by Lainey Reese
What they didn’t do was yield and scurry like frightened mice. They parried like fencers in a life-or-death duel—which is what they were. Neither had any doubts about that.
Christy swung wildly with the wicked blade in her hands. Desperation made her crazed, because he had veered toward Sharon when they split. Sharon, who was unarmed and helpless—or so he thought. He managed to grab her flowing skirt then yank her backward with it. Sharon stumbled to a rickety stop but stayed on her feet. She didn’t give her attacker time to adjust or even get a better grip on her. She bent her knees, gathered her energy, and pushed up on one leg while she kicked out with her other in her signature fan kick. Her foot connected with the side of his head, and Christy watched as she followed through with the arc of her move and forced him to the floor, where he landed with a thud. The momentum had her spinning in the finish of it.
Sharon leaped over the moaning man like a gazelle, caught Christy by the arm in two bounding strides, and then they were pelting for escape like a madman was after them. Which he was. Christy could hear the grunting and clatter as he got to his feet and gave chase.
Max went flying. No other term for it. His brain registered dimly that the supposedly reformed accountant fought like a fucking ninja. He spun, punched, and kicked like a well-oiled machine and moved so fluidly that Max found it impossible to predict where his next swing was coming from.
“Fucking Bruce Lee wannabe,” Max muttered and spat as he grappled with his suspect. Jax spun and swung out with a backhand that Max barely dodged. He ducked just in time and parried with a fist to the other man’s kidney, but the bastard dodged by spinning back the other way and coming at him with a fly kick that Max wasn’t fast enough to evade, and it caught his shoulder with sledgehammer force. He felt his arm go numb and drop to his side. With teeth gritted, he dropped to a crouch and swiped out a leg; he’d get the asshole down for some wrestling and see how his fancy-ass moves helped him there.
But as soon as Jax came down, he was up again. His body just rolled with the fall as soon as he started to topple, and before Max had a chance to take the advantage, the other man was already on his feet again. Jax bounced on his toes, eyeing Max like he was mapping out his next move.
“Fuck this,” Max muttered then landed a punch to the other’s mouth. He was rewarded with a satisfying groan.
Luke groaned. Andie came against his mouth, and the heady rush intoxicated him. Her delicate folds were like silk gliding along his tongue, and her sheath clenched rhythmically around his marauding fingers. He wanted to feast on her forever. Her cries echoed in his ears and made him hungry for more as he sucked, bit, and licked his way up her sweat-dewed body. She dug her nails into his hair when he reached her mouth and kissed her. His tongue plunged deep, filling her with the taste of herself at the same time he filled her body with his.
She was as exquisite as he remembered. Liquid heat and velvet clenched and engulfed him, and Luke was sure he was going to embarrass himself and come right then. He dropped his head to the pillow next to hers, his elbows braced to support his weight, and he grabbed onto his control by a thread.
“Don’t move,” he groaned into her ear when she flexed under him and all but snapped that thread. “God, Andie, don’t move. Gimme a sec—”
“I can’t help it.” She panted under him, a sultry bundle of need and urgency. “I need… I need to—” And his tenuous grasp on control snapped. Luke’s hands tunneled under her to grab tight to each delectable ass cheek, and the beast within took over. He was need and lust and power. All feeling, all animal instinct, they were purely physical in that moment. There was only the driving hunger to mate, to make them one, and his hips pounded out a brutal tempo against hers that she met beat for ruthless beat while both of them left sanity behind.
“He’s insane!” Sharon gasped out in a shocked whisper as they reached the barn doors and grabbed hold of the beam that kept them trapped.
“I know.” Christy was crying, not hysterical, but the tears dripped steadily down her face even as she pulled with all her might at the giant slab of wood. “Sharon, it’s stuck.” She took one second to look back and saw not the mild-mannered boyhood friend of her son, but a bloody-nosed and furious madman on their heels. “Run!” She locked one hand around Sharon’s wrist and drug her along as she whirled and streaked to the other side of the barn. They needed to get distance between them and this killer so they could think.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he called out, taunting them with a scoffing huff of a sound. “I’ve locked the only way out. You ladies can’t make it up the ladder and to the windows before I catch you either. Plus, even if you did, the drop would kill you from that high up.”
Against her will, Christy’s eyes followed his words and scanned the loft level in search of an escape route. Little bastard wasn’t kidding; no way they could jump out a window from that high up.
“He’s right,” Christy gasped as they rounded the small stack of hay where they’d sat and had lunch. “He’s blocked the only way out.”
“So, what the hell is your big plan, asshole?” Sharon turned and demanded. Christy jolted at her tone; she had never heard Sharon so pissed. “Just how are you going to explain our deaths? You’re not going to get away with this.”
“Oh, I can.” Abram smiled benevolently. His nose oozed blood down his face like a B-movie prop; it looked fake and overblown. His manic smile was stained red, and Christy knew the flavors of her nightmares would forever be altered by his grotesque image. “God has shown me the way already. The perfect solution. Don’t you see?” His arms waved about the room like he was on The Price is Right showcasing the new car they just won. “This is the perfect resolution. You hold in your hands just one of the many problems that have plagued me. See, this space where I do my penance. All my transgressions are tallied here. My weaknesses.”
He marched to the stall closest to the doors and pulled with sudden viciousness at one of the beams. It gave with a crack, and he threw it to the side. At first, Christy couldn’t tell what tumbled out from inside, but then he picked up a pink and fluffy scarf. “This was from the Jezebel who enticed me to let her into my cart.” His hand shook as he held the stained scrap of cloth in the air between them. “She was so cold, she told me, too cold to walk all the way home in the snow. I relented in good faith. I let her climb in, thinking I was offering help to one in need. And what did she do? She tempted me! With her seductive scent and softness. Still, I resisted, but she would not be denied and was so bold that she even slid under the blanket with me, drew herself close to my side, and shivered. She claimed she only wanted to share my body warmth….” He trailed off, glaring at the scarf as though it were the proxy for the girl who’d warn it. “She screamed and begged when I fell to her temptations. Why? Why are women so eager and desperate until they get what they want from a man, and then they’re all tears and recriminations. She rubbed up against me! She wanted my warmth? Well, I gave it to her! Then that wretched witch changed her mind and begged me to stop, tried to claim she only wanted a ride because of the cold, but I knew her for the whore she was. The she-devil of the ancient one sent to lead me astray. But I overcame and saw the error of my ways. I then honored my God-given duty and did what was necessary. What was right.”
Christy felt the reflexive jerk of Sharon’s hand in hers as the realization of just what they faced hit home. It was one thing to hold a couple suspicious items and have theories. It was quite another to have a bloodied and deranged madman describe his reason for killing.
“Then, there was this slut who ground her backside against me so hard she almost caused my seed to spill in the middle of a crowded room!” Another article of clothing, this time a sequined, sheer blouse he tossed at his feet and stomped on. He pulled a necklace out next and flung it across the barn with a snarl of rage. “I’ve kept them all here. Pieces of them. Remembrances from each one in an effort to atone for my failings. To repent and be the man I was intended
to be. Yet still I’ve feared. Feared that if my repentance isn’t equaled to His mercy, then I would be forever in shame and darkness.”
Sharon and Christy flinched; each memento hurled represented a woman. There were far too many.
“In the beginning, I had not shown enough remorse. That’s clear to me now. I was not humble in my failings, but God in His mercy corrected me. Showed me the error of pride, how the stain of sin still lingered in my heart. That’s why He sent Wally in here to catch me basking over my relics instead of gnashing myself over them as was proper. Wally saw my sin. A righteous man saw that I showed reverence for what I’d done instead of shame over it as is proper. The wages of sin is death, and God demanded a high price for my sin that day, for Wally was faultless in my transgressions. His life had been the price God demanded of my transgressions, and it humbled me before the Lord to have to take out a good man because of these fallen women.”
Christy couldn’t even comprehend what she was hearing right now. He killed Wally too? Wally had been the sweetest and kindest man she’d ever known, and the news was like a punch to her midsection.
“You miserable piece of shit!” Sharon was vibrating with rage. “You killed an old man, because he found out you were a murdering bastard. Don’t stand there and try to make it sound like you’re some kind of avenging angel. You’re weak, dickless, and fucking crazy, and we’re not going to stand here and listen to you rant about killing like some kind of comic book villain. You can go fuck yourself.”
Later, Christy would marvel at her lover’s courage in the face of a deranged maniac. Right now, there was too much adrenalin flooding through her system to register anything but fight or flight. Sharon widened her stance and rocked to the balls of her feet. Christy took a deep breath, dropped the bloody jeans, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sharon. Fingerprints be damned, they would survive, and Christy was prepared to do whatever she had to in order to guarantee that.
“Foul, wretched women.” Abe’s blood-stained lips curled in disgust. “You curse and swagger like an uneducated man. Your soul is so infected with filth that it bleeds profanity out of those whore’s lips; it warns a wise man to keep away. For you are surely poisonous.”
He stalked closer as he spoke, circling around until the hay they’d ran to place between them was no longer in his path. “Like a rattlesnake, you belong away from our homes; there is no place for the likes of you where children and families dwell. And had you stayed where you belong in your filthy concrete wilderness, I would have let you be. Instead, you slithered into our homes, bringing your dangerous and contagious ways, seeping your venom into the very hearts of every life you touch. Abomination. Now I am called to—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Christy was almost looking forward to the fight now. “Would you shut up? She told you we weren’t going to listen to your bullshit, and we won’t.” She tried to match Sharon’s bravado, knew her voice had been too shaky, but still, she shut him up, so mission accomplished. He looked like the comic book villain even more now.
“Very well,” Abe said flatly. “Let’s get this over with then.”
Derek roared up the long dusty drive to Andie’s place and was out of the car while it still rocked on its tires. Then he froze. There were feminine screams and guttural shouts coming from all around him. From the big house in front of him, the work shed off to one side of it, and the barn off to the other. Derek felt like he was caught in some horrible test of the Fates; there were people in danger in every direction, but he could only save one. His head whipped from one site to the next, listening as he tried to decide which path to take. Andie’s high-pitched wail shrilled out of the house decided him, and the sheriff was off like a shot.
Abe stomped to Sharon with hatred blazing on his crazed face. He swung out with such speed and force that even though they both saw it coming, Sharon hadn’t been able to dodge in time, and Christy felt ice land in her belly with a thud as her beautiful lover staggered under the impact of the blow. He didn’t give her time to recover; he swung again. This time, his fist came down like a hammer from above and crumpled the arm Sharon had thrown up to block him. She went down, and still he didn’t stop, bellows of unintelligible words grumbled from his bloody lips, and he looked possessed.
“No!” Christy shouted, tightened her two-handed grip, lifted the knife, and drove it down as hard as she could into his back. It was a terrible feeling, the give of flesh and the impossibly hard recoil of hitting bone. The lethal blade sliced a jagged path along his shoulder blade, separating his skin as cleanly as it did the layers of fabric covering it, and his roar of pain filled her head even as his vicious backhand sent her slamming butt-first to the floor.
“Filthy whore!” he shouted, enraged. Somehow, Christy managed to hang onto the knife, and she realized that only when he turned on her with the intent to wrest it away. “Give me that! Now!”
She scrambled backward like a crab desperate to stay out of his reach. Christy didn’t think she would be able to stab him again, but there was absolutely no way she could let him get his hands on this weapon either.
Abram stalked her as she clambered to put distance between them. Gone was the sweet-looking Amish boy. In his place was a deranged, blood-soaked lunatic, and he came at Christy with death shining in his over-bright eyes.
“I’m going to kill you both, and then I’m going to burn down this bar—”
Sharon took his knee out with another fan kick, and Abram buckled with a grunt of anguish.
“I told you we don’t wanna hear it, asshole!” She spun like an avenging angel and slammed her foot full-force into the side of his head. There was a sickening crack as his jaw snapped to an impossible degree, and he crumpled to the floor with a thump. Sharon leaped over his temporarily prone body like a gazelle, and Christy was on her feet by the time she reached her. The two ran hand in hand back for the doors. They almost made it. So focused on escape, neither of them had spared a thought for the man they’d thought unconscious until he slammed into them from behind in a flying tackle.
Pain. There’s pain everywhere, Christy thought, as she and Sharon grappled to break free. Desperation fueled the madman sprawled over them, and his fists landed like death blows as he pounded them into both their bodies.
They were screaming, and he was grunting with the effort he put into each swing, and the noise became a jumbled crescendo of chaos. If she could just get him off their backs, she thought as she heaved and struggled to break free, but he was a hundred and eighty pounds of enraged madness over them, and her attempts to break free seemed laughable.
Sharon managed to swing back with an elbow, and though it didn’t appear to hurt him, it drew his focus, and Abe wrapped both hands around her throat. “You first, bitch,” he spat venomously. And that was the chance she needed. With his weight and his attention shifted, Christy managed to roll to her back. Crying out in desperation, she once again gripped the knife in both hands and drove it into Abram’s side with all the strength she had.
He roared like a beast. Blood flooded out from around the blade as he reared back. Christy sobbed, finally let go of the hated weapon, and scrambled to pull Sharon out from under the boy.
The two of them, beaten and bloody, scurried backward until they were huddled against the barn door. Dimly, Christy heard shouts from the other side, pounding thuds and demands of “Police! Open up!” but the two women were immobilized by the macabre scene forced upon them. Traumatized and shocked, they sat clinging to each other as they watched Abram in his plain Quaker’s clothes kneeling before them with his life spilling from his side like a fountain.
He looked as horror-struck as Christy felt when his eyes found hers. Christy sobbed. He was dying, and regardless of what he’d done, his life was ending, and Christy had been the one who made that happen. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as the eyes of a young boy implored her, a lost and frightened child who didn’t understand what was happening. The weight of regret settled like a mantle of g
uilt on her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she told him again. He toppled to the side with a pained sound at the same time a new voice came through the door.
“Mom?” It was Logan, and he sounded terrified. “Mom! Are you in there? Are you okay? Oh my God, Mom!” Nothing else in this world could have prompted her to move, so sore was her body and so deep was her shock. But the sound of her son crying out for her, in fear for her, had Christy clamoring to her feet to push at the beam that kept them trapped.
It wouldn’t budge at first, but then Sharon rolled to her feet with a croaking groan and added her muscle. Christy sent a worried look her way, and her tears fell faster.
Angry red grooves were gauged into her long, slender neck where he tried to strangle the life from her. Her face and arms already had bruises marring her beautiful skin, and Christy wanted to just get her home and safe. She needed to hold onto her for the next ten years or so; maybe then the fear of losing her would ebb. Right now, the sight of her lover in the murdering grasp of a madman flashed with strobe-light procession behind her eyelids every time she blinked.
A sob of frustration pushed from her lips as the beam still refused to budge even with Sharon’s help, but then Logan called out from the other side. “You have to push up then through. It’s got a groove warn in it. Lift it up first.”
Finally. The beam dropped to the floor with a clatter, and the two women were close behind. Christy sat where she dropped with Sharon wrapped up in her arms like a tangled vine, and as the doors opened and people rushed in, she just held on to her love and cried.
“Shh, don’t cry.” Luke was still inside her. The aftershocks shook them both with each rhythmic ripple, and the moment was so clear, so pure and perfect, that Andie found it impossible to keep the tears at bay. “Why the tears? You okay?” His kisses feathered across her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, her eyelids; the man couldn’t seem to stop showering her with tenderness, and it was reducing her to a puddle of goo.