Cooked Goose (34 page)

The red stocking cap slipped to the side of her head, along with the ratty-looking gray hair. Corey saw the black curls sticking out from beneath the disguise and knew he’d been had.

“Take your finger off the button,” she told him as she stood to her feet and took a step closer to him.

Corey couldn’t move. He was so scared he couldn’t even breathe.

“I said, ‘Take your finger off the button.’ Do it, or I swear I’ll shoot you right in the head.” She sounded like she meant it. She looked like she meant it.

Corey removed his finger from the spray button.

She held out her left hand. “Give it to me,” she told him.

Slowly, carefully, he surrendered the can.

A second later, both her gun and his paint can were aimed at his face. The angry gleam in her eyes seemed to change. She smiled a little, as if she were enjoying herself.

That was worse. Much scarier.

“So, you like to terrorize old people?” she said. “Poor people, sick people, folks who’ve got a few screws loose, huh?”

Corey squirmed inside his baggy fatigues. “Uh, no. I mean, I don’t terrorize them. I just mess with them. A little...you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I know all about you, you little Nazi-wanna-be punk. You think you’re real bad. Well, you’re not. You’ve got no balls, or you wouldn’t be hurting people weaker than you.”

Corey felt his face flush, scalding hot with embarrassment and fury. He wanted to hurt her, kill her, show her she was wrong about him. But she had that gun—and that scary grin on her face.

“Are you a cop?” he asked in a small, squeaky voice that shamed him even more.

“Nope,” she said.

“Then who are you?”

“Just somebody who doesn’t like nutless Nazi punks.”

She took another step toward him, and for a second Corey thought she was going to shoot him after all. He started shaking, a violent tremble that coursed in waves through his body from his head to his combat boots.

“Look at you, big tough guy,” she said, “shaking like a mange-bald hound dog in a snowstorm. How does it feel to be so scared that you don’t have any spit in your mouth? To have somebody treat you like you’re less than the dirt under their feet?”

Corey glanced around quickly, hoping that maybe someone would see what this crazy woman was doing and come to his rescue. But they were the only two in sight. He had picked a solitary place, a solitary victim. And now it looked like he was going to be the victim. The game had definitely gone sour for Corey McPherson.

“There’s something else you need to experience firsthand,” she continued in that cold voice with the deceptively soft, feminine accent. “You need to find out how much fun it is to scrub paint off your bare skin, to get it out of your hair once it’s all dried and matted. Oh, yeah. And then there’s the humiliation.”

She lowered the barrel of the pistol, and for a moment, Corey was relieved. Until he saw she was pointing it at his crotch.

“Pull out the waistband of those baggy breeches of yours,” she told him. Her nasty grin widened. “Do it now.”

Corey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Didn’t want to believe it. “What?”

“You heard me. You’ve got enough room in those pants for you and the jackass you rode in on. Now do what I said and hold the waistband out in front of you.”

Corey shook his head. “No. I won’t. What are you, some sort of pervert?”

“Maybe I am.” She laughed. “Now there’s a scary thought, huh? If I’m a real sicko, heaven knows what I’ll do to you before I’m finished with you. Pull those pants open, now!”

Corey was afraid to. But he was more afraid not to. He did as he was told.

“Your underwear, too,” she said. She took a step closer to him.

“I haven’t got any on,” he replied, feeling four years old.

“How unsanitary.”

She closed the small gap between them. Pressed the barrel of her gun against his neck. Pointed the spray can directly down the front of his opened pants.

“You’re not gonna…you’re not—!” he shouted.

“Oh, yes-siree-bob,” she replied in that silky Southern voice. “I most certainly am.”