Page 32 of Bleeding Outside the Lines

Nate hits him with the hose.

Wake up motherfucker.

The man’s head lolls. I nod to Nate. Another blast of water.

One eye opens and then another, his head lifts.

“You’re going to rot in jail,” he spurts. Blood coats what’s left of his teeth.

Expand.

Contract.

Manic laughter bubbles into the air, and Elijah Cranston smiles. It’s a loser’s smile. A dying man’s smile.

I pick up the staple gun off the table, and pull the trigger a few times, sending staples flying in his direction.

His face slackens, all composure abandoned.

“Please,” he slobbers. “I didn’t hire her. I swear on my kid’s lives.”

Expand.

Contract.

“You mean the kid who tortured Isabella? That kid?”

“He didn’t! I swear!”

“You took a teenage girl into foster care, and then adopted her so that your piece of shit son could have a plaything. Do you know what the bones in the human body sound like when they are crushed by a ton of speeding metal?”

Elijah blubbers, tripping over his own lies as he tries to get the words out of his mouth.

The table of tools calls to me like it always does. When my fingers graze the sledgehammer, Elijah pulls in a hard breath.

“This one?” I lift the sledgehammer to give him a better view. It’s heavy in my hands, but a good heavy. A familiar one. It’s like an old, worn T-shirt, the one with all the holes that you can’t seem to throw away. It’s a part of you. The wooden handle looks and feels scarred like me.

A smile creeps over my face. I’m like a kid in a goddamn candy store.

“Nate! Nate! He wants this one.” I hold the hammer up for his approval.

He only grunts in response. I can never tell if he wants to laugh and is afraid, or if I’m not funny. Oh, well.

I lift the hammer over my head, bringing it down on Elijah’s knee.

Screams fill the room, echoing off the soundproof walls.

“You son of a bitch! It wasn’t me!”

“Maybe paralyzing Junior wasn’t enough. Maybe I should put him down too.”

His expression droops. “I know who hired her,” he mumbles. With his admission, his face comes back to life, the skin pulling taut over his features.

But I don’t even care at this point if he knows anything about who hired Ruby. His wife and daughters deserve better. Isabella deserved better.

The hammer drops to my feet, the metal hitting the concrete with a thunk that reverberates around us. The knife I pick up to replace it is unfamiliar and I hold it in the light to admire it. The silver blade gleams. It’s not a tool I normally use. It’s delicate where I am rough, creating art in places one would not normally expect. But I’m not an artist. Not yesterday, not today. I lack the patience, the finesse.

I shove the knife all the way to the hilt into Elijah’s kidney. With the handle tight in my grip, I twist. His screams sound like music to my ears.

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