Authors: Bryan Smith
Of course, there was no guarantee her car was still in there. During her months of residence at the compound, she had occasionally seen more cars formerly belonging to other new initiates driven into the barn, which didn’t seem nearly large enough to house all the surrendered vehicles. She suspected they were eventually taken away and sold elsewhere. It was yet another way of filling the Order’s overflowing coffers and an especially cynical way of exploiting the gullible lost souls the organization had accepted into its fold.
Even so, whatever process they used to convert the cars into cash could only move so fast. Maybe her Toyota was long gone, but odds were strong there would be some other car she could commandeer to take her away from this ridiculous place.
That thought made her smile and tremble with hope. In many ways coming here and putting herself in the hands of these lunatics was the single dumbest thing she had ever done. However, outside of her short jail stint, these last several days of enforced sobriety while confined to her room was the longest she had stayed straight in just about forever. And the sobriety had gifted her with a rare clarity and a fledgling sense of purpose. If she managed to make it out of here, she was going to change her life, this time for real. That would include making things right with Casey. She was grateful he had managed to elude capture so far and could only hope his luck was still holding out.
As she reached the barn door, she glanced behind her again to check for signs of being watched or followed. She still hadn’t been observed as far as she could tell. There were a few initiates milling around in the area between the rows of cabins, but none of them appeared to have taken note of her.
She eased the door open and slipped inside the barn, squinting against bright sunlight streaming in through the hayloft window. A half-dozen cars were packed inside the barn. As she suspected, there was no sign of her Toyota, but that was okay because here was her means of escape. She had hardly dared believe it possible those first several minutes after abandoning her room, but now it was beginning to feel real.
The barn appeared to be unoccupied, another stroke of almost unbelievable good luck. But she supposed anyone in any kind of position of responsibility was too busy trying to keep the sinking Order ship afloat to keep an eye on things here. She hurried over to the closest car—a late-model Fiat, surprisingly fancy for a new Order initiate—and peeked inside, hoping to see a key in the ignition. There wasn’t one, though, and the ignition slots of the other cars were empty too.
But the backseat of the last car she checked was
not
empty. A young hippie couple was hunkered down behind the seatbacks, clearly hoping to avoid discovery. Keely almost missed them when she checked the ignition, but she caught a quick glimpse of furtive movement that made her peer through the rear window. The couple—a meek-looking boy and a slender, deeply tanned girl with dark hair and eyes a startling shade of blue—gaped at her in shock for a long moment. They were clearly hiding out rather than using the car’s backseat as a place to fuck, which maybe meant they were trying to escape too.
Keely had scarcely begun to process this when she heard a creak behind her as the barn door came fully open. An attractive, familiar-looking woman in dark sunglasses entered the barn holding a gun. She wore black jeans and a black V-neck shirt. An ankh pendant dangled from a slender gold chain around her neck. For a moment Keely puzzled over where she had seen the woman before, but then it came to her—she was the curvaceous beauty she had seen lounging in a tiny red bikini on the back deck the day Boyd took her to the big house. Faces from that day were popping up everywhere suddenly, which probably had to do with John Wayne’s indisposition.
The woman pointed the gun at her. “There you are. I was worried you’d gotten away already.”
Keely frowned as she took a step back from the car. “Gotten away?”
The woman smirked. “No need to play coy. You were trying to escape.”
Keely gave her head an emphatic shake. “No. I was just…wait…who are you?”
“You can call me Jade.”
“Pretty name.”
Jade smiled. “Thank you.”
“Look, there’s no need to point that thing at me. I was just…out for a walk.”
“Oh?”
Keely nodded. “Things have been tense up at the big house. I thought I’d get out for a while and breathe in some fresh air. That’s all.”
Jade kept the gun leveled at Keely’s midsection as she came a few steps closer, her gait an unhurried, hip-swaying strut. She was still smiling, but there was a hint of something vicious in her eyes. “Here’s the thing, Keely. Your story sounds almost plausible, but it doesn’t explain why you’re in here checking out these cars. Do you want to know what I think?”
Keely could still see the hippie kids in her peripheral vision. Knowing they were there made it hard not to glance directly at them. Doing so would almost certainly alert Jade to their presence.
She swallowed a lump in her throat and forced herself to keep her eyes staring straight ahead. “I know what it looks like, but—”
“
Shut up!
”
Keely flinched at the barked command. Her heart was beating fast and she knew she was on the verge of surrendering to panic. Tears stung her eyes as she struggled against a total collapse.
“I’ll tell you what
I
think, bitch.” The heat in her voice surprised Keely. She had never talked to Jade until just now. The animosity made no sense. “I think you were planning to steal one of these cars and drive away, which makes you a low-down cowardly traitor.” She sneered disdainfully. “You know what makes me really sick? The way you’ve betrayed John’s trust. He thinks you’re special. Which should be hilarious, because you’re nothing more than a common drug whore. But John isn’t himself these days. So instead of being hilarious, it’s just sad.”
Keely was having a hard time focusing on anything other than that looming gun barrel, but she made herself lock eyes with Jade. “You’ve got it all wrong. I swear. I—”
Jade cocked the gun’s hammer and smiled at Keely’s stricken expression. “I love the look on your face, like you’re about to piss yourself you’re so scared. Like you know you’re about to die.”
Keely made a pitiful sound of pure terror. “What? You can’t shoot me. You just…please…you can’t…”
“You should hear yourself. You’re pathetic.” There was something more than anger in Jade’s expression now, a suggestion of almost sexual excitement. “A pathetic, worthless little whore.”
Keely sniffled. “Why are you so angry with me? What have I done to you?”
Jade raised the gun and sighted down the barrel at Keely’s forehead. “You killed Susan Wagner. My best friend.” Her eyes gleamed with moisture. “I loved her, and you took her away from me.”
Hot tears spilled down Keely’s face. “Please. I don’t want to die.”
Jade laughed. “You can’t always get what you want. You’ve heard that before, haven’t you? It definitely applies to you.”
“But what about John? Won’t he be angry with you for killing me?”
Jade shrugged. “I’ve already got my cover story worked out. You attacked me when I tried to stop you from escaping and I wound up killing you in self-defense.”
“He won’t believe you.”
“Of course he will. He’ll believe anything I tell him.” Jade’s smile had a leering quality to it. “Or did you imagine you were his only special girl?”
In desperation, Keely tried appealing to her common sense and humanity. “You’re right. You could totally make him believe that story. But what’s the point? You know everything’s going to hell here. And you know what he has planned. Why not go away with me right now? We could go to the cops and tell them everything. They could put a stop to it and save a lot of lives. And instead of being seen as a villain, you’ll be a hero. You don’t really want to die with the rest of them, do you?”
Jade’s expression hardened. “Of course I do. I’m a true believer in John’s message.” She kept the gun’s barrel trained on Keely’s forehead and came another few steps closer to ensure the accuracy of her shot. “Say goodbye, bitch.”
“Wait! Don’t you want to know the real reason I came in here?”
The question surprised Jade enough to forestall the execution a few seconds longer. “This isn’t television, Keely. You’re not saving your sorry life by stalling me with some made-up bullshit.”
Keely shook her head. “But it’s not made up! Look!” She felt a stab of burning shame the instant she realized what she was about to do, but her absolute terror overrode any compassion she might have felt. She gestured at the car next to her and heard a muffled cry of distress from inside. “I followed these kids in here. I was trying to stop them from getting away.”
The rear door on the other side of the car popped open and the kids scrambled out. They hit the ground running and headed straight for the back of the barn, apparently seeking a rear exit.
Jade was quick off the mark, launching herself past Keely with the speed of a champion track runner. Keely watched the woman plant her feet and aim the gun at the retreating backs of the would-be escapees. She cringed as the shots rang out. The boy took a slug between the shoulders and ran a few steps more before stumbling and falling to the ground. The girl had her brains blasted out of her skull by a bullet that punched through the back of her head. As she fell over dead, Keely thought of the girl’s stunning blue eyes and felt that sick feeling inside her again.
Their killer let out a breath and relaxed out of her shooting stance. She walked over to the fallen bodies and kicked at each of them. The boy made a pitiful sound, indicating he still had some life in him.
Jade shot him in the head.
After that she put the barrel of the gun under Keely’s chin and smiled. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Keely. You are quite the ruthless little whore. Don’t think for a second I believe the lie you told about them.”
Keely sighed. “Just go ahead and kill me. Get it over with.”
Jade shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not yet. You see, now I’m thinking I want you to take that journey with the rest of us tomorrow night. Not because I’ve had a change of heart about you or any bullshit like that. No, ma’am. But I want you to spend your last moments of mortal life knowing that all the cold-blooded shit you did to save yourself was for nothing. In the meantime…”
She pulled the gun away from Keely’s chin and pointed it at her stomach.
“Get on your knees, Keely.”
Keely sighed. She was so over being abused in some way by practically every inner circle member she encountered. What perverse slugs these people were. But what choice did she have? She still didn’t want to die and was willing to do anything she had to do to put it off a little while longer.
Keely dropped to her knees.
Jade brushed the barrel of the gun across her lips. “Open your mouth.”
Keely whimpered and heaved a breath. And then she did as Jade instructed.
Jade pushed the barrel of the gun deep inside her mouth. “Look at me.”
Keely’s eyes rolled upward. She waited.
Jade had a strange look on her face. A perverse, intense excitement colored her features. “There was this act I saw performed at a strip club a while back. These gorgeous girls did this really fucking hot routine. A gun was involved. One of them—a raven-haired slut I’d sell my soul for—sucked on the blonde’s gun like it was a dick.”
Keely sobbed. The gun’s sight scraped against the roof of her mouth.
Jade laughed.
“That’s what I want you to do, Keely. That’s your way out of this barn alive.” She jabbed the barrel of the gun deeper into her mouth, mashing her bottom lip with the trigger guard. “Suck on it, bitch. Suck it good.”
Keely fought for several moments to get her sobbing under control.
When she finally did, she performed the act Jade commanded with an unrestrained faux-enthusiasm that both shocked and pleased her new tormentor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Some Fucked-Up Shit Dez Almost Did on the Road
The clusterfuck at Vixens was two days in their rearview mirror when the girls opted to crash at a fleabag motel shortly after crossing the border into Tennessee. This was a testament to how burnt they were after the endless days of not sleeping and bingeing on high-grade coke. A long overdue return to Echo’s house in Rutherford County was little more than two hours away, but they were simply incapable of making it even another mile down the road. They had run out of coke the day before and were crashing hard.
Turned out the only lodging right off the highway was a nasty pit called the Hoot N’ Holler Inn. The name would have amused the trio under better circumstances. They might have taken turns posing for pictures beneath the burned-out neon sign in the parking lot. But by the time Dez pulled the Impala to a stop outside the lobby, all any of them cared about was getting a room and sleeping for forty-eight hours.
The man behind the check-in counter was a middle-aged Iraqi or Afghani or some damn thing. This surprised Dez nearly enough to elicit a snarky comment. Based on the joint’s name, she had expected some big redneck Bubba to greet her. But she was too tired to poke fun at the guy or risk offending him with racist jokes, which she liked to do sometimes just for the pure obnoxious hell of it.