and I’ll patch you up.” Chrissie pulled out the chair from behind the desk.
He did as requested.
Chrissie pulled the shirt away and dumped some tequila in the wound. The pain knifed through his side like a sling blade, burning through the last of the heroin in his system.
He struggled not to scream.
Chrissie patted the wound dry with a paper napkin she found on the floor. She fashioned a bandage out of Tom’s handkerchief and fastened it over the injury with Scotch tape. The movement and activity were agony and made Tom nauseous.
He burped and tasted alcohol and cigarettes. He wanted to nail Chrissie but it hurt too much.
Finally she was finished. She fixed another hit of Ice and held the pipe to his mouth. He took a couple of puffs and felt the vigor return, though not as strong as last time.
“It hurts,” he said.
“I know, baby.” Chrissie got out the spoon and dumped a thumbnail portion of heroin in it. After a moment’s hesitation, she added a little more. Using Tom’s lighter, she heated the drug until it was liquid, then drew it into a syringe.
“Here you go, Tommy. This’ll make everything better.” She took his arm and injected the full load. He’d never felt anything like it in his life. The alcohol, speed and heroin combined to make him alert but nearly unable to move. Not like he cared to go anywhere. He was warm and comfortable in the padded leather chair, glowing with confidence and power and euphoria.
After a while, he was vaguely aware of Chrissie carrying the duffel bags outside. He kept his eyes open but didn’t really see anything until the television set across the room turned on.
Chrissie dropped the remote control on the desktop. The noise startled him.
He blinked and found himself staring at the talking head on the big screen. She was one of the anchors for the station in Waco, the one with the bad permed hair.
The image on the screen shimmered and became the parking lot by the Brazos. A shot of Bijoux Watson’s Jaguar and a pair of EMTs loading a body onto an ambulance. That dissolved into a photograph of Tom, his wife and their children. Their Christmas card from last year.
“I—I—I love you, baby.” Tom looked at Chrissie, standing in front of the desk with the keys to the Chevy in her hand. His voice was barely above a whisper.
She didn’t reply. Her image grew hazy in the dull light of Bijoux Watson’s office.
Tom managed to turn his head back to the TV.
The cameras showed his house, the flowers in the front beds he and his oldest son had planted last month. His wife appeared on-screen, mumbling to the reporters, words too indistinct to comprehend. Tom knew he should be sad but wasn’t. His breathing became shallow, but it didn’t matter. Tom summoned what energy he could and forced his head to make the long slow turn back to where Chrissie stood.
But she was gone.
Chapter Seven
Mariah Stewart
Haven’t we all dreamed about revenge at one time or another? Getting an abusive boss fired, leaving an unfaithful spouse, or killing a disloyal best friend are all common fantasies—rarely admitted and never discussed. In “Justice Served,” bestselling writer Mariah Stewart shows what might happen when a young woman does what the rest of us only think about in our darkest moments. It is a tale of vengeance that takes you to corners of the human heart better left unexplored in real life. And in classic Mariah fashion, the many twists and turns make this story anything but a straightforward tale of justice and revenge.
Chapter Eight
Justice Served
Every time I think back on that night, I can see myself poised at that exact moment in time. I watch the story unfold—it’s like watching a movie, you know?—and I wish to God I could relive that instant when I did the unthinkable.
I wait for that split second when I could change what happened, when I could do what I should have done, even if it killed me. Dying that night, possibly as a hero, sure beats the shit out of living with the memory of my cowardice.
It always starts at the same time and place, and try though I might to make it turn out differently, it never does. I see it as it happened, over and over and over.
I am driving Jessie home in my car—not the one I have now, but the one I had that night. The streets are quiet, it’s almost two in the morning, and we both have a pretty decent buzz on from all the drinks we’d had that night, Jessie in particular. She’d left her car at the lot rather than drive herself and I offered to drop her off since we lived in the same town, though several blocks apart. We knew each other casually, the way you know someone who works where you work, but who’s never worked with you. We’d always been cordial to each other, but never really had all that much to say. Maybe if she’d worked there a little longer, we’d have been a little closer, I don’t know. In any event, she was in my car because she’d had more to drink than I had, and the consensus among our coworkers was that her judgment was more impaired than mine.
A lot they knew…
So anyway, in my mind’s eye, I see my car drifting slowly through the night, almost like a leaf floating downstream, taking the corners carefully, pulling up in front of her place and putting the car in Park.
“Do you need help?” I ask her. “Want me to come up with you, or wait while you get the door open?”
Jessie looks out the window to the front porch of the three-story Victorian house. There are three mailboxes alongside the front door, one for each apartment. I know that Jessie lives alone on the second floor. I follow her gaze and notice that one of the lights attached to either side of the front door is missing a bulb, but I don’t mention it.
“I’m okay. I’ll be fine.” Jessie holds up her keys and gives them a little shake. “Just peachy. Not to worry…”
She opens the door and swings it wide, unbuckles her seat belt and slides to the edge of the seat.
“Thanks for the ride. ‘Preciate it.” She pushes herself out of the seat and bends down to face me. “See you tomorrow.”
“I can pick you up in the morning if you need a ride,” I tell her, but she’s already slammed the door and is making her way up the sidewalk, more steady on her feet than I would have expected.
Out of habit, I lock the doors, then reach into the backseat and grab my bag and pull it by the strap and yank it to me, and some of the contents fall onto the floor behind me. Rather than take the time now to scoop them up, I plop the bag onto the passenger seat where Jessie had been sitting. In this brief time, she’s made it up the steps of the house and is at the front door. I put the car into Drive, and start to lift my foot from the brake when, out of the corner of my eye, I first notice the shadow moving along a line of trees to the left of the house. I turn my head and there are several more, creeping through the dark toward the porch, and I blink, not sure if I’ve seen anything at all. But then, there, the shadows draw closer to the house, like wolves stalking in the night.
My hand falls to the door handle and I start to open it, when I realize one
