Page 10

10. ANOTHER CORPSE

SAMMY

Something jarred me awake.

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been knocked out. All the action and then the restless, fitful little bit of sleep I got in that uncomfortable-as-hell chair in the hospital left me completely drained when I got back. Then there was the whole confrontation with my step monster. I truly hated that woman and didn’t understand what my father saw in her. She was nothing like my mother.

Another sound caught my attention, and I slowly slid out of the bed as I grabbed the gun I kept in the top drawer of my nightstand. I rolled down to the floor, gun in hand, and listened intently. It was hard to hear other noises over the sound of my own frantic heartbeat, but there it was again. The slightest bump and scrape as the front door to my cabin was forced open. Son of a bitch, someone had broken in. I had to hope that it was just one person, because I wasn’t sure I’d make it out alive if several people had been sent to take me out.

I stayed absolutely still as I thought about the past two days since I’d come home from sitting by Bigfoot’s side in the hospital. There hadn’t been any sign of another person hanging around the property besides the one Colleen checked in. In fact, there were less people overall at the campground thanks to Colleen’s attitude with the campers. I hadn’t really checked on the remaining two since I’d been back home. Mostly, it was because I was mourning the loss of all those fantasies I’d had of me and a ruggedly handsome biker-man. The lack of sleep while by his side was the other reason. It was kind of scary how drained I felt.

That was before a boatload of adrenaline hit my system. I pulled my cell phone out of my pajama pants pocket and dialed Uncle Brady.

“Sammy?” he questioned.

“Someone broke into my cabin. No cops. Need backup, though. Maybe.” I didn’t wait for him to respond because the floor squeaked just outside my bedroom door. I waited, crouched on the far side of my bed, until the door burst open and three quick shots were dropped into my bed where I’d been asleep just moments ago. I popped up and fired two rounds, then dropped back down because I didn’t know if there would be another body behind the one I’d just dropped.

What if he’s wearing body armor?

It should have sounded far-fetched to even think of that possibility, but then again, it didn’t seem plausible that someone would try to assassinate me while I slept either. Unlike my assassin, I didn’t have a silencer on my gun, so those shots rang out loud and proud. My ears were ringing a little as I carefully peeked around the end of my bed. The man was down and had already spilled a significant pool of blood on my hardwood floor. That would probably leave a stain.

I heard an engine outside and figured it was my uncle, but I slowly moved out from behind my bed and started toward the body on the floor. There was no need to check on the asshole. He was deader than dead.

“Sammy!” I heard Uncle Brady yell through my front door.

“Wait!” I yelled and then quickly cleared the rest of the cabin before I allowed him to come inside. It didn’t take long. The cabin was small, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room kitchen combo that totaled less than 600 square feet. Once I was sure there was no one else lying in wait, I went to the door and pulled it open.

“What the hell happened? Are you okay?” My uncle’s frantic voice as he pulled me into a tight hug made my heart squeeze. I wasn’t sure my own dad would have reacted the same way. I could only imagine annoyed indifference from him.

“I’m okay. The guy who came to kill me in my sleep? Not so much.”

Brady set me to the side and marched back to my bedroom. He stopped just short of the body, and I saw when he noticed that my bed had a few new holes in it. “What the fuck? Sammy, he shot you!”

“No, he shot my bed. Luckily, it wasn’t breathing before he shot it.”

“You could have been in that bed. Why weren’t you in it?”

I made my way to Brady and wrapped my arms around him again. “I’m okay. I heard something and hid beside the bed with my gun. As soon as I had a clear shot, I took it.” I pointed down to the body that continued to pump blood onto my floor. “Look, he’s dead. I’m not. The only worry I have now is how the hell I’m going to clean this up. I’ve never really put a lot of thought into how to dispose of a body before. I mean, I’ve had plenty of fantasies of taking Colleen out, but the dream is of ending her, not the cleanup afterward.” It was a long-winded ramble that left my uncle looking a little shocked.

“You’re not okay.” He glanced down at the body and then back up at me. “You said no cops, but sweetheart, we have to call someone.”

“The club,” I muttered.

“The club?”

I nodded. “Bigfoot, Baffle, Jester…” I thought about that for a minute. “Probably Jester, he has a murder van that will be perfect for this.”

“What the fuck?” Brady asked before he took hold of my arms and shook me a little bit. He was gentle about it, but it was still jarring. “A murder van?”

“I doubt it’s really a murder van, but he did use it to clean up the last body I dropped.”

“The last body… Sammy, what in the hell is going on?”

“Call the Kings of Anarchy and have them send someone. This is no doubt linked to the assassination attempt on their president. Besides, they owe me for saving his bacon last time.”

I watched as Brady called the clubhouse number, spoke to someone and then spoke to another person. Once he was done, he hung up and pulled me back into his arms as he walked us over to the couch to take a seat and wait. My phone rang as we both let out a long breath and relaxed back into the couch.

“Sam Morton,” I said into my phone.

“Hi, this is Cricket and Bobby from site 4.” That’s all she said.

“Yes?” I prompted.

“Well, we thought we heard gunshots and got worried. These RV walls are thin and they ain’t stopping bullets.”

“Nothing to worry about, Cricket. I shot a rattlesnake trying to crawl into my cabin.”

“A rattlesnake? I didn’t know you had rattlesnakes on the property.”

“It’s not like we can stop nature from happening.”

“No, no. I get that. What kind of rattlesnake?”

“Mojave,” I said without thinking.

“I thought they were in Arizona.”

“We see them sometimes in New Mexico.” That wasn’t entirely true, at least not as far north as I was. “We had a regular old Arizona black rattler.” Honestly, it was a pretty apt description of the asshole lying dead in my bedroom doorway. He was dressed all in black, which was dumb in a desert, since he wouldn’t blend with anything like that.

“Oh, okay. Well, wait, aren’t they from Arizona too?”

“You do realize we’re less than twenty minutes from Arizona, right?”

“Oh, that makes sense. Sorry to bother you.” It sounded like Cricket meant to hang up but missed the button. “Bobby, we need to pack up and get out of here. They have a rattlesnake problem here.”

“We’re in the freaking desert, Cricket. Of course there’s rattlers.”

At least Bobby had some common sense.

“We need to leave. I’m not comfortable with rattlers committing home invasions.”

I hung up my cell. “Me either, sister.”

“What was that about?”

“Campers heard the gun and got worried. I think we’ll lose at least one, if not both of our current campers.”

“Well, hell, I hate to say this, but it might be for the best if we have a snake problem,” He tipped his head toward the body on my floor.

“Yep.”

Blue lights flashed outside my cabin and my heart rate kicked back into overdrive. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Who the fuck called the cops?”

“I don’t know but stay calm and remember that you do not have to let them in without a warrant.”

“Good to know, since there’s a fucking dead man on my floor,” I whisper-hissed back to my uncle.

“Use my shot to shit blanket and cover him up or something.”

Uncle Brady gave me a look that said if the sheriff saw a bloody blanket on the floor, he would definitely ask questions, but whatever. It made me feel marginally better about shit to not have to look at the asshole assassin.

I moved to my door and quickly took a step outside and closed the door behind me again. “Evening, officer.”

“Sheriff,” he corrected.

Dick!

“What can I do for you?”

He craned his neck around, as if trying to look to see what I was hiding. “I came by to check in with you about the accident again. It felt like there was something you left out of your statement.”

“Nope. What I said is exactly what happened. This is kind of a weird time to be out taking witness statements for a vehicular accident when a statement was already made isn’t it?” I questioned.

“I had other things to handle throughout the day. We get to things when we can.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I have nothing to add to my statement.”

“That may be, but I have questions to ask. Follow up, you see. Why don’t we go inside and get comfortable?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” I could see by the tension in his shoulders and face that he was about to lose his temper, but that didn’t stop me from getting downright sarcastic and rude with him.

“Well, ‘no’ is a two-letter word consisting of the letters ’N’ and ‘O’. It signifies the lack of consent to do a thing that is asked of a person. Since I already gave my statement, I have nothing else to add and I certainly am not inviting you into my home.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I don’t like you and I don’t have to,” I told him.

“Now, you listen here…”

I shook my head. “No, you listen, Sheriff Estes. You’re on my land, demanding entry to my house, and I am relatively certain you do not have a warrant to be in either place. You could have called and told me to come on down to the station and give a better statement, during normal hours, but you didn’t. You came here at dusk,” I pointed down to my pajamas, “when I was about to go to sleep because I’m exhausted from studying for upcoming exams, and you want to question me about something I have nothing more to add to. Did you catch the trucker who almost killed that man?”

“No, we’re still unsure who the trucker was.”

“Right. So, you haven’t even done your job that well, and you want to come here and see if I can do it for you?”

We both turned as the sound of motorcycles and other vehicles echoed up from the road that wrapped around my family’s property and would eventually bring them to my cabin. A smug smile bloomed on Sheriff Estes’ face. He would have been a handsome man with golden-brown skin, dark hair, and eyes that were a golden brown to match. His personality being that of a dipshit frat-bro on a power trip ruined the appeal, though.

“Thought you weren’t affiliated with bikers?”

“I’m not,” I offered with a quick shrug of my shoulders. “Maybe they’re stopping by to thank me for taking care of their president when he got into an accident. I don’t know. I’m not a damn mind reader.” I pointed to my pajamas again. “And like I said, I was getting ready for bed when your blue lights disturbed me.”