Page 58 of Hero & Villain
“Jezebel, what are you doing?” Minx whispered.
I watched from under the truck as the bald man whirled around back towards Jezebel. Had she gotten the bull to come in this direction?
I ducked out and took aim, determined to put the man down, but this time I couldn’t even squeeze the trigger. I clenched my teeth and watched helplessly as he shot at Jezebel and Bo, riding down the middle of the road, right towards Baldy. The bull got shot, but it didn’t go down; it just slid for a moment before it continued raging mad towards the man. Baldy was limping, and his blood ran down his leg from another wound that I may have given him during my blind shooting, but it didn’t stop him.
Jezebel and the bull rode right towards him. He cursed and dove to the side, but Jezebel left Bo, flying gracefully through the air in a somersault, knocking the bald man to the ground. She kicked his gun away and twisted his arms back, hyper-extending his elbow while grinding his face into the pavement. She was so fast, so smooth, like she’d rehearsed this scenario a thousand times before.
I stepped out from behind the truck and then felt a gun against my temple. The other man. How could I have forgotten about him? He must have snuck up behind me. I could have shot him when I first drove up, but I’d frozen. I deserved to get shot for being so weak, but I didn’t want to die like this.
“Let him go, or her brains will be all over this godforsaken road,” he said in an accented voice.
“Minx,” Jezebel said, and then Minx stood up and shot the man next to me and then turned and shot the man as he broke out of Jezebel’s grasp. He went down hard and fast. They both did. One bullet each, and they were out. Permanently.
Minx kept her gun pointed at Baldy and shook her head sadly. “Don’t even think about skipping out on tacos, Trix. I deserve a seriously good time.”
Jezebel walked over to Minx and pulled her into a hug. “Let go of the gun,” I heard her whisper in my com.
“I should maybe shoot him a few more times. To make sure he’s dead.”
“He’s dead. You got him good, honey. Let go of the gun. We can’t take guns into the taco place. You know, the one where they do virgin Margaritas by the pitcher. Trixie.”
A helicopter came closer and then landed on the road. Jezebel walked towards it with one arm around Minx’s shoulders. The gorgeous redhead looked blank, numb, empty. I knew that feeling. That’s how I felt after my first Thursday with Clint. I’d never killed anyone before. Would it be like that for me? What kind of villain was I if I couldn’t kill someone even in self-defense? It was terrible to force a weaker person to do my dirty work to save me because I couldn’t do the hard thing, unless I was weaker even than the weakest.
My shoulders slumped while shock warred with terror. I couldn’t control myself, even to save my life. Something was seriously wrong with me. Did I want to die?
“Back up,” Jezebel said to me and pulled her redhead friend to the end of the truck. “Minx, you saved me. You didn’t kill anyone who wasn’t already going to die; you just did my execution for me. In this truck are sixty-seven girls and women on their way to the dirtiest pits on earth to be used and tortured until they aren’t pretty enough to tempt the customers anymore. Hey!” Jezebel grabbed Minx’s face and glared into her eyes. “You saved. Repeat it.” The brunette cowgirl was terrifying in her intensity.
“I saved.” Minx’s luminous green eyes were full of tears and her lips trembled, but she’d shot them like a sniper without any hesitation after I’d completely choked.
“That’s right. You did. You saved these women, and you saved our new friend Pinkie. She can ride a bike, but she can’t shoot. She feels bad about it.”
Minx turned and patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. We all freeze up sometimes. I’m okay, Jez. I just felt a little blurry for a minute. I’m fine now.”
“You will be. Come on. After a short helicopter ride, you’re going to be parked at Taco Joe’s with Trixie.”
“I’ll wear mascara and everything,” Trix said in a rough voice.
“Bring out the big guns,” Felicia said with a laugh.
“Okay.” Minx smiled a small smile and then headed towards the helicopter. Felicia passed her and bumped her hip on the way.
Jezebel pulled off her helmet and nodded at me. “Can you take care of the bodies? I need you to drive them down the ramp and then collapse the lean-to on them. You’ll also have to drive the truck and trailer back to the cars while I take care of the cargo. It’s getting hot, and they haven’t had water for a while.”
I looked at the back of the truck, feeling a weird out-of-body floating sensation. “Yeah. I can take care of the bodies.” I mean, already dead bodies wouldn’t bother me, right? I had absolutely no idea what my body’s reaction was going to be to anything. I wasn’t in control, not of myself, not of anything. I’d never been so terrified. But even the terror came from far away. Shock. I was going into shock. Fun.
“Minx is right. We all freeze up sometimes. You shot his leg, exactly where I told you to shoot him.” She gave me a smile as hard as ice and as bright as a nuclear bomb. I’d only grazed him though, or when I had shot him, it was an accident. “Head back to the motel and get Prudence. I’ll come for Betsy later.”
I nodded and grabbed the big guy who’d held a gun at my head, dragging him towards the edge of the road. Felicia was already at Minx’s car, working quickly under the hood, fixing whatever had been temporarily broken. I grabbed the bike and rode back down the road to the truck. My driving lessons with Dirk hadn’t prepared me for the stick shift and the trailer that didn’t take turns, but it didn’t matter because I had Toni’s lessons to fall back on. I drove up the road, and Jezebel was already backing up the Mac truck. Was she going to turn itaround? Yes, she was. Was there anything the woman couldn’t do? I didn’t really want to know.
“Did you disable the cameras?” Jezebel asked in my com.
Felicia answered. “Of course. Did you disable the GPS?”
“Honey, do you think I was born yesterday?”
Felicia laughed, and then the comms went quiet. Felicia passed me on the road in the little gray sedan that Minx had been driving. She waved, and I waved back, but it was all so surreal. I gathered up the dead bodies and stacked them in the trailer before driving back to the pit.
The cleanup went by in a weird, timeless blur. No one would go through that much effort and risk to rescue women. It didn’t make any sense, but neither did my freezing up, incapable of saving myself or anyone else.
