Wrong Time, Wrong Place

7

They killed the girl quickly. Stuart picked her up from behind, held her steady, and then cut her throat in one swift movement, while Rory held the dogs and watched, shaking his head.

‘This is a big problem,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get a lot of shit for this. Eastern European whores are ten a penny, they don’t get missed. But these are tourists. The boss is going to be mighty pissed off.’

‘We’ve just got to make sure they disappear,’ said Stuart, stepping away from the girl as she twitched on the ground. The mantrap round her leg made a scratching sound against the soil.

That, thought Rory, was the problem with his younger brother. He didn’t realise that you couldn’t just kill your way out of trouble. You had to plan it. ‘You fucked up, Stuart. Don’t ever do that again.’

‘I won’t. The little bitch tricked me, but it was a one-off.’

Rory gave a curt nod. ‘It better be.’

In the five years they’d been guarding the whores who were delivered to the estate, they’d never once had a problem. The girls tended to be young and they were usually too scared and confused even to think of escape, which was just the way it should be. Rory prided himself on his ability to run things smoothly, but they’d grown far too complacent lately. He hadn’t even been there today when the girl got out. Then Stuart had totally messed up by delaying it a good ten minutes before he called him, which had given her the chance to cover some distance. Just their luck, she ran into what must have been the only bunch of tourists for twenty miles.

The tourists had to die in order to protect the secret. Rory had to make sure it didn’t get out into the wider world. If anyone else had made that kind of mistake, Rory wouldn’t have hesitated to put him in the ground with all the other bodies from the last five years. But Stuart was family, and you didn’t do that to family.

On the ground, the girl stopped twitching. Stuart gave her a kick just to check that she was dead, although with half her head hanging off she was always going to be.

Rory let out a deep breath, and looked into the wall of trees ahead. ‘Three down, one to go. Let’s find her and then we can go home for the night.’

He released the dogs, watching as they tore off into the darkness. Then he pulled out his knife, stepped over the girl’s corpse, and headed after them.