Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94686 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94686 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Troy grimaced. “Okay. I already asked Viv to leave.”
“Good. I don’t want her to hear this.” He went down the stairs. “She already hates me, but. . .”
He never finished. Instead, he returned to whistling and rounded the corner when he reached the bottom steps.
Jasmine gasped. “He fucking killed Dawn?” Her chest lifted and fell like she’d been working out. “He killed her? Up here? When? How? Oh, my God. And he’s fucking whistling like a maniac.”
“Jazz, she looked like hamburger—”
I held my hand up. “Enough, Troy. Your sister doesn’t need the details.”
“Naw, man. Benny is killing in the name of Jazz’s safety. So she needs to know. Jazz can’t close her eyes to this shit,” Troy said. “When Benny comes back up here, Wendy will probably look even worse than Dawn because he won’t have the time to knock her out before he begins crushing and slicing her up like he did Dawn.”
Jasmine covered her mouth. “He. . .sliced?”
“He did a lot of nasty shit to Dawn, and that’s just from what I saw. I don’t even want to think about what his process is,” Troy said.
“We can’t. . .” Jasmine shook her head. “Look. We can’t let him do anything else.”
“What are you saying, Jazz?” Troy rubbed his face. He’d been doing it a lot in the hallway as if he couldn’t stop sweating or something.
“I don’t know.”
“Naw, man. Fuck that ‘I don’t know’ shit.” He lowered his voice. “That motherfucker played with Dawn’s body until she looked like hamburger meat.”
“Enough with the details, Troy.” My voice might have been a bit higher than intended, but I couldn’t take it anymore. “We don’t want Benny to kill Lucy. We agree?”
“Yes,” Jasmine said. “If Lucy didn’t have anything to do with me getting shot, then I’m fine.”
“Cool. I think she’s innocent. Lucy is already off with Viv so you know I’m cool with it,” Troy said.
Unease crept up my spine. “Now what about Wendy?”
“I don’t know, man. Wendy wasn’t an angel.”
“But does that mean Benny should make her into hamburger meat?” Jasmine asked. “I don’t think so. I just couldn’t live with myself. What do you want to do, Chase?”
I dug my hands into my pockets and tapped my leg over and over. “I can’t let Wendy be mutilated and tortured like that, if only because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Jasmine, what do you think?”
“We can call the cops,” she offered.
“No way.” Troy waved her comment away. “We’re all in this shit too deep. Too many questions, answers, and bloody coincidences. Plus, it’s foreign cops.”
I nodded. “Troy is right, and there’s too much at stake to deliver her over. Who knows what else she may have plotted? Plus, the cops might get wind of Dawn’s murder. She still has family here, maybe even distant relatives on the police force. Not a good idea.”
“I don’t know about this.” Jasmine bit her lip. “We can’t just deliver justice because we think it’s the way.”
“We’ve done it before,” Troy argued. That pedophile Troy killed for Jasmine came to my mind.
“Yes,” Jasmine said. “But that was different.”
“How?” Troy asked.
“He was right there ready to rape me.”
“And she’s right there in the room, probably wondering how she’ll kill you.”
“We don’t know that, Troy.”
They went back and forth a little bit more. The whole time I kept watch of the time. Benny would be back soon. He’d rush up and start his torture on Wendy. Did she deserve death? Probably. I was pretty sure she had had a hand in three people’s murders. But had she earned Benny’s sort of death?
No. And this is my problem to solve, anyway.
“Troy, do you have that gun I gave you?” I asked.
Troy bent down, lifted up his jeans, and pulled the gun out of a holster wrapped around his ankle. “Yeah. What about it?”
“Give it to me, please.” I held my hand out. He placed it on my palm. The cold metal weighed heavy. I gripped it, and the steel seemed to melt into my hold.
“What are you doing?” Jasmine reached for it.
I moved my hand away. “Do you remember what I told you in Rome?”
“Yes.” The word was more a sad whisper than the usual confidence Jasmine oozed.
“I really would kill for you.”
“But you don’t—”
“I do.” I looked up at Troy. “Make sure your sister gets out of here. I don’t care if you have to drag her down kicking and screaming.”
“What the—” Jasmine’s words got interrupted when Troy yanked her up by both hands and slung her over his shoulder.
“No.” she whispered. “Wait. . .stop. . .I’m trying. . .”
She probably attempted to keep her voice down enough to not alarm Wendy in her room or Benny downstairs. Over and over she beat his back, not hard enough for the sound to be heard, but enough for him to grunt as he rushed them downstairs.