Chapter 7 #5
“Lucy is a court reporter.” Bee slid her hand into Lucy’s and their fingers threaded together. They stared at each other lovingly, and my heart ached at the sight.
My gaze glided to Sam, and to my surprise, he was already staring at me, mouth quirked in a half smile.
“Sometimes she finds the worst criminals before I do,” Bee finished. “It depends on where crimes were committed.”
“I’m also good with tech.” Lucy brushed her nose against Bee’s, then leaned back again. “Sometimes we need information about our targets and I can find it. And if I can’t, I know people who can help.”
“It all works out in the end,” Dalton said. He shoved some pork into his mouth and finished eating it. “We’re a team.”
“Why do you do it?” I stared around at them carefully, starting with Sam and finishing with Bee. “You don’t seem like you’re psychopaths.”
Lucy laughed. “We’re not. You don’t have to be a psychopath to be a killer, little Ezra. God, you’re so cute.” She glanced at Bee. “He’s so adorable, isn’t he? I just want to eat him all up.” She gave me a mischievous glance that told me she knew exactly what she’d said, and I rolled my eyes.
“The most adorable.” Bee winked at me.
Dalton shook his head when Sam signed to him, then turned to me. “Sam said he’s never been diagnosed by anyone, so it’s not to say he isn’t something, but that doesn’t matter. We do what we do because these people are worse than us. They take advantage of innocent folks and they hurt them.”
“If you ask me, Sam’s got some antisocial personality traits.” Bee shrugged. “It’s why his dad always had an issue with him.”
Sam glared at her.
“His dad?” I frowned and looked at him. “You had a problem with your dad?”
He gave me a small smile and started typing on his phone that lay in the middle of the table. A computerized voice spoke for him.
“My father hated me. Mom died when I was twelve and my dad had to raise me on his own after that. He never wanted to and he always said I was different. I barely spoke even as a kid, but after Mom died, I withdrew, and Dad thought I was “a freak.” When I was thirteen, he tried to get me to speak to him over something stupid. I think it was baseball. He’d forced me to sit with him and watch it, make a man out of me, but I wasn’t interested.
When I wouldn’t talk to him, he grabbed me by the throat and strangled me.
I don’t know if he was trying to kill me or what, but I remember I couldn’t breathe. ”
He held up his hand to me and shifted slightly to pull out a small notepad from his pants’ pocket before beginning to write. The other three had conversations of their own, but I focused on Sam and the way his hand moved as he wrote. When he was done, he passed the pad to me.
I thought I was going to die, so I reached out for the first thing I could find. It was a pen. I stabbed him in the neck with it and there was blood everywhere. My throat was on fire and I was in pain and couldn’t breathe and Dad was dead.
I paused, closing me eyes to take a shaky breath before I opened them again to continue reading. He’d switched to paper when he was confessing his deepest sins, and each word was inked into my skin as though he was writing on my flesh.
I was a scared kid and didn’t know what to do.
I called my aunt, Dalton’s mom. She came over, saw what had happened, and took me to the shower.
She told me to wash the blood off and by the time I was done, the body was gone.
It was in the trunk of her car. She called my uncle and when he got there in his truck, she told him to take her car and get rid of the body. Feed it to the pigs.
When I was done, he had his phone ready again and the computerized voice started to speak.
“She took me to the hospital. It hurt to breathe and they told me I had a damaged larynx. Swelling. After that, I couldn’t talk without it hurting.
I might have been able to after six months, but the doctors said my brain now associates talking with excruciating pain. It’s trauma.”
I swallowed again as I finished listening. A shaky breath slipped from my mouth, and I licked my dry lips as anger for what Sam’s father did to him swirled low in my stomach. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
“We all are,” Dalton said. “If he wasn’t, Mom would’ve finished the job.”
“So, your parents helped?” I gaped.
Dalton hummed. “Mom hated Sam’s father and she hated her sister, too.
Mom had always been protective of Sam, so when that happened, she wanted to make sure Sam never got in trouble.
So, she got rid of the body.” He shrugged.
“It was self-defense, but Sam’s father was a DA.
So, the chances of police officers believing Sam? ”
“Zero,” I concluded.
Dalton grabbed his wine glass and raised it. “Right.”
Sam sighed and wrapped an arm around the back of my chair, and I leaned against him, inhaling the scent of the day’s work on his skin. He smiled sadly.
“How did you start killing?” I murmured.
He waved his hand at Dalton, who took over.
“We were about nineteen at the time. Bee was eighteen and her boyfriend was a jackass.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Bee drawled.
Dalton made a sound of agreement. “He got caught raping his neighbor. He expected Bee to side with him and tell the cops he was with her that night, but she didn’t.”
“The bastard smacked me, right here.” She pointed to her cheek, her words emotionless. It was as though she was telling someone else’s story and not her own.
“When Sam and I found out what happened, we just decided it was time for him to go.” Dalton shook his head.
“I’m not the type of person to do the deed.
I tried with this guy, but I couldn’t stand the sight of killing someone.
So, that’s why I take the background role now.
Own a farm, feed the bodies to the pigs.
” He winced. Out of the three cousins, he seemed to have the most sensitive reactions.
“By the time they come to me, they’re almost doll-like, just. .
. in pieces. So I don’t have a problem.”
“After Jeff, we decided the world needed someone to get rid of these scum when they were let off the hook.” Bee stared at her gleaming fork, smirking. “Sam and I decided it’d be us. We would do it. People like Sam’s father or my ex deserve that fate.”
The room fell silent, and despite their words holding a lot of dangerous implications, a pleasantness settled inside me.
I remembered Sam taking out the jock who’d beat me, then imagined him doing the same to the other jerks who’d treated me like shit in my life, and I smiled.
Yeah, there was a lot of trash who deserved to be taken out.
Dalton held out his hand, and I frowned for a moment before Sam ripped out a few pages of the notepad with his writing and passed it to him. Dalton headed out of the room and I frowned.
“Fireplace,” Sam murmured, cringing.
He’d done that back at his house, too.
“When you admit this kind of stuff, the evidence needs to disappear.” Bee laughed.
“Everything is traceable with electronics. Even if you delete it off your phone, it’s still there.
Written on paper means it can be thrown into the fire and burned until there’s nothing left.
We only ever use our phones for the innocent stuff that can’t connect us to murder. ”
I chuckled. “Makes sense.”
Sam rubbed my shoulder and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and my chest went all light and fluttery. Fuck, that was a weird feeling.
He pointed at my plate and I took it as a sign to keep eating.
Later that night, after hours of laughing about childhood stories from the cousins, I found Bee in the kitchen while the other three settled in the living room. I helped her with the dishes, choosing to dry while she washed. It was a small chore, but it felt almost like I was at home.
“Can I ask you something?” I peeked at Bee from the corner of my eye as she passed me a plate. Her blue eyes narrowed in on the dishes, like it wasn’t her favorite job. I didn’t blame her.
“Sure thing, kid.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Do you think you can teach me ASL?” I ducked my head as heat flooded my cheeks.
Clearing my throat, I focused on drying the next plate she handed me before I shoved it in the cupboard where it belonged.
“Sam communicates to me by notepad and sometimes he actually talks, but it hurts his throat. I don’t want him to be in pain, but I want to converse with him, you know? ”
When I glanced back at her, she hadn’t stopped washing the dishes, but a grin had spread across her face. I ignored the flames that burned my cheeks and took a wine glass from her when she handed it to me.
“Like any language, it isn’t easy to learn. ASL has its own grammar and syntax and it’s different all over the country. Other than hand gestures, it uses your facial expressions and body language, too. But I think we can figure out something. Why don’t you ask Sam?”
I rubbed my stomach where it started to ache in embarrassment. “I want to surprise him.”
She laughed then and grinned at me. “Oh God, you two really are adorable.”
“We’re not together.” But fuck, I wish we were. I didn’t say that. “He said he isn’t gay.”
She snorted. “Sam doesn’t know what he is.
He’s had one girlfriend and it barely lasted a couple of months.
” She paused and turned her body toward me, giving me her full attention.
“Let me tell you something about my cousin. He’s not a psychopath.
He knows what’s right and what’s wrong, but he doesn’t feel the way normal people do.
I don’t think either of us do. He can’t express remorse for the people he kills and he doesn’t want to, and he’s a geek if you ask me.
He’s hella smart and he prefers science to humans because it’s easier to predict.
So, he’s got his smart little job in his smart little facility and that’s made him happy for a long time. ”
I sucked in a breath and released it again, the conversation digging deeply into my abdomen, somewhere between my ribs.
She gave me a sharp look. “Then you came along. He protected you when he didn’t need to.
He kept you around and told you secrets he’s never shared with anyone else.
He doesn’t trust because he doesn’t understand other humans.
But you, you he trusts. So, Ezra, maybe he’s not gay.
Maybe he’s not bi or straight. What I do think he has, though, is attraction to you.
” She stepped forward. “If you hurt him, you won’t have to worry about being added to the cheese because the pigs will eat you.
Only after I torture the hell out of you. Am I clear?”
I swallowed, then raised my chin. “Yeah, definitely.”
A wide grin spread across her face. “Great. Welcome to the family.” She patted me on the shoulder with a soapy hand. “Lucy has Mondays and Tuesdays off. She can come around and teach you ASL while Sam’s at work.”
I smiled back at her. “Great.”