Page 2 of Nasty
The hottest dream I’d ever had? The most confusing, hurtful dream? The past few days came rushing back at me with the most frightening urgency, and a kernel of fear sprouted in the pit of my stomach. I’d just had a sex dream. About the man sitting beside me. The man who’d been paid to kill me, and who might be driving me to my death even now.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew I was kind of fucked up. This wasn’t the first time I’d found myself trouble. There had been plenty of other terrible, dangerous situations—situations most normal people would never understand, because they’d never had to go through it. I’d been beaten and abused, and I’d been robbed of all that was good in me. And here I was, yet again, neck deep in the shit, but this time it didn’t seem as though there would be a way out.
I hated myself for the images that had just bullied their way into my subconscious. But a part of me—the largest, smartest part—knew the truth. Those images hadn’t forced their way into my subconscious. They’d forced their wayout. Fix was ingrained inside me, down to the very roots, and it didn’t matter that he had been given money to take my life from me. It didn’t matter that he was a murderer and had the blood of countless people on his hands.
I’d wanted him.
I still wanted him.
I was the most foolish girl in the world.
ONE
BUTCHER’S MOUNTAIN
FIX
There were stars piercing through the windshield, brilliant and blinding. The glass was dirty, streaked with mud and a thick layer of burned yellow pollen that had gathered overnight while the truck had been parked underneath a bank of trees. The windshield wipers groaned as they went to work, swinging maniacally back and forth, but they had little to no effect. If anything, they smeared the glass even further, making it almost impossible to see the pot-holed road that stretched out ahead of the truck, winding up the side of the mountain like the looped coils of a snake.
Butcher’s Mountain: that was the name of the giant, vertical shadow that loomed in the darkness up ahead. It was owned by the Pamunkey Indians, but even they didn’t come up here. The place was either considered sacred or haunted, I couldn’t remember which. All I knew was that the lone mountain, punching upward beyond a curve in the broad Pamunkey River, was deserted, and there was no chance of being disturbed. The night had closed in three hours ago, and Sera hadn’t said a word. Her face was pale, her hands gathered in her lap, underneath which sat a brown envelope containing the case information Monica had sent through to me—information about Sera. I should have thrown out the envelope. It had only been a matter of time before Sera found it and freaked out, and that’s exactly what had happened. She’d wheeled on me in that parking lot in Alabama, demanded to know who had hired me to kill her, and when I’d refused to answer her, telling her we needed to sit down and discuss it like level-headed adults, she’d clamped her mouth shut and hadn’t said a word to me since.
That was ten hours ago. More like a lifetime ago. My mind had run a marathon since then, and I still couldn’t stop it from racing. Sera hadn’t even tried to escape the truck. She’d been so still for so long now, that I kept wondering if she was still breathing. She barely blinked.
I’d used the cabin at the summit of Butcher’s Mountain a couple of times before when I’d driven cross-country. It had been left to the church back when my father had still been priest at St. Luke’s, by a member of the congregation who had passed away. The woman (whose grandfather had been gifted the cabin and surrounding woodland on the side of the mountain by the Pamunkey Indians in 1897) had no family to speak of, and so she had bequeathed her holdings and possessions to St. Luke’s.
The church had tried to sell the land. However, since it was surrounded by Pamunkey land, planning permits were impossible to come by and new structures couldn’t be built, and the Pamunkey weren’t too happy about the idea of the mountain being disturbed. Whenever a real estate agent came out to the property to place a ‘for sale’ sign, the board was gone by the time they’d reached the bottom of the mountain. Not that anybody would have ever seen it.
It was too far from New York to use as a retreat base for youth camps, and far too small besides, so it had been forgotten about.Ihadn’t forgotten the place, though. When I left the church, I’d made sure to grab the paperwork for the cabin, as well as the key, and that was that. As far as anyone else was concerned, this place didn’t exist. It was a handy base whenever I was on the road. I came out here to clear my head on occasion, mostly after a messy job set my mind reeling. I liked the solitude.
Thirty minutes passed by, and I drove through the darkness, chewing on the inside of my cheek. This was fucked. This was so, so fucked. When I eventually reached the narrow dirt track that signaled the turn off to the cabin, I was ready to start fucking smashing my fist into things.
Sera didn’t react at all as I pulled up in front of the small, run down log cabin and I shut off power to the truck. I knew what she was thinking. What she’d been thinking ever since I locked the truck doors and we sped away from that hotel in Fairhope. She thought I was going to complete the job I’d accepted, and I was going to kill her. I could have told her that her worries were unfounded, but she wouldn’t have listened to me. Not right now. There were too many worries spiraling around inside her head, and she couldn’t be blamed for that. It was selfish of me to refuse to talk to her about this until we stopped for the night. I knew that. But if I had to be selfish, then so fucking be it. I needed her to be calm, and I needed her to look me in the eye, and I needed her tohearme.
“Do I have to carry you inside?” I finally growled. “Because I will.”
A sharp look formed on Sera’s face, her eyes narrowing—the first emotion she’d shown in hours. I was glad of the display, even if it was anger. “You won’t. You won’t touch me. You won’t come near me, Felix Marcosa. You donothave my permission.”
“Okay. Then I’ll see you inside when you’re ready.” I took the keys out of the ignition, and I climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind me. Sera’s door opened just as I fished the key for the cabin out of the rusting metal pale that sat on the top step of the porch.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll run? If you leave me out here, I could just head back to the road and wait for someone to pick me up, y’know. I’m not afraid of the dark.”
I sighed, rubbing at the pockmarked steel key with the pad of my thumb. “You could do that, yeah. But you’re too smart for that. You know exactly how far it is back to the road, and you know exactly how many cars we passed on the way up here. That being none. If you did manage to find your way back to the road, you’d have to walk all the way back down the mountain. That’s four long, winding miles. And once you’re down, you’d have to walk another fifteen miles to reach a road where you might come across another car. You’re wearing Chuck Taylors on your feet, and you don’t have a jacket. In case that doesn’t sound unpleasant enough, you should know that this is Indian land. The Pamunkey hunt here,” I lied. “And so do plenty of mountain lions and cougars.” That partwasn’ta lie. I shot her an incorrigible smile. “So…if you’re determined to go wandering off in search of a rescue, then please be my guest. On the other hand, if you’d like to come inside and have a proper conversation with me, difficult and shitty though it may be, then I’ll have a fire going in a minute. I’m also pretty sure there’s a bottle of whiskey stashed under the floor boards in the bedroom.”
Sera’s scowl was Olympic gold medal-worthy. “Fuck you, Fix.”
It took every ounce of strength I had to bite back the retort that was dancing on the tip of my tongue. “Your choice. Sleeping in the truck isn’t all that comfortable, but I’ve done it before. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.” I let myself into the cabin, stamping the dirt off my boots as I stepped over the threshold. Inside, the air was stale and stuffy, the tang of damp wood permeating the small, partitioned living space. There was a breaker box on the outside of the building, but it would be quicker to light the storm lanterns that I knew were scattered around the place. How long exactly had it been since I’d made my way up here? A year? Eighteen months? The batteries in the lanterns would still be good. I found the first lantern sitting on the low coffee table in front of the fire, and it was a moment’s work to turn it on. A circle of dim white light flickered into life, illuminating a three-foot radius around me; from there, it was simple to locate the other lanterns and turn them on one by one.
The cabin was comprised of two main rooms—a bedroom to the back, and a living room with kitchenette along the right-hand wall—as well as a bathroom on the other side of the bedroom. Stuffed animal heads hung from the walls, along with dried furs and skins, and a number of rusting bear traps that were so old they likely didn’t even close shut anymore. Their jagged teeth protruded from hooks in the timber like the gaping, snarling mouths of long-dead sharks. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. The throw rug that rested over the back of the three-seater sofa was so moth-eaten that its numerous holes were beginning to form some sort of a crochet pattern.
Underfoot, the floorboards were splintered and worn but swept clean. I tucked the truck and the cabin keys into my jeans pocket, and I went about loading some of the chopped, dry wood into the fireplace, counting inside my head.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one…
I’d reached twenty-eight and just about finished constructing the base of the fire when the cabin door creaked open and Sera slipped inside. I didn’t look back over my shoulder. I used my lighter to ignite some balled-up newspaper, and I slid it in between the logs, blowing lightly until the flames caught and strengthened.
“Well, this is homey,” Sera muttered. “Nothing screams ‘I’m not planning on killing you’like an array of spiked traps and murdered animals hanging all over the walls.”
“This place used to be a hunter’s lodge. People who hunt tend to collect spiky traps and dead creatures. That’s the whole point.” I straightened, brushing my hands off on my jeans, then I grabbed a flash light from one of the drawers beneath the kitchen counter, heading back toward the door.
