The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  49

  The girl’s skin that brushed against Mia’s arm felt like that from a shriveled grape. Her eyes were hollow, her glassy gaze so distant it seemed like her brain had been scooped out. She swayed back and forth like a Weeble. But Mia couldn’t help her. She couldn’t help herself or the two others that stood in the dusty living room, all wearing skimpy nightwear.

  Sal had just walked in with two large briefcases, set them on a table, and opened them, facing him. He pulled a pistol from the case, checked it for ammunition. A collective gasp from the girls—everyone except the girl next to Mia. He used the barrel of the gun to scratch his messy hair and began to pace, like he had done in her room the prior day. Since then, he’d been back to her room twice more, taking blue pills before each session.

  In the last visit, he had been erratic, more violent than ever. He had slapped her around. At one point, he put both hands around her throat and squeezed. Her head had felt like it would pop like a balloon. She’d thought she was going to die—she knew she was going to die. And all she could think about was that no one would know what had happened to her. She would be one of those missing girls who are never found. Her parents would have no closure; they would slowly crumble. His phone had rung from his pants over on the chair—he leaped from the bed to answer the call. That call had saved her life. At least temporarily.

  He continued pacing, his loafers clipping the hardwood at an uneven cadence. Everything about him was off. His shirt hung out from his pants, which appeared as though they’d been wadded up in a corner. He mumbled incoherent statements, but it was his fiery eyes that she couldn’t turn away from. Radiating a fury she’d not witnessed in her seventeen years, his eyes had a crazed look. Like he was possessed.

  Something had changed. She’d been communicating with two other girls, one through the pipe in the bathroom, another through the wall behind her bed. He must have learned that they’d been communicating. He’d brought them all into the living room and told them they would have some type of ceremony. She felt less alone by being around the other girls. There was power in numbers, right? But in looking at the others, a mutiny was out of the question. It would probably only get them killed even more quickly.

  Sal stopped pacing, turned, and aimed his gun at a bookshelf. He slowly panned left until he had it aimed directly at the girl on the far end.

  “Bang,” he said, pretending to fire the gun. He moved to the next girl and repeated the same exercise. When he reached Mia, he paused and smiled at her. His expression looked as if he wanted to eat her limb by limb. “You are the youngest, Mia. The most pure. I hope you will survive. But we shall see how you hold up. If you are victorious, then it will be my honor to have you by my side from now until my last days.”

  She tried to breathe, but her throat had clamped shut. Victorious at what?

  He finished his mock-shooting escapade with the girl to her right, the one who mentally was out to lunch.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s about time for the games to begin.”

  The girls, minus the emaciated one, traded glances, but he didn’t notice. He was too much into his ritual. He pulled a knife from his briefcase, walked to the center of one of those fancy Persian rugs. He stood in the middle, where a circle had been woven into its design. “You have all broken the rules of the house. Therefore, we must hold a tournament to determine the strongest. It saddens me really, but there is no other way,” he said, looking off for a moment.

  He set the knife in the circle and walked back to his briefcases. “When I call out your names, you will each get on opposite sides of the rug. When I say go, you will then race to get the knife. The winner will be determined by who inflicts the most damage on the other in two minutes.”

  Mia tried to swallow, but couldn’t. She needed water.

  “First up we have…” He paused as he scanned each of the girls. “Fay and Carolee.” The two girls to her left both cursed, then began to whimper. That didn’t stop the proceedings. He guided each of them to their starting spots and returned to his station. “Are we ready, ladies?”

  “Yes sir.” Carolee, an Asian girl with hair down to the small of her back, released a deep breath. While staring straight at Fay, she tied her hair in a series of knots until it was a taut ponytail.

  “Finally, someone who wants to be alive…who wants to be with me,” the man said. “Fay, are you ready?”

  Fay’s cracked lips moved, but she didn’t speak. She had to be in shock, Mia thought.

  “We can’t wait all night.” He checked his watch, raised his arm, then lowered it at the same moment he said, “Go!”

  Carolee burst out of her stance and got to the knife before Fay had taken one step. Then, in one fluid motion, Carolee bounced across the rug and swung the knife across Fay’s arm. Fay screamed, grabbed her shoulder, and fell to her knees. Before Mia could take a breath, Carolee jumped on top of Fay, straddling her, and using two hands, plunged the blade into Fay’s torso.

  “Very nice work, Carolee.” The man began to clap as Carolee hopped to her feet and raised her arms to the ceiling. Then she looked down at Fay, who was writhing in pain, her moans muted as if her oxygen supply was almost empty.

  Mia’s legs felt like rubber. She put a hand to her mouth and tried not to hurl. She wanted to run over to Fay, to help stop the bleeding. But all she could think about was how she would be punished. And that made her ashamed of herself.

  “Mia, Lexie, you’re up next. Please assume your positions,” he said. “Carolee, you can stand over here next to me.”

  Mia walked over to the spot about five feet from where Fay was curled into a ball, blood gushing from her multiple wounds. She was quivering. Mia couldn’t help but look down. Fay glanced up for a second, and their eyes locked. She mouthed, “Help me.” Mia couldn’t just stand there and fight. Not with the wounded girl dying at her feet.

  The man snapped his fingers, and Mia’s heart skipped a beat. She lifted her head.

  “If I were you,” he said, “I’d pay more attention to your present situation, rather than something you have no control over.” After taking the bloody knife from Carolee, the man pulled a clean knife from his bag of weapons and placed it in the circle.

  Mia looked across the rug. Lexie seemed as dazed as ever. She had to be on heroin or coke.

  “Ladies, are we ready?” Sal seemed enamored with his own little survivor games.

  Mia hopped up on her toes, trying to wake up her muscles.

  “There we go,” he said with a wicked chuckle. “Mia, my young fawn, your lithe body looks like it’s ready for the fight of your life.”

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She’d quickly developed a strategy—or was it more like false hope? She would do everything in her power to be the first to the knife. She would circle Lexie as if she were looking for the right opportunity to attack her. Then, once she got close enough to Sal, she would try to slit his throat. Hell, she’d settle for just giving him a hangnail. Anything to divert his attention. Then, she’d go in for the kill.

  And yes, she knew she could kill him if given the chance.

  As Sal checked his watch and raised his hand, Mia could feel her pulse double.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  Lexie shot out of her stance. With twig-like limbs flying everywhere, she dove for the knife. Mia could hear herself yell out of shock that this emaciated girl, who had appeared to be in a drug-induced state, had even known what was about to happen. While drained from the last three days, Mia’s athletic body was better tuned for this type of event. She quickly lowered her center of gravity and leaped for the knife as well. She actually reached the target first—her fingertips nudged the knife’s grip. But she wasn’t able to grasp it. And that was a big mistake.

  Lexie hit the rug, scooped up the knife, and rolled back to a standing position. Her body was now lower, in an attack position, as if some type of ninja survival instinct had kicked in.

  “Mia, I forgo
t to remind you. Lexie here…she was the gold medal winner at the Kni-Com competition in Southern California.”

  Mia glanced at Sal as the two girls circled each other.

  “Ah, I see that got your attention. Kni-Com is a special kind of knife-fighting expertise developed for the US Marine Corps. Her dad is a Marine. Not that he was able to help her when I convinced her to walk away from her mundane life as a secretary at a local junior college in San Diego.” He laughed, as if this were nothing more than a big joke.

  From the floor, Fay gurgled up blood. Mia then looked beyond the circling Lexie to see Carolee standing next to Sal, wiping tears from her face. Mia felt badly for every girl in that room and how this so-called charming man was pitting them against each other. But she wanted to live. And to do that, she might have to hurt another person. So be it.

  Lexie had the knife and the experience on how to use it. True, Mia was in better shape, but she had no weapon. Using her peripheral vision, she quickly scanned every inch of the room looking for something she could use as a weapon.

  She saw it. A brass candleholder on the buffet against the wall. She could use it like a billy club. She’d lunge for it on their next rotation.

  “If I were a betting man, I’d have to put my money on Lexie,” the man said. “I’m sorry, Mia. Lexie might look like she just walked out of a concentration camp, but she’s a determined little hussy.”

  Mia was now as close as she would get to the buffet—and she didn’t waste another second. She jumped off to the side. The moment she left her position, though, Lexie also made a leap…in the opposite direction. Mia’s hand grabbed the candleholder just as Lexie crashed through the briefcases and swung the knife at Sal. He simply dodged out of her way and fired a bullet right into her face.

  Lexie’s body landed on the hardwoods with a strum of thuds.

  Mia’s legs gave out as her mind spun with what she’d just witnessed. He must have had a gun by his side behind the cover of the cases.

  “Anyone else want to challenge me?” he barked.

  A second later, the room went pitch black.

  50

  We’d been too late.

  That was my first thought after I’d heard the gunshot. I rushed the living room, right behind Brook, Stan, and a uniformed officer. After the fiasco at the mission, Stan had insisted on having a solid backup. He brought along two of SAPD’s best. One had cut the direct line of power going into the house, while the other rushed the house with us, giving us a police unit of three people, five arms, and me.

  I could hardly see two feet in front of me, but my sense of smell was on high alert. The aroma of blood was nearly enough to make me gag. Brook and Stan yelled for everyone to get down. A shot fired into the ceiling above me.

  “Mia?” I called out amidst the chorus of screams and furniture tumbling to the floor.

  I heard voices, more than one girl. Lots of grunting. Someone was struggling. I ran into a person on the floor, tripped, and skidded my elbows across the rug. I pushed up, but my hands slipped. I brought them to my nose. It was more blood. I could see the outline of a girl in a ball on the floor. I touched her arm. She twitched.

  “Mia? Is that you?”

  More yelling from across the room, but I focused on the girl right next to me. “Mia? Your parents miss you. They want to see you. Are you—”

  Before I finished, lights popped on. Stan was using his one arm to push up from the floor—he must have tripped over the edge of the rug. Brook, though, was in her cop stance, her gun trained on Clifton, who had Mia pulled to his chest, his pistol at the side of her head.

  “Why did you people have to ruin our fun little party?” Clifton asked.

  The girl next to me was lying in a pool of blood. I saw another one on the floor near Clifton, motionless, half of her face blown away. The fourth girl, with black hair, hovered behind the cop, who also had his gun drawn. Clifton had nowhere to run, but he had the ace—Mia’s life—in his hands.

  I looked at Mia, her face painted with a raw fear. I’d never met her before, but after reading her Big Rules, seeing her on the video, hearing so much about her perfection from her parents, and her desire to be perfect through her Big Rules, I felt like I’d known her for years. Or maybe I just wished I could say that because I wanted to believe she was more than just another name, another missing girl that no one would find. But we had found her, dammit! She was one itchy trigger finger away from being the second child her parents would have to bury.

  “Clifton, let her go,” I said, moving to my feet.

  He snickered. “Always trying to save the souls who shouldn’t be saved, right, Ivy?”

  Stan was now on his feet, his gun firmly in his left hand. “Clifton, just let her go, put down your gun, and you’ll be able to live.”

  “Live? Where, in the Texas prison system? Ha! I’d be someone’s bitch within a day of showing up.”

  “Put the gun down. Now,” Brook said with precision.

  I could hear an engine rumbling from another room. “Those are my generators,” Clifton said, disregarding the warnings from Brook and Stan. “The end is very near for most of us. So many crazy people running the world now. I’m not naïve. I know that a couple of generators, some extra rations, and weapons won’t prepare us for the last world war. But it might buy us a few days, maybe a week or two.”

  I had no idea why he was bringing up his post-apocalyptic plans right now.

  Stan moved a step closer. “Clifton, you need to put the weapon on the floor and release Mia. Do you hear me?”

  Clifton retreated three feet. “Mia and I have always dreamed of visiting Europe together, taking a ride along the canals of Venice, touring the Louvre, swimming in the ocean off the coast of Spain.” He paused, looked down at Mia. “We have been dreaming about that, right, Mia?”

  She nodded, but her lips were quivering uncontrollably.

  Keep it together, Mia. Just a little longer.

  “Take me instead.” I walked past Stan toward Clifton and Mia.

  “Stop! Stop or I’ll kill the girl.”

  I did as he said. “Mia’s got her whole life ahead of her. If you care about her at all, you’ll let her live her life the way she wants to live it.”

  He blinked, but didn’t respond.

  “She’s right, Clifton,” Stan said. “Be the nice guy here. You can still do the right thing.”

  The right thing. I knew Stan was saying anything to get him to let her go. There were two dead girls in this room, maybe others.

  “She just wants to return to her parents like any other normal kid,” I said. “Don’t you understand that?”

  He looked across the room. “These girls were my family. It may not have been a regular family, but we were close, you know?”

  I nodded and stayed silent.

  He released a tired breath. “I suppose you’ll know the truth soon enough. Abel and I had a deal. He would try to save the souls of a generation by sacrificing those who he deemed expendable, or those who needed to learn the greatest lesson. I knew his methods were out of the norm, but I also knew the younger generation needed to be saved. The older generation… Look at what we’ve created across this globe.” He looked away for a second. “He would recommend the cream of the crop to me. To join my family, here. All I wanted was a few special friends to share my life with.”

  His gaze dropped to the girl whose face was destroyed. “In some respects, I guess I failed them. It’s really quite sad, now that I see what has happened, what I did to them.”

  Did he just wipe a tear from the corner of his eye?

  “You’re right. Mia should go back to her family. I… I will now meet my maker and pay for the sins I have committed.”

  He pushed Mia aside, then put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  51

  Brook and I drove Mia back to her parents’ house. Actually, Brook drove, and I sat in the back seat as Mia leaned against my shoulder and unloaded everything she’d
experienced. And it wasn’t just the last three days.

  She started with her captivity, what oddly had begun as an adventure. She was to meet Clifton in a parking lot, and then they would drive to a place where he would procure her a new passport. From there, they’d jump on the next flight from San Antonio to London. And then they would begin the trip of their lives.

  Instead, he had taken her to his family farm, using his natural charm to convince her that they could relax, plan out the details of their trip. Initially, even despite numerous warning signs, she said she fooled herself into thinking there were no red flags, nothing to worry about at all. He’d locked her in her room “for her protection.”

  His control, his obsession with how the world would soon end quickly broke through her fantasy-like daze. She went on to describe the assaults, sexual and otherwise, and how he’d promised to keep her there until the end of his life or the world, whichever came first.

  Looking back, she said she couldn’t believe how gullible she had been. She said she wasn’t even attracted to the older Clifton, but only his ideas of freeing oneself from the daily pressures and responsibilities, and experiencing new things, new cultures.

  Brook and I locked eyes after Mia’s comment. We knew there was a sad irony in what Clifton had promised Mia versus what he had given her—tortured imprisonment. But I didn’t respond. I didn’t say much at all.

  When Mia finished discussing her captivity, there was a moment of silence. She sat up, used a tissue to wipe tears from her face. Then she talked about the cycle of abuse in her family, how she’d watched her dad abuse her mom when she was young. And then how Brandon had done the same to her. From there, she chose to bare her soul, discussing her obsession with perfection and how she had been so wrapped up in how she was perceived.

  “Everyone knew my family had little money, but they saw so much in me. They thought, If she can be all of this, then why can’t I?”