Click – Brothers At Arms #5

Click tapped her cheeks and said, “Wakey, wakey, darlin.”

The woman groaned and moved her head. Finally, she managed to open her eyes.

 Click was stunned when he saw their color. They were a remarkable aquamarine color, more green than blue and as far as he was concerned very unique. He narrowed his eyes at her. Despite how she looked, she was still an unknown. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing sneaking around this place?”

The woman’s eyes widened and she licked her dry lips with her tongue.

 Click’s gaze followed the movement. Then he looked at her again and snarled, “I asked you a question, woman. And I don’t ask twice. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she whispered with a stubborn look on her face.

“Wrong answer, sweetheart.” Click glared at her.

“It’s the only answer I’m giving you.” She tipped her head back and glared up at him.

“Then I guess we’ll see how you answer the same questions when Zeus gets around to asking you.”

The woman scoffed. “I’m not afraid of your Zeus. I answer to no man.”

Click smiled and leaned in close to whisper, “Oh honey, you will, you most definitely will.” Then he took out a ziptie and zip tied her hands to the frame of the bed.

With a shake of his head, he walked out to the main room then a few minutes later, he returned and sat down at his desk. He turned the lights down and opened his laptop. “You’d better get some rest darlin, cuz come morning, you’re gonna find out about Zeus and his lightning bolts, the hard way I think.” He turned his back to her and looked at his screen.

Desi closed her eyes and shivered in fear. She messed up this time. Just like all the other times in the last decade, she’d messed up big. She thought about the last ten, almost eleven years. Tears rolled down her cheeks and soaked into the pillow under her head. She’d been fourteen years old when she came home from school one day and found her mother lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Her mom was almost dead by that time, but she had enough life in her to whisper the man’s name who had done this to her. “He’s a bad man, honey… a bad man who thinks he can’t be stopped.” Her mother reached up and tore the necklace from around her own neck then told her daughter, “Remember me child, never forget me. I will live in your heart and your memories. I left some papers for you in the safe. Clear everything out before you call the police and hide it until you are old enough to go after him. Then just before you kill him… whisper my name in his ear.”

Desi grabbed her mother’s hand and held onto it as her mother breathed her last breath. She was sobbing hard by this time, but she forced herself to get up and go to her mother’s safe. She took everything out of it and put it in a small backpack. All her life Desi and her mom prepared for this day and as much as Desi never wanted this day to come, she was ready for it. She knew what she had to do now. So when she came back out to the living room, she went over to her mother and whispered in her mom’s ear, “I’m ready mama. I know what to do and I won’t let you down.”

Before she left, she phoned the police station and told them her mother had been murdered. The woman who took her call wanted her to stay on the phone. Desi just laid the phone down on the table and walked out the door. She had places to go and a man to hunt down.

When she left her mother’s house, she went out back and drove her mom’s car out of the garage. She knew how to drive, her mom taught her when she was twelve, and as long as she didn’t get caught, she would be fine. She would only drive at night when no one could look into the car and see a kid driving. Over the next few weeks, she made her way from New York City to her grandfather’s farm in Montana, where he raised cattle for sale for slaughter.

As soon as the old man saw her, he knew her mother was gone. He gave her a home and a job. Over the years that followed, he taught her how to protect herself from the likes of men like her mother’s killer. He taught her how to shoot, use a knife, and track people. How to hide in plain sight, how to walk silently. He had been in the Army so he taught her all he knew.

He also called in a few markers and began making things hot for this killer. He found out where the man was at the time so he dropped a dime on the boys. It took them four years to find out who was causing them so much grief and one night —they burned him out.

When her grandfather had stormed out of the house to open the barn doors and let out the animals—one of the men who’d started the fire shot him. He died falling down the front steps and Desi had taken off out the back.

They didn’t bother looking for her. Why they hadn’t she never knew but she was lucky that they had to leave or get caught by the law. She hid all night long and watched the fire trucks fight the fire that took the house, the barn, and the machine shop. She waited and cried many tears while in the shadows as everything she had left was consumed by the fire.

This killer and his family had won a second round in the battle but she vowed she would win the war.

She made her way to the storage area that was far away from the house and hidden by some trees. A place that she and her grandfather had set up in case this very thing happened.

Rolling the doors back, she looked inside to see the car and the safe. She opened the safe and took the items out, loading them into the car. One of the objects was her grandfather’s rifle along with a handgun. She grabbed the knife in its sheath that she knew was really sharp because just last week, she had sharpened it while her grandfather watched.

Finally, she grabbed the to-go bag her grandfather left for her and she put it in the car as well. He told her once a long time ago if this day ever came, she would find everything she needed in this bag. That had been six years ago and for six long years she had been hunting the men who had taken all of her family and she intended to do the same to them.

Now, lying here ziptied, she looked at the man, sitting at the desk. For many reasons, she couldn’t tell him who she was or what she was doing here. She knew he wouldn’t like it, nor did she expect this Zeus character would like it either but that wasn’t her fault. These killers had a lot to answer for and she would be making sure they did pay. Come hell or high water, she had taken a vow in blood that she would see them all pay for their sins and she wasn’t about to let that vow to be incomplete.

Closing her eyes, Desi prayed she would live long enough to see it done. Years, she had been tracking them. The fiends who’d taken everything from her. The men’s faces were imprinted in her memory and she vowed to see them all dead, lying in a bloody heap on the ground. She would send them all to hell, if it was the last thing she ever did.

Knowing she wasn’t going anywhere, she kept her eyes closed and fell into a troubled sleep. A fitful, terror filled sleep plagued with nightmares of her hideous past.

The faces of the men who had destroyed her life floated in her dreams as they sneered and snickered at her. ‘We will kill you someday, just like your worthless family.’

Next, she saw her mother reaching out to her, a bloody hand holding the necklace. “Promise me…” her mother spoke breathlessly.

Her grandfather had that fire of fury in his eyes as he told her the day before he died, “Get them Desi, they need to pay…” Her grandfather stated in his low voice.

“I will, I promise!” Desi yelled out in her sleep.