Chapter 12
Keith
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous of how Quinn screamed. What the fuck was he doing to her? My jealousy subsided the moment she walked out the door. That seemed way too quick; perhaps she was only faking it to get the hell out of there.
When she walked to the bar, I patted the pile of her clothing I gathered. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and offered it to her. She scowled. Immediately, I regretted my action, knowing exactly where her mind was going. “I’m not paying for sex. I am buying you lunch. We have to go soon, so we don’t have time to wine and dine you.” Smirking, I pulled out a one-hundred-dollar bill just to see her reaction. “You’re worth way more than twenty. How’s this?”
She continued to scowl and eyeball the money. Before I could yank it away, she snatched it from my grasp. “It was a joke! I wasn’t really going to give you that,” I complained, holding out my hand.
She grinned. “Too bad.” Holding it in her mouth, she pulled on her skirt.
“Oh, that’s wifey right there,” Taven called. “You’d better get on your knee right now, boy, cos she got you.”
Normally I would demand my money back, but the cockiness she displayed made me relent. Granted, work was slow, but losing one hundred dollars would just mean I had to dine on sandwiches for a couple of days.
Fully dressed, she sauntered up to me and offered the hundred.
I pushed her hand away. “Keep it. You snatched it fair and square.”
Her bright blue eyes were wide. “Are you sure? It’s a lot of money.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
It took a little while for her to realize that I was serious. I didn’t want to seem hard up for cash. I was, but she didn’t need to know that.
I escorted her to the Jeep and planted my lips on hers for a long moment until I forced myself away. Closing the door, I motioned for her to roll down the window. “I’m going to be busy the next couple of days. But I’ll call you Thursday; maybe we can hang out then.”
With a cute little smile, she began to roll the window up. “Maybe.”
I backed away with a smile. The moment she was out of sight, it fell. I had serious business to attend to. As much as I wanted to fantasize about our next encounter, I had to push any thought of Quinn, whatever her last name was, to the back of my mind.
Taven and Zane were already getting ready when I walked back into the clubhouse. We had one shot to get our hands on our next victim. He worked the night shift for months, and his wife worked from home. The only time she left during the day was to get their dog groomed. The plan was to leave our debit cards and cell phones at the clubhouse for our other brothers to pick up. We would ride to their place, leave our bikes there for them to use, and take a stolen car with out-of-state plates.
Our decoys would drive out of town to a nearby pumpkin festival and spend some money on useless crafts as long as they were allowed to pay with a card. There wouldn’t be any cameras to work with, and they would even take pictures with our phones. That way, we would have an alibi when the pigs sniffed around.
“So, why did you throw her in the diamond room?” Zane asked as he tossed his card onto the bar.
I shrugged, pulling mine out. “Didn’t you have fun?”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
Rolling my eyes, I sighed heavily and went to the front door. “It will be easier to keep track of just one woman. I don’t know about you, but I plan on getting plenty of pussy before I end up on death row. I hope you realize there is a very good chance we won’t survive this. We may not even get everyone on the list. Having too many women poking around is just going to make things harder. So far, Quinn only seems to want to fuck, and that’s perfect. No attachments, no feelings, just pussy, and that’s amazing. Nobody is forcing you to fuck her. If you don’t want to, don’t. I’m perfectly fine banging her on my own.”
“I still want to fuck her,” chuckled Taven.
Zane seemed satisfied with that answer and silently walked out the door. Taven and I quickly followed suit. When we got to our decoy’s clubhouse, we traded vehicles and rushed back into town. We sat across the street for a good ten minutes, waiting for the wife to leave. We had spent over a year casing the house, learning all its ins and outs. There was a doorbell camera, but it was only linked to the husband’s phone. We would have to put on our masks before we got out of the car. There were no other security measures, and they always left the back door open just in case something happened to their keys. The husband was bound to be sound asleep, and we had enough horse tranquilizer to keep him that way.
The hardest part about the entire situation would be getting to the backyard without anyone calling the police. If the wrong neighbor spotted us, they would surely call. There was no way three guys in pig masks weren’t up to something bad. Even with Halloween only a few weeks away, it still spelled trouble.
Typically, we would bring our victims back to the old park, but it was too risky to drag a body around in broad daylight. We had to do this quickly, in his own home.
“One, two, three!” I called, and together, we jumped out of the car. There was no traffic on the road, which made sense since most people were out to lunch after church. The privacy fence gate was unlocked, giving us easy access to the back door. It was quiet inside; the only sound was made by an old grandfather clock.
We had broken into the house three times before, making sure to memorize the layout leading to the master bedroom. Pulling out my hatchet, I tested the weight in my hand. Taven was behind me with a syringe of horse tranquilizer, and Zane took up the rear with the other supplies we would need.
All three of us froze the moment we passed the open bathroom. There the pig was, naked, pissing in the toilet. Before any of us could make a move, the man turned to us. “What the fuck?”
There was no more time. We had to subdue him, or the entire plan would be blown. Without thinking, I slammed my body against his naked form. The man screamed, and I tried to cover his mouth to muffle the sound. The problem was he was in very good shape. The adrenaline pumping through his body made it worse. As I tried to make room for Taven to stick the pig with the needle, the fucker pushed me into the bathroom mirror.
Taven and Zane clambered into the small room, trying their hardest to keep the man down. In the scuffle, the syringe clattered into the open bathtub. This was all going wrong. If we didn’t bring this to an end soon, all three of us would get locked up.
Picking up my hatchet, I shouted, “Move!”
They dropped to the side, and the moment there was an opening, I brought the blade down on the center of his skull. The pig’s body began to convulse uncontrollably before he slumped over.
Panting, I held my knees as I tried to control my shaking. After a moment, I stood, my lungs heaving as I tried to think of what to do. “Get the apple,” I ordered, grabbing the man’s legs, forcing his body to lay flat on the linoleum flooring. I had this entire plan perfectly thought out until this asshole decided he needed to take a piss. Now, I had to improvise.
I pressed the hatchet to the man’s lips, slicing his face from the corner of the lip to his jawbone.
“What are you doing?” Taven panted.
“We have to do this right. We can’t have the cops thinking we were too scared to finish the job.”
He began pacing the room, gripping his mask with both of his gloved hands. I ignored him, returning to my task of slicing the man’s face. I held out my hand, and when nothing was placed in it, I began flapping it around frantically. “Give me the fucking apple!”
As if pulled from a trance, Zane shuffled through the backpack and yanked out a fresh, crisp red apple. Pushing it into the man’s gaping jaw, I held my hand out again. “Knife!”
“We don’t have time for this, Keith!” pleaded Taven.
“Give me the fucking knife!”
When the handle hit my palm, I thrust it into the dead man’s abdomen. It was much harder to flay this man open than I hoped, but I had to do this right. The people who did us wrong would be gutted like the swine they were, I couldn’t alter that aspect. Not to mention, if we changed our routine, the cops would think we were scared or sloppy. The media might claim there was a copycat. I couldn’t have that; not if we wanted to get away with this. Everything had to be perfect.
Yanking at his innards, blood spilled onto the floor in pools. “Stay away from the blood. We can’t leave tracks.” They backed up, and I continued my work, dumping the man’s guts into the tub. “Give me the note.”
With a shaky hand, Zane passed it over. Big, bold letters that read “The third little piggy” contrasted starkly with the pristine paper.
How surprised the cops would be when they found out there were more than three by the time we were done. I looked down at the man’s hands and plunged the hatchet into one of the wrists.
“What are you doing?” hissed Zane.
“He grabbed me. There may be fibers or hairs that the cops can track. We’ll take the hands with us.” Hearing a gagging sound, I turned. “Don’t you dare fucking throw up!”
Gripping his stomach, Taven stepped back.
Shaking my head, I effectively removed both appendages from the victim and tossed them into a nearby trash can. Numb from exertion, I tried to force myself to my feet but slipped on the blood and hit my head on the edge of the tub. All I could do for a moment was sit there as the world swirled around me. The moment I felt something warm streak down my brow, I tried once again to get to my feet.
Groaning, I stepped around the pool of blood the best I could until I reached the waste basket. I pulled the bag out and tied it up, surveying the bloody area. There was a streak where I slipped, but there was no actual shoe print. I could burn my shoes, but the last thing I needed was for the cops to get my size. There couldn’t be that many men in the city with a size fifteen motorcycle boot. With that in mind, I grabbed a nearby towel, rubbed down my soles the best I could, and wiped down the floor to ensure I left no tracks.
I tossed it to Zane. “Put this in the bag. We’ll burn it later.”
Backing out of the room, I scrutinized the tub; there was blood on it, but I doubted any of it was mine. Even if there was, I couldn’t do anything about it; we were running short on time. The wife would be home in less than a half hour.
“We have to get going.”