Fate and Destiny by Claire Collins Page B

you dropped
her on this road somewhere? If you dropped her off the side of this
road, we should have found her body last night, or at least traces
of it. If an animal dragged it off, it would have left tracks or
something.”
    “ It’s been snowing a lot
up here. The tracks could be full of snow.”
    Lenny smacked him in the
back of the head.
    “ Yeah dolt, but you’d
still see the impressions under the snow. Besides, you think the
animal ate her clothes too? We didn’t find shit. No tracks,
Nothing. I think you’re too stupid to know where you left the body.
You sure she was dead when you shoved her out of the
truck?”
    Lenny drove so Doug could
track landmarks back to where he thought he left Destiny’s body.
DeMont refused to pay either of them without proof she was
dead.
    Doug hated himself. He
never killed anyone. He didn’t kill the old man. Charles did. They
all thought Doug was dumb because he didn’t get very far in school
and he didn’t know how to handle things like money, or killing
people. His cousin Lenny was smarter than him, but Lenny had a big
mouth so he always got them both in trouble.
    Doug quit his job in Texas
working construction because Lenny convinced him Vegas had money
falling in the streets and women for anyone who wanted one. He took
a job as a bouncer at a strip club where girls with broken dreams
sold themselves to anyone flashing cash. Lenny tended bar in the
same club. That was where they first met up with Charles DeMont. He
would go to the club and pay the dancers to spend an hour in the
back room. Doug overheard some of them talking about the twisted
things the man with the money liked them to do. Listening to it
always made Doug’s stomach hurt. The girls were usually desperate
and did whatever was asked of them for a few measly bucks. By the
time men ended up in that particular club, they were near broke.
Not only in their pockets but also in their minds.
    Lenny was a smooth talker,
always had been, and somehow he became the middleman between DeMont
and the girls. He was responsible for setting the right girl up for
whatever sick fantasy DeMont wanted to live out that night. Lenny
persuaded even the girls who weren’t quite so desperate.
    Once Lenny got in close
with DeMont, Doug became included in the mix since he looked like a
big scary guy. Lenny and DeMont always made him act like he was
tough. Doug really hated to fight.
    Now he was in a big
mess.
    He needed money to pay off
the loan sharks Lenny hooked him up with and he needed enough money
to get out of Vegas and go back to doing regular work. He would
never be able to live his own life as long as he was around
Lenny.
    Destiny was a pretty young
thing. Never hurt nobody. He’d seen her before at the casino with
the old man. She even said hello to him on a couple of occasions,
and she never looked afraid of him like other women did. At least
not until the night he was supposed to get rid of her. She looked
plenty scared then.
    It broke Doug’s heart to
hurt her. He couldn’t make her bleed. He thought if he doped her up
real good, she would just kind of die out there and it wouldn’t
hurt. Even though he read the instructions on the painkillers, he
wasn’t sure how much to give her to kill her. He smashed them up
into water and forced it down her throat before putting her in the
truck and driving until he found a road out of the way. After
dumping her, he went back and discovered most of the pills still
swimming in the bottom of the cup. Maybe he should have stirred it
up before he gave it to her.
    By then, it was too late,
so he told Lenny and Charles he gave her the whole bottle of pills
to kill her, then left the body on a mountain for the animals. The
plan worked great until Charles got all bent out of shape wanting
to see the body.
     “ I thought she was
dead. I mean, I didn’t check for a pulse or anything, but she
didn’t move anymore.”
    “ Like you would even know
how to check for a pulse. What about