Read Online Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman - Free Book Online Page A

big hands inside her top to play with her breasts. Lenny’s palms grew sweaty as he thought about his own hands inside the girl’s shirt. He imagined them as soft and squishy as overripe peaches, except for the nubs on each end.
    “So what do you think, Leno?” Kirk asked. “Did I hit her?”
    “Hit who, man?”
    “Hannah Hawk.”
    Lenny shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. You got one of the windows.”
    “I heard her screaming,” Kirk said, “but that doesn’t mean anything.”
    “I thought you were just trying to scare her,” Margie said. “Not hit her.”
    “Hell, what’s the point of that?” Kirk put his gun against the side of Margie’s head. The cold metal went in her ear. “You don’t shoot a gun unless you want to hit something.”
    “Stop that!” she told him.
    “I thought you wanted to be a porno star.”
    “Don’t,” Margie begged.
    Kirk hooked his arm around her throat and shoved the gun until it was almost breaking skin. As he tightened his grip, Margie twitched in panic. Her legs kicked spastically.
    “Bang,” he whispered as he pulled the trigger.
    Click.
    “It’s empty, stupid,” he chuckled.
    Maggie squirmed in his arms and hyperventilated. “You bastard!”
    “Don’t be a crybaby.”
    “You scared the shit out of me!”
    “Oh, quit whining. My gun wasn’t loaded. You got off easy. Ashlynn got her brains blown out by that St. Croix bitch.”
    “Why do you care about her?”
    “Ashlynn was a Barron girl. In Barron, we stick together.”
    “I heard she dumped you,” Margie snickered.
    “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”
    “She was just dating you to piss off her father. Every rich girl likes to fuck her daddy’s nightmare. Although the word at school is she never even let you between her legs.”
    Under Margie’s shirt, Kirk crushed her nipples between his thick fingers, and the girl wailed. “Shit! Shit, stop it!” She wrenched away from him, crying. “You crazy asshole!”
    “Don’t talk about Ashlynn. You hear me? Don’t even say her name to me.”
    Margie’s knees knocked like a baby deer’s. Tears of anger and pain rained down her face along with makeup, and strands of her blonde hair lay plastered on her cheeks. Her lower lip bulged in defiance. “Oh, yeah? Ashlynn, Ashlynn, Ashlynn. As in Ashlynn Steele would never dream of getting banged by Kirk Watson.”
    Kirk shot off the bench with his forearm cocked, and Margie ran. She fell down in her clumsy heels and got up, drenched in mud, but she ran through the park until she reached the footbridge that arched across the Spirit River into downtown Barron. They heard a frantic clop-clop as she sprinted across the bridge, arms pumping. In the middle of the bridge, under the twinkling lights, she finally looked back and realized that Kirk wasn’t chasing her. She stopped, panting, and held out her hand with her middle finger raised. She shouted a curse at the top of her lungs.
    Then she turned and ran until she disappeared into the town.
    Kirk landed his fist on the bench so hard that the vibrations nearly pushed Lenny off the seat. It happened like that with Kirk sometimes. He boiled over like a pot of water, and you didn’t want to be nearby when he did. Lenny had been hit. Burned. Choked. Kirk took an unopened beer bottle and marched toward the nearest oak tree and smashed it into jagged razors against the trunk. Beer foamed white, splashing over him. Glass cut and scratched his hand, drawing blood. Lenny heard murmurings of fright elsewhere in the park.
    Kirk spun back, sucking the blood from his fingers. “We’re not done. You got that? Ashlynn’s dead. People gotta pay.”
    “I hear you, Kirk,” Lenny said softly. “What’s next?”
    “We need to teach Tanya Swenson a lesson. The little bitch ran away and left Ashlynn there. Get her out of school tomorrow, Leno. Bring her to the football field for me. We’ll make sure she gets a message to take home to her daddy.”
    “I