That would have been much more fitting for the men who tried to destroy me, the same men who murdered my father.
Still … they’re dead, and that’s better than them being alive.
“That’s got to give you a headache,” I joke, referring to the last two pictures. The blood and gore have no effect on me. My stomach is made of iron after the atrocities I’ve seen, after all that I’ve endured. If this bitch wants to rattle my cage, she’s going to have to try harder.
“And then we have Jimmy,” she says, sticking one last photograph to the wall. Jimmy’s face, still frozen in shock, the trail of blood from his temple where Jase shot him barely noticeable in the extreme close-up.
“He looks unwell,” I comment. “Thing is, I’m still not sure why you’re showing me all of this.”
Dunn frowns so hard it looks like she’s about to burst a blood vessel.
“Here’s the thing,” she says, throwing a stack of photographs in front of me. “We’ve got you. We have your DNA on the first two victims, and motive. We’ve got probable cause to take you to trial.”
I sift through them, suppressing a twisted smile as I see what happened to Jazz and Ant after they bit the big one when bombs in their motorcycle fuel tanks exploded, ripping them to pieces. It isn’t pretty, what became of them. But to me, it’s beautiful.
I drop the photographs on the table and lean back in the hard metal chair I’ve been sitting on for the past five hours.
“These people are — were — like family to me. Don’t you think it’s a little tacky showing me all of this? I’m still grieving for these boys. They were like brothers to me.”
Agent Dunn actually rolls her eyes at me. At least she’s got some spunk somewhere in there. “Give it a rest, Miss Portland,” she says impatiently. “You’ve got more motive than anyone else, and no alibi for any of these murders.”
“Motive?” I ask sweetly. “And what might that be?”
Agent Dunn hesitates. Go on, I think. Say it. They raped me until they thought I was dead. The murdered my father, and you want to arrest me? Say it.
“I’m not authorized to talk with you about an active investigation,” Dunn says finally. “But I really think you should start talking, Miss Portland.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay,” I say finally. “I give up. You got me. I’ll tell you something. Let me write it down.”
Dunn’s beady eyes practically wig out of her head. She studies me for a moment, probably to see if I’m telling the truth, and I stare right back at her. If she wanted a wallflower who’d stare at the floor, she arrested the wrong girl.
After a beat, she stands up, turns and bustles out of the room. I divert my attention to Agent Dumbass, who looks like he’s about to fall asleep in his chair.
“I’ll make a full confession,” I say, “if you give me that.” I point to the coke can and he eyes it dubiously. After a pause, he slides the can over to me with one finger. With a smile, I pick up the can between my cuffed hands and take a long drink.
The fizzy liquid burns on the way down my throat, but it’s delicious. I drink as much as I can before Agent Bitch returns, setting it back down on the table and smiling at Dumbass. I slide the can back towards him with a wink. Let him think we’re friends. Let him think I’m just a silly young girl who couldn’t possibly hurt anyone. He looks surprised, taking the can back as Agent Bitch walks back into the room.
She looks between me, the can and the goofy look on Agent Dumbass’s face and shakes her head.
Sliding into her seat, she drops a yellow legal pad on the table between us as she addresses Dumbass.
“She killed a man by poisoning his drink with pure meth,” she says to her partner. “You sure you want that back?”
“Allegedly,” I add.
The oaf stares at the can for a few seconds. Finally, he pushes it back in my direction with an embarrassed look.
In the past five hours or so since I was unceremoniously dumped in this interrogation room, I’ve gone through the whole gamut of emotions. Fear. Shock. Despair. Now, I’m at anger. Anger that bubbles within me. Anger that is thinly disguised as apathy to these two morons.
Dunn drops a blue Bic pen on the legal pad and pushes it over to me. I hold up my cuffed wrists helplessly.
“I can’t write with these things on,” I say.
Dunn gives me the filthiest look before nodding at Dumbass. He stands and circles around to me, removing my cuffs before returning to his spot.
I WANT A LAWYER. I write it as obnoxiously large as I can, underlining the word LAWYER three times.
Agent Bitch’s smile disappears, replaced by a thin line of contempt at her mouth. I grin. Good luck getting those cuffs back on me, motherfucker. I sit back in my seat and snatch up the Coke, draining the rest of the can before they think to take it from me.
“We can play this game for however long you want, Miss Portland,” she says curtly, fiddling with the stack of crime scene photographs in front of her. I smile.
“I’ve got all day,” I say sweetly, even though I really, really don’t. Dornan has Elliot’s daughter and ex-girlfriend, and possibly Elliot himself, and Jase and I have twenty-four hours to meet him and get the girls out of danger before he kills them. At least, that’s what I’m assuming he plans to do to them. I can’t even comprehend what else he might be planning to do to those poor girls to get back at us.
Agent Dunn shakes her head one last time, gathering up the files and stalking towards the door. “I’ll give you some time to think about your position,” she says.
“Isn’t this illegal?” I call out to her. “I’m an American citizen. I have a right to a lawyer. Get me a goddamn lawyer.”
Really, I just need a lawyer to post bail so I can get the hell out of here. Not that I’m sure I’d actually be bailed out, but I need something, and talking to these two is proving fruitless. A cold panic is building up inside my stomach, in the hollow space where my baby once lived and died.
God, it’s still so raw, so vicious when the memory of our tiny little baby takes hold and squeezes me. Sometimes, selfishly, I wish I could forget about her, because losing her has cursed me with more pain than I could ever imagine.
If I had any remnants of doubt about killing Dornan before? They’re gone, bled from me in the moments after our daughter was born, still and dead, in the early hours of the morning when the world was still dark.
He took her from me. From us. And I cannot rest until he’s dead and buried, a rotting corpse in the cold ground, a memory and nothing more.
Dornan Ross needs to burn for the things he’s done.
Agent Dumbass follows his partner out of the room and pulls the door shut. I immediately stand up and go to the door, testing the handle. Locked from the outside. Of course. I go back to my chair, collecting the pen someone so thoughtfully left for me and shoving it into my pocket. You know, just in case I need to stab somebody sometime soon.
Which, as it turns out, is sooner than I’d anticipated.
About an hour later, Agent Bitch sticks her head back into the room. “Your lawyer’s on the way,” she says, closing the door behind her again.
This could be anyone. A cop posing as a lawyer to get a confession on tape. A hit man, sent by the Gypsy Brothers or the Cartel. I’m like a sitting duck in here, and I don’t like it one tiny bit.
But what greets me isn’t any of those things.
It’s so much worse.
I don’t move an inch as the door swings open and he walks into the room. Dressed in a suit I’ve seen before, clutching a black leather briefcase by his side. He looks positively fucking amused.
“Well,” I say bitterly, “they’ll let any motherfucker take the bar these days.”
That makes Donny laugh.
TWO
Donovan “Donny” Ross laughs, but there is no trace of pleasure in the strangled noise that comes from his throat. It’s a painful laugh, weighed down by death and despair.
My laugh
probably doesn’t sound that different, come to think of it.
“Well, stand up,” he says. “I’ve missed my little sis.”
I glare at him, standing abruptly so that my metal chair falls behind me.
“Relax,” he soothes, motioning for me to sit down. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, Julie.” He throws the briefcase onto the table that separates us and shoves his hands in his pants pockets. Pants that look ridiculous on him. He might think he’s dressed for success, but from where I’m standing he looks like a gangster, the long suit sleeves and white collared shirt underneath concealing some of his tattoos, but not the ones on his neck and hands. He’s got matching tattoos on the fingers of both hands, VITA and MORS. Life and death. I remember them well. They were on his hands six years ago.
I’m sure you didn’t come here to hurt me, I think, pissed that he’s used the element of surprise to get me while I’m trapped. Stuck in a goddamned interrogation room inside a US air base with nowhere to go.
“What are you doing here, Donny?” I ask, my heart thudding as I watch him pace casually. As if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
As if he hasn’t just lost five brothers and a grandfather in the bloody battle that we’re still stuck in the middle of.
“Just a little business trip,” he says flippantly, his smile never reaching his dead black eyes, eyes that match Dornan’s perfectly. He’s just a younger version of his father, really.
“Oh,” I reply, “I thought you’d be at another funeral.” I throw him a fuck-you smile, full of sweetness and hate.
He doesn’t reply.
“You’re dressed for it,” I continue, acutely aware of both the pen in my pocket and the empty Coke can near my left hand. “Your family plot must be overflowing,” I say. Press those goddamn buttons. Come on, asshole, if you’re here to dance, let’s fucking dance.
“I hear cremation is much more efficient,” Donny says somberly, clicking the briefcase open and removing something.
A box.
A box full of ashes.
My daughter.
I can’t help it. I buckle at the sight of my daughter’s remains in his hands, my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream that tries to escape me. I back up against the far wall as he places the box beside his briefcase and snaps it shut again.
I can’t even rush over and try to grab it, because I can’t risk him spilling one precious bit of those ashes. Can’t fathom what he’s going to do to them. Please, please, don’t hurt them. That box and a set of footprints on paper are all I have left of the baby who held on through every horrid bit of torment Dornan inflicted upon my body during the months I was his captive.
“I came for what you owe my father,” he murmurs. “And instead, I found this.” He runs one finger along the top of the box, and I can’t see or hear anything else except him, except this here and now.
Everything I’ve managed to suppress for the past couple of hours comes crashing back into me with an intensity that physically hurts me. It’s like I’m dying, one painful moment at a time.
“You lost his baby?” he asks, patting the box. “Daddy will be so angry.”
Kill him. I have got to kill him. He cannot live.
“She was never his baby,” I seethe, composing myself somewhat as the sadness engulfing me is temporarily drowned by the rage that rattles inside my chest. The rage that I need to finish this. To finish him.
“She?” Donny asks, tilting his head to the side. “Hmph. Dornan always wanted a daughter. I mean, he had you, but look what you went and did.”
Goddamnit! Why did I tell him that?
“Not his daughter,” I argue, shaking with anger and terror. “I was already pregnant.”
“Daughter, granddaughter,” he shrugs, waving his hand in a noncommittal gesture. “It’s all the same, really. She came from Dornan. She belonged to him. And you lost her, you pathetic, fucking junkie.”
He lets his hand drop from the box, and it’s a visceral relief for his hand to be off that box that contains the burnt remains of all of my hopes and dreams. He doesn’t have the right to even touch her, to be anywhere near her.
“I told him to be careful with you. That you’d end up like your fucking mother,” he says, stalking around the table and towards me. Shit! He comes at me like a snake, so quick and without warning that I don’t have time to react. Not that it’d matter. I never was able to fight him off, not physically. Not six years ago, not now.
I back away, but there’s nowhere to go. We’re in a square box with a table and a chair, and there’s nowhere left to go.
I scream as a hand closes around my neck. He squeezes hard, cutting off my air supply, crowding me with his body so there is nothing else but him.
How did he get in here? That bitch agent must really be in with the Cartel. And I don’t believe for a moment what she said about the Cartel working for the CIA. Nope. I think she’s on his payroll.
I claw at his death grip, feeling Donny’s warm blood underneath my fingernails as I gouge at his flesh, but he doesn’t even flinch. He laughs as he squeezes harder, and white dots start to float lazily in my vision.
He’s going to kill me.
I go limp for a moment, tired and just completely over this relentless war that has consumed my entire existence, until I think of Jase.
He can’t have Jase. No. He can’t take Jase from me. I love him too much to let that happen to my precious boy.
I kick and punch and gouge, but it’s no use. It’s like trying to fight off a brick wall. Nothing happens when I hit him.
I am going to die here, and I didn’t even fight back. I am pathetic, just like he said.
My lungs burn with emptiness. I need air. But I am smothering within his grip.
My eyelids are drooping when I hear the door burst open. The two agents hurry in, and Donny drops me like I’m made of fire.
“What did I say!” Agent Dunn screams at him. I imagine his smirk, but I can’t see it, because I’m on the ground, and Agent Dumbass is shaking me awake.
“You said don’t kill her,” Donny scoffs. “I was just playing.”
“Time for a recess,” Dunn says to him. He starts to protest but she isn’t having any of it.
I see Agent Bitch escort Donny from the room, the door slamming in their wake. The male agent brushes hair from my face and pats me on the cheek.
“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
I feel really, really bad for what I’m about to do. I mean, no doubt the guy is working for the Cartel, but he seems like a stupid oaf, harmless really. I remind myself that he’s the enemy as I whisper something unintelligible to him.
“What?” he asks, coming closer and putting his ear near my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, as I bring up the pen and drive it into the meaty hollow of his throat, cringing as I strike gold and hit his windpipe. He gasps — or, he tries to gasp, but nothing happens. Shit, I hope I haven’t killed him. Both of his hands come up to his throat and he attempts to pull the pen out. I use this opportunity to shove him to the side and reach over him, unclipping the holster at his hip and sliding the gun out. He takes one hand from his throat and swings his arm around, but the shock of being stabbed in the throat makes him clumsy and foolish. I parry his blow easily, bringing the gun up and aiming it at him as I rise to my feet.
“Get up,” I hiss.
He glances up at me with wet eyes, a sickening rasp coming from the pen in his throat. He’s trying to pull it out.
“Don’t pull it out,” I caution. “If you pull it out, you won’t be able to breathe. It’s keeping you from bleeding out.”
He stops trying to pull at the pen and nods minutely, his movement hampered by the Bic ballpoint in his throat. Poor guy. That’s got to hurt like a bitch.
I look at his wound, suddenly deflated. I was planning on taking him as a hostage, but the guy won’t be conscious much longer.
“Are you afraid of blood?” I ask incredulously. He’s a
s white as a sheet and shaking. I mean, I did just stab him in his neck, but that’s no reason to pass out on me.
If I’d done the same thing to Dornan, he probably wouldn’t even flinch.
“Hey!” I urge, snapping my fingers in front of his face. “Stay with me, dude. I’m not going to kill you. Christ.”
He’s really struggling. But I don’t have time to think about him right now. Jase. I have got to get to Jase, and get out of here, and get to Elliot, and get Elliot’s ex-girlfriend and daughter back. And then kill Dornan. And then bury my daughter properly.
And then go on a fucking vacation.
My eyes fall on the briefcase Donny left on the table. My poor baby’s ashes are in there. I won’t let him take them back.
“Give me your cell phone,” I hiss at the agent. In the end, I have to crouch down again and dig around in his pockets, because the guy isn’t hearing a word I say. He’s deep in the throes of panic, breathing heavily — or at least, trying to breathe. Guilt stabs me again as I watch blood trickle down his neck and beneath his white shirt, soaking the material.
I yank his cell phone out and flip it open. Dialing Elliot’s number, I can only pray that he is the one who picks up.
“Yes?” he answers, before I’ve even heard the line ring.
“Elliot?!” I cry.
“Julz!” he says urgently. “Where are you? Are you with them?”
My heart sinks. “No,” I say quietly. “Jase and I are in some kind of air base. We were taken from the house. I don’t know where Luis is. And Elliot,” I glance down at the agent on the floor, “these people are CIA.”
Elliot lets out a long breath. “He has my baby, Julz. My girls. He has my girls.”
Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series Page 53