Killers - Blake Crouch [30]
That would have shown the son of a bitch. Bite the hand that feeds you.
“I should have done that,” Donaldson said.
“He hurt you when you were a child.” Mr. K said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yeah. He used to beat the shit out of me.”
“Did he sexually abuse you?”
“Naw. Nothing like that. But every time I got into trouble, he’d take his belt to me. And he hit hard enough to draw blood. What kind of asshole does that to a five-year-old kid?”
“Think hard, Donaldson. Do you believe your father beat you, and that turned you into what you are? Or did he beat you because of what you are?”
Donaldson frowned. “What do you mean what you are? What am I?”
Mr. K turned and stared deep into his soul, his eyes like gun barrels. “You’re a killer, Donaldson.”
Donaldson considered the label. It didn’t take him long to embrace it.
“So what was the question again?”
“Are you a killer because your father beat you, or did your father beat you because you’re a killer?”
Donaldson could remember that first beating when he was five. He’d taken his pet gerbil and put it in the blender. Used the pulse button, grinding it up a little at a time, so it didn’t die right away.
“I think my dad knew. Tried to beat the devil out of me. Used to tell me that, when he was whipping my ass.”
“You don’t have the devil in you, Donaldson. You’re simply unique. Exceptional. Unrestrained by morality or guilt.”
Exceptional? Donaldson had never felt like he was exceptional at anything. He did badly in school. Dropped out of college. Never had any friends, or a woman he didn’t pay for. Bummed around the country, job to job, occasionally ripping someone off. How is that exceptional?
But somehow, he felt that the description fit him.
Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been trying to be normal all of these years, but I’m not. I’m better than normal.
I’m exceptional.
“How do you know this stuff?” Donaldson asked.
“The more you understand death,” Mr. K said, “the more you appreciate life.”
“Sounds like fortune cookie bullshit.”
“It was something I learned in the war.”
“Vietnam?” Donaldson had been exempt from the draft because he didn’t pass the physical.
“A villager in Ca Lu said it to me, before I removed his intestines with a bayonet.”
“Was he talking about himself?” Donaldson asked. “Or you?”
“You tell me. Did you feel alive when you killed your father, Donaldson?”
Donaldson nodded.
“And when you killed the owner of the Pinto?” Mr. K continued.
“Goddamn piece of crap car. I wish I could kill that guy again.”
“How about someone else in his place?”
Donaldson squinted at Mr. K. “What do you mean?”
Another half smile. “The man in my trunk. If I gave you the chance to kill him, would you?”
This bonus excerpt is from the new eBook Break You by Blake Crouch, the next installment in the Andrew Z. Thomas series. It features Luther…
Published February 2011
At long last, the next installment in the Andrew Z. Thomas trilogy…following the events of DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS, Andy Thomas and Violet King are hiding out in the wilds of northern Canada, where Violet has a four-month-old son and a burgeoning romance with Andy. On a cold, rainy night at their cabin in the woods, the promise of an idyllic life that seems just around the corner is shattered when a man from their past, a monster of pure malevolence, returns. What he has in store for them will challenge their understanding of evil and stretch the fibers of their love to the breaking point.
Excerpt from Break You…
Yukon, Canada
Autumn 2004
Andy
Early October.
A cold, midnight rain pattering against the tin roof above our heads.
“We should be drinking whiskey,” Violet said. “Something to warm our bones.”
I set another birch log on the fire and crawled back onto the bearskin rug where Vi had sprawled with her wineglass.
“You’re already cold?” I asked.
“I’m a southern girl. I’m always freezing.”
“Hate to say it, but that doesn’t bode well for you this winter.”
“How cold does