Exploited (The Dark Redemption Series) (13 page)

Brede

I walk into the unlocked house and head for the living room where I hear the TV blasting. There were no other cars here, thank goodness, because I don’t really want to deal with anyone’s bullshit today.

“Yo, Rog,” I say when I see him stretched out in a recliner. I didn’t want to have to come back, but if he gives me an assist, I can get this done quicker, see Blair even sooner.

Rog’s head turns, and he nods in greeting. “What’s up, Brede? Where you been, man? Took care of business yet?”

“I had to take a road trip,” I say in explanation, trying not to visibly wince at the reminder of what I was hired to do. “You got any plans tonight?”

“Ah, only the ones that I made between me and my bong,” he says with a grin.

“Good. Do you, um, think you can help me out?” I ask with my hands braced on my hips. Asking for help is not something I’m used to doing. Most of the time, I take care of shit myself, but this one will be easier with some help.

“Ah, sure. What you getting into?” he asks, lowering the footrest of the recliner to sit up.

“I need to bust a car out of the pound,” I explain.

“A random car or one in particular?”

“One, in particular, Blair’s. You know, so that I can make sure it disappears,” I lie.

On the way home from West Virginia, I tried to figure out a way to apologize to Blair for up and disappearing on her, for acting shitty to her about the whole suicide issue. Now I get it. She saw her mom murdered, probably brutally by her own father, and then he threw her ass into a mental hospital. I’m not sure how she got out, if they released her or if she escaped, but now I’m starting to understand her, why she doesn’t say much and why she got the tattoo. I think she feels guilty, but she shouldn’t based on what my dad told me.

“Okay,” Rog agrees easily like I figured he would. “You need a Slim Jim and something to pick a padlock?”

“Fuck yes,” I answer. “You’ve got that shit lying around?”

“What kind of half-assed criminal do you take me for?” he asks with a chuckle as he gets to his feet. “Let me change clothes. And once it gets dark, it’s show time!”

Rolling my eyes at the crazy SOB, I go into the spare bedroom he’s let me crash in and change into my own dark jeans and a black tee. Then, the two of us meet back up in the living room to down a few beers while we wait for the sun to go down.

“So, you fucked her yet?” he asks during the commercial break of the stand-up comedian show we were watching.

“No, can’t find her,” I tell him, which is not really a lie since I haven’t looked for her since I got back.

After finding out the history, I care about her even more, not just because I want to take her virginity. Fuck yeah, I want that too, but she’s the weeping, defiled angel on my arm. Someone needs to take care of her because she’s been through hell and back. Maybe it’s idiotic, but a part of me wants to make sure that every last one of the suicidal thoughts in her head is knocked out. Whether or not I’m capable of that, I don’t know. But I want to try.

For too long I’ve been a fuck up, my anger at the life I was dealt getting me into fights and trouble with the law, leading me to the Army and becoming a cold-blooded killer. Now, things don’t seem quite as bleak, especially since I now know the truth, that my father is innocent. I wasn’t born with murder in my DNA. He never meant to leave us, and he sure as shit never had a choice in the matter. Knowing who’s to blame, I want to wipe that bastard off the face of the goddamn earth, especially since he was ready to end his own daughter’s life. Time’s running out now. He’ll want an update on whether or not she’s alive; and if she is, he’ll hire someone else to finish the job. Before that happens, I need to keep Rog quiet and find a way to take the DA down. 

“You ready?” Rog asks a little after eleven. It’s been good and dark for hours, and there shouldn’t be anyone hanging out around the pound lot this late.

“Let’s do it. You driving?” I ask.

“Sure, we can take the Benz.”

Shaking my head at the rich fucker, I follow him into the garage where he pushes the button to raise the door while I climb inside. Wandering around the brightly lit room, he grabs a few supplies before getting into the driver seat. “Here,” he says, thankfully offering me a pair of gloves with the tools we’ll likely need.

“So how did the girl’s car get impounded?” he asks with a snort. 

“Fuck, I don’t know. She left it at the pawn shop the other night, and the next morning it had been towed.”

“What does she drive?”

“A little Audi something another,” I tell him since I didn’t see it that closely. “There’s only one in the lot. You know the guys who own it?”

“Yeah, old man Peterson,” Rog answers while driving us over. “That kook ain’t got any damn sense and shouldn’t even be driving a tow truck, but everyone in town keeps using his senile ass.”

A few minutes later, we park off on a side road and walk the rest of the way to the lot. We didn’t bring a flashlight, ‘cause that’s one way you sure as fuck get caught, so we walk slowly, careful with our footing in the light of the few lamp posts.

Reaching the chain-link fence, we follow it around to the gate, since climbing it is out of the fucking question with the barbed wire around the top. I’m not sure how Rog does it in the dark, but he pops the padlock in seconds, and then we’re in. We open both sides of the gate wide to drive right on out as soon as we can find the keys for Blair’s car.

“Uh-oh,” Rog whispers. “Is that red Audi hers?”

“Yeah,” I answer as we walk closer.

“It’s blocked in by a truck and a van,” he says before he laughs.

“Fucking great,” I grumble when we reach the car. In order to get it out, we have to move the truck that’s in front of it. And to get the truck out of the way, we’re gonna have to move the van that’s blocking it. Which means, instead of finding one matching set of keys in the office, we have to find three. “Goddamn it. Guess we better get started,” I say, looking around for the door to get inside.

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Rog says as he follows me to the side entrance. I let him do his magic picking the lock, and soon we’re in. Now I wish we had brought a flashlight; but since we didn’t, there’s no choice but to turn on the fucking overhead light. At least the pound is off the road on a few acres of land with no nearby neighbors.

“We’ve gotta hurry,” he says unnecessarily. “I don’t want to end up in fucking jail tonight.”

“Neither do I,” I say, much rather preferring to end up in bed with Blair once I return her car to her. Going over to some drawers on a desk, I start digging through them and find a shit ton of keys. So many that I don’t even know where to start. “What’s the make of the truck and van?” I ask Rog, hoping he noticed.

“Ah, Toyota Tundra and Honda Odyssey I think,” he replies. “Want me to go back and check?”

“Nah,” I tell him, grabbing up all the keys with Toyota, Honda, and Audi trademarks. “We’ll see for sure when we go back out and try these,” I tell him, holding up the handful of keychains. “Get the lights,” I say since we’ve found what we need to get started.

On the way out the building, Rog helpfully says, “You know, if these were all towed, then they wouldn’t have a set of keys with them, would they?”

“Well, fuck,” I mutter, knowing he’s right. I’m pretty sure Blair would have her keys in her purse.

“Do you know how to hotwire?” Rog asks.

“No, do you?”

“What good are you,
Azrael
?” he asks with a chuckle. “Of course, I know how to hotwire. That’s criminal delinquency one-oh-one, motherfucker.”

It takes a while, almost longer than my nerves can take, but we finally get the Audi out. Why it’s important for me to return the vehicle to Blair, I don’t fucking know. But it’s not like I’m the type of guy to buy her flowers or some bullshit. No, I steal a car from the pound for my girl.

Whoa.

I brake so hard in the Audi that my face nearly smacks into the fucking windshield.

My girl
? Where the hell did those words come from?

Inches away from the dashboard, I see a handicap placard shoved toward the crease where the window meets the dash. When I come to a stoplight, I reach for the piece of blue plastic with the little white guy in a wheelchair. Huh. Blair’s obviously not physically handicapped, but maybe it’s for her mental illness.

Although, now that I think about it, she didn’t have a license in her purse. If she’s been locked up for ten years, she wouldn’t know how to drive a car, would she?

The stoplight turns green; and as I ease my foot down on the accelerator, I reach for the glove box and pop it open, digging around for the registration. Finding it, I flick on the overhead light and read it as I try to keep the car between the lines on the road.

“Gladys Franklin,” I read from the piece of paper from the DMV in Maryland. “What the fuck?”

Over in the passenger seat, I see a dark blue photo album and flip it open. Inside are pictures of a man and woman and then their baby, followed by pages showing a scrawny little girl with butterscotch hair and a shy smile.
Blair
.

Shutting off the light with my fist, it becomes clear to me that Blair obviously stole this fucking car, and the photo album is the only thing of hers inside it. Which means, they probably didn’t let her walk right out of the mental hospital. She escaped, and now her father wants her dead before she opens her mouth and rats him out.

Jesus. Christ.

Needing a fucking cigarette more than ever, I park her car, I mean Gladys’s car, in front of the house until I can get Blair to open the garage to hide it. Once I cut the engine, I pull out a smoke from the pack I bought on the way back to town. I had gone in
l
the store to just buy a razor, but the fucking red and white boxes where taunting me from behind the cash register.

After lighting up, I only take two quick puffs before I remember the look of disgust on Blair’s face. No longer craving the nicotine rush, I put the cigarette out in Gladys’s ashtray before I take a deep breath and head inside. 

Walking up to the front door, I push the doorbell. After the third time, I start to get annoyed and impatient. Why is it taking Blair so long to answer the damn thing? I’m considering just breaking in, worried she may have hurt herself during the last twenty-four hours while I’ve been gone when the front door finally opens.

“Wow,” I remark at the first sight of Blair standing before me in nothing but panties, her eyes lowered, hair tussled and wild in her face. “What the fuck have you been doing?” I ask her. Of course, her only response is the blood-red flush that magically appears on her cheeks while she stares down at my shoes. Then I notice the other red marks on her neck and shoulder, making me a helluva lot more murderous than I’ve ever felt in my life. “Maybe I should ask
who
the fuck have you been doing?” My jaw clenches so hard it nearly breaks when she just turns and walks away, back into the house without answering me.

She’s hiding shit and won’t talk to me, so why the fuck do I keep coming back? Because she’s gorgeous, and I’m a sick bastard who can’t stop ruining her?

Going in after her, I shut the front door and then find her in her room, curled up in the fetal position in bed on her side, her bare back to me standing in the doorway.

Grabbing some paper and a pen from her desk, I walk over and toss it over in front of her face.

“Who the fuck is he?” I ask, sitting down on the edge of the mattress behind her to look at her finished tattoo. It’s beautiful and feminine with bright blue, white and yellow blooming flowers mixed in with the greenery. Two Monarch butterflies are on opposite sides, one at the top and one at the bottom. It’s even sexier than I expected, but now I know it holds a deeper meaning since she incorporated two names throughout it. From afar, most people would never notice them, but I see them clearly.

Blair eventually picks up the pen and scribbles on the paper so messy I can barely read it, “
Who I’ve been doing or on my tattoo
?”

“Both,” I tell her, surprised when she actually admits to seeing someone. Goddamn it, I want to kill that motherfucker. Who the hell has she been fucking around with? An asshole from the tattoo parlor? Did she mess with someone else just because she’s pissed at me? “You could just talk to me, you know?” I snap.

She shakes her head and keeps writing while I scowl at the tangles in the back of her hair, wondering who the fuck’s hands have been on her. While I think of ways to torture and kill the unfortunate bastard who’s decided to mess with
my girl,
Blair writes, “
I would rather not say on the first one, and on the tattoo is a long story.”

“Well then, write me a fucking book,” I bark at her. I’m not sure what I’m angrier with her for, the fact that she refuses to tell me about the other man or that she obviously fools around with him too. 

“Have you fucked him?” I ask, needing to know even if she doesn’t want to talk about it. When she shakes her head, I let out the breath I was holding and spear my fingers through my hair in relief. I still don’t like knowing another man’s hands have been on her. Having never been jealous before, I realize it’s throwing me off balance. Making me doubt myself with her. I’m starting to care about her, and she’s been seeing someone else. What do I even say to that? No, you can’t fuck anyone but me? Yes, that’s what I should say as Blair holds the pen above the paper, carefully considering her words for so long I want to smack her ass and tell her to hurry the fuck up. When she puts the tip of the pen back to the paper, I relax a little more and decide my raging jealousy can wait a little longer since she’s already pissed at me.