A Better Life Read online

  A

  Better

  Life

  Kyle M. Scott

  Text Copyright 2018©Kyle M. Scott

  All rights reserved

  First Authorized Digital Version

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book was written using US standard dictionary. Some spellings may differ from UK variations.

  Cover art by Michael Bray

  For Raina Gabrielle, whose many worlds I feel blessed to be a part of, each and every day.

  Special thanks to Lindsay Mclean for sticking it out with me while I wrote this number. You’re a constant inspiration in my life to do better.

  I’d like to give a little shout out to my beta-readers too. Lisa Lee Tone, Jade Velasquez and Mandy Tyra… you guys are invaluable, tough, honest and fair. Now that I’ve discovered you, I’ll most likely be pestering you till the end of time.

  Huge thanks, also, to all my readers, both long-term and short-term. Your support is immeasurable. In those dark, endless hours when the journey seems impossible, it’s a light that shines bright.

  Now let’s get to it.

  A

  Better

  Life

  Kyle M. Scott

  PROLOGUE

  With the lightest of touches, the pretty eight-year-old girl brushed her hair aside, revealing a delicate, intelligent face untouched by even the slightest hint of panic or trepidation. She drummed her fingers on her knees carelessly, as though she was merely out for a daytrip with the family and itching to reach their destination.

  Was the girl bored? Was that it?

  Was she bored and day dreaming, like a kid drifting into realms unseen during a particularly lengthy mathematics class? She certainly wasn’t afraid, Jess thought. At least, she wasn’t showing any signs of it. There were no tell-tale tears welling in her luminous green eyes. No dam poised to overspill and unleash a rushing wave of panic and dismay. The panic simply wasn’t there.

  As Jess studied her, the girls wandering eyes met her own from across the van. In them Jess sensed a quietness, a subtle wisdom that seemed to reach far beyond the child’s years. The girl sat in silence, looking deep into her eyes, seeming to see beyond the surface level, seeing deeper into Jess that Jess herself felt comfortable with.

  Before the child’s gaze she felt exposed, naked…guilty.

  And, she had to admit, a little nervous.

  She wondered what those probing, searching eyes perceived inside of her as they shone, full and round, from behind the parted curtain of jet-black hair. The contrast between the near-mesmeric eyes and the raven hair was both startling and beautiful.

  Beautiful or not, though, it did little to help Jess’ nerves.

  You need to calm down, Jess.

  Breathe. Nice and slow. Let your nerves dance the damn jitterbug if they must, but keep your cool, don’t let the girl see it. She looks calm, but looks can be deceiving. She may well be terrified. Poor kid doesn’t need you freaking out right alongside her. Feel guilty by all means. You should feel guilty. But don’t let your mind play tricks on you. Do your part.

  Just do your part.

  To her side, the van doors rattled together, a harsh and bracing sound that made her think of chains and captivity and an eight-by-four cell with dried blood on the walls and cockroaches scuttling in the dark corners. Jess felt like kicking those damn doors open and hurling herself outwards onto the softening tarmac, broken bones be damned.

  Instead of making her grand exit from the insane situation she’d gotten herself into, Jess took a deep breath, swallowed her anxiety and flashed the girl a smile she hoped was reassuring. When the girl smiled back, open and warm, Jess’ shame only intensified.

  In her hands the spare set of keys to the old house clinked together, sounding loud in the van’s small confines. She knew that in fumbling with them she was signaling to both her colleague and the girl that she was nervous, but she was helpless to stop it, no matter how the girl or Pete perceived her. The keys jangled noisily as, realizing there was no drawing from the child’s all-pervasive calm, she tried to train her mind on something, anything, other than the strangely hypnotic eight-year old child.

  She finally settled her attention on Pete.

  He was sat to the left of the little girl, hunched over so as not to hit his head off the van’s roof as it bumped and careened through the desert terrain, careless for the bones of its passengers.

  “Are we nearly there?” Jess asked Pete.

  Pete’s eyes squinted in the gloom, cold and cunning. She knew the man only through the stories her husband had shared but it was obvious that, for whatever reason, he regarded her with intense disdain. The man had small eyes…rat’s eyes, she mused…yet they seemed somehow smaller still when he set them on her. Two little black holes, poked into an otherwise nondescript face, sucking in light like light was an offence to the man’s sensibilities.

  Creep.

  “He said ‘no talking’…so no talking,” he growled.

  ‘He’ was Curt, her boyfriend of three years, husband of five years, lover, best friend, and the only person in her life who gave half a damn about her

  Currently, he was up-front, steering the rusted, near-derelict van through an unseen landscape. There were no windows back here, only rusting sheet-metal surrounded her, above, to the sides and below her feet. She felt as though she were housed inside a tin can. A sardine, fit for plucking by monstrous fingers from an aluminum coffin.

  Nor could she see Curt. That was even more disconcerting. The metal wall that separated the driver’s compartment from the van’s rear left her feeling a hundred miles apart from him. It didn’t help matters that she was stuck back there in the gloomy, uncomfortable tin-can with only Pete’s impatient glare and the strange little girl’s aura of unearthly calm to keep her company.

  Get it together, she scolded herself. Pete may look like the world’s creepiest asshole but Emily sure as hell doesn’t…she’s just a little girl.

  All she knew of Pete was that he worked alongside Curt at the ‘Screw’n’Fix’ garage back home in Cider Creek and that he had a real knack for trouble. The relationship between her husband and this angry, gruff individual was, to the best of her knowledge, little more than a ‘working’ one. Curt hired the man and Pete did as he was told. He’d never once been to Jess and Curt’s trailer in the years he’d been in her husband’s employ. Not even to drop off parts for work.

  He’d been nothing more to Jess than a name without a face, a story without an anchor.

  And for these small graces, Lord, I thank thee…

  Yet here he was now…barking passed-down orders from her own husband and looking at her like she was something filthy he’d stepped in with his best boots.

  Jess could feel his cruel eyes crawl across her flesh.

  She couldn’t wait to have a word with Curt regarding the company he’d brought along on this thing they were doing.

  From her front, a quiet, lilting voice: “I’m hungry,” the girl said, finally registering Jess, Pete and the situation.

  Though startled by the child’s sudden words, Jess smiled reassuringly. “We’re almost there, sweetheart.”

  Pete leaned forward. Jess could smell liquor on his breath, sour and stale. “No talking.”

  Jess ignored him. “We’ll be where we’re going in just a few more minutes, honey. Then we’ll get you something nice to eat, okay?”

  The girl didn’t return the smile, only nodded and in her strangely calm manner answered, “Okay…thank you.” With that, the little girl with th
e raven hair and the luminous emerald eyes eased back into her ‘off-world’ serenity.

  Jess smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  She was a strange child, one entwined in circumstances that were stranger still, but a sweet child at that. Well-mannered, too. Spaced-out or not, Jess liked her.

  Just how she’d have liked her own child to be…

  Hell no, Jess. Not today. Not on this ride. You can wallow in self-pity when you’re on your own clock, but not while you’re on the kid’s.

  Pete hocked loudly and spat on the van floor.

  “Lovely,” he growled. “Nice to see you two bonding.”

  Jess, disgusted, went on fingering the spare keys. The girl, content with Jess’ answer, had already drifted off on a sea of her own musings. She hadn’t lied to the little girl…they would be there soon, though the minutes stretched out like hours.

  Curt had said the abandoned house was only fifty or so miles from Las Vegas. Sixty, tops.

  Las Vegas…

  Den of iniquity, rich and fertile pasture for grazing sinners, home of corruptions both subtle and extreme; a world of bright, garish lights, dark festering corners, towering casinos and broken dreams. And the place where they’d snatched up the eight-year old girl who now sat so close to her that Jess swore she could hear her little belly grumbling over the van’s engine.

  They had to have driven at least forty miles out by now. They’d been driving off-road for a huge part of the journey and that would slow things down a touch, but a mile was a mile was a mile and from the way the van was jostling Jess around like a ragdoll on the small wooden bench secured to its side, she figured they weren’t moving slowly.

  Soon, they’d arrive.

  And then what?

  Well, then she’d do her part in all this.

  She would clean and bathe the girl if needed. She’d feed her. She’d keep her calm, (not that that was required, it seemed), and keep her company.

  Jess’ job in this thing was to make sure the whole plan ran as smoothly as possible. That meant making the girl feel safe, secure, comfortable. The hardest part, Jess surmised, was already over.

  They’d managed to abduct the child with no real problems at all. The girl’s parents, for all their wealth, power and influence, were apparently just as careless in their protection of their little one as the worst folks back home at Cider-Creek Trailer Park. All that money, all that entitlement, and they’d hired the girl a nanny who barely raised a hand in protest as they snatched the child up.

  Perhaps the nanny saw it as poetic justice. A way to get back at the rich and pampered elites who paid her a meagre wage.

  That seemed unlikely, though. More likely that they’d held back on their money and simply hired the cheapest carer available. You get what you pay for and you didn’t get rich by spending, as Curt was one to say.

  Money did not bring class. Not one bit.

  But that was no great reveal to Jess. Being the daughter of a tycoon who owned one of the strip’s most luxurious high-end casinos afforded her a keen insight into the sorrow that abundance could wrought. She thought of her father’s greatest pride now…a bright, shining garish den of hedonism and temptation, a dark beacon in the city of sin, drawing the tourists and gamblers like eager flies to its burning, devouring light.

  Skin-deep, he’d seemed a man of immeasurable success, but that skin bled corruption. Privilege, she understood, was oftentimes the road to spiritual impoverishment.

  And look where she’d ended up, raised by such a high-flying bird…living hand-to-mouth in a two-bit trailer perched on the edge of nowhere, with no future before her and only a dark and sickening past behind.

  No…money didn’t bring nobility or honor.

  Nor did it assure good parenting.

  And so here they were; Curt, Pete, herself…

  And the girl.

  Little Emily.

  The daughter of a senator with more corporate interests than political ethics. Heir to great wealth the likes of which most folks could only ever dream of.

  Yet with no protection for his kid, a small voice said in her head. None, at all, unless you counted the barely conscious nanny.

  Jess studied the girl, winking when the girl caught her watching.

  The girl smiled, coy and demure.

  “Not long now…” Jess worded, quietly mocking Pete and, she hoped, lightening the atmosphere for the faultless girl caught in the black vortex of his mood.

  Yes. They’d be there soon.

  The old house couldn’t be far now.

  Jess wondered what it would look like.

  According to Curt, it had stood out there in the barren desert, uninhabited, for years. Perhaps for as long as three or four decades. Perhaps even longer.

  Empty.

  Forgotten.

  Abandoned, until she and her companions had come along, with their plans and their dreams of escaping the dead-end lives they all lived in.

  Jess allowed herself to reach over and take the little girl’s hand in her own. She squeezed reassuringly.

  Emily squeezed back.

  Pete shook his head in disgust. It seemed the whole spectrum of his repertoire was spit, curse, growl and scowl. Not necessarily in that order.

  Both she and Emily ignored him.

  Jess studied those luminous, hypnotic emerald eyes, marveling at the little girl’s beauty. How perfect her skin looked, unblemished by time, unravaged by woes. How bright her gaze, brimming with innocence and untapped potential, keen to be unchained and set free.

  Yet as she gazed into the girl’s ethereal eyes…

  Jess saw something.

  Or thought she had.

  She was smiling at the girl as their eyes met, yet in the dark reflection of the child’s pupils Jess could swear that…just for a second…she’d seen herself screaming.

  Screaming, lost and alone, in the darkness.

  The vision passed as quickly as it had surfaced.

  The van sped on through the gathering Mojave dusk, while the desert held its breath.

  PART ONE

  Hopes and Dreams

  1

  “We’re here!” Curt shouted from the front.

  His voice was muffled by the thick sheet of metal that separated the cabin from the driver’s compartment, but to Jess it rang like a Sunday church bell on a summer’s morning. Her legs were beginning to cramp, and she desperately needed to pee. Besides all that, Pete was still doing his thing; looking and acting like a hardened thug with all the scruples of a wild dog. She’d be glad to be away from him and inside the house at last.

  “You ready?” she asked Emily.

  The girl nodded.

  “Can we just fucking go, already?” Pete huffed.

  Jess reached for the handle, pulled down hard and swung the van’s rear-door wide.

  Fresh air washed over her and she breathed deep. Shuffling to the exit, she climbed from the van, glad to feel the sand and dirt beneath her feet. She reached in and took Emily gently by the hand. The girl squinted as she stepped into the soft warmth of the evening. Dark had yet to settle on the land and the fiery-red skies, that seemed to reach on forever, were a far cry from the dusty, shadowed confines of their ride.

  Hopping lightly from the van’s interior, Emily’s lightness of touch immediately intensified. She gripped Jess’ hand, held on tight as they turned together and took in the house; a first look for them both.

  It looked like something from a fairy tale.

  Or perhaps from an old movie; the type Jess’ mother used to love watching. Something alight and shimmering in glorious Technicolor, starring Clark Gable, or maybe Cary Grant.

  She quickly cast aside thoughts of her mother, wary as always of where they’d lead, and studied the huge two-story house in all its pre-industrial splendor.

  It looked a lot older than Curt had surmised.

  The white paint, once surely dazzling in the dusk’s waning light, was faded, giving the place a more ancient look
than it would otherwise have. Some parts of the roof looked close to collapsing in on themselves, bent beneath the will of a hundred seasons. The awning that surrounded the borders of the roof hung loose in places. Instead of water, weeds spilled over the sides of the gutters up there, swaying in the evening breeze. The house’s windows were almost all surprisingly intact. Of the nine she counted, only one on the upper floor was completely shattered, while two to its left were badly cracked. Curtains, so worn they looked like bound wraiths watching the world beyond their borders, clung to the glass, hungry for light. Lights shone in two of the downstairs windows, though Jess could see little of the house’s interior.

  The light looked artificial. No flickering of flame. Had Lisa brought a generator with her in place of candles?

  Two old Juniper trees swayed languidly in the gentle desert breeze to either side of the house, affording it a pleasing symmetry as they lent in protectively over the roofing. The front porch housed a rocking chair for two, sat to the side of an old oak door that stood wide open.

  And behind and around this wonderful old representation of a time when men were men and women wore corsets - the shimmering stars shone from the heavens above, piercing the slowly darkening, purple-red skies with their ancient light.

  “It’s beautiful,” the small child said in a soft, quiet voice.

  “It sure is,” Jess agreed. “I feel like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.”

  “Gone with the wind? What’s that?”

  “It’s the name of an old movie. A very good one. I’ll tell you all about it later, if you like.”

  “I love old movies. I watch them all the time in my room…the black and white ones. I’d like that.”

  “I would too, Emily,” she said, smiling down at the girl.

  The conversation was cut short when, from the left side of the van, Curt appeared.