She hooked thumbs in the elastic band of her panties and began to slide them down. “Is someone in there?”
The woman nodded. “Yes.”
“Who?”
Megan stepped out of the panties and pulled the halter top off over her head.
“The girl you’re about to kill for me.”
Megan’s fingers froze for a moment on the hook of her bra. She felt dizzy for a second. But only for a second. She unhooked her bra and removed it, let it drop to the floor. “When do I get to kill her?”
“Soon.”
“Good.”
The woman smiled. “But first…dance for me.”
Megan returned the smile.
She danced.
And she tried not to think about the girl in the bathroom.
Something important occurred to Jessica. Maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn’t. But she had to know the answer. She didn’t like loose ends.
“Why were you stopped?”
Larry arched an eyebrow. “Say what?”
“I saw you go blazing by me, like you were on your way to somewhere important in a big damn hurry.” Jessica’s thumb caressed the .38’s hammer. She felt a strange kind of intimacy with the weapon. An easy familiarity she found comforting. It was a bond forged in blood and noise, in the acrid scent of gunpowder and memories of the still bodies of dead adversaries. She could put this gun to Larry’s head, if she had a reason. Put the barrel right up against his temple and squeeze the trigger, watch the bullet blow his head apart. But she really hoped he wouldn’t provide a reason. “I took off after you fast as I could, but you should have gotten away. So…why did you stop?”
Larry removed the cigarette from his mouth, the third he’d smoked in their brief time together, and said, “I do believe I detect a note of paranoia in that question.”
“Maybe. I’d still like an answer.”
Larry shrugged and put the cigarette back in his mouth, then removed it again and blew a stream of smoke out the open driver’s-side window. “Ain’t no big mystery.” Yet another drag on the cigarette. A chain smoker. His breath reflected this, but the unpleasant odor had not blunted the sweet taste of his lips. And right then she wanted to kiss him again, this man she was so willing to kill with just the right (or wrong) kind of provocation. How strange.
Strange, but undeniable.
“So spill it.”
She clenched her teeth, bit down hard on her lower lip.
Clutched the gun tighter.
Larry appeared to sense the tension seething inside her. He glanced at the gun and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His cigarette burned down to the filter in the silence. He stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray and punched in the dash lighter as he shook a fresh smoke from a dwindling pack.
He lit up again and looked at the road as he talked. “I’ve got this ex. Real crazy broad name of Roxanne. Sometimes she gets liquored up and comes skulking around my place. Really didn’t want to deal with her tonight, so I pulled over and called my friend Bill, this guy who lives across the street from me. I asked him to take a peek outside and let me know if the coast was clear.”
“And?”
“Bill didn’t see her. Didn’t see her car, either, which don’t necessarily mean anything. She’ll sometimes drive it down the road and park out of sight.”
“Why don’t you get a restraining order?”
Larry snorted laughter. “Local law ain’t got the manpower to enforce a thing like that. If they did, they’d
be out to my place every other night dragging the bitch, pardon my French, off to fucking jail. And anyway, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. Getting a restraining order—hell, that’s kind of a sissy thing to do.”
Jessica grunted. “Interesting attitude, Larry. Tell me something. Is everyone in Hopkins Bend as big a moron as you?”
Larry’s face crumpled, the good, easy humor draining entirely from his features in about two seconds. “You don’t need to insult me.”
“Where’s your phone?”
Larry frowned. “Huh?”
“Your cell phone, Larry. The one you used to call your friend.”
“Yeah, you are definitely paranoid.”
“You need to show it to me, Larry. Right now.”
Larry rolled his eyes and shoved a hand down a hip pocket of his jeans. He extracted a slim black cell phone and held it up for Jessica’s inspection. She snatched it from his fingers and flipped it open.
Larry shook his head. “Why, yes, Jessica, you do have my permission to use my phone. In fact—”
“Shut up.”
Larry’s mouth closed.
The phone’s menu was a breeze to navigate, and she found the list of recently dialed numbers within moments. She quickly scrolled through the names and numbers, then flipped the phone shut and shoved it into her own pocket. “This friend you were talking about. Is his name William Murphy?”
Larry eyed her warily. “Well…yeah. That’s him.”
“You haven’t called him since yesterday.”
“I can explain.”
“Don’t. How far are we from your place?”
Larry glanced at the gun again and cringed a little
when he met Jessica’s fierce gaze. “Look, the shit I told you about Roxanne, it’s all true. And I do sometimes call Bill for a scouting report on my way home.”
“I don’t care. Answer my question.”
“I stopped to do a bump of coke. I didn’t want to tell you.” He indicated the dashboard with a small nod of his head. “Check the glove box.”
Jessica opened the glove compartment.
She sucked in a quick, startled breath. It was there, just as he’d said, a small amount of white powder weighing down a corner of a crumpled plastic sandwich bag. She swallowed with great difficulty, the lump in her throat like a ball of smoldering charcoal sliding down her esophagus. She felt dizzy. Sweat collected in her armpits and slid down her sides. She flung the bag back inside the glove box and flipped it shut.
Larry cleared his throat. “You, ah…sort of treated my little stash like it was on fire.”
Jessica stared at the closed glove box. “I had a small problem with that shit a while back.”
“What happened?”
“Rehab.”
“Ah, shit. So you don’t party at all, huh?”
“I drink.”
“Huh.” Larry stroked the stubble on his chin and pursed his lips. “Never been to rehab myself. Reckon I’ll keep at it until the stuff does me in or I just get too old to party. But the way I understand it, you go to rehab, you’re supposed to quit everything.”
Jessica looked at him. His earnest expression eased some of her tension. There was genuine human concern there. It was nice to see after facing down so many bad guys. “I live by my own rules and what’s right for me. I drink. Sometimes I drink too much. But I don’t have a problem with it, not like I did with coke. Trust me.”
Larry nodded. “Okay. Good enough.”
“I know I’m being bitchy, but I’ve had kind of a rough day.”
“I understand.”
A moment of silence.
Jessica watched the trees flash by.
She looked at Larry and his face turned her way, a bemused smile working at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah?”
She touched his knee again. “You’re kind of cute for a redneck.”
He laughed. “You ain’t so bad yourself. Ain’t every day I run into a gal kicks more ass than Zoë Bell and looks like a supermodel.”
“Supermodel.” Jessica snorted. “Right. That’s the second time you’ve used that ridiculous word.”
“Yeah, but I ain’t kiddin’.”
They looked at each other, eyes locking, and a different kind of tension formed between them again. Jessica experienced a dizzying surge of arousal. Her hand tightened around Larry’s knee. “Please tell me we’re almost—”
Larry grinned. “Hell, we’re already there, practically.”
He nodded at the road ahead and she saw a glow of electric lights some hundred yards away and coming up fast. Another fifty yards closer and she was able to make out the low-lying outlines of two ranch-style houses facing each other across the road. There were no street lamps out this way, but the smallish lawns were lit by floodlights. The house to the left showed signs of a human presence. Lights were on throughout the house, and a truck was parked in the driveway. The lights were out in the house to the right, and the driveway was empty, obviously marking it as Larry’s home, a guess verified in a few moments when he pulled into the driveway and shut the Nova’s engine off.
He let out a yelp of surprise as she came at him in a hurry, shoving him back against the seat and straddling his thigh as her wet lips found his mouth and went to work. She probed his mouth with her tongue, her head turning in a blur of constant motion as she attacked him from every angle with her mouth. Kissing him hard and teasing him endlessly with her tongue. She chewed on his lower lip and kissed his neck, making him arch his back and moan.
He was panting when she pulled away. His face was flushed and covered in a sheen of sweat, and his racing pulse beat visibly at his neck. He gaped at her in obvious astonishment as he struggled to catch his breath.
“Like that?”
He nodded and managed a low, hoarse reply. “Yeah…oh, God, yeah…”
“Of course you did.”
She writhed slowly against him, enjoying the way his face contorted. Enjoyed, too, the feel of his strong hands sliding over her body. The sensation was so good it nearly erased the lingering aches that had plagued her since the crash.
“Want some more?”
He nodded. Whimpered.
Such a helpless sound from such a strong man.
She loved it.
She slid away from him, settled back into the passenger seat. “Take me inside, Larry. Now.”
Larry didn’t have to be told twice. He was out of the car maybe a second later, and she was right behind him. They walked briskly up a path of inlaid stone steps toward the front porch. Jessica watched him from behind, enjoying the interplay of muscles obvious through the fabric of his tight white T-shirt. He looked as if he worked out a lot when he wasn’t speeding around in a
goofy Chevy Nova and snorting coke. She was so eager to wrap herself around his lean and powerful body, she was almost drooling. A desperate desire for hot, sweaty sex was a strange thing for a woman in her position to crave. She recognized and accepted this. Didn’t lessen the desire one bit, though. It even made a crazy kind of sense to her. She had started the day as the victim of an assault. Male strength and anger had been used against her. And now here she was, a few hours later, wanting it from this man, this stranger, and she was the aggressor, in a way. But it was about more than that. She’d seen bloody death up close multiple times. Had felt her heart slam and almost feel as if it would burst as she narrowly eluded her own death more than once. She’d heard sex described as the ultimate affirmation of life, a sentiment she’d not truly understood before. Now, as she watched Larry, she thought she understood it perfectly.
God, but I want to fuck this man’s brains out.
She thought of the packet of coke in Larry’s car and remembered with shocking vividness how much she used to enjoy getting fucked all night long while coked out of her mind. The thought made her lips curl and her nostrils flare.
Maybe…
No.
She shoved the thought out of her mind. Going down that path again would inevitably lead her back into the mess she’d left behind years ago. She could not allow it to happen, not even one little slip. She’d made a promise to her mother after rehab, and now more than ever, with her gone, she meant to keep that promise.
Still…
No!
Her heart was beating fast, almost too fast, by the time they reached the porch. Another reminder of the drug
days. She watched Larry climb the steps to the porch and lean toward the yellow glow of the single porch light to sort through his keys. She silently urged him to hurry as she planted a foot on the first step. She needed to be inside and tearing his clothes off. Needed to lose herself in his body and derail the potentially destructive train of thought brought on by the coke memories.
He found the right key and grinned over his shoulder at her. “Got it.”
“Hurry.”
He opened a screen door and slipped the key in the lock. He chuckled. “Movin’ as fast as I can.”
He turned the key and twisted the knob.
Jessica climbed another step…
She saw the dark bloom of crimson in the center of his back a fraction of a second before she heard the shot. The sound came again. And again. Larry’s body twitched as multiple bullets hit it. He staggered backward, crashed into Jessica, and sent her spinning to the ground. She landed hard and rolled. She wound up on her back, but then heaved herself onto her side. She saw Larry’s body sprawled on the ground. He was dead. She saw and understood that right away. But she couldn’t comprehend why it had happened. She felt sick and dizzy, her mind swirling with a clash of conflicting, incoherent thoughts. Larry’s eyes were open and still, staring straight up at the black sky.
Someone was screaming.
Jessica tore her eyes away from the dead man.
A woman in very short blue-jean cutoffs and a pink halter top stood outlined in the open doorway, a smoking pistol clutched in her right hand. The gears in Jessica’s mind spun around like the numbers on a slot machine and landed on a name written in pulsing red block letters across the forefront of her consciousness:
ROXANNE
.
The crazy ex Larry had talked about on the way here.
He hadn’t been lying, after all.
The woman was coming down the porch now.
Coming toward
her.
She was still screaming, but the sounds coalesced into actual, understandable words now: “YOU FUCKING WHORE! I KNEW THAT SONOFABITCH WAS SCREWING SOME GODDAMN FUCKING WHORE! YOU’RE DEAD, YOU FUCKING CUNT!”
She was standing over Jessica now, red-lacquered fingernails curled around the butt of a .44 Magnum. She aimed the gun at Jessica’s face and spoke in a drunken slur. “Say good-bye, bitch. I hope the two of you have fun burning in hell.”
Jessica remembered the gun in her own hand.
She raised it and aimed.
Another explosion rang out in the quiet rural night.