“Please, I didn't want to,” she whispered, eyes flicking back over her shoulder as though she expected to see someone there.
“I don't care about what you wanted. I care about what you did,” Jackie said. Then she put her hand on the doorframe, leaned down and began to speak in a very soft tone. “I'm going to give you some advice. Leave Los Angeles for a while. Tell me where I can find Sarah, let me inside and then just go. Start walking. Get on a bus when you can. But you don't want to be here when bad things start to happen.” Mrs. Crawley’s trembling hand clutched at the doorknob.
“But Sarah - ”
“You already failed her. Tell me where she is,” Jackie ordered, refusing to feel any pity for the sad woman in front of her. Finally Mrs. Crawley took a deep breath then leaned close.
“She's in her room upstairs, first door on the right. I don't think they hurt her.” She bit her lip. “Ms. Chase, one of them wasn't human.” Jackie stared down at the shaken Mrs. Crawley and, for a moment, really saw her. She saw the child who had always been the center of the universe, the girl who'd wanted the fairy tale wedding but hadn't been ready for motherhood. The woman in front of her hadn't known how to grieve for her husband, only that she had to find shelter. She hadn't known how to raise Sarah. She couldn't protect her.
“Don't be silly,” Jackie said. “Of course he was human. Your husband's just mixed up in something illegal. You need to leave before you get too involved.” She saw how desperately Mrs. Crawley clung to that statement and the instant she accepted it as truth. For the rest of her life, that was what she would believe. It would probably be better that way.
“Be careful,” she whispered before hurrying out the door. Jackie didn't know where she would go and she didn't care.
The house was very quiet as she stepped into the marble hall. She shut the door then made her way towards the stairs. The occasional antique vase or large ornamental mirror caught her eye. It was her first time inside the house but she wasn't interested in looking around at the moment. Studying the crown molding would have to wait. Jackie hurried up the elliptical staircase, wincing as her footsteps slapped against the smooth marble. At the top of the stairs she found white carpet to silence her steps and she unabashedly ran to the first door on the right, flinging it open.
What had once been the perfect little girl's room looked as though it had taken some serious abuse. Bookcases had been torn down, a charming antique desk smashed. Someone had taken a knife to the soft coral rug and it looked as though a bucket of primer had been erratically splashed onto the eggshell walls with their delicate border of lavender flowers. It was a vicious sight. In fact, it looked like the sort of thing a man might do after a child broke his nose with a shovel. Jackie's eyes fell on the bed where an unmoving eight year old lay.
“Sarah!” she gasped, crossing the room in an instant to check her for a pulse. She looked flawless in her school uniform. There was not a single mark on her skin. No blood could be seen and Jackie felt the beat of a pulse in the child's throat. She was safe and whole, just unconscious. “Sarah, wake up. Come on, baby.” Jackie shook her shoulders, trying not to be too rough. Sarah remained still. The idea that maybe she'd been drugged entered Jackie's mind. Chloroform? That was the most likely choice given the lack of any puncture wound.
“You actually were stupid enough to come,” a familiar smug voice stated from the doorway. “I wasn't sure if you'd fall for it.”
Jackie turned around to face off with Gregory Crawley. Her eyes narrowed at his relaxed posture. “I'm Sarah's mother. I'd be stupid enough to follow her into a burning building if I had to.”
Gregory rolled his eyes. “The mama bear act is very cliché. Not to mention it won't do you any good. The Left Hand promised me revenge. I get to kill you as slowly and painfully as I like. I'm thinking you'll experience more pain if I kill Sarah first, though. And I never really liked the kid, anyway.” Jackie moved to better shield Sarah's vulnerable form on the bed before sizing up Crawley as he advanced into the room. From what she could see he wasn’t armed, which made him significantly less dangerous.
“Is the Left Hand here?”
“He's waiting for your vampire to show up. Apparently once I start hurting you, O'Connor will know. How does that work anyway? Some kind of weird psychic alarm?” Gregory stared at her curiously a moment before shaking his head. “Well, it doesn't matter how it works as long as it does.”
“One more question before you start hurting me. Are you still human?”
He smirked. “For now. The immortality thing sounds pretty tempting, doesn't it? Maybe after the Left Hand has what he wants we can discuss it.” A smile curled her lips and made Gregory scowl. “What are you smiling for?”
“I'm just smiling at a moron,” she said.
“Stupid bitch,” he spat, surging forward to take a swing at her. Jackie caught his arm before he could complete the movement then struck out with her foot. She hit her intended target and he crumpled onto the ground, clutching his manhood as pain wracked his body. Jackie proceeded to kick him in the face, deciding the damage Sarah had done with the shovel wasn't good enough. His nose let out a satisfying crack before blood poured down his face and onto the floor.
“Do you have any sort of training at all?” she asked as she strode over to the wrecked desk and picked up the chair that had been overturned. “Did you think you could just trap me in a corner and smack me around? What do you think I do for a living, Crawley? Knit?” Jackie lifted the chair up then slammed it over his head. He collapsed, sliding into painless unconsciousness. Or maybe she'd hit him too hard and he'd died. She put down the chair, deciding not to think about that.
As she turned around, intending to pick up Sarah and get the hell out, a gunshot pierced the silence. A bullet plowed into her left thigh. She let out an agonized scream, hitting the floor on her knees. For the second time in her life, she'd been shot. This time, however, the bullet had most definitely not grazed her. The pain was so much worse than she remembered. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears began to well up.
“Gee, that had to sting.” Eve stepped over Gregory's body, careful not to let her black heels touch the blood. She appeared incredibly calm for someone who had just shot another person. Her dark brown hair was done up in an elegant twist and her slim body was clad in a neat black silk suit. Calm dark eyes studied the bloody wound in Jackie's thigh. Eve smiled. “I'll bet Liam felt that. If you aren't sending out all sorts of pain signals right now, then you might want to ask yourself if you're a masochist.” Jackie managed to move enough so she could look Eve in the eye. The shock of seeing her wielding a gun nearly made her speechless.
“E-Eve? What are you...?”
“Doing here? I guess you could say I'm earning a promotion. The Left Hand will be setting up a whole new system of government once he kills Liam and he pays very well. I spent too long in low-paying dead end jobs to pass up that kind of opportunity. You've figured out that I'm the one who gave him updates about your relationship with Liam, right?” Jackie stared at her with bewilderment. “I mean, he does have some psychic talents but he can only see an eventual outcome. The details are always pretty sketchy, according to him. He needed me to keep him informed.”
That triggered something in Jackie’s thoughts as she began connecting the dots. The Left Hand only knew an eventual outcome but not the details. He had told her that he hoped she wouldn’t be the one. Now it made sense. He’d seen something bad happen to him. It had to be death since nothing else meant anything to a vampire. The killings hadn’t been random. He had been trying to narrow down whoever it was that was going to end him. His focus had never been to take over L.A., it had just been to survive. Eventually he’d been able to focus in on Jackie and those around her.
The thought of Izzy’s bullet-riddled body made Jackie look up at the icy calm woman wielding a gun. “Did you kill Izzy?”
Eve grinned. “Look at you playing connect the dots like a pro. Ye
ah, I killed her. I didn't feel good about it, though. It was sort of like shooting a kitten. Still, we have to obey our masters. Don't we, Jackie?”
She had managed to drag herself off the floor and onto the bed. Pain radiated down her leg but the initial burning had faded enough for Jackie to think clearly again. “Just because you're a pathetic, greedy slime who takes orders from a walking corpse doesn't mean the rest of us are. I don't have a master. I have a lover who's head of Los Angeles and he will kick your backstabbing ass. Then once I get used to the pain in my leg, I'll help him.”
Eve pursed her lips with distaste. “You won't die easily, will you? You'll fight and scream and claw and just be an utter nuisance.”
“Not like a kitten then, huh?” The sheer hate in Jackie's eyes made Eve take a step back. The armed woman cleared her throat.
“No, not like a kitten.” A moment of silence passed as Eve kept the gun trained on Jackie. “I like what you did to Crawley's face, by the way. I'd hoped if I stalled long enough you might give him the beating he deserved.”
“Well, thank you. He’s such a jerk, right? You got a very nice shot off, too. That bullet went right into me. Very impressive!” Jackie gushed with so much sweetness it could rot teeth.
Eve frowned. “Are you always this touchy?”
“You fucking shot me!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. Eve winced at the shrill noise. “You want to talk about something? Let's talk about what you fucking intend to do with me, huh? How about that as a topic for discussion?”
“I was going to wait until you were steadier on your feet but if you want to start now, we will!” Eve snapped, moving to the side of the room and gesturing to the open door. “Get going.”
Jackie closed her mouth before complaints about her leg could emerge. She didn't want her enemy to know her weaknesses, if she could help it. With her teeth firmly set against her tongue to keep from letting out any sort of whimper, Jackie pulled herself into a standing position. All of her weight was on her right leg. Every step she took with her left leg was a slice of agony as she limped through the open door.
Eve followed her closely with the gun. “Down the stairs. We're going outside.”
Jackie didn't foster any hopes about shouting for help once she got outside. It would just get some innocent bystander killed, even if she believed there was any way someone would hear her. At this time of the day, most people were at work.
The tiny hope of screaming for help that she'd already discouraged died entirely once she limped out of the Crawley house. The backyard was very large and there was a lot of space between houses. At least it seemed that way to her. She couldn't really tell since for privacy tall hedges surrounded the entire backyard. There was no way anyone in that neighborhood was coming to her rescue.
“Now what?” she asked, proud of how almost pain-free her voice sounded. Eve took a seat on one of the lounge chairs on the white wood patio.
“Now we wait for Liam to show up. It's better if he sees you die. More heartbreaking or something.” She gestured to one of the other chairs. “Sit down before you collapse, okay? If you're unconscious from blood loss or pain how are you ever going to say goodbye to your lover?”
Jackie wished she could keep on standing but she knew better than to cut off her nose to spite her face in this situation. She needed to conserve strength. As delicately as she could, Jackie lowered herself onto one of the chairs and winced as the movement still managed to jostle her leg.
“What about Sarah? What happens to her after all this?” she asked once she got her pain under control.
Eve shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe whatever family she has will pick her up. Maybe some other nice lady with a ranch will adopt her. It's really not my problem.”
Jackie didn't bother with anger at Eve's blasé tone. She was too relieved. “You won't kill her?”
“She fulfilled her purpose, didn't she? You're here. Killing her now would be a waste.”
Sarah would live. Jackie stared down at her pant leg, which had turned nearly black from the blood. Even if she did die during this mess, Sarah would survive. That was a slightly depressing happy thought but she would take her happy thoughts right now in whatever form they fancied.
“Just out of curiosity, did you care for Izzy at all? Or any of us, for that matter? When you made us like you was it all an act?” she asked. Eve didn't sigh or roll her eyes or complain about sentimentality. She looked straight at Jackie without speaking for several long minutes. Then she looked away, tapping her foot nervously against the ground. Jackie would have been nervous too if she was working for a monster that might kill her for the fun of it.
“What would you like me to say? Sorry for lying?”
“I want to know if any of what you said to me was real. Did you actually read Janet Evanovich or was that a lie to get me to like you? Did you ever want to help me? When I talked to you, were you secretly thinking about what an idiot I was for ever trusting you?” Eve began shaking her head.
“It wasn't meant to be personal. You'll get along a lot better if you keep that in mind. I did not target you because I had a grudge against you. You never did a single bad thing to me. You were just in the Left Hand's way and I had a job to do.” She met Jackie's eyes again. Jackie stared at her with all the disappointment she was feeling. Eventually, Eve looked away.
Jacquelyn. Her head jerked up. Liam was coming for her. She just hoped Jack had managed to contact him so he would be bringing backup. If not, they would be in a lot of trouble.
Liam, she thought as hard as she possibly could. She needed him to know she was okay. She needed him to think before he plunged in headfirst like she had. Of course, she was Sarah's mother. It was her job to react first and ask questions later when it came to her baby's safety. She wouldn't have been able to live with herself if yet another child had died because of her.
Suddenly she could feel the impression of a steering wheel under her fingers. He was driving. People were talking around him, all at the same time. Jackie closed her eyes. She knew those voices. Sofie sounded panicky while Jack spoke in calm, deep tones. She couldn't make out any of the words but the sound of their voices was enough. They were coming.
Like Eve had said, she would not die easily.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“SHE FEELS ME,” LIAM informed the other people in the car. Sofie leaned forward, pulling hard against her seatbelt so she could get closer to the driver's seat. Ever since Liam had mysteriously declared that Jackie was in trouble and they had to go get her, she had been on edge. It had gotten worse when they'd arrived at Sarah's school only to find that they'd missed Jackie by a good twenty minutes and that Sarah had been picked up by her biological mother.
They were able to put the pieces together about the Crawleys' involvement with the Left Hand as Liam broke nearly every traffic law on the books trying to get to Holmby Hills before Jackie got herself killed. Sofie thanked God she still remembered how to get there. She also thanked God that Liam didn't get them killed when he nearly swerved off the road, clutching his leg as though he'd just been stabbed.
Jack had tried to take the wheel at that point in case Liam reacted to any other injuries Jackie sustained in the same fashion and wrecked his silver ‘65 Mustang Coupe. Predictably, Liam refused and Jack made a mental note to make his friend pay for any repairs his car would need.
“What do you mean she feels you? Is that a good sign? Is she okay?”
Jack turned around and reached for Sofie’s hand, probably to keep her from slapping the now mute driver. “It's a good sign. She knows we're coming to help her,” he assured her. They both winced as Liam made a very sharp turn, the shrieking of the car making both mortal and immortal alike very uncomfortable.
“Is that the house?” Liam asked.
Sofie looked at the lavish near-mansion and nodded quickly. “That's it. And that's Jackie's truck,” she added, spotting the beat-up Ford. The car screeched
to a halt just behind the truck. There was a rush of movement and the next moment she saw Jack holding onto Liam's wrist. Somehow in barely a fraction of a second the vampire had turned off the car and nearly escaped out the door at breakneck speed. She couldn't imagine how Jack had caught him before he'd vanished into the house.
“Let go,” Liam growled. The sound was intimidating enough to make Sofie scoot away from his side of the car. Her respect for Jack increased when he still refused to release his friend.
“You can't charge in there without a plan.”
“She's bleeding!”
“She'll keep bleeding if we don't manage to rescue her without getting ourselves killed,” he shot back. Liam hesitated. Jack had a good point. While his instincts were screaming at him to attack first and ask questions later, he needed to consider the risks. He had to think of Jacquelyn and Sofie. They were both human. He could very easily get them killed if he didn't think.
“You won't stay in the car for this, will you?” he asked Sofie, who immediately snorted as though he'd told her he was giving up blood. “You're as bad as Jacquelyn.”
“She wouldn't stay in the car if it was me,” she agreed, completely shameless. Liam breathed in and tasted blood on the air. He turned around to look at the house then considered the hedges surrounding the backyard.
“They're outside,” he said. It made sense. Outdoors provided considerably more space and the sun was covered by a thick layer of clouds so there wouldn't be any weakness caused by the early afternoon light. He would be able to fight as well as he did at night but so would any other vampire waiting on the other side of that hedge. Although if the ominous clouds released the rain they were promising, the advantages of the outdoors would quickly diminish. The element of surprise would work best, aside from the fact that it was nearly impossible for vampires to sneak up on each other. “All right, I have an idea.”
Animal Instinct Page 31