“Get up.” His voice was flat and hard, betraying only one emotion-pure hatred. “Let’s finish this right now.”
Kristen knelt over Jake, putting her body between the brothers. She glared up at Trey. “Don’t touch him! We’re leaving.” She put a hand on Jake’s face and gazed down at him. “Are you okay?”
Jake drew in a deep breath. His throat still hurt, but at least he was able to breathe again. He gripped Kristen’s hand and drew himself to his feet. He looked Trey in the eye. “I don’t know what’s wrong here, brother, but I’m gonna find out.”
Trey scowled. “There’s nothing to find out.”
“I doubt that.”
Jake spun away from his broken family and strode rapidly back across the lawn to his Camry. The world spun and he wobbled some, but he managed to stay upright. Kristen caught up with him, taking him by the hand again as they reached the car. By then he was shaking all over. She pulled him into an embrace and he allowed her to hold him as he fought to get control of himself.
“It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
Jake nodded.
He looked over her shoulder and saw Jolene standing on the sidewalk with her arm draped around Trey’s waist. With her other hand, she waved to Jake. “Bye, baby. Tell that whore of yours to come see my other baby if she ever wants a taste of a real man.”
Jake felt another surge of nausea.
Kristen whispered in his ear: “Don’t say anything else. This is not the time. You’ll only make it worse. Let’s get out of here and figure out what to do next.”
Unable to bear the sight of his mother’s leering face another moment, Jake decided to follow Kristen’s advice. He eased out of her embrace and got back inside the Camry. Moments later they were out of the Zone and speeding back toward Washington Heights.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The name of the place was GUN CITY USA. It was a sort of firearm superstore. A Walmart for hunters and aspiring mass killers. The store offered rifles, shotguns, and sidearms of every make and caliber imaginable. Some of the rifles looked like the kind of thing a motivated sociopath might easily convert into a fully automated killing machine.
Raymond Slater was appalled.
These were the things that had haunted his pre-Lamia nightmares. Every time a story broke about some new school shooting a chill went up his spine. He lived with an ever-present dread that something similar might occur at Rockville High one day. On his worst days, a Columbine-style massacre at his school seemed inevitable, which he realized wasn’t entirely rational, and so he’d sought the help of a therapist, who’d dispensed antidepressants and antianxiety meds by the fistful. The pills helped some, but the affair with Penelope had been the real cure for his stress. But now even that was lost to him, though she didn’t know that yet.
Because the time had come for Raymond Slater to make a stand.
Following a long night of degradation and humiliation, Penelope had left him to his own devices this morning. That bitch. So smug. So certain he was again a thoroughly cowed man. He knew his place in Lamia’s scheme and would perform as required. It was a given. They thought he was a spineless, weak-willed man incapable of rebellion. The threat of torture and death would certainly be enough to keep a cretin like him in line. And if by some remote chance he should develop the testicular fortitude to oppose them, well…
Josefina.
Sweet little Jo…
Something tugged at his heart at the thought of his daughter’s name. His only child. She was all he had left. And they had threatened her. She would die in the slowest and most agonizing manner possible if he attempted to stop today’s planned mass murder at Rockville High. This was according to Penelope, who said she was relaying the message on behalf of Lamia. And though Jo was at a college hundreds of miles to the north, Raymond knew this was no empty threat. So he had been forced to weigh the possible loss of his beautiful daughter against the potential loss of hundreds of young lives.
The decision to rebel was the hardest he’d ever been forced to make.
He felt hollow inside.
Desolate.
But he knew this-a man forced to sacrifice so much must do his damnedest to get the job done.
He sucked in a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and turned away from a display of various trinkets emblazoned with NRA-approved slogans. The morbidly obese man in red suspenders behind the register at the checkout counter eyed him with obvious suspicion. Raymond forced his mouth to form something that may have resembled a smile. And he stood there. Still not moving. The big man still watching him, slowly moving a green toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. The store was nearly empty this time of day. Raymond had actually been counting on that. But now he was wishing he had come at a busier time. Now he wanted nothing more than to blend in with a crowd. To be anonymous. What if this man was in cahoots with Lamia?
Was he paranoid?
Maybe.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Raymond approached the counter and coughed. “I would like to purchase a firearm.”
The man behind the register smirked around his toothpick. “Didn’t figure you were here for milk and cookies,” the man said in a slow redneck drawl. He removed the toothpick and noisily sucked moisture from the corners of his mouth. “Whatcha lookin’ for?”
“Excuse me?”
The man made a sound that might have been a laugh or a grunt of contempt. “What I mean is, do you need something for protection or…” He hesitated, smirked. “Or something to hunt with?”
Raymond cleared his throat and stepped closer to the counter. “Hunting.”
“No shit.”
Raymond leaned over the counter, dropped his voice an octave. “I would like to buy a handgun and some type of shotgun, something with serious stopping power. The best you’ve got. Price is not an issue.”
“Mister, have you ever fired a gun in your life? Because, no offense, but-”
Raymond’s face reddened as he bristled at the man’s questions. “Is this not a place of business? Do you regularly interrogate potential customers? Because if you don’t want my money, I’m sure-”
“Now hold on, don’t get yourself all riled up.” The big man grinned. “I don’t mind takin’ your money. Was just curious, is all. Let me show you some stuff.”
The big man showed him an array of handguns and shotguns. He spent a lot of time extolling the relative virtues of each piece. Most of the finer points went over Raymond’s head. There was something else he’d been thinking about and while he listened to the man talk he tried to work up the nerve to broach the subject.
To his relief, the man went there for him. “’Course, you know there’s a waiting period. Federal law.”
Raymond struggled to keep his face blank as he said, “I’ve, uh, heard…”
The man grinned, showing him a lot of yellow, uneven teeth. “This here’s the South, son. Federal laws are made to be broken, you know that. We can negotiate. I get the feeling you’re wanting these here hunting weapons sooner rather than later. Am I right?”
Raymond swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Thought so.” The clerk grinned again. “I’ll have to sell you something that ain’t from official stock. And you’ll have to pay cash. A lot of it. That a problem?”
This was a point Raymond had anticipated. He’d fattened his wallet with a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills prior to coming here. “Not at all.”
“Good.” The man put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. “Roscoe! Cover the register while I talk to this man in back.”
A big, bearded behemoth of a man emerged from an aisle and approached the register. He looked like a younger version of the the clerk. Father and son, Raymond had no doubt. “Got it, Pa.”