Page 12 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

Absalom took a bottle of water from Lorrie’s bag and flung it over the man’s face, reviving him.

Ratface moaned, “Don’t kill me!”

Too late.Bright red arterial blood spurted from the arm Absalom had almost severed. He would bleed to death eventually. Lorrie was weeping, her face buried in the bed. Absalom squatted on the floor to the man’s level. “I don’t recognize your face,” he said. “So you must be one Hiram picked up from the road. I don’t think he’d care if you died right here and now. He understands somebody’s got to answer for his fuck-up just now. Absalom’s got to save face with the boys, don’t he? As their leader.”

“I got kin from the Back Hills. You’re dead,” the man spat.

“Fuck your kin.”

“You bastard— Fuck you!”

Absalom held out the man’s gun to Lorrie. “You can do the honors.”

“You’re crazy,” Lorrie gasped, backing up against the wall in sick horror. “I’m not shooting anybody. Get it away from me!”

“No woman’s gonna be my end!” The man tried to crawl to his knees. Absalom carefully applied his boot to the man’sshoulder and stopped that nonsense cold. The man’s screams were muffled by…something. Lorraine’s? No. It was a distant noise from somewhere in the back door of his mind. What was it? Anyway, the man fainted.

“You wanted to rape my girl?” he said, grinding his boot down. “You wanted her to suck your dirty fuckin’ dick? How about now?”

“Abi, stop it,” Lorraine sobbed, scrambling to the end of the bed to grab his belt. She’d seen this side of him once…He’d tried to never show it to her again. “No! Don’t do this,” she begged.

He had words for her too. “This motherfucker would have raped you,” he said. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you up here. This is Florin. You ain’t ready for this life, Lorrie. Not by a mile.”

“This is wrong!” Lorrie sobbed. “Abi, it’s a sin! Oh, God! I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.”

Sorry for what? Then he remembered. “You sorry for Mike?”

“Yes! Yes, I’m sorry!” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Don’t kill him, Absalom. Don’t be that man.”

“Lorraine,” he said, shaking his head at the soft heart that would beg for the life of a man who had tried to violate her. “If this son of a bitch held you down on this bed like he wanted to, and you got hold of his gun, would you lay there cryin’, or shoot him dead? One way or another, he ain’t leaving this room. You do it fast with the gun, or I butcher him slow with this.” He hefted the bloody axe. “Your choice, darlin’.”

“They’ll come up here and kill you for this,” Lorrie argued desperately. “You already hurt him bad. Walk away and leave him.”

She still didn’t get it. “Hiram put a gun to my head. He put a gun to my girl’s head. That needs a response– right now, in this moment,” he patiently explained.

“Choose peace, Abi! Choose God!”

He stepped back, forcing Lorrie to take her hands off his belt or fall on the floor. “Next time they’ll get you alone,” he said grimly. “There might be more of them when they do that. They’ll drag it out. They’ll fuck you to death. And I won’t be there to stop them– they’ll make sure of it. I know that, ‘cause they done it before. You understand me now? You understand why I didn’t want you up here in Florin? Tender hearts don’t have a place in my world.”

“Just shoot me, damn you,” the man moaned. “I can’t take this horn-tossing.”

“Lorrie?”

“No!”

Absalom nodded. “Go wait outside, then.”

Lorrie gripped his arm, eyes huge. “You really gonna kill him with that axe?”

“I would kill anybody that ever hurt you.”

“You hurt me,” Lorrie said, grabbing her things. “You hurt me so much, you don’t even know. I will never forgive you.”

The man’s blood had soaked the pages of her Bible. She picked up the Book, then suddenly dropped it like a hot coal. The door slammed after her.

“Wait in the hall, Lorrie,” Absalom called.

“Go to hell!” came the muffled reply.

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