Welcome to Sugartown (25 page)

Chapter Twenty
Two

Elijah

Five minutes
after I ended the call with Holly her car had come tearing through
the motel car park. She’d parked diagonally across two spaces,
pulling up so hard she’d almost toppled me on my bike.

I told her
what he’d done. She cried and sat down heavily on the bitumen in
her fluffy bunny PJs. She looked like she wanted to throw up and,
come to think of it, I kinda wanted to, too. She agreed to watch
Ana until I got back and, much like Ana would have, she’d given me
the third degree about what I was about to do. She screamed and
ranted so loudly I thought she might wake Ana up, but whether it
was the shock or the pills she was dead to the world, which was
just the way I needed her to be.

Now I’m
sitting on my bike outside that fucker’s house. It’s still pitch
dark outside, but it won’t be if I sit here much longer. I flip the
kickstand down and quietly make my way around to the back of the
house. What I’m about to do will get me sent away for a long time,
possibly the rest of my life, but there’s no other option
here.

Pulling out
my lock pick I slide it into the back door off the kitchen. I’m a
little rusty, but after a minute the lock gives way and the door
swings open. I pray like hell they don’t have an alarm system
because if they do, I’m toast.

I step inside
and ease the door closed behind me, then I slowly make my way up
the stairs. At the top I glance at the three closed doors and thank
mums everywhere for buying stupid signs that read: Scott’s room,
like the one I’m staring at right now.

I creep over
to the door. It’s at the very end of the hall, so I have to bypass
his parent’s and one other bedroom on my way, and I hold my breath
and hope like hell this doesn’t end before it even gets
started.

I breathe a
sigh of relief when my passage goes without a hitch, and another
one still when I carefully turn the handle and I’m met with no
resistance. I ease into the room and quietly shut the door behind
me, taking a minute for my eyes to adjust to the
darkness.

It’s obvious
he’s here and not out abusing some other woman because he’s snoring
softly. For a moment I just watch the rise and fall of his chest as
he sleeps. I try not to think about what it will be like for his
parents to wake and find their son dead in the morning, but of
course as I stand in his childhood room surrounded by footy
trophies, high school memorabilia and a poster of a half-naked
woman bent over a V8 that looks an awful lot like my Ana, I can’t
help but feel a twinge of guilt for his family at what I’m about to
do to their precious, sack of shit, rapist son.

I creep over
to the bed, pull the gun and a strip of Duct tape from inside my
jacket and place the tape over his mouth as I thumb the hammer and
press it into his forehead.

His eyes
spring open immediately. He screams, but it’s muffled. He’s not
stupid enough to try wrestling the gun from me and I’m both
thankful and disappointed for that. It takes everything I have not
to blow his fucking head off right now, but I want him as
shit-scared and fucking humiliated as she was, so I’m committed to
seeing this through for Ana’s sake.

“
Remember me,
arsehole?” I whisper. It’s an effort not to scream in his face, but
that really wouldn’t help my situation any.

Scumbag makes
some desperate pleading noise in the back of his throat. His eyes
are shinning with fear and I shift so I’m sitting on his chest and
staring down into his pretty boy face that I want to fuck up every
which way.

“
You took
something from someone tonight,” I begin and he shakes his head
vigorously beneath my gun. I decide he can’t feel it enough and
press it into his forehead a little harder which gets his full
attention. He stills beneath me, except for the shallow breaths
he’s taking and the sob that wracks his chest. “That wasn’t a
fucking question you fuck-rag. I know what you did, you know what
you did and you’re gonna fucking die for it.”

“
Did you know
she was a virgin?” I ask. I can see by the way his eyes widen
slightly he didn’t. Not that it matters, really. Rape is rape. It’s
still brutal and unwarranted, no matter what the circumstances, and
men like him deserve to be strung up and castrated. He starts
yammering again behind his gag and I pull back my elbow and slam it
into his face. He screams like a little girl. It feels good to have
an outlet for the rage so I do it again, harder this time. Then I
press my hand down over his nose so his cries don’t gain any
unwanted attention.

“
This the
first time you stuck your cock in a pussy that didn’t want it?
Think carefully before you answer, you little fuck, because I will
know if you’re bullshitting.”

He closes his
eyes and very slowly shakes his head.

“
You sack of
shit,” I mutter and clench my jaw together tightly in order to keep
from filling his groin full of bullets. “You’re lucky I don’t cut
it off and nail it to your parent’s door.”

His eyes
widen and he starts screaming again. He’s making too much noise so
I punch him in the face to shut him up. Then I climb off of him and
stand beside the bed with my gun aimed squarely at his groin. “Take
off your pants.”

He shakes his
head and I lean down so our noses are almost touching. “This 9mm
may be small, but it’ll still blow a hole in your head. Now,
imagine what something like that could do to your Johnson.” Scott’s
eyes widen in terror. His nostrils flare wildly as he sucks in air
and tries to plead with me from behind the duct tape. “So this is
how it’s going to work: I tell you to do something, you do it. I
won’t ask again, I’ll pull the trigger instead. Are we fucking
crystal clear, or do I need to start shooting family members for
you to get that point through your thick skull?”

He nods and,
with trembling fingers, pulls his pants down to his ankles. I lift
the knife from my belt and watch the fear slide over his face. It’s
equal parts beauty and horror all at once. I move toward him and
catch my reflection in the window above his bed and it occurs to me
that I’ve never done anything with this much premeditated
brutality. I’ve killed men in self-defence, once on the inside and
once on the out to save the woman I loved from the same fate that
this scumbag delivered to her tonight. I’ve done a lot of fucked up
shit and left an awful lot of unhappy people in my wake, but I’ve
never carved up a man’s junk and put a bullet through his brain
while his parents were asleep in the next room. And, as I stand
there glaring at my reflection, I see that if I go through with
this, if I put a bullet in this fucker’s brain and splatter him all
over his bedroom walls, it won’t make me any fucking different from
him.

Would Ana
forgive me for ending his life? Would she forgive me for letting
him walk free? Would I?
I don’t know the
answers to any of these questions, and that scares the shit outta
me.

A musky acrid
scent hits my nostrils and I snap out of my thoughts and glance
down at the piece of shit before me. He’s so fucking terrified he’s
pissed and shit all over the bed. I wrinkle my nose, take a step
closer to his head and bring my fist down on his cheek so hard it
whips his head to the side and knocks him out cold. Then I pull up
a seat beside him and waste no time making sure the outside
reflects the ugliness on the in.

It’s not
fucking pretty, and several times I gag and retch and worry his
parents are going to walk in on me impersonating Jack the Ripper,
but it isn’t long before it’s finished. My gloves are covered in
blood—my knife too, obviously. I pick up the end of the sheet and
wipe my hands and the blade on the clean white bedding.

Then I calmly
walk over to the desk, tear off a sheet of paper from a notepad and
write a letter to his parents:

Tonight your
son raped a nineteen-year-old girl.

This is to
make sure it never happens again.

I set the
note in the middle of Scott’s chest. He’s out cold, but the rise
and fall of that piece of paper eases some of the anxiety inside of
me. I came here tonight to kill him and I didn’t. A part of me
hates myself for being such a god damned pussy, but the other part
knows I did the right thing.

He destroyed
my girl tonight and I destroyed his chance of ever doing this to
another woman again. We’re not even close to even but I’ll settle
for it anyway, because it may just keep another naïve girl from
having her life destroyed by that fucker.

Two
kilometres from the Turner household and I have to pull the bike
over because the shock of what I just did sets in, and I start
spewing before I’ve even pulled off the road. I spend a good twenty
minutes outside the Sugartown Primary School heaving up my guts,
and then I climb back on my bike and drive to the nearest payphone
where I report a break in at 24 Pine Tree Road.

Across town,
I hear the wail of police sirens cut through the quiet early
morning air and I jump back on the bike. I drive right past the
motel, about 10 kilometres past it actually, and hurl the gun off
into a cane field. I bury the gloves by the side of the road and
clean myself up as best I can with some wet wipes I keep in an ammo
case, then I speed back to the motel to spend as much time with Ana
as I can before the men in blue come for me. And they will come. I
have absolutely no doubt about that fact. In a way, I’m counting on
it to keep me in line, because I could still very easily turn
around and put a bullet in that kid’s head.

Once I slide
my key in the door Holly is right up in my face, demanding answers.
I pull her into the bathroom with me and quietly close the door to
keep her from waking Ana.

“
What the
hell did you do?”

“
I took care
of it.”

Her eyes
widen. “What does that mean, Elijah?”

I run my
hands under the hot tap to clean away a spot of blood on my wrist
and curse these old pipes for taking so long to heat up. My
knuckles are bruised and, despite the leather gloves I’d been
wearing, the skin is still all torn up from slamming my fist into
Scott’s face. I desperately want a shower so I peel off my jacket
and shuck off my boots but then it occurs to me that Fanta-pants
has no intention of leaving until she gets her answers.

“
He’s still
breathing,” I say, and then think,
Not
that he deserves to be
. “He
has
had some body
modification work done, though.”

“
What the
hell does that mean?” she shouts. I glare at her to shut up but the
bathroom door opens and a shell-shocked Ana looks back and forth
between us. She takes one look at my hands and my guilty wide-eyed
expression and bolts.

“
Ana!” I
shout and take off after her, nearly knocking Holly off her feet as
I push through the bathroom door and into the motel room. She’s
already out the door and half way to the staircase when I catch her
by the waist and drag her back to my room, kicking and screaming. I
dump her down on the bed, remembering only at the last minute how
carefully she was moving last night. In the daylight I can see he
really fucking did a number on her, and I curse myself again for
being such a fucking pussy and not gutting the bastard.

“
You
promised,” Ana sobs and I make a move toward her, but suddenly
Holly is beside her on the bed, holding her in her arms, and I feel
like I’ve been shunted aside like old garbage. “You promised you
wouldn’t tell. You said you wouldn’t go after him.”

She’s right.
I did promise that. But I also made myself a promise the night the
Angels attacked us, when she was almost raped right there in front
of me. I promised myself I’d do everything within my power to keep
her safe and if it’s one thing I know about spoilt little rich kid
fucks like Scott Turner it’s that once they get away with
something, they’re cocky enough to try a second time I’ll be a
rotting corpse before I ever let him near my Ana again.

Holly
surprises us both by saying, “He did the right thing,
Ana.”

“
What?” Ana
and I ask at the same time.

“
You need to
go to the hospital. You need to let them carry out a rape kit and
then you need to report this to the police.”