She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,200

tilted his head, his stringy hair catching the night breeze. “You might be the ugliest man I’ve ever met.”

“You’re not very smart, are you?”

“No, not really.”

“I’m the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.”

The man considered this, then said, “Yeah, I guess you are.”

David left him there, standing in the street, before climbing into the back seat of the middle Ford Expedition beside Latrese Oliver. She was picking at a flakey black spot on her bad arm. He shook his head and looked back out the window as they began to pull away. “There’s a room in the house, freshly painted pink. We found a doll.”

“Another child?” Oliver said.

“Maybe,” David looked over at the house, “Cammie Brotherton might have given birth after all.”

“I wonder what she can do.”

“I wonder,” David said.

28

“Anyone behind us?”

The ringing in my ears was still there but subsiding, the pain just a dull ache.

Stella unsnapped her seat belt and swiveled in the passenger seat, peering out the back window. “I can’t tell. Traffic is too heavy. I see three white cars, but I don’t recognize the drivers. I think we’re okay.”

The light in front of us turned red, I made a quick right turn to keep moving. We were somewhere in downtown Carmel. The traffic grew thick as morning commuters filled the streets. “I need to get us to the highway. Or maybe find another car.”

“Jack, we need to look at his shoulder.”

“We need to keep driving.”

“There’s blood all over the seat.”

“It’s leather. Blood wipes right off. We need to keep moving.”

“I’m not concerned with upholstery. He could die.”

I made a left turn onto 17 Mile Drive. “Is there anything in back we can use to tie him up? Is he awake?”

Stella snapped her fingers in front of Dewey Hobson’s eyes. “He’s awake, but he’s not very responsive. Mr. Hobson, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Maybe there’s rope or something we can use in the trunk.”

“I don’t think he’ll hurt us.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

Stella said, “Dewey, do you plan to hurt Jack Thatch?”

Silence.

“Are you going to hurt me?”

Silence.

“What about Cammie Brotherton?”

“I’m going to tell her David says hello, then kill her.” Hobson raised his hand and made a gun gesture again. “Pop, pop. Double tap to the head.”

“Do you plan to hurt anyone else?”

Silence.

I frowned. “When David told me to point the rifle at Hobson, I did. I couldn’t help myself. I would have shot him if he told me to do that, too. You knew. That’s why you fired the shotgun, to make sure I didn’t hear him say the words. What the hell was that?”

Stella turned back around and settled into her seat. “David can be very persuasive.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s all they told me,” she replied. “Ms. Oliver said he was special, like me, and he could be very persuasive, so they monitored everything he said to me, everything I said to him. It was horrible. They kept him in this little room, all alone. We couldn’t really talk. We were like lab mice under a bright light, all these eyes and ears on us. I felt sorry for him, so I went.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, exactly. I was always blindfolded or made to wear a hood. When I was young, Ms. Oliver said it was all a big game. When he came to see me, they made him wear a mask. That was part of the game, too, but I knew it was to keep him from talking to me when they couldn’t listen. As I grew older, she told me it was best I didn’t know where he lived, for my own safety. The drive always took a long time—four or five hours. I have no idea where we actually went. They might have circled the block, for all I knew, back then. I never thought he’d get out of that place.”

“They used you and your ability to kill people. Maybe they’re using him, too.”

“Make a left up there,” Stella said, pointing toward a sign.

“Toward the beach?”

She nodded. “It will be quiet this time of day.”

Stella was right about that. We found only three other cars in the lot (green, red, silver). Only two early-morning sunbathers and a jogger on the sand. We pulled into a spot at the far end, and I shut off the engine. After donning a fresh pair of latex gloves from the box she had “borrowed” from Cammie’s house, Stella rummaged through her duffle, took out a first-aid kit, and went to work on Hobson’s shoulder. She unbuttoned