so I fought back. I grabbed the gun, twisted and shoved, and both our hands were on it and he slammed me up against the wall, but I’d gotten my finger on the trigger—”
“It was pointed towards Hank?”
“Pointed up, but he was so tall. He was leaning over me, trying to force me down. And it went off. The look in his eyes. I’ve never seen anyone so surprised. Despite everything, he never expected to die that way. He fell on top of me and we landed on the floor.”
“But you said your mom was there? That was real, not a hallucination from the drugs?”
“Very real. I always thought she’d left me after the fire—before that, even, when she let those men, the Reapers, come into our home. I was so stupid. Everything she did, she did to protect me. After my dad died, Gran had her first heart attack, so all our money went to take care of her. But it wasn’t enough. So—” I choked. “So a man named Stone came to her. Said there was an easy way she could earn money without even leaving home. All she had to do was let a few friends of his use our house as a meeting place.”
“The Reapers ran their drug deals out of your house?”
Lucy was a quick study—she’d filled in the blanks much faster than I ever had, and I’d lived through it all. “It was perfect—we had a cabin in the woods, right on the state line. No way the county sheriff would ever bother them, and they were way too far from any state or federal police. But then…”
“They took over. Began cooking meth there.”
“And my mom had no choice but to let them do what they wanted—otherwise they’d hurt me. Of course, I didn’t know that. I was so angry, so hateful to her—I thought she was betraying my dad, that she’d turned into an addict or a whore. But then the cabin burned down. I saved her, I pulled her out of the fire, but a few Reapers got hurt and two died. So they said now my mom owed them. Big time. And she had to pay or else.”
“They took her. But you and your grandmother were still hostages.”
“She had to do anything they told her, or they’d come back for us. I grew up hating her, thinking she’d abandoned me, that she’d betrayed my father and grandmother, wanting to be anyone, anything except like her…and she was giving up her entire life to keep me safe. But…” I couldn’t swipe my tears away, not without dropping the knife, all I could do was blink and sniff. “But I guess it doesn’t take long for a life like that to wear you down to nothing.”
“I still don’t understand. Why was she there that night? At the Kutler slaughterhouse?”
“After losing our cabin, the Reapers built another distribution network—this one run by the Kutlers. After all, who would ever suspect the two most popular boys in Craven County? Plus all their sports meant travel throughout the tri-state area, all under the radar, all to events filled with new customers. Meth wasn’t as popular with kids, and the feds were cracking down on it, so the Reapers focused on marijuana and designer drugs that were less risky to produce and even more profitable, thanks to Hank and Jack. They also expanded their prostitution activity—they realized a drug could only be sold once, but a girl could be sold over and over. Hank and Jack helped with that as well, steering girls who no one would miss, who wanted a new life, into the Reapers’ hands.”
“That’s why they targeted you that night?”
“Yes. I was alone and vulnerable. With Gran in the hospital, people might look for me for a day or two, but then I’d be just another runaway lost to the world.”
“So your mom was with the Reapers that night, thinking they were picking up a girl?”
“They could’ve killed her.” My voice was stronger now. I was stronger. “I saved her. Just like she’d saved me. I saved her. With my silence.”
Lucy waited for me to continue. I’d never dreamed how difficult it would be, saying these things. Putting them into the world, making my worst nightmare real.
It was so much easier keeping the memories locked away, but she needed to know, so I told her how my mother had screamed and screamed and screamed until the lead Reaper, Stone, yelled at his men, “Get her the hell out of here!”
Then he’d stepped inside the office, his eyes seeming to absorb all the light from the overhead bulb as he stared down at me. I couldn’t breathe; Hank’s body was still on top of me. I thought about playing dead—I was covered in enough blood—but Stone saw everything, including when I blinked.
“What a mess, what a godawful, cockup of a mess.” He wasn’t yelling, yet his voice boomed through the room, louder than the gunshots. He took another step and the guy with him grabbed his arm, but Stone shook it off. He pulled out his pistol and waved it first at the other Reaper and then at me and Jack and Hank in turn. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put a bullet in all of their heads and make sure the job’s done. What a screw-up!”
“Forensics, boss,” the other Reaper said. “Three dead kids means the cops tear the whole place apart searching for evidence. Including out back. And we can’t be sure how careful the boys have been since they took over from the old man.”
My mother’s screams finally faded into the distance, and for a second I thought they’d killed her. I opened my mouth to shout for her, but Hank’s weight was like an elephant sitting on my chest and it was all I could do to gulp down a whisper of air.
Suddenly my ears are pounding with my heartbeat, and I no longer feel like I’m outside my body. Just the opposite—I feel every single cell preparing to die.
Stone keeps staring right at me. Slowly, careful of where he steps, he crosses over and squats down in front of my face.
“You’re right,” he tells the other Reaper, who stays by the door. “Get everyone out. Then call our friend at the Sheriff’s and tell him he needs to be the first one here, make sure our name stays out of it, and no one looks too carefully in the back. Just a bunch of kids partying too hard. A tragic accident. Then after all the commotion’s died down, you’ll get the old man and scrub the whole place down. Decontaminate every inch of it. I want you to use so much bleach and shit that you can eat off the floor and still not leave any DNA behind. Got it?”
“The old man will be pretty upset about his boys.”
“Do I give a damn? They’ve been making money off us for years. Give him a bonus, tell him to retire to Florida. This was all his fault anyway, giving the business to the boys so young.”
All the while he’s talking to the guy behind him but staring at me lying there on the floor. Hank’s body is starting to cool on top of me. I’m gasping each breath like it’s my last. He cocks his head to one side, then pokes at my face with his pistol. “Now, then. What about you, little girl?”
“Don’t you hurt her,” I snarl, ignoring his gun. “Don’t you hurt my mother.”
He laughs and pulls the gun back. The Reaper behind him shuffles uncomfortably. “The boys said they’d roofie her before we got here—she shouldn’t remember a thing.”
“Oh, she’ll remember this,” Stone replies. “She’d better, if she doesn’t want the whole wide world to come toppling down on top of her.” He lowers his face so it’s the only thing I can see, filling my vision until all the air I breathe comes from him and stinks of rotting meat and whiskey. “Starting with you being the reason why your dear old ma ends up dead.”
I shrink back, but he pins me to
the floor with the pistol again, grinding it into the soft flesh below my eye until it hits my cheekbone.
“Don’t hurt her,” I whisper, each word a gasp of pain.
“I won’t. Not if you can keep your mouth shut. That’s the deal I’m offering. We were never here tonight. Your ma was never here. The boys never mentioned us, never told you anything about the work they do for us. Especially not what they do in the back. You tell anyone—anyone—about us being here, and I’m going to send you pieces of your ma bit by bit, whittle her down to bare bones, and send you a tape of it all so you can watch her scream and know it was all your fault. Understand, little lady?”
Tears strangle my breath and I think my chest will be crushed as my lungs lose their air, but somehow I manage to nod.
“You keep your mouth shut, say nothing to nobody, and your ma stays safe. You have my word on that. Not a hair on her head will be harmed. But it’s all on you. Can you do it? Can you keep your mouth shut?”
I open my mouth to answer but quickly clamp my chattering teeth together and nod again.
“Good girl.” He eases up on the pressure against the gun. “So we have a deal? Think hard because this is for the rest of your natural born life we’re talking. You can’t say anything, not even on the day you die—if you do, your ma, she dies, too. Deal?”
A third time I nod, sealing our fate: my mom’s and mine. He stands and returns to the door. “Wait five minutes, then call the police.”
Then he was gone. They were all gone, vanished into the night, taking my mother with them.
And now, eleven years later, it was Sylva paying the price for my silence.
Chapter Thirty
As soon as Lucy was freed, she searched the SUV for any weapons, but found nothing except a tire iron. Cherish refused to wait for help to arrive and the cell service was down, so Lucy had no choice but to allow the younger woman to come with her. Together they headed through the quagmire into the slaughterhouse.
Cherish helped by sharing the layout of the slaughterhouse with Lucy. “This ramp leads into a corral where the cows were rinsed off. From there they were herded one by one into the stunning pen. Once they were stunned, the sidewall would give way and they’d tumble into a chute, where they’d be hoisted by a hoof up onto a railing system. Then they’d have their throats slit and be bled out.”
Lucy tried to translate the words into a map in her mind. “How do you know all this?”
“Grade school tour before they shut down.” Cherish gripped her knife. “The thing to remember is that there are several levels—ramps and scaffolds and ladders connect them—and not everything you step on will be solid. There are trap doors, false floors, and fake walls designed to force the carcass pieces down certain paths.”
They’d reached the sliding doors leading inside the large barn. Jack must have brought Sylva this way because they weren’t fully closed, shuddering in the wind. Lucy took advantage of the cover provided by the storm to ease the door open a few more inches, enough to glance inside. The small cattle pen was empty, and she couldn’t see past the walled chute that was the only way out. “Where do we start?”
Cherish looked past her and shrugged. “Follow the way the cows went.”
They edged inside. Rain thundered against the metal roof, echoing through the confined space.
“There has to be an employee door, right?” Lucy asked, eyeing the chute uneasily. It felt like a trap. “He’ll be expecting us to go through the chute.”
“You’re right. Let me go first—I can distract him, draw him away. Then you follow.”
“No way. You’re a civilian, I’m not letting you—”
Too late. Cherish dodged past Lucy and sprinted up the incline to the cattle chute. She ducked low, shoved against the bottom of the false wall, and disappeared from sight beneath it. Lucy followed, pushing the wall out just far enough to see into the next space, watching and waiting.
The killing area was as Cherish described: chains hanging from a railing and large hooks dangling free over a shallow vat. A scaffolding about six feet high began on the other end of the vat, allowing men to work both from overhead where they could reach the hoisted hindquarters of the cattle as well as below where their heads would have hung. At least half the lights were out, leaving much of the equipment in shadows, its bulk conjuring images of macabre killing machines.
Cherish had slid down the path, climbing out before reaching the stainless steel vat. Lucy imagined a stunned cow having its rear hoof chained and hooked, being hoisted up high enough for a man to slice its throat over the vat, and dangling in the air as its lifeblood drained.
She couldn’t see past the vat, not without pushing the fake wall out further, but she heard Cherish cry out and took the risk. Angling her gaze to her far left, she saw Sylva, hanging from one of the hooks, dangling in mid air by a chain wrapped around her ankle. She was kicking, trying to fight the weight of her entire body pulling against one delicate joint, but it was futile. Lucy grimaced—she knew firsthand how much pain Sylva had to be in.
Then Sylva saw Cherish. “No!” she screamed. “Get out of here. Run, now!”
Cherish released some unseen mechanism and the chain spun out, and Sylva fell to the ground in a heap. Lucy used the noise to cover her movement past the wall and down the chute to where she crouched below the vat, hopefully out of sight of anyone on the other side.
“I knew you’d come.” Jack’s voice echoed through the space, but Lucy couldn’t see where he was—it sounded like he was up high, maybe on the scaffold.
Taking care not to let the tire iron scrape against the steel vat, she crawled along its length until she could see past it. Cherish was cutting Sylva’s wrists free, but the chain was still wrapped around her ankle. Movement blurred through the space overhead as a machine whirled and metal clanked. Lucy glanced up and saw that the railing holding the chains was moving—and the slack was quickly being taken up on the chain around Sylva’s ankle.
Lucy dashed forward to grab the chain, hurling her body weight onto it to try to keep some slack on it before it ripped Sylva along the butchering assembly line. Cherish made the final cut, releasing Sylva’s hands, then she moved to release the hook that secured the chain above Sylva’s foot. Sylva was helpless to do anything but lie on the cement floor as the assembly dragged her across it.
Cherish had no choice but to wrench Sylva’s ankle, bloody and swollen where the chain bit into the skin, basically using Sylva’s own blood as lubricant to allow her to squeeze it past the chain. As soon as Sylva was free, Lucy let go of the chain and it whipped past her, retracting into the railing, following the other hooks and chains clattering down into the belly of the slaughterhouse.
Laughter echoed overhead. Lucy tried to help Sylva to her feet, but it was no good—she couldn’t put any weight on her injured ankle. More machinery began to whirl, and crackles of electricity sparked through the dark. The damn cattle prod, Lucy realized. Then she looked down—the floor was covered with water, and all three of them were soaking wet. One touch of that prod could be deadly.
“Which way out?” she asked.
Cherish took Sylva’s other arm and pointed to her left. “That way, through the office.”
“That’s right, Cherrygirl. Step into my office—remember what fun we had there last time?” Jack’s voice seemed to come from every direction at once.
Lucy glanced up through the dim light. He must be watching them with security cameras, using some kind of intercom system tied to his phone, she realized. Which meant he could be anywhere, waiting for them. Still, they had no choice. They half carried, half dragged Sylva to the office door, a solid steel fire door that was locked.
Of course.
“What about back through the chute?” Lucy asked.
Cherish nodded, and they headed back the way they’d came. Jack must have cranked up the speed on the railing system because the chains with their heavy hooks whipped back and forth, almost hitting them as they
dove past them. They reached the hinged wall, and Cherish pried it open and held it in place so that Lucy could help Sylva climb up.
Lucy scrambled up after Sylva and pulled Sylva out of the way, but when she turned back to hold the wall open for Cherish to crawl under, the steel wall slammed shut, trapping Cherish on the other side. Lucy tried to push it open once more, but it didn’t budge.
Jack’s laughter filled the air. “Cherrygirl. It’s been too damned long. Let’s have some fun.”
Chapter Thirty-One
After they found the courthouse guard’s body with his head caved in, whether from a fall against the rocks on the river’s bank or—TK’s bet—some other, more malicious cause, TK spent the rest of the morning waiting on Warren. First, they waited for backup from his department. Then the coroner who called the State Police’s forensic team. She had the feeling that if it had been just Warren there, they might not have even have bothered, but she made sure every investigator arriving at the scene heard who she was and why they’d come to interview Gleason. Funny how mentioning Cherish Walker’s name made everyone hustle to pass the buck up the chain of command.
Which left Warren pissed as hell, sending her back to wait in the car. Although when the storm hit, she was the only one under shelter, so she saw that as a small victory. Until she realized he’d been right—the storm arrived with the ferocious, stunning force of a hammer striking an anvil, washing away any uncollected evidence almost instantly.
Fuming with frustration, she watched as Warren strode out of the cabin and crossed over to the car. After closing the door on her in the back, he jumped into the front seat, phone pressed against his ear. “On my way.”