The Cabin: The Ranch Series, #3

By Erin Lee

It began with a simple hope and a need but got crazy quick.

For lifelong besties Suzie and Heather, it was obvious there would be a price for sweet justice eventually.

Karma is—after all—a subjective thing. And pain and pleasure can be as tangled as friendship.

But it’s not always so complicated. We’ve all been there. We know that justice can be sweet. So what if, Heather and Suzie wondered, they found a way to turn it all around? Maybe, if they thought hard enough, they could erase the bitter past and start anew one last time.

Or maybe not.

Hello justice:

We’ve been counting on you. Because rotting in a jail cell? Well that’s not an option…

With nothing left to lose, the lovable killer duo takes one last stab at redemption.

Welcome to THE CABIN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crazy Ink
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386537434

Erin Lee

Erin Lee lives in Queensland, Australia and has been working with children for over 25 years. She has worked in both long day care and primary school settings and has a passion for inclusive education and helping all children find joy in learning. Erin has three children of her own and says they have helped contribute ideas and themes towards her quirky writing style. Her experience working in the classroom has motivated her to write books that bring joy to little readers, but also resource educators to help teach fundamental skills to children, such as being safe, respectful learners.

Book preview

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

-Scott Adams

Copyright © 2018 by Erin Lee and Chelsi Davis

Editing – Rita Delude

Proofreading – Samantha Talarico

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Don’t piss us off. We’re crazy. We may kill you.

For every victim of love who has yearned for the sweet taste of justice.

The struggle is real.

We’ve got you.

The Cabin

Chapter One

Heather

How is it that you can leave a place for years and when you return, nothing’s really changed? The holding cell has a smell. It’s not the exact cell I was in so long ago, but it might as well be. Not much is different anyway. Somewhere in the rank stench of sweat, urine, and the occasional bitter whiff of ammonia is the scent of home. I know. Sounds crazy, right? Well, have you met me? You shouldn’t be surprised exactly. Hell, even in county lock up, waiting for extradition back home on charges of at least a dozen murders, I don’t have my meds. And the rumor is I’m loony. Whatever, Suzie.

It’s good. I’m not complaining. The longer they push me off for an intake psych evaluation, the better. Gives me the best shot I’ll ever have at insanity. And really, it’s not that far off. I mean, I did help my best friend Suzie kill all those people. It doesn’t matter that we had good reason. No one will care that we just wanted to give karma a stiff shove in the right direction. They’ll just call me—the one this is all being pinned on—a whack job.

And that’s fine too. Kind of. I mean, I’m used to it. By now, Grant and Suzie are probably off to regular life doing what they do best and fucking around on each other. I’m sure she’s stolen my infant son—Elliot—and the two of them are playing house with yet another of my kids. She’s probably even changed his name to something stupid—like Bob Two. Un-fucking-believable. But that’s Sue. I should have made sure she was dead when I had the chance. By now, she’d be fish hors d'oeuvres in that lake.

It won’t matter that it was them who started it all. Somehow, I’ll ultimately take the fall. It’s always my job to clean up the mess. So if they want to call me crazy, I’ll take it. Wouldn’t you be? Suzie’s supposed to be my best fucking friend.

Some friend she is! Bitch takes the first opportunity she gets to rat me out. Blames it on her mom. I don’t believe it. Not sure I can blame her either. I mean, I did try to kill her. Can you blame me? This is a bitch who dragged me around for years making everything about her. The same chick that called me her bestie in one minute then stole from me in another.

I suck in large bursts of air, licking the roof of my mouth so I don’t have to taste the odor coming off the bitches I’ve been in here with. One smells so bad of last night’s bar crawl you’d swear her blood type was booze. In a way, she smells like Suzie. But don’t worry. I’m the one known as the addict.

I’ve been here three days. I should probably get used to it. By the time they move me out of this place and up to the state prison back home, it’ll probably be at least two more weeks. Meantime, I watch the idiots here on silly charges, like disorderliness and failures to appear, cry in the corner like they have anything to cry about at all. These bitches won’t make it a day in the big house.

You’d think Suzie, the asshole who put me here, would at least come visit. Even if it was just to stick her tongue out at me or tell me it’s a point for the win. I’m amazed she hasn’t been here yet. By now, she’s probably on a second honeymoon with Grant—the man I fucked behind her back for years and who secretly told me she sucked at blow jobs and was so loose you couldn’t feel the sides. I wonder what she’d do if she knew he said her pussy was as big as an airport.

I can’t tell her now because the bimbo isn’t gonna show up. Even for her, it’d be a stupid move. Suzie isn’t insane. That’s my job. The town slut? Maybe. But not crazy. At least not when she’s getting her way.

I have to admit, I’m sort of proud of her. I should have known with all those secret calls to her mother that something was going on. I should have paid more attention. I would have realized there was no way she’d bring the kids to The Cabin. Even asshat has her limits. She wasn’t the worst mom—not like crackhead, the last of my victims, but one I haven’t been charged for. Yet.

***

A fat bitch with three teeth—one gold—and onion breath who appears to snack on her own hair, smiles in my direction. I flinch. This one might survive in the prison. Her four hundred pounds of fugly could be enough to scare away even the roughest of the prison queen butches.

I turn to my left and then my right. The only thing on either side of me is a concrete wall and the metal one that locks us in the 20 by 20 holding pen for retards like me, too stupid to not get caught at the hands of a Judas like Suzie. When I realize she is for sure smiling at me, I feel the heat coming to my face. I smile back, hoping that’s the end of it. Well, hope is a shit thing. It’s like karma. It plays in circles that aren’t always so easy to chase.

I’m Dez, she grunts in a raspy voice that curls higher at the end.

Assuming that shit means Destiny, I hope my own isn’t to spend more than a few hours with this beast. Her heavy breathing has been getting on my nerves for hours. The idea that I’m now supposed to have a conversation with her doesn’t exactly thrill me.

I could play this two ways. I know, from my stint doing time for Suzie’s dumb ass shoplifting habit in the past, that I need to lay the ground rules now before I become a new toy for Dez.

Hey, I reply, intentionally not stating my name. Even if her intentions are good, the fuck I am here to make new friends. Look where that got me last time. Christ, I’m probably looking at lethal injection or some shit while Suzie runs away with my life—my child.

Why ya here?

Okay, maybe the bitch missed the memo where you don’t ask that shit. I take it back. She won’t last a second at the big house pulling shit like this.

Murder. Aggravated. ...Like now.

She laughs. Oh, it’s like that, huh?

I cross my arms over my chest. She can think I’m full of it. I really don’t care. I have way more important shit to think about. Praying the letter reached Grant in his cell, I wonder if he’ll tell Suzie I was pregnant with their kid. Maybe, if I’m smart about it, I can convince her that Elliot came out of me. I mean, she saw the blood. The period. There’s no way to dig up crackhead’s body. Maybe if she thought I was the biological mother, she’d take pity on me and bring him for a visit.

Or, no. That could be dangerous. If the bitch caught wind of me and Grant together that recently, she’d probably slit the innocent baby’s throat. I’ve got to get out of here—fast. Elliot isn’t safe with her.

I leap off the cold bench and rush over to the metal door that cages us. I bang with both fists on the window, ignoring Dez.

My fucking kid! Suzie! She stole my baby! He’s been kidnapped, I scream, banging harder and harder on the Plexiglas.

"She and her shit mother stole my baby! I need to file a report. Somebody—help me!"

The Cabin

Chapter Two

Suzie

I should go visit. I know I should go visit. I could absolutely kill Mom for doing this to Heather. Heather’s crazy ass is going to think this is all me. What in the actual hell am I going to do? Oh my God this baby! I have to take him to the hospital. She’s lost her damn mind if she thinks this baby belongs to her. Jesus, I knew she was going to crack, but I didn’t know it would be this bad.

My mind has literally been one hundred miles per hour since the cops picked Heather up. This baby hasn’t stopped crying no matter how much I try to do for it. Lord knows, withdrawals will do that, and my mom has been on the phone with everyone trying to raise money to get Grant out of jail to be with his family where he belongs and not in jail with that monster who was trying to destroy his family.

Oh, Mom. You have no idea who the monster is.

Pacing around the living room, I begin packing a bag for the hospital. I’m taking this baby in. It’s my nephew or something. I don’t know; I’ll figure it out when I get there.

Thud.

Thud.

Not now. I can’t afford a panic attack right now.

My heart is hammering my chest, my chest begins to ache, and my arm is going numb. Since college, every anxiety attack has felt like a heart attack. God willing I never actually have one because I’d die shaking it off as a panic attack.

Trying to remember what the kids needed in their diaper bags, I start loading empty bottles, the can of formula the weird lady brought, and several diapers. He’s so tiny. How am I going to get him to a hospital without hurting him? All of my kids were a solid four or five pounds more than this baby. My heart breaks for the screaming thing in my arms, knowing his chances of survival being premature and an addict are slim to none. But I have to try.

Mom! I shout up the stairs. She has wasted no time making herself comfortable in one of the upstairs bedrooms. As much as I love this house, I don’t love the idea of sharing it with my mother.

No reply.

She’s probably sleeping. Or helping herself to the Jacuzzi tub. Or she can’t hear over the nonstop wailing coming from something too small to be so loud.

Grabbing a scrap paper off the table with Jenna’s name on it, I write a quick note.

Mom-

I borrowed the car. Hope you don’t mind. I have to get this baby to a hospital. He’s going through withdrawals, and I can’t have it on my conscious if something happens to him. Be back soon.

-Sue

The bundle has finally stopped wailing long enough for me to hear myself think a little more clearly. Taking a few more deep breaths to calm my nerves, I lay Elliot down on the backseat. We don’t have a car seat, so I have to make do. I lay him on his side, facing me, and strap the seatbelt around him, and for the first time in my life, I say a prayer. I pray that I get to the emergency room without incident. Maybe I should stop and get a seat. The store is closer than the hospital.

I swear, I hold my breath the entire way to the local supercenter store. It’s only about five miles away, but takes twelve excruciating minutes. Seven hundred twenty seconds. But, we made it. I keep glancing in the rearview mirror which is tilted all the way down to see his face instead of out the back window like it should be.

His sweet face is finally relaxed. He has the most perfect round cheeks. When he opens them, his eyes are a crystal blue, and the blonde wisps of hair are the perfect amount for a newborn. I don’t care what