by Bryan Smith
Madeline was seated behind her desk, reading a copy of Us Weekly. She looked up as Megan settled into the chair in front of the desk. She set the magazine on the desk. “You ready to shake your ass for an audience?”
“No.”
Madeline laughed. “Too bad. You’re going on stage for the first time in about forty-five minutes.”
Megan’s eyes widened. She sat up straighter in the chair. “But that’s crazy! I’m not anywhere near ready. Don’t I get some kind of private training first?”
“Sheriff said you pole danced before.”
“Yeah, in a private fucking class! With a bunch of other girls! This is not the same fucking thing at all. I can’t do it. Not yet.”
Madeline’s face turned hard during this outburst. “You can. You will. And I can tell you this. You won’t enjoy your punishment if you refuse.”
Megan thought of Sonia.
The ice pick wedged into her eye socket.
Any punishment she received for refusing to dance her first night wasn’t likely to be that extreme, but she knew it wouldn’t be any barrel of laughs either. There was no point in arguing with Madeline. She would do what was expected of her. Again.
They talked some more and settled on Megan’s stage name. Amber Wine. Could have been worse, given some of the possibilities Madeline rattled off. Megan sort of liked it. She would have a light first evening, dancing only to two songs, just enough to break her in. That was something of a relief, anyway. That settled, they adjourned to the dressing room. Most of the girls stared daggers at her again, but at least that tall blonde wasn’t around. Madeline led her to a large walk-in wardrobe, where they selected her stage gear—stockings, stiletto heels, garters, G-string, and bustier. The next stop was one of the primping stations in the dressing room, where Madeline watched her dress and instructed her on the proper whorish application of makeup. That done, Megan fluffed her freshly dried hair and looked at herself in the mirror.
She had to admit it—she looked pretty fucking hot.
She looked at the other girls and smirked, letting them know she knew she was sexier than any of them. Some of them looked troubled, as if they believed it themselves. Some of the others shot her angry expressions that hinted at future drama. She guessed they all knew she had killed Sonia. A friend of some of them. Good. At least they would know how far she was willing to go to save her own ass. The only real threat among them was the missing Nordic goddess, but she would worry about her later.
Madeline led her out of the dressing room and down the narrow, dark hallway. The door to the small holding room stood open as they moved past it. Megan glanced in and wished she hadn’t. Sonia was in there, her limp body sprawled across the unfurled sheet of plastic. A shirtless, muscular man with a cigarette wedged into a corner of his mouth stood over her. He held a heavy ax propped over one shoulder. The man caught her eye and grinned. Another, heavier-set man saw her and calmly closed the door.
At the far end of the corridor Madeline opened a door on the left and led her into a shorter stretch of narrow hallway. The blaring hard-rock music was louder than ever now. This song was something she didn’t recognize, but something about the texture of it told her it was yet another eighties headbanging anthem, which seemed to be about all they played here. They went through another door on the right, and the music grew louder still, reaching near-deafening proportions.
They climbed a short set of steps to a small backstage area. There were three other girls in skimpy lingerie there, all apparently waiting their turn on stage. The tall blonde wasn’t here either, which meant she must be performing right now. And judging from the raucous hoots and catcalls audible even through the thundering music, she was a big crowd favorite. Megan wasn’t surprised.
Madeline beckoned her to the curtain, where they peered around the edge to watch the show.
Megan gasped.
The eighties anthem ended and a tune of more recent vintage kicked in.
“Crazy Bitch,” by Buckcherry.
Megan couldn’t imagine a more appropriate soundtrack to what was happening on stage. A man was tied to a chair at the center of the stage. The man was young, maybe late twenties. He was slim and might have been handsome under better circumstances. But his clothes clung to his body, soaked through with sweat. Sweat plastered longish hair to his scalp. He was shaking and crying, an endless stream of tears rolling down his shiny cheeks. Looking at him punctured the hard shell that had begun to encase Megan’s soul. She felt outrage. This man was a victim. A terrified, helpless captive. Just like her. Just like dead Sonia.
And just as with Sonia, there was not a damn thing she could do about it.
The blonde was down to heels, stockings, and G-string. She lay flat on her back in front of the bound man with her legs high in the air. She tweezed her pink nipples to stiffness with her fingers and turned her face to the crowd as she faked an orgasmic expression. Oh hell, maybe it wasn’t faked. She sure looked into what she was doing. She flexed her legs, kicking them up and down like a spastic child.
Then she rolled onto her side and reached for something shiny at the front of the stage. Her hand closed around the object and she rolled again, got to her hands and knees. She moved along the front of the stage, slinking like a cat. The men in the seats up front roared to their feet and a rain of green bills fell on the stage. The blonde stayed focused on her act, making no move to scoop up the loose cash as she continued to the far end of the stage, where she shimmied to her feet and struck a dramatic pose with one hand on her hip. She flicked her other wrist and a straight razor popped open.
More roars from the crowd.
Another rain of bills.
The blonde turned away from the ecstatic audience and sprinted across the stage, slashing at the bound man with the razor as she passed him. The blade sliced off the tip of an ear, and the man bucked in his chair, screaming now as the tears continued to roll down his face. Still in motion and moving at top speed, the blonde dropped the blade and leaped into the air. She hit one of the dance poles high up and spun around it, holding herself aloft with amazing grace and ease. She turned herself upside down, held her legs high in the air and spread them wide as she slid slowly back to the stage, revolving slowly around the pole all the way down. The men in the audience were going absolutely wild in a lust-induced frenzy. Many of them climbed up on their chairs and screamed through cupped hands. They went even wilder as she scooped up the razor again and approached the doomed man from behind.
Megan scanned the faces of the men in the audience. Some of them dressed like regular guys. They could almost have fit in with a crowd at a blue-collar bar in Minneapolis. Neat, combed hair. Blue jeans and stiff, button-up shirts. But many of the others looked like rejects from a casting call for a Deliverance sequel. Fat and dirty, clad in decaying overalls and homemade clothes. She saw a lot of mouths with a lot of missing teeth. There were jugs of what had to be moonshine on a lot of the tables. More than one of them had their dicks out and were playing with them as they watched the decadent and depraved stage spectacle. Megan tried to see herself performing in front of these pigs without throwing up.
She wasn’t sure she could manage it.
She swallowed hard and thought, I am so fucked.
The blonde was standing right behind the bound man now. She flicked her wrist and popped the blade open again. With her free hand, she seized a handful of the man’s sweaty hair and yanked his head back, exposing the tender flesh of his throat. Megan saw his Adam’s apple go up and down and felt a flutter in her stomach. But the blonde didn’t slash his throat. Instead she forced the blade inside his mouth, wedged the sharp side up against the inside of his cheek, and held the pose as she stared at the audience, allowing several dramatic moments to elapse. During this time, Megan finally realized that another song was playing.
It was yet another Mötley Crüe oldie. She didn’t know the name, but could guess. The singer kept yelping about some chick with the “looks that kil
l.”
The blonde yanked her arm back and the blade ripped the man’s cheek open. He squealed and thrashed in the chair as blood spilled down his chin and splashed the front of his shirt.
Megan’s stomach twisted again.
Madeline leaned close and yelled into her ear in order to be heard over the cacophony of sound. “ISN’T HELGA AMAZING?”
Megan made herself nod.
But what she was thinking was This is what I have to follow?
I am fucked.
Fucked hard.
Helga kicked the chair over, and the man tumbled to the stage with it. He lay on his side as Helga stalked the stage, the bloody blade held high as the crowd roared its approval. Yet another flurry of bills rained down around her. When she was finished reveling in the roar of the crowd, Helga strutted back across the stage and stood over the man she’d tortured as part of her act. She planted a foot on the side of his head. A spiked heel dug into his ear canal.
Madeline yelled into her ear again. “WATCH THIS! IT’S AMAZING!”
What else could she do?
Megan watched.
Helga applied her full weight to the man’s head, lifting her other leg off the stage to stand on him with one leg. The spiked heel sank deeper into his ear canal. Megan kept expecting the man to try to shake her off, but he didn’t move. He was possibly already dead, but that didn’t keep the audience from eating it up. Some of the men were up on the tables now, jumping up and down like monkeys. She saw some of them fall and crack their heads on the floor. She hoped the redneck fucks broke their necks, but she knew better than to expect a kind twist of fate at this point. And she was right. They were all on their feet and hooting and hollering again in seconds. It was absolute bedlam out there now. Helga maintained an incredible, perfect balance for many moments before lowering her other leg and planting it on the dead man’s neck. She raised her hands over her head and unleashed a roar of triumph.
The music stopped.
Madeline leaned toward her again and said, “You’re next.”
Megan gulped.
Shit.
Helga stepped off the dead man’s head, bowed, then turned and blew kisses to the audience as she headed to the backstage area. Employees of the Sin Den rushed out to collect the piles of scattered bills. It looked like a small fortune. Two husky men in colorful Sin Den T-shirts came out to retrieve the dead man.
Helga blew into the backstage space, shooting a pleased smirk in Megan’s direction as she breezed through the room and down the stairs beyond. Had Megan felt intimidated in the woman’s presence before? Good Lord, there wasn’t a word for what she felt at being close to her this time. She was a fucking force of nature. Despite her inner bravado before, she knew she could never compete against the likes of Helga. The woman was in a league of her own.
The DJ’s voice was booming out, announcing and introducing a new dancer at the Sin Den, Amber Wine.
Madeline’s hand was at the small of Megan’s back, pushing her toward the stage.
Megan’s heart raced.
She wasn’t ready.
But she had no choice.
Her first song started. Another old hair-metal anthem. Later she would be told it was “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” by Poison.
Megan swallowed hard and hit the stage. The crowd roared.
And somehow she found within her the ability to do what was expected of her yet again. It wasn’t even that hard. And when it was over, she was stunned by how much she enjoyed the enthusiastic approval of the crowd. It wasn’t much different from how she’d often felt during her high-school cheerleading days. She was even called back for an encore. Madeline was impressed.
Megan only wished Helga had been watching.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sheriff Rich DeMars was thinking about the word clusterfuck. It was one of many bits of military jargon and slang that had come into common usage over the years. The term referred to an unfortunate convergence of previously unrelated events to form a perfect shit storm of violence and death. And right now his job was to unfuck what looked like the mother of all clusterfucks.
He swigged whiskey from a flask and added it all up in his head again.
Three dead deputies.
Two dead from gunshot wounds, one from some unknown trauma.
Two totaled official Sheriff’s Department cruisers.
Another cruiser missing.
A dead suspect from a liquor-store robbery.
Two crashed trucks, both stolen.
He swigged more whiskey as he watched the heavy machinery being used to pull the tangled mess of wrecked vehicles apart. Klieg lights lit up the night. The rural route was blocked off to through traffic for a mile in each direction. Too many civilians had happened across the scene already. He’d paid out an ungodly amount in hush money so far and unfortunately knew he was far from being done with doling out the green. The tidy profit he’d made selling the outsider girl to the Prestons was almost gone. Soon he’d be dipping into city money, which was sure to stir unhappy rumblings from the commissioners, but those old assholes could suck his fucking dick. He would do anything necessary to cover this mess the hell up, regardless of the strain it would put on his relationship with the local power structure. In the end, they would have to admit he’d done what he had to do in the midst of a difficult situation.
Greg Saunders stepped out of his cruiser and came over to where Rich stood leaning against the hood of his own car. “Got a GPS fix on the missing cruiser. It’s stationary. Whoever took it must’ve ditched it. Want me to check it out?”
Rich looked at Saunders. The guy was young. Twenty-three. He was one of just two still-living deputies on the Hopkins Bend Sheriff’s Department payroll. Doug Smith, the other guy, was minding the store at HQ. Doug wasn’t as green as Saunders, but he had about as much brainpower as the average fence post. In retrospect, offing Hal was looking more and more like an error in judgment. Sure, the cocky bastard got too big for his britches at times, but he had been a good deputy. Would have been a good man to have around right now.
He sighed. “Nah. I’ll go have a look myself. You stay here and oversee this operation while I’m gone.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open and took out a stack of crisp green bills, the last of his take from selling the girl. “Here’s a grand. Before they leave, give a hundred each to these men.” He waved a hand to indicate the tow-truck operators and the bored-looking paramedics leaning against their meat wagons. “Tell ’em this is just a down payment. They’ll get another grand each by tomorrow morning.”
Saunders took the money and whistled. “More than ten grand of city money, huh? Wow.”
Rich grimaced. “Yeah” He took another slug of whiskey and screwed the cap back on the flask. “So where’s the cruiser?”
Saunders told him.
Rich frowned. “Way out to the eastern edge of town.”
Saunders nodded. “Almost to the city limits.”
“Shit. I better get a move on.”
The one thing he did not want was any whisper of what had happened here today to get out to the state boys. The location of the missing cruiser was close enough to the very edge of his jurisdiction to scare the shit out of him. He dropped the flask in a jacket pocket and got back in his own cruiser without another word to Saunders.
He started the car.
Backed up and turned around.
Then drove away from the scene of the clusterfuck.
Fast.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The .38 caliber bullet punched a big hole through the center of Roxanne’s throat and sent her staggering backward. She was dead weight before her body hit the ground with a hard thump.
Jessica sat up and stared in shock at the dead bodies sprawled across the green lawn. Bathed in the glow of the floodlights, they looked like props from a horror movie. It wasn’t fair. Some part of her had really believed the blood and killing was behind her. Which made her feel li
ke a fool. It wouldn’t be over until she was far from this place. She looked at Larry’s bullet-riddled body and felt a surge of grief. She’d known the man barely a half hour, but she’d experienced what felt like a real connection with him. An instant, electric chemistry she’d known with only a few other men. And now she could never know if there might have been something between them beyond that initial burst of intense desire.
Tears welled in her eyes.
She glanced at Roxanne and felt real hate for the dead woman. She felt like shooting her corpse again just for spite. Pump all the remaining bullets into her skull. Make a fucking bloody mess of her. She almost got up to do just that, but some still-functioning pocket of common sense in her brain stayed the impulse. And after that, she began thinking in a colder, more logical way.
Her first thought was to get in Larry’s car and drive away. Just drive and drive until the gas gauge was hovering around that big letter E. Until she’d put a hundred miles and more between herself and this lunatic asylum of a town.
There was just one problem with that.
She couldn’t find Larry’s keys.
Obviously they had been in his hand when Roxanne started blazing away. And he had let go of them as he died. She checked the porch and the ground around the porch. They weren’t there. She searched the ground around Larry’s stiffening body and still came up empty. She was feeling pretty frustrated by the time it occurred to her to look under Larry. She got on her hands and knees and cringed at the sight of the bloody holes in his chest. Then she gripped him by the shoulder and grunted as she heaved him up onto his side and saw the keys. She snagged them and let go of the dead man in a hurry.
As she got to her feet and staggered across the lawn toward Larry’s Chevy Nova, she happened to glance across the street and saw a light turn off close to the front door of the house over there.
Shit.
So someone was awake there. Awake and observing everything that had happened. The light going off was an obvious attempt to hide that. Jessica thought of some things Larry had told her. The man who lived in that house was his friend. He was probably calling the cops right now. And he would tell them there had been a woman with Larry. A woman who shot and killed Roxanne before driving away in the dead man’s car. And soon cops would be looking for that Nova. She’d get pulled over. God alone knew what might happen then. Nothing at all fucking good, based on the evidence of everything else she’d endured so far.