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A silver Ford Taurus peels into the parking lot of the Olin
Motel. This time no voices are heard as the door opens, just the door slamming
shut again. Ken walks quickly from the car and dashes up the stairs. He
nervously fumbles with the key at the lock of room 8 and finally opens it. Ken
enters the room with his regular duffel bag plus an extra one. Looking utterly
distressed he throws it down on the bed and unzips it revealing an unimaginable
amount of cash. He inhales and then just says "Babe, I need you to help me
count it....as fast as we can..."
Heather was watching a movie she had seen a hundred times
before, so she did not have to concentrate on it very much. But she still
jumped when Ken came into the room and opened the bag of cash. She gaped at it
and reached out for it, tentatively. "I ... sure .... Where the
hell...." and then she decided she didn't want to know. She starts to
count, placing piles to the side as she reaches one hundred.
Ken counted with her looking anxious "Ran out of
time......pick up is here tonight...not the plan.......not the fucking
plan......" he muttered. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. He
made his piles, looked at Heather's and wrote down a figure on a scrap of paper
from his jacket. Then he started putting bands on the bundles and shoving them
back in the bag just as there was a pounding at the door. Ken jumped about a
foot off the bed and hissed "Get in the bathroom....and shutup..." to
Heather.
Heather stared at the completed pile of money, stunned. When
Ken ordered her to go into the bathroom, she tried to get up, but her legs
tangled and she would up stumbling into the room with no grace, closing the
door and backing against the furthest wall, thinking the whole time that she
had never seen that kind of money before Ever.
Through the wall Ken can be heard opening the door and
speaking in a low voice to another man. From the rising of his voice, he seems
to be stepping into the middle of the room. Lots of it is muffled but words
that can be made out are "promised discretion Mr. Hall...." and
"There can be no witnesses..." Ken starts to argue with the other
man's voice "I had a girl here but I sent her out....I swear....."
The man keeps moving forward in the room and suddenly the bathroom door burst
open revealing a red faced man with a receding black hairline in a simple black
suit. He raises a gun towards Heather's position when suddenly another one goes
off behind him shooting him twice through the back. The man winces and then
falls dead. Ken is standing in the doorway with a handgun catching his breath.
A dark pool of blood starts to spread under the man on the floor.
Heather kept pressing herself against the wall of the
bathroom and, when the door slams open her eyes widen. Before she can scream,
Ken shoots him dead. Heather stares at Ken and, not running onto the arms of
her savior, crumples and begins to cry hysterically.
Ken slides the gun into a holster on his back, one he didn't
usually wear around Heather but he hadn't taken it off yet from the job he came
from that's gone from bad to worse. He has a moment of genuine concern and
remorse and steps over the boy to Heather trying to pull her into his arms
"I'm sorry....I had to."
Heather doesn't fight being held, but she is shaking like a
leaf. "I ... I ..." is about all she can manage through her fear. Her
body and voice are shaking like something in a hurricane.
Ken holds onto her a little longer and then leans back from
her and pulls her face up by her chin to meet his gaze "I need you to stop
crying and get your shit together. Help me get him in the tub so he doesn't
bleed through the floorboards. Soak up what you can with towels from the floor.
We can get rid of those. I'll come back for him but I have to take his pickup
to the delivery point or there'll be more of him looking for it." the way
he's talking about this make it clear that this situation or others of its type
are not as new to him as they are to Heather.
Heather is still crying but at Kens .. request ... her eyes
widen and move from Ken to .. a dead body and she begins to back up, still
shaking her head and whimpering. "Noo .. I .. nooo."
Ken is at the end of his stress tether and it starts to fray,
his voice rising "Fuck I just saved your life! Step up and help me
bitch!" He rises to his feet so he's standing over her now.
Heather is still shaking her head, now looking up at him.
"Ken .. please ...." she manages, still shaking like a leaf in a
storm. Her breathing is hard, fast and near hysteria again.
The tether snaps and the back of Ken's hand comes down hard
across Heather's face "Get the fuck up!" he now screams at her. He
moves towards the body, grabbing for some towels and pushing them down into the
pool. They immediately go from white to crimson. The coppery smell of blood
starts to infuse the air. Ken fishes in the man's pockets, pulling out and pocketing
a wallet, an iPhone and a set of car keys. The dead man has a ring on the middle finger of his left hand that looks almost like a
class ring with a dark rectangular stone. The stone has a symbol engraved on it
that looks like some sort of tooth, maybe even a fang. Ken starts dragging the man to the
tub to heave him in. There's a river of blood trailing behind him and as the
body moves across it mingles with piss. The man's bladder had let go as he
died. The combined stench was horrific. "Fuck, take his legs!" Ken
demands.
A yelp of pain accompanies the back of his hand against her
face. Still shaking uncontrollably, Heather does move now. She slips in the
blood and helps with the legs almost unaware of the smells and even the blood.
Then she claws at the towels and begins to mop the blood up with one.
"Th-there ,.. not ... I ... need more .. towels..." she chatters, barely
coherent. Knowing only that she needs to clean or face Kens anger again.
"To . to clean..." she cries and wipes her tears with the back of her
hand, leaving the man’s blood on her face.
Ken steps back from the tub and pulls more towels off the
upper shelf and tosses them down to Heather before washing his hands. Then he
turns and looks at her, covered in blood now, with obvious inexpressible guilt
about what he's making her do. He's horribly clueless about things between them
but even he knows this is asking too much of her, of anyone. He pulls the gun
from the holster on his back and sets it on the vanity by the sink "I have
to go out...but keep that one just in case. Don't call the cops....don't answer
the door for anyone." His tone is uncommonly apologetic and he leaves
before she can acknowledge it or protest further.
Heather concentrates on cleaning and decides maybe it would
make the body cleaner if she turned on the shower, so she did that. When he
speaks she looks up at him and then at the gun and then at him again. She
sniffs and nods. "No. I won't. I'll stay here." she swallows and gets
herself back to cleaning as best she could, occasionally rinsing out towels in
the water that is washing the blood from the man in the tub down the drain. She
could mop the floor with her tears.
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