Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [418]
No one had seen him slip behind the trees to vomit up all those precious hamburgers. He stayed there, and when they were finished with the third woman and heading for a fourth, Justin helped her away, trying to make up for his part in the nightmare. When he knew she was safe, he left, sneaking back to the bus, still hearing the laughter and the screams ringing in his ears.
He didn’t want to think about it. He brought his knees up and hugged them to his chest. He needed to think about something, anything else.
He had only been to Boston once before when Eric was still at Brown. It had been one of their last family trips together. They had stayed at the Radisson. He and Eric had even gotten a room to themselves. Their dad let them order room service, which blew them away because he’d always been so tight with money.
They spent one day at a Red Sox game, then the Metropolitan Museum to satisfy his mom. But even that didn’t suck. It had actually been a good time, one of the few that hadn’t ended in a huge argument of some kind. It had left Justin with good feelings about Boston; feelings that now were replaced with sounds of women’s screams for help and the smell of warm beer.
He jumped off the seat and into the aisle, pulling off his T-shirt, wadding it up and kicking it under seat. Then he peeled off the rest of his clothes until he was standing in the bus aisle, wearing only his jockey shorts. That was when he saw Brandon standing in the bus’s door, staring at him. But instead of getting angry, Brandon started laughing.
“I knew it,” he finally said as Justin wrestled back into his blue jeans. “I knew you didn’t have the stomach for this. You’re a coward, just like your fucking brother, Eric. I need to get back and finish things like a real man.”
Then he turned and left, heading toward the park.
CHAPTER 50
Calm. He needed to stay calm and let the liquid course through his veins. Let it do its magic. Already he could feel its strength, its power.
Not that he needed much physical strength. The woman was small, easy to drag. And with the noise and excitement still going on close by, no one would notice the rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs.
But he needed to hurry. He needed to find a more isolated area. The sun was sinking behind the buildings. He didn’t have much time to set up, to get ready. Tonight would be different. He could feel it. Tonight would be the night. Somehow he just knew it.
He stopped, turned and waited while he stared at the woman’s half-naked body, leaves and brush dragging along between her legs. He smiled when he finally saw her exposed chest move just slightly, shallow breaths, barely noticeable. Oh, good. She was still alive. Then he continued dragging her. Yes, tonight he felt quite certain it would happen. He would finally see it tonight.
CHAPTER 51
Maggie drove with the windows rolled down, hoping it would squelch the churning in the pit of her stomach. As she drove, she tried to make sense of all that she had learned from the woman called Eve about the Reverend Joseph Everett. She needed to prepare herself before she confronted her mother. She’d need to arm herself with information for when her mother started to defend the man, because Maggie knew her mother would defend him.
She tried to put aside the horrible images Eve had conjured up. Instead, she should concentrate on the facts. Most of her arsenal of facts was general biographical stuff. As a young man, Everett had been kicked out of the army, an honorable discharge with no further explanation. There was no police record, despite the rape charge that was later dropped by the journalism