Broken (20 page)

“Look,” he straightened up, leaning on his knees, “I know this is driving you nuts, but we don’t have any way of knowing where he is. He could be sitting in the building across the street just waiting for a stupid move on our part.”

“What about work?” she asked. “I have to go back, eventually. My clients aren’t going to want to talk with other psychologists! They’re MY clients for a reason!” she ranted half-heartedly.

Jase stood up, his hands on her shoulders, pleading down into her eyes, “Please, baby, just give us ‘til the end of the week. Give us a few more days to see if we can flush him out,” he stroked her cheek.

“Let me go to the store with you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I’ll be with YOU, in a
public
place. He wouldn’t dare make a move!”

“No,” he pulled her close, feeling her body squeeze him tight, maybe in an effort to feel as if she were doing something physical.

“I’m gonna be jumpy as a bug on a hotplate when Pete gets here.”

--

A few cars down from the door to her building, he sat in the front seat of another recent acquisition, disguised by nature in his beard and moustache, in addition to a Buckeyes ball cap and plain sunglasses. He appeared to be listening to maybe an mp3 player, even occasionally bobbing his head to make it appear even more so.
Gotta play the game just right in the daylight, plain sight, getting her out is going to be the hard part.
He gazed into the rear view mirror at the side door of the building. He was parked almost perfectly. He needed to be quick, get her downstairs and into the trunk. The faster he did that, the faster he could have her back at the motel and finish this. Then he could rescue Eric and they could hit the road to somewhere they’ve never been. Somewhere they’d both be safe.

“A bug on a hotplate, huh? Better that than dead,” the detective assured her under the sound of rustling clothes.

Thank God I don’t have to listen to them have sex! I don’t think I could take it,
he rubbed himself gently, despite the stinging rawness that came from the deep scrubbing it took to get all the blood and viscera off his body.
Left no stone unturned.
He cracked half a smile with the thought.

Randy’s heart beat picked up, though he made certain to remain as nonchalant as possible while listening to her chain and deadbolt the door behind him.

Kitchen sounds filled the bud in his ear while he watched for the detective to leave her building, either on foot, or in his car.

As carefully as he’d surveyed the area, the detective’s visual sweep in Randy’s direction was blocked by an SUV pulling out onto the road.

Knowing time was of the essence now, Randy moved with purpose, exiting the vehicle, carrying a computer bag over his shoulder, and having departed from the jumpsuit with the use of Jeans, t-shirt and a suit jacket. He glanced around the parking garage, where there were no signs of security, and moved unimpeded to the inside door to the stairwell.

At her door, he tapped out the familiar rhythm, ‘shave and a haircut, two bits.’

“What’d you forget?” she asked undoing the deadbolt and chain.

As soon as the knob turned, he pushed into the apartment, his knifepoint pressing into her throat as he kicked the door closed, forcing her across the apartment until the wall stopped her progress.

“Please,” she whispered at the same time as his hand with the blackjack came up, stealing her consciousness on the way down.

--

The first thing she registered was a thrumming in her head under a point of pain. Opening her eyes hurt, the light from the room hurt.

“Mmm?” she questioned, noticing that once again, her mouth was duct taped, just as it had been five nights ago while Randy waited for her to awaken in the barn.

Motel room,
she realized, easily identifying the generic furniture.
It’s still daytime,
she noted a slant of light from between the opaque curtains,
something stinks like rotting meat.
She turned her head and yhipped a surprised scream under the duct tape at the sight on the bed.
Holy shit that’s Sandy, he did it. He really did it
, the clinician in her noted, while the woman in her tried to claw her way to the surface in pure panic.
Don’t panic, don’t you dare…
she told herself.

On the table to her right, within easy reach if she’d been unbound, a .9mm lay taunting her.

Behind her, the toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened.

That’s strange,
she thought in response to how she’d been taped into the chair. Her left arm was bound tightly to her body, her torso bound to the back of the chair. Her right arm, however, had been carefully placed on the arm of the chair and fastened there with a single piece of the silver stuff.
What are you up to, Randy? What kind of fantasy are you playing out now?

“I’d like to believe that if I took the tape off this time, too, you wouldn’t scream, but I can’t take that chance.” His knife flicked out in front of her face, her eyes grew wide and her breath came short as he wedged it beneath his fingernails, cleaning them one by one. “Y’know, I liked your dad. He was a good guy. Do you know he’s one of, what? Maybe six guys in town that wouldn’t fuck my mom?” he motioned to her corpse.

“Oh she tried! Believe me, she had a hard on for him for a looooong time,” he smiled, “but he was a smart guy. Knew better than to get involved with her, could probably smell her from a mile away. I know I could, but that’s for a whole different reason, as you know.”

She nodded, making an affirmative sound.

“Oooh, hey, speaking of hard ons, did you know my little brother had one for you? He’s a very sentimental, sensitive man. Probably too sensitive to have ever told you, but he said you probably knew.”

Again, she nodded.

“He also told me you never made him feel bad or stupid about it. Thank you for that,” he smiled a little sadly. “Eric’s a good boy.”

Leaning forward he set the blade down on the table and reached for the gun, sliding the grip into her hand.

He watched her fingers slide over the steel, flip the safety off and do her level best to angle the muzzle at him, all the while pleading beneath the tape.

“Oh, I know, you’re saying, Randy don’t do this, you don’t have to do this, it’s over, Sandy’s gone. Yeah she is, wow!” he looked back to the bed. “Guess I went a little berserk there, huh? Yikes!” then shook his head. “Wasn’t much of a fuck left, a little loose, y’know? S’what happens after so many years with the Porn Star Supreme, not to mention every Tom and Harry Dick she could get to fuck her,” he chuckled, then leaned over and picked up the knife again.

He wiped the tip of the blade clean on his jeans, leaning forward, the point angled toward her cheek. He watched her tears fall and her head wag back and forth as she tried to convince him to stop.

“You’re probably still pretty tight,” he mused, running the flat side of the blade over her face, from her cheek to her forehead, watching her cry, trying to hold still until she couldn’t take it anymore and simply pulled the trigger.

She knew the gun wasn’t loaded, she knew it couldn’t be if he was literally putting it into her hand, but what she couldn’t fathom was what he was after besides the sheer rush of toying with her.

He smiled, taking the pistol from her hand then slipping a magazine into it. He popped a round into the chamber and set it on the table again.

Randy slid to his knees beside her, that gleaming blade ever present as his lips came to her ear, her neck, kissing and nipping at her while his hands roamed over her body, sliding into her blouse, under her bra, the blade caressing her skin just as frequently as his hands did.

The sound that came from under the tape was an obvious plea, but he couldn’t stop. He could feel one side of the blade or the other pressing against her skin and couldn’t tell if it was the flat back or the honed edge.

His lips slid to the divot of her throat, “I can taste your heartbeat. God, I can smell your fear, Sam, its thick and sweet,” he breathed deep, “the things I want to do to you. The ways I want to hurt you,” he nipped hard, drawing blood as she squeaked and finally let the sobs fly free.

“But this isn’t for me. This is for Eric. He asked me to stop, but you know I can’t. I’m not strong enough,” he slid the tip of the blade into the center of the single piece of tape that held her right arm down and cut through half of it.

Eyeing her arm, Randy stepped up his groping and kissing, swinging the blade in front of her face, working up her fear, trying not to give her time to think about what was going to happen.

He almost smiled when she jerked her arm up, breaking through the rest of the tape and grabbed the gun, pressing the muzzle to his temple.

I have a part to play here, this is for you little bear.

Randy leaned back, guided by the gun pressing into his temple. His hands came away from her body, the blade still in her sight.

He looked into her golden colored eyes, and she into his crystal greens, and in a flash she understood exactly why he’d brought her here.

He had to give her credit, once he saw realization in her eyes, she started to fight down the panic he’d worked so hard to set rolling inside her.

She flicked her head to the side and meep’d a plea.

In the periphery of her vision the steel blade flicked back into its housing, but all she saw was movement, and in a split second of full awareness of how he’d planned this moment, she blinked her understanding and gave him the release he asked for with the squeeze of the trigger.

EPILOGUE

The Glen Falls Cemetery - One Year Later.

“If the headstone doesn’t have a name on it then how will…” Jase stopped in the middle of the walkway and shook his head with a smile.

“Well, if his name was on the headstone, then it’d be sure to be vandalized, if not completely desecrated. I don’t blame Eric, losing the one person in the whole world you love with everything, it’s bad enough. He still cries,” she faced him with watering eyes,.“So do I.”

He thumbed away the tears, “Yeah, but not for you, that’s what I don’t get.”

“That night in the Parker barn, no matter what he did, no matter what he planned on doing, he let me in. He gave me the chance to see the kind of man he could have, SHOULD have, been, the one he
wanted
to have been. No one should ever hurt that deeply. If he’d come to the realization two years ago, that he came to that night, he and Eric would have been off somewhere living together as a couple, maybe even married, but they would have had a chance to heal each other, and maybe in the end, they both could have been whole.”

“Sam, they’re
brothers
.”

She shrugged, “With what they went through, they loved each other,” she smiled at the marker, the meaning of it a private detail Eric had shared with her over coffee one day, “that’s all that really mattered.”

She barely registered the marker beside the one she was looking for. Only the name Custon really stood out and it took a moment to realize that the simple engraving, “Sandra Custon, Beloved Wife and Mother, At Rest.” was as good as she was going to get.

To the left of Sandy’s was the one Sam wanted. In front of the headstone she propped up the bouquet of Black-Eyed Susan’s, and looked down at the grave. “These were my dad’s favorite flowers. I hope you
are
at peace.”

Jase shook his head in wonder at the woman he’d married, that she could cry so deeply for a man who’d tried to kill her was beyond him. But it was that part of her that made him love her all the more, and gave him the most rudimentary idea of just how deep the love between those two brothers might have really run.

As they walked back toward the car through the interminable rows of headstones, markers, and monoliths, in a deep and secret place inside, he wished, too, that things had worked out differently for them.

In the end, the bundle of yellow and black flowers was the only sign of any visitors to the beautifully simple, rose-quartz headstone. On the right-hand side was engraved a large Teddy Bear holding a smaller bear in its arms, and to the left was inscribed, simply, “The Love of My Life, Finally at Peace. Little Bear.”

End.

This book is dedicated to all those who work every day to help others. You are the ones who will leave your fingerprints on the future and you chose to do it positively, Blessings to you.

And of course to the wonderful support of all my friends and family who suffered through just about every kind of pathos this writer could muster. A thousand Thank You’s are not enough, so you have my love and gratitude as well.

Thank you to my publisher, E. Zuliani at Uneak Press, Inc. (uneakpress.com); my editor Katherine S; my plot geologists (always looking for those holes) Carol, Sheila, Kat, I am grateful to you all!

Now, if I’m not mistaken you’ve all got something in your queue that needs to be read and critiqued I’m sure. So, the margaritas are in the fridge, and I’ve got work to do.