by Bryan Smith
She swallowed and said in a small, soft voice, “Yes. Friends.”
Michelle’s other hand settled on Abby’s waist as she leaned in for a quick, light kiss. “I can’t wait to be alone with you later, Abby. I know what a risk you’re taking. I’ll make it worth your while.” She leaned closer still and teased an earlobe with the tip of a tongue, eliciting a low moan from Abby. Then she stepped back and smiled again. “Now get us out of here.”
Abby squeezed Michelle’s hand and felt her heart beat faster.
This was it.
The very beginning of her new life.
She felt like a child on the eve of her first holiday feast.
She stole another quick kiss from Michelle, then turned and led her to the staircase. The old stairs creaked and trembled beneath their combined weight. Abby felt one of the steps sink noticeably lower than it should. She heard a splintering sound and held her breath, hoping the ancient wood wouldn’t give way beneath them. The decrepit condition of the stairs was nothing new. They had been fragile as far back as she could remember. But the process of decay had accelerated in recent times. Ma had been making noises for months about hiring a carpenter to shore them up, but she had never gotten around to it. Abby raised her right leg and set it on the next step up with an extreme degree of caution.
This time the splintering sound gave way to a louder crack.
Michelle sucked in a startled breath. “Abby…”
“Just hold on.”
She tightened her grip around Michelle’s hand.
“Take it easy.”
She raised her left leg up.
Set it down.
Pulled Michelle up behind her.
Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaa-CCCK!
Michelle whined. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, shit.”
Abby tensed.
Stayed absolutely still for a long moment.
The staircase remained intact.
Abby breathed slowly out. “Next step up. Easy. One step at a time.”
She climbed another step up, setting her weight down by slow, careful degrees, holding her breath again as the wood splintered and settled beneath her foot. The slow, painfully tedious process continued until they reached the top. Abby pulled Michelle into the dark pantry and then through into the kitchen.
Michelle clutched at Abby as she tried to stop shaking. “Oh, God, Abby, I didn’t think we would make it.”
Abby stroked her hair. “But we did. Next poor bastard down them stairs is getting their neck broke, though.”
Michelle let go of her hand and moved away from her to take a good look around the kitchen. She opened drawers and sifted through layers of assorted junk.
Abby frowned. “What ya lookin’ for?”
“My wallet. My keys.”
Abby snorted.
Michelle’s brow furrowed as she glanced at her. “What?”
“Ain’t gonna find those things. Your car’s gone. Done been sold to a local dealer. You’ll never see that wallet again, neither.”
Michelle slammed a drawer shut. “Shit!”
Abby flinched. “What’s the matter?”
Michelle spun toward her and glared. “How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here without money and a ride?”
There was an edge to her voice Abby had never heard before. It was devoid of even a hint of the tenderness of moments ago. And the set of her features was harsher now, lips curled in a sneer, jawline a tight and thrumming high-tension wire. The abrupt and dramatic shift in demeanor made her fear the woman a little.
Michelle stalked toward her and clamped a hand around her shoulder. “Abby? Did you fucking hear me? Please don’t tell me letting me out of those fucking shackles was the extent of your escape plan.”
Abby’s face crumpled. “I’m…sorry.”
Michelle sighed heavily. “Fuck!”
Abby sniffled. The unexpected aggression affected her in ways she couldn’t have foreseen. Her whole body was shaking. It was crazy. She shouldn’t be afraid of this woman. If anything, the opposite should still be true. But she was scared, no way to deny it. Michelle was like a whole other person, now that she was no longer a captive. Confident and a thousand times more assertive. The idea of admitting she had no idea what to do next terrified her.
But then she stopped trembling.
She smiled.
Michelle cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve thought of something. Spit it out.”
“I know a car we can steal. It’s real close. And it’ll be easy.”
Some of the tension eased out of Michelle’s features. They loosened, became softer, and a small smile formed. “Yeah? Where?”
Abby swallowed hard, cleared her throat. “Our closest neighbors are the Colliers. They have an old Plymouth. And I can get to the key easy. We can be there in ten minutes.”
“The Colliers?”
“Yep.”
Michelle squinted and her brow furrowed again. She was trying to think of something. Abby had a feeling she knew what it was, and she was proven right a moment later.
Michelle’s eyes widened. “Yeah. You mentioned them before. They’re the ones who have Lisa.”
“The fat girl. Yeah, they got her.”
Michelle’s expression hardened again. “That ‘fat girl,’ as you call her, is my best friend. I’ve known her since we were babies. So show a little respect, okay?”
Abby’s face flushed. Her fingers clutched at her dress as waves of anxiety rippled through her. “I’m s-sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Michelle rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Hush, Abby. It doesn’t matter. You said you could get to the key. What about Lisa? Could we get to her?”
Abby made herself breathe in and out a few times in an effort to slow the anxious racing of her heart. “I probably could. The Colliers are a bunch of sorry assholes. I maybe could even—”
A frown creased her face.
Michelle had turned away from her in midsentence and was opening cabinets and drawers again. She jerked one drawer so hard it came all the way out of its slot. She dumped the contents on the floor and knelt to sort through them. “Keep talking, Abby. I’m listening.”
Abby coughed. “Yeah. Uh…anyways, they’re all sorta shiftless and lazy. Bunch of sloppy drunks. I know I could get your friend out of there.”
“Aha!”
Michelle closed a hand around something and stood up.
Abby frowned.
It was an old hunting knife in a sheath. She was pretty sure it had belonged to her father. Michelle unsheathed the big knife and held it close to her face. She ran the ball of a thumb lightly along the sharp, serrated edge. Abby fidgeted and chewed on a thumbnail while Michelle inspected the heavy-duty blade.
Michelle looked at her. “What? You seem bothered.”
“That was my daddy’s. He’s…dead.”
Michelle blew out a breath and rolled her eyes again. “So fucking what? We may have to defend ourselves at some point. Hey, are there any guns around?”
The question made Abby groan. “Yeah, but…”
Michelle’s expression was puzzled for a moment. Then her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me…”
Abby nodded. “Yeah. Couple of hunting rifles. They’re in the cellar.”
“Might as well be on Neptune.”
“Yeah. Something else down there, too. Big jar of cash. Plumb forgot all about it in the excitement.”
Michelle scraped the blunt edge of the blade along her chin. “Huh. How much cash?”
Abby shrugged. “Right around fifty thousand dollars.”
Michelle’s mouth dropped open. She gave her head a hard shake and stalked toward Abby, stopping scant inches from her. “Abby, don’t take this the wrong way, but how on earth could a bunch of cracker-ass inbred redneck fucks have fifty grand stashed away?”
Abby gave her an abbreviated rundown on the sordid history of the Maynard family’s activities during Prohibition.
Michelle tossed her head back and laughed
. Color rose in her cheeks and made them shine in the lantern light. “Oh, Abby…”
Abby’s brows knit together. Her fingers worried at her dress again. She had a feeling she was being made fun of now. “Why are you laughing at me?”
Some of the mirth faded from Michelle’s face as she sobered slightly. “Abby, I’m sorry—you’ve got some good qualities, but intelligence is not one of them. Did you really imagine you could go around passing eighty-year-old bills without drawing the law’s attention?”
“I did wonder about that.”
“You wondered about it.”
Abby felt a bit of defensive pride kick in. “That’s right. I did.”
Michelle shook her head. “Oh, hell. It doesn’t matter. We’ll figure something out. Maybe rob a fucking liquor store on our way out of town for some cash.” She paused, pursing her lips. “This town does have liquor stores?”
“One. But I could prob’ly steal some cash from the Colliers.”
Michelle laughed again. “Thank God for the fucking Colliers. Come on, girl. Let’s blow this dump.”
She brushed past Abby and stalked out of the kitchen.
Abby stared after her, hesitating a moment as she watched the woman disappear through the door to the living room. The possibility that she had perhaps made many very large errors in judgment made her guts churn.
Michelle poked her head back through the doorway. “The hell are you waiting for?”
Abby sighed.
Yeah, could be she’d made some mistakes.
But what she’d thought before was still true. She was committed now, for better or worse. Not going through with it was no longer an option. Her sister’s broken and battered body provided stark testimony to that truth.
She followed Michelle into the living room and then out of the cabin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The right thing to do seemed obvious to Pete. They should give the Preston house a wide berth and head down the long, dirty driveway to the road beyond. Or maybe seek the cover of the surrounding wilderness, rather than staying out in the open. They could get just beyond the tree line and follow a parallel path to the road. It was the sane, safe way to go. Which probably explained Justine’s refusal to go along with it
She gripped him by a wrist and squeezed. Hard. “No.”
Pete’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Why, for fuck’s sake? And by the way, that hurts.”
She increased the pressure on his wrist. “No.”
Pete twisted his hand free of her grip. It wasn’t easy, but he managed it. He shook his hand and massaged an area where her clenching fingers had turned the flesh a bright shade of red. “Okay. You’re crazy. We established that a while ago, but I think it bears repeating. You are fucking crazy. So how about this?You go do whatever crazy thing it is crazy people like you do in situations like this, while I head for the road.”
Justine shook her head. Long strands of dirty hair fell across her face. “Where I go, you go.”
Pete stared at her. He thought of other arguments he might make, but kept his mouth shut. There could be no talking sense to a person like Justine. He knew he should just turn around and start walking. Megan was still out there somewhere. Now was the time to break the weird hold this crazy woman had on him and get back to her.
He brushed the hair from her face and slid a palm across a sweaty cheek.
She smiled. “Megan is your past. Your future is with me.”
He just kept staring at her.
This is nuts.
I am losing my mind. Is insanity contagious?
She took his hand from her cheek and kissed his palm, making him shiver. Then she clasped hands with him and started drawing him toward the back of the Preston house. He saw lights on through the windows, but no sign of movement. As they got closer to the house, the penned-up dogs went into a new frenzy of barking and howling. He heard the chain-link fencing rattle as some of them threw their bodies against it. His breath grew short as the fear rose up inside him again, making his heart thump too fast, the way it did at the end of a longer-than-usual run. He choked down a lump in his throat and clenched Justine’s hand tighter. They went into a crouch as they reached a window.
Justine looked at him. “Stay down.”
She raised her head slightly and peered over the sill. Pete watched her face, waiting for a reaction, but it remained impassive. He kept expecting her to duck back down, but that didn’t happen either.
“What’s going on?”
She glanced down at him. “Take a look.”
Assuming the coast was clear, Pete raised his head and saw big Gil Preston and his mother sitting in expensive-looking leather recliners. They were watching what looked like some kind of homemade porno movie on a large flat-screen TV. The flickering, unsteady image on the screen showed scrawny Carl Preston giving it to a large-breasted black woman from behind. Another well-endowed black woman lay beneath the other one on a sofa, letting those big tits bounce in her face.
Pete swallowed a yelp and ducked back down. “Jesus!”
Justine looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
Pete gaped at her. “What’s wrong!? Christ, what’s wrong with you? I don’t want those fucking psychos to see us.”
Justine smirked. “You should take another look.”
Pete squinted at her. Even for a crazy person, she seemed remarkably calm, given their proximity to their captors. He supposed it was possible he’d missed something important. He reluctantly raised his head again. This time he saw the profusion of crumpled beer cans on the floor of a den filled with expensive toys. In addition to the flat-screen TV, there was a full bar with rows of gleaming bottles behind it, several sets of bookshelves stuffed full with shiny DVD cases, and a wide array of top-of-the-line electronic equipment. On the TV screen, Carl and the girls had shifted positions. The girl who’d been prone before was now going down on the other one while Carl pounded her from behind, sweat streaming from his sneering, hawklike face. The women were attractive, but as far as Pete was concerned, the involvement of bony, pasty-white Carl killed any eroticism the images might have conveyed. He couldn’t imagine why the Prestons would want to watch their relative in a homemade porno. Then he remembered that they were fucking perverts. Mystery solved. But it hardly mattered at the moment, because neither Gil nor Ma Preston were seeing any of it.
Both were passed out in the recliners.
Stone drunk, with their mouths hanging open and drool running down their chins. Ma’s wrinkled, sun-weathered face was frozen in an ugly sneer. A beer can hung loose from the fingers of her left hand. Any moment now it would slide free and spill all over the plushly carpeted floor. Well, here was another mystery solved. No wonder the morons hadn’t heard the dogs losing their little canine minds.
Justine let go of his hand and stood up. “Wait here.”
Then she turned and jogged away from him. Pete turned on his haunches and watched her slim, nude body streaking toward a large toolshed some fifty yards to the left. She disappeared inside the shed and didn’t come out for a few minutes, long enough for Pete to begin to feel antsy. He glanced back at the Prestons and saw that the beer can had finally slid free of Ma’s fingers. A small quantity of cheap beer glugged out of the opening, staining the carpet. Both mother and son were still passed out, and Pete supposed they would stay that way for a while. There were so many empty cans on the floor, the place looked like a frat house in the aftermath of a wild bash.
When he glanced back at the toolshed, Justine had finally reemerged. He frowned as he watched her jog back across the yard. She was a little slower this time. Which made sense. It couldn’t be easy for a woman that small to run fast while holding a chain saw.
She was panting by the time she reached him. “Are you…ready?”
Pete’s frown deepened as he stood up. “Justine…What…exactly…are you planning to do with that thing?”
A corner of her mouth quirked. “Isn’t it obvious, Petey Pete?”
>
She brushed past him, and Pete turned to see her approach a small set of concrete steps that led to the back door of the house. She climbed the steps and held the medium-sized McCulloch with one hand, while her other closed around the doorknob.
Heart pounding, Pete hurried after her. “You’re not going in there!”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I am. So are you. Come on.”
She twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. A second later she slipped inside the house and disappeared from view. Pete stared at the empty space and didn’t move, gripped by a temporary paralysis as he recognized this moment for what it was—his very last chance to make a break from Justine. He knew that if he followed her through that door, he would be throwing away his last opportunity to run from this place and try to make his way back to his old life and remain the man he’d always been.
It was the logical thing to do.
It was what he should do.
He stared at the open door a while longer. He glanced at the dark woods surrounding the property. Then he looked at the open door again.
He shook his head. “Fuck me.”
He climbed the steps and entered the house.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was as if he’d walked through a portal straight into some nightmare chamber in hell. The room was big. It had to be, to contain the abomination that lived inside it. The room stank like a sewer. Worse than that. The odor of the rankest New York City sewer was as pleasant as the aromas filling the boudoir of a high-class call girl in comparison, like a bouquet of scented candles, potpourri, and expensive perfume. The stench staggered him, made his knees go weak and his eyes water. There was no way to tell what color the walls had originally been because the paint was underneath so many layers of dried shit and vomit. A glance at the ceiling showed more of the same, only worse. Congealed columns of vomit, shit, and mucus suspended from it like stalactites. And the floor beneath his feet was sticky with the same mix of excretions. The condition of the room was vile enough, but the thing that lived in it was more than monstrous enough to overwhelm the disgust he might have felt at having to walk through that quagmire of filth and shit in his bare feet.