“Dammit.” Diego paused, then glanced at Abby. “Take her to the bathroom to freshen up, then hang her from the wall. Bring Court in after that. He’ll regret every move he’s made against my men. I’ll take each one out on her.”
Abby jumped back when Mendoza approached her. The phone slide inside her dress, so she gripped at the bodice to keep it in place. She had no idea if anyone was on the other line, or if they even cared about what was going on, but she needed hope, and she would take it in any form that presented itself.
“I’ll go with you,” she wheezed. “Please don’t hurt Sean anymore.”
“She’s full of shit,” Diego said as Mendoza opened the door for her. “Watch your back.” He nodded at Diego and grabbed Abby by the arm. She was able to hold the phone in her bodice with the other arm as he led her to the bathroom. Then, while sitting on the toilet, she slid the phone out of the dress. Fortunately, Mendoza was bothered enough by feminine urination that he had his head turned away while she sat, which gave her the time to place it quietly on the floor under a thin layer of toilet paper. She noticed that the screen was showing that the call had not ended. Twelve minutes had passed, but it seemed like an eternity.
“This is taking too long. You taking a shit? Because I doubt he’s willing to wait for that.”
Abby shook her head and adjusted the dress before going to the sink to wash her hands. Mendoza watched her questioningly as she rubbed the soap into her hands, rinsed, then dried them on a towel. “What?” she asked.
“You don’t have a clue what’s about to happen to you, do you?”
Abby had blocked it out of her head. She’d been able to think about the phone, about how there could possibly be an ounce of hope, about how God had provided a safety ring for her to hold on to. But now the horrifying thoughts were back again full force. She watched her face grow pale in the mirror.
“Stop stalling,” Mendoza said, then dragged her into the other room. She looked towards the pole that Sean had been attached to earlier. There were endless spatters of blood on the ground. Abby expected Mendoza to drag her that way, but instead, he shoved her towards the wall and lifted several zip ties from the table next to the couch. She dropped her weight and attempted to pull out of his grasp, but he only gripped her harder, pulling her body into his own. “Keep fighting,” he said. “I like it that way.”
He bent her over the arm of the couch and placed his knee on her back, then proceeded to slide the zip ties over her wrists. Once confident in their strength, he lifted her arms and hooked the ties over a peg secured high on the wall with her back facing out. She pressed her face against the cool wall and listened to him leave.
She recognized the sound of Sean coming from the other room by his bloody cough, Mendoza was grumbling, and Abby heard shuffling feet and the sound of a body dropping to the floor several times before they entered the room.
She knew exactly when Sean caught sight of her, because a pained gasp left his body as if he’d been socked in the gut. Mendoza laughed. “Diego’s going to make it extra painful ‘cause a what you did to the guys.”
“Fuck you,” Sean replied.
Abby didn’t say a word. She only stood quietly, not wanting to add to the anxiety Sean was already oppressed with. For now, she was fine. Her hip hurt, there was pain in her head, possibly a concussion, and several strands of hair had been ripped out of her scalp. But other than that, she was fine.
Fine.
Fine.
The cool of the wall centered her as she focused only on things that wouldn’t send her spinning into insanity. Or maybe she had already lost it. Maybe that’s why she’d had the insight to steal the phone off the sideboard, why she’d calmly washed her hands after using the bathroom, and why she was currently standing against the wall, her hands restrained above her, awaiting a death more horrendous than she could imagine. Yes, she had definitely lost her mind.
But then, she remembered something else. It was a Psalm.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
Abby closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She let air fill her lungs, then cried out. The scream was louder than anything she had ever manifested, even prior to the damage to her throat. It was deafening, it was frightening, it was beautiful. She cried out until no remaining breath was present in her lungs, and then she quieted once again.
The sound of bodies shuffling behind her did not affect her, nor did the sound of Diego entering the room with anger and screams. Pain sliced down her arm, then again in her neck, gunfire, more screams, and eventually the sound of Sean’s weak, shaky voice in her ear. “Jamie, are you still with me? Jamie?”
“Abigail,” another voice, gruff, strained, battered at her ears. She didn’t recognize it. Didn’t care.
No. None of it affected her. She’d gone back to that quiet place, the one in which she didn’t have to think about being slaughtered by a madman, or her parents being killed, or Sean in agony as he watched his fiancée’s skin torn off her body. Instead, she floated on the arms of men dressed in black suits, down a set of stairs, out a heavy metal door, and into the cold of the night. She didn’t watch the lights of the road flash by as she peered out the window, the smell of expensive leather and cognac filling her nose. She didn’t feel the nurse’s hands as they cleaned the blood out of her hair and repaired her wounds. She didn’t sense anything until the black surrounded her. Then she felt a familiar place - the absence of everything.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
“MR. Court? You have a phone call.”
“Not interested.”
“You’ll want to take this one, sir.”
Sean caught the cell phone thrown by his de facto babysitter, a man wearing black tactical pants and a dark flak vest; too hot for the sweltering summer heat of Florida. Sean’s own khaki shorts and torn Mountain Dew t-shirt were more appropriate for the weather, but out of place amongst the bustle of the Riverwalk lunch crowd clothed in business suits and shined shoes.
He sat on a retaining wall, watching the St. John’s river churn and lap against sludge and barnacle striped concrete below his feet. The same river in which Abby had been dumped via the rigged condo waterfall, then plucked out by Diego’s men, only to suffer a torture that would destroy her.
Shaking the thoughts from his head, Sean lifted the phone to his ear and growled. “Court here.”
“Sean?”
It was her mom. Sean took a drag of the cigarette and flicked it towards the river. “Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Fine,” he said. He didn’t want to talk to her. It was the same every time. Catatonic in a state of waxy flexibility. It sounded like a damn joke. Sean lifted the flask to his mouth and took another swig.
“You told me to call you when she talked.”
Sean set the flask down and grunted.
He could sense from the sound of her voice that she was nervous speaking with him. Sean had once again turned into a monster. He had considering leaving the country, but he’d already left Abigail Ellwood too many times. Each separation of his own doing, his own selfishness, his own frustration over the crap cards God had dealt. So, this time he’d stayed, praying for sense within the madness, a guide to why his Jamie had been taken from him once again.
He couldn’t make a move anyway. Not until the investigation against Diego and the Bianchi family had run its course. The feds were going easy on Ricco and his men, seeing as how they had ensured that Abby and Sean had made it safely to the hospital. But the lack of prosecution didn’t sit well with Sean.
He took a breath. It was doubtful Abby was talking. Probably another gasp that her mother imagined was some weird form of communication. He had almost forgotten that she was on the other end of the line until her worried voice came through again. “I assumed that you’ve been… um… drinking. So, Jerome is coming for you.”
“Thanks,” he said, then hung up, not wanting to hear another word a
bout what couldn’t possibly be communication.
Mrs. Ellwood was right. Sean was sweating alcohol at this point. He’d started drinking the moment they’d released him from the hospital and hadn’t stopped. Had even taken up smoking again; an addiction developed during the see-sawed stress and monotony born of military action, only taken up when God was close-lipped on the horrors Sean couldn’t manage to deal with on his own.
He didn’t know what to say to Abby’s mother anyway. Their communications had become forced and awkward. She was suffering as much as he was, but there was no way he could make it better. No way he could bring her daughter’s mind back from whatever screwed-up world it was living in.
Sun beat heavily on Sean’s neck while a breeze off the river licked at layers of sweat that had formed under his too-long hair. He scratched at the beard covering his face. He must look like a street bum. But a visit to the barbershop wasn’t on the books right now. Only Jamie mattered.
Sean knew he was wrong. He knew there was more to live for than the woman he’d give his own life for, but he couldn’t get past the vision of seeing the knife plunged into her back and neck. The red dress, the blood, the vacant stare. Twice, she’d been punished for a crime she hadn’t committed. And twice, she’d been pulled from this world.
He needed to shift gears and just be grateful that she was okay; that they all were okay.
Jerome had been the one to spot the incoming chopper, identifying it as a possible threat, and the Senator and Mrs. Ellwood had made it to the fortified shelter before the explosion. Now the Ellwoods were staying at a condo in the city while repairs at the estate were taking place, with Abby tucked into an ugly blue room with little to no light. He hated going into that place anymore, hated what it did to him, how it tore open his insides, spilling them out onto the depressing gray rug at the foot of her bed. Her stare teasing him by resting on his eyes but knowing that the moment he moved out of her line of sight they would continue their focus in the exact spot, as if she were blind. He prayed that she could somehow see this world, not whatever dark horrors had happened to her while in Diego’s hands, but the family that surrounded her, the light.
Sean looked through the steamy afternoon sky, up to where his apartment used to be. Blown to bits as well. Fortunately, the entire building had been empty when the blast had gone off. The only civilian injury was to a yipping Pekinese that had tripped over a damaged drain pipe the next day. The floors from the seventeenth up were currently vacated until reconstruction was completed in three to five years.
So Sean had rented out a small apartment near the Ellwood’s condo instead. His temporary new place was wretched with roaches and meth addicts. But he hadn’t cared. It was close to Abby, his Jamie. Her parents had kicked him out of their newly rented home multiple times, especially when he’d been belligerent about her treatment. The whiskey didn’t help.
Sean had received lecture upon lecture from McCarrin about his behavior. He put up with McCarrin’s reprimands because he was so damn glad the old man was still alive.
During the chaos of that day, Sean had thought McCarrin had died in the explosion of the ops vehicle. Two men had been injured in the explosion, but it could have been so much worse.
Mendoza, one of Diego’s henchmen, the one Sean could never figure out how to take down, had set up a TV with live feed in the suite where Sean had been kept. Those four video feeds were now permanently etched into Sean’s brain.
The first, a view of Sean’s apartment building. The second, video of an ops vehicle disguised as an RV. The third was a long-distance view of the Ellwood estate. And the fourth visual, a camera pointed at a couch in Diego’s den, Abby curled into a ball, her face shoved into the corner of the cushions, doing everything she could to avoid the carnage of Diego blowing up her parents and their house. But Diego had been brutal, he’d made her watch. Sean’s eyes had been glued to that screen, watching Abby’s reaction to each horrific hit.
He remembered the light from the explosions reflecting off her necklace in the TV room. Diego had coaxed the location of the jewelry from Sean. It hadn’t mattered to Sean at the time. Initially, he had thought that was all Diego really wanted anyway; to sell Abigail Ellwood’s blood diamonds on the black market. But that was before Sean knew how disturbed Diego’s mind really was. It all became clear the day Diego pulled out the knife he’d used to carve the words into her back so many years ago.
Sean felt sweat sting his eyes. Or was it tears? He didn’t know anymore. Hunching over, Sean once again prayed the endless prayers that seemed to be hung up in some sort of celestial traffic.
But it could be worse. So much worse. At least they were all alive.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
MCCARRIN was alive. Abby’s parents were alive. Even that stupid Pekinese was alive.
Most importantly, Abby was alive.
Was she really talking?
Maybe the Ellwoods had planned some ugly version of an intervention for Sean and were just saying that to reel him in. He looked back at his tactical babysitter watching him from the shadows of his old apartment building.
The waterfall no longer carried water and was being dismantled. It had been discovered that Diego Bianchi had worked with engineers prior to the kidnapping in order to rig it. He’d been planning it for over a year. Diego had even found a clandestine way to arrange for Abby’s mom to unknowingly find a suitable apartment for Sean just above the apartment Ricco used to bring his girlfriends. It didn’t take much for Diego to plant the explosives.
Diego Bianchi was a genius, and psychotic. Even the first attack on Abby at Minck’s house had been orchestrated to perfection. Diego had taken every measure to be in the same spot as Abby on her birthday. Hooking up with Stacey Maughan had been only one of multiple plans he’d concocted.
Abby’s mom had no clue, of course. She blamed herself, like she always did. She knew that Abby was Ricco’s daughter. He’d raped her when she was engaged to Abby’s dad. Sean suspected that the Senator knew as well, but he played ignorant, surely to appease his wife. But whatever the case, her mom would always suffer from that knowledge.
Sean shook another cigarette out of the pack and put it to his lips. But he didn’t light it.
You told me to call when she talked.
He wasn’t going to believe it until he heard his Jamie’s voice with his own ears. Sean picked up the flask and lifted it to his mouth. Empty. He tossed it to the waves of the river and stretched with a wince. His body was still healing, still suffering from the shit that Diego and his band of ruffians had put him through. Diego had been a psychotic genius, but he was an idiot when it came to his knowledge of enhanced interrogation techniques and the depths of Sean’s military experience. He’d kept Sean beat up and bruised, but not incapacitated. With his training, Sean knew that he’d just had to wait for the right moment to strike. It had been that night. After hearing Abby’s scream, he’d lit up. He still couldn’t figure out where he’d gotten the energy from, or the strength, but he’d been able to strike Mendoza down within seconds, and then get to Diego before his knife could plunge into Abby for a third time. He remembered the blood dripping onto the dress, like a sappy remake of an original horror flick.
He thought back to Kenya. What was that woman’s name? It had sounded like Abby. Yeah, it was Ayubu. He remembered Ayubu and all the crap she’d gone through. An asshole husband that practically beat her to death, multiple surgeries, never able to have kids. And what did she do? She went back to him. So, it could be worse. But then, she wasn’t suffering anymore. Because of Abby’s generosity, she was going to school, and because of Sean’s connections she had a place to stay. Sean pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it towards the flask that was bumping over the water. Ayubu was free. Why the hell couldn’t Abby be free as well? What kind of fucked-up world was this? Where was God in all this?
He stretched again and tried to force his shoulder back into place. He needed to get it looked
at again. But at this point, he’d become the king of surgery. He’d probably be able to operate on himself by now. Glancing down at his hand, Sean laughed sarcastically. That was a load of shit. His short stint in the neurology department at Memorial had given him unrealistic hope, had tried to convince him that he didn’t need all his fingers to do great works. His mind had been sharp, and he’d exceeded expectations during his time there, but now he couldn’t enter a hospital without being drunk. It was too much. A human being shouldn’t be expected to put up with all this shit.
The sound of a horn pulled Sean’s attention from the water. Jerome’s black Lexus was parked next to the curb. Sean lifted his body from the retaining wall and slid his legs over the side. When he got to the car, the babysitter gave Sean a quick salute.
He didn’t know why McCarrin’s team put up with his crap. Probably because of the Bianchi thing. It seemed like everyone and their brother was overly-impressed with what went down at Diego’s house. But it didn’t matter. None of that mattered. Unless Abby’s mom was telling the truth about Abby talking. Then his world would fall back into place again. Then he would be able to start new again. Then it all mattered.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
“YOU look awful,” Jerome said as Sean slid into the passenger seat. He sniffed. “And you smell awful too.”
“Just shows how many shits I give,” Sean grumbled.
“Grief doesn’t give you the excuse to disregard respect.”
“Sorry.”
He really was. Jerome had been kind to him the past several weeks, driving him to doctor appointments, understanding that Sean was too gnawed up to talk to the Ellwoods without losing it every ten minutes. He’d talk with a voice of reason, and Sean would listen… half the time. The other half, his mind would wander into the realm of ‘what ifs’.
“She’s talking,” Jerome said.
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