Reaper

Chapter 1

She wakes in the dark. Her hands are raw and bloody.

She tries to scream through the choking panic that sends spasms down her spine, but there's a gag in her mouth: an old rag. She maneuvers her tongue around the bulk of it and gags, letting it thud softly to the ground, preceding a long string of thick spit. Then she screams.

"Holy-." The driver jumps in his seat, jerking the car dangerously to the left as he whips his head around and locks eyes with the girl in the backseat.

"Holy-," he says again as the blaring horn of an oncoming semi-truck focuses his attention on the road in front of him. The car swerves to the right in an over-adjustment.

"Don't tell me you didn't see that coming." It's a woman this time, his passenger. She has dark skin, and her stiff hair is tied in a taut ponytail. Her belly hangs slightly over her seatbelt as she turns, peering at the girl from behind the safety of her hypocritical shoulder.

"What, the girl? Yes, yes I did."

The woman sighs, as though she's heard this bit a million times before. She reaches around her seat and firmly grasps the girl's face. The girl suddenly recoils, letting out another shriek, jerking her hand over her face to block the blow she's grown to anticipate. She sees the man's hands stiffen around the wheel, but he doesn't glorify her terror with verbal surprise. He instead glares angrily at his comrade.

"Dang it, Bernice. You know kids like her don't like it when you do that."

"She had drool! I was gonna wipe it off before she slobbered all over the backseat; YOUR backseat."

"Yeah; that last guy had day-old tomato on his chin and he nearly bit your hand off."

"Yeah, but he wasn't abused. He just wasn't very nice. I could see why people wanted him dead."

The woman approaches her face again with the rag, slower this time, motherly, and swabs at the spit.

"Chase has done this 72 times," she whispers to her, not quite out of earshot of the scowling man, "and he still gets antsy like an amateur. Not to mention he can be a total as-."

"That's enough education for today, don't you think, Blanche?"

She leans away with a smug look on her face. "Hardly. We haven't even told her what she's doing strapped to the backseat like a kidnapped person."

"Right, but that's enough about me. By the way, Bambi here is more of the as-"

"Language."

"I was going to say 'as-tounding person', just like you were going to say."

"Actually, I was going to say as-"

"Language."

"-stonishingly handsome stud muffin."

"Shut up," he says, laughing.

"Anyway," the woman says, throwing a sideways glance at her grinning partner, "You're here because you need to be. You were married to a... Ralph Lorres, correct?"

The girl nods, concern filling her eyes.

"Oh, no, he's fine," the woman says, confused at her empathy. "It's actually you we're worried about."

"Where's Ralph? Why am I here?" the girl asks, fear edging her voice.

"Mrs. Dawes, we've been observing you for a while now. Your husband was not a very kind man."

Katie laughs nervously. "Ralph just had some anger issues. It wasn't all that bad."

The woman doesn't hesitate this time, thrashing her hand out as if she was about to slap her. The girl flinches away, instinctively clenching her eyes shut.