“Hello ladies, it’s good to see you.”
After the women greeted her in kind, they got down to the reason for their video call.
“It’s likely not Numerical behind this,” Elena said. “Still, changing locks and implanting listening devices could be a part of Numerical’s M.O.”
“Cassandra also found a device of some sort on her sister’s phone,” Mia said. “Isn’t that one of Numerical’s signatures?”
“It’s believed to be, yes,” Elena said, “And it’s an even greater indicator than the changing of the locks that it’s a sophisticated predator, still, it could be the work of another criminal and not Numerical.”
“It’s him,” Cassandra said, “I feel it, and if I’m right, he could strike any day now.”
“I want to bring in the authorities on this one,” Elena said, and Cassandra, Mia, and Kelly, all spoke up in protest.
On screen, Elena raised a hand, and the three younger women stopped talking.
“I don’t like it either, but the psych profile on Numerical says that if cornered he would be extremely dangerous, and I’m not willing to risk you girls unnecessarily. If the authorities capture him, they’ll likely be able to handle anything he throws at them.”
Again, Mia, Cassandra, and Kelly, protested, and again, Elena silenced them.
“I like your passion and lack of fear, and so I’ll make a concession. I won’t contact the authorities until tomorrow, if the man who changed the locks comes back tonight, he will be all yours.”
Cassandra grinned.
“All right, but you realize that even if the authorities capture him that they’ll never give him the justice we will.”
“I know, dear, but if this is an opportunity to stop that monster, Numerical, I don’t want to waste it, and despite the abilities of you three, he may prove to be more than your equal.”
Kelly spoke up, and despite her diminutive size, the resolve in her voice was mammoth.
“If he shows up here tonight, we’ll stop him, believe it.”
On the monitor, Elena smiled with pride.
“I do believe; it’s why I’m giving you tonight. Happy hunting, and stay safe.”
Cassandra signed off her laptop and then opened a bag that Mia had brought along, a bag that contained a blond wig. When she put it on, she looked remarkably like her sister, Emily, she also happened to sound like her sister, and could speak in her cadence.
She looked at Mia and Kelly, her eyes ablaze with determination.
“Let’s get ready.”
***
Dr. Anna Dewitt greeted Jessica and Amanda in the waiting room with a confident smile. Dewitt was forty-three, black, with shoulder-length hair and large gray eyes.
Jessica thought Dr. Dewitt looked familiar, but couldn’t recall ever having met her before.
Lawson and Tyler were present as well, and after introductions were made, Jessica asked Dewitt about the surgery.
“I won’t lie to you, the second bullet is lodged in an extremely unfortunate position, but I’ve performed this type of operation on four other occasions and I’m confident that I can extract the bullet without causing damage to the artery, of course, I’ll know more once I operate.”
“Those other four operations, what were their outcomes?” Jessica asked.
“Three lived, and one died, however, the man who died had other complications that increased his risk factors.”
Amanda wiped at tears.
“Please save my boy, Doctor.”
Dr. Dewitt reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
“I’ll do my best. You have my word on that.”
The ambient music pouring from the hospital’s speakers ceased, and was replaced by a message for Dr. Dewitt.
Dr. Dewitt, Code Blue, Please come immediately, Dr. Dewitt, Code Blue, please come immediately,
Jessica gasped.
“Code Blue, that means cardiac arrest, is that my husband?”
Dr. Dewitt sent a look of sympathy over her shoulder, even as she rushed out of the room.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go now.”
Jessica followed her, but was met by a nurse in the corridor.
“I’m sorry, Dr. White, but we need you to stay here.”
“What’s happened to my husband?”
“His heart stopped again, due to pressure on the artery, but Dr. Falcone was able to get it beating once more just before I left the room.”
“Oh God, when are they going to operate?”
“I believe immediately, but Dr. Falcone or Dr. Dewitt will speak to you soon, for now, please wait in the room there.”
Amanda placed an arm around Jessica’s shoulders.
“Come on, honey, come sit and wait with me.”
Jessica thanked the nurse and followed Amanda back into the room. Jessica sat on the sofa between Tyler and Amanda, but after an hour had passed, she began pacing about the small room as if it were a cage.
When Dr. Dewitt finally appeared in the doorway, Jessica saw the smile on her face and sighed with relief.
“You got the bullet?”
“Yes, and your husband is in recovery. I also expect that he’ll be good as new someday.”
Dr. Dewitt walked over to Jessica, took one of her hands, and tumbled two copper-colored pieces of metal into her palm.
“One of those was lodged in his right lung, but didn’t collapse it, the other one there, the more misshapen of the two, that’s the one that was causing all the trouble.”
Jessica gripped the evil metal in her hand and hugged the doctor.
“Thank you for saving my husband’s life.”
Dewitt hugged her back.
“It was my pleasure, Dr. White, and now let me take you and your mother-in-law to see your husband, but only for a moment, he needs his rest.”
After saying goodbye to Lawson and Tyler, Jessica and Amanda were escorted down a corridor by Dr. Dewitt, and Jessica asked the doctor a question.
“Have we met before? You look familiar.”
Dewitt stopped walking.
“I wasn’t going to bring it up, but yes, we met briefly seven years ago in Rockford, Illinois. It occurred while you were consulting on the Mark Robertson case.”
“Mark Robertson? He was being framed by a serial killer, and my husband and I proved him innocent.”
“Yes, and you also caught the man framing him, thank God, otherwise Mark would be rotting in prison right now.”
“You know Mark?”
“He’s my brother, Doctor, my baby brother. My maiden name was Robertson.”
“Yes, that’s it; we met briefly at the police station.”
“Yes, you saved my brother years ago, and today I was happy to repay you by helping to save your husband.”
“What we did for your brother hardly equals what you’ve done today, and you’ll have our gratitude forever.”
Dewitt shook her head in disagreement.
“Not only did you save Mark from spending his life in prison, but you stopped the monster that tried to frame him, and that man would have killed again. We both save lives, Jessica, each in our own way.”
Jessica looked down at the bits of metal in her hand as she thought how close they came to killing her husband.
“We’ve done good over the years by consulting with law enforcement, my husband and I, but... I think it might be time for us to reevaluate our lives, before we lose them.”
Dewitt smiled sadly at those words, and began walking again.
“I’ll take you to your husband.”
When they reached him, Jessica and Amanda were only able to view him through a window, but Jessica was relieved to see that his breathing was strong and regular.
He had gone up against superior numbers so many times and always come out on top, had proven himself to be exceptional in so many ways, that she had begun to think of him as indestructible, but, though exceptional, he was not indestructible, and she had nearly lost him.
&
nbsp; Never again, Jessica thought, We’ve given enough and it’s time to rest, to raise a family, to simply live our lives.
Jessica gazed in at her husband, her lover, and her best friend, and thanked God that they would be able to go on with their lives, lives she thought, which needed to change.
***
In Florida, the man known as Numerical powered on a laptop. As the machine came to life, he put on a black ski mask. In the room behind him were the blank cinderblock walls of a basement, walls that gave no clue to his location. The computer was also equipped with software that would make tracing his IP address impossible.
After a short interval, he was looking at several other men wearing ski masks, and behind them, their surroundings were just as anonymous as his own.
He and the others were thought of as apostles by a man named Prophet, and Prophet had aptly named all of them after their biblical counterparts, all of them, that is, except for Numerical, who refused to be called anything else.
Prophet appeared in a new window. He was just a shadowy shape, and his voice was being electronically altered. Numerical, who was well acquainted with computer technology, had tried several times to trace Prophet’s location, and had failed every time.
Prophet spoke.
“Gentlemen, we seem to be short a man, or perhaps Bartholomew changed his mind about joining us today.”
One of the men laughed. He was named John, and was someone that Numerical liked.
Numerical could always spot his own kind, fellow predators, and believed that they too could spot him. When he was approached anonymously by Prophet, he assumed that the man was a serial killer such as himself, but the more contact he had with the man, the surer he was that Prophet was something else. However, who or what that something else was eluded him.
Prophet had contacted each of the apostles the same way, and would only make contact after he had stalked them long enough to watch them take a victim, and had gathered proof of their crime. Only then would he send them an offer to join him in conversation.
Numerical did so, knowing that he obviously wasn’t a cop, or Prophet would have arrested him instead of taking pictures of him entering and leaving the home of a victim.
Assembling this group must have taken years, Numerical knew, and despite the coercion, speaking with them always made him feel less alone in the world.
The life of a predator was a lonely life, and Numerical had always craved the company of another like himself, but needed to keep his identity a secret. Thanks to the Internet, such camaraderie was possible, but Numerical still wondered about Prophet’s motivation for forming these alliances, and would love to know his endgame.
“Bartholomew is late all right,” John said. “But I think I know what happened to him,”
John had a southern accent, and there was long blond hair hanging out of the ski mask.
“What are you saying?” Prophet said.
“This video just came on the news, it shows a very large man being chased and shot down by a girl with long dark hair, and it’s being reported that when police entered the man’s home, they found the dead body of a missing teen in his basement, and we all know that Bartholomew loved them young.”
Beneath the ski mask, Numerical’s brow furrowed.
“I want to see this video.”
“Hold on,” John said. A few moments passed, and then a new window appeared along with the rest, and filled with a video. The video was small on the laptop’s screen, but Numerical saw that it had likely been recorded by a security camera of some sort, because it appeared to have been filmed from above and outdoors, and also had no sound.
As John had said, the video showed a large man running away from a girl with long hair, and even in the grainy images you could tell that the man was terrified, as he constantly glanced back over his shoulder.
When the shots came, the man dropped to the ground and raised his hands up in a gesture of pleading, but three more shots followed with their corresponding muzzle flashes, stilling the man, and after a moment of staring down at her handiwork, the girl ran off and out of view.
“She’s one of those bitches I told you about,” Andrew said. His voice was deep and betrayed a Boston accent.
Simon made a sound of derision. Although Numerical had never seen his face, he believed he was young, and looked large on screen.
“There is no group hunting us down, Andrew. This girl was just a victim that got the better of her captor.”
“That’s what you said about that pimp in Texas last month, but I’m telling you, there’s a group out there hunting us down.”
As the other men talked, Numerical watched the video again, and felt chilled as the girl fired into her victim.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I think we should err on the side of caution and start watching our backs more than usual, just in case Andrew is right.”
Prophet spoke up in his annoying electronic voice.
“Simon is correct, Numerical; there is no organization of women hunting down serial killers. If there were, I would know.”
“Tell that to Bartholomew, Prophet. Oh wait, you can’t, one of the bitches just killed him.”
The others laughed at Numerical’s joke, and he could tell that it annoyed Prophet, who let out a long sigh. Prophet may have formed the group, but Numerical was its unofficial leader, and the other men looked up to him, and distrusted Prophet.
On screen, Numerical saw Simon shake his head.
“It’s not possible for women to hunt us, to their eyes, we look like just another sheep. We’re the only ones who see each other as wolves.”
“I wonder about that,” Numerical said.
“What?” John said. “You think that some of them can see what we are?”
“Maybe, I’ve had some women look at me and run the other way, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah I have,” John admitted. “But it’s rare, and like you say, they run away.”
Numerical stared at the video once again, where it played on a loop, and watched the girl firing the gun.
“Maybe they’ve grown tired of running.”
CHAPTER 7
8:37 p.m.
Jessica was at her husband’s bedside.
The operation had gone smoothly and his vital signs were all good. She had been told that he wouldn’t awaken for many hours, but she would not leave his side until she could speak to him, and know that he was all right.
A sound came from the doorway and Jessica saw Elena standing there. She rose from her seat, and when Elena opened her arms, she fell into them.
“How are you, dear?”
“I’m all right, and they say he’ll make a full recovery.”
“Excellent,” Elena said, and then she joined Jessica in her vigil.
As they spoke, Jessica found that she gained strength simply by having Elena present.
Jessica had the TV on with the sound turned low, and at one point, the news showed the video that Numerical had watched earlier, the video that showed a young woman shooting a man down in the street.
Jessica pointed at the screen as she whispered to Elena.
“Is that one of your people?”
“No, we would never act in such a public manner, but I’m quite interested in her, that is actually the third time she’s killed, ballistics prove it, and all three men were later discovered to have been serial killers.”
“Really? Then, perhaps she shares your gift for spotting predators.”
“That is what I’m wondering, if so, I need to find her. She would be invaluable as a member of PREY.”
They talked some more, but during a period of silence, Jessica heard Elena gasp, and then whisper two words,
“Good lord,”
She looked at Elena, saw the shocked look on her face, and then followed her eyes to the doorway, where Samantha stood, staring in at the bed.
“She’s a.... a...”
“Yes, Elena, she is,”
Jessica rose from h
er seat and went to Samantha, who was gazing at the form upon the bed with the saddest of eyes. Out in the corridor, Jessica saw Brendan Ryan speaking pleadingly with the ICU nurse, a stern-looking woman with short gray hair.
“Nurse Gardner,” Jessica said. “I know there are rules against children visiting, but I would like you to make an exception, for a few minutes, please?”
Nurse Gardner sighed noisily.
“All right, Doctor, but no more than two visitors at a time.”
Jessica agreed, and then spoke to Brendan Ryan.
“She made you bring her, didn’t she?”
“I had little choice. She began heading here on her bicycle when I told her no.”
Jessica looked down at Samantha, who still gazed at the bed.
“He’s going to be all right.”
Samantha didn’t respond, but moved towards the bed, even as Elena headed for the door.
Elena gazed back at Samantha.
“She’s the youngest I’ve ever felt, and her aura is nearly as strong as your husband’s.”
“He’s been mentoring her, and... I think it’s helped.”
Elena hugged Jessica.
“I’ll call tomorrow to check on you.”
“Thank you for coming, Elena, I appreciate your company.”
Elena left her with a kiss on the cheek, and when Jessica joined Samantha near the bed, she saw that the girl was crying softly.
“Will he really be okay?” Samantha said.
“Yes, honey, it may take months, but he’ll fully recover.”
Samantha sniffled, and then reached over and touched his face tenderly, before letting her hand drop to her side.
Jessica stood beside her in silence for over a minute, but then felt the tentative touch of Samantha’s small fingers in her hand.
She clasped the child’s hand, somewhat shocked by the gesture of her touch, and for the first time, she knew that the core of goodness her husband glimpsed inside Samantha was real.
Then, the two of them stood there hand in hand, gazing down at the wounded form of a man they both loved dearly.
***
Summervale, North Carolina
Alice found herself laughing at another of Rob Bolan’s stories as he escorted her to the front door of her aunt’s house.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 13-16 (Taken! Box Set Book 4) Page 16