Chapter 16
RUDE VISITORS
The sun has faded into orange, and the night is hinting it may fall on me any time now when I curve into my driveway. No strangers in sight? Nope. I double-check. Still nope, and I lower the gun to the seat, then send a text to Ron telling them I’ve reached home.
The garage door is hopeless at opening automatically so I unlock the car door then shove it open, though the slope I’m on makes it try to close on me.
Hate that. I kick it open again and am halfway out when someone grabs my throat and shoulder and throws me out of the car.
He’s grabbing for my wrist, but I’m cursing and kicking.
You are not taking me down without a fight.
Someone else turns up to help him, and I’m thrust facedown into my car seat, having turned this way and that before being pinned here. I spit out some grit, buck backward, try to unleash a kick but only get air. He sits on my back, twists my wrist higher on my back, chokes me harder.
I’m wheezing, having trouble breathing. His grip on my neck fails to loosen.
The second man laughs. “Shall I grab her legs?”
“No. Stay the fuck still, girl. This is just a damn warning,” the first man growls in my ear.
“You are to desist and leave town. Hold fucking still while we add a little decoration to your ass. Shut up. Don’t say nothing, while I just do a little exploring…
” He chuckles and releases my throat, lets me breathe, putting that hand to my waistband, smoothing it downward until his hand is between my legs. “Give me that—”
There’s a thud that seems to rock him, that shakes me, a muffled cry.
Boots scrape on the gravel. He grunts, his weight on me eases, then his hands are whipped away, and he’s gone.
After another series of thuds and a groan, somebody falls.
Something solid lands across the backs of my legs as I push myself off the seat, but it’s quickly removed. I think that was an arm.
Coughing, spitting out dirt that somehow ended up in my mouth, I stagger to my feet. While I swallow to check my throat is okay, I use the car as a prop.
The only man standing is etched in shadow against the last of the sun, but it’s Kail.
I know it by his shape and the glimpse of a suture line on his neck.
He’s breathing softly, chest rising like normal.
And my attackers, in uniform black, are sprawled in a heap to his left and right.
One is still and I’m guessing dead. The other sighs once and twitches then is still.
“Kail.” What has he done? Saved me, I think. Hand on my throat, I push myself upright even as he levers one of my attackers off the ground and over his shoulder.
“Stay.” That’s said to me. Swaying on wobbly legs, I’m unsure if anything but staying is possible.
“Hey…” I rasp and swallow to lose the roughness in my throat, then have to stop.
He glances at the remaining body, kicks it once. “He’s dead. Go inside.” He points. “Lock yourself in. I’ll be back but first I need to get rid of these.”
Two corpses are damning evidence.
I’ve never had to clean up after a murder. Two. Murders.
The engine is still running.
He glares at me as I slip back into the driver’s seat and run the car forward into the garage. Behind me, the door rolls down and bangs shut, bringing utter darkness.
When I go to the side of the garage and look through the small window, he jogs past, heading for the backyard with body number one slung over his shoulder.
Where the fuck is he going? If he buries it in my yard…
no…he wouldn’t. Fumbling my way around, I find the door into the house, open it, shut it, fall back onto it.
Stay?
How dare he command me.
Except he just saved me from those two pigs. It was a warning, they said. Clay sent them, and he’s threatened worse to come if I don’t leave, as in ‘not breathing’ will be next.
Kail is scary as fuck, but he’s also my best bet to go forward with this investigation into Dad’s death. Calling it an investigation is pompous. More like poking about and seeing what moves. FAFO? I think…I think, tonight has been the FO phase.
So, am I just going to let him go wherever he’s going and do nothing but stay?
My neck is sore to touch, I’ve aches in my back, and bruising will no doubt come. A shotgun waits in the car. Wherever Kail is going to bury those guys, it won’t be nearby.
Adrenalin is riding me, and I hold up one visibly trembling hand. I’m. If I’m doing anything, then I need to go do it, right now. Suck it up, Buttercup. Your prince is not riding down the hill on a stallion.
Prince? I giggle. Subconscious, was that supposed to mean Kail? I mean WTF.
I roll my shoulders to test what bits are still functioning, heave in a deeper breath, then I hear him return, going in the direction of where body two awaits.
After sneaking into the garage and wriggling back the sliding window, I spy on Kail as he leaps the rear fence easily, despite carrying the body, then sprints…
fucking sprints up the slope toward the forested part of the mountain.
That’s difficult terrain. I chew over the notion of following him.
One year, my friends and I roamed through there on weekends when our parents thought we were elsewhere. We did stupid things and had fun, and succeeded, mostly, in not getting lost.
I can do this.
I go to the car, retrieve the shotgun, and thank my luck that I’m already wearing long pants with shoes I can hike in. The light is still good enough to follow him, if I’m quick and careful. I just need to make sure I don’t trip and blow my head off.
Wherever he aims to take them, he must shuttle two bodies, and that will slow him down.
Doable.
I stop to grab a flashlight as I jog through the house, then exit out the back, carefully climb over my fence, and head upslope, following his trail.
It’s not difficult because he’s doubling back constantly, and I catch flashes of him above me, though as night creeps in under the tall trees, I’m feeling in dire need of that flashlight.
I stop to text the McCluskers, then muse on what to say. If I say nothing they might come looking and see signs of a struggle. I’m not comfortable getting the cops involved. Not yet.
HAILEY: Got home OK. See you tomorrow.
I hope that is the right thing to do.
In another twenty minutes the need for light is even more crucial. How far is he going?
Falling down a hole or a slope is possible. If I use the light, he might see he’s being followed. How is he still running? Does he have night vision?
“Maybe the fucker is a bat,” I murmur and fumble the small LED light from my pocket, looping the lanyard over my wrist. This thing is super bright and might light up the mountain enough to show half the town someone is up here. “Should I?” I whisper, finger toying with the switch.
“No.”
The voice is male and behind me. I gasp, swinging to see if it’s—
He pushes me forward onto a large tree trunk, plucks away the shotgun, and holds me there.
His strength is impossible to fight; it’s like resisting a truck.
The hand splayed on my back is swapped for a knee wedging onto me.
He pulls the flashlight from my fingers.
I can move my arms, but reaching backward to try to grab his leg only gets my wrists trapped.
Something is looped on them and tightened.
My face is sideways, my cheek pressed onto bark. Luckily, the branches are higher.
I blink, groaning in the hope that’ll get me a less rough treatment.
“Kail? Kail!”
Has to be Kail. He says nothing. A cloth is placed over my head and tied there. Then I’m spun to sit on my ass and one ankle is zip tied to what must be a tree root.
“I’ll be back.”
“Oh fuck. It is you.” Relief swoops in on me. Thank god. I was getting worried it was not my frankenstruct…whatever he is. Tying me up does not say friend.
Twigs snap as he departs, leaving me helpless and fastened to a tree, in the middle of the forest on a mountain above Revenant, at night. With a bag on my head.
My inhalation sucks it onto my mouth, so I spit it out. “You douchebag asshole…”
More crunching occurs, coming closer.
The cloth is dragged off my head. “Fixed.”
I purse my lips and rasp out, “Forgiven.”
“Huh.”
There’s a long moment where he stares down at me, and I do the same, looking up at him. Concern is obvious in the wrinkles on his forehead and angle of his lips. He palms the side of my face where it’s grazed, and I wince.
“They’re lucky they’re dead.”
Then he leans in and presses his mouth to mine in a beautifully possessive kiss and, for a second, my heart stops to appreciate the sensation. The softness, the hush of our breathing. As he lifts away and retreats from me, his warmth fades, but the rush of that all-too-sexual contact lingers.
My wrists remain behind me, where the zip ties compel me to keep them, and I should be unhappy with that forced kiss, but…
I am so undone. My lips tingle, remembering the feel of him, the pressure even as I sighed into his questing mouth. His eyes follow the rise and fall of my breasts, and he makes this small animal sound before he leans in again. His nose touches mine.
“Dearest Hailey, I forgot this.”
When he comes in for another kiss, I close my eyes. With his hand wrapped about my jaw, he tilts my head upward then bites the angle of my neck and shoulder, hard. I gasp as his teeth sink into muscle.
When he lets go, my flesh is stinging and I’m sure there will be marks.
Disbelieving, I search for the reason on his face.
“Much better.” Head cocked, he considers me.
Then he slips to the right past the tree, and disappears from my view.
I am tempted to swear, wish I could touch my neck, to feel what he did there. Instead, I wrap up that moment in threads of memory and put it away, carefully, so I can take it out and think about it another time.
Silence descends. I should hate him for that.
I should. But the repetitive throb from his teeth constantly reminds me of what he did to me the night before.
My brain decides to kick back in.
He’s not really forgiven for tying me up. Why has he made me stay here? Is he worried I’ll see where the bodies go? I witnessed the murder, and it can’t get more incriminating.
I take in my bound situation, the small hurts, that I can’t see much past a few yards, and I’m totally alone.
“Fuck this.” I test all the zip ties for looseness. Why did he have zip ties on him?
The other men must have had them. Oh. Oh no. Now that is frightening.
Ten minutes of wriggling, swearing, and twisting leave me with eroded skin at ankles and wrists. If I go further, try harder, I will make myself bleed, badly. That’s not smart. Not when I’m here. Are the night noises only coming from bugs?
Probably. God, I hope so.
I slump onto the tree and ground and give up trying to get free. Cautiously, I wriggle my butt to relocate a broken branch that’s poking into me. I stop and listen. I should stay still and try not to breathe loudly. What was that crunching to the left?
Was that a possum, or something worse? I remain quiet and keep listening.
If I get chewed on by some predator, I will rescind calling him my rescuer.
Above me, an owl hoots then I hear the soft flap as it glides across my front to somewhere way up high. If I stare long enough…is that it?
A pair of eyes glints in the moonlight. Then another pair opens below those, then another, each pair smaller than the one above. Those appear to be all on the one bird.
Before I can truly translate the shadows and faint light, it vanishes into the darkness.
That was the six-eyed owl.
I’m living in a weird age. What else is out here? Teletubbies? I’d rather those than Chucky the vengeful doll or a six-eyed owl.
Twisting my wrists gets me nowhere, though I’ve learned and I’m quiet.
I’m not trying that hard. A purr interrupts me.
Squiggle cat emerges, stage left, carefully stalking across the fallen foliage while making almost no noise except for that comforting purr.
It headbutts my side, gives me a suspicious and unhappy look as if to say, why no pats?
“Sorry. No can do.”
It pads across my thigh, wanders to the right, sniffs a bug or something among the leaf litter, then leaps away chasing moonbeams or mice.
“Alone again. That’s a song, isn’t it?” I whisper.
And Kail is off burying the dead.
If he comes back and lets me go, I will talk to him about…everything.
If he returns and does something bad to me, I am fucked.
That makes me try to get free again. I hiss through my teeth at my ankle, thinking. Can a person ever really regret not sawing off a leg to get loose?
I have no saw.
That movie sucked anyway.