Page 8 of Along for the Ride

I shiver until I feel warm and my eyes are too heavy to keep open a moment longer. With the city’s lullaby thrumming around me, I welcome the comforting embrace of a much-needed sleep.

ChapterFour

Karson

George needed us to do one more hit near the city before we set off on our road trip, and Gentry was pissed about it. Not me. I fucking love doing hits. If I were stuck at a day job, I’d probably hang myself and be real dramatic about it before I do.

I just love killing. Was born to do it. Just like an artist or musician has a drive to draw or play music, I have an innate desire to slice throats and practice macrame with intestines. Going against it would be so...unnatural.

I unthread the silencer and holster my pistol. We’ve finished the hit, but it feels incomplete. Sometimes a gun just isn’t enough. It lacks the thrill because it’s so quick. So effortless. A pull of a trigger andbam,they’re gone.

Boring.

I like to play with my victims. A nice mix of psychological torture and physical torment is usually enough to satisfy me, but sometimes I keep going after they’re dead. Sometimes killing them just isn’t enough.

Gentryhateswhen I play. He’s way too serious. He sees it as a means to an end, and while he enjoys the thrill of it as well, he doesn’t understand my need to drag it out. It’ssupposedto titillate you. If it wasn’t so much fun, people wouldn’t do it serially. If you love your job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life, right? Well, I fucking love my job when I’m allowed to do it my way.

I let Gentry take the lead on our last hit, but now I’m crawling out of my skin to have a little fun with this one. I skim the room and listen. Drawers open and close behind me on near-silent rollers—rich fuck furniture never squeaks and squeals. Gentry’s rifling through shit, looking for some cash, so I turn back to the man slumped on the floor in front of me. His pale hand presses against his abdomen, fighting to hold his blood inside his body. It’s a losing battle. A red stain is already spreading across his jeans. His lips part in an open-mouthed pant as he tries to get more air. Nothing is wrong with his lungs, but he doesn’t have enough blood to push the oxygen to his brain and probably feels like he’s drowning.

Lovely.

I grab my knife from my pocket and flick it open. The moment he sees the shiny metal blade, his eyes widen and he opens his mouth to scream. I leap toward him and cover his mouth with a gloved hand before the initial sound erupts from his lungs. He strains against my grasp, but I refuse to let him alert my brother to my game. I’m not in the mood to be knife-blocked.

“Shh, rich boy. You need to conserve your energy for dying,” I whisper with a laugh. I tease his neck with the blade, running the shining silver against the faintly pulsing skin.

Tears fall from his eyes, but I feel no pity. I particularly dislike his kind—well-off people who are younger than me. This fuck can’t be older than twenty-five and he has more money than God.

Fuck him.

With a sharp jerk of my wrist, I nick the sensitive skin just beneath his ear. His eyes widen again, and he squeals behind my hand. That sheer display of instinctual panic gets me hard. No matter who they are, their fear goes right to my dick.

I feel for the pocket of emptiness by his right shoulder and plunge the knife into him. His eyes bulge out of his head and his feet push against the floor, but he’s losing steam. I pull the knife from his flesh.Pop.I fucking live for that momentary feeling of suction as the steel battles to remain buried where I’ve placed it. It almost makes me giddy.

A weak trickle of blood oozes from the new wound, and this guy doesn’t know what to do with himself. He removes his hand from the bullet hole in his gut and clamps it on his shoulder. Life is full of decisions, and I suppose death is as well. He’s just made a terrible one.

I reach down and plunge the knife into his gunshot wound, twisting it within the valley of his already grievous injury. The flood gates open and create a crimson pool around his lap. Each breath he takes grows smaller until they’re little more than quick gasps through flared nostrils.

Satisfied he no longer has the strength to scream, I remove my hand from his mouth and dip my gloved finger into his gut wound. It comes away soaked and slick. Leaning forward on my knees, I create a little artwork above his lolling head. My fingers swirl along as I write, and I keep having to dip my finger in to add more paint. His mouth just opens and closes like a fish stuck on land each time I dip back into the inkwell. He can’t even keep his eyes open now, and they’ve become tiny slits as his life force drains from him.

Above his head is a message, dripping downward in an eerie pattern. It looks like something out of a horror movie or some shit, but instead of something cryptic likeREDRUM,it says “Kiddie didler.”

I snap a picture and turn the phone screen toward him, but he doesn’t even react to my fucking art. Rude.

When I’ve grown bored, I finish him off by slicing his throat and letting him bleed like the rich little piggy he is. The sound of a knife going through neck flesh actually gets to me a little. Real squelchy.

“Much better,” I whisper.

I wipe my blade on a rag and pocket it as I stand up.

“It’s spelled diddler, dumbass,” Gentry says behind me. Judgmental prick. “Sure doesn’t look like the gunshot killed him, Karson. How will we explain that to George?”

“All I did was shoot him. I swear.”

Gentry lifts the man’s slumped head, which is nearly disconnected from his neck. “Real sharp bullet.”

I shrug. “I helped him along. The train was coming too slowly and he was suffering.”

“Aren’t you a fucking saint.” He lets the head slump forward again. “You complicate things when you use multiple weapons. We get in, eliminate, rob, and get out.”

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