Chapter 7 #2
“Nothing, probably,” I said. “You just got noticed by the wrong person. You came in flaunting your legs and your tits.” I couldn’t help my disapproving tone. “You drew attention to yourself. I tried to warn you off.”
She didn’t respond to that. Just looked clouded and confused.
“Just drink the fucking chocolate, Sandee,” I said curtly. “You’ll make my life harder if you faint, or go into shock.”
There it was, that flash of anger I was angling for. “I won’t faint,” she said haughtily, and then took a careful sip of the chocolate drink.
I crouched in front of her, edging back when she cringed away.
“Listen up,” I said. “If you’re worried about what you said to me at the prison, don’t be. You came on real strong during our talk, but that was just a fantasy for you, and I won’t hold you to it. Understand? Tell me you understand.”
Her lips were trembling. She nodded.
“We’ll just hole up here until I can get us out safely,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “When I figure out someplace where you’ll be safe.”
“Just get me to my car,” she said swiftly. “I’ll go straight home. I’ll never say a word, to anyone, ever. You can forget you ever met me.”
“Too late for that, Sandee. Your car is full of bullet holes, and it has frozen cadavers all around it,” I told her, and then the thought hit me, like a splash of ice water. Jesus, I was getting sloppy. “Shit. Have you got a phone on you?”
She just blinked at me. Anxious, confused, innocent. She had to be stalling, because of course she had a phone. “Give me your fucking phone, Sandee. Now.”
She moved stiffly as she unzipped her coat, holding it closed over herself as if she were afraid of giving me a glimpse of her chest She fumbled at an inside pocket, and pulled out a smartphone with a hot pink Hello Kitty phone case.
She handed it over without meeting my eyes.
I swiped the screen, and hit the passcode prompt. “What’s your password?”
She shot me an embarrassed look. “FreeJamesCraig884.”
Whoa. That was alarming, but I shined it on and entered the password without comment. It took me to a hot picture of Sandee dressed up in an old-time saloon girl outfit with two other girls. Lots of cleavage and dazzling smiles on display. Sandee was the prettiest of the trio.
I looked through her chat app. There were messages from someone named Willie.
He was evidently her boss at the roadhouse.
I skimmed a series of ranting, angry texts about her not showing up for a bartending shift.
There were chats with two girls named Kelly and Loretta, heavy with emojis and colorful stickers.
Kelly and Loretta seemed fun-loving, man-crazy girls. No more or less than what I’d expect.
“Are Kelly and Loretta the girls in your wallpaper picture?” I asked.
She looked panicked. “You’re not gonna do something bad to them, are you?”
“Nope,” I said, scrolling through the chats. “I hope I never lay eyes on them.”
Her fitness app told me she logged 12,000 steps a day, her heartbeat averaged around 71, and her blood pressure was well within the norm. Huh. Good for her.
I pulled the battery out of her phone and stuck it all into my bag for further study later on. “I’m going to clean up in the bathroom,” I said. “Don’t move, and don’t touch anything. Finish your chocolate. And be good. Understand?”
She gave me a jerky nod, still not meeting my eyes.
I rifled through the boxes in the corner, a gift from my former self, five months before.
Clothes, rope, tools. The guns were all stored in the safe, other than the gun I’d hidden inside the Jeep.
I brought that one into the bathroom with me, along with the first-aid supplies, the fresh clothes.
All I needed was to turn around and find Sandee holding my own gun to my head. Like the punchline to a bad joke.
I left the bathroom door open as I stripped off the bloody coverall. I was monitoring her in the mirror the whole time. No more surprises.
She huddled in her chair, dazed and confused. She looked like exactly what her letters and phone suggested she was. A lost, lonely girl with no family behind her, a crap job, plenty of self-destructive tendencies, and a desperate need to overcompensate.
But she was smarter than anyone gave her credit for, and she’d gotten bored.
Boredom could be deadly.
She’d told me about her hard-luck childhood in her letters.
At great length. Heart-tugging, hair-raising tales of abuse and neglect in the foster care system.
One story in particular had creeped me out the most. The fanatic religious couple who had chained her up in the basement when she was seven because she was so “bad.” God, who did that to a defenseless little kid?
No wonder she was bouncing off the walls.
Her emotional fragility was so clear. As if she were literally advertising to be abused by a psychopathic predator. As if she actively sought the suffering that would bring her. It made me scared for her. Angry at the assholes who had hurt her.
And knowing all this? It should be a huge dick-wilting turn off for me. But no.
I could drive railroad spikes with this hard-on.