Jan Coffey Suspense Box Set: Three Complete Novel Box Set: Trust Me Once, Twice Burned, Fourth Victim

by Jan Coffey

  “Then you can have me,” she said desperately. “Get her to a hospital. Let her live, and I’ll do anything you want.”

  He seemed to contemplate her offer. Kelly’s nervous glance went from Somers back to Jade. She tried to see any sign of the poison affecting her child.

  “Full cooperation,” Somers demanded.

  “In exchange for the guarantee that no harm will come to Jade. That she’ll be taken to a hospital and given the best care…now!”

  He crushed the cup in his hand and tossed it to the ground. “No hospital is needed. This is just a red fruit drink…this time.”

  Kelly couldn’t stop the quivering of her chin. She wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t. What if he was lying? What if this poison took time to work? She shook her arms free. They let her go.

  “I need to hold her,” she said brokenly.

  She took hesitant steps toward Jade, and Somers waved off the gunman. No one tried to stop her.

  Kelly crouched in front of her daughter. She touched the child’s cold face. The silky hair. The thin shoulders. The large green eyes were open, looking directly at her.

  Kelly took Jade in her arms.

  “There are a few of our disciples who will not be joining us in our ascension tonight,” Somers told her. “You’ve met Ken Burke. As a young man, he did an outstanding job of documenting Michael’s final earthly moments and his ascension to the divine plane.”

  She remembered Burke now. That was why he’d looked familiar.

  “He’s doing the same thing for us, making sure our next generation will have a complete understanding of our last moments in this earthly wasteland. You don’t have to fear. He’ll watch over the two children…as we watched over you.”

  “Two children?” Not letting go of her daughter, Kelly looked up at Somers. “What do you mean…two children?”

  “Jade’s soul mate. I received the vision and I have ordained him. He will be a part of her life until her time comes. You already know the child.”

  “Ryan?” she asked, her entire body breaking out in cold sweat.

  Somers nodded.

  She was giving life to her daughter for a short time. Jade would be a victim of this group then, as Kelly was being forced to play her part now. There would be no end to the vicious cycle. No one would be left to stop them.

  “Our final devotions started last night. Your people are eager for you to arrive for tonight’s ascension,” Somers told her, motioning Kelly to get to her feet.

  “But wait! The alignment happens on Monday,” Kelly said, hoping she was using the right terminology. “You said tonight.”

  “The moment of alignment takes place in the Eastern World tomorrow at sunset, but here in New Hampshire, the Khumba Luxor is tonight. We intend to meet the Prophet at the moment when the eternal door is open. With you leading us, we’ll do just that. You will guide us along the divine path…and no one will interfere.”

  Crazy, Kelly thought. He must have known the authorities were on his tail. But he was going to do it. In spite of all the pain he had caused, all the murders he’d committed, he would die making a name for himself instead of rotting away in some prison.

  “If at any moment you rebel against us, if there is any sign of disobedience on your part, you will be eliminated, and Jade—or rather, the innocent Luna-J—will have the honor of being our guide tonight,” Somers warned. “Those of us who know both you and your daughter find her far purer of heart, anyway.”

  Kelly had no doubt he was talking about her relationship with Ian. She caressed her daughter’s hair and thought about how quickly Jade and Ian had bonded, as well. He was the only person she’d ever met that she knew Jade would have been safe with.

  She pulled her daughter into a tight embrace. The tears coursing down her cheeks were for both of them, and for the man they’d both lost too soon.

  “It’s time to go,” Somers said impatiently.

  Kelly saw the two gunmen approach. She lifted Jade into her arms and walked to the open door of the van. Cassy was sitting in the back seat by herself. Janice was in front of her. Another woman that Kelly didn’t recognize was sitting behind the driver’s seat.

  Kelly moved all the way to the back and sat next to Cassy. The young girl tensed immediately and looked away, but Kelly didn’t care. Of all the people in the van, she had the best chance of getting help from the teenager.

  ~~~~

  “Are you asleep?”

  “How could I be asleep?” Brian answered gruffly. “You haven’t stopped moving once, all night.”

  “I really have to take a leak. And no way am I going to go in my pants,” Victor said.

  “I don’t think it really matters. Do you?” Brian said.

  His arms and hands were bound with tape behind him, as were his feet. They’d taped his arms to a metal loop on the side wall of the truck. It was a fixture used for lashing in furniture, so Brian knew it was strong. On the other side of the truck, Victor continued to squirm in the semi-darkness.

  “Just go,” he told Victor. “I promise never to tell anyone about it or give you a hard time.”

  “Yeah, right! If we get out of here, you’ll tell everybody in Center City.”

  “And South Philly, too,” Brian replied.

  “See, I told you.”

  “Of course, that’s if we ever get out of here.”

  Brian looked around the confined space in the back of the truck. Pieces of furniture were jammed all around them. Thin streaks of light were coming through a couple of rusted seams where the walls of the truck met the roof. The rental truck Victor had gotten for free from one of his many cousins in South Philadelphia was not in the greatest shape. There were even pieces of plywood in the truck, covering a number of rusted areas on the floor.

  Brian flexed his legs, pushing at the edge of one of the boards. He’d been doing it repeatedly during the night to keep the blood flowing to his bound feet. He wasn’t so lucky with his upper body. It’d been hours since he’d felt anything in his shoulders and arms. They didn’t feel like part of him anymore.

  “What time you think it is?” Victor asked.

  “After eight.”

  “How the hell can you be so sure?”

  “I’m hungry,” Brian replied. “You have to take a leak. I have to eat. My stomach says it’s after eight.”

  “Your stomach is hardly what I’d consider a finely tuned clock, Brian. Besides, we had a hotdog each for lunch and no dinner. Your stomach might be telling you it’s eight o’clock at night.”

  “Well, it’s morning.” Brian pressed his head back against the wall. “And I’m so hungry that I feel sick to my stomach.”

  “Well, just go ahead and throw up. I’ll never tell anyone,” Victor replied. “What do you think they’re going to do with us?”

  “For the hundredth time, I don’t know.”

  Shawn Hobart and his Rambo gang had been men of few words. They sure did seem to have been waiting for them on the road. Still, there were no explanations. No questions answered. They weren’t robbing them. Nor did they seem to be interested in hanging a couple of gays from the nearest tree for old time’s sake. They did seem to be well armed with plenty of guns and lots of duct tape, and before they were done, the two of them were trussed up like prize pigs ready for the barbecue spit.

  What Brian couldn’t figure was why Hobart or one of his thugs had driven the truck for a few miles on a gravel roads before just stopping and leaving them. Brian had no clue where they were. He had no idea if anyone was coming back for them. Sometime during the night, they’d given up calling for help. They didn’t seem to be within earshot of anywhere.

  Brian closed his eyes and pushed at the plywood again. Strange. The entire thing was too damn weird.

  “I don’t have the heart to watch you waste away like this. Do you want a piece of gum?” Victor asked.

  “Sure. What the…?” Brian looked over in shock as his friend rubbed his wrists, one at a time, and pee
led off more of the tape from his shirtsleeve. “How did you manage to cut through the tape?”

  “Hobart’s a moron. He underestimated my preparedness.” Vic flashed him the nail clipper he always carried in his back pocket. He looked at the tiny file critically. “But I didn’t realize how dull the silly thing was.”

  Feeling hopeful for the first time in hours, Brian watched Vic go to work on the tape around his ankle, peeling and unwinding it, layer after layer.

  “I have to take a leak first,” Victor told him as soon as he had his feet free.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Brian warned. “You’ve held it this long. You can hold it until you get me out of here.”

  “That could be days. You know the door is latched on the outside.”

  “Get my hands undone, and I’ll have us out in under an hour.”

  “An hour?” Vic complained. “Forget it.”

  “Vic, get my hands,” Brian ordered in his sharpest tone.

  “Fine. Fine. Fine.” Vic moved across and pushed Brian forward, so he could reach his bound hands. “So what’s this genius plan for getting us out of here?”

  “My toolbox.”

  “You left that in the front, right by my feet.”

  “No, I used it back here. It’s behind the Randolph highboy,” Brian told him. “That’s the first piece we loaded.”

  “You left it in front.”

  “No,” Brian insisted as Victor started helping him get the tape off his ankles. “I needed my power screwdriver.”

  “I’ll bet you—”

  “No betting. Just help me move some of these pieces around.” Brian pushed himself to his feet and stopped, putting out a hand on the wall until the woozy feeling passed.

  “My bladder can’t take too much pressure.” Despite his complaints, Victor helped Brian with moving the pieces around.

  “You’re thinner than I am. Why don’t you crawl through here and see if you can reach the tool box?”

  The look he got told Brian that Victor still didn’t believe the thing was there. “I’m taking a leak inside it if it’s back there.”

  “Be my guest,” Brian replied. “Just take the tools out first.”

  Victor started working his way between the pieces toward the back. Brian waited until he guessed Vic was getting close.

  “So is it there?”

  “Do you hear me peeing?” the other man called out.

  “Vic,” he said sharply.

  The sound of a power screwdriver revving reached Brian’s ears.

  “No tool box. Only this,” Victor said as he worked his way back.

  “It’ll do.”

  Brian took the tool and lifted up one of the plywood boards on the floor. “It’s a good thing your cousin Vinny gave us the crummiest truck on his lot.”

  “Yeah, he showed a lot of foresight giving us this one, wouldn’t you say?”

  Brian crouched down on one knee. Drilling a line of holes through the rusted floor, he sat back as Victor pounded out the thin metal with the corner of the plywood.

  “Your hour is up.” Victor announced after his third go at the floor.

  “It hasn’t been ten minutes.”

  About an hour and a half later, Brian was covered with dust and sweat and his hand and arms were cut in a dozen different places, but they had a hole big enough to crawl through.

  “I’ll go first,” Victor said.

  Brian poked his head down through. There were no cars around them. No one he could see. Only lots and lots of trees. And they were parked in the middle of a gravel road.

  “Be careful,” he said, pulling his head back in.

  “You can leave in a more civilized manner,” Vic told him. “I’ll open up the back door.”

  “Good, because this is going to be a squeeze for me.”

  Brian helped him down through the hole. A moment later, Vic’s face reappeared.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’ll have to come out this way, and be quick about it, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Take a look.” Vic backed out, and Brian poked his head out. Victor pointed to a small device taped between the muffler and the gas tank and some wires leading toward the back of the truck.

  “They’ve set us up to be a fireworks display. I touch that back door, and we’ll be flame-broiled…just in time for lunch.”

  Brian put his feet in the hole and started working his way out.

  Chapter 21

  It was a miracle. As he sank, Ian’s arm hooked on the anchor line. Grabbing the rope and trying not to panic, he pulled himself upward toward the floating swim platform. The water was black and cold, and his left arm was numb and useless. Still he pulled himself along, running out of breath with each passing second.

  Ian knew he’d be dead if he surfaced anywhere near the canoe, but the rope was rising on an angle, and the vague thought emerged that he might be able to hide on the far side of the float.

  He heard Kelly go into the water, and he knew she was looking for him. He couldn’t let her find him. He was sure they wouldn’t hurt her. They’d taken Jade only as a way of forcing Kelly to go along with whatever they had planned. No, they wouldn’t hurt her—not yet, anyway.

  His lungs were burning, and the pain in his left shoulder was fierce. Suddenly, he couldn’t stay under any longer, and he let go of the rope, kicking for the surface. Before he broke through to the air, his head glanced off something hard, stunning him momentarily even as he surfaced.

  Gasping, Ian had no idea what was going on. His face was above water, but he was in an enclosed space. He reached out with one hand and realized instantly where he was. A foot or so above him, he saw light coming through the slatted wood of the platform.

  Gradually, his breathing slowed. He was starting to get some feeling back in his arm, and that wasn’t a good thing. The pain in his shoulder was getting worse, but he tried to ignore it.

  He heard Kelly call his name. She was still in the water. When he heard the note of desperation in her voice, Ian found it almost impossible not to call out to her. He tried to peer through the narrow spaces between foam blocks. On one side, the canoe bumped against the float and then drifted past. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

  Far off, he heard Jade’s voice. She was calling Kelly. Grimacing from the pain, he moved to another side, where he had a partial view of the shore. Jade was standing on the beach with her abductors. The camp van was on the grass behind them, and two men with automatic rifles stood by the open door.

  “Bastards.”

  Suddenly, Kelly appeared in his line of vision, wading out of the water. The float shifted, and again he couldn’t see them.

  The words were muffled, but he heard Kelly’s voice rise. Ian considered swimming out from under the float, but he didn’t know if there were others along the edge of the water, perhaps looking for his body to surface. Even if he got out, he knew he wouldn’t be able to support himself in the water and still get a decent shot off at the two armed men. That was, if his gun would fire.

  Time had no meaning and he lost track of it. He knew he had to be losing blood. He tried to stay afloat, holding on to the anchor rope. When he heard the doors of the van slam shut and the engine roar to life, he couldn’t wait any longer. Taking a deep breath, he dived and kicked his way beneath the foam blocks. When he surfaced, he could see the van disappearing around the inn. There was no one left on the beach, and no one he could see hiding in the trees, either.

  Kicking hard and pulling with his good arm, he managed to get to shallow water and wade ashore. His entire body was aching now, and he pulled his shirt away to inspect his shoulder. The wound was bleeding but not as heavily as he would have thought. The bullet had gone in the back, near the left shoulder joint, and had come out beneath the collarbone, grazing his chin, which was bleeding more than his shoulder. He tried to move his left arm and found he could use it, though he had little strength in it.

  “It could’ve been worse,
” he muttered. “You could be dead.”

  Ian pulled his pistol from its holster and looked at it. He needed more firepower than this, he thought. Looking at Dan’s cottage, he started for it but then changed his mind. First, he had to stop the bleeding somehow and patch himself up.

  Going into the boathouse, Ian found a cabinet containing towels and a first aid kit. He dug out two gauze pads and pressed one into the wound behind his shoulder. He sat down hard as the pain shot through him. Tearing opening the other packet, he applied the gauze to the exit wound and replaced the shirt over the dressing.

  As he stood up, he saw a roll of duct tape on a workbench. He thought of the young man lying in the cottage nearby but shook off the image. He had work to do if he was going to be of any help to Kelly. Using one hand, he wrapped his wound, going over his shoulder, under his aching arm and around his chest before repeating the cycle.

  Going out, Ian scanned the inn property as he moved quickly to the cottage. There was no sign of life by the main building. Slipping through the door, he glanced at the body. His heart went out to Dan…or Ed…or whatever his name was. He wondered if there was a wife involved, or kids.

  Taking another look at the dead body, Ian knew exactly what kind of people he was dealing with. As crazy as Butler had been, this was much different than what the New Mexico Mission was all about. Somers and his thugs were cold-blooded killers. He hoped Kelly remembered his warning.

  He looked around the room for a likely hiding place. Whether the kid was working for the state police or the FBI, he wouldn’t come out here without weapons to protect himself in an emergency.

  Two storage lockers contained only rain gear and a jacket. The drawers yielded nothing, either. He wouldn’t leave anything in the open where anyone could find it.

  Ian looked up toward the rafters and saw the storage area. Fishing gear and boxes, backpacks, sleeping bags, and what looked like rolled up tents had all been stored up there. Actually Dan had done just that…hidden his things in the open.

  Ian dragged a chair to the middle of the room, climbed onto it, and reached up with his good arm.