Rendezvous (10 page)

Chapter 10

Tristan

Cage arrives back at the cabin mid-morning.  It’s been quiet since Darla decided to remain silent the past twenty-four hours. I guess the imminence of her death is weighing on her mind. I really hope she made peace with what was about to happen, because there will be no change of heart. Her death is the only thing that will ensure Bentley’s safety, and if I never have her by my side again, at least I know she has this small piece of assurance. She will never have to look over her shoulder again.

My thoughts of her weigh heavily as of late. I hope she’s safe and I hope she’s happy, but more than anything, I pray she isn’t alone. Not that I want to think of her with another man, I don’t. I just don’t want to imagine her out there somewhere, by herself, waiting for her own personal devil to come knocking on her door.

I won’t give up looking for her, but I’ve resigned myself to the belief that if she really does find someone who makes her happy, I won’t interfere. I love her enough that I truly want her to find happiness, even if I’m not the one to give it to her. I can’t guarantee that seeing her with someone else won’t kill me, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge should it ever come to it.

A scuffle breaks me from my thoughts as I turned to see Darla lying on her side, still tied to the chair. I look up to see Cage nursing his bleeding hand.

“I tried to give her something to eat, and the psycho bitch tried to bite my fucking fingers off. Next thing I knew, she was lifting the chair and trying to charge me, so I flipped the bitch.”

I laugh at Cage. Only he would be stupid enough to put his hands anywhere near that bitch’s mouth.

“Makes no difference if she eats or not, man.” I reply while helping him turn her back upright. “The venom is going to go into her bloodstream. Whether she has an empty stomach or not isn’t going to affect how long it takes to kill her. Just make sure you’re not standing close when I stick the needle in her. Last thing I need is her fucking moving and you getting stuck. Better yet, help me take her the fuck outside, then get lost for a bit. You don’t need to witness me doing this.”

“Yeah sure, sounds good. I’ll make for higher ground.” He said while lifting one end of her chair. I know by higher ground he means he’ll go camp in the tree stand, just in case any unforeseen circumstances arise. He knows if the bitch tries to attack me to shoot her. Not that she can infect me once she’s poisoned, but I didn’t trust the bitch.

Cage and I decide the best time for the venom to start taking effect is around dusk when the animals come out to hunt for food. A normal boomslang bite can take days to kill a person, yet there is only a small window to administer antivenom. I’m not willing to sit here for days watching her bleed out. The concentrated form of venom that I have will ensure her death is reached after several agonizing hours. It’ll be about three hours before her organ tissue starts breaking down and the internal and external bleeding begin. If she’s lucky she might go into cardiac arrest or have a brain hemorrhage. I don’t intend on her being lucky though, so I diluted it with a couple CCs of saline to prolong the effects. A few measly hours just doesn’t seem long enough for the lifetime of pain and misery she delivered to Bentley. This way she’ll be in agonizing, gut wrenching pain for a most of the night, or so I hope.

The sky is darkening pretty early. It’s just past 1:00P.M., when we set her down in the small clearing. I ask her if she has any last words, anything left she needs to put out into the world before she leaves it for good. I wait for the dying pleas of remorse, but hear none as she tightens her lips together and glares at me.

I poke the syringe into the venom bottle and suck the liquid into the hypodermic needle, then toss the bottle as far as I can fling the fucker. Darla chose that moment to lose her shit and start freaking out. She twists and turns her body trying to break loose. I don’t want to have to knock her out. I need her awake and coherent. I want her to comprehend every bit of her terror, so she remembers the hell she put Bentley through. I wrap my hand around her neck to hold it still, and jam the needle into her flesh before releasing all of the liquid.

It should never be easy to take a person’s life, but the only thing I feel from Darla’s impending death is relief. It will be over soon enough. We still need to find a way for the body to be discovered so Bentley knows she’s not coming for her, but we have time to figure that out.

It feels like forever before Darla lets out the first ear piercing scream of pain. I stay with her up until that point, waiting. For what, I’m not sure, maybe a sign that what I’m doing is wrong. Some hint that she could be redeemed, that what I’m doing isn’t justified, but it never happened.

I watch as she bowls over in the chair before letting out another blood curdling scream. Standing up, I cut the ropes from her hands and legs then leave her there. We dragged her a safe distance from the cabin so she won’t be able to flee to safety. Not that being inside would stop the venom from overtaking her body.

I join Cage on the other tree stand, and watch as the effects of the venom take their course. Even from this distance, I can see the blood start to pour from her orifices. She’s hobbling in circles as the blood runs from her nose. When she turns in the direction that faces us, I can see it running from her eyes also. It’s strange how in this moment she looks tragically beautiful. Her tears of blood running down her face remind me of a story I once heard about a statue of the Virgin Mary that bleeds tears as well. Unlike the statue, there is nothing holy about Darla, and her eyes are just the beginning. Soon she’ll be bleeding from everywhere in her body.

I put a set of earplugs in my ears so I don’t have to listen to her tortured wails. She tries to get away, but her shredded ankle isn’t letting her get very far. In truth, I wonder where the fuck she thinks she’d go? She’s in the middle of the woods on a fucking mountain, where does she think she can run to?

Even through the muffled buds, I can hear her. She was screams, cursing both Bentley and my existence. I watch as she scratches and tears at her skin. She is gouging her eyes, trying to get the blood to stop pooling. After a while, her screams become gurgled as she chokes on the blood filling her mouth.

You can tell the moment the venom starts to affect her organs. She begins ripping her skin apart, as if it will give some relief, and every few minutes her body convulses and spasms as the venom attacks her muscles.

A couple more hours pass, and she’s lying on the ground, thrashing mere feet from where she started. She’s still screaming like a banshee as she wriggles on the ground. Her movements look like that of a struggling animal and it isn’t long before she draws the attention of some predators.

Though it’s dark, I’d wager that the four animals approaching her are likely coyotes. Her strangling cries and wriggling make her look like a wounded animal. I can’t nor would I warn her to shut the fuck up and lay still. It wouldn’t matter, the smell of her blood and fear in the air attract several more hungry animals.

I fail to look away as the first of the four lunge for her, it looks like it is going for her throat, but she throws her arm up and it latches onto her forearm. She lets out a high pitched wail at the contact and continues to scream as the animal tosses its head back and forth trying to rip her limb off. It was only then that I hoped the venom would work faster. I don’t think I can stomach watching her get eaten alive, but I’m not getting out of this stand until I know she is dead.

I swallow back bile as the other three join in, each tearing at another part of her as she screams and tries to break free. The cries seem to go on forever until they just stop, leaving me with nothing more than a ringing in my ears. I don’t know how much time passed from the point of her injection until her last scream, but I find little comfort in her death. I thought I would feel better knowing she’s gone, but the truth is I feel sickened by what I just witnessed.

Movement to the left of me catches my attention as I watch Cage descend the hunting stand. I hop down next to him and we trek back to the cabin in silence. When we step inside, I look up at the clock hanging above the fireplace and see that it's 9:48. It took about twenty minutes to get back to the cabin, which meant it had taken Darla over eight hours to die. I imagine it would have taken much longer had she died from the venom and not from the coyotes making dinner out of her.

Cage offered to dispose of the body. There’s an old abandoned mine that is now home to a large rattlesnake population. He plans on dumping her body down into the old mine and alerting officials that he heard screams coming from that direction while on a hunting trip.

I’ll be far away, back home with Aggie when her body is discovered. The needle and syringe were burned then buried so no evidence remains. We both wore gloves so even if the bottle is ever found, there will be no fingerprints. That’s it. Darla’s dead, and tomorrow I will be back home as if nothing ever happened.

I don’t go straight home though, I go to a variety of different places so my movements will be hard to track, but the one place I find myself is the one place I never expected to be again. I pull the rental car into the cemetery and wade through the two feet of snow until I stand in front of a grave. Looking out at my surroundings, it is almost peaceful here, serene. Except no amount of beauty can hide the stench of death. I’ve never come here before. I know the place, but I wasn’t told of my father’s death until months after he’d been buried. It wasn’t until that bitch tried to take his estate that I knew he was gone.

Kneeling down, I brush the snow away from the headstone so I can see the name clearly. Only it isn’t my father’s name I’m staring at, it’s my mother's. All these years I’ve never known where she was buried. He told me her family claimed her body and that he wasn’t told where she was. He lied. He knew exactly where she was this whole time since this is his family’s plot. I lean over and brush the snow away from the one by her side, and there is my father. After everything he did to desecrate my mother’s memory, here they are eternally side by side.

Maybe Aggie was right, maybe he never did get over the heartbreak of losing her. Aggie always told me she was the love of his life, and after losing her, he just broke inside. Staring at their headstones, I realize I don’t want to be broken for the rest of my life. I want to know what it’s like to have that all-consuming kind of love. I know who I’d find it with, but I’m completely lost on where to look.

As I get back in the car, I send a text to Jacob letting him know the mission is accomplished and ask if he has any news. It is several minutes before my phone chimes.

Got a message from your buddy, Dante, earlier. He received a letter from her. It’s stamped out of Cali. I’m looking into anyone she might know out there. I might have a lead. You should talk to Dante. ~J

I try to recall something Dante had mentioned, but for the life of me, I can’t fucking think straight. The snow is coming down pretty hard, so I’m going to chance trying to talk to him while driving. I’ll just have to wait until I get back to see what he can tell me.

The flight is longer than expected since the storm caused a few delays, but I’m finally back on warmer soil. Dante is picking me up so I don’t have to worry about renting another car and since I only have my carry on. I make my way out of the airport and into the humid air. As if he can read my thoughts, Dante pulls up to the curb in front of me.

I waste no time getting out of the hot humid air and into the air conditioned car. You would think for the middle of December it would be cooler, but nope, not in the middle of Florida. The sun is shining and the temperature outside reads seventy-nine degrees. Leaning my head against the rest, I take an anxious breath, ready to ask Dante about Bentley, but before I get the chance my phone chimes.

Done deal ~ C

So that’s it, now he just needs the authorities to go out there and find her. He plans to place an anonymous tip once he’s out of the area. He needs it to come from somewhere they won’t be able to trace it. I let him know I’m back in Florida and what little I’ve learned about Bentley. He writes back to let me know he’ll head out that way after he confers with Jacob.

Turning back to Dante, I ask him about anyone Bentley might know in California, and why she might go out there.

“Well shit, I don’t know anyone she’d go out there for. I know her mom had that affair with some director out there, but that was before Bentley was born. My parents said once spoke of how she tried getting knocked up by him, but ended up getting pregnant by Grant. I bet you could find old media coverage. She tried to blackmail him into making her a famous actress by threatening to tell his wife about the affair. He’s the only person I know of that lived in Cali, but that was forever ago. He could be anywhere by now.”

I mull over the words for a while. In truth, Dante is probably correct. The odds of her going out to Cali for some guy her mom boinked is highly unlikely. It’s still a lead, but Dante has no clue what the guy’s name is so that leaves us at a dead end. I’ll just have to wait and see what Jacob comes up with. He said guy who told Bentley about her sister skipped town around the same time Bentley left, which makes me wonder if she didn’t go searching for her sister. It would make sense as that would be a logical decision for anyone who thought their sister was dead for the past seven years. But would her sister be where it all began

I hate playing this waiting game, but I have no idea why she would be in California unless she was just stopping through while traveling north. I have no clue as to where to find her sister, especially since she has a new identity.