The Rise of the Red Queen

by Bourne Morris

  “Let’s just say I have done research on you. Now, please, let’s go to the parlor.”

  “No. No Bible reading. It won’t work. Not on me any more than it did on Alice.”

  Spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth. He slammed his fist down on the table. “No more about Alice. I told you that,” he shouted.

  Jamie took a deep breath and pulled the driver’s license out of her pocket.

  She put it on the table face up so the man could not avoid seeing Alice’s face. “I found this in the parlor sofa. It’s been there a long time.”

  He reached for the license.

  His face flushed and his eyes watered.

  Jamie stepped back from the table and crossed her arms in front of her. Her shirt felt sticky across her back. But something told her this was her chance to prevail. “What really happened to Alice? She did not drive away from here without her license.”

  The man swallowed hard and shook his head. A tear ran down his cheek.

  “And you never found a death certificate for her in Louisiana, did you?”

  He made a choking sound. “No.” The license trembled in his hand as he stared at it.

  Jamie licked her lips. Her mouth was as dry as cotton. “Would I be right if I said your father killed Alice after he had nearly beaten you to death?”

  More tears streamed down his face. He bent over the back of a chair, nearly choking. Foam appeared on the corners of his mouth. “She wasn’t as strong as I was. She couldn’t take the whipping.”

  “Where’s her body?”

  His chest heaved, his voice choked to a rasp. “I don’t know.”

  Jamie slammed her fist on the table. “Where is Alice’s body?”

  His tall body was trembling from head to foot. “She’s buried on a hill overlooking the lake. About a half-mile from here.”

  “You must know now why I can never stay here, never be with you.” She tried to steady her voice. “I know what you want, but it’s not going to happen. I am never going to be able to bear living in this house. I hate it here.”

  His eyes returned to her, his hand clutching his chest.

  “I care for you, Jamie. I really do.”

  “No, you cared for Alice. You loved her. But you can’t transform me into Alice. I’ll never be her, and I’ll never be yours.”

  “You keep saying never. You don’t know what more time with me might…”

  Jamie leaned toward the man and slammed her hands on the table. “Never. Never. Never!” she shouted.

  He shuddered. A loud moan parted his lips. He raised his head and opened his mouth wide.

  The sounds of a large wounded animal reverberated around the room. “Please, Jamie. You have to stay.”

  “No. I can’t stay. You have to let me go.”

  His shoulders fell and his head hung over and nearly touched the plate of unfinished food. Then, he pushed the chair away and moved toward her. “I know. I want you to be free. I do.”

  She walked backwards toward the kitchen door. He staggered and broke his fall by putting his hand on the wall. He leaned against the wall, then turned toward her, but his legs no longer supported him, and slowly he slid down until he was sitting on the floor. He stopped with his back against the wall, his shoulders shaking and his head buried in his arms.

  Jamie strode to the kitchen door and reached for the padlock. “What’s the combination?” Her voice was hard and firm. She knew he was defeated.

  “I’ll tell you in the morning,” he murmured to his knees. “It’s going to be dark soon. You can’t leave in the dark. We are miles away from anywhere. You’ll get lost and hurt yourself. In the morning, Jamie, in the morning.”

  Jamie strode to where he sat against the wall and squatted down until she was no more than a few inches away from his bowed head. “What made you think you could force me to love you?”

  He looked up with bloodshot eyes. “You’re so young, so lovely, and I’m so much older now. I thought this would be the only way. I thought that after you got to know me better…”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “I can take care of you, Jamie.” His voice became firmer. “I have money. I can give you anything you want.”

  She stood up. “I want the combination.” She walked over to the back door.

  No response, just a shaking of his shoulders. Jamie raised her voice. “The combination. Now.”

  His head rose and the look on his face told her all she needed to know. Jamie reached for the padlock, and punched in the first digit of Alice Lassiter’s birthdate.

  Chapter 34

  “Drop the phone, lady.” The voice came from the right and I looked over. Through the gloom of dusk I saw a Jeep parked under one of the trees. A short, stocky man was standing in front of the Jeep. There was still enough light to see he had no hair, small eyes set far apart, and a flat nose—the face of a pit bull.

  He wore a thin sweater that displayed forearms the size of hams. His chest was broad and striated with thick muscles that seemed like plates barely attached to his body. His hands held what I took to be the Bushmaster semi-automatic Shelby had described. The gun was enormous. The barrel was at least sixteen inches and it was pointed at my chest.

  “Drop the phone. Now.” He gestured with the gun, waving it ever so slightly back and forth. “I’d hate to see this baby cut a good-looking woman in half.”

  I dropped the phone.

  Still using the gun as an indicator, he waved me over to the other side of the gravel road. He pulled a sat phone from his pocket and punched in a number. His voice was low and menacing. He spoke in a sharp voice like a bark without taking his eyes off me. “I’ve got a female trespasser here.” He paused, listening. “She’s about thirty or thirty-five, roughly my height, red hair.” He paused again. “Right. I’ll walk her in. Unless you want me to bring her in the Jeep.” Another pause.

  I stared at him. No way was he the man who had entered Jamie’s apartment. Too short, too heavyset. How many men were involved? If this guy was any indicator of the sort who had kidnapped Jamie, I’d be astonished if she was still alive. Or if she was…poor Jamie. I wondered what these animals had done to her. I could almost hear my heartbeat. Where was Shelby? Was he the man on the other end of the phone? Where was Joe? Oh, God. Probably a mile away on the other side of the lake.

  The man leaned down and picked up my sat phone, still pointing the gun at me. He dumped the phone into the backseat of the Jeep and gestured with the gun again. “Walk,” he said, indicating the road ahead.

  It was getting darker, but I could just make out the gravel and the curve ahead. I looked at the trees that lined the road, hoping for a glimpse of a man following us, a man with a gun strapped to his body, a man who would know what to do and how to disarm my captor. But no shadow moved and no sound occurred.

  After a minute or so, the road curved around and I saw it. A two-story house with bars on all the windows visible from the road. A tall brick cube of a house, imitation Federal style, with a low-pitched roof and windows arranged symmetrically around a center front door. I wondered how someone had trucked all that brick this far into this wilderness. It looked like a jail.

  The gravel drive ran past the side of the house to a wooden barn with a door closed with a heavy six-by-six bar. A black sedan was parked on the gravel on the side of the house. Off to my left, the last rays of the sun hit the lake. How was Joe ever to find this place, or me?

  Jamie

  Jamie punched the next digits of the code into the padlock. She tugged on the lock to free it from the hasp. It didn’t move. She started the code again.

  His phone rang. Still sitting on the floor, he tugged the phone from his pocket. “What? What does she look like?” The man staggered to his feet, still holding the phone. “Bring her to the house.”

  Jamie paused, confu
sed. Her? A woman. Here? Oh my God, had someone found her? Was the woman alone?

  “No, leave the Jeep where it is. Just walk her here.”

  Jamie punched in the code again. This time the lock snapped open. Too late. The man was next to her. He grabbed her arm and pushed her back toward the table in the kitchen.

  “No,” she shouted. “You said I could be free.” She lunged for him.

  But he had gained his balance, and avoiding her swinging fists, grabbed both her hands. She leaned forward and bit his wrist. He howled and dropped her hands. She stepped back and prepared for a knee kick to his groin, but he was too fast and grabbed her again. He wrenched her arms behind her back.

  “Jamie, I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t let you go now. Someday, maybe. But not now. Relax.” With one hand, he grasped her wrists behind her back, locked his other hand in a firm grip around the back of her neck, and pushed her down the hall into the parlor. He shoved her down onto the sofa. “Stay here. Don’t move and don’t make any noise. If you make any noise, I swear I’ll knock you out cold and tie you up again.”

  “Go to hell,” Jamie sobbed as he locked the door to the hallway.

  Jamie sat, huddled into the sofa, trying not to weep or scream. She had been a few seconds away from walking out the back door, but for that damn phone call. What woman?

  She tried to calm herself. She had unlocked the padlock and knew the combination.

  The man was vulnerable. She could figure out a way to manage him after he had dealt with this woman who showed up. She took deep breaths.

  She felt into her pants pockets. The paper clip was still there. She walked over to the hall door. Then stopped. Better to wait until he let her out again. Better to make another try at the back door. He had understood that she’d never give in to him. He knew his cause was lost. Be quiet, she thought, be patient.

  Her blood turned cold. Letting her punch in the combination had just been his way to calm her down. He would change the combination tomorrow. He would never let her go, because now she knew about what had happened to Alice.

  Chapter 35

  I felt the tip of the gun barrel press against my spine. “Keep going,” the voice behind me said. My knees almost buckled but I steadied myself.

  A small porch fronted the house and offered slight covering to the massive and windowless front door. A light came on over the door, then went off again.

  “We’re here,” shouted the voice behind me. The door opened. A tall figure stood in the doorway. “Bring her in,” said the figure, retreating back into a dark hallway. The tall figure turned and moved down the hall. The gun pressed me in through the door and down the hall to a lighted room. As I passed through the hall, I noticed two closed doors, one on the right, one on the left, and a stairway to the left.

  We entered a kitchen. The tall man had his back to me and did not turn, but there was something familiar about his stance. He was taller than Shelby. But he was not Froman. The shoulders were wide but not wide enough. He put his hand up. He must have covered his mouth because the words came out muffled and exaggerated. “Sit her down and face her toward the stove, away from the table.”

  I knew that voice. With his attempt to disguise it, I couldn’t quite place it. But I knew this man, and sooner or later he’d figure that out and then I would pay for that knowledge.

  The gun directed me to the chair and I sat. I felt the tall man come up behind me and pull my arms back and tape my hands together. Cloth that felt like a dishtowel came over my head and across my eyes and ears. Hands tied the towel tight and the knot caught my hair.

  “Ouch.”

  “Shut up,” said the watchman with the gun.

  Hands lifted the edge of the towel and stuffed what felt like wads of paper toweling into my ears. But I could still hear him say, “Tell her to be quiet and not make a move. I’m going outside to check for others.” It was harder to hear but I was beginning to figure out his voice.

  “She was calling someone on her sat cell when I caught her. She called him Joe.”

  God, where was Joe? He must be trying to find me. He must have found the road and the Jeep by now. He must have called Wynan and Shelby to help him find the house. Where was Shelby? The voice behind me was not Shelby’s, so that meant he was somewhere else.

  I heard a door open and close.

  Minutes passed with no sound but the faint breathing of the man with the gun. I heard the scrape of a chair being pulled across a hard floor. The door opened and closed again.

  “No one out there. And it’s pitch dark now.” How did I know that voice? I struggled to identify it. Another chair scraping on the floor. Then I felt tape going around my ankles. “Okay, lady,” said the voice of the watchman. “Now tell us what the hell you are doing here.”

  He was letting his watchman talk for him. He knew me, too. Was he pretending not to know me? “My boyfriend and I were camping out here,” I said, trying to keep my own voice from trembling.

  “Bullshit,” said the watchman. “No one camps out here. It’s private land.” I head another scraping of something like metal on wood. The gun on the table?

  “We wanted to camp near the lake and go fishing in the morning.” My breathing was labored.

  “More bullshit,” said the watchman. “You were a quarter mile away from the lake when I found you on the road. And you had no equipment.”

  I struggled to maintain the fiction I’d started. “I was looking for wood for a campfire.”

  I waited for a response.

  Finally, the voice of the tall man. “Go get the Jeep and bring it around to the back of the house. I don’t know where her boyfriend is, but we need to get her off the property now.” Definitely not Froman’s voice. Oh my God. I knew who he was.

  A chair scraped. The heavy tread of a man wearing boots. The door opened and closed. I sensed the tall man near me. I needed to calm down. My mind wasn’t working because I was too damned scared. What would they do to me? What had they done to Jamie? What about Joe out in the dark woods, not knowing about where I was, and worse, not knowing about the watchman with the semi-automatic?

  I wanted to ask them if Jamie was here, but I was terrified that they would kill me right away if I betrayed my reason for being there.

  I waited for him to speak again. I wanted to be certain. Silence.

  I waited to hear the sound of the Jeep. Again, silence.

  Ten minutes and still no sound of the Jeep. The chair scraped the floor, and again, the heavy tread of a man in boots. A door opened.

  “Shit, what the hell…” A loud groan and I heard a fall. A loud bang against the stove. I felt a body fall against my legs and then move off again. Then I heard two voices. One was Wynan’s. “Where’s my granddaughter, you son of a bitch?”

  Another was Joe’s near me. “Steady yourself, Red. Hold on. I’m going to rip off this tape on your wrists.” The towel came away from my eyes.

  I saw Wynan with his hands around the throat of a man taller than he was.

  They moved back and forth like two great animals.

  Wynan raised a fist and smashed it into the man’s face, knocking the man to the floor and sending one of the chairs sailing across the room.

  Joe freed the tape from my hands and lifted me to my feet. He held my arms tightly in his hands and stared at me. “Jesus, Red. Damn it, this was close. Too close.” He was furious. But I didn’t care. We were all still in danger.

  “Joe, where’s the watchman? He has a gun.”

  “We captured him by his Jeep. Shelby’s got him trussed up like a Christmas turkey. He’s guarding him with the gun he was carrying.”

  Behind me, a fist cracked against bone. Wynan shouted. “Where is she? I swear I’ll rip your head off.” Another punch. I turned in time to see the tall man fall to the floor holding his hand across his face. Blood poured from behind his
hand and down his chin. Now I was sure. “Joe, I know him. I know who…”

  A woman’s voice screamed from another room. “Grandpa, I’m in here! Grandpa, it’s Jamie.”

  Jamie, my God.

  Joe released me and we all ran into the hall. Wynan beat on the door. “Jamie, stand away from the door,” shouted Wynan.

  Joe stood back and gave the door a kick. The door held. Wynan turned around, kicked backwards like a mule, striking the door just below the doorknob. He kicked so hard he almost lost his footing. The door gave in. Behind it stood a girl with black curly hair and large eyes flooded with tears. She was in her grandfather’s arms before Joe and I could turn back to the kitchen.

  The tall man was sitting on the floor, holding his jaw. He lifted his head and I held my breath looking at the tear-stained and bloodied face of Ezra McCready.

  Chapter 36

  It was a long night.

  Joe searched the rest of the house while Wynan stood guard over McCready. Jamie and I sat on the parlor sofa, my arms around her shoulders, while she described her ordeal.

  It took the Landry police a while to get to the house and another several minutes to staunch the bleeding in McCready’s nose, handcuff him, and get him into a police car.

  It was another hour getting Jamie to the hospital in Landry and then waiting to learn enough about her condition.

  Wynan couldn’t take his arms from around Jamie, even in the hospital.

  He had insisted she spend most of the night and be thoroughly examined in spite of her repeated protests. “I’m not hurt, Grandpa. He didn’t hurt me. He just kept me.”

  And then it was another half hour quizzing Shelby over coffee in the hospital cafeteria.

  “Sorry,” said Shelby, slurping coffee from a mug. “I meant to catch up to you, but when I got to the south shore of the lake, I figured since you and Wynan were going up the west side, I’d check out the east side. If I found something, I’d call on the sat phone. If not, I’d join up with you at the top of the lake.”