The man noticed his hands. He made a sound of anguish and a stain spread dark wings over the groin of his jeans. “The bitch is lying. Please believe me.”
The rank odor of urine burned his nostrils.
Tick, tick.
Karson took one step forward.
The man fell to pieces then. He shook all over, his eyes locked with Karson’s, filled with fury and terror. “No, please, please no...”
Karson felt no empathy. He felt no more for this pathetic human than he would a loathsome cockroach. He moved so fast the male didn’t see it coming, his hand grabbing hold of the back of his sweaty neck.
Tick.
The satisfying sound of a loud snap rang through the room. The stain’s head dropped. His mouth hung agape. His neck bulged out at distorted angles. The beer can fell from his hand, gurgling over the carpet.Cheap beer, Karson thought with disgust. Spilled on the floor was the best place for it.
The clock read 1:59 a.m.
Chapter 3
A Cruel Lie
The green gem of my ring burned with the last threads of the sinking sun, as if offering a promise of hope. It was a lie. A lie as sweet as the late-night whispers of a lover. A lie as cruel as a promise from a mother who said she’d never leave. Lies etched into my heart like arrows.
My palms, damp with sweat and pale as ash, clamped the wheel. The road droned beneath the tires of my car. The landscape was a blur of long, dry paddocks, lingering forests, and dwindling houses. All of it merged into itself as I drove steadily upward and inward, away from heavily populated areas. I didn’t know where I was going. I just drove, and drove, staring lifelessly into a coffined twilight, compelled by an unyielding urge to escape the pain.
It wasn’t working.
The air had left my lungs days ago, so each breath came in thin and shallow. My head ached dully, and my eyes felt as if they were carved from sandpaper. I’d survived on coffee, the odd sandwich, and barely any sleep for five nights and six days. Motel beds, especially the cheap ones I’d been sleeping in, had a lot to answer for. I stretched my shoulders back and yawned so wide my jaw cracked.Wake up, Amy!
I took a sip of near-cold coffee, screwed up my face at the bitter taste, and forced it down my throat.
In the back seat of my Fiesta sat my khaki duffel bag, with the total of my possessions in it. Sad, really, to reach twenty-two years old, and everything I owned fit into a solitary rectangular bag. No, not sad. Pathetic. Technically, I did own a share in a bed. I hoped it cracked and one of the slats jammed right up Tom’s ass. I couldn’t believe my adult life replicated the bulk of my childhood, like a record on repeat. Empty. Lost. Broken. I could, however, pinpoint the exact moment things began to plummet to the south side of my perfectly curated delusion of happiness.
It started four years ago at 2:34 a.m. on the fifteenth of July. I was eighteen years old when my mother was killed. The world crashed from underneath all of us.
Dad receded into himself. By day he worked as a detective, and at night he drank himself into a stupor. If I had to diagnose him, “functioning alcoholic” would have been a suitable analysis. He was a shadow of his former self, staggering between bitterness and emptiness, between forlorn numbness and downright hostility. My relationship with my father didn’t disintegrate overnight. Instead, like a festering wound, it rotted away slowly and painfully, until there was nothing left but decaying flesh.
Sometimes, he looked at me with such resentment it was as if he held me responsible for my mother’s death. I understood. I blamed myself too.
Given my history, I was forced to consider that maybe I was born with something wrong with me. Nothing physical—I was an ordinary-looking girl. Nothing mental either. My photographic memory ensured learning was a breeze. I had above-average intelligence, if the school curriculum was the benchmark. There was nothing I could pinpoint exactly. But maybe I was bornbroken, with a darkness you couldn’t see—you could only sense. My birth parents thought there was a problem, because they put me straight into the foster system. I was bundled from house to house, never feeling loved, never feeling like I fit in. When I looked back on my early childhood, I didn’t view it through rose-colored glasses. I saw the blood on the floor.
That all changed when, at twelve, my parents adopted me, and I was finally cherished. I was finally loved. They offered the promise of a life I never thought I could have.
Then my mother died.
My eyes drifted to the sky; mottled rays of the dying sun spread across the darkening horizon like a bloody wing. My fingers grazed the cold jewel of my ring, and I sucked in a shaky breath. I could escape the past by fleeing. Maybe eventually the ache in my chest would dull, but a horrible feeling dwelled inside me, as if I were destined for some ill-fated doom. It coiled within like a serpent, ready to rise and strike. I brushed a sodden tendril of hair off my cheek and shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind, trying to focus on the road.
I was on the outskirts of a small older town, nestled in the foothills of a mountain. I drove past a warren of timber-clad homes which had seen better days, a corner milk bar, and a gas station. Ahead, the bright-orange glow of a vacancy sign beckoned. I turned my wheel to the right and pulled into the asphalt driveway of yet another roadside hotel. The bottom corner of the vacancy sign had been smashed out, and I was sure the exterior sign, no doubt, reflected the interior. I sighed and jerked to a stop.
Predictably, the room was dowdy and bland. The faint tang of bleach rolled up my nose. The walls were covered in a beige printed wallpaper, peeling at every joint like a half-stuck stamp. The carpet was dark brown and mottled. All the furniture was wood. At the end of the room was the bathroom, probably tiled,probably stained, but if the smell of bleach was any indication, hopefully clean.
I threw my duffel bag onto the cabinet against the wall. Then, hands on hips, I sighed from the depths of my soul.
Resigned to my fate, and too exhausted to move on, I grabbed the corner of the duvet with my fingertips and peeled it back, relieved to find clean, bleached-white sheets underneath. I removed my ring and placed it on the bedside table, pulled the curtains closed, lay flat on my back, and stared up at the grime-coated ceiling. The night was still, except for the hum of cars as they passed on the nearby highway. Bone-weary, I barely heard them. My eyes closed.
“Yes, baby, yes. Ride me, cowboy.” A woman’s voice came through the paper-thin walls, so crystal clear it was as if she were in my room.
My eyes fluttered open. The last of the day had morphed into darkness. Seemed appropriate—I was wrapped in darkness. Ironic really, given I’d always been scared of the dark.
