The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3), Emmy Ellis [electric book reader txt] 📗

ego wouldn’t let him do otherwise at the minute—if only to prove to her how strong he still was, how she didn’t call the shots.

Even though she had that gun to administer them in a different way.

And he had no doubt she would.

* * * *

What’s going through his head? Is he even thinking of owt other than the pain?

Jason calmed, slumping back down, blood welling then oozing out of the shin wound, spreading over his creepy shaved leg. More blood coated his sleeve and the area where the nail had entered his side. He breathed heavily, and his eyes rolled. Cassie reckoned he was on the verge of passing out so needed to do this quickly.

“Admit it.”

He remained silent. Why was he being so stubborn? Was it that much of a trial to just say what he’d done?

She poked at his injured arm, and he squealed, panted.

“I’m not going to stop until I hear what I want,” she said. “You know enough about me by now to realise that. I’m a dog with a bone, gnawing and gnawing. And like a dog, I’ll bury you—but not in the ground.” She didn’t say he’d be in pigs’ bellies.

Time stretched.

Jimmy paced, a hand to his forehead. “How much longer are you going to drag this out, Jason? For fuck’s sake, she isn’t going to back down. Just tell her, will you?”

Jason sighed, and Cassie fancied it was one of resignation—he was beaten and he knew it.

He managed, “Oh-gay, I…wan tid it.”

Victory soared through Cassie, and she couldn’t stop the winner’s smirk. “I know you did. But guess what?” She bent over him. “You’re not going to have it.” She nailed his hand to his belly, the round end pushing his skin and flesh inwards.

You absolute knob.

He had some kind of fit, jerking, his tongue poking out. Garbled sounds came from his ruined mouth, unfinished words and “Peas, peas…” She stepped over him, one foot on either side. Gun pointing at his heart, close, she shot him again, abandoning her earlier idea of shooting him in the eye, intent on killing him a faster way while he was still with it, so he’d feel the pain and know he’d soon take his final breath.

Blood. It spurted, landing on the ends of her dangling red hair, her clothes. He choked, scarlet filling his mouth and running out of the sides, dripping onto his top. His irises lowered then lifted out of sight, and his body relaxed. One last tremor in his good leg, his heel whacking the floor, and he was gone.

“Christ alive.” Jimmy stopped pacing and slapped a hand over his mouth.

“This is what happens when you cross me, Jim. I get a bit angry, like.”

He came to stand beside her. “You didn’t look angry.”

She straightened, reversing away from Jason, then tugging the plug out of the socket. “Good. That means Lenny taught me well.” She coiled the cord around the handle of the gun and walked over to put it back in the case, returning to stand at Jason’s feet.

Jimmy couldn’t seem to stop staring at him. “What happens next?”

“We take him to see Marlene.”

“But he’s already dead. She can’t kill him again, cos that’s what she does, isn’t it?”

Cassie chuckled. “Oh my days, you do make me laugh. You’ll see soon enough. Now, are you going to help me yank him off that nail in the floor or do I have to do it myself?”

Chapter Twenty

Alone in his car on the drive to the meat factory (and he’d never felt so alone in his life), Jimmy couldn’t get the sound of Jason’s flesh ripping out of his head, a squelch and tear combined, repeating over and over.

When they’d each grabbed him beneath an armpit and hauled him off that nail… God, they’d had to tug for a bit, then the shin broke free, the nail coming away with it, leaving a hole in the carpet in the middle of a soaked-in circle of blood. Cassie, gloves on, had yanked the nail out of the calf and held the bloodied thing up to the light, turning it this way and that as though marvelling at how such a simple thing could rip into skin and bone the way it had.

Jimmy had trembled all over, still holding Jason’s armpit, unable to believe for a second what he was doing—he was there, a dead man’s back against his legs, his new boss smiling in such a creepy manner he’d had to look away.

Fucking hell. What have I got myself into here?

It was too late to ask himself that now. He was in it up to his neck.

While the lure of twenty grand was strong and could send him and Shirl on a lovely holiday and clear their debts, he asked himself whether the money was worth all the nightmares he was bound to have—there was no way he’d sleep soundly, was there. He’d never forget how Cassie had so casually unplugged that nail gun (and that act was somehow more frightening than the murder itself), as if she didn’t have any feelings one way or the other about what she’d done to Jason—and God knew who else.

She’d mentioned Nathan Abbott (Jimmy had wondered where he’d got to), and that Jason had taken some money and blamed it on him. Yeah, that was a mega shitty thing to do, and Jason did deserve pain as punishment, but to the degree Cassie had administered it?

Jimmy wasn’t so sure about that, but who was he to question the patch leader? He couldn’t very well tell her he thought she’d gone way over the top and expect to live afterwards. From now on, he was stuck in her employ, and if he valued his life, he’d accept that and do whatever she