Rage Factor (31 page)

They talked while Loser finished the cookies and milk, but she learned nothing else of value. Brenda was taller than Dixie’s five-foot-two, but not a lot taller. She might be the one Loser guessed to be a female. But Regan was fairly small, too. Clarissa was tall—not as tall as her husband, who had suggested his wife carry a gun. Clarissa wouldn’t be a victims’ rights volunteer if she didn’t believe victims needed protection, and her husband obviously shared her beliefs. Dixie recalled Clarissa’s loud accusations at the Suds Club, claiming Brenda’s protection methods hadn’t worked. Had she and her gun-toting husband decided to follow their protective instincts a step further?

Dixie also recalled Lowell Foxworth’s statement that his wife had hardened after their daughter’s hospitalization. Grace Foxworth had to be nearly six feet tall. Dressed in jeans and a dark jacket, and viewed from a distance, she’d pass for a man. And as much as Dixie had liked Lowell, he obviously carried an enormous hatred for the man who destroyed his family.

Having started poking around for her friend’s sake, Dixie realized she was now just as concerned about the Foxworths, the Thomases, and Regan Salles. What worried her almost as much as the police catching up with them was their own potential for self-destruction. Decent people couldn’t live easy with lawlessness and brutality, especially the vicious sort of assault issued on Coombs. Anger and guilt would surely
start to eat at one or another of the Avenging Angels, until they turned on each other. She truly hoped their vengeance had run its course.

By the time she arrived home, the sky had lightened. In an hour Dixie’s clock radio would signal time to get dressed and pick up Sarina. She entered the house silently. In the dim glow of a nightlight, Parker’s sailboat snapshot caught her attention. She picked it up. She liked the idea of a romantic moonlight sail. She liked even more that he had arranged it to not interfere with her job.

At times Parker’s caring made her feel so damn good. So why at other times did it made her feel smothered, manipulated, forced to choose between doing what made her feel good and what she knew was right?

Stripping her clothes off as she walked, Dixie gimped softly into the bedroom and drew back the curtains to glance out. The first ribbons of melon-colored sunlight wouldn’t show for another half hour or so. And today was only Thursday. She could wait until after their moonlight sail to decide what to do about the weekend. She slipped under the covers and snuggled against Parker’s broad, warm back.

Sid Carlson flexed his fingers around the monkey wrench and concentrated on the noises outside the trunk. Since the car stopped rolling, five, ten minutes ago, he’d heard low voices, doors banging, scuffling sounds like something being dragged. Now somebody was fartin around with the trunk lock. Sid hoped it was John, ’cause he was going to take the little fucker’s head off.

Hearing a key slide into the lock, Sid gripped the wrench tighter, bracing his feet against the floor of the trunk. He’d hunkered himself into a ball, legs folded under him, ready to spring as soon as the lid opened. His knees hurt like hell from being bent double; he just hoped they wouldn’t freeze up when he needed them.

In the darkness, he’d felt around with his fingers until he located the seam where the trunk lid joined the body, and now he stared at that spot, braced for the thinnest sliver of light to show. Wouldn’t actually be light, of course,
unless the sonofabitch parked under a street lamp, but Sid was watching for the slightest change from absolute blackness.

The lock clicked. A slip of gray showed through the crack. Sid unfolded, pushing up the lid with his back and swinging the monkey wrench in one swift motion.

He missed—
FUCK!
—and swung again, connecting this time and hearing a muffled curse as he fell headfirst to the ground, cracking his chin, getting a whiff of exhaust fumes. The wrench flew from his hand, clinked across the pavement, landing somewhere to his right. He tried to scramble after it, but one of the cocksuckers grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back, trying to pull him to his feet.

Sid wrapped an arm around the fuckers knees and heaved, pulling the sonofabitch down, hearing his tailbone strike the ground with a
whump
and him shrieking like a goddamn woman. The fucker would scream a hell of a lot harder before Sid got through. He snaked up on top, pinned the fucker to the ground, and sat on his stomach. Then Sid shot out a fist, a hammer blow to the fucker’s nose. Blood spurted in Sid’s face.

Hot damn! Nothing he liked better’n a good fight.

He reared back again, ready to loosen a few teeth with the next punch, but somebody grabbed his arm, somebody else kicked him in the head. He felt the boot heel flatten his ear, snapping his neck hard and making a popping sound inside his head. Then someone grabbed his other arm, lifting him up, dragging him across the concrete, ankles bumping over a threshold.

He blinked in the sudden dim light. Saw a clutter of boxes marked Bacardi, Budweiser, Chardonnay, Chivas, a storeroom, maybe, smelling of dust and rat turds, the boxes alphabetical. Stupid way to warehouse liquor, in Sid’s mind. Smarter to shove all the hooch in one corner, all the beer in another, get rid of the fuckin wine. Sour damn crap nobody but women and queers drank, anyway.

And then he saw Gary, and Sid’s stomach curled in on itself like a clam drying in its shell.

The fuckers had tied Gary to a wooden pallet loaded with boxes in the center of the room, Gary naked except for the rope looped around his neck, lashing his wrists and connecting him to the pallet. Gary was on his knees, slumped over a case of Miller Lite, a single shop light hanging overhead, the big guy’s eyes wide open but not seeing, cheeks streaked with dirt, mouth working with no words coming out. Sid knew Gary was reliving The Nightmare.

“Cut him loose,” Sid said quietly. Not yelling or anything, but real reasonable, ’cause he wanted it done now,
RIGHT NOW
, without any flak, and then they could do what the hell they wanted with him as long as Gary was out of it. “Cut him loose and I won’t give you no more trouble.”

“Trouble?” A squeaky voice, hell, it was a woman, sounding like she had a cold. Or a nose bleed. “We’re the ones dishing out trouble, little man.”

They had peeled off Sid’s leather jacket and shirt, tied his hands behind him, and now the one Sid’d hit, the woman, was pulling off Sid’s clothes. Her face was bloody. Sid wished it’d been that little cocksucker John he’d hit, but he wasn’t sorry about the woman. Seeing the blank terror in Gary’s eyes, Sid wished he’d shoved the cunt’s fuckin nose bone straight into her brain.

His muscles twitched with rage that had bunched up inside him. He looked at Gary, laying there like a bitch dog ready to be mounted, and felt sick and helpless.

“Gary can’t take being tied up,” he said. “Cut him loose.”

“You seem more worried about your good-looking friend than about yourself.” A low voice in his ear, sexy. Another goddamn woman? “Are you and Gary asshole buddies, Sid? Is that why you’re so worried about him?”

Shit! It wasn’t like that, never had been like that
He loved Gary, that’s all. In school, Sid’d been a snot-nosed runt, and Gary had taken care of him, saved his puny ass from being beaten to a pulp more times than Sid could count.

He jerked his wrists apart, twisted them, but the tape held tight, no give.-He had to do
something
, though, to cut Gary free.

He lunged forward, breaking John’s grip and shoving aside the tall bitch with the sexy voice. Then he turned and kicked her halfway across the room, liking the rush it gave him, wishing he was Chuck Norris or Bruce-fuckin-Lee. Stumbling, though, with his hands tied, throwing him off balance. He aimed for John-the-little-fucker’s nuts, and missed, kicked his thigh instead.

The tall bitch darted out of the way. She was dressed like the others, dark pants, sweatshirt, knit cap. Couldn’t see her face good. She grabbed a push broom out of the shadows, holding it by the bristle end, and jabbed it at him. Without his hands to fend off the blows, Sid could only dodge: the broom handle caught him under the ribs, again in the gut, and then a hard stiff jab in the soft spot right above his stomach knocked the wind out of him.

He managed to stay on his feet, but she swung the next blows overhand, the crazy bitch strong as a wild hog, coming down hard on his back and his neck and his head. He stumbled toward Gary, fell to one knee trying to think of something,
anything
, he could do to get Gary loose.

“Hang on, guy,” he muttered. “Well get out of this.” Saying it but not believing.

The next blow caught Sid above the ear, knocking him sideways, his head going dull inside like wet cotton.

“Bring him over here,” someone said. “Give him a front-row seat for the show starring his asshole buddy.”

Then they were tying him seated against a crate, arms stretched backward, the rope looped once around his neck. Sid shook his head, trying to clear it. Blood from a gash on his face spattered the floor. The pain in his head was like a firecracker exploding.

Someone grabbed his hair, jerked his head back.

“You remember little Celeste, don’t you, Sid?” The sexy
voice, purring close at his ear. “Celeste’s uncle must have felt about as angry and helpless as you do right about now.”

Who the fuck was she talking about,
Celeste?

“Remember tying her up, making her uncle watch while you beat and raped her?”

Celeste. The sweet-thang they’d took as a bonus. Well, it was no more than what the shithead old store owner deserved, taking his deposit to the bank early. Here they’d been watching the place all fuckin week, ready to rake in a big load, and barely got sixty fuckin dollars outta the fuckin till.

“We’re going to give your friend the same treatment you gave Celeste. You get to watch all the fun until your own turn comes.”

“No!” He lowered his head to butt her, but the rope yanked him back, choking him. “C’mon now, listen,” he gasped. “You got to let Gary go. He didn’t do anything, I was the one did the girl and beat the old man.”

“Celeste said it was
both
of you.”

“Well, she’s wrong, that’s all.”

She smoothed his hair back out of his face. Sid could see the other one across the room, wrapping black tape around the handle end of a sawed-off broomstick for better grip, the wood beaded with nail heads like the ones him and Gary kept under the car seat. Like the ones they’d used on the girl and the old storekeeper. Sid felt his bowels go weak.

He knew what was coming, and so would Gary. Gary would know better than anybody.

Even as a kid, Gary had been a looker, the girls twitching around him, old ladies patting him, saying what a fine big boy he was. When his ma died, Gary was nine, maybe ten. People around said the old man went home drunk one too many times and finally beat her to death, which was his right, her being his property and all. Then instead of looking for another wife, the old man started using Gary for a woman. Gary got real moody after that, and real quiet.

A few years later—Gary would have been twelve—his pop got in trouble and had to come up with a bunch of
money to pay a debt. Gary said the old man’d acted weird all week, even when he was drunk, treating Gary nice and inviting guys from all over the county to a party that weekend. The old man’s friends, sure, but also guys he didn’t even know.

Turned out Gary was the entertainment, chained to a big staple his pop drove in the floor by the bed. Every man who came paid at the door, then used Gary any way he wanted.

Besides the sex part, they beat him. Beat him with everything within reach in that old house. Every few hours, the old man would shove Gary into the bathroom, tell him to clean himself up, and Gary would swallow a handful of water. But nobody bothered to feed him. Gary said he probably couldn’t have kept food down anyway.

It took two weeks for Gary to heal enough to go back to school and nearly a year for him to get up enough nerve to kill the old man. Then him and Sid lit out on their own. They’d been hanging out together ever since. Most of the time Gary was like anybody else, except maybe a bit more quiet. And sometimes he’d get real moody until he got a chance to use his big fists on some geezer, give out a little of what he’d taken on that nightmare weekend. One thing Gary still couldn’t stand, though, even for a minute, was being tied up.

The mousy woman with the screechy voice struck the first blow, a full roundhouse with the nail-studded broomstick across Gary’s ass as he lay slumped over the Miller Lite box. Gary’s head snapped up, back arched, his mouth and eyes opened wide with astonishment. Sid felt the pain as if it were his own, even as he saw the woman lower the broomstick to deliver a different sort of pain to Gary’s backside.

Sid’s rage exploded. He kicked the tall bitch in the knee, thinking maybe he heard a crack as his shoe connected with bone.

She cursed and stumbled, but recovered fast, whirling toward him, her own foot drawn back, and Sid suddenly remembered how they’d silenced the old man in the store.
Through his fear, he saw John coming in from the side, the cocksucker not even as big as the woman but reaching out to stop her, and then the woman’s heavy black boot slammed into his mouth. His first feeling was sheer disbelief that anything could hurt so fuckin bad, then through a red haze of pain he felt teeth crumble on his tongue like peanuts.

“That’s enough.”

Sissy shook away the hand that had jerked her off balance. “It’s not half enough.” She looked down at Carlson’s bloody mouth and itched to land another blow. “It’s only a taste of what they did to Celeste and her uncle.”

“Nevertheless, its enough.” The woman’s voice was calm.
Back off
, the bright, hard eyes commanded, I’m
taking charge here.

Sissy met the eyes with her own, her jaw muscles tensed with resolve. She would not be deterred from the Lord’s work.

Silence thrummed the air like torque on an E string.