Her heart was pounding in her ears so hard it was difficult to be sure Devon had actually said what he'd said.
"What do you mean he's fucking his sister Devon!" she demanded with an ear piercing screech, quickly stomping her way over to the unmoving figure on the ground to kick him in the ribs. He was passed out, not even a whine or whimper wheezing out at her assault.
"Walter what aren't you telling me!?" she growled, turning toward the old man seated in his folding chair, hand massaging the bridge of his nose, aggravated sigh leaving his lips.
He should have known Devon would open his mouth just to stick it to his brother.
Mac hadn't moved a muscle. The gears in his head working. It all made sense now and he felt like such an idiot for not seeing it before. Walter ordering him not to touch her when she'd first arrived, needing to steal her hair, the reason she had come to Cainville in the first place. His father's reluctance to kill her, the way he favored her, and the smug looks Devon threw his way like he'd known the juicy secret all along.
"You tell me the truth right now god damn it!" Kristy screamed, advancing on him, rage and panic increasing with every second of Walter's silence.
She was more than ready to use violent force to make him talk, eyeing the hot ember end of a roasting stick sitting in the flames.
"She was here on vacation with her fiancé and her sister, Mac's mother Arlene." he began quietly, letting it slip that they were at least cousins for sure.
"Sisters by adoption, not blood." he clarified at the horrified look on her face.
It seemed the more she heard the less she could breathe and he'd just started.
"Your mother and I had a brief affair while she was here." he confessed, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. "It ended when her husband-to-be found out and drug her out of town."
"Sonofabitch!" Kristy raged, throwing Devon's chair at Walter.
"You just had to fuck that stupid whore didn't you!? Couldn't just keep it in your pants. Her sister wasn't enough you asshole?" she continued, walking around aimlessly cussing in several languages at inanimate objects and thin air.
"God damn it! Fuck!" she yelled out in a pained howl, crouching down with her head almost touching her knees, her breaths coming in gasps and pants, wrapping her arms around her head, letting out scream after throat shredding scream.
Losing her shit, to put it simply.
Mac was staring at her wide eyed just as Walter was. Neither of them having ever seen her normally cool, calm, and collected persona crack like this before. Sure she yelled all the time but this was different, it was like she was slipping into madness.
"We don't know anything for sure yet." Walter yelled over her keening wails once he got himself together.
"The results to a paternity test I had sent out almost a month ago won't be back for another week or so." he reluctantly told her, watching as she began pacing, running her fingers through her hair and pulling it at the roots, working herself into hysterics.
He wasn't even sure if she was hearing him, so wrapped up in her rampage.
"Devon's just drunk, trying to get back at Mac, he doesn't know anything." he offered, trying to make it out to be no big deal.
At the sound of Mac's name she froze, her head snapping in his direction. Their eyes locked across the fire and his indifference to the situation was quite clear in his icy spheres.
Sister or not she was still his as far as he was concerned. When he shifted no more than an inch she bolted. Breaking every promise she'd made not to leave him in a split second fight or flight reaction fueled by fear and insanity.
Mac was seeing it all in slow motion. The disgusted look on her face. The way her body was violently trembling. The manner in which her wild eyes shifted towards the car the second he moved. His body sprang into action on it's own accord. The familiar instinct to chase and capture ingrained in him from so many of his victims kicking in when she ran.
At one point she could almost feel his breath on her neck. Feel a slight tug as her hair slipped through his fingers, just out of reach. He would have caught her too if it weren't for the steel toe of his boot catching in a hole, sending him flying face first into the ground, the tips of his fingers brushing against the heel of her tennis shoes. So close.
She was fumbling with the spare key hidden in the visor just as Mac got himself up and running again. Her hands shaking too badly to get it in the ignition correctly, gasping for breath as her heart thundered against her rib cage. Finally the key was in and the engine was roaring to life just as he was within three feet of the car. The gear was jammed into reverse the same moment his hands shot inside the door frame, grabbing for her, trying to pull her out before the vehicle started moving.
Kristy gunned it backwards with no regard for Mac's safety. Who'd switched from trying to grab her, to struggling to hang onto the window frame. Had the Denali not been moving so fast and the chance for purchase on the ground was given he would have been jumping through the window. Her swerving down the curves of the driveway was making it increasingly hard to hang on, his fingers and arms aching with the effort.
"Donchu fuckin' leave me!" he roared, making her finally look at him instead of the rear view mirror.
Though his voice was filled with rage his expression was one of hurt and desperation. If she weren't in the middle of a complete mental breakdown her heart would have broken at the look in his eyes. A salty water droplet trickled down her cheek as she smashed her fist into one of his hands and then the other when she reached the bottom of the driveway, forced to stop in order to put the car in drive.
She watched in her mirror through tear blurred eyes as he landed in the dirt behind her, his image retreating, becoming smaller and smaller as she drove faster.
'You came looking for a family, now you've found one just as twisted as you are.' she thought, sneering at her own inner voice.
When she'd originally come to what she now knew was a barren rocky hell on earth she'd been hoping for a kind father, maybe a sister to get to know. She realized she'd been naive to wish for such a thing. A happy loving family didn't fit in the grand fucked up design of her life. But he did. All too well.
The similarities between her and Mac were like a hard slap to the face. Their taste for violence, inability to function like normal human beings, the way they even fought like brother and sister when they argued. It was so sick and it was so them.
Turning off her headlights in case Mac was on her tail she veered off into a random stretch of rock and down into a dried up ravine. She needed to be able to think without risk of car crash. Only she couldn't think properly, her mind jumped from plans to leave and set up somewhere else, to killing Walter, to curling up in a ball in the back seat. She had officially lost it.
Mac was choking back tears and just plain choking on her dust, wasting only a few seconds watching her leave from his place on the ground before running to get to his truck, determined to hunt her down. When he reached the road there was no sign of which way she'd headed, not even a dust cloud still kicked up in her wake.
He drove for hours scouring the town, the canyons, and the cave before he returned to the cabin, his truck tires tearing up the driveway.
"Yew motherfucker." he growled, pushing Walter who had been in the process of hauling Devon up off the ground.
"Don't pick a fight with me Mac, you know you won't win." he snarled at his son, punching him in his gut, making him double over.
"Get back out there and find her you worthless piece of trash, we can't let our cash cow get away!" he ordered as he kicked Mac's leg, leaving him on the ground to collect his passed out son.
He didn't give a shit if Krystal was having a mental breakdown or that his son's one chance at a semblance of happiness had just been ripped to shreds. He only cared about getting Devon home and getting his cook back where she belonged.
Limping into the house Mac tried the last thing he could think of, pulling his phone from his pocket to scroll down to the name 'Devil Bitch' and press send.
A buzzing emanating from the bedroom crushed his last foolish hope and had him smashing his phone against the wall. Setting off the beginning of a rampage as he broke everything and anything in sight. A blender went flying when the memory of her wrapped around him in bed just this morning played in his mind.
How she'd snuggled his head to her chest, stroking his hair, telling him how much she needed him along with a whole bunch of other things that made him feel good.
It was all bullshit. She'd ran and left him there with a fucked up hole in his chest. Deserted him.
He was in more pain than he could ever remember, he couldn't even recall it hurting this much when his mother had abandoned him as a child.
He would make her pay for this with a lifetime of hell, she'd never get the chance to get away again once he found her. If he found her.
Climbing back into his truck to drive aimlessly in search of her as the sun began to rise Mac refused to just let her go without a fight to the death. But you can't fight with a ghost.
She was gone. Disappeared.