Dom moves fast, grabbing Carl by the collar and slamming him against the desk, and I hear the air rush out of Carl's lungs.
“Grab his phone,” Dom says to me, and I pick up the old cell phone that’s on the desk next to his face. This guy is so fucking dumb that he doesn’t have a passcode, who the hell does that?
“Take the damn phone and get the hell out of here,” Carl shouts, struggling under Dom’s body.
“Shut up!” Dom shouts as I scroll through the phone, because I'm nosey, but I soon regret it when I go into his photo album.
“You sick fuck,” I hiss, showing the screen to Dom. There are pictures after pictures of Lisa, ranging from shots of her at work, in her car, talking to customers, and then there are pictures of her with nothing but terror in her eyes, wearing only her underwear, with bruises on her arms and chest. This fucker archiving his abuse is beyond redemption. To top it all off, there are hundreds of pictures of different women who have been in this store. Some of women filling up their vehicles at the pumps. All young and the shots are mainly close ups of their bodies. This guy is seriously sick.
“I wonder what your wife would think of these pictures? Or even better. What would the police have to say?” I say, taunting him with the screen close to his ugly face.
“Just take the money and leave,” he says, begging like the pathetic scumbag he is.
“He won’t stop, Dom. He’s lying,” I say, and Dom looks at me, smirking, knowing what I mean.
"You're going to listen very carefully," Dom says, his voice deadly calm. "And then you're going to make a choice."
"Fuck you!"
Dom slams him against the desk again, harder this time as Carl's head snaps back.
"The choice is this," Dom continues. "You leave tonight and you get in your car and you drive away from this town and you never come back. You don't contact Lisa, you don't contact anyone, we want you to intentionally go missing."
"You can't…"
"Or," Dom says, leaning closer, "I make you vanish. Permanently."
The threat hits the mark and I can see Carl processing it, trying to decide if Dom is serious. He’s not. We have no intention of letting him go, but who said it isn’t fun to play with your prey?
"You're fucking crazy," Carl spits.
"Yeah, we are," Dom says, and I can’t stop the giggle. This is fun.
Dom releases Carl and steps back, and for a second I think Carl might actually try to run. That he would consider leaving, but he doesn’t, instead he reaches under the desk, searching for a gun probably, or some other weapon, but he has nothing on the speed of Dom.
Before my eyes can register what I’m seeing, the first thing I hear is the sound of Carl gurgling on his own blood, a choking sound with panicked breaths, before his heavy body hits thefloor. Carl's breathing turns ragged before finally stopping. I look down to see Carl lying in a pool of blood that’s quickly spreading as it runs like a faucet from his neck. I watch in awe as my chill guy wipes the blade on his pants and puts it into his pocket. I didn’t know he had a knife.
Dom straightens, his hands bloody, and looks at me.
"Are you good?"
"I’m better than good," I say as I grab my camera from my bag and start shooting. Not Carl, I don't need that image, and I don't want it. But the space. The desk, the cash scattered on the surface and some of it on the floor with drips of blood staining the notes. I shoot the sickly yellow light that makes the room feel suffocating. This is the evidence that something happened here, that we were here, that this moment existed and we are the creators.
Dom watches me work as he stands by the door, checking that we are still alone, and when I'm done, he takes my hand.
"We need to go," he says.
"Okay," I say as I scan the shop for any evidence that we may have left behind, and use a cloth we find in the back to wipe down anywhere we have touched, including the doors.
We leave through the back door, and by the time we reach the van, my hands are trembling. Not from guilt but from the pure adrenaline of what we just did, from the understanding that we crossed a line we can't uncross.
Dom drives this time, his bloody hands gripping the wheel, as I sit in the passenger seat with my camera in my lap. The highway is busier than before, as the sun starts to lower in the background, and neither of us speaks for the first twenty miles.
The adrenaline hasn't faded. If anything, it's building like a pressure cooker in my chest, a heat in my blood that makes my skin feel too tight. I can feel Dom's tension radiating off him in waves, his jaw clenched, his knuckles white on the wheeldespite the blood. That familiar ache intensifies in my abdomen, creating a pleasure of tingling sensations in my clit. I have to cross my legs to control it.
"Pull over," I say, already panting.
He glances at me. "What?"
