In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue...

by K. Alex Walker

  Desmond responded by slipping on the coat and following Doug out the door. His anger increased with each fervent step he took. He understood that the FBI had a particular protocol to follow, but he was going to make sure that Delgano told him exactly where they took Larke. Then, he was going to find Jarvis and personally carve every single ounce of skin away from the man’s flesh.

  *****

  Larke woke to the fragrant smell of freshly chopped wood. Dry heat from a fireplace warmed her legs, and her neck and back ached as though she’d spent the last several hours in the same position. She’d been changed into an oversized man’s dress shirt with nothing underneath, and she took a moment to scan her body for any signs of overt injury.

  Like before, another memory threatened to rupture her skull as it painfully resurfaced. It was what Wren had been referring to at the safe house.

  Desmond had left her.

  He’d left her with a terribly written note without explaining why he left, and she remembered the debilitating pain she’d felt in her stomach each time her calls went to voicemail, or an email went unanswered. In an instant, she’d gone from reveling in the happiest moments of her life to clutching at hope in the dismal darkness. Moving on had been pointless since, even after six months of no contact with her estranged husband, she still found that there was no comparison in other men. Then came the assumptions: Did she work too hard on the Jarvis trial? Did she work too much in general? Was she no longer able to satisfy him? Had he realized that he’d made a mistake?

  Yet, nothing seemed to fit.

  However, an entire year later, it was a little past nine on a Friday. Because of all the threats she’d received after the trial, she’d been in the process of booking a two-week trip to Jamaica when Joni had knocked on her door, in tears and complaining about something that the married man she’d been seeing had done. She’d given Joni the customary advice—leave him—and they’d had wine, chatted, and watched a movie. In the middle of the movie, after hearing footsteps outside, she’d excused herself and peered out her bedroom window just in time to see movement across the backyard. At that moment, her heart told her not to call emergency services. It told her to call Desmond. And, as fate would have it, it was the first time in over a year he’d picked up.

  She’d already expected him to be awake, the night owl that he was, and when she told him what was happening, he was out the door in under sixty seconds. When she peered downstairs, Joni was nowhere to be found and the front door had been left wide open. As she made her way downstairs, one of the men had rushed inside the house, charging towards the stairs. She’d screamed for Joni to run while backing into the bedroom, but as she tried to close the door, he’d shoved it open and sent her flying across the room.

  She’d fought as hard as she could, but they still managed to overpower her, shove pills down her throat, and drown her face with water. One of the men had geared up to give her a second dose, but that was when she’d fought his friend. The friend that shoved her into the wall.

  After that, Desmond had shown up.

  He’d left their marriage, but had still shown up to save her and protected her with his life the entire time they were together. He’d even told her that he still loved her, so what had made him leave?

  “Ahem.”

  She realized that she was in the middle of a king-sized bed in the loft-style area of a stylish log cabin. The platform on which the bed rested overlooked a large living room on the first floor with chandelier lighting, and another, more traditional fireplace made out of gray stone. A brown leather sofa and loveseat sat in front of the fireplace with an antique, wooden rocking chair next to them. In the antique chair was Eddie, sitting casually with his arms folded across his chest and facing her.

  “You’re not going to say hello?” His voice boomed. “You’ve been out for the last four hours. Greet me.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Eddie sighed and lifted himself from the seat. “Okay, so we’re playing this game.”

  He was dressed in another one of his expensive tailored suits, however he was missing his traditional pricey Berluti loafers, and there was no diamond-encrusted watch adorning his wrist.

  Larke remained perched in the middle of the bed and refused to tear her eyes away from him as he climbed the stairs leading to the loft. She knew that he wanted her to cower, and although her insides had jellied into an amorphous blob of fear, she managed to fake a hardened exterior. Now that he’d had her, he had every intention to kill her. Whether she fought or not made no difference. Backing down, however, was nowhere on her agenda.

  He walked until he was standing about three feet away from the bed, crossed his arms once again, and searched her eyes for the fear that he’d hoped to see by now. But, it was still missing. Even at the apex of defeat, she was still determined to throw daggers.

  “You’re not going to talk to me?” He questioned. “You’re not going to ask me where we are or what I plan to do with you? You’re not a very good captive.”

  She still didn’t reply.

  He leaned against the wooden railing that bordered the loft area. “Do you know who was a good little prisoner? That kid. Your witness. I don’t recall his name—”

  “Cory,” Larke finished.

  He grinned. “Yes. Mr. Adelson.”

  “And you say don’t remember his name?” She challenged. “Don’t bullshit me, Jarvis.”

  He grinned again and tightened his arms across his chest. “My god, girl. You are fascinating. But back to Mr. Adelson. When I sent my men to pick him up, he asked questions: ‘Who are you?’ ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What are you going to do to me?’ Gano, whom you’ve had the pleasure of meeting, told me all about it. See, I wasn’t able to see them take Mr. Adelson because I was otherwise preoccupied in an American jail cell.”

  Larke’s eyes mischievously flickered. “You’re welcome.”

  He’d expected for his anger to rise and for him to lunge at her from across the room, but instead, he felt his groin tighten. All of his energy moved from his extremities to pool in the one region of his body that only seemed to work when she was in the room.

  “My, my,” he tsked. “Do you know what they call a cock-tease, Larke?”

  “How did you kill Cory?” She asked, ignoring his question.

  “Who said he was dead?”

  She mirrored his expression by folding her arms across her chest.

  “You’re right. Now I’m being coy,” he added. “Truthfully, I didn’t kill Cory. I mean he is dead, and parts of him are floating in different directions across the South Atlantic Ocean, but I didn’t do it. A former associate, Tony, did that. You met Tony.”

  Larke paused for a few seconds as she gauged her responses. “North,” she answered.

  Eddie’s eyebrows went up.

  “My guess is that he killed him the Caribbean,” she explained, “so that would be the North Atlantic Ocean. Not the South. You’re not as erudite as you lead people to believe.”

  This time Eddie felt his anger surge. “Do you want to die?”

  Larke shrugged and the effort felt as though it took every last ounce of her strength. “No one wants to die, Jarvis, but I know it’s inevitable. Begging for mercy won’t change anything because you don’t have a merciful bone in your reprehensible body. And you can’t negotiate with a sociopath, so I don’t see the point in trying.”

  He took a small step towards the bed. “Contrary to your beliefs, Miss Larke, I am not a sociopath. I don’t kill indiscriminately. I only kill those who get in my way, those who make mistakes, and those who try to cross me. Vickers was part of the latter. Care to guess where you fit in?”

  She struggled to keep him talking. “So, why did you kill Vickers?”

  He grinned. “Vickers failed to realize that this business, this industry, is like being in a gang, although not as trite. Once you are in and have learned the inner workings of the business, the industry, then death is the only way out. Every
life in my business is an investment and those who are not making me money or protecting my money, are deleted.”

  He walked towards the bed until he was standing a mere foot away from her, then briefly closed his eyes to inhale the aromatic cedar emanating from the thick wooden walls.

  “But let me tell you where you are,” he offered. “This beautiful cabin belonged to my late defense attorney, Daniel Croft. You might know where we are. Birch Creek?”

  Birch Creek was about a three-hour drive away from Milwaukee up the east coast of the state. Larke remembered that her parents had traveled up a few times for weekend vacations when she was younger, but she’d never actually been herself.

  He sat on the edge of the bed a few inches away from her. “But, I’m not going to kill you. Not today,” he revealed. “I’m getting the jet fueled up for tomorrow. We’re going to Italy. Isn’t that exciting?”

  An evil grin commandeered his face.

  “I know you probably thought that I’d strap you to an old dirty mattress and kill you by slowly injecting you with all kinds of drugs. Barbiturates, things like that. That’s trivial of you, Larke. I wouldn’t stay here another minute if I could avoid it. This country doesn’t have anything else to offer me.”

  He picked a piece of lint off of his pants. “Do you know what Trovodine is, Larke?”

  “That drug you illegally tried on humans?” She bantered.

  He snickered. “I see you’ve done your homework. But, it’s a drug that’s going to make me even richer, and get me out of this opiate game. And, you’re going to help me do just that.”

  When she didn’t ask “how,” he continued, “You see, you’re the first healthy person that was ever exposed to the Trovodine, and it did exactly what we expected it to do. It caused your memory loss.”

  Larke frowned. “You knew that the Trovodine would cause memory loss?”

  “We did,” Eddie answered with a nod. “What we’re going to do next is study your brain to figure out the path it took, and how it caused your memory loss, to come up with a ‘cure’ of sorts.”

  “Then, you’re going to sell the Trovodine on the black market,” Larke surmised. “And when people start losing their minds, you’re going to swoop in with this ‘cure’ to make money off of the same illness you’re peddling.”

  He shrugged. “Poetic, isn’t it?”

  She clammed up, and he sighed.

  “You’re not cooperating, Larke. You’re supposed to ask how we’re going to study your brain, so that I can tell you by cutting your head open.”

  Larke felt her resolve begin to crumble.

  “So, you see, you’ll be alive for a while. At least for a few years while we run the tests on you. Then, when your body can’t take being cut open and stitched any longer, especially without the benefit of anesthesia, you’ll die a slow, agonizing death.”

  There was something mentally unfit about this man, Larke realized. For him, everything had to be psychological warfare.

  “Payback is a bitch, isn’t it?” he asked, getting up.

  “When did your mother change her name to Payback?” Larke countered.

  Eddie clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails pierced his skin.

  “The jet will be ready tomorrow,” he tersely replied. “Dr. Lindholm will be in to check your vitals and one of the agents will bring you downstairs for dinner. We’ll eat together.”

  He’d made it all the way to the top of the stairs before he swung around. “Oh yes, I forgot about your friend. The military man. Mr. Harding.”

  When he witnessed a hint of emotion flash across her face, he grinned. He’d found her weakness.

  “Have you ever had a toasted marshmallow, Miss Larke?” He asked. “I have. Once, when I was seven. It was my birthday. I never really celebrated my birthday because my mother didn’t have much, but in this instance, she’d bought a bag of marshmallows. We made a fire by the front stoop using old newspaper and twigs, and she put the marshmallows on sticks and gave one to me and one to Gano. See Larke, when you toast marshmallows, the outside gets hard and brown. But if you do it right, even though the outside gets hard and brown, the inside remains thick and sticky.”

  Larke tilted her head to the side. “Am I supposed to believe that’s a metaphor for how you are?”

  Eddie shook his head and let his gaze slowly return to her. “No. You, Larke. You see, no matter how much you defy me, you remain soft on the inside. It is a flaw of most humans, to have that weakness at the core, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your weaknesses are, at least, things that have value. Your family. That man. You, I could never buy and sell. You should take some pride in that.”

  He turned to walk down the stairs again, but when he was halfway through his descent, Larke spoke up. “That’s the first normal thing I have ever heard you say, Jarvis.”

  He froze.

  “I doubt your mother’s still alive, but if she is, I don’t know how the shame of what you have become hasn’t killed her. If she was roasting marshmallows outside with her seven-year old son and his friend, I can tell you, she was every bit of human as I am. Just like me, she was a marshmallow. Just like you. You act as though you’re above everyone else. As if you’re some sort of superhuman. And you may have fooled all of those trolls who worship you like a God, but not me. Your insides are blood and guts just like mine. You bleed when you’re cut. You’ll bleed when you die.”

  Eddie turned on his heels and rushed up the stairs, covering the space between them in only a few seconds before he was standing over her. His chest heaved and his jaw clenched, and although terrified, Larke realized that she was mildly pleased with herself for rattling the man who always kept his cool.

  “I’m the only person that can get to you, aren’t I?” She continued to provoke. “The only person who doesn’t fall for your gangster charade.”

  As much as Eddie wanted to take both hands and snap her feminine neck, he refrained. It would only be exactly what she wanted, to alter his plans. She was as reluctant to relinquish her power as he was eager to consume it. She might be assuming that she had balls, but he was going to show her exactly what made her a member of the weaker sex.

  He willed his anger to subside and walked away, trotting quickly down the steps to avoid giving her a chance to continue her bantering. Walking across the living room, he tossed another log into the fireplace before disappearing from sight.

  Larke waited a few seconds to make sure that he was gone before falling backwards onto the mattress. She had no clue how he managed not to kill her, and she was even more baffled as to where she got the strength to challenge him. But all of his talking revealed one important thing: she had several hours left in the United States, which meant that she had until daylight to try to escape or somehow get in contact with law enforcement. Unfortunately, Desmond and his contacts weren’t there to help her this time around.

  *****

  Desmond clenched and unclenched his fists. An entire hour had already passed with Agent Wright interrogating Delgano in the small room and yet, Wright was the only one that had said a word the entire time.

  “You alright there, man?” Doug asked, noticing Desmond’s agitation.

  Desmond shot him a look. “Alright? Every second that we waste on this man is another second Larke’s still missing. “

  Doug nodded in agreement. “I understand, but we’ll let Will work for a little bit longer. He’s been doing this for a while. They say he’s one of the best the bureau has. Personally, I believe that Gano is itching to talk and won’t be able to hold out for much longer.”

  Desmond shook his head. “Well, if he’s the best…” his thoughts trailed off. “Doug, imagine how you would feel right now if it was Alisha that was missing. Or even worse, if it was Tandi and the only person that could lead you to her was the man sitting in that room.”

  Doug didn’t even want to imagine his wife and child being the target of a madman like Eddie Jarvis.

  “What do you w
ant to do?” He asked, turning to face Desmond.

  “I want to talk to him,” Desmond suggested, “but I’m not going to go in there doing the whole ‘guns blazing’ thing. The least that I can do is try to get him to talk to me.”

  Doug knocked on the glass and Will looked up before excusing himself from the room, appearing in front of Desmond and Doug with his hands at his waist. “What’s the problem, fellas?”

  Doug flicked his thumb at Desmond. “Let Harding have a go at him.”

  Will grinned and chortled a laugh. “Guys, I’ve got this.”

  “No, you really don’t,” Desmond countered.

  “And what do you know about interrogation, Harding?” Will argued. “I mean, I respect what you did for our country when you were in the service, but, and no offense, interrogation isn’t your specialty. If anyone is going to get Delgano to tell us where to find Jarvis, it’s going to be me.”

  Desmond clenched his jaw to temper his rage. “Well, I need him to tell me where to find Larke.”

  William closed his eyes and stretched the muscles his neck. When his eyes landed on Desmond, he sighed. “Look, for all we know, he could have already had her killed and tossed her body in an open field somewhere. We need to concentrate on finding Jarvis so—”

  Ignoring anything else that he had to say, Desmond pushed past William into the starkly furnished interrogation room. William started after him, but Doug grabbed him by the shoulder and closed the door behind Desmond. When Delgano spotted his new visitor, he grinned.

  “The military man,” he greeted, his smirk growing to the width of his face. “I would have never thought that I would see you in here.”

  Desmond flopped down into the metal chair across the table. “They almost didn’t want to let me in.”

  “Why?” Gano asked. “They think you will kill me? Not in this country. Right now, I am too valuable to them. I am like the largest diamond in Africa.”

  Desmond feigned fascination. “I would have to agree with you.”