Jasmine

by Bene, Jennifer

  It’s enough.

  Daniel bellows a cry that is pain and rage in equal measure. He staggers and goes down on his good knee. Clint skids past in the dirt, scrambles up as Daniel goes down, and then Clint flings himself in a half arc, swinging the crowbar downward as he does.

  He doesn’t have the force he had on his running pass, but the crowbar hits Daniel in the shoulder with a thudding noise that sounds like a punching bag being struck. Daniel roars again, and this time he loses his grip on the girl, and she tumbles into the dirt. I keep my gun on Daniel, waiting for my moment, any chance when he is in the clear from Clint and the woman, and I can take my shot. Because I am shooting this sonuvabitch. There’s no way I’m going to try and talk him down.

  Clint sees the girl fall, and I watch him drop the crowbar, diving for her. I’m not taking my eyes off Daniel, who appears to be trying to track what is going on through the pain Clint has inflicted. Clint scoops up the young woman, stumbles,and begins running. He darts out of my vision, even as Daniel is rising from the ground, and that’s all I need.

  “MY WIFE! LET GO OF MY WIFE!” Daniel roars as he bursts forward.

  Fuck the warning, fuck Miranda rights, fuck it all. It’s been a while, but I know what to do here. This is not my first rodeo. I take in a breath, hold it, gauging the closing distance as Daniel surges toward Clint. I let the breath out slowly, easing my finger against the trigger until the weight…

  The first shot rings out. The Glock kicks, pulls upward slightly to my left. I settle it back in place and Jesus fucking Christ he hasn’t even broken stride.

  The gun kicks again. Daniel twists slightly, and I see the spray of blood. It’s a solid fucking hit and yet…

  He’s slowed, but he doesn’t stop.

  God fucking damn. He can’t be human.

  I take another breath, and the bulk of his body fills my sights. This will be the third round, and if he doesn’t go down I’m going to be fighting to try and keep Clint and the girl out of the line of fire, and I don’t fucking have time for this, and why the fuck won’t you just go down you enormous motherfucker…

  The gun jerks a third time, the empty casing spinning away as it ejects out of the chamber, the fourth round seating in its place, and he staggers.

  He staggers, wrenching to his right, and he’s going to go down. He has to go down. He’s got three goddamn bullets in him, nine millimeters, 147 grains each and every one, and not even those crackheads on Normandie can take that many rounds…

  He wrenches back. Lurches forward.

  Fuck it.

  I squeeze the trigger again. The bullet hits, a thunk that I can hear clearly, and a small fount of crimson bursts from a hole that appears on his chest, near his shoulder.

  He twists the opposite direction, and everything he does now is as if it’s in slow motion. He sinks to his knees, then leans forward until he’s braced on his hands. I keep my weapon trained on him as I close the gap between us, watching as his fingers clench into the dry earth.

  “Jasmine.” He chokes the name out, and it’s followed by a spew of gore that pushes up behind the word, past his lips.

  He looks up. Still keeping my gun trained on him, I glance in the direction of his gaze. Just beyond me, Clint has the young woman encased in his arms, his back to Daniel, shielding her from his advance.

  I turn back to Daniel as he chokes up another sound, voice almost unrecognizable. Blood foams at his mouth, his heart pumping blood to lungs that force his life out on every exhale. He looks up at her, one hand coming up from the ground toward her, fingers dripping dust and earth in a fine sheen. Like sand in an hourglass.

  “As’muun!” The sound is a burble of liquid, an inhuman noise that is carried forth on a choke of crimson.

  I hear a noise. A cry that is a whimper, and I turn back to see the woman struggling in Clint’s arms. She’s fighting, wrenching to be free of him. Finally, he relents, letting her go but keeping one protective arm in front of her as she stumbles to the side stark naked. The woman turns her head to look at Daniel, and when she does, it feels like a blow to my chest.

  I watch as Sloane Finley shoves against Clint’s arm, stepping past it. I can’t speak. I can only watch in stunned silence as she moves one foot closer to the man dying in the dirt under the West Texas sun. She stops, and I expect her to be scared, horrified, but she’s not. She looks… dangerous. Angry.

  Cold-blooded.

  “Asmuun.” The word is barely discernible as he gazes up at her, beseeching.

  “I am not Jasmine.” Her voice is a sibilant hiss, filled with a rage that does not seem possible from one who looks so young. So innocent. She stares down at him with eyes that are as filled with anger and hatred as his are with madness.

  “My. Name. Is. Sloane.”

  There is a tension of violence within her that seems as if it might snap at any moment, but in the end she does nothing. She simply stands and watches as he stares up at her with an uncomprehending blank face. His mouth opens again, breath blowing a red bubble that wavers for a second in the warm air, then pops. Daniel’s elbow gives way as he slowly collapses, crumpling into the sunbaked dirt that stretches out around us.

  Dead.

  For a moment there is only silence. No movement, not even a breeze, the only thing the soundless scream of the sun a billion miles away. Clint moves closer to Sloane, gently touching her arm. She flinches, jerking back, and he raises his hands up as she turns to look at him.

  “We’re the police,” he says softly, and she crosses her arms over her chest, wavering on her feet as she appraises him with quick jerks of her eyes. When he spreads his arms, she steps wordlessly forward, and it’s like they’re having some kind of conversation I’m not privy to. Whatever it is, it ends with Sloane moving slowly forward until she presses against him. I hear her sob, and then her legs give out, but Clint catches her.

  “Sloane Finley?” I ask, but my voice is hoarse. Quiet.

  Her head turns, and she just stares at me, tears streaking her cheeks, rivulets that cut paths through the dirt that stains her face as she gives a single short nod.

  “I’m Agent Jones. FBI.” Forcing a breath, I do everything to calm nerves that are askew in ways that they haven’t been for a long time. I start to reach out my hand to her, realize the stupidity of the gesture, and pull it back. I blurt the only thing that crosses my mind in this moment, “Are you okay?”

  She stares at me as if the words have no meaning, and then answers with a voice that cuts through me like a shard of glass. “No.”

  I stand mutely as she turns back into Clint’s chest, her hands fisted in his uniform as he curls her in tight. He doesn’t look at me, only at the top of her head that shakes as she cries quietly. I turn away and walk to where Daniel’s body lies in the dirt. Blood has soaked into the dry ground beneath him, creating a darker halo around his chest. A wave of irrational anger pushes through me, and I bring up my gun and point it at him. For a moment that’s all I do, point the weapon at his body, finger on the trigger, and I know what I want to do… but the feeling passes, and I holster my weapon, turning and walking away.

  I open the door to the Bronco, slide up into the seat, and pull the mic from the radio set.

  “Sheriff Braddock?”

  There is a slight hiss as I let go of the button, and then a long pause. Finally, a voice comes back over the speaker.

  “This is Sheriff Braddock. Who’s this?”

  “Agent Jones. You might want to head out here to the Christiansen ranch.” I pause, looking out the window to where Clint still stands, holding Sloane. It looks like he’s saying something to her, probably whisperings words of comfort into her hair.

  I swallow.

  “We found Sloane Finley.”

  There’s another pause, and I put the mic back into its holder. A second later the radio bursts into sound, Braddock’s voice, but I’m not listening. I slip out of the cab, close the door to cut off the noise, and stand in the sun. I see mov
ement out of the corner of my eye, up in the sky. It’s a bird, large, black, riding a thermal that rises from the endless grasslands that surround us. I watch as it circles, a tight spiral that goes on and on, until it becomes a tiny dot in the infinite blue.

  And then it’s gone. Forever.

  * * *

  I’m not sure how long I stand there before I hear the sirens. Long enough that Clint has Sloane Finley wrapped in a blanket, sitting in the A/C in the backseat with him right beside her.

  Alive. She’s alive.

  That thought keeps pinging around inside my head, and I keep glancing back at her just to remind myself it’s real. The kid was fucking right, and if I’d been the kind of asshole I am ninety percent of the time… she’d be dead. Or wishing she was.

  Jesus Christ, what did he do to her?

  It’s not like I don’t have a pretty good idea. I went inside the barn after Clint had to carry her to the truck because she couldn’t stand on her own two feet, and based on the dark smears on the concrete, the blood splatter near the post, and the whip I found on the workbench… I’ve got a damn good idea why the girl can’t stand.

  He beat her, tortured her, and I don’t have any doubts that he touched her. Wife. The maniac called her his wife, called her ‘Jasmine,’ and it’s not until I see Sherriff Braddock getting out of his truck that I remember where the hell I’d heard that name before. His missing person, the girl that the FBI didn’t bother to send some asshole like me out to investigate.

  Another girl who probably looked just like Sloane Finley before she got buried in the dirt.

  Another body that they might find in all this grassland. If they’re lucky.

  Sixty-eight thousand, nine-hundred and something of the stats for whichever year he took her. Fucking Daniel Christiansen. The Wall.

  Neither of these girls stood a chance.

  I shake my head as Braddock approaches me, red-faced and stunned as he looks between the corpse on the ground and the half-alive girl in the back of Clint’s Bronco.

  “What the hell happened?” Braddock asks, mouth hanging open as he watches Clint climb out.

  “The kid’s instincts were right. Bastard had her all this time.” My gaze lands on the corpse again, the dust the vehicles kicked up is settling on the blood, leaving the big motherfucker as streaked and dirty as his victim.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t suffer like she did. He got to go out quickly by comparison, and I hate him more than a little for that.

  But I hate myself more.

  Why didn’t you just go back, Mason? You were right here yesterday. Right fucking here.

  “Agent Jones.”

  I can tell by the tone in Braddock’s voice it isn’t the first time he’s said my name while I zoned out, but I try to play it off as I walk closer and join the conversation. I manage to say all the right things, explain why I discharged my weapon, all of it. Clint backs me up, says some shit about me saving their lives, but I ignore it.

  If it weren’t for him, no one’s life would have been saved today, and we both know it.

  “Well, Doc Hendricks shouldn’t be too far behind us. Talbert called him before we left the station and told him how to get out here.” Braddock lets out a sigh and looks over Clint’s shoulder at Sloane. “She looks to be in real bad shape,” he says in almost a whisper, and Clint’s jaw goes rigid.

  “Yeah.” The word is clipped coming out of the kid, and I don’t miss how he shifts his body to block Braddock’s view. Still trying to protect her, but I don’t say anything. I don’t have the right to.

  “I can’t believe he’d do this. He was always a bit weird, but… shit.” Deputy Talbert has been silent since he showed up, but his assessment sums it up.

  It’s shit.

  The whole damn situation.

  Braddock takes charge, and I don’t say a word. I’m not interested in pulling rank here, and the body is on his turf. If I had my way, I’d walk away right now, but I’m too deep in this shit, and it’s going to be one hell of a report by the time I sit down in Amarillo.

  Carmen. Fuck.

  I step away from them so I can call her, watching as Talbert covers Daniel’s body in a sheet. I can hear the road noise when she answers. “Hey Mason, I’m on the way home with her right now. Should be on the road in a matter of—”

  “We found her.”

  Silence fills the line for a second, and then I hear Carmen sputtering over her words. “Wh— Where— How did you find her?”

  “Clint did, actually. Out here at the Christiansen place. Psycho’s had her locked up all this fucking time, and—”

  “She’s ALIVE?” Carmen shouts the last word, her shock almost making me smile as I press on my ribs and wince.

  Bastard might have cracked a few.

  “Yeah. Not in great shape, but she’s alive.”

  “Whittman is going to fucking kill me.” She groans, and I hear her explaining to her wife before she comes back to the phone. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

  “No rush. Had to shoot him so there’s no suspect to deal with.” I take a deep breath and look back at the sound of a car pulling over the dirt and gravel. “Just bring me my bag, will you? I need a change of clothes.”

  “Sure, Mason. I’ll head out soon.”

  “Thanks, Carmen.” I hang up and tuck away my cell phone, watching as Clint carries Sloane Finley to the doctor’s car. When he sets her down in the backseat, the doctor nudges him out of the way, and I catch his eye, beckoning him over with a tilt of my head.

  I can tell he doesn’t want to leave her side, but he does. His uniform is a wreck. Smeared in dark smudges of blood, and it’s dried on his bare arms as well. He looks like he’s been through hell, and it’s in his eyes too. No shiny glint of hope, no puppy-like eagerness.

  He kind of looks like me.

  “Listen, Mason—” The kid starts to talk but I wave him off.

  “You did good today. You saved her, and I’m man enough to admit that you were right yesterday. We should have come back here; we should have pressed. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.” I’d expected that there would be some lifting of the heavy feeling in my chest after I said the words, but it doesn’t abate. It just squats there, beside the ache in my ribs every time I breathe too deeply. Fucking hell. My eyes wander past him to the car I know she’s in. I can’t see her with the glare off the windshield, but I can see the doctor crouched beside the open door. “She wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you, kid.”

  Clint’s quiet for a minute, eyes focused near our feet, and then I hear him speak softly. “I thought she was dead.”

  “What?”

  “When I found her in the basement. Couldn’t even tell it was a person at first with the blood and the dirt. Then I thought she was already dead.” He twists at the waist, looking back toward the doc’s car. “Still can’t believe she’s alive. She looks…”

  Clint trails off and I let him. I don’t need to fill in the gaps there, because the image of Sloane Finley isn’t going anywhere for a long while. I’m sure we’ll both still remember her when we go into the dirt ourselves. Some things just stick with you, and I already know she’s one of those. The girl I’d already written off as dead, the girl I made Clint drive away from yesterday, the girl who would have been a corpse if he hadn’t dragged me back here today.

  “She asked me not to leave her,” he says, and his shoulders straighten out as his head comes up. “I’m going to ride with her to the doc’s. Can you take care of getting the Bronco back to the station when everything’s done here?”

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Thanks,” he says, hurrying back to her, and I wander back to the sheriff as the doctor gets in the car and turns around to head up the drive.

  “Guess you’ve got more’n a few paragraphs to add to that report of yours,” Braddock says out of the corner of his mouth, and I let out a huff that makes my ribs throb.

  “Definitely more than a few,” I answe
r, watching the plume of dust rising as Sloane Finley gets carried away from the hell that was her prison for more than two months.

  I know we’ve got to process the scene, take photos, somehow load the fucker’s corpse into one of these vehicles before we put him wherever they put their dead in Stockdale, Texas… but I can’t help turning to stare at the house and the barn. All Norman Rockwell on the outside, picturesque and pretty. A lie.

  Can’t judge a book, or a case, by it’s cover, Mason. Never again.

  I know I won’t. Not without doing my job, not without trying at least a little, because the next time my head tells me it’s just another dead girl, I know I’m going to think her name. And, hell, maybe I’ll find another one. Reduce that sixty-eight thousand by a digit or two before I kick the bucket myself.

  It’s probably bullshit, but it’s possible. Anything is.

  Because Sloane Finley is alive.

  Epilogue

  Mason

  One Year Later

  “You’re getting the same calls I am, aren’t you?” Carmen’s voice coming through my phone’s speaker is laced with mirth, and I chuckle.

  “Of course I am. Sinclair is over the fucking moon. When things died down after the initial Sloane hysteria, you’d have thought he was going through smack withdrawals.”

  “Same with Whitmann. I’m his favorite person on the planet right now because the interview requests are pouring in, and he’s angling to get back on camera.” I can practically hear Carmen rolling her eyes as she huffs. “Our little media whores.”

  “And, yet, you and I are the ones getting all the screen time,” I add. I can’t help but smile because I know just how much it grates Dave Sinclair that it’s not him.

  “True.” Carmen laughs before she says, “And speaking of which… I’m not turning down that invite from The Ellen Show, so I better see your goddamn signature on the agreement soon. I want another trip out to Hollywood.”