Depraved by Bryan Smith

Author:Bryan Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Occult, American Horror Fiction, Horror, Fiction - Horror, Fiction, Horror & Ghost Stories, Horror - General, Thrillers, Horror fiction, Occult & Supernatural
ISBN: 9780843962925
Publisher: Leisure Books
Published: 2009-09-29T18:50:07.155000+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Something important occurred to Jessica. Maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn’t. But she had to know the answer. She didn’t like loose ends.

“Why were you stopped?”

Larry arched an eyebrow. “Say what?”

“I saw you go blazing by me, like you were on your way to somewhere important in a big damn hurry.” Jessica’s thumb caressed the .38’s hammer. She felt a strange kind of intimacy with the weapon. An easy familiarity she found comforting. It was a bond forged in blood and noise, in the acrid scent of gunpowder and memories of the still bodies of dead adversaries. She could put this gun to Larry’s head, if she had a reason. Put the barrel right up against his temple and squeeze the trigger, watch the bullet blow his head apart. But she really hoped he wouldn’t provide a reason. “I took off after you fast as I could, but you should have gotten away. So…why did you stop?”

Larry removed the cigarette from his mouth, the third he’d smoked in their brief time together, and said, “I do believe I detect a note of paranoia in that question.”

“Maybe. I’d still like an answer.”

Larry shrugged and put the cigarette back in his mouth, then removed it again and blew a stream of smoke out the open driver’s-side window. “Ain’t no big mystery.” Yet another drag on the cigarette. A chain smoker. His breath reflected this, but the unpleasant odor had not blunted the sweet taste of his lips. And right then she wanted to kiss him again, this man she was so willing to kill with just the right (or wrong) kind of provocation. How strange.

Strange, but undeniable.

“So spill it.”

She clenched her teeth, bit down hard on her lower lip.

Clutched the gun tighter.

Larry appeared to sense the tension seething inside her. He glanced at the gun and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His cigarette burned down to the filter in the silence. He stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray and punched in the dash lighter as he shook a fresh smoke from a dwindling pack.

He lit up again and looked at the road as he talked. “I’ve got this ex. Real crazy broad name of Roxanne. Sometimes she gets liquored up and comes skulking around my place. Really didn’t want to deal with her tonight, so I pulled over and called my friend Bill, this guy who lives across the street from me. I asked him to take a peek outside and let me know if the coast was clear.”

“And?”

“Bill didn’t see her. Didn’t see her car, either, which don’t necessarily mean anything. She’ll sometimes drive it down the road and park out of sight.”

“Why don’t you get a restraining order?”

Larry snorted laughter. “Local law ain’t got the manpower to enforce a thing like that. If they did, they’d be out to my place every other night dragging the bitch, pardon my French, off to fucking jail. And anyway, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. Getting a restraining order-hell, that’s kind of a sissy thing to do.

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