AllFreeNovel
Share Us
6
TRAP
* * *
Leo Fucking Key is a goddamn mess. His hair hangs down to his shoulders, individual strands melted into thick, filthy hanks. His beard grew in patchy, but it’s matted together too. He’s got an open sore on his right cheekbone; something that looks like it started as a burn before it went red and oozing. He broke his nose at some point, and no one bothered to set it.
His eyes are so dilated all I can see is black, not a hint of the whiskey brown I know so well from Alix. He’s shaking like he’s in one of those rock tumblers I begged my parents for when I was a kid. The goose pimples on his arms are bigger than his pitiful prick.
Herzog’s guys kept him chained to a table; his neck is scarred from an iron collar. When Kelly’s lieutenant kicked in the door, one of the jailers yanked Leo to his feet by his hair. The cumstain used him as a shield, which might have worked if Kelly hadn’t gotten off a perfect head-shot.
Now, the broomstick of Leo’s neck is twisted around so he’s gaping at me. His jaw is slack and his mouth smells like ass; I don’t know how many teeth he has left, but at least one of them is rotting.
He blinks hard, trying to focus in the glare of the room. I crush the hood in my fist as it takes him three tries to ask, “Whoareyou?”
Because he’s staring at me, he doesn’t see Alix take two steps forward. He doesn’t know her hand stretches out. He can’t tell that her fingers grasp empty air. But a tiny noise rips out of her throat, something between a gasp and a sob and that’s when he finally turns toward her.
“Alix?” He sounds like a little boy, finally catching his first glance of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
She doesn’t say a word.
“Alix?” he asks again, his ruined face lighting up from inside. “Master said he killed you. He said you were dead.”
She flinches atMaster, a full-body twist. “He’s not your fucking master,” she says, every syllable etched in acid.
I’ve heard her swear plenty of times. Hell, I taught her most of the words she knows. But there’s something about thisfucking—it’s raw and dangerous, and I suddenly remember that the scissors weren’t the only tools on that rolling table.
There’s a steak knife there, lean and dangerous, and if it’s not the one she used to execute Herzog, it’s part of the same set. She has a scalpel too, something she must have ordered when she had the goddamn medical table delivered.
Stirrups. She’s got him in fucking stirrups, his shit-smeared ass half off the table.
Leo gulps for air like a beached goldfish. “He said he killed you. He said he had to because I fucked up. I lied to him. I said you were a virgin.”
Alix flicks a glance toward me. She leftmybed that night. She went home wearingmyboxers,myT-shirt. She must have arrived home smelling like sex. That’s what doomed her.
No.
Leo doomed her.
“It was none of your fucking business,” Alix says. Again, her voice is frozen. Each word sounds like it could shatter into a million diamond-sharp points.
“I’m sorry,” Leo sobs. “I’m so, so sorry. I told him I was wrong. I told him it was my fault. I begged for him to let you go. I tried!”
“Not hard enough. Did it ever cross your mind to call the fucking cops?”
“I didn’t have a chance! He kept me in the house until he killed you and then—”
“I’m not dead!” She shouts it loud enough for my ears to ring.
Leo shakes his head like he doesn’t believe her. Maybe it’s the fucking Crash in his system. He was already begging me for a fix while Kelly was putting insurance shots in the brains of both the guys babysitting him.
Him, and a hundred keys of Crash.
“I’m not dead,” Alix says again and this time her voice is back to ice. The man chained to the table between us might as well be a stranger. A mannequin. An actor in a film.
She’s not dead. But Leo might be before she and I walk out of this room.
“I know that now,” Leo says. “But I thought you were. He showed me pictures. A woman. Her head was cut off, and her puss—, her v— vagina was in shreds. He said he used a firecracker, a Sky King. He showed me the box, honest!”
