Randall #01 - The Best Revenge by Anne R. Allen Read Free Book Online Page B

idea of what kind of weirdoes might be hanging around, as he followed her through the parking lot.
    “Where’s your car?” he said, close to her ear.
    “Over there.” She waved in the direction of the motel, which was separated from the diner lot by a few hundred yards of unpaved dust and weeds.
    “Staying there all by your ownself?” His smile glittered in the reflected neon.
    She wondered whether she could outrun him if she kicked off her sandals.
    “No. Me and my husband.” She said it too loud. Her phoniness hung in the air.  “My, um, husband and I were—well, he just wasn’t hungry, so…”
    “You don’t have no husband.” He grabbed her left hand and held it up to the dim light from the diner’s sign. “No ring.” How come you’re lying to me? I hate to hear a little girl lie.”
    Camilla kicked off her Ferragamos and broke into a run. The dust felt dry between her toes. The heavy room key in her jacket pocket knocked against her side as she ran.
    “What’s the matter with you, little girl? You need me, honey!”
    Room four. She was in room four. She pulled the key out of her pocket.
    “There’s nothing in that room is gonna save you, honey. You gotta spend some time with me.” He ran toward her across the dust.
    She had the key in the lock. It turned. She pushed her shoulder against the door, squeezed inside, and started to close the door, but above her head, the cowboy’s huge, sinewy hand pushed against her. She tried to duck past him, thinking only of getting to her car and escaping this terrible place, but his body blocked her exit. She looked wildly for the phone, until she remembered there was none.
    He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
    “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out right now!”
    “I will, honey; I will. But not until I’ve changed your life.” He circled her, like an animal stalking its prey. “You’re alone, little girl, am I right?”
    She looked around the room for something she could use as a weapon.
    “You’re in a lot of trouble, am I right?”
    She backed toward the bedside lamp—a large chunk of hideous avocado ceramic. It might do some damage.
    “The last thing this world needs is one more sinful little girl.” The man’s eyes glazed and a terrifying grin crept over his face as he reached into the bulging pocket of his denim jacket.
    She reached for the lamp. But it fell over with a wimpy thud. In that instant, all she could think was that this was too wrong—too stupid. She couldn’t die here, shot by some cowboy with bad teeth. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
    “Here,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. “I want to give you this.”
    It wasn’t a gun. It was a small magazine.
    On the cover was written, “Have You Heard About Jesus?”
    He pushed it into her hand, opened the door, and disappeared into the night.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6—Avocados in the Hot Tub
     
     
    The house in Ocean Beach was an unappealing little box of crumbling mustard-colored stucco, wedged between two equally bleak hovels, on a narrow, dead-end street near a rocky stretch of sand that Wave called “Dog Beach.” Camilla hadn’t yet determined if the name referred to the four-legged creatures that were allowed to run free there, or the unattractive men and women who seem to make it their home.
    There was a fair-sized kitchen and a long, skinny living room, carpeted in a matted shag that might have, in the distant past, been one of those colors called “harvest gold” or “sunset yellow,” but now resembled the sands of Dog Beach. There were three minuscule bedrooms, the smallest of which was hers—because “you have, like, no stuff,” Jennifer explained.
    But in the back yard was a hot tub. It wasn’t a spa or a Jacuzzi—just a redwood tub full of water that could be hot if somebody remembered to turn on the heater.
    ~
    The heater was running when Camilla got home from her job at the San Diego Union on an