Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down by _Collection Read Free Book Online

like a one of Bijoux’s testicles. He plopped his carryall on the hood of the car, opened it and rummaged through the contents until he found the foil-wrapped nugget of methamphetamine. The pipe lay underneath some loan documents due at the title company a week ago, next to the Glock .40-caliber pistol he’d started carrying ever since he’d gotten tangled up with Bijoux Watson.
    His fingers fumbled as he jammed the drug into the bowl of the pipe. With the battered Zippo his father had carried in Vietnam, he ignited the crystalized narcotic. Two big lungfuls and all the confidence, power and cojones on the planet coursed through his veins, as thick and fast and strong as the muddy waters a few hundred feet away.
    Chrissie appeared at his side with a canvas bag she’d evidently found in the trunk. She opened it and pulled out a Ziploc sack full of dirty brown powder.
    “Bijoux always traveled with a stash.” She licked her lips and produced a needle and a blackened tablespoon from the bottom of the bag.
    Tom offered her the pipe.
    She grabbed it and inhaled deeply. Then, she set about cooking a dose of heroin.
    “Baby, don’t do that,” Tom said. “Shit’s bad for you, dirty needles and all that other stuff.”
    “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” She lowered her voice. “It makes sex incredible.” She pointed the needle at him. “Gimme your arm.”
    Tom looked at the syringe and then at Chrissie’s face. Her eyes were wide with what he assumed to be anticipation. He wanted to say no, but because he had just ingested over a gram of primo Ice and had all the confidence, power and cojones in the world, he stuck his arm out.
    Chrissie smiled, found a suitable vein and slid the needle in, giving him half the load. She then injected the rest into a blood vessel in her thigh. Together they sat on the grimy asphalt and leaned against the side of Bijoux Watson’s bloody Jaguar. Tom felt like there was nothing he couldn’t do, no task or challenge he couldn’t accomplish. Except for the fact he had no energy, he thought at that moment he could climb Mount Everest.
    Chrissie fell against him and said that just as soon as they came down a little, she’d fuck him so hard his toenails would hurt.
    Later, it could have been thirty minutes or thirty seconds, Tom heard the crunch of tires.
    He opened his eyes as a county squad car pulled up and stopped a few feet from the Jag.
    A deputy got out.
    Tom recognized him and struggled to remember the man’s name. Dean something. Dean, Jr. had been in his wife’s Sunday-school class a couple of years ago.
    “Tom? Is that you?” Deputy Dean squinted in the afternoon sun and leaned down to get a closer look. “Whole town’s looking for you. You ain’t been to the bank in three days.” The deputy rubbed one hand over his mouth, and his eyes got wide as he looked from Chrissie back to Tom. “You okay? What’s wrong with your pupils?”
    Tom nodded and pushed himself off the ground, the uppers and downers in his system making everything deliciously hazy and warm and happy.
    “Dean, it’s damn good to see you.” He enunciated each syllable with extreme precision. “The bank. Um, yes, the bank. The bank. They need these very important documents. At the bank. Very soon, Dean. Can you help me with that?”
    Tom turned his back to the officer and reached inside the briefcase
    “Uh, yeah, sure,” the deputy said. “Anything you need.”
    Tom remembered the man’s last name. Chambers. Dean Roy Chambers, his wife and two children lived in a double-wide on nine acres just outside of town. Tom’s bank had made the loan.
    “Who is she?” the deputy said. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
    “She’s fine.” Tom turned and smiled.
    Then he shot Dean Chambers in the cheek, about a quarter inch to the left of his nose, with the .40-caliber Glock.
    The bullet was one of those fancy armor-piercing hollow-points the liberal gun-control freaks loved to whine about. It