Chapter 25: Ruger

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ruger

Z ayna and I drive out to the East Coast a couple weeks later, strapping my Indian Scout down in the truck bed so I can have her once we’re there. We have one week in Boston – plenty of time for me to kill the first two before waiting for Tamiya’s final word on Grant Fairfax’s location. He’s the only one of the bastards who hurt Zayna smart enough to leave Boston.

By the time I bring Eden to Tamiya and Gideon to look after, Tamiya has some clue of what I’m up to. She meets Zayna for the first time and exclaims, “Well, that explains it,” while giving me one of the dirtiest looks imaginable. Then she gives me a long lecture that “wasn’t an attack” about staying out of trouble while Zayna follows Gideon to their baby room where he set up a crib for Eden.

Like Doc, I can count on Gideon for everything. My cousin Zebulon just got back in town from his job for the club, so I have him on dog-sitting duty. Tamiya doesn’t get along with Zeus due to an incident with a pot roast that was entirely Tamiya’s fault.

Leaving my truck at Gideon’s place, we ride my Indian Scout for the rest of the trip. Zayna clawed my back like a terrified bobcat the first day of the drive on my bike, so for the next couple of days I have to make lots of promises. It’s my fault for putting the tattoo on her ass. The bike’s vibrations make the pain even worse, but there was no way in hell I planned on doing this without my assurances.

What assurances I don’t get now, I’ll get later…

We spend three nights on the road to Boston, taking in every raw dirty inch of the Midwest. I take the drive a lot faster when I’m alone and when I have the slightest bit of meth to keep my head on straight, so this drive is taking longer than it usually does. Just when we’re past the most boring highways, we hit the freeway in Pennsylvania. It’s fucked out here. Boring. Dead raccoons every two miles. I can’t wait to get back to the cabin with Zayna. To have her to myself forever…

Every motel we stop at, I fuck her until I can't anymore. I never wanted so much sex in my life and I feel... unhinged. Crazier than normal. When we're done, Zayna falls asleep, but I can't. She keeps me up with the same sledgehammer against my unconsciousness that I get from crystal. I can't stop turning over plans to kill the first asshole rapist and when my mind wanders, I go somewhere much darker.

Zayna's ex-boyfriend. The innocent one – except for the fact that he touched Zayna, which means I don’t want him alive. Tamiya didn't have to do her research for me there. I looked him up myself and it was extra easy to find him because he seems to be one of those men who shares every victory with the world. Huge mistake, motherfucker.

Zayna wants revenge. I want something more. Some point soon, that's gonna be a problem.

Our first morning in Boston, I sense a change in her. Not entirely a bad one. She won't move from her position in my arms in the morning and when I kiss her trying to get her awake, she just pushes her ass back against my crotch.

It's normal to get anxious on game day. I nibble on Zayna's neck and eventually tease her awake.

"Nervous?"

"No," she lies through her teeth. But I love her for it. That stubbornness just makes everything about her more... exciting. She just strikes that perfect balance.

"It won't be as bad as you think."

Finally, she turns to face me, moving more than she has the entire morning. "How can you say that?"

"Because I killed before," I tell her. "And got away with it."

I expect her to pull away from me. Any sane woman who saw me with blood on my hands would at least flinch. Zayna leans forward, presenting her lips for me to kiss.

"We can make this the last time," she says, resting her hands against my chest and kissing me back. I would do anything for her. Anything. And maybe she knows it. Zayna pushes me onto my back and we make love slowly.

I love watching her fuck herself with messy bedhead bouncing everywhere and her soft flesh moving so sexily as she impales herself on my dick. It doesn't take long for me to cum along with her. After sex, Zayna brings me coffee... Mission accomplished.

I try to calm her agitation throughout the day since our hunt begins at night. She interrupts our Jerry Springer reruns binge watch with the occasional question about the job -- questions a woman doesn't need to be asking, honestly.

"Shouldn't we do surveillance?" she asks.

"Been planning this. Been done."

"But we just got here."

"Princess..." I whisper. "Don't you want to watch that man get his ass beat with a metal chair?"

"Yes," Zayna says. And I turn up the volume to drown out her worries.

In the evening, Zayna gets dressed up like a ninja and waits for me to be ready. She's ready a couple hours early and tries not to act annoyed that I polish off a couple Labatts Blue’s before we need to leave. I get up at just the right time -- not earlier, and Zayna springs to her feet, ready to throw the motel door open before I get the keys to my bike.

"I didn't realize murder got you amped up like this..." I mutter as I search my sleeveless cut for my keys and experience a painful flash of regret that I can't use Zayna's amped up energy to drag her into bed again for more sex.

"I'm not excited," she says. She rolls her tongue around the front of her mouth and then, she confesses. At least her words have the somber tone of a confession.

"I'm scared."

"Of what? Prison?"

"Those kids attacked me, Ruger. They're sociopaths."

"What's a sociopath?" I ask yet another innocent question that sets off a black woman.

"That explains a lot," Zayna mutters harshly.

"What does it explain?"

"Nevermind," She responds huffily. "Yes, I'm scared of prison. I'm scared of Brooks. I'm scared that this will go wrong and..."

I press my finger to her lips. "Do you know why I tattooed your ass?"

She waits for my finger to drop away before she speaks. "Because you are extremely mentally ill?"

"And..." I reply, ignoring that rude comment. "It's a promise. I will never let anything happen to you. If I have to go to prison... I'll do it."

Her eyes get soft. Feminine. Like I gave her some permission to drop her harshness for a moment. I kiss her to seal in the softness. I understand why she's harsh but I like Zayna like this. I grab her cheeks and kiss her again. Mine. That's what that tattoo means. She's mine -- and I'm a good old American boy. I look after what's mine.

"What if he fights back?"

"He won't," I tell her. We're closer to our moment of action, so I can tell her what she needs to know about the plan.

"Brooks lives in a medically mandated single dormitory room close to the varsity football fields. He normally spends a couple hours on the mend after practice, has dinner with his friends and returns to his room... He'll be asleep when we get there."

Now she seems surprised.

"You planned this out?"

"Yes."

It's a murder. Better to do it with a plan.

Zayna gets calm enough to get on the back of the Indian Scout. I'll have to give her a pistol once we get there. I'm sure the presence of a gun will freak out her liberal sensibilities but... her gun won't be loaded. It will just be a huge help. I take us off road a bit to cut down on the drive to the sprawling college campus.

This place looks like it's out of a fucking fairytale or something. I swear, universities are more about wasting money than anything else, because I can't imagine this much masonry necessary to educate America's spoiled brats. Everywhere stinks of money and I don’t like it. Reminds me of the one time Doc took me to Mr. Hollingsworth’s house when I did a job at sixteen.

We ride around the 450 acre campus until I find the spot I searched out in advance where buildings and grounds management are unlikely to find even an Indian Scout. The good thing about a private school campus is lots of places to park.

I drive to the spot and when I park, Zayna hops off quickly. She takes off her helmet and scans our surroundings.

“Do you know where we are?” She asks. I take the helmet from her and then once her hands are close to me, I put one hand over hers, forcing Zayna to look me straight in the eye. You’re safe, baby.

“I know exactly where we are. Scouted on Google Maps.”

I stow the helmets as Zayna hovers.

“But Google Maps doesn’t show you where campus security searches…”

“It’s a private university with tuition that costs twice as much as this bike did brand new. Rich people don’t think anything bad could ever happen to them.”

I kiss Zayna on the forehead and when I pull away, she looks glum. If I weren’t right about the rich boys, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

“It’s already getting dark,” I whisper. Thank you to the season changes for making that happen right after I park the bike. Again, everything is going according to plan because out of all the folks I’ve killed in my life, this one will be the easiest. If everything goes the way I think it will, we won’t even need to clean up.

Tamiya sent me everything I need. Brooks Astor’s face is printed in my mind, filling me up with a type of hatred for all the men who looked down on me in the past. Officers when I first enlisted. Rich kids at school before that. The killing is easier when you give in to the anger.

Zayna watches carefully, with uncertainty I would expect from a woman new to crime, but relatively calm all things considered. I hand her the pistol unwrapped from my pack inside the Indian Scout and Zayna holds it all crazy, but with somewhat of a natural instinct to know not to hold her finger on the trigger or point the muzzle at me.

Still, she looks clumsy, and I’m glad the gun isn’t loaded.

“You know what to do with that thing?”

“No.”

“When I need it, I’ll tell you to hold it up to that motherfucker’s head.”

She looks at me nervously. “You won’t need to pull the trigger.”

Again, it wouldn’t matter if she did. Not loaded. Would never give her a loaded gun — especially not right now. Zayna nods and looks a little nervous. She taps the side of her sweatpants pocket but when she catches me looking at her, she moves the gun, which then snaps me back into attention.

“Don’t wave it around. Safety is right here. Hard to budge outta place. Stick it in your pocket. We got a half mile walk up to the medical singles.”

“If we shoot him, won’t the other people in the dorm here?”

“Not gonna shoot him.”

She can tell the question irritates me because I have a plan and made mention before that I don’t enjoy having my plans questioned much. I slip the rest of the items I brought into my pocket. Thin, but surprisingly strong black rope, a roll of thick black tape, a serrated hunting knife with a six-inch blade and another smooth long blade that belonged to Doc for skinning deer.

Zayna watches me patiently conceal all the sheathed knives and then slip a black beanie over my head.

“How are we going to find our way in the dark?” She whispers.

Brooks’ dorm room rests up against Sheffield Forest — a patch of woods on the map donated by some rich old dude named Shorty Sheffield who loved trees and wanted his son to have a pine forest behind his dorm room in the 60s. Weird, but convenient, because this privilege patch of pine ultimately provides perfect concealment. It’s far enough from the other dorms and campus houses that living out here is considered a luxury — at least according to the campus community’s Reddit page.

“I know the way,” I tell Zayna. I did my research. When I promised to kill another man for this woman, I had no intentions of screwing this shit up. So far, she hasn’t broken her promise to me and when this is done… I’ll have to ask her for something that she might not want to give.

I can’t screw up.