Under His Spell (10 page)

“Yeah?” Kennedy yelled back.

“I’m glad I have a sister!” Nicole cried
out, and then she turned around again and continued walking away.

***

Why
are you doing this?

Kennedy had been asking herself that
question ever since she’d gotten back in her car and started driving.
 

You
have no right.
 
This isn’t going to
help anything.

The thoughts were like warning signs,
flashing neon in her mind, telling her over and over that she was making yet
another gigantic mistake.

But for some unexplainable reason,
Kennedy felt compelled to continue on.
 
She drove all the way out to Jersey, eventually parking in the large lot
behind Dean’s sport’s bar, Half-Time Johnny’s.

It was a decent-sized building, with big
tinted windows and a billboard out front announcing their twenty-five cent buffalo
wings special on Wednesday nights.

She made sure to park behind a large
pickup truck, giving herself some cover, while at the same time having a view
of the comings and goings inside the bar.

Kennedy didn’t even want to go
inside.
 
Something told her to just
sit in her car and watch from a distance.

Why?

She didn’t exactly know.
 
Ever since Dean’s wife had visited the
office, Kennedy had become convinced that something bad was
happening—something that Easton wasn’t aware of.

Kennedy felt protective of Easton.
 
Despite the fact that he was powerful
and strong and smart, she sensed that he had deep vulnerabilities, places
impenetrable to the naked eye, and that he could be hurt if someone ever
exploited those places.

She never wanted Easton to be hurt like
that.
 
She never wanted someone
close to him to betray him, not if she could stop it.

But
is it your place?
 
Will he
appreciate this kind of help, when he never asked you for it?
 
What if he considers what you’re doing a
betrayal as well?

Kennedy didn’t know how to resolve the
dilemma.
 
All she knew was that
something had told her to find out about Sheri, and that had led to Easton’s
brother Dean, and the knowledge that Dean was in trouble.
 
What if Dean was somehow going to pull
Easton into the same rabbit hole he’d fallen into?

But what or where exactly hole that was,
didn’t seem completely clear.
 
The
picture was very hazy, and Kennedy needed a lot more information before she
could make any judgments about what was truly going on.

So she sat in her car in the parking lot
of the sports bar, watching, waiting, not quite knowing what she hoped to
uncover.

As minutes turned into hours, Kennedy
watched people filter in and out of the bar with no discernable pattern.
 
It seemed that Dean had a decent
business, and there were customers, so they were making some money.
 
She wondered whether the rent was high
in that area, whether they were simply not making enough money or if it was
another problem that had created all of the debt and credit trouble?

Maybe he had a drug problem, maybe his
wife liked spending a little too much for what they could afford…

And then her mind drifted back to Easton,
and the little outfit she’d bought at Cosabella with Nicole.
 
Would Easton see her in that outfit in
just a few hours?
 
Would he be
helping her to slip out of those bright colored panties, unclasping her bra?

She started to fantasize, losing all
sense of place and time.

Kennedy saw herself in the hotel room
with Easton, his shirt unbuttoned, his chest revealed, and both of them were a
little sweaty from excitement and heat.
 
It was like a snapshot of the future, and she could imagine what it
would feel like to be close to him once again, to smell his scent, to kiss his
firm lips, to feel the caress of his fingertips over her bare skin…

She startled out of her reverie to find
that a large delivery truck was pulling up to the back entrance of the
building.
 
A couple of guys got out
of the truck and waited, one of them lit a cigarette, while the other texted on
his phone.

Something about the truck and the men had
gotten Kennedy’s antennae up.

The truck itself was unmarked, which
didn’t necessarily mean anything.
 
But the two men didn’t look like normal delivery guys.
 
First of all, they were dressed a little
too nice, slacks and collared shirts, and they both had the kind of expensive
haircuts that she associated with a high-end salon.

After a minute or two, they opened the
garage to what appeared to be a loading dock, and were joined by a large,
rather heavyset man with a shaven head and shoulders like a linebacker.
 
He was dressed in a dark suit, and he
wore sunglasses.

The three men began conversing and
Kennedy wished she could somehow read lips or get close enough to hear exactly
what they were talking about.
 
After
a minute or two of conversation, the big bald guy gestured to inside the
loading dock.
 
The two men seemed to
be taking direction from him.

They came out with hand trucks and then
went inside the building with them, disappearing momentarily, while the big
bald guy folded his arms and waited.

Kennedy wondered what was going
on—the whole scene had a look that didn’t quite fit with a typical
delivery to a neighborhood bar.
 
Who
were these guys, she wondered, and what were they up to?

Her question was partially answered not
long afterwards, when the two men reappeared with their hand-trucks bearing
boxes stacked upon boxes.
 
What was
inside the boxes, she didn’t know.

But over the next ten or fifteen minutes,
the two guys loaded lots of stuff inside their truck, and they just kept going
and going and going.

Usually delivery trucks
delivered
product to a bar, they didn’t
remove it.
 
That in and of itself
was quite weird.

The strange scene got a lot weirder when
a fourth man appeared, walking out of the building and approaching the three
other guys with a very agitated expression on his face.

Kennedy registered that this new person
on the scene was Dean—she’d seen his picture on Facebook the previous day—and
he was clearly unhappy.
 
Dean Rather
had brown hair, slicked back over his head in a hairstyle that was fashionable
in the eighties or early nineties.
 
He was handsome, with features reminiscent of Easton, but somehow rougher,
as if he’d lived a much tougher adult life.
 
He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt,
and he had a close beard.

When Dean got closer to the big bald man,
what was clearly an argument ensued.
 
Dean was gesturing at the two guys moving boxes out of his bar and into
their truck, pointing at them and yelling, his face reddening.

Kennedy picked up her phone and started
photographing the scene, wanting to have physical evidence to refer back to if
necessary.

Dean yelled and gesticulated for a little
bit, while the big bald guy remained passive, arms still folded, just watching
him as he yelled and waved his arms.

Kennedy rolled down her window, but she
was too far away to hear much of what Dean was saying.
 
She caught a few phrases that didn’t
mean a whole lot to her.

He said something about “going over his
head” and “pillar of the community.”
 
And then he waved his arms and said, “why don’t you burn the place
down,” seeming to refer to his own bar.
 
But Kennedy had no idea if Dean was being serious or sarcastic.

Meanwhile, the two other men continued
loading the delivery truck, not seeming to pay much attention to what Dean was
saying or doing.

Kennedy continued to take pictures, her
heart beating fast as she watched the situation developing.
 
She had a deep sensation in her gut that
things were starting to unravel, that something bad was about to happen—she
just wasn’t sure what.

When the dramatic moment occurred, it
still surprised her, even though she’d felt it coming.

One second, Dean was yelling and
pointing, and the bald guy was just watching him freak out.
 
The very next second, the bald man had
grabbed Dean by the throat and pinned him against the building.

Dean’s face was turning purple and his
eyes bulged out of his head.
 
The
big bald man, although heavy, was not just some out of shape fat man.
 
Beneath the extra pounds, Kennedy could
see the bulges of muscle in his biceps and chest, like a slightly past his
prime athlete.
 

He pinned Dean to the wall and held him
there, choking him.
 
Then he leaned
his face against Dean’s face and said something too low for her to hear.

Kennedy had no idea what he told Dean,
only that when he finally let him go, Dean fell to his hands and knees,
coughing and sputtering.

She took as many pictures as she could,
wanting to be able to show Easton what had happened to his brother, although
she still had no real idea why any of this was happening, what they were even fighting
about…

Suddenly, the big man kicked Dean in the
ribs, sending Dean rolling on his back, clutching his torso and writhing in
pain.

Kennedy snapped another picture and
another.
 
Should she call 911?
 
How far could she let things go before
trying to put a stop to it?

The bald man’s sunglasses had fallen to
the ground during the scuffle, and as he bent down to pick them up, he glanced
up in time for Kennedy to snap a perfect picture of his face without his sunglasses
to mask him.

Unfortunately, he also looked straight at
her as she took the picture.
 
He
picked up his sunglasses and continued looking at her, a grin appearing on his
face.
 
“Hey!” he called out, gesturing
to her.
 
“You get a good look,
honey?”

Kennedy’s heart was suddenly racing, as
she put her phone down and searched frantically for her car keys.
 
Why had she so stupidly put them in her
purse instead of leaving them in the ignition?

From the corner of her eye, she could see
the bald man walking towards her car, talking as he approached.
 
“Don’t drive off, now, I haven’t even
gotten your name.
 
Wait a second,
baby!” he called.
 
There was an edge
to his voice, and he started moving faster.

She was searching through her bag, and he
was getting closer, and the panic was intensifying.
 
“Goddammit,” she muttered.
 
Finally, she found her keys and stuffed
them in the ignition.
 
But just as
she got the keys in, the man arrived at her car, putting his giant hands inside
the passenger door as he leaned through, invading her space.

“What’cha doing, baby?
 
Where you running off to now?”

“Leave me alone,” Kennedy said, turning
the key in the ignition.

“You’re taking pictures on private
property.
 
I didn’t give you my
permission, doll.
 
I didn’t sign no
release.
 
So who sent you, huh?”

Kennedy put the gearshift into reverse,
her hands shaking.
 
She couldn’t
look at him, although she could smell him and feel him and see him out of the
corner of her eye.
 
He was even
bigger than he’d seemed at a distance, and every cell in her body screamed that
she was in the presence of real danger—a true psychopath.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed.

Suddenly, the man’s smile and phony
affable demeanor disappeared, and he grit his teeth, reaching in and grabbing
her arm.
 
“Give me that camera, you
stupid bitch, before I knock your fucking teeth into the back of your head.”

Kennedy hit the gas and the car lurched
backwards.

The big man stumbled, his hand grabbed
for purchase and he tore the sleeve off her shirt.
 

“Fuck you!” she yelled at him, putting
the car into drive and speeding out of the lot as he ran after her, yelling
insults and threats.

Kennedy was shaking for a long time
afterward, driving back to the city to meet with Easton, knowing that she’d
screwed up badly.

A
man like that would make note of her license plate.

A
man like that wouldn’t forget her face
.