Chapter 3
NIC
“ Y ou're a hard man to track down, Pearce.” I lean forward from the backseat where I’ve been hiding when he eventually gets into the driver's seat of his SUV.
“Wh…who are you?” His voice trembles when he feels the barrel of my Glock press into the back of his skull.
“Me? I’m about to become your worst fucking nightmare. Now, get driving.” I keep my weapon against him as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main street. Lucky for me, this flash cunt has blacked-out windows so I’ll go undetected.
“Where am I driving to?” he asks nervously as his eyes flick up to his rearview mirror.
“Get on the freeway and head west,” I tell him, trying my best to remain calm. I’ve waited weeks for this and I won’t blow his brains out before I make him suffer.
“If it’s money?—”
“I don’t want your money,” I cut him off.
“Well, if it’s not that, what is it?” The bastard sounds as if he’s going to cry and when I look behind us to check we’re not being followed, my hood drops and I hear him gasp.
“It’s you! The…The psycho from the club.” He says his thoughts out loud.
“You want to watch who you’re calling a psycho there, Tim.” I use his real name this time. “How are the wife and kids?”
“Now, you…whatever this is, you leave them out of this.”
“Does your wife know about your online dating habits, Tim?” I talk over him. “Does she know about the drugs you’ve been slipping into the drinks of the women you met up with?” I make an indent in his scalp when I think about what might have happened to Lorna had I not been there to intervene that night. How her sweet, innocent pussy could have so easily been taken by him, instead of me. In fact, I’ve been obsessed with the thought since that morning I dropped her home.
“No…no. My wife knows nothing.” He shakes his head and starts to fucking cry.
“You weak-ass pussy, having to drug a girl to get her to sleep with you. Scared of your wife. Scared of me. You know what, Tim? If I were you, I think I’d have to pretend to be someone else, too.”
“Who are you?”
“I work for Dario DeMarco, and Dario does not tolerate people who try to drug unsuspecting females in his club.”
“I…I didn’t d–”
“Save your breath, we’ve got cameras at all angles. I went back and watched you fucking do it.”
All hope leaves his body in the next heavy breath he makes.
“So, what is this, you drive me out somewhere remote, and then you shoot me?” He keeps flicking his eyes between the road and the mirror where my eyes are peering at him.
“ Now you're catching on.” I laugh to myself as he continues driving along the freeway.
“You can’t kill me. I…just let me speak to this Dario guy. Let me apologize to him and the girl.”
Of course, that can’t happen. For starters, Dario knows nothing about this. If he did, it would mean I had to own up to giving a shit, and there is no way I was prepared to do that. I’m not even prepared to do that to myself.
“You will never see the girl again.” I lean forward and snarl in his ear. I don’t know how to describe the feeling that thinking about him touching her gives me. I know what envy feels like, and this far surpasses it. Whatever it is, is making me mad enough to want to blow this cunt’s brains all over the interior of his station wagon.
“There has to be an arrangement we can come to.”
“Take the next exit,” I ignore him, offering him further instruction, and when he checks his mirror and flicks on the indicator, I calculate in my head that we only have a few more miles to go.
“Please, reason with me. I have a family. A wife, two daughters.”
“Two daughters. You know what, Tim? That makes me want to kill you even more. How would you feel if one of those girls of yours went out for a drink with a guy they trusted and he slipped something in her drink? How would you feel if that guy intended on fucking your daughter without her consent?” I watch his eyes drop to his lap and leave him to think about that while we make the rest of our journey.
“You can pull up here,” I tell him when we get to an opening near the woodland, and when he does as he’s told, I get out the back and open the driver’s door for him. “Get out.” I keep the gun aimed at his head.
“Are you going to kill me?” He looks up at me, pathetically.
“I said get out.” I grab him by his suit jacket and rip him out of the seat.
“Please, I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do it again.” His voice trembles as I force him into the trees.
“You think this is some self-reflection bullshit?” I laugh at him. “I didn’t bring you here to make you a better person, Tim…” I shove the barrel of the gun into his head to make him move faster, and when we eventually get to the clearing he looks back at me warily when he sees the deep hole in the ground.
“ What the fuck is this? ”
“I prefer to go into these kind of situations prepared.” I shrug, gesturing for him to jump inside it.
“I’m not gonna just stand in there and let you shoot me,” he laughs through his tears as if I’m crazy.
“I don’t think you have much of a choice. Look around you, it’s a nice spot, a far better resting place than what you deserve. Now, get in the fucking hole.”
“I get it, you’re fucking with me.” He laughs again and this time I smile at him.
“Tim, get in the hole.”
I feel my cell start to vibrate and when I see Lorna’s name flashing up on the screen, I stare at it confused. I didn’t even think she had my number.
“There has to be something I can offer you.” Tim’s pathetic whine brings me back to the moment. Ignoring the call, I shove my phone back in my pocket.
“Believe me when I say, there is nothing you have that I want, more than you being dead.” I raise the gun and pull the trigger, putting a bullet between his eyes and causing his body to fall into the grave I came out here early this morning to dig for him. The noise of it going off makes birds scatter from the trees above, and I feel a rush of adrenaline from knowing that I put this fucker in the ground for her.
I get straight to work, filling in the space around Tim Pritchard’s body, and dragging debris over the freshly filled grave. Then I head for the truck that’s waiting for me a few hundred yards away and take out my cell. I have no idea why Lorna would have called me. And it’s pathetic that I’m letting it fuck with my head. She’s left a voicemail and as I light myself a cigarette, I hit play and listen to it.
“Hey, this is Lorna. I…um. I need to talk to you. Can you call me back once you get this? Thanks.” She doesn’t sound like her usual self. She sounds subdued and nervous. Exactly the same as she was at my sister’s house the other day. It has me wondering if she’s in some kind of trouble. I open the ‘find my phone’ app and search for her location. It’s not the first time I’ve done this in the past six weeks and I’ll admit that checking where she is from time to time has become a guilty pleasure of mine. One I should probably see a therapist about.
She’s not at home, she’s not at college and she’s not at Madalina’s place. It appears that she’s at my sister’s OB/GYN clinic.
It’s only been a few days since she delivered her little boy at home and they both got a clean bill of health. I can’t think why Madalina would be back there unless something was wrong. So, I immediately dial her number to check she’s okay.
“Hello,” she answers cheerily.
“You good?” I check.
“Yeah, I’m fine, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I was…I was just checking in.” I breathe a sigh of relief.
“How sweet, I’m just about to wake up your lazy nephew, all he seems to do is sleep.” She giggles.
“So you're at home?” I frown.
“Nic, I have two toddlers and a three-day-old baby, where else would I be?” She giggles back at me. “Are you okay? You sound…weird.”
“I’m fine.” I hang up the phone and check the app again. It’s still showing that Lorna is at the doctor's office. Maybe she’s picking up a prescription for Madalina, though I still don’t know why she’d call me. I decide to find out and call her back.
“Hello,” she answers quietly.
“You called, said we needed to talk?” I get straight to the point.
“Yeah, I…I can’t do that right now. Can I call you later?”
“Sure.”
“Great, I’ll call you tonight.”
“Wait, where are you?”
“What?”
“Where are you.”
“Nic, that’s none of your business.”
“Just answer the fucking question!” I snap at her, starting to wonder what the hell’s going on here.
“I’m just about to go into a lecture,” she lies to me, making me even more suspicious. “Look I have to go. Speak later, okay?” She hangs up and triggers my rage and when I look at the location and click on ‘route planner’ I see that the clinic is a forty-minute drive away. Crushing out my cigarette, I dust off my hands before getting into the truck and setting on the journey.
I keep my phone in one hand as I slam through the door to the reception, interrupting the calm music that's playing out of the speakers and seeming to get everyone's attention. I see no sign of Lorna, but I know she’s still in the building, the blue dot tells me she is.
“Can I help?” The lady behind the desk looks put out by my disturbance
“I’m looking for Lorna James.” I glance past the women sitting in the waiting room, some of them very obviously pregnant.
“Is she expecting you?” the receptionist asks.
“Yeah, she’s expecting me,” I tell a little lie of my own.
“Great, she’s in sonogram room 4. It’s just down the hall to your left. Dr Walsh is still with his last patient so I don’t think you’ve missed anything.” She smiles at me and I nod my head gratefully before rushing down the hall.