His men were all carrying weapons with homemade silencers, and so the fact that he could hear the shots told him that they were fired by one of the women, and he wondered if they had somehow gotten the upper hand. But, as he moved back towards the hall, he heard one of the women scream in pain. The sound cheered him, and he went in search of Cassandra.
***
The sound of the first two shots awakened Cassandra from a dream about a boy she dated in high school, a boy who later married her former best friend.
Her eyes opened to find a shape rushing towards her in the darkness, and before she could react, she felt the blade as it was jammed into her shoulder.
She flailed out with her arms and legs and felt her right hand make contact with soft flesh, even as the yelp of pain hurt her ears. There was a touch lamp on the nightstand, and she swiped at it, illuminating the room, where a man was bent over and moaning as blood trickled from the corner of one eye.
The knife laid on the floor, but there was a gun jammed into his waistband. Cassandra reached over, gripped the gun, and without bothering to remove it, she pulled the trigger.
The gun made a sound like a small child clapping, but the man groaned as his hands flew to his crotch, and he fell to the floor, where he hissed through gritted teeth.
The gun came free as he dropped and Cassandra rose from bed, naked, as it was her custom to sleep in the nude.
Kelly appeared in the doorway wearing only panties and a T-shirt. She looked at the dying man on the floor and then ran to Cassandra.
“They’re everywhere,” she said, and that’s when they heard the three shots, followed by the sound of Mia screaming.
***
There was a man standing at the top of the stairs looking down, and Elena watched as Violet shot him in the chest three times. The man dropped his gun, sat down on the top step, and as his eyes rolled back in his head, he too fell back, and the blood from his wounds turned the beige hallway carpet red.
A scream came from one of the rooms to the right of the stairs and Elena thought it sounded like Mia. When she and Violet reached the top, Numerical walked out of Kelly’s doorway.
When Numerical spotted them, he cursed, and then Cassandra and Kelly stepped into the hall. Numerical was taking in Cassandra’s nakedness when she raised her gun and fired at him twice, both shots hitting him in the back as he spun around to take cover in the bedroom. He moaned loudly and dropped to the floor with his torso in Kelly’s room as his feet stuck out into the hall.
From the left, a stout man poked his head out of Elena’s bedroom, and then followed it with a trio of shots that caused Elena and Violet to fall flat on the stairs. Cassandra fired at him, missing, and the man returned fire, striking Kelly in the right forearm. Two blond women rushed out of a room across the hall and grabbed at the man’s gun arm, the three of them tussled over the weapon, tripped over the dead man at the top of the stairs and went down in a blur of arms and legs, end over end.
Violet yanked Elena up and out of the way just in time to avoid joining the trio, and then watched them tumble down to the bottom. Both women were dressed in pink nighties with fuzzy pink slippers, giving the spectacle an almost comic flair.
In the aftermath of the fall, one woman appeared to have broken her leg, and the other her wrist, but the stout man remained unscathed, and with his gun still clutched in his hand.
The man sat up, shook his head to clear it, and received a bullet between the eyes from Elena.
“You bitches better let me leave here or I’ll kill your friend. I swear I will!”
Those words were shouted from Mia’s room, and when everyone gathered in the doorway, they found the apostle named Simon holding a gun to Mia’s temple. Mia had also been wounded in her left ribs and thigh, causing her white cotton nightgown to turn red on that side.
Violet started to raise her gun but Elena halted her by placing a hand on her wrist.
“We’ll let you go. We’ll back off and let you go downstairs. When you reach the foyer, you can release her, and then no one else gets hurt, all right?”
“Just get the hell out of my way.”
They backed up into the hallway until they were past the stairs and the dead man, and when Simon followed them, his face looked bewildered by the carnage.
“Holy crap,”
Simon told the two blondes who had taken the tumble down the stairs to move to a spot where he could keep an eye on them. The woman with the broken wrist helped the one with the broken leg move to a chair against the wall, and afterwards, Simon called out to his murderous brethren.
“John! Philip! Numerical? Where are you guys?”
“Which one was Numerical?” Cassandra said, as she gazed at the dead men, it was then that she realized the man she’d shot in Kelly’s doorway was gone. She pointed at the floor.
“Son of a bitch, he must have been wearing a vest.”
Simon was readying himself to go down the stairs. He would have to do it sideways, while holding Mia and keeping an eye on the other women.
Elena stepped forward.
“Please, let her go and take me instead.”
Simon moved the gun away from Mia’s temple to point it at Elena, but when it was halfway between the two of them, Mia turned her head and bit a chunk out of Simon’s cheek.
He howled in pain and she slipped from his grasp, then, she fought him for the gun. She was immediately joined by Kelly, then Cassandra, and as they drove him to the floor, Violet entered the fray.
The gun was wrenched from Simon’s hand, and the big man began striking out with his fists. He landed a hard right on Violet’s chin, but she shook it off and answered with punches of her own, as the other women also beat, scratched, kicked, and gouged at Simon mercilessly.
“Enough!” Elena cried, as she pulled Kelly from the pile, and once they’d all disengaged from the battle, bloody, but triumphant, they saw that they had beaten Simon to death and that only one eye remained in his pummeled face.
Cassandra, still naked, and bleeding from the knife wound, gazed into Kelly’s room and saw the open window that Numerical had escaped through, she then checked on the man she had wounded earlier, and saw that he had bled out. She grabbed her robe from the back of the door and rejoined the others, who were gathered around Mia with concerned faces.
“How bad is she?” Cassandra asked Elena.
“A bullet passed between the edge of two ribs and there’s another bullet in her leg.”
“I’ll call our doctor if you’re sure she doesn’t need a hospital.”
“No hospital, I’ll be fine,” Mia said, in a voice that sounded shaky.
Cassandra checked the wound to Kelly’s forearm and saw that the bullet had passed through the outer edge and that the wound would need stitches. She then called down to the two blondes. Their names were Lisa and Laura, and they were sisters.
“How badly are you two hurt?”
“A broken wrist for me,” Lisa said, “And Laura broke her leg below the knee.”
Cassandra grinned down at them.
“You’re a couple of tigers, attacking an armed man like that.”
Lisa grinned back at her, but then pointed at Violet.
“Who is she?”
Elena took Violet by the shoulders and smiled at her.
“Her name is Violet, and she’s one of us.”
Violet looked around at the others, uncertainty shining in her intense eyes, but when she gazed back at Elena, she nodded her head and grinned.
***
Numerical made it to his car, and when he climbed behind the wheel, he nearly screamed out in pain. Vest or no vest, his back felt like someone had slammed a sledgehammer into it, and his right knee also hurt from the tumble he’d taken after climbing out of Kelly’s window.
What the hell went wrong?
He had no answers, and when he saw that the other men’s vehicles were all still present and empty, it occurred to him that he was likely the only one to survive the encounter.
A spasm shot through his back, and this time he did cry out, and after starting the car, he drove off and slunk away like a whipped dog, with tears of pain rolling down his cheeks.
CHAPTER 24
One day later, Summervale, North Carolina, 9:14 p.m.
Carl Herman watched the blond woman while he was filling up his tank at the gas pumps. She was wearing a waitress uniform and had just left the diner across the street with her little girl, who was talking excitedly about some kid’s movie she wanted to see over the weekend.
Carl stared at the woman because she was beautiful, but as she and the little girl drew closer while crossing the street, he felt as if he knew her from somewhere.
With his tank full, he paid at the pump, and then limped around on his bad leg and got back behind the wheel. Instead of leaving, he just sat there and stared into the convenience store, where the woman was buying a toy of some sort for the girl.
“I know her from somewhere,” Carl muttered, and then wondered if she used to be a customer of his.
Carl was a drug dealer, had always been a drug dealer, and would die a drug dealer, and he had a knack for remembering the faces of people he had sold to on a regular basis. The woman wasn’t a customer he finally decided, but he sat there and watched her until she and the little girl walked back across the street, climbed into a car, and drove away.
Carl was headed back to Atlanta after going to Fayetteville where he got a great deal on ten pounds of gungeon, that potent Jamaican pot that he loved, and then he drove it straight up to Raleigh, where he knew a dude that would make A-bombs with it. A-bombs were cigarettes made from marijuana and heroin, and they were aptly named.
The trip and the two deals would eat up the whole day but he had made an easy six grand.
With a sigh, Carl gave up racking his brain for the answer to where he knew the blond from and headed for home. He was at the border of South Carolina when the answer came to him in a flash, and it startled him so that he had to pull over and settle his nerves.
How the hell could I ever forget her?
He recalled the time she had him on his knees with a gun in his face. He had been so terrified that he begged her not to shoot him and only a lucky break had saved him.
He remembered that she had brown hair then and that it was shorter, he also remembered that there was a reward for her capture, a substantial reward.
He took out his phone, ready to call 9-1-1 and tell the cops where they could find a multiple murderer, but then he changed his mind. If he just called it in, then maybe someone else would try to cut him out of claiming the reward.
The smart thing to do would be to return to that town and turn her in to the local five-o. Plus, that way he could have the satisfaction of seeing her face when they tossed her into a cell.
Carl’s phone was still in his hand, and he Googled her name and found a picture that made him certain that she was the woman he spotted in Summervale.
He pulled back onto the highway, made the next U-turn and headed back the way he had just come, with a hunger to claim that reward money, and the dream of gaining sweet revenge.
***
Numerical was mad enough to kill, but he was also too badly hurt to be much of a threat.
Cassandra’s shots had done serious damage to his back, and he was beginning to wonder if he had a ruptured disc, and as if that pain wasn’t enough, his knee had swollen up overnight to twice its normal size.
At least his question about what had gone wrong was answered by the six o’clock news.
The apostle Thomas had been found in his apartment, after police received several calls from neighbors about gunshots.
Thomas, who had actually been a serial strangler by the name of Ronnie Richards, hadn’t been too afraid to show the night before, he had been dead by the time they entered the house, and thanks to ballistics, Numerical knew that it was The Girl With The Long Dark Hair that had killed him.
Numerical saw it all clearly in his mind’s eye. The girl cornering Thomas, Thomas begging for his life, and then betraying Numerical and the others in a useless attempt to strike a deal with the girl, but once he had talked, she’d shot him, then, rushed to the PREY house and screwed everything up.
The carnage that occurred at that house never made it into the news and Numerical knew that Elena Colt and her crew had covered the whole thing up. John was dead, Simon was dead, and even the traitorous Thomas was dead.
“Prophet should have named that bastard Judas instead,” Numerical mumbled.
Thinking of Prophet caused him to recall the conversation they’d had earlier via the Internet.
Prophet was furious over the loss of so many of his apostles, and promised Numerical that he would pay for killing them.
When Numerical told him that it was PREY that had slaughtered the men, Prophet once more refused to believe that PREY was real, and threatened Numerical again. Numerical told Prophet to do his worse and that he was through listening to his electronically enhanced ramblings.
Prophet had pictures of him entering and leaving the home of Victim Number 44, but Numerical knew they were little better than the photos the FBI already had, and so he wasn’t worried.
He downed another Percocet, eased his injured back against a pile of pillows, and waited for sleep to take him, and as he lay there, he thought about ways to get revenge. He doubted he could find Cassandra again. She would likely cut all ties to the Cassandra Smith identity as well as her real name, Cassandra Carson, and might even hide in another state. No, he likely couldn’t get revenge on her and Elena Colt personally, but he would hurt them all the same.
He came up with a plan just as he could no longer fight the drowsiness the drug always made him feel, and he fell asleep while smiling, confident that when he next struck, it would put fear into the heart of every woman alive.
CHAPTER 25
Summervale, North Carolina, 12:47 a.m.
Carl Herman made good time getting back to Summervale, too good in fact, as the red and blue lights in his rear view mirror reminded him.
From habit, Carl was pissed, but then he remembered that he wanted to speak to a local cop anyway, so what the hell? And once he explained about knowing the whereabouts of a cop-killer, the pig in the car behind him would forget all about writing a speeding ticket.
***
After Deputy Rob Bolan had finished running the plates on Carl Herman’s car, he walked over and politely asked for his license and registration.
Rob was in a good mood. He had spent time with Alice and her daughter Kimmy before going on shift and the three of them had plans to go to the movies the next night.
There was a diamond engagement ring in his pocket that he intended to give Alice, as he asked her to marry him, but the timing wasn’t right yet, he told himself, even as he knew deep down that it was just nerves that made him chicken out whenever he planned to ask.
The guy in the car handed over his documents with a smile on his face. A definite rarity, as most people either scowled or looked afraid,
They were on a road where the traffic was scarce in the early morning hours, and the reason that they kept the speed limit low was because the deer frequented the area after dark.
Rob was in such a good mood that he was intending to let the man off with a warning, even though he had been going well over the limit.
Rob told the man that he would return in a moment, but as he began to walk back to his cruiser, he spotted something glinting in a rear corner of the car’s open glove box, and when he lowered his head, he saw it was the barrel of a gun.
Rob placed a hand on his weapon and told the man to exit the vehicle.
“What’s wrong?” Carl asked, as he stepped out.
“There’s a weapon in your glove box. What were you planning to do?”
“Oh shit, I forgot that was there. I only carry it when I’m traveling with a
lot of money.”
Rob asked Carl Herman to step out of the vehicle, then, he instructed him to place his hands atop the car roof and spread his legs. When Rob patted him down, he found the envelope with the six-thousand dollars that Carl had been carrying; he also detected the scent of marijuana on the man’s clothing.
Rob had Carl Herman straighten up and turn around, and when they were facing each other, standing just a few feet apart, Rob asked the man a question.
“Are there drugs in your car, sir?”
In fact, there was, Carl had kept an ounce of gungeon, the potent Jamaican pot, for his own use. It was hidden in a compartment inside the trunk of his car, well hidden, but not so well hidden that a drug-sniffing dog couldn’t find it. In his excitement about claiming the reward money, he had forgotten all about the weed.
Carl began talking rapidly, telling Rob about the fugitive he saw in town earlier.
Rob appeared startled as he stared at him.
“Say that again?”
“A cop-killer, there’s a woman in your town who’s a cop-killer. She’s a waitress, I know, because I saw her coming out of that diner there in town.”
“What’s she look like?” Rob asked, even as he began feeling sick to his stomach.
“She’s blond, about thirty or so, with a real good figure. Hell, you must know her, right? This is a small town.”
When he answered, Rob’s voice was thick with pain.
“I know her. Her name is Alice Johnson.”
Carl shook his head.
“That’s not her name, her real name is—”
Rob drew his gun so fast that Carl Herman barely saw it coming. The drug dealer grunted from the shots and collapsed atop the roadway, dead.
Rob stared down at the body, as tears formed in his eyes.
“Jenkins,” Rob said. “Her name is Sandra Jenkins.”
PART THREE
"The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That’s the essence of it.” ― Vince Lombardi
CHAPTER 26
Summervale Sheriff Ron Gibson stared at the body of Carl Herman with the aid of a flashlight.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 13-16 (Taken! Box Set Book 4) Page 25