I lift her into the shower and grab a washer from the towel rack. Stripping off, I join her under the stream, letting the hot water needle out the tension in my body as I hold her. I do as she asks and, with gentler hands than I thought I possessed, I help her wash away the stain he’s left upon the woman I love. I hold her in my arms and we cry together until the hot water runs out, and then I dry her off and carry her to bed. I hand her some sleeping pills and some Panadol for the pain and fold myself around her body until she falls asleep. Then I quietly tiptoe back into the bathroom, take the grate off the air vent and feel around until my hand comes to rest on the cool metal inside. Then I use Ana’s phone to make a call.
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.
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:
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.
