“Come on, darlin’,” I say, slipping my arms beneath her knees. I pick her up and cradle her.
There’s blood coating the inside of her thighs and my jaw tightens, my teeth grinding against each other. I grab the blanket from the bed and cover her up, exhaling to keep myself from losing it as I head toward the door. When I glance at Jeb’s body in the corner, that white-hot rage nearly consumes me again.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks. The fear in her voice breaks me away from the cycle of anger, tossing me directly into a wave of guilt.
“To get you cleaned up.” I throw the door open and head up the stairs.
The entire way up, she stares at me. I kick the door to the kitchen open and it slams against the wall. Earl and Bubba are still standing by the open screen door smoking a pipe. Earl’s eyes drift from me to Ava before he peers back toward the stairs to the cellar. Ava buries her head in my shoulder. I can’t look at him because I will kill him if I do. And I will not do that in front of her. Not again.
I don’t say a word before heading into the foyer and up the stairs to the bathroom. My shirt is soaked with her tears by the time I get to the top of the stairwell. My throat tightens and heat washes over my skin. Nothing will ever take this away. Nothing will ever chase away the monsters that will live in the recesses of her mind when this is all over, but the one thing I can do is change the path this shit-storm is on.
I set her on the edge of the tub and turn the taps, warming the water before I plug the drain. She’s shaking, still sobbing. I turn to her and rub my hands over her arms. “Look at me, dear,” I say calmly.
She doesn’t budge.
“Ava. Please. Look at me.”
She lifts her chin and the desolation in her eyes nearly breaks me in half. This is too much. Lila. This…I take a deep breath and bite down on the inside of my cheek. “We’re going to clean you up, and then…” I swallow because I haven’t exactly figured everything out yet. “We’re leaving.”
Her eyes widen before they narrow with confusion. “You’re…letting me—” Suddenly, her chest begins to rise and fall in rapid swells. “Are youleavingme? Max, please. I don’t want to—”
Shaking my head, I grab both sides of her face with my hands. “No,weare leaving. Me and you.Together. This is not where you belong.” I can’t help myself, can’t fight the draw I feel to her, so I kiss her lips—gently, apologetically, innocently—because even after all of this, there is still a sliver of innocence left somewhere deep inside of her. “You belong with me,” I say before I even realize it.
I lift the tattered shirt over her head, pull her messy ponytail loose, and help her into the tub. When the water touches the battered parts of her body, she winces.
I pace in front of the tub, dragging my hands through my hair, trying to steady my breathing, but I can’t. The longer I think of Lila, of Ava, of all the girls I’ve helped beat down to nothing—I lose my ability to rationalize. The blood shoots through my jugular in hard pumps. I’m dizzy with hate and anger, my skin literally on fire and covered in sweat.
“I’ll be back,” I say through a clenched jaw.
Ava glances up at me from the tub. She shakes her head, her lips trembling. “Please don’t leave me. They’ll…” She swallows, choking on her words.
“No, theywon’t,I promise you.” I give her a stern look. “They won’t, understand?”
She gives a quick nod, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she goes back to washing herself off.
“I’m going to get you clothes.” I place my hand on the doorknob and stop, but I don’t turn around to look at her. “And no matter what you hear, don’t leave this room. I will be back.” And with that I open the door, closing it behind me and locking it with the key.
Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” floats up from the kitchen. I pull my gun from the back of my jeans, cocking it, the distinct click becoming lost in the twang of the guitar.
Death will come for us all, but some people don’t deserve to slip away quietly in the night. People like Johnny Donovan and Andrew Biddle, Earl and Bubba and Jeb, they need to be snuffed out. And that is why there is a hint of excitement drumming through me right now. Murder, to some, may seem cruel, but I can tell you, the power that surges through you when you watch some sorry motherfucker take his last breath, when you know you are the last thing they will ever see, that is unmatched by anything else.
My pulse remains steady as I calmly descend the stairs, my finger resting over the smooth curve of the trigger as I approach the doorway. Earl’s singing along with the radio, shuffling a deck of cards with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I step into the room and he barely gives me a second glance.
“Need to get yer head on straight, boy. That girl ain’t—”Bam. Bear scurries out from under the table as Earl slumps over in the chair. Blood pours onto the table from the hole in his head, and within seconds, it’s trickling over the edge and splattering onto the linoleum floor. Bear cautiously creeps over, his tail tucked. He sniffs the puddle and looks up at me before lapping up some of the blood.
The cellar door flies against the wall with a bang, and I spin around. “The fucking shit?” Bubba mumbles. I lift the gun and he holds both hands up, his face going white. “Now”—a nervous laugh bubbles from his lips—“Max, put that gun down. You don’t wanna…” Thesplat, splat, splatofthe blood hitting the kitchen floor pulls his gaze over to Earl and he swallows hard. “You don’t wanna do anything more than you done did. Jeb and Earl…I ain’t gonna say shit. I’ll help you cover it up, just don’t kill me.”
“You took my sister.”
His brow furrows as he shakes his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about, Max.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I feel the rage battering my insides. My chest heaves, my pulse clangs in my temples. I step toward him and shove the gun in his face. He backs away and I follow until his heels are hanging over the threshold of the cellar steps. “You let Jeb do that to Ava, you sick fuck!”
His jaw clenches and his eyes flicker. He goes to grab the gun from me, but I pull the trigger, the bullet flying through his jugular. Flesh tears loose, blood gushes out in an arterial spray, and he falls back, his heavy body banging down the old steps until he’s nothing but a lifeless heap at the bottom.
“She wasn’t yours,” I say. “She’s mine, she’s always been mine, motherfucker.”
I lift the gun and pull back on the trigger three more times. Each time a bullet disappears in his body. Smiling, I tuck the pistol into the waist of my jeans before I make my way down the steps, carefully sidestepping around Bubba’s body on my way to Ava’s room.
