THE PAIN OF OTHERS (13 page)

It occurred to her that he didn’t know she was awake, but the thought wasn’t two seconds old when she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. They registered her consciousness, turned back to the road.

They drove on. An endless stream of rodents darted across the road ahead and a thought kept needling her—at some point, he was going to stop the car and do whatever he was driving her out in the desert to do.

“Have you urinated on my seat?” She thought she detected the faintest accent.

“No.”

“You tell me if you have to urinate. I’ll stop the car.”

“Okay. Where are you—”

“No talking. Unless you have to urinate.”

“I just—”

“You want your mouth taped? You have a cold. That would make breathing difficult.”

Devlin was the only thing she’d ever prayed for and that was years ago, but as she watched the passing sagebrush and cactus through the deeply tinted windows, she pleaded with God again.

Now the Escalade was slowing. It came to a stop. He turned off the engine and stepped outside and shut the door. Her door opened. He stood watching her. He was very handsome, with flawless, brown skin (save for an indentation in the bridge of his nose), liquid blue eyes, and black hair greased back from his face. His pretty teeth seemed to gleam in the night. Rachael’s chest heaved against the strap of webbing.

He said, “Calm down, Rachael.” Her name sounded like a foreign word on his lips. He took out a syringe from his black leather jacket and uncapped the needle.

“What is that?” she asked.

“You have nice veins.” He ducked into the Escalade and turned her arm over. When the needle entered, she gasped.

“Please listen. If this is some kind of ransom thing—”

“No, no. You’ve already been purchased. In fact, right now, there isn’t a safer place in the world for you to be than in my possession.”

A gang of coyotes erupted in demonic howls somewhere out in that empty dark and Rachael thought they sounded like a woman burning alive, and she began to scream until the drug took her.

This first bonus excerpt is from the eBook Serial Uncut by Blake Crouch, Jack
Kilborn
, and J.A.
Konrath
, also available in the Kindle Store for $2.99…

PART ONE

Tampa, 1978

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you about the dangers of hitchhiking?” the driver said. “You never know who’s going to pick you up.”

Donaldson wiped sweat from his brow and eyed the driver through the half-open passenger side window of the Lincoln Continental. The driver was average-looking, roughly Donaldson’s age, dressed in a dark suit that matched the car’s paint job.

“I’m roasting out here, man,” Donaldson said. And it wasn’t far from the truth. He’d been walking down this desolate highway for damn near three hours in the abusive, summer sun. “My car died. If you want to rob or kill me, that’s fine, as long as you have air conditioning.”

Donaldson forced a bright smile, hoping he looked both pathetic and non-threatening. It must have worked, because the man hit a switch on his armrest, and the door unlocked.

Must be nice being rich,
Donaldson mused at the fancy automatic locks. Then he opened the door and heaved his bulk onto the leather seat.

“Thanks,” he said.

The car was cooler than outside, but not by much. Donaldson wondered if the man’s air worked. He placed his hand against the vent, felt a trickle of cold leaking out.

“Happy to help a fellow traveler. I’m Mr. K.”

“Donaldson.”

Neither made a move to shake hands. Mr. K checked his mirror, then gunned the 8-cylinder engine, spraying gravel as the luxury car fishtailed back onto the asphalt.

Donaldson adjusted his bulk, shifting the .38 he’d crammed into the front pocket of his jeans. The pants were loose enough, and Donaldson portly enough, that he doubted Mr. K noticed.

“You’re sunburned,” Mr. K said.

“
Sun’ll
do that to you.”

Donaldson touched his bare forearm, lobster red, and winced. Then he flipped down the visor mirror, saw how bad his face was. It looked like his old man had slapped the shit out of him, and hurt almost as much.
 

“Your car a Pinto?” Mr. K asked.

“My car?”

“A Pinto. Saw one about five miles back.”

Donaldson contemplated the harm in admitting it. He supposed it didn’t matter. Before he’d abandoned the car, he’d wiped it clean of fingerprints.

“Yeah. Blew a rod, I think.”

“Why didn’t you wait for the police?”

Again, Donaldson deliberated before answering. “I don’t like pigs,” he finally said.

Mr. K nodded. Donaldson doubted the man shared his sentiment. His hair was short, he was well-dressed, and he owned a fancy car. Cops wouldn’t hassle him. They were too busy hassling people with long hair and beards and ripped jeans.

People like me.

The highway stretched onward, wiggly heat waves rising off the tarmac. There wasn’t much traffic. Only about twenty cars had passed Donaldson during his long walk, and not one had so much as slowed down. Bastards. Whatever happened to human compassion?

 
“Did you kill the car’s owner before you stole it?” Mr. K asked.

Alarm bells sounded in Donaldson’s head. He frantically pawed at his .38, but Mr. K slammed on the brakes.

Donaldson bounced off the dashboard, smacking his sunburned nose hard. During the momentary disorientation, he was aware of Mr. K throwing the car into park, unbuckling his seatbelt, and pressing a thin-bladed knife under Donaldson’s double chin with one hand, while digging the .38 from Donaldson’s front pocket with the other.

“You should buckle up,” Mr. K said. “Seatbelts save lives.”

Mr. K stuck the knife into his breast pocket, belted himself back in, then hit the gas. The tires screamed and the Continental shot forward.

“I’m bleeding,” Donaldson said, his hands cupped around his nose. He knew it was a stupid, obvious thing to say, but he was still dazed and trying to buy some time.

“Tissues in the glove compartment.”

Donaldson dug them out, feeling more ashamed than hurt. This guy had gotten the better of him much too easily. As he mopped the blood from his face, Mr. K pressed a button to open the passenger side window.

“Throw the used ones outside, please.”

Donaldson went through ten tissues, tossing each one onto the road whizzing by. Then he ripped one more into pieces, balled them up, and shoved them into each nostril, staunching the trickle. He kept an eye on Mr. K the entire time, alternating between watching the man’s eyes, and watching the .38 pointed at him.

This is a real bad situation.

“I don’t enjoy repeating myself, but you hit that dashboard pretty hard, so I’ll ask one more time. Did you kill the driver before you stole the Pinto?”

Donaldson knew he was screwed, but he didn’t want to get himself even more screwed.

“You a cop?” he asked, not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

The barest flash of mirth crossed Mr. K’s face. “No. But your biggest worry right now shouldn’t be getting arrested. Your biggest worry should be the hole I’m going to put in your head if you don’t answer me.”

The gears began to turn in Donaldson’s head.
How the hell do I get through this? Talk my way out?

“You won’t shoot me,” Donaldson said, surprised by how calm he sounded.

“No?”

“You’d ruin your car.”

Again, a faint hint of a smile. “It’s not my car. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

Mr. K thumbed back the hammer on the pistol.

Donaldson contemplated his own death—the first time in his life he ever had—and decided dying would be a very bad thing.

“I killed him,” Donaldson said quickly.

Mr. K seemed to think about this. He nodded slowly. “Was it someone you knew?”

“No. Jumped him in a parking lot in Sarasota. Wouldn’t have wasted the bullet if I knew what a piece of crap his car was.”

Donaldson watched Mr. K’s eyes. They betrayed nothing. The two of them might as well have been talking about the weather.

“How’d it feel?” Mr. K asked.

“How did what feel?”

“Killing that man.”

What kind of freaky talk is this?
Donaldson thought, but all he said was, “I
dunno
.”

“Sure you do. Did it feel good? Bad? Numb? Did it get you excited? Did you feel guilty afterward?”

Donaldson thought back to the day before. To holding the gun to the man’s ribs. Seeing the shock in his eyes when he squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. Watching him flop to the ground in a way that had struck him as funny. The holes in his chest had made sucking sounds, blowing tiny blood bubbles.

“Excited,” Donaldson said.

“Did he die right away?”

“No.”

“Did you stay and watch him die?”

“Yeah.”

“How long did it take?”

It’s so strange that we’re both so calm about this.

Donaldson shrugged. “Few minutes, I guess.”

“Did you do anything else to him?”

“Like what?”

“Did you hurt him first?” Mr. K raised an eyebrow. “Rape him?”

Donaldson scowled. “Do I look like a queer to you?”

“What does being a homosexual have to do with it? You had a human being at your mercy. That excited you. I’m asking if you capitalized on that opportunity. If you made the most of it.”

Donaldson thought about it. The guy
had
been at his mercy. He’d begged for a while when Donaldson pulled the gun, and that was kind of a turn-on.

“I didn’t rape him,” Donaldson said.

“Could you have raped him?”

Donaldson licked some dried blood off of his top lip, let the salty, copper taste linger on his tongue. “Yeah. I could’ve.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Mr. K. He was quiet for over a minute.

The road stretched out ahead of them like a giant black snake.

Empty swampland and blue skies as far as Donaldson could see.

I can’t believe I’m telling him this stuff. Is it because he’s threatening to kill me?

Or because he understands?

“How’d you know?” Donaldson asked.

“Know what?”