Page 80 of Brandishing Beginnings

I jumped at the sound, even though I watched his every move.

He motioned with the gun for me to exit the vehicle.

My heart pounded in my chest as blood rushed my ears.Fight or flight, bitch! Fucking move!I thought about just driving off, letting the gas nozzle rip out of my tank as I drove away. A bit of damage to my car and maybe ripping off the gas line out was the least of myproblems, right? Not when there was a dead body on the pavement some twenty feet away. The station had to have insurance, right? I could drive off and live to see another day.

He knocked on the window with the gun again.

I scrambled for the door handle, already cursing my decision. So much for fight or flight.

The man barely stepped back as I stepped out of the car. He was in my face, in my bubble a moment later. His breath was rancid, smelled like stale cigarettes and whiskey. There was a thick, jagged scar that ran down the left side of his face, almost half an inch thick. It was raised and puffy, and sliced through his eye. The iris on his left eye was a pale blue, almost gray, probably blinded from the injury.

I forced myself to look into his right eye, the iris almost as dark as night.

He watched me silently, his gaze roaming over my face. He reached out and pulled my clipped-on work badge off my shirt. “Maya Henderson,” he said coldly, his voice a nasally rasp as he read my name tag.

I shivered, not only from the cold and rain, but from the way his voice skated over me. His voice was higher than I thought it’d be, not like the deep scary killer he appeared. I’d never heard anyone sound like he had before…it was almost unhuman.

“Please don’t kill me,” I murmured, shivering. “I promise. I didn’t see anything. I won’t say anything.”

He struck before I even saw him move. His massive hand wrapped around my jaw, gripping me tightly. He shoved my face backwards, my head slamming back against the side of my car as he forced my face to look up at him. His fingers dug in harder, nails puncturing my skin. “You saw nothing, Maya Henderson, because nothing happened,” he growled in my face.

I whimpered as he squeezed my jaw even harder, before he slammed my head back against the car again. My ears rang as I lost my focus on him towering above me. Pain radiated through my skull and down my spine as my teeth clenched painfully in my mouth. I let out a stifled whimper when he leaned even closer to my face.

“I’ll be watching you Maya Henderson,” he rasped, his face inches from mine. “Your family, your coworkers, even your little dog won’t be safe from me, if you tell a single soul what happened here tonight.”

I nodded as much as he would allow with his fingers still painfully grasping my face. “No one,” I muttered.

“I’ve got your name, your place of work, and your license plate,” he rasped again, an amused air spreading across his face. “Soon, I’ll know everything about you.”

I trembled as a shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

He chuckled darkly and finally let me go.

I scrambled to get my feet under me before I fell to my ass on the wet pavement.

“Get home, little rabbit,” he chuckled, before he turned away.

Then he was gone, climbing back into his LaSabre and easing out of the gas station parking lot, like a man with all the time in the world—not like a man who just murdered in cold blood.

My hands shook as I quickly pulled the nozzle out of my gas tank. I screwed on the gas cap and shut the metal cover. I was back in my car a moment later. I didn’t wait to stop shaking. I had to drive away. I couldn’t be here. I needed to be far, far away from the scene when it was discovered, and who knew when Barry would wake up from his little nap behind the counter.

Jason “Stone” Langford

Isighedinreliefwhenthe text from Maya hit the group chat that she had made it home safe from her shift at the hospital. I hated that she worked such long and hard hours. She made good money and she loved her job, but she came home utterly exhausted and often fell into bed for over twelve hours after a working a week of twelve-hour shifts.

I was even more pissed that I wasn’t home, waiting up for her, to help her shower off her shift and tuck her into our bed. The bullshit that had popped off with the club couldn’t wait though, and when our president called us all in, there was nothing we could do.

Club camefirst, always.

Maya understood how it was, and while she never voiced her frustration, I knew it bothered her sometimes.

“Someone killed the mayor tonight,” President Larry “The Butcher” Buckley said from his spot at the head of the large table that made up our church.

“What the fuck?” Marcos asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“He was gunned down at Barry’s gas station about an hour ago,” Buckley said.

I frowned, “But you called us here before that happened.”

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