The Dead King Read online

  At six thirty on the dot, Rosie started shutting down her computer. “You almost ready, hon?”

  I drew a dread-filled breath, my eyes glued to my screen. “Did they come for him?”

  Rosie knew what I meant, but she didn’t answer immediately. “No, hon.”

  “I can’t leave yet.” I swiveled in my chair, pleading with my eyes. “I’m not done, and we can’t miss this deadline.” The company needed the money to pay the crew, who’d been working fifteen-hour days to clear away one of the port’s older cranes. The ground had gotten so soggy during the hurricane it fell over onto four rows of containers, pulling up a long stretch of asphalt with it. The entire mess was blocking most of the yard. They had another crane on the other side of the dock, but it was no use to anyone if the supplies from the incoming barge were blocked from going anywhere. And, as sad as it was, the workers—mostly welders and heavy equipment operators—were in high demand. If they didn’t get paid, they’d probably move on to the next job unless Ripley figured something out.

  “I can’t, Jeni.” Rosie gave me a pitying look.

  She meant she couldn’t stay. I knew she had kids at home, also about an hour drive with all the roads shut down.

  I put on a brave face. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  She grabbed her tote. “You got an hour of fuel left in that generator, babe. Better hurry.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She left, and a chill immediately swept through the room, leaving behind a dark cloud over my head. In my mind, there was just me and that cold rotting man down on the beach.

  “Stop it. Fucking stop it, Jeni,” I hissed at myself. He was dead. Everyone died. And everyone had a body. Which meant we all became like him eventually. Nothing to be scared of.

  I finished up the last of my forms in forty-eight minutes and hit submit just as the generator kicked off.

  “Shit!” I slapped my hand on the keyboard. Who knew if the files had uploaded in time? There was no way to check until morning, when Gilly would refill the generators with the fuel truck outside. Rosie and I weren’t allowed to handle the diesel. Company policy. Couldn’t blame them. No one needed another disaster on their hands.

  Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow sweep across the dark room.

  Oh God. What was that?

  With shaking hands, I felt my way across my desk. There was a flashlight on the wall by the coffee machine, but all I wanted was to grab my purse and get the hell out of there. My imagination was making me see things.

  Not real. Not real. I found the desk drawer handle, pulled, and reached inside for my purse. My keys were in the front pocket.

  I quickly fumbled my way to the exit and stepped outside into the raging storm, locking the deadbolt with my key, using only my sense of touch. The wind began gusting, spraying my face with stinging rain. They said it might—might—sprinkle today. This was no fucking sprinkle.

  I carefully made my way down the short flight of stairs, holding onto the railing for dear life. All I needed was to find my way around the trailer and hit the unlock button on my rental, which was parked out back. The headlights would come on and guide me the rest of the way.

  Squinting, I glided my free hand against the wet textured wall of the trailer’s exterior while the rain pelted me. A bolt of lightning exploded in the sky, and I yelped. For one brief moment, everything around me lit up and came to life. Piles of construction debris seemed to move, the angular shadows dancing in a choppy motion. The puddles on the muddy ground flashed and swirled with the wind. The fallen crane, off in the distance, looked like it was bending with the wind.

  Jesus. I was knee deep in a horror flick. Don’t think about the dead guy. Don’t think about the dead guy. Fuck. I’m thinking about the dead guy.

  I picked up my pace, my hands extended while I prayed my feet wouldn’t land in one of the deep mud puddles. The makeshift lot was normally used for broken-down equipment waiting to be picked up and repaired. Not a smooth patch of ground to be found.

  I successfully reached the corner of the trailer. Then the next.

  “Thank you.” I didn’t know whom I was thanking, but my thumping heart didn’t care. The fine hairs on my arms didn’t give a fuck either. They were so stiff they felt like tiny cactus needles.

  I hit the car’s remote, and my headlights came on. Sweet relief washed over me.

  I got to the white sedan and pulled the driver’s side door handle. Nightmare averted. All I needed was to get dry, eat a granola bar—the only food I had back at the motel—and crawl into bed. Everything would be fine.

  “Hey, Jebby. Watcha doin’ here sor late, huh?” said a raspy voice.

  I froze, knowing exactly who it was. Randall. And given how he was slurring, I assumed he was drunk.

  I slid behind the wheel and jerked the handle, but Randall wedged his construction boot inside before I could close it.

  “Where you goin’, baby?” He yanked the door from my wet, slippery hand. Before I could utter a word, he had one of my long wet braids.

  I clawed at his hand, screaming as he dragged me from the car and threw me onto the mud.

  “I know what you like, Dorothy,” he slurred.

  My eyes wide with terror, I watched as he started reaching for the fly of his dirty wet jeans, all the while chuckling.

  I flipped onto my hands and knees in the mud and got into a sprinter’s crouch, but the moment I lunged to run, he had my hair again.

  I flew backward, landing with a thud on a sharp rock right in the middle of my back. I knew it hurt. I knew I was injured. But that’s the thing about adrenaline, it shields you from feeling pain.

  Randall jumped on me, straddling my torso.

  “Get off me. Get off!” I screamed, trying to push him away.

  “That’s what I’m doing, Dorothy.”

  The interior of my car gave off more than enough light to see Randall’s snaggletoothed grin as the rain dribbled down his oily, stubbly cheeks. He was enjoying this.

  I clawed at his arms, raking my nails down his skin.

  He yelped and then laughed heartily. “Damn, girl! You got some spunk in ya.”

  “Help! Someone help!”

  “Shut up.” He backhanded my face.

  My nose. My nose. Was it broken? I didn’t know, but the pain shot under my cheekbones and through the back of my skull.

  I cupped a hand over my face, using my other arm to punch at him. “Stop! Help!”

  My panic only seemed to amuse him, because his sadistic grin turned to a shit-eating grin. He was an animal.

  Randall grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. With his weight, I could do little more than squirm my hips.

  Our faces were close. I could headbutt him in the nose if he just came a little closer. Come on. Come in for a fucking kiss!

  He didn’t. “I’m gonna sit here until you get tired,” he said. “And then I’m gonna—”

  A deep, silky voice chuckled to my side, catching Randall’s attention.

  I looked up at the dark, shadowy figure standing twenty feet away.

  “Just move along, buddy,” Randall said. “This here is between me and my girlfriend.”

  In that moment, the clouds opened up, and a beam of moonlight washed over the large shadow. The man was tall with broad shoulders. His cheekbones were pronounced, casting sharp angles of light over his face. To me, he didn’t look like a man. He looked like a wicked statue of the devil brought to life. Only, he didn’t have horns.

  “Son of a bitch. It’s you,” Randall muttered under his breath. “It’s not possible.” He jumped off me and started running toward the crane wreckage.

  Still on my back, I stared at the shadow for a split second, trying to make him out in the rain. I couldn’t get a good look, but I felt his presence. I felt his powerful gaze punching a hole right through me, drowning out everything else, including the shock of having almost been raped. There was just him. And me.

  The sky t
urned back to black, and when the moonlight broke through again, the man was gone.

  I got to my feet, trying to breathe. This can’t be happening. It can’t. The devil wasn’t real. The devil didn’t come to save people.

  Off in the distance, I heard a horrible scream. Randall begging for his life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After the attack, I drove to my motel, unable to remember a second of the trip. Not one sliver of time after I heard the terror-filled screams of a man having his life ripped away. When I came around, I was taking a shower.

  Numb. I felt numb.

  Well, mostly.

  Somewhere deep inside, I felt lucky, too. God only knew what Randall had planned to do to me, and now the monster was dead.

  No, I didn’t see him die, but the whimpering sounds had been that of person in incredible pain, an oratory nightmare I couldn’t pry from my thoughts. Still, the next morning, when I woke up in my crappy, all-brown motel room, I was sure the entire event had been a dream. A bad, bad dream. Until my cell beeped inside my purse.

  I peeled my tired body from bed, noting a sharp pain in the center of my back. The rock. I’d landed on a rock. Last night had not been a dream.

  I stumbled over to my brown leather purse hanging from the brown pleather armchair next to the window. I’d only kept my cell charged to keep time and watch a few movies I’d downloaded, so I was surprised to have service.

  “Where are you?” I muttered, digging through my huge purse—flashlight, wallet, granola bar, and makeup bag. “There.” I looked at the screen. It was someone from Ripley Construction.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Thank God your phone’s working. Where the hell are you?” said Rosie.

  I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “My motel. What time is it?” It was still dark outside.

  “Nine thirty. I just got a call from the home office. Mr. Ripley’s pissed.”

  Nine thirty? I never slept in this late. I pulled back the curtains to expose the dark gray clouds and gusting winds outside. Everything was coated in a gloomy hue. Like my mood.

  “Seriously, girl. What happened with the forms?” Rosie said, yanking me from my mental hole.

  The forms. The forms. “Oh shit! The forms! I hit send right when the generator cut out. I thought I still had fifteen…” My voice trailed off. Randall. He had been waiting outside last night. The generator hadn’t run out of juice, had it?

  “Well,” she said, “I told the home office we had technical issues with the internet equipment. They told us to try to submit the files again. They’ll see if they can work something out with FEMA, but you need to get here ASAP—I can’t get into your computer. Also, you left a bunch of your filing cabinets open. You gotta lock that stuff up…”

  While she went on about securing computers and all the weird stuff going on around the port, my heart pounded in my ears like a warning from deep inside my bones. Don’t go back to the jobsite, it said. What if that man returned? He’d saved my life, but there was no getting around how frightening he was. Like a ghost. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “I’m, uh, not feeling well.” I coughed for effect. “Think I’m coming down with something.”

  “Jeni, you have to come in. If you don’t, those men outside won’t get paid. I won’t get paid. A lot of us have families, remember? I also need your help expediting parts today.”

  Fuck. I exhaled slowly. My nose hurt. My scalp hurt. My everything hurt. I’d fought for my life last night, and the last thing I needed was to go back to that port and relive it.

  “Please?” she begged, a hint of irritation in her voice.

  I knew she was going to yell at me, and avoiding confrontation was a strong motivator for me. “I-I guess I could come in.”

  “Great. How fast can you get here? Claire is waiting for an update.” Claire was the VP of operations in Tallahassee.

  “I’ll leave now. Probably an hour. Hour and a half?”

  “Well, get a move on it, girl.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and good news. The police came by this morning and picked up that body.”

  Somehow, that body in the metal box didn’t seem as important or as scary as it had yesterday.

  “Good news,” I mumbled.

  “Not as good as Randall getting fired. He didn’t come into work again this morning, so his ass is grass. That’s the third time. Probably went on another bender or something.”

  Randall. Oh God. Randall. Yes, he had gone on a bender. And it hadn’t ended well for him.

  “Thank God we won’t have to see his nasty-ass face around here anymore,” she added.

  “Yeah.” I choked down a bitter glob in my throat. “Thank God.”

  “Claire was going to fire him anyway.”

  “Why?” I asked, not entirely vested in the answer. Randall was the sort of man constantly getting into trouble. Eventually, it would catch him. It had.

  “You think I wasn’t going to report that shit he said to you? Hell no. I got it all on videotape, too.”

  “I’m s-sorry. What?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We have cameras inside the trailer and all around the work site. Insurance reasons.”

  How did I not know this? They must’ve been those small internet-based things, because I’d never noticed them. “Are there cameras around back?”

  “I think so. Why?” she asked.

  Because I wanted to see who the man was. Randall seemed to know him. He’d crapped himself and run.

  Maybe I should run, too, if I see the man again. Knowing what his face looked like might aid me in that.

  “No reason,” I muttered. “I-I just thought I saw something last night. An animal hanging around.”

  “Probably a raccoon.”

  “Sure. Probably.” There was a deep rumble on the other end of the line.

  “Hey. The police are back. I gotta go see what they need. Talk to you in a bit.” The call ended.

  I walked over to the bed and sank down. My insides felt all twisted up. I did not want to go back to the scene of the crime. To say I had a bad feeling about it was the understatement of my life.

  Maybe I should just get in my car and drive home. Eventually Ripley Construction would work things out with FEMA and get everyone paid, right? And it wasn’t my problem they were cash strapped. Mr. Ripley made the choice not to have a buffer for payroll.

  As I sat there, coming up with every reason in the world not to go to the port, my mind snagged on the one thing that pertained only to me. Eventually, they’d discover why Randall hadn’t shown up for work. And eventually, the police would start asking questions: Who hated him? Who stood to gain from his death? Who were his enemies?

  No, a man like that didn’t waltz through life without making enemies, but I was the last human soul with a bone to pick.

  Fuck. I had to go back.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I arrived at the port over an hour later, the rolling in my stomach was made infinitely worse by the police car parked out back behind the trailer. A couple of men were talking to Rosie, both dressed in black slickers.

  The rain had stopped during my drive, but the dark clouds remained overhead, and it was freezing out again today.

  Rosie pointed at me as I shut off the engine. The men turned their heads in my direction.

  “Great,” I muttered and exited my car, grabbing my long purple coat from the back seat. I threw it on over my black sweater and jeans, hugging it to my body as I went over.

  “Jeni,” said Rosie as I stopped a few feet from their little huddle. “Officers Nelson and Franco have a few questions.”

  “Sure.” I shrugged, trying to sound friendly. Of course, on the inside, my chest was welling with anxiety because I hated talking. I hated talking to strangers even more. But this? I was involved in a murder and about to be questioned by police. “Ho-how can I help?” I stuttered, doing my best not to stare at my black rainboots.

  I didn’t know wh
ich man was Nelson and which was Franco, but the bald guy, who looked to be in his fifties, spoke first. “Just making sure we talk to everyone who’s had access to the port. Have you seen anything strange? I understand you stayed late yesterday.”

  Rosie looked down at me with a reassuring smile. I was shorter than her, shorter than most people in fact, at a whopping five feet two. That, along with my small frame, made people either feel protective of me or feel like they could push me around. Didn’t help that I had one of those round faces that made me look younger and more innocent than I really was.

  “You said there was an animal outside, right?” said Rosie.

  “Yeah, um.” I cleared my throat. “I heard some noises. Like, maybe a cat.” But bigger. “Did you see anything on the security footage?”

  Rosie shook her head. “The wind must’ve knocked out the camera.” She pointed behind me to the back side of the trailer.

  No. Not the wind. Randall probably took it down. He was a criminal type and probably spotted the security equipment, whereas someone like me would hardly notice such a discreet device.

  “Then I don’t know,” I lied. “I just heard some noises when I was getting in my car.”

  The two men exchanged glances. I wouldn’t describe their expressions as worried. More like confused or frustrated.

  “Am I missing something?” I ask.

  Rosie jumped in. “The body in the metal box was fresh.”

  Huh?

  “We prefer that you didn’t discuss details with anyone until we’ve had a chance to complete our interviews,” said the bald guy.

  I knew Rosie would tell me everything she knew after they left. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut when it came to gossip. And this was juicy. I could tell from the giddy look in her eyes.

  “Well, if you think of anything, give us a call.” The other detective handed me a card.