Chapter 3

Their breakfast was uneventful after the police took the man away. What he didn’t understand was why Trinity was still here when she could have said whatever she wanted to and left. Finally, he’d had enough of her talking to his children.

“Why are you here?” She told him that she wanted some food. “There are about fifty restaurants around here that would love to sell you something to eat. So again, why are you here?”

“I have to apologize to you.” She looked up at him from her sausage that she’s speared. “I mean, I want to. I was told that I have to fix this, whatever I did to piss you off, but—”

“You owe a quarter to the cursing jar.” She dug out the change purse from her purse and handed Patty the required quarter. “Sometimes I see Dad put a lot of money in the jar, and he goes outside for a while. I think he’s out there cussing up a storm or something.”

“What does the money go to?” Thinking that it was going to be some vacation or something equally extravagant. When she was told, it humbled her in so many ways. “That’s a good idea. Using it to buy Christmas presents for—”

“Don’t be nice to them. You want nothing to do with them.” She looked around the table at the faces that, in the last few minutes, had come to mean a great deal to her. She could tell, too, that he was embarrassed by what he’d said. “What I meant to say was, you don’t need to be nice to them. I accept your apology, and now you can go home.”

“Just like that. You’re going to let me off the hook for saying those nasty things to you.” He told her that since he wasn’t planning on seeing her again, that made it fine by him. For some reason that hurt worse than anything that she’d ever had hurt her before. “Look. You have a life. I get that. But I do as well. I love watching over the kids, loving them, and spending time with them. Could I use a break? Sure but that’s not anything to do with you. It’s my family, and I understand that it’s too much for you.”

She wanted to cry. Never in all her adult life had she wanted to have someone to look at her the way he did his children. Someone to care enough that she wasn’t kidnapped. To be all right with chocolate syrup on their pancakes. Putting down her fork, she looked at him.

“You’re right. I’m sure you hear that a great deal. I don’t mean that to be mean, but you seem to be a man who has his head on straight. I’ll leave you now.” The girls, as one, told her not to leave. “Your father is correct. I don’t want children, and I have a life that doesn’t involve getting married. Thank you.”

She was nearly to the door, thinking that she was going to make it to the street before her tears fell when someone, a very short someone, put their arms around her legs. Looking down at the little girl, her name was Beth, she had found out she asked her what she was doing.

“Don’t leave us. Please?” She told Beth that she had to go back to work. “Nothing is more important than family. We’re ‘pose to be a family. You can’t just leave us here with our dad. You have to be his wife, so we have a momma.”

She was ready to bolt, thinking that there was no other way that she was going to be able to get out of this with her dignity or some semblance of it when Ewing was standing there. He asked her politely to please come back to the table with them. Nodding, she let the tears flow then, there was no hope for it.

“Don’t cry, please?” He handed her a tissue and realized that it was used. “I’m going to buy stock in tissues when I get home. They’re good for all kinds of things.” Digging through his pockets, he found one that looked clean and handed it to her. “I think that the little packets of them are better. And softer, too.”

She had no idea why that was suddenly funny to her. As she was wiping at her tears, she walked back to the table. The kids were still eating, but the smiles that were all around the table were worth every second of her pained heart. Trinity realized that she wanted this, the home life, more than she did anything. Looking at Ewing as he cut up pancakes into small blocks, she realized that at some point in her coming here and nearly leaving, she’d fallen in love with Ewing.

It was the way that their kind did things. Fast and hard. But she was still leery about what to do with her life. She just couldn’t be a full time mom and feel like she was making anything of her life. She kept thinking about her parents. They were forever bickering about the smallest little things.

“Do you ‘pose they have whipped cream?” Trinity asked Rachel if she wanted some. “Nah, I was just wondering. They seem to gots everything else a body would want on pancakes.” She had to agree with her. They did have a large selection of toppings for pancakes and waffles.

The conversation flowed nicely, even between her and Ewing. He’d answer one of the kids like he wasn’t bothered by their constant questions and she did the same in turn. It wasn’t until the waitress came by to ask about refills that she realized that the kids were sharing a single order of pancakes. It ticked her off a bit that he was taking advantage of the place by not paying for everyone an order.

“I think we’re about finished here, Milly. Make sure you charge me for each of the kids. It couldn’t have been easy waiting on all of us. But you did a wonderful job of it.” He looked at her as if he knew what she’d been thinking. “I really wish that you’d start thinking positively of me instead of thinking that I’m taking advantage of people. Believe it or not, I’m not a bastard, nor am I cheap.”

When he picked up Billy, telling the girls he was going to go and change the baby to not move, Trinity looked around the table at the little girls who had a large piece of her heart already. It was Harper, the most outspoken of the children, who asked her why she was being mean to their dad.

“I didn’t realize that I had been.” She said she had that mad look in her eyes. “I’ll have to work on that then. I wanted to ask you if you would help me with that, but I’m afraid that you’ll be too harsh on me, and it’ll upset me.”

“I won’t be hard on you.” She looked at her sister, sort of looking for support, she thought. “I’ll help you because you are trying. Dad said that if you mess up on accident, that’s all right. But don’t do it again. Like when I spilled my milk because I didn’t want him to help me. I learned that the jug is too big for my little arms, and I need help. He said asking for help is a good thing to learn.”

“I know that’s easier said than done, asking for help. You don’t want people to think that you’re some kind of wimp or something like that.” She was going to have to keep watching her language. Ewing would never forgive her if he had to explain what the word pussy meant.

By the time Ewing returned with a much happier Billy, she’d paid the bill and tipped well. When he asked her, quietly how much she had tipped, she wasn’t sure what he meant. But she did understand when he pulled out two one hundred dollar bills and put them on the table.

“For the other mess, too.” She’d forgotten about that, having so much fun with the kids and Ewing was a nice distraction for all the bad things that were going on in her life. “You’ll come with us, right?”

By the time they were outside, she couldn’t believe how beautiful the day had gotten. Since the girls wanted to walk around a bit, she was willing to take their hands in hers to help out. Billy had a front carrier thing that Ewing was wearing, and Trinity laughed when Patty called it the Billy pouch. Apparently, Ewing was reading the Winnie the Pooh series, and they had learned about Kanga and her son.

There were plenty of shops on this end of town, but they were more centered on the townspeople rather than the touristy people. As soon as they entered the shop that had beautifully displayed items from the area, she thought she could spend her entire check in the store and not get everything that she wanted.

“We have this one in our house. The bathroom stuff is smelly, but in a good way. Dad brought us here when we first lived with him. To get us bathroom junk.” She looked around and then motioned for Trinity to move closer to her. “That lady at the counter is trying to steal him away by telling him that she’d love to get to know us. Like someone wants to get to know us when there is a big handsome man around.”

Against her will, she was falling in love more and more with Ewing’s big family. When she decided that she was going to keep an eye on him, the girls seemed to be way ahead of her. They were dragging him all over the store to look at the displays and how much they wanted him to make their rooms look like this, too. Like they were really interested in a commode filled with pine cones.

“Help?” It startled her when she heard the word and looked around for the source, if there was one in here. After a few seconds, she had to ask who it was that was talking to her, and it turned out to be Ewing. “It’s Ewing. This woman is going to abuse my body in the most sinful way if we don’t leave here soon. Please, help by distracting her or something?”

Taking her cues from the girls, Trinity wrapped her arm around Ewing’s waist while he was being shown the newest tea flavor in the store and smiled at him when he turned her way. Kissing him quickly on the mouth, something that she realized she needed more than her next heartbeat, she asked him if he wanted to have a cookout with the girls tonight.

He kissed her then and smiled. It was a devious sort of smile but she figured it was too late for her to back off now. Ewing looked at the girls.

“How about burgers on the grill tonight, my little ones? Hot dogs and brats.” He looked at her again. “We’ll have to go and get buns. There aren’t any in the house that I know of.”

“Good. I have the list from the house. We can get that taken care of, too.” She had no idea what she was talking about but Trinity was certainly having a blast. When her jacket was tugged on, she turned and swept Rachel up in her arms and hugged her.

“Gee whiz, Ms. Trinity, you sure do give good hugs. Are you going to be our momma now?” She didn’t answer because she’d gotten a good solid punch to her heart that made her slightly dizzy. However, what scared her the most was that she wasn’t afraid to be their mom. It was, she realized what she’d been made for. To be a mom to these six kids and to help shape them into better human beings.

“Yes, I believe that I am.” But when she turned to look at Ewing to get his take on her being the girls’ mom, he looked at her like he was pissed. “I think I would enjoy that, but I can see that your dad might—”

Ewing took her hand into his and kissed the back of it. If it wasn’t for the overly tight hold, she might have thought that he was all right as well. Wanting to jerk his hand from hers, she decided to fuck it all and get out while at least a part of her heart didn’t belong to him when he started speaking to her.

“I can smell him.” She started to look around. “No, don’t. I don’t want to alarm the kids but he’s been following us around for most of the morning and yesterday. I didn’t think much about it because he’s a local. But it’s him. The boss of the other four men that wanted the teenagers.”

She’d heard about the death of the four teenagers and that they’d been mutilated beyond all recognition. Trinity didn’t have all the facts, so she didn’t know what Ewing was talking about with the man, but she gathered up the girls and went up to the counter.

It was much too close to the door, she realized when the man swept by her and it looked to her like he was reaching for Beth—she was the only one that she couldn’t get between her and the counter. It was scary to think that he nearly got the child when all she did was reach out her hand to hold onto the children and wrapped them close to her while she paid for what she had picked out for the house that she’d never been to.

“Come on, girls. We’re headed to home.” She didn’t want this man to know where they lived. More than that, she was terrified to think that he nearly got one of them. Once they were outside, her knees felt like they were going to buckle, but she held on until Ewing came out with her. “Are you ready?”

He shook his head before speaking. “I need to go into the hardware store for a couple of things. The girls are drawing us so many pictures that I want to hang them up in a way that we can display them all the time.”

She wasn’t sure she should follow him when he kissed her on the mouth again and asked her to go to the car. She didn’t have one and had no idea where he’d parked, but nodded, telling him to be careful. Nodding, he left the seven of them standing there, including Billy, in his car seat and wondered what she’d do if something happened to Ewing.

~*~

Mac made his way back to the hardware store that he worked in. He’d damn near had himself a little girl. Or a passel of them. The people had been asking him if he could get them a kid to kill for weeks now, and it wasn’t anything that he’d ever planned on doing. But they’d been right there. Five of the prettiest little things that he’d ever done did see. Then he’d tipped his hand somehow and lost out on it. Their momma she nearly snatched his hand away when he’d started to grab the one nearest to the door. Damned woman. He put out the open sign when he got the door unlocked.

He should have been the owner of the hardware place, too. But one of the Cross people had purchased the building right out from under him. Not that he could have afforded as much as they paid for it but he nearly had old man Mason ready to just hand it over to him for all his years of loyal service. Standing behind the counter when the door opened, he ducked down behind it when he saw two of the very Cross men that he hated with a passion.

“Mr. Mason around, Tetters?” That was another thing that he hated about the Cross men. They always used his last name instead of calling him by his first. “Tetters? Is Mr. Mason here? I wanted to see if the corks that I ordered have come in yet.”

“There ain’t been no deliveries in today, but he’s already gone on home. His daughter picked him up about an hour ago.” The nod. Like they knew he was lying to them. Which he was. “I know he ordered them. I saw him doing it.” Another lie.

In a fit of rage about three months ago, he’d killed the Masons—and their little barking all-the-time dog when they sold this place to a Cross family when they knew that he’d been counting on it.

Also, since he didn’t know the first thing about ordering and shit, there hadn’t been anything ordered for the little shop since then, either. It did a fairly good business here but if he didn’t figure out how to order more product, he was going to be selling next to nothing next month.

It was a good thing that he had his other gig going—which he needed to get with the boys that had been ordered to get him some girls for him to sell off soon. He needed at least that to be giving him cash money. He’d not have any money at all by the end of the day if not for that.

Everybody was paying by credit card and he couldn’t get to that money as it went right into Mr. Mason’s account every day. Fuckers. Who did shit like that anyway? Pay for things with a credit card all the time instead of having cash on them. Even the kids that he sold, nary a one of them had even enough to make a phone call. But they did have their cells, he thought. Damned—

“I’ll have to go out to his home then.” He asked him why he’d do something like that. “Because I need the corks he ordered for me. Why do you care if I go out there, Tetter? I mean, he’s the one that I asked to order them for me. I would have thought that he’d have them in by now.”

Mac decided that he was going to take one of the big eye hooks that he had on the counter and ram it into Ewing’s face. Several times. With all his strength. The other one was some big deal with the Feds but Ewing had them pretty little girls. He was a fucking pussy.

What man would take little kids into his home—not even his own kids—without nary a person around to help with them. Christ, he just couldn’t understand the Cross men at all. People were stupid to think that they were the smartest men on the planet. Also, he thought that women were just off their noodles, too, talking about how nice they were to everyone. Well, they’d never ever been nice to him.

He knew that they had money. A lot of it, too. But they never once offered any to him. Laughing a little to himself, he did admit to himself that he’d never asked for any money but they should have offered it to him all the same. Any fool could see that he was about as broken as the Masons were dead.

“I’ll call him. I’m sure that he wouldn’t care for you going all the way to his home to talk to him about corks, for Christ’s sake.” Ewing just looked at him, and Mac worried that he’d tipped his hand. So, letting out a long breath, he spoke to Ewing in a much calmer voice. “I’ll call him and figure out what’s going on. He put me in charge here, and I’d like him to, you know, think I can do a good job.”

“All right.” He thought that was settled, then the little fucker asked him if they had any of the other things that he’d ordered. “I believe that my brothers have some things coming in as well, don’t they? It seems like things are taking longer to get to us now days. I wonder why that could be?”

“I don’t have any idea. Might be because, you know that it’s still the spring thaw or something. You know how nasty the roads can get when there is flooding everywhere.” The asshole nodded like he had any idea how hard it was to get things in and out of this god-forsaken place. He wasn’t a working man. “I’ll gather up all the orders and call the places here in a bit. You just leave it to me. I might have ordered them wrong or something. I’ll get on it.”

“You said that Mr. Mason ordered them.” He nodded, not sure what he’d said to the man but Ewing was nodding. “Yes. That’s right. You told me that he’d ordered it, and now you’re saying that you did. Which is it?”

Putting his hand on the largest of the eye hooks he’d been playing around with to use out in the old barn, he tried to think of the best way to get out of talking to this fucker. Just as he was going to pick up the hook and use it on him, the phone rang. Thank god.

The person on the other end was asking if they had any pen bolts. He knew what the person was talking about but hadn’t been able to order them either. People would use them to build bear-proof fencing around their land to keep their animals safe. It didn’t work, and just as he was going to tell the person on the phone that, the Cross’s left him, and he simply fell to the floor and put his head on the front of the counter.

“Is Mr. Mason there. He knows what works better than you do, Tetter. Christ, for as long as you’ve been working there, you’d think that you’d have the first clue as to what all that shit in the store is for by now. Instead, all you do is walk around there looking like—” He hung up on the man. He didn’t have time for that sort of shit either.

Pulling out his cell phone while still on the floor, he called the number that he had for Vance. It rang for a bit, and he was just thinking about what sort of message to leave when the phone was picked up. They answered it with ‘Agent Farnworth, how may I help you’ and confused him even more.

“I’m sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number.” The man asked him what number he’d dialed. Before Mac could figure out that hanging up might be a better idea, he told him the number that he’d been given. “It’s for a man by the name of Vance Tetters. No, that’s not quite right. His momma was married, so I don’t know… He’s my nephew.”

“Really? Then I hate to be the one to tell you this, sir, but Vance Tetters, as well as three other men, were killed not too long ago. I think that it’s only been about three days now.” He was glad that he was sitting down when he got that information. He wondered aloud what happened. “Well, they were doing something illegal, and it caught up with them. Are you, by any chance, their boss? They had someone keeping them in line, I heard.”

He closed the connection after thinking about who he was talking to. Were the Feds involved? Why did they care for his little business? Getting up, he pulled the closed sign down and locked the door to the shop. Getting on the computer, something else that he didn’t know a great deal about, he logged into the local newspaper page, one that he’d been reading all his life, and found the article on the front page.

“Four men killed after killing four teenagers in a massive murdering spree.” It went on to talk about how these four men had kidnapped three females and one male from the mall and had murdered them. In the most heinous way, the paper said. They’d been caught, it said, by the Feds and consequently killed. Then it asked if anyone had any news on the men or what they’d been up to because they had some other missing children that they’d like to put names to.

That meant that they’d found his dumping ground, too, he thought. Closing the computer when someone yanked on the door, he nearly laughed out loud when they tried three more times to gain entrance. When they finally gave up, looking in the window to see if they were kidding about being closed, Mac let out the long breath that he’d been holding.

It was just a little side business, he told himself. Why were the Feds involved? He could see the police being curious, but the Feds? It was just so that he’d have some cash, damn it. But it had also been really fun for him too. Like getting the girls ready to be sold off for the night had been his special treat.

Washing them down with the coldest water that he could have coming out of the tap at home, he’d then hang them from the rafters of the old barn on display. It had been something that he’d never dreamed of doing before. Not only that, but there were enough people out there willing to pay big bucks to fuck and kill someone smaller than them.

He didn’t know how to make the computer work for him, so he’d just been making up flyers about having a man’s night out had been simple enough. He had only meant to sell the girls to someone and then not have to worry about them being around. But the first man who won the bidding asked what he could do with the girl he was bidding on, and Mac had told him anything that he wanted.

The man bought and paid for the kid, walked right up to her, and put a bullet in her head. He was so shocked that it took him several minutes to understand that was all he wanted to do. To murder somebody. Then, he was asked how much he charged for disposal.

“It’s not going to be cheap, you know. I have to clean up the place, then put them someplace nobody will find them.” The man said that he was in a generous mood and would give him an extra five grand if he could do that once a month. So that was what he charged for just dumping the girls over a hill to let whatever was down there to have at them. Men, too, when they got smart with him. Though there weren’t too many of those.

Since he had no overhead but the boys that worked for him, he was making a good profit off it. However, now that he’d been doing it a while, Mac knew that he was going to have to start putting some of the money to better use than just having a thick steak every meal and then buying himself all kinds of fun, manly toys like the new truck that was sitting outside in the parking lot.

He now had a boat, a pool, and even a pair of snow ski things that he loved more than the boat. The boat, a big one, had to be moored in the water too far away for him to get to use it every day, but the ski things? Why they were a hit with every snow fall.

Getting into his new truck, the sucker had everything that could be ordered on it, he made his way home. He had some thinking to do, and tonight wasn’t going to be fun for him because it hurt his head to think. But he did feel better about getting home when he had his new baby.

The truck was bright red and had a pair of smoke pipes on it that would allow him to drive fast. However, with all the twists and turns around here, the highest speed that he’d been able to get to was fifty-five. And even that on long stretches wasn’t all that easy. His plan was to have taken it all the way out to Vegas one of these days and race it up and down the strip. He’d heard of people doing that.

He’d not done anything to the Mason’s house but move in. All their things, including the shirts that Mr. Mason wore all the time, were his to do with what he wanted. The freezer had been nice and full, and even it was beginning to look a little bare now that he had been eating all the stuff in it. The man had a great deal of bear meat and wondered if he could figure out where it had come from so that he could get more. There was even bison and elk meat, too. But he didn’t particularly care for the elk meat. To him, it was just too gamey.

Setting up his meal to thaw out, he decided that tomorrow he’d go out to the dump place and see if there was anything around that might get him caught. He’d never taken any precautions always thinking that one of the bigger animals of the park would take care of the bodies for him.

Glad that he’d remembered to bring home the laptop, he decided that as soon as his supper was over, he was going to figure out this ordering thing. While that was going on, he was looking at all the newspapers that had been delivered to the Masons since he’d moved into their home. It wasn’t like they were going to use it.

The Masons surely had to be gone by now, having been the first body that he’d dumped in his special place. Even the gun that he’d killed off the couple with was there. He was going to be in a lot of shit if he got caught. He was sort of happy to know that his nephew Vance was gone so that he didn’t have to worry about him telling on him. Paying him a small part of what he’d been making had been little compared to what he’d get when the night was over.