Tarnished Soul: A Nine Minutes Spin-Off Novel Page 14

  They’d been leisurely making their way around Naples when a black Corvette pulled up next to them at a red light. Lucy peered over at the driver and had to force herself not to stare. The first thing she noticed was the muscular and tattooed arm that rested on the open window. She allowed her gaze to slowly make its way up to the driver’s face and realized with a start that he was eyeing Jonas. He’s like a lion, was the first thought that came to her. The man wasn’t classically handsome, but he had a rugged appeal that was only enhanced by what she considered a mane of wild blond hair that rivaled the king of beasts. His green eyes were mesmerizing in their intensity. She shifted uncomfortably when she realized those eyes were now glaring at Jonas. She bent a little lower and could see a brunette woman with a ponytail in the passenger seat. She had her hand on the man’s right arm and a troubled expression on her pretty face.

  Lucy sat back and watched Jonas give the lion a curt nod, which the king of beasts quickly returned before taking a sharp right, the Corvette’s wheels squealing as it peeled away.

  It was two blocks before the woman with the ponytail finally asked, “Who was that guy on the bike, Grizz? Do you know him?”

  Without looking over at her, Grizz replied, “He’s one of Anthony’s guys. He goes by Brooks.”

  “Does he know you and Anthony are really friends? Or does he think what you and Anthony want everyone to think? You know, that you two are fierce enemies?” Her warm brown eyes were sparkling with curiosity.

  “I can’t say for sure, Kit, but I’m going to guess he knows we only pretend to be enemies.”

  Kit swiveled in her seat to face him. “Why do you guess that?”

  “Because he nodded at me instead of giving me the finger.” Grizz laughed.

  She hmphed before replying. “I don’t think it matters what he knows or doesn’t know. I can’t imagine anyone being brave enough to give you the finger, Grizz.”

  As they stopped at another red light, Grizz looked over at his wife. He gently tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. “I know all about Brooks, and believe me when I tell you, if there’s anyone with big enough balls to give me the finger, it would be him. I don’t know if he’s brave or just doesn’t give a shit, but he’s done things even I wouldn’t consider doing. Again, the safest assumption is he knows or guesses I’m tight with Bear.”

  “Because—” she started to say.

  “Because regardless of what anyone knows or thinks they know, giving me the finger is a death wish I’d be more than willing to make come true.”

  Hours later, Jonas and Lucy were back at the cabin where Lucy took a moment to ask Jonas about the figure painted on his gas tank. After seeing some of the more sinister depictions on the gas tanks of not only Skid’s bike but some of the others as well, she was curious as to the meaning behind what she guessed to be an ethereal figure displayed on Jonas’ gas tank.

  She looked from the bike to Jonas. “Is it a ghostly grim reaper?” she questioned.

  Jonas gave a deep snicker and tilted his head sideways. “I guess it might look like that to some, but that wasn’t my intent.”

  “What was your intent?”

  “It was supposed to be an angel. When you came to my aid at the hospital all those years ago, I remember waking up from surgery thinking you were a figment of my imagination. Sort of like an angel. Of course when I fully came around, I knew you’d been real, but the angel image remained in my head. The artist got it wrong at least ten times because I couldn’t articulate to him what I wanted. That’s why it seems a little mysterious or ghostly, I guess. But it’s supposed to be you. I hope you aren’t insulted, Lucy.”

  Practically breathless, Lucy asked, “Has anyone ever told you what a romantic you are?”

  “I’ve been called a lot of things. I can assure you romantic isn’t one of them.”

  Lucy placed her hand over her heart to make sure it was still there because she was certain that Jonas, at that very moment, had permanently stolen it.

  Chapter 35

  It was two days after they’d seen the movie and went for a motorcycle ride that they found the hunter’s abandoned campsite. After Jonas did some additional scouting that led him to believe the men had left in the right direction, they headed back to the cabin. They took a different route home and came upon a deer that hadn’t been dead for very long.

  Jonas knelt down, and after inspecting the animal, assured Lucy the deer hadn’t lost its life to a human. “Looks like it got gored by a wild hog. Their tusks are razor sharp.”

  Lucy looked around before asking, “You told me the wild hogs are skittish and normally wouldn’t attack unless they felt cornered or threatened. I can’t imagine this poor little deer threatening a hog.”

  Jonas laid down his crossbow and stood up. “True, so my guess is that this was a collision of sorts. They were both probably running around and the hog ran into the deer in a spot that caused it to bleed out. It’s definitely a ragged tear, not a gunshot or arrow wound,” he assured her. “And it’s not going to go to waste.” He produced a huge knife and went to work.

  As they hiked back to the cabin, Lucy asked, “I never ate deer meat before, let alone its lung. Is it a delicacy?”

  “We’re not going to eat the lung, Lucy. We’re going to use it for bait.”

  “Bait for what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The next morning Lucy watched from a safe distance as Jonas waded into the swamp. “Shouldn’t you be in a boat?” Worry lines caused her forehead to crinkle.

  “A boat is definitely safer,” he told her. “But I have my gun if I need it. Besides, I think the boat floated away about twenty years ago,” he said with a grin.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I can’t imagine anything being safe when it comes to hunting alligators.”

  “Observe and learn, sweetheart,” was his answer.

  Lucy watched in jaw-dropping wonder as Jonas used the floating air-filled lung to lure an alligator close enough for him to kill it. One sharp stab to the back of its head with what she learned was called a bang stick, quickly and humanely put the reptile down. She remained in awe at how skillfully Jonas not only killed the creature but expertly skinned it with one of his more sinister-looking knives.

  That night she had to agree with his earlier assessment that yes, when properly tenderized, alligator tasted just like chicken. And as much as she appreciated Jonas braving the swamp for her to get a taste of it, she’d eat chicken for the rest of her life if it meant keeping him from risking life and limb for her taste buds. After all, like she’d told Jonas, just because he wasn’t afraid of alligators didn’t mean that he shouldn’t be.

  The sun rose hot and bright the next day and after going about their normal routine, by mid-morning, Lucy found herself sleepy.

  “It’s probably just the heat,” she said with a yawn. “I’m going back to bed for a nap. Do you want to join me?”

  “No, I was hoping you’d come with me,” he told her.

  Stifling another yawn, she asked, “Where are you going?”

  “I see smoke a ways off. I can’t tell if it’s someone’s campfire or an act of nature. I need to check it out and want you to come with me.”

  She looked at him pleadingly. “I understand how this is important, but I think I can safely sit this one out, Jonas. You know the hunters are gone. You’ve taught me how to defend myself. I feel safe here.” She nodded toward the nightstand where one of the handguns she’d been trained to use rested. “I always get this tired at the tail end of my period and the heat isn’t helping. Can you please trust me to take care of myself for a little while? I promise not to leave the cabin.”

  Jonas gave her a reluctant nod followed by a kiss on her forehead. He instructed Lucy to fire the gun if she needed him. He gauged the smoke to be less than a mile away, but it would equate to about a forty-five-minute walk through the swamplands. And it was in a direction that wouldn’t allow him to take his truck. After loading up his g
ear and hastily inspecting the cabin’s perimeter, he hiked off in the direction of the smoke.

  As he walked, he took note of his surroundings and didn’t see anything indicating a human had taken the same trail. The smoke column didn’t appear to be getting any larger, which caused him to believe it wasn’t an act of nature but manmade. This meant that someone was on his property. Those hunters weren’t an isolated incident. Well-meaning conservationists, activists, and hunters were always getting lost in the Everglades. He would just tell them what he told the men that had shown up at the cabin. They were trespassing on private property.

  He found the cause of the smoke, and like he’d suspected, it was a small campfire that appeared to be slowly burning itself out. He glanced around the area and realized that other than the campfire, there were no signs that anyone had actually set up camp. No litter. No obvious spots where someone may have pitched a tent. No flat areas where a sleeping bag would’ve been rolled out. Just a single pair of boot prints that led away from the site in the opposite direction of the way he’d come. He cautiously followed the footprints, scanning his whereabouts with his crossbow at the ready.

  And that’s when he caught the smell. It was one he knew intimately. This was where he would find the remains of a dead creature. He couldn’t discern what kind of animal. Decomposing flesh wasn’t fickle. Death smelled like death. It could be a boar, a deer, even a bear. He spied a mound through the brush and knew it was the lifeless animal. He stopped for a moment to look to the sky and wondered why there weren’t buzzards circling. Probably because they’d been eating whatever had been killed for days, he told himself. When he got to the spot, he realized that whoever had killed the creature had done a half-assed job of burying it. He shook his head in disgust and used his boot to kick at it and shake off some of the dirt.

  Jonas Brooks had found himself in scary situations before, but nothing had terrified him like this since his childhood nightmares. At the precise moment he discovered the obnoxious red-bearded hunter had his throat slit from ear to ear, he heard the gunshot from a mile away that signaled Lucy needed him.

  Chapter 36

  It had taken him close to forty minutes at a brisk walk to find the campfire. He didn’t know how long it had taken him to return to the cabin. Due to the rough and uncertain terrain, he couldn’t run the entire time, but he tried. By the time he had the back side of the cabin in his sights, his chest burned fiercely. And not because his lungs were oxygen deprived, but because the uncertainty of what he might find weighed heavily. He realized that the hunters must’ve had a plan since first finding the cabin. They had followed his orders to remove themselves from the property. They waited a decent amount of days for Jonas to let down his guard before deciding to return. It was now obvious that the polite, dark-haired guy was the leader of the two, and he’d obviously turned on his hunting buddy. Jonas rounded a stand of trees and came up short. With a relieved gasp, he ran to the solitary figure huddled on the porch steps. It was Lucy. She had her head resting on her knees and her arms wrapped tightly around them, the gun dangling from her right hand. As he got closer, he noticed her bloodied clothes and cried out, “Are you hurt? Did that fucker hurt you? Where is he?”

  She raised her head as Jonas came barreling toward her. “I had to, I had to—” she started to say, her bottom lip trembling.

  “Where is he?” Jonas screamed as he knelt in front of her and carefully removed the gun from her hand. “Where is he, Lucy?”

  She nodded behind her. “Inside. He’s on the floor in front of the couch. If I hadn’t remembered you kept one of those big nasty knives of yours under the cushions, I’d be dead by now.” She looked up at the sky as the sun’s glare almost blinded her. “That’s what he told me, Jonas. I’d be dead before noon, and he’d be long gone with your truck and bike before you found me.”

  “Stay here, Lucy,” he told her as he made his way into the cabin. He found the man lying between the couch and the cooler that had served as a coffee table. He had a knife sticking out of his neck. It was obvious there had been a struggle. Lucy’s tote bag and its contents were strewn across the floor. The curtain that separated the rooms was torn down. Lucy’s cookie jar was shattered on the floor. The small corner table was on its side, and broken glass from the lantern and his family portrait was scattered across the hardwood. He felt Lucy behind him.

  “I was asleep and woke up when I heard the door open. I’d locked it after you left, but he must’ve picked it open. Anyway, I thought it was you. I got up and by the time I reached the doorway, it was too late.” She looked at the floor where the curtain laid, and her shoulders started to shake.

  Jonas realized she was crying and he pulled her tight against him, her glasses digging into his chest. “Let’s take these off before you break them,” he told her as he delicately removed them and laid them on the small kitchen table.

  She looked up at him, tears streaking her cheeks. “He didn’t even act like he’d made a mistake coming into the cabin. He was on me immediately and said that even though he hadn’t seen me that day, he knew I’d be worth coming back for. I tried to run back into the bedroom for the gun, but he grabbed me by my hair and yanked me back. My glasses flew off my face, so everything was blurry, but I managed to pick up the cookie jar and smashed him in the face with it. It only made him angrier.” After wiping her tears, Jonas arranged her glasses back on her face. She gestured around the room with her hand. “As you can see, we struggled and that’s when I remembered your knife under the couch cushion, so I pretended to give in. I stopped fighting him and went over to the couch and said something like ‘let’s get this over with.’” She sniffled and swiped her arm across her nose. “I couldn’t make out his expression because I didn’t have my glasses, but he gave the most maniacal evil laugh I’ve ever heard. That’s when he told me I’d be dead before noon and he’d be long gone with your things.” She shivered before continuing. “So, I lay back on the couch and when he got on top of me, I reached where I knew the knife was and I stabbed him in the throat. I pushed him off of me and went outside to wait for you to get back. I don’t know how long I sat there before I remembered you told me to shoot the gun if I needed you. I guess I was in too much shock. I just kept rattling off numbers until I came to my senses.” She paused to look back up at him. “You know, my memory game.” She stifled a sob. “I killed a man, Jonas. I killed a man.”

  Jonas gently pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Lifting her face up to his, he said, “If you hadn’t, he would’ve killed you, Lucy.”

  “For some reason, knowing that still doesn’t remove the reality of it.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t make it not true. He was telling the truth when he said he would’ve killed you. I found his hunting buddy with his throat slit so deep it almost decapitated him.”

  Lucy gasped and placed her hand across her chest. He watched her swallow before she asked, “What’s next? What do we do now?”

  Jonas looked over at the man’s lifeless body, the bloody couch and blood-soaked floor, then back to Lucy. “I know what I would do, but I’m guessing you’ll want to have me take you into Naples and report what happened. If that’s the case, we need to leave everything like it is so there won’t be any question about the validity of your story.” Jonas looked away from her, obviously uncomfortable with getting the law involved.

  “No,” Lucy informed him. “We can’t do that and you know it.” Without giving him time to respond, she added, “We both know this will get pinned on you. I’m sure you don’t own everyone in law enforcement, Jonas. There have got to be responsible police out there that have been waiting to get their hands on you. This will get twisted because they’ll think I’m covering for you. It won’t matter what I tell them. They’ll assume this whole crime scene is staged.” She knew she’d read his earlier expression correctly when he nodded in agreement.

  “Then I clean this up the way I normally would, Lucy, and we neve
r speak about it again.”

  She stood tall, her resolve to allow him to handle the matter overshadowing any doubts she may have had about what she’d done to protect herself.

  Jonas motioned toward the back room. “Go to the bedroom. I’ll get the curtain put up and you stay back there. Read one of your books, try and go back to sleep, maybe soak in the tub. Do something, anything that won’t let you think about what I’m doing out here. Okay?”

  Her voice trembled when she answered, “I should, should…I should help you.”

  “No, go in the back, sweetheart.”

  She numbly walked to the bedroom and sat on the bed as Jonas returned the curtain to its place and closed it. Instead of trying to block out thoughts of what was happening in the front room by reading, sleeping, or bathing, Lucy did the only thing she was actually capable of doing. She thought. She reasoned. She calculated.

  She was twenty-two years old. The youngest student to have earned a doctorate in her university’s history. The Centers for Disease Control had been pursuing her since she was eighteen. She now wondered why she continued to thwart job offers, not just from the CDC but from prestigious labs and colleges as well. Why had she continued on this endless quest for knowledge? Was it to rack up more degrees that she didn’t need? Or was it because college had been a welcome refuge from all the nonsense she’d experienced in high school? College was familiar. Safe. You’re avoiding change, she told herself. You don’t want to get out of your comfort zone. She agreed with her self-assessment and went out to find Jonas. If she was ever going to have a future with him, she would definitely need to get out of her comfort zone.

  She immediately noticed the dead body and couch were missing from the front room. She found Jonas behind the shed. He had the couch in a burn pile and the dead man wrapped in a tarp and tied with a rope.