Not Your Average Man

Chapter 1-2

From the courthouse, I went home to pick up what I needed.

Let me say up front, I’m not inherently a violent man. Yes, I helped Mick—and he was. Violent, that is. But as I’ve said, I’ve never killed before. Tonight that would change.

Carl was responsible for the death of the man I loved—and the incarceration of the only man other than Mick that I could truly call a friend. I grieved for Mick, but I can’t, I won’t, hold Jason responsible for what happened. He was only doing what he thought was best for me. The lies Carl told him drove him to that.

If Carl had known the real truth about Mick, he might have rethought saying anything to Jason. But he didn’t. So, out of a whole cloth, he made up a story about Mick’s being drug dealer who had gotten me involved with what he was doing.

That’s what Jason thought he was saving me from, despite my telling him it wasn’t the truth. He saw what Carl wanted him to—that our trips out of town were runs to buy drugs. There was no way I could convince him otherwise—and God knows I tried. If I’d told him the truth? Mick would still be dead, and perhaps I would be as well. I did do one thing to ease Jason’s mind—after he’d killed Mick. I promised him I’d get out of the drug trade. It was easy enough to do, since I hadn’t been in it to begin with.

I went to the club first. Only for a quick minute to make certain Carl was at work. I didn’t want to deal with all the people who had watched the news and knew Jason had been found guilty of Mick’s murder. Some of them would tell me justice had been dealt out and I should be happy about that. Others, who only knew me as a bartender there, would probably try to spend the evening rehashing the details of the trial with me. After all, it was big news in a small city. I’m sure Carl was savoring it all, waiting for me to finally accept that he was the man for me, now that everything was over. God only knows he’d hinted at it often enough, in the weeks between Mick’s death and Jason going to trial.

As soon as I saw Carl—and before he could see me—I left.

My next stop was his place. I knew where he lived because he’d invited me to a party there, back when he first started working at the club. I parked two blocks from his apartment building, then waited on the steps leading up to the front door.

It was soon after one when he drove up the driveway to the lot in back of the building. I followed on foot, arriving as he got out of his car.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked, infusing those five words with need and pain.

He barely managed to repress a leer, replying, “Sure. Let’s go up to my place.”

“I’d rather…I’m too stressed. Do you mind if we walk?” I nodded toward the street.

“Well…” Carl hesitated and I knew he wanted me up in his apartment where he could console me.

“Please,” I said plaintively—and he bought it.

This wasn’t the best part of town. Not a slum yet, but slowly turning into one, with some nicer streets interlaced with others housing abandoned buildings, sleazy bars, and liquor stores. Exactly the sort of area a rat would choose to live.

As we walked, I talked, venting about how Jason should have received a medal for offing Mick, not life in prison. “I finally saw the light,” I told Carl. “Thanks to you. But it still hurts. How could I have been so blind?”

Carl was buying it, hook, line, and sinker. “Sometimes it takes a friend to open someone’s eyes to what they don’t want to see,” he replied, his voice oily with pretended concern. “Thank your lucky stars you’re free of him.”

I frowned, staring sadly down the dark street. “I…I wish…Poor Jason.”

“I didn’t expect he’d go off like that,” Carl said told me, easing his arm around my waist.

I repressed a shudder at his touch, but didn’t pull away. Instead I kept walking until we came to the doorway of vacant building. The door hung open on one hinge, obviously the result of punks going inside at some point to see if there was anything left worth stealing. I couldn’t have found a better spot for what I had planned. Easing out of his hold, I stepped into the doorway.

Carl seemed surprised for a moment. Then a lascivious grin twisted his lips up as he followed. “This isn’t where I planned on kissing you for the first time,” he said. “But who am I to miss the chance?”

I moved inside, playing coy. He followed, like I’d hoped. It was dark, so he didn’t see me take the stun gun from my pocket until it was too late and I’d pressed it to his chest. He went down, a look of pure shock—excuse the pun—on his face.

I’m not a big man, but neither was Carl. I hefted him over my shoulder, taking him deeper into what turned out to be one large room. I dropped him on the floor, turned on the flashlight I’d brought with me, and surveyed my surroundings. There was a radiator, the old-fashioned kind, along one wall so I dragged him over and used flex cuffs to bind his hands to it. Then I waited for him to regain consciousness.

He came to, eventually, and began struggling to free himself. I shined the flashlight into his eyes, telling him he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

“Why?” he cried out. “Why are you doing this? What are you going to do to me?”

“Kill you,” I replied coldly. “If it wasn’t for your lies, Mick would still be alive and Jason wouldn’t be sitting in a prison cell.”

“I did it for you,” he said, curling into a fetal position as if that would somehow keep him safe. “For us. We belong together.”

“Only in your insane imagination,” I spat out. I debated whether to use my knife or the gun Mick had given me a long time back. I opted for the gun. As much as I’d thought I wanted to torture Carl before killing him, I realized that wasn’t in me, in spite of how much I hated the rat bastard. I took the gun from its holster, pressing the barrel to Carl’s forehead.

“You can’t! You won’t!” he screamed, trying to pull away.

I gripped his shoulder and pulled the trigger—twice. “Yeah, I can.”

I’d been afraid, when I planned this, that I might puke after I shot him. Mick had said it could happen with a first kill. “When you get that you’ve ended someone’s life, no matter how much of a bastard they are, you’ll feel numb. You’ll throw up. You’ll cry.” He had put his hands on my shoulders, staring me straight in the eye. “Or, you’ll know you did the right thing. You won’t rejoice. Not if you have an ounce of humanity in you. But you’ll eventually accept you did what was necessary.”

I knew for me, seeking revenge for what Carl had done had been necessary. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he had killed Mick just the same—and destroyed Jason’s life in the process. And mine, I suppose.

I looked down at Carl’s dead body with no feelings other than relief, despite the blood surrounding his head. Taking out my knife, I cut the restraints and pocketed them. “Never leave anything behind,” Mick had told me. I couldn’t exactly take the bullets. They were lodged in Carl’s brain. I did look for the casings, and found both of them. With that done, I left the way we’d come in. The street was still dark and empty.

I made it back to my car before the reaction hit me. I was trembling so much I could barely get the key in the ignition. I killed him. He deserved it. But…I closed my eyes, picturing Mick the last time I’d seen him. Carl will never f**k up another person’s life the way he did ours, ever again.

That thought helped. I was able to calm down enough to make it home without running the car off the road.