Beard Up(68)

I came up to my knees, but stayed where I was, while I watched what was happening in front of me play out.

Tunnel took Josh by the throat and lifted him up as if he weren't a two-hundred-pound man, and started to shake him. Josh was inches up off the floor before he'd even realized that he was in the air with my husband's angry face only inches from his.

"You should've listened to me the first time," Tunnel said in such an even tone that had I heard him over the phone, I wouldn't have realized he was mad. "But you didn't, and now I'm going to take my time killing you." 

Josh's lips turned up into a grin despite his lack of oxygen.

"Had your sister, too."

And that, people, is not what you say to a man who is already on the edge.

"She was pretty. Your parents said I could, so I did."

Have you ever seen steam coming out of the top of a boiling tea kettle? Or maybe a tornado that comes up out of nowhere, impacting everything in its path and shredding it?

That would be too nice of a description for what Tunnel did to Josh.

I had to look away at one point, the sound of the sickening thuds of Tunnel's fists hitting Josh's flesh turning my stomach.

Tunnel held him in place with one hand on his collar and used the other to pummel his face.

"You know," Tunnel dropped Josh, who fell immediately to his knees. "I was going to beat the shit out of you. But that would be too easy. With your confession added on top of what I caught you doing to my wife … oh yeah, you're going down. You're doing time, and I'm going to pay a man named Joe to do those exact same things to you every day for the rest of your life."

Ghost started fishing in Josh's pockets and came up with a phone.

"It was good, too."

Tunnel handed the phone calmly to me, and I handed it to Audrey.

I didn't want her to hear anymore.

I'd, of course, understood Josh's words.

Hopefully Audrey hadn't put two and two together, yet.

But with one look at her face as I passed over the phone, I quickly realized that our smart girl brilliant, and had already put two and two together.

Sure, she'd been the one to experience the rape, but she'd had no clue that her parents had played a part in that.

At least, not until tonight, that was.

But she calmly took the phone, and dialed, all the while keeping her hate-filled eyes on the man that was currently getting the shit beat out of him. Again.

I vaguely heard Audrey talking to someone in low, even tones, but I never took my eyes away from what my husband was doing to Josh.

Which was what cost me.

I wasn't paying attention until my head was wrenched back, and I cried out in pain.

My gaze lit on a woman, Tunnel's mom, and my mouth opened to scream.

Before a single sound could even leave my lips, she had shoved her gun in my mouth.

"Stop."

I froze, my eyes closing, as I realized that I should've paid more attention.

I'd known, of course, that this wasn't over.

I'd also known that I'd seen her come out of that hidden doorway once today when she followed Josh in not even fifteen minutes ago.

What I hadn't realized was that seeing my husband beat the ever-loving shit out of someone would've held my attention so completely that I would miss a freakin' door opening behind me.

A cry of rage had me turning-as far as the gun in my mouth would allow-to see Audrey racing forward, a long pipe that Josh had been taunting me with earlier, in her hand.

Tunnel looked up, moved out of the way just barely in time, and watched as his sister brought down that same pipe straight down on Josh's goods.

His cock, which was still hanging out of his pants, took the brunt of the hit, and I had to close my eyes at the severity of the wound.

But it didn't matter. The image was seared onto my brain, and I started to lose the fight with my stomach.

All this fear, uncertainty and anger started to swirl together in my already churning stomach, and I lost my battle.


      ///
       
         
       
        

I threw up.

Puke went everywhere, but it landed mostly on the woman still holding me.

Her instinctive reaction was to pull away, which was her fatal mistake.

She should've just taken the puke shower like the badass she claimed to be.

Instead, she backed away, still pointing the gun in my general vicinity, and glared at me.

There was puke all over her. On her hands and on her shirt, all over the gun and her arm. It was even in her hair.

I had a ripple of sick satisfaction at seeing her covered in my vomit before I saw a missile made of flesh and bone shoot past me and tackle the woman to the floor.

The gun went off, but Tunnel was up and maneuvering his body so that the majority of his weight pinned his step-mother to the floor.