Rage

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Wyatt

“ Y ou drive like a blind man, with a peg leg and noodles for arms, Dre! Watch out!” I yelp while I reach up and grab onto the oh-shit handle above my head. “Who the fuck agreed to giving you the keys to this thing?”

I choke down a shriek of terror as I brace myself for the impact as Drake barrels towards the rear end of the car in front of us. At the last minute, the RV jerks to the left. Drake says nothing as he turns the wheel and pulls into the fast lane. Cars honk their displeasure at the decision, but he simply guns the gas and we’re barreling down the road. I’m thrown back in the passenger seat, letting out a huff.

“You know, I think it’s time we changed drivers,” I complain as I swallow down my racing heart that’s crept up into my throat.

“I just started,” Drake objects, his deep voice practically a well enunciated growl.

I scoff. “It’s been three hours.”

“Exactly. I just started.”

“You’re going to get us pulled over and arrested,” I argue. “ Or you’re going to end up killing us!”

Drake shoots me a dark look. It’s pretty intimidating. He’s let his blond beard and brows grow wild this past year. With his long hair down, he looks like a feral lumberjack, especially since he’s wearing a flannel shirt today. If I didn’t know him so well, I’d probably back down. Instead, I flip him the bird.

“We need to shave off time,” Drake grumbles, his eyes returning to the road.

My stomach clenches with nerves and frustration. We have less than twenty-four hours to get to our location, kill everyone there, and break those women out, but we’re still twenty-two hours away. If we don’t get there in time, the ten women locked up in a shipping container will be in the wind and we’ll never be able to find them. As much as I hate Drake’s reckless driving, I understand his motivations.

“Between us and them, Dre—” I growl between clenched teeth at one of my best friends. “—I pick us. I’ll always choose us.”

Maybe that makes me an asshole, always putting my life and the lives of my best friends first with each of these missions. If so, I don’t care. The five of us have been friends since childhood. Early in our lives, a horrific tragedy pulled us apart. Somehow, though, Daisy glued the five of us back together. Since then, we’ve become more than friends. Stronger than family. Our mangled, blackened souls have merged. We can’t live without one another. It’s an unspoken truth that hangs over all of us. Nothing will tear us apart again.

Not even death.

Certainly not the cops, who could pull us over any minute now and run background checks on us. Our potential criminal records would get us jailed in no time. Owen’s good about erasing any existence of us in most police databases, but he’s not perfect. There’s no reason to risk getting arrested. None. Not even for the women we’re on our way to save.

If they’re even still alive. Who knows what condition we’ll find them in after they’ve traveled across the ocean in that steel container. All the more reason to be cautious. We don’t want to risk everything for women who might already be dead.

Drake heaves a heavy sigh, as if my words are the most annoying thing he’s ever had to deal with. Still, the RV begins to slow. Annoying or not, he agrees with me.

“You should go help Owen with the planning,” Drake suggests bitingly. “We’re going to need all eyes on this since we’re coming in hot.”

“You’re the best when it comes to planning these types of attacks,” I point out. Drake’s background in military combat has come in handy before. I have no doubt we’re going to need it this time, too. “Which is just another reason I should be driving.”

Drake shoots me another glare. “Wyatt…”

“Alright, alright. I’ll go, but you get to drive for one more hour and then I’m taking over.” I unclick my seatbelt and head to the table and couch combo where Kingston, Owen, and Daisy are all seated.

There’s not a lot of space in the RV. Approaching the table, I inwardly cringe at how crowded the three of them look as they peer between Owen’s laptop and a spiral-bound road map of the United States that we picked up at a gas station a year ago and kept ever since.

“Any progress?” I ask. Rather than try to squeeze into the booth with them, I hop up on the counter across from them.

Owen shakes his head with a grimace. He looks tired. Dark circles hang low under his eyes, but staying up all night will do that to a person.

“It’s an abandoned port,” he says. “The satellite images are blurred out, which is weird, and all the roads leading to this place are suspiciously absent.”

I frown. “What’s that mean?”

Kingston tears his eyes away from the paper map in front of him to look up at me. If I thought Owen looked tired, Kingston looks utterly exhausted. The dark purple circles under his sunken icy blue eyes, and tight press of his mouth all speak to his ragged state. It’s all emphasized by his pale white skin. When we were kids, he used to always have a tan. Long days out in the sun would golden his skin and made it glow. But ever since Daisy broke him out of that mental hospital, a place where he’d been forced to survive thanks to his father, his skin has been white as a sheet, as though it refuses to, or can’t, soak in color after a stint in hell.

“It means someone with money and power tried to erase this place off the map,” Kingston signs, his fingers moving fluidly in the air as he shoots me a dark look.

I scowl as I ask, “You mean someone like… your dad?”

Kingston Winslow’s father had been the leader of the cult that hid within our hometown of Briar Glen. He’s dead now. Has been for years. Mr. Winslow’s reign of terror had been the catalyst to every horrible thing that ever happened to the five of us. His power and influence over the people in the town made covering up his crimes easy. If there’s someone else like that where we’re headed, we may be in over our heads.

At Kingston’s nod, I shudder.

“Great, that’s just fucking great.” My sarcasm isn’t lost on the others, it’s simply ignored. “If we can’t see where we’re going or the layout of the land, what do we do?”

“We piece together what we can of the old maps that I’ve found online until we have the general idea of where we’re going,” Owen says without looking up. “Right now, we’re missing about fifteen miles between the newest map and where the satellite images begin to blur.”

My brows rise as I stare at him in alarm. “Fifteen miles ? Jesus, if we end up going the wrong way or end up at some dead end, we won’t have time to double back and try again!”

“Gee, what a great observation, Wyatt. Quite helpful, thanks for that input,” Owen mutters as his fingers fly over his keyboard.

He misses it when I smile. “You’re welcome.”

“We’ll figure this out. Failure isn’t an option here. We’re going to save them, and if we don’t get them free here, we’ll track them down,” Daisy declares, not looking up from the map.

A heavy silence follows her declaration. It’s filled with a solemnity that always comes before one of these self-imposed missions. Daisy’s been like this ever since we left Briar Glen. Her need to save people from the same fate that had befallen her will eventually take her to the grave. We all know this. We all had it pretty bad in the ten years we spent apart, but Daisy had it the worst by far. Her need to purge the world of evil comes from having lived in its grasp for far too long. I have this feeling, deep down inside of me, that she truly believes we can wipe out the worst of the worst. That there will be a time when this is over, and we can sit back and relax.

But me? I know better. There will never be a sense of closure or satisfaction after a mission great enough to ease the knowledge that we’ll be doing this all over again soon enough. I hate this, the feeling of inevitability that we’ll never win. We’ll never be able to wipe out evil.

“Of course, Daisy,” I pacify her easily, a habit I’ve picked up to keep her even keeled.

Kingston’s gaze flickers up to me. An understanding passes between us, letting me know we’re on the same page when it comes to caring for Daisy’s mental health.

“Fuck,” Drake says from up front. “Looks like you’re going to get your way sooner than expected, Wyatt. We got to stop for gas.”

I grin, eager to be doing something other than just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. “Great! Maybe we can get some snacks, too.”

Daisy’s hands fist on the table before she slides them off and tucks them into her lap. “We need to make this stop quick.”

“It’ll be super-fast,” I assure her. “I promise.”

“Alright, we’re good to go!” Drake calls, shutting the gas cap.

I’m already jogging up the steps into the RV with four plastic bags filled with food in my hands. I dump them onto the table next to Owen and glance toward the bunks when I don’t immediately spot Daisy or Kingston.

“I think I figured out the lay of the land!” Owen declares, though there’s a little doubt in his voice.

There’s a flushing of a toilet, and Kingston steps out of the bathroom. He comes over to us and peeks into the bags I’ve brought. I step around him and head to the back, where the only real bedroom is. We’ve designated this space as Daisy’s room, but she keeps the door open for us to join her whenever we want.

I push open the door to find the queen size bed empty, the sheet made. My eyes land on the only nightstand in the room. On top of it, her knife sheath lies there, empty. Unease pools in my gut and my back stiffens. Daisy always keeps her knife with her. If it’s gone, then she’s gone. If she’s not here, there’s only one thing she could be up to.

“Ah, guys, does anyone have eyes on Daisy?” I ask, turning to return to the others just as Drake enters the RV.

The three of them freeze before everyone’s head turns in different directions, as if I might’ve missed her in the tight space of the RV in my initial search.

“Did she go into the convenience store?” Drake asks, looking behind him through the open door.

I shake my head. “No, I was just in there and I would’ve noticed if she came in.”

“I, ah, didn’t notice that she even left the table,” Owen admits with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, you know how I get when I’m working on a lead.

He starts to shut his laptop as he slides to the edge of the seat, but Drake shakes his head. “You and I are going to look at the map and do some planning. Kingston and Wyatt can go look for Daisy. She can’t have gone far, they’ll find her.”

With a sinking suspicion and growing urgency, I turn to Kingston, who’s already working his way around Drake to go search for our girl. As Drake moves out of the way, I follow Kingston outside.

“King, we have a problem,” I mutter while our eyes scan the gas station’s parking lot. It’s relatively empty except for a few parked cars. “She’s got her knife.”

Kingston’s body stiffens as his head whips around to look at me.

“Fuck,” he signs in frustration.

Yeah, fuck is right. If she kills someone here where there are cameras on each corner of the store and around the pumps, the cops will get here in no time and will have plenty of evidence against us. Owen won’t be able to save us then with all his tech savvy skills.

“Let’s split up, and meet at the back of the store,” I suggest. “If she’s not out here and not inside, that’s the only place left to look.”

Kingston nods and the both of us take off, splitting up to search for our girl. There’s nothing around the gas station, situated beside the busy highway, except for a few abandoned looking stores. Trash litters the sidewalks and there’s a general stench of garbage that permeates the air.

I’m glad we’re just passing by—I’m not a fan of this place.

When I get to the back of the convenience store, my eyes dart toward the small patch of trees. They’re fairly sparse. I’m pretty sure I can see through to the store beyond them. My initial sweep doesn’t reveal Daisy lurking in there. With a frown, I turn looking for any sign of her elsewhere back here. Did she climb into one of the few cars out front? That wouldn’t be too out of the norm for her. When she senses something amiss, she’s a dog with a bone. It’s like she can’t stop herself once she gets started. It probably doesn’t help that the four of us don’t bother talking her down off most of her edges.

How could I possibly say no to my Pretty Flower when she wants to bathe herself in blood? Red looks so damn good on her.

The thing is, we all have better impulse control than Daisy. No one enjoys keeping a leash on our girl, but when we don’t keep her close, she disappears and kills the first person she thinks deserves it. I don’t think she’s been wrong about any of the deaths she’s caused. Still, we have to be cautious. It’s one thing to kill people who deserve it. It’s another to drive a blade into the neck of someone who looked at someone else the wrong way.

Kingston comes around the other side of the building a moment later. There’s no Daisy with him. Shit. He sees me and throws up his hands in frustration. I stop, ready to turn back around and retrace my steps but halt as a feminine cry pierces the air.

My limbs lock up and for a second, I’m terrified that the sound of fear belongs to my Pretty Flower. Kingston freezes too. Our eyes meet, and despite the distance I can read the panic in his icy blue ones. The look lasts half a second before we both spring into action.

We dart toward the trees, racing in the direction the sound had come from. We only get a few feet into the sparse woods before I see her. There’s a girl on the ground, probably no older than fourteen. Her cheeks are ruddy, tears streaming down her face, and there’s a red mark on her face in the shape of her hand.

She’s completely ignored as my eyes narrow in on my girl.

Daisy has a man on his knees a few feet away. Even though I wasn’t here to witness what took place, I know instantly why Daisy inserted herself into the situation. The guy has to be in his fifties, maybe even sixties, judging by the wrinkles and shape of his face. His fly is open and by the terrified look on the young girl’s face, I can only assume he was being a pervert.

The man is a blubbering mess, promising my girl something as fat tears roll down his cheek. One eye is already swelling shut and there’s a bloody X sliced across the front of his shirt. Standing over him, Daisy is as still as a statue. The blood on the hunting knife in her hand catches in the overcast light.

“P-please, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying nothin’!” The man says as he tries to talk through his sobs.

They do this a lot, Daisy’s victims. Try to talk her out of killing them, plead for mercy as if their own victims hadn’t been doing the same thing just moments before my girl arrived. I’ve heard it so many times I wonder if it’s in the ‘asshole playbook’ or something.

Daisy’s hand tightens around the hilt of her blade, and I know what’s about to happen. Shit.

“Hey!” I snap sharply, trying to get her attention. The girl on the ground screeches in terror, scrambling away at our approach. “Get out of here, now ,” I shout at her.

She doesn’t have to be told twice. Scrambling to her feet, the young girl whimpers as she sprints away. The minute her back is turned to us, she’s forgotten. The man on the ground at Daisy’s feet finally sees us, his one good eye going wide.

“H-help! She’s crazy, she’s going to kill me!” He shouts.

I get to Daisy first. My hand snatches her wrist to keep her from striking out. It’s small, my fingers easily curling around and then some. A jolt of awareness shoots through me, just like every time Daisy and I touch. Like she’s a live wire, full of energy.

“Hey, Pretty Flower,” I murmur into her ear. “We got to go.”

“But he was going to hurt her,” Daisy objects. There’s an eerie lack of emotion in her voice. It lets me know she’s gone to that place inside of her head, that special place that allows her to do this, kill people, without feeling anything.

Kingston steps around us to come up to the man Daisy has incapacitated.

“Thank god you came when you did, this bitch is?—”

Without warning or fanfare, Kingston slams a fist into the guy’s face. The man’s head whips around. He’s out cold before the rest of the body hits the ground.

“We should—” Daisy starts, but I cut her off.

“Not this time, Daisy,” I tell her. With a step back and a gentle tug of her wrist, I try to pull her away. “We have to go now. There are people who need us, remember? We don’t have time to clean up a body.”

Kingston turns to face us, his eyes latching in on her face.

“Wy is right,” he signs grimly. “Come on, Daze.”

A tremor rushes through my girl's body. I feel it as it rushes down her arm and into the wrist I hold.

“We should at least cut his dick off,” she mutters.

I trade a look with Kingston over her head. Our mental debate is swift and ends with me saying, “Fine, but make Kingston do it. I don’t like the idea of you touching a cock that doesn’t belong to one of the four of us.”