Minnie sobbed; a heart-breaking sound erupting from the deepest depths of her stomach; staining the air with something awful and ugly.
“They took me to some place,” she gasped as if each word was like a gunshot to her oesophagus. “Some place where there were lots of men…”
Ronnie listened to her continue, bile churning in his stomach as he gripped her tighter and listened to the horrific ordeal that the poor girl had endured. Every sentence was like a sharp, jagged blade of glass ripping roughly through his heart, tearing apart his organs, re-opening the deep lacerations on his chest.
The more she spoke, the clearer the harrowing realisation that formed in his brain became. At first just a blur; the image sharpened and sharpened; until it reared its horrendous head in all of its hideous, earth-shattering glory.
It all made sense.
The fake-ID guy wanting that folder of official paperwork. Official paperwork that allegedly proved the identity of a young woman. Ronnie had not asked questions. He’d followed the man’s instructions out of desperation because he needed the fake ID. Minnie and their unborn child needed him to have it.
So, he’d broken it at the exact time, through the exact opening at the back of the house. He’d followed all of the directions that he had memorised so carefully, tip-toeing through the upstairs corridor, climbing the short, partially concealed staircase to the attic room.
Except, when he got the door open, he’d found more than just documents.
He’d found a girl. A frantic, desperate girl whose hair was matted in blood, whose yellowing eyes bulged from her skull, and whose traumatised screams alerted very much unwanted attention.
Now, it all made sense.
Blindly, he’d been tricked into burglarising the home of a sex ring leader into attempting to release a clearly half-dead woman from an insane, dangerous maniac. And in the process, he’d gotten himself captured and tortured, and the girl in question shot dead on the spot.
She hadn’t even made it down the staircase.
Ronnie spluttered, trying with all of his might not to let his tears spill onto Minnie’s clammy flesh.
One girl had died, and one girl now had to take her place.
And it was all Ronnie’s fault.
It was his fault that the mother of his unborn baby was being used; her body solicited beyond her control to a pack of disgusting animals.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Chapter Thirty-six
2019
By the time Ronnie and Lloyd were trudging back over the dry grass; the sun was starting to beat down on their heads; both of them felt exhausted.
Getting rid of Destiny’s body hadn’t been difficult; she was a skinny little thing, and disposing of her corpse had been no trouble between father and son. They’d worked mostly in silence, with only the odd, occasional growl from Ronnie to gruffly give Lloyd instructions. As planned, they’d dumped her into the stream, which was not as deep as Ronnie had hoped. Her body would turn up sooner rather than later, which only intensified the urgency in Ronnie’s step as he hurried back towards the RV.
It was that urgency, the rush that tired him out.
This life he and Minnie had chosen was thrilling and exhilarating and more satisfying than anything the two of them could have ever hoped for as young, naïve teenagers. But it was the running away that he hated. The irritating fingers of doubt and anxiety that tickled the back of his mind, reminding him that they’d been extremely fucking lucky to have gotten away with so much of their impromptu criminal activity.
Murder, theft; torture; and all that other good shit was best pre-planned and pre-meditated. Planning ahead meant there was room to savour the experience and ensured the absence of concern. But when shit like this came about, the stress almost always outweighed the thrill.
Maybe, Ronnie had considered, both to himself and to Minnie, it was his age.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Lloyd muttered, just as the top of the RV parked at the edge of the caravan site came into view above the crescent of a hill.
Ronnie grumbled, his brow furrowing as he forced himself to look at Lloyd.
The kid was just fourteen; and almost completely hopeless. He was overweight, and the only one out of the four kids that Ronnie could clearly see was not attractive or naturally charming in their manner.
Hopefully, it was just an awkward, pubescent stage that Lloyd Garnet would eventually grow out of. But for now, it made him a lumbering idiot and, frankly, a great deal of the time, one hell of a liability. Not that Ronnie was wholly impressed with his other kids at that moment in time. Attempting a robbery on a group of rough traveller kids who likely slept with rifles beneath their beds and fucked their own sisters. The only one who’d shown a single grain of intelligence that day was Flo, who wasn’t even a decade old, for fuck’s sake.
Abruptly, he stopped, startling Lloyd. The middle-aged man groaned and rubbed the back of his neck, frowning at his son.
“This has got to stop, mate,” he said sternly, although his expression finally began to soften. “Me and your mother love you dearly… you’re our son,” he added.
“I love you too, Dad.”
Ronnie took a step closer to the boy and fixed his sharp, piercing eyes on the teenager’s piggy pupils. As he moved into his space, the gross stench of body odour infiltrated his nostrils.
“There’s not a lot me, and your mother won’t allow you. Barely anything we won’t support you with…”
“I know…”
“But there is a line,” Ronnie said firmly. “And we’ve made it very fucking clear to you from the day you were born what that line is.”
Lloyd bowed his head, colouring rising to his cheeks, betraying his childish shame.
“Now, this is your final warning, Lloyd,” Ronnie continued, lowering his voice. “Any more of this rapey shit and I’ll chemically castrate you myself. You understand?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Father and
