Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (28 page)

“Izms scared of the big bad handcuffs?”

Izms wasn’t scared, exactly. Izms couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he knew he didn’t want to be handcuffed to anything.

“Well,” I said, and tried to keep my sanity as she nibbled my naked earlobe.

It had been about half an hour since our last act, and Nate’s body was so healthy and horny I couldn’t see straight. Pretty soon, there wasn’t any hiding that fact from Erika.

“
That’s
my naughty boy,” she breathed, snapping the other end of the cuff to the steel headboard.

Coming to my senses, I tried another tack.

“Erika, hey, come on, we were fine just a minute ago… I kinda want more of that cake, don’t you?”

Her finger pressed against my lips, shushing me, then she replaced her finger with her mouth. Before I could offer another objection she slipped a cuff from the other pair around my free wrist.

A sudden vision hit me of Jill, bruised and pitiful in a house reeking of cigarettes and beer, crying out desperately for her doomed father…

“No, hey, Erika stop!” I shouted at last, panicking. I didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable like never before.

In a rush, Erika threw all her weight against my right arm and snapped the other end shut around the steel post.

Effectively chaining me to Nate’s bed.

Shrieking with laughter, snorting so much it sounded like a farmer’s pigpen, Erika leapt from the bed naked, tore out of the room, and then bounded down the stairs.

Chapter 31

“You’re in a real pickle, now, Danny Boy,” I said out loud. It was my father’s favorite thing to say whenever I’d gotten myself into trouble. As a result, I’d spent my whole life pulling pickles off my burgers and dinner plates. I’m sure pickles are perfectly fine, but the rituals incurred from childhood scarring simply must be observed.

Erika had been gone for about thirty minutes. To me, it was as if all the pickles I’d ever chucked aside had somehow found their way back.

I tested the cuffs again, flexing them against the steel headboard, but it was no use. I couldn’t achieve the necessary leverage to effectively employ Nate’s uber-muscles. With nothing to do, I settled for waiting patiently.

When Erika finally returned she was fully dressed and carrying her purse.

“Going somewhere?” I said, and admired my cool delivery.

“Just returning, actually,” she said, tossing her purse on the floor next to the bed with a light thump. Then she calmly removed her clothes and started throwing them at random to different parts of the room, smiling mischievously all the while.

Erika climbed onto the bed and straddled my chest, looking down at me.

“Miss me much?” she said.

“Sure. But you’re here now, so why don’t you unlock these handcuffs, Erika?”

“I would, but I’m not sure where the key is,” she said, in a way that suggested a lack of truthfulness.

“Come on, quit playing around and get the key. This is our wedding day. You don’t want to ruin it, do you?”

I hoped by acting as if she were just joking, she’d chicken out of whatever she was up to and let me go.

Erika assumed an expression of intense thinking, then perked up.

“I think I know where it is!”

“Great, go get it, I promise to wait right here.”

Grinning in a way that made me wish I’d seen it coming, Erika reached down, grabbed me between the legs and squeezed.

“Hey, ouch! What are you doing?”

I began to buck and heave, unable to help myself, but Erika held on, mounted on my chest like a rodeo cowboy.

“That’s not the key?” she said, her face a mask of innocence.

“No!”

“It’s sort of like a key. But it’s all smooshy. I’m thinking it has to be more stiff, don’t you? So you can get it in the keyhole?”

Then she started rubbing me, her expression one of hedonistic pleasure. Worse, against all my instincts and the ridiculousness of the situation, Nate’s dumb, ultra-healthy body began to respond.

I made objections. She responded by shifting her perch on my chest to straddle my waist. Helpless, I decided the best course of action, all things considered, was to just let time pass for a few minutes. I suppose I could have kicked her off the bed or tried to strangle her with my legs, but that would leave me stranded in Nate’s bed. I didn’t fear death, but the idea of starving to death horrified me. After all, who would come looking for me at home when we were supposed to be off on our honeymoon? No, I had to play this out and see where it led.

About three no-comment minutes later there came a series of loud bangs from downstairs, followed by the unmistakable crack of splitting wood. It sounded like someone had just kicked in Nate’s door.

Erika’s face lit up with delight.

“Oh my goodness!” she said. “I think we have company, Hun Bun. I wonder who it is?” She said it in the same tone a child might say,
I’ve got a secret and I’m not telling.
Then she shimmied from my waist to the side farthest from the door and draped her hand casually across my chest, stroking me.

Moments later, Rob stepped into the room.

***

The last time I saw Rob he’d been wearing a tuxedo. He’d ditched the tux in favor of jeans, a black T-shirt, leather gloves, and a black stocking hat. He also looked amused as hell. Call me a pessimist, but I didn’t think his arrival was that of a rescuing hero.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he said with a wry smile.

Quite aware of my nakedness, secured by fuzzy handcuffs and smeared with pink and blue icing, I said, “Not at all. I was just about to put on a shirt and do some laundry.”

Rob threw a questioning glance at Erika.

“He’s been saying clever shit like that all week,” she said, sitting up, serious now and a few degrees cooler.

“Shut up a minute,” Rob said. Then he walked around the room, sizing it up. “Looks like my little brother’s doing pretty good for a teacher. Got himself a big empty house to go with his big empty head.”

Christ. Another brother?

I began to feel the first vestiges of real shame. It had been my job to find these things out.

Erika said, “Rob I’m sorry, I just thought it was a good idea to do it now. I didn’t think I could go through with what we said—I got scared.”

Rob took two quick steps to the bed and backhanded her hard across the left side of her face.

“I said shut up,” he said, not changing the tone of his voice in the slightest.

In my experience, a guy who could do it that way was old-dog hard in ways the thug puppies littering the culture often admired but could never pull off themselves.

Recovering quickly, Erika said, “Good, that’s right, hit me again. It has to look like I got beat up or the cops’ll be suspicious.”

Rob turned to me and said, “You see what she’s like? Really Nate, I’m doing you a favor.” Then he reached behind his back, pulled out a silenced pistol and pointed it at me.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice. “You’re just going to shoot me? We’re flesh and blood man, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Rob squinted at me, the look on his face ranging from perplexed to amused and then back again. But he lowered the gun.

“What’s with you, anyway?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Wagging the gun at me, he said, “I mean look at you. Layin’ there naked as a jaybird, no famous good-boy shyness anywhere, tossing off jokes like ‘flesh and blood’ cuz we’re all adopted. It’s too cute, too smart, not like you at all. How can you be so calm knowing I’m about to blow your head off?”

Adopted…

Things were beginning to gel now, which made me think the old cliché,
Better late than never
, made no sense at all.

“Oh, that,” I said, nodding. “Listen, forget that. Why don’t I just write you a nice fat check, give you half? You can cash it, it’ll clear, and then we never talk to each other again. There’s almost two hundred million in the account. This way you don’t have to kill anyone and Erika can go back to being a hooker or whatever she does when she’s not ruining people’s lives.”

That earned me a fist to the crotch from Erika. Rob had to run over quickly to pull her off me.

“I’m fine, get off!” she yelled, making a show of composing herself and glaring at me to show she’d do it again.

Meanwhile, my vision pulsed with every heartbeat—and oh, the pain. The kind of hurt that starts at the bottom of a mountain with no top and just keeps climbing.

I didn’t think for a second that this was some everyone-hates-Nate party. These two were after Nate’s winnings. Lucky for everyone I didn’t care about the money. If I could get Nate out of this mess with no more holes than the day I found him I’d call it a win.

“That’s not the deal, Rob,” Erika said, sitting back on the bed in a huff. “If he gives you the money, what’s in it for me?”

“Hold on, babe, let’s hear him out, see what he has to say.”

Hardly daring to hope, I said, “Just like I said. I write the check and hand it over. I don’t call the cops. The last thing I want is you two holding a grudge against me. I’m frugal, I don’t need much. Even half is more than I’ll ever spend.”

“Bullshit!” Erika shouted, turning to Rob. “You don’t believe that, do you? He’ll say anything right now. Frugal? Him? He’s got a goddamn Ferrari! As soon as you let him go he’s going to call the police.”

Rob had had enough. He grabbed her and shouted, “Ok, we do it your way. You want some bruises?” He hit her twice in the face, knocking her to the floor, senseless.

He looked at me, eyes raging.

“I was the one who got us out of that house, away from that crazy old man. I didn’t want to do any of those things to you two, but he made me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I was the one who killed him. I protected us. And what’d I get after? Psychologists, foster homes and more of the same from another perv, only this time not so old he couldn’t get it up himself. Then it was off to juvey. You and the homo got to grow up together in a good place with soccer and Boy Scouts and shit while I got beat up every day by niggers and queers. Then, when I got out, surprise surprise! Neither of you want nothin to do with me.”

I got the sense if Nate knew anything about Rob it ended after their shared history. Call it a hunch, but Rob didn’t seem the type to confide these things to anyone he wasn’t about to kill.

“But, we’re friends now,” I said. “I mean, we’re making things right, hanging out and everything. You’re my best man, dude.”

Rob laughed out loud.

“I’m friends with anyone who wins two hundred million dollars. When the homo talked you into making me best man instead of him, what was I gonna do, say no?” He leaned back, pointing at me, laughing so hard his face turned red. “That’s some irony right there, that’s what that is. Best man. Hah!” Moments later, calmer, he shook his head. “Like that could ever make up for what you told the judge.”

I threw him a questioning look.

“Thought I forgot that part, huh?”

I started to say something but he waved me off.

“I’m not backing out now,” Rob said. “I put this thing together, and Erika’s gonna want something for those black eyes I just gave her. Man, she messed this whole thing up real good.”

“What do you mean?” I said, stalling for more time.

“Oh,” Rob said, chuckling. “You’re gonna love this. She was supposed to push you off that cliff you were heading to—on account of you being a big hiker and not afraid of heights. It was all set. She’d stand near the ledge in the morning, sipping her coffee, waiting for you to show up and put your arm around her. And when the right moment came—woosh, you’d go down the quick way. They’d call it an accident.” He shook his head. “Now I gotta stage a goddamn home invasion. Christ.”

He stepped over to the door and raised his gun.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t take half,” he said, letting the gun drop a little. “It’s that you don’t deserve it. You or Timmy-boy. Not after what I’ve been through—for the things I’ve done for this family and how I got treated for it.”

He sounded like an unappreciated hero. For all I knew he
had
been a hero. But that’s the problem with popping up in people’s bodies like this—I never know the backstory on anyone. Still, so long as he pointed that gun at me—or rather, at his brother Nate—I couldn’t allow myself to feel any sympathy for him.

“Come on man, listen to yourself,” I said. “Are you going to trust Erika to keep a secret like this? She’ll be the beneficiary of all that money—not you. Why would she share it with anyone?”

Rob licked his lips and said, “We had an agreement.”

“You think she’ll stick to it?” I said. “Does she seem like a stable… whatever she is?”

“Stable enough, for a stripper.”

I blinked a few times and then, numbly, I said, “Stripper?”

Rob laughed.

“What, you thought she was gonna give up the fast life for you? How many strippers you know go hiking, anyway?”

I felt dumb, finally getting it. That explained the little chat I saw Rob have with the manager at the bachelor party. Erika was a stripper. Probably the reason she didn’t like being called “babe.” Yet more missed details in case I didn’t hate myself enough.

“You know her from Hardlickers,” I said. “She worked there, and you got her to join my hiking club. And you actually trust her with a secret like this?”

Rob made a more-or-less motion with his free hand.

“I met her after I bought the place with the chump change you gave me,” he said. “Friend-of-a-friend kind of thing. She never worked for me, so there’s nothing to trace. Man… When I saw that
60-Minutes
segment about you staying a teacher and giving away all your cash to hospitals and shit it drove me nuts, all that waste. So yeah, I got her to come onto you, see if she could appeal to your better half.” He said this last with an amused look at my nether regions. “As for trusting her, we got an understanding. That and I got a full, taped confession back at the house to keep her honest.”

“Rob, listen, don’t do this,” I said, calmly, not pleading. “You have no idea what’s in store for you. Trust me on this one.”