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“It’s the 1970 R/T with the 426 Hemi,” Kyle added, proudly.
“I really don’t know what any of that means, Mr. Groundskeeper.”
“Really? How’d he ever trust you with this one then?”
“We didn’t exactly have much of a choice,” I admitted.
“You ladies in trouble?” He asked. “Still?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I think we are.”
“He still alive?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
I couldn’t stop the tear that escaped, but I wiped that little fucker away as quickly as I could.
“We’ve got kind of a lot to get figured out,” I said, to try to mask the emotional whiplash that was coursing through me. “I imagine we’ll be in and out quite a bit over the next few days.”
“I’m not here to keep tabs on anybody,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll be here either way, keeping the outside nice like he wanted. I’m out in that house if you need something. There’s an intercom in the kitchen that connects to my kitchen if you really need something. Haven’t had to do much dirty work in recent years, but I reckon I still know how if the occasion really called for such a thing. If you ladies mean enough to him that he’d send you here for safety, I have to assume it’s because he knew I’d do that too.”
“You’re willing to do all of this for him just because he lets you live here?”
This man looked at me like I might’ve been the least intelligent being he’d ever encountered.
“You don’t really know him very well then, do you?”
“I really wish everyone would stop saying it that way,” I said with a sigh and went around to the trunk to get the bags that managed to survive the last couple of weeks with us. “I met the man like two weeks ago. Against my will. And I still hate him just as much as I like him. So no, I don’t know him. At all. And nobody seems to be interested in telling me anything about him.”
He stared at me that time like I’d just busted out of custody from an institute for the criminally insane.
“Yeah,” I added. “It’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.”
“I think I’d be more than willing to swap some of my stories with him for some of yours,” he said and chuckled. “Yours sound like they’re probably hilarious.”
“They definitely don’t feel very funny on this side of it.”
“Here, let me carry some of those,” he said, taking literally everything from my hands. “I think I’m going to like having you two around here.”
CHAPTER SIX
jersey
The room that they’d moved me into at least came with the small convenience of a bucket. Though it took some convincing to make my own brain decide to actually use it. Seemed like it was really only convenient for whoever they might send in here to empty it, and something about making some other human get down on their hands and knees to scoop my shit back into that bucket sounded more appealing. It only took the logical side of me realizing that they’d just make me do it before I figured I was better off just going along with the bucket’s intended purpose.
Unfortunately, that bucket was the only fucking thing that adorned this room. They’d taken the handcuffs from my ankles but left the ones around my wrists. They took my shoes, my belt, and the bag from my head. And that was that. It was me, a bucket, a set of handcuffs, my pants, and my shirt in a concrete box. All with a very unpleasant bullet still residing within my shoulder. If they knew what they were doing, it was only a matter of time before they took my clothes too, but I was under the impression that we’d be starting slowly. They would need me mentally present enough to be able to register and react to the kinds of things they planned on doing to me if they wanted to use my suffering to draw Trista and Memphis back out.
The beginning wouldn’t be so bad. Regardless of their early tactics, as long as I could hold onto an image of either Trista or Memphis, I’d be able to keep it together. The only downside to that was that I’d had very limited contact with both of them. I only had a handful of moments where Trista truly smiled in my presence, even fewer when she’d laughed and looked genuinely happy. I saw Memphis a grand total of one time, and it was under wildly unpleasant circumstances.
The terrifying part was having to acknowledge that the moment those images disappeared, the thoughts of someone else would take their place. And those thoughts would send me into a tailspin that couldn’t be controlled. Those thoughts unleashed the monster, and if that fucker got out again, I didn’t imagine there’d be much of a chance at boxing it away another time. If I was being honest about it, that would probably be for the best once it got to that point. I’d made my peace with it that my death was coming at the hands of somebody in this building. Not having to be the one mentally present for that sounded easier.
Every time that door opened, I ended up with the most unpleasant, mad rush of adrenaline. No matter how often I told myself that I was trained for this shit or how many times I reminded myself that I’d already been through worse than anything these people could do to me, I was still nervous. It took me an extra second or two to figure out who they’d sent in here this time. I was looking at a younger version of Nate Evans, one who entered the room with his right arm in a sling. I laughed when I realized it was probably due to an injury from a gunshot; one that had been fired by me in a parking garage in Kentucky in a blind rage that I didn’t even remember.
“New Jersey.”
“Have we met?” I asked.
He smirked and I saw a flash of that same ruthless nature that crossed his daddy’s face when the old man façade was peeled back.
