Ready Or Not (The Hunter’s Club #2)

Chapter 14

14

LALALAND - Kami Kehoe

I take Rachel to my place, which is just around the corner from Manson’s. Almost all the cars from the corn maze are gone, and the sky is just turning gray.

I get Rachel out to my barn, which I’ve transformed into a workshop. I’ve even installed an old garage door where the main doors rotted out. The barn is full of junk and empty stalls, but I mostly stay in the front, where I’ve cleared out a space. I wave my hand at the old couch I keep in here, complete with a blanket. “Sleep.”

Rachel is stuck staring at my setup, her eyes wide. Probably tasting colors at this point.

I shake my head and guide her to the couch. “Sleep it off, girlfriend. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Why do you have a bed in your shop?” She looks around at my workbenches, buckets, hoses, tubes, and tools. “Wait, I’m not your girlfriend.”

“It’s not a bed; it’s a couch, bambi. It’s for sleeping. And sometimes fucking.”

Rachel’s face turns red, which makes me smirk. As much as she pretends not to like it, she loves it when I touch her.

And I love it, too. That pretty little body is so responsive. So tense and hungry. It makes me wonder how long it’s been since someone has touched her.

At that thought, a strange anger fills me. Who else has touched my little deer?

Loud chirping outside the barn doors breaks me out of my haze. It’s morning already, but I’m not tired. I’m wound up. I need to work with my hands. Go hunting. Do something. But I can’t leave her. Now that Rachel’s on Manson’s radar, he’ll do anything he can to fuck with her. Which just puts me in a mood.

How dare he mess with me, and what’s mine after killing Pup? I’ll kill him for what he did.

Rachel wanders to the couch, but she just stands there, staring at it.

“It’s green,” she says softly.

“Yep. Gold star for you.” I move up behind her, pick her up, and toss her gently on the couch. She screams softly, then hisses.

I glance down. Her leg has clotted up, but it looks nasty.

Fuck.

Gathering the first aid kit, I drop it on the couch. Rachel scoots back and eyes me like…well, like a wounded animal.

I sigh. “Please don’t make this hard for me.”

She blinks slowly. I could tie her down, and I might, but that could turn her trip bad, and I don’t want to deal with a screaming woman for the next few hours.

I hold my hands up. “I’ll be gentle.”

Something flashes in Rachel’s eyes. All her muscles lock up, and her breathing picks up.

I softly grab her leg and hold it down. Her skin is so soft. “Easy. It’ll hurt, but I’ll be careful.”

“No.” Rachel panics, backing up against the back of the couch. Her leg shakes under me.

“It’s just pain, bambi.” I’m getting annoyed.

“No,” Rachel gasps again. “Don’t be gentle.”

I look up at her, confusion running through me.

Rachel sucks in a breath. “Please. Don’t be gentle.”

I arch an eyebrow, then shrug. However the princess wants it.

I don’t want to break open the scab, but I do pour a generous amount of rubbing alcohol over Rachel’s leg. She hisses, and I have to hold her down to keep her from scrambling away from me. Once I’ve blotted up most of the area, I wrap a bandage around it. As far as I could tell, the splinter only went in an inch or two. If there are any little wood pieces left, they’ll get infected, and she’ll have to go to the hospital.

It bled pretty good. Manson has blood all over his house. Her blood. I smirk. It almost tempts me to kill her just so I can frame him.

When I’m done, Rachel’s eyes grow heavy. Finally, under the effects of the drug, she passes out, half-splayed across the couch. I stare at her for a second, wishing I could sleep that deeply. But I don’t sleep. Not much, anyway, and not heavily.

I work for a few hours, setting up supplies, defrosting my meat freezer, and cleaning my tools.

Anything to forget.

Pup was the last time I remember feeling any sort of affection. His death marked the death of my humanity, and I kind of like it that way. There’s less pain when you have no emotions. No anxiety, no fear, no…nothing.

I’m numb.

Unless Manson’s around. Then, that blessed rage courses through me, and for a minute, I feel alive.

When Rachel wakes again, I’m just starting to feel fatigued.

Rachel groans, rubbing her eyes. “Where am I?”

“My barn.” I continue sharpening my favorite hunting knife. I use it mostly to get the hides off small game.

Rachel squints her eyes and groans. “Water?”

I jerk my head at the side of the couch. I’ve left some water bottles, a thing of painkillers, and an apple.

I don’t deal with whining well.

Rachel looks around at the hides I have strung up to dry on the walls. We sit in silence for a while while Rachel takes the pills and some water. She doesn’t whine, or beg, or cry.

Which is fucking intriguing.

Finally, Rachel asks, “You’re a hunter?”

I just grunt. I’ve hunted ever since I moved out on my own. I can’t stand mass animal farms. Those animals have no quality of life. They live in crowded pens, some of them never seeing the light of day until they’re killed. Then, parts of their bodies were wasted. If not in the process of gutting them, then when they’re eaten and scraped from the plates of the ungrateful to the trash. The entitlement of human beings drives me insane. Other humans are the worst thing to happen to my planet.

So I hunt my own meat. I get the thrill of a good hunt, and I take care of my world so it’ll keep producing for me. Plus, Manson keeps fucking up my plans to do this to people, so here we are.

Rachel looks uncomfortable.

“Don’t pretend you have a bleeding heart.” I snort. “I saw the collection you have at home.” At the mention of that, I get pissed again.

Rachel’s eyebrows shoot up. “You were in my house?”

I shake my head. “Don’t change the subject.” I don’t care about her opinion of me breaking and entering. Actually, I don’t care about anyone’s opinion, period.

“I don’t have a bleeding heart,” Rachel huffs. “But even if I did, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

I snort. “Spoken like a true bleeding heart.”

“I’m going home.” Rachel jumps off the couch.

I continue sharpening my knife, the sound of the grinder filling the barn.

“It’s your death wish,” I say over the grinder as Rachel stomps to the door.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her pause. I won’t let her leave, but I want to see what she’ll do.

“Where’s Manson?”

Oh, so she does have some brains.

“Out looking for you.”

Lie. He knows exactly where she is—with me.

Rachel pauses. “Can you take me back home?”

“Take you back to the place he’s looking?” I snort. “I gave you more credit than that.”

Rachel looks torn.

I shrug.

Finally, she says, “Let me call someone.”

I just turn and raise an eyebrow at her. “Do you know who Manson is?”

Rachel glares at me. She still doesn’t get it.

“Manson has hired guns all over this damn region. You think just staying with a family member will get you out of his reach? Use your brain, bambi. You saw him; you know what he’s capable of.”

Rachel is still frozen, like a deer in the headlights. Probably knows she can’t trust me, but Manson is even less trustworthy. She’s stuck. Because the more I use her emotions against her, the more I seem like the best option. Humans fear the unknown much more than they fear the known.

“Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe from him.” Ironically, I’ve told her more truths than lies in this conversation.

What an interesting predicament.

I hold my hand out to her.

Still, nothing.

Okay, so she’s a lot smarter than I gave her credit for.

“Let me rephrase this.” I stare at her. “I won’t let you risk your life running right into Manson’s hands. You have no choice. You’re staying with me.”

Rachel’s eyes flash with defiance a second before she darts out of the barn.

“Jesus,” I groan. Who knew having a toy would be such work?

I jog after her, only to find her puking her guts out at the edge of the corn maze. She sees me and starts running again, only to double over. She half-jogs, doubled over and hurling.

“Are you quite done?”

She waves me off. I wait until she’s done. Nothing but bile is coming up.

I need to feed her something real.

“Whenever you’re finished, I have things to do.” I tap my foot.

“You drugged me!” she yells.

I blink. “Yeah.”

“It was awful!” She whirls on me. “You can’t keep me prisoner.”

“Why not?” I cock my head.

“Because!” Rachel’s face is pale. “It’s not right!”

“It must be quite hard trying to live with what’s right and what isn’t.” I blink at her. I don’t understand why people would want to live that way. Emotions and morality put so many rules on an already boring life.

Rachel just stares at me, her face a curious void of emotion. It’s not the first time I’ve seen her go blank. The first time I saw her, I thought she might be one of us. Her face was empty, and every time she showed an emotion, it seemed rehearsed. But now I know she can’t be. She doesn’t seem to have a manipulative bone in her body.

“What are you looking at?” Rachel’s face gets red. She’s embarrassed.

Okay, definitely not one of us.

“You done puking?”

Rachel squares her shoulders.

“Good.” I snatch her up and throw her over my shoulder. “If you run from me again, I won’t be this nice.”

I don’t normally sleep in the house, but I might need to today. I drag Rachel inside, ignoring her cute attempts to claw my eyes out, and push her into the master bedroom. I don’t want to share a room with her, but given our circumstances, it’s the best way I can protect her. Manson will expect us in the barn, and this place is much easier to protect.

I handcuff Rachel to the headboard. She acts quite unhappy about the whole thing, but I don’t care. I cuff her so both arms are stretched above her head but leave the cuffs loose enough that they aren’t biting into her skin. While I enjoy pain, I want Rachel to relax enough that I can get some sleep.

Once she’s secured, I move around the first floor, setting up mouse trap trip wire alarms. I position them around the doors and windows and use fishing line so Manson can’t see. I also pull the blinds down so he can’t see where we are in the house.

I don’t have cameras set up in my place. I learned the hard way when Manson hacked them and used them to spy on me. So this will have to work. This way, if someone walks against the fishing line, it triggers the trap to snap, hitting on some bullet primer. It’s loud as fuck. And I’ve never used these, so Manson shouldn’t be expecting them.

I bring some pillows up to the room and settle myself against the door. Rachel stares at me from the bed. She’s stopped babbling, and I can see her calculating from here. “You’re not sleeping on the bed?”

I shake my head. I don’t like beds. Too many shitty memories. Plus, I’m pretty sure Rachel’s calculating how to kill me. So I settle onto the floor with my pillows.

It’s kind of a pain in the ass to have a prisoner. This must be why Manson doesn’t keep people alive for long.