Crash & Carnage by Emma Slate

Chapter 28

Another few hours passed,and I slipped away to a place of cool detachment. Fear wouldn’t help me now. Fear clouded judgement.

Thoughts of Boxer drifted into my mind. We’d just found one another. We were two wounded souls, and we’d been building something beautiful and special. Hope was a fragile thing. It bloomed like a bud in spring, nurtured into opening, until the harsh chill of winter killed it. I cursed my own stupidity for not telling him I loved him.

Now it was too late.

I was under no illusions that my life and my body were about to belong to someone other than me.

Undiluted rage poured through my veins, melting the icy calm inside me.

I was completely unable to hold on to my detachment.

It was fight or flight.

I squirmed in my seat, catching Cletus’ attention.

“Stop that,” he commanded.

“I can’t,” I gasped. “I have to go to the bathroom again.”

My cinched wrists glided over to the seat belt latch, pressing down on it firmly in the hopes of discharging it without them hearing. “Come on, I see a town in the distance. Can’t I use the bathroom at a gas station? I know how fond Paul is of his car.”

“She’s right, man,” Paul said to Cletus. “We’ll stop for a couple minutes. What’s she gonna do?”

“Fine. But you’re telling Dante why we’re late,” Cletus stated. “This shit isn’t on me.”

“I’ll call him right now,” Paul said, looking down for just a moment while reaching for his phone.

Now or never.

I lurched forward, slid my zip-tied wrists over Paul’s head, and yanked them against his neck. I pressed my knees to the back of the seat and used leverage to choke him. I pulled with all my might.

“What the fuck!” Cletus shouted from the passenger side.

Paul reared back, his foot slamming down on the gas as he tried to relieve the tension on his neck. The car shot forward and the engine screamed, sounding like it was going to explode. Paul gasped and lifted his hands up and clawed at my arms. His knee jerked the wheel, causing the vehicle to veer out of the lane and onto the shoulder of the highway.

Cletus grabbed on to the passenger door to brace himself as the car continued to swerve.

Anger and adrenaline coursed through me.

I was out for blood.

I tightened my hold on Paul’s windpipe as he attempted to regain control of the car, which kept diverging on and off the road. His foot refused to release the gas.

Cletus reached into his pants and pulled out a pocketknife. He flicked it open and stabbed me deep in the meaty part of my upper arm near my shoulder.

I yelled in pain, but I still wouldn’t let go. It only enraged me further, and I yanked my fists into Paul’s Adam’s apple as hard as I could.

“Let off the fucking gas!” Cletus bellowed.

A gurgle escaped Paul’s lips, and I looked in the rearview mirror. His face was red. Blood vessels and capillaries burst in his eyes making him look like a deep-sea diver who’d come to the surface too fast.

My strength was waning, but if I could just hold on a little longer…

Cletus grabbed my hand and then slid the knife through the zip ties holding my wrists together. I lost my clasp on Paul’s neck and fell backward.

A horn blared from the oncoming lane.

“Fuck!” Cletus yelled, dropping the knife and wrenching the wheel so we didn’t collide with the approaching truck.

Cletus overestimated the torque, and combined with our demonic speed, the small car screeched and skidded across the asphalt, tilting up on its side as we veered to the right.

My body catapulted into the door, and my head smacked against the glass. Stars danced before my eyes, clouding my vision.

I prayed the vehicle would right itself.

But God didn’t hear my prayer.

The car flipped, and the world stilled.

For a heartbeat, we were suspended in midair…and then the vehicle turned upside down.

Screeching metal across asphalt was the last sound I heard before I passed out.

* * *

Pain buzzed through my temples, and a hearty groan fled my lips. I took a deep breath. And then another.

I slowly opened my eyes and saw Paul’s body suspended upside down, his neck slanted to one side. A piece of the windshield had severed his carotid artery and blood was pouring from his neck.

I moved my legs.

Thank God.

Cletus was not in the vehicle.

Had he been flung from it?

I slithered from my spot to the front seat. The scent of oil, burnt rubber, and other fluids from the car penetrated my nose. The passenger door was open, bent back at an odd angle. The rest of the vehicle was too crushed to escape from. The radiator hissed, and fluid leaked out onto the ground, splashing like a tub overflowing from a faucet left on too long.

I slid out onto the asphalt, my skin abraded by gravel and glass. I sliced my palms, but I kept going. My jeans had provided some protection to my legs.

When I was clear from the wreckage, I stood up and looked around.

The truck we’d almost plowed into had stopped on the opposite side of the road a few hundred yards away. Its hazard lights flashed in the weak morning light.

A man jogged toward me and across the street, calling out in Spanish, asking if I was hurt. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, his brown eyes warm with concern as he looked me over. His gaze locked on my arm where Cletus had stabbed me. It was oozing, and I was about to tear off a piece of my shirt to wrap it when the young man spoke.

“I have a first aid kit in the truck,” he said in Spanish. “Do you have any other injuries?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied in the same tongue.

He looked relieved that I spoke his language.

In the past twelve hours I’d been kidnapped, stabbed by an inept maniac, and in a violent car wreck after trying to kill one of my captors. Maybe my luck was turning, and this kind stranger would patch me up and help get me out of here.

The young man introduced himself as Roberto as we headed toward the truck. It was a large pickup, and the engine sounded like it was a diesel. The driver’s side door was ajar, and he popped open another small door to the back, and then reached underneath the seat from behind to retrieve his first aid kit.

“I’m a doctor,” I said.

The young man looked surprised but took my directions and helped me field dress and bandage my wound. It was a temporary fix, but it would stop the bleeding and prevent any other objects from entering the cavity.

Cletus had hit muscle when he stabbed me. I wouldn’t know if he wounded something vital without an X-ray. I hoped there wasn’t nerve or tissue damage.

I can’t worry about that now.

“I need to make a phone call,” I told Roberto. “Do you have a phone I can use?”

He nodded and pulled out his cell from his jeans pocket and backed away from the truck a foot or two to give me space.

I smiled in gratitude and took his phone. I struggled to get a signal and lifted the cell in the air.

Roberto’s sharp inhale drew my attention.

Cletus stood behind Roberto and extracted a knife from between his ribs. Cletus then punched the blade in and out several more times in Roberto’s kidney, like it was something he’d done before. The young man tried to scream, but the pain overwhelmed him, and he fell to his knees, his hand going to his back and sliding through blood that began to pool at his feet. He collapsed on the ground in front of me, eyes dimming.

Cletus folded his knife up as I stared in shock, and then he grasped my arm where I’d been injured. I cried out in pain. By the time I thought to wrench free and run, my body balked. It had been through enough trauma and refused.

He slapped me hard with his other hand straight across the face causing me to drop the cell phone. “You fucking bitch!”

My vision was spotty and I struggled to remain upright. The maniac reached over the driver’s seat, turned off the truck, and pulled out the keys. He paused and then said, “Get in, sweetheart. We have some place to be. You’re driving.”

* * *

My fingers clenched the steering wheel of the diesel truck while Cletus sat next to me with his pocketknife in his hands, ready to use at a moment’s notice.

“Keep your speed at eighty. No one’s going to stop us around here,” he snapped angrily.

“Okay.”

“And don’t even think about pulling any more shit.” He sneered. “I’ll slit your throat if you try another stunt like that and tell them you died in the crash.”

His face was scratched from the car accident, but the idiot was more durable than Paul.

I’d once believed that every human life had value. That everyone deserved a chance to be saved.

How incredibly naive I’d been.

When people came to the hospital, it was my job to treat their injuries. It was supposed to end there, but I’d routinely gone above the physical repairing of human beings, wanting also to help battered women find new lives, new meaning.

But I couldn’t fix people like Cletus.

What made someone aid in the kidnapping and human trafficking of another person?

There were sliding scales of criminality, clearly. I’d excused Boxer and his club’s actions. Why? Was it because I loved Boxer? Because I’d been seduced by the idea of acceptance and family? Because even though they were criminals, they helped people?

Where was my own line?

What direction would my own moral compass point me in?

An innocent man had been murdered because he’d tried to help me. I’d carry that burden with me, just like I carried the death of my eight-year-old patient on my conscience.

“Turn up there at the sign,” Cletus commanded.

I was still running on adrenaline. My head throbbed. I was thirsty, hungry, tired, and scared. I did as he said and turned off onto a side road off the barren highway.

Fifteen minutes later, I drove the truck up to a massive wrought iron gate built into a ten-foot-tall wall that surrounded what looked like an old ghost town. Behind the gate, I could see pink adobe buildings, each decaying at their own rate but some still whole and appearing habitable.

I idled the truck at the gates and sat for a moment before Cletus made a phone call.

“Yeah, it’s us,” Cletus said.

No sooner had he clicked off did the gates begin to open on some electric chain mechanism, and I realized they were new despite the appearance of the small township behind them. I drove through and followed Cletus’ directions and then parked the truck and turned the engine off before climbing out. My knees locked, and I bit down on my lip to stifle my moan of pain from my body’s effort to move.

I took a moment to examine my surroundings. The edifices were dilapidated, and the doors were cracked and faded from the sun. Some were falling off their hinges and there was dirt and dust covering almost every surface. We had come to one of those forgotten towns in the middle of nowhere, and it had clearly been decades since any occupants had bothered to wash or paint the exteriors of the buildings. A few young women with wide eyes and gaunt faces hurried down the dusty streets, as if they didn’t want to be out in the open. An old man with white hair and sunken cheeks from lack of teeth scooped beans from a wooden bowl into his mouth, muttering to himself in Spanish.

Cletus scrambled from his side of the truck and quickly came to me, grasping my bandaged arm.

I hissed in pain.

He released me instantly and then glared. “Don’t open your mouth unless I tell you to. Got it?”

When I didn’t reply, he leaned in close enough that I could smell the stale cigarette smoke and gingivitis on his breath and asked again, “Got it?”

“Got it,” I snapped back.

The structure we’d parked in front of was larger than the rest. I wondered if it had been opulent in its heyday. It might’ve been gorgeous at some point but, it, too, had fallen into disrepair.

Where am I?

The heavy wooden front door opened, and a man loomed in the doorway. He was tall and lithe, with dark hair combed off his forehead. His gray silk shirt draped across his shoulders like it was a part of him, and contrasting black slacks topped expensive looking shoes that were polished to a perfect shine. He was urbane, and I didn’t trust the veneer of his appearance at all.

He looked completely out of place in this poverty-stricken ghost town.

The man perused me up and down for a long moment, and then he turned his attention to Cletus.

“You’re late,” he said in heavily accented English. “And you’re missing a partner.”

“Paul’s dead,” Cletus said flatly. “Killed in a car accident.”

The man’s gaze came back to me, and my heart kicked up in terror.

He was the one to fear. I knew it in my bones.

“She’s wounded,” he said as he stalked toward me. I instinctively flinched away from him, but he captured my chin in his hand and turned my face from side to side for inspection.

“It’s her fault,” Cletus defended. “She caused the car accident trying to get away.”

The man’s jaw clenched, and he released me. I hastily scrubbed my skin as though I could somehow remove his touch.

“You were supposed to deliver her three hours ago, and in pristine condition,” he said.

“But Paul—”

“Paul is dead, as you said,” the man interrupted. “I don’t like excuses.”

I swallowed at the deadly calm in his voice.

Cletus’ hands clenched by his side. “Look, I just want the money—”

“Money?” Dante repeated. “For a job not done to my satisfaction?”

“I nearly died bringing her here,” Cletus argued. “And now you’re not going to pay me? Fuck that, man!”

“Shh, easy now. I’ll pay you,” Dante crooned.

Cletus paused, looking befuddled. “You will?”

“Yes, of course.”

A smile spread across Cletus’ face, but he was either too stupid to recognize the coldness emanating from Dante, or he was too greedy to care.

Dante calmly but swiftly reached beneath his silk shirt and pulled out a golden pistol, engraved with ornate scroll work, and leveled it at Cletus’ face. It happened so fast Cletus didn’t have time to react. His smile had just started to fade when the gun went off and a bullet caught him between the eyes. The back of his head popped open as the shot rang out, and he collapsed to the ground, his blood and pink chunks of brain staining the dirt.

A gasp rose in my throat, but I clamped it down.

Dante lowered the gun slowly and looked at me. “Welcome to Palacio de Sangre.”

The Palace of Blood.

Fuck.