So... This is the ending to Echo that I wrote and hated before I re-wrote it with exploding trucks and things. I wasn't sure if I wanted to post this, because a lot of people haven't read Echo yet, and this may contain spoilers, even though it's not the real ending. So it's with conflicted emotions that I present you, the unedited FIRST ending to Echo.
When Lacie had the cab let her off at the turn off Simon had
turned onto, she swiped her credit card and got out of the car, breathing
through her fear. She could turn around
now and go back to the hotel, and only be seventy five dollars in the
hole. That’s totally what she should do. She had no plan. No skills.
But she had determination.
And that would have to get her through.
At least she’d worn tennis shoes.
As she watched the taxi drive off, her only way back to
something that made sense, Lacie turned to the dirt drive in front of her. It was little more than a driveway, leading
into the woods. Every horror movie she’d
ever seen flitted through her mind, and she told herself this was real. There wasn’t a boogey man up there.
Except she knew better.
Whoever had targeted her and put her out like a cattle call for stalkers
and rapists was up there. And that couldn’t be much better.
She started walking, forcing one foot in front of the other,
clutching her cell phone in her pocket, like a lifeline. She probably should have called the
cops. Except Simon probably hadn’t done
that, and it would mess up his plan.
Her steps faltered.
She was messing up Simon’s plan.
No. She was helping
him.
Lacie walked up on two vehicles parked off to the side of
the road in a small clearing. Simon’s
rental was there, and another car. A
newish model VW Beetle. Maybe his
sister’s?
A renewed sense of confidence she was on the right track
lifted her spirits. Or maybe it was the
fresh air. She didn’t know, maybe she’d
just gotten really good at this compartmentalism thing. But she felt a sudden lightness in her step
telling her she was on the right track.
Finally.
Some sense
of resolution.
Until suddenly, there wasn’t.
Footsteps to her left, off in the woods, tracked her. For every step she took, a heavier, more
lumbering one matched her. She stopped,
but the steps kept on, coming closer.
When he man revealed himself, Lacie screamed. He was no man.
He was a demon.
As he advanced on her, her limbs turned to jelly, and Lacie
was pretty sure she might have wet herself.
But the fight or flight reflexes took over, mercifully, and she ran.
Chapter Twenty six
Simon found the house with little trouble. It looked ramshackle, but he of all people
knew looks could be deceiving. He
watched from the tree-line for a while until he saw some movement in one of the
front windows. Dumping his bag on the
ground, he pulled out his long-range radio and called Ryan.
“ETA?”
“We’re about ten minutes out, maybe fifteen.”
“Hurry. I’ve found
the house. Don’t have a count, yet.”
“Copy that, Sarge.”
He dropped the radio and carefully, he squatted and ran, his
gun ready to fire, held at his side.
Back against the house, he risked a look inside.
Quinten was tied to a chair, unconscious and bleeding from
his face. Somebody had used him as a
punching bag. His lack of consciousness
was alarming, because to Simon’s knowledge, he’d never been knocked out before,
and his ability to take punches rivaled anybody he’d ever seen. But he wasn’t typically tied up either. Bonnie had said he sounded drunk, so maybe he
was drugged. Either way, it was
horrifying.
Simon looked for wires around the window, expecting to find
some sort of alarm system, but there were none.
Still, with the level of technological advancements this guy had used
with the StrongArm thing, Simon expected some sort of motion sensors or
something protecting the property. He
left the window, edging along the perimeter to peer in others.
All were empty except one.
A room, which was sort of a bedroom, except everything was chillingly
covered in washable vinyl, with a computer station set up in one corner, and a
shower in another. Simon recognized it
for what it was. A clean room. For killing.
And his sister was in there.
But she wasn’t alone.
Jonas Prestley was in a swivel office chair, looking at something on the
computer, an image of the road Simon had skirted on his way up here. So there was surveillance on the property,
but apparently, Simon had missed it.
Thank God for small favors.
Bonnie appeared to be unharmed, and pissed off, which was
good.
Simon would go back and get
Quinten, and they would kick this guy’s ass.
It appeared he was here alone.
So, if he could get Quinten conscious, this would be a piece of cake.
Slinking back to the other window, Simon edged it open and
stepped inside. Using his knife, he
sliced through Quinten’s bindings, then went around to the front of him,
crouching between his legs.
“Quinten,” he whispered, slapping his blood-slick
cheek. “Wake up. Val’s gonna kill me if you get your nose
broken again.”
His eyes fluttered open, but focused on something directly
behind Simon, just as Simon heard the loud click in the silent room of a gun
cocking near his temple. Ever so slowly,
he turned his head to look down the barrel of a gun being held by his sister,
Bonnie.
Her eyes were wide and her hands shook, as Jonas held her
hair in a tight grip and a skinning knife to her throat.
“Well, shit,” Simon muttered, as he stood up, his hands in
the air. Jonas grinned at him.
“So nice of you to join us, Simon.” Looking from one brother to the other, his
grin only showed joy. As if he was glad
they were all here. “Have a seat.” In Bonnie’s ear, he cooed, “Hand me the gun,
love, you did really well. Thank
you.” Now he had the gun and the knife,
shoving Bonnie toward a chair, he managed to cover them all. “You know what? Just to be on the safe side…” he mused, as
the gun wavered over toward Simon. With
a loud CRACK fire exploded from
Simon’s kneecap.
“Fuck!” Simon gripped
his knee, as pain whitened his vision.
His entire leg was on fire, and even as his mind tried to minimize the
injury, just a tiny lead ball in his knee cap with excruciating force, his
lungs couldn’t catch the air necessary to breathe.
“Oh Excellent! You
brought your girlfriend! V has been
wanting to meet her.” Simon managed to
retain his vision just long enough to see Lacie being manhandled into the room
by the ugliest tattooed motherfucker he’d ever seen. And then he passed out.
Chapter twenty seven
“Yoga girl!” The man
clapped his hands together, and Lacie could only assume he was the mastermind
behind all of this. But any words lodged
in her throat at the sight of Simon, ashen faced, slumped over in his chair,
with blood pouring out of his knee.
“Simon!” She launched
herself at him, pressing on his knee, to keep the blood from flowing so
freely. Quinten looked on, his hands
behind his back, while his sister wept in the chair on the other side of
him. She removed her jacket and passed
it over to Lacie.
“Here,” she whispered through her tears.
“Fiend, tie them up.
Go ahead and dress the senior Mr. Pierce’s leg. I don’t want him bleeding out just yet, if
you don’t mind.”
The man was actually smiling at everybody, like he’d just
invited them over for beers and the game.
It was the weirdest thing Lacie had ever experienced.
“So, you’re just carrying on business as usual for dear old
dad?” Quinten snarled from her right
side, and a shiver of fear coursed through Lacie. The scary looking man with the red tattooed
face was tying her up. Living in Austin,
she’d seen her fair share of body art, even some of the implants to make people
look like dragons and unicorns and stuff.
But never this evil looking.
He had horns surgically implanted onto his shaved scalp, and
every inch of his skin was tattooed in the shape of a red skull. His teeth were filed into points you could
see when he smiled, and the guy smiled a lot.
Everybody here was so freakishly happy.
It was insane.
Meanwhile, Quinten was talking as if they all knew each
other, which lent another texture to the surrealness of the experience.
“Yeah, but Dad was too short-sighted. He was in it for the big bucks, whereas I saw
the future.” He spoke with the gun
trained on Quinten, obviously the biggest threat, even though he was tied up,
with his hands behind his back.
Meanwhile, V was tying her hands. She could hear his breathing echo in her ear,
as his gentle touches sent a sliver of dread across her skin, making her feel
slimy.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?”
He spoke softly, intimately, and the illusion it held of familiarity was
the stuff of nightmares. He had a lisp,
and Lacie figured it was probably from a forked tongue, slithering around in
his mouth.
“No,” she managed to squeak out. “You’re not.”
She had to stay on friendly terms with one of these guys, and the leader
of the two currently had his gun trained on her. “Who are you?
Have we met?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m
Jonas Lawrence. I have yet to make your
acquaintance.”
“I know him,” Bonnie spoke.
“He stalked me in college.
Apparently, I look like the sister he had some weird affair with before
she died. Am I right?” Bonnie spat at his feet, already tied to her
chair. “Then my brother killed his dad,
and apparently he’s holding a grudge.”
Lacie looked back over at Simon. The exchange was too much information for her
to process, and the fact that her
boyfriend was right here, still passed out and bleeding, was freaking her out more
than a little.
Jonas advanced on her.
“V may be a little in love with you.”
Lacie’s eyes darted to the aptly named apparition, standing in the
shadows. “He’s been watching you for a
while. In fact, a lot of men have been
watching you. I’ve made quite a bit of
cash from you. I’ll be sad to see it go,
but there are always others.”
That’s what she was afraid of. But she was too afraid to ask. She didn’t really need to, as he just kept on
talking.
“They pay to watch.
They pay more to get a location.”
He chuckled to himself. “The
attacks? Men paid extra to see those,
even. And the women are a re-usable
commodity, until they can’t be used anymore.
It’s brilliant?”
“How did you do it?
Is there a sicko website to watch the girls?” Quinten asked, fidgeting beside her.
“Why yes… Yes there is.
I took one of Dad’s old ideas and modified it a bit, looked for a
different clientele, edgier, more criminal.
I satisfy the craving to watch, and participate.” Motioning to the tattooed devil, he said,
“Fiend, here, helps with silence motivation.
Turns out, he’s quite good at
it.”
Lacie threw up a little bit in her mouth, but managed to
swallow it back down. It was gross, but
she didn’t want to know what would happen if she drew attention to herself that
way. Next to her, Bonnie had fallen
silent. Quinten was still struggling
behind his back and Simon began to mutter incoherently. She wanted to go to him, badly, to apologize
to him.
Jonas walked over to Bonnie and yanked her up by the
hair. “Well, I’m going to go have some
private time with my girl, here. I trust
Vwill keep you guys occupied.”
Vsmiled at Lacie and a shiver of revulsion coursed down her
spine. Under any other circumstances,
she’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it would be a
conscious endeavor to not judge the book by the cover. She wouldn’t date the guy, but she wouldn’t
automatically think he was evil.
Now, though, that thought was firmly off the table. He’d chased her down in the forest, carried
her here against her will, threatened other men to not talk about how they
found out about her, had watched her
live her life online, and was part of Jonas’s sick plan to exploit women.
Yeah, having him make a move toward her wasn’t on her bucket
list. But there didn’t seem to be
anything she could do about it right now.
Suddenly, Simon yelled out of nowhere.
“NOW!”
Explosions racked the house, shaking everything, and ripping
clouds of dust from nowhere. Bangs and
flashes disoriented her.
“Get down, Lacie!
Get
down!”
She threw herself to the floor,
and Simon’s body covered hers, as he fell on top of her.
With a roar, Quinten was up and out of the
room through the clouds of smoke as gunfire rang out everywhere.
Then all was quiet.
Lacie’s ears rang in the silence as she could hear Simon’s
team move through the house with yells of, “All clear!” Two gunshots in rapid succession and another
“All Clear,” from a woman’s voice, and a yell of “Who?”
“Ugliest motherfucker on the planet.” It had to be Deena Rae’s voice, and Lacie
sagged with relief.
“Are you okay?” Simon asked in her ear.
“Yes, but you’re not.
We need to get you to a hospital, Simon.”
A car started outside, and Simon stiffened before yelling,
“He’s driving away with Bonnie! Someone
stop him!”
Ryan came in the doorway.
“He won’t get far. I disabled his
alternator.”
Simon grunted. “Can
we just kill the motherfucker?”
“I honestly think we’ve reached the limit of the Austin
Police Department’s patience on that one.
But Hollerman’s taking him down right now, so you can bet everything
will be done by the book.”
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