Page 42 of Deadly Obsession
He was gone, and all that was left was the rope that had bound him. I’d completely forgotten that I’d sneaked him the knife, and now I had to admit as much to my friends.
“Fuck! James, where are you?”
I took a deep breath and headed towards the living room, where the others were taking turns being hysterical and comforting each other. I couldn’t bring myself to approach them just yet. Instead, I made my way back outside to James’s truck. Stepping over Lola without looking down at her, I opened the back door and began to rummage through the interior.
I had no idea if I truly knew who James was anymore, but I was certain that a manlike himwould have a few survival items hidden around.
“There we are,” I said out loud to myself when I pulled out a red medical bag from under the back seat. It was full of supplies I didn’t know all the uses for.
I eagerly grabbed the gauze, a big bandage, and the medical tape. Digging a little deeper into the bag, I randomly grasped a small white bottle with the bold letters VA on the cap.
“Oxycodone. Yes, please.” Returning the bag to the spot where I’d found it and shutting the door, I stepped back over Lola and headed inside.
“Where’s James?” Brian questioned the moment I entered the room.
“He’s gone,” I said quickly, then tried to change the topic. “But look! I found some really good painkillers. Here, take one. It’ll help.” I attempted to open the bottle but the pain in my shoulder spiked, making me drop it.
Luckily, Danielle was there to pick it up and open it, dispensing a pill and placing it in Brian’s palm before handinghim the only drink in reach. A bottle of Fireball. “What do you meanhe’s gone, Sera?” she said in a broken voice.
Brian swallowed the pill, chasing it with three gulps of the cinnamon-flavored whiskey. Danielle snatched it from him and took just as many.
“Right, I tied him up perfectly. He couldn’t have gotten loose,” Brian added.
Danielle placed a pill into my waiting hand, and I popped it into my mouth before grabbing the whiskey and taking a quick shot.
“I may have sneaked him a knife when I ran in there earlier.” I moved over to the sofa chair, carefully pulling my hoodie off till I was in just my black Sullen Art sports bra, and examined the wound. It really wasn’t as bad as it felt.
“You did what? So he isn’t innocent and that was him out there!” Brian yelled, and I flinched out of habit. Ever since Micheal, I couldn’t bear to be yelled at.
Thankfully, Danielle came to my rescue. “Brian, there’s no way that was him. He’d have to be the Flash to beat us out there in the truck,” she said, but her tone told me she wasn’t so sure either. “Sera, let me help you with that. I’m a vet tech back home. Not the same as a nurse, but I know how to work a bandage.”
So much for none of us knowing more than CPR.Then again, I didn’t know how much of a difference there was between animal patients and human patients.
It took Danielle a moment to walk over to the table of liquor and swipe up a bottle of vodka with a blank look on her face.
“What’s that? Fuck!” I hissed as she pulled off the top and poured the alcohol onto my open wound.
“That’s for setting James loose without telling either of us,” she said coldly without even looking at me. Then she took the gauze and bandages from my lap and began working on my shoulder. “It was just a small buckshot pellet. When weescape this place, you’ll have to have a doctor actually dig it out of you so you don’t get an infection.” She spoke softly while working some of the gauze into the hole in my shoulder with her finger.
It hurt but the pain killer was already starting to kick in. I raised the whiskey bottle to my mouth and took another shot.A little more couldn’t hurt?I liked pain, but I think I’d found my line. Getting shot wasn’t going to become a new fetish for me.
“Look, we don’t know where James went. He could have run for help. There’s a lake not far from here. He could be out there right now, trying to make it across to one of the other cabins and get us help,” I stated, my eyes shifting towards the sliding glass doors, imagining that I could see him right now, shoulder-deep in the icy water, attempting to save us all.
Once Danielle was done patching me up, the two of us went around and checked that all the entrances were shut, locked, and covered. We’d all agreed that our best bet at this point was to bunker down and wait for help. Attempting to pass the time, we engaged in a spontaneous game of “fuck, marry, and kill” but after the twentieth round, we fell silent. Aside from the growling of our stomachs.
After we’d watched what happened to Jade when she ate the ice cream, none of us would dare consume anything, apart from the water straight from the tap, or the alcohol apparently. An hour later, Brian limped over to the table, scanning the bottles of liquor, appearing to decide that if death was upon us, he didn’t wish to be coherent.
Danielle, on the other hand, was pacing the room. Shotgun in hand and eyes darting from the front door to where Jade still sat on the couch with a blanket over her, just like Lola.
I’d actually been about to dip off when the muffled sound of a distant gunshot broke the silence. Danielle rushed over to the window and peeked through the closed curtain, while Brian and I sat up and stared in her direction.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JAMES
It took much longer than I’d expected for the target to appear. More than an hour. Maybe two. My limbs had begun to fall asleep, and I had to quietly shake them out one at a time. Just as I considered going farther out to try to find his camp on my own, I heard the snapping of twigs. Someone was headed in this direction at a pace fairly fast for just an afternoon stroll.
Slowly moving backwards and closer to the trees at my side, I ensured I was well out of sight. And less than a hundred yards down the hill from me, out from a thick patch of pine trees, stepped a man. Dressed in all-black, tactical-style clothing much like my own. He looked to be just a few inches shy of six-feet tall, with a strong build but one that he’d let go a bit, and he was wearing the classicCall of DutyGhost mask. But the mask itself wasn’t what truly caught my attention. It was the stonewashed bone crown resting just above it.
