Mute (38 page)

Catching the look in Swartzman’s eye telling him
that a certain lucky student would be taking that dive, Aaron groaned. He
better make sure his wetsuit doesn’t have any holes. Too bad he didn’t have one
that was mutant gator proof.

“What exactly will I find down there?” Aaron asked.

“It’s a colony. God knows who it’s for. Just make
sure that you…”

The officer finally dislodged the Lagoon Watcher
from the doorway and slammed the steel frame shut. As Aaron watched his
professor’s sullen expression, he chewed on a dreadful feeling that Swartzman
would never see his friend again.

Chapter 37

Moni couldn’t get out of the Enchanted Forest fast
enough, but when she parked in the dark lot around her hotel, she couldn’t
leave her car. Too much weighed on her mind.

Gazing into her rearview mirror, she saw Mariella
awake and alert. The girl should have fallen fast asleep after wandering
through the steamy forest all day, Moni thought. It had truly been a miracle
that she had found the girl in those endless woods. Yet, she didn’t feel so
overjoyed. Moni knew that Mrs. Mint wouldn’t come out of that forest alive. She
had no idea how she knew, but she felt so certain of it that she might as well
have buried the body herself.

The teacher had meant well. She just lacked the
toughness required for a special girl like Mariella. The girl didn’t seem all
that distraught over losing her teacher. As she tugged futilely at the door
handle, which had been locked from the inside, it seemed that leaving the car
as fast as possible concerned her more. Moni reached for her own door handle
and pulled it halfway before her thoughts interrupted her again. She had
arrested the Lagoon Watcher, so he couldn’t have hurt Mrs. Mint.

Can
he control his mutant animals from his cell? Are they still hunting us?

Shaking her head as she finally yanked the handle
and pushed open the door, Moni realized that it didn’t matter either way. She
wouldn’t put Mariella back in school. She wouldn’t take her by the police
station either. The urge to hurry up and move somewhere, anywhere not familiar,
tugged at Moni.

Moni finally stepped out of the car. Her sore legs
buckled. She steadied herself by posting a hand on the window. Moni sent
Mariella a reassuring smile. The girl didn’t even pay attention to her. She sat
up on her knees and arched her head to face something off to the side. When she
saw the girl’s startled expression, Moni realized that she better turn around.
She glanced over her shoulder. Moni met the silver nozzle of a gun. Through the
cloak of darkness, she saw the whites of Darren’s eyes transfixed on her. His
gold grill of teeth glimmered. She felt like a gazelle the moment before a
leaping lion buries its fangs into its neck.

“Sit yo’ ass back in the car,” her ex demanded.

Moni didn’t move. His words were muffled by the
mind-blowing shock. She pondered whether if she had gotten back together with
him, or even returned some of his calls, she could have avoided this moment. It
wouldn’t have mattered. With her or not, Darren wanted more than she could give
and he broke what he couldn’t own.

“Quit ignoring me!” Darren barked. “Get in the car.
Unlock the doors.”

His voice reached the same pitch it had the last
time he smacked her—a tone that dredged up horrific memories of her father’s
brand of punishment. Moni complied. After returning to the driver’s seat, she
silently begged Darren to walk around the car to the passenger side. Her heart
nearly choked on a pint of blood when the sculpted mass of muscles and tattoos
crowded into the back seat besides Mariella. The girl’s face contorted with
fright. She scooted as far away from him as she could get. Without thinking,
Moni drew her pistol.

“Put that shit down, cunt!” Darren jammed his gun
against the back of Moni’s neck. The cold barrel cracked into her spine. She
tossed her pistol down on the seat beside her. He eased up on the pressure on
her neck, but only a little. “If you try that again, the next outfit I buy you
is gonna be a body bag.” He glanced at the frightened little girl beside him.
“Better make that a double order.”

As she felt Darren’s hot breath on the back of her
neck and ear, she recalled how that breath had once been so gentle. It had
lathered her when they showered together. It had caressed her when their sweaty
bodies danced under the hot lights in the clubs and she ground her booty into
his hard crotch.

That whore must have felt Darren’s breath on her
back when he fucked her doggy style in the car, Moni thought. Instead of
apologies pouring out of his lips after she caught him, he peppered her with
curses and pigheaded demands.

She should have seen it coming. She had pursued
Darren, despite her mother’s warnings, because she couldn’t imagine a tougher
man—someone her father would never mess with. Only now Moni realized that the
brutal way he smashed his rivals on the streets would apply to anybody who
Darren hated on, especially his ex girl.

Mariella shouldn’t pay for her mistake. She has
already suffered enough.

“I’ll do whatever you want. Just leave the girl out
of this,” Moni said.

“Mmm hmm, that’s what I like to hear. You’ll do
whatever I want.” Darren flashed a gold-toothed perverted grin as he no doubt
fantasized about scenarios that few willing woman short of porn stars would
subject themselves to. “Now why didn’t you say that before? You been doin’
whatever this kid wants, huh? I bet that’s why you left our house.”

“I didn’t leave the house on my own, honey
bear.”She cringed as she forced out her pet name for him. It proved worth the
effort, as Darren removed the gun from her neck and pressed it against the seat
cushion behind her back. That hurt a little less. “Two people were murdered
there. I barely escaped with the girl. It’s a crime scene.”

“So the killer’s after you and they put you up in
this hotel. Yeah, you’re a princess in her palace with a royal guard, right?
Too bad your buddies didn’t bother show’n up tonight.”

Darren had been stalking her the whole time. He
could spot a cop from a mile away. The “undercover” officers that were waiting
for the Lagoon Watcher had kept him at bay. After the freak’s arrested, Sneed
took everybody off Mariella guard duty except Moni. And he would have fired her
from that job in a second if he could.

This lion had waited until his prey strolled alone
with her cub. Then he pounced. She knew the odds of both of them surviving were
frightfully slim, but Mariella might make it if she could distract him.

“You got that right, baby. We’re all alone. You and
me,” Moni purred in the most seductive voice she could muster with the nozzle
of her lover’s gun nudging against her back through the seat cushion. “How
about I drop the girl off in the room? Then we can check into our own room and
get down. There are plenty of vacancies on my floor. I’m wide open.” Moni
spread her thick lips wide in a smile that always left men drooling and
readjusting their pants.

“Yeah, I could dig that,” Darren said as he hiked
up his jeans. “But I can’t just stroll into the hotel with a gun in my pants.
Should I wave at the cameras and say, ‘Hey, I’m kidnapping over here. Shout out
to my boys.’? That’s just what I should do, right Moni?”

“That’s not what I meant. I just wanna…”

“You won’t see my ass arrested like that old white
man that was chasing you. Ya fuck him too?” Darren asked. She gasped in
revulsion at the thought of touching the sunburned Lagoon Watcher. “I’m not
fool’n like that old honky. Here’s how we do this. The girl gets out the car
and then I’ll tell you where to drive. Once we get there…” He curled his
hulking arm around Moni’s seat and squeezed her breast. Darren had felt them
thousands of times and he usually did so passionately, tickling them and gently
massaging. This time, he groped them like a menacing kid trying to pop a
balloon. “I have some surprises waiting for you, girl.”

Darren’s hand felt as comfortable on her body as a
tarantula. Moni couldn’t rip it off and stomp it to death—not if she wanted
Mariella to walk away from this. The girl wouldn’t get very far in a parking
lot by herself in the middle of the night. She had to stop this.

“Darren…” Moni winced as he pinched her nipple as
if he were trying to crush a grape. When he finally released it, she exhaled
and continued on. “The girl can’t stay in this parking lot all night.”

“Give her your room key,” he said without even
looking at the child.

Mariella curled up against the door with half her
fist in her mouth and her eyes verging on tears.

“They won’t let an eight-year-old walk into the
hotel alone without asking her questions. The girl can’t talk. Let me just drop
her off in her room and then we can… you know.” She couldn’t even fake
enthusiasm anymore—not with his sleazy paws violating her.

“I don’t care about the damn girl.” This time
Darren noticed Mariella. Moni wished that he hadn’t. He aimed the gun square at
her forehead. The girl drew up her knees and ducked her face behind them as if
that could shield her from a bullet. “This is about you and me. It ain’t about
her. I didn’t agree to you bringing a child into our lives.”

“This isn’t about
our
lives. This is
my
life,” Moni protested. “You ain’t part of it no more. You cheated on me. You
hit me. So you lost the right to tell me what to do.”

“What? Hell no. Yo’ still my bitch.” The hand that
had been molesting her body slid up and pinched her throat between its massive
thumb and forefingers. She had seen the oxygen-starved purple faces he had
given ex-cons and drug dealers with that hold. On her delicate neck, it could
inflict much more damage. A few pounds of pressure from his fingers would end
her life, but that thought barely registered in Moni’s mind as she saw Mariella
tremble behind her knees while Darren’s gun pointed at the girl.

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” Moni croaked
from her constricted throat. “Please don’t punish her. I’m all she has.”

“So that’s what’s been keep’n you from seeing me
and returning my calls, huh?” Darren sharpened his glare on the girl. “Now, how
can I take care of that problem? Oh, I know. Like this.”

The blood froze in Moni’s veins as she watched it
unfold. Darren wrapped his finger around the trigger of the gun that aimed
point-blank at Mariella’s forehead. She was a flick of his finger away from
death. Darren let the weapon drop from his hand before he could fire. The
dumbfounded expression on his face only lasted a second and then he reached for
his gun on the floor. Moni quickly seized her pistol on the seat beside her.
Darren saw it coming. Throttling her throat with one hand so she could hardly
breathe, Darren sent his other hand after Moni’s gun instead of his own. He
caught her wrist before she could aim it at him. Her strongest grip couldn’t
withstand the way Darren bent and twisted her wrist. He snatched the gun from
her contorted hand, and brought it up against her temple.

In an instant, Moni’s vision was clouded with
blood.

Chapter 38

Moni wiped the blood from her eyes. Her sight
became transfixed on the bizarre and gruesome scene in the back seat. Darren
glared at her with his mouth agape. He still held Moni’s pistol to her temple,
but his wobbly hand couldn’t fire it. Dark red blood spurted from the hole
gorged into his neck. It bubbled out of his severed trachea and throat, both of
which Mariella held between her slender fingers.

Directing a stone-cold gaze at the thug as he
expired, the girl dropped the chunk of his neck from her hand. It splattered on
the seat between them. The pistol lowered from Moni’s forehead as Darren’s hand
went limp, along with the rest of his body.

Moni had seen what happened out of the corner of
her eye. Mariella had sprung out of her corner and dug her fingers into the
man’s neck. She had ripped it open as easily as peeling a banana. It happened
so fast that Moni didn’t understand what she had seen until she saw Darren’s
warm corpse gushing blood all over her back seat.

Without thinking, Moni started the car and sped out
of the parking lot. Her hand reached for her cell phone. She stopped herself.
If she reported this, Mariella would end up caged inside a government lab for
the rest of her life. The girl—if she truly was a girl –deserved better than
that after saving her.

I
never got her tested for the bacteria. I shielded her from answering any
questions. What kind of child have I been raising all this time?

Moni abruptly pulled the car over onto a dark
shoulder of the road. She got out and walked around to Mariella’s door. She
opened it. The girl got out obediently. She immediately snuggled up against
Moni as if she had just witnessed a brutal killing rather than committed it.

No, Mariella didn’t kill Darren, Moni thought. She
had saved both of their lives.

“You shouldn’t have to sit back there in that icky
mess, baby,” Moni said. “Come up front with me.”

Moni got back behind the wheel with Mariella at her
side. When she reached for the ignition, her hand trembled. She didn’t know
where she should drive. All this time, she thought she had found a daughter.
This poor innocent creature couldn’t defend herself, she had assumed. She
needed her. Yet, Mariella more than defended herself against Darren. Someone
capable of ripping a throat out couldn’t be a real child or a real daughter.