Grace Anne (15 page)

Mother fuck.

~~~

Verrie watched the news lead story
run again. The stupid cock sucker had killed a fucking cop. Not to mention the
debutante that he’d killed earlier. What the hell he’d been thinking killing a
girl on camera was…it didn’t bear thinking. She started to turn off the
television when they showed the scene again. She smiled. He’d done a very good
job of killing the girl; she was impressed. Not that they showed much. Some
blurred pictures of the girl on the ground and the frantic interview with the
butler at the home of Cunningham. Verrie wondered, not for the first time, if
all men simply had a brain in their dicks and, every time they came, a little
more of it leaked out. She swore that that was why there were so many old men
in nursing homes. They’d fucked themselves stupid.

There was an all-points bulletin
out for Thomas Cunningham. The FBI said that they were taking precautions. She
couldn’t figure out what the hell they were doing in on it when the family of
the dead bitch came on. The senator of New York. Well, when Thomas did
something up, he certainly didn’t do it in half measures.

Killing a senator’s daughter was
big news. And even bigger news was that she had only been seventeen when she’d
been murdered. Verrie turned off the television and sat on the dirty couch. They
were running out of time. The money had arrived yesterday, but Ginny had
insisted that they try very hard not to spend it like they had done with what
they’d brought with them. Verrie snorted. Like she gave a good fuck what she said.
Reaching between the cushions she pulled out the stash that she knew Guinevere
had stuffed there yesterday. Twenty grand would go a long way to having a good
time. Smiling, she started for the door only to stop when Ginny started in on
her.

“No,” she snapped. “I told you we
have to lay low. And if you kill anyone right now, especially right now, we’re
never going to see this thing to the end.”

“Like you care. All you want to do
is fuck that boy, Cain. Well, he ain’t gonna have you. In case it escaped your
notice, you are his mother as far as he’s concerned.” Verrie felt the pain from
the other woman. “And on top of that, you’re old. Nobody that looks like him is
gonna wanna fuck someone as old as you are.”

The pain in Verrie’s head was
immense. But she didn’t move or so much as acknowledge it. She stood still
while the blood trickled from her nose and ears.

“I fucking hate you. You’ve been a
fucking pain in our ass since the first time you showed up. Why? Why do you
have to be so cruel?”

Verrie started to answer, but she
couldn’t speak until Ginny let her.

“I’m going to destroy you when
this is over. I’m going to make sure that you are never allowed to come out
ever again.”

“Fucking try it, cunt, and see
where it gets you. You may be the top dog now, but I’m the one that pulled the
strings. If I want I’ll murder myself a cop and get us put into jail for the
rest of our lives. And you know who will have to be the first when we get
there. Your little pansy ass would never survive past the first night.” They
had been in jail twice now and, both times, Verrie had been the one who’d kept
them together. “I might just let you be the first and then see how much you
need me just for the fun of it.”

Ginny went away and left her to herself.
Verrie sat on the couch and thought about how they had become. She knew there
was probably a technical term for what they had developed into, but she neither
cared enough to look it up, nor did she give a good shit. They just had become.

Verrie knew that she couldn’t make
any one of them not appear again. And none of them knew who was in charge, but
all of them knew that it wasn’t Guinevere. She knew that Ginny and the others
couldn’t survive. And if they didn’t, or worse yet, got caught and put into a
hospital, she might as well be dead. They would keep them so doped up all the
time there would be no way for any of them to be very productive.

Being first, as in the host, was Guinevere’s
role. Ginny had come to Guinevere when things had been too hard for her. Ginny
the child had a horrific childhood. Over the first years of her life, the most
fragile ones, her father and mother had abused Guinevere to no end. Locking her
in closest, starving her, or worse, making her eat well beyond what she wanted
were just a few of the things they’d done to the already unstable child. Then
when things had gotten bad, or out of her control, Guinevere would become the
docile, sometimes self-abusing Ginny again. It wasn’t until later, in her
preteen years, that she’d turned to her.

Verrie had been the bad-assed Guinevere.
Guinevere would turn to her when things got to be overwhelming. And Verrie
would take care of it. The boy who had made fun of where she’d lived had been
in a diving accident. A little bit of drugs from Guinevere’s mother’s array of
barbiturates in his water bottle made him dizzy and he slipped off the high
dive during practice and hit his head. He’d died almost instantly.

Then there was the little girl
from the library that had made fun of Guinevere’s clothes. They weren’t new, nor
were they very clean. That little girl was mauled to death by a dog. Verrie had
known the dog was wild and had let it smell the girl’s shirt every day for two
weeks while Verrie beat him. When he’d been allowed out of his pen and found
himself with his supposed tormentor, he’d gone wild. The girl never had a
chance and had died from massive injuries. Verrie felt bad for his death. She
hated to see animals killed.

Over the years, she’d gotten
better at hiding the murders. Then one day, she simply didn’t care. She killed
her first man at the house Guinevere and Roscoe had shared. It had been a dump
and he was in jail on some crime that he’d always told them that he’d been
framed for. As far as Verrie had always thought, Roscoe was an idiot. But the
man she’d brought home because she’d been lonely and horny had proved to be so
much fun that she’d made a habit of killing men whenever she could.

They’d been having sex. Of course,
that was another thing. Verrie simply loved sex. But this guy with his huge
cock had satisfied her completely. She asked him if she could tie him up. He’d
told her that he wasn’t really into that sort of shit, but he’d tie her up. She
really wanted to bond him to the bed and he wasn’t playing fair so she pulled
the gun and cuffed him to the bed.

She thought maybe he was excited. His
cock was still semi-hard and she’d been happy to see that he hadn’t screamed at
her. Guinevere’s kids were just down the hall and she didn’t want them to barge
into her fun. When she’d sat over him and told him what she had planned, he
looked like he thought she was insane. The pillow over his face probably gave
him the first indication that she was serious.

Every time his cock became flaccid
she’d suck him off. No man could resist her mouth and she made him hard almost
immediately. Well, she could at first. After the fourth time she’d cut him he
was harder to…well, get hard. She smiled at her pun. By the time he’d lost consciousness
the first time she’d already cut him enough that she knew he was going to have
to die. Then, when she’d gagged him, the real fun had begun.

At first Verrie had experimented,
played with the way she cut him. She was inexperienced in the way she killed
him; she could see that now. But as the years had gone by her work with a blade
had become precise and perfect until she knew when she had a man in her
clutches he was hers until she’d had enough. Killing a man slowly, she could
bleed them out and still have her fun. She was able to make the killing last
for days now rather than the few hours she’d had the first time. She thought of
the people she had killed that night and decided to go to the furnace room and
check on her latest victims.

She’d had to hide them quickly
before one of the others came to her. Verrie hadn’t expected anyone to come by
and nearly catch her in the act of having fun with the man she’d picked up at
the bar the night before. She wasn’t stupid. She was a murderer, but not that. No,
never that. She’d wrapped him in the throw on the back of the disgusting couch
and hidden him behind it when someone had started ringing the door bell.

Her landlord at the door simply wouldn’t
leave. Finally, after an hour of him asking about the different aspects of the
apartment, she’d taken one of Ginny’s pots and hit him over the head with it. It
took her forever to get the landlord’s body down to the furnace room and even
longer to get the first man she’d killed down there too. She’d had to hide the
fucking prick who’d wanted to make sure the stove was working correctly before he
came up missing. Now she had the landlord all wrapped up in plastic and the
dead man from earlier both tucked in the basement. She needed to find somewhere
to put them, and fast.

She made her way to the basement
and was trying to decide the best way to move over four hundred pounds of
bloody dead weight then the fucking debutante killer popped out from behind the
furnace.

“You have to help me. I can’t
go…the police were at my house and now I can’t go back.”

She stared at him as he continued
to rant.

“They think I killed somebody. I
didn’t…I don’t think I did. My stepbrother and that cunt, they framed me.”

“They have you on tape, you
fucking moron. There was a security camera at the gate where you left her body.
When you kill someone, you can’t leave any witnesses.” She smiled at him,
thinking that was a good plan. “You get in touch with your brother yet?”

“He’s not my brother,” he snarled
at her. “He’s my fucking stepbrother.”

When he lunged at her, Verrie
smiled bigger and pulled the trigger on her gun.

Chapter 15

Michael had to go home. He didn’t
want to. He wanted to stay here in Ohio and get to know Grace’s family and
enjoy them. But the problem with his brother and his mother’s hysterics was too
much for his dad to handle alone. He was tossing stuff into his case when Trace
came into the room. Without stopping, he glanced at him and grimaced. Trace was
upset.

“We’ll only be gone long enough to
get this fixed then come right back. Grace said she’d even watch Walter for you
and make sure he was—”

“I don’t want to go. I want to…I’m
afraid to go back with you.”

Michael turned to look at his son
as he continued.

“If I go back, Thomas will find me
and hurt me. He’s told me that before. And maybe…”

Michael was almost afraid to ask. “Maybe
what, son? What else makes you not want to go back with me? I promise you that
Thomas won’t come near you. He’ll not get past me, I swear.”

Trace sat in the chair near the
bed and looked at his shoes. Michael knew his son well enough to know that he
needed to process. He was a brilliant little boy, but he was more of a thinker
than he was a fly by the seat of his ass sort of kid. He waited also, knowing
that rushing him would only upset him to the point where he’d clam up all
together.

“Grace will leave us.” Trace looked
at him now. “She’ll think she’ll be doing us this great big favor, but she won’t.
My heart will hurt if she isn’t here when we get back. If I stay…” he said as
he got up to pace. “If I stay, then I can make sure she’s doesn’t leave us. She
wouldn’t leave me if I’m here. I can…I’ll make sure to call you if anything
happens too.”

Michael had been afraid of the
same thing. He’d even gone so far as to ask Cain and the others to watch her to
make sure that she didn’t leave. He loved her with all his heart and he was
sure she loved them both too, but she would bolt at the first opportunity.

“Your grandmother will be
disappointed. She’s hoping that you’ll help her not think about what Thomas has
done and give her hugs.” It was a cheap trick he knew, but the thought of
leaving Trace where he couldn’t watch him was scary. “I can’t watch you if you’re
not with me.”

“I sort of already called Grandma.
I told her that Grace loves us, but… I told her I didn’t want to lose her. I
need her too much to not want to be with her.” Michael couldn’t help but be
very proud of his son. “She told me that if you were okay with me staying here
to protect the woman I love then she was going to be fine with it too.”

Trace flushed and Michael knew
there was more. “What did she make you give her back? I know there was
something. Mom doesn’t just let an opportunity like this pass her by without
extracting some sort of payment. Dishes for a month? Or was it something like
weeding her flower beds for the summer?”

“She said I had to hug her at the
mall,” Trace said with venom in his voice. “I don’t like hugs. Why would she
make me do something like that when she knows it’s going to embarrass me to
death? What if one of my friends sees me doing it? I’ll never live it down, Dad.”

Michael laughed. It was the first
really good laugh he’d had all day.

“Because she knows it will
embarrass you. When you do it, make sure you try to pull it off like it’s no
big deal. She won’t do that again.” Standing, he knelt before Trace and looked
up at him. This was as serious as it got. “Thomas is accused of murder; I know
you know that. But do you know what else he’s done?” Trace shook his head. “He’s
also accused of murdering two men and hiding them in the basement of an
apartment complex. The police might not have known he’d done it if somebody
hadn’t called them. It’s going to get ugly, son, and people are going to talk
about this for a long time. Thomas killed four people, four innocent people.”

“Did he do it? I know what the
news lady is saying, but do you think he did it?”

Michael wasn’t positive, but he
didn’t want to say it out loud yet. He didn’t want to admit just yet that he
thought for sure Thomas had done it. He didn’t answer Trace, but stood to
finish packing. “Stay with Grace. I know I don’t have to tell you that, but for
my peace of mind, please don’t leave her side. The others, all of her family,
is going to help you watch her, but she’s tricky.” Michael smiled when Trace
snorted. “She is and you know it. Thomas is in the hospital right now, but there
are others…other people trying to hurt her and they might try to get to her by
hurting you. Don’t let them. All right?”