Locke 2 (Blackwater Boys #4)

Forty-Five

Kali

I stared into a monster’s eyes and unlocked the doors of my safe prison. I wondered how many people could say they did the same thing. I wondered if it even mattered in the end. I was going to find out, playing a game I was already rigged to lose.

The sick prick didn’t even open the door. He watched me, waiting for me to do the honours. This was fucked up. My hand tightened around the knife one last time before letting go. Then I opened the door and forced my body to cooperate. Stepping out on trembling legs, I’d barely felt the ground at my feet when something hard crashed into the side of my skull.

I fell into darkness, unconscious.

I was outside my body.

Floating for a while in the blackness.

Then I suddenly came to, whipping my eyes open as my body was being pulled apart around me. Pain throbbed in my skull. My hips ached. My legs burned. It took me too much time to figure out I was being dragged ruthlessly across the forest floor by my arm. Twigs and branches skimmed harshly along my body. I was cold. Too cold. The violent wind ripped through me. I gasped, aware now that he’d removed my jacket, and I was in just my thin shirt and jeans.

I felt like vomiting again. The world spun. My arm was going to pop out of its socket if he didn’t slow down. And throughout it all, words trickled down to me. Words from the doctor I had thought once charming.

“I would have liked it if you'd chosen to run,” he said. “That game is my favourite. I could have ignored your wishes, Kari, but I’m a man of my word.”

I didn’t speak. There was blood in my mouth. Why was my mouth bleeding, though? Why did everything hurt? What had he done to me?

A groan slipped out of me. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I would have preferred to be silent because groaning in pain would have stroked this man’s ego and I wanted to die without doing that.

I was already fucking failing.

This man was going to feel like a god by the time he was done with me.

“Kari, I was really looking forward to our follow up appointment,” he continued. “There were so many neat tricks I wanted to explore with you about your anxiety. Breathing exercises and herbal teas. I could have prescribed a nature walk. Did you know doctors can do that now? What the fuck is this world coming to?”

He sounded crazy, so I tuned him out. I thought of Jem dying in these woods and I swallowed down a sob.

Then I thought of Locke, and a laugh bubbled out of me. We told him where we were going. He would find us. We were dead, but he’d find us anyway and cause unimaginable suffering on this man.

It was a pleasant thought.

But that was the last thought I had before the pain in my head returned with such intensity, I blacked out again.

It could have been a minute, or an hour. I didn’t know. I opened my eyes, and I was still being dragged. I resigned myself to this fate. I would forever be dragged through the bush by this fucking psycho, forever feel this pain in my arm and head and body.

He let me go suddenly and I didn’t even make a sound as I lay there, on my back, staring up at the dark sky. So many stars. My eyes were heavy. I swallowed down more blood, vaguely aware he was still moving around me. Except now he was humming some kind of tune. And he was still talking.

I’d rather he kept dragging me than have to hear his lunacy.

“Two dead people,” he grumbled, annoyed. “Over one fucking boy. That’s three bodies I have to get cleaned up. You know the shit they’re going to give me when I tell them the boy was a bust and my hot patient was wasted? I could have really gotten a sweet number on you, Kari. It’s your eyes, you know? They’re big and mysterious. You’re like a toy I know a bunch of powerful guys would have loved to have. Though, to be honest, I wanted you all for myself. I could have seen us having a pleasurable relationship. Do you like to fish?”

I turned my head, and my body screamed from that movement. I watched him as he kicked away soil and began removing layers of patches of grass. Fake grass from the feel of its blades against my face as he threw it down close to me.

“Lenny…” I croaked out. “Where…is…he?”

He paused to look down at me. “All good things come to those who wait, Kari.”

Oh, fuck me. I wanted to strangle this asshole. I should have just gutted him with Jem’s knife.

“I wish I could say your death is worth finding him,” he said, scoffing. “But he was a defiant little shit. He wasn’t worth the trouble. There was no taming him, and you can’t sell a broken pet, am I right? No more kids for me. It’s hot anxious girls like you from now. Non-refundable, good resale value, and you’d make the perfect little prey to catch when you’ve reached your expiry date.”

He bent down and pulled a door open from the ground. It creaked loudly as it swung away, landing close to my head.

I didn’t have any time to mentally prepare myself for what he was about to do. Terror hit me. I couldn’t move, and the feeling of pain dwindled away. He leaned over and picked me up with surprising ease. I couldn’t feel the ground, just hollow nothingness under me. My breaths picked up, and my body went tight. He pressed my chest to his and stared into my frightened eyes. He looked like he was committing my face to memory.

“Take a look at the stars, Kari. One final time.”

I did. I stared up at the stars, committing them to memory. An open universe there in front of me. Endless and free. I smiled at the brilliant light.

He dangled me there in his arms for a second longer…then dropped me.