Chapter Two
Rodney and Finn just watched him at the end of the hallway.
Banger was having a full conversation. With whom... they didn’t know.
Rodney looked over at Finn and shook his head.
Then Banger finally came back to the kitchen and turned to look at Rodney. “You up for a return to Troy?”
“What the hell for?” Rodney barked out.
“We’re gonna bring Cassie to her knees and I know just how to do it.” Banger grinned but his eyes were cold and they glittered with an unholy light.
Rodney just kept staring at him.
Banger then turned to Finn and demanded, “Hand over your truck keys, we need a vehicle.”
Finn just shook his head. “Man, you both are crazy, you know that? You’re going right back into the fire and it will burn you alive. You need to stay as far away from that city as you can get. Isn’t it bad enough that you got the Vincinti’s on our ass?”
Rodney stared at Finn. “What would this have to do with the Vincinti’s?”
Finn glared at him. “After we got back to Quincy, we came back to find someone had blown the clubhouse the hell up.” He motioned at Banger.
“Then he went back and found Peaches. He took her hostage and now we’re definitely on their radar.
Especially since he roughed her up and held a gun to her head when he demanded Cassie to tell him what she knew about this place.
He told me about it on the drive back. Her husband and Peaches’s old man beat the hell out of him and left him tied to a pole inside the warehouse he was hiding in.
He called me in to give him a ride to this house after they put sugar in his gas tank.
Going back there only means one thing: Pain and possible death. ”
Rodney smiled. “Hell, I’ll go back there, they owe me too.”
“Fuck, the both of you are crazy.” Finn looked disgusted.
“You can’t take their women and slap them around then expect to live.
The fuck.” Shaking his head he added, “I have a feeling you won’t be back and even if you are, the Sin’s Bastards will be right behind your asses looking to torch you both. ”
Banger chuckled. “They don’t know what we’re driving so they won’t catch us back there. I owe them all, and they won’t get close to us.”
The two men who were bruised, cut up and had limps turned and headed out of the little house on Winsor street.
As they walked out to the truck, Rodney could barely walk and he had his arm in a sling.
Banger was walking gingerly and he kept wincing.
The pair of them were both stupid as fuck.
They did not have the brains that God gave them. Hell, they must have a death wish too.
Finn shivered. He just stayed back. He had no intention of going with them or being near them. He sure didn’t want to die anytime soon.
He felt like he had been tainted by helping Banger.
He shouldn’t have agreed to get him. He felt a cold draft blow through the kitchen.
Maybe this gold had too much blood spilt over it?
Maybe it was cursed. Hell, Banger used to be an ok guy before he went to prison.
Now, look at him. He was mean as hell, off his rocker and he didn’t have any common sense anymore.
Finn just stood there as he ran his hand over his head wondering how he would get home now.
He dug into his pockets. He had lost his phone too.
It must have dropped out when he fell through that hole in the floor.
Maybe he could find it beneath the floor?
He shivered again as he felt spooky. With a sigh, he walked through the house again.
He wondered now about what Banger had said.
The gold being hidden here. Then what if someone actually lived here?
He scoffed. They would probably die from dysentery or some disease.
He opened the bathroom door and as soon as he stepped inside, he felt the floor shift beneath him.
He tried to step back but the floor gave way under him again and this time he was too late to stop it from breaking underneath his feet.
Finn yelled as the floor gave way and he fell into the basement.
Hitting the cement floor, he cried out as he felt the bone in his leg break. The back of his head bounced off the hard floor. Lying sprawled out on his back he opened his eyes and saw the hole in the floor above him.
Then there was another sound.
Someone was moving around beyond the door and when it opened, a hideous sight stood there. “Well, well, well what do we have here?” the shadow asked.
Finn just groaned and passed out.
Five minutes later...
The shadow in the doorway moved in slowly and the light from above shone down in his mostly bald head.
He shuffled into the room further and stood there staring down at the fallen man.
He just shook his head then he looked up at the hole in the floor from above.
“Damn,” he swore softly. Staring back down at the body on the floor, he shook his head again.
“What a nuisance this has turned out to be.” He growled. “Now I have to deal with this joker.”
The man’s face looked terribly scarred with lines that dug deep down into his skin. His left arm was missing everything from the elbow down and his right leg dragged behind him, making movement difficult.
His right hand was missing half his fingers.
Yet, he curled them around the downed man’s shirt and dragged him down the hall to a spare room that was nothing more than a storage closet.
He moved the body into the room and chained him to the wall for now.
He had used these same chains a few times already when some bum would try to make this house their home and he would do it again.
He had been out on the streets too long to give up his place here.
He would decide what to do with him later.
The crippled man went over to the doorway leading upstairs and began the climb that would take him to the main floor.
When he got to the doorway near the kitchen, he took a ring of keys out of his pocket.
He inserted one of the keys in the lock and twisted it.
The heavy door opened and he stepped out into the kitchen.
Shuffling to the front door, he twisted his face into a sneer that made him look even more broken.
Fucking intruders. He slammed the door and flipped the lock then clicked on the outside cameras.
Shuffling to the door that led downstairs, he paused to pull the bathroom door shut and turned the lock.
He made his way downstairs and locked the door behind him. He shuffled back to the main room in the basement and sat down carefully in the easy chair. He studied the monitors in front of him and sighed heavily. The house was secure again.
He had security again.
Thanks to that gold he found several years ago, he set himself up real nice. No more street living for him.
Leaning his head back in his chair, he closed his eyes briefly.
He would take a rest for maybe a half hour. His old injuries made it hard to be mobile too long. But that’s what war did to some people. Make them crippled while nobody cared.
He finally opened his eyes to look around the single lower level he lived in now.
It was clean and stylish. It also held everything he needed to live off the grid.
The upstairs had been falling in with the years of carelessness but here he kept this area as clean as possible and he’d made repairs.
Whoever the owner had been before, they never did any repairs.
After a short check of all the cameras, he got up again and shuffled to the small storage room. He fit the key into the lock and swung the door open.
The chained man looked up at him and his face reflected his horror. He just stared at him in total shock then he shook his head slowly.
Yeah, he always got that reaction but he didn’t care anymore.
All he cared about was keeping his place here.
The monster shuffled closer and put his hand into his pocket.
When he raised his hand again he held a switchblade.
He flicked the side of the blade open and stepped closer yet.
Then he lowered the knife blade to the intruder’s throat. “You can’t steal my home.”
The injured guy flinched as the blade bit deep into his skin. Then he slid the blade across his neck. The victim tried to fight back but he was still weak from his head wound and the chains held him back.
The killer moved quickly and blood gushed from under his blade. The cut man breathed his last breath and the killer stepped away. He cleaned the blade on the victim’s pants then stepped back to the door.
He just stared at the dead man. He had killed before to protect his turf and he would do it again. Without saying a word, he stepped out of the room and closed the door, locking it behind him.
He went back to the basement and back to his chair again then sat down in the quiet. And he sat there for a long time, not looking at anything while the silence surrounded him like a blanket.
Then after his rest time, he reached out and turned on the CB radio he kept beside his chair.
At first, there was no sound coming from the speakers but then a soft hum could be heard along with a voice, “Hey Ghost, are you there?” This contact was someone on the street he spoke to over the last few years.
“Yeah I’m here, what’s going on out there? Anything happening right now?”
“Naw, it's all quiet out here, but something happened the day before yesterday. The big mafia man was moving around some. Three of his vehicles took off in a hurry. They stayed out for a couple of hours then came back. Haven’t heard yet what that was all about but they headed out of town.”
He smiled a bit. “Interesting, let me know if you hear anything.” He flicked the radio off and leaned back in his chair again. He had an idea what that meant but Boston had never been a quiet, peaceful place. That had been why he made his own sanctuary in this basement.
If he could just keep the street bums out it would be a perfect life for a scarred monster like himself. Tomorrow, he would have to get the rock salt out again to get rid of the death scent of his latest victim. Then he would be tired for the rest of the day.
At least his little house was safe again.