Her only hope was Dan, whose name she now began screaming.

  Dan felt like things were taking an awful long time. While he’d given up hope that he’d hear anything through the earpiece, he figured that by now one of three things should have happened.

  First, J.J. should have walked out, unsullied, and report that the doctor had been completely professional.

  Barring that, Nicole and J.J. should have calmly but quickly come out together, which meant the good doctor had probably made his last consult.

  And if neither of those things occurred, the doctor himself should have come bolting out, screaming like a little bitch, probably.

  But he’d encountered none of the above. Finally, he decided he’d leave the car and walk back into the building. Not the office itself, just the entry area. Maybe that would bring him into range of the communication devices. He walked toward the door, attempting to look casual. Just before he reached for the handle, he heard tires squealing at the far end of the building, by the dentist’s office, if he remembered the briefing session correctly. He looked and saw a beat-down orange pickup truck speeding onto the road. He watched it for a second longer, though it was quickly out of sight. He really didn’t attach any meaning to it, other than it being a distraction. It had happened all the way down there. He was concerned with over here.

  Stepping into the entry of the building, he instantly thought that his right eardrum had spontaneously burst of its own accord, so loud was the sound and so great the pain. It was Nicole, and she was screaming his name over and over.

  “Cole,” he shouted, sprinting toward Suite 122. “Cole!” She probably could have heard him without the device.

  “Danny, I’m trapped in the closet. Hurry.”

  “What do you mean you’re trapped?” he asked, tearing open the office door. Then a moment later, she heard him say, “Oh.”

  “Oh, what? What’s going on? Get me out of here.”

  “I will, hold…” he grunted as he tried to the cart away from what was no doubt the door to the closet. It didn’t budge.

  “What the… Oh. I see. One of those wheel lock thingies.”

  “I knew it!” Nicole screamed, banging on the door to emphasize her frustration.

  Dan looked up, startled by the bang, but smiled, realizing he’d found his wife. He clumsily unlocked the wheels and pulled on the cart. Even with the wheels turning, the cart was ridiculously heavy. That can’t be OSHA compliant, he thought. Just as he was reaching for the door, Nicole burst out, having decided to try another shoulder smash. Their perfectly timed pas de deux drove the edge of the door into Dan’s right eye, instantly opening a nasty cut over it.

  “Ow! Fuck, Nicole!”

  When Nicole got her bearings, she saw Dan bleeding. “Oh! Oh, baby! I’m so sorry!” she said. She reached out and tried to gently wipe the blood so that it didn’t run into his eye, but he winced and pulled away.

  “I am definitely going to make this up to you. But right now, we need to find a way out… that way!” She pointed back towards the exam rooms and they ran in that direction, Dan leaving behind a trail of blood droplets. When they reached the doors of the two rooms, both of which were empty, they saw that the hallway extended down to a room with a closed door, and they started towards that, but after only a few feet, they saw that a crude secret door, consisting simply of a cut away section of the wall’s sheetrock, had been left carelessly open. “Through here,” Nicole said, plunging into the dim space beyond the opening. Dan, his head throbbing, struggled to keep up with her.

  The narrow corridor through which they were passing made a couple of turns before a final ninety-degree corner led them to a second crude opening in the wall, just like in Lewis’s office. They walked out into another hallway, part of what they quickly realized was a fully outfitted dentist’s office, lacking only people. It was abandoned or, Cole was increasingly convinced, was just for show. A stage set.

  “I’m sure they came through here. The doctor was with… with Uncle Clyde,” Nicole said.

  Suddenly, Dan’s heart sank. The dentist’s office. The rust-bucket orange pickup had screamed out of that side lot at just about the time they would have been running out.

  “I think they took J.J. with them,” Nicole said, cracks rapidly spidering across her poker-face.

  Dan had watched them escape. With his daughter.

  “FUCK!” he screamed. “FUCK! Cole, I saw them. I didn’t expect anyone to come out down there, so when I heard the tires, I looked, but I didn’t think anything of it. I just watched them go.”

  Nicole said nothing. Her jaw was quivering as she tried to keep her composure. It was all the more important now, hearing that Dan had seen them slip past and would no doubt be blaming himself for every rotten bit of bad luck that had just befallen them.

  “Alright,” she said at last. “We found her once, we can find her again. We need to look around that office, quick, fast, and in a hurry.” She darted back into the opening, and when she emerged back in Lewis’s suite, she immediately ran to the closed door they’d spotted earlier. She pushed it open and saw that it was probably the doctor’s private office. A laptop sat on the desk. It was on. Nicole moved around the desk and looked at the screen. She raised her hand to her mouth as she saw an exam room with separate windows for various camera angles. In one frame, she could clearly see J.J.’s pink workout top, carelessly left behind.

  She looked up at Dan, who had entered the office a few seconds after her. “He recorded her, I think.”

  Dan spun the computer around and saw the same scene, the same pink top. His fingers began to play across the keys as he found a rewind icon. An instant later, they saw J.J., naked and unconscious, as Lewis inserted an ungloved finger into her vagina. Nicole gasped. “Damn. Damn. Damn,” Dan said over and over. “I’m taking it with us. He won’t get to sneak back and grab this for… for…” He closed the top down and tucked the notebook under his arm.

  From behind them came the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. “Now, now. That computer doesn’t belong to you, Daniel Porter. I think you should put it back where you found it.”

  Dan started to turn toward the voice, but the man said, “Ah, ah! I didn’t say ‘about face.’ I told you to put the laptop down. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear me pull that hammer back just then.”

  Dan, swallowing back bile, set the computer on the desk.

  “There, see? Nice. Now, if you both put your hands real high in the air, I’ll let you turn around.”

  As Dan lifted his arms, he glanced at Nicole, who was doing the same. But Dan could see that Cole’s face was drained of its color as she began to turn.

  “Easy does it. Nice and slow. You too, Daniel.”

  Dan turned and saw a man in his seventies, with short cropped hair that was a dingy gray, and a .38 caliber revolver that was a cold blue. For a moment, no one spoke. Then the man looked at Nicole and smiled. “Well, hello, June-Bug.”

  The pounding in Dan’s head doubled as he heard her reply, “Hello, Conrad.”

  19

  Everyone Goes for a Drive in the Country

  Dan’s mind raced. As he looked into the face of the man who had recently rocketed to the top spot on his Most Hated List, Dan looked at the revolver that Conrad pointed first at Nicole, then at him. Any sudden movements would no doubt elicit gunfire, and as he didn’t know the older man’s prowess with handguns, he wasn’t willing to risk either (or possibly both) of their lives. His own gun was currently in the waistband at the back of his pants, and Nicole had returned hers to the shoulder holster when they’d returned to Lewis’s office.

  “How wonderful to see you after all this time, June-Bug. Oh, wait. It’s Nicole now, isn’t it. I guess you felt that changing your name would help you forget your dear old daddy and how you murdered ten of his friends.”

  When Nicole had first said hello to her father, her voice, while not shaking, was not as strong and confident as Dan was used to hearing from her.

  But as she answered him now, its metal had returned.

  “I never forgot a single thing, Conrad. From that first horrible day when you offered me up to man after man to the day I kicked your nuts in and burned down your goddamned shack with their rotting bodies inside, I can see every moment like it just happened. Like it’s still happening. Do you think something as simple as changing my name could ever counteract the horror that you put me through?”

  “Watch your tone with your daddy, now, girl,” Conrad said, his eyes narrowing to angry slits as he pointed the gun in her direction.

  “You stopped being my daddy a long time before I stopped calling you that.”

  “Aw, June. How can you talk like that? I never stopped being your daddy!”

  “You never stopped being the man who knocked up and married my mother. Unfortunately, I can’t undo that. But you were not a father, not my father.” She nodded her head in Dan’s direction. “This is a father. This is a man who paced the floor all night when his baby son had croup. This is a man who would leave the boardroom of his company to take his daughter to her doctor appointments. This is a father, you piece of shit.”

  Conrad growled and took a step closer to his daughter, when he suddenly stopped and smiled. “That was good, June-Bug. Goading me into coming at you all angry and careless. Nice try. But I’m not stupid enough to fall for that. So this is a father, huh?” he asked, returning the business end of the pistol back to Dan’s orientation. “Looks like a pussy college-boy to me. You know what we do to your kind round these parts, college-boy?”

  “Sure, I’ve seen Deliverance. Do you need me to squeal like a pig?”

  “Oh, he’s a funny-boy too!” Conrad laughed. Then he gritted his teeth and raised the gun so that it was pointed at Dan’s face. “I hate them even more than pussy college-boys,” he said menacingly.

  Nicole desperately wanted to know how Conrad had figured out her plan. There should be no way of connecting them to Britney Darrow, the only name that was given when the consult was arranged. But she knew he wouldn’t tell her, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of withholding information from her.

  As the three of them stood in this triangle of madness, Nicole realized that there was probably no chance of dealing with Conrad here. She’d have to wait for his next move, then hope she could see an opening.

  Clyde Davis drove his old Chevy pickup like he’d stolen it, heading out of the city at breakneck speed and with more than one close call until the traffic thinned out as he neared more open country. As he turned hard and swerved through traffic, the etherized girl flopped from side to side, first resting against Lewis, then Clyde.

  “So do you mind telling me what’s going on, Davis? I was just about to have some fun and you came running in to spoil everything.”

  “I reckon if I smelt your fingers, you had already commenced ‘having fun,’ Nathan.”

  “Regardless. What the hell is going on?”

  Clyde had been instructed by Conrad to get Lewis and the girl out of the city, which clearly, he’d done admirably. He hadn’t been told, as in many cases prior, to keep his big mouth shut. So he felt well within his rights to tell Lewis just how smart he was.

  “Well, it’s like this, doctor. Late last night, my boss, your protector, got a call from the other Clyde Davis, the one Conrad put on top of the Chamber of Commerce so he could control it from a distance. He gives some bullshit story about calling in to check on status or some such shit. Conrad was a little suspicious at first, but eventually relaxed. But I was with Conrad. We was discussing important strategy… and stuff.”

  “I’m sure you were,” said the doctor, who had pulled J.J. against him and placed his arm around her shoulder.

  “Anyhow, I says ‘Conrad, something’s up with him.’ He agrees and calls him back. Other Clyde says a bunch of shit that don’t make sense, so I says, ‘Conrad, we got to go see him. Get some straight answers.’

  “So, we show up at his place and Conrad knocks him upside the head a few times. You know, to get him to talk.”

  “Of course.”

  “Finally, he lets slip that he seen the girl, this girl, at some drive-thru or something. Conrad flips when he finds out she’s still in Greenville. Shoots ol’ other-Clyde right in the face. Guess the Chamber’s gonna need a new president.” The weasel laughed.

  Dr. Lewis was confused. “Of course she’s still in Greenville. She was scheduled for a consult today. What does Conrad Barker care about Britney Darrow?”

  Clyde started laughing so hard that he began to cough, and when his eyes started to water, he pulled the truck over for a minute to compose himself before he laughed and coughed the truck into a ditch. “This ain’t no goddamn Britney! This is J.J. Porter. She’s Conrad’s granddaughter!”

  Nathan Lewis’s eyes opened wide, until they, like his swarthy smile, seemed too large to fit on his face. “I am so lost. What’s Conrad’s granddaughter doing coming to me for an injury consultation?”

  “It was some kind of setup. You see, she’s not the problem,” Clyde said, pointing a thumb in J.J.’s direction. “It’s Conrad’s daughter, June, that’s giving him conniptions. We’re one hundred percent goddamn sure that she’s here…” He paused dramatically. “…to kill you!”

  “Kill me? Whatever for? I don’t know her.”

  “That what she does, Conrad says. She’s a paid killer or something. I didn’t quite get clear on that part of the story, but it don’t matter. The point is, when Conrad heard the girl was still here, he realized Junie must be too.”

  “‘Junie?’ You make it sound like you know her pretty well.”

  “I should say so. Known her since she was a baby.” Clyde leaned toward Lewis conspiratorially. “I was her first, you know. When she was just ten. Oh, it was so sweet. I’d been thinking about it since she was a baby, but Clyde made me wait till the cancer took her ma.”

  Normally, that sort of story was one that Nathan Lewis would have like to hear more of. But the revelation that someone might want to kill him kept him from asking Clyde for details.

  “But why would she come after me?”

  “Are you kidding? We’ve had to work pretty hard to keep your name out of the fucking headlines, doctor.” He said the title with a full complement of derision. “And when you get tired of diddling the kiddies at the high school, you start bringing them in from all over the country, making things even harder for us. It’s probably just as well she came for you, ‘cause Conrad has been starting to think you’re more damn trouble than you’re worth.”

  “More trouble than I’m worth? I pay him handsomely to keep my name out of the newspapers.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re doing everything you can to see that’s exactly where your damn Yankee-sounding name lands! He’s thought about taking you out himself more than once.”

  Lewis scowled. “Finish your story. How did all this land in my lap?”

  “Well, if June was still in Greenville, then she was probably still here to take you out, Conrad figured. Now, in a sad turn of events, Conrad’s normal computer guy sorta got hisself kilt the other day, but we managed to get into your appointment calendar. Conrad saw the name ‘Britney Darrow’ and thought for a minute that he was barking up the wrong tree at the wrong coon. But then he saw the picture. So he figured today was the day. He sent me to get you the hell out. I was sorta supposed to get there before the girl even showed up.”

  Clyde Davis, still driving, couldn’t help but lift the blanket a little and peek underneath at J.J.’s still naked upper body. “Damn. She ain’t got her mama’s big ol’ titties. She looks more like the way I like ‘em. Anyway, I got you out alive, and we ended up with this little bonus here.”

  “Keep your eyes on the damn road, you inbred moron.”

  Clyde looked at Nathan Lewis and said nothing for a moment. Finally, he said, “Hell, we shoulda let her take care of you like she did them others.”

  “What others?”

  “Hellfire, man! You ain’t never heard of the Hartwell Mangler?”

  “The… the what? Sounds like some stupid local legend.”

  Clyde shook his head, bringing his eyes back to the twisting dirt road down which they were travelling. “Uh-uh. Ain’t no legend. One day when she was like sixteen or something, Junie snapped. She started killing off all the guys Conrad was letting have their way with her. Ten of ‘em all told, shoved into Conrad’s old hunting shack with they hacked-off dicks stuffed in they mouths. Then when she got ‘em all stacked up in the shed, she burnt it down.”

  “Conrad’s daughter did that. Conrad’s sixteen-year-old daughter? How is it you survived? You were her first, after all.”

  “Aw, hell. We hid out. I hated it. We spent weeks holed up, till after the clients stopped disappearing and someone spotted the fire. Even then, we laid low, till Conrad decided June had probably gotten the hell out of town.”

  “What made him think that?”

  “She didn’t kill us! She got all her other killing done, chop-chop. Hell, we shoulda been the first, me for breaking her, and Conrad for pimping her.” He glanced at J.J. again. “Wonder if this one’s broken yet?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Lewis, “she’s not. I had time to find an intact hymen before you burst in and spoiled my fun.”

  “No matter,” said Clyde. “We can both have some fun when we get where we’re going.”

  “Which is?”

  Clyde looked at Dr. Lewis with a mask of confusion that went a long way to confirm Lewis’s “inbred” description of him. “Witches?” he said with a voice that sounded like the word horrified him. “Ain’t no witches ‘round these parts!”

 

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