“This isn’t a fucking game, asshole. This is my life. A life that you are trying to take from me. You didn’t think I was just going to step aside and let that happen now did you? She’s supposed to be my wife.”
“No she fucking isn’t,” I said, clicking the cuffs in place. It took all the self control I didn’t know I had not to destroy the kid with my bare hands.
“Yes, she fucking is! We said vows goddamn it!” Tanner stomped his foot on the floor and his face turned bright red. “I have her father’s fucking blessing!”
He looked around my chair to the senator who lay lifeless on the floor. “Or…should I say, had.” Tanner smiled his toothpaste ad manic smile. His eyes were blood shot and rimmed in red.
I pulled on the cuffs, itching to damage him in any way I could but they didn’t budge.
“Listen, you fucking amateur, there ain’t no way you’re getting out of this without feeling blowback from someone. Even if you kill me and her you don’t get out of this clean.”
“Me? I’m not getting away with anything. I’m just the son-in-law. I was just as shocked as everyone else to hear about the senator’s murder.” He exaggerated his surprise with his hand over his mouth. “But I was also so glad to hear that the man who killed him, Brantley King, the criminal with a rap sheet longer than a football field, was also found dead.”
“Clever,” I said sarcastically.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” he spat, shaking the gun at me.
“Where the fuck is she?” I asked, again.
His smiled returned. Tanner walked over to the closet and opened the door. Out tumbled a mess of white-blonde hair streaked in red. She was tied to a small white patio chair. She crashed onto the floor with a hollow thud. My heart seized when I didn’t see her move, but started back up again when a few strands of her hair that had fallen into her face were pushed away when she exhaled.
She was alive.
And so was my resolve to kill this motherfucker.
“If you somehow come out of this alive, I assure you, you won’t be that way for long. I may be alone now, but there are people out there. They know where I am,” I warned.
“Yes, but who do they think you are meeting?” Tanner laughed. “They think you’re meeting the senator, right? So, when I crawl out of here they’ll easily believe what I tell them to believe, because it’s what YOU had believed. You barged in here. Had a fight with the senator. Guns were fired. People died. That’s all she wrote.”
He leaned down and pushed the hair out of her face, kissing her on the lips. She stirred and my heart leapt. It was killing me that I couldn’t help her. I wanted to carry her out of there and put a bullet in this kid’s brain. “What’s going…?” She stared to ask. Her eyes opened and landed on Tanner. She jumped like she’d been doused with ice water, but bound to her own chair, both legs and wrists, she couldn’t get more than an inch or two as she tried desperately to scoot across the floor and away from Tanner. He picked up her overturned chair and set her a few feet in front of me so she was facing me. She was close enough to where if I reached out to her, I could put a hand on her leg. If I had use of my arms.
“Ssshhhhh darling,” Tanner said, running the barrel of his gun down her cheek. “I’m here. Your husband is here. Everything is going to be okay, now.”
“Tanner. No. I have to go. I have to go get…” She stumbled over her words, clearly confused from whatever damage Tanner had inflicted. Tanner grabbed her chin and forced her head up.
“This who you’re looking for, dear?” he asked, rubbing his nose against her cheek.
Doe’s eyes seemed to finally focus, and when they did and they landed on me, her eyes widened in surprise and she gasped. She struggled against her restraints but it was useless. Surprisingly, Tanner released her bindings.
“Kneel,” he hissed.
“Please. Don’t do this. Let’s talk okay? You and me. Let him go. He has nothing to do with this anyway and we’ll go for a walk like we used to do and talk.”
“The time for talking is over. I am so fucking tired of all the fucking talking!” he screamed in her face. “KNEEL!” he ordered again. This time she complied, looking straight out to me.
I’m sorry, she mouthed to me.
I wish I could tell her this wasn’t her fault. This was my fault. It all was. But I was so fucking tired of blaming myself for everything that happened. So instead I focused on not losing hope. I focused on what it would feel like to squeeze the last breath from Tanner’s lungs.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” I roared.
“Do you think she really wants a white trash piece of shit like you? She’s confused. She doesn’t know what she wants. The only reason she was even with you was because she has a brain injury.” Tanner’s eyes glazed over. “She’s my WIFE. We’re finally going to be the family we were always supposed to be…” Tanner trailed off.
I wanted to keep him talking. If I kept him talking then maybe I could stop him from hurting her long enough until Bear and Jake showed up. “You really think she’s gonna want you now after you’ve shown her that you’re a complete psychopath.”
“Marriage is all about forgiveness,” Tanner said. Then he scoffed. “And refresh my memory, Mr. King, but didn’t you go to prison because you killed your own mother?”
I shrugged. “Cunt deserved it.”
Tanner tapped on Pup’s head, “Well, this cunt deserves this.” He reached down to the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it up over her head until it was wrapped around her arms like another binding. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her bare breasts were exposed to the night air and to Tanner who blew out a whistle. “Almost forgot what great tits you have, wife. It’s been so long.”
I pulled at the cuffs, they dug into the skin on my wrists until I felt the trickle of warm blood drip from my wounds, down my fingers, and onto the floor.
Tanner rounded Doe and knelt behind her, fumbling with something on the floor I couldn’t see. “Now this…” he said, tapping on her tattoo. There was a hissing sound. Like gas being released from a balloon. He lifted what he’d been messing with. A mini blowtorch. “This has got to go.” He pressed the flame to her skin. I pulled harder at the cuffs.
The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
And so did her strangled screams.
He might as well have been burning my fucking skin, because I felt her pain in every muscle of my body. The hurt I felt for her was more hurt than I’d ever felt for myself.
She wasn’t just mine.
She was a part of me.
“Does that make you feel like a man motherfucker?” I shouted above Doe whose screams stopped abruptly. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Tanner turned off the torch and she slumped forward, twitching as if she’d just been electrocuted. Smoke rose off of her burnt skin.
He yanked on her hair and her head fell backwards. Her eyes and lips were partially opened, devoid of the life that was in them just yesterday. Her cheeks were covered in dried blood, and fresh dripping red. He released her hair and her chin fell lifelessly onto her chest. “See? She’s just being punished. That’s what happens to bad girls. They get punished. And Ray here has been a very, very bad girl.”
“What’s the fucking point of all this?” I asked.
“The fucking point? The fucking point is the same one you were making to me when you were fucking her on the bed where we made our son!” Tanner screamed. “And now you’ve tainted her! You’ve ruined what was mine!” Tanner ran his hand down Doe’s hair, petting her. “All will be okay though…” He walked over to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets, producing a rusted fishing knife. “As soon as I resolve one last problem.” Tanner ripped her shorts and panties down her legs. He pushed her knees apart, exposing her pussy.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growled as Tanner knelt down in front of her and held up his knife.
“Oh, you didn’t know? Seems my wife here has gone and gotten herself knocked up again!” He looked back at me over his shoulder. “But I’ll fix that as soon as I cut your bastard out of her.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Doe
Burning.
Inside and out I was burning up. Sharp unrelenting pain seared through me and even in my state of partial clarity I could feel the flames traveling deeper through layers of skin, muscle, and bone.
It was a scream that brought me back into consciousness. No, a roar. A guttural roar with such strength behind it, it literally dragged me back from the precipice of the unknown. Through the narrow slit in the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, I saw Tanner leaning over me. But just beyond the blond curls, there was King.
He was sitting in a chair with his hands behind his back, just as I’d seen him before Tanner had taken the torch to my back and shoulder, his bright green eyes the darkest I’d ever seen them.
And then he wasn’t.
The muscles in his arms and chest tightened, the chords rippling under his tremendous strength. With the roar that had brought me back to life, he pulled his hands apart with such force that the back of the wooden chair shattered into a million pieces.