My Tye (12 page)

God, the ways he could do that—the ways he
wanted
to do that. He closed his eyes as both Flash and Rocky nuzzled and pushed at him with their muzzles. Yeah, yeah, he’d get their fresh carrot and apple treats, but he needed a moment to himself first. He needed to stop and give in for just a second, to let his mind wander, to let himself imagine all the things he hadn’t—wouldn’t—before. And by doing so, he pretty much sealed the deal for himself.

No matter what, he would see to it that Laine Morgan became his.

Roofing was damn hard work. Too hard, as it turned out.

Fuck it, Earl Harlan had thought after suffering one too many cases of heat exhaustion while slamming his nail gun into shingle after shingle on all those endless black tar roofs. After one too many times of coming home to his run-down hut of a house and being dehydrated beyond belief only to find out the hard way that the case of beer he’d lugged home on those nights didn’t really ease that how-in-the-hell-did-I-get-stuck-in-this-rat-hole feeling raging through him. He was ready for more. Ready for the big-time. Ready for someone to respect him for a change.

Nursing what turned out to be a nice crop of pot in the basement of his rental unit and selling it here and there was easier, wasn’t it?

Yes sir. It was damn straight easier.

It was also a damn shame the good ol’ boys in law enforcement didn’t feel the same way.

His trial was short, sweet and to the point, mostly because his assigned deputy public defender was young and inept. She never once considered objecting to anything, to challenging what had to have been an illegal search of his house. Something like that surely would’ve got him off, right? But no. The bitch kept her mouth shut while the prosecution freight trained right over them.

Aaaand hello, prison.

The two-year sentence they gave him could’ve been worse, considering. He ended up serving his slice of time, earning several months off for good behavior—and because of a crowded cell block, thank you very much—and wasn’t it a piece of cake.

Well. Not all of it, no.

He’d made his share of enemies on the inside. Bumped titties with enough of them too. For the most part, he came out on top whenever that happened, all except for that one time. Never a good thing to be caught off guard when a homemade shank is involved.

His eye took the brunt of that bloody fight. He lost sight in it as a result of being sliced from above his eyebrow to down below his cheek. His sightless eye and the scar gouged into the side of his face served as a reminder, every fucking day, of the hell he went through. Of the hell he was
put
through.

Hats off to the thirteen and a half for that—twelve jurors, one judge and his half a flipping chance. And he certainly couldn’t forget to add on one more. The hopeless public defender assigned to his case.

Still, not every second he spent in prison was all bad. Earl had made a few friends. His cellmate, for instance. Jeffrey—call me Jeff, please—was a hell of a guy. He’d been in a few years, long enough to make himself known, respected and maybe even a little feared. All tatted up and pissed off at the world, Jeff reminded him a little of himself. He was ten years older but hadn’t gone any further in his life than Earl had. Dead-ended with drugs and booze, but what the hell. That was the way of the world, wasn’t it?

Sure as hell was. In his world, anyway.

Anyone who ever served time knew that most people on the inside were there because they were set up. Or because someone was out to get them. Or, as in Earl’s case, because of an incompetent lawyer. It was rare that a convict actually admitted to carrying out the crime they were accused of committing.

Except Jeffrey.

He was proud of what he’d done. Proud that he’d tortured those women the way he had. Proud of beating them nearly to death. Hearing him tell it, his reasoning made perfect sense. They were whores, every one of them. Each woman deserved what she got, plain and simple. ‘Course, Earl figured there was a hell of a lot more to Jeff’s tale than he let on.

Regardless, Jeffrey’s story struck Earl like a baseball bat to the head. The man was an inspiration to the pissed off and vengeful, to say the least.

Earl had had his share of women. He liked to fuck. He liked women to fuck him. What he didn’t like was being played. He’d been played more than once. Fucked over, and not in a good way.

Women used sex, used the power of it to get what they wanted. Money, a place to stay, drugs, whatever. It had been a woman who had handed him and his little cash crop over to the cops. He’d turned her down once—
once
. He didn’t have the fifty she wanted for her recreational meth habit. Uh huh. So she made one little phone call to 9-1-1. Ironic that in the end, her doing so would lead him to meeting the man who would change his life.

Fuck ‘em all. Every bitch out there. Every whore. Every selfish cunt who used sex as a way to get what she wanted. Every lazy piece of trash who ever turned her back on him. He’d take care of them, one by one. And as a little tip of the hat to the man who inspired him, he figured he’d do it just the way Jeffrey had.

Nothing like the possibility of a copycat case to get the cops scratching their heads.

And all right, he’d admit that his first time out hadn’t exactly gone the way he planned. He was pissed as hell about that. But for the first time in forever he also felt a little ray of sunshine cutting through the black cloud that always circled his head.

He still couldn’t believe his beginner’s luck.

He knew who Laine Morgan was, had read her name on every piece of letterhead he’d received from the Public Defender’s office. She was the one responsible for assigning that useless twat to his case, the one who let him end up in prison.

Laine Morgan had held his life in her hands and made the conscious choice to fuck him over.

Now it was his turn to do the same damn thing to her.

She was going to be his test case—a little fuck-you-very-much to get him started. It was going to be so easy, like taking candy from a fucking baby. Hell, he’d had it all figured out before he’d even left prison.

Snatching her while she was out was best. Darkness afforded anonymity—that was lesson number one he’d learned from Jeff. Two nights in a row he had parked down the street from her house. He waited and waited, but she never went anywhere except down the driveway to her damn mailbox.

Last night, though, his patience had paid off. Finally, just after dusk, she left her house. All dressed up, she hopped in her fancy-assed car and lit out of there. He’d tailed her, following the unwritten rules and hanging back three or four car lengths as she drove farther and farther away from her picture-perfect neighborhood. Where she was going, he didn’t have a fucking clue. All he knew was that when she stopped, she’d get what she deserved.

It was when they crossed over into Samson County and she made a few well-known turns that the itch started. His skin prickled just like that, lighting him up from his head down to his toes.

As an homage to the man he’d learned so much from, a few days ago he’d driven over to the shit-hole club where it had all started—and ended—for Jeffrey. He paid his respects in his own twisted way, tossing his freshly drained bottle of beer at the black front door as he drove by. Watching the glass shatter had given him a quick yet satisfying rush.

But that bit of instant gratification paled in comparison to the surge he got as he parked a ways down from her car last night and watched her walk into the place.

Even though he knew the plan backward and forward, he used the time she was inside to walk himself through it a few more times. He was as prepared as a boy scout. Everything was ready.
He
was ready.

The wait for her to come back out lasted close to forever. But when she finally did… Halle-fucking-lujah. It was do-or-die time. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway.

He’d had every intention of running balls to the wall with the “do” part of that particular equation. What he hadn’t counted on was having the second half of his plan spin a one-eighty just as quickly and blow up in his face.

The bitch had some guts, he’d give her that.

Furious at both her and the shitty direction last night had gone, he leaned back in the creaky, barely padded metal chair and tapped the edge of Laine Morgan’s driver’s license on the top of his shitty kitchen table while he downed his third shot of the morning. He needed the whiskey for breakfast to numb the agonizing pain in his shoulder and to calm him the fuck down.

Christ, she was just like every other woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Conniving, all of them. Conniving and downright irritating. He saw now that he was going to have to up his game a step or two if he wanted to win this one. And he
would
win. He didn’t have a doubt in his mind about that.

This was just an unexpected sidestep. There was nothing stopping him from moving forward with the rest of his plan while fixing this little mishap at the same time. Hell, he’d already taken the first step in doing that.

He’d left his message in her bedroom, one he knew wouldn’t be misunderstood. The only roadblock in his way that he could see was that damn sheriff. Earl had watched them as they left her house, and even from halfway down the block he could see the determination on Carter’s face as he and the bitch had driven away.

Not that Sheriff Carter mattered. Earl had no choice now except to see this through to the end. He’d finish what he set out to do. He’d take out as many lazy whores as he could. As many as he had to in order to calm his itchy soul. And if there happened to be an extra victim along the way, namely one county sheriff, then what the hell. So be it.

He wasn’t going to let anyone or anything throw a wrench in his plans now.

Laine might’ve dozed on and off, but she hadn’t really fallen asleep. The pain in her head had eased to a dull ache—a
constant
dull ache—but at least the ice-pick-a-thon had stopped spearing her brain every time she moved.

She’d played possum after Tye finished his phone call—a call she couldn’t hear word for word, but the tone of it came from across the hallway crystal clear nonetheless. The call had to do with her and the attack and most likely a lot of assumptions on where she’d been.

She hated keeping him in the dark, but at the same time she loved the patience he showed her. He wanted to push, she could tell, yet he didn’t force her to do or say anything she wasn’t ready to. His patience wasn’t going to last forever though, and facing her anxiety over telling him was going to come sooner rather than later.

When he looked in on her after his call, she considered for a moment rolling over and asking him to sit with her. He would’ve done it. He wouldn’t have so much as hesitated. But she wasn’t quite ready, not after reliving everything with him outside on the porch.

As hard as it was to let all of that out, she found it comforting to have someone else clued in on what had happened to her. And his concern over whether or not she’d been sexually assaulted only helped to open her eyes a little wider, to see him in a light so very different than any she’d seen him in before. His relief that she wasn’t hurt in that way, coupled with his gentle touches, warmed her heart and sent sparks of promise through the rest of her.

She was finding that Tye Carter truly was one big surprise after another.

And the last thing she wanted was for his concern to push him to the opposite end of the spectrum, which could very well happen. She feared that once she told him the whole truth of where she’d been, combined with the ugly things her attacker not only did but said, he might think she’d be skittish or too scared to touch or hold. It could turn out that he might be so worried, thinking he might scar her further, that he’d end up closing himself off from any physical contact with her entirely.

She had to find a way to reassure him that wasn’t the case. Laine was a master at compartmentalizing, she always had been. She’d been attacked out of pure violence and hatred, out of some twisted idea that man had in his head. The assault she had endured had nothing to do with her exploring her sexuality—or anything remotely related to love, sex or relationships. Even if the man’s motives for hurting her stemmed from his shallow way of thinking about sex, his attack was born out of brutality and rage. Laine understood that, and right now she could separate it all inside her head easily enough.

Her concern was whether or not Tye could as well.

Because she truly didn’t know what she would do if he stopped touching her. Every simple hand he placed on hers, every arm he wrapped around her waist, every caress he smoothed over her skin, each touch soothed her as much, if not more, than words sometimes could. He was like a magic elixir she was quickly coming to crave more and more.

Kicking off the covers, she carefully rolled over onto her back, breathing evenly as she stared at the ceiling. Her thoughts and convictions may be clear, but physically she felt like she’d been run over by a Mack truck not only once, but maybe two or three times. She couldn’t stand the awful feeling or the vulnerability that came along with it. She almost laughed to herself for a second, thinking back on what her mother always told her was a sure-fire cure-all for whatever ailed a person.