Chapter 13 #2
Another 18-wheeler pulls up, identical to the one parked.
It’s ready to exchange the human beings in the back.
The door opens, and a short, curvy, beautiful, black woman climbs out, dressed in dark jeans and a dark shirt.
Brown curly hair is tucked under a trucker hat.
An old school medical bag bangs against her hips as she walks.
I nod to her, and she nods back. “Stone.”
“Livia.”
She stands next to Scout, and he looks at her.
His jaw is tight as he crosses his tattooed arms. He’s angry.
She stares up at him like he’s a hero, and he looks at her like he wants to swallow her whole.
The exchange between them makes me raise an eyebrow.
Then it disappears, and then she shifts away.
It’s subtle. I’ve known Olivia for a few years.
She’s Dr. Campbell’s daughter. She’s also a doctor.
Her father has no idea that she’s involved with the Legion Lords, helping to check on the men, women, and children that we rescue.
We’ve tried to stop her, but once she found out what the Mestizos were doing, she committed to helping.
“What’s the status?” She asks, all business. “We need to get them checked out.”
Scout answers, “150. Dehydrated. Seventy women. Twenty men. The rest are children ranging from 2 to 16.”
“Any other signs of injury?”
Scout nods and says softly, “Three possible SAs. Children.” Livia’s eyes close as she inhales. When her eyes open, they’re haunted. “Four of the men are pretty banged up.”
She walks towards the back of the truck that Cade holds open for her. When she approaches, she hugs him, and Scout growls. “What the fuck is she doing here, Stone?”
I see it on his face: the jealousy. Then I turn back to watch Cade helping Livia into the truck, his hands on her hips. He steps forward, and I push him back. “Cool it.”
He shoves my hand away and scrubs his hands over his face, and then raises his head to the sky.
“I can’t stop her. And we need her.”
“She doesn’t belong around this shit.”
He turns his glacial eyes to me. I’ve known him for years. Met him in the army, along with Cade and Easton. After we all left and I went to jail, he, Easton, and Cade found Riggs and patched into the Legion Lords. His backstory is even more fucked up than mine.
“You’re right. She doesn’t belong in this shit.
” She’s a respected doctor who is doing illegal shit to help save innocent people.
We all know she’s putting a lot on the line.
“But neither do they.” I gesture with my chin to the long line of women and children being helped out of the back of the trailer.
They move like sheep, probably so conditioned to do what they are told.
Cade, Onyx, and Easton help them into the back of the new 18-wheeler.
The back is filled with food and sleeping pallets.
It will hold them down until they reach the safe house we've created to help care for them.
“Remember the goal is bigger than any one of us.”
He nods and walks away, and I can feel for him because I’m just as distracted by a woman, a woman who has no idea that a man is watching her, stalking her, imagining fucking her while she’s covered in her blood. A man who is good friends with her brother.
Onyx heads to me. “You need me?”
“Not for the rest of the night. Just take care of the three guards.”
“Done.”
Which means they’re already dead. Onyx is nothing if not efficient. He doesn’t enjoy extending a murder the way I do. He’d much rather use his silencer and get the job done quickly. Clean-up is his expertise. The bodies will never be found again.
“Is the big one loaded up?”
“Yeah, I put him in the van with the other two. Do you want me to drop him off at your place?”
“Yeah. I’ll find him when I’m ready.”
He nods, not asking me more. He knows about my predilection to hunt them before I kill.
I could just shoot him, but playing with bodies, manipulating them, and then skinning each one is fucking delicious.
The feel of their skin stretching before I tan each inch to preserve it is like nothing else.
The final act of tattooing each one using the burned ash is god-like, a visit to Elysium.
“There’s a body in the bushes. Forty feet in.
Leave it there, but strip him of any discerning information.
” It will be another unexplained dead body.
Onyx heads in that direction. Scout starts the new rig; its engine hums. Cade closes the doors, and it pulls away. The original truck is abandoned on a highway, the human cargo gone.
“Fucking bastard. Let me go.”
“So you do speak. I wondered.”
Bending, I stoop next to the guard leaning against a large oak tree. No longer as fat as before, he lifts his mottled face up to me before he closes his eyes again.
A hard slap to his face has his eyes springing open again. “No. No. No. I want you to stay awake, friend. We need to talk.”
My prisoner starts cursing at me, and I chuckle.
He has some spirit left. He won’t for much longer, but for now I’ll let him insult me.
He looks very different from how he looked four days ago when Onyx dropped him off in my woods, bound and gagged.
My camera picked up his heat signature immediately.
I followed him out and removed his hand and leg restraints.
It wasn’t much fun if they just lay there.
It was the hope of escape that enhanced my bloodlust.
So I let him run, just as I do with all the others.
I let them try to survive in the 80-acre wooded area filled with coyotes, foxes, and poisonous snakes.
There’s a small lake that is about 50 feet deep, filled with aquatic life and temperature ranges stratification to support diverse life and to dispose of rotting flesh.
It’s an ecosystem that I’ve created. Enough edible plants are growing so that he could survive.
I like to let them believe they have a chance to escape their living tomb.
I watched and waited. It didn’t take long.
He stepped into one of my bear traps. Watching him screaming, moaning, my cock getting harder and harder.
I enjoy the pain he’s feeling. My level of sadism has grown since I first stabbed my stepfather’s body and removed his head with a hacksaw.
Watching them slowly bleed to death, or listening to them suffer through the torture of me removing their genitals or their other appendages, feels damn good.
Right now, my fingers itch to cut him. Watch him bleed.
I crouch down next to him and smile at the condition of his body.
He’s covered in poison ivy blisters. One eye is completely swollen.
His lips are cracked from thirst and hunger.
There are cuts and abrasions on his face.
He’s sweaty and even smellier than before.
My eyes travel to his foot. The bone is most likely broken, or he may have severed tendons when his weight triggered the trap.
I’ll know once I start dismembering him.
Crusted blood coats the festering wound.
It must have bled profusely, but now some has coagulated, but with the heat and the multitude of microbes, the wound is infected.
Yellowish pus oozes out around the mangled muscle and fat.
I spot a few maggots crawling around, feeding off his dying body.
All evidence that the flies are well acquainted with my prisoner. His good eye is glazed with pain.
I ask him in Spanish. “Where does El Jefe hide?”
Slowly he lifts his head, “I fucking told you. I don’t know. No one’s ever seen him. He’s like you. A ghost.” Each sentence is pained, accompanied by breathless pants.
“So who gives you the orders?”
“His enforcers. But everything comes from someone even higher than El Jefe. He’s a billionaire or something.
He owns half of New York. Everyone is involved.
The senators. The governors.” He flops back down on the ground.
“Just kill me. I’m already dead once they know you have me.
” He laughs, his lip cracking more, blood collecting in each opening.
“One day they will find you, El Búho. Even the best predators can be hunted and brought down.”
The mockery in his tone generates memories of Ivory and Angel’s broken bodies, reminding me of their helplessness.
It ignites the rage in me, and I pull out his tongue and slice through it neatly, relishing his garbled screams. He drops to his knees, grabbing his mouth, choking on his blood.
I step back and watch him struggle to catch his breath.
He starts to crawl away, low moans coming from his mouth.
He can no longer talk, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to run again, dragging his useless, rotting foot behind him.
I easily trail him, stepping on the wound once I get close enough.
I smile at his weak attempts to remove my hand.
I whisper the words of atonement for Angel and Ivory, “Iniuriam tuam ulciscar.” I pull out my second knife, the one I’ll use to end his miserable life.
He flops to his side and holds out his hand, an entreaty in his gaze, a plea for clemency or grace, but I don’t have any goodwill left for men like him.
The image of the little girl from a few days ago flies through my mind.
God knows what fate she would have suffered.
The same as Angel, a voice echoes inside my head.