Cruel Games (Killers of Port Wylde)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

IVY

Seven Years Ago

“Dad?” I peered around the door to the study, confusion tainting my sleep-slurred speech. “What’s going on?”

Our home was equipped with a top-of-the-line alarm system, which was currently going off like someone had tripped the damn thing. There was no telling what was going on–maybe one of the hired help accidentally tripped it. Maybe it was a malfunction. Maybe my mother was drunk and put in the wrong code–

My father turned his head and smiled gently at me, but something in his eyes made me hesitate. Something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what.

Whatever it was, it had to be serious. Nothing shook my father. Nothing.

Never.

But as he lifted his hand and motioned me to his side, I watched the strange glint in his eyes, and suddenly, I was very much awake.

“Dad?” I asked again, leaning into his embrace as he hugged me with one arm and reached into the locked drawer of his desk with the other. “What’s wrong?”

“You shouldn’t be here right now, Ivy–”

His gaze flicked to the door, ears twitching as he waited for something to break the silence beyond his field of vision. I almost didn’t recognize the man looking off into the distance, and for a moment, I was convinced I was still dreaming up in my room. Dragging a hand down my face, I blinked a few times, and the same gentle, if now slightly alert father I knew and loved was back, like he’d never left.

“Get out of here ? —”

The sound of shattering glass in the foyer echoed down the pitch-black hallway, and suddenly, whatever move I’d been about to make was cut off at the knees as my father put his hand on my head and shoved me beneath his desk. When I protested, he held his finger to his lips and shook his head.

“Stay there and stay quiet. Don’t come out for anything, you hear me?”

I knew better than to disobey my father. But still, I nodded and motioned that I was zipping my lips as I watched the most passive, loveable man I’d ever known pull a pistol from his desk drawer and slide the top back, checking to make sure it was loaded.

The door to his study was still cracked from when I’d come in, but the splintering sound as it slammed into the wall, kicked open with a single booted foot, would haunt me forever. It was the first sound in what would become a recurring nightmare for me, though I didn’t know it, didn’t realize yet. I was shaking now, all the exhaustion chased from my bones as pure terror and adrenaline roared in my ears. Blood pounded through my veins as I wrapped my hand around the winding wires of the computer and tugged them to the side, freeing just enough space in a hole in the back of his desk to peer out at the room. And suddenly, one thing became very clear, even to my panicked mind.

This wasn’t a normal home invasion.

Three men in bright neon Halloween masks strolled through the door, as if this were their home and we were the intruders. Baseball bats were slung over their shoulders.

All three wore permanent mocking smiles on their masked faces.

And even though I couldn’t see their eyes, I knew they were dangerous.

Deadly.

And about to end life as I knew it right before me.

The one with the red mask moved first, his greasy black hair peeking out from around the edges as he pointed his bat at my father, eyeing the gun with little concern. “Well, well, looks like Dannyboy came prepared.” he cocked his head like a dog and chuckled like some unhinged B-movie villain. “You gonna use that to end your own life, Danny? Cause I hate to break it to you, but bullets don’t do much to me anymore.” He tapped a scar on his arm, another on his bare chest, then a third on his shoulder. “Shooting me doesn’t seem to keep this dog down. So if I were you, I’d turn that gun on myself, Dan, and make it quick.”

The one to his left stepped up next, curly brown hair bouncing as his hood fell from the top of his head. The blue of his mask set him apart, marked him as unique but still one of the crew. His moves felt softer, less edgy, no less dangerous, but perhaps compassionate in their own way.

“You know why we’re here, Dan. Someone put a target on your back, and we’re just the bastards they’re paying to get the job done.”

My father straightened his spine and fired a warning shot in their direction–but Daddy never fired guns. Until now, I’d never even seen him hold one. He was a businessman , not a killer .

The bullet missed its intended target by a mile, and I witnessed the pedestal I’d always put my father on begin to crack at the base. To me, he’d always been this unshakeable guy, a pillar of the community and the strongest man I’d known.

Now, he shook in his slippers, wrapped in a bathrobe and some fancy silk pajamas like the rich man he was, the gun hanging limply as the third man in line stepped up and kicked it from his hand.

Don’t just give up, I wanted to tell him, but he made me promise not to say a word. I knew now that he knew these men were coming for him. He’d always known. That was why the security had been doubled lately. Why he always sent me to school with a bodyguard. Why I wasn’t allowed out at night anymore.

He’d known someone was after him. And that made the rest of us just as unsafe as him.

“I don’t know why you’re here–”

“Enough with the bullshit, Dannyboy. You know what you did.” I wished I could see their faces, so I could identify them to the police later when they got what they came for and left.

Maybe they’d just hurt my dad and walk away. Break a few bones. Make him squeal.

I didn’t think they’d kill him.

And I certainly couldn’t have imagined what happened next, even in my best daydreams and worst nightmares.

Red Mask brought his bat off his shoulders and swung it one-handed, slamming it into my father’s side. The ear-piercing scream he made as the wood hit flesh was terror-inducing. I covered my ears in the hopes that I could block it out, but to no avail. It echoed in my skull and reverberated through my body as the masked man pulled the bat away, and the shiny metal of barbed wire wrapped around the tip glinted against the moonlight. Blood dripped from it to the floor, staining the expensive shag rug my mother had bought him last Father’s Day.

Mom would be so angry in the morning. I bet she’d even yell at the cleaning lady like it was her fault some psychos broke in and got blood everywhere.

My brain was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that tomorrow wouldn’t be just another day in my life.

Everything would be different.

But that meant accepting the things happening in front of me, and I was still half-hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare and find myself in bed still.

“Fuck,” my father wheezed, clutching his side like he could keep the blood from pouring out as the Red Mask man pulled back for another swing. “Just take me outside and get it over with, please.” His eyes cast in my direction, but he dared not look directly at me, perhaps because he worried what they’d do to me if they found me hiding here, a witness to their crimes.

The man on the end, who hadn’t spoken a word, put his hand up and stepped in front of Red, his mask flashing a bright lime green. His bat was steel, and it made a hollow metal sound as it dragged against the hardwood floor before it met the thick carpeting, and the sound was swallowed whole. He dragged it up my dad’s cowering form, from his knees resting on the ground, across his ragged and damaged torso, across his chest, until he reached my father’s chin. He tipped his head back with the force of the bat, and his masked gaze met the shaky, fearful one of my dad. And then, without warning, that bat flashed in a move so skilled, so swift, you could have mistaken the man wielding it for a major league star. The tip of the steel bat snapped my dad’s head sideways, the sickening crunch sound of bone and teeth meeting metal echoing in the silence.

My dad spit out several teeth onto the floor, just inches from where I still cowered.

“You wouldn’t have had to die, Dannyboy, if you had just left well enough alone. But men like you crave power and money, and no amount of common sense will get in your way of having both, will it?” Red stepped forward again, taking his mask down to look my father in the eyes over the top of it, muffling his voice a bit. “Did you enjoy taking the light out of her eyes? Did she fight? Did she plead for her life like a bitch?”

Who were they talking about?

My father would never hurt a fly, let alone a woman.

So why–

“She was thirteen, you sick fuck. Thirteen. She had her whole life ahead of her, and you snuffed it out. You and your sick friends, all for a quick buck. And then you damaged her so much, there was nothing identifiable left but her teeth.”

That couldn’t be right. Daddy was a nice man. These guys had the wrong Dan.

They did sorta seem like they were off their rockers. They had the wrong house. The wrong man. That was it. Maybe if I stood up and told them that, explained the situation, they’d leave us alone ? —

The blue one reached out and grabbed my father by the collar of his undershirt and dragged him from the room, the other two following close behind. I listened from my hiding place as they marched through the house, my father pleading for his life now, begging them to take his money and leave, promising to make it worth their while ? —

The sound of the front door opening echoed through the house, and the moment I heard their voices outside, I forgot all about not moving. I forgot my promise to stay hidden. Slowly, I inched for the open window nearby, the one that overlooked the front lawn, and the driveway where three men stood around my father in a semi-circle. There was a trio of dirtbikes coated in various splatter patterns from mud, or blood, or who knew what, sitting next to them on the asphalt. One was lifted up, the back end on a riser that left the back tire suspended in the air.

Green reached for the handlebars as Blue watched on from the side, merely a spectator at this point. Red held onto my father by his hair. His mask had slipped all the way down his face now. The wild desperation and unhinged glee in his eyes were now reflected in the wicked smile spreading his lips wide, wide enough to see that his teeth were sharpened like a shark's.

Or a wild dog.

“You took away her beauty, her life, everything that made her who she was. And you threw her away like a broken toy.”

“Please, I didn’t–it wasn’t–fuck, I’ll give you whatever you want ? —”

Red leaned down so close he was nearly nose to nose with my father. “What I want is my sister back. Can you give me that, Dannyboy? Can you bring back the dead?”

My father heaved a sigh and whimpered like a puppy who’d piddled the carpet, still shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes turned to meet the stone-cold gaze of the man whose hand was twisted in knots in his short hair. “I didn’t mean–”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t mean for it to happen. It was your business. Your orders. Your goons. I might not have been able to save my sister back then, but now, I’m gonna show you what this girl felt when that car backed over her dead body and turned her face into tire tracks.”

The rev of the dirtbike engine filled me with a sickness in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure what they planned to do, but it couldn’t be good. And from the look of terror in my father’s eyes, he knew what it was enough to be very, very afraid.

He clawed uselessly at his captor’s hands as Red dragged his face closer to the tire, which now spun dangerously fast. It was like an out-of-control sawblade, and as Green revved the engine again, Red pulled my father’s face against the hot rubber tire and ground the two together in a sickening display of feral depravity.

Blood. So much blood.

The scream was . . .

I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t move. I just stood there as my father’s horrified, agnized screams filled the air, his blood spraying all over the side of the house and through the window, painting my face with a perfect arc of gore and gruesome artwork.

I could taste my father’s lifeblood on my lips. Could smell the metallic tang in my nose. It tinted the edges of my vision pink.

His screams filled my ears. Made it impossible to think.

I wanted to scream–whether in rage, fear, or horror, I wasn’t sure–but I couldn’t make my throat work.

“How do you like the taste of that tire, huh, Dannyboy?” Red screamed, his voice cracking. “Does it taste good? Do you want more?!?”

My father’s body went limp, and I realized with a sickening clarity that he was dead now. There was no life left in the shell of a man who’d once been my hero. He was gone.

Gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

“Enough, Jackal,” Blue said quietly, motioning with his hand to tell Green to cut the engine. “He’s dead.”

“I wanted it to last longer,” he growled, slipping his mask back up on his face. “He didn’t deserve a quick end. ”

Green grunted in agreement but said nothing more. He simply slung his bat over his shoulder, kicked the riser out from under the bike, and put it on its kickstand before moving to another one, the neon paint job matching his mask. Blue grabbed Red by the shoulder and jerked his head in the direction of the gates, suggesting it was time to go.

In the distance, police sirens wailed ominously, but they were too late.

Too late.

My hands shook as I stared out at the body of my father, lying abandoned on the ground, bleeding all over the fresh layer of asphalt he’d paid to have installed last week. The river of red wound its way from his body to the edge of the lawn, seeping into the dirt to disappear from sight.

My mind was a mess, thoughts jumbled, cut off and fractured, just like the part of me that had, until now, clung to innocence and referred to her father as ‘daddy.’

My ears rang. I could feel a rapid, staccato beating in my temples, in the depths of my chest. Air was hard to swallow, and it felt like I couldn’t get enough of it. I just barely managed to keep from pissing myself as I stood there, watching these men prepare to disappear back from wherever they came from–the pits of hell, most likely–like they’d been nothing but a figment of my imagination.

Enough, Jackal. He’s dead.

Jackal.

A feral dog. How fitting.

Should I run and hide? Should I duck down in case they looked back and saw me standing here, and decided to end me next? Surely it wasn’t a smart idea to leave a witness. If they’d seen me, maybe I’d be the next one lying on the asphalt, bleeding out, the only sound escaping me a death rattle.

As their tires kicked up gravel and dirt and blood, they peeled out and disappeared from sight, leaving me still standing there in the dark of my father’s office, still coated in the perfect arc of his blood, the sound of his screams still echoing in my head.

And as the first police lights reflected on the black driveway my father had just paid to have re-paved, I swore I’d make those killers pay for what they’d done tonight.

I’d find them. I’d find them all and make them suffer.

And when I finally got my revenge, I’d make sure they remembered my name. Remembered why I’d come for them in the first place.

They’d go to hell with the knowledge that they left a witness that night. And just like they took my father’s life, I would take theirs.

I’ll see you dogs in hell. Just you wait.