Chapter 2
Thea
“Are you fucking serious right now?” I asked, lifting my head and turning around to look at Jude.
“Whatcha got in the trunk?” he asked, grinning his stupid grin at me.
“What are the chances of you getting out of the car and going home?” I grumbled half-heartedly.
“Less than zero,” he cheerfully answered.
Sometimes I just wanted to punch stupid Jude in his stupid face. Is this what having brothers was supposed to be like? Because if so, Jude was killing it.
The fucking jerk face.
“Don’t you have a sheriff to harass?” I tried one last time.
“Nope! Paul is off tonight.”
I didn’t bother replying. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the spot, and made my way out of the lot and toward the little backwoods, abandoned cabin not too far away that I’d discovered.
Jude didn’t bother to ask where we were going.
He just hummed along with the radio, which was still quietly playing the Beatles.
The fucker had even messed with my streaming.
Whatever. He obviously wasn’t planning on interfering, because there was no way he didn’t know who was in the trunk.
So fine, I’d have a little help with Rick the Dick.
I had a feeling Jude would be okay with bending the rules.
After all, Liam and Atlas had threatened Rick.
(I think that had pissed Josh off. But then again, I wasn’t planning on threatening Rick in order to make him stay away from Josh.
I was planning on teaching him an important life lesson.)
We drove for about a half hour, and I made my way into a more secluded area, eventually pulling off a two-lane road and onto a barely noticeable dirt side road. I drove for another mile, then cut off onto a path that barely fit the car. We eventually pulled into an open area that housed the cabin.
“Very horror movie, Thea. Love the ambiance,” Jude commented.
He hopped out of the car, and I heard him opening the trunk and grabbing Rick to bring him inside. I was still sitting in the driver’s set, cursing the existence of brothers.
Because the cabin wasn’t empty.
“Jude, who the fuck is here?” I shouted to his back as he walked up the steps, Rick thrown over his shoulder.
He just waved a hand at me, kicking the door to the cabin open.
I probably should have been able to smell who was here, but again—I hadn’t really mastered the whole smell thing. I felt that someone was here as soon as I’d pulled in, and I somehow knew it was one of the hellhounds, but I hadn’t quite figured out how to tell them all apart yet.
I sighed and got out of the car. I guessed there was only one way to find out.
I trudged up the stairs and looked through the open door. Liam was sitting at a rickety table inside the one room cabin, Jude behind his shoulder, staring at whatever he was doing. Rick the Dick had been unceremoniously dumped on the floor.
“I’m wiping your presence and any signs of your car from any cameras at or on the way to the club, along with traces of the idiot’s rideshare so he could go break into your car,” Liam said, typing away at the computer.
Well, at least I wasn’t “the idiot.” That counted for something, I guess. I gave Jude a dirty look, but he just smiled and winked at me.
“He didn’t rat you out. I covered your tracks after you hacked into Rick’s therapist’s files. I have no idea how Jude knew what you were up to,” Liam admitted, not looking up from his computer.
“My keen intuition, baby,” Jude joked, grabbing one of the other chairs at the table, flipping it around, and sitting in it.
I was at the end of my fucking patience. Here I was, just trying to torture a guy in a little peace, and everyone had to butt in and get involved. I still didn’t know how they even figured out what I was doing. Like, were they tracking me?
Well, Liam probably was, but how the fuck had Jude known if Liam hadn’t told him?
With that, I heard the sound of an engine, and I felt another hellhound presence.
Motherfucker.
The engine stopped, a door slammed, and two seconds later, Dexter walked in the front door, dropped a duffel bag at his feet, and smiled like nothing whatsoever was wrong. “Did I miss the fun?”
He spotted Liam and frowned. “Hey, you didn’t win—you don’t get to stay.”
“I know, I know. I’m just covering everyone’s tracks,” Liam complained.
“Still, Corbin and Atlas are gonna be pissed if you’re here and they didn’t get to come,” Dexter said.
I threw my hands up in the air. “What the fuck? Did you guys draw straws on who got to come?”
“Wrestled,” Jude stated, popping something into his mouth.
I turned and stared at him. He had pulled out… were those cookies? Was he eating fucking cookies? Where had he even gotten cookies? Had they been shoved down his pants? Or hidden somewhere in this decrepit, nasty-assed cabin? Because… ewwww.
Liam turned around and grabbed one, and I watched as Dexter walked over to join the circus.
“Yup,” he said. “We wrestled, and Jude and I won. We decided only three of us could come and three of us had to stay home.”
“You decided…” I said, trailing off.
Liam stopped trying to grab a cookie. “Yeah, we didn’t include Wilder.
He probably knows what we’re up to, but he didn’t say anything, so we figured best not to mention it.
Plausible deniability. Since there’s six of us in total, three seemed like a good compromise.
” Liam shrugged, like that made total sense.
I was surrounded by lunatics. They were all fucking crazy.
“Three of you?” I asked. Because I wasn’t asking about the whole wrestling thing, and because Jude and Dexter were only two people.
“Yeah. Three of Josh’s new adopted kids, because he has great step-dad vibes. You, me, and Dexter. So Stalker Boy here has to go watch from his hidden cameras, or Corbin and Atlas are gonna be pissed,” Jude said, giving Liam a shove.
Liam growled, but he closed the computer. “I told you I was just covering tracks. Since you’re fucking morons.” He looked at me then. “No offense, Thea. You’re not nearly as bad as them. Although you could cover your tracks a little better on hacking. We’ll chat.”
With that, he got up and walked out of the cabin.
I watched him go, then turned around and stared at Jude and Dexter.
Jude was still eating cookies, and he’d gotten up and walked over to Rick the Dick, prodding the body with his toe as if to check if he was awake.
Dexter had grabbed his bag and brought it over to the table, and he was pulling out knives, wrenches, and even a screwdriver, gently caressing each one in a way that wasn’t at all creepy. Really.
What. The. Fuck.
“Do you think we broke her?” Dexter asked, chomping on potato chips.
“Nah. It’s probably a girl thing,” Jude answered, reaching into the bag and grabbing some more chips.
I wasn’t asking why it would be a “girl thing.” I also wasn’t asking where the snacks came from. Because boys would eat anything. Fucking gross. Okay, maybe not all boys, but these boys. They were half feral, juvenile, immature man-children.
“You want some, Thea? We saved you some curly chips. Toby says they’re the best,” Dexter said, shaking the bag in my direction. Jude nodded his head in agreement, smiling at me.
I sighed. Okay, so they were also oddly sort of sweet, even if they were complete idiots. I now understood every television show and book where women complained about their brothers. They were annoying as fuck, but they were also sort of… I don’t know, entertaining? Cute?
I sat down in one of the remaining chairs—there were four, but Rick the Dick was still unconscious on the floor, so he didn’t need one yet.
“So what did you guys have planned? What were your intentions?” I asked.
I could be a team player. I could adjust my plans and work with my… new family. After all, I was doing this for Josh, and I guess they had just as much right to revenge, if not more of a right to it. They’d known Josh longer than me.
I was kinda thrown off, though, because I was met with two totally blank stares.
They looked at me, then they looked at each other, then they looked at me.
“Well, uh…” Dexter started.
Jude rubbed the back of his neck. “See, we thought this was your plan, and we didn’t want to butt in or anything, so we didn’t come up with a plan.”
“Not that we totally can’t!” Dexter added. “We can totally think on our feet!”
“Yup! We can torture him or psychologically scar him. We just thought you had something planned already,” Jude added.
“You didn’t want to butt in…” I said slowly.
They both nodded their heads. The irony almost made me laugh out loud, because that’s exactly what they were doing—butting the fuck in. But at least they weren’t gonna take over.
Rick the Dick groaned a little, and there was a slight ruffling sound as his body moved a bit on the ground. Dexter had tied his arms and legs together, so at least I didn’t have to worry about him running.
“Ok,” I said, standing up and dusting off my hands. “Looks like Rick the Dick is waking up.”
I was about to go grab him, but Dexter ran over and hauled him up. Jude pulled over the chair, and Dexter sat him on it, looking at me.
“Yeah, I guess tie him to the chair,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
It didn’t look terribly sturdy, but if Rick fell on his head, I wasn’t gonna feel bad.
“You want duct tape or zip ties?” Jude asked, going to look in Dexter’s bag.
“Duct tape can rip hair and skin off with its removal, which is painful but not often permanently disfiguring. Zip ties can cut into the skin, and if applied tightly enough, they can lead to numbness and nerve damage, causing at least somewhat permanent damage,” Dexter explained.
“How permanent?” Jude asked. “It might be fun to maim him.”
“Not sure,” Dexter shrugged. “I killed the hellbound soul after a week. If he’d gotten medical treatment, surgery, and physical therapy, I’m not sure what would’ve happened. Toby just had to wing it on figuring that stuff out for his book.”
“Zip ties,” I decided, cutting off their discussion.
A little extra pain sounded good to me, and I wasn’t gonna ask about Dexter experimenting on rotten souls to get info for his author boyfriend to add realistic details to his books. Toby was sweet, but he was also odd as hell. And bloodthirsty.
“So,” I asked as they finished securing Rick, “are you guys gonna do everything while I just stand here looking pretty?”
“You aren’t standing there looking pretty!” Dexter defended.
Jude smacked him on the back of the head. “Of course you look pretty, Thea. Dexter meant we aren’t gonna let you just stand there.”
“Yeah. We figured we’d do all the not fun stuff, like securing the victim and cleaning up the mess and stuff, and we’ll leave all the fun stuff, like the torture, up to you,” Dexter added.
“Yup. And we can figure out what to do with Rick at the end of it, too. We can drop him off somewhere, or we can get Corbin to wipe his memory,” Jude added.
“Corbin argued he ought to be able to come for that reason alone, but I might’ve thrown a rock toward his crow—not like I was gonna hit it—and distracted him, so I won that round,” Dexter admitted.
Jude chuckled, “You’re totally gonna get shit on for at least a week, you know. Probably a month.”
Dexter just shrugged, like it was a price he was willing to pay.
Okay then. I guessed the rest was up to me.
Rick moaned a little bit, and I thought he was probably waking up. That meant it was show time. I’d never had an audience before. I’d never tortured anyone with help, either, so this whole thing was a little weird. There was also one other little problem.
I really hadn’t been planning on letting Rick go when I was done.