Authors: Bryan Smith
She gripped a handful of his hair, jerked his head up and slashed savagely at his throat, opening his jugular vein. Blood fountained from the wound as he pitched over onto his side and twitched on the gore-soaked floor.
Echo heaved a big breath and grinned happily in the way she often did in the immediate aftermath of a kill. In some ways it wasn’t much different from sex. You had your foreplay and the main event, followed by the afterglow. She enjoyed all of it, but the afterglow was especially nice. She felt fulfilled. Satisfied.
One more sleazy man gone from the face of this earth. I call that a good day’s work.
She washed her hands at the sink and cleaned the blood off the blade before dropping it back in her bag. She cleaned the blood from her body with hot water and a wad of hand towels. There was nothing she could do about the crimson stains on her halter and cutoffs. The bloody hand towels would come with her to be disposed of at another location. Dez always insisted on leaving behind as little DNA evidence as possible. So she gathered up the towels, dropped them in the wastebasket by the toilet and removed the plastic garbage bag from the basket, which she tied up and set down by the door.
With all this taken care of, she was at long last able to do what so desperately needed doing. She dropped her shorts and sat on the toilet seat, letting out a long, relieved sigh as she voided her bladder. That done, she donned a pair of latex gloves from her bag and used another wad of towels to wipe down every surface she had touched in the room. Remembering that she had already tied up the garbage bag, she opted to flush the paper towels down the toilet.
When she at last walked out of the bathroom, Dez and Lana were standing by a rack of snack items, waiting for her. Someone else was also waiting for her, a pudgy guy of about thirty who was obviously in a hurry to get in the bathroom.
Echo blocked his way. “You can’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re dead.”
He frowned. “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”
Echo’s gloved right hand dipped into her purse and came out with a .22. This happened far too fast for him to react. She jammed the barrel against his throat and pulled the trigger. He staggered into a rack of pastry items and knocked it over before falling dead to the floor.
Echo looked at her friends. “Somebody get the clerk.”
Lana ran for the front of the store. She had a gun in her hand—produced from her own handbag—barely a second after Echo spoke. Dez spotted an elderly woman—the only other customer in the store—heading for the front door and intercepted her, knocking her down and snapping her neck with a crunching stomp of her foot. An instant before that happened there was the crack of a gunshot and the clerk fell down dead behind the counter.
It all happened with a speed and deadly precision that made Echo smile.
She loved her friends so much.
After Dez procured the security recordings—another thing she had learned to do with almost supernatural speed and skill—they got out of there and hit the road again.
Chapter Ten
Reunited and It Feels So Bad
“I’m here to kill you. Just like I promised.”
This was Echo’s response to Casey’s question about her unexpected appearance in his house. It wasn’t the answer he had been hoping to hear, and it temporarily short-circuited his brain and left him clueless about what to say next.
Echo kept the gun aimed at him as she stepped over a dead thug and moved closer to him. “Get on your knees, Casey.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand and swept it around in a gesture meant to indicate the three fallen thugs. “Aren’t you even a little curious about what was happening here?”
“No. On your knees.
Now
.”
Her tone was chilling in its resoluteness. He looked into her eyes and saw not even the slightest hint of pity or mercy. This wasn’t a case of Echo trying to scare him by expressing her feelings in the most dramatic way possible. That would have been a lot like the girl he remembered, but he could see she had changed during her time away. She seemed harder than before. Meaner.
She was within six feet of him now. The 9mm’s barrel was pointed at the center of his face. Her aim was steady, her posture relaxed. There was no hint of nerves, no indication she was just seconds removed from having killed three men. “I told you to get on your knees. Do it or I shoot you where you stand.”
Casey remained on his feet and shook his head. “Then that’s what you’re gonna have to do.”
For the first time her expression changed. Her brow knitted and a corner of her mouth twitched. Something told him this wasn’t the first time she had aimed a gun at a man. This probably wasn’t even the first time she’d killed someone. You just didn’t come by this level of chilly calm in matters of life and death without some kind of prior experience. And he had a hunch this was maybe the only time anyone staring down the barrel of her weapon had defied her.
But then she smiled. “Get on your knees now, Casey, or I’ll fucking kneecap you.”
Casey frowned.
Okay, this shit’s getting serious.
He tried to think of something—anything—he could say to distract her, to somehow deflect her rage, but remained at a loss. He didn’t know if it was even possible to reason with anyone who could hang on to this much anger after so long away.
But then he did think of something. A simple question. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t have anything else to work with so he tossed it out there. “Why now?”
He didn’t expect a reply. Hell, he didn’t expect anything other than a bullet to the knee. He was pretty sure his former love had not changed in one essential way. When she said something, she meant it. And when she told you she would do something, it was an absolute lock to happen. So Casey was mildly surprised when she said, “You’re unfinished business. I have to kill you before I can move on.”
Casey grimaced. “I’m sorry I cheated on you, Echo. You probably think I don’t mean it, that I’d say anything with a gun pointed at me, but I swear it’s the truth. I know I fucked up a good thing.”
“I actually believe you, Casey. But I’m still gonna kill you.”
She came another step closer.
Casey took a reflexive step back.
Echo laughed.
Casey frowned. “Is something funny? Because I’ve gotta tell you, Echo, nothing about this seems fucking funny to me.”
She smiled. “Everyone does what you just did. It makes me laugh.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Usually when I’m coming at someone with a gun, they start to back up once I get within six feet of them. It’s like an unwritten rule. The Rule of Magical Bullet Evasion.” Her smile tilted higher on one side, becoming more like a smirk. “Something in their brains makes them feel like they’ll be okay if they can just stay that certain distance away, like that few extra inches will somehow protect them. It’s not true, of course.”
She came another slow step closer.
Casey let out a breath and stayed where he was. His heart was pounding and his mouth felt dry, but he wasn’t going anywhere, not after that little speech. He didn’t want to get kneecapped. He didn’t want to get shot at all. But there was virtually no chance he could stop it from happening. Either way—on his knees or on his feet—there was a bullet with his name on it in that gun. And he had been threatened quite enough for one day.
So fuck it.
“You told me you’d kill me if you ever saw me again.”
“That’s right, motherfucker.” She said it with a smile so enthusiastically malicious it nearly broke his resolve. “And that bill has finally come due.”
“But it was like a warning, right? That’s how those things work. It means stay out of my way and don’t come around again. Well, that’s just what I did. I fucked up and I stayed away. I held up my end of the bargain. So why come looking for me?”
Echo rolled her eyes. “I’ve already told you what’s up, Casey. You’re just trying to delay the inevitable.”
Casey sighed. “Look…what am I supposed to do here? Beg for my life?”
“That’d be a start, bitch. I want you on your knees and begging for your life. I want you kissing my feet and crawling like a worm. I want to see you completely humiliated before you die.”
“You used to love me.”
“Things have changed.”
“So what we had doesn’t mean anything to you anymore? Because I thought it was pretty special.”
Echo sputtered incredulous laughter. “Are you shitting me, Casey? That’s rich coming from you. Our love was a lie. I knew that as soon as I caught you between that whore’s legs.”
“Hold on. You said you believed me when I said I knew I fucked up a good thing.”
“Oh, I believe that. That’s a whole other issue from the simple fact of you being a worthless, cheating piece of shit.”
She came yet another step closer.
Casey still didn’t move.
There was only about three feet between them now.
Echo smiled. “Go on, Casey. Make a grab for the gun. See what fucking happens.”
Casey entertained the idea for all of about a second, dismissing it as soon as it occurred to him. Echo was too confident in the way she handled the weapon, too sure in every aspect of what she was doing. A grab for the gun would accomplish nothing other than getting shot sooner. He had to think of some other way to throw her off balance, some way of changing the game.
And then he had it.
“Keely’s in trouble.”
The words appeared to penetrate Echo’s veneer of mercilessness. She pursed her lips as she stared at him for a long, thoughtful moment. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
Finally.
He had her attention, had even managed to at least temporarily shift it away from the issue of vengeance. Chances were good he would still wind up dead within the next few minutes, but he had an opportunity here, one he’d better damn well exploit to the fullest while he could. “You remember that weird cult that started making headlines the year before you took off?”
Echo’s mouth twisted in a disdainful sneer. “Those hippie weirdoes?”
Casey nodded. “Yeah. She’s living at their compound now.”
Echo lowered her gun a little. He figured this was a reflection of shock at the revelation about Keely rather than an indication she had decided not to shoot him, but he would take what he could get at this point.
“When did this happen?”
Casey detected real concern regarding Keely’s plight in Echo’s tone. This was a potentially very good thing and did not surprise him. The only surprising thing was it had taken him this long to play what was, in retrospect, his ace in the hole.
His sister was the only other member of the extended Miller clan Echo had bonded with in any significant way. They had been genuinely fond of each other, though there was some friction near the end related to Keely spurning Echo’s offer to get her a tryout as a dancer at the club. Echo got upset when Keely described stripping as “low class”. The truth was dancing at the club would have been too much like going to a real job, where you had a boss and were expected to adhere to a regular schedule, both of which were things she avoided whenever possible.
Casey sighed. “Several months back. She wasn’t working, as usual, and somewhere along the way her drug of choice changed from coke to heroin. That’s when she really started going downhill. And there were legal issues related to that.”
Echo shook her head. “Again?”
“Yeah. Again.” Casey’s voice reflected all the weariness he felt any time he reflected on Keely’s endless tribulations. “She was getting into some shady shit before she hooked up with the cult. Theft. Turning tricks. Shit like that.”
Echo’s expression turned pensive. “I’ve been into some ‘shady shit’ myself lately, Casey, a lot of it way worse than stealing or selling myself for cash.”
Casey didn’t have anything to say to that.
Echo grunted. “Let me guess. It’s different because she’s your sister. Because she’s blood. I’m just the crazy ex you forgot all about once she was out of the picture. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
“Echo—”
“Hush. I don’t want to hear it. I know how shit is.” The corners of her mouth quirked in a bitter little smile. “Back to your baby sister’s tale of woe.”
“Keely’s a year older than me.”
“Whatever. Like her age matters. Your sister is a fucking child. You know it as well as I do.”
Casey couldn’t argue the point. “Yeah.”
“Hell, at this point, maybe being in a goofy hippie cult is the best thing for her.”
“How do you figure?”
Echo shrugged. “She’s got a place to stay, right? You don’t have to worry about her doing unsavory shit to pay rent. And I bet they’re providing all the drugs she can handle. Drugs are, like, her favorite thing in the whole world, right? She might as well be somewhere she can get dope without getting into even bigger trouble. Yeah, maybe it’s not an ideal situation, but it’s probably about the best you can hope for at this point.”
Casey snorted. “Bullshit. If that’s all there was to this, maybe I’d agree, but there’s a lot more going on than just a big love-in. This so-called Order of Wandering Souls is trouble. I’ve done a lot of looking into them, including talking to a private investigator named Carl Stark. Stark was convinced the Order’s on the verge of turning into a full-blown Manson family or Jonestown situation. The public gets fed the hippy-dippy bullshit, but behind the scenes the guy running the thing, their fucking guru, believes in blood and revolution, the whole sixties radical trip.”