by Michele Hart
It’s all geometry. Luckily, Greg was great at math and shooting pool.
“We used to be friends, Jerry,” Sissy smoothly put into the conversation, probably trying to contact some soft part of him. “What happened to our friendship?”
Flicking ashes from his half-smoked cigarette, Jerry cast an indignant snort and scanned his perimeter, a cursory search as though he might sense someone else in the warehouse, watching him, but didn't really believe anyone was there.
“We were never friends, Sissy,” Jerry spat, the snarl permanent. Greg never imagined seeing Jerry filled with so much hate, especially toward Sissy.
“You were the stuck-up sister of a friend of mine and the lifelong crush of another. You and I barely knew each other. Don’t sweet-talk me, thinking I’ll let you go. This isn’t a seventies drama with a happy ending guaranteed.”
Launching ashes from his cigarette into the air, Jerry turned cold eyes onto them. “This is a dog-eat-dog situation, if metaphors turn you on. Either I find that wine or serve up Greg’s head on a platter for losing it for us. The people who own that wine are pretty demanding.”
Greg took in Jerry’s every word, sealing it in his memory.
“Greg did a bad thing, Sissy, disrupting the freight schedule and calling down the attention of the police. If we don’t find the wine, I’ll be the dog eating before I’ll be the dog eaten.”
He added as a post note, “If we find the wine, no one dies.”
“Sergio Moretti’s already died, Jerry,” Elissa reminded him, and Greg knew she worked on connecting this crime with his father’s death. “Wasn’t he good to all the neighborhood kids?”
Greg watched Jerry go silent again, taking a drag on a cigarette barely bigger than a butt.
Jerry stared at the concrete when he muttered, “No one’s gotta die this time.”
His words struck Greg. That Jerry might know the name of his father’s killer and had withheld it all this time made Greg’s heart harden against any idea of saving him from prison.
Discovering Jerry holding the girls, actually seeing it with his own eyes, had an unexpected effect on Greg. The true danger of the situation didn’t penetrate him until now. Guns, kidnappings, the Mob, international smuggling. Jerry became less sympathetic in Greg’s eyes by the moment.
“Are you going to release us when you get the wine?” Elissa pried gently, leading him from one casual question to another.
Jerry turned toward the girls again, leaned forward in his metal seat, and put his elbows on his knees, tapping ash into the air and watching it hit the concrete floor for entertainment.
“See, here’s the thing about that. Greg and probably Allen will leave the wine at the drop-off place, and Don will pick it up. Greg and Allen will see no one. That part works well.
“Herein lies the problem. If we release you, you’ll tell the guys I was involved in your kidnapping. And they might take offense and call the police, could quite possibly rip my head off.”
Greg nodded a promise and saw Allen making that silent vow to Jerry, as well. He appreciated Allen as an ally. They thought the same way.
“So we can’t merely return you,” Jerry pointed out to the girls. “And I’m guessing you’d prefer to live instead of dying.”
Both girls declined opportunities to comment on the obvious.
Jerry submitted for his own consideration, “I’m thinking, we could ship you to Vietnam where American girls go for high prices to the slavers of the local rape camps.”
That froze Greg’s brain for a second. He really couldn’t believe what he’d just heard come from the mouth of a friend he’d known for decades, a man Greg thought he knew well.
Neither woman gave a big reaction, but Greg could see terror in their eyes. He suppressed his imagination on what life was like in such horrid conditions, and how such a threat would cause rampant terrors through a woman.
“Of course, you’ll not draw a price big enough to compensate for the loss of the wine, but you can always work it off for the rest of your lives. Which will probably not be overly long.”
Greg saw a shiver shake Sissy, recognized fear blocked in Elissa’s eyes. He’d seen her steady concentration with the wine thief. Now her eyes were fixed on Jerry, seeking some break-point, Greg guessed, like she had during the hold-up.
Jerry still talked on, seemingly getting off on the fear he generated in the girls. He must feel powerful, able to put them in fear like this. “With you two gone for good, Greg and Allen learn nothing of my involvement. They’ll whine and blather for a while missing you, but they’ll get past it, and wounds will heal. Nothing of our friendships is harmed.”
Jerry smiled like a shark. “And I don’t do time. I like that part best.”
Sissy looked sick, a green pallor come over her. Elissa appeared to keep her cool, but had to be quite unnerved.
Greg burned at a simmer as he decided he’d not let Jerry’s psychological threats go unrebuked. The Jerry he knew in their teens wasn’t capable of doing such a thing, taunting women with the repugnant threat of selling them into slavery. The kid he knew wasn’t capable of thinking up such an awful plan.
How could life turn a friend into a monster Greg no longer recognized? The kid he knew was gone, replaced by this pig.
Jerry lit another cigarette, seeming to enjoy the pollution.
“Now, if you’re really lucky, you could be sold to a private owner who may treat you kindly. But honestly, I haven’t seen that happen. Guys who buy women aren’t nice to them.”
Greg loathed him more with his every word.
“You’ll both fetch high prices, good-looking girls,” Jerry commented with an appreciative smile Greg wanted to wipe off his face.
Too interested, Jerry rose to his feet and stood a few yards away from them, looking the girls over like meat.
“Some of the buyers pay well for beauty. Sissy oughtta pull in several grand with those big brown eyes, those succulent boobs. There’ll be some rich son-of-a-bitch who’ll pay good money to put his hands all over you, Sissy.”
Sissy shivered visibly.
Red with anger, Allen took a step forward, but Greg put his hand to his friend’s chest and shook his head. “Not with the gun in his reach,” Greg whispered, his eyes on Jerry.
Jerry then turned his black eyes onto Elissa, and Greg remembered at Club Reno’s how Jerry had fantasized about having sex with her. Greg swore revenge if Jerry laid a hand on either one of the girls. He didn’t like the cruel glint in Jerry’s eyes when they raked over Elissa like an assault.
“Too bad I’ll not see you turn sweet, Elissa. I do appreciate Greg’s taste. I could tell at Reno’s he had a thing for you, despite his sainted report of only caring about the drowned rat he’s been taking places. All I had to do was lay eyes on you to know I’d’ve taken that ass home too.”
Elissa smirked. “I wouldn’t have you.”
“Oh, you might feel differently about me after a day tour of the remote honeymoon camps of Vietnam. You could be the bride of twenty men a day. I hear they keep women in cages. Who asked you for your approval, anyway? You’d be damned lucky to end up in my hands. Don’t push me too much, Girlfriend.”
Steamed past his tolerance, Greg moved forward, and Allen put him to a halt.
“Not with a pistol in your reach,” Allen whispered to Greg. “Don’t face him angry with a gun in your hand. No shoot-outs, no body bags.”
“You’re sick,” Greg heard Elissa tell Jerry.
Jerry laughed, gathered the cards around the empty wine bottle, went back to his chair ringed in ashes and butts beside a rickety card table. He sat, puffing on his cigarette and dealing himself a Solitaire spread.
Greg thought Elissa’s declaration of Jerry’s infested mind an understatement. He feared Allen’s request of no body bags unfillable.
Someone was going to die. Greg felt it and didn’t know why. It wasn’t a sharp visualization, just a nagging certainty with the backdrop music of a clock
ticking down the seconds to reality, a premonition of ominous, oncoming fact.
They’d need a body bag soon.
Chapter 14
Their wrists bound securely by flex-cuff plastic straps to the forklift prongs at chest level, Elissa and Sissy stood, bored and worried, suppressing panic fringing every thought for too many hours. The high windows of the warehouse said the night had set in long ago.
Elissa had no way of knowing what time it was, and Jerry was too obstinate to give a straight answer. He just sat there, playing Solitaire on the lone table in the clearing of freight. Sissy looked exhausted, probably just from fright. Jerry had been tormenting them with threats of the sex slavery market for hours.
Elissa vowed to the Constitution of the United States she’d kill him trying.
Tired, though feeling less effects from it than Sissy, Elissa lifted her arms a little higher to take the weight off the bindings that caused her fingers to go numb. She wiggled the feeling back into her digits as she kept an eye on everything around them for the slightest opportunity to turn this situation around. After passing the hours in inane chitchat, there was little for the women to do but think.
Elissa thought of her mother and missed her. Mom had never been fond of the idea her daughter would become a federal officer, and she feared Elissa would die in service like her father had. If it all ended now, like this, Elissa knew her mother would never recover from the loss of her only child. Elissa figured she couldn’t let that happen.
She thought of Penny, and how her neighbor had flippantly proposed that Greg might in some way be dangerous. She’d been right in part. Greg wasn’t dangerous in that particular way, but he’d inadvertently opened the door for the Mob to threaten his life. She doubted he’d seen that coming. If she’d have let Fisher rob Greg’s house and take the wine, they wouldn’t be here at this moment.
Elissa pictured Greg running around, collecting bottles he’d given away all week. He must be a mess, concerned for them. It surprised her how much her heart ached to be in his warm arms instead of considering her funeral.
Here, in this crisis, she held only a passing thought of finishing school and becoming an FBI criminologist. If she were shot to death right here, then the only thing she regretted was having left Greg’s side for a single second. She’d tried her best not to fall in love with him, but she’d failed miserably and fooled herself into believing she could control such a firestorm.
Now she thought of the possibility that she may not leave this warehouse alive, and Greg was the biggest thing on her mind.
Him and Jerry’s gun. A Colt Cobra double-action revolver. She’d caught the make when he’d forced her to release Fisher from the pressure hold.
Too much time to think, Elissa glanced over to Sissy beside her, looking wan and haggard. She wondered if Sissy missed Greg, a past love, or Allen. She’d said she’d known for years Allen held feelings for her, and she’d never acted on the knowledge. Elissa figured maybe Sissy waited for Greg to return to her.
Now Elissa found herself in a situation that could end with bullets, and all she thought of was the feel of Greg’s soft hair through her fingers, the sweetness of his kiss, his lively smile when he cast his pretty pecan eyes her way. How much she wanted more of him when she betrayed the stranglehold she kept on her heart. She’d tamped it all down to keep the future loss of Greg from affecting her.
Elissa pushed the reset button on her programming, reminded herself once again, she was headed for Quantico. She’d keep people from suffering the loss of a loved one by catching the bad guys. Until weeks ago, it had been all she wanted.
Now she wanted to make Jerry eat his gun.
As much as she wanted to lure him over to her close enough to kick him in the groin for pure satisfaction, she wouldn’t be able to free herself or Sissy. Easy guess to bet Jerry wouldn’t be releasing them with his family jewels jammed into his throat.
And, let’s face it, a bullet trumps all.
She had to get to that gun.
Elissa cursed herself that she’d netted no opportunity to use Sissy’s phone. Three seconds alone with that phone, and the police would be there, all of this over, but Jerry had confiscated the phone from her skirt pocket when he’d secured her to the fork-lift. She’d thought for a second he’d belt her for having it in her possession and preventing Fisher from finding it in his earlier purse search. Instead, Jerry dropped the phone to the concrete floor and ground it with the heel of his shoe to do it in. Maybe women with bruises didn’t net as much money on the black market.
Elissa’s eyes went back to the gun strapped under his arm.
She had to get that gun.
“So,” Elissa said to Sissy, in her most uneventful tone, “Where’d you go to school, Sissy?”
Sissy batted her eyes for a moment at Elissa for the oddity of the seemingly mundane subject. Then a spark lit her eye, and she turned her cocoa vision onto Jerry. “Same school as Jerry’s sister, Carolyn. Isn’t that right, Jerry? I’d taken business classes, and Carolyn had attended Pre-Med.”
He didn’t bother to comment, and Sissy didn’t appear happy with his silence. “You remember Carolyn, Jerry. How would you feel if some thug took your sister from under your nose?”
“Shut up, Sissy. You talk too much.”
An awkward quiet hung to menace the women. Sissy jabbed at him again. “How are you going to handle our disappearance with Greg and Allen, Jerry?”
Elissa noticed the evolving discomfort on his face, a twinge revealed at the mention of Greg’s and Allen’s names. Something they knew nothing of went on in their captor’s head.
“Greg will never get a clue to suspect and question me, anyway. I’ll not even know where you’ll have gone. I doubt I’ll be the one making the decision about your futures.”
“In deep, are you?” Elissa volleyed into the conversation. “What’s with the wine, Jerry? Why’s it so valuable?”
He didn’t answer.
“Drugs, liquid explosives, a biological weapon? No sense in keeping it to yourself if you plan on killing us or selling us to some of your high-quality friends in the slave market,” Elissa tried, but got no response. Jerry wasn’t stupid.
“C’mon, Jer, solve the mystery.”
Jerry drew on his cigarette like it was a lifeline. He was nervous. Elissa could read his body language. There had to be a pack of butts and ashes at his feet.
“You in a rush to get cancer tonight?”
No answer.
“Got any idea when Greg will come up with those bottles, Jerry?”
His cold eyes apparently engrossed in his card game, he took a long drag of the cigarette, thumped ashes to the floor. “Don’t bring up Greg again.”
Elissa turned back to Sissy, strapped to the other fork prong of the lift beside her. Sissy looked truly frightened from the ghosts in her eyes. Anticipating no change for another hour or two, Elissa weighed every fact in her head.
Greg’s father had been killed. There’d been no evidence of forced entry or even a lack of stock since the wine box Greg suspected had been taken wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Someone in the police department had called it a Mob hit. Clearly organized crime was in the mix somewhere if freight disappeared from police lockup.
Could someone Greg’s father had known gone to the restaurant that night to retrieve the wandering wine and found the patriarch of the Rubia-Moretti clan there long after the restaurant had closed?
Someone Sergio Moretti had known had come for the wine a year and a half ago.
“Jerry, did you kill Greg’s father?” Elissa accused, watching his reaction. It was an easy guess, taking in Jerry’s reaction to the mention of Greg’s name.
Jerry’s head snapped up, his eyes burning with an ire he didn’t show a moment ago. “I said, don’t bring Greg up again!”
“Why can’t Elissa mention me, Jerry?”
Elissa’s vision swept to the direction of the new voice, one she’d heard in her ea
r at moments of bliss.
Jerry rose to his feet and drew his gun, his eyes huge, bloodshot, and looking like a mouse spotting a diving hawk zeroing in on it.
Anxious, the women watched Greg and Allen enter the warehouse by the only path through the stacked freight, hauling plastic crates containing the bottles of wine. Elissa sagged a little in her bonds in relief they’d found the bottles.
Jerry scanned the warehouse to insure they came alone, cursing under his breath. He’d thought Greg wouldn’t know a thing about where they were located, nor that Jerry had a thing to do with the wine thefts, but here they were. Elissa watched, balanced on a razor’s edge.
“Why the hell are you here, Greg?” Jerry demanded, his voice anxious. “How did you know we were here?”
The men halted several feet away from Jerry and set the crates down on the floor, then they stepped back, the looks on both their faces grave.
“I tracked Sissy’s phone before it was turned off. When your partner called to direct me somewhere else other than where Sissy’s phone was located, it was damned easy to figure you were here holding them.
“Here’s your wine, Jerry,” Greg told him, and Elissa could see his jaw locked and tense, his eye on the revolver in Jerry’s hand, probably seeking a good moment to gain an advantage, like she did. “Though why you’d take the girls hostage to retrieve wine, I don’t know. Yet.
“Let Allen take the girls home, and you and I’ll sit down and figure out a way to get you and your family out of trouble with the Mob. And me and my family.”
Jerry’s eyes darted from one man to the other, friends with whom he’d grown up, and Elissa watched him take a nervous drag of his cigarette and huff the smoke out. “Who told you that? That I was involved in the Mob? How did you put that together, Greg?”
“A clever and pretty bird figured it out and whispered the secret in my ear.”
Greg’s dark eyes went to Elissa, and she wanted to smile back to him, but the situation discouraged it.
“So, why aren’t I your favorite subject, Jerry?” Greg asked again with more insistence this time.