Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
King
It’s a good thing Ice Pick bungled our planned event. We used Jim’s proposed means of cleanup to dispose of Charity’s body, and it was less than ideal.
He’d planned for us to murder Cattle in various ways as a sort of exhibition match, then bury each of them as well. I love the man, but I seriously question his intellect at times.
Thankfully, the rest of the events on this trip were planned by both of us because they involve our actual mission, which is to reunite the Carter children with their father. There will be no more risk of us digging twenty or so bloody graves.
What was Jim thinking?
This whole Ice Pick issue threatens to royally fuck everything, though. Now that everyone is so focused on who fucked his woman, they’re less eager to find Daddy Carter. It was all the siblings talked about for the weeks leading up to the trip, but that excitement has been forgotten now.
Josie’s excitement petered as well. She hasn’t spoken much since we left the campground outside Macon, Georgia. She likely suspects I was the bloke who stuck his fingers in someone else’s pie, but it’s none of her damn business what I was sticking my fingers into last night.
The RVs trundle up a dirt path as we head to the next campground. We’ve made excellent time, and Bennett even made it to the post box to retrieve whatever it is he couldn’t live without. He and Cat are somewhere behind us, right outside Nashville. They should meet up with us within the hour.
Gary hops out of Jim’s bus; they’ve been riding together since Ice Pick went off the deep end. He begins motioning RVs into parking positions in each allotted campground.
I’m shocked to see other Normie campers nearby, but tomorrow’s event won’t occur here, so I suppose it’s no bother. So long as these Normies don’t come sniffing around, that is.
Josie jumps out of the passenger door before I’ve brought the ride to a complete stop. She can’t wait to be rid of me.
I remain seated a bit longer, just so that I can admire her for a moment. She stretches her long legs and rocks back and forth to loosen her lower spine. If she needs help, I can think of a few good ways to loosen her up a bit more . . .
Ezra and Kindra tumble out of their RV, quite literally, which steals my attention and reminds me I still don’t have a satisfactory conclusion to that stranger situation. Samuel, his name was? I’d best inquire about that.
I hop out and catch up to the pair before they meld with the group. Everyone is making their way toward the community bathrooms like some bladder-relief pilgrimage.
“Something I can help you with, King?” Ezra asks as I pull them aside.
“Yes, actually. The mysterious lad from yesterday—”
Ezra gives one solid nod of his head. “He’s hired me to find some people for him. Friends of his. They travel around the United States killing people, and he thought I might pass along a message for him.”
“Anyone we know?”
“Not really,” Kindra says. “They keep to themselves, mostly. I covered them for an AP piece once.”
That puts my mind at ease. Ezra needs income, after all, and I won’t fault him for picking up a side job while we’re on the road.
“So, who do you think fucked Charity?” Josie says behind me.
“Now she speaks,” I mutter under my breath.
Kindra looks up at Ezra. “I don’t have a clue, but it couldn’t have been either of us.”
The fact that no one can narrow it down to male or female makes things far more complicated.
Ice Pick only knew she’d cheated because she wrote about the explosive orgasm in her journal, which he read because she left it out on the nightstand, wide open to that page.
Most of us were shocked to hear that part. Not because he read it—any of us would have—but because we didn’t realize the man could read.
We weren’t privy to the exact missive, as he set fire to the entire journal in the toilet, but the message left no room for debate. The woman fucked someone last night, enjoyed herself thoroughly, and just had to write about it.
Everyone is determined to figure out who would do something so cruel to Ice Pick, but Jim broke up the conversation before we could even begin.
That worked well because I was about to put a stop to it myself, and that would have brought far too much suspicion my way.
Jim’s questionable sexuality puts him in the clear in most everyone’s eyes.
“Kindra and I were in our RV all night,” Ezra says.
“Yeah,” Kindra adds with a glance toward her beau. “We were a bit tied up.”
“I was locked away like a prisoner, so it couldn’t have been me,” Josie offers. She turns her green eyes toward me. “What about you, King? You never returned to the RV after you locked the doors.”
I smile at her. “I have no alibi.”
“Not sure how loudly I’d declare that,” Kindra says as she and Ezra start toward the bathrooms.
“Yeah, sure would be a shame if everyone hated you as much as I do.” Josie flicks her hair over her shoulder and saunters away.
She means it now—the hatred. The girl believed she could handle a no-strings relationship all those years ago, but she proves time and time again she isn’t the sort who can be loved and left. Even now, when I’ve only eaten her pussy to settle a bet, she feels she has a claim on me.
Blowing off steam didn’t have quite the desired outcome, though, because I feel the same way about her.
Damn.
We sit around a large fire. Most of us, anyway. Maurice hobbled off once the talk about Charity started up again. He said he had to go clean up after dinner, but in reality, he’s following my orders and walking away before he says something he shouldn’t.
You see, he’s my alibi for last night, but I don’t want little Miss Nosey Josie to know I wasn’t balls deep in Ice Pick’s woman. I want to get to the bottom of things and wring the bastard’s neck myself, but I want to toy with the silly bird a bit first.
“So who does that leave?” Cat asks. She counts heads and recalls alibis. “Bennett and I were fucking. So were Kindra and Ezra. Maverick and Frankie saw her wandering around the RV camp before they went to bed, but Blayne saw her right after that.”
“As did I,” I say, willing to heap the suspicion my way now.
The tighter I can wind that little redhead, the more delicious she’ll be when she comes undone. And I’ve decided she will, whether Jim pushes me with another bet or not. By letting her think I fucked that woman, I’m merely improving my chances of success. Jealousy is an aphrodisiac for my beauty.
Josie raises her finger. “I’ve been following along. The only people not accounted for are Eve, King, Chef, Gary, Blayne, Jim—”
“Basically anyone aside from you who isn’t in a relationship?” Frankie offers.
“Exactly,” Eve says. “Which is unfair. I like a pair of big titties as much as the next person, but I would never fuck my friend’s girl. All of you should know me better than that.”
I glance at Blayne. “Yes, I think we know everyone well enough . . . aside from one of us.”
“Ain’t no way,” Ice Pick says. “Blayne’s my best friend. If she even so much as came onto him, he would have told me.”
That’s a slap in my face, but it’s deserved.
I had no plans to tell Ice Pick how his deceased lover tried to grab my dick through my pants.
The man struggles so with women, and I thought it would only damage his confidence.
This Charity person wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
I question if she’s even a real serial killer.
Well, was a serial killer. Now she lies six feet below the Georgia pines.
“I was drugged, so it wasn’t me,” Blayne says. He rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head. “She must have seen an opportunity and seized it.”
More like this asshole saw an opportunity and seized his best-friend’s girl.
“Well, as fun as this is, we have an event in the morning, and I’ll be damned if I miss this one.” I stand and stretch, then motion for Josie to join me.
She looks at my hand as if I’m offering a dirty nappy.
“No thanks. I don’t know where those fingers have been.” She rises to stand; at least she’s being obedient.
“Don’t worry, Ice Pick,” I call over my shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. And when we do—” I turn my attention toward Blayne, but Josie steps directly into my line of sight.
Ice Pick? she mouths. She grits her teeth, clenches her tiny fists, and widens her eyes. Then she mouths it again, forming every syllable with her mouth as loudly as she can. Fucking Ice Pick?
I see her die a little inside, and I suppose that’s enough.
“Yes, you’ve been calling him the wrong name all this time, and now you’re the butt of the joke.” I smile down at her. “Ha. Ha. Now let’s get you to bed.”
She’s too stunned by her embarrassment to argue. But by the time we get to the RV, she’s ready for a rebuttal.
“You aren’t locking me in here again,” she says with a shake of her head. “Hell no. I refuse to sit on my ass while you’re out there playing Whack-a-Mole with every vagina in a one-hundred-yard radius.”
“No worries there, young lady. I’ll be locked in with you tonight.”
“That’s worse,” she grumbles, but it’s enough to move her feet.
And it is worse. I realize that as I climb the steps behind her.
Her figure, her beauty, her wit—it’s more than one man can deny for an entire night, and deny her I must. If I make a move too soon, it could derail everything, yet being so close to her makes me do insane things.
I’ll make her sleep on the floor.
It’s safer.
Once we’re in the RV, I pull some blankets from the cubbies above the bed and do my best to make a sort of nest beside it. There aren’t any extra pillows, so I retrieve a few couch cushions and prop them up.
“There, that should do nicely,” I say, but when I turn to look at Josie, she’s already fast asleep on the bed.
I keep silent and look down at her. A bit of moonlight streams through the window and dances over her cheek. For a moment, I’m thrust backward five years to a night like this. No one would have been sleeping on the floor then.
Why now?
I remove my suit jacket, followed by my tie. Then I climb into bed behind her. She murmurs something about putting on the kettle, and my heart squeezes in my chest.
Some old habits die hard.
Whenever I was forced to take a job I couldn’t tell her about, or whenever I’d return from one, we’d say I’d just popped into the next room to put the kettle on.
Then one day, I popped out and never returned.
She knew it would happen eventually. I told her it couldn’t be forever.
She told me she understood.
Only one of us was lying.
I turn onto my side and try not to think of her warmth crowding my back. My god, the woman is still a furnace; her body puts out enough heat to melt the ice caps. If a human had the propensity to spontaneously combust, it’d be this one.
And her pussy is just as warm.
I close my eyes and beg for sleep. Anything to drag me away from this very stressful situation. The Carter family’s secret will be out of the bag by the end of this trip, and that’s only if we can survive the Ice Pick Cuckold mystery and keep Josie’s needs within my domain.
This is going to be a glorious time.