Authors: Don Aker
“I know which end the bullets come out of, asshole.”
He smiled again. “There’s a whole lot more you need to know than just pointin’. Like recoil, for instance. How it can affect your aim.”
Keegan watched the guy’s body shift incrementally toward her. “Willa,” he warned as the scarred guy continued, his voice smooth, almost hypnotic.
“And then there’s the matter ‘a mechanism. Most guys in my line ‘a work prefer semis, but I’ve always liked a forty-five, like that double-action you’re holdin’ there. It’s got great balance, but you gotta be careful how—”
Willa pulled the trigger, the explosion deafening as a bullet winged into the wall to the guy’s left, the acrid smell of gunpowder now filling the room. Keegan could see her hands were shaking now almost as fast as Isaac’s were flapping. “Stay back!” she shouted. “I know what you’re doing. Don’t move a muscle.”
The scarred guy froze, the smile on his face a sudden slash.
“Sweetheart, this’ll end a whole lot easier for you if you don’t make me mad. I gotta thing about blonds.”
A second bullet whizzed past him within an arm’s length. “Shut up and sit your ass down or the next one will be in your crotch!” Willa gestured with the gun at a chair behind him.
The guy with the scar stared at her for a long moment, then sat.
Isaac’s hands were a blur as he recited the IP address at warp speed. Clutching his stomach, Keegan moved toward his brother, doing his best to murmur soothing words. Uncharacteristically, Isaac leaned into him, his face pressed to Keegan’s shirt, and Keegan resisted the urge to hold him. “Dad needs us,” he said softly. He led Isaac to Evan, weaving around Wynn’s still unconscious form, and then knelt by their father, untying the rope around his wrists.
Both Evan’s eyes leaked tears. “I’m so sorry, son. I never meant—”
“I know,” said Keegan. “We need to get you to a doctor.”
Evan shook his head. “We need to call Forbes.”
“Done,” said Keegan. “He’s sending help.”
Wincing, Evan gingerly pulled himself to his feet. “This guy’s car is parked down the road where you wouldn’t see it.” He limped toward the seated figure. Although Willa still had the gun pointed at the guy, Evan kept his distance. “I want your keys. Now.”
The scarred guy ignored him.
Willa waved the gun. “Give him your keys! I wasn’t kidding about your crotch.”
Despite the gravity of the moment, Keegan grinned at Willa’s fierceness. After today, he thought, Wynn d’Entremont had better watch his sorry ass.
Scowling, the scarred guy reached slowly into his pocket, fumbling for a long moment before finally pulling out a key ring, tossing it to Keegan’s dad. His reflexes impaired, Evan missed, and he gasped as he stooped to pick it up.
“I got it, Dad,” said Keegan, reaching for it and handing it to his father, never taking his eyes off the scarred guy, who seemed to be studying their every move.
Wavering on his feet, Evan said, “It isn’t safe here. There could be more coming.” He looked at Wynn on the floor. “I’m not sure what to do about him.”
Remembering how Wynn had begged to be let go, to hell with the rest of them, Keegan kicked the guy in the ass. Wynn groaned. Keegan kicked him a second time, and Wynn’s eyes fluttered open.
“Get up,” ordered Keegan.
Wynn turned to see the scarred guy sitting in the chair, Willa covering him with the gun. He pulled himself slowly to his feet, clutching the side of his head and groaning again. “What the hell—”
“Just so you know,” Keegan snarled, “this is your fault. You nearly got us all killed!”
Evan put a hand on Keegan’s arm. “There’ll be time for that later. Right now, I want you to take him, your brother, and Willa and drive until you get a signal, then call Forbes again. He’ll tell you what to do. I’ll wait here for the people he’s sending.”
Keegan shook his head. “You’re hurt. I’m not leaving you.”
Evan sighed. “The only other choice is for all of us to drive out of here together.”
“
Nuh
-uh,” said Willa. “No
way
am I getting into a car with that freak.” Although her hands were steadier than before, Keegan could still see them tremble. The weight of the gun wasn’t helping. He considered offering to take it from her, but he was pretty sure what her response would be.
“Maybe we could just tie him up and leave him here,” suggested Willa.
“He’s a professional,” said Evan. “He’d be out of here in minutes.”
Keegan had another option. “Dad, you need a doctor, and Isaac is traumatized.” He nodded toward his brother, who remained by the chair where their father had been tied, his open eyes unseeing. “Forbes’s support shouldn’t be much longer now. You take Isaac, Willa, and Wynn and go make that phone call. I’ll wait here with him.”
“
No
!” said Evan. “I’m not leaving you alone with that—that monster.”
“I’ll stay,” said Willa. Wynn, however, said nothing. He moved toward the door and stepped outside without looking back.
Keegan turned to her. “No. This isn’t your fight.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “He was going to kill me here in my own place. Look, Mr. Fraser,” she said, her eyes still on the guy in the chair, “Keegan is right. You need medical attention and Isaac needs to be away from here. The key to my car is in the ignition. We’ll be okay. This jerk is going to sit right where he is with both of us watching him every second.”
“I can’t let you—”
“Do I need to remind you who’s holding the gun?” she asked, and Keegan was surprised to hear her crack a joke after what
she’d just gone through, what all of them had just gone through. She was frigging amazing.
“Dad,” he said, “we’ll be careful. Go call Forbes.”
Evan looked at them both, clearly unwilling to move, and then turned to Isaac and his unseeing eyes. “Your father is going to kill me, Willa,” he said.
“Now
there’s
an expression I can do without hearing again,” she murmured, and Keegan grinned.
Evan moved toward Isaac, tenderly taking his hand in his. “Time to go,” he said, and Keegan recognized the same gentle manner he’d always used with his younger son—he could just as easily have been getting the boy ready for school. Leading him toward the door, he paused and turned to Keegan. “Promise me—”
“We’ll be careful,” Keegan finished for him.
Wincing, Evan raised his arms and pulled Keegan to him. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Mindful of his father’s injuries, Keegan resisted the urge to hug him back as hard as he wanted to. “I love you, too, Dad. Now go.”
As the door closed behind them, the scarred guy spoke. “Christ, I’m in a rerun of
Dr. Phil.
”
“Fuck off,” said Keegan.
“You eat with that mouth?” The guy smirked.
The sounds of Willa’s car starting and pulling away from the house gave Keegan strength. “Go to hell.”
“Ignore him,” said Willa. “You know what he’s trying to do, right? He wants to rattle you. Rattle both of us.”
“Don’t try to get inside my head, sweetheart,” the scarred guy said. “You don’t know me. But I know
you
,” he said to Keegan.
“Bullshit,” Keegan said.
The guy’s eyes gleamed. “So you weren’t the ones livin’ in that dump on East 52nd?”
Keegan’s blood ran cold.
“Too bad about your mother. Pretty thing, except for the hair.”
Keegan tried to hold on to Willa’s warning—
He wants to rattle you
—but he felt like he’d been haymakered again. “You shut your mouth.”
“I set the device under the kitchen counter. Thought I’d get all of you at breakfast.” He shrugged. “My bad.”
“Keegan,” said Willa, her voice clear, urgent, “Forbes’s people will be here soon. Don’t let him get to you, okay?”
The guy’s grotesque face creased in a parody of a smile, as if he’d just remembered something. Something important. “She used to stand at the sink a lot, didn’t she, looking out at the street. You suppose that’s where she was when it went off?” He laughed then, the sound like rocks colliding in his chest. “I wonder if she felt anything when it blew her to pieces.”
Keegan knew he was being goaded, provoked into doing something stupid, something he’d regret. But knowing that and caring about it were two different things. This was the guy who’d killed his mother. Had blasted her into oblivion so there was barely enough left for the authorities to cremate. And now here he sat gloating, laughing, rubbing it in Keegan’s face, daring him to do something about it.
Keegan remembered Wynn doing the same thing in the school corridor after Keegan had embarrassed him in phys ed. Remembered Wynn taunting him, ridiculing him, showing everyone how pathetic he was. And Keegan had been forced to
take it, had swallowed his anger and even smiled before turning and walking away, listening to the laughter echo behind him.
Not this time.
He strode across the space between them, Willa’s cry—”Keegan, don’t!”—drowned out by the blood pounding in his ears. Reaching for the scarred guy, his only thought was to wrap his fingers around his windpipe, to choke off the words spewing from his mouth, to finally give himself the peace that eluded him whenever he recalled the last time he saw his mother, the way she’d stood at the sink with her head down, her hands gripping the countertop. Inches from the device that would obliterate her. “I’m gonna shut you up for good!” he roared.
And in the split second when his hands reached for the guy’s throat, the split second that separated misery from peace, he saw the knife.
W
illa screamed as the scarred guy thrust the blade into Keegan’s chest, the gun discharging into the ceiling. Then he was on his feet, tossing Keegan’s bleeding body aside and coming for her. In her panic, she shot wildly, pulling the trigger again and again, gunfire reverberating around the room and in her head until all she could hear was clicks.
“
Fuck
!” cried the scarred guy, looking down at his left leg, where blood streamed from a hole in his jeans just above his knee. “You
bitch
!” He grabbed her arms and knocked the empty revolver to the floor, shaking her hard, then backhanded her before throwing her onto the sofa.
Willa’s face was broken—it had to be. She had never known such blinding pain, and her ears, already ringing from gunfire, now jangled from the blow. But all of this was secondary to the terror that clutched at her now, rending her, ripping at her core as the scarred guy raged above her. Some part of her subconscious now understood deer frozen in the sweep of headlights. She was paralyzed by the fear coursing through her, unable even to cry out.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, bitch,” he snarled, his words shredding the air. “That thing I have about blonds? It ain’t a good thing.”
It wasn’t his words that shattered her paralysis. It was the look in his eyes. Yes, he was going to kill her. But afterwards. And it was her sudden knowledge of the part before that, the horror between what was now and what would follow, that galvanized her, made her think of Bailey at the look-off and again on Casino Night. Beneath her surging terror was an anger she’d never known she was capable of feeling, and it clawed at her throat. “You talk and
talk
!” she shrieked, unsure where the words were coming from, just letting them flood out of her. “You compensating for a tiny
dick
, asshole? Or maybe you don’t even
like
girls and all this is just for
show
!”
Roaring, he lunged at her, and that single moment of unguarded fury gave her the chance she was hoping for. Drawing back her foot, she drove her heel into the wound on his leg.
He didn’t go down—that’s how powerful he was—but he staggered back a step, bellowing in agony, and she rolled from the sofa and ran. She kept her eyes up, not just to avoid running into furniture but to keep from looking at the body on the floor, the pool of red expanding around it. She was sobbing when she reached the door, tearing it open and launching herself into sunlight.
T
hat fucking, fucking
bitch
! She’d
shot
him!
The pain in his leg razored through him, making each step a singular agonizing nightmare. But despite the overwhelming, all-consuming power of it, there was a part of him that was numb, that didn’t feel it, that was somehow removed from the excruciating confluence of bullet and flesh and bone. It was the same part of him that had stood in a double-wide trailer on Lancelot Way watching his mother come for him, brandishing the broken bottle, screaming,
I brought you into this world and I can goddamn take you out of it!
The part of him now keeping the pain at bay was the same part that had kept him from shattering when he’d heard
I shoulda had the doctor suck you outta me when I found out I was knocked up!
But the thing was, she’d been coming for him nearly every night for the past five years, screaming names like “fudgepacker” and “faggot scum” in dreams that, even after all this time, still left him sweat-drenched and shaking. And now she had come for him here.
Maybe you don’t even
like
girls and all this is just for
show! Out of nowhere, Gil Atkins’s voice had suddenly echoed his mother’s, reminding him of those photoshopped images he’d deleted from the super’s computer. But he hadn’t deleted them
from his head, no matter how hard he’d tried, and they only fuelled his rage, his whole body quaking from the sheer effort not to fracture at its centre.
A more rational part of him realized that it wouldn’t be long before the cops arrived, that he still had time to get away if he left now, even with a bullet in his leg slowing him down. But that rational part hadn’t watched his mother’s neck snap, hadn’t buried his only friend behind a dumpster in the dark, hadn’t spent three years in the Idlewood Home for Boys planning how to torture Travis Hubley before putting a bullet through his forehead. Because no rational human being could have done any of those things and survived.
But survival was the last thing on Griffin Barnett’s mind right now. He would make that blond bitch pay for all of them if it was the last thing he ever did.