Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Josie
My eyes slide open and adjust to the sunshine streaming through an open door.
A deep ache grips the muscles in my neck, which isn’t surprising.
I’ve been sleeping upright in a chair for who knows how long, and my arms have been bound behind me.
My head slumped forward while I was out, and now it feels like the muscles have been stretched to the point of snapping.
But I don’t groan. I don’t cry. I grit my teeth and do my best to get my bearings.
I’m close to the doorway—maybe six feet away—but freedom is out of reach. The room is dark, only lit by the sunshine streaming through lace curtains and the open door. Despite the gauzy pillowcase over my head, I can make out these shapes.
I can also make out my captor’s silhouette as he strolls past my seated form. I wiggle my wrists and try to free the ropes strapping my arms behind the chair back. It’s no use. They’re snug, and I’m still groggy from whatever they injected me with last night.
Whoever they are.
Look, the details are fucking foggy at best. I’m still piecing shit together. Work with me, brain.
I tip my head and shake it back and forth until the pillowcase comes free.
The man doesn’t notice. He steps into the doorway and stands there as a breeze rushes over his wrinkled skin.
A slender cigarette perches between his fingers, though he doesn’t bring it to his thin lips.
He just holds it. A spindly ribbon of smoke curls around his head and dances in his grey curls.
His pale buttocks clench as he turns when he hears me rustling around.
I have to tear my eyes away from a very swollen nutsack as he faces me fully.
“You might want to see a doctor about that,” I say with a raspy voice as I nod toward his crotch.
“What is everyone’s concern with my anatomy?” His thick German accent comes as a shock. I travel all over the country, and German is all but common. Still, there’s a familiarity that gives me the feeling of déjà vu.
I can’t dwell on that right now, though, so I get straight to the point. “What the fuck is going on, where am I, and who the fuck are you? In that order, preferably.”
“You are quite the noisy little crab. I expected the lamentations of a terrified girl.” He shakes his head with a scoff and returns his gaze to the world beyond this place. “Please remain seated in your chair until you are told to do otherwise. No more speaking. Danke.”
I lick my lips, and my blood chills. “You aren’t going to . . . do things to me, are you?”
“Disgusting. Please do not speak to either of us any longer.”
I’m about to ask who this us is, but a naked woman appears with two steaming cups in her hands. She joins the man in the doorway and passes a cup to him. A gnarly scar runs across her throat, and there’s something familiar about that too.
They raise the cups, sipping the steaming liquid as if it’s completely normal to have a tied-up redhead behind you as you admire the sunrise. In the nude.
By a . . . lake? Is that the shimmer of distant water just beyond this woman’s drooping left nipple?
“It that Lake Bomoseen?” The brain fog lifts enough to remind me where I am. “Wait, no. We’re in Florida, not Vermont. That little dock down there looks—”
“Stop talking.”
“It’s just that—”
“Silence!”
He finally spins to face me again, and I regret pushing him. Because my god, those testicles should be in a book of records or something. It’s like I’m wearing 3-D goggles as they come toward my face.
“Bring the syringe, Liebchen,” the German says to his friend. He speaks much softer to her. “This little crab will not stop clicking its claws.”
The woman nods at him and shuffles away with a cute little smirk. How dare she.
“Okay, first, rude. I’m not a fucking crab. Second, I don’t—” My voice cuts off as something pricks my arm. “Ouch! Fucking warn a bitch, why don’t you?”
The woman smiles and strokes my hair before joining Lord Nutsack by the door again.
Well, great. Now I’m tied to a chair and about ten minutes away from another very long nap.
I kick toward the German, as it’s my only form of recourse and I’m fucking pissed. He takes a step back to dodge the blow with a scoff. His massive purplish balls ricochet against his thighs.
“Come, my sweet one. Let us away while our guest slumbers.” He wraps his arm around the woman and exits the house.
At least, I think it’s a house. It could be a condo for all I know, but wherever I am, it’s time to leave.
This isn’t my first rodeo, and I’ll be damned if it’s my fucking last. I’ll slit all of their throats the moment I’m loose, and then I’ll shit in the neck stumps for posterity.
Because fuck them for kidnapping and drugging me.
They have no clue who they’re fucking with.
I remain in the chair as the naked duo meanders toward the water.
He left the door open, so he isn’t afraid I’ll scream for help.
Or run for it. When I tie someone to a chair, I’m usually a little more careful.
Something makes him certain I won’t be an issue, though, and I don’t think it’s merely whatever they injected into my arm.
My wrists wriggle until they burn, and I’m no closer to freeing myself. I’m also running out of time. The medication will make itself known soon enough.
“Well, fuck,” I whisper to myself. “You’ve really stepped in it this time, Josie.”
Okay. Not a problem.
I grit my teeth and muster the strength to hop forward.
This would have worked much better had my wrists been attached to chair arms, but of course this piece of shit is armless.
The weight distribution is all wrong, and the chair tilts on the first hop.
I try to lean backward, but that only shifts the balance again, and I land on my side.
Better than my face, I guess.
But now what? Do I just wriggle to freedom?
Actually, that’s not a bad idea.
Standing isn’t possible, but I can mildly straighten my legs enough to sort of inchworm myself toward the door. Slowly. Very, very slowly. Inch by painstaking inch, I jerk my body until I’ve moved exactly a foot closer to freedom.
This is pointless.
I tip my head to the side with a groan. My brain isn’t sleepy yet, but a thick haze surrounds my memories of last night. A bar. An accepted invitation. A dark back room.
It’s a blur. I don’t even know why I took the guy up on his offer. He wasn’t even my type. I don’t do bald guys with thick southern accents.
What am I talking about? I’m a fucking sex fiend. I’ll do damn near anyone if the mood strikes. It’s no wonder I’ve found myself in a precarious situation. If I make it out of here, I’ll be into the next bit of drama in no time. Trouble has a way of finding me.
Finding me, teaching me who I am, and then abandoning me in the rain.
I laugh to myself. No fucking way am I thinking about him at a time like this.
It took almost five years to get over him, but a few months ago, I finally stopped looking for him.
No more scouring the news sites for evidence of his darker dealings.
No more chasing shadows. I’ve been focusing more on myself and who I want to be.
All of that is for nothing if I can’t get out of this situation.
“How’d you get down on the floor?”
I try to turn my head toward the deep southern voice, but the injection is already kicking in. My skull weighs thirty pounds, and my neck is a string bean.
“Little help,” I say.
The man kneels before me and brushes my hair out of my face.
I expect to see the same man from last night—the stout southern guy with one hell of a crumb catcher above his lip—but this one is far more muscular.
And he has hair. Thick golden-brown curls cover his head, but something about them isn’t quite right.
“Good golly, girl. How’d you get in this pickle?” He grips the chair and rights it with little effort. “They ain’t cut you loose yet?”
“No, but you could be a peach and help me out.” I wiggle my fingers.
He whistles, low and smooth. “Sorry. No can do. They want you trussed up tight until the others get here.”
“Me? Am I some sort of flight risk?”
“The way I heard the others tell it, you were an everything risk. Even with that injection they gave you, it was like trying to stuff a tiger into a tin can. That spit mask came in clutch.”
“So it wasn’t a pillowcase?”
He cuts on an overhead light, and I can finally see his face clearly. He looks roughly my age—late-twenties. Hazel eyes peer down at me from the manliest visage I’ve ever witnessed. I could crack open a longneck on that sharp jaw, and he has the perfect little dimple in his chin.
“There. Now we can all see just how pretty you are.” He smiles, and I’m blinded by straight white teeth. “I always did like a redhead.”
“If you can’t free me, can you at least tell me why I’m here?” I nibble my lip and bat my eyelashes. I could hazard a guess, but there are so many reasons someone might want to tie me up.
“That’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid. The boss man should be here soon, but my buddy—”
An ATV speeds by outside, driven by none other than the naked duo. Flesh flies past, and the buzz of the engine garbles his friend’s name.
“Lice Pick?” I ask, hoping I misheard him. Who the fuck earns a name like Lice Pick? My scalp is already crawling just thinking about it.
The man stares through the open doorway and nods absentmindedly. “Uh, yeah. Hey, were they . . . naked?”
The way he says naked—like it’s spelled nekkid—makes my toes curl. Maybe a southern accent isn’t such a bad thing . . .
“Yeah, I don’t know what that was about, but what were you saying about the boss man?”
“Oh, right.” He pulls up a chair and places it in front of me. The view is much improved. “Before that, though, you’re kind of a weird one, ain’t ya?”
“Way to make a girl feel good.”
“No, don’t take it that way,” he says with a laugh that heals some broken part of my soul. Or maybe I’m confusing that with a vagina tingle. The feeling is so similar. “Most girls just do a lot of hollering when we tie them up. Granted, we don’t tie up girls often. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
My eyes widen. “No, I’m definitely getting the wrong idea. Please explain.”
He glances around, then faces me again as he leans closer and licks his lips. “When I tell you this, I don’t want you to scream, okay?”
“No promises,” I say, though I’m not a screamer.
Then again, if he bends me over the credenza by the door, that might change.
“I’m only telling you this because you’re either safe to tell or you’ll be dead by morning anyway,” he says.
Wow, he really knows how to romance a girl. I keep my mouth shut only so that I can hear the rest.
“We’re all serial killers,” he says, face as somber as the grave.
Before I can think better of it, I laugh. Then I remember that he doesn’t know who I am. Aside from my many victims—and that asshole who left me pining for him one hot, rainy August evening—no one knows.
And I think I’d like to keep it that way.
The man folds his arms over his chest and leans back. “What’s so funny? This ain’t a joke. I know those two out there don’t look like it, but they’ve killed more people than you’ve seen with those green eyes of yours. My numbers might not be as high as theirs, but with Pick’s help, I’m climbing.”
“Oh, are you new to the murder life?” I ask, widening my eyes like I’m genuinely intrigued.
He bristles at this. “No. Not new. I just ain’t been at it as long as some of the other folks here.”
“Others? Is this a convention? For serial killers? And where is here?”
“This lake cabin? We’re in a little spot in Florida. We have to wait here until Jim—”
“Blayne!” a voice barks from the open doorway.
I recognize the man from last night. Now I know his name is Lice Pick. How fucking odd when he has no hair on his head. Or is a chronic infestation why he’s opted for the bald look?
“We ain’t supposed to talk to her,” he says, “and she ain’t supposed to know our names.”
He screamed his friend’s name as he came in the door, but okay.
Blayne raises his hands. “My bad. You know how I am about a pretty girl.” He looks at me and winks.
“At least I didn’t fuck up and try to take this one,” Lice Pick says with a chuckle as he steps into the room.
What room? I still don’t fucking know. All I can see is a doorway and a window.
Lice Pick pulls up a chair beside his friend. He looks me straight in the face with a serious expression, all joviality cast aside. “I just did what the boss said to do, so when I was flirting with you last night, I didn’t mean it. You’re a pretty little thing, but I’m seeing someone.”
“Is she a serial killer too?” I ask.
Blayne winces and looks away when Lice Pick glares at him.
“Yes, she is, but you weren’t supposed to know that. Think you can keep it between us three?” Lice Pick eyes me. “Please?”
“I think I can do that.” I pause for dramatic effect. “If you tell me why I’m here.”
He groans and grips his bald head in his hands. “I can’t do that. Jim said if we tell you anything—”
“Chad Smith!” a man bellows from outside.
Footsteps pound up the stairs, and a man in a suit barrels through the doorway.
A large white bird perches on his shoulder, and it flaps its wings as the two men turn to look at him.
“I gave both of you very strict instructions. Very simple instructions. If you can’t manage this much, how will I trust either of you on the road trip? ”
“So a group of serial killers has kidnapped me to take me on a road trip? You could have just asked.” I lift my shoulders in the best shrug I can muster. “I would have moved my schedule around for you.”
The suited man swipes his hands down his face and mutters something into his palms. “Cut her loose. It doesn’t matter that she knows. Ever heard of the Cross-Country Trio?” He nods at me. “She’s all of them.”
Lice Pick and Blayne turn their heads toward me at lightning speed. No one’s keeping their fucking secrets today, I guess.
But how does this Jim know about me?
“She’s also the Cross-Country Sniper, Assassin of Abilene, and a few others of note,” Jim continues. “If anyone belongs amongst us, it’s her.”
“She can’t weigh more than a buck fifty soaking wet,” Lice Pick says. Disbelief weights his voice. “How’d she pull off the Marvin County Massacre?”
I want to answer him. I want to tell him that it was just as complicated as it seems. I want to tell them that I learned from the best killer in the business, who also turned out to be the worst man whore in existence, but that’s beside the point.
Unfortunately, the medication sweeps my system, and I can tell them nothing.
My tongue is a slug in my mouth. My head tips forward.
“Oh, she’s out again,” Lice Pick says, but his voice is miles away.
And now . . . so am I.