Jessie Black Box Set 2

by Larry A Winters

  They wrestled one of the bales off the pile and got to work. After what seemed like an eternity of working in the rain, they’d created a path from Leary’s car to the road.

  After a moment’s consideration, he grabbed a notebook from his glove compartment, jotted a quick note, and ran to the barn to leave it near what remained of the straw. It had his name and phone number and an offer to pay the owner for what they’d taken.

  “Okay,” he said when he was back in the car with Graham. “Let’s see if this works.”

  After some initial wheel-spinning, it did work. The tires bit into the straw-covered ground and the car lurched forward. Leary swerved up the slope, maneuvering over the path they had created, and back onto the asphalt, barely keeping control of the steering wheel as it jumped in his hands. The car skidded onto the road and Leary felt the satisfying stability of pavement under his wheels.

  “How much time have we lost?” Graham said.

  Leary felt the momentary sense of victory deflate. “Too much.”

  He pressed his foot hard against the accelerator and the car jumped forward. He knew how dangerous this was, knew they’d been lucky the first time, and that the rainy and dark conditions on this isolated rural road could still spell disaster for him. But he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was finding Jessie. He picked up speed, caught up with the horse and buggy, swerved around it, and kept going.

  They hurtled along the road for five, ten minutes without incident. Most people had been smart enough not to go driving in this weather, so the roads were mostly empty. The rain continued to pound down, but the rhythm of the windshield wipers and the drumming of the rain almost lulled Leary into a sense of complacency. He almost missed it when his GPS app told him to turn the car off of the road. Leary tapped his brakes and drifted to the spot where the private road, made of soaking wet gravel, led to Ray Briscoe’s property. In the rain and dark, he almost didn’t recognize it.

  There were buildings set back from the road. A Mercedes sedan was parked in front of one of them. Vicki Briscoe’s car? Leary drove close to it, parked, and checked his gun. Graham did the same.

  “Ready?” Leary said.

  She nodded.

  He opened the door and climbed out. Rain washed over his face. He made a visor with his left hand and tried to see, holding his gun in his right hand. There was no one inside the Mercedes, but Leary noticed the raindrops drumming against it turned to steam. The vehicle was warm. It had been used recently.

  Then Leary saw a woman walking toward them. In the darkness, it was hard to make out details. Tall, good figure, long hair. Was it Jessie? Or someone else? The woman raised a hand, as if in greeting. He couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t move!” Graham trained her gun on the advancing figure. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “Emily, no!” Leary pushed her arms down, forcing her gun away from the approaching woman. “We don’t know if that’s—”

  He never finished his sentence. Something struck him hard from behind—a blow to the back of his head that drove him down to his knees in the dirt. At the same time, he heard Graham cry out. He tried to see what or who had hit him, but all he saw was the butt of a gun coming down hard into his face. The rest was blackness.

  38

  Pain brought Leary back to consciousness. Two men were holding him. He was being half-carried, half-dragged down a hallway. He moved his head, trying to locate Graham. The movement brought another burst of pain.

  “I’m here, Mark.”

  He turned the other way and saw her, flanked by two of her own escorts. Bikers, by the look of them.

  Leary recognized the building as the same one they’d entered during their previous visit. They passed closed doors, one of which Leary was pretty sure was the room in which Jessie had seen Briscoe operating. No moans came from it now. The only sounds were the grunts of the men manhandling Graham and him down the hallway.

  Leary let his feet drag against the floor. He had no desire to make the job any easier for these thugs. But the men were big and the extra resistance barely slowed them down. They dragged Leary and Graham ten more feet. There, the hallway ended at a sturdy-looking door.

  “Let me unlock it.” A woman’s voice. Leary twisted around and saw Vicki Briscoe striding behind them. She walked past Leary’s escorts, unlocked the door, and opened it. The men gripping Leary thrust him into the darkness. His knees hit the floor hard, sending his head into a spasm of agony in the parts of his skull Briscoe’s thugs had hit earlier. He gritted his teeth and willed himself not to pass out again. Graham came tumbling in after him.

  A voice in the darkness said, “Who’s there?” The voice was angry, charged with nervousness, and unmistakably familiar. Jessie.

  “Enjoy the reunion,” Briscoe said. “I’ll be back.” A kick sent Leary staggering forward. He fell on his face in the darkness. The door closed behind him and he heard the clunking sounds of the locks engaging.

  Graham helped him up to a kneeling position. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he saw a figure rush toward them. Jessie’s familiar and comforting smell enveloped him. “Jessie, thank God!” He hugged her close to him and kissed her.

  “Let me breathe, Leary.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Briscoe used a Taser on me. Other than that, I think I’m okay.”

  “Your wrists are bound.”

  “Duct tape. I’ve been trying to loosen it, but Vicki wrapped it pretty tight. Emily, is that you?”

  “Of course,” Graham’s voice said from the darkness next to Leary. “You think I’d miss this?”

  “Hell of a party,” Jessie agreed.

  Leary was glad they could make light of the situation, but he couldn’t. His hands moved over Jessie’s body, searching for wounds. Only when he was satisfied that she was in one piece, did he reluctantly let her go.

  “What about you, Leary?” Jessie said. “Are you injured?”

  Leary tried to remember the cause of the blinding pain in his head. One of the bikers had slammed the butt of a gun into his forehead. And seconds before that, someone had hit him in the back of his head, probably with the same gun. It was a miracle his skull hadn’t opened like an egg, and he continued to feel sensations of imbalance, nausea, and immense pain. “I’m fine.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Jessie said.

  “Why do I doubt Vicki left us a key?” Graham said.

  “As far as I can tell this room is empty,” Jessie said. “Just four walls and a ceiling, and the one door, which seems securely locked. No windows. No furniture.”

  “That doesn’t give us much to work with,” Leary said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessie said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Leary said. “We’re going to get out of here.”

  “We’re here because of my stupidity.”

  “If there’s one thing you’re not, it’s stupid.”

  “I agree with that,” Graham said. “So stop using your brain to feel bad about yourself and start using it to think of a plan.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jessie said, “and there’s no way out.”

  “We don’t need to escape,” Graham said. “We only need to survive long enough for Lorena Torres and her unit to get here. I called them while Leary and I were driving here.”

  Leary ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Jessie, as long as we’re stuck here for a little bit, and given that there is a certain degree of possibility—very small—that we might not make it out, there’s something I want to say to you.”

  He strained to see Jessie in the darkness, but her face was only a light blur in the gloom, unreadable.

  She said, “Okay….”

  He licked his lips, suddenly unable to continue. Graham thumped him hard on the back. “Just ask her already!”

  “I don’t have … well … everything with me right now that I need to do this the right way, but what the hell.” He knelt on one knee and took her bound hands in his. �
��Jessica Black, will you marry me?”

  “Leary—”

  The sound of locks disengaging interrupted them. Leary spun toward the door. It opened, and two figures stood silhouetted in the light from the hallway. Both of them were female. At the same moment, the room lit up with light as someone hit a light switch on the other side of the door. Leary blinked against the sudden glare. Through squinting eyes, he saw Briscoe and a second woman, battered looking, with bruises and blood on her face and wearing tattered rags. Her hair was a disheveled mess. Briscoe shoved her into the room.

  “Thought you might like to reconnect with an old friend,” Briscoe said. Her voice was full of scorn.

  Leary blinked rapidly, almost unable to believe his eyes. The woman was Kelly Lee.

  She was alive.

  39

  Vicki Briscoe sat on the porch outside the main building of her father’s compound. The porch had a roof, and she leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the sound of rain drumming against it. It was a soothing sound, a sound that brought back childhood memories and felt as comfortable as a warm blanket. But she was not warm. It was cold on the porch, and the comforting sound was an illusion.

  She opened her eyes and pulled her coat tighter around her body. Now was not the time to allow herself to be lulled into a sense of complacency. Things were accelerating now, much more quickly and in a different direction than she had intended. She knew she needed to think while she still had the opportunity to think. She needed to make decisions and plan ahead now, before a sense of urgency overwhelmed her.

  She heard the sound of the screen door open and slam behind her, but she did not turn around. The familiar odor of her father’s cigar smoke reached her before the man lowered himself into a chair next to her. She glanced at him, saw the tip of his cigar burn bright red in the darkness. He took the cigar from his mouth and offered her the half smile she’d become so familiar with over the years.

  “You want one?”

  “You know I don’t smoke those things. They can give you mouth cancer, among other negative health effects.”

  Her father chuckled. “Listen to the doctor.”

  He frowned the second after the words left his mouth, and she sensed his sudden awkwardness. Her father might be a violent man—a man with his own brand of morals, if you could even call them that—but his love for her was genuine and she knew he worried about causing her even a second’s worth of pain.

  “Relax, Dad. You can still call me a doctor. I’m not going to break down in tears.”

  “I know that. Not my daughter.”

  “Fuck no.” Vicki looked away from him. She certainly had broken down in tears—Ray Briscoe’s daughter or not—and more than once. When she’d received notice of the lawsuit. When she’d lost her license to practice medicine. She was tough. Her father had raised her to be tough. But she was still a human being—much more so than he was. She believed her father was a sociopath, or, at least, that he had strong sociopathic tendencies. She wasn’t like him. She experienced the full range of human emotions. Feelings. Her father would consider this a weakness, and to appease him, she’d spent her life pretending not to experience feelings. Pretending to be him. But she wasn’t a sociopath.

  A psychopath, maybe, but not a sociopath.

  He reclined in the darkness, puffing his cigar. Eventually, he took it from his mouth with a contented sigh. “You gonna tell me who our guests are?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  Vicki hugged herself tighter. “The same ones who came here before.”

  “The DA and those cops? Jesus Christ, Vicki.” Her father took a long pull on his cigar, then blew the smoke out into the night.

  “They were too close to finding out the truth about Kelly Lee. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You could have asked me.”

  “Is that what you want? Me running to you every time I have a problem?”

  “Actually, yes.” Her father sighed. “If you think I wouldn’t want that, then I must have gone wrong somewhere raising you.”

  “If the PPD finds out we have them, they’re going to come down on us hard. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  Her father did not look overly concerned. “I’m not worried about the PPD. We can handle them, like we always have.”

  He did not elaborate, but Vicki knew enough about the family business to understand what he meant. Graft, violence, extortion. “I still have time to finish what I started,” she said. “After that, I won’t cause any more trouble for you and the Hounds.”

  “You’re no trouble sweetheart.” His gaze held some warmth, but only for a space of seconds. “You’re not going to finish anything, though. Too dangerous now.” He clamped his cigar in his teeth, leaned forward, and pulled something out of his back pocket. He passed it to her. A passport. Flipping it open, she saw her own photograph and someone else’s name.

  “Dad—”

  “The rest of the package is in the house,” he said. “In the safe. I’ll take care of our guests. You leave tonight. Start fresh somewhere else. Didn’t you always admire the beaches of Colombia?”

  “I’m not leaving tonight.”

  His eyes narrowed. They stared at each other as rain continued to pound the roof above them and soak the tall grass surrounding the building. In the distance, she could hear the sounds of his men moving around. Hardened criminals, but not one of them tough enough to stand up to Ray Briscoe. Was she?

  She could feel the anger radiating from him. “I didn’t raise a stupid bitch.”

  “That’s right. You didn’t.”

  “The smart move is to disappear.”

  “Yes, at the end. But I’m not there yet.”

  “The end of what?”

  “You know what,” she said.

  “Where’s the upside? It’s all risk, no reward.”

  “For me, it’s a reward.”

  Her father held her gaze for a long moment. She felt her insides go cold and had to struggle not to look away from that stare. Then, after a seeming eternity, he let out a sigh and rose from his chair. “We don’t see eye to eye on this one, sweetheart. But you know I’m always on your side.”

  Until you’re not. “I know, Dad. Thanks.” But he had already left her. She sat alone outside for a few more minutes, listening to the rain, looking at the fake passport in her lap.

  Her father was right. And she would leave. But not before she extracted her pound of flesh.

  Literally.

  40

  “Kelly?” In the darkness of the windowless room, Jessie stared in shock. After almost a week of searching for this woman’s killer, her brain rebelled at the idea that she had been alive the whole time.

  Kelly stared back at her, but there was no look of recognition in the lawyer’s eyes. She looked distant. Absent.

  “Kelly, it’s me. Jessie.”

  Kelly said nothing, but her body started to shake uncontrollably. Jessie could hear the rapid pumping of her lungs. Almost hyperventilating.

  She tried again. “Kelly? I thought you were dead. Can you tell me what happened?”

  No response.

  How was this possible? “You were in a car accident. The ME identified you. How—” Squinting in the darkness, Jessie saw the amputations. Several fingers missing from each of Kelly’s hands. A chunk of flesh from her right arm. Possibly part of one of her feet, which appeared to be bandaged and bloodied. The driver’s body had been found in pieces. The ME’s identification had been based on fingerprints.

  My God.

  Jessie felt a threat of vomit in her guts. Bruises covered Kelly’s body, along with dried blood, and stitches where she’d been opened and then sewn up.

  Graham’s voice from somewhere else in the dark room: “She must be in shock.”

  Jessie heard Graham and Leary moving around. She supposed they were searching the room for an escape route, a weapon, anything. She already knew they would find not
hing.

  “Kelly.” She tried to penetrate the woman’s vacant stare. “We need to get out of here. Is there anything you can tell us?”

  Kelly’s lips moved. Jessie couldn’t hear her. She leaned closer, almost losing her balance with her wrists bound in front of her.

  “What did you say, Kelly?”

  “Crazy.” Kelly’s voice was barely a whisper. “She’s crazy.”

  Jessie touched the woman’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “We’re going to get you out of here, Kelly.”

  “They took me. They came into my apartment at night and took me. Vicki Briscoe and … some men. She’s crazy. There’s a room. She takes me there and….”

  The door opened. Kelly curled up into a ball and started sobbing. Jessie stared at the rectangle of light that was the doorway and the three dark figures framed within it. She recognized Vicki Briscoe’s now-familiar shape. The woman appeared to be flanked by two tall and powerful-looking men. The three of them advanced into the room. Kelly’s sobs turned into a keening wail as the footfalls echoed in the room and the three visitors surrounded them.

  Jessie braced herself for a fight, but against three people who were probably armed, and with her wrists tied, she didn’t know what she could do. Headbutt someone? If it came to that, maybe. She’d seen movies where someone broke an assailant’s nose by ramming it with a forehead.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Leary tense up. Graham, standing in another corner of the room, also turned to face the intruders. Both of them were better fighters than Jessie was, and their wrists weren’t bound. But they were unarmed.

  Briscoe walked past Kelly and stopped in front of Jessie. She grabbed Jessie roughly by the arm and yanked her to her feet, then toward the door. “Time to see what your pain tolerance is, prosecutor.”

  Leary charged at them. The two men with Briscoe blocked him, one of them grabbing him in a bear hug from behind and the other one slamming a fist into his belly, doubling him over. Graham headed toward them next.