KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (20 page)

Kim frowned slightly. She didn't see how loving
Kennick meant she wasn't sensible. Picking up on it, Jimmy rushed to clarify.

“I just mean...you know, you've always seemed so
logical and straightforward. Always seemed like you were heading straight for
the world of white picket fences. I guess I assume gypsies are a little
more...wild.”

“Well,” Kim said with a sigh.
 
“I guess you're right.
 
I mean, it's surprised me, too. But
Kennick's not wild in a bad way, you know? He's a good man. Just a little
eccentric. Doesn't wear a watch. Doesn't care about the same sort of things other
men I've dated have cared about. But he's good to me.”

“I can tell,” Jimmy said with a smile. “You seem
really happy, Kim. I'm happy for you. And he doesn't seem to like me much, but
I guess I can understand that. Especially after reading that article. Man,
Chief was
pissed
when that came out.
And Bob Talkee came by raging that we should go and run them out of town. I
don't know what he thought, that this was like Frankenstein's village or
something and the cops would go in with torches and pitchforks. But Chief and
Bob have been best friends forever, and Bob pitching a fit didn't help Chief's
mood.”

Chief Geller had always been a very stern sort of man.
Kim can't remember ever seeing him smile, even in a good mood. She could only
imagine what he would look like in a bad mood.

“Can I ask...what did you think?” Kim bit her lip,
waiting for Jimmy's answer. He seemed to consider the question, eyeing the ice
cream without purpose, before speaking.

“I think there were some good points made. But I don't
know; I'm not sure it's any of my business what I think of it. All I know is
that the guy was cleared in the eyes of the law, which means
something.
And I know that if anyone in
town tries to mess with our newest residents, they're not gonna get any
leniency. Not from me, at least. Can't say the same for Chief Geller, but most
of the guys on the force pretty much agree that you can't go around making
people's lives hell because their Pop may or may not have had something to do
with something thirty years ago.”

Kim's heart warmed to know that her suspicions about
her town were proving true.
 
Jimmy
wouldn't lie to her. They'd been too good of friends for far too long for that.
If he told her that most of Kingdom's police force stood for justice over prejudice,
she believed him. Impulsively, she reached over and wrapped him in a quick,
friendly hug.

“That makes me happy to hear, Jim,” she said, still
holding his arms while Kennick appeared behind her, wrapping his arms around
her possessively. Jimmy laughed amiably as he held his hands up, palms out.

“Hey, your girlfriend hugged
me,
dude,” he said, and while Kim worried for an instant that
Kennick
might
actually have held some
sort of animosity towards Jimmy, she was relieved when he scolded
her
instead.

“I know you love that whiskey ice cream,” he growled,
“but you don't have to go hugging other men to get them to buy it for you. I
happen to know the owner...”

“Oh, I just
love
a man with connections,” she teased, leaning back into his embrace and
raising her head, accepting a slow, light kiss that nevertheless drove tingles
down her spine, making her fingertips feel hungry to touch him.

“I take it back,” Jimmy said with a fake sneer as
Kennick released Kim. “I'm not happy for you. I prefer you miserable and not
making out with guys in public.”

Kim laughed and swatted at her friend.

“We should go out sometime,” she said without really
thinking. “Bring Sally and we can all double date or something. Just like high
school, but with beer that you can legally drink.”

Kennick and Jimmy shared a look that made Kim rethink
what she'd said. A tense moment passed before, miraculously, Kennick smiled.

“Sounds like fun,” he said, only sounding a little bit
like he'd rather nail his own feet to a treadmill and turn it on high. Jimmy
nodded and smiled in response.

“Oh,” Kim said, realizing it was just past nine. “I'm
late. Though Mayor's probably not in yet, I should go.”

“See you later?” Kennick asked, grabbing her waist and
leaning in close. When she said yes, he could feel the kinetic energy of her
lips moving. He closed the distance between them and kissed her harder than
before, though for not as long. Still, she was breathless when she pulled away,
her desire awakening like a cat, and she knew she would spend the rest of the
day squirming each time she thought of him.

“We'll celebrate,” she promised. “Bring the whiskey
ice cream.”

When Kim twirled away, Jimmy had already meandered on,
browsing the shelves. Kennick didn't want to be buddies with a cop, but then
again having a friend on the force was never a bad thing. Didn't mean he had to
try and forge that friendship now, but a double date really wouldn't kill him.
He shook his head as he wondered at the things he was willing to do for that
girl. Saying goodbye to Ana, who was already speaking with another couple who'd
found their way into the store, he trotted across the street to check on Damon
at the cheese shop. It was a hot day and Kennick felt good. Very good.

So good that everything that would happen later would
hurt a thousand times more.

Chapter
Thirty

Jessica knew someone had been following her. She
didn't know who, and if you'd asked her how she knew it was happening at all,
she would have bit her lip and shrugged. It was the car parked at the end of
the block. The same car that followed hers when she went to work. It was a
figure in the bushes, a shadow on her wall when the moon was high and throwing
light through her first-floor window. Jessica thought maybe she was going a
little bit crazy. Maybe she was getting anxious for no reason, panicky over
nothing.

Or maybe someone was fucking following her.

She spent more time than she cared to admit trying to
figure out who it was. It could be anyone she saw everyday at the diner. Work
was no longer a fun place to catch up with her friends and the people
she'd
 
known her whole life. It was
a place to see if anyone was paying her particular attention.

She took to biting her lip, to the point where she
began waking up with dried blood on her teeth. She considered changing her
locks. She spent an hour at the hardware store staring at new locks – but she
didn't know how to install them. She'd never been very handy with tools. She
wished her father was still alive to help her. Or her mother, to hold her. She
would ask someone else but...

But you
know how crazy you'll sound,
she thought to herself. And bit her
lip a little harder.

They don't
have to know why I'm changing the locks,
she reasoned, standing there
in the hardware store and denying all the proffered help from employees.

What are
you going to tell them? You just felt like a change and couldn't afford a
haircut?

It was a small town. People talked. If it got out that
Jessica was turning into Crazy Jessica, it would be bad. It would be worse if
whoever was following her heard about her changing her locks.

Someone
changing their locks doesn't constitute hot gossip,
she told
herself, furrowing her brow as she tried to gather the courage to make the
purchase that could –
could –
save
her life.
And you can look up how to do
it on Youtube.

She left without new locks. She thought a car might
have followed her home. That night, she did what she'd been doing the past few
nights: counting the cars that drove past, and watching to see if any of them
parked.

In the end, changing her locks wouldn't have saved
her.

Because she was right. He
was
following her. When all was said and done, he'd been following
her for three weeks. Just a few days shy of the one month anniversary of the
night Kim James had given Kennick Volanis a very good reason to stay in
Kingdom, Delaware.

He didn't need to break into her house to get to her.
He just needed to wait until she was closing up the diner, the last one out on
Wednesdays, which were so slow that the cook usually had the kitchen cleaned
and the fridge stocked for tomorrow before the last cups of coffee had been
served out. And since Sid was pinching pennies, good old Jessica had been happy
to offer her services as a dishwasher for an extra fifty cents an hour.

She hadn't been too happy about those late Wednesday
nights those past few weeks, though. He could see in her eyes how truly scared
she was; genuinely, deep down frightened. So that's why he decided it was time
to finally do it. There, in the parking lot, with the street light that
flickered from the spotty electrical grid that was Tudor Street's constant
complaint. He would have tried to be poetic about it, and finish her in a
likewise manner to Rhonda all those years ago. But he was too smart now, and
blood would stain his car. So his gloved hands around her neck would have to
do.

And they did.

He didn't have to follow her after that; after that,
she'd be with him forever. He'd never be able to let her go. Taking someone's
life, he'd learned, didn't end that life at all. It just transferred it to you,
and you had the burden of carrying it on your back for the rest of time. That,
he reasoned, was how God punished you. There would be punishment afterward,
too, he knew; he just hoped that all the punishment he'd endured during his
life would help reduce his sentence. And he'd done good, too. Lots of good.
Plenty of good things in the service of God, and Kingdom.

He'd served Kingdom here on earth, and he hoped God
knew he'd serve in
his
Kingdom, too.
But matters like that were matters for God alone. He could only bear his burden
for the rest of his days.

Sighing, he slid her body out of the backseat and
dragged it into the woods near Cunningham Avenue. Not too far, but far enough.
He gave the trash bag one more long look, a sigh in his throat that never quite
made it out. It was done. And they would leave. And he would never have to
worry about them again. Not their hell-bent nature, not their illegal
activities, not their awful blood corrupting the young girls of his town. He'd
already seen how easily they could get their hooks into someone.

He really ought to have gone for Kim James. But he was
an old man now, and he didn’t have the energy in him to deal with her and the
gypsy she’d shacked up with. He knew they spent damn near every waking moment
together. The chances of getting her alone…well, actually, those chances were
pretty good, but all the same, he was just…older. So Jessica would have to do.

The ends
justify the means,
he reminded himself as he lay in bed that night. He
said the words over and over and willed the ceiling to stop spinning around and
around and around...

Chapter
Thirty-One

“Banjo!” Cristov cried through the ever-thickening
woods, crashing forward, pushing away bushes and cracking through rotten tree
limbs. He grumbled as sweat pooled under his arms and on his neck, the day
nearly unbearably hot and humid even under the thick canopy of trees. The damn
dog had run off into the forest, leaving little Tommy Surry yelling after him.
He'd hopped free of the cold water in the tub that had served as his bath,
trailing soap suds and water all the way.

“Aw, let 'im go,” Cristov had said through a laugh,
watching the spectacle while standing beside Mina. “Don't you know dogs are
supposed to be dirty?”

“Ma's gonna have my hide,” Tommy had whined as he
stood at the edge of the woods, hopping from one foot to the other. “Will you
go find him, Cris?”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Cristov scoffed. “I'm not
going in there after a dumb old hound like him. He'll come back, you know...”

“He'll come back even dirtier, and if he comes into
the trailer looking like that, Ma will make him sleep outside for the rest of
the year,” Tommy said, a pleading look in his child eyes. Mina nudged her elbow
into Cristov's side and gave him a stern look.

“What? You're so eager to help,
you
go find him,” Cristov said, not seeing what the big deal was.
It was just a dog.

“You remember what happened to Coot,” Mina said in a
low voice, not wanting the boy to overhear. Cristov cringed. He did remember,
all too well. Coot, Tommy's last dog, had run off and been hit by a car a year
prior. The boy wouldn't admit it, but he spend his whole life afraid the same
thing would happen to Banjo. Cristov knew that Tommy wasn't really worried
about his Mom being mad. He was worried about Banjo being hit by a car, or
mauled by a particularly nasty raccoon. With a sigh, he headed towards the
woods in the direction the hound dog had run.

“I'll bring him back, Tom-o,” Cristov said, ruffling
the boy's shaggy blonde hair before disappearing into the trees.

Banjo had left a pretty decent trail behind him,
including a trail of suds that were slowly melting into puddles of slick soap
on the forest floor. It wasn't long before Cristov saw a clearing in the
distance, and heard a high, plaintive whining. Frowning, he sped up his pace,
thinking that something might actually have gone wrong with the dog. That
certainly wasn't the sound of a happy, baying hound running free and wild
through the forest on a squirrel's trail.

He saw the dog first. Banjo turned to look at him,
those baleful eyes looking extra sad. The whining increased in volume as
Cristov approached and the dog paced slightly, looking down at the ground and
then back up at Cristov.

When the smell hit Cristov's nose, he recoiled, gagging
slightly. Stupid dog must have found a deer rotting in the leaves, because that
smell was undeniable – the smell of decaying flesh. With the back of his hand
over his mouth, he called Banjo's name again and tried to beckon him back. The
dog didn't budge, just paced a little more. Rolling his eyes, Cristov strode
forward, determined to drag the dog back by the scruff of his neck if need be.

Then he saw red. Literal red. Glossy, painted
red.
 
Fingernails. A woman's painted
fingernails. And the fingernails were attached to fingers, attached to a hand,
attached to an arm, attached to a body that was just beginning to cease being a
body at all, more like a gruesome approximation of the human form. Cristov's
gag reflex gave up the ghost; he heard, rather than felt, himself vomiting into
the grass of the clearing. Stumbling backward, he hit a tree. He tore his eyes
from the young, dead girl and met Banjo's chocolate brown gaze. The dog
whimpered. Cristov turned and ran.