CHAPTER 20
The big mansion just a couple of miles outside Huntington Beach was the perfect place, the perfect resort to find my sanity. At least so I thought. When I arrived there, I was confident it was the right decision to make. Well… It wasn’t. In the first two hours of my arrival I had walked around the house for five times… at least, walked through every single room another five times and finally decided that was the worst idea I’ve ever had. Away from the civilization, the only entertainment I had was a boxing bag and the fridge which emptied in a mind-blowing pace.
I had purchased the house when I was experiencing the good times, when a single kill earned me more than hundred grand and when California was full of criminals and everyone was eager to get rid of them. I was the one to name the price back then, clearly not anymore. Now I received twenty thousand dollars for a single job, and only if I was lucky. Over the last years, more and more assassins showed up, taking all the good jobs from me. Somehow I was even thankful; most of them would’ve sent me straight to jail. They were too big for me at the time and I was too stubborn to admit I couldn’t handle something.
My arms touched the boxing bag in a perfect angle each and every time, driving hits that would be deadly to a human, but to a bag, well, let’s just say, from the third person view it looked like I wasn’t putting enough effort in it. Sweat was dripping down my forehead and I wiped it away with my black boxing glove. Each muscle in my body tensed up. I had realized I had muscles I wasn’t even aware of. Yes, I used to train, but not in boxing.
Last week passed with me kicking the living crap out of the punching bag, that just showed how bored I was without a tv and a pc. God, I even longed for company! Me! The person who hates humans and believes every single on of them is just a burden to this world. An unnecessary weight to carry. At least Trent kept me occupied in the evenings, he was calling every single night to make sure I hadn’t given in to the tempting voice of suicide. That just showed he didn’t know me at all. Although I had a thought of jumping off the roof. I had forced myself to go up to check how the surroundings looked. But it was just because some stray dog was attacking the grocery bag. For god sake, I would’ve shared if only he asked me to. Trent kept calling me more often after I told him how tempting the ground looked from the roof.
The first time he called me was to yell at me. He blamed me for Duke’s black eye and I pretended I didn’t know anything about a goddamn black eye. Why should I? But once he described me how it started at the inner corner of his eye and ended somewhere around his eyebrow, I got very proud of myself. It was a shame I hadn’t broken his skull, tho.
"Arrogant bastard!" I hit the bag, pretending it was Duke who received the punch. "How dare you make me fall for you?!" I yelled throughout the house. My voice echoed through the room. My phone vibrated somewhere on the bench just few feet away. I drove another hit in the bag before I walked past it, taking the gloves off on the way. I looked down on my swathe covered knuckles. They were soar. Well what did you expect, girl? You’ve been punching the crap out of that bag for days. Yes, it was the only thing I had been doing through the days. I bent down to see the caller’s ID. Maddox.
"Surprise, surprise! Look who decided to call!" Yes, I was that desperate. I smiled and tried to regain a steady breathing. Something or someone was yelling rather loudly at the other end of the conversation.
"Aw, somebody missed me. So, what’s up?" I cocked my eyebrow on his question, still hearing the masculine shouts. Someone was ready to pull a fight and he was asking ‘what’s up?’ Yeah, seemed like Madd. I gave in to a chuckle.
"Tell me you’re not serious! Tell me you’re fucking joking!" I was forced to move the phone away my ear, the yelling got too loud even for my deaf comfort. Somebody’s in a bad mood.
"What the hell is going on there?" I spoke, crossing the big room with all kinds of sport equipment. I walked through the sliding glass door and out on the porch in the warm afternoon sun. The mansion was just in a mile run from the beach, so, yes, in the evenings I ran to the beach, but I didn’t dare to swim in the ocean. I’ve always had this fear from open waters, who knew what kind of monsters lived underneath the calm surface?
"It’s nothing, really," Maddox shoved something in his mouth, he was champing into the conversation. When Madd told it was nothing, obviously something was deadly wrong.
"You tell me to calm the fuck down?! This is bullshit!" Maddox murmured something over the background noise, but I didn’t listen to him, I found it more interesting to keep my attention on the deep voice who sounded extremely similar to Duke’s. In fact it was Duke. Somebody was in deep shit. It was really interesting how I found that situation amusing. I was a bad person.
"Is that… Duke?" I bent over when I saw a black cat running towards me. I pet the furry thing, wondering how it got here. There was no one in the range of at least two miles. He purred in to the touch.
"Oh that?" Well yeah, it was kind of hard to miss the shouts, don’t you think? I rolled my eyes as the cat purred. "Yeah, he’s having a hissy fit."
"Over what?" I sat on the ground and the little beast jumped in my lap.
"Michelle kind of spilled it."
"Spilled it? With it you mean everything about you and Trent?" The black cat leaned over my sweat covered chest and hit my chin with his nose. An attention seeking fur ball.
"Yeah… He’s kind of on a rampage now." Madd was talking like it was no big deal, I could even see him shrugging his shoulders on the statement.
"Maddox get the fuck off the phone!" It was Trent who was yelling now. It was a relief I was not there, I was hundred percent certain, it all would’ve came down on me.
"Hold your balls, I’m talking to Morrison." Silence. Dead silence. Awkward dead silence. Very awkward dead silence. "So how’s it going?" When he spoke, it felt like an enormous weight had fell off my chest. For a moment there I thought Duke had killed them both.
"Fine. Are you sure it’s fine to be talking to me instead of laying the truth to Duke?" The truth some may ask? The truth was we all weren’t as bad as Duke thought. He was over reacting with all the serial killer stuff. A serial killer would not feel regret when killing someone close to him, but, hell, I would. After the first thirty minutes, ‘cause only then it would probably sink in.
"Oh yeah…" He exclaimed, "That cocksucker has earned a lifetime as a wacko. Right now he’s looking at me like he’s about to kill me, but hey, he can’t, I’m the fucking killer here, not him." He was little too amused for all of this. Somehow I even felt sorry for Duke, no matter how he was behaving around me, it was hell to find out his friends, let alone his best friends were murderers. The perfect start of the day.
"True. So… How’s it going? Hmm… I’m bored as hell and pretending my boxing bag is Duke's face." My hand gently touched the back of my new friend. Actually, my only friend.
"So…No party?"
"I’m in the middle of nowhere, you little alcoholic, and I don’t have friends." Lying. I had one. He was making himself comfortable in my lap, ready to shut off. Really, friend? I hadn’t planned on staying outside until you wake up, I wanted to do a good nothing, not lay here with you.
"Motherfucker!" It sounded like somebody slapped Madd. Wow. Who dared to do something that monstrous?
"Elle…" I froze hearing Trent’s voice. I was supposed to be there, with Duke, I was supposed to protect him and what was I doing? Pretending to punch him. I remembered the feeling when my fist connected with his cheek, it was an indescribable pleasure. But then again, he had Michelle, so no worries, until she goes crazy and decides to use her stabbing abilities. "He’s driving me mad."
"And why are you telling me this? It’s not like I could help." I leaned against the brownish wall. This conversation suddenly had become tiring.
"You could talk to him…" He spoke with a slight hope in his voice. Sorry, to be a disappointment, but I was not willing to face him.
"There’s no fucking way in hell I’m going to talk to her!" Duke yelled in the background, making me smile. So he remembered the last time he saw me? Or he reacted that way just because he wasn’t very fond of me?
"See?" I looked in the deep, seeing the shore of the ocean. Should’ve gone for a run and left my phone here. Yeah, that would’ve been nice. Instead of trying to figure a mess I wasn’t even responsible for, I would try to figure out the mess in my head.
"Sit the fuck down before I tie you to the couch!" Why couldn’t he just let him go? Oh yeah, he would’ve gone straight to the police department. "Listen, he can’t be around people. He has to come to the terms with this."
"That wouldn’t be a good idea, he wants to kill me and vice versa." I sighed. I really didn’t want to kill him, just to make him suffer.
"Five hundred bucks for each hour you spend with him."
"Thousand..." The joy started to flow in me. Just mention money and my joy was all over the place. "And a half."
"You’re pushing it…" He sighed deeply.
"Fine…" My smile disappeared, "A thousand." I just loved a good bargain, and this just proved Trent was willing to do practically anything for his friend, so did I, only for money.
"Deal. Just so you know he’ll probably be wasted until we get there." Wait, how did he know where exactly was I? I had never mentioned the precise coordinates of the mansion; I just told it was out of the town. Wait, no, I didn’t even want to know.
"I don't care, just make it fast." As soon as the conversation ended and I was left looking at the phone in my hand, I realized what I had agreed to. It was probably going to take at least a day for everything to sink in which meant twenty four hours of constant arguing and maybe even fighting. I predicted he would go for a run as soon as my eyes closed shut, so maybe he wouldn’t last here even for a day. Hmm… How much would I gain in the end? Oh the possibilities.