The Shack series

Chapter 12

"You take of her, Les." We'd talked it over for weeks. Sheree felt Delaney needed to be part of this, needed to feel like she could do something. She was nervous for her, but Sheree's faith in me was way stronger than I thought it should be.

Delaney was remarkably calm, all things considered. "So what's the plan?"

"We're going to do a B&B."

"Okaaaayyyy... what the Damn is that?"

I started laughing. "It's a home invasion technique; it stands for 'bait and b***h'."

"I must be the bait, but my mother isn't here, so I guess you're..."

"Shut up."

Two hours later, Delany rang the doorbell of a skeezy apartment.

Asshole opened the door and stared at her in shock.

Delaney smirked. "You lookin' for me?"

"What are you, Di Niro all of a sudden?" While he stood frozen, I stepped up from the side and leveled the .45. I shook my head at the Asshole. "I have got to start her on some different movies, you know?" I nodded towards Delaney. "Besides, it's 'You talkin' to me?'"

He held very still, looking from her to the .45 pointed at his head.

We had him tied into a chair in just a couple minutes.

He glared at us. "This is bullshit. You're gonna try some "good cop, bad cop" s**t. Ain't gonna Damning work. Hell, she's a Damning kid."

I gestured helplessly. "Work with what you got, you know? But teenage girls don't have much in the way of empathy, and she knows exactly what you Damnheads were planning on doing to her, so..."

Delaney looked dead at him. "You think it was an accident, shithead? An accident that the Damning welding shop and house outside Durham burned down? With everybody in them?" She threw the paper on the table in front of him. The article headline "Fourteen Dead in House Fire" blared out him.

He looked over it disbelievingly.

"You notice anything missing, Asshole? Like the three girls you Damners kept in cages?"

I could see him realize what Delaney meant.

I kicked his leg to get his attention. "We have a few questions we want answered."

"Wait." Delaney rummaged through her backpack. "I have... lineman's pliers. A propane torch... this..." She pulled a bizarre kludge of auto parts wired to a short plank and put it on the table.

"What the hell is that?"

She twisted her mouth doubtfully. "An electrical shock thingy. If it works. I took an alternator and..."

"Where the Damn did you learn how to do that?"

"You have a book with a brown cover in Sally's garage."

"Jesus. That's a Spetsnatz field interrogation manual. It's in Russian. You don't even read English very well."

"I said 'if it works.' s**t. There were a lot of pictures. They had a littler battery on theirs, though."

I shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."

The Asshole stared at me from the chair. "Look I know you're not gonna..." He was cut off by his own scream as Delaney jammed her electric nightmare into the side of his head with a sharp crackling sound.

I shoved her back. "Jesus, Delaney."

She thrust her chin out defiantly, eyes flashing, ready for an argument.

He turned to look at her disbelievingly and I could see a scorch mark on his scalp. "You bitch..."

I cuffed him hard across the back of the head. "Shut the Damn up." I shook my head at Delaney. "Not in the head. You'll scramble whatever Asswipe uses instead of brains and he won't be able to answer any questions. Kidneys, liver, arms, legs, testicles, the sciatic nerve, maybe the soles of his feet, just not his head. He has to be able to talk."

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't think of that. At least we know it works, though."

I shrugged at the Asshole. "See, no empathy at all."

Delaney studied him like she was looking at a bug. "Where's this, sy... sy... the nerve thingy?"

"The back of his thigh, it's kinda hard to get to, but we can..."

"Wait! Jesus. You're Damning crazy!"

I backhanded him hard. "Watch your Damning language, Asshole, there's a kid here."

He shook his head to clear it. "What do you want?"

"Why are you coming after Delaney?"

"I don't know, Manny set it up. We were supposed to just kill her and dump her, but Manny had a... a customer who wanted a girl like her. Really young. He likes them fresh but broken in and scared. I never met him or heard his name but he wanted them messed up; the more terrified, the better. We've done it before, but this time I was just supposed to cap her a*s and get gone."

Delaney lunged and drove her prod into his side. Maybe I let that happen that time. I waved her back.

"Who the Damn is Manny?"

"Manuel Ortiz." He caught his breath and nodded toward the newspaper. "Third from the top on the second column of pictures."

"s**t. And you don't know anything? Like who or why?"

He shook his head.

"Damn it then. He's all yours Delaney."

He looked up in panic. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait goddammit! I was supposed to call a number and tell them when it was done so we could get the other half of the money."

"Not Manny?"

"No, just some guy."

"Okay, here's the deal then. You call and set up a meeting. Tell him you got the girl, but Manny is dead and you want the other half of the money."

"What if he won't meet?"

"Then I step out to get lunch for an hour and leave you with a girl your crew tried to r**e, t*****e and murder. I have no Damning idea what she'll do, but I'm betting you won't enjoy it. I'd be really Damning convincing if I were you."

I untied one hand and let him use his phone.

The conversation was very short, and the guy on the other end agreed to meet him without any argument in one of the smaller, less frequented state parks in a few hours.

Asshole didn't seem to realize what a bad sign that was and I didn't bother explaining that he might have been better off taking his chances with Delaney. Might.

I ordered pizza while we waited; Delaney looked at me like I was crazy when I asked what type he liked and got him one of his own.

After we got to the park, I took his phone and put it in the inside chest pocket of his jacket with an unopened Allen wrench box.

I let him out of the trunk and held the .45 on him. "Put the jacket on and zip it up."

He eyed me suspiciously while he did it. "What now?"

"Here's the deal. Feel that thing in your jacket pocket? There's not much explosive in that thing, but more than enough to kill you. You give us any trouble and one of us will push the button. Try to run, try to take off the jacket, try to talk to a cop. Boom. We will be watching."

We watched with binoculars from an overlook while he waited near the trail. Joggers went past him infrequently, but it was quiet for a long while. I'm sure most of the joggers who went by him were convinced he was there for a d**g deal, but that's hardly rare in the parks anymore.

I finally saw what I was looking for. A jogger who'd come by earlier passed him from behind.

We heard the flat snap of the small handgun as Asshole crumpled to the ground.

"Let's go, we need to follow him from the parking lot."

Delaney moved sluggishly to her feet, almost in shock. "No. We don't. That was Dave something or other. He worked on my Dad's campaign. He still works for him."

I stopped. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. "Let's get back to the cabin then."

She dragged down to the parking lot, head down, listless and dragging her feet.

As we pulled out, she looked up. "You knew he'd be killed, didn't you? That's why you let him have the kind of pizza he wanted. That 'last meal' thing."

"I thought it might happen, it was too easy to set up the meeting."

"Damn him. He deserved it." I could hear a little of her spirit coming back.

"He deserved a lot worse."

A quick, painless death was better than the Asshole should have had after what he'd done, but nobody ever said life was supposed to be fair. That wasn't what Delaney was brooding over as she sat quietly for the whole two hours back to the cabin.

When we got back to the cabin, she went to her room wordlessly, and I just waited for Sheree to get back from work. As Sheree came in, she started to ask what had happened but I shook my head and silently mouthed, "Later."

When she heard Sheree arrive, Delaney trudged out in pajamas, red-eyed and sniffing, dragging her blanket and a pillow. "I know it isn't Friday, but... can we have a Movie Night tonight?"

Sheree took one look and nodded. "Get a fire started, Les. I'm getting my pajamas on and grabbin' a blanket."

After Delaney had finally fallen asleep on the couch next to us, I explained to Sheree what had happened.

Sheree pushed a little hair out of Delaney's face. "This isn't going to stop, is it?"

"Not if I'm right. Not until I make it stop. I've got some guesses but I'm not sure exactly why. I'm damn sure going to find out."

She watched Delaney sleep for a minute. "The cops won't be any help, not on this. They might sort it out after, but that'd be too late for her."

I kissed the top of Sheree's head. "She needs to stay here with you this time. You were right she had to have a chance to really fight back, it's in her nature. She needed that. But this part... this part isn't for her to do. This is my job."

"I think she knows that. This is the first time I've ever seen her like this."

I nodded, running my fingers through Sheree's hair.

We just sat for a while. Sheree studied Delaney's sleeping face, then looked up at me with a steady gaze. "You do what you gotta do, Les. Nobody comes after our little girl."