Darin: The Pride of the Double Deuce - Erotic Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (13 page)

“You sound like a spoiled child. You’ll not have it? She’s yours? You’re wrong on both counts by the way. And she only needed to show up and let them see the police reports, the hospital records. As well as bring in testimony from the few people that she could get to write her something that stated what sort of person you were. There were pictures too, I’m told. Of the violence you committed against her. I’ve told you, time and time again, she is off-limits to you. Move on.” He told him he couldn’t, not without her where she should have been all along. “Then you’re going to lose this war you’re taking out against her. I’m just glad that I won’t be a part of it.”

“You’ll do as I tell you or so help me....” Nash let out a long breath and tried his best to get control of his temper. “I need you to look into my accounts. There is money missing. All of it, as a matter of fact. How is it that someone was able to get into my personal accounts and take my money like that? Not to mention, the house that is mine is now in Mer’s name. I want that looked into as well.”

“I would imagine the same way that you got someone to take
her
money from
her
accounts. You stole it. But I don’t really care. As I said, I no longer work for you. Why I even started working for you in the first place is still a mystery to me. I did you a favor and you fucked me over. I’m done.”

When the line went dead, Nash hit redial. There was no way that this little shit was going to end this relationship because he said so. But when the call went straight to voice mail, he decided that he was going to take care of him as soon as he got back to his home. If he could ever get back there.

After the visit yesterday from the supposed vampire and the animals with that Douglas person, he’d done a lot of thinking. The vampire had been wearing fake teeth. The animals were well trained movie set animals. He was still trying to work out the one where Darin had turned into the cougar, but he would. There were no such things as shifters and vampires, and anyone that believed that shit should be shot in the head and put out of his misery. If there were, he was sure he would have read about it somewhere. Or he would have seen a couple of them. People were ready to believe everything that came along. Nash was not.

The doorbell rang as he was making his way to the kitchen for some much needed coffee. There wasn’t anyone to make it for him now. Rocky had taken care of that. But he still needed the caffeine hit. His nerves were fried.

Nash approached the door quietly. He didn’t just open the door anymore. He watched and waited, trying to see what the person on the other side of door was about. When the man simply put a box on the stoop, Nash waited until he was gone before he went out and picked it up. But the man coming out of the shadows made him scream a little. Nash was going to kill the fucker. However, the gun at his head had him standing perfectly still.

“You’re going to come along with me.” Nash tried to turn his head but was prevented from that when the guy knocked the gun against his head. “I said that you’re coming with me, not that you were going to do some sightseeing while you were at it.”

“What’s this about? I’ve done nothing wrong.” The man laughed. “At least tell me who you are. So when I’m finished here, I can hunt you down and kill your motherfucking ass.”

He was shoved into the back of a van, and the doors slammed shut before he could try to get a good look at the stranger who’d put him in here. Another guy sat in the passenger seat. There was a man in the back of the van with him, one that he was pretty sure he’d never seen before, but he had on a hoodie and Nash couldn’t see his face. But no matter how many times Nash tried to get him to tell him what was going on, he did nothing but sit there like he’d done this a thousand times. Nash wanted to knock the shit out of the man but was sort of afraid of him. He had seen some pretty crazy shit over the last few days. Then the driver got in and he was knocked around again.

Yesterday when he’d gone out to get the paper, he’d seen a man that looked like Rocky. Nash had yelled for him to come to him, and the man had rushed him, knocking Nash on his ass and busting his head on the pavement. When he woke, only a few minutes had passed he was sure, but his clothing was all mussed up. His tie was undone and his shoes were scuffed. Going into the house, he looked himself over in the mirror to find that he’d been wounded too.

Cuts under his arms had startled him. There was a bite mark on his throat. In addition to his shoes looking like he’d walked a few hundred miles in them, his socks were missing, the zipper in his pants broken. The harder he tried to remember what had happened, the fuzzier things got. Like he could no longer remember what he’d gone outside for. What he had for lunch or breakfast. It was as if his mind had been messed with.

Later that day, after taking a long hot shower, he’d gone to where he’d hung all his suits. That’s when he noticed that all the shirts he’d brought with him were stained. There was blood, a rusty color, on each of them in different spots on his clothing. Some more than others, but blood all the same.

His pants had been knotted at the legs. It had taken him twenty minutes to find a pair that didn’t look too bad so he could wear them. All his shoes had been soiled. Some of them looked as if someone had filled them with shit. He’d been so nervous all afternoon that he’d not left the living room except to go to the bathroom. And even then he’d checked under the sink and in the small linen closet before using the commode. Today wasn’t much different in the weird shit going on either.

When the van stopped, he was tossed around again. The man sitting in the back with him didn’t even move, not even when the van lurched forward again. As soon as the doors were opened again he tried to get away, but the two men from the front seats dragged him out by his feet. His head hit the bumper twice, then the ground. Someone was going to pay for this. He was going to make sure of it.

Sitting up, he got to look around. They were in the middle of the woods. There didn’t appear to be a telephone, much less a house, around for miles. Even the trees looked like someone hadn’t touched them in decades, the poison ivy growing up them as thick as his arm.

“What the fuck is the meaning of this?” If Nash was honest with himself, which he rarely was, he would admit that he was terrified. These men were going to hurt him, and badly. “Take me back right now.”

“This is the way this is going to work. And so you know, I’d rather just kill your fucking ass, but I made a promise to someone and I have to keep it.” He wondered aloud where this person was. “Safe. At home, I guess, with the family. You’re going to answer a few questions for us and you’re going to tell us the truth. Then when we’ve gotten what we want, you’re going to go to away for a very long time.”

“You think so? Well, I have news for you. That is not going to happen. I don’t care what sort of deal you made with Mer or whoever you made a promise to. You tell her that she’s next on my shit list.” He found himself lifted up off the ground and pinned against the side of the van. The man that had spoken was holding him there with nothing more than his hand, and that made him think of the man who had claimed he was a vampire.

“Did you kill Alfred Donaldson?” He wanted to lie to him, tell him to fuck off at the very least, but he couldn’t. Not with the hand around his throat. And it felt like he was choking on the words when they tried to get past his lips. Nash shook his head and felt it bang against the metal at his head. “Do you know who killed Donaldson? And what was done to him?”

“Rocky did. He loves to play when he murders. Sometimes he can get out of hand, but I don’t care so long as the results are the same.” The thoughts of lying to this man evaporated with each question. The man asked him what happened to the body. “I don’t know what he did to him, but he was gone and that’s all I cared about.”

“Were you aware that you broke the law to come here? That as a condition of your release that you were to report to your parole officers weekly and not leave the state?” Nash nodded. “Say it, damn it. We need to have you say it.”

“Yes. But who gives a shit? They rarely know who you are when you call in. And I had business to take care of that didn’t leave me any choice but to leave the state. This is all my wife’s fault. Well, my ex-wife’s fault. She left when I didn’t tell her she could.” He tried to clamp his mouth closed, but the man asked him if he understood that once you divorced someone, that ended things. “No. I don’t care what sort of paper she had filed. She’s mine until I kill her.”

“You plan to kill her? You want to kill Mercedes?” He felt his nose running then, the blood running down over his lips and to his chin. “Answer me.”

“Yes, I’m going to fucking kill her. And that fucking brat she birthed too. Things might have been different had she given me a son, but she didn’t. Not that I think that one is mine. Have you seen her? She looks like she could be anyone’s kid.” The man let him go. Nash had fallen to the ground, but he wasn’t hurt. They would be, but for now he would let them think they’d won. “So we’re done here? You got what you wanted?”

“No, I got enough, but not what I wanted.” That made no sense to him, but before he could ask him what the fuck that meant, one of the other men stood in front of him.

“Mr. Nash Crosby, you’re here to pay for the murder of Alfred Donaldson, Rocky Bends, Millie Sanders, Allen Jack—”

“I didn’t kill Rocky. He was my friend.” The man looked over at the first one. “This guy, Douglas someone, came by and gave me body parts of him. But I never killed him. Look at him for that.” Neither man spoke, and for some reason Nash felt the need to fill in the quiet. “Rocky was my friend. I’d never kill him. He knew too much about me to let go, but I’d never kill him. As for those other people, you can blame that on Mer too. Had she just done what she was told, none of this would have had to happen.”

“Be that as it may, you still were responsible for a lot of people dying, Crosby. And we’re here to make sure that you pay for each one of them.” He looked around, then back at the man. The gun in his hand was dangerously close, but Nash wasn’t worried. If they had wanted him dead, he’d be there.

“You won’t kill me that way. It would be cold blooded murder, and I know enough about your kind to know that cops, for the most part, follow a set of rules. And murder isn’t on that list.” Nash laughed when he put the gun to his head. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is to spot a man who is good at doing the right thing. That would be you. You can no more pull that trigger than I can turn straight. You just don’t have it in you.”

The man backed off, and Nash stood there. He wasn’t worried now. They didn’t have it in them to kill him. But they would knock him around a bit. That might be painful for a while, but he’d live to hunt them down and make sure they never bothered him again. These men were going to die, of course, but not today. He realized that the two of them were talking and moved closer to listen.

“I knew this wasn’t going to work. I said that when we got called in to do this. The man is a real bastard and he thinks he’s right.” The second man only nodded, and he had a feeling they were talking about Mer. “No one is going to be happy when we go back. I’m not, so I’m sure that other people aren’t going to be either.”

“You should have brought her with you. I’d really like to tell her what I think of her. Damned bitch owes me a great deal of money. And if she thinks I’m going to just let her get away with this shit because you two were too stupid to pull the trigger, then she’s gonna learn not to trust me.” He laughed and the two men looked at him with a confused look on their faces. Or stupid, Nash wasn’t sure. “Not that she ever did trust me. Not even when I took her out the first time. Well, took her out wasn’t right. I took her.”

“Somebody said you forced her into marrying you. That you held a gun to her head to make her do it and threatened the life of her father.” Nash nodded. He was feeling pretty good now and didn’t care if these idiots knew what he’d done. He was going to walk, plain and simple. “You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”

“Yeah, but I’m a man that gets what he wants when he wants it. She might have been better off if she’d just given me what I wanted. I don’t like to be thwarted when I have a plan in mind. Nor do I like it when I can’t have something I want. And I wanted her. The only reason I married her was because she was so high and mighty about things. The stupid cunt should have died right away, but I wanted to play. Then she got knocked up. Mother fuck. No matter what I tried to do, that kid would not go away. Not even when I shoved her mother down the stairs a few times. Hung on like they meant business.”

Nash was saying too much. He knew this. It was like in all those dump programs on television that Rocky used to watch. They’d wrap it all up with the bad guy pretty much confessing everything he’d done and why. These two were about the stupidest cops he’d ever encountered. As he made his way around the van to see if they had left the keys in it, he thought of all the things he was going to do to Mer when he got her back. Things might be delayed a bit, but she was going to get it but good.

No keys. When he made his way back to where he’d been sitting, the two men were gone, but the one from the back of the van was standing there. He’d forgotten about him and wondered why he’d not been pulled out of the van when he had.

Nash backed up. He’d not realized how fucking huge the man was when they’d been in the van together. He asked him where the idiots had gone.

“They’re busy.” He pulled the hoodie off his face. He looked like a kid, his face almost smooth like a young boy’s. Nash wondered if he was even old enough to drive yet. “I’m much older than you think. And the other two, they never said they were cops, now did they? They work for me.”