Go Kill Crazy!
Author: Bryan Smith
Date: 2014-02-04 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Thriller
Description: "Blood! Bullets! Killer babes! " "It's a man's world," according to the old saying. But a girl gang with no inhibitions when it comes to sex and violence would disagree. Dez, Echo and Lana are former strippers with lethal curves and bad intentions. Together they embark on a wild cross-country orgy of crime, leaving rivers of blood and piles of bullet-riddled bodies in their wake. Knowing they are destined to die young-and probably violently-the girls get their kicks while they can, never suspecting they are on a collision course with notorious cult guru John Wayne de Rais and his fanatical fol
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Rights: All Rights Reserved (c) 2014 Bryan Smith

Dedication

For Lady Dynamite.

Chapter One

Austin, TX

One month ago

The pain was getting worse by the moment. Or at least that was how it felt to Quincy Carter some three hours into his ordeal at the hands of the three crazy chicks he’d had the misfortune to run into at the Dirty Halo Saloon.

The Dirty Halo was a lowdown Austin dive long frequented by lowlifes and bikers. In recent years, however, it had become increasingly popular with hipsters. They dug the noir vibe and the cool retro music on the old-fashioned jukebox. The soundtrack was oldies and rockabilly, the latter in the form of both vintage tunes and new stuff from bands carrying on the tradition. You couldn’t walk into the place these days without feeling as if you had stumbled upon an open casting call for a parody of a 50’s juvenile exploitation film. Two out of every three dudes in the place would be sporting chain wallets and pompadours. The rest would be affecting the greaser look, with slicked-back hair and leather biker jackets. The chicks mostly rocked the pinup look. Vintage dresses and heels, flawless hair, nails and makeup.

As a Dirty Halo regular going back to the late 80’s, Quincy had observed the formerly sleazy joint’s evolution from scary dive to hip hangout with a mixture of bemusement and resigned dismay. Many of the old school regulars had stopped coming around. Some, yeah, because they were just dead, but a lot of guys hadn’t been able to stomach the new poser vibe. But Quincy still dropped in once or twice every week. Partly because old habits die hard, but mostly because of the women. So many of them were beautiful in an almost otherworldly way, like images of old time Hollywood glamour somehow brought to life. Quincy was decades older than most of them and realistically he knew he had no chance of scoring. Well, old maybe he was, but he still had a lot of lust in his heart. He liked watching the women as they laughed and danced and flirted with the younger guys. He would fix their gorgeous images in his head and later go home and masturbate. Which wasn’t exactly fulfilling, but at least it was some kind of relief.

The only relief he craved now was for an end to his suffering. His whole body was aflame with unrelenting agony. He was bruised and battered. His flesh was leaking blood from what felt like a million open wounds.

Some parts of his body were…missing.

He whimpered and tried to swallow around the dirty sock that had been stuffed in his mouth. The triple thickness of duct tape wound around the lower portion of his head made spitting the nasty thing out impossible.

Their names were Lana, Desiree (pronounced Dez-uh-ray) and Echo. His trio of female tormentors. He’d struck up a conversation with the young women out of helpless curiosity. Though obviously not part of the old school crowd, the girls also hadn’t struck him as hipsters. All three were devastatingly attractive. Dez, a tall and statuesque blonde, had a particularly striking look. She was an absolute bombshell. Lana and Echo were brunettes and were nearly as stunning as Dez.

All three sported a number of visible tattoos. Dez had full-sleeve illustrations on both arms and was also inked in several places on her legs and neck. A lot of it was horror and gypsy imagery—skulls, zombies and sensuous images of veiled women. Another recurring image was the number thirteen, appearing in various fonts and sizes in several places on her body. Lana’s ink was nearly as extensive and just as varied, but the image that most compelled Quincy’s attention was the skull with wings on her chest. Clenched between the skull’s teeth was a thorny rose. Twin images of pistol grips were visible above the waistline of Echo’s denim cutoffs. The impression was of Old West style revolvers holstered in low-slung gun belts. Her tiny, midriff-exposing top made it nearly impossible to look away. She had such a scrumptious-looking stomach. He had longed to reach across the table and tug at her navel piercing.

The girls eschewed the classy retro look preferred by the pinup crowd at the Dirty Halo in favor of distinctly more slutty attire. Very skimpy attire. Shorts and tiny, form-fitting tops that exposed a lot of skin and left virtually nothing to the imagination. Quincy had been unsurprised to learn that all three were strippers.

He had enjoyed the early part of his interaction with the tattooed bombshells. They were funny and they laughed at his jokes. At the time he had been so proud of himself for having the guts to approach them. It had been early evening, and he had been a little liquored up already, as usual. The Dirty Halo wasn’t yet as packed as it would be later and he’d been unable to keep his eyes off the dangerous-looking yet wildly gorgeous girls, who were sitting at a table by the window. So he knocked back another shot of courage and sauntered over to introduce himself. Instead of making fun of him—as he’d expected—they invited him to sit and drink with them. And things had gone smashingly until he made the mistake of fixating on Echo’s odd name.

“Is that your real name?” he’d asked her.

An expression of boozy mirth froze on her face. “What do you mean?”

The other girls got real quiet.

Though aware of the dizzyingly abrupt shift in their demeanors, he had been a touch too intoxicated to perceive the need to back off the subject. Surely it was no big deal. He figured it was the kind of thing she must get asked all the time.

So he had fixed Echo with a supremely goofy grin, placing a cupped hand to his ear as he said, “Echo-echo-echo…” He laughed in a way that was too loud and too desperate. “It just doesn’t seem like it could be anyone’s real name. You know?”

Echo and her friends just stared at him in utter silence for at least a full minute after his joke fell flat. In retrospect, the smart thing to do at that point would have been to apologize and get out of there. But that desperate part of him hadn’t wanted to give up on making friends with the sexy trio. So he just sat there, sweating and wilting in the silence.

Then, at last, Echo laughed. “That’s pretty funny, Quincy. I’ve never fucking heard that one before.”

“I’m s-sorry,” he stammered, belatedly attempting to apologize. “I just—”

“You just owe us some more drinks. In fact…” She leaned across the table in a way that emphasized her amazing cleavage. “…I think you should buy all our drinks the rest of the night.”

And so things had reverted back to the previous level of boozy camaraderie. The festivities continued for a few more rounds of drinks. And then Dez invited him to party with them at the hotel where they were staying.

Quincy was strapped to a chair in the musty living room of a very decrepit house in a poor area of town. From where he sat, he could see a sagging blue sofa that was missing a cushion. Directly across from the sofa was a boxy Magnavox television with a cracked screen. He saw bookshelves that had once been lined with books and knickknacks. The books and knickknacks had been swept to the floor, perhaps by some junkie in search of a hidden cache of money. Gauzy curtains on the windows blocked a view of a tiny yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. He had glimpsed the shabby exterior of the house prior to being coaxed inside by the girls. How stupid he had been not to realize something was up at that point. Supposedly they were staying in a nice hotel in town, yet here they were entering this shithole in what he knew was a drug-infested, high crime neighborhood. But he had been too in awe of them. Too drunk. And, yes, too dumb.

Fun gave way to horror almost immediately. A savage beating got things underway. He was a big guy, but there were three of them. And they were younger and far more fit. They punched him and slapped him, bouncing him around the room like a pinball. Then Dez landed a kick to his balls that sent him mewling to the floor. She wore white platform go-go boots. He felt like he had taken a cannonball to the nuts. A sturdy old chair was dragged into the room from some other part of the house. They used two entire rolls of duct tape to secure him to it. And then the real torture got underway. It had gone on until roughly half an hour ago. He had been cut on and beaten so mercilessly that he only hoped for a swift end to it all. He knew they planned to kill him. He didn’t understand it, but he had come to accept it. He just wanted his pain to end.

But they had abruptly ceased torturing him and gone off to another room to confer about something. Then, without a word to him, they left the house. He heard their car start up and drive away.

They were coming back. There was no doubt of that. He could give the police extremely vivid descriptions of all three girls. No way would they chance that.

The extended time alone was a different kind of torture. All he could do was think and be perfectly aware of the hopelessness of his situation. He still couldn’t fully grasp why this was happening. He had made a lame joke about the one girl’s name. He hadn’t meant it as an insult. It wasn’t fair he was suffering for something so insignificant. They were psychopaths. There was no other explanation. They were bad. Evil. He had known men like them. Grifters and hardcore criminals from the Dirty Halo’s old days. Vicious bastards who’d cut a guy’s throat over pennies. But you didn’t expect that kind of thing from women. Especially not pretty women.

Stupid, he thought. I’m so fucking stupid.

He saw a dim glow of headlights through the gauzy curtains as a car pulled up to the curb out front. Their car. It was a black Impala from the 70’s. A big car with a powerful engine that made a lot of noise. Its throaty rumble resonated in the street outside a few more moments before it ceased. Shortly thereafter he heard a buzz of feminine voices and heels clacking on the sidewalk. Quincy’s heart pounded as the voices drew closer. Then a key rattled in the lock and the door came open.

He pissed his pants as they came inside.

All three girls entered bearing paper sacks. Dez shifted the sack she was carrying from one arm to another and he heard a clink of glass. Liquor store purchases. For them, this was a party. They weren’t just doing this out of a sense of payback for a perceived slight.

They were doing it because they enjoyed it.

Echo pointed at his stained crotch and said something demeaning. Then they were all laughing like escaped lunatics. Which, come to think of it, maybe they were.

Lana kicked the door shut and followed the other girls into the living room. Dez removed several clear bottles from a sack and set them on the floor. Vodka and grain alcohol. All very high-octane stuff. Quincy had to wonder why so much of it.

Echo emptied another sack of what turned out to be hardware store purchases. A hammer. Nails. A Black & Decker power saw. And an acetylene torch.

Quincy’s chest hitched and he struggled to swallow. A bleak, black hopelessness engulfed him. He was in hell. This house was hell. And these three deceptively beautiful girls were Satan’s emissaries on earth.

Lana removed six-packs of cold beer from another sack and nodded at him. “Look. It’s crying again.”

All three looked at him then.

And giggled like schoolgirls.

Echo swept her handbag off her shoulder, snapped it open and dipped a hand inside. It came out gripping the same straight razor she’d used on him so extensively already. It was still wet with his blood.

She made her hips sway suggestively as she crossed the living room. Her eyes glittered with savage amusement. She flicked the straight razor open and grinned. “This is going to hurt. A lot. But be a good boy and stay still or I’ll make it hurt even more.”

She leaned over him and wedged the sharp end of the blade behind his right ear. With her other hand, she tugged his ear outward and began to saw it off his head. And Quincy couldn’t help it. He screamed behind the gag and bucked in the chair. Echo screamed at him in response. The blade came away from his ear and slashed across his face, a deep gash that split his cheek open to the bone. Blood soaked the sock stuffed in his mouth and made him gag. His heart pounded more furiously than ever. His body’s relentless drive to survive pushed him beyond the brink, shattering what little remained of his sanity.

Echo’s pretty face contorted with rage. “I told you to stay still.” She leaned close to him, spraying his face with spittle as the volume of her voice increased. “And I fucking meant it!”

Dez was standing next to her now. Her hands were on her shapely hips, her large breasts thrust brazenly outward. “Do as she says, pig, or she takes an eye next.”

Quincy whimpered.

Blood was still spurting from his slashed cheek. He kept swallowing it as it leaked into his throat. The new wounds hurt. They throbbed relentlessly. Just like all the other open wounds. But this latest cut had gone deeper than most. Maybe he would bleed enough to lose consciousness. It was all he could hope for at this point.

Dez snapped a hand across his face, rocking his head savagely to the side. He screamed behind the gag again.

“Look at me, bitch!”

Quincy wanted to defy her. Wanted to close his eyes and never see any of them again. He wished they would cut his eye out. Hell, both of them. But something primal within him wouldn’t allow him even this gesture.

So he looked at Dez.

But he couldn’t look her in the eye. The intimidation factor was just too high. It was like looking into the devil’s eyes. So he focused instead on one of her countless tattoos, an image of a Halloween black cat crawling up the side of her neck.

“You’re going to obey Echo this time. Nod if you understand.”

Quincy nodded.

There was nothing else he could do.

Echo went back to work on his ear. This time he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he expended every last bit of remaining will he had in an effort to remain perfectly still. His eyes came open again the moment he felt the last strand of tissue connecting his ear to his head tear loose.

Echo displayed the severed ear for him, pinched between a thumb and forefinger. Then she smiled and held it close to her mouth. “Hey, pig, tell me if you can hear this. My name really is Echo-Echo-Echo.”

The girls were delirious with laughter after that. The bloodthirsty lovelies looked like a vision torn from the darkest depths of nightmare country. There was a demented, perverse, funhouse aspect to what he was seeing. It almost seemed like a hallucination. Like something that couldn’t be real.

That impression changed again when Echo tossed his ear over her shoulder and came at him again with the straight razor. The blade sliced into the skin just below his hairline. Blood spilled down his forehead and over his squeezed-shut eyelids. Quincy’s whole body shook again as he felt the blade cut in a straight line toward his temple.

She’s scalping me, he thought. Oh, dear God, she’s scalping me!

Echo laughed as Quincy sobbed and swallowed blood.

“Come on, pig, let’s get a look at your brains.”

Quincy opened his eyes and squealed as he felt her start to tug the loose flesh away from his head. Through a vision stained crimson by the spilling blood, he saw Dez uncap one of the big vodka bottles. She took a single deep swig from it. When Echo moved behind him to slide the blade into the flesh at the back of his neck, Dez ripped the triple thickness of duct tape from his face, extracted the blood-soaked sock and jammed the open neck of the vodka bottle into his mouth. He spluttered, choking on it, spitting what he could of it out even as the alcohol burned the gash in his cheek. But it was useless. He couldn’t stop her from jamming the long neck of the bottle all the way to the back of his throat.

“Drink, bitch!” she screamed at him. “Drink it all! Fucking drown, pig!”

It was just the first bottle. Not all of it got into his lungs, but plenty did. Dez had the second bottle open by the time Echo finished peeling his scalp from his head. He tried to resist, but they forced his mouth open.

And he drank and drank.

And drank some more.

Bottle after bottle.

Until he was dead.

Chapter Two

But before all that happened…

The front door was unlocked when Lana arrived home from a rare afternoon shift at the Booty Boutique, the Tampa strip club where she worked as an “exotic dancer”. She nudged the door open and stepped into a dark living room. She frowned as she groped for the light switch. Blaine’s car was parked out front, same as always on a Monday afternoon. He worked nights at a warehouse, and Sundays and Mondays were his usual days off. It wasn’t like him to sleep the day away on those days. He was usually up practicing his music and trying to write songs. So maybe he wasn’t feeling well. He’d been complaining of headaches lately.

Lana found the silence and darkness mildly curious, but these things did not overly concern her. She was tired from dancing and wanted to nap for a couple hours before heading back out to the club later that night.

Her normal shift was ten p.m. through the wee morning hours. Which was the best shift because all the guys were shitfaced and loose with their money. But today she had been covering for a friend who had a sick baby. Lana was happy to do the favor. Extra hours meant significant extra cash, even during daylight shifts. And you could never tell when some showoff businessman might roll in with some associates he wanted to impress. Today she had hit the jackpot. A big, florid-faced man in an expensive suit and an oversized cowboy hat entered the club shortly after lunchtime. In blatant defiance of local anti-smoking ordinances, he had a big, smelly cigar wedged into a corner of his mouth. Accompanying him was an entourage of several other cigar-smoking douchebags.

It took every ounce of will Lana had not to laugh in the Boss Hog-looking motherfucker’s face when he introduced himself as “Big” Ted Wilkinson and immediately asked for a lap dance. But that was the job. You danced for any and all of them. Didn’t matter how they looked. Fat or skinny, young or old, ugly or handsome, if they had the cash, you had to make with the booty shakin’.

And anyway, this guy oozed money. He took an immediate shine to her, throwing so much cash at her she offered to escort him to a VIP room for a private show. He declined and instead slipped a scrap of paper into her garter. His number was on it. She could call him any time she wanted for a “proper date”. Again, she had to call on a hell of a lot of willpower not to laugh in his face. Not because she considered the prospect of seeing the man outside the context of the club laughable. He was rich as fuck. Of course she would consider it. What was funny was the idea of a “proper date” with the likes of him. Flirting with a tattooed and multiply pierced stripper in a place like the Booty Boutique was one thing. In here guys like Big Ted were hidden away from the judgmental eyes of their more straight-laced colleagues. In public was another deal altogether. Take away all the booze and the showoff aspect and…well, clearly it wasn’t going to happen. But no-tell motel sex in exchange for a large amount of cash?

Maybe.

It was something she did now and then with high rollers when the money was right. She didn’t like it much, but she endured it as a means to an end. Between these occasional private arrangements and the money she made dancing, she did more than all right for herself. She was still very young and hot, but she wasn’t dumb. Her looks wouldn’t last forever. So she meant to stockpile as much money as she could while she could. And in the meantime, Blaine could keep working at getting somewhere with his music. She had faith in him. Not only was he very good looking, but he was also super talented. He was an amazing singer and could play practically any instrument. He was destined for stardom and she planned to be right there alongside him for the whole ride. And by then all the sacrifices she’d ever made would have been worth it.

She flipped the light switch up and eased the door shut, taking care to make as little noise as possible. If Blaine wasn’t feeling well, she didn’t want to disturb him. With that in mind, she stepped out of her heels before proceeding to the kitchen, where she shrugged her purse off her shoulder and dropped it on the counter. Then she padded barefoot across the cool kitchen tiles to the refrigerator. She pulled the door open and peeked inside at the contents, thinking she might prepare a light meal prior to catching a few winks of her own. She was reaching into the fridge for a jar of strawberry jam when she heard it.

The moan.

What the fuck?

For a long moment, she thought she’d imagined it. Other than the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of cool air issuing from a nearby floor vent, the apartment was quiet. Then she heard it again and knew she had imagined nothing. She gently closed the refrigerator and, treading as lightly as possible, walked out of the kitchen and entered the short hallway that led to the bedroom.

She stopped halfway down the hallway, held her breath and stared at the sliver of light visible through the closed bedroom door. Her heart was galloping. An incipient rage quickly gained momentum, making her chest feel tight. She tried telling herself not to panic, not to rush to judgment. Maybe Blaine was very sick and the moans she was hearing were merely a reflection of that.

Then the sound came yet again, escalating to a higher pitch this time, almost like a scream. By now she knew these were not sounds of sickness or misery.

They were sounds of pleasure.

Of ecstasy.

An unfamiliar sense of deadly calm descended over Lana as she turned away from the door and returned to the kitchen. She felt detached. Like a stranger inhabiting her body. She knew what she meant to do and felt nothing. No sense of horror. No internal debate of right and wrong.

Back in the kitchen, she opened her purse and got out her gun. The very one Blaine himself had given her as a birthday present for protection against the predators he always imagined were lying in wait for her outside the club at the end of a late shift. He loved her and didn’t want anything happening to her.

Only that love had been nothing but a filthy lie.

How else to explain what was happening now?

Back down the hallway again, pausing a last moment outside the door. Then she let out a breath and gripped the doorknob in her free hand. The frequency and volume of the orgasmic sounds increased dramatically as she twisted the knob and eased the door open. She poked her head in and saw Blaine rutting away atop a curvy blonde woman with long, toned legs and large breasts.

Lana stifled a gasp.

The blonde was Alice. Her friend. And co-worker. The one with the supposedly sick baby she’d had to unexpectedly rush to the emergency room. Lana felt slightly dizzy as she rapidly processed it all. The whole thing had been a plot engineered by these two betraying pieces of shit so they could get together and fuck. The one thing they hadn’t counted on was her early departure from the Booty Boutique thanks to a lull in business following the exit of Big Ted and his gang.

Lana’s hands were shaking as she moved farther into the room. The shaking was not a product of nervousness. It was the rage continuing to gain momentum. She knew exactly what she meant to do. What she would do. She wasn’t going to just wave the gun around and threaten them. And she had no interest in interrogating them. What did it matter how long this had been going on anyway? Whether it had happened once or a hundred times was irrelevant.

It had happened.

They had betrayed her.

And now they would pay for their indiscretions. She reached the edge of the bed and watched them a few moments longer. They were so into the act that they were oblivious to her presence. Blaine writhed and thrust against Alice with uncontrolled abandon, rocking the bed frame and causing the headboard to slam against the wall. Alice’s lovely legs were locked tight around him and her long, bright red nails were digging grooves in the flesh of his muscular back.

Lana raised the gun and aimed it at the center of Blaine’s back.

She waited.

Alice’s eyes came open and her head turned at last in Lana’s direction. Then she gasped and those blue eyes got very, very big. Blaine grunted loudly, obviously mistaking this for yet another expression of passion.

Lana locked eyes with Alice.

Smiled.

And squeezed the trigger.

The bullet punched a nickel-sized hole through the small of Blaine’s back. He screamed. They both screamed. Blaine arched his back and screamed some more as he tried to disengage himself from Alice. The next bullet drilled through the back of his head and exited through his forehead. A spray of blood and brains spattered Alice and the headboard. Lana’s man was dead. The man she’d loved more than anything. Dead. And she felt nothing at all that resembled grief or regret. All she did feel was that still-simmering rage. She had never even looked the cheating motherfucker in the face. Which was just as well. He didn’t have much of a face left now. The exit wound had seen to that.

Lana laughed.

Even in the midst of murderous violence, the thought struck her as funny. She discovered some interesting things about herself in those bloody moments. Things like the possibility that maybe she wasn’t really all that nice a person at heart. Maybe, in fact, she was kind of a bad person. Because who else but a bad person would laugh now?

Alice shoved Blaine’s corpse away from her and rolled out from under him. She sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed. Lana saw that the first bullet had passed all the way through Blaine and had entered Alice’s body. A bloody hole just below her navel was leaking blood.

Lana laughed again.

Double penetration.

Alice stared up at her with pleading eyes. She put her hands to her stomach and whimpered. “Please…” She tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly and she plopped back down on the edge of the bed. “Please…”

Lana sneered. “Stop begging. It’s not gonna help.”

She squeezed the trigger again and the next bullet went between Alice’s breasts. The one after that made a ruin of her face and ended her life. Only then did Lana lower the gun. The rage gripping her began to fade as she watched her dead friend’s body slide off the bed and flop awkwardly to the floor.

She stood there without moving for many long moments. She still felt nothing like remorse. Blaine was gone and it was as if his passing had lifted a mental veil she hadn’t known was there. She knew at once she had never really loved him. It was a thing she had fooled herself into believing because a great love was the kind of thing girls were conditioned into thinking they needed and wanted. The reality of Blaine came into stark relief in those moments. He was a slacker, earning barely more than minimum wage at his warehouse gig while expecting her to pick up the tab for virtually everything, including most of his music gear.

A sudden piercing wail from the other side of the bed made her jump. In the next instant she recognized the sound as a baby’s cry.

Aw…shit.

Lana kicked Alice’s corpse. “You fucking sick-ass bitch! You had your fucking baby in the room with you while you were fucking my fucking boyfriend!? What the fuck is your problem, you fucking whore?”

Each of these inquiries was punctuated with more kicks.

Alice, of course, answered none of them.

And the baby continued to wail.

Lana circled the bed and stared down at the creature. He was a wrinkly little thing in a Motley Crue onesie. She had given Alice shit about the onesie. Aside from middle-aged fat guys, who in their right mind listened to Motley fucking Crue in this day and age? Especially that goddamn “Girls, Girls, Girls” song, which they all had to hear multiple times a day every day at the Booty Boutique.

She set her gun down on the bed and knelt to extract the squalling brat from a detachable car seat. She cradled the little guy in her arms and began cooing to him as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had little practical experience with babies and suspected she would not be able to coax this one back to silence. Not unless she shot it. But she didn’t want to shoot the baby. Despite everything, she wasn’t quite ready to cross that line. So she kept cooing at him and rocked him gently in her arms. She was shocked as he fell silent and stared up at her with round, wet eyes.

She smiled. “Sorry I shot your mommy, baby. But she was a fucking whore and deserved what she got. One day you’ll understand.”

She returned the baby to the car seat and did some serious thinking. Time passed. What had happened in this room had been very noisy. She had expected to hear sirens almost immediately. But something like twenty minutes had gone by and there was nothing. It was a little strange, but not inexplicable. A lot of their neighbors kept odd hours and were frequently gone. It was possible no one outside the apartment had heard anything. After another ten minutes of waiting around, she was sure of it.

The law wasn’t coming for her.

At least not yet.

Which left her with bodies and a live baby to dispose of, as well as a hell of a mess to clean up. Except that she hadn’t the faintest idea how she might go about accomplishing those things.

Or…did she?

She leapt off the bed and hurried out of the room. The scrap of paper with Big Ted’s phone number scrawled on it was still in her purse. Before leaving the Booty Boutique, he’d reiterated his desire for that private date. But that wasn’t all. He’d leaned close to whisper something else, a remark that made her laugh and roll her eyes at the time.

“There ever anything you need, sugar, you just let me know.” She could still feel his hot whiskey breath against her ear. “And I do mean anything at all, no matter how big or small. You give Big Ted a ring and I’ll take care of you.”

Lana fished the scrap of paper from her purse and stared at it indecisively for a long, fretful moment. This was a crazy impulse. Maybe, in an odd way, even crazier than the murders she had just committed. She didn’t know this Big Ted person at all. Not really. Sure, he talked a hell of a big game, but a lot of guys like that did. And she had no reason to suspect there was even the remotest chance he might actually help her.

But Lana didn’t know what else to do. She gave a moment’s thought to going on the run, but figured the cops would quickly catch up to her after discovering the bodies. She was no experienced criminal. Until today she’d committed only the pettiest of offenses. You had to really know what you were doing to successfully live life on the lam. Lana just didn’t have the necessary skills.

Not then.

Despite her misgivings, a very calm inner voice insisted she take a chance on calling Big Ted.

So she delved into her purse again and pulled out her iPhone.

She braced herself with a last deep breath.

Exhaled it.

And called Big Ted.

Chapter Three

Nashville, TN

Present day

A lot of people were out and about as Casey Miller cruised down Broadway toward 2nd Avenue. They were mostly tourists cruising the many gift shops, bars and live music venues that dominated the area. At least it was the middle of the week. What he had in mind would be impossible on a weekend, when the milling throngs would achieve a density requiring the police to block off the street to traffic. But the area was nonetheless busy enough that he stood a good chance of not being spotted too soon. The “borrowed” car he was driving should also help matters. He was wearing dark sunglasses and had his unruly, long blond hair tucked under a black baseball cap. And though it was early summer, he was wearing a plain black hoodie with the hood pulled up and cinched tight around his face. It was a look any lawman might find at least vaguely troubling, but that was a risk he was willing to take.

Keely Miller’s life depended on it.

His sister was older than he was by a year, but their birth order may as well have been reversed. Given her troubles, it was hard not to think of her as the baby sibling. She had lost her way somewhere along the line. It had started with drugs. She had financial difficulties as a result and eventually wound up losing her job. Then she got pinched by the cops for petty theft. It was a first offense and she was lucky enough to get off with light probation. But these things weren’t the real problem. Legal and substance issues were things that could be dealt with via some pretty standard approaches.

The shit she was into now was a different deal altogether.

Casey eased into the turn lane where Broadway intersected with 2nd Avenue and turned on the left blinker, waiting patiently while the light turned red. The thing he had planned had to go off perfectly in order to succeed. And quickly. If he faltered at all or bungled any aspect of it, the mission would fail and Keely would remain in the clutches of those crazy assholes. The plan was simple—snatch his sister off the street, muscle her into the car and burn rubber out of there before anyone could do a damn thing about it.

But there was a complicating factor.

This would be his second attempt to grab her. The first had occurred out by the old ranch house compound outside the city limits where they all stayed when they weren’t out recruiting. He had gone there ostensibly just to visit. Their guard hadn’t been up that time, probably because he had been out there to see Keely previously. So he was able to get her in his car and start tear-assing away from the farmhouse. What fouled it up was the long drive back down the private access road out to the main road. He hadn’t known it at the time, but they had people in position as a contingency for exactly this type of scenario. Cars were blocking the way out before he got there. A big truck pulled into position behind him, boxing him in. Keely, who had been screaming at him and cursing him the whole time, promptly bolted from the car. The men who had trapped him brandished guns, keeping him there while Keely was hustled back to the farmhouse. These men said nothing to him. It wasn’t their place. But they made him wait right there until the head honcho came down from the ranch house for a word with him.

The man was maybe fifty. People like Keely adored him and treated him like a messiah. John Wayne de Rais had his followers believing a lot of dangerous things. A lot of doomsday nonsense. They couldn’t see the truth about him, but for Casey it was plain as day.

“You’re never coming back here again,” de Rais told him that day, smiling without any warmth in his cold, calculating eyes. “And, boy, you are never going to see your sister again. She belongs to us now. If you show your face around here again, my men will kill you and bury you deep in the woods.”

Casey didn’t reply. He knew he had to back off for a while and do some planning before making his next move. After the group’s leader waved his men off, Casey drove calmly away and returned to his house to do some serious thinking.

The light turned green.

Casey cranked the steering wheel to the left and eased into 2nd Avenue. Thick streams of people moved in each direction on the wide sidewalks. No one was paying him any mind. The car he had picked up was a dark-colored late model Honda. There were countless millions just like it. It would afford him an extra degree of anonymity that might prove crucial.

He spotted them a block down the street. Several of them loitered by a bench at the edge of the sidewalk. Like Keely, they were all young. And mostly attractive, despite their attire, which was a mix of hippy and slacker motifs. It all added up to a general bohemian vibe, which was their goal, a second coming of the peace and love era at first glance. But it was a sham. Most locals knew this, but a lot of the people visiting this place were clueless. And every now and then some young new recruit would get seduced by their bullshit.

This was his third trip down the avenue this week. Cult members had been present every day, but Keely had not been among them. They rotated the recruiting crew on a daily basis. Casey kept his head down as he drew near them, but he observed the group of smiling young people from behind his dark sunglasses. His heart lurched as he spotted Keely among them. She was facing away from the street, engaged in an apparently spirited conversation with a tourist in a cowboy hat.

Keely clutched a stack of propaganda leaflets in one of her slender hands. Some of her friends were handing out leaflets too, while still others waved signs and engaged in obnoxious chants that conveyed vague messages of love and enlightenment while also exalting their glorious leader. One of the signs read, HONK IF YOU LOVE JOHN WAYNE.

Every now and then some idiot would actually honk, either a clueless tourist or some sarcastic local joker. The tourists didn’t know they weren’t honking to signal affection for the late cowboy actor. The “John Wayne” referred to by the sign was John Wayne de Rais, alias of the leader of the Order of Wandering Souls. The name of the group made it sound like they were advocating some benign stripe of neo-hippy foolishness. But Casey knew better. The truth was right out there in the open, for anyone with a brain to see. And it was a sick, sick joke. Most of de Rais’ followers were very young people. Gilles de Rais was the name of an infamous child murderer from the middle ages. Casey was no history buff. He knew this because he had looked the shit up. And when he’d made the connection, he knew right then he had to get Keely free of the cult no matter the cost.

Even if it meant his life.

This was it.

The moment of truth. Do or die. Everything was riding on what happened in these next few minutes. His sister’s future was hanging in the balance. It was up to him to see to it that she had a shot at some kind of normal life someday down the road. She would be furious with him now, but hopefully she would thank him later.

He eased the car to a stop and engaged the emergency brake. This was another carefully considered element of the plan. A sudden squelching of brakes would have alerted the hidden security team to possible danger too soon. In a situation like this, even an extra second or two could mean the difference between success and failure.

He was out of the car and racing up onto the sidewalk in a flash, brandishing a 9mm pistol. Cult members and pedestrians reacted predictably, with shouts and shrieks of fright. It was a natural reaction to seeing a hooded man waving a gun about in a public place. But the excitement was lost on Casey, whose sole focus was Keely. Her back was to him as he hit the sidewalk, but she turned toward him as she heard the shouts. He had her firmly gripped by an arm before she could take even a single step back. A male cult member with long, stringy hair attempted to intervene, but Casey was having none of that. He slammed the butt of the pistol into the center of the guy’s face, breaking his nose and sending him squawking to the sidewalk. Then he waved the gun again, backing off several other cult members as well as several random would-be heroes. The latter concerned him almost as much as the cult members, because they didn’t see a guy rescuing his sister. They saw a black-clad thug trying to abduct a young woman.

Keely was thrashing and screaming at him as he dragged her toward the car. Casey got her around to the other side, got the back door open and started shoving her inside. A number of people had edged close to him again from all sides, but they backed off some as the barrel of the gun whipped toward them. No one wanted to get shot. And he had already shown he would hurt anyone who got in his way. Those were factors that, thus far, were working in his favor. A couple more moments and he’d be on his way, mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, one pivotal factor did not work in his favor. And that was the utter disregard for human life de Rais’ men had. A glance over the roof of the Honda showed a burly, bald guy dressed all in black aiming a big handgun at him. Casey ducked an instant before the man squeezed the trigger of his gun. The gun made a big bang and someone behind Casey fell over dead in the street. Casey popped back up and fired a shot of his own over the roof. The slug took the big man in the shoulder and spun him about, but in his place were two more black-clad men with guns. Casey dropped to the street again as they opened fire, watching in dismay as more pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk sprouted wounds and went crashing to the ground. While he was pinned down, Keely took advantage of his momentary helplessness and slithered out of the car. He swiped a hand at the hem of her skirt, his fingertips brushing futilely over soft fabric as she made good her getaway. He screamed then as an immense frustration welled up inside him.

So close! So fucking close!

His rage was such that all concern for his own safety vanished. He bounced up again and popped off several more shots at de Rais’ black-clad soldiers before dropping back into the car, where he disengaged the emergency brake and hit the gas. The Honda’s wheels squealed as he shot down the avenue. A pedestrian crossing the street didn’t get out of his way in time and got clipped by his front bumper. Casey grimaced, but put it out of his mind. The important thing was making his getaway before the cops could close in.

He’d known there was a chance this could end in a spectacle of very public violence and had planned for that as well. In the event of failure, getting caught would mean he’d never have another chance at rescuing Keely and that was unacceptable.

He turned left at Church Street and continued his high speed flight as he passed through several intersections, including two where the light was red. Cars crashed and horns honked, but Casey didn’t slow down. He kept going full speed until he took a turn at a side street and then down a narrow alley, where he pulled to a screeching stop next to an overflowing Dumpster outside the rear exit of a downtown restaurant. His own silver Hyundai was parked on the other side of the Dumpster. He stripped the hoodie off and ditched it in the stolen Honda before abandoning it in favor of his own ride.

Wasting no time, he drove the Hyundai fast in the opposite direction down the alley until he hit the next side street. Before he reached the street, he removed the sunglasses and baseball cap and shook out his long hair. These and the gun went in the glove compartment. He had to wait until he reached the light at Broadway before he could remove his leather gloves. These he tossed into the back.

He forced himself to remain perfectly composed despite the rising blare of sirens. The light turned green, but he stayed where he was as several cop cruisers went shooting down Broadway en route to 2nd Avenue. His heart pounding, he gripped the steering wheel hard and waited for the light to cycle back to green again.

After an eternity, it finally did.

He let out the breath he’d been holding for the same eternity and turned right onto Broadway, driving the speed limit as he fled the scene of his second botched kidnapping attempt. Only when he was many, many blocks away did he allow himself to vent his frustration by screaming and repeatedly pounding the Hyundai’s steering wheel.

Chapter Four

Some Fucked-Up Shit that Happened on the Road, Part One

Ominous black clouds blocked out the sky in Tupelo that afternoon as Dez stepped outside for a smoke. From the balcony of the Sleepytime Inn’s second floor, what she could see of the little city looked like it was waiting to get squashed by a giant black fist. There was a slight chill in the air and a fine mist of drizzle, but the real downpour had yet to begin. Dez could feel it coming in the way her skin tingled and by the faint scent of sulfur. A loud boom of thunder emphasized this impression. The sound was gigantic, as massive and air-stirring as the detonation of military ordnance.

The roiling sky and blasts of thunder tinged the afternoon with a distinctly apocalyptic feel. Dez felt like she had a ringside seat to the end of the world. She loved it. Playing in the rain had been one of the purest joys of her early girlhood. She liked the feel of water sliding over bare flesh dotted with goose bumps.

She lit a Virginia Slim and leaned against the balcony railing. A slightly harder patter of rain started hitting the parking lot asphalt below at the same time. She smiled. Maybe she would head down there and dance around in the rain after she finished the cigarette.

A door creaked open behind her and in a moment Lana joined her at the railing. She nudged Dez with an elbow. “Bum a smoke?”

“Thought you were trying to quit.”

“Changed my mind.”

Dez smiled. “Oh yeah? Why?”

“Knowing I’m probably gonna die young anyway.”

Dez nodded and handed over the pack.

Lana blazed up and stared out at the charcoal sky. “Gonna storm like a motherfucker.”

Dez exhaled smoke. “Yeah.”

“Maybe we should go in.”

“Thinking about playing in the rain.”

Lana gave her a funny look. “Have you lost your mind? Look at that sky.”

“You already know I’m crazy, bitch. Don’t even ask that.”

Lana shook her head. “Crazy is one thing. I’m not the poster girl for mental stability, either. But getting struck by lightning isn’t my idea of a good time.”

Dez shrugged. “Fuck it. We take bigger risks every day. I’ll die when I die. That shit doesn’t scare me.”

“You’re a badass.”

Dez nodded. “You know it. And, hell, I can think of worse ways to go out. If God chooses today to reach down from the sky and zap my ass, so be it. It’d even be sort of cool.”

Lana’s expression turned thoughtful. “I guess it beats death by lethal injection.”

“Fuck yeah, it does. Wanna join me?”

Lana smiled. “Nah. You do what you want. I’m gonna go back in and stay dry. Maybe get high and listen to the fireworks.”

Dez shrugged. “I’d love to get wet with you, but suit yourself.”

“Oh, Dez, you always get me wet, you know that.”

Dez leaned over and gave Lana a light kiss on the mouth. “And don’t you forget it. Anyway…how’s our girl doing?”

Lana frowned at the reference to Echo. “Still sleeping it off. Thought she was gonna fucking die on us for a while.”

Dez exhaled smoke again and tapped ash over the railing. “She should lay off the fucking vodka.”

Lana grunted. “You try telling her that.”

Dez sighed. “Right. She’d call me a hypocrite for all the fucking blow I do, and she wouldn’t be wrong. Girl knows what she’s doing. Up to her if she wants to keep going down that road. Same goes for you or me.”

Lana laughed. “Damn. That almost sounded profound. Never thought you had it in you.”

Dez smirked. “I haven’t had anything in me in too long.”

Lana rolled her eyes. Dez had a knack for turning even the most innocent remark into something risqué. “There’s always your jelly man.”

Dez smiled at the mention of her eight-inch dildo. She also had a strap-on she sometimes could coax Lana or, less frequently, Echo into using on her. “Maybe later.”

Thunder crashed again, louder than ever, and the real downpour began at last. Silver sheets of heavy rain gushed from the sky.

Lana flicked her half-smoked cigarette over the railing and took a quick step back. “I’m going in. I’ll see you when you come to your senses.”

“See ya.”

Dez heard the door to their room open and slam shut as Lana beat a hasty retreat from nature’s assault. She dropped her cigarette and leaned out even farther over the railing, allowing the rain to drench her torso. The torrent of water flattened her hair and plastered her halter top to her body and felt wonderful sluicing down her flesh.

After maybe a full minute, she stepped back from the railing, swept her hair back and began to swipe water from her eyes. Though this was the Deep South, it was still early spring and there was a nip in the air, a sensation the water heightened. She shivered and considered joining the other girls in the room. Reckless disregard for Mother Nature was one thing, but she didn’t much relish the prospect of catching pneumonia.

A door somewhere to her right clicked open and in a moment she heard the clomp of booted feet on concrete. She swiped more water from her eyes and turned her head toward the sound, a smile blooming on her face as she got a look at the stranger. “Why, hello there.”

A grizzled-looking but not entirely unattractive man eyed her with a curious expression. “Hello yourself. Looks like you got wet.”

Dez smirked.

That’s quite the gift for stating the obvious you’ve got there, buddy.

“I must have been thinking of you.”

Curiosity gave way to confusion as his brow knitted. “What?”

Dez smiled. “You’re right, I’m wet. So I must have been thinking of you.”

The man’s look of confusion deepened. “Come again?”

“I’d like to.”

He squinted at her. “Darlin’, you ain’t makin’ a lick of sense.”

Dez sighed. “Wow, are you slow on the uptake. Do you want to fuck me or not?”

His astonished expression made Dez laugh. But then he shook his head and began to smile, stroking his silver beard as his pale blue eyes roved over her body, belatedly taking note of her lush curves and exquisitely muscled long legs. The smile improved his borderline good looks, giving her a glimpse of how he must have looked decades earlier. He had deep wrinkles around his eyes and a full head of gray hair to go with his beard. The guy had a lot of miles on him—Dez put him at either late forties or early fifties—but he looked like he still had a bit of gas in the tank.

His laugh was a deep rumble. “Ain’t I a mite aged for the likes of you?”

Dez chuckled as she approached him and tugged gently at the front of his shirt. “That just means you’ve got experience, big daddy.” She danced her fingers up the length of his torso and stroked his bristly beard. “So how about it?”

He made a thoughtful sound. “This is a damn tempting offer you’re making, I gotta admit.”

Dez pushed herself against him, delighting in the way he shivered at the physical contact. “And not the kind that comes along every day, am I right?”

“You can say that again.”

Dez made a purring sound low in her throat. “Well, my advice is you should take advantage of your good luck.”

“I’d sure like to do just that. Only thing is I was heading out to get a six-pack of beer. I’ve had a rough old day and I’ve kind of built up a thirst.”

Dez moved back a step and slapped a hand against his chest. “Shit, I can take care of that. You don’t have to go out in the nasty rain. Wait right there, big daddy. I’ll be right back.”

Lana was sitting at the little table by the window as Dez came into the room. She had an open bottle of Rolling Rock in front of her as she flipped through an old issue of Elle. She gave Dez a squinty look. “You got wet.”

“Everybody’s showing off their fucking powers of observation today.”

Dez went to the mini-fridge in a corner of the room, pulled out six cans of Bud, cradled them against her chest and kicked the fridge’s door shut as she stood again. She glanced at Echo as she headed back to the door. The girl was still sprawled facedown across one of the room’s two twin beds. “Any signs of life?”

Lana shrugged and flipped a page in the magazine. “Woke up for a minute when I came back in, said she wanted a beer.” Another bored page flip. “Passed out again.”

Dez laughed. “You should fuck with her while she’s out. Write ‘drunk-ass bitch’ on her face with lipstick.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” Lana frowned as she glanced up from the magazine. “Where are you going with all that beer?”

“Got a hot date with the guy next door. Want to join us, make it a threesome?”

Lana frowned. “But you hate men.”

Dez’s smile turned mischievous. “Except for those rare times when I don’t.”

“So it’s like that.” Lana pursed her lips for a moment before shaking her head. “Sorry, not in the mood. Have fun, though.”

“Oh, I think you can count on it.”

The old redneck was still waiting for her on the balcony landing. Dez wasn’t surprised. No straight guy with a pulse would pass up what she was offering. “Hey, big daddy. You ready to party with Dez?”

He smiled and took some of the beer off her hands. “Suppose I am. That your name? Dez?”

“Sure is. What’s yours?”

“Dale.”

She followed Dale back to his room. He flipped a light switch on as they entered the room, which was a mirror image of the one Dez was sharing with her friends. Same little round table by the window, same two twin beds, same small television atop a little dresser and same mini-fridge in a corner. A weathered old Samsonite suitcase rested atop the twin bed on the far side of the room. That bed’s linen had not been disturbed. Dale had slept in the bed closer to the door. Dez could tell by the rumpled sheets. The little wastebasket between the beds was overflowing, and the table’s surface was obscured by empty beer bottles.

“Been here long, Dale?”

Dale pushed aside some of the empties to make room on the table and set down the cold cans of Bud he’d been holding, gesturing for Dez to do the same. He popped the tab on one and took a deep swallow. “About a week.”

“Long time to stay in a joint that ain’t pay-by-the-week.”

Dale scratched at his beard. “Yeah. Guess it is.”

“So what’s the story?”

“Just taking my time to figure some shit out.”

“What kind of shit?”

“None of your business.”

Dale’s entire demeanor was different now. He didn’t seem as flustered as he had been during Dez’s brazen flirtation with him out on the balcony. His chest was puffed out and his chin had an arrogant tilt to it. The shift would have unsettled most women enough to send them running from the room, but Dez didn’t frighten easily. She had a hunch he was accustomed to intimidating women, maybe didn’t even like them much aside from their obvious necessity for sexual release. Having had extensive experience with a lot of piggish men during her time, Dez’s hunches in this regard were usually accurate.

But she had another hunch, as well, and that was that Dale had probably never met another woman quite like her.

She popped open a beer can and sipped from it. “No need to be short with me, baby. I was just curious.”

There was an odd twist to his mouth as he said, “Curiosity killed the cat.”

Dez tugged at the front of his shirt and said, “How much you know about killing, Dale?”

He put a hand on one of her breasts, gave it a rough squeeze. “More than most men.”

Dez’s lips parted in a soft moan as the pad of his thumb pushed at her stiff nipple. She arched her back and leaned into his touch. “Oh…I like that. Do it again.” Dale complied and she responded with another, louder moan. “That feels so fucking good. Keep doing it.”

He grunted. “So you’re that kind of girl. I know just how to handle the likes of you.”

Before she could respond to that, he set his beer on the table, scooped her up in his arms and tossed her onto the bed with the rumpled sheets. The beer she had been holding went flying across the room. Rather than responding with indignation, Dez let out a squeal of delight. She sat right up and peeled the wet top off her body, displaying zero fear as she thrust her jiggling breasts at him. “Come get me, Dale. I dare you.”

He stared at her bare breasts with open-mouthed, drooling, stupid desire. Then he let out a horse-like snort and started tearing off his own clothes. After he’d shed them all, he came at her fast, hooked his fingers inside the waistband of her shorts and started pulling at them. Dez assisted by lying back and lifting her ass off the mattress. He tossed the shorts aside and his nostrils flared when he got a look at her shaved pussy.

She spread her legs wide and smiled invitingly, beckoning him toward her with a crooked finger. He climbed atop her and pushed his hard cock into her moist softness. She screamed and hooked her legs tight around him as he started thrusting away at her. His face twisted in a kind of savage ecstasy. It was Dez’s opinion that all men turned ugly when they were fucking you. They never looked more like beasts than when they were in this position.

And now he was grunting and growling just like a beast as his thrusts came quicker and harder. She could feel him building up to a boiling point, reaching the very precipice of orgasm, and she couldn’t have that. It was too soon. So she clawed at his back, shredding his flesh as she dug her nails in deep and tore long, bloody grooves down to his waist. He screamed in agony and the pain brought him back from the brink of release. His hard-on didn’t wilt inside her, but it wasn’t about to burst either. In other words, mission accomplished.

But now he was all pissed off.

“You fucking whore.”

Dez laughed hard at that. “Yes, I’m a whore, a fucking whore.” She snapped a hand across his face, startling him. “Now fuck me like one, asshole.”

He gave her an astonished look that just made her laugh again.

Then the shock faded from his features and he clamped a strong hand around her throat, squeezing tight as he began to thrust against her again. Though tight, the grip didn’t quite shut off her air, and Dez went to work on his back with her nails again, flaying the flesh with bloody abandon. This time the pain only fueled the erotic frenzy gripping her partner. Tears leaked from Dale’s eyes and the tendons in his neck stood out in stark relief as he arched his back and slammed into her as hard as he could again and again. Rivulets of blood slid between her thighs and further lubricated things.

Dez’s hands came away from his back smeared with gore. She wiped blood on his face and on his chest. His grip loosened on her throat, probably because he was too focused on the manic rhythm of his pelvis. She pushed the hand roughly aside and started clawing at his chest, drawing forth more bloody streams that dripped all over her chest and flat belly. He was in tremendous pain and more tears were spilling from his eyes and still he couldn’t stop fucking her. Dez reveled in the surge of power that ripped through her upon seeing this. There was nothing she loved more than utterly breaking a hard man like Dale. They just never saw it coming, never imagined a woman could equal or exceed their own savagery. He screamed yet again as he pulled out of her and shot his seed all over her belly.

Dale stared down at her, panting heavily as he struggled to catch his breath. After pushing out a particularly big breath, he managed to say, “You’re crazy.”

Dez laughed.

“There’s something wrong with you.”

“Says the guy who knows more about killing than most men.” Dez giggled. “Or was that just big talking bullshit?”

Another giggle.

He climbed off her and moved backward until his butt met the edge of the little round table. His scared expression made her laugh. “You need to get out of here.”

Dez rolled her eyes and sat up, leisurely swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “What’s the matter, big daddy? I thought we were having fun.”

Dale was eyeing her the way one would a snarling, dangerous animal, with deep trepidation. The belated wariness wouldn’t help him, of course. “Just get dressed and get out, goddammit, before I toss you out.”

“Like to see you try.”

He gave her a pained look and pulled at his blood-flecked beard. “Please. I’m begging you. Just get gone.”

Dez got to her feet, but made no move to find her clothes. “Begging is good. That’s always fun. Tell you what, bloody face. I’ll make you a deal. Lie flat on your back on the floor. I’ll sit on your face and let you lick my clit until I’ve come a few more times. Then I’ll leave. How’s that sound?”

Dale shook his head. “No way. I’ve had enough. Just leave. Please.”

Dez arranged her features in a way designed to convey resigned acceptance. “Fine. You are no fun at all, though.” She approached the table, smiling at the way he flinched and sidestepped away from her. “Jesus, so skittish.”

Her right hand drifted over the table, found a bottle. Her fingers curled around its long neck.

Dale frowned. “That ain’t got any beer in it.”

“I know.”

Dez smashed the bottle across Dale’s face before he could even flinch. He screamed and staggered backward, tumbling hard to the floor as he tripped over his own feet. Dez kicked him in the face when he tried to sit up, laughing at the way his nose crunched and spurted blood. She grabbed two more empty bottles and fell atop him. Again, this happened too fast for him to adequately react. She swung the bottles at his head one after another, enjoying his screams and the equally lovely explosions of brown glass.

She was left holding two jagged bottle necks.

They were sharp and glittering.

And they parted the flesh at his throat with satisfying ease.

Dale began to bleed out. He tried bucking against her in a desperate attempt to dislodge her, but Dez had the advantage of experience. This wasn’t the first time she had killed a man like this. And it wouldn’t be the last, because it was always so much fun.

When he started to fade, she put her mouth close to his face and said, “You should know you’re not really my type. There’s only one kind of man I really dig, Dale.” She smiled. “The kind that die.”

Then he was gone.

Chapter Five

Wolves at the Door

After lying low under an assumed name in a fleabag motel a couple counties over for a few days, Casey decided the time had come to cruise by his place and get the lay of the land. He checked out of the Bangin’ Bungalow early Friday morning and hit the road. Less than two hours later, he pulled into his east Nashville neighborhood, turned down Austin Avenue and took a first slow pass by the rental house.

A few unoccupied cars were parked at the curb on both sides of the street, but none outside his house. The driveway was empty and the house was dark. Casey nonetheless drove past the house and on down to the end of the street, where he took a left and drove a mile to the nearest big intersection, where he turned in and parked in the lot of a convenience store. The frequent glances at his rearview mirror during the drive from his neighborhood failed to turn up a tail.

He got out of his car and went into the store, where he bought a pack of smokes and a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor. Back in his car, he screwed the cap off the bottle and took a deep drink of fortifying booze. He then wedged the bottle between his legs, peeled the cellophane off the pack of Marlboros and punched in the cigarette lighter on the dash. He applied the lit end to the cigarette after the lighter popped out, then sat there and smoked it down to the filter.

Killing time.

Making sure.

It seemed the smart way to go.

He crushed the cigarette butt out in the low-hanging, overflowing ashtray, took another swig from the forty, put the cap back on and drove away from the store. The second pass by his house also turned up no signs of surveillance.

After pulling into the driveway, he dug the 9mm out of the glove compartment, put it in his lap and stayed in the car a few moments longer, his eyes flicking from the house to the rearview mirror and back again several times. He kept the engine running as he sat there and waited for cars to come squealing into the driveway in an attempt to box him in.

His paranoia was running high for good reason. The bungled kidnapping attack and broad daylight shootout on 2nd Avenue had been big news. No surprise there. It’d been a pretty brazen move. In hindsight, he should have waited a while longer and formulated a less risky, more foolproof plan to get Keely free of the cult’s clutches. Pure emotion had gotten the better of him, pushing him into acting too soon again after his initial failed attempt at the ranch.

His name hadn’t turned up in any media reports on the incident, which meant it was unlikely the law had connected him to the fiasco, unless they were playing things especially close to the vest. But he didn’t think that was the case. A high-profile incident like this one, his name and picture would have been everywhere if they had identified him as a suspect. This was at least in part thanks to the precautionary measures he’d taken prior to trying to grab Keely, but the cops weren’t dumb. Even without definitive proof connecting him to the bungled kidnapping, they should have come looking for him, at least to have a chat. That he seemed off their radar completely was worrisome in its own way. It meant the cult wasn’t cooperating in the investigation. The cops might not even know Keely had been the target that day. Knowing what he did about how the cult operated, that was a pretty safe bet.

Another safe bet was the cult retaliating in some way. You couldn’t fuck with them in so public a way and not face consequences. The one thing he knew for absolute certain about John Wayne de Rais was he did not have a sense of humor about that kind of shit. Which meant returning here was a high-risk move. He needed a new place to stay in another part of town. He meant to do something about that pronto, but there were some things he needed to retrieve from this place first.

Five minutes passed while he sat there with the engine running. Five long minutes with his finger inside the 9mm’s trigger guard.

Ten minutes.

At last satisfied that he was safe for now, he shut the Hyundai’s engine off, grabbed his smokes and the forty bottle and got out of the car. He took a final look around the quiet neighborhood, tucked the 9mm inside the waistband of his jeans, turned away from the street and approached the side door to his house.

He was flipping through his keys when the door came open and a pair of strong hands seized the front of his shirt and hauled him inside. The forty bottle shattered on the linoleum floor. He made a grab for the 9mm, but the guy who’d grabbed him got to it first and sent it flying across the kitchen. Then a hard fist roughly the size of a boulder slammed into his abdomen and sent him crashing to the floor.

Casey landed hard on his back. The jarring impact expelled what little air hadn’t already been driven from his lungs by the savage blow to his gut. Though his vision had gone blurry, he sensed a hulking presence looming over him.

He blinked his eyes rapidly several times and finally got a clearer look at the guy looming over him, who looked uncannily like Godzilla dressed up as someone from the cast of Reservoir Dogs. He was wearing a black suit with a starched white shirt and a narrow black tie. But the main reason for the impression was his sheer mass. He was a few inches over six feet and looked like he was mostly made of bulging muscle. His neck was so thick it barely existed.

Casey raised a shaky finger and pointed at a spot somewhere behind the giant. “Look. Over there…”

No-Neck scowled. “What?”

“It’s Mothra. Go get him, boy.”

Someone in the vicinity tittered at the remark even as No-Neck’s scowl gave way to a look of confusion. He glanced to his right, at another goon in a black suit. “Something funny, Marzetti?”

Marzetti was big, but he wasn’t as imposingly massive as No-Neck. He wore black sunglasses and had gel in his wavy dark hair. The shiny butt of a nickel-plated 9mm protruded from the waistband of his trousers. “The hippy just called you Godzilla.”

No-Neck was giving Casey his full attention again. His face turned a deep shade of red. “Think you’re a comedian, you long-haired faggot?”

“The only joke here is you, you steroid-chomping motherfucker.”

Marzetti pursed his lips. “Uh-oh.”

Fucking with the guy wasn’t the brightest idea. Casey was on thin ice already. But he figured his odds of walking out of this situation alive were pretty close to nil anyway, so what the hell. “Do you know what a Neanderthal is?”

Marzetti made a pained sound and put a hand to his forehead. “Kid, you really should quit while you’re ahead. Don’t antagonize—”

No-Neck cut him off with a simmering glare. “Shut up.” He looked at Casey. “I know what a Neanderthal is, you fucking faggot. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

No-Neck let out an enraged roar and leaned down to seize the front of Casey’s shirt in his massive hands. He jerked him roughly to his feet and kept hold of him with one hand while he drew the other one back in preparation of delivering another of those devastating punches.

But before he could uncork the blow, someone else in the room spoke up.

“Enough.”

The deep baritone was unfamiliar, but apparently the speaker was the true voice of authority here, because No-Neck immediately lowered his fist and released his grip on Casey’s shirt.

“We are not here to waste time on these antics. This man is at our mercy, Mr. Boyd, and he knows it. Allowing him to rattle you so easily displays only weakness.”

“Yes, sir.”

No-Neck’s expression was sheepish now. He actually looked down at the floor, the way an awkward kid would after a scolding from a parent or teacher.

“Bring him to me, Boyd.”

Boyd grabbed Casey by a bicep and dragged him across the kitchen, where he was dumped into a chair at a round table. It was a nice table with a wood surface and a wrought-iron frame. Along with the chairs arrayed around it, he’d inherited the table from his late grandmother, a taciturn woman who had nonetheless been a steadying influence during his turbulent youth. The way he’d heard it, she had died of a stroke at this very table during dinner one night. And now it was looking like dying at this table was on its way to becoming an authentic Miller family tradition.

Another man in a suit was in the chair directly across from Casey. The guy didn’t look much like his underlings. For one thing, he was black. And his clothing was more colorful—he wore a purple shirt beneath his blazer. Like the other men, though, he was of an imposing size. He had a big bald head. His smooth scalp gleamed from the overhead light. He sat with his legs crossed, his fingers laced almost primly over his right knee.

He smiled. “Mr. Miller, it is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

“Fuck you.”

Boyd smacked the back of Casey’s head. “Show Mr. Jones respect, hippy.”

Casey groaned and touched the back of his head. “Ouch, man. Jesus. Stop calling me a hippy. I ain’t any goddamn flower child.”

Boyd snorted. “What else should I call you, Goldilocks?”

Casey managed a laugh. “Goldilocks. That’s a good one. Very creative.”

“Thank you,” Boyd said with no trace of irony.

Casey directed a smirk at Jones. “You’re welcome.”

Jones smiled. “My apologies for the rough handling, Mr. Miller. However, I find myself in the position of having to manage a crisis situation. And that’s fine. It’s part of the job description.”

Casey frowned. “What is your job?”

Another smile from Jones. “I’m a problem solver, Casey.”

Casey sighed. “Let me guess. You’re here to solve a problem named Casey Miller.”

Jones nodded. “Correct. You’re a man with a flair for the dramatic, Casey. Your actions have made things temporarily uncomfortable for my employer.”

Casey smirked. “Good.”

Jones’ expression turned grim as he shook his head. “No, Casey. It’s not good. Not for me, not for my boss, and most definitely not for you. My boss does not enjoy the close scrutiny of law enforcement officials.”

Casey nodded. “Yeah. Okay. So you’re here to warn me off again. Maybe rough me up a little and scare me. That about the shape of it?”

“That is the general gist of the situation, yes,” Jones said. He took a cell phone from an inner pocket of his blazer and set it on the table. “But what we’re doing today is a little more complicated than that. A man like you, an impetuous man prone to committing very brazen, foolhardy acts, requires a deeper level of motivation.” He tapped the phone’s screen with a forefinger and a frozen image of Keely Miller’s face appeared. “I have something to show you, Casey.”

Casey stared at the image of his sister for a long moment, then forced out a breath. “If you’ve hurt her—”

“Your sister has not been harmed.” Jones turned the phone toward Casey and tapped the screen again. “Watch.”

A video message began to play. It showed Keely smiling in a strangely vacant way as she stared at the person making the video. She had braids in her long hair and was wearing a pretty yellow sundress. She was in a room in which the dated décor screamed mid-twentieth century. Casey figured this was a room somewhere inside the big house at the ranch owned by de Rais.

An off-camera female voice broke the silence. “All right, we’re ready. You know what you want to say, right?”

Keely glanced to her right, smiling but looking a little unsure of herself. “Yes.”

“Good. Start now.”

Keely looked into the camera lens. “Hi, Casey. Today is Friday. It’s been two days since you tried to grab me off the street and got a bunch of innocent people shot. You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, but we’ve decided to leave you out of it. The police don’t know I was the target of the kidnapping attempt. You’re probably wondering how that’s possible. What you don’t understand is there’s no limit to what a dedicated group of people working toward a common goal can accomplish.”

She glanced to her right again, an eyebrow raised.

The unseen female spoke again. “You’re doing great so far. Go on.”

When Keely resumed speaking, her expression was grim. “For the first time in my life, I’m in a place where I feel like I belong. I’m surrounded by caring, nurturing people who only want the best for me. They are my soul mates, my real sisters and brothers, and together we have embarked on a path of spiritual awakening and enlightenment. My eyes are finally open and at last I see the world as it really is. I see the reality behind the lies society has taught us to accept as truth. And I won’t allow you or anyone else to take that from me.”

A sense of dread crept through Casey as he listened to his sister’s recorded voice. There was a harsh edge to it he didn’t recognize, a wisp of wrongness that saddened him even as it made his skin crawl. Not helping at all was the way Boyd and Marzetti continued to creep closer to him from either side. Though he knew the effort would almost certainly prove futile, the time had clearly come to make a break for it. Maybe take a roundhouse swing at the goons with a chair, then dash for the door and hope for the best. He would likely be shot down long before he could get there, but what other choice did he have? He wasn’t about to just sit here and take whatever brand of brutal punishment they had in mind.

He had to act and act now.

But something in his sister’s voice helplessly compelled him, made it impossible to do anything other than sit and listen as long as she continued to speak. “You are done interfering in my life, Casey. I have a rendezvous with destiny…” Something about that phrase struck a nerve within Casey and further fueled his already redlining sense of anxiety. “All of us do. And you’ve made your last attempt to block it. But I know how stubborn you are. I know you won’t just do the sensible thing and go away. So we’ve come up with a special way of dealing with you. After this, you won’t want anything else to do with me. But that’s okay. I no longer consider you my brother. Any pain you are about to suffer you brought on yourself.”

Boyd and Marzetti were too close now. The chair gambit was no longer a viable option. Every elapsing second brought him irrevocably closer to something horrible. The perverse anticipation of the goons pinning him in was a palpable thing. And yet still he couldn’t move.

Keely’s image smiled again. “Your life is about to change forever, Casey. All the simple, everyday things you take for granted are about to become very hard for you.” There was a vicious twist to her mouth now. The sight of it stabbed at his heart. “And it’s all your fault.”

The video ended.

Casey braced his feet on the floor and tried to propel himself out of the chair, but Boyd and Marzetti were there to grab him and slam him facedown onto the table. Boyd, being the substantially bigger man, held him down while Marzetti stretched out his right arm and held it against the table’s surface.

Casey’s eyes rolled upward to stare at Jones, who was now standing. From this vantage point, he looked almost impossibly huge, more like a mountain than a man. And clutched in his right hand was a shiny stainless steel meat cleaver. Casey was willing to bet it was brand new, purchased especially for the occasion. He had also donned a long rubber apron at some point while Casey had been transfixed by the video.

Every remaining ounce of bravado drained away from Casey as his gaze locked on the gleaming edge of the blade. In its place was nothing but gut-twisting fear. He was pretty sure he’d never seen anything quite as sharp as that blade.

“You don’t have to do this. I’ll leave you motherfuckers alone from now on, I swear.” Casey hated hearing the pitiable whine creeping into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. Stoicism was impossible in a situation like this. “Come on. I fucking swear to God, I won’t ever bother you again.”

Jones chuckled. “Oh, we already know that, Casey. According to your sister, you’re right-handed. Well, you used to be, as of a few seconds from now.”

This remark elicited belly laughs from the goons holding him down.

Jones looked like a grinning ghoul as he raised the blade high above his head. “Ready to bleed, Casey?”

Casey couldn’t stop shaking. Tears stung his eyes. “No. Please.”

Jones’ right bicep expanded perceptibly as he prepared to slam the blade down, but before that could happen something in the kitchen exploded. Screams filled the room as Jones staggered backward. Casey glanced up and saw that a chunk of the man’s head was missing. He belatedly understood that the explosion he’d heard had actually been the close-range report of a gun. The cleaver slid from Jones’ fingers and clattered on the tiled floor an instant before the big man toppled dead to the floor. The goons let go of Casey and went for their weapons, but it was already too late for them. Two more loud reports rang out. Two more big bodies hit the floor. Casey remained where he was a few moments longer, his ears ringing while he waited, fully expecting to meet the same fate as the other men. Then the ringing began to subside and he realized someone was talking to him. The voice was vaguely familiar.

It was a woman’s voice.

It was telling him to…to…

“…get up off the goddamn table, Casey.”

He decided obeying the voice was probably wise. And anyway, it wasn’t like there was anything else he could do.

So, still trembling, he pushed himself away from the table and turned around to face the person who had maybe saved his life. The “maybe” qualifier was definitely necessary, because the person pointing a 9mm at him now had once vowed to kill him if she ever saw him again.

He held his hands up, a look of profound confusion twisting his features.

“Echo? What the hell are you doing here?”

Chapter Six

One year ago

The scene is an idyllic middle-class neighborhood on a warm day in early spring. It’s a newer development and all the prefabricated homes look much alike. This lack of outward personality is offset by the clean streets and immaculate lawns. The residents are all hard-working people who are justifiably proud of the small slice of the American Dream they’ve carved out for themselves. The people here look out for each other and strive to be good neighbors. There are no gangbangers dealing drugs on the corners and no drive-by shootings. All that sort of thing happens in an alien world removed far from this place. Crime of any sort is rare.

So when twenty-two-year-old Echo Vaughn emerged scantily-clad and screaming from one of the prefab homes early that sunshine-soaked afternoon, it made for a pretty unusual sight. Ninety-year-old Vera Brooks happened to be out walking her elderly Pomeranian when this occurred. She stopped dead in her tracks and gawked in open-mouthed wonder as the enraged young woman swung a golf club and smashed in one of the headlights of a late-model Lexus. Puddles the Pomeranian started barking his little head off while Vera stared at Echo and felt faint stirrings of the forbidden lust she had last indulged decades ago. Nowadays people were more open-minded about such things, but in her time Sapphic love had not been socially acceptable.

Vera was just a visitor to this neighborhood, the reluctant guest of one of her grandsons, a patronizing young man she secretly couldn’t stand. At the moment, however, she was very glad she had accepted this latest invitation to visit. Never in her life had she beheld a sight as glorious as the one before her now. Her heart was beating almost painfully fast as she watched the young beauty swing the golf club again and smash out another headlight. The woman’s assault on the car continued as she commenced striking the windshield. After the third swing of the club, the glass began to splinter. She continued with her screaming the entire time. It was a profanity-laden tirade that was only intermittently intelligible, but it seemed most of her ire was directed against someone named Casey.

But Vera didn’t care much about the source of the woman’s anger. She didn’t know the young lady, nor would she ever know her. The gulf of years between them was unfortunately far too wide for that. Therefore the cause of this drama was irrelevant. All that really mattered was that it was happening and for that she was grateful. The woman’s hair was a shade of midnight black so perfectly dark it had to come from a bottle. Vera loved her razor-sharp bangs and the way the glossy locks brushed her narrow, alabaster-pale bare shoulders. A lot of bare flesh was visible thanks to a wardrobe so skimpy it was hardly there at all. She wore a tiny black halter top, tight denim cutoffs barely larger than a bikini bottom, flip-flops and nothing else. Her large breasts jiggled pleasingly every time she swung the golf club. And then there was the proliferation of colorful tattoos. This was another thing that would have scandalized the prudes in her time. Until today Vera had never had much of an opinion regarding illustrated flesh one way or the other, but that had now changed. The tattoos enhanced the woman’s beauty and contrasted her ghostly pallor in a way that was quite striking.

Soon a well-built young man clad only in boxer shorts emerged from the house and attempted to placate the tattooed beauty. He had long blond hair Vera judged too pretty for a man. She realized this was unfair given her own preferences, but she couldn’t help how she felt. The woman screamed at him. It seemed this man was the mysterious Casey. It was clear he had been the woman’s lover, but he had done something to bring their relationship to the brink of ruin. The nature of that something became obvious as another young woman—this one a shapely blonde wearing a man’s dress shirt and nothing else—came out of the house and started screaming at both of them. The blonde lady seemed more upset about the damage to the Lexus than anything else.

The tattooed woman screamed again and charged at the blonde lady. The man intervened, putting himself between the women. He managed to wrest the golf club away from the tattooed woman. By then a male neighbor had emerged from the house next door and was threatening to call the police. The blond man displayed some venom of his own, telling the neighbor he had things under control and that he should mind his own fucking business. At that point the tattooed woman broke off her attempted assault on the blonde woman and headed for a truck parked at the curb. She got in the truck and started it up, apparently having left her keys in the ignition prior to entering the house. She did a three-point turn in the middle of the street, got the truck positioned so that the driver’s side was facing the driveway, and screamed a final threat at Casey and his blonde floozy.

“You stay the fuck away from me, asshole! I ever see your face again, I’ll fucking kill you, and that’s a promise.”

Then she hit the gas and peeled away from there. The black-haired beauty was so consumed with rage she took no note of either Vera or her dog as she drove away. Only a desperate, last-second tug on his leash saved the life of Puddles the Pomeranian.

Vera lingered a couple moments longer as Casey and the blonde woman exchanged a few heated words before going back inside. Once this last bit of drama was over, Vera turned away from the house and headed back in the direction of her grandson’s home. The grandson remarked on how subdued she seemed upon returning, but Vera did not mention the fabulously exciting things she had witnessed that afternoon. She spent the rest of the day thinking of little else, though, and only became sociable again later that night when she made tea for the grandson.

She dosed the condescending asshole’s cup with rat poison.

It was a satisfying end to one of the most remarkable and enjoyable days of her long life.

She was so consumed with rage and incipient hatred she nearly crashed the truck several times on her way out of the whore’s neighborhood. The truck swerved wildly every time she let go of the steering wheel and slammed her palms against it. With just one exception, she was able to right the vehicle in time to avoid colliding with cars parked at the curb. But that one time she was a touch too slow correcting her course and wound up clipping the fender of a big old Buick. There was a thump followed by a loud rending of metal.

Echo Vaughn never considered stopping. The way she felt right now, she was likely to kill anyone who got aggro with her, which the Buick’s owner was certain to do if she stopped to talk with him or her. So she put the accelerator to the floor and Casey’s F-150 tore away from the Buick with an even louder sound of rending metal. A glance at the rearview mirror as she sped away revealed significant damage to the other vehicle. Its fender was badly shredded. Any other time she might have felt bad for what her negligence had caused, but right now she didn’t give a damn.

She couldn’t believe Casey had cheated on her. She had been convinced he was the total opposite of all the other losers she’d dated, who by and large had been a bunch of conniving jackasses who took advantage of her generous nature. And too many of them had been a little too happy about her being a stripper. The worst was when they’d bring a gang of their equally brain dead friends to the club to see her dance. That was some creepy shit. It happened often enough she had to wonder if all guys were natural degenerates.

But Casey had never been like that. He often tried to talk her into quitting the world of adult entertainment. There was no way she could do that. It was far too lucrative and she didn’t have the skills to do anything else. Casey countered this by saying she could go back to school. He told her she wouldn’t have to work at all if she enrolled at one of the local universities, promising to take care of her and provide for her until she got a degree. Which sounded great in theory, but somehow Echo had never quite been able to buy into it. Getting a degree would take years and would require a level of commitment she couldn’t imagine any guy—even one as seemingly true-blue as Casey—ever being able to manage.

Turned out she had been right about that. The bastard had the same commitment issues every guy had. A gossipy neighbor tipped her off to Casey’s fling with Ella Barton. There had been no hard proof of an affair, just repeated sightings of a busty blonde woman coming around to Echo’s house while she was at work. So she paid a guy from the club five hundred dollars to stake out her house and, if necessary, follow Casey around while she was working. Her paid stalker reported the bad news via a call to the club earlier today.

She fled the club in a blind rage and took Casey’s truck—which she frequently drove to work—to the address her informant had provided. Echo was incapable of playing it cool. So many guys had come and gone in her life and the eventual parting of the ways never bothered her. Again, though, Casey was different. He had really gotten to her on a level no one else ever had. She had tears in her eyes when she arrived at Ella’s cute little prefab house. The visible emotion annoyed her. No one had ever made her care enough to shed tears. And this guy—this fucking snake—didn’t deserve any fucking tears.

After slipping into the house via an unlocked back door, she found the semi-clothed couple making out on a sofa in the living room. They were both clad only in their underwear and Casey was on top of the woman, prone between her whorishly spread legs. Ella was writhing and moaning as he kissed her, her hands tangled in his long hair. Echo loved Casey’s long blond locks. He was a good-looking guy to start with, but the hair really sealed the deal.

Echo totally lost her shit.

She screamed.

She threw things. Anything that was handy, especially if it looked expensive.

Casey tried to reason with her, shedding tears of his own and sounding oh-so-sincere as he told her over and over how sorry he was for “fucking up”. But Echo was in no mood for his apologies, regardless of how heartfelt they seemed on the surface.

She didn’t depart until Ella—a woman she’d known in passing from hanging out with Casey at a local bar—got on the phone to call the police. On the way out, she grabbed a golf club from a bag of them propped up in a corner in the foyer.

Now that she was out of the neighborhood and driving back toward town, the worst of her rage seemed temporarily spent. She started thinking about her next move. Obviously Casey was getting his cheating ass kicked out of her house effective today. She briefly considered trying to get to the house before he could so she could systematically destroy everything he owned. But she rejected the idea immediately. Trashing his stuff would just reinforce the impression of being devastated by his actions. Now that she was thinking more clearly, that was the last thing she wanted. What was called for now was absolute cold detachment. She would show no emotion whatsoever when he came around to see her again.

An image of Ella’s shapely legs wrapped around Casey’s muscular back made her grip the steering wheel harder and push the gas pedal to the floor.

Or fuck that, she thought. Maybe I’ll just kill the son of a bitch.

She could do it. A vivid fantasy formed in her head as she drove. Casey on his knees as she held a gun on him, crying and begging for his life. Then her smiling coldly as she pulled the trigger and blew his worthless brains out.

It would be nothing less than what he deserved.

So why did she have tears in her eyes again as she thought about it?

Rather than going home or returning to the club, she drove for a few more miles and pulled into the parking lot of a bar called Buffalo Ted’s. An ordinary dive from the looks of it. Nothing special. But it would do for what she had in mind. And what she had in mind was getting shitfaced drunk in a place where she wasn’t likely to be recognized.

She grabbed her bag and got out of the truck, her flip-flops flapping loudly on the asphalt as she hurried across the parking lot en route to the bar’s entrance. The sooner she could get that first drink inside her, the better she would feel. Or maybe not, but at least it would be something to do.

A bell chimed as she banged through the front door and took a quick look around. A few faces turned in her direction. Most of the handful of patrons present went right back to their drinks, but a few gazes lingered, which was not surprising. Echo was long accustomed to being ogled by a certain percentage of the population wherever she went. She had tantalizingly long, exquisitely toned legs and a chest that irresistibly compelled the attention of heterosexual males wherever she went.

But she wasn’t much interested in male attention or company right at the moment. Her opinion of the male species was at its lowest ebb ever, and that was really saying something coming from someone who considered almost all men scum or trolls. So instead of sidling up to one of the guys perched at the bar to await the inevitable drink offer, she took a seat at one of the little tables in the small dining area and waited for a server to come by and take her order.

Before that could happen, a forty-something fat man with a skullet—bald scalp ringed by long hair hanging to his shoulders—in a Molly Hatchet T-shirt slid off his stool at the bar and waddled over to her table.

“Mind if I join you for a drink? My treat.”

Echo shot him her most withering, disdainful glare. “Fuck off, troll.”

The unexpected harshness of her response made him take a reflexive step back. Echo detected a note of genuine hurt in his surprised expression. This pleased her immensely.

The fat man scowled. “Fucking dyke.”

Echo laughed.

“What’s so funny, bitch?”

Echo smirked. “What part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you understand? By the way, what is up with the Molly Hatchet shirt? What are you, lost in time? Nobody listens to that dinosaur bullshit anymore. On second thought, don’t answer any of that. Just go the fuck away. You smell like vomit. Did you know that? Again, don’t answer that. Fuck off. No, better idea. Go home and kill yourself.”

The fat man looked stunned. He obviously had not been on the receiving end of this kind of vitriol in a long time. The pathetic loser looked like he was about to start crying. A part of her realized she was being excessively unkind. It was just bad luck and timing on his part. He was a guy and thus was Casey’s unknowing proxy in this situation.

She sighed. “Look, dude, you really don’t want to be around me right now. Trust me. Please just go away.”

The fat man regarded her with a blank look for another long and exasperating moment, but then he did something that surprised her. He dropped a twenty dollar bill on her table. “I’m gonna buy you some drinks even though you treated me like shit. I think you need them more than me.”

He walked out of the bar before she could say anything or give the money back.

Echo felt bad for about five seconds.

He had called her a fucking dyke, after all. Not that there was anything wrong with being a dyke, but it had been meant as an insult and that was just plain rude.

A server belatedly swung by to take her order. She was a slender woman in her late thirties with hard features arranged in an unpleasant expression. Echo couldn’t decide whether the woman was pissed at her for the way she had treated the fat man or if she always looked like she was mad at the world. Either way, the last thing she wanted at the moment was some bitter old skank of a waitress spitting in her drink.

So she summoned her sweetest smile and said, “I’ll have a shot of tequila and a tall glass of beer.”

While she waited for the drinks to arrive, she opened her bag and removed her phone, which she had switched to silent mode before heading out to Ella’s house. A glance at the screen showed a half-dozen missed calls received within the last twenty minutes. They were all from Casey. There were also some voicemails. She didn’t need to listen to them to know they were all Casey pleading with her to call him back.

Not happening, douchebag.

While she was staring at the screen, someone pulled a chair out and sat directly across from her. She initially suspected the fat man had returned for more abuse, so she couldn’t have been more surprised when she glanced up and saw the blonde bombshell on the other side of the table.

“Um…”

The word statuesque had been coined specifically to describe women like this magnificent creature. She was maybe just two inches shy of six feet tall and was blessed with the most astonishing curves Echo had ever seen. Though she was seated, the chair was well away from the table and she was sitting sideways in it, with her long and shapely sun-bronzed legs crossed and her slender arms folded beneath her majestic breasts. She looked like something out of a comic book, like some adolescent boy’s idealized fantasy of the perfect female. Also, while many of the girls she worked with at the club were profusely inked, few of them were as lavishly illustrated as this woman. The work was all top-notch and bursting with fine detail. It belatedly occurred to Echo that the pose the woman had struck was deliberate. She was purposely displaying her body in the most provocative manner possible.

“Can I pick that up for you?”

Echo shook her head in confusion. “Pick up what?”

The blonde goddess laughed. “Your jaw. It looked like it dropped all the way to the floor.”

Echo closed her mouth, suddenly self-conscious. No other person, male or female, had ever rendered her temporarily stupid by merely utilizing their looks. Hell, it was usually her on the other side of this equation. She felt befuddled and slow-witted, her mind adrift in a mental fog. She didn’t care for the feeling at all, but she figured she now had a better appreciation for how all the tongue-tied trolls who’d ever hit on her must have felt when she shot them down.

The server returned and set Echo’s drinks in front of her. She then began to move away from the table. The goddess stopped her in her tracks by seizing one of her thin wrists. “What about me, beautiful? I’m thirsty too.”

The server glanced down at the goddess for the briefest of instants before nervously averting her gaze. Echo realized with some astonishment that the hard-faced old waitress was blushing. She still knew next to nothing about this gorgeous stranger, but already her admiration for the woman was off the charts. She possessed a magnetic quality unrivaled in Echo’s experience. The server scurried off after another brief exchange of words. The words didn’t register for Echo because she was again too entranced by the blonde woman’s total physical perfection.

The goddess looked at her and smiled. “I told her to put my drinks on your tab. I’m sure you don’t mind.”

Some kind of snide comeback would be her usual response to something like that, but this time it wasn’t possible. So instead she simply said, “I don’t mind.”

“I know you don’t, honey.” The goddess uncrossed her legs and moved her chair closer to the table, the blatant display of her attributes no longer being necessary. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with that bald elephant.”

Echo frowned. “I didn’t see you when I came in.”

And there’s no way I could have missed you.

The goddess shrugged. “I was in the bathroom.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating a closed door to her left. “I heard you plain as day. You were pretty loud.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Her expression turned serious. “You were upset before you even got here, weren’t you?”

Echo grunted. “Yeah. You could say that.”

The goddess regarded her silently for a moment before saying, “You have the look of a woman who has been wronged by her fella.”

“Wow. That’s…unusually perceptive.”

“I’m just good at reading the moods of other people.” She winked. “Especially women.”

The server returned and set a tall glass of beer in front of the goddess. Before she departed, the goddess touched her wrist again. It was a light, very brief touch that accompanied a deceptively innocuous positive comment about the service she was giving, but Echo was certain the waitress almost fainted in that moment.

The goddess took a long drink from her beer before setting the glass back on the table. “What’s your name, gorgeous?”

Echo giggled and felt her cheeks redden.

The goddess smirked. “What’s so funny?”

Echo giggled another time or two before heaving a big breath and finally composing herself. “I’m sorry. You’ve got me all flustered. But I’m guessing you’re used to that reaction.”

The goddess laughed. “You could say that. Now out with the name, sweetheart.”

“My name is Echo Vaughn.”

The goddess didn’t laugh or smirk upon hearing the name, nor did she look as if she might be trying to conceal an incredulous reaction. Echo’s already sky-high opinion of her shot into outer space. “That’s a lovely name.”

Echo smiled. “Thank you. It’s my real name.”

“Of course it is. Why would I think otherwise?”

Echo shifted in her seat, becoming suddenly nervous. “Well…it’s just that in my line of work most of the girls don’t use their real names. I’m an exotic dancer.”

“Ah. A stripper, you mean.”

“Well…”

The goddess leaned across the table and touched the back of Echo’s right hand. “It’s okay, nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m in the clothing removal business myself.”

“Where do you dance? It can’t be around here or I would’ve heard about you for sure.”

The goddess lightly stroked the back of Echo’s hand. “You’re right, doll. You would have heard about me. But it wasn’t around here.”

A long, silent moment elapsed.

Echo’s brow creased. “Um…so where was it?”

Though she was still smiling, something in the goddess’s expression became more guarded. “I’ve done some naughty things, Echo Vaughn. I won’t spill the details to just anyone. But maybe I’ll tell you all about it once we get to know each other a little better.”

“Could you at least tell me your name?”

The goddess let go of Echo’s hand and picked up her beer glass. “Dez is what I’m called. Short for Desiree.”

“Last name?”

Dez shook her head. “That gets back into the territory of privileged information.” She licked her lips and a naughty smile spread across her face. “But maybe I’ll tell you later while I’m sitting on your face.”

Echo’s mouth dropped open at the remark.

Dez laughed and drank some of her beer.

Echo said, “You say that like it’s a given.”

Dez had another sip of beer and shrugged. “It is. In my entire life, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t Dezsexual.”

“Dezsexual?”

“Yes. I don’t care who you are or what your usual preferences are, when you meet me, you become hopelessly Dezsexual.”

Echo belatedly realized she hadn’t touched either of her drinks. She picked up the shot of tequila, knocked it back in a single quick gulp and thumped the empty glass on the table. “I hate to admit it, but I may be just a little bit Dezsexual.”

“It’s like I said. Everyone is.”

Echo shook her head. “I hate how totally fucking confident you are.”

“And by that you mean you totally fucking love it.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me about your man trouble, Echo.”

Echo hesitated only a moment before launching into a detailed description of everything that had happened that afternoon. Any lingering reluctance to share so intimate a tale with a stranger evaporated within seconds as she quickly realized how desperately she needed to vent. Dez was an attentive listener. She interrupted only a handful of times and then only to seek clarification of certain points. For the most part, she allowed Echo to spew nonstop until the whole sordid tale was out. They had downed another round of drinks and started another by the time it was finished.

Dez shook her head, her expression darker and more serious now. There was no trace of her earlier playfulness. Echo might have found it unsettling if not for the cathartic effects of having told her tale. “I’ll tell you something, Echo. Men are worthless.”

Echo snorted. “Not exactly front page news.”

“I’m serious.”

Echo stared at her a moment before replying, abruptly realizing how genuinely angry the woman seemed. It was a little strange. “It’s not that big a deal. I mean, it happens. Guys are assholes. I’ll get over it and move on.”

“You should kill him.”

Echo flinched, unable to believe what she had just heard. “Um…that…well, I admit I considered it for, like, a second, but it’s a little extreme.” She forced a laugh. “Come on, I don’t want to go to jail.”

Dez leaned farther over the table and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Who said anything about going to jail? You can get away with anything if you’re careful.”

Echo gaped at her in disbelief for a long moment. Then she shook her head. “No. Seriously. You’re kind of creeping me out now. I don’t really want to kill Casey. Not anymore.”

Dez stared levelly at her. “You might change your mind after you hear my story.”

“Your story?” Despite the uneasiness the other woman’s abrupt and very dark mood change had stirred within her, Echo couldn’t help smiling. “Would this involve any of that so-called privileged information?”

Dez nodded. “I think I know you well enough now, Echo Vaughn. We’re two of a kind, I can feel it. I’ll tell you anything and everything, starting now.”

And so she did.

Dez’s story began on a note so hilarious it had Echo holding on to the table to keep from falling out of her chair. But hilarity took an abrupt turn into deep darkness mere moments later. Echo listened in mounting horror for nearly thirty minutes, polishing off two more beers and two more shots of tequila in the time it took Dez to finish her story.

She felt dizzy from the drinks and vaguely nauseated when Dez at last fell silent. “Holy shit,” she said, her voice subdued as she shook her head in disbelief. “That’s the most fucked-up shit I’ve ever heard. Did all that really happen?”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

Dez pushed her chair away from the table. “I’m gonna go pee. Pay for our drinks and meet me outside. I’ve got something to show you.”

She walked away before Echo could reply, disappearing inside the women’s room seconds later. Echo stared at the closed door for a moment, still too stunned by everything she’d heard to properly process it all. But then the world came back into sharp focus—or relatively so, given all the booze she’d consumed—and she flagged the server down to pay the bill.

Dez joined her on the sidewalk outside a couple minutes later. It was late afternoon now and the flow of traffic in the street next to the bar was much thicker. A glance at her phone showed several more missed calls. As expected, some were from Casey, but a few were from the club. She recalled how she’d fled from there without explanation and felt a stab of anxiety.

Hmm…I may be in a little trouble here.

She blinked when Dez snapped her fingers in front of her face. “Earth to Echo. This way.”

She stepped off the sidewalk and started across the parking lot. Echo shrugged and followed her over to a black Impala. The big car looked like it was an early 70’s model.

Dez dug around inside her purse a minute before pulling out a ring of keys. She shot a wicked grin at Echo. “You ready for this shit, bitch?”

Echo wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what it was Dez wanted to show her, but she could make some educated guesses based on her story. One in particular seemed more likely than anything else and it troubled her deeply. “Um…”

Dez laughed. “Fuck it. Get ready, baby.”

She unlocked the trunk and flipped it open.

Echo slapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a loud gasp. Dez leaned against the edge of the trunk and studied her face, smirking broadly.

There was a man in the trunk. And he matched the vivid description of one of the lead characters from Dez’s personal tale of woe. He was a big, dumpy man dressed in dirty clothing. He was bald and had a livid scar that ran from his left temple down to his mouth. This was all as expected.

Echo pulled her hand away from her mouth and let out a breath as she moved in for a closer look. “Is that…is he…”

Dez was smiling as she nodded. “You bet your beautiful ass.”

Echo shook her head. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

The identity of the guy in the trunk was the expected part. The simple fact of his existence confirmed all the insane horror show stuff Dez had told her. The unexpected part of the equation was that he was still alive. He was tightly bound with thick rope and many layers of duct tape covered his mouth.

But he was alive.

Echo shook her head and stared at the living monster with morbid fascination. She knew without being told that Dez meant to kill the guy. No way could she let him live after all the rotten things he had done. Knowing she was looking at a living dead man should have repelled her, but it did not. Strangely, the opposite happened. Her stomach began to settle and she experienced a weird kind of serenity. There was a sense of being precisely where she was meant to be at this exact moment in time.

This was destiny.

Dez sidled closer to Echo and slid a hand inside a rear pocket of her cutoffs. “So what do you say? Want to keep the party going, maybe help me fuck this guy up some more?”

Echo stared at the man’s wide, pleading eyes for a few moments and tried hard to feel any sympathy at all. Then she shuddered as Dez’s fingers clenched against her ass, sending an electrifying shiver of Dezsexuality rippling through her body.

She looked at Dez. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Dez smiled. “I know.”

She pulled Echo close and kissed her with hungry abandon.

Chapter Seven

De Rais Ranch

Two weeks before the shootout on 2nd Avenue

Keely woke up in the big, empty field that occupied the southernmost portion of the ranch property owned by John Wayne de Rais. The compound functioned as the headquarters of the Order of Wandering Souls. The ground was hard and rocky and not at all an ideal place to spend a night under the stars. Not without a tent or sleeping bag, at least. Keely had neither of those things.

She groaned as she stretched her body and forced her bleary eyes open. It was a clear day and the sun’s position in the sky told her it was sometime in the early afternoon, which meant she had slept through another morning of chores. This was her week on laundry detail and Susan Wagner, overseer for female initiates, was notoriously strict when it came to doling out punishment. Order members were generally free to do whatever they wanted. Critical chores or tasks were assigned on a rotating weekly basis. If it wasn’t your week to do real work—and if you weren’t assigned to a recruiting party—you could spend all your time fucking and getting high if you wanted.

Keely had a long history of indulging her vices to an excessive degree. Out in the ordinary world, that had been a big problem. She hadn’t ever been able to hold down a decent job for very long. As a result, she was arrested multiple times on various charges, mostly shoplifting or petty drug offenses. It had been a real spiral of hopelessness kind of deal. Even her baby brother—hardly an angel himself—got tired of her shit.

Casey gave lip service to trying to help her, but he blew up at her after discovering she had pawned a bunch of his shit to pay for dope, calling her a junkie whore. He kicked her out after that. That was the lowest point in her life. She gave serious consideration to killing herself. Casey had several guns and she managed to swipe one of them before getting the boot. Her original plan for the gun had been to use it to liberate money from people who had too much of it. Her secondary plan—considered only briefly—had been to shoot Casey and then take her own life. A part of her that was still tenuously connected to reality realized this wasn’t exactly fair, but killing herself and checking out of this miserable world was acceptable.

Fate intervened, however, when she crossed paths with a recruiting party from the Order of Wandering Souls. She examined their flyer and listened with mounting skepticism to the crazy-sounding pitch from one of the Order members, a bearded, scraggly-haired young man who did most of the talking that day. He spoke with a dramatic earnestness that was like nothing she had ever heard outside of church, which she hadn’t attended since childhood. He talked of a coming time of “cleansing” and how she could be among the enlightened few who would one day inherit a changed world. This didn’t impress her much. It all sounded too apocalyptically biblical for her taste. But then one of the girls invited her into the group’s van to smoke some weed, a more effective come-on by far than all that end of days stuff.

Thus began one of the wildest days of her life. The weed was the most potent she had ever sampled and the next thing she knew she was getting finger-fucked by a hippie chick. She quickly realized there were no sexual boundaries with these people. No one belonged to anyone else. You could do whatever you wanted with whomever you wanted. Their liberal attitude regarding weed and other illicit substances was the biggest selling point of all. The rest of the day passed in a blur of tangled naked bodies and nonstop partying. It wasn’t long at all before all thoughts of suicide vanished.

The next day was very different, though no less exciting. Keely was granted a personal audience with John Wayne de Rais, the leader of the Order. He liked to meet one-on-one with all new recruits to ensure they were truly suited for membership.

John Wayne was older than the rest of them by decades, but he exuded a level of charisma Keely could only compare to A-list movie stars. He was a silver-tongued charmer with a quick wit. Keely was entranced the entire time she was in his company. She wound up desperately pleading her case with tears streaming down her face. The Order of Wandering Souls was where she belonged. It would be her salvation. John Wayne smiled in a benevolent way and assured her she would have a place among his people. However, when Keely offered to seal the deal with a blowjob, he did not refuse.

She had spent the months since fervently hoping for another intimate, private encounter with John Wayne, thinking she could maybe even please him enough to earn entry into his elite inner circle. But that was never going to happen if she didn’t stop fucking up like this.

She sat up and rubbed at her eyes, blinking against the bright sunlight. When her vision cleared, she saw a group of three people moving across the field in her direction. They were too far away to make out clearly, even with a hand held up to cut the glare of the sun, but she felt no sense of alarm. Members of the Order looked out for each other. This group had probably been dispatched to search for her when it was determined she had gone missing.

Keely resolved to seek out Susan Wagner as soon as she returned to the main part of the compound. She would apologize profusely for not doing her part when it was expected and volunteer for an extra week on laundry detail. It was only right.

The figures marching across the field became more distinct. All three were bare-chested men dressed only in dirty jeans and boots. But there was something off about their heads, which looked lumpy and misshapen from this distance. She squinted as they drew closer, trying to determine the cause of the irregularity. By the time they had closed to within twenty yards she realized they were wearing canvas hoods. This detail caused a first faint stirring of alarm. She had never seen anyone at the ranch wearing anything to obscure their identities, and there was no way to interpret the hoods as anything other than sinister.

The hooded men were coming rapidly toward her, their strides growing longer the closer they got. There was a sense of grim determination in their bearing. Keely’s heart started pounding as she got to her feet and took a few nervous backward steps. She took a quick glance around her and weighed the advisability of making a run into the nearby woods.

But there was no longer time for that. They were too close now. There was no chance of outrunning them. She cried out as two of the men roughly seized her and shoved her to her knees in front of the third man, who backhanded her across the face. The ferocity of the blow sent a shockwave of pain through Keely, but she was more disturbed by the mere fact of the blow than the force behind it. In the entire time she had lived at the compound, she had never seen an act of violence perpetrated by Order members against another member.

A possible explanation flitted through her mind and she latched on to it with desperate hope. The men of the Order respected and cherished their women and would never harm them. These men were outsiders. That would explain the hoods. It would make them harder to identify later, if she survived this encounter. She was probably about to be raped, a prospect that horrified her to the core, but that same desperate part of her thought she could endure it and survive so long as these hooded beasts truly were interlopers unconnected to the Order. The alternative was too sickening to contemplate.

This final hope was crushed as she stared up at the man looming over her and realized she knew him. He was a tall man with a big frame, muscular but with a bit of pudge around the middle. Keely would have recognized him soon enough even without the skull tattoo on his chest. The skull covered an old swastika tattoo he’d gotten in prison. A casual observer would never be able to make out the swastika. It had been obscured pretty effectively. But Keely could discern the shape of it. The big man had told her all about it one deliriously passionate night a month earlier.

Her features contorted and tears leaked from her eyes. “Garrett? I…don’t understand. Why—”

Garrett Palmer delivered another hard backhand blow, this one so savage it knocked her to the ground. “Keep your mouth shut. You’re coming with us.”

They began dragging her across the field, moving at a pace significantly faster than she could match. She slumped between the two men holding her and her bare feet slid over the rocky ground. Garrett’s last blow had sapped most of her remaining strength and it was all she could do to remain conscious as they headed for the group of cabins that acted as living quarters for most Order initiates.

Keely was mortified at the sight of all the people standing around outside when she and the hooded men arrived there several minutes later. She searched a lot of grim-looking faces and saw a mix of anger, fear and what might have been actual concern for her. No one was occupied with chores. No one was fucking, getting high or otherwise having fun. This was a serious communal moment. They were here to bear witness to her shame, possibly on instructions from John Wayne himself.

She was taken to one of the largest cabins. Keely had been inside this one on only a few occasions. It had several rooms and functioned as office space for Susan Wagner and other Order higher ups.

They’re not gonna kill me, Keely told herself. There’s no way that’s gonna happen.

But was that really true?

She started crying again as she realized she couldn’t be certain. That weird gathering outside was something new. It reminded her a little too strongly of scenes from old western movies, the ones where the condemned outlaw was marched through the center of town on the way to the gallows. Maybe something a lot like that was about to happen here. Now that she had allowed herself to entertain the appalling idea, it was easy to see how they could get away with it. This was a huge property. There was a lot of space to bury a body and be reasonably certain no one would ever find it.

The hooded men pushed her down a hallway until they reached a closed door at the end. Garrett knocked on it and said, “Ma’am? We’ve got the Miller girl.”

A voice Keely recognized responded. “Bring her in.”

Garrett opened the door and stepped into the room. The other men hauled Keely inside and one of them kicked the door shut. As with most of the cabins, there was no electricity here, hence the presence of oil lamps (currently unlit) and other low-tech throwbacks to other eras, including a metal filing cabinet and a manual typewriter. The typewriter sat atop a big desk that filled more than a quarter of the available space. Seated behind the desk was Susan Wagner, whose stern and unforgiving expression triggered Keely’s tears again.

“Susan, please, I know I’ve been fucking up a lot, and I’m really sorry, but I swear—”

“Silence her.”

A big fist slammed into the small of Keely’s back, driving her to her knees in front of the desk. The pain this time was worse than that inflicted by any of Garrett’s backhanded blows. It felt like she had been hit with a bowling ball. Another blow like that might cripple her, an insight that effectively overwhelmed the need to apologize or explain herself. She wasn’t saying anything else until she had Susan Wagner’s express permission.

Susan glanced at the men standing behind Keely. “Leave us.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When the men were gone, Susan smiled. “Stand up.”

Keely grimaced as she got slowly to her feet, and as she did so, she forced herself to face a fact her mind had thus far refused to look at head-on. She was being tortured. What was happening here went far beyond the bounds of normal Order discipline. It was also worlds removed from John Wayne’s glorious message of enlightenment.

Susan smiled. “Remove your clothes.”

Keely frowned. “What?”

Susan slapped a hand against the desk’s surface, making her jump. “Remove your clothes. Don’t make me tell you again.”

It was the last thing Keely wanted to do. Hadn’t she been humiliated enough already? But there was no one around to intervene. No one to whom she could plead for mercy. There was no choice at all here, save for perfect obedience.

She removed her dress, then her undergarments.

Susan smiled. “Now bend over and grip the edge of the desk.”

Keely winced at the thought of what this would do to her aching back, but again she obeyed. The only thing to do at this point was to endure whatever extra level of humiliation Susan had in mind with as much stoicism as possible, then once it was over, maybe start reassessing her commitment to the Order.

Susan stared at her for a long moment without speaking. There was a curiously avid cast to her features and Keely belatedly realized the woman’s gaze was trained on her hanging breasts. Then she looked Keely in the eye and smiled. “Tell me, child…have you ever been caned?”

Keely sighed. “Please don’t do that. It’s not right.”

Susan shook her head in a reproachful way. “Nonsense. You’re only getting what your behavior warrants.”

She pushed her chair back and stood. Susan was a slender woman somewhere in her forties. Her hair was a dark shade of blonde. It was tied back in a loose knot. She wore a white blouse and tan shorts.

Keely’s hands were shaking and she feared she might lose her grip on the desk. “Please. I know I haven’t been doing my part, but I don’t deserve this.”

Susan grunted. “Oh, but you do, Keely. More importantly, I deserve it.”

Keely frowned.

What an odd thing to say…

In a corner of the room was a wooden stand containing a number of rattan canes of varying lengths and thicknesses. Susan approached the stand, smiled as she glanced over her shoulder at Keely and selected one of the longer, thicker canes. She then moved out of Keely’s field of vision and took up a position behind her.

Susan chuckled. “Brace yourself, girl.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

The words just came out. There was no forethought to the suddenly blurted accusation. Keely silently cursed her stupidity. No way could it do anything other than make things worse.

“You’re being impertinent.”

Keely sniffled. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re right, though. I’m enjoying this very much.”

Keely flinched as she felt the tapered end of the cane touch her quivering buttocks. “Please. Please.”

“Do keep saying that word. It sounds so sweet on your lips.”

The end of the cane came away from her buttocks as Susan drew it back to deliver the first blow. Keely flinched as it come whickering through the air at her. When it snapped against her bare flesh, the pain made her weak in the knees.

“Do not fall.”

The cane whickered through the air again.

SNAP!

“You’ve earned yourself an extra week of laundry detail, Keely.”

SNAP!

“After that you will join a recruiting party daily until you personally have brought ten new initiates into the fold. And you can forget about trying to escape. You will be monitored closely from here on out.”

SNAP!

“Do you understand?”

Keely whimpered. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” Susan made a soft sound of amusement. “And I’m pleased to hear the appropriate subservience in your tone.”

Keely gasped as she felt the end of the cane slide between her legs and stay there. Susan didn’t penetrate her with the cane, but she did press it firmly against her pussy. Several moments passed and nothing happened. Keely didn’t know what to make of this development. But by now the once absurd notion of a sexual assault by a sister Order member shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did anyway. It was just another in a growing series of dashed illusions.

Susan let out a shuddery breath and withdrew the cane.

“You’re very pretty, Keely.”

Keely worked to keep her voice steady. “I know.”

Susan made a contemplative sound. “I could possibly be persuaded to end this unpleasant phase of your punishment in exchange for other considerations.”

Another long silence ensued. When it became clear Susan wouldn’t speak again until Keely said something, she stood and forced a smile as she turned to look at Susan. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Susan handed her the cane. “Hold that.”

Keely accepted the cane with open-mouthed astonishment, but she said nothing. Her mouth stayed open as she watched Susan unbutton her shorts and wiggle out of them.

Susan took up the very position Keely had abandoned. With her bare ass thrust up in the air, she glanced over her shoulder and said, “Cane me.”

Keely shook her head. Not because she didn’t wish to do as instructed—she was more than willing to cane the living shit out of Susan Wagner—but because of all the bizarre, unpredictable twists this day had taken, this was by far the strangest.

Susan’s voice emerged as a strangled whine when she spoke next. “Cane me, Keely. Please.”

Keely got a good grip on the cane and drew her arm back. Then she swung it forward with every ounce of strength she could muster.

SNAP!

And then she did it again. And again.

It went on that way for a while before things progressed in a direction Keely didn’t find surprising at all.

Chapter Eight

A Song of Lana

The time between the end of her phone call with Ted Wilkinson and his arrival at her door were the tensest, most uncertain moments of Lana’s life. She spent nearly every second of those twenty-some minutes second-guessing the advisability of contacting him. He was still a stranger to her, just some big-talking blowhard who had tried a little too hard to impress her. Blurting out a double homicide confession to the man over the phone had maybe not been the smartest thing she had ever done.

But taking the lives of your cheating boyfriend and his whore lover had a way of traumatizing the common sense out of you. The insult done to her pride could not have passed unpunished. But now she was wishing she hadn’t acted so rashly. This was too big a thing she had done. Despite Ted’s assurances to the contrary, there was no way he could make this all go away. There were two bullet-riddled bodies and a blood-soaked mattress in her bedroom. And Alice had bled all over the carpet. Also, there were bits of Blaine’s brain on the wall behind the headboard. The whole room was your basic DNA evidence extravaganza, a crime scene investigator’s fucking wet dream.

And then there was the goddamn baby.

Yep.

She had to face it. Big Ted had just been humoring her. He probably called the police the moment their conversation ended. The likelihood of this was something she couldn’t deny. It was what any remotely sane person would do. Any moment now she would hear the first rising whine of sirens. And at that point she would have a big decision to make. She could either surrender quietly or take her own life before they could take her into custody. The gun still had some rounds in it. She could put the barrel in her mouth and squeeze the trigger. Just be done with it all. Though she had never previously been suicidal, the prospect of a life in prison was unacceptable.

Seated on the edge of her living room sofa, she looked at the gun still clasped in her right hand. It didn’t look like much. It wasn’t a big gun. But in this case looks were definitely deceptive. She had seen what it could do.

Fuck it.

She opened her mouth wide and slid the short barrel inside. Only fear of dying and what might (or might not) come after death made her hesitate. Some people said suicide was a sin and that you went straight to hell for it. Lana had never given the notion of hell’s possible existence any serious consideration. It just seemed so ridiculous. But having a gun in her mouth put a different spin on things. What if she was wrong about hell? She had been wrong about many things in her life. Why not this too?

She pulled the gun out of her mouth and heaved a big sigh.

In the end, it wasn’t fear of eternal damnation that stayed her hand. The baby was awake again, staring up at her with those big blues eyes from the car carrier at her feet. She just couldn’t blow her brains out in front of him. Or, whatever, maybe some part of her was looking for any excuse at all not to commit suicide.

The baby didn’t look scared or traumatized. Just innocent and curious. The look on his face triggered her first tears of the afternoon. Alice and Blaine deserved what they got. They were adults. They had known what they were doing was wrong. But the cute little complication in the baby carrier didn’t deserve any of this. It wasn’t his fault his mother was a worthless whore. Still, his life had changed forever thanks to Lana’s rash actions—and probably not for the better.

A knock on the door made her jump and almost drop the gun. “Lana, you in there, darlin’? It’s Big Ted.”

A big, hopeful grin spread across Lana’s face. Ted’s presence at the door meant there were no cops on the way, at least not yet. It might only be a temporary reprieve, but she was grateful for it.

She carefully set the gun on the coffee table and got up to go to the door. When she opened it, Big Ted smiled broadly at her around the unlit stogie wedged into a corner of his mouth. “Come on in.”

Ted tipped back his cowboy hat and entered the apartment as she stepped aside for him.

She closed the door and followed him into the living room.

Ted stood with his hands on his hips as he stared down at the baby in the carrier. He made a clucking sound as he shook his head. “Shit. Poor little fella.”

Lana took up a position next to him and looked at the baby too. “Yeah. I done fucked up his life forever.”

Ted snorted. “What little is left of it. Go grab me a pillow, sweet thing.”

“Why?”

Ted gave her an incredulous look. “So I can smother the little cocksucker. What do you expect me to do with him? We can take him out on my boat later and drop him in the ocean. Over and done with.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

“You can’t kill him. I’d rather go to jail.”

“Seriously?”

Lana nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, shit.” Ted took the cigar out of his mouth and scratched the back of his neck. “That makes things a mite more complicated, but coming up with an alternate solution ain’t necessarily undoable.”

“Good. Because killing him is a deal breaker.”

Ted put the cigar back in his mouth. “There are things I could possibly do, but first I need to get a feel for the full scope of what we’re dealing with here. Show me the bodies.”

Lana led him down the hallway to the bedroom. The bedroom door was closed for some unknown reason. Closing the door on the scene didn’t negate the reality hidden inside the room, but then she hadn’t been thinking logically for a while. Though Ted already knew what was waiting on the other side of it, she nevertheless hesitated for the briefest instant when her hand closed around the doorknob. There was a strange tingly feeling in her gut that reminded her of childhood. It was the one she used to get when her parents were about to discover something naughty or just plain wrong she had done.

The deep lines around Ted’s eyes crinkled. “You gonna open the door, sugar?”

Lana let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry, just not in a hurry to see this again. It’s…pretty horrible.”

Not really, she thought. But for some reason I need you to believe I think it’s horrible.

Ted smiled and touched her shoulder, giving her what he meant as a reassuring squeeze. But the touch was a little too intimate for that. She half-expected his hand to slide away from her shoulder to grope some other part of her body, but for the moment he refrained. “I understand, girl. I really do. But the sooner we can start dealing with this unpleasantness, the sooner we can put it behind you.”

Lana made herself smile. “I know. Thanks for caring. It means…a lot.”

She tried to summon a fake tear—or at least a sniffle—to garner more sympathy, but her eyes remained dry.

Ted squeezed her shoulder again. “Happy to help. You’re a special gal, I knew that the second I laid eyes on you. Now let’s see what’s what.”

Lana let out a breath and opened the door. Ted was right behind her as she entered the room. He removed the cigar from his mouth and let out a low whistle. The bodies remained where they had fallen. She hadn’t touched them. Blaine was facedown on the bed, but the hole at the small of his back and the ruin the second slug had made of his head were plain to see. Alice was flat on her back on the floor, her unblinking, dead eyes staring up at nothing.

Ted grunted. “Damn. That one had a pretty good rack on her.”

“I worked with her. She danced at the Booty Boutique too.”

Ted’s brow furrowed. “I thought them titties looked kind of familiar. Fakes, huh?”

Lana nodded. “You can tell by the way they don’t spread out when she’s on her back.”

“Huh.” Ted glanced at her. “Your titties fake?”

“I have naturally bodacious breasts.”

Ted chuckled. “Nothing better than a legit pair of great tits.”

Lana agreed, but she was eager to move the conversation along. “So…as you can see, I made one hell of a mess. I hate to be a doubting Thomasina, but I don’t see how you can make this go away.”

Ted’s default joviality gave way to an unexpected earnestness. “I hate to break it to you, darlin’, but this ain’t my first rodeo.”

Lana frowned. “Meaning what?”

Ted’s eyes twinkled in a way that chilled her. There was a certain shady vibe criminal types who patronized the Booty Boutique gave off, one she was usually able to smell on them as soon as they came in range. She hadn’t caught that vibe off Ted before—possibly because he was more skilled at concealing it than most—but it was certainly there now. “Meaning this won’t be the first time I’ve made bodies disappear.”

Lana smiled. “I see. That’s good to know.”

It was strange. She knew now she was dealing with a genuine bad guy, a dangerous man by definition. But, rather than disturbing her, she found the knowledge reassuring. A for-real villain who knew his way around effective corpse disposal and crime scene cover-up was exactly the kind of dude she needed in her corner right now.

“So…how does this happen? What’s next?”

“What happens is I make some phone calls and get my people on this.”

Lana frowned as she again studied the scene. She didn’t see how it could be covered up without stripping the place to the bone and replacing everything. And that was just the aesthetic side of things. Getting two adult bodies and a bunch of blood-soaked crap out of the apartment without attracting a lot of unwanted attention seemed like a time-intensive, logistical nightmare.

In fact, it seemed fucking impossible.

Ted patted her shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, girl, but trust me, my people are pros. They’ll work fast and by the time they’re done, you’d never guess anything happened here. I’ll give you my word on that.”

“What about the kid?”

Ted shrugged. “Not really my area of expertise, but I can get in touch with some folks who should have no problem placing him somewhere.”

Lana thought about that as she chewed on a thumbnail. “I don’t know how I feel about that. Can’t he just anonymously be passed off to next of kin?”

Ted took her by a wrist and pulled her close, wrapping his big arms around her. The move didn’t surprise Lana, nor did it bother her much. She had been expecting something like this all along. A favor this big wouldn’t come without a sizeable price tag, after all.

“Trust me, this is the way to go. It’s better if these dead folks and the little one just disappear never to be heard from again. People will assume the three of them ran off together somewhere. That’s what we want. But if the baby gets left behind, it turns into a big goddamn mystery with a whole lot more questions from the po-lice.” He said it like that, emphasizing the first syllable with a corndog drawl she now recognized as partly an act. “Just let me take care of it all and you won’t have a thing to worry about. That’s a promise.”

Lana allowed herself to settle into his embrace, smiling wickedly as she pushed her large breasts against his chest. “There anything I can do to help, Teddy?”

He shook his head. “You’ve been through enough. We’ll clear out once my people get here and give them room to do what needs doin’.” He tucked the unlit cigar in his blazer’s front pocket. “But there’s something else you can do for me before I make my calls.”

She shifted her weight some and angled a thigh against the erection tenting the front of his trousers. “Does it have anything to do with that?”

“It’s got everything to do with that.”

His hands went to her ass and gave her buttocks a rough squeeze as he pulled her harder against him. She responded with a hungry, lustful growl. Ted was a rather large gentleman and wasn’t precisely movie star handsome, but he had come willingly to her rescue, an act that seemed to have supercharged her libido. Before she knew it she was standing on her tiptoes and shoving her tongue into the big man’s mouth. He made a muffled sound that might have been a surprised laugh, but after that her ministrations elicited something closer to a tortured squeal.

Lana clawed at him and pulled at his clothes until the two of them fell backward onto the bed. Ted’s cowboy hat came off his head as he tried to rise up. A look of repulsion played across his features. Lana almost got mad before realizing he was reacting to the proximity of Blaine’s corpse. She belatedly realized her bare arm was touching Blaine’s leg. The revelation should have filled her instantly with disgust, but it did not. Instead it drove her arousal to an even higher level.

She grabbed Ted’s hat and flung it across the room before seizing the lapels of his blazer. “Get your goddamn clothes off and fuck me, Big Ted.”

Ted looked pale. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I want more. But wouldn’t you rather do it somewhere else? Like out in the living room?”

“You wouldn’t believe how wet I am right now, Teddy.” Lana pushed at his chest and he raised his torso higher as she slithered backward, splaying herself across Blaine’s legs. “I want you to fuck me right here next to my cheating dead boyfriend.” She pulled off her top and tossed it aside, then began to wiggle out of her shorts. “In fact, I want you to fuck me on top of him.”

Lana knew what she was doing was sick and wrong. Justifiable homicide or not, clearly there was something wrong inside her, something deeply and fundamentally fucked up, something that had always been there, lurking in the darkest shadows of her obviously deranged mind. There was no other way to explain this impulse. Recognizing this might have troubled her any other time, but for now she only wanted to embrace it, to revel in her inner darkness and this profound perversity.

A fleeting look of disgust twisted Ted’s features, but then it was gone and he was shrugging off his blazer. “You dirty little girl. I think I’m in love with you.”

Lana peeled off her panties and slapped them against his face. “Say that again.”

He fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, hurrying to get it off. “I love you, Lana. I love the fucking shit out of you.”

She laughed and spread her legs as she repositioned herself atop Blaine’s body, waiting with feverish anticipation as Ted shed the rest of his clothes. And then he was on top of her. On top of both of them. Then he was inside her. She screamed and screamed as the bed shook and the headboard slammed against the wall. The screams became one long, uninterrupted expression of insane ecstasy, almost like a kind of music, the tortured rhythm of the bedsprings providing a thumping backbeat to her operatic singing.

Chapter Nine

Some Fucked-Up Shit that Happened on the Road, Part Two

They were on the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama, when Echo announced she needed to take a piss. Dez gave her a ration of shit for not getting out of the car at the last stop and threatened to keep going until she felt like stopping. Echo countered with a threat to drop her shorts and piss all over the backseat, which effectively ended the short-lived debate. Dez hit the turn signal lever and pulled off at the next exit, where she pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a Stop N Go store.

The three of them got out of the Impala and went into the store. Dez infuriated Echo by getting to the women’s room first and closing the door in her face with a smirking expression.

Echo shot an incredulous look at Lana, who was over by a row of coolers checking out the array of beverages on display. “Can you believe the nerve of that bitch? I’m this close to pissing myself and she pulls that shit. Fucking unbelievable.”

Lana shrugged, not looking at her. “Just how she is. Shit, you’re lucky she stopped at all.”

Echo made a loud sound of frustration and stamped a foot on the floor before slamming the base of a fist against the closed door. “Hurry up, Dez. Don’t be a goddamn hour in there just to spite me or you’ll fucking regret it. That’s a straight-up promise from me to you, bitch.”

A dim sound of feminine laughter issued from the other side of the door. Echo screeched and was about to bang on the door again when she glanced to her right and frowned at the closed men’s room door. Normally she didn’t like to use the men’s rooms in convenience stores because they grossed her out, but this was an emergency situation. She felt like she might explode at any second.

Fuck it.

She opened the men’s room door and let out a startled gasp, taking an immediate step backward. A young man in his late teens or early twenties sat on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles, but he wasn’t taking a shit. A skin mag—one of the raunchier ones by the look of it—was open on the tiled floor in front of him, and he had a hand wrapped around a throbbing boner. At first he looked angry at the intrusion, but his expression changed when Echo’s curvaceous femininity fully registered.

The young man’s face contorted in a way that made him look like he was having an attack of some kind. He groaned like a movie zombie as he abruptly ejaculated, shooting a silvery stream of seemingly jet-propelled come that struck the opposite wall. His shoulders sagged and he slumped backward against the upright seat cover, his chest going up and down as he panted like a runner at the end of a sprint.

Echo made a loud sound of disgust. “You fucking pervert! What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of sick fuck jacks it in a public bathroom?”

The man had recovered enough from those first moments of post-orgasm insensibility to direct an accusatory glare at her. “Ever hear of knocking? You might want to try it next time.”

Echo barked an incredulous laugh and shook her head. “You’re gonna blame me for this, you perverted motherfucker? Seriously?”

Lana was still over by the coolers, but now her head turned in Echo’s direction. “What’s going on over there?”

“I just watched a skinny perv shoot his wad in a public bathroom.”

“Is he cute?”

Echo glanced at her, scowling. “Shut up if you don’t have anything helpful to contribute. And no, he’s not.”

The guy in the bathroom picked up the skin mag, calmly folded it and tucked it under his arm as he stood and pulled up his pants. He zipped up and flushed the toilet, then moved over to the sink and started the hot water tap to wash his hands. As he lathered up, he glanced at Echo’s oblique reflection in the mirror above the sink. “You’re just saying that because you’re pissed at me. I know I’m handsome.”

Echo laughed.

The man rinsed the soap off his hands, turned off the water and shook off the excess moisture before pulling a wad of hand towels from the dispenser mounted on the wall. He directed a smirking glance at Echo as he dried his hands. “Admit it. You’re just mad I didn’t hold off long enough to stick it in you.”

Echo stared at him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing as a fresh welling of anger simmered inside her. A lot had happened since leaving Casey and her old life behind all those months ago. She wasn’t the same person she had been back then. A wild life on the road with her dangerous new friends had changed her forever. Copious amounts of blood had been spilled. And a lot of people—mostly men—had died by her hands. This smarmy little son of a bitch had no idea what he was provoking. It was equivalent to poking a snake with a sharp stick.

Time to learn the hard way, little man.

She stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind her, being sure to turn the lock. The man’s first reaction was a surprised frown, but then he began to grin, his hawk-like features making the expression look almost cadaverous. He looked her up and down, licking his lips as he admired her long legs and bountiful curves.

“I knew it. You got a load of the B-man’s tube snake and just had to get some of that for yourself. Am I right?”

Echo smiled but said nothing.

She slipped her purse off her shoulder, pulled it open and began to root around inside it.

The man tossed the wad of towels in the trash and moved a step closer. “I’m gonna need at least a few minutes before ol’ Mr. Snake is ready for action again.” He smiled in that smarmy way of his and came another step closer. “But I could go down on you. Would you like that, baby?”

Echo’s fingers closed around something in the bag. “You called yourself ‘the B-man’. Why?”

He chuckled. “Because my name’s Brad and I’m the man.”

Echo smiled. “Not anymore, you’re not.”

The switchblade clicked open as her hand came out of the bag. Brad’s eyes opened wide at the sight of the blade, but he didn’t immediately back away from her. Echo had killed enough men to understand why. Their brains took too long to process what was happening. None of them ever expected a woman—especially a gorgeous woman—to lash out in a violent way, not unless they had been attacked or threatened first. It was hardwired into them to believe they were the only real predators, which was just one of the many things about their gender that made them undeniably inferior.

Echo slammed the blade into his groin. It pierced his scrotum and sank in deep. Brad shrieked and staggered backward until his back met the wall. Blood rapidly stained the crotch of his jeans and leaked from the hole made by the blade. Echo rushed at him and he held up a forearm, managing to deflect a jab aimed at his throat at the last second. The blade punctured a meaty part of his arm just below the wrist and blood began streaming from the new hole in his flesh. The pain appeared to focus him as he belatedly realized he was fighting for his life. This happened a lot too, and this was when things often got more interesting—and more exciting.

She yanked the blade out of his arm and brought it around to slash at his face. He got his arm up in time again and this time he pushed back at her. She staggered back a step and he came at her, instinct telling him now was the time to press the advantage. Echo grinned as he made a predictable grab for the knife, snatching it away before his hand could close around it. Then she feinted to the right, making him stumble before reversing direction and driving the blade deep into his abdomen. His eyes went wide again and he exhaled a wheezing breath as she jerked the blade out and thrust it into his gut three more times in rapid succession.

At that point it was pretty much over.

Echo stepped back, getting out of his way as he dropped to his knees. He clutched at his bleeding stomach and looked up at her with eyes brimming with tears.

His bottom lip trembled. “Why?”

“Because you’re disgusting.”

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.”

Echo frowned. “Was convinced?”

“So you noticed the past tense there. Good. You’re finally paying attention.” Casey smiled, but inside he was barely holding it together. This remained a very dangerous situation. Echo’s volatility meant he was a second away from taking a bullet in the face as long as she had that gun in her hand. He had to keep playing on her lingering fondness for Keely and hope like hell it would be enough to earn him a reprieve. “Stark disappeared about a month ago. Nobody has seen or heard from him since then.”

Echo’s expression was thoughtful. “And you think these Order people had something to do with his disappearance?”

“Can’t prove it, but I fucking know they had something to do with it. Stark got a little too close to the truth, maybe found out something he wasn’t supposed to know, and got killed for it. These dead motherfuckers here…” Casey nodded to indicate the bullet-riddled bodies on the floor. “…they’re Order thugs. They came here to take care of me same way they took care of Stark. See that phone on the table?” He waited until Echo noticed it. “There’s an insane video message from Keely on it that’ll prove what I’m saying.”

Echo sidestepped toward the table and turned the phone toward her. She swiped at the screen a couple times and then Casey heard his sister’s voice as the message began to replay. Having watched it once already, he kept his attention on Echo’s subtly shifting expression, watching for any kind of hopeful indication.

When the messaged ended, she said, “Maybe there’s something to all your paranoid bullshit, after all.”

Casey heaved a relieved sigh. “Thank God.”

Echo’s pretty features hardened subtly. “What, you think you’re off the hook now, Casey?”

She aimed the gun at his midsection.

He swallowed with difficulty. “Echo…please…”

“That’s a start.”

“What?”

Echo laughed. “I still want to hear you beg. I still want to see you on your knees. Maybe I’ll help you with this thing with your sister and maybe I won’t, I don’t know yet. But if you want even a slight chance, you’ll give me what I want.”

Casey didn’t say anything. He had done his best to talk his way out of it, but it was looking like this might be the end of the line for him anyway.

Echo moved away from the table and placed the barrel of the 9mm against his forehead. “So what’s it gonna be, baby? Do I get what I want? Are you gonna get on your fucking knees right now?”

Casey knew the time had come to swallow his last pitiful shred of pride. There was no choice at all here. Any remaining hope of saving Keely would have to begin with doing whatever it took to save his own life.

He let out a breath.

And dropped to his knees.

Echo’s big smile was incandescent. “There’s a good boy.”

Her expression turned hard again.

Then she whipped the gun across his face.

Chapter Eleven

De Rais Ranch

One day before the shootout on 2nd Avenue

The man his followers knew as John Wayne de Rais had gone by many other names during his more than fifty years of life. A succession of aliases was just a natural part of the conman’s existence. Frequent change and reinvention were necessary to stay ahead of the game. There were times when he was hard-pressed to remember his birth name at all.

The night he cut a Columbian coke mule’s throat was the end of the road for “Billy Evans”, his first assumed identity. After that he drifted around the country, rarely staying anywhere for as long as he lived the life of a grifter. An uncle—by then doing a long stretch in a federal penitentiary—had taught him the fine art of swindling suckers. The uncle’s downfall was in getting a little too ambitious, in part because of gambling debts that had spiraled out of control. His uncle’s troubles were why he stuck with low-level scams for many years thereafter. A life behind bars didn’t appeal to him much.

Before he knew it, decades had passed and he had been dozens of different people. He had been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things. It was an interesting way to live a life and the money he made doing what he did was more than enough to get by, especially as the years went by and he got better and better at it.

But eventually he began to tire of grifting. The thrill of conning people out of their money had diminished. That was when he began thinking about getting into the fake religion business. Human beings were always looking for something to believe in, something bigger and more meaningful than the drudgery that characterized their little lives. They craved enlightenment and an uplifting of the spirit unavailable in their dead-end jobs and stunted relationships. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he also wanted those things. That was when the incipient notion began to become something more than just another scam.

From the beginning, he understood that the so-called “normal” people leading happy, well-adjusted lives would not be his target audience. Instead he would go after those who had lost their way. The confused and damaged people. The restless wanderers.

Hence…“The Order of Wandering Souls”.

Still, it remained only a concept until the incarcerated uncle passed away and left this ranch property to him. When John visited the place for the first time and got a look at its rolling, expansive grounds, he felt that fate had been guiding him to that moment his entire life, because it was immediately clear he had found the ideal place to found his new movement.

John Wayne pushed the leather chair away from the big desk in his office and swiveled around to peer through the window that overlooked the grounds behind the ranch house. He blew out a lungful of smoke and tapped a cigarette against the edge of the ashtray he kept on the windowsill.

Smoking was an old, much-loved pleasure he was unfortunately having a harder time enjoying these days. He kept doing it. The addiction was as strong as ever. But drawing the smoke into his lungs made him feel light-headed in a way that never used to happen. It also made the headaches he’d been having lately worse. Sometimes they were so bad he felt like putting his fist through a wall. This time, though, there was only a mild ache and for that he was thankful. The strong pills his doctor had prescribed probably wouldn’t be necessary this time.

John blew the smoke toward the high ceiling of his office as he stared out at the rows of cabins some one hundred yards in the distance. Most of his young acolytes lived in those cabins, which were arranged in a manner that made them resemble a section of pioneer town in the Old West. They were required to live simply, without the modern conveniences of electricity, television or, most importantly, the Internet. Ostensibly this was to help them become more in touch with the beauty of nature. In reality, John didn’t want them seeing the many negative things the Order’s detractors had to say about the organization.

After stubbing out the cigarette butt, he grabbed a pair of binoculars from his desk and took another look out the window. He adjusted the focus and scanned the cabins and surrounding grounds. This was just an idle bit of surveillance. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular. But then he caught sight of a long-legged young woman in shorts and a halter top. She was fighting the wind as she struggled to pin sheets to a clothesline.

John adjusted the focus again and zoomed in on her, watching as she bent over to draw another clean white sheet out of the basket at her feet. The way her pleasingly round ass strained the fabric of those shorts was a wondrous thing to behold. He felt a stirring in his groin as she stood up and flipped an end of the sheet over the clothesline. As she worked to make the sheet fit in a neat, snug way on the line, she turned at an angle that allowed him a fuller glimpse of her face.

Beneath the binoculars, John’s lips twitched in a smile.

I remember that gal.

The Order’s ranks included quite a few attractive young women. Though the temptation to do otherwise was immense, he made it a rule not to fuck the newer initiates. At that stage, it was important not to spoil his illusory purity. They might get cold feet and leave before fully giving themselves over to the Order. But there were ways they could prove themselves worthy and advance to a place within the hierarchy beyond which there was no turning back, a point of utter trust and commitment. He fucked the ones who made it that far on a regular basis.

But this gal…oh, how sorely she had tempted him. She was so comely, so radiantly sexual, and in a sly, knowing way that had a powerful effect on his libido. The day she arrived at the compound was the closest he had ever come to violating his rule of banging the fresh meat. There had been no actual intercourse, but he had succumbed to her unprompted offer of a blowjob. On that day his desire was stronger than his usually formidable willpower. But there had been a secondary reason at work that day, something more powerful than mere temptation. He had grappled with one of the first of the truly monstrous headaches much of that day, and it had subsided shortly before his meeting with her. Accepting the girl’s gift of pleasure had been the most life-affirming thing available to him at the time, temporary proof that moments of perfect bliss were still possible.

John Wayne made a hungry sound as he watched her chase after a sheet the wind ripped from her hands, her breasts bouncing beneath the flimsy fabric of the halter top.

The ache flared in his head again.

Fuck it.

He swiveled around and thumbed a button on the desk phone.

“Boyd!”

“Sir?” came the reply over the phone’s speaker.

“Get in here. I need you to fetch me someone.”

“Yes, sir.”

Keely cursed in frustration as the wind tore the sheet from her hands and sent it whirling across the grass. She hurried to catch up to it before it could reach the barren ground near the cabins. If that happened, the sheet would become noticeably dirty and she would have no choice but to clean it again. She had spent entirely too much time cleaning things these last two weeks. Everything—every sheet, every garment, every towel—had to be spotless lest she risk incurring Susan Wagner’s wrath again.

A desperate dive allowed her to snag a corner of the sheet just before it could reach the edge of the grass. Tears welled in her eyes as she sat up and reeled the sheet in. She had already spotted a small green smear on the white cotton fabric. She would either have to wash it again or willingly go to Susan and subject herself to additional sexual humiliation in exchange for a break from the drudgery of physical labor. Normally she would opt to do the extra work, but she was so damn tired of doing laundry. And today had been an especially long day. The thought of having to wash even one more sheet made her almost inexpressibly weary.

She got to her feet and began to trudge back to the clotheslines, where many other pinned sheets and clothes flapped loudly in the high winds. The empty laundry basket was on its side, knocked over by the wind. The sheet that had gone flying had been the last item at the bottom of the basket. She was thankful for that, at least. Multiple soiled laundry items would have brought her to the brink of suicide.

A man in a black suit stepped from behind one of the flapping sheets, making her gasp in surprise.

“Are you Keely Miller?”

Keely eyed the man warily. “Who wants to know?”

“John Wayne de Rais. I’m to bring you to his office in the big house.”

Keely gaped at the man. A summons to see John Wayne didn’t happen often, especially for newer initiates. She felt immediate regret for her reflexive impertinence and hoped word of it wouldn’t get back to him. The man’s dark suit should have told her to treat him with deference. All his top-level security guys wore them.

Of course, she couldn’t help wondering why she was being summoned. She was no one special here, at least not yet. But she knew Susan had the guru’s ear. They were old friends. She guessed it was possible de Rais wished to personally reprimand her or perhaps even kick her out of the Order. At this point, she was no longer sure that would be such a bad thing.

She dropped the soiled sheet in the basket and knelt to pick it up. “I’ll be happy to go with you, but this got dirty again. I need a minute to run it back to—”

“Leave it.”

Keely frowned. “But—”

“Leave it.” The man’s tone was curt. “You’re expected at the big house promptly. Someone else will be along to finish your work.”

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t take but a minute. I’d hate to get in trouble.”

“Jesus, lady. Put the damn basket down and come with me.”

The guy’s tone indicated further argument wouldn’t be wise. So Keely set the basket on the ground and forced a smile. “Lead the way.”

The security man turned away from her and started toward the house, leading the way at a brisk pace that left her hurrying to catch up. She fought an impulse to take off running in some random direction just to spite him. But she immediately rejected the notion. According to Susan, she was being closely monitored at all times. The impulse would be interpreted as an escape attempt and escape wasn’t possible, at least for her.

Most initiates were free to leave the Order if they wanted—though very few ever did—but that was no longer the case for Keely Miller. She was essentially a prisoner here now, had become one the moment she ran afoul of Susan Wagner.

Keely followed the security guy up some steps to a large deck at the back of the house. A few upper echelon Order members lounged in chairs on the deck. A middle-aged man with a large beer gut played with an iPad while a woman of the same approximate age was texting on her phone. This was a striking reminder of the wide gulf between inner circle members and lower-level initiates, none of whom were allowed access to modern technology. Initiates were expected to live simply in order to become more “pure”. It was an idea Keely had bought into completely in the beginning, but now she figured it was just a way of keeping initiates uninformed and in their place.

A shapely younger woman in a tiny red bikini was lying on her stomach on a chaise lounge. She had long and glossy dark hair that fell past her shoulders in waves of lush curls. She turned her head in Keely’s direction as she followed the security guy across the deck. A small, inscrutable smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. Her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses.

Keely couldn’t help wondering what that smile meant. Was it innocuous, or did it hint at some secret knowledge?

Does that bitch know something bad is about to happen to me?

It was impossible to tell and Keely kept her face carefully blank as she walked past the woman. Whatever was about to happen here, it couldn’t be any worse than what Susan was already putting her through every day.

Or so Keely sincerely hoped.

The security guy opened the back door and stepped aside, beckoning her inside with a tilt of his chin. She tried again to calm her nerves as she entered the house. The thing to keep in mind was she didn’t really know what was happening here. It didn’t necessarily have to be anything bad. Until the worst actually happened it was premature to give up hope. A big part of her still wanted to believe in John Wayne.

The security guy led her through several rooms until they emerged into the large foyer at the front of the house, where they climbed an ornate spiral staircase to the second floor. When they arrived at John Wayne’s office, Keely noticed a little speaker embedded in the wall next to the door. The security guy thumbed a button below the speaker and leaned close to it. “Sir? It’s Boyd. I have Keely Miller with me.”

“Thank you, Boyd. Send her in.”

An electronic buzz sounded and the door popped open. Boyd waved Keely in and she stepped through the doorway. Rather than accompanying her into the room, he shut the door behind her and presumably remained outside in the hallway.

It was a relatively spacious room. The floor was hardwood, varnished to a high gloss. There were several bookcases lined with old volumes. A big desk dominated the center of the room. Two comfortable-looking chairs sat facing the desk. Beneath the chairs was a round throw rug with a map of the world design. Keely felt sort of like she had stepped through a magical portal into the goddamn oval office.

Seated behind the desk was John Wayne de Rais.

Keely’s heart raced at the sight of him. Aside from the initial intake assessment, the guru rarely interacted with lower-level initiates on an individual basis. They would usually only see him when he delivered his weekly talks to the faithful. Being face-to-face with him was surreal. It was like being in the same room with Jesus or Mohammed. The fact that she’d had the man’s dick in her mouth did little to lessen this impression. She had forgotten what a presence he was. Though she knew it wasn’t rational, just being here and feeling his silent scrutiny made her feel guilty for the doubts she’d begun to harbor about the sincerity of his message.

She thought she might faint when he smiled warmly at her and said, “Have a seat, Keely.”

Keely sat in one of the chairs facing the desk. “You…wanted to see me, sir?”

“Call me John. We’re all equals in God’s eyes, Keely. There’ll be none of that ‘sir’ business here.”

Keely smiled. “Okay. John.”

“You’re curious to know why I summoned you.”

She hesitated, frowning. “Well…I know I’ve been in some trouble lately and I’m real sorry about that, but I’m trying hard to do better.”

John propped his elbows on the edge of the big desk. “Yes, I know all about your work lapses. That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about today. Keely, would you say you’re happy living here with us?”

Keely’s mouth opened, but no words came out because she didn’t know whether she should be honest about her feelings or just say whatever felt necessary to smooth things over. She was terrified at the prospect of saying the wrong thing.

Sensing her discomfort, John smiled again, infusing it with even more of that dizzying charm. “It’s okay, Keely. We’re all friends here, brothers and sisters united in a common cause. Feel entirely free to say whatever’s on your mind without fear of repercussions. Is anything troubling you?”

Keely hesitated again.

Just go for it. Spit this shit out.

“I think…” She heaved a breath. “I think Susan Wagner is abusing her position.”

John arched an eyebrow. “Oh? How so?”

A sudden conviction that she had already said far too much assailed Keely. Surely John Wayne had some inkling of Susan’s kinky proclivities. If so, that knowledge must mean he did not disapprove. On the other hand…she had already come this far. The proverbial genie was out of the goddamn bottle and there was no putting it back. The only path left to her was to tell the whole truth and hope for the best.

“She had some men rough me up for not doing the work I was assigned. Maybe I kind of deserved that, I don’t know. Or some other kind of reprimand. Some suspension of privileges. But…” Another tiny hesitation, another flickering pang of doubt. She swallowed hard and pushed ahead. “But she’s been doing things that don’t seem right. In fact, they’re really kind of fucked up.”

Keely then gave him a detailed account of the sexual abuse she had suffered at Susan’s hands. John Wayne’s expression conveyed thoughtfulness, but otherwise did not betray his true feelings while he listened to her tale. When she had finished speaking, he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his stomach.

“Let me explain something, Keely. Susan and I have a long history together. Maybe you know that already. But I like to think I’m a fair man, one who dispenses justice with an even hand. Favoritism is not a factor here. Make no mistake, I consider these serious allegations.” He unlaced his hands and spread them in a vague gesture of magnanimity. “So tell me…what would you like to see happen here?”

John Wayne’s words ignited a spark of real hope inside Keely. The healthy paranoia was still there and right now it was telling her to be wary of trusting anything this man said in light of his long history with her tormentor. But now a part of her believed there was a real chance something might be done. “I want to see her stripped of her position. She doesn’t belong in a place of authority. She should also be severely punished somehow.”

John stared at her in silence for several seconds. His smile had vanished. “I’m afraid I can’t do any of that.”

Keely’s heart sank and her eyes filled with tears.

Shit.

She wanted to scream. The cruel motherfucker had been toying with her the whole time.

“Please don’t cry, Keely.”

She sniffled. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize.”

She wiped at her cheeks. “It’s just…you said you took my allegations seriously.”

“I do. Very much so.” He smiled, but this time it was chillier, a ghost of previous smiles. “But what we’ve got here is a she said/she said situation. It’s your word against hers. Without witnesses, you can’t prove a thing. For all I know, you’ve got some kind of unrelated vendetta against my old friend and this is your way of getting back at her.”

Keely started to protest, but he held up a hand to silence her.

“Now I’m not saying that’s the case here. You could be telling the truth. So let me run something else past you, see what you think. How would you feel about a position of your own within my inner circle?”

Keely gaped at him, temporarily unable to speak or believe what she had just heard.

John Wayne laughed. “You look thunderstruck. I reckon I can’t blame you because I know what you’re thinking. No one advances up the ranks that fast. Am I right?”

Keely could only nod in response.

“You’re absolutely right. We have a hierarchy in place for good reason. Trust has to be earned. Loyalty has to be proven. And these things happen only after careful evaluation over time. But I’m prepared to make an exception for you, Keely.”

Keely finally found her voice. “But…why?”

The sunniness of John Wayne’s smile surprised her, given the previous direction of their conversation. “Exciting times are ahead for the Order. A revolution is brewing. A great time of cleansing is on the horizon. We’re going to shake the world, Keely. Do you believe me?”

Listening to the rising thunder in his voice made Keely’s own spirits soar. She again began to feel like she was in the presence of true greatness. “I believe you, John Wayne.”

He beamed at her and clapped his hands together. “Good! Then believe this. When the time comes to wipe this rotten world clean again, I’ll want all my best people—all my favorite people—standing with me. And, Keely, I do believe you have what it takes to be one of those people.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit, indeed. This is a righteous time and we are righteous people. And as part of the inner circle, you would no longer be under Susan’s authority. In fact, you would be her equal. You will work harder than ever before, but the rewards will make the work you put in more than worth it, I assure you.”

Keely still didn’t much care for the idea of hard work, but she loved the idea of not being under Susan’s thumb anymore. She also found the notion of rapidly vaulting up the ranks so alluring it verged on intoxicating. All the other initiates would be so jealous of her.

“What do I have to do?”

“Take off your clothes.”

It should have disappointed her, but it did not. John Wayne eyed her slowly up and down. His expression was very similar to the way Susan had looked at her that day she was dragged into her office. The difference was she didn’t mind this kind of scrutiny from John.

Keely rose from the chair and began to slowly remove her garments, teasingly drawing out the process for his pleasure.

She believed in John again, but knew he was still a man with a man’s needs.

And she would do anything for him.

Chapter Twelve

Dez: An Origin Story in Three Parts

1

Things started going to shit in my life long before I got sent away for a few years. Saying I come from a dysfunctional family is like saying the motherfucking Nazis may have had some issues with the Jews. It’s like, no shit, you know what I’m saying? Listen, I’ve got this idea for a new kind of dictionary. A picture dictionary. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. On second thought, don’t do that.

Anyway…in the picture dictionary, the only words in it are the ones you’re looking up. But instead of using more words to describe those words, there’s just a picture of the one thing in the world absolutely everybody understands defines that word. Like, for instance, you look up the world “evil” and there’s just a picture of Hitler. And right away you get it. You say to yourself, “Yep, that’s evil. I understand what that word means now.” And then you close the book and put it away because you are fucking done. Your intellectual curiosity has been satisfied. Same deal with my family. In the picture dictionary, there’s just a picture of them next to the word “dysfunctional”, because where I come from everybody and their motherfucking mother knows the Morgan clan is the foulest, twisted, most fucked-up and batshit crazy bunch of inbred, sibling-fucking, dope-peddling, dog-kicking, cornholing, mush-brained, necrophiliac contract killers you could ever hope to never meet.

By the way, the reason I was in the bathroom so long before was because I was doing a lot of cocaine. So, you know…fair warning.

My dad was gone from the time I was ten. If you want to know why I hate men so much, you gotta start with him. He spent the last twelve years of his life sitting on death row for killing a federal judge. Damn shame about the slow way our legal system works. At least he went away before I got old enough to grow boobs and attract the wrong kind of attention from his sick ass. My sisters weren’t so lucky. You’re probably wondering where my mother was while all that was going on. Well, I’ll tell you. She was in on it with him. She’d take pictures of that shit and sell them to her pervert friends. This was right before all the freaks and sickos figured out they could get their filthy contraband online for free.

Maybe you’re wondering why nothing ever got done about this shit. What you don’t understand is how feared my douchebag daddy and all his shady brothers and cousins were in that town. They ruled that area through terror and intimidation. They did things that would make those Al Qaeda motherfuckers say, “Perhaps you are going a little too far there, my white devil friends.” These guys were a real redneck mafia. It was a big deal around those parts when it all came crashing down. Only reason my mother got spared was because she worked out a deal to testify against dear old dad.

My sister Janine killed herself after he went to the penitentiary. Just blew her fucking brains out. She was finally free of him, finally safe, and she offs herself. Crazy, right? Took me a long time to realize it was maybe because she realized she’d never truly be free. She was gonna live with the memories of the things he’d done to her the rest of her life and it was just more than she could handle.

Candy, my other sister, took off a while later and was never heard from again. That really tore me up. She was the one person in my whole rotten family who ever gave a shit about me. She tried to shield me from some of the worst shit, even though that was pretty much impossible. But, hell, at least she tried. Jesus. I still miss her.

Mom took to whoring herself out to anyone with a few bucks to spare. It’s not like she had any other marketable skills. She was nothing much to look at after so many years of sucking down the PBR, but there’s never been any shortage of desperate men out there willing to pay for rundown pussy, because even rundown pussy is better than no pussy at all, right? It didn’t take long before some of the creeps who came by started taking note of the way I was blossoming. By the time I was sixteen I was well on the way to becoming the fabulous Dezsexual bombshell you see before you today. And so came the day when my wonderful mother asked if I’d like to make a little extra spending money by having a threesome with her and this toothless fat fuck named Lowell.

I knocked that loathsome bitch out and got the fuck out of there. After that, I caught a bus to Dallas, where I hooked up with some older friends who gave me a place to crash until I had my shit figured out. Which didn’t take long. I got a good quality fake ID and landed my first stripping gig inside of two weeks of hitting town.

Those next couple years were the best of my life to that point. I was still around a lot of shady people, but they were a better class of shady, if you know what I mean. I wasn’t surrounded by creepers all the time, despite working in a strip joint, and the whole thing just felt safer than where I’d been. Some of the other girls figured out I was underage and became very protective of me. I got lucky on that count.

There was a lot of partying, though. A lot of sex. A lot of drugs. Even some rock and roll. One time this famous heavy metal band made a tour stop in Dallas and stopped in at the club the night before the show. The owner closed the place to the public and had us put on a private show for the band and their entourage. Some of us got invited back to their rooms at the Ritz-Carlton. Long story short, I wound up banging the shit out of a famous rock and roll singer. I was having a high old time in general. Looking back, I should have known I was heading for a fall.

Then came the night I got all fucked up and went on a late night joyride with some friends from the club. We took my car. I still think about that a lot, how things might have turned out a different way if anyone else had been driving. I ran a red light and hit another car head-on at three in the morning. The girls riding got hurt pretty bad. Broken limbs, a broken collarbone, fractured skull, you get the picture.

But a dude in the car I hit was killed on impact. I was the only person to walk away from the thing with barely a scratch. If I’d been thinking clearly, I might have walked my ass away from there and skipped town before the emergency responders could get there. But I was in shock, so I didn’t do that. Those next several hours were the worst of my life. All the endless talking with those cops was so fucking tedious. So was pretending to be grief-stricken about ending the life of some guy I’d never met before. Bad as all that was, it was just the beginning of a long goddamn ordeal.

I got convicted of involuntary manslaughter and they sent me away for a few years. My court-appointed attorney told me I was lucky to get off as light as I did. They could have charged me with vehicular homicide and put me away even longer, but they took into account my age and the fact that, believe it or not, I had a clean prior record.

With my background, I was kind of a hard-ass bitch already, but by the time I got out of prison, I had reached a whole new level of hard. I became the kind of bitch you don’t ever want to fuck with, not if you hope to keep on breathing.

So I set about making up for lost time. I started stripping again, only now I was a grown-ass woman instead of a kid in over her head. I was a whole lot better at working that pole and working all those drooling idiots who came to see me dance. Didn’t take long before I was a real star attraction. It was a different work environment this time, though. A lot of the other girls weren’t happy about all the attention I was getting and I did not give the first shit about their hurt little feelings.

But one of the girls, a smoking hot blonde who went by the name Anya Overdrive, turned so resentful she hired a guy to kill me. The irony is this girl was one of the few who stayed friendly with me the whole time my star was rising. After my years locked up, I should have been wise to her game from the beginning. In prison you learn to be wariest of the people who cozy up to you the most. This may come as a huge shock—or maybe not—but prison is ass-deep in duplicitous motherfuckers. You can’t really trust anyone. Later on, after her hired killer fucked up the job, I was all pissed at myself for not seeing through her shit sooner. But I made her ass pay for that shit, you can believe that.

Anyway, this guy was lying in wait for me one morning after I returned from my shift at the club. The plan was to make it seem like a stalker, some obsessed fan no longer content with worshipping me from afar, tracked me down and had his way with me before killing me. Yes, rape was a part of the plan Anya hatched. She told the guy he should feel free to do any sick thing he wanted to me before turning my lights out. I know all this because he told me.

Everywhere I ever stripped, I did a pretty good job of creating a buffer between myself and the customers. But you’re in the same biz, so you know the score. Always use an assumed name, never provide any personal details unless they’re highly fictionalized, be sure you’re never followed from the club, and so on. The guy who came after me, the fucking hitman, was a goddamn amateur. Anya should have consulted my father. Motherfucker would have hooked her up with a real pro.

But I’d gone so long without any kind of incident I guess I’d become kind of complacent. I had my head down and was digging my keys out of my purse when this big fucker jumped me. He was sloppy and I almost slipped away from him, but he knocked me woozy and dragged me into my apartment.

He got my clothes off and wasted no time doing what Anya told him to do. It needed to look like a straightforward sex crime, the kind of thing that would never track back to any of my co-workers. After the motherfucker finished shooting his nasty DNA all over me, he roughed me up some more, but he took his time with it, toying with me, letting me get up only to knock me down again. This went on for a while. It was awful, but the time he took wound up saving me. Stupid cocksucker should have finished me off right away.

After letting him knock me on my ass I don’t know how many times, I faked being too weak to get up again. It was a calculated risk. I knew the fucker wasn’t done having his fun with me. And when he knelt over me to haul me to my feet again, I sank my teeth into his neck like a fucking vampire. Motherfucker screamed like a little girl. After all I’d been through, that scream was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I tore off a piece of his flesh and spat it in his face. There was a lot of blood. Little pussy rapist fainted. His eyes rolled back and he toppled over, three hundred pounds of deadweight that shook the floor like a motherfucking earthquake.

You can bet I didn’t waste any time getting that son of a bitch tied up. My original intent was to call the police and have them come fetch the fucker, like any good law-abiding citizen would do. But I was angry. The motherfucker had raped me. I was seeing red. I had murder on the brain. Calling the cops got eliminated as an option the second I started cutting on him. And the cutting was just the beginning. I did some messed-up shit. But he deserved it. Right?

Of course he told me all about being hired by Anya to rape and kill me. I didn’t want to believe him at first. At that point I still thought of the bitch as my only real friend. But once the whole story was out, it just made too much sense to deny.

Did I say I was seeing red before? Well, now I was a fucking volcano. The rapist had a gun on him. I guess he’d meant to put a round in my head after he was done playing with me. Instead I used it to march him out to my car and put his fat ass in the trunk.

Then I went over to Anya’s place.

Knocked on her door.

And shot the whore in her goddamn face.

Anger and a shitload of cocaine led up to that moment. But once it was over, panic replaced the anger. I freaked the fuck out. It was almost dawn by then and I’d just shot a bitch dead. And I had another half-tortured-to-death motherfucker in the trunk of my car. Neighbors were poking their heads out to see what the commotion was all about. I stood there paralyzed while maybe a half-dozen people got a good, long look at me. Finally I snapped out of it. I got in my car and took off. I didn’t know where the hell I was going, but I knew I had to get out of town as fast as possible.

So that’s what I did.

And so here we are.

Now you tell me…what’s my next move?

So that was Dez’s story.

The one she told Echo before they left the bar and went to work on the man she called Stu. Much of the story was true. Dez did have a long-lost sister named Candy. Her late father had been a professional hitman. She did do time and she did have sex with a famous rock and roll singer. However, a few important elements of her tale were entirely fabricated.

2

What Really Happened was This…

It was past four in the morning by the time Dez arrived home from her shift at the Boom Boom Room. She was looking forward to a relaxing bubble bath and a glass or two of champagne. Her current lover—a Starbucks barista named Shandi—occasionally teased Dez about her fondness for the bubbly, suggesting it would be more adult to drink wine. Well, maybe that was so, but nothing stirred her libido like a bottle of champagne. When Dez strongly hinted she might not be as amorous without the aid of her favorite liquid aphrodisiac, Shandi stopped teasing her about it. Good thing too, because the girl was an extraordinarily imaginative and athletic sex partner.

Thinking about that soured Dez’s mood a little. That bubble bath would be so much nicer shared with her girlfriend. Shandi, alas, was fast asleep at her place in another part of town. She would be rising shortly to prepare for her early shift at Starbucks. Dez hated the frequent schedule conflicts caused by their very different jobs. Her sexual preferences aside, Shandi was very much a denizen of normal society, an early to rise and early to sleep daylight dweller, while Dez was a confirmed creature of the night.

The thing that most bothered Dez was that Shandi didn’t have to work. She brought in more than enough money to comfortably support both of them. And there would be even more of it soon. As a rising star in her field, she had been in discussions with some promoters who were going to get her established as a national touring attraction. She was set to appear in several classy videos with some of the top names in porn. The high-profile videos would give her the boost she needed to become a top national draw. And once that happened, her income would skyrocket, maybe even make her legitimately rich. She would be able to move out of this place and buy a nice house in one of the classier parts of town. Who wouldn’t want that?

Well, her girlfriend wouldn’t want that, apparently.

Dez had often urged Shandi to quit her job and move in with her. But Shandi rejected the idea every time, saying she valued her independence too much for that.

Things had been tenser between them lately over that very issue. Shandi’s sleepovers at her place weren’t as frequent. For most of her life, Dez had avoided relationships that went deeper than a surface level. Anything else just opened you up to being hurt and she’d had enough of that in her time. Dumping Shandi now, before the seemingly inevitable disintegration of the relationship, would be the smart move. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not yet.

Dez sighed as she unlocked the door to her apartment. The only action she was getting tonight—or, rather, this morning—was the self-loving kind. She nudged the door open and felt inside for the light switch. Before she could find it, a door to a neighboring apartment came open and a heavyset bald man stepped into the hallway.

“Hi, Anya.”

Dez glanced at him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to use that name outside the club, Stu?”

“Sorry. It’s just that Anya is such a pretty name.”

Dez had no desire to converse with the guy, but she couldn’t help frowning at the comment. “And what the fuck is wrong with ‘Dez’? I think it’s a pretty awesome name. It’s short for Desiree. And I know for a fact you desire me, you fat fuck.”

“I could ask you the same question. And I forgive you for calling me fat.”

Dez couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You’re a funny motherfucker, Stu. Ain’t anything to apologize for when you tell it like it is. And what do you mean you could ask me the same question?”

He smiled, unfazed as always by her insults. “I mean there’s nothing wrong with my real name, which is Larry. Stu isn’t even my middle name. In fact, it’s not part of my name at all. I don’t even know anyone named Stu. Yet it’s what you always call me.”

“Well, shit, you look like a Stu.”

“What does that even mean?”

Dez rolled her eyes. “It’s just a thing you feel in your gut, you know? First time I ever set eyes on your rotund ass, I decided your name was Stu. Just the way it is.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

Dez stepped away from the open door to her apartment and turned fully toward him. “So what if it doesn’t make any sense? I’m sexy as fuck and you’re just a dude who worships me. Everyone knows that means you’re required to agree with everything I say. It’s a universal fucking law. Now tell me your name, fat boy.”

He sighed. “I guess my name is Stu.”

Dez pouted. “You guess?”

“All right, you win, my name is Stu.”

Stu sighed again, sounding even more put-upon now, but he was smiling too. Dez couldn’t believe it, but she was actually enjoying interacting with the guy. She would sometimes tell Shandi about his pathetic, fumbling attempts to engage her, making cruel fun of his unfortunate physique and the ludicrous notion of anyone who looked like him hitting on a chick of her caliber. But Shandi wasn’t around to giggle at this latest tale of goofy guy awkwardness. Her mood spiraled abruptly as she realized three full days had elapsed since the last time she had even seen her girlfriend.

A pinched expression of concern formed on Stu’s face. “Is something wrong, Anya? You look sad.”

“Motherfucker. If you use that name again, I will hit you.”

“Sorry.”

Dez sighed. “It’s all right. Sorry I snapped at you. You’re right, I am sad. I think my girlfriend is avoiding me.”

Stu snapped his fingers. “Oh! That reminds me. I saw her over here earlier.”

Dez frowned. “Shandi was at my place tonight?”

Stu nodded. “Yeah, it was just after you left for the club. I passed her going down the stairs as I was taking out some trash. I said hi, but she didn’t even look at me. She wasn’t in your place more than a minute. She was back in her car and driving away by the time I started back up the stairs.”

“Huh. That’s weird.”

Stu shrugged. “Maybe she was in a hurry and needed something from your place.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Shandi had a key to her place and a few of her things—mostly clothes—were stashed here. There wasn’t necessarily anything ominous about her coming by at a time when she knew Dez would be away. And yet a vague sense of unease took root within her just the same.

Stu’s expression was sympathetic. “Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?”

“None of your damn business.”

Stu flinched at her tone. “Sorry.”

“Oh, fucking hell.” Dez heaved a weary breath. “Guess what, Stu? Tonight’s your lucky night. I don’t feel like being alone. You want to hang out with me for a while? Get drunk, do some fucking drugs. What do you say?”

Stu’s mouth was hanging open.

“Jesus. Close your mouth. You look like a fucking retard.”

Stu closed his mouth and cleared his throat. “Sorry. It’s just that that’s pretty much the last thing I ever expected you to say to me.”

“Well, you better give me an answer now, because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Stu, and I’m gonna be withdrawing the invitation in about five seconds. Five, four, three—”

“Yes!”

Dez laughed at the naked desperation in his voice. Guys like Stu could be amusing to play with at times. There was an eagerness to please that reminded her of dogs and small children.

But then his expression sobered some. “Oh. But I’ve gotta remember to call in sick to work by seven at the latest.”

Dez laughed. “Shit, that’s almost three hours away. Just how long do you think you’re gonna be hanging out with me?”

“Don’t know, but ain’t no way I’m going in to work messed up on drugs. Guys get fired for that shit all the time.”

Dez was struck by how very little she knew about this man. “What exactly is it you do for a living, Stu?”

“Drive a truck for UPS.”

“Oh.”

Stu nodded. “I know. Not very exciting.”

“It really isn’t.”

Dez had never had what most people would consider a normal job. She often forgot that the rules were different in the world she inhabited. All the girls she worked with drank to excess and did at least a little blow. Hell, it was practically part of the job description. She couldn’t relate to the dreary realities of life in the regular workaday world, which of course was the big issue that always came between her and Shandi.

She gestured at her open apartment door with a tilt of her head. “Come on, tubby. Let’s get this party started.”

Once they were inside, Dez seized him by the front of his shirt, startling him as she dragged him into the living room and sat him down on the sofa. He whimpered when she dropped to her knees in front of him and reached for the zipper to his dirty jeans.

She giggled as she took the zipper tab between a thumb and forefinger. “I bet you weren’t expecting this, huh, Stu?”

“Lord, no.”

She massaged his bulge through the fabric of his underpants. “It’s like I told you, baby. Today is your lucky day.”

She tugged his underpants down and took his hardness into her mouth. The high-pitched moan this elicited thrilled her. She didn’t get with men very often and when she did it was always in situations like this. The male of the species mostly repulsed her. This had been her emphatic impression going back as far as she could remember and it was no surprise given her traumatic early upbringing. But as sexual partners they could be fun whenever there was a high potential for humiliating them in some way.

Stu hadn’t been with a woman in a very long time. The way his cock twitched within seconds of entering her mouth told her that. He was already on the very edge of orgasm.

She pulled her head back and his cock popped free with a wet plop. She frowned as she stared up at him, an expression calculated to confuse.

Then she snatched her purse off the floor, got to her feet and walked into the kitchen. She took a baggie of cocaine from the purse and began chopping lines on the table. This was an act she’d performed countless times. It was as automatic as her daily hair and makeup routines. While she did it, an amused smile tugged at her lips as she imagined the confused thoughts that must be swirling through Stu’s head.

He belatedly wandered into the kitchen as she put a straw to her nose and snorted up a thick line of blow. “Have a seat, lardbucket. Do some fucking cocaine with me.”

His expression was the expected mixture of hurt and confusion. Seeing it gave her a little thrill of excitement. A sense of power. And power over others was a thing she always enjoyed. Her private delight at Stu’s wounded feelings was at least partially a byproduct of the escalating uncertainty in her love life. It occurred to her that as things stood Shandi was the one with all the power in their relationship. She got virtually everything she wanted and what did Dez get in return?

Jack shit, that’s what.

Stu pulled a chair out from the table and sat next to her. There was a sour twist to his mouth as he eyed the lines of white powder. “I don’t know if I really want to do this. Cocaine is bad news. It killed a friend of mine.”

Dez inhaled another line. “That’s a sad fucking story, Stu, but let me ask you this—do you wanna fuck me or not?”

He gaped at her. “What?”

“You heard me. Answer the question.”

“I guess you’re saying you won’t fuck me if I don’t do a line.”

Dez laughed. “Wow, you’re a smart goobucket. You figured that out all by yourself. But you’re gonna have to do more than one line, bitch. It’s like they say—go big or go home.”

Stu’s expression was solemn. “I’d feel a lot better about doing this if you wouldn’t insult me so much. I mean…I know I’m lucky to even be in the same room with you and I shouldn’t complain, but I’m only human and that shit hurts my feelings.”

Dez kicked off one of her shoes and slid a foot between Stu’s legs, wedging the sole against his crotch, which abruptly began swelling again. “Does that help with your hurt feelings?”

Stu’s only answer was a groan.

She pressed her foot harder against him, eliciting the sound again.

Then she pulled it away. “Do the goddamn cocaine, Stu.”

Stu plucked the straw from her fingers, slotted it in one of his nostrils, bent toward the table and snorted up a line in a single, long inhalation.

Dez was surprised. “Wow, you did that like a pro.”

Stu shrugged. “I said I didn’t want to do it, not that I’d never done it before.”

“Good for you, fatso. Do some more while I open up some champagne.”

Stu frowned. “Don’t you have any beer?”

“We’re drinking champagne.”

“Okay.”

Dez kicked off her other shoe and stood up to pad across the linoleum floor on her bare feet. Before she could get to the refrigerator, she caught sight of something that made her heart flutter. A sealed white envelope had been placed at the end of the counter. Her name was written on it in a familiar script.

Stu glanced her way as he prepared to snort yet another line of coke. “You okay, Dez? Is something wrong?”

Dez didn’t answer.

She picked up the envelope in her trembling fingers. It was lightweight, but the ball of her thumb pressed against something solid inside it. Tears welled in her eyes as she realized it could only be one thing. She tore the envelope open and removed a single piece of folded copy paper. The extra key to her apartment—Shandi’s key—slid out of the piece of paper and landed on the counter with a little plink. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she unfolded the piece of paper and read the brief handwritten note scrawled on it:

Dez,

I’m sorry, but we’re done. Here’s your key.

Our time together has been an interesting experience, but it was just a phase for me. I’ve met a guy who makes me happy. He asked me to marry him and I said yes. I hope you can be happy for me.

Goodbye,

Shandi

The tears continued to flow as Dez read the note through several times. She heard a chair scoot away from the table as she began sobbing. A moment later, Stu’s hand was on her shoulder. The touch was tentative. She could feel his nervousness. It was a sincere attempt to comfort her. She felt that too.

But it didn’t matter.

Because suddenly all she could think about was how a man had taken away the woman she loved. It was a powerful reinforcement of a lesson she had learned long ago. This was what men did. They caused pain. They ruined things. Men were the ultimate root cause of all things bad in the world. These feelings were nothing new, of course, but now her bitterness was turning into true rage for the first time in a while. The most fucked part of it all was it had taken something like this to break through her barrier of denial and admit to herself that she was truly in love with Shandi.

Stu squeezed her shoulder. “Anya? Is there something I—”

Dez screamed.

There was an empty champagne bottle within reach on the counter, a leftover from the previous evening. She grabbed the bottle by the neck, wheeled around and smashed it across his face. The bottle made a loud thump but did not shatter as it struck his skull. He toppled backward and landed on the floor with a heavy thud. Dez fell atop him, straddling him before he could raise his hands in defense. She grasped the bottle’s neck in both hands and raised it high over her head. Then she slammed it down with all her might.

This time it shattered on impact.

Stu was unconscious for a while after that. Dez had a pair of police issue handcuffs. She also had a 9mm handgun. She used both these things to make Stu easier to handle once he finally regained consciousness.

The rest of that day—the brutal torture of Stu and her subsequent flight from Dallas—unfolded in roughly the same way Dez had described it to Echo.

3

Echo wasn’t sure what to make of this situation with Dez. She had an effortless way of captivating your attention that made you accept every word she said as true, at least at first blush. The story of her brutal rape at the hands of the man stashed in her trunk filled Echo with empathetic rage. She’d felt a strong desire to punish the man as symbolic retribution against all men for the ways they had wronged women over the ages.

But now that she was away from Dez and removed from the powerful influence of her “Dezsexuality”, some small doubts were beginning to creep in. The main thing was she couldn’t understand why Dez had kept him alive for so long, transporting him all the way from the heart of Texas to middle Tennessee. The risk of her live cargo being discovered by law enforcement at some point along the way had been enormous. Only sheer luck could account for that not happening.

She glanced at her rearview mirror and saw the headlights of the big black Impala. Dez was hanging very close, obviously out of fear of losing her in the early evening traffic. She continued to stay close as they hit the interstate and traveled the thirty-odd miles to nearby Rutherford County, which was where the empty house formerly owned by her late parents sat on a remote rural lot. The nearest neighbor was a mile away. The house belonged to Echo now. She rented it out as a way of earning a modest second income, but the last renter had moved out more than a month ago and she hadn’t gotten around to advertising the vacancy.

Dez pulled back a little after they left the interstate and began traveling more lightly trafficked back roads. Echo’s nerves were fried. A part of her had expected this whole thing to end in disaster before now. Every time she looked at her rearview mirror she was sure she would see blue lights popping up behind the Impala. If that happened, Echo meant to take off and leave Dez to her fate. Sure, Dez could probably give the cops her tag number and name, but so what? She hadn’t actually done anything illegal yet, and they wouldn’t be able to prove she’d had any intention of committing a crime. It would be Dez’s word against hers.

The turnoff was just ahead now. Echo’s hand went to the blinker, but she didn’t immediately flick it on. She still had a chance to extricate herself from a potentially very messy situation. She could drive past the turnoff, accelerate and try to lose Dez on what were, for her, unfamiliar roads. It wouldn’t be difficult, and she would be able to just slip back into her normal life. Of course, that would mean continuing to deal with the fallout of Casey’s infidelity.

She held her breath as the turnoff loomed.

That cheating motherfucker.

Her hand hit the blinker and she twisted the wheel to head down the short dirt road to her house. A glance at the mirror showed that Dez had already taken the turn behind her.

Well, this is it, she thought. I’m committed now.

It was the resurfacing of her rage against Casey at that critical moment that swayed her. She had almost forgotten her anger after meeting Dez, whose story made her own tale of woe pale in comparison. And then the ride here had been so fraught with fear and doubt. But now that the risk of law enforcement-related complications no longer seemed imminent, the personal drama that had consumed so much of her time earlier in the day no longer seemed remote.

Her hands were locked tight around the steering wheel as she guided Casey’s truck to a stop outside the house. An image of Casey between Ella’s legs made her grind her teeth. She thought about how mad she had been in that first moment of revelation.

Mad enough to kill.

A knock on the window next to her made her shriek. She glanced at the window and saw Dez. She had been so consumed with her own rage she hadn’t heard her get out of the Impala. Echo forcibly unclenched her fingers from the steering wheel and worked the truck’s gearshift to put it in park.

Dez grinned as Echo got out of the truck. “Motherfucker could scream his head off for days out here and nobody would ever hear. This is perfect. It really your place?”

“One of them.”

Dez laughed. “Listen to you. ‘One of them.’ Like you’ve got houses coming out of your perfect ass. What’s up with the mad face?”

“I was just thinking about Casey again.”

Dez nodded. “You want revenge. I know what that’s like.”

Echo realized she was on the brink of saying something that could set her down a course she might later regret. She heaved a breath. Fuck it. “I think I want to kill him.”

Dez reached out and clasped hands with her. “If that’s what you really want, I’ll help you do it.” She put her face close to Echo, dropped her voice to a breathy whisper. “We’ll make a great team.”

She kissed Echo lightly on the mouth.

Echo shivered. The Dezsexuality effect was kicking in again. But—

“Dez…there’s something I have to tell you.”

Dez laughed softly and licked her lips. “Oh? And what would that be?”

After a brief hesitation, Echo spat out what she had to say. “Dez…you’re a fucking goddess and I’ll definitely have sex with you, if that’s what you want. But you should know I mostly prefer fucking men.”

“Yeah, I’d already figured that out.” Dez smiled. “Honey, I don’t care if you fuck guys. I do too. Sometimes. But you should be more like me when it comes to men. Use them and throw them away. Treat them like the trash they are.”

The comment brought a reluctant smile to Echo’s face. “They are trash.”

“Speaking of trash…” Dez twirled her key ring on a forefinger and started back toward her car. “It’s time to take out some.”

Echo hurried after her. The bright light of the full moon provided ample illumination in the rural landscape when Dez opened the trunk lid. The bound man stared up at them with hopeless eyes. A foul odor wafted out of the trunk, making Echo crinkle her nose and wave a hand in front of her face.

“Gross.”

Dez made a clucking sound. “Did you shit yourself again, Stu? Jesus, you’re disgusting in so many ways.” She reached behind her and tugged out the small handgun wedged into her shorts at the small of her back. She aimed it at Stu. “Untie the rope around his ankles while I cover you.”

Echo crinkled her nose again. “I don’t want to touch him.”

Dez glanced at her, her expression harder now. “Just do what you’re told.”

Echo frowned. “Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not. We’re a team, like I said. But I’m the team leader and I expect you to do what I tell you. Stop fucking around and untie him.”

Echo felt a fresh prickling of fear in those moments. She had still only known Dez a few hours. Anyone else in her position would never have allowed things to go this far. There were just too many unknowns in play. The woman could be a pathological liar. She could be a mass murderer. This man might not even be a rapist, but rather just the latest in a string of unfortunate victims. It was even possible Dez meant to kill her after finishing off Stu.

But it was too late for second thoughts. All she could do was take Dez at her word and hope she was being straight with her. She had no doubt the story Dez had told her had been embellished in some small ways, but hopefully at least the gist of it was true.

She sighed and bent toward the trunk, feeling around in the gloom for the knot securing the thick rope around the big man’s ankles. The odor was even worse at this range, making her eyes water as her fingers found the knot and began to pull at it. It came loose with surprising ease. She guessed tight knots hadn’t been necessary with the man’s hands cuffed behind his back. Once she had removed the rope from his ankles, she tossed it into the rear of the trunk and stepped back.

Dez smiled as she addressed Stu. “Now wriggle around and flop your fat ass out of there, motherfucker.”

Echo glanced at her. “Do I need to help him out?”

Dez shook her head. “Might be hard to believe, but tubby can wiggle his way out when he puts his mind to it. It ain’t easy. His fat face turns red as a fire engine, but he eventually gets it done. Isn’t that right, tubby?”

Stu’s only answer was a muffled groan of despair, but he did begin maneuvering his body around in a series of awkward exertions. The force of the effort caused the Impala to shake hard enough to make its springs squeak. After several minutes, Stu got himself positioned so that his big belly was hanging over the edge of the trunk. Before doing anything else, he shot a sorrowful, desperate look at Dez.

She laughed heartily. “Do it or I rape you with the tire iron again.”

Echo thought, What? Did I really hear what I think I just heard?

Stu pitched forward, sliding out of the trunk and landing on the soft ground with a heavy thump. He remained facedown where he had landed for several moments, his body heaving and his lungs working overtime as he struggled to breathe through his nose.

Echo frowned. “Maybe I should cut away the duct tape. It’s like you said, nobody will hear him scream out here.”

Dez glared at her. “No fucking way. He’ll only say a lot of bullshit and the motherfucker’s already had his day in court far as I’m concerned. So what if he can’t breathe? That’s his problem, not ours. Help him stand up.”

Echo cringed at the thought of getting close enough to take another good whiff of the rancid load of shit lodged in the seat of his jeans. She knew, however, there was no point in arguing with Dez.

She knelt next to Stu and helped him get into a sitting position, an effort that required another series of grunting, wheezing exertions from the bound man. Dez was right about what his struggles would do to his face, which had turned a shocking shade of bright scarlet. Echo made eye contact with him and felt a reflexive twinge of pity. Whatever the poor bastard had done to wind up where he was, he was beyond pathetic now, a threat to exactly no one.

She touched his shoulder. “I’m gonna hold on to your arm and help you stand. You ready to try?”

Dez made a disgusted sound. “Don’t talk to him like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s some mistreated little child. He’s a fucking monster. Stop screwing around and get him on his feet.”

Dez’s tone was thick with barely restrained fury. Regardless of its true source, there was no denying her rage was genuine. It was true she didn’t know Dez very well, but she knew even less about this man. Whatever the whole truth about him was, odds were he was no saint. One way or another, he was probably getting what he deserved. Or maybe that was just what she had to tell herself to get through this situation.

And if the latter was true…well, so be it.

She got herself into a squatting position next to him and hooked her hands under an armpit. “All right. Let’s do this. On three. One, two, three—”

Stu groaned and strained mightily as he got to his knees. Echo struggled just as hard to get him upright, feeling the worst of the strain in her shoulders and thigh and calf muscles. But he finally managed to get his feet planted beneath him. A moment later he stood fully erect and his face looked redder than ever.

Then he took off running toward the nearby stand of dense, dark forest.

Dez doubled over, howling with laughter.

Echo gaped at her in disbelief. “He’s getting away!”

She felt an intense terror at the thought of Stu getting to the woods and subsequently finding his way to safety. He didn’t know her name or exactly where he was, but the cops wouldn’t have too much difficulty figuring it out. And if that happened, her life as she had known it was over. This time there would be no plausible deniability regarding her involvement with Dez’s plans for the supposed rapist.

Dez was still laughing.

Echo slapped at her shoulder. “Jesus fucking Christ! We’ve gotta do something.”

Dez smirked. “Watch this.”

She pointed the gun into the air and squeezed the trigger. The close range report made Echo flinch, but her physical reaction was mild compared to Stu’s, who tripped over his feet and landed facedown on the ground with a heavy thud.

Dez cocked an eyebrow at Echo. “Come on. You can’t tell me that shit’s not funny.”

Echo couldn’t help smiling. It was kind of funny.

There had been a Three Stooges-like physical comedy aspect to the awkward, slow motion tumble Stu had taken upon hearing the gunshot. And now he was trying to get to his feet again, but he was having a hard time of it, unsurprising for a handcuffed man of his girth. He got close a couple times, but his feet slid out from under him each time, prompting more gales of laughter from Dez. Echo began to feel a renewed camaraderie with her. Soon she was laughing just as hard.

Dez shot her a mischievous grin. “All right, enough of this. Let’s get him inside and start having some real fun.”

She became all business then, at least for a while. There was no more laughing until after they retrieved Stu and got him situated inside the house.

On the plus side, the power was on. Echo never let it get turned off, even after a renter had vacated the premises. So at least they wouldn’t be operating in the dark, which would have been a huge negative for the undoubtedly bloody antics Dez had in mind. The downside was there was no furniture in the house. But Dez did some rooting around in the garage and found two old metal folding chairs. A rolled up old tarp also looked like it might come in handy. Ditto a rusty old axe hanging from a peg on the rear wall.

Dez shook out the tarp. “No use getting this place all bloody. We could use it as a permanent home base.”

Echo frowned. “Home base. What do you mean?”

Dez shrugged. “I figured we could do some traveling together. You know, just if you’re up to it. Drive around and see the country. Get into adventures and shit. But then we’d always have this place to come back to and figure out our next move.”

Echo was still frowning, but this time because she found the idea strangely appealing. After all the insane shit that had happened today—and was still happening—it might be nice to get away for a while. And Dez would probably make for a fun traveling companion, at least as long as they didn’t wind up killing people wherever they went.

Dez pointed the gun at Stu and ordered him into one of the chairs. He sat down heavily and stared at the floor, all hope obviously lost.

Dez looked at Echo. “Hit him.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Dez smiled. “Hit him. Hit him as hard as you can. Just wind up and really let him have it. Show me you have the guts to see this through.”

Echo didn’t say anything.

She looked at Stu, who was still staring at the floor. She thought again of her own lack of a personal stake in whatever it was Stu might have done. But then she thought about Casey and what he had done, how he had betrayed her, and that did the trick again. Her blood began to boil as she approached Stu. She curled a hand into a fist as she took up a position in front of him.

Echo sneered. “Look at me.”

Stu inhaled deeply through his nose, but kept staring at the floor.

“Look at me!”

The fury that came over Echo surprised her. All her remaining reluctance melted away. A need to do violence gripped her. She wished she still had the golf club she’d used to trash Ella’s car. But, no, that would be too easy. She needed to feel her own bare fist crashing into this worthless fuck’s face.

“Look at me, goddammit!”

Stu raised his head and looked at her with great and obvious reluctance. Thick tears spilled down his grimy cheeks.

“I want you to know something, asshole.” Echo’s tone was calmer now, but an unyielding hardness that surprised and delighted her remained just beneath the surface. “No matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, you deserve this.”

And then she let him have it with every ounce of strength she had. The blow broke his nose and caused blood to come streaming out of both nostrils. The brutal physicality thrilled Echo and got her adrenaline pumping. She found his tears strangely thrilling too, and immediately wound up to deliver another punch.

And then another one.

And another.

It went on and on until she had worn herself out. She stood there panting and staring at Stu’s swollen, purple face. Her hand was throbbing from the abuse she’d dealt out, but it was a good pain, a well-earned pain.

After a moment, Dez let out an appreciative whistle. “Good job, baby.”

Echo heaved a breath. “Thank you.”

Dez then stepped closer and shot Stu through the forehead. Echo felt only a mild repulsion as she watched the man she’d beaten die. It was the first time she had ever seen anyone killed in front of her. The only surprise was that it didn’t sicken her more.

They stared at the corpse in reflective silence for a few moments.

Then Echo looked at Dez. “Did he really rape you?”

“No.”

Echo nodded. “Okay.”

“Are you mad?”

A brief hesitation. “No. I mean, I really don’t think so. It’s weird.”

Dez took Echo by a hand and pulled her close. “Remember what you said outside? About having sex with me?”

Echo smiled. “Yeah.”

In a few more moments, they had shed their clothes and were rolling around on the dirty tarp, exploring each other’s bodies with hungry abandon as the dead man watched them with sightless eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

The Circle Completes (aka Three Become One)

Everything went down exactly the way Ted said it would. She vacated her apartment for a couple days while his people got in there and did their thing. During that time she stayed free of charge at a hotel owned by Ted. The more she learned about him, the more she realized he really was some kind of shady tycoon. He had his fingers in so many pies even he probably had trouble keeping track of it all.

One of the bigger surprises on that front was when she found out he was the real owner of the Booty Boutique. In fact, he owned a lot of strip clubs. Not just in Florida, but all across the southeast. He didn’t visit them often because he liked to keep that side of his business portfolio low profile. Every now and then, though, some prospective business partners with a taste for that kind of entertainment would need to be shown a good time. The day he met Lana was one of those rare occasions where some horny investors required an extra level of personal attention. That was the real reason he had swept into the club with such swagger that day. He had people to impress.

All Lana knew was she was grateful he had walked into her world that day. She would have gone to jail for double homicide for sure otherwise. After two days at the hotel, she received a text giving her the all-clear to return to her apartment.

She was a bundle of nerves when she got there. Rather than entering immediately, she cast many nervous glances over her shoulders as she pretended to flip through her keys. The paranoid part of her was certain police were watching from somewhere. Eventually she gathered her courage and went inside.

The interior of the apartment was oppressively quiet. The total lack of noise freaked her out, made it feel even more like a place where something bad had happened. She realized the impression was entirely disconnected from reality. It was just the voice of paranoia again. But knowing this on an intellectual level did little to calm her nerves.

The door to the bedroom was standing wide open at the end of the hallway, which she interpreted as a very hopeful sign. Her remaining reluctance deserted her then and she hurried to the door to peek through it.

Her jaw dropped open in astonishment.

Holy shit!

The bedroom was pristine. There wasn’t a speck of blood or brain matter anywhere. Some things were immediately obvious. Not from visible evidence, but rather by logical conclusion based on known facts. The wall had been cleaned and repainted. The carpet had been ripped up and replaced. Ditto for the blood-stained mattress. Yet there wasn’t even the slightest trace of the work that had been done, not even a new paint smell. The latter made no sense at all, but there was no denying it. She even put her nose to the wall and sniffed it. Nothing. There had been so much blood and sticky brain matter adhering to it. A mere cleaning of that kind of mess would have left visible evidence of scrubbing. No, the wall had been painted, she was sure of it, and they had done something to neutralize the smell. What that might be she couldn’t imagine, but there was no other explanation.

The new carpet exactly matched the carpet that had been replaced. There was even a small tear in it near the open bathroom door that precisely replicated a tear in the original carpet. The new mattress and sheets were also identical to their ruined predecessors.

After several minutes engaged in close examination of everything in the carefully reconstructed room, Lana moved to the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in one more time.

Then she laughed.

She couldn’t help it.

Ted’s people were good. No, that wasn’t right. “Good” was a word you used for people who did the expected acceptable kind of job. This was something on a level far, far beyond that. What she was seeing here wasn’t the product of simple workmen. This was actual artistry.

She called Ted.

He answered on the first ring. “I take it everything’s to your satisfaction.”

Lana smiled. “And then some.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

“I’m not even gonna ask how it was done.”

Ted chuckled. “That’s probably for the best.”

Lana put her purse down and breathed a languorous sigh as she stretched out on the new mattress. “So I guess it goes without saying, but I am forever in your debt.”

“Nonsense. Always happy to help out a lady in distress.”

Lana lifted her legs and stretched out her feet, inspecting her toenails. She needed to paint them again soon. A shade of turquoise might be nice. “Don’t be modest, Teddy. Do you mind if I call you Teddy? Of course you don’t.” She lowered her feet and turned onto her side as she giggled. “We both know you’ve earned a shitload of favors. I don’t want you to ever forget how grateful I am for what you’ve done.”

Ted made a thoughtful sound. “When you say ‘favors’…”

Lana adopted the breathy, kittenish tone she already knew turned him on. “That means whatever you want it to mean, Teddy. You want to fuck me? You can have me any time you want, as many times as you want. Any way you want, no matter how degenerate. You want me to do certain unsavory things for you, maybe use me to manipulate other men in ways that benefit you, I’m your girl.” She made her voice even lower and breathier. “I’ll even kill for you, Ted.”

Ted made a choked sound. “Ah…you probably shouldn’t say shit like that on a cell phone, doll. You never know who might be listening in.”

Lana’s laughter then had a giddy, musical quality to it. “Well, I’m only joking, of course.” But you know I’m really not, she thought. “The point is, I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”

“That’s good to know, darlin’. Maybe I will cash in some of those favors now and then, whenever the mood or necessity strikes.”

Lana shifted a little on the mattress and ran her free hand down the length of her bare thigh. Listening to Ted’s baritone voice—which now actually sounded sexy to her—was getting her all stirred up. “Hmm, maybe you could come over here right now and fuck the daylights out of me, sort of christen the new…well, you know.”

Ted sighed. “That’s mighty tempting, but I’ve got some business that will keep me occupied the rest of the day. I might be able to see you tonight if you don’t mind me dropping by late.”

Lana smiled. “Honey, you can come by any time, day or night. But I’ve been gone from work too long. I need to call my manager and go in for a shift.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ted made a sound Lana guessed was a hard puff on a cigar. It was amazing how well she already knew all his little tics and quirks. “You’re my girl now. You don’t need to work.”

“But I need money.”

He snorted. “You’ll have money. Lots of it. And I’ll pay your rent from now on. Everything else too.”

“Wow, the real princess treatment.”

“You deserve it.”

Lana laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I won’t turn it down. Here’s the thing, though, Teddy. I like stripping and want to keep doing it, even if it’s only a couple nights a week. It’s a great release. I love the physicality of it and I love the dumb cow looks the stupid men give me when they stare at my tits. Makes me feel powerful.”

Ted grunted. “Well, you do what makes you happy, doll. That’s all I care about. Maybe I’ll drop by the club late and see you there.”

Lana smiled. “I’d love that.”

“See you there, darlin’.”

“See ya, Teddy.”

They hung up.

Lana decided to take a nap. Before she drifted to sleep, she thought about how she had coaxed Ted into fucking her atop Blaine’s corpse, an undeniably sick and depraved act. A thing she never could have imagined doing prior to that day. She couldn’t help feeling as if the whole incident—from the murders themselves to that act of borderline corpse defilement—had awakened something genuinely monstrous inside her. Because she felt no revulsion at recalling any of it, not even that sensation of Blaine’s hairy legs beneath her back as Ted pounded into her.

Maybe there’s something really wrong with me.

Maybe so. But, as she closed her eyes and adjusted the pillows beneath her head, she knew for a fact she didn’t care. She was at peace with herself and her life, regardless of any darkness residing within her. In the last moments before sleep finally took her, she realized she hadn’t asked Ted what had become of Alice’s baby. She also realized she didn’t care and went to sleep with a smile on her face.

When she woke up less than an hour later, she called her manager at the Booty Boutique. He gave her no grief about her missed shifts. There was an unusual level of deference in his tone over the entire course of their brief conversation, bordering on obsequiousness. Lana had no doubt he had received stern instructions from Ted regarding how to treat her from now on.

She headed out to the club after taking a shower, bopping her head to loud dance music as she wove her way through the thick Tampa traffic. Other motorists gave her dirty looks, especially when she would come to a stop next to them at a light. Their faces said they were unhappy about the pounding volume of her music, but Lana didn’t care. The way she felt now, nothing could touch her. She delighted in mocking the angry motorists, sometimes smiling and waving, other times responding in cruder ways, including the usual middle finger gestures as well as miming fellatio. One man was so livid at her behavior he started to get out of his car, but she punched the accelerator and shot through the red light, laughing at the screeching tires and honking horns that ensued.

A few blocks away from the club she decided to pull in at a convenience store. Her gas gauge needle was right at empty and she didn’t want to bother having to fill up after her shift. She parked at a pump that was the farthest away from the store’s entrance, but she did not immediately shut off the car’s engine. Instead she sat there and bobbed her head to the music some more as she rooted through her purse. She knew she had some good pills in there somewhere. Some bop pills. Some motherfucking get up and go pills. They made her happy and always made her shifts at the club so much more fun in general. She found a red one and popped it in her mouth. On reflection, she wasn’t sure what it actually was. The bop pills were usually white or yellow.

She giggled.

Whatever. It’ll be a surprise, a nice drug adventure.

She finally shut off the engine and got out of the car. Her keys slid from her hand as she kicked the door shut.

Shit.

She knelt to pick them up, but before she could snag them a booted foot stepped on them. Her initial reaction was blinding anger. Whoever this joker was, he or she was playing with fire and definitely did not know who they were fucking with. The anger turned to fear when she glanced up and saw the scowling face of the man who had tried to come after her at the traffic light.

Oh, fuck.

She tried to scurry away from him, but he seized her by her ponytail and jerked her painfully to her feet. This drew a wail of high-pitched agony from her, but it cut off abruptly as he smashed a very large fist against the side of her head. Things went blurry and she sagged reflexively into his arms. In the next instant a smelly cloth was pressing against her face and consciousness began to desert her completely. In the last instant of awareness, she cursed her rotten luck.

Of all the fucking guys to piss off, I had to pick a goddamn serial-killing creep like this pig-ugly motherfucker.

When she came to an indeterminate time later, she was still groggy and had no idea how much time had passed. But one of her first conscious thoughts was that maybe that red pill had been some kind of powerful hallucinogen. That was how different the dynamics of the situation were from anything she could have expected.

For one thing, she wasn’t tied up.

Nor was she in the trunk of the serial killer’s car.

In fact, he was the one tied up.

What the hell?

Not that she was complaining, mind you, but this turn of events made no sense at all. They were in a small, dimly lit storage space with a concrete floor. Her assailant was tied to a metal folding chair in the center of the room. There was a gag in his mouth and he was unconscious. His eyes were closed and his head drooped forward in a way that made him appear drugged. Or dead. It was hard to tell. She hoped for the former. Now that she was apparently no longer in danger of being raped and strangled by the fugly fucker, she yearned to exact vengeance for his rough treatment of her.

Her head throbbed as she braced her hands on the cool concrete and pushed herself into a sitting position. She yearned for a fistful of painkillers and a bottle of vodka, but unfortunately neither of these medicinal items was currently available to her, which sucked big time. This headache was worse than any in recent memory, including a number of monumental hangovers. Another look at the unconscious man reinforced how lucky she had been. He was a big-framed son of a bitch, with thick arms and hands large enough to wield Thor’s mighty hammer. If he had clocked her more than once with one of those monster fists, she might never have woken up again.

But…had it really been luck?

She frowned as she thought about it. There had been some element of luck, no doubt. She should be dead right now or at this fucker’s mercy. Whatever had happened to turn the tables, she had played no part in it. There could be only one logical conclusion—someone else had come along at just the right time to intervene on her behalf.

She gasped at the sound of a metal door creaking open behind her. Her head throbbed again as she twisted it and watched a couple of the hottest women she had ever seen enter the storage space through a bright vertical rectangle. The stunning brunette and the blonde goddess looked like they were emerging through a shimmering heavenly portal, though obviously she knew it was just the sun shining through the open door.

The heavily tattooed women were dressed scantily in similar barely there outfits. They were tall and blessed with the kind of curves that rendered men instantly stupid. Both were smiling and wearing dark sunglasses.

Lana couldn’t help gaping at them.

I’ve died and gone to the Planet of the Super Women.

Then it struck her how similar their look was to her own. These babes could have been her own long-lost sisters—except that she didn’t have any fucking sisters.

The heavy metal door slammed shut behind them. In their hands were bottles of whiskey and sacks of food and other items. The scent of something hot and yummy made her stomach growl. Until that moment, she hadn’t been aware of how hungry she was.

The dark-haired one smiled right at her. She had perfect Betty Paige bangs and the high cheekbones of a model. “Oh, look. Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”

The blonde smirked. “About time. We were starting to worry you were never coming out of it.”

Lana cringed as her stomach growled again, this time loud enough for the others to hear. “Who the hell are you bitches? And where am I?”

They glanced at each other and laughed.

The blonde lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged in front of Lana. She began digging around in one of the plastic bags and a moment later produced a large bottle of Tylenol. After opening the bottle and removing the tamper-proof packaging, she passed it to Lana along with one of the bottles of whiskey.

She smiled. “I’m guessing you could use some of both.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong about that.

Lana accepted the offerings and knocked back a handful of painkillers with a couple big slugs of expensive whiskey. She savored the delicious burn of the booze and looked forward to the relief the pills would soon provide. “You still haven’t told me who you are. What the fuck’s going on?”

The blonde removed her sunglasses and hooked them over the collar of her tiny V-neck shirt. “My name’s Dez. That’s short for Desiree. My friend here.” She gestured to the dark-haired girl, who sat down next to her and removed a Styrofoam food container from a plastic bag. “Her name’s Echo.”

Echo glanced sharply at Lana. “Don’t make fun of my name.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Dez laughed. “Smart girl. Last guy who didn’t heed that advice…well, let’s just say his days of making fun of anybody are over.” She removed another of the Styrofoam containers from a bag and arched an eyebrow. “Hungry?”

Lana’s mouth watered. “What’s in that?”

“A thick-ass cheeseburger and the best damn fries ever.”

“Gimme that shit.”

Dez laughed and passed it over.

Lana ripped the container open and dove into the food with a single-minded urgency that surprised her. She liked to eat as much as the next person, but she rarely did it so piggishly. Five minutes later the food was all gone. “Holy shit.” She took another big slug of whiskey and sighed. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

Dez and Echo exchanged another of those cryptic glances.

Dez’s expression then became a touch more somber. “Well, the thing is…you sort of haven’t.”

Lana frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve been unconscious since yesterday,” Echo said, after swallowing a bite of her own cheeseburger. Lana couldn’t help noting she’d only eaten half of it thus far. “You were in a fucking coma, or the next closest thing to it.”

Lana’s brow creased as she gave a moment’s deeper thought to her circumstances. The bright midday sun she’d glimpsed through the door should have tipped her off to how long she had been out. It had been darker when she pulled in at that convenience store.

“Um…why didn’t you take me to a hospital?”

Yet another of those cryptic looks passed between them.

Dez said, “There would have been too many questions. We like to avoid any involvement with the law whenever possible.”

“But…why?”

“We have our reasons. Besides, if we’d done that…” Dez tilted her head in the direction of the unconscious man. “You wouldn’t have this opportunity to avenge yourself against this piece of shit.”

Lana made a contemplative sound. “Huh. Now that you mention it, I would like to fuck him up some.”

Dez smiled. “Oh, you’re gonna do more than that.”

Lana frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re gonna kill him.”

Lana shrugged. “Oh. Okay.”

Now it was their turn to frown.

Dez said, “Gotta admit, I expected a little more resistance to the idea.”

“This guy’s not gonna be the first motherfucker I’ve iced this week.”

The words just popped out. She hadn’t meant to make the admission. In fact, she had assured Ted she would never speak of it with anyone other than him, a solemn vow she’d had every intention of honoring. But there was something about these chicks, something that made her feel an immediate, instinctive kinship with them. She felt like she could tell them anything. Trust them with anything. She recognized it as a crazy notion with nothing real to back it up, but somehow it felt right.

Dez glanced at Echo. “What did I tell you? This shit was meant to be. She’s just like us.”

Echo’s expression was guarded at first, but she nodded slowly as she studied Lana’s face. “Yeah. You may be right.”

Lana sipped more whiskey. “You bitches saved me, didn’t you? Tell me how it happened.”

How it happened was pretty straightforward. Dez and Echo had been right behind Lana when the man approached her at the red light. They watched him take off after her and decided to give chase. Good thing too, because otherwise Lana would likely no longer be in the land of the living. They followed the guy to the convenience store. He had been so consumed with catching up to Lana to notice he was being tailed too. They got to him seconds after he put the chloroform rag to her face. Too late to prevent the initial assault, but in time to save her life. And now here they were, holed up in an abandoned mini-warehouse, waiting to see how things would play out.

“So…” Dez eyed Lana speculatively. “How do you want to handle this?”

Lana pursed her lips as she gave it a moment’s thought. “Do you have a knife?”

Dez and Echo glanced at each other and giggled.

Dez got to her feet and extended a hand to Lana. “Come on. Let’s step outside a minute.”

Lana allowed Dez to haul her to her feet. Standing up made her feel a little woozy again, but not nearly to the degree as when she awakened. The booze, painkillers and food were doing their job. She followed Dez out into the bright sunlight, where her car was parked next to a 70’s model black Impala in the otherwise empty parking lot of an industrial area that appeared to have fallen on hard times.

Dez opened the Impala’s trunk and invited Lana to take a look at its contents. What she saw was an impressive array of weaponry. Handguns, shotguns and what looked like a couple of those mini-machineguns drug dealers in movies were always carrying. Lana shook her head in astonishment. These chicks were armed to the teeth. Dez reached into the trunk and grabbed a thick leather bundle. She pulled loose a Velcro snap and rolled the bundle open, revealing an array of sheathed knives of various sizes and shapes.

Dez smiled. “Take your pick, baby.” She put a hand on Lana’s ass. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”

Lana looked at her. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but you should know I’m into men.”

Dez’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s what they all say. At first.” But she laughed and removed her hand. “Go on. Pick something.”

Lana bit her lip as she studied the impressive selection of edged weaponry a moment longer. They all looked equally lethal. She wound up selecting a big hunting knife with a curved six-inch blade.

Dez nodded approvingly. “Looks like the right tool for the job. Let’s do this.”

She slammed the trunk shut and they went back into the mini-warehouse. While they were gone, Echo had managed to rouse the bound man. He gazed at them in groggy stupefaction for a few moments. Then his gaze locked on the big blade in Lana’s hand and he began to scream behind his gag.

Lana smiled as she knelt before him and pushed his legs open. He tried jerking away from her, but the other women grabbed on to him and held him in place.

Lana dragged the tip of the big blade up the length of his inner thigh, stopping at his crotch. She continued to smile as she looked up at him. “Bet the last time you saw a woman in this position she was about to suck your cock.” She giggled. “Well, I’m gonna do something else with your cock.”

More screaming.

Hysterical laughter from Dez and Echo.

Lana began to saw away at the fabric of the jeans. It yielded easily to the exquisitely sharp blade. She cut away the entire crotch of his jeans, drawing out the process and savoring every moment of it. The bound man tried harder than ever to rock himself out of the chair, but Dez and Echo leaned into him with all their weight and managed to keep him from toppling over. It helped that they had used what looked like multiple entire rolls of duct tape to secure him to the chair.

Lana’s laughter mocked him. “Struggle all you want. I like it. You’re not going anywhere and it makes this even more exciting.”

The knife made even quicker work of his underwear. The man was weeping nonstop as she took hold of two large balls and stretched them out, placing the sharp edge of the blade against the base of his scrotum.

Dez let out a low, appreciative whistle. “This is some trippy shit. I mean, we’ve done fucked-up shit, Echo and me, but never this.”

Lana smiled. “Good. I’d hate to be boring.”

Dez laughed. “Baby, I doubt you’re ever boring.”

Lana again made eye contact with the man who had hurt her. The way his eyes seemed to plead with her—to beg—made her very happy. She let out a breath and began to work the blade through his scrotum. The muffled screaming was louder than ever, rendered shrill and girlish by the pain. The gushing blood required her to squeeze harder on his dick to maintain her grip. And at first the flesh gave way as easily as his clothes, but she encountered a bit more resistance when she began to saw through his dick. But she just redoubled her effort and in seconds the job was nearly done. There was a lot more blood as his cock at last came completely away from his body. The gore spattered Lana, making a bloody mess of her halter top, but she didn’t care.

Justice had been done.

She came out of her crouch and eyed Dez. “Take out his gag.”

Dez looked at Echo. “This bitch is hardcore. Damn.”

But Dez did as requested, ripping duct tape from the man’s face and pulling out the sock that had been jammed in his mouth. His screams were louder than ever now, ear-splitting bursts of sound that bounced off the concrete walls and made everyone’s head hurt. Lana shut him up by jamming his bloody severed cock in his mouth the next time it opened. Dez grabbed a nearly depleted roll of duct tape and sealed his mouth shut again, winding it around his head until it was empty.

Then the three women stood back and watched him bleed out.

Dez sighed heavily. “Well, that was fun. But we should start getting our shit together and covering our tracks.”

Lana chuckled. “Not necessary.”

Dez cocked an eyebrow. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“I know someone who can take care of this shit, make it like it never even happened. Uh…do you guys happen to know where my phone is?”

Chapter Fourteen

Sexual Healing

Echo’s nails tore into Casey’s back, drawing blood as he continued to slam into her with a ferocity that exceeded anything in his recent experience. One of her hands came away from his back to grip his throat. She thrust her pelvis at him and cinched her legs tighter around his back. The hard grip on his throat made his breath come out in a wheeze. Echo grinned in a way that made her look borderline insane. Casey thought of the dead bodies in his kitchen, as well as her vehemently stated desire to kill him, and scratched the “borderline” qualifier from this impression.

Something inside Echo had cracked during her year away. Taking human life was something she did with relish and without regret. He didn’t need all the gory details of her adventures to know that. That same off-kilter something had changed her lovemaking as well, though “lovemaking” was too tender a word. It was raw and animal-like, infused with a new violent intensity that was disturbing.

Yes, he was afraid of her, even without a gun in her hand. But his fear of her did nothing to dampen his arousal. If anything, the fear enhanced it immensely. The force of his thrusts rocked the bed hard enough to make the headboard slam repeatedly against the wall, which normally only happened as his tempo increased upon nearing orgasm. But this time the headboard boogie had started right away.

Being inside her felt glorious. Like every moment of euphoria he had ever experienced gathered into one burning center of ecstatic, erotic energy. The sight of her beneath him felt surreal and not just because he had been sure he would never see her in that position again. She was so insanely sexy it almost hurt to look at her. This feeling was so intense he eventually screwed his eyes shut in a desperate effort to stave off orgasm just a little longer.

Echo’s hand came away from his throat. An instant later her fist crashed against his jaw, opening his eyes and snapping his head hard to the side. The unexpected jolt had the effect of abruptly triggering the release he had sought to delay.

She braced her hands on his muscular chest and shoved him away. “Get the fuck off me.”

So much for the afterglow…

Casey fell away from her and rolled onto his back. He breathed heavily and stared up at the ceiling. He put a hand to his forehead and it came away coated in sweat. The scent of sex was heavy in the air, that musky commingling of their perspiration and the smell of her pussy. It was definitely always stronger the better the sex was and this was maybe the best sex he’d ever had, though he wasn’t sure of the wisdom of telling her that. Though intended as a compliment, it was hard to tell how she’d take it given her current state of mind.

In truth, he wasn’t sure how to handle her at all now. She was so much like a different person from the girl he had known. There remained some lingering traces of that girl, but they were mostly submerged beneath a veneer of hardness.

He glanced her way and saw she had turned onto her side and was staring at him. Her expression was stony, empty of even the smallest hint of warmth. She looked like she wanted to strangle him. He recalled the iron grip she’d kept on his throat during the last minutes of their escapade and figured maybe that wasn’t too far from the truth.

She sniffed in a disdainful way. “You’re not as good as I remember.”

He wanted to seem aloof, impervious to any insults she might sling his way, but he flinched at her judgment. “Oh. Sorry.”

Her expression remained blank as she said, “You’re better.”

Now he was just confused. “Um…”

“It’s almost as if you’ve been practicing.” There was a hint of menace in her tone. “I bet you’ve been banging bitches left and right since I left, haven’t you?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

He had been with a half-dozen women since Echo stormed out of his life. So he hadn’t exactly been chaste, but it was hardly the untamed degree of promiscuity Echo assumed. Then again, the number might have been at least double that had he not become consumed with liberating Keely from the Order of Wandering Souls.

“How would you put it, Casey?”

He gave a tired shrug. “There have been a few. But only a few.”

“You expect me to believe that?” She lifted her head and propped it on an upraised palm, peering at him more closely in a way that was both curious and accusatory. “You’ve always been such a fucking man-whore.” She sighed. “But whatever. It’s not like I’m still your girlfriend. Just tell me you’ve never been with Ella again.”

Casey made what he saw as a supremely wise decision.

He lied.

“I’ve never been with Ella again. Not since that day.”

Echo studied his face in total silence for several tense moments, clearly searching his features for signs of deception.

Then she smiled and shifted a little closer to him, draping a silken-soft thigh across his legs. She lightly dragged her fingernails down the length of his chest to his groin, where she then wrapped her fingers around his flaccid member. “I’m so glad to hear that, Casey. I think if you’d told me otherwise I’d have to cut this thing off.”

He grimaced as she gave him an unnecessarily hard squeeze.

He let out a breath when she relaxed her grip. “Jesus. You never used to like it rough before. What happened?”

“I’ve changed.”

Casey couldn’t help laughing.

No shit.

Her expression hardened. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t want to laugh at me. It’s a bad idea.”

“I believe you.”

Casey put a hand on her bare thigh and gently eased it closer to his midsection. She responded by smiling and snuggling closer against him. “Hmm. Feels like someone’s almost ready to go again.”

They kissed, softly at first, then with greater urgency for a few moments, though it was no match for the intensity of before. Casey smiled as he ran a hand through her luxuriant hair. “I’ve missed this. Being with you.”

Her body language changed when he said that, became stiffer and perceptibly more hostile. “You didn’t ever have to lose it. I was happy with you, Casey. I wanted to be with you forever. Why do you think I so completely lost my shit after I found out you were cheating on me?”

“I wish I could take it back.”

“But you can’t.”

He sighed. “I know. I guess you could still kill me if it’ll make you feel better.”

She groaned and rolled away from him. The mood was broken. There would be no encore performance for now. But he knew it wasn’t a total rejection when she clasped his right hand and twined her fingers in his. Given her aggressive behavior to this point, the emotion in her voice when she spoke next came as a shock. “I don’t want to kill you, Casey. Not anymore. Not after this. But I don’t know if I can ever really love you again, either.”

“So what happens now?”

“I don’t know.”

Her tone made it clear his infidelity remained a raw wound. He knew he had hurt her, but until this moment he hadn’t completely appreciated the depth of that hurt. A year later and she was still feeling it just as intensely. He felt a fresh wave of guilt at this realization. But he also felt considerable relief that his life apparently was no longer in danger, at least not by her hands.

A half hour earlier a very different outcome had seemed likely. That initial pistol-whipping was followed by several more concentrated bursts of brutal violence. She had kicked him across the blood-spattered kitchen floor, keeping the gun trained on him the whole time as a deterrent against fighting back. When she finally tired of kicking the shit out of him, she ordered him to his feet to smack him around with the butt of the gun again. These blows opened gashes in his face that were still leaking blood. The fury she exhibited while knocking him around had caused him to lose all hope she would relent and help him figure out how to help Keely.

But then a funny thing happened.

After knocking him to the floor again, she fell atop him and began to kiss him, pushing her tongue deep into his mouth, which had always been a signal that she was deeply aroused. In the past, this would have caused his arousal to instantly match hers, but this time his body went stiff rather than his cock. This was the instinctive reaction of a battered, untrusting psyche. But a few more moments of pleasurable oral manipulation allowed him to relax and respond in the normal way. Soon their clothes came off and they commenced the first stage of an epic coupling right there on the floor, within arm’s reach of the nearest goon’s corpse. They eventually picked themselves up and shifted the scene to the bedroom.

He still wasn’t sure what to make of this development. Obviously it was an improvement over having the shit beat out of him, but he couldn’t help being troubled by the way it had come about. It was as if the extreme violence had turned her on. Any other conclusion defied logic, defied what his gut told him. Hurting people—even a person she had once loved—was what got her motor running these days.

His gut also told him it might not be wise to question her about it. It was too easy to imagine her becoming overly defensive about it, possibly even violent again. On the other hand, the circumstances meant being delicate about any aspect of what was going on was no longer a good option.

Casey turned onto his side and studied Echo’s face. Her expression was distant now. There was a sense of calm detachment, a peacefulness he found hard to reconcile with the earlier violence. “So…what’s been going on with you, Echo? Where have you been for the last year?”

She turned her head to look at him. “Are you sure you want to know? I’ve done some bad things, Casey.”

Casey grunted. “That part I already gathered. And I do want to know. I think it’s important if we’re to have any chance of trusting each other again.”

Echo laughed softly. “Trust each other? That’s funny coming from you.”

He nodded. “I know it is. And I accept that proving myself worthy of your trust again is gonna take a fuck of a lot of work.”

“It might not even be possible.”

“I know that too. But I want to try. So…please…tell me what’s been going on with you. How bad could it really be?”

Echo smirked. “It hasn’t all been bad. I’ve had some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my fucking life out on the road the last year.”

She was silent for a very long moment.

Casey decided to prompt her. “But…?”

She sighed. “You might hate me if you knew the really bad parts. As angry as I’ve been with you, I’m not sure I could take that.”

“What are we talking about here? Robbing banks? Arson? Murder?”

Her reply came in a soft whisper. “That last one.”

“More than once?”

She nodded.

Damn.

“And you’re talking about before the three guys you iced in my kitchen, right?”

“Yeah.”

Casey hesitated before continuing the line of inquiry. He doubted there was anything Echo could tell him that would make him hate her. But not hating her didn’t necessarily mean he might not be repulsed by any of her revelations.

Again, though, this was a case where knowledge was better than being kept in the dark. “Were any of these cases of self-defense? Kill or be killed situations?”

“A few. But mostly not.”

Jesus.

“So…premeditated murder. How many?”

She gave him a look of frustration and let go of his hand. “I don’t know, Casey. I lost count a while ago. There, you happy? Now you know exactly what kind of monster I am. And now you can judge me. Because the truth is, whatever your failings are, they’re nothing compared to the truth about me.”

“I’m not gonna judge you, Echo.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m not lying.”

This was the truth. Though Casey in no way approved of killing people where there was no just cause to do so, his heart wouldn’t allow him to condemn Echo. Despite everything, his feelings for her remained too strong for that.

She smiled. “You know what? I think I believe you. Which means you’re almost as fucked in the head as I am. I meant what I told you earlier, you know. I came here to kill you. And getting away with it would have been so easy thanks to your carelessness. I can’t believe you leave your bedroom windows unlatched.”

“It’s summer. I open the windows a lot.”

She eyed him disdainfully. “It’s stupid to make yourself so vulnerable. There’s a world full of predators out there. I should know, seeing how I’m one of them. On the other hand, it allowed me to get in here and save your ass.”

Casey nodded. “See. I was thinking ahead, planning for all contingencies.”

Echo sat up. “I need to call my friends and let them know what’s going on. They expected me back a while ago.”

Casey sat up too. “Who are these friends?”

Echo glanced at him as she slid off the bed and headed for the door. “Dez and Lana. My partners in crime.”

Then she was out the door and headed down the hallway. Moments later he heard her voice and realized she was talking to someone on a phone. Her phone, he guessed, which presumably was with her discarded clothes in the kitchen. Her tone was soft at first but quickly became more agitated. He couldn’t know exactly what was being said on the other end of the conversation, but the gist of it was easy to discern. Her friends were unhappy about her extended absence, but they were even less happy about her decision not to kill him after all.

She was dressed again by the time she returned to the bedroom. No more sex then, at least not for now. Casey was again taken aback by the depth of his renewed desire for her. It was temporarily making him forget about a lot of important things, like what to do about Keely.

She stared at him without speaking for a moment. There was a glint in her eyes that indicated her thoughts weren’t far removed from what he was thinking. Then she breathed a regretful sigh and said, “You need to get dressed.”

“You need to get undressed.”

This earned him a roll of her blue eyes, but a small smile played at the edges of her mouth. “Wish I could, baby. But we’re getting out of here. So get up and put your fucking clothes on.”

Casey moved to the edge of the bed and swung his legs over the side. “Where are we going?”

A troubled look clouded Echo’s features. “To meet my friends.”

Casey frowned. “I don’t know. I heard you talking out there. Doesn’t sound like they much care for me.”

Echo snorted. “They don’t even fucking know you. Well, not aside from the shit I’ve been telling them about you, which admittedly has kinda prejudiced them against you. They were very supportive of the idea of me getting some closure by capping your ass.”

“Normally I’d say it’s good to have supportive friends, but in this case…”

“You might want to knock off the whole wiseass thing when you meet them. You’re kinda gonna be on trial. You’ve got to make them like you and that’s not gonna be easy, especially with Dez.”

“Why? What’s her deal?”

“She hates men.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“Again with the sarcasm.” Echo shook her head. “You’re doomed.”

Casey got off the bed and headed out to the kitchen with Echo right behind him. He pulled on his jeans and shirt and sat in a chair to put on his socks and shoes. He looked up at Echo as he tied the laces. “Look, I get that you have reasons for wanting me to meet these people, but I can’t put off dealing with this Keely thing. I can’t take time out to meet your friends when I should be working out my next moves. Plus…” He waved a hand around at the carnage in the kitchen. “I’ve got to figure out what to do about all this.”

“I may have an idea.”

Casey cocked an eyebrow at her. “Oh, really? Because I’ve got a confession to make. I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do.”

“Lana has a friend who might be able to help. A shady big money guy. He’s gotten us out of some of our stickier situations.”

“And why would he help me?”

Echo shrugged. “I’m not saying he will. I’m saying maybe he will. It’ll depend on the impression you make on Lana. You’ve got to try really hard to make her like you. And then there’s the other reason you can’t stick around here.”

“That being?”

Echo sniffed. “Because, Casey,” she said, enunciating the words with deliberation, as if addressing a “slow” person. “Before long the guy who sent these dead motherfuckers will start to wonder why they’re not reporting back to him. He might then send more thugs around to see what’s up. You probably won’t want to be around when that happens.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s a good point.”

Echo shook her head. “It’s a wonder you managed to survive a year without me around.”

Casey stood up. “Fine. Let’s go meet your friends. But it’s on you if they kill me.”

Echo smiled. “But maybe that’s been the real plan all along.”

Casey eyed her carefully a moment before giving his head a wry shake. “You’re evil.”

Echo just laughed.

After gathering all the available weaponry, they walked out of Casey’s house.

Neither of them would ever return.

Chapter Fifteen

Two days after the shootout on 2nd Avenue

A time of hard reckoning was nearly at hand. John Wayne de Rais believed this with a conviction that easily eclipsed anything in his conman past. The Order of Wandering Souls had started as yet another attempt to part fools from their money, but it had become so much more than that.

There was a certain kind of fragile, possibly damaged soul that was eager to believe in an imminent collapse of the social order. These people saw the modern world as corrupt to the core, as a festering cesspool tainted by excessive greed and self-interest. It was a viewpoint John was able to exploit with instinctive ease and skill. He told his new audience the things he knew they wanted to hear, affirmations of all their darkest fears. He talked to them about how there was a handful of mysterious and very powerful men who controlled the bulk of the global economy and pulled the strings of political leaders behind the scenes. It was essentially a repackaging of the Illuminati myth, though he never used that term out of concern it would invoke kneejerk skepticism. But his followers found it easy to believe in a shadowy collective that controlled world affairs and relentlessly trampled on the downtrodden. After a while, John began to infuse his sermons with warnings of a coming revolution, a time when the downtrodden would rise up and wrest control of the world out of the hands of the puppeteers. The popularity of the Order began to surge, at least in part because so many of those damaged souls he’d courted also wanted to believe in revolution.

At some indefinable point along the way, John began to believe in it too. In part it was because he had spent so much of his life believing in nothing. And he had reached an age where it felt important to replace the soulless emptiness inside him with something that had real meaning. He began to wonder whether he might be a spiritual vessel of some sort, the means by which God would bring about the great cleansing that would allow the world to start afresh. Maybe that had been the real purpose behind his existence all along and he was just now awakening to it.

The shootout downtown had changed things yet again. It was impossible not to see the incident as a watershed event in the history of the Order. There were more eyes on them than ever now, both in the media and in law enforcement. The national press had even taken note of them for the first time, including reports on all the major cable news outlets. At any other point in his life, John would have shied away from such scrutiny. There were too many skeletons in his closet waiting to be unearthed. With this kind of attention, it was inevitable he would be linked to some of his previous scams. Even now his old instincts were telling him it was time to ratchet things down until the heat wore off.

But it was too late for that now.

This was his moment, his time to make his mark on the world. If things unfolded the way he hoped, he would likely be dead or in jail very soon, but it didn’t matter because either way his legacy would be secured. The world would remember John Wayne de Rais and his deeds for generations to come.

And maybe, just maybe, the events he was about to set in motion would provide the spark for a real revolution.

He was backstage at the compound’s community hall. This was where the faithful gathered every week to hear him speak about the coming great change that would signal the end of a dying world order. He could hear their murmuring voices on the other side of the curtain. There was a palpable extra level of excitement in the air. Though most of them were not allowed access to media, all were aware of the incident that had occurred. Many of them had been interviewed by the police in the intervening days. As a result, the rumor mill was working overtime. There was talk that a raid on the property was imminent. John Wayne had no idea whether this was true, though he suspected it was inevitable.

All the more reason to set the wheels in motion sooner rather than later.

He reviewed his handwritten notes a final time before folding the two sheets of lined notebook paper and shoving them into a hip pocket of his jeans. He glanced down at his hands, which were shaking ever so slightly. There was nothing he could do about this, just as there was little he could do about the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He withdrew a vial of pills from an inner pocket of his blazer, the shaking in his hands increasing as he worked to unscrew the cap. When he did finally get it open, he immediately popped three pills into his mouth and grimaced as he dry-swallowed them.

He breathed a tired sigh.

The pills would help a little—but not nearly enough, nor for long enough.

Before stepping out onto the stage, he peered through the part between the curtains at his audience. There wasn’t a single unoccupied seat in the house. Many more Order members were standing against the back wall.

John couldn’t help smiling.

Standing room only, literally.

There were a few notable absences that couldn’t be helped, but nearly the entire Order membership was under this roof this morning. The speech he was about to deliver would be the most important he’d given since founding the Order. Everything was riding on his ability to fire up the faithful in just the right way. And John Wayne had total faith in his ability to do just that.

He cleared his throat, moved through the part between the curtains, and strode confidently out to the podium at the front of the stage to thunderous applause.

Keely was not allowed to attend John Wayne’s momentous speech to the faithful. Though this was disappointing, it did not come as a surprise. She had been kept out of sight since shortly after returning from that debacle on 2nd Avenue. A scheme to cover up her identity as the target of the kidnapping attempt had been set in motion almost immediately after Casey was forced to flee the scene. She had been spirited away by Order security before the police could arrive and clamp things down. Another young blonde girl who had been part of the recruiting party that day wound up acting as her stand-in. The scheme worked thanks to the chaos surrounding the event.

She assumed this was a contingency plan that had been in place since her ascension into John Wayne’s inner circle. But it was more than just that. They didn’t want the police to track Casey down for inscrutable reasons. He knew things that could hurt the Order, supposedly. Also, John had a real thing for her. All she had to do was look at him the right way and he would get hard. So a desire to shield the hot young piece of ass he’d taken as a lover was maybe part of it too. Yet another factor was her brother’s original bungled attempt to snatch her away from the Order’s clutches.

Thinking about that stoked her anger anew. Butting in where he wasn’t wanted was just like Casey. He had been pulling this concerned big brother routine forever even though she was actually the older sibling. It had gotten old a long time ago and it was high time he left her alone to make her own decisions about her life. If anything good had come out of the events of the other day, it was the shedding of the last vestiges of his former psychological hold on her. She had a new family now and a new purpose in life—to serve John Wayne and the Order.

Her comfortable new living space was more proof that her recent choices had been the right ones. There had been some rough times and many uncertain moments, but she knew now she was right where she belonged. John Wayne had installed her in a second-floor room of the big house. A large window in a corner of the room overlooked the cabins where the Order’s lower level initiates lived—where she had lived until just a few days. She stood at the window now, staring out at the warm yellow light visible through the windows of the gathering hall.

Most of John Wayne’s congregation was inside that building, listening raptly as the great man delivered another of his stirring, inspiring speeches. Keely wished she could be there with them. She imagined John’s booming voice resonating powerfully inside the building. Though he was far older than she was, that voice always stirred something primal and libidinous within her. But that wasn’t the only reason she wished she could be there this morning. John had been telling her of a big change on the horizon. The Order was at the forefront of a coming revolution that would shake the world to its foundations. To an outsider this would undoubtedly sound like a lot of overblown bullshit, just so much blustery rhetoric to pump up the faithful. But to the true believers it was akin to the holy word of God, wisdom handed down from on high.

She turned away from the window when she heard the door to her room open, grimacing when she saw Susan Wagner enter the room and shut the door behind her.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Susan smiled. “I don’t think so.”

Her former tormentor was wearing black lace panties and nothing else. For a woman somewhere in her mid-forties, she was remarkably well-maintained, with pert breasts and a trim, toned figure that would be the envy of many women half her age. She normally kept her long hair in a ponytail, but tonight she had let the honey blonde locks down. Clutched loosely in her right hand was a thin rattan cane. In her other hand was a sleek cell phone.

Keely glanced at both items and shook her head. “Have you lost your mind? You know you’re supposed to stay away from me.” She smirked. “If you get out of here before I count to five, maybe I won’t tell John Wayne about this.”

Susan laughed and came farther into the room, swishing the cane back and forth as she moved. “Stupid girl. I’m here on John’s orders.”

Keely frowned. “I don’t believe you.”

Susan shrugged. “Boyd is standing guard in the hallway. Call him in if you want. He’ll confirm what I’ve told you.”

“Boyd!”

Susan laughed at Keely’s abruptly shouted call to the thuggish security man, but she said nothing further for the moment.

The door to the room opened again and Boyd poked his blond head in. “Yes, Miss Miller?”

Keely smiled as sweetly as possible. “Could you pretty please escort this psycho dyke from my room? She’s annoying me.”

Boyd grimaced. “Afraid I can’t do that. Miss Wagner is here on assignment.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

Another pained look crossed Boyd’s rugged features. “That’s not for me to say. I’m sorry, Miss Miller.”

He then ducked back out of the room and shut the door again.

Susan laughed as she came yet another step closer. This time she snapped the cane against the floor, making Keely jump. “Now then…where were we?”

Keely’s heart raced. Her mouth felt dry and she struggled to swallow as her gaze locked for a moment on the cane. The memory of being whipped was still so fresh in her mind. This wasn’t fair. She had been so sure this brand of humiliation was behind her.

“Please…” She struggled to keep a quaver out of her voice. Keely had her back to the wall as Susan continued to approach. Further retreat wasn’t an option. She could slide sideways to the corner, but that would accomplish nothing other than emphasizing her weakness and she didn’t want that. “What’s going on here? I don’t understand. I thought—”

“You thought you were his special girl.” Susan smiled in an irritatingly knowing way. She was only a few feet away now, nearly within touching distance. “In reality, you’re just another in a long line of naïve whores, albeit a slightly more useful than usual whore.”

Keely’s instinct was to refute the whore accusation, but in this case denial would have been laughable. It pained her how easily Susan shattered her illusions. Her tentatively restored pride had taken a heavy blow. “So what makes me useful?”

“John Wayne has a proposition for you. If you do what he wants, you can keep your favored position here in the big house.”

“And if not?”

Susan smirked. “You’ll belong to me again. And this time I’ll be able to do with you as I wish. I won’t have to hide or justify my treatment of you. No one will have a problem with it because everyone will know John approves. And after his speech tonight, the sheep will accept all John’s proclamations as holy writ.”

“That’s crazy.”

Susan laughed. “Is it? Do you really think so?”

Yet again Keely was forced to face an unpleasant truth. The Order faithful were already inclined to do as Susan said. John was their messiah. She had thought of him that way too. But now she felt only a sense of betrayal. She’d let herself believe John was genuinely interested in her as a person and as a valuable member of his inner circle. But the truth was he’d just been using her. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but now that she’d been confronted with this ugly reality all she could do was accept it. Because the only other scenario—a future as Susan’s slave—was no option at all.

She’d sooner die.

“Fine. What does John want me to do?”

Susan smiled brightly and held up an admonishing forefinger, which she waggled back and forth a time or two. “Ah-ah, not so fast. We’ll get to that in a moment. First I need something from you.” Her eyes flicked toward Keely’s chest. She opened her mouth and licked her lips. “Take off your top.”

Keely scowled. “What? No way.”

She flinched as Susan raised the cane and touched the tip of it to her cheek. “Do it. Unless you’d like me to whip you mercilessly. The choice is up to you.”

“You fucking bitch.”

Susan laughed. “Yes. I am. You have until the count of five to remove your top. Five—”

Keely pulled her top off and held her chin high. “There. You happy?”

Susan smiled. “Very.”

She made no move to touch Keely. Instead she just stood there and stared at her bare breasts for at least a full minute. Her eyes had a glazed look. But she soon snapped out of it, giving her head a hard shake before smiling again. “My. I do believe you have the loveliest breasts I’ve ever seen. You can put your top back on.”

Keely wasted no time doing just that. “All right, you’ve had your fun. Now what the fuck does John Wayne want from me?”

Susan held up the cell phone. “We’re to record a scripted video message to your brother. You are to say every word exactly as we’ve written it out for you. Your job is to make your brother believe you really mean the things you say. Do you think you can manage that, stupid girl?”

Keely frowned. “But nobody knows where Casey is. John says he’s in hiding somewhere.”

Susan nodded. “And so he is. But the boy can’t lay low forever. He’s bound to surface eventually. And when he does, representatives of the Order will deliver the message to him personally.”

Keely chewed her bottom lip and fretted over it a moment. “What am I supposed to say?”

Susan called for Boyd again. He came into the room and produced a folded sheet of paper at Susan’s request. Susan passed it to Keely, who frowned as she unfolded it and began to read the short script.

Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes got big as she encountered a particularly alarming passage. “You’re gonna hurt Casey.”

“He’s caused us a lot of trouble.”

Keely had her issues with Casey, it was true. There were times when she felt like she hated him. But she had never wished him any real harm. She couldn’t go along with this.

Could she?

Susan came closer and put a hand on Keely’s hip. “I know you think I’m cold-hearted, but I’m not a total monster. You don’t have to do this. You can refuse John’s offer and surrender yourself to me.” She raised a hand to smooth back a lock of Keely’s blonde hair. “I think we both know it’s what you really want, deep down.”

Keely’s face hardened. “Back off, bitch. I’ll read the goddamned script.”

The humor leeched out of Susan’s face. She sniffed disdainfully. “So be it. Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Sixteen

Some Fucked-Up Shit that Happened on the Road, Part Three

Somewhere in Louisiana…

The look on the doorman’s face as the trio of tattooed badass babes strolled up to the strip club’s entrance was comical. The way his mouth dropped open and his eyes bugged out made the women smirk. Though he didn’t know who they were—had, in fact, never laid eyes on them in his life—he waved them in ahead of some guys who were waiting in line to show their ID’s.

The reason was simple—chicks with the kind of looks these three had were just good for business. It was standard operating procedure in a scenario like this. Hot female customers got a kick out of stirring up the male patrons. They would pay the strippers to give them lap dances, maybe even make out with them. Technically touching was against the rules, but the rules never applied to knockouts like these. The faux-Sapphic shenanigans got the male customers extra stimulated, causing them to get extra loose with their money. The female customers got the attention they wanted and the dancers and the club made serious bank, a win-win proposition for everyone.

These girls were maybe a little hotter than the usual pack of exhibitionist babes that occasionally came around, but there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with that. All in all, it was just another typically wild Saturday night in bayou country.

The girls booted some guys from a table near the front of the stage and claimed it for themselves. The guys initially invited them to pull up extra chairs and join them, but that idea was rejected in favor of outright eviction. There was some resistance on the part of the guys, but that withered when Dez opened her purse and showed them her shiny, nickel-plated handgun.

As soon as they were situated at the table, Lana got out some coke and started chopping lines on its pitted surface. All three girls took a turn hitting that shit. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the attention of everyone in the club—including the dancers—was riveted on them. Powered by a big supply of the high-octane marching powder, they were running on more than three full days without sleep. The result was they were dangerously unhinged and were actively seeking to incite chaos wherever they went.

A bouncer came over to the table and told them they would have to leave. No weapons were allowed on the premises. Openly abusing piles of narcotics on the tables was sort of frowned upon too. Dez reached into her purse for her gun, but Echo forestalled disaster by seizing her wrist. This was too public a place to start wasting everybody in sight. Even gacked to the nines on blow, she had enough residual common sense to recognize that.

Dez folded her arms beneath her breasts and pouted. “You bitches are no fucking fun tonight.”

The bouncer said, “Look, ladies, I’d really hate to have to call the cops, but…”

Dez snorted. “Do you want your cock sucked?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Every problem has a solution, motherfucker.” Dez eyed the guy up and down. He was six foot and then some and filled out his clothes in ways even a girl who liked girls found interesting. “Take me somewhere private and I’ll blow your mind. That’s a fucking promise. Then we can all relax and have some goddamn fun.”

The bouncer laughed. “Take a look around, lady.” He waved a hand in a gesture meant to indicate the abundance of exposed female flesh on display. “You’re not offering anything special. Cheap bitches like you are a dime a dozen here at Vixens.”

Echo and Lana exchanged a worried glance.

Dez kicked her chair over as she stood up from the table. “You are dead.”

The bouncer laughed at what he no doubt took as idle bluster. But Lana and Echo knew better. The good-looking son of a bitch had sealed his fate the moment the rude insult passed his lips. You just didn’t say things like that to Dez and get away with it. But his punishment wouldn’t happen here because he was now a special case. Dez would want to savor his suffering and eventual demise and that would call for a quieter, more isolated location.

She knocked the table over and stomped her way out of the club. Echo and Lana were hot on her heels. All three women were burning with disappointment. It had been too long since they had last gotten to cavort in a strip club.

Outside the club, three sets of heels clicked on asphalt as the girls made their meandering way across the parking lot toward the Impala. Dez was a little wobbly as she sought to dredge a pack of smokes and a lighter from the depths of her purse while continuing to fume over the bouncer’s rude behavior.

“Still say I should have shot that cocksucker in the face right then and there. You can’t tell me he didn’t have it coming.”

Lana laughed. “No doubt, but you’ve gotta be smarter than that, Dez. Might have been our last fucking stand if you’d pulled that shit there. And I don’t know about you, but I ain’t in any hurry to die.”

Dez flicked at a neon green disposable lighter several times before finally summoning a thin column of flickering flame. She applied it to a fresh Marlboro Light and lit up. “Fuck that bullshit right in the ass. Ain’t anybody gonna kill us, baby. We’re too tough to die.”

Echo rolled her eyes. “Nobody’s too tough to die, Dez. One day your skull will get in the way of a bullet and that’ll be all she wrote.”

Dez sneered. “I say again, bullshit. Never gonna happen.”

Echo sniffed. “Look, I know how it is. You do a bunch of badass shit like we’ve done and you get to feeling invincible. But nobody’s invincible, including us. One day our luck’s gonna run out. That’s just how it is.”

Lana made a face. “Ugh. What’s with the doom and gloom? I just want to have some goddamn fun tonight. Hey…that who I think it is?”

She nodded at a line of cars to their right. Loitering next to a red Corvette was a trio of young men. They were smoking and passing around a whiskey bottle.

Dez cackled. “That’s them, all right. Let’s go say hi.”

Echo felt another jolt of apprehension. This was the same group of men who’d involuntarily surrendered their table to them. It stood to reason they were responsible for getting them ejected from the club. Obviously they’d told the bouncer about the gun in Dez’s purse. The pending confrontation here could only be bad news. It didn’t take much to rile Dez under more or less normal circumstances, but her current state of intense agitation meant every interaction with strangers held the potential for disaster. The smart move would be to get somewhere quiet so they could chill until they could finally pass out, but getting Dez under control when she was like this was easier said than done.

“Hey, motherfuckers.”

The men visibly tensed when Dez called out to them. Each of them took an unconscious step backward. One guy shifted his grip on the whiskey bottle’s neck in a way that indicated he meant to use it as a weapon if necessary. He was slender but handsome with a day’s worth of dark stubble on his square chin. His shift to a defensive posture was instinctive, but the glint of fear in his eyes betrayed him. This wasn’t a dude accustomed to mixing it up with anyone. Same went for his equally timid-looking friends. All were well-dressed and carefully groomed. Coupled with their proximity to the Corvette, their appearance indicated a not-inconsiderable degree of upward mobility.

The guy with the whiskey bottle raised his other hand in a warding-off gesture. “Whoa, hold up. Let’s not get crazy here.”

Dez laughed and snatched the whiskey bottle from his hand. Echo was surprised when she took a deep slug from it and passed it back to him. She had expected her to smash it across his face. It would have been a very Dez-like thing to do, after all, especially when she was this amped up. “What’s your name, pretty boy?”

The guy shot his friends a wary glance. “Um…Cameron?”

“You don’t sound sure. Is that your name or not?”

Another wary glance at his friends. “Um. Yes. It is.”

Dez blew smoke at him, making him cringe. “Cameron. Huh. What kind of preppy fag name is that?”

“I’m not gay.”

Dez mocked him by repeating the words in a tone meant to emulate the voice of a mentally slow person. “I’m not gay.” She sneered. “Bullshit.”

Cameron frowned. “But it’s not bullshit. Why else would I have been in a strip club paying naked ladies to shake their tits in my face?”

Dez shrugged. “Overcompensating?”

Cameron shook his head. “No. That’s not it.”

Dez dropped her half-smoked cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel. She then snatched the bottle from Cameron again and took another deep drink. This time she didn’t pass it back to him. She tilted her chin at his friends. “Tell me the truth, fellas. Your friend here. Cam. He’s a flamer, isn’t he?”

Cameron’s friends laughed at this. One of them—a blond guy who sort of looked like a displaced California surfer dude—smirked and said, “Well, he’s never shown any blatant tendencies, but I guess you never really know.”

Dez laughed. “And what’s your name, sexy?”

“Ogden.” He tilted his head toward the dark-haired guy next to him. “And this is Micah.”

Echo had to laugh. She was still anxious, but this initial exchange with the guys seemed to have calmed Dez somewhat. “Micah. Ogden. Cameron. Those are Ivy League frat-boy names. What’s up with that? You’re not from around here, are you?”

Cameron folded his arms and leaned against the Corvette. Along with his friends, he had picked up on Dez’s mellower mood. He felt safe now. He wasn’t safe at all, Echo knew, but it was good that he believed it. “Actually, we are. We’re just all from very wealthy families.”

Dez nodded approvingly. “Well, well. Mr. Moneybags.” She pursed her lips and gave Cameron an exaggeratedly lascivious once-over. “You know what, fellas? It’s your lucky night.”

The mood of the guys turned palpably more wary at that statement. Nervous looks passed between them before Cameron said, “Are you…whores?”

Dez and her friends burst out laughing.

Dez shook her head. “We’re not whores.”

Cameron frowned. “Oh.”

“Doesn’t mean we won’t fuck you.” Dez shrugged, a playful look on her face. “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Just kind of depends on how things go.”

Cameron extended his neck and scratched his chin. It was a nervous gesture. The girls plainly saw interest beneath a veneer of calculated aloofness. “What makes you think we’d want to fuck you?”

Ogden coughed and raised his voice. “Um…can I just go on record as saying I’d very much like to have sexual relations with any one of you lovely ladies should you be willing?”

The women laughed.

Cameron glared at him. “Ogden…”

Ogden glared right back at him. “What? Look at them. They’re gorgeous. Like we’re really gonna blow them off.” He smiled and looked at Dez. “What do you ladies have in mind? Why is this our ‘lucky night’?”

Dez beamed at him. “Thank you so much for cutting through the bullshit, Ogden. I may have to take a special interest in you. As for why it’s your lucky night…well, you boys have just come from a place where you pay women to remove their clothes. Since you’re all obviously fans of that kind of thing—with the possible exception of Cameron—you’ll be happy to hear my friends and I are all professional exotic dancers.”

Cameron’s brow furrowed. “You’re strippers?”

Dez gave him a dubious look. “Yes, Cam. We’re strippers.”

“Huh.” Ogden smiled as he gave their bodies a closer appraisal. “You do all have that look about you, now that you mention it. Nice tattoos, by the way.”

Dez smiled. “You like girls with tattoos, Ogden?”

Ogden’s expression was almost smug now. The boy clearly fancied himself a bit of a player, smoothly confident with an effortless ability to charm the ladies. What he didn’t know about Dez—aside from her default preference for vagina—was that when she did indulge her latent heterosexual side, she never went for preppy guys. He also was clearly failing to sense the predatory side of her personality.

“Like them?” He laughed. “Nothing sexier, in my opinion.”

“Cool. I like you, Oggie. Do you mind if I call you Oggie? Of course you don’t.” Dez took a big gulp from the whiskey bottle and passed it to him. “So…you boys live around here?”

Cameron snatched the bottle from his friend and held it close to his body in an effort to keep it out of grabbing range. “Why do you ask?”

Dez shrugged. “Just thought maybe we could continue the party elsewhere. Our original plans for the night got mysteriously cut short.”

Cameron grunted. “Why should we have anything to do with you? I mean, I admit it’s tempting to take advantage of whatever you’re offering, but let’s not forget you pulled a fucking gun on me.”

Dez sighed. “Whatever. Technically I just showed you a gun. I never took it out of my purse.”

Cameron shook his head as she spoke. “I know you think you’re being cute now, but that was still a pretty fucked-up thing to do. Look, no hard feelings or anything, but I think we’re better off going our separate ways.”

Ogden slugged Cameron in the shoulder, making him wince. “Speak for yourself, man. Don’t be such a fucking pussy.” He shot a glance back at Micah. “What do you say, Mike? It’s your folks’ place we’re staying at, so it’s your call, bro.”

Cameron groaned in disgust. “And so our fate was sealed.”

Micah was the shortest of the three by a few inches. You could tell he was self-conscious about it. His gaze locked on Dez’s impressive breasts for a moment. An obvious effort of will was required to lift his gaze and look her in the eye. “Here’s the thing. My parents are in Europe for a few weeks. Since school is out, I agreed to housesit while they’re gone. They’ve got a really nice place with a lot of expensive shit in it.”

Echo couldn’t help smirking as she thought, That’s very good to know, Micah. Thanks for being so helpful.

Micah’s reluctance to invite them to the parental palace was obvious. “I don’t know, maybe we could all just go to a bar somewhere instead. I’d hate to wreck my parents’ place with some kind of crazy sex party.”

A moment of uneasy silence followed this pronouncement. Partying with these clowns in some lame upscale bar was not what any of the girls had in mind. Conferring with Dez on the subject wasn’t necessary to know that. The goal now was to somehow seal the deal in a way that would squash any concerns Micah had regarding his parents’ property.

Dez dropped to her knees in front of Micah, eliciting shocked gasps from his friends. She tugged his zipper down, reached through the fly of his jeans, pushed his underwear out of the way and pulled out his cock. This occurred with a practiced swiftness so impressive it rendered everyone momentarily speechless. Even her friends had trouble believing what Dez was doing right out in the open.

Then she took him into her mouth.

Micah groaned and arched his back as he grabbed on to the sides of Dez’s head to keep from falling over. She swatted his hands away and continued to work his pole with devastating skill. The look on Micah’s face made it clear the ecstasy he was experiencing was nothing short of mind-bending.

Echo’s shock soon gave way to concern. This was happening outdoors in a very public place. There were voices nearby. Cars were continuing to enter and leave the parking lot. Someone would notice.

Sure enough, in a few moments a booming male voice called out to them. “Hey! Hey! What’s going on there?”

Echo realized there was something familiar about the voice of the interloper when it called out to them again. She turned her head and smiled as she recognized the bouncer who had booted them from Vixens. His intrusion wasn’t good news, but seeing him sent a tremor of inappropriate excitement through her anyway. This was in part a product of the dangerous edginess they’d all been feeling. But the bigger part of it was that seeing him awakened the taste for brutal violence she’d acquired since hooking up with Dez.

The bouncer brushed past her and took hold of Dez by the shoulders, pulling her away from Micah and jerking her roughly to her feet. “You fucked up, you skanky ho. Should’ve gotten lost while you had the chance. Now I’m calling the cops on your ass.”

Dez pouted. “I’m sorry.”

The bouncer’s laugh had a nasty edge. “Too late for sorry. You’re going to jail, bitch.”

Dez shook her head. “No, I meant I’m sorry I’m not gonna get to take my time with you. Skinning you alive would have been fun.”

Echo noticed Dez already had her hand in her purse. She saw her hand flex as she squeezed the trigger of the gun, shooting the bouncer through the purse. The loud report startled the preppy boys, making them stagger backward as they gaped at the big wound in the bouncer’s belly. Dez remained nonchalant as she pulled the gun from her purse and shot him again, this time in the face.

Cameron shrieked as the big man’s body toppled over.

Dez swiveled calmly around and shot Cameron through the throat. He fell backward and landed on the Corvette’s hood, lying there frozen for a moment before sliding off it to the ground. By the time Cameron’s friends thought to flee, it was already too late. Echo and Lana had their own guns out and aimed at them.

Micah started crying.

Echo smashed her gun across his face, shattering teeth as blood came out of his mouth. She then jammed the barrel under his chin and scowled. “You and your friend get Cameron in the Corvette. We’re going for a ride.”

Micah cried some more.

Echo hit him with the gun again.

Micah and Ogden finally understood that instant obedience was their only option. Anything else meant either more brutal punishment or a bullet through the head. And they had already seen enough of the latter to know they wanted no part of that. Once they had loaded Cameron’s corpse in the backseat, Dez and Lana joined their captives in the Corvette. Lana tossed Echo the Impala’s keys. “Heading out Highway 100. Catch up.”

Then she peeled out.

Echo started across the parking lot toward the Impala at a brisk pace. Before she could get there, a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caused her head to jerk to the left. A trembling young couple—a guy and a tarted-up gal in a red dress—sat hunkered down against the side of a car, evidently having witnessed the bloodshed and now desperately attempting to avoid getting caught up in it.

Echo did a quick scan of the parking lot.

No one else in sight.

She took three quick strides toward the terrified couple, raised her gun and fired twice. They died as she spun about and ran for the Impala. She couldn’t afford to lose any additional ground. She had no cell phone on her and couldn’t know for certain when her friends might take an exit off Highway 100.

After narrowly avoiding a collision with a Gran Torino entering the parking lot as she was pulling out, Echo put the pedal down and took the Impala out toward the highway junction at high speed. Vixens was an out-of-the-way joint and this narrow, curvy road that connected it to the highway had no streetlights, which meant high-speed driving at this late hour was ill-advised. But Echo saw no glowing taillights ahead of her. She put the Impala’s bright lights on as she took it screeching around a bend.

Still no taillights in the distance.

Echo pounded a palm against the steering wheel. The road hadn’t seemed this long on the way in, but she hadn’t been driving then, nor had she been feeling anywhere near as frantic as she felt now. The level of cocaine in her system wasn’t helping matters, either. Her frustration was such that she almost blew past the highway junction when she finally reached it. She screamed as she slammed the brake pedal down, causing the Impala to fishtail in the middle of the road. She knew she had to calm down. A cop might decide to stop her for reckless driving. Then she’d be in a world of shit.

Okay, she thought. Deep breath.

She took a moment to do just that. It didn’t magically wipe away her anxiety, but it did make it more manageable. She also experienced a rare moment of clarity in those precious few seconds. Mostly she lived in the moment and didn’t think much about the grim reality of her life. She was free now, but that couldn’t last forever, not after everything she’d done. It was like she’d told Dez. A day of reckoning was coming and it probably wasn’t that far down the road.

She glanced at her eyes in the rearview mirror.

Look at you.

She thought of the couple she’d shot down in the parking lot.

Look at what you’ve become.

The episode of melancholy was a scant few seconds in duration. Echo forced her eyes away from her reflection. Her path was set. There was nothing to do about any of it now. All she could do was keep on keeping on until she was dead.

Feeling more centered, she backed the Impala up and got it pointed in the right direction. She then drove at a reasonable speed until she hit the highway, at which point she checked her mirrors for police presence and, seeing none, put the pedal to the floor. This time she kept it there as the speedometer needle shot past eighty and then ninety.

The first set of taillights she encountered belonged to a boxy old Ford Escort. She swung into the passing land and drove past the ugly beige-colored car. A little silver-haired old lady sat hunched over the steering wheel, driving slowly. She flipped a middle finger at Echo as the Impala roared past.

Echo laughed.

The Impala’s wheels ate up mile after mile of highway. She passed several more cars, all of which were going too slow to have Lana behind the wheel. Just as she was about to give up and pull into a convenience store to purchase a disposable cell phone, she at last came up on the Corvette, which was going considerably slower than she had expected. She zoomed up behind it and flashed the Impala’s bright lights.

The Corvette slowed to a crawl and pulled over to the shoulder.

Echo pulled up behind it and got out with her gun held down by her leg, a precaution in case the preppy boys had somehow managed to turn the tables on Dez and Lana. The Corvette’s doors popped open.

Echo tensed and raised her gun.

Then she heaved a relieved breath as Dez and Lana came out of the Corvette with Micah in tow. Lana had hold of Micah by the back of his shirt collar. Her gun was jammed into the small of his back. He looked woozy and his face was more bloodied than before. They kicked the Corvette’s doors shut and hurried over to the Impala.

“Where’s the other one? Ogden?”

Dez grimaced. “Had to blow the Ogster’s brains out. Made a grab for my gun. It’s nasty in there now. Probably a good idea to change cars anyway.”

Echo nodded at Micah. “Why is he still alive?”

“He says he can lay his hands on some serious money.”

“Do you believe him?”

Dez shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care. If he can’t, I get to have other kinds of fun with him.”

Echo nodded.

Torture was the kind of fun she meant.

Dez grabbed a rag from the Impala’s trunk and hurried back over to the Corvette, where she got to work eliminating what DNA evidence she could. Echo figured it was a waste of time. Even if she got rid of all the fingerprints, there would be other traces. Hair and clothing fibers. All that CSI forensics shit.

Echo turned at the sound of an approaching engine. She raised a hand to cut the glare of low headlights. The car was moving at a ludicrously low rate of speed for highway travel. Echo smiled, realizing who it had to be even before she could discern the shape of the car.

She raised her gun and fired three times as the Ford Escort went puttering past. All three bullets penetrated the Escort’s rear window. A splash of blood slapped the front windshield. The car veered off the road into the grass median, sliding to a shuddering stop in the depression between sides of the highway.

Dez cocked an eyebrow at Echo as she returned from the Corvette. “The fuck was that about?”

“Little old lady flipped me off back down the road.”

Dez nodded. “Right.”

As if that made perfect sense.

They piled into the Impala and drove away from there.

Chapter Seventeen

Messengers of Love/Harbingers of Doom

A nondescript brown van is parked at the end of a long lane in a residential neighborhood. The van has tinted windows and was manufactured in the 1970’s. There are five human beings inside the van. Only three are alive. The deceased are Tod Clark and Paul Legerski, meth dealers who had the misfortune of possessing the right kind of vehicle required by their killers for certain illicit nocturnal activities.

The van’s living occupants are a young woman and two young men. They are all well-dressed and clean-cut in appearance. All three are good-looking types who smile easily and effortlessly project an illusory image of wholesomeness. Their names are Sally, Thomas and Joshua.

The van—referred to as a “creep van” by the trio of faux-wholesome killers—has been parked in its current spot for over an hour, long enough for the mescaline they’ve injected to take effect. Lucky for them, this is not their first trip. They know what to expect and eagerly anticipate the interesting ways the drug will enhance the experience ahead.

A creep van normally attracts attention in an upscale neighborhood, its residents being unaccustomed to the sight of decrepit vehicles manufactured in the previous century within the pristine environs. It’s the kind of thing that screams “potential criminal activity in progress”. That the young predators have not taken this into account is attributable to a variety of factors, most notably their perpetually altered minds and their youth (none of them are older than twenty). However, it is dark out and they have had the foresight to park in front of an unlit and currently unoccupied home. A forlorn-looking FOR SALE sign in the yard suggests the house has been on the market for some time. These things combine with a healthy dose of good luck to ensure that their presence—as well as their nefarious intent—goes entirely undetected.

Now that the mescaline is doing its thing, the time has come to fulfill the mission assigned them by their mentor. They pile out of the van and shut the doors on the bodies inside. Sally looks up at the clear sky above and smiles. It is a beautiful night. So many stars, twinkling so prettily against the canvas of dark sky.

She hums a merry tune as she leads the way down the street.

The pretty music issuing from the Klipsch speakers perfectly complemented the sensations country singer Melanie Montgomery was experiencing. John, her latest boyfriend, was on top of her on the leather sectional in her tastefully appointed living room. John was an aspiring musician who probably hoped a romance with her would enhance his own shaky standing in the industry. That was never going to happen. He simply wasn’t good enough. He was, however, very skilled in areas that mattered much more to Melanie. She loved the feel of his rough hands on her soft flesh, reveled in the way his mouth seemed to melt into hers as they kissed.

Her hands were under his shirt, her fingers probing the hardness of his back, when he abruptly broke off the kiss and said, “Did you know ‘Dear Prudence’ is about Mia Farrow, the actress?”

Melanie sighed. “I know all there is to know about every one of these songs.” Her fingers came away from his back and slid through the soft hair at the back of his neck. “Now shut up with the trivia and kiss me again.”

But he frowned, resisting when her fingers pressed against the back of his head. “She was a recluse at the time. That’s what the song is about. She was hiding away in her room without coming out for weeks at a time.”

Melanie became annoyed. “Right. I told you. I know. Your point?”

“It’s just depressing. I get sad every time I hear this song. Do you mind if I put on a different record?”

“This is my favorite record.”

A pained look crossed his face. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Not sorry enough.

She peered into his eyes and was struck as always by how open and soulful they were. He was a pretty man. His mediocre talent was such a shame. He made for a nice distraction, but she would have to cut him loose soon. She already had her eyes on a few prospects with better industry standing. She didn’t relish knowing she would have to hurt John—who had already started claiming he was in love with her—but it would be a necessary evil for the betterment of her career.

And nothing mattered more than her career.

So it couldn’t hurt to do him this one small kindness.

She touched his face lightly with her fingertips and smiled. “Okay. Change the record. Just be quick about it.” She traced the length of his bottom lip with the ball of her thumb. “You need to be kissing me again very soon.”

He smiled brightly and got up to head over to the turntable, where he started pawing through the crates of records beneath it. Though Melanie possessed nearly every modern technological gadget available, she preferred to listen to music the old-fashioned way. The warmer, fuller sound of vinyl was just plain better than sterile digital music.

Melanie’s love of music was a lifelong passion, one instilled in her by her late father, who’d been a singer of some renown in his own right. But music was more than a passion at this point. It was her life. Sales of her albums had earned her this beautiful house in this nice neighborhood. But for all she had accomplished, there remained so much untapped potential. There were so many different sounds she wished to create, so many different genres to explore. She longed to branch out and become more than just another country pop artist.

John stood up and displayed the record he had selected—Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Melanie frowned. “That’s your idea of an antidote to depression? Jesus, John.”

He shrugged. “It’s one of my favorites. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it on vinyl.”

Melanie was a little annoyed with him, but she could appreciate an expression of genuine love for a piece of music. It was the kind of thing that always made people more interesting to her, especially men. “Fine. Put it on and get back over here.”

The doorbell rang as John lifted the lid on the turntable to remove the Beatles record. Melanie frowned and bit her bottom lip. It was past nine p.m. Who would be calling at this hour?

Her instinct was to ignore whoever it was. No one she knew would just show up unannounced this late. Also, this neighborhood didn’t get a lot of people selling things or peddling pamphlets door-to-door, but when that did happen, it was usually at a much earlier hour.

The doorbell rang again.

She sat up with a sigh and pulled worryingly at a strand of her long, silken-soft hair. John turned away from the turntable as the Pink Floyd record began to play. A blissful smile gave way to a look of concern as he saw her fretful expression. He glanced in the direction of the front door as the doorbell rang yet again.

He looked at Melanie. “You want me to get that?”

Melanie smiled. “I’ve got it.”

She appreciated his willingness to fulfill the role of the protective man, but she was suddenly sure it wasn’t necessary. No stranger would ring the bell with such obnoxious persistence. There was one person she knew who might do such a thing, someone who had, in fact, been guilty of this kind of behavior in the past, though it had been a while since the last time it happened.

The person she was thinking of was Tara Benson. Best friends since high school, they had moved to Nashville together after graduation to pursue country music stardom. They were a notorious duo in those early Nashville days, party girls who were always out and about and looking to make connections. Things soon started happening for both of them, but Tara ran into some booze-related problems, culminating in a string of DUI arrests. She had been shakily sober for more than a year now, but Melanie had long suspected a tumble off the wagon was inevitable.

And if that had happened, it made sense Tara would drop by Melanie’s house without calling ahead. She probably wanted to drag her old friend out to a club to relive the good old days. Melanie put her hand on the doorknob and took a deep breath. She then put a fake smile on her face and opened the door.

Her smile melted, giving way to a frown.

It wasn’t Tara on the porch.

John called out to her from somewhere behind her. “Who is it, babe?”

There were three young people outside. None of them looked more than a year or two out of high school. The girl’s perfect blonde hair and conservative outfit made her look like a character out of a 50’s sitcom. The boys flanking her wore khaki pants and starched white shirts. Narrow, neatly knotted black ties dangled from their necks. One of the boys was holding a briefcase. They looked sort of like Mormons, though it was of course unusual for Mormon kids to come around yammering about their missions or whatever this late at night.

She glanced over her shoulder at John. “Just some Mormon kids.” She put her fake smile back on to address the young religious zealots. “Look, I hate to be rude, but it’s really late…”

Melanie trailed off when she saw that the one boy was opening his briefcase. He flipped the lid open and pulled out a hatchet. The other boy removed another hatchet.

Shit!

She tried to slam the door shut, but the blonde girl cackled as she burst through the opening before that could happen. There was a big carving knife in her hand now, produced from seemingly nowhere. Melanie belatedly realized she had been holding it behind her back the whole time. She reflexively held up her hands as the big blade arced toward her. It cut deep into the meat of a forearm. The pain was instant and terrible as bright red blood leaped from the big gash in her arm. Someone was screaming. She didn’t know whether it was her or John. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered other than the price they were both paying for her act of unthinking stupidity. A late night knock on your door never heralded anything good.

The hatchet-wielding boys dashed into the house and headed straight for John, who shrieked as he backed away from them and tripped over his feet in his panic. The boys grinned like madmen as they fell upon him and went to work with their hatchets. Great gouts of blood leaped into the air as the heavy blades punched through flesh. John struggled at first, bucking beneath them and fighting desperately to dislodge them. But they were too much for him and too much damage happened too fast.

The blonde girl threw the door shut.

Melanie staggered backward through the foyer until her back met a wall. Tears streamed from her eyes as her assailant advanced on her. “Please…I’ve got money. A lot of money.”

The blonde smiled. “Money is meaningless.”

She abruptly swung the knife at Melanie again. This time the blade raked across an upheld palm, loosing another river of blood. Melanie wailed in pain and began to blubber, insensibly pleading with this incongruously beautiful agent of evil. She couldn’t fathom how this was happening to her or why. This wasn’t how her life was supposed to end. She had so much still to do. So much still to accomplish. More music to make. Awards to win. And, someday, a family of her own to begin. This wasn’t right. It was a brutal, horrific insult against the proper course of things. How could God let something so terrible happen?

Please save me…somebody…anybody…please…

But no one was coming to Melanie Montgomery’s rescue tonight.

The blonde seized a handful of Melanie’s long hair and dragged her screaming into the middle of the living room. The screams gave way to sobs when she got a look at John’s ruined body. He looked more like an oversized bloody ragdoll than a man. His head had been nearly severed and one of his arms had been chopped off. There were several more equally sickening wounds. Melanie felt a crushing wave of guilt as she recalled her callous thoughts about John from just a few minutes ago. He was a good guy. He hadn’t deserved this. No one deserved this.

The blonde stabbed her in the stomach and she pitched to the floor, landing on her hands and knees. The blade entered her flesh yet again, this time penetrating her back. Her arms gave out and she started crawling across the floor, trailing blood on the varnished hardwood.

There was laughter from the boys.

The blonde said, “Flip her over.”

Strong hands seized Melanie’s arms and did just that. She cried out as she was dropped onto her back. The boys held her down, preventing any further efforts to escape.

The blonde knelt next to Melanie and smiled. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

Melanie sniffled. “What?”

The blonde slapped her. “Stop crying and pay attention. This is important. The time of cleansing has arrived. We’re going to make the world pure again, starting with getting rid of all the dirty little moneygrubbers like you. It’s time for you to transcend your life of greed and selfishness. Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

Melanie whimpered uncontrollably for several moments before the blonde slapped her again. Then she said, “I don’t want to die.”

The blonde smiled. “That’s a shame. His love was yours to take. If only you had accepted it willingly.”

Then she snarled with savage glee as she plunged the carving knife deep into Melanie’s abdomen. One of the boys got up to turn up the volume on the music to cover the sounds of the loudest screams yet. The blade went up and down many more times. It made a sickening wet punching sound each time it entered her flesh. After a while consciousness began to ebb and Melanie stopped being aware of how much it hurt. Which was nice. Letting go was nice. Or at least better than incomprehensible suffering. And it was nice to have such hauntingly ethereal music accompanying her into the abyss.

Sally kept careful count.

She stabbed Melanie exactly sixty-nine times. She wasn’t sure why, but the number felt right. It was the perfect amount to establish the beautiful cosmic synchronicity instinct told her was necessary. Before the act of flesh transformation via blade was complete, Thomas flipped the record over to the other side.

Sally had never heard it before, but it seemed like a nice record.

Later, they wrote on the walls with the blood of their victims.

Chapter Eighteen

Meeting the Gang/Trial by Fire

It was late afternoon by the time Casey followed the old Impala down the little dirt road that led to the rental house Echo owned. She had never spent much time at this place during their time together and this was only the second time he had ever been here. The one other time he had helped her haul away some worthless old furniture abandoned by some renters who’d abruptly packed up and left without proper notice.

Two other cars were parked on the gravel driveway in front of the house, a sun-bleached 80’s Camaro with Florida plates and Echo’s Lexus. The Camaro had a large outline of a Playboy bunny on the rear window. A sticker on the bumper advertised something called “The Booty Boutique”, which showed a silhouette of a shapely, long-legged woman next to the name. No way that was anything but a strip joint, albeit one with a more colorful name than the norm.

After parking behind the Impala, he got out of his car, removed his sunglasses and hooked them over the collar of his shirt. He squinted at the house as the Impala’s driver’s side door creaked open and Echo emerged into the slowly fading sunlight. “Wow. I’d almost forgotten what a nice place this is.”

Echo snorted as she hip-checked the door shut. “It’s a dump, but it’s been our base of operations for a while.”

There was a wry twist to Casey’s mouth. “Base of operations? What are you, some kind of elite squad of stripper commandos?”

A fleeting smile touched the corners of Echo’s mouth. “I told you to watch the wiseass bullshit. You need to take that seriously. My friends may not look it, but they are hardcore killers. If they get the feeling you’re disrespecting them at all, you are fucked.”

“Duly noted.”

Echo frowned. “I mean it, Casey. Please mind your mouth in there.”

Casey forced the last remaining traces of levity from his expression, which was harder to manage than it should have been. It wasn’t that he didn’t take her warnings seriously. He knew well enough by now to heed Echo’s words when she was in no-bullshit mode. But something about being on her good side again—even if only tentatively—brought out the smiles and wisecracks. And somehow it didn’t matter that she had been beating him and threatening his life only a few hours ago. Every time he looked into her eyes all he could think about was how badly he had fucked up with her and how lucky he was to have even the remotest chance of winning her back again.

“I hear you, Echo, I promise. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Do better than that. Your life depends on it.” She jerked her head toward the house. “Come on, let’s get on with it.”

Casey followed her up the steps to the porch, where she unlocked the front door after a quick flip through her keys. Inside there were cobwebs in the corners and the hardwood floor was dusty. Some wooden crates were lined up against a wall adjacent to a hallway. But what really grabbed his attention was the heavy machine gun fastened to a tripod mount. The big gun sat atop a metal cart with rollers in the middle of the living room. Ammunition belts were piled next to it. Its presence in this setting was incongruous and disconcerting. A weapon like that belonged on a desert battlefield somewhere on the other side of the world, not in some unassuming little house in the southern United States. It was another indication Echo and her friends were into some dangerous and shady things.

Echo noted his dumbfounded expression and shrugged.

A rickety wooden table was the sole piece of furniture in the kitchen. The beat-up old thing looked like something Echo and her pals had scrounged up from a dump somewhere and maybe they had. Some metal folding chairs were arrayed around the table. There was an enormous pile of cocaine in the middle of the table. As they entered the kitchen, a blonde woman scraped some of the coke away from the pile with the edge of a credit card and started cutting lines. Casey couldn’t help doing a double-take when he saw the blonde. She was so stupidly hot it nearly melted his brain.

The blonde glanced up at him and smirked. “So this is the infamous Casey? He looks like he wants to fuck me.”

Echo grunted. “Why should you be different from anyone else?” She snagged a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam from the table and pressed it into Casey’s hands. “Here. Drink up. And stop gawping.”

Casey didn’t hesitate to take her advice. The way the blonde was watching him made him feel light-headed. He would have to watch himself where she was concerned. He was a strong-willed guy in a lot of ways, but history had proven again and again how that didn’t necessarily apply where gorgeous women were concerned. Falling victim to that weakness again under these circumstances just couldn’t happen.

A long-legged woman with an abundance of lush, dark hair sat in a chair opposite the blonde. She was gorgeous too, though perhaps just a shade shy of being the kind of earth-shattering bombshell the blonde was. And that was no knock against her. In any other room full of beautiful women, your eyes would go immediately to her and stay there. Like Echo, the blonde and the raven-haired beauty had a distracting number of tattoos. Also like Echo, they evidently both preferred to wear as little as possible.

Casey’s brain started to melt again.

He took a few medicinal slugs of whiskey to counteract the effect.

Echo waved a hand at the blonde. “This is Dez.” She then gestured at the leggy brunette. “And this is Lana.”

Casey tipped the whiskey bottle at them. “Girls. Good to meet you. So…what’s with the giant gun of doom out there?” He jerked his chin toward the living room. “Expecting a Taliban invasion?”

Dez shook her head. “That’s privileged information, Casey. Our business ain’t your business, at least not yet. Now sit down and do some fucking cocaine with me.”

Casey shot a troubled look at Echo. “Look, I appreciate the hospitality, but cocaine just isn’t my thing. Hell, that goes for drugs in general. My sister—”

Echo nudged him hard with an elbow. “Just shut up and do it.”

“But—”

Another, harder nudge. And a look to match. “You’re doing it.”

Casey pulled out a chair and sat next to Dez. He set the whiskey bottle on the table.  “I guess if Echo says I have to do this, I don’t have a choice.”

Dez reached out and touched one of the tender spots on his face. “Yeah. I can see she put you in your place.” The pad of her thumb lightly rubbed the still-raw gash. “From what I hear, it’s the least you fucking deserved.”

Casey held his breath.

He couldn’t help it—her touch made his dick twitch.

But then her hand came away from his face and she bent her head toward the table to snort up a thick line of powder. Her head popped right back up and she stared into a middle distance with a slack expression for a moment. Then she cackled like a madwoman and leered at Casey. “Your turn.”

She passed him the clipped straw she’d used to snort the coke.

And then she put a hand on his knee. Echo made a sound of annoyance, but she said nothing. Casey’s dick twitched again. In a deliberate effort to negate the physical reaction, he focused his attention on the obscene amount of cocaine in the center of the table. It looked like a small snow drift. He knew an eight-ball of coke went for between two and three hundred dollars locally, depending on source and quality. An eight-ball was just 3.5 grams. So right now he was looking at many thousands of dollars of coke, perhaps tens of thousands. The realization raised a number of troubling questions. Then again, he already knew Echo and her friends were murderers. Drug-trafficking, guns or whatever else they were into sort of paled compared to that.

Dez squeezed his knee. “Hit that shit.”

Casey shook his head. “What?”

Dez shifted in her chair and put her feet in his lap. Echo made a louder sound of irritation, but again said nothing. “What’s with the drooling idiot look? Didn’t know Echo had a thing for retards.”

Casey glanced down at her feet, which were crossed at the ankles. They were perfectly shaped feminine feet. The nails were painted red. He had a momentary impulse to take a big toe into his mouth and suck on it.

He looked at her face and swallowed hard. “I, uh…”

Echo groaned. “For fuck’s sake, Casey, she’s just messing with you. Dez is a lesbian.”

“I’m maybe ninety-percent dyke, Casey.” Dez laughed. “But the other ten percent of me wouldn’t mind taking you for a test drive.”

Echo glared at her. “Not cool, Dez. You know he’s mine. Cut the shit.”

Dez kept her eyes on Casey. “He’s mine if I want him.”

“No. He isn’t.” Casey could hear the tension in Echo’s voice. She was fighting hard to hold back her anger and not go ballistic. “Take your feet off his lap. Now.”

Dez looked at her. “Maybe I’ll fight you for him. Who do you think would win?”

Though her tone was playful, Casey detected a hint of something more malicious under the surface. And if he could discern it, Echo sure as hell wasn’t missing it. This was an interesting and unsettling development. The bond these women shared was maybe beginning to fray a bit around the edges. This disturbed him for reasons beyond the current moment of confrontation, mostly because it indicated Echo’s faith in their ability to help him with his sister wasn’t founded on anything much.

Echo sighed and adopted a slightly more obsequious tone. “Dez…please take your feet off my boyfriend’s balls.”

“Oh? So he’s your boyfriend again, is he?” Dez glanced at Lana. “Hey, who was that chick we were talking to last night? Black hair. Bangs. Pale skin. Very pretty. Said something about wanting to blow out the brains of her scumbag ex. You remember that? Who was that chick?”

Lana shrugged and took a drink from a bottle of beer that was wet with little beads of condensation. “Maybe I recall something like that. But relationships are complicated. People change their minds about the people they’re banging all the time.”

Dez nodded. “But it’s a hell of a leap to go from wanting to blow a motherfucker away to suddenly reconciling. Am I wrong?”

Another shrug from Lana. “It’s like I said. These things are complicated.”

Dez slid her feet out of Casey’s lap and sat up straight. “Whatever.” She cut a look at Echo. “Chill, bitch. It’s like you said, I’m just messing with him. You know that. Why so uptight?”

Casey could see the tension drain from Echo’s features as she let out a breath. “I’m just tired. A lot of intense shit happened this afternoon. We need to talk about that thing I was telling you about.”

“You mean about his sister?”

“Yeah.”

Dez nodded. “Right. We’ll get to that. But first things first.” She slugged Casey in the shoulder. “You’re not getting out of this.” There was a gun at the edge of the table. She picked it up and aimed it at his chest. “Now snort up or I’ll do what Echo was too softhearted and sentimental to do. You’ve got five seconds.”

Casey’s aversion to drugs yielded to pragmatism. He bent to the table and snorted half the line Dez had cut for him with the credit card. A quick glance her way told him that wasn’t good enough, so he finished the line. “There. Could you please not point that at me? It’s making me nervous.”

“One more line.”

“Oh, come on.”

“One more.” She cocked the hammer on the gun for dramatic effect. “Or I put a bullet through your heart.”

Casey sighed and made no effort to hide his frustration.

But he did the second line.

And just as he was finishing it, he heard a soft sound of suffering issuing from somewhere else in the house. “What was that?”

Dez’s smile was all patently false innocence. “What was what?”

The sound came again.

Casey knew Dez wouldn’t give anything away—she was a world class bitch who enjoyed playing mind games far too much for that—so he shifted his focus to the other girls. Lana looked at him evenly when his gaze shifted in her direction. She took another swallow of beer and said nothing. Echo’s expression was slightly more troubled, but she also opted to remain silent for the moment.

He pushed the chair back and got up from the table when he heard the sound a third time. Someone in another part of the house was whimpering in a way that suggested intense discomfort and/or pain. There was a familiar quality to the sound, one he’d heard before in hospitals and hospices. It was an expression of distress unique to the dying.

Casey walked out of the kitchen and into the dusty living room, where he stopped for a moment and listened. The girls were close behind him. The next whimper was followed by a pitiful fit of muffled crying.

There was a hallway on the opposite side of the living room. Casey directed a quick glance at Echo before starting in that direction. Her mouth was a tight line of tension. It was clear she wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of him locating the source of the cries. It wasn’t an expression of shame, not exactly, just apprehension.

The girls followed him down the hallway until he stopped at a closed door on the left. The door had been decorated with markers of various bright colors. Written in large block letters were the words FUN ZONE!!! Surrounding the words were various crude renderings of people being executed via guillotine, hangman’s noose and a bullet to the head.

Casey looked at Dez. “Your work, I guess.”

“It was a team effort.”

Lana said, “We were tripping balls that night.”

Casey grimaced. “Lovely.”

He opened the door and went inside.

A bruised and bloodied young man sat bound to a chair. The girls had used a combination of duct tape and electrical cords to secure him firmly to it. His clothes were in filthy, blood-stained tatters. His shirt was so shredded it barely clung to his body. Through the many rents in the fabric, Casey could see countless raw and oozing wounds. Some looked infected, which suggested he had been held hostage a significant amount of time, weeks or longer. The stench arising from his soiled clothes supported this theory. Nails had been driven through his knees and through the tops of his bare feet.

The man was awake as they entered the room. His eyes pleaded with Casey as he came closer and bent down to look at him more closely. There was something wrong with his tongue, something that made closing his mouth difficult and rendered speech impossible. It was hugely bloated and gray. Casey suspected a failed attempt at excision. The bloated wedge of infected flesh looked like a dead thing living inside his mouth. The splintered remains of his teeth made the sight even more stomach-churning. Someone had bashed them out with a hammer. There were bloody tooth fragments all over the floor in front of the chair.

He turned away from the poor bastard in the chair. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on here? Why have you been torturing this guy?”

Dez smiled. “Because it’s fun.” She looked at Echo, her expression expectant and domineering. Casey had a sudden insight. This chick was a bully. She had probably been pushing Echo around from day one. He wouldn’t have believed anyone could do that to her, but the truth was obvious. “Isn’t that right, Echo?”

Echo looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

Dez looked at Casey. “There you go. Anything else you want to know?”

Casey didn’t have the first clue what to do about the guy in the chair. Dez still had the gun she had pointed at him in the kitchen. She wasn’t pointing it at him now, but that didn’t really matter. Even if she didn’t have the gun, it would still be the three of them against him. When it came down to it, he knew Echo would be on their side in any kind of struggle. There might be some dysfunction here, but they were a gang, a tightly knit unit. He could see from Echo’s expression that nothing about their captive’s condition shocked or disgusted her. They had done things like this many times. She had told him in a general way about the murders, but minus visual proof of what that meant there had been a kind of disconnect from the reality of it.

That had changed.

Again, though, pragmatism had to rule the day. This guy was fucking doomed. It sucked, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he took any kind of action other than simply accepting that, he would be fucking doomed too.

Casey looked Dez in the eye and shook his head. “No. There’s nothing else I need to know.”

“Good.”

Dez pulled a slim object from a pocket of her tight denim cutoffs and tossed it to him. It landed on the hardwood floor with a clatter. He glanced down and saw a small folding knife at his feet. A spring-button on the side indicated it was a switchblade.

He looked at Dez.

She smiled. “Pick it up.”

He did as he was told. What other choice did he have?

“Wonderful. Now press the little button on the side and stick that blade in Micah’s neck.”

Casey stared at Dez. He didn’t press the button. “What?”

She raised the gun and pointed it at him. “Do it or you don’t leave this room alive.”

Casey believed her. He glanced at Echo in desperate hope of some sign of solace, but there was nothing there. Just a hard, resolute mask. Maybe she wasn’t thrilled about him being forced into this situation, but she knew there was no way out of it.

His gaze settled on Dez again. “I’ll do it. I know I’ve got no choice.”

“That’s right. You don’t.” Her expression softened some, but Casey figured that was just more manipulation on her part. “But here’s the thing. I know you think you’re being made to do something terrible for no reason, but that’s not true. Consider this an initiation. If Echo is serious about taking you back, I’ll have to respect that, but not until you prove yourself to us. Do this thing and you’ll be one of us, a part of our family. And as family, we’ll do whatever we can to help your sister.”

Casey studied her face. She wasn’t smirking and there were no obvious signs of deception. With someone like Dez, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He had no clue whether her offer to help was sincere.

In the end, it boiled down to making a leap of faith.

A hugely fucked-up leap of faith, but it was all he had.

He turned away from the women and approached Micah, who started shaking and whimpering louder than ever. His shining eyes looked up at Casey. They were open wide and devoid of hope. All he wanted now was deliverance from this suffering. Casey didn’t need to read his mind to know that. He was afraid to die, but who wasn’t?

Casey pressed the button and the blade popped open.

He mouthed two words: I’m sorry.

And then he plunged the knife deep into Micah’s neck.

Chapter Nineteen

De Rais Ranch

Six days after the shootout on 2nd Avenue

The raid everyone had been expecting finally happened. Thanks to his security team’s police connection, John Wayne de Rais was warned of it a full day in advance. It was more than enough time to craft a façade of harmlessness. There was nothing to be done about the bodies buried out in the woods, but de Rais was confident the graves would go undiscovered for now. The corpses were buried deep in areas beyond the borders of his property. By the time they eventually were exhumed, it would be too late to matter.

The law arrived in force early in the morning to serve the search warrant. The Order offered no resistance whatsoever, despite the brusque demeanor of the lead investigator on the scene. They had prepared for this and knew what was expected of them. There would be no repeat of the Waco standoff at the de Rais compound. The top cop’s frustration mounted throughout the course of the search. He had expected to find large caches of illegal weapons and narcotics. All he did find was a modest assortment of legally acquired handguns and hunting rifles. Excuses were manufactured to confiscate these along with several computers from the big house. A handful of Order followers were busted for possession of small amounts of weed and other substances. All the serious weaponry had been temporarily moved to another location, as had the hard drives of any computers containing genuinely sensitive information.

The search went on for several tedious hours, but John Wayne never became visibly irritated. He politely answered every question asked of him and even made occasional suggestions about where the jackbooted thugs might search for hidden contraband, which only further stoked the lead investigator’s ire.

The man was under a lot of pressure. The city was still screaming for a resolution to the mystery of the 2nd Avenue shooter. And now, mere days later, a rising country star and her boyfriend had been slaughtered in spectacularly grisly fashion in an upscale Nashville neighborhood. Melanie Montgomery’s killers had written on the walls of her home with her blood, things about revolution and a cleansing rain of blood. Most of the grislier aspects of the crime had been withheld by investigators, but news of the scrawled messages leaked to the press. This rattled an already spooked public and led to intense speculation about a possible link to the Order.

Which was all to the good.

John wanted people scared. He also welcomed the suspicion. He reveled in the idea of all those lips flapping to no effect. After years of writing him off as a harmless flake, the local power structure now believed he was anything but harmless and had set in motion plans to dismantle his organization. Of course they were fully capable of doing just that. John harbored no illusions to the contrary. But his enemies were hampered by the need to follow certain processes that would take time. And while the wheels of justice were just beginning their slow, methodical grind where he was concerned, he was already prepared to implement his endgame.

The latest visit to his doctor confirmed his suspicions regarding the cause of his crippling headaches and other symptoms. He was terminal. At best he had months left to live. The diagnosis did not surprise him and he received it with stoicism. He had no reason to fear death because he knew what was happening to him was a sign from God. His illness would be a catalyst for the great change he’d preached about for so long.

The actualization of an idea birthed as a sham was a strange and wonderful thing. It felt good to know his true legacy would be something so much more meaningful than an unparalleled ability to scam gullible sheep out of their money. It was a chance at redemption he suspected had been a part of God’s grand scheme all along.

He was God’s agent on earth.

The time of the great cleansing was at hand.

Keely was whisked away to another location ahead of the raid. She knew the raid was happening, but not much regarding the actual cause for it. Her Order minders refused to shed any light on the subject when she queried them about it. After a while, she gave up asking them questions and spent the bulk of the day silently watching a lot of boring crap on TV in a depressingly bland motel room.

Now that the police were gone, she had been returned to solitary confinement in her room at the big house. The guard who had shadowed her those first few days after John extended the inner circle invitation—the blond thug named Boyd—had gone missing soon after she was coerced into recording that hateful video message to Casey. She strongly suspected she would not see Boyd again. He was part of a team dispatched to deliver the video message and “deal with” Casey. She knew this because a smug Susan Wagner told her about it. But the men never returned from their mission and Susan—no longer smug at all—refused to answer her questions about what happened.

But Keely could make the obvious guess. The men weren’t coming back because they were dead—because Casey had killed them.

Or, whatever, some other calamity had befallen them. But knowing her brother had somehow eluded mutilation and/or execution both relieved her and filled her with a grudging admiration for the meddling son of a bitch. He was a resourceful motherfucker and anyone who underestimated him did so at their own risk.

The door opened and Susan Wagner came into the room. Keely was sitting at the little table by the window, a dog-eared old paperback novel open in her hands. She glanced up from the book and caught a glimpse of the slender, dark-haired new security guy before he pulled the door shut.

She gave Susan a wary look. “What do you want?”

Susan crossed the room and sat on the edge of the table. “I need some information.”

“What kind of information?”

Susan snatched the thick old paperback from Keely and smacked her across the face with it. It wasn’t a hard blow. The impact of the book against her cheek startled her more than it hurt.

Keely gaped at Susan. “What the fuck?”

Susan dropped the book and seized Keely by an arm, jerking her roughly out of the chair. Keely cried out in surprise as Susan flung her across the room. She cried out again when she crashed into a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. She tumbled to the floor and Susan fell atop her, straddling her and pinning her in place.

The door opened and the slender security guy poked his head in. “Everything all right in here?”

Susan glared at him. “Get out.”

The security guy retreated.

Susan clamped a hand around Keely’s throat and leaned in close. “We need to find your brother. Where else can we look for him?”

Keely tried to say something, but the pressure around her throat made anything other than a pained wheeze impossible.

Susan relaxed her grip some. “Answer me, whore. Where is he?”

Keely sucked in a deep breath before answering. “You get off on getting rough with me, don’t you? You’re probably wet right now.”

Susan smiled. “You’re not wrong. And by the way, I can do whatever I want to you now. John Wayne won’t be intervening. He’s not himself lately, I’m afraid.”

Keely frowned. “What does that mean?”

Susan flipped long blonde locks out of her eyes. “He’s sick. Only people like me who’ve known him forever would pick up on it, but it won’t be long before he can’t hide it from the rest of the sheep. I’ll be running things here soon and I want your brother dead before that happens. Help me find him and I’ll keep you in the inner circle when I take over.”

Keely tried to make her expression look thoughtful. “What about this ‘cleansing’ thing I keep hearing about? The revolution?”

Susan grimaced. “John’s illness has him believing his own bullshit. When he’s gone, we’ll shift our focus back to what’s really important—scamming people out of their fucking money.”

Now Keely tried her best to convey sincerity. “I like the sound of that, especially if you let me in on it.”

“So you’re a greedy little bitch in addition to being a whore.” Susan laughed and relaxed her grip on Keely’s throat. “But I can respect that. And who knows? If you play your cards right, you could wind up helping me run this thing. You can start by giving up your brother. Tell me where he is.”

“I can only make guesses.”

“Then start guessing.”

Keely sighed. “Please let me up first. This is really fucking uncomfortable.”

Susan let go of Keely’s throat and climbed off her.

Keely got to her feet and climbed onto the bed, stretching out across the luxurious mattress with an exaggerated groan. “That’s better.”

Susan frowned. “What are you doing?”

Keely pouted. “You hurt me. You play too rough.”

Susan did exactly what Keely had hoped she would do—she climbed up on the bed and stretched out next to her. She smiled and put a hand on Keely’s hip. “I can be gentle too, if you like it better that way.”

Keely smiled as she began to roll toward her. “You know what? Let’s keep things rough.”

The item stashed beneath the pillow was something she had found during an exhaustive search of her room’s nooks and crannies. It was in a drawer beneath a pile of fabric scraps. The room had been swept for removal of anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon prior to her installation in it, but it was easy to see how this had been overlooked.

The overhead light glinted on the slim pair of stainless steel sewing scissors as Keely’s hand came out from beneath the pillow. Susan’s eyes opened wide, shock registering as she watched Keely raise the scissors high overhead. Keely slapped a hand over Susan’s mouth before she could scream and brought the scissors down as hard as she could. The sharp end slammed into her throat, punching through the flesh with astonishing ease. Blood erupted from the hole as Keely pulled the scissors out and brought them down again, punching a second hole in Susan’s throat.

Susan tried to roll away from her, but it was too late for that.

Keeping one hand clamped over her former tormentor’s mouth, she climbed on top of her and easily held her in place. She leaned close and stared into Susan’s terrified eyes. This bitch had made her life hell and she was getting what she deserved. Keely maintained eye contact with her as she shifted her grip on the scissors and jabbed them into her side several times. She did it slowly, gingerly, easing the scissors in and out as she savored Susan’s terror. Her hands were slippery with gore by the time the light went out in Susan’s eyes.

She sat up and stared at the dead woman beneath her.

Panic set in after a few moments.

Killing Susan was something she had fantasized about for weeks, but now that it had actually happened, the reality of the situation slammed home. She had just murdered one of the top-ranking members of John’s organization. There was no taking this back. And there was no way in hell John would ever forgive her for doing this.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. What do I do now? What do I fucking do now!?

She gasped and whipped her head around as the door to the room came open. She expected to see the slender security guy aiming a gun at her.

Instead she saw John Wayne.

He peered at her in a glassy-eyed, confused way. “Susan? What…have you done to that girl?”

Keely started to say something, some kneejerk, ridiculous denial, but she closed her mouth.

Wait. Hold on.

She frowned. “What did you just call me?”

John Wayne smiled. “Your name, of course.”

Keely’s heart was slamming away in her chest.

My God…he thinks I’m Susan Wagner.

She remembered what Susan had said about John’s deteriorating condition. She hadn’t believed it until this moment. Still, it was possible the reprieve would be very short-lived. His confusion might give way to a moment of clarity. And if that happened and he understood what she had done to his old friend…

Kill him. Kill him now.

She was scooting toward the edge of the bed when the slender security guy finally entered the room. His eyes got big when he got a look at the bloody mess she had made of Susan Wagner. They got even bigger when he focused on the blood-stained scissors clutched in her hands.

He fumbled for his gun.

John Wayne snatched the weapon from the man’s holster before he could get a grip on it. Confused the man might be, but his reflexes were still ace. The security dude could only gape in dumbfounded, uncomprehending terror as the boss put the barrel of the gun against his forehead and squeezed the trigger.

A spray of blood leaped from the back of the security guy’s head.

He fell over dead and Keely let out a big breath.

Holy motherfucking shit…

John Wayne looked at her. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’ve just learned Claude was a police informant. I know you’re not really Susan, by the way, though I admit to a moment of confusion.” John looked around at the bodies and shook his head. “It shouldn’t surprise you to know I have listening devices in every room of this house and cameras in a lot of them. This room has both. I watched you kill my friend.”

Keely swallowed a lump in her throat. “You knew what was happening in here the whole time and did nothing to help her?”

John Wayne nodded. “I heard what she said about her plans for the Order after my demise. Her greed saddened me. She was a traitor to the cause, thus I cannot mourn her. I need to know who has what it takes to stand beside me during the last days, Keely. Some of what she said is true. I’m a walking dead man. But death is a transition, not an end.”

Keely tried to smile. “I’ve always believed in you, John Wayne.”

John’s features took on a coldly calculating cast. “Tell me something, Keely. Will I be able to count on you now that the cleansing has begun? Will you be one of my chosen few?”

Keely nodded. “Yes. I’ll be whatever you need, faithful and true until the end.”

John smiled. “We already know where your brother is.”

Keely tensed. “You do? But Susan—”

“Knew only what I wanted her to know.”

“But how did you find him?”

“It was not difficult. A private investigator tracked him down easily enough by looking into known associates. He will no longer be a problem very soon. Which means the final and most important phase of our destiny can begin.”

“That being this ‘cleansing’ business you keep talking about?”

“The cleansing is underway. But we have our own roles yet to play, you and I. A time of great sacrifice is ahead of us, Keely. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

Actually, no. Because fuck that shit.

But Keely went to him and kissed him lustfully on the mouth. “Of course I’m ready. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

John moaned softly as she reached for the snap of his jeans.

So far as you know…

Chapter Twenty

Home Base Echo

Six days after the shootout on 2nd Avenue

The area behind Echo’s hideaway house in Rutherford County was too large for Casey to think of as a “yard” in the traditional sense. It was more of a small field that happened to be immediately adjacent to the rear of the property. The area was banded by a dense stand of tall trees that kept the rest of civilization hidden from view.

As he strolled with Echo in a directionless way around the field, Casey felt a deep gratitude for the privacy it afforded them now. A mistrustful Dez had hardly let him out of her sight since his arrival. She told him she was just being cautious and that it was nothing personal, but Casey suspected the real reason for her ongoing animosity was her general dislike of men. He was intruding where he wasn’t welcome and was tainting the special bond the three of them had formed.

Today was the first time he had been allowed to leave the house. The outing earned Dez’s reluctant approval only after yet another heated argument with Echo. Casey had a hunch the only reason Dez yielded to Echo’s demands was that she sensed she risked causing a permanent rift in the group by carrying the argument any further.

He glanced up at the clear sky overhead, squinting against the bright sunlight. “Nice day out.”

“Yeah.”

“Nice being out of that fucking house too.”

Echo squeezed his hand. “You have to try harder to get along with Dez.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my friend.”

Casey grunted. “Some friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “She’s manipulative as hell, for one thing. And the way she bosses you and Lana around bugs…well, I don’t get that at all. Are you afraid of her?”

Echo frowned. “You just don’t know her like I do. She’s my friend. My good friend. But she has control issues that have to do with shit that happened to her when she was younger. Being in charge makes her feel safe.”

Casey shook his head. “You’re just making excuses for the way she walks all over you.”

Echo glared at him. “Bullshit, Casey. I’ll stand up to her when I think it really matters.”

Casey planted his feet and stopped Echo in her tracks. He pulled at her hand, turning her toward him. “I want to talk about that guy she had me kill.”

Echo’s face hardened at the mention of Micah. It was a warning look, but there was a note of defensiveness in the expression too. “No.”

“That was some real horror show shit.”

Echo’s expression became a full-on glower. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

“I’m sorry, baby, but I’m gonna lose my shit completely if I can’t talk about this. I need to understand.” He put a hand against her cheek, smiling at the way the little intimacy made her melt noticeably. “I’m not condemning you. I’ve been around you and your friends long enough to have a feel for the dynamics of the situation. I figure Dez goaded you into this murder business by playing on your anger at me. You met her the same day you caught me with Ella, right?”

Casey already knew this, but it was important to carefully lead Echo down a path that would put her own actions in the best possible light while at the same time painting a far less flattering picture of Dez.

Echo chewed on her bottom lip a moment before nodding. “Yeah.”

Casey nodded. “So she saw you were vulnerable and took advantage of that. She probably even exaggerated some of the shit she’d been through to make you sympathize with her. Am I wrong?”

A troubled look clouded Echo’s features. “No. At least…not entirely.”

Casey sighed. “She came along at exactly the right time with exactly the right story. She played you and manipulated you into killing that first dude with her. Once that was done, you were on the hook. Look, I get that you’re not totally innocent in this. I know you’ve done terrible things. Those are your own words. Again, I’m not condemning, just saying how it is. All the sick shit that happened to Micah, that poor bastard…that isn’t you, Echo. I know it’s not.”

A single tear rolled slowly down her cheek as she averted her gaze. “But that’s the part you don’t get. That is me.”

Casey shook his head. “I don’t believe that. You’re not a monster. Not really. Not deep down where it counts. That fucking bitch kept right on manipulating you and steering you down darker and darker paths. Tell me when I start to get any of this wrong.” He waited a beat, but Echo said nothing. “And she’s worked hard to keep you off balance with all the drugs and booze. The really terrible stuff has to be easier to deal with when you’re fucked up all the time, right?”

Echo’s chest hitched. More tears streamed down her cheeks. “Casey…”

He softened his tone, knowing he had struck a nerve. “I know you think it’s too late to turn away from this path, but it isn’t. You haven’t been able to see it because of all the insanity around you, but you’re free, Echo. You can do anything you want. Be any kind of person you want. You don’t have to live this kind of life. You and I could slip away tonight. Take one of the cars and drive somewhere far away. You’d never have to see Dez again and we could have a normal life…” He lifted his hand to touch her cheek again. “…together.”

She sniffled. “If only that were possible.”

“But it is possible. Don’t you see that?” He was trying hard not to sound exasperated, but it wasn’t easy. “All it takes is making up our mind to do it and then fucking doing it.”

Echo frowned. “But what about Keely? You’ve spent so much energy trying to rescue her. Could you really just walk away from that?”

Casey sighed. “You can’t rescue a person who doesn’t want to be rescued. It’s taken me a long time to accept that, but I think I finally have.”

“What about the video message? You said you thought it was made under duress.”

Casey shrugged. “Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really fucking know. But I do know she’s resisted all my efforts to pry her out of that crazy motherfucker’s clutches. Keely’s made her choices and it’s time I left her to them.”

Echo’s expression turned thoughtful. She glanced at the house, then at the dirt driveway beyond, which they could just glimpse from their current vantage point. She had a strange look on her face when she looked at Casey again. “Do you really think we could do it? Slip away without Dez being able to stop us?”

Casey was astonished. He heard real hope in her voice. And he had somehow inspired it with his impassioned words. So this was it. Letting her down wasn’t an option. Not anymore. “Baby, I know we can. Now that you’re with me again, I feel like anything is possible.”

Echo wiped away the last of her drying tears. She was smiling again, but this time it was with a confident glint in her eyes. “How do we do it? Get away, I mean.”

Though she hadn’t stated it explicitly, Casey knew she had decided to trust him. They were going away together. After everything that had happened between them, the development was nothing short of momentous. He was unable to restrain the big smile that spread across his face.

“Well—”

The smile froze at the sound of an approaching engine. He let go of Echo’s hand and took a few quick steps to his right for a less obstructed view of the front yard. A black box truck with no markings came roaring up the driveway and stopped with a loud squelching of brakes in front of the house. Black-clad men hopped out of the truck’s cab and ran to the back of the vehicle, where they hauled open the roll-up door and stepped back as more men in black swarmed out of the cargo compartment. These men wore body armor and black helmets with visors. They were armed with what looked like semi-automatic rifles.

Echo came to Casey’s side and gasped. “Holy shit.”

Casey nodded.

That about summed it up.

Some of the men fanned out and began to circle the house from the sides, while others disappeared from view as they approached the porch. Casey tugged at Echo’s arm and took a step back. “The woods,” he said, when she shot him a panicked glance. “It’s our only chance.”

“But my friends—”

He tugged at her arm again. “We can’t help them. Now, Echo, or we’re fucked.”

The truth was they were already fucked. They were unarmed and exposed, sitting ducks out here in the middle of a damn field. The line of trees that hadn’t seemed so distant moments ago now looked a million miles away. Fucked though they may be, Casey wasn’t about to stand around and be shot down like some dumb animal.

A burst of automatic gunfire crushed the last of Echo’s already faltering resistance. She turned with Casey and ran for the trees.

Lana did a line of coke and chased it with a slug of whiskey. One of the things she liked best about cocaine was how it allowed you to keep drinking for a long time without passing out. Her use of the drug had increased significantly since hooking up with Dez and Echo, who were easily the most avid coke fiends she’d ever met.

Luckily for all of them, Big Ted was more than happy to supply as much powder as they could handle. He had even gotten them into trafficking the stuff a while back, but that was only one facet of his partnership with the girls. They did some gun-running for him too. And why not? They did a lot of traveling anyway. It only made sense to become part of his network and make some good extra money doing what really amounted to pretty simple work.

The actual transactions didn’t take a lot of time—though they could, on very rare occasions, turn a little hairy—which left them with lots of downtime to fill between deliveries. On occasion they made appearances at some of the many strip clubs Big Ted had a stake in, which were primarily concentrated across the southern states. They billed themselves as “Tha Suicide Bombz” and performed an elaborate routine of their own devising. The act was heavy on kink and lesbian innuendo. Guns were often involved. The Neanderthals in the crowd went wild when one of the girls would go to her knees and perform mock fellatio on the barrel of a 9mm.

But even in the South there were areas where the strip joints were operated by people outside of Big Ted’s sphere of influence, Vixens in Louisiana being one example. That debacle was just the latest and most dire sign that things were starting to spin a little out of control. It was fun to run around doing a bunch of crazy shit, but lately they were all becoming more careless than usual. If they didn’t tighten their shit up soon, it’d only be a matter of time before it caught up to them.

Lana did another line of coke and kicked back in her chair to stare at Dez, who was staring out a window at the big back yard.

“Still watching them?”

Dez nodded but didn’t turn her head Lana’s way. “I wish I knew what they were saying. Conversation looks intense. Echo’s crying. Damn. That girl’s our weak link.” She shot a smirking glance at Lana. “Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

Lana didn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought.” Dez braced her forearms on the windowsill and returned her attention to the back yard. “I’ll tell you what else—I think that self-righteous asshole is talking shit about us right now. I bet you a million fucking dollars he is.”

Lana grunted. “I won’t take that bet. And do you really expect anything else?”

Dez shook her head. “No. And that’s exactly why I think we need to kill that motherfucker before he can go full Yoko Ono on us and break up the band.”

Lana’s brow creased as she took a thoughtful sip of whiskey. “I don’t disagree, but you’d have to be real careful about it and have a rock solid excuse, otherwise Echo’s gonna hate you and break up the band anyway.”

Dez sighed. “I know. It’s a goddamn conundrum.”

Lana didn’t feel any real hatred for Casey. He seemed okay, even kind of cool. He was hot too, with those chiseled good looks and that long blond hair that made him look like a Viking or romance paperback model. Given the chance, she would probably fuck the guy. But her attraction to him didn’t outweigh her desire to keep the gang together. Dez and Echo were the wild and crazy older sisters she’d never had. This year of traveling around with them and having a bunch of bloody adventures had been by far the best time of her life and she did not want it to end any time soon.

She made a contemplative sound. “I could seduce him.”

Dez glanced at her, arching an eyebrow. “Oh?” Her tone was noncommittal, but curious. “And how do you aim to do that? He’s obviously in love with Echo.”

Lana nodded, smiling. “Yeah, but he’s also a dirty little horndog. You can see it in his eyes every time he steals a look at one of us.”

Dez grunted. “Yeah. That dude lives for pussy. You can smell it on him.”

“Shit, this will be easy. I’ll fuck him and somehow convince Echo he forced himself on me. Maybe she’s forgiven him for fucking that other bitch behind her back, but I bet raping one of her best friends will be a whole other story.”

Dez opened her mouth to reply.

And that was when they heard the sound of the approaching engine. It sounded like a diesel engine, which was something they heard out here now and then, but Big Ted would have alerted them to the impending arrival of a shipment of product.

Lana followed Dez out to the living room, where they each moved to a different window and peered through slats in the blinds at the black box truck that pulled up. It looked nothing like the trucks Big Ted used to ship guns and cocaine, which always bore the markings of one of his companies. They both knew something serious was happening as soon as the men in black hopped out of the cab and ran to the back of the truck.

They leapt into action almost instantaneously. Lana got one of the windows open while Dez rolled the heavy M2 machine gun into position. Some of the mercenaries approached the porch while others fanned out around the sides of the house.

The poor bastards noticed the M2 too late.

Dez opened up on them, taking most of them out of the game in the first few seconds of the conflict.

Casey risked a glance over his shoulder as he continued flat-out toward the woods. He saw one of the black-clad men stagger and fall over, shot down by either Dez or Lana firing through a side window. Another of his comrades took multiple hits and did a morbid little death-jig before falling over too. It was a good thing Echo’s friends were armed to the teeth. They might not be able to hold back the greater force, but at least they were taking some of the bastards out first.

A few of the mercenaries—or whatever the hell they were—had reached the back of the house. One of them crouched beneath a window and removed a grenade from his equipment belt. That would probably put an end to the girls’ valiant fight. Though he didn’t care much for Dez, this was unfortunate, if only because the elimination of resistance would also remove whatever infinitesimally small sliver of hope he and Echo had of getting away.

Two more mercenaries peeled away from the group at the back of the house and started chugging across the field toward them. The one in the lead abruptly stopped and put his rifle’s stock against his shoulder, aiming the weapon at them.

Casey turned his head toward the line of trees.

It was less than twenty yards away.

An explosion from the direction of the house made him flinch at just the wrong moment. His right foot twisted beneath him the next time it came down and then he was falling, powerless in any way to impede his descent. He hit the ground with a heavy thud, a side of his face smacking against a patch of dry dirt. Someone was screaming at him. The sound was right in his ear. Echo. He felt her hands on his shoulders, pulling at him, urging him back to his feet. And though he knew there was now no chance at all of escape thanks to his ill-timed tumble, he braced his hands on the ground and pushed himself upright, still determined not to surrender so long as he had breath left in him.

Though he knew he should immediately resume the doomed escape attempt, he couldn’t help another glance back at the house.

He did a double-take as he noted some curious things.

The man who had been primed to toss a grenade through the back window was dead on the ground, parts of his corpse scattered about in bloody pieces. And the men who had been pursuing them across the field had stopped in their tracks and had turned back toward the house, staring at it in evident confusion.

What the fuck?

A small cloud of black smoke was rising from somewhere inside the house, which wasn’t surprising. It was an old house with a lot of old, dry wood inside it, the kind of place just looking for an excuse to go up in flames.

Casey stared at the back of the man who had been leading the charge across the field. His rifle was at his side now, pointed at the ground. There was no conscious decision to do what happened next. It was just animal instinct, a reflexive urge to take down a predator while his guard was down. Echo screamed at him as he took off running again, this time straight toward the unsuspecting mercenary. Casey gritted his teeth and willed her to shut up lest she alert his prey too soon.

But this concern soon proved irrelevant.

Casey realized the sound of constant gunfire had ceased an instant before another sound displaced it—the roar of a diesel engine. He came to an abrupt halt and stared in open-mouthed disbelief as the black box truck—now riddled with gaping holes courtesy of the high caliber bullets spewed by the M2 heavy machine gun—appeared around a side of the house and came charging across the field.

Casey couldn’t help it—he laughed.

These chicks are just not to be fucked with, period.

Lana leaned out the passenger side window and sprayed bullets at the remaining mercenaries with a Mac-10 machine gun pistol. Two of them were cut down immediately, while the last one—the guy who’d taken aim at them moments earlier—turned tail and made a run for the woods. Unfortunately for him, Casey was right in his path. He tackled the man and drove him to the ground before he could react.

Casey ripped the rifle from the man’s hands and jammed its barrel up under his chin. He responded with whimpers and barely intelligible pleas for his life. The truck came to a stop about ten feet away. Doors popped open. Lana and Dez approached with savage sneers twisting their pretty faces.

Dez put her hands on her hips and glared at Casey. “The fuck you waiting for? Shoot that piece of shit.”

“I need to know something first.” He pushed the rifle’s barrel against the man’s chin, eliciting another mewling whimper. “Did de Rais send you? Was all this to get me?”

More whimpering.

Dez rolled her eyes. “This is a waste of time. If you’re not gonna kill him, I will.”

Echo joined the group arrayed around the prone mercenary. “Casey’s right. We need to know who sent these fuckers.”

Dez snorted. “Like it fucking matters.”

Casey ignored this exchange, focusing on the whimpering mercenary. “Listen up. I’m making a one-time offer. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you live. Word of honor. Tell me straight-up. Did John Wayne de Rais send you here?”

The man got his mewling under control and pushed up his visor. He looked Casey in the eye and said, “John Wayne sent us. He’ll send a backup team if he doesn’t hear from us within the hour.”

Casey squeezed the rifle’s trigger.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Dez laughed. “You lying son of a bitch. Word of honor, my ass.”

Casey grunted. “There’s no room for honor in a thing like this.”

Dez gave him an appraising look. “There may be hope for you, after all.”

Echo cleared her throat. “We should probably figure out our next move before that backup team shows up.”

Dez looked at Lana. “What do you think? Time to get Big Ted in on this?”

Lana stared off into a middle distance for a moment. Then she sighed and shrugged. “Yeah. Even if he doesn’t give a shit about this de Rais motherfucker, he’s not gonna be happy about having his distribution point compromised. I’ll call him soon as we get clear of this place.”

Dez nodded. “True that. The fuck are we waiting for? Let’s hit the road.”

No one voiced opposition to this idea.

In another few minutes they were speeding away from the backwoods conflagration.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Runaways

Things were falling apart at the de Rais compound. John Wayne’s mental confusion was accelerating by the hour, rendering the entire organization essentially rudderless much of the time. The situation was verging on chaos less than a day after Keely’s impulsive decision to murder Susan Wagner.

A peek outside her door the next afternoon revealed an empty hallway. The guard who had replaced the supposed police informant was nowhere in sight. Keely stood in the open doorway and listened to people yelling at each other somewhere else in the house. Though she couldn’t make out what was being said, she detected an unmistakable sense of panic. Moments later, she heard the sound of glass shattering, followed by footsteps pounding up the stairs. Keely cringed backward a step and peeked around the doorjamb.

A heavyset woman came stomping down the hallway. Her eyes flicked toward Keely’s partially hidden face for an instant. The woman’s gaze slid away from her a millisecond later as she entered a room about halfway down the hallway and slammed the door shut. Keely didn’t recognize the woman, but her relatively stylish attire—as well as her mere presence in the big house—indicated she was someone in the inner circle.

A fat man appeared at the end of the hallway a few seconds later. He was wearing cargo shorts and a garish Hawaiian shirt. The goofy bastard looked like he should be at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Keely had seen him before. She was pretty sure he was the bloated-looking dude she’d seen fiddling with an iPad on the back deck the day Boyd had taken her to meet John Wayne.

He tried to open the door to the room the heavyset woman had entered. The knob wouldn’t turn when he tried it so he banged on the door with the base of a fist. “Laura! Goddammit, let me in! We’ve gotta figure this shit out before it’s too late.”

There was a brief, tense silence.

Then the door to the room quietly snicked open and the big man slipped inside, easing the door shut again once he had disappeared from view.

Keely let out a breath and stepped out into the hallway. She did this without any forethought or even the vaguest inkling what she had in mind. She was several steps down the hallway before she realized she meant to get out of the house and somehow escape the compound.

It was a significant moment in the brief history of her membership in the Order of Wandering Souls. Even as recently as a day ago she had wrestled with ways of rationalizing a continued devotion to the Order. That need to believe in something remained strong within her and making that final call to break completely with something she had invested so much hope in wasn’t easy. But at this stage further attempts at denial of the obvious were impossible.

John Wayne told her some truly disturbing things after fucking her the previous day. The man was nothing less than a madman. What he had in mind for his followers was deranged enough to earn him a place in the top ranks of the world’s most infamous maniacs. How much of this was a product of his deteriorating condition was an open question. According to him, it had been part of his endgame all along, but his declining health was forcing him to implement it sooner than originally planned. Keely wasn’t so sure about that. This “endgame” could be a new thing dreamed up by his fractured mind. At this point even John Wayne himself was too far gone to know the whole truth.

The winding staircase down to the first floor was empty, as was what she could see of the wide foyer beyond. She started down the stairs, listening intently for other voices or approaching footsteps. She knew John Wayne still wanted her confined to her room, thus the presence of the new guard who had been stationed outside her door overnight. His fixation on her remained strong. She was one of his chosen, or so he said, but being one of the chosen apparently didn’t mean he trusted her to stay put left to her own devices. And yet her personal guard—and seemingly everyone else—had disappeared. She was grateful for the lack of human presence, but she couldn’t help seeing it as ominous.

She reached the bottom of the staircase and took a look around the big foyer. The architecture was expensive, with lots of ornate touches and marble tiles on the floor. A sculpted bust of John Wayne sat on a pedestal in a corner. The sculpture was a fine, nearly lifelike piece of work. You could almost believe the real John had been turned to stone and cut in half. It was pretty fucking eerie.

Keely eased the front door open and stepped out onto the long front porch. Her heart lurched at the sight of two armed men lounging against the side of a black Hummer. The men wore black sunglasses and had semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. They were smoking and talking quietly as Keely came outside. Her appearance caused a brief pause in their conversation. They glanced at her with curious expressions and for one supremely terrifying moment she was sure she was about to be marched back to her room.

But they appeared to take no interest in her and soon resumed their conversation. Keely remained where she was another few moments. This was largely because she had difficulty trusting this apparent new freedom to move about the property without an escort. She kept expecting someone to come rushing out of the house and drag her back inside. During those moments, she studied the men lounging against the Hummer while trying to appear uninterested in them. She suspected she wasn’t entirely convincing, but they went right on ignoring her anyway.

She moved to the edge of the porch in an effort to better eavesdrop on their conversation. It still wasn’t easy to pick up on what they were saying, but Keely sensed a pronounced tenseness. And though the clipped snippets she heard made it hard to know for certain, she got the general drift. They were planning to bail on John Wayne and his organization at the earliest opportunity. For Keely, it was additional confirmation that fleeing was absolutely the right move to make.

She started down the steps, taking care not to go too fast lest she rattle the already uptight security or draw the attention of someone who might still be loyal to John. At first blush, this seemed a non-issue. A couple more black Hummers were parked down by the access road that led away from the compound. No one was lounging around outside those vehicles and their tinted windows made it impossible to glimpse any occupants. Keely suspected there were more security personnel inside them, but, for the moment at least, she doubted they were at all concerned with her.

When she reached the ground, she started walking at an unhurried pace, still trying her best not to look like someone trying to escape. She turned right at the side of the house and kept going, the Hummers and the security guys disappearing from view within seconds. A nervous glance over her shoulder confirmed she wasn’t being followed and she picked up the pace. A flat-out run was still probably a bad idea, but being overly cautious might doom her attempt to get away just as certainly. The situation at the big house was in a serious state of flux and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, completely clueless about what to do next, but sooner or later someone who mattered would note her absence and raise the alarm. Her only hope lay in getting clear of this place before that could happen.

She spotted her destination some one hundred yards up ahead. The big red barn no longer housed horses or bales of hay. Instead it had been pressed into service for another kind of storage. Keely recalled the day she had pledged herself to John Wayne and the Order in a hazy way. She had been high as fuck at the time. No surprise, as she had been high as fuck almost all the time for most of the last several years. One of the requirements of Order membership was surrender of all material possessions. And she remembered seeing one of the ranch hands drive her maroon Toyota into the barn as Susan Wagner led her away from the big house to her assigned cabin.

Giving the car up had been easy. It was symbolic of the end of her old life.

The life she now hoped to reclaim.

She sighed.

Boy, have I been fucking stupid.

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.

The Middle Eastern transplant hardly spoke as they interacted, keeping his utterances to the absolute minimum necessary to effect the transaction. This was fine with Dez, who never enjoyed conversing with foreigners or putting up with their ridiculous accents. He told her he needed a credit card to put on file until they checked out. The only credit cards she had belonged to dead people and were due to be discarded. She got past this requirement by opening her purse and throwing a big wad of cash at him. His eyes got big behind his thick-lensed glasses when she told him he could keep whatever was left over when they checked out in the morning (not that they had any intention of actually going through the checkout process).

Dez grabbed the room key from the clerk’s hands before he could argue with her and staggered back out of the lobby. A few moments later she had the car parked in front of room 119 and roused her friends long enough to get into the room. Lana was the first to come around. Echo was problematic. She never did become fully conscious, but she stirred just enough to allow her friends to drag her out of the Impala and into the room.

They left a handcuffed and gagged Micah in the trunk, never even thinking about him.

The room’s walls were stained and the carpet was shredded and filthy. There were two sloppily made twin beds and a boxy old Zenith television that didn’t work. No one much cared. Lana took Echo by an arm and curled up with her on the bed closest to the door. The spooning duo was asleep within seconds. Dez felt a stirring of resentment as she watched them occasionally shift their bodies, instinctually getting more comfortable as they fell into an even deeper state of sleep. She usually had her choice of one or the other as a cuddle partner, but this time she had been left in the cold. She considered dragging Lana away from Echo and into the other bed with her. Maybe she wouldn’t be happy about being rudely awakened, but in the end she would let Dez have her way. Just like she always did.

And like Echo mostly always did.

Dez had another cute term she liked nearly as much as “Dezsexual”. This one was “Dezocracy”. It was her name for the rules their little gang lived by, which boiled down to being sure to damn well do whatever Dez said. Her friends mostly wanted the same things she did, so this didn’t cause much strife. More and more lately, though, Echo was displaying troubling signs of independent thought. At some point she would have to be taught a lesson. Maybe even a permanent one.

Dez yawned and felt her eyes turn bleary. She was too tired for this shit. It was time to let her resentment go and get that long stretch of sleep. So she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the other bed, yawning again as she doubled the pillow up beneath her head and turned onto her side.

When she opened her eyes again, it was dark outside and the room was shrouded in gloom. A digital clock sat atop the dresser next to the non-functioning television. The glowing digits told her a little more than three hours had elapsed. She already felt better than she had in days. That burnt-to-a-crispy-little-cinder feeling was gone. She had an impulse to get up and fetch a bottle of whiskey from the Impala, but she knew she would be better off closing her eyes and allowing sleep to take her again. Her depleted energy levels had only been partially restored. Getting fully recharged while she had the chance was the smart way to go.

She banished the temptation of whiskey and turned onto her side again, her eyes fluttering as she stared at the dim shape of the other bed. Her eyes had adjusted some to the darkness and she realized there was something off about what she was seeing. At first she attributed it to a trick of the faint moonlight filtering through the closed window blinds, but a longer look told her something was definitely amiss.

She sat up and turned on one of the wall-mounted lamps between the beds.

She frowned.

Her eyes had not been deceived. There had been no trick of the light.

Echo was alone in the other bed, still sound asleep.

Dez got up and took a look around the little room. Lana wasn’t hiding out in the grungy bathroom or anywhere else, which could only mean she had slipped away while her friends were asleep. This didn’t raise any real alarms. One or more of them would often go out while the others slept. Dez suspected Lana woke up feeling restless after a couple hours sleep, much like she had, except that Lana had actually acted on the impulse to get out of bed. She was probably outside smoking or taking a walk around the parking lot. The possibility rejuvenated her own impulse to get up and this time she didn’t suppress it. She walked out of the room and into crisp, cool night air.

She stood on the sidewalk and frowned.

Huh.

The Impala was gone.

She was still not at all alarmed. This was another thing that happened from time to time. It was a sometimes unavoidable consequence of only taking one car when they traveled. Still, it was disappointing. She hadn’t fully realized it until she was standing out there staring at the empty parking space in front of their room, but a part of her had relished the prospect of some private time with Lana.

After staring out at the mostly empty and litter-strewn parking lot for a few more moments, she went back into the room and stood over the bed where Echo was still so deeply asleep she looked comatose. She was so out of it she probably hadn’t noticed Lana disengaging herself from her and slipping away.

Dez sat next to Echo on the edge of the bed. She put a hand on her shoulder and pressed down, causing her to groan softly as she rolled onto her back. Her breathing remained regular and she failed to stir at all. For a while, Dez just sat there admiring the fine contours of Echo’s pretty face. Despite how annoying she could sometimes be lately, there was no denying how lovely she was.

She slipped a hand down the front of Echo’s shorts and let her fingers slide over her shaved pussy. A naughty smile played at the corners of her mouth as she considered tugging the shorts off to give her an oral wake up call. She slipped a finger inside Echo and wiggled it around a little. A frown replaced her smile as Echo again failed to stir.

She removed her hand from Echo’s shorts and felt a fresh stirring of resentment—until an entirely different kind of impulse struck her.

A check of the parking lot through the blind slats confirmed Lana was still nowhere in the vicinity. Dez hurried back across the room, grabbed the pillow from her bed and pressed it down over Echo’s face. There was a barely audible groan from beneath the pillow, but Echo remained oblivious. Dez’s nipples stiffened in excitement as she pressed the pillow down harder.

Her plan was simple. Hold the pillow down until Echo stopped breathing. She was so far gone there was no chance she would wake up before that could happen. Then, once it was done, she would turn the light out and crawl back into the other bed, feigning sleep until Lana returned and discovered Echo dead. Getting away with this would be so easy. Lana would never suspect her of killing their sister-in-blood. She had seen for herself the pitiful state Echo was in. An accidental death would be an easy sell. The only drag would be having to fake a believable amount of grief.

And, okay, maybe it would be a little sad, at least at first. She didn’t hate Echo. They’d had a lot of fun times together. But this Three Musketeers routine was getting old. Echo was becoming too assertive within the group, whereas Lana remained pliant and even sort of in awe of her. In light of that, going on as a duo for a while might be the best option all around.

Dez flinched as headlights appeared through the blinds and lit up the room. She pulled the pillow away from Echo’s face and tossed it back to the other bed. Echo’s features were completely slack for a moment and Dez held her breath as she watched her, but then she snorted and pulled in another deep breath.

Fuck!

She got up and moved away from the bed as she heard keys rattle outside. The door opened and Lana stumbled into the room with a lopsided grin on her face. Her eyes were bleary and her lipstick was smudged. She had been out drinking somewhere.

“Hey, Dez. What are you doing up?”

Dez smirked. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Lana kicked the door shut and dropped her purse on the table. “Woke and couldn’t sleep, that’s all. Decided to go out.”

“I see.”

“Are you mad?” Lana’s brow furrowed. “You sound mad.”

Dez crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”

Lana wobbled her way across the room, a smile forming on her face as she neared Dez. “Am I about to be punished? I’m sorry for being bad.” Her voice took on an exaggeratedly girlish, singsong tone. “I promise I won’t do it again.”

Dez pointed at the empty bed. “Take off your clothes and lie down.”

Lana smiled and complied with the command. This was nothing new. They had enacted similar “punishment” scenarios many times. Dez glanced at Echo while Lana undressed, watching her inhale and exhale several times.

And she thought, You got lucky.

This time.

She turned out the light and crawled into bed with Lana.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Man with the Plan

The man who was supposedly the answer to all their problems was more than an hour late arriving at the designated location, which was room 2035 at the Renaissance, a luxury hotel in downtown Nashville. Casey’s nerves were on edge well ahead of the delay for a couple of reasons. One was the proximity of the hotel to where he had made his botched attempt to grab his sister off the street. Innocent people had died that day as a direct result of his actions, including a couple of tourists who’d had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He felt bad about that and wished he could go back in time and undo the whole damn thing.

The girls were well aware of what had gone down a couple streets over, so they had a degree of insight into why he was so jittery. But there was another element contributing to his unease, something he hadn’t shared with any of them, including Echo.

He had spent a night in the Renaissance once before after meeting an elegantly dressed businesswoman in a 2nd Avenue bar. Her name was Carolyn. She was in town for a conference and was looking to take a walk on the wild side before heading home to Toronto. Casey was exactly the kind of handsome bad boy she wanted. It had been a reasonably fun evening, but in the end it hadn’t been much more than that. They were the proverbial passing ships in the night, very different people from radically different worlds. Casey might never have thought of that night again but for one thing—room 2035 was the exact same room Carolyn had been staying in that night.

Casey knew coincidences of that magnitude sometimes occurred. He had once happened across a list of some crazy ones online. It was mind-blowing stuff, including some incidents that were connected to major moments in history and others that involved ordinary people like himself. He spent a lot of time reminding himself of this while they lounged about in room 2035 and waited for “Big” Ted Wilkinson to show up.

Echo’s behavior wasn’t helping his nerves any. She was pacing almost ceaselessly, wearing a path in the carpet as she walked from one end of the room to the other and back again over and over. Now and then she would pause and drop into a chair, but these pauses were very brief, never lasting more than a minute before she popped back up and resumed pacing.

Casey couldn’t tell whether this was mere restlessness or a sign that she felt as anxious as he did. He suspected a combination. At least the other girls were taking things in stride. Lana was taking a bath. Dez was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds with a remote control in her hand. She had just used the remote to order a pay-per-view all-girl pornographic movie, something she had been threatening for hours. It wasn’t long before the sounds of cheesy soundtrack music and orgasmic moans were issuing from the Hi-Def television’s speakers.

Dez leaned back against the headboard and reached inside her panties.

She looked at Casey. “You don’t mind if I masturbate.”

It sounded more like a statement than a question. “Uh…”

Echo groaned. “She’s fucking with you again. She thinks it’s funny.”

Dez laughed. “It is funny.”

Echo had finally stopped pacing again. Casey joined her at the big window that afforded guests an impressive view of downtown from the twentieth-floor room. Echo folded her arms beneath her breasts and pressed her forehead against the window. “I’ve been here before, you know.”

The statement was so unexpected it almost made Casey gasp. “What? In this room?”

If she says yes, fuck it, that’s it, I’m getting myself the hell out of this spooky bullshit.

She laughed, turning her head to look at him. “No. Shit, how freaky would that be?”

He forced a little laugh of his own. “Pretty…freaky…”

She shook her head. “I just meant that I’ve been in the Renaissance before. This was before you and I became a thing. Some high-roller guy from out of town came to the club and threw a lot of cash around. He was hot too, and most of those guys aren’t. So I let him drag me back here and have his way with me.”

“I hope he made it worth your while.”

Echo smirked. “You better believe it.”

Casey turned away from the view of the city and looked Echo full in the face. “So…how much do we know about this Wilkinson character? Can we really trust him?”

The door to the bathroom opened and Lana emerged from the steamy room wrapped in a white towel. Her hair was wet and her skin looked fresh and clean. “You can trust Big Ted. Guaranteed.”

She looked nothing less than absolutely scrumptious. There was something extra appealing about a woman fresh out of the bath. Casey was grateful for her opening conversational salvo. It meant he could look at her and pretend to be feeling something other than total lust. “I’m sorry, but all I’ve got is your word for that. I don’t know this Ted guy from a hole in the wall. For all I know, he’s setting us up somehow.”

All three women gave him a genuinely baffled look.

Lana narrowed her eyes at him. “Setting us up for what?”

“Well…” Casey raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He didn’t actually have an answer for this. “I don’t know. It could be anything.”

Lana shot a dubious glance at Echo before shaking her head and looking Casey in the eye again. “Do you know how paranoid that sounds?”

Casey fought the urge to fidget. They were all still looking at him like he had lost his mind. “Maybe it is a little paranoid, but can you blame me? There’s a psychopathic cult leader out there pissed off enough to send a squad of mercenaries to kill us. Our supposed savior is late to the fucking rendezvous point. And about that, why would a big deal guy like this meet us personally? Why not send a representative? You’d think he’d want to keep out of it in case everything goes to hell.”

Lana went to a nightstand and took a cell phone out of her purse. She brought it over to Casey, turning it to show him the screen.

The display read: Flight delayed. Hold tight. C ya soon, darlin’.

Lana arched an eyebrow. “There. That make you feel any better?”

Casey sighed. “Whatever. It still doesn’t explain why our situation merits a face-to-face meeting with this tycoon, or crime kingpin, or whatever the hell he is.”

Lana tugged at the fold of the towel above her chest and swept it away from her body. There was a moment of near total silence, during which the only sounds in the room were the moans from the all-girl porn movie.

Then Echo laughed. “I think that answers your question.”

Casey cleared his throat a little too loudly. “Uh…yeah…I guess it does.”

Lana smirked as she wrapped the towel around her again. “Teddy’s been sweet on me ever since I killed my boyfriend.”

Casey nodded. “I see.”

The brief glimpse of Lana’s gloriously nude form had taken the wind out of his argument, leaving him befuddled and mush-brained. Though Echo was his girl and he knew he should banish any further lustful thoughts lest they take root and turn dangerous, he couldn’t help comparing their bodies. Echo had the more classically beautiful face and a set of killer curves. Lana also had banging curves, but there were subtle differences—the size and shape of her breasts, the flatness of her belly and the more pronounced swell of her hips—that made her seem even more attractive fully revealed. The image wasn’t one he’d be getting out of his head any time soon.

Dez laughed. “He totally wants to fuck you now. Look at his face. He looks sort of like a caveman.”

She made what Casey took to be caveman noises.

He realized his mouth was hanging open. He closed it.

Lana smiled. “That true, Casey? You want to fuck me?”

Echo made a disgusted noise. “Of course he does. I must be crazy giving him a second chance.”

Casey gave her the most solemn look he could summon. “The only girl I want to fuck is you.”

Echo rolled her eyes. “Bullshit.” She smiled. “But it’s okay. I know you’re trying.”

Dez snorted. “Ah, ain’t they sweet?” She pointed an index finger at her open mouth. “Gag me.”

A strident knock at the door made everyone jump. This was followed by the bellow of a boisterous male voice from the hallway. “Y’all open up this door before I kick it down!”

Casey tensed and edged toward the dresser to his right, eyeing the Glock that lay atop it.

But then Lana squealed in delight and made a beeline for the door. “Teddy Bear!”

She opened the door and leapt into the arms of a tall man in a suit, nearly dislodging the cowboy hat from his head. “Big” Ted Wilkinson grinned around the stogie lodged in a corner of his mouth and wrapped his arms around her, carrying her into the room and swinging her around like a kid, eliciting more delighted squeals.

An attractive woman and a man in a dark suit followed them into the room. The man in the dark suit closed the door and stood perfectly erect in front of it, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses and his hands folded at his waist. The telltale bulge of a shoulder holster indicated the man was Ted’s personal bodyguard.

Casey didn’t care about him.

The woman, however, was another matter.

She had a graceful and elegant bearing, her attire, jewelry and perfect hair communicating a level of class and refinement typically only seen at the upper levels of society. This was the kind of woman you would see on the arm of a senator at a White House gala. Her presence in the company of a guy like Ted Wilkinson—who Casey could already see was the kind of puffed-up redneck big shot with delusions of grandeur he despised—seemed incongruous.

Casey fought an urge to run screaming from the room.

He was officially in Twilight Zone territory here.

This was Carolyn. The Toronto businesswoman he’d had sex with several months ago in this very room. Her hair was different. A little less modern style than he remembered, more like the hair of a Southern senator’s wife, frosted and shaped to eerie perfection.

Casey realized everyone in the room had fallen silent. He looked around at their faces. They were all staring at him. This shit was becoming a trend, people looking at him like he was a fucking ape-man let loose in the world of humans.

He scowled. “What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?”

Ted took the stogie out of his mouth. “Son, it might help if you’d stop giving my baby sister the stink eye.”

“What?”

Sister!? Holy Jesus.

Ted grinned and draped an arm around Carolyn’s shoulders. “I know Cora’s cute as a button, but I’m sure you’re not her type. No offense.”

Casey said, “Um…none taken.”

Cora?

Cora gave him a look that betrayed not even the slightest hint of recognition. “You’ll have to pardon Ted. He can be uncouth.”

Her accent almost sent Casey back into stupefied dumbass mode. It was all Southern honey and twang. There hadn’t been the slightest hint of that the last time he’d seen her. It seemed clear now her previous “Toronto businesswoman” persona had been nothing more than a performance.

This was all just too fucking weird.

The only obvious solution—at least for now—was to pretend it wasn’t happening at all. She wasn’t the only one here who could play make believe.

Ted extracted a cigar from an inner pocket of his blazer, proffering it to Casey with a raised eyebrow. “No hard feelings, son. Stogie?”

“I think this place has a no-smoking policy.”

Ted chuckled and clapped Casey on the shoulder. “That horseshit only applies to the peons. This is my room, son. I do what I damn well please in it.”

“Your room?”

Ted lit his cigar with a Zippo, then passed the lighter to Casey. “Do a lot of business in your city. I have this room on permanent reserve.”

Casey nodded in a noncommittal way as he lit up. That explained at least a little of the weirdness. “So no one else can stay in it? Like, ever?”

“Well, Cora comes up here now and then. She’s a big fan of the Grand Ole Opry, so she never misses a chance to tag along any time I come to your fair city.”

Ted glanced at the television, taking note of the pornographic movie playing on its screen for the first time. Dez had hit the mute button the moment Lana went running to the door. “Enjoying some quality cinematic entertainment, I see.”

Casey nodded at Dez . “Her doing.”

Ted smirked. “No surprise at all.” He shot Dez a wink and she blew a kiss back. “Now then. Down to business. I did a bit of looking into this John Wayne de Rais character after Lana gave me the lowdown on what went down yesterday. Son, you’re gonna have a hard time swallowing this bullshit because it’s a doozy, but turns out I have a history with the son of a bitch. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of a believer in coincidence, especially ones this big.”

Casey tried hard to keep his gaze from going to Cora. “Yeah. That’s a…pretty big coincidence.”

Ted guffawed. “You have a hell of a knack for understatement. This is the kind of shit that was meant to be. There’s no other explanation for it. This sorry sack of shit ripped me off for a good chunk of change back when I was just getting started and promptly disappeared, never to be seen again. I’ve done well for myself since then, but I ain’t ever forgotten what that old boy did to me. And that, my friend, is why I am here in the flesh to see to this matter in a hands-on way. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”

Casey nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can.”

“Of course you appreciate it. This is personal for both of us, after all, albeit for very different reasons.” Ted exhaled smoke and gave Casey a flinty-eyed look that was equal measures determination and good old-fashioned Southern cussedness. “So you ready to hear what I’ve got in mind for Mr. So-Called de Rais?”

Casey was starting to warm to Big Ted. “Fuck yeah, I do.”

“The way I understand it, de Rais has a significant amount of security in place at his compound, all of it deployed in a way that makes getting in or out by land nigh impossible.” He grinned. “Which is why we’re going in by helicopter.”

Casey had been in the process of bringing the cigar to his mouth again. His hand froze just short of his mouth. “Helicopter? We can do that?”

Ted laughed. “Of course we can! Not only are we going in by helicopter, we’re going in with enough ordnance to blast this fool off the planet. Here’s how I see it going down. We hit those sons of bitches hard and fast, knock their teeth out before they even know what’s happening. We whack de Rais and anyone else dumb enough to get in our way, grab your sister and fly our happy asses back out of there, returning in time for everyone to change and have a big steak dinner on me at Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse later tonight.”

Casey frowned. “We’re doing this tonight?”

Ted showed him another of his good ol’ boy grins. “Got any other plans for the evening?”

Casey shook his head. “No. Just not what I expected. I’m all for it. The sooner the better.”

Ted’s grin got even bigger. “Good man, good man.” He shifted his attention to the girls. “Anyone else got any objections to commencing Operation Blow the Shit Out of the Weirdoes tonight?”

There were no objections.

Ted dug a plastic baggie full of powder out of a hip pocket. “How about this? Any objections to—”

The girls sprang into action, nearly bowling Ted over in their haste to get to the cocaine. Dez got to it first, earning angry snarls from her friends. But the anger was instantly forgotten as she dumped the coke out on the table by the window and started chopping lines for all of them.

Loud snorting sounds filled the room.

Big Ted winked at Casey. “Good times, good times.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Cleansing

The guy ahead of him in line at the ATM was beginning to piss off Jeremy Stewart. He was taking forever to complete his transaction or check his balance or whatever it was the greasy asshole was doing. Navigating the onscreen menus of the typical ATM was so intuitive a monkey could do it. Hell, a monkey would probably have an easier time of it than this guy. Every ATM he’d ever used offered the same limited range of functions. The average person never took more than a couple minutes to do their business, but this guy had been poking at the machine’s buttons for at least five minutes.

Jeremy suspected the guy was some mentally ill homeless person who didn’t actually have an account at this bank. Or any bank, for that matter. He was either high or permanently addled from all the drugs over the course of a long career in substance abuse. It seemed likely he was confused or hallucinating. His unwashed, stringy hair and the ragged condition of his clothes contributed greatly to this impression.

ATM etiquette dictated that the person next in line should maintain a distance of several feet from the person currently using it. This was so the person accessing their account could feel secure about doing so in public. Anyone who got too close immediately labeled themselves as suspicious, thus prompting the ATM user to more conscientiously block the view of the keypad to prevent PIN number theft.

Under normal circumstances, Jeremy scrupulously observed this unwritten but universal rule. He was a polite guy in general and was always careful not to step on anyone else’s toes unnecessarily. He also had no appetite for instigating trouble of any sort. But even he had a limit to his patience. Though he was considerate and courteous when called for, he was not a pushover.

“Hey,” he called out after clearing his throat. “You up there. You mind speeding it along?” He tapped the glass face of the expensive watch strapped to his left wrist. “There are other people in line, you know.”

The guy at the ATM mumbled something unintelligible and kept his gaze focused on the screen. He continued to poke buttons in an apparently haphazard way.

Jeremy heaved an exasperated breath and glanced over his shoulder, hoping for some gesture of support from the others in line, but the only person behind him now was a tall man whose dress and appearance was disquietingly similar to that of the ATM abuser. He had a lot of bushy hair and an unruly beard. A crudely fashioned homemade necklace encircled his thick neck. His clothes had the typical look of handmade hippie apparel, the sort he often saw those annoying cult kids wearing when they were out recruiting around town.

The man met Jeremy’s gaze and smiled, but the smile didn’t look friendly.

Jeremy glanced in the direction of the bank’s entrance, thinking maybe he should go inside and report these guys to security. The only thing keeping him from doing just that was the time factor. He was in a hurry. He was due to meet the usual after-work gang for happy hour at South Street, a hip restaurant with a fun open-air area. Tonight he was especially anxious to get there because the cute new girl from the office was joining them for the first time and he had already developed a terminal crush on her. She was the whole reason he’d stopped off at the ATM in the first place. He hoped to impress her by throwing some cash around, but now he was thinking it was time to give up on that idea. Trying to be flashy with his cash was a cheap move, anyway. He would think of some other way to ingratiate himself to her.

He turned away from the ATM to head back to his car, but the tall homeless guy put himself in his path. “Need to ask you a question.”

Jeremy sighed. “Sorry, pal, I don’t have any money for you.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your ATM-hogging friend over there saw to that.”

The tall guy smiled in that unfriendly way again. “Don’t need money. Currency only means anything if you let it.”

Jeremy laughed. “Right. Groovy. I can dig it. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

The tall guy blocked Jeremy’s path again when he tried to go around him. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

“What?”

“Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

Jeremy’s face screwed up in confusion. “What the hell does that mean? Actually, never mind. Just get out of my way.”

The tall man started laughing.

This whole thing was creeping Jeremy out. He’d heard a lot of wild rumors about these Order of Wandering Souls people. Some were even saying they’d had something to do with what happened to Melanie Montgomery. Jeremy didn’t know if he believed that. It was probably just the usual kind of fear-mongering. Still, the sooner he could get away from these guys, the happier he would be. And if this beanpole in front of him tried blocking his way again, he was getting knocked over.

He was tensing himself to do just that when he detected the presence of someone just behind him. The tall guy’s eyes flicked in that direction an instant before Jeremy caught a whiff of foul-smelling breath. Before he could turn around or attempt to run, something sharp punched into his back, penetrating deep. The person wielding the knife yanked it out and jabbed it back in again. A blinding surge of pain hit Jeremy, instantly crippling him and causing him to stagger into the arms of the tall man, who held him upright while the blade punched into him from behind again and again.

The tall man held him close and patted the back of his head in a reassuring way. “It’s okay, brother. Take the gift. Join us in the light.”

Jeremy had no clue what he was talking about. All he could do was sob against the tall man’s shoulder while his partner ripped the life out of him with his knife.

A group of about a half-dozen young men and women walked into the lobby of a downtown law firm mere minutes before the end of regular business hours. A glance from the receptionist—who took one look at the motley bunch and immediately knew they were trouble—prompted the lone security officer on duty to intercept them.

The firm was small, but it had been around a long time and had a solid reputation. Some of the city’s powerful old-timers were among its list of clients. The bigger firms had offices in skyscrapers and did business with a lot of the younger movers and shakers in the ever-evolving and fast-paced modern economy. Some of the junior attorneys at Lowell & Hyde undoubtedly envied their peers at the bigger firms and aspired to eventually move on to positions there. Even so, most of them were pleased to get their feet wet at the storied old firm. It was good experience and the firm’s reputation meant it would be a solid early entry on their resumes.

A young attorney named Bernard Tate was not among those who felt the appropriate amount of gratitude for getting on with the firm. He had applied at all the bigger firms with no luck, this despite an array of impressive academic accomplishments and passing the bar exam with a stellar score on his first try. Simply put, he felt he was better than Lowell & Hyde. He should be rubbing elbows with other young go-getters in one of the glitzy high-rise offices. More than one veteran attorney had tried to counsel him in the matter, advising patience as well as the need to guard against getting eaten up with inappropriate bitterness. But their wise words fell on deaf ears. Bernard wanted his future now.

The elevator doors dinged open and Bernard stepped out into the lobby at the precise moment the old security guard moved to intercept what looked like members of a rock band and their groupies. He cringed at the sight of them and prepared to scoot around them to the entrance. As usual, he wanted out of the building as fast as possible, but this time it wasn’t just because he loathed being there. He was meeting a particularly attractive client named Brad at a 2nd Avenue bar shortly. And with any luck—

A scream rang out.

The source was the receptionist, Lupita, who was on her feet behind the desk and was scrambling backward as one of the longhairs dove over the desk at her, brandishing a machete. She tripped over her feet and the man with the machete disappeared behind the desk. Bernard was shaking in his loafers as he watched the machete appear above the top of the desk and go up and down several times. The first time it appeared the blade was clean. The next time it was dripping with Lupita’s blood. The security guard had met a similar violent fate seconds earlier when one of the intruders slammed a screwdriver through his temple.

Bernard found he couldn’t move as three of the lunatics went charging past him, piling into the elevator before it could close again. They were all giggling like maniacal, misbehaving schoolchildren. And they were all armed with various forms of edged weaponry. Bernard could only assume they intended to unleash a similar degree of mayhem in the offices upstairs. The image of old Mr. Lowell cringing beneath the descending blade of an axe almost made him smile.

A pretty girl in sandals and a plain dress approached him. She had a dandelion tucked behind one of her ears and a machete in her right hand. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

“What?”

The machete blade arced toward him.

Bernard’s head went flying across the lobby.

Nathan Hargrove was able to keep it together until his wife started begging the people who had invaded their home to spare the lives of their young son and daughter. Until that moment, he had believed he could reason with these people, perhaps come up with an arrangement that would allow everyone involved to get what they wanted.

People who did things like this were after money, after all, and he had easy access to a significant amount of cash, starting with the hundred-grand rainy day fund he kept locked in his office safe. He was hopeful that amount would be sufficient to send these animals on their way with no harm done. He would happily and without hesitation hand over every penny to save the lives of his wife and children. Though he’d dedicated much of his life to acquiring wealth, it meant nothing to him next to what really mattered. But if it wasn’t enough, the hundred grand was just scratching the surface of what was available to him. He could lay his hands on many times that amount without much difficulty, though obtaining the extra funds would have to wait until the next day. There were a lot of hours remaining between now and the beginning of the next business day, but given the stakes involved, surely these people could find the necessary patience.

That was before he understood exactly how unhinged they were. Nathan’s confidence in his ability to successfully negotiate a way out of the nightmare began to crumble when the invaders started in with their crazy, borderline incoherent ramblings about John Wayne de Rais and his “gift of love”.

Like practically everyone he knew, he had followed the occasional news reports about the so-called Order of Wandering Souls. He had dismissed it as the usual sort of fake religion con a certain segment of society often fell victim to, this time presented as an idealistic revival of the 1960’s peace and love hippie ethos. Most of the ones he’d encountered had that old-school bohemian look to them, right down to the long hair and perpetually stoned expressions.

These three did not fit that mold. Their clean-cut appearances and conservative attire made them resemble Mormon missionaries. It was why he’d opened his door to them in the first place. He had no more interest in their religion than he had in rehashed Summer of Love flakiness, but Mormon kids were harmless.

Except that they weren’t Mormons.

The one called Sally slammed the butt of a gun against the crown of Margaret’s skull, momentarily silencing her pleas as the blow drove her to her knees. Then she leered in Nathan’s direction as she aimed the gun at the back of his wife’s head and squeezed the trigger. Nathan’s heart almost stopped at the sight of the gruesome exit wound that made a shocking mess of his wife’s forehead. A spray of blood and bone fragments decorated the living room coffee table an instant before his wife’s body toppled over.

His children started screaming again. They had been sobbing the whole time, terrified by the invasion of their home and the disruption of their charmed and perfect little world. Their sounds of terror broke Nathan’s heart. Part of why he had worked so hard and become so successful was to create that world for them. They had lived the entirety of their short lives perfectly insulated from harsh reality.

Until now.

The one Sally had called Joshua tackled Benjamin when he tried to run for the front door. He was grinning in perverse delight as he raised a knife high above his head. The unrestrained joy in his expression drove home the brutal, bleak truth of the situation. None of them were getting out of this situation alive. His entire family was doomed. Parental instinct caused him to take a lurching step toward Benjamin, but another part of him now believed it might be best to let it end quickly for all of them. It was the only kind of mercy they could expect.

“Stop!”

Everyone looked at Sally. Joshua’s hand remained frozen high above Benjamin’s prone form, his execution at least temporarily stayed.

The psychotic blonde bitch had his daughter on her knees in front of her. Courtney was shaking uncontrollably and could not stop sobbing. Tears streamed endlessly down her puffy face. There was an ugly welt below her left eye from where Thomas had punched her seconds after the gang swarmed into the house. Seeing her like this stirred his anger, an emotion he’d foolishly tried holding back during that brief period when he imagined he could reason with these monsters.

His hands curled into fists at his sides. “Don’t hurt her.”

Sally wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t kill the son,” she said, addressing Joshua. “Drag him over here. Knock him out if he resists.”

Joshua hauled Benjamin to his feet and dragged him across the room by a slender arm. His son was then made to kneel next to Courtney.

Benjamin’s bottom lip trembled as he made eye contact with his father. “Daddy…”

Tears spilled from Nathan’s eyes as a hideous smile twisted his face. The smile was parental instinct. Basic, helpless. It was meant to reassure, to say that everything would be all right, but it was a lie and it was the lie that made it hideous. Even Benjamin could see the lie. Nathan knew this because the boy started crying harder than ever.

“Look at me, Nathan Hargrove.”

Nathan did as Sally said. He couldn’t bear looking at his son’s face, anyway. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

She smiled brightly. It was awful how wholesome she looked, even moments after committing cold-blooded murder. “What’s happening here is part of the great cleansing. The world must be purged of filth and greedy pigs like you. Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

“What does that even mean?”

She laughed and pointed the gun at the back of Courtney’s head. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Her eyes flicked to a spot somewhere behind him. “Thomas, it’s time to record Mr. Hargrove’s testament of love.”

Thomas moved into view. He had a smart phone in one hand and a hatchet in the other. There were specks of blood on the front of his starched white shirt. He stood next to Sally and aimed the phone at Nathan.

Nathan frowned. “Are you recording a video?”

Sally smiled. “Yes. All you have to do is answer the questions I put to you and accept John Wayne’s gift of love. The video will be posted online as a testament to the great power and beauty of this time of cleansing. If you’re a good boy and perform as required, your beautiful children will be spared today. Are you ready?”

Nathan didn’t believe they would spare his kids. Mercy on any level didn’t fit with the brutality these deranged people—who were barely more than kids themselves—clearly loved dispensing. He was being lied to and used. There was nothing in him that believed anything other than this.

And yet…

“Yes. I’m ready.”

Though he believed doom for them all was certain, he had no choice but to play along. So long as there was the tiniest, most infinitesimal chance Sally was telling the truth, he would obey her every command.

“Are you a filthy, greedy pig who values material possessions and the accumulation of an obscene amount of wealth above all other things?”

Nathan swallowed hard and heaved a breath. “Yes.”

Sally smiled. “Tell me what you are.”

“I’m a filthy, greedy pig.”

“Oink for me.”

His instinct was to rebel against this indignity, but he suppressed it and made the requested sound. Sally’s male cohorts giggled.

Sally put a hand on Courtney’s head. His little girl flinched as the woman who’d murdered her mother began to stroke her hair in an obscene mockery of maternal tenderness. “Isn’t your father funny, Courtney?”

Courtney’s only response was another sob.

Sally grinned. “Next question. Do you believe John Wayne de Rais was sent to this filthy world to save us all?”

Nathan sighed. “Yes.”

“Do you accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”

“Yes.”

“Should everyone else do the same?”

“Yes.”

“Do you accept your death as the just judgment of God?”

“Yes.”

Sally glanced at Thomas. “Stop the recording.”

Thomas pressed a button on the phone’s screen and tucked it away in a rear pocket.

Sally raised her gun again. “Are you a music fan, Nathan?”

He frowned. “What’s this got to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question.”

He lifted his shoulders in an exasperated little shrug. “Sure. I guess. Isn’t everyone?”

Sally smiled. “I sure am. I’m a big fan of the Doors. You ever listen to them? I figure an old guy like you must. Anyway, there’s this book about them called No One Here Gets Out Alive. It’s one of my most favorite books ever. I’ve read it over and over.” And now her smile turned overtly menacing. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

Nathan’s eyes opened wide as her meaning hit home.

He opened his mouth to scream.

Sally fired her gun until it was empty.

At several locations across the city in those early evening hours, many more similar incidents unfolded. All of them occurred in places where the wealthy and privileged lived, dined and did business. Soon the populace was in a froth of panic. The multitude of crime scenes made for a tremendous amount of confusion and chaos for those charged with investigating the incidents and attempting to restore some measure of calm. By the time the city’s leaders could put their heads together and come to the conclusion that it was time to move against John Wayne de Rais and his cult with significantly more force than before, it was too late to matter…

Chapter Twenty-Five

Coming Down Fast

The thing that mattered most to John Wayne de Rais as the last day of his life began to unfold was that all his years of scheming and manipulating others had to mean something bigger in the end than just the pursuit of money. This was why he had devoted so much time to defining his central message as a rejection of the modern world’s obsession with money and material things. In his sermons to the faithful, he railed with tremendous fervor against greed and the tyranny of big business. Once upon a time he’d had to fake that depth of feeling, but no more.

Because now he had at last become the man he was always meant to be. All the superficially “bad” things he’d ever done had served a greater purpose in leading him to this transcendent moment in time. All his former cynicism vanished as the larger purpose behind all the years of madness and deception was finally revealed.

The time had come to send his message out to the world in the most dramatic way possible. The events he had set in motion today would rock the foundations of corrupt western civilization. Even now, as he prepared to take the final steps of his own journey, his emissaries were out there communicating the message and sowing seeds of fear and chaos. Video recordings of the many acts of painful love would soon be appearing in many places online. His own pre-recorded farewell and statement of intent would be uploaded by Jade in the moments following his death.

The world will hear us, he thought as he stared at the closed curtain in the backstage area of the compound’s meeting hall. The time for revolution is ripe. The poor of the world are more desperate than ever. We are the spark that ignites the conflagration that burns the world clean again.

Before today, there had been moments when he wondered whether his increasingly frequent cloudy moments meant he was deluding himself about the rightness of steering the Order down this revolutionary path. Maybe his quest for some kind of larger meaning was nothing more than megalomaniacal selfishness.

Today had put an end to that for good.

For the first time in weeks, he woke up without a crushing headache and free of even the faintest wisp of confusion. He didn’t trust the apparent relief of symptoms, thinking they would reappear soon, but that never happened and he spent the day feeling clear-headed and more mentally fit than he had in ages. John was no fool. He knew well the medical reality facing him. This was nothing more than a blessed respite from suffering. But the temporary lifting of the clouds convinced him he was doing what was righteous and just. The respite was a sign from God, a gift for rallying the faithful to make this great sacrifice.

John smiled.

Time to make history.

He parted the curtain and stepped out onto the stage to applause that was nothing short of ecstatic. The faithful were on their feet, the mass of humanity so dense it all but made the rows of chairs invisible. Some rolled on the floor as if possessed by manic spirits, while many others danced and sang. Their hands were in the air, their feet were stomping and their voices were thunderous enough to raise the rafters.

John walked to the podium at the edge of the stage and stood there beaming out at the rapturous crowd. He didn’t bend his head to the microphone to ask for quiet, choosing to allow them this moment of perfect joy a while longer. The revelry of his faithful further reinforced the rightness of what he was doing. Soon enough, though, the crowd noise leveled out, dimming amidst loud shushing sounds from many in the audience.

When the noise had dropped to an acceptable level, John smiled and put his mouth close to the microphone. “Are you ready to go to heaven tonight?”

The crowd erupted again.

Hundreds of feet stomped the wooden floor.

The building shook.

When the frenzy again began to abate, John looked to a black-clad man at the rear of the building and gave the prearranged signal. The man opened the door to the meeting hall and stepped back as several more men in black entered the building.

The mood in John’s private quarters was tense as the remaining members of his inner circle awaited his return from his final speech to the faithful. Keely’s understanding was that the group once numbered more than a dozen people. Desertions and death had reduced inner circle membership to half that number. If John’s plan played out the way it had been outlined to her, all the remaining inner circle members would be dead within the next hour.

Keely wanted no part of this madness and had said so—loudly—many times. It struck her as grotesquely humorous that her official position in the Order remained “inner circle” despite her attempted escape and the fact that she had never felt like anything other than a prisoner during her brief time in the big house. But it was the way John wanted things, which she took as more proof of his raving insanity.

No one in the room was talking. The couple she had glimpsed in the hallway outside her bedroom prior to her foiled escape attempt—the heavyset man and his female friend—sat on the edge of the large bed, their hands intertwined as they stared at the floor. A security guy in the usual black stood with his back against the door, a semi-automatic rifle clutched in his hands. He steadfastly refused to meet anyone’s gaze. A female couple sat cross-legged opposite each other on the floor, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. One was weeping quietly, but both were smiling. That was the crazy thing to Keely. They were all about to die, but no one was outwardly panicking. They should all be scared witless.

Jade was standing by a window that overlooked the area behind the big house, watching and waiting for John’s inevitable departure from the meeting house.

Keely approached her. “He still in there?”

Jade didn’t look at her. “Yes.”

The terse one-word reply made it clear she wasn’t interested in further conversation. The implicit warning of physical retribution if she dared pursue it was impossible to miss. In normal circumstances, that threat would be enough to still her tongue. But she was facing imminent death anyway, so what did it matter?

“This is ridiculous. You can’t want to die.”

Jade said nothing and kept staring out at the window.

“I don’t get it. You’re young. You’re attractive. You have a fuck of a lot to live for. Throwing all that away over this bullshit is insane.”

Jade looked at her. Her jaw tightened and her nostrils flared, but still she said nothing. She flexed her fingers around the handle of the gun in her right hand, tightening her grip on it. Her rapidly fading patience was as palpable as her anger. It wasn’t out of the question that she would fabricate some excuse to shoot her now rather than waiting for John’s arrival. Already tonight the woman had gunned down two other inner circle members who’d attempted to flee.

But Keely again put her fear aside and pushed ahead. “This is stupid. You’re not going to some celestial paradise when this is over because there’s no such thing. You’re just gonna be fucking dead. For no good reason. For nothing.”

Jade’s face twisted in a snarl as she whipped the back of a hand across Keely’s face. The loud crack made everyone else in the room flinch. The pain made her cry out and stagger away from Jade, who followed her into the middle of the room. She said nothing as she delivered another, even more devastating blow, this one a closed-fist punch to the face that made Keely’s knees buckle. The next punch drove her to the floor.

Keely rolled onto her back and looked up in time to see Jade looming over her. Before she could attempt to scoot away, Jade planted the heavy sole of one of her designer boots against the side of her head, pushing down until her face was pressed against the carpeted floor. “That’s enough out of you.”

Keely whimpered, tried to say something.

Jade’s boot pressed down harder, silencing her. “Enough.” She took her boot off Keely’s face and knelt next to her, pointing the gun at her face. “You know what? I enjoyed playing with you out in the barn. Let’s play some more.” She smiled and put the barrel of the gun under Keely’s chin. “Beg for your life.”

Keely’s heart hammered as she stared into Jade’s pitiless eyes. “What’s the point? You’re just gonna kill me anyway.”

“Probably. But as long as your heart is beating, you’ve got a chance, right? Maybe you’ll even be rescued. It won’t be much longer before the police are all over this place. But you’ll never know because for some reason you decided now was the time to save a little bit of pride.” She nudged Keely’s chin with the barrel. “Beg.”

It infuriated her to think so, but the bitch was right. The chances of salvation were close to zero, but…

As long as my heart’s still beating…

She begged for her life.

Before they departed the Renaissance, Ted Wilkinson arranged for his sister to have a private chat with Casey Miller. This occurred in a bar inside the hotel called the Bridge. Rarely in his life had Casey felt so out of his element than when he walked into the lounge there. Everyone looked as if they had just walked off the set of Mad Men. The atmosphere was elegance and class. There was a lot of muted, civilized-sounding conversation that was entirely bereft of all but the most benign profanity, a disconcerting thing for a guy not accustomed to putting together more than a couple sentences without saying “fuck”.

The men all betrayed the easy confidence that comes with a high level of financial success. They drank martinis and scotch. There wasn’t a single beer bottle in sight. The women were the sleekest and most chicly dressed Casey had ever seen. He didn’t have the first clue how to behave around any of these people.

Fuck this noise, let’s get this over with.

He made his way to the bar and scanned the area for Ted Wilkinson. Ted had invited Casey to the bar because, supposedly, he had a business proposition for him. Also he liked the cut of Casey’s jib (whatever the hell that meant) and wanted to get to know him better. They had a couple hours to kill before heading out, so Casey figured why not?

He knew it had all been bullshit the moment he spotted Cora smiling at him from atop a stool near the far end of the bar. Summoning a fake smile, he approached her and slid onto the empty stool next to her. “What’s this about?”

She smiled and swirled the swizzle stick in her martini glass. “Oh, I think you know.” She raised a finger and a bartender in a bowtie approached them. “A scotch for the gentleman. Rocks.”

Casey frowned as the bartender went off to make the drink. “I don’t drink scotch.”

“You do now.”

“I’d rather have a fucking beer.”

Cora smiled over the rim of her martini glass as she took a small, ladylike sip. “Your preferences don’t matter much. Consider this the beginning of your transformation.”

“My what?”

“Right now you are a caterpillar, lowly in stature and unsophisticated. By the time I’m finished with you, you will be a butterfly.”

Casey scowled. “I ain’t gonna be any fuckin’ butterfly, lady.”

“Mind your mouth.”

Casey began to slide off the stool. “It’s been a trip seeing you again, Cora. Or Carolyn. Or whatever the hell your name really is. I admit it’s a coincidence for the ages, but there’s no reason to make this anything bigger than what it really is. Oh, and tell Ted he can fuck himself for setting me up.”

“Sit down, Casey.”

Casey smirked. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll have Ted call off this foolish rescue expedition.” She took another dainty sip of her drink. “And don’t overestimate his fondness for his tattooed harlot. He loves his sister more and will do whatever I say. So sit down and have your drink.”

Casey stared into her eyes long enough to know she was serious. He sat and reached for the newly arrived glass of scotch. “All right. I’ll play along. For now. What’s the fucking deal here?”

Cora sighed. “I’ll resign myself to doing something about your foul mouth another time. The deal, Casey, is simple. Ever since our night together, I’ve thought of you frequently. I’ve fantasized about you. No one else I’ve been with has ever fucked me quite the way you did. Like a fucking animal.”

“Now who has the foul mouth?”

Cora turned fully toward him and put a hand on his knee. “You’re coming back with me to Florida once this foolishness is over.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Casey laughed. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t heard anything this crazy in…well, ever. “I’m not going to Florida. I have a girlfriend.”

Her laughter had a condescending edge. “What, that tattooed bimbo who was clinging to you in the room?”

“Yes. And her name is Echo.”

“You’re done with that cheap bitch, Casey.” Her gaze bored into him, cold and devoid of empathy. “I’m sure you’ll want to argue further, so I’ll make this simple. Fall in line and do as I say or I’ll have her tortured and killed. While you watch. And then you’ll come to Florida with me anyway.”

Casey gaped at her, unable to talk.

She slid off her stool and continued speaking as she removed a wallet from a tiny handbag and peeled off some bills. “I always get what I want, Casey, and I happen to agree with my brother on the subject of coincidence. Clearly this reunion is a product of fate and I would be a fool to buck fate. I allowed you to slip away once before, but not again.” After dropping the bills on the bar, she kissed him on the cheek and put her mouth close to his ear. “You belong to me now.”

And with that, she walked away from Casey, leaving him alone and stupefied at the bar. He stared at the untouched glass of scotch, the wheels in his head spinning crazily as he desperately sought some way to make sense of what had just transpired. But it was useless. He couldn’t even begin to process it.

Minutes passed.

He glanced at the clock on the wall behind the bar.

Time was running out. They would be heading out soon. There was no way to figure out something this big in a matter of minutes. He could only roll with it for now and hope an acceptable solution presented itself before it was too late.

He slammed the drink and hurried out of the bar.

Dez initially wanted no part of the raid on the cult compound. The idea of suiting up in unsexy body armor and swooping into the place via helicopter as part of some half-assed commando raid struck her as absurd. She had zero interest in getting herself killed trying to save someone she didn’t know and didn’t give a damn about. Wilkinson had put together a team of professional mercenaries—all of them hard-bitten ex-military thugs—who were perfectly capable of executing the raid without assistance from a gang of gorgeous strippers.

That the issue had been up for debate at all both exasperated and infuriated her. Echo wanted to suit up and ride along with the mercenaries because that’s what her guy was doing. Just thinking about Casey made Dez’s blood boil. She understood he was more or less the perfect embodiment of a type that made many women swoon, the rugged but somehow pretty bad boy, with a perpetual shadow of stubble emphasizing the perfect jut of his chiseled jawline. But she didn’t get the appeal of the type at all. She barely understood the appeal of men in general. And it upset her that Echo was willing to put her life on the line to help a man who’d fucked her over severely not so long ago. Had the bitch learned nothing from their year on the road together?

It was true things started to sour some toward the end of that year, but the three of them had shared something special. They were beautiful, strong, ass-kicking, badass women who did what they wanted and took no shit from anyone, especially men. But now Echo was reverting back to square one where the male of the species was concerned. She was making decisions based on her feelings for a man. It was too bad it wasn’t just the three of them anymore. In the past she could have slapped Echo around until she came to her senses, but that wasn’t currently an option.

Perhaps the most galling thing of all was that it was Casey who came up with the alternate solution she found acceptable. She and the other girls would ride up to the compound’s main entrance shortly ahead of the helicopter raid to create a diversion. Given that most of the compound’s security force were men, what diversion could be more effective than a trio of long-legged and scantily dressed gorgeous women? They would exit the Impala at the entrance and do their best to create a commotion, either by pretending to be lost or by demanding to see a friend or family member who’d recently joined the Order of Wandering Souls.

It sounded like an excellent way to contribute to the success of the raid while staying out of the main action. The brilliant part was it actually made a lot of strategic sense. Once suggested, the idea took a lot of the wind out of Echo’s argument and she was soon convinced of the wisdom of Casey’s idea.

So that’s what was happening.

They were on their way out to the compound now and would be there in a matter of minutes. Echo was behind the wheel of the Impala and Lana was slouched down in the shotgun seat with her feet up on the dash. Echo had the radio on, tuned to an oldies station playing “Wild Thing” by the Troggs. She was drumming her thumbs on the steering wheel and bobbing her head as she mouthed the words to the song. Though they were headed into a potentially dangerous situation, the mood in the car was more excited than nervous or frightened. And why not? They had all perpetrated more than their fair share of violence and carnage. Such things didn’t scare them.

Dez raised her voice to sing along with the song, doing her best to pretend her mindset was in alignment with that of her friends. The whole time, though, she was busily imagining ways she might feasibly kill Casey Miller and get away with it.

She looked at the back of Echo’s bobbing head and smiled.

Yes, she thought. Be happy while you can. Because I’m going to make you cry soon.

Hours before the tattooed strippers headed out to the de Rais compound, Cora Wilkinson entered an elevator at the Renaissance hotel and hit the button for the twentieth floor. She put her cell phone to her ear and waited for the number she’d dialed to connect.

Ted Wilkinson answered on the second ring. “Things go how you wanted?”

Cora smiled. “He’s not happy, but I made him understand the consequences of not falling in line.”

Ted made a contemplative noise. “Hmm. And you’re sure this is what you want?”

“Quite sure.”

There was a brief silence from Ted. Cora made out dim voices in the background. Feminine voices. The girls were arguing about something. Hearing them elicited nothing but contempt from Cora. They were low-class trash, nothing more. Soon Casey would wonder what he’d ever seen in such women.

When Ted spoke again, the background voices were dimmer and he was speaking in a lower tone, clearly striving not to be overheard. “And what about the other thing? Is it really necessary?”

“It certainly is.”

Ted sighed. “Even Lana?”

Cora harrumphed. “Even her. I want all those bitches dead. You can always find another cheap floozy to whore around with. There’s no shortage of them at your gentlemen clubs.”

She hit a button to disconnect the call and dropped the phone in her handbag.

A young married couple stared at her with horrified expressions from the other side of the elevator. Cora almost laughed. She had been riled up and had forgotten herself. This was the problem with other people. They were frequently in the way. Investing her tone with her patented brand of savage sophistication, she addressed the young marrieds. “Pretend you did not hear that. I can make you disappear. Also, stop looking at me. I don’t exist.”

The woman clutched at her husband as they both immediately averted their gazes. They scrambled out of the elevator upon arriving at their fourteenth-floor destination. Cora committed that scrap of information to memory and made a mental note to have the couple tracked down by private investigator once this current business was finished.

She pictured them with their throats cut.

The image pleased her.

Full dark had descended by the time John walked out of the meeting hall with one of the last surviving members of his personal security detail. A last glance inside the building before his man closed the door invoked a sense of melancholy while also filling him with pride. But this was not a self-directed pride. He was proud of the immense courage displayed by his faithful. The world would not soon forget what they had done tonight. As for himself, he had merely accomplished another in a series of phases of the larger task assigned to him by God.

His own ultimate test of courage was still ahead of him.

And just minutes away.

So strange, though, this almost total silence in the wake of the raucous, roof-shaking jubilation of less than a half hour earlier. The meeting hall was as quiet as a tomb, an impression John recognized as apt even as it further fueled his melancholy.

The security man fell into step next to him as they began to trudge across the ground toward the big house. Though he said nothing, John sensed his anxiety. It rolled off him in waves, as palpable as the stench of a manure pile.

John glanced up at the clear sky. As a kid in Texas he’d stared up at the stars and thought about the other worlds that must be out there so many billions of miles away. He’d tried hard to imagine what life on those worlds might be like. “Beautiful night.”

The security man’s gaze turned upward. “Uh. Yeah. I guess it—”

John reached beneath his shirt and tugged his pistol out of his waistband, jamming it beneath the guard’s chin before he could react.

John said, “Godspeed, son.”

He squeezed the trigger and the guard fell over dead.

John stared at the dead man for a few moments and tried to think of his name. He thought maybe it was Gordon. Not that it mattered. John had been around long enough—and done enough—to know what a man sounds like when he’s about to experience a failure of nerve. John had done the man a service by doing for him what, in the end, he would not have been able to do for himself.

John returned the gun to his waistband and resumed his journey across the yard to the big house, where destiny awaited.

It’s almost all over, he thought.

Almost time to go home.

The rage Jade displayed when the heavyset man dared to question her treatment of Keely was a fearsome thing to behold. She hauled him off the edge of the bed by an ear and cracked the butt of her gun against his nose, breaking it and drawing forth an explosion of blood. The plump woman who was his wife or girlfriend screamed and went to him as he dropped to his knees and cradled his face in his shaking hands.

She glared up at Jade, her face twisted in anguish. “What’s wrong with you? How dare you! You’re not in charge here!”

Jade snorted. “Like fuck I’m not.”

From her prone position on the floor, Keely stared up at Jade’s murderous expression and had to wonder why anyone here would bother standing up to her at this point. They were all prepared to die anyway. There was no reason to incur the obviously unhinged woman’s wrath. The only thing Keely could deduce was that this confrontation was a byproduct of festering feelings unrelated to the current crisis. There was a history here and it was an ugly one.

Not that she was ungrateful for the interruption. Up until a few moments ago, Jade had been brutalizing her, stomping on her with her heavy boots and kicking her all over the room. Her face was bruised and bloodied and she had at least one broken rib that was causing an excruciating amount of pain.

The plump woman sneered at Jade. “Wait until John Wayne—”

Jade pointed her gun at the woman’s face and squeezed the trigger.

The last gray light of dusk had faded during the drive out to the compound. Night was fully upon them by the time Echo steered the Impala down the access road to the ranch house. The lack of streetlights meant Echo had to put on the car’s high beams to navigate the twisty stretch of road. The radio was off and no one was talking, the excitement of before giving way to a familiar, tense preparedness. They knew the feeling well from their many criminal endeavors. There was the elevated pulse, the breath lodged in the back of the throat, and the faint tingling in the gut that straddled the line between pleasant and nausea-inducing.

The Impala’s high beams illuminated an open gate and the faint outline of a big house in the distance. Though the gate was open, two black Hummers were parked nose-to-nose in the road, blocking the way. Two guards with assault rifles were standing in the road near the Hummers. As Echo guided the Impala to a slow halt, one of the men raised a hand to shield his eyes against the glare of the high beams.

They approached the car when Echo shut off the high beams.

Echo kept her gaze straight ahead as she said, “Remember, we’re lost.”

Lana nodded. “So we’re not visitors?”

Echo shook her head. “I’m thinking they’d just tell us to go away if we went with that story.”

She parked the Impala and opened her door, stepping out before the armed men could reach the car.

The men stopped in their tracks and aimed their rifles at her.

“Halt!” the one to her right shouted.

The other girls climbed out of the car to flank Echo, each posing with a hip cocked outward in a manner meant to be distracting while not being obvious about the intent. It was a tactic that had worked well other times, and Echo was pleased to see it was already paying similar dividends here.

The men glanced at each other before lowering their rifles. The one who’d already addressed them spoke again. “What are you ladies doing out here? This is a private road.”

Echo summoned a smile intended to convey guilelessness. “Oh, that’s interesting. We’ve actually been looking for a…private…party…”

She trailed off as a noise she hadn’t expected to hear yet became audible somewhere off in the night. The guards ceased paying attention to her and turned toward the distant ranch house. The sound steadily grew louder, eventually becoming identifiable as helicopter rotors. And soon after that multiple sets of lights appeared in the night sky somewhere to the rear of the ranch house.

Before Echo could think of what to do next, Dez broke for the Impala and bent down to stick her head through the open window. She reemerged seconds later clutching two handguns. She kept one for herself and slapped the other into Echo’s hands an instant before she streaked toward the oblivious guards.

One of the men started to turn toward them.

He was a millisecond too late.

Dez put the barrel of her gun to his ear and shot him. He slumped to the ground, a puppet with his strings cut. The other guard spun around and reeled backward, his gun raised ineffectually toward the sky. Echo aimed at his face and fired once. The bullet made a ruin of his face as he staggered backward another step and collapsed into the brush by the side of the road.

Dez nodded approvingly. “Good shot.”

Echo looked at her. “You taught me well.”

Dez smiled. “Ah. You still love me. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Wonder no more.” Echo approached the Hummers and took a closer look around. She saw more dark vehicles farther down the little road, but no people. It was difficult to be sure about that in the dark, but she felt a certain deadness from that direction that strongly indicated a lack of human presence. “I thought there’d be more guards.”

Dez sidled up next to her, leaning close to whisper in her ear. “I get so excited when I see you in action. I wish it could just be me and you again.”

Echo looked into her eyes and, for the first time in a while, felt a stirring of Dezsexuality. She understood what Dez was saying. Only other people like them would get it. There was nothing quite like the buzz you got from killing people. She had almost forgotten it with Casey around again. “I…need to think about things.”

Dez smiled. “You do that. Just don’t think too long. Opportunities have a way of slipping away.”

Lana cleared her throat.

Echo and Dez turned to look at her.

Lana had liberated an assault rifle from one of the dead guards. The way she held the weapon—with a comfortable familiarity that would surprise anyone but her friends—made her look more like a trained killer than a professional stripper.

Dez and Echo, of course, knew she was both those things.

“If you bitches are done sharing your intimate moment, what do you say we get up to that house and save the fucking day before the boys can get there?”

Dez and Echo smiled as they shared a look.

Show up the guys at their own game?

That sounded like an excellent idea.

Two military-grade helicopters packed with heavily armed mercenaries seemed like overkill to Casey, though he supposed going into a situation like this with more than you needed was preferable to being caught short when the fireworks started. The noise the big birds made rendered stealth impossible. There would still be something of an element of surprise, but Casey soon realized the air approach had little to do with that anyway. Ted’s overall philosophy was pure cowboy and his true motivation for doing things this way was easy to figure out—it was all about one-upping the other guy.

Oh, so you’re gonna send some soldier boys to bust up my contraband distribution point? Okay, well, guess what? I’m gonna launch a goddamn AIR ASSAULT on your asses.

Death from above, motherfucker!

Even more absurd was the stogie-chomping maniac’s insistence on playing music through the retrofitted helicopter’s stereo speakers. The speakers produced a punishing level of volume, which was necessary to be heard over the sound of the rotors. Casey spent the flight out from the private helipad to the de Rais compound feeling like he was trapped inside a speaker cabinet at a death metal concert. The playlist was of Ted’s own devising and the song playing as the ’copter flew in low over treetops just before arriving at the compound was “Undercover of the Night” by the Rolling Stones.

The guy probably saw himself as a drug kingpin version of that character from Apocalypse Now, with the Stones in place of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. How the pilot could hear to communicate with the pilot of the other bird was a mystery to Casey. He breathed a huge sigh of relief once they finally touched down safely in the field behind the ranch house and the assorted outlying buildings.

Wilkinson’s mercenaries wasted no time streaming out of the helicopters and commencing a door-to-door search of the cabins. The area was lit up by a sea of bobbing flashlights. Casey and Wilkinson brought up the rear, allowing the professionals to take care of business with machine-like efficiency. A trend was soon established—the cabins were all empty. Focus then shifted to a larger building closer to the big ranch house. Other than the ranch house, it was the only illuminated structure in the compound. Light was visible through a few small windows. A mercenary kicked the door open and went inside, followed closely by several of his comrades.

Casey made like he was about to go in after them, but Ted stopped him with a hand splayed across his chest. “Hang back a bit longer, son. Let these men do their job first.”

Casey already felt ridiculous outfitted in full military gear and body armor, especially since they were encountering no resistance at all so far. This should have come as a relief, but it somehow felt oppressively ominous instead. Something had gone very wrong here. He couldn’t put his finger on what it might be, but he felt the bad vibes in his bones. Other things had dominated his attention over the last few days, but now his concern for Keely’s safety returned in full force.

She’s either dead already or soon will be. Shit.

In addition to that, there was this issue of what to do about Ted and his domineering sister. He had a hunch the real reason Ted was keeping him out of the action—or lack thereof, given how things were developing—had more to do with her desires than letting the professionals do their job. She had probably ordered him to keep her new boy toy safe and sound. His forefinger twitched outside the trigger guard of the M16 clutched in his hands. It was tempting to put a bullet through Ted’s temple and be done with that part of it. The only thing that stopped him was the suspicion that one of Ted’s hired men would kill him immediately afterward.

The building’s front door creaked open and a mercenary stepped out onto the little porch. His expression was grim as he addressed Ted. “Sir, the building’s been secured, but you’ll want to take a look inside. It’s…pretty bad.”

Casey experienced a deep sense of dread upon hearing those words. “Shit.”

Ted glanced at him. “Sure you want to go in there?”

No.

He grimaced. “Got no choice. I have to know.”

Ted clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s have a looksee then.”

Casey held his breath as he followed Ted and the mercenary into the building. He let it out and felt a rumbling deep in his gut once he stepped through the door and got his first look at the horror inside.

“Oh…fuck.”

Ted swept off his helmet and palmed sweat from his brow. “I echo that sentiment. I’ve seen some shit in my day, son, but this takes the cake.”

They were all dead.

Casey walked numbly down the aisle between the rows of chairs, scanning the faces of the dozens upon dozens of slumped-over bodies in search of Keely. Most had fallen out of their chairs to the floor. Their frozen expressions were contorted and their limbs were twisted in ways that indicated they had died in extreme agony. Everywhere he looked he saw discarded plastic cups and red stains on the floor. But the stains were spilled punch rather than blood. These people had been poisoned. Casey felt a flabbergasted rage building inside him that pushed aside the numbness. These people had gone willingly to their deaths. There had to be at least a hundred corpses in this building alone. What brand of follow-the-leader insanity could compel so many to throw their lives away?

He reached the front of the stage and turned around to face Ted. “She’s not here.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

Ted scratched the side of his head. “Well…that’s good, right?”

“Yeah, but—” A faint popping noise made Casey turn his head and stare out one of the dark windows. “What’s that sound?”

Ted’s brow furrowed as the popping sound came again. “Sounds like gunfire.”

Casey dashed up the aisle, brushing past Ted and stepping on bodies in his haste to get back outside. Keely wasn’t among this mass of dead. That meant she was still out there somewhere, possibly even still alive. And as long as any chance of that remained, he meant to be in the thick of the action until he knew for sure.

The back of the plump woman’s head exploded in a shower of blood and brains. The heavyset man screamed and struggled to his feet, apparently intending to charge at Jade. Keely understood his rage, but his attempt to get at Jade was ill-advised. He was unarmed and she, well…

Jade fired two more times. Both bullets hit the man in his chest, each impact making his body jerk before he fell over and landed on the floor with a tremendous thud that shook the furniture in the room. The female couple separated and screamed as they scooted rapidly away from Jade. The guard by the door had the thin, hollow-cheeked features of a young man barely out of adolescence. His nervous, darting gaze also betrayed his youth and inexperience. He had taken a tentative step away from the door and looked like he knew he should take some kind of action but lacked the decisiveness to do anything without being told.

Jade shot him in the face.

One of the women got to her feet and bolted toward the door.

Jade shot her in the back.

Something in John’s top surviving female lieutenant had snapped, yielding at last to the monumental pressure she had to have been feeling all along as she contemplated her own imminent demise. It was either that or she was just a murderous lunatic. On reflection, Keely decided it was likely a combination of those things.

And it’s only a matter of time before the bitch works her way around to me again. Gotta make my move.

The other half of the female cult couple had her back to the wall and was struggling to stand, her hands held palms-out in front of her in a pleading gesture. She was crying and shaking her head.

Keely didn’t get it.

All these idiots had been so sure they wanted to die…up until the moment someone was pointing a gun at them.

Jade sneered at the crying woman. “Time to die, Kate.”

She shot Kate.

She glanced at Keely. “And now your turn.”

Jade aimed the gun at Keely.

But the sound of shots ringing out somewhere else inside the house made her hesitate. Keely shifted her hips and swept her legs at Jade’s ankles. The move was well-timed, but Keely also benefited from her adversary’s temporary distraction. Jade lost her grip on the gun and it flew into the air as her legs went out from under her.

Knowing she wouldn’t get more than the one chance, Keely acted fast, rolling over and getting to her hands and knees as she scanned the floor for the gun. She spotted it an instant before Jade did. It was by the body of the plump woman in a puddle of her blood and brains.

Both women scrambled toward the gun.

Keely got to it first.

Her right hand closed around the handle in the same moment someone kicked the door open.

The first floor of the ranch house was utterly deserted as John came inside through the back door. The emptiness did not strike him as haunting, despite how different it was from the bustle of activity that had formerly characterized the place. This house had never been anything more than a kind of way station, a temporary spiritual oasis his inner circle inhabited on their way to somewhere even better.

The lights were off in most of the bottom floor rooms, save for a lamp here and there. John opted to leave them that way as he made his way toward the foyer. The darkness enhanced the impression of the house as a transitional place that had served its purpose and was now being left behind.

He had reached the bottom of the spiral staircase when he heard voices outside on the porch. He stood with a foot planted on the first step up and listened a moment. The voices were female. Detecting this was easy because they were not attempting to be quiet. John glanced up the staircase and wondered whether he should head on up there anyway or go to the door to see if he could learn more about the intruders. Whoever they were, they had gotten past the remaining guards at the gate, which could only mean their intent was hostile. Whether they were police—unlikely—or vigilantes out to avenge some portion of the night’s events was immaterial.

The remnants of his inner circle were waiting for him.

It was time to join their brothers and sisters in the afterlife.

He took another step up the staircase.

And that was when multiple shots from a large-caliber weapon blew the lock off the front door. John tugged his gun out of his waistband as someone—he glimpsed the silhouette of a woman with the legs of a goddess—kicked the ruined door open and stood framed in dim moonlight.

John fired several rounds from his gun.

The woman staggered backward and fell off the porch. There was a scream of rage coupled with anguish and in a moment someone else out there returned fire. John also experienced rage. He would not be shot down before he could reach the last of his faithful and depart this rotten world in their company.

He fired another shot at the door and took off up the stairs as fast as he could go.

John Wayne de Rais came into his quarters with a look of panic on his florid face. This shifted to an expression of surprised anguish as he took in the carnage.

He shook his head at the two still-living women on the floor. “Why?”

Keely almost said something about how Jade had lost her mind and started shooting everyone in the room, but she was distracted by the sound of footsteps outside in the hallway. Jade made a grab for the gun in Keely’s hand in the same moment, but she did it from an awkward position and her hand slid over the barrel without grasping it.

Keely rolled away from her, sat upright and aimed the gun at her.

Jade’s eyes went wide. “No.”

Keely sneered. “How’s it feel to be afraid?”

John pointed his gun at Keely. “Don’t you—”

There was a boom from the hallway and John’s body lurched as a bloom of exit wound red appeared at the center of his chest. Two more bullets made a wreck of the deluded old scam artist’s head. His now-lifeless body did a crash-landing atop the corpse of the guard.

Keely stared past the bodies at Jade. Even at this late and apparently hopeless stage of the game, the woman had a look of cold calculation in her eyes. She was still as deadly as she had ever been and now John’s gun was in grabbing range.

She made a dive for it.

Keely put a bullet through the top of her head and let out a breath so big she felt like she had been holding it for years. Her head snapped up as someone else came through the door. She frowned. “Echo? What are you doing here?”

Echo’s face was wet with tears as she kicked at John’s body. “Son of a bitch!” She pointed her gun at the dead man’s back and squeezed the trigger until it was empty. “Son of a bitch!”

She let go of the gun and dropped to her knees, sobbing into her hands.

Keely opted to hold on to the gun when she heard more voices out in the hallway. She still had no sense of what was happening here, beyond the happy facts of the deaths of the big bad wolf and the fucking wicked witch. Echo’s arrival on the scene was a thing she could never have predicted, incongruous enough that it bordered on surreal. She couldn’t even begin to guess how it had come about. Then more people were streaming into the room, scary-looking guys who looked like soldiers. They had lots of big guns and exuded enough testosterone to make the makers of Viagra weep.

And then came Casey.

Looking like some kind of fucking commando.

Keely laughed. “Casey,” she said, wiping away tears. “You look ridiculous.”

He sighed. “Yeah. I know. Are you okay?”

“I want out of here.”

A bald-headed older man also dressed like a commando came into the room, winking at her as he lit up a cigar. “Don’t you worry about a thing, darlin’. We’ll all be out of here in less than five minutes. Wouldn’t do to still be around when the law shows up.”

Casey set his rifle aside and dropped to his knees next to Echo. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Echo sniffled and looked at him through bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “Dez is dead. That son of a bitch de Rais killed Dez.”

She pressed her face against Casey’s shoulder and resumed sobbing.

Keely felt genuinely bad for her. She had always liked Echo and had been sorry to see her disappear from Casey’s life. But her empathy for her old friend’s loss couldn’t dampen her own happiness. She was going to get her second chance after all.

And I’m damn well gonna make the best of it.

She smiled and finally let go of the gun.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Synchronicity

The memory of it kept coming back at random moments. The three of them on the porch. Lana shooting the lock off the door with her commandeered rifle and Dez kicking the door in seconds later. Then Dez’s head snapping backward as a bullet punched through her cheek. The end of everything the three of them had been together right there in that moment, over and done too fast to fully comprehend until later.

It had only been a day since the assault on the de Rais compound and the reality of her friend’s death was still hard to grasp. She missed the crazy bitch more than she ever could have imagined. The only thing distracting her from her grief was the weirdness going on with Casey. Something was bothering him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. All Echo had been able to surmise was it had something to do with Cora Wilkinson. Ted’s sister kept dragging her boyfriend off for private talks. Casey returned from each of them looking more troubled than before. According to Cora, she had a business venture she hoped to involve Casey in, but Echo knew that was bullshit.

For one thing, what kind of business venture requiring that much private discussion could have arisen in the brief time the two had known each other? Especially given everything else that had been going on? As cover stories went, it was one of the most cynical Echo had ever heard. Casey had no business background or acumen whatsoever. He was a mechanic. A good one, yes, but bending a wrench was really all he knew.

Echo mulled all this over as she paced the floor in room 2035 at the Renaissance Hotel late that afternoon. Cora had shown up again only moments ago to whisk Casey away to yet another “meeting”, this in room 2040, one of the other suites Big Ted kept on permanent reserve at the hotel. This time it was eating at her more than ever.

If Dez had taught her anything of any real value, it was to never let anyone take you for a chump.

Fuck this.

She grabbed her handbag off the table and started toward the door. Lana, lying on the bed nearest the window, looked up from the iPad Ted had given her. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m taking care of business.”

Echo walked out of the room and stalked down the hallway to room 2040.

Once they were inside room 2040, Cora ordered Casey to remove his clothes. By now he knew better than to resist. The only thing keeping Echo alive was his compliance with Cora’s wishes. The bitch had armed thugs awaiting her orders in room 2036. One word from her and they would pay Echo and Lana a visit.

Casey still hoped to find a way out of this crazy predicament. There had to be something he could do to neutralize the woman’s intense interest in him.

But time was running out. They were scheduled to catch a flight to Tampa early in the morning. If no exit strategy presented itself before then, he might have no choice but to accompany her to Florida and hope he could figure something out once he got there. The drawback to that was the likelihood of losing track of Echo’s whereabouts for another longish period of time. He doubted she would stick around the area for long once he was gone. That would be regrettable, but it would be better than rebelling now and condemning her to death.

He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. Cora licked her lips and eyed his buff physique with a lustful expression. He unbuckled his belt and began tugging it free of the belt loops. He considered wrapping the belt around Cora’s throat. Though killing her would solve the immediate dilemma, a host of other complications would immediately ensue, starting with what to do about Big Ted and the assassins-on-retainer in room 2036. There were just too many obstacles to overcome to make it a viable way to go, at least at this juncture.

On the other hand, it was possible having the guts to act now and take his chances might be the only way he could be with Echo again for the long haul, which was something he wanted very much. Now that he no longer had to worry about Keely, a lot of things had become clearer than ever to him. If he wanted something difficult bad enough, decisive action was necessary to make it happen.

Cora removed her own top and approached him. She smiled in a naughty—and smugly superior—way and cupped the crotch of his jeans with a soft hand. His cock responded instantly to her touch. This was something he couldn’t help. The thing had a mind of its own. And, despite his hatred of her, Cora was very attractive.

She pressed her breasts against his bare chest and made a hungry sound low in her throat. “Your bitch will be dead by the time I’m done making you come.”

Casey frowned. “What?” His hand tightened around the buckle end of the belt. Her words repeated in his head, the meaning penetrating more emphatically this time. There would be no reprieve for Echo. The assassins weren’t just a contingency plan. “You bitch.”

Cora laughed and tugged at his zipper tab. “You’ll get over it.”

Casey began to raise the belt.

Gunshots boomed in the hallway. Bullets blasted the door open. Cora screamed and reeled away from him as Echo stalked into the room with a raised Glock and an expression so furious she looked like rage incarnate. Casey recognized at once there was no chance of soothing that fury fast enough to avert catastrophe.

But that didn’t stop him from trying.

He raised his hands and showed Echo his most beseeching expression. “This isn’t what it looks—”

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, fuck you.

This variation on the old saying was something her dad used to say a lot when she was little. It had stuck with her all these years and today it seemed more apt than ever.

She fired twice at Casey.

The first bullet clipped the side of his neck, making his body jerk backward. The next bullet went between his eyes and ended his life. Cora had her back against the room’s big window, her slender form outlined against the city skyline. Echo shot her once between the boobs. There was a bright splatter of blood on the window when she slid lifelessly to the floor.

Voices out in the hallway.

Big Ted’s booming baritone.

Other male voices Echo didn’t recognize.

She stepped back out of the room and saw Ted to her right—his cowboy hat perched cockeyed atop his head—and armed men to the left. She dealt with the armed men first, putting each down with a single bullet. She had no idea who they were or where they had come from, but instinct told her they were connected in some way to Cora and Big Ted.

The door to room 2035 opened and Lana popped out into the hallway. She gasped when she saw Echo swing the Glock toward Big Ted. “Don’t!”

Echo grimaced. “Sorry, baby.”

She blew Ted’s brains out as he was backing toward the open doorway behind him. He slumped against the doorframe and slid slowly to the floor.

Echo looked at Lana. “Cora was fucking Casey. I killed them.”

Lana peeked inside room 2040. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry about Ted.”

Lana looked at her. “It’s all right. You had to do it. He would’ve killed you.”

Echo smiled. “Thanks for understanding.”

Doors were opening and then slamming shut again up and down the hallway. For the briefest of moments, it was almost amusing. Guests at a ritzy joint like this were not accustomed to gunfire in the hallways.

The girls exchanged a look.

Echo said, “We should probably go.”

Lana nodded. “Let me grab my shit.”

She disappeared back inside room 2035 for a moment, quickly reemerging with her purse slung over her shoulder and the iPad clutched in her right hand. She saw Echo’s furrowed brow and laughed as they hurried down the hallway. “What? I had to come out of that relationship with something.”

Sally Richardson walked east along the side of the highway as the sun began its slow early evening descent toward the horizon. She had been walking for several hours. She had awakened earlier to find herself suddenly sober in a house full of dead people. There was blood everywhere. Some of it was from the people who had lived in the house. And some of it was from Thomas and Joshua, who had cut their own throats.

It was too bad about Thomas and Joshua. They were fun guys. The only problem was they had bought into John Wayne de Rais’ bullshit, whereas for Sally the whole cult thing had never been anything more than an excuse to go wild and live outside of society’s rules. She remained interested in pursuing the same brand of fun, but maybe this time without the expectation of ritual suicide, because that shit was lame.

She heard a car begin to slow down behind her, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and continued walking. A lot of people had offered her rides already today. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. She was a cute white girl with blonde hair. Her clothes were rumpled and her white shirt was stained with blood spatter. Even that failed to put off a lot of people. The only surprise was that some budding serial killer hadn’t attempted to stuff her into his trunk, which was kind of a disappointment. Boy, did she have a surprise waiting for any motherfucker like that.

She smiled, thinking about it. Hello, Mr. Sex Killer, say hello to Mr. Stabby.

Sally figured this walking thing would get old after a while, but for now it was what she wanted to do, though she was no longer certain why she had set out on foot in the first place. The latest stolen creep van had still been parked at the curb outside the house, but for some reason she had walked right on past it, continuing out to the main road and beyond. Though she was no longer high, she still felt a bit out of sorts, but she supposed anyone would after engaging in such spirited hijinks for so long.

A black Impala rolled up next to her. It was one of the big models from the long, long ago. Big and long. The thought made her giggle. The driver’s side window was down. A female voice called out to her. “Hey. You. Blondie. Want a ride?”

Sally stopped in her tracks.

The Impala stopped next to her.

She turned toward the car and stepped close for a peek inside. It was the first time she had stopped to interact with anyone since the beginning of her journey. Even as she did it, she couldn’t say why she was doing it. It was pure instinct.

It felt right.

There were two women inside the car. Both were gorgeous with lots of tattoos, long legs and black hair. The one behind the wheel had Bettie Page bangs and was wearing dark sunglasses. Some kind of heavy rock music was playing at low volume on the radio.

“What is that you’re listening to?”

A smile from the Bettie Page lookalike. “That’s ‘Death Valley ’69’ by Sonic Youth.”

Sally opened the door and slipped into the backseat.

The Impala started off down the road again.

The woman in the shotgun seat turned toward her, grinning. “I’m Lana and this is Echo. What’s your name?”

“Sally.”

“Sally.” Lana drew the two syllables out, as if savoring them. “Nice. I like a good old-fashioned name. Where are you headed, Sally?”

Sally shrugged. “Wherever you’re going.”

Echo glanced at the rearview mirror. Sally glimpsed rows of perfect white teeth when she smiled. “You look like you’ve been walking a while. I bet you were offered other rides. Any reason you got in with us?”

Sally nodded. “You both have black hair. You needed a blonde to balance things out. Also, I was suddenly tired of walking. That shit’s overrated.”

Echo and Lana glanced at each other.

Then they burst out laughing.

Echo put the pedal to the floor and the Impala roared toward the sunset.

About the Author

Bryan Smith is the author of numerous previous novels and novellas, including The Late Night Horror Show, 68 Kill, House of Blood, Depraved, The Killing Kind, The Dark Ones, The Diabolical Conspiracy, and The Freakshow.  Bryan lives in Tennessee with an array of animals.  He enjoys beer, loud rock and roll, bad B movies, Britcoms, and a lot more of the usual kind of stuff.  Visit his home on the web at www.bryansmith.info.

Look for these titles by Bryan Smith

Now Available:

The Late Night Horror Show

When the movie starts, the horror becomes real.

The Late Night Horror Show

© 2013 Bryan Smith

It was a run-down old multi-plex in a seedy part of town. But it had a special late-night festival of the cheap horror movies one group of friends loved, movies filled with zombies, vampires and backwoods maniacs.

How could they know it was a very special screening indeed? After the friends split up and their chosen movies began, they found themselves transported out of the life they knew and into the blood-drenched worlds of the films. Worlds where the living dead roam the countryside, the decrepit mansion of a vampire and his minions dominates the night sky, and the shrill scream of a buzz saw is always right behind you.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Late Night Horror Show:

There was something odd about that music. The sound was discordant. Jarring and shrill. But that wasn’t the odd thing about it. What was odd was how tantalizingly familiar it was. The defining element of the music was the sound of seemingly one thousand tortured violins being violently assaulted by an army of escaped mental patients bent on wringing the soundtrack of hell from their undoubtedly stolen instruments. Rapidly repeated, stinging bursts of sudden sharp sounds, followed by longer and more ominous-sounding notes in a lower register.

The overall effect was so like something he’d heard a million times before, with perhaps a couple of minor variations, perhaps wedged between the more familiar notes as an afterthought, a way of warding off a copyright violation lawsuit.

Yet…he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it was so damn familiar.

What the hell is that monstrous noise?

John Dorsey stirred from his semidoze and squinted at the fuzzy images on the television in his living room. There was nothing wrong with the picture. And his eyesight was usually fine. The fuzziness was instead a result of the many beers he’d consumed since his breakfast earlier that morning. Wait…was it still morning?

He swiveled his head slowly to the right, squinting harder than ever now.

“Ah.”

Sunshine was visible through the half-drawn blind above the buzzing air conditioner. Didn’t quite solve the mystery. Could be late morning still. Could be afternoon. Could be early evening. But something about the glaringly bright quality of the sunshine made him doubt the last possibility. It was still relatively early, though not so early that he hadn’t had time to put a respectable dent in that case of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Speaking of…

He glanced down at his dangling right hand, which was hanging over the arm of his recliner. The top of the can was held very lightly by the tips of his fingers. Even the slightest lessening of his grip would send it tumbling to the carpeted floor. He frowned and got a more solid grip on the can. He then sat up straight and trained his eyes on the television.

Little less fuzzy now.

Huh. Interesting.

A woman on the screen was attired in a very skimpy bikini. Nice body. Long, black-as-sin hair flowing over milk-white shoulders. She was screaming and running down a long, shadowy hallway. Someone was chasing her. A dude, naturally. Very large, of course, and wearing some kind of freaky mask. It was easy to see why you’d want to run away from him. Partly it was the ugly mask, but mostly it was because of the huge, whirring chainsaw held high over one of his shoulders.

“Jesus. Not another Chainsaw sequel.”

This one looked to be the worst yet. The production values were clearly far below the norm for the series. This one looked like one of those schlocky shot-on-video pieces of garbage that had a tendency to sit unrented for years on the shelves of failing video stores everywhere. And the chainsaw-wielding psycho on the screen didn’t look right at all. The mask looked cheap. A flimsy piece of plastic shit you might buy for a buck at Walmart the day after Halloween. Nothing at all like a mask stitched together from dead human flesh. And the guy lacked the classic Leatherface physique. John’s mouth curled in disgust. Clearly this was a case of some hack with a camera “rebooting” or “reimagining” the franchise. The only question was how in God’s name these obvious amateurs had managed to wrest away the rights to…

He frowned again.

“Huh.”

The woman had reached the end of the hallway. The door there was locked. Of course. It had to be locked. Otherwise, she couldn’t turn to the camera, as she was doing now, splay a hand across her mouth, and scream again as the dude with the chainsaw at last got close enough to begin the butchery.

A title in wavy yellow letters splashed across the screen.

Chainsaw Maniac!

John raised the can of Pabst to his mouth. “The hell is this?”

Of course. Should have been obvious from the beginning. Not an official Chainsaw sequel, but instead a cheap rip-off. As the faux-Leatherface character raised his weapon and began to lower the whirring blade toward the cringing babe, the tempo of the music increased again. Now that he’d come out of his beer-induced stupor, his synapses were firing faster and he was able to place why the music was so familiar.

He snapped the fingers of his left hand and jabbed a forefinger at the screen. “Psycho! You cheap bastards are ripping off Bernard Herrmann’s score!” He chuckled and raised the can to his mouth again. “Hell, of course you are. So many others have done it, so why not you, right?”

He laughed.

The laughter cut off abruptly as it dawned on him that there was a disturbing lack of refreshing cerveza streaming down his horribly parched throat. He scowled at the empty can as he shook it. “Someone has stolen my beer. This offense cannot be tolerated. I declare global thermonuclear war as just retribution.” He chuckled. “Unless, of course, a diplomatic solution is hastily arranged.” He pitched his voice higher and jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Marie! Another beer! Stat! The fate of the world hangs in the balance.”

He laughed some more. Then he frowned. This wasn’t like him. This…jocularity. This delirious good humor. No. No. That wasn’t quite fair. It was what he’d once been like, a lifetime ago, or, in normal people terms, approximately five months ago. Which, imagine this, happened to coincide with his layoff from the well-paying job he’d held for nearly a decade. Yes, a thing like that, especially in today’s barren job market, was enough to crush any man’s spirit.

So…why was he feeling so good?

He kept frowning for a moment. Then he smiled and shrugged. “Whatever. Life is full of mysteries.”

The images on the screen shifted. The wavy yellow letters blurred and spread across the screen, giving way a moment later to new images of horror and destruction. A postapocalyptic world. Burned-out buildings and piles of debris in smoky streets. Hordes of drooling, slack-jawed people in tattered clothes lurching around in the streets, most of them bearing evidence of grisly wounds.

The music was different now, too, the derivative symphonic sounds replaced by a bludgeoning, staccato heavy metal beat and rumbling, growled vocals. He couldn’t place the song, but the band sounded kind of like Disturbed. Only it wasn’t Disturbed. It was some sound-alike outfit, some anonymous group of nu-metal douchebags whose tunes were undoubtedly far cheaper to license.

A black helicopter flew high above the lumbering throngs of the dead, the whir of the chopper blades intermittently audible between bursts of metal riffery. A man clad in a helmet, goggles, and military armor leaned out of the copter, an M-16 clutched in muscular hands. But he didn’t fire his gun. It would obviously be a waste of ammunition. There were just too many of them.

Too many zombies.

Another set of wavy yellow letters splashed across the screen.

Rise of the Dead!

The production values on this one were obviously higher. Still not up to big studio, A-list Hollywood standards—some of the zombie makeup was too obviously fake—but clearly several notches above the ridiculous chainsaw thing. And yet, the seamless transition from those scenes to these, along with the identical font used for the movie titles, implied an obvious connectedness. John’s instinct to snarkily pick apart cheap movies yielded to a genuine interest.

John belatedly realized a stentorian voiceover announcer was speaking. He made himself focus on his words: “Chainsaws. Zombies. The undying lust of the undead. Blood flowing thick as a river through dirty city streets. Women in danger and the maniacs who crave their demise—”

John giggled.

He couldn’t help it.

Crave their demise?

The ad copy for this thing sounded as cheap and cheesy as the movies themselves.

“—all of these dark wonders and more will be on display all weekend at the Late Night Horror Film Festival at the Sunshine 6 cineplex in Murfreesboro. Doctor Ominous presents six masterpieces of horror. See them all…if you dare.”

John giggled.

But wait. Who was this Doctor Ominous character? It had the ring of a moniker a cable TV horror host might use, though he was unaware of anyone with a local host gig going by that name. Not that it mattered much. It was just strange.

And also…

“If I dare? Ain’t no ‘if’ about it.”

He realized the truth of the statement as he spoke it. The movies looked bad, but bad movies could be their own kind of good time. Especially if enough booze was consumed, which would most assuredly be the case if he had anything to say about it. Suddenly he had a plan for the evening that involved something more than slowly rotting in front of the television. Sure, it wouldn’t involve anything productive or particularly positive, but at least it would get him out of the apartment, out from between these too-close-together walls, this grim, Kafkaesque space he had begun to suspect was a not-insubstantial contributing factor to his slow decline. He would get out and breathe, enjoy the simple pleasure of just being around other people. He would feel human again, and maybe, just maybe, that wouldn’t be such a small thing at all.

It might even be the first necessary small step toward getting his life back on track.

He stared at the empty beer can in his hand and was reminded of something.

“Oh yeah. Need a refill.”

He turned his head slowly to the left, stared beyond the partition that separated the small apartment’s living room from the cramped kitchen. Marie usually sat at the little table there and read books or magazines, while he sat in front of the television and drank himself into oblivion. They hadn’t been interacting in any meaningful way since just after the layoff. She didn’t nag him or cry or get hysterical. She just sat in there in deep, uncharacteristic silence.

Brooding.

He often thought things might be better if she did show some signs of losing her patience or temper. It would prove she still cared. It might give him just the kick in the ass he needed to get out and find some kind of job, even if he had to humble himself by taking some position that paid very little and was obviously beneath him. Fast food. Convenience store clerk. Car wash attendant. Something. Anything. He hoped like hell he could convince her to go with him to the film festival. He smiled at that. A real date. How long since they’d been anywhere together socially?

Months?

A year?

Too long, in any case. A night out might make her smile again. He’d give anything to see that.

But—

Where the hell is she?

The apartment was small. She could only be either in the bathroom or their bedroom. He shifted his weight, feeling the bloat of who-knew-how-many beers in his tender belly, and leaned forward in the recliner. “Marie?”

There was a faint note of panic in his voice. He recognized it and told himself it was stupid. There was no good reason to worry. She was lying down, taking a nap, or maybe was in the bathroom. No reason to worry. It quickly became a mantra.

No reason…no reason…no reason.

He made his voice even louder. “Marie!?”

Still no answer.

His heart was beating faster now, thudding heavily in his chest.

No reason…no reason…

“Shut up,” he muttered as he hauled himself out of the recliner. The beer can slid from his shaking fingers and landed softly on the carpeted floor as he staggered toward the open bedroom door.

“Marie?”

His voice sounded weaker now, full of fear.

He stepped into the bedroom.

Marie was there, stretched out on the bed, and it became instantly clear why she had failed to answer his multiple entreaties. She was naked, her body very still and covered in blood. Her mouth hung open and her eyes stared up at nothing. Her hair was matted with sticky gore. It was easy to see why. Someone had used the heavy brass base of the nightstand lamp to smash in the back of her head. And she had been stabbed. A lot. More times than he could even begin to count.

She was dead.

Unmistakably, irreversibly, undeniably, completely fucking dead.

After a long moment’s silence, a shrill, strangled sound issued from John’s throat. He staggered closer to the bed, the strangled sound growing louder and more distraught with each step. Everything became more crisply defined. He saw how pulped her cheekbones were. He saw the crookedness of her previously perfectly straight nose. He saw white fragments of teeth amidst the dark gore on the bed sheet.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh…”

John’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body pitched forward as he fell unconscious across his wife’s bloody corpse.

Go Kill Crazy!

Bryan Smith

Blood! Bullets! Killer babes!

“It’s a man’s world,” according to the old saying. But a girl gang with no inhibitions when it comes to sex and violence would disagree. Dez, Echo and Lana are former strippers with lethal curves and bad intentions. Together they embark on a wild cross-country orgy of crime, leaving rivers of blood and piles of bullet-riddled bodies in their wake. Knowing they are destined to die young—and probably violently—the girls get their kicks while they can, never suspecting they are on a collision course with notorious cult guru John Wayne de Rais and his fanatical followers. Buckle your seatbelts and hang on tight, because things are about to get crazy for the sexiest thrill killers the world has ever seen.

eBooks are not transferable.

They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

Go Kill Crazy!

Copyright © 2014 by Bryan Smith

ISBN: 978-1-61921-436-1

Edited by Don D’Auria

Cover by Scott Carpenter

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com

Table of Contents

- Dedication
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- About the Author
- Look for these titles by Bryan Smith

- Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

- Back Cover Copy

- Copyright Page