Whatever food they were able to salvage from the grocery they’d piled up in the main lobby behind the front desk. There were boxes of food packed with canned goods. He grabbed a hostess cake and ripped the bag open. He stuffed the pie into his mouth and in two bites it was gone.
He ripped a Gatorade out of its plastic ring older and chugged half the bottle. The yellow liquid dribbled down his chin. He gave a few throaty coughs and then headed back out to the courtyard where most of his crew was still passed out.
Jake saw Frankie sprawled out on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Jake kicked Frankie’s boot. Frankie didn’t move. Jake sent his toe harder in the side of Frankie’s leg, shaking his whole body.
“Wake up, asshole,” Jake said.
Frankie moaned. He jerked his head up. He squinted his eyes open and put his hand up to shield them from the sun.
“What?” Frankie asked.
“Where’s the girl?”
It took Frankie a minute to process what Jake had told him. Jake kicked him again, impatiently.
“I don’t know, man. I think she’s still in my room,” Frankie said.
“Wake up the rest of the boys and have them meet us in your room then.”
Jake and his boys killed everyone in town they could find. The only souls that got away from them, were the three girls that Frankie let escape. Jake had thought about who could have killed Garrett and he still wanted justice. He would find the people that murdered his brother and make them pay.
He didn’t think the girls had any weapons on them to kill Garrett with, and Jake had also considered that it could have been a drifter passing through, but he wanted to narrow the field of who to hunt down, and he had a good idea to determine if it was the girls who did it.
Jake allowed his boys to keep the mother around. It was a good… stress-reliever for them. They needed to let off some steam from time to time and she reluctantly provided the services to do so.
Jake pushed the door to Frankie’s room open and she lay naked on the bed. Her wrists were tied to the headrest. Black and blue bruises spotted her legs and neck. Her eyes had opened at the sound of the door.
The bed next to the one she was lying on had some crumpled sheets. Jake tore one off and placed it over her body, covering her up. Unlike the rest of his crew, he hadn’t touched her.
The cigarette Jake had was down to a nub, so he dropped it to the carpet, putting it out with the toe of his boot. He pulled out the cigarette from his pack and lit it. He took a drag and sat down on the bed across from her. He just sat there, smoking and staring at her.
Her lower lip was cut and swollen, her mangled hair half-fell over her face, partly hiding her eyes from view. She tried to shift her body under the sheets, and in doing so, the top par of the sheet fell away, exposing one of her breasts.
Jake leaned forward reaching his hand out. Her body shuddered as she recoiled trying to escape his touch, but he pulled the sheet back up, covering her.
She started breathing heavy. Jake took another drag from the smoke, watching her examine him. Trying to understand why he was here.
“Let me go,” she said.
Jake tapped the end of his cigarette. The bits of grey ash fell to the carpet and on top of his boot.
“What’s your name?” Jake asked.
Her voice was barely above a whisper when she spoke. The name came out in hushed breaths.
“Hannah,” she said.
“Hannah. A beautiful name,” Jake said.
Jake took another drag on the cigarette. The smoke began to cloud his face from her view. It became thick and heavy in the room. She coughed a little.
“Have you had anything to drink or eat?” Jake asked.
“No.”
Jake rose from the bed and left the room, just as Frankie and a few of the others were stumbling in.
“The rest wouldn’t budge, Jake. Everybody’s passed out stone cold. It got wild last night,” Frankie said.
“Search the rooms. Look for any women’s clothing and bring it to me. Nobody touches her this morning. Just drop the stuff off.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem, Jake,” Frankie said.
Jake headed back up to the motel lobby, grabbed a box of peanut butter crackers, two bottles of water, and a Gatorade. When he returned to the room he saw that the men were waiting outside.
“Everybody leave,” Jake said, pushing past them and entering the room.
His crew scattered, most of them stumbling back to bed. When Jake entered he saw a line of pants, blouses, and shirts on the dresser. He set the crackers and Gatorade next to them and walked over to the side of the bed. He bent down intimately close to her. He placed his hand gently on her face and brushed the hair out of her eyes. He held her small chin in his hand.
“I’m going to untie you. If you do anything stupid I’ll bring everyone in here and every single one of my men will fuck you. Do you understand me?” Jake asked.
She nodded her head. Jake reached up and untied the rope binding her to the bed. Red lines marked her wrists made by the rope she desperately struggled against to free herself. Jake tossed her the clothes.
“Once you change I have some food for you,” Jake said pointing to the peanut butter crackers on the dresser.
“The bathroom’s over there. Come out when you’re done,” he said.
Hannah clutched the sheet to her chest and picked up the clothes Jake had thrown her. She walked to the bathroom and shut the door. A few minutes later she came out wearing a shirt that was a few sizes to large and a pair of baggy jeans. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and walked to the dresser. Her hands shook when she picked up the box of crackers. She tried opening one of the packs, but was to weak to do it.
Jake grabbed the pack from her hand and ripped one end of the plastic open. He extended his hand, offering it to her. His hand lingered in the air for a moment before she took it. The first cracker went to her limps slow, but she brought the rest to her mouth greedily. She grabbed the bottle of water and chugged it down, coughing a bit from drinking to fast.
Once she was finished with one pack she tore open another one and devoured it, continuously sipping water while she did.
Jake sat on the bed across from her patiently waiting for her to finish. Once she was done he leaned forward, his hands folded together.
“What were you and your family doing here?” Jake asked.
“Vacation,” she said.
“Where are you from?”
“California.”
Hannah’s eyes watered. The swollen lip started to quiver. Her head dropped and then she started nodding.
“What did your husband do?” Jake asked.
Hannah wiped her eyes on the shirtsleeves and rubbed her nose clean of any snot dribbling down.
“H-He was a financial investor.”
“And what were you guys doing in Ohio on your vacation?”
“We were doing a cross-country trip. My h-husband and I wanted o-our girls to see the country.”
Jake could see her barely holding it together. Her whole body was shaking. She was tired and afraid. She had no idea where her girls were and no husband. Jake knew, just as she did, that her life was over.
“What you did to save your girls was courageous, Hannah. You’re a very brave woman. Frankie would have raped all of them,” Jake said.
Jake stood up and paced the room. He ran his hands through his matted hair.
“You see Frankie’s different than I am. He lacks a certain amount of control. He’s more animal than man. He’s vicious, dangerous, manipulative, and angry. Whatever he wants he takes. He doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way. Now, you add him to this type of climate where everything is chaos? Where there’s no law, no rules, no decency? Well… This is a world he was made for and he’ll live for a very, very long time.”