Montana Rogue

by Jessica Douglass

  Courtney backed away, trying desperately not to be sick. That voice, that voice. So many times he’d used that voice just before he’d started to beat her. Jack. Think of Jack. He needs you. He needs you to stay strong. She looked at him, his face battered and bloody, and yet she could feel the defiance in him, the rage.

  Roger was opening a briefcase. From it he removed a small vial and a hypodermic syringe. To William, he said, “Hold him steady.”

  Jack tried to jerk away, but it was hopeless. Roger jabbed the needle into Jack’s arm and pushed down the tiny plunger. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. A little sedative to make you more...docile, shall we say. We’ve got a bit of a ride ahead of us, and I wouldn’t want you getting too rambunctious.”

  Jack tried to look at her, but his eyes rolled back in his head. He slumped forward, unconscious.

  Courtney felt suddenly, chillingly alone. And responsible. Responsible not just for her own life. But for Jack’s. He was helpless now. Until he regained consciousness she had to do whatever she could to keep them both alive.

  Julio returned to the apartment, his task evidently accomplished. Mark was nowhere to be seen.

  “More trash,” Roger pronounced.

  At once Julio and William took up positions on either side of Jack’s unconscious body. Together they held him erect. Then Roger gripped Courtney’s arm and stuck a gun in her ribs. “Any sound, any warning, anything I construe as an attempt to get away, and I will put the first bullet into Sullivan’s brain. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Just don’t hurt him anymore, please.”

  Roger looked amused. “My God, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?” He clucked his tongue. “Such low-brow taste. No wonder I came to loathe you so.” He shoved her toward the door.

  Outside, the parking lot was pitch-dark. All four security lights were out. No doubt, compliments of Roger’s personal vanguard of vandals. Julio and William went first, keeping Jack on his feet as best they could. A jacket had been draped over his manacled wrists. Courtney and Roger followed. As they crossed the macadam toward the Mercedes, a man appeared out of the inky darkness walking his dog.

  “Evenin’,” the man said, though Courtney could see that he was eyeing their peculiar entourage with more than a little nervous curiosity. His dog, a black Lab, growled and whined, tugging on its leash, anxious to be somewhere else.

  “Do pardon us,” Roger said. “My friend here is an alcoholic. Tonight we’ve done what’s called an intervention. We’ve forced him to see himself as he really is.” Roger shook his head. “Which as you can see is blind drunk. But, praise heaven, he’s agreed to check himself into a clinic. To get the help he needs.” He turned toward Courtney. “Jack certainly does need help, doesn’t he, darling?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “yes, he does.”

  “Good luck to you,” the man said, then acceded to his dog’s wishes and moved on.

  Courtney’s heart sank. She hadn’t wanted to involve an innocent bystander, but at the same time she had hoped the man had sensed something amiss. That he would hurry off to phone the police. But that was the sort of thing that happened before the I-don’t-want-to-get-involved era had strangled so much humanity out of the world.

  They reached the Mercedes, and Courtney couldn’t help looking at the trunk. Was Mark in there? The gag had been so brutal. He could be suffocating. Or, she thought, her gaze flicking to a large nearby dumpster, he might not be in the trunk at all.

  She had no time to worry further about Mark. Roger ordered her into the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel. Julio and William played bookends to Jack in the back seat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  And she did. They were headed for the Hamilton estate in Elk Park.

  “My father’s so looking forward to your return,” Roger said.

  “I thought Fletcher had been arrested.”

  “Oh, that.” He laughed. “I’m afraid I convinced Mr. Segura to tell your boyfriend a little white lie. Mr. Segura complied when I mentioned that I knew where each of his six siblings lived. And his mother. And his grandmother.”

  “You’re despicable.”

  Roger’s arm snaked out, and he grasped her by the back of the neck. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” His fingers tightened cruelly, but she did not cry out. She clenched her teeth so hard, her jaw ached.

  “Ask me to stop and I will.”

  Involuntary tears sprang to her eyes, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “Ask me,” he repeated tightly.

  “Go to hell.”

  He slammed her away from him so hard her head rebounded against the passenger side window. But she did not reach up to rub the injured spot, nor did she knead the aching flesh at the back of her neck.

  “How’s our friend in the back seat?” Roger snarled.

  “Still breathing, boss.”

  “See that he stays that way. I have a special treat in store for him at the house. The house where he first dared humiliate me.”

  Roger stopped the Mercedes at the security gate on the Hamilton grounds. Her father had had the property fenced in, over her objections, years ago. Only a quarter mile now separated them from the house. A thin-faced man, obviously posted as some sort of lookout, leaned into the car’s interior with a flashlight. He didn’t so much as blink at the bloodied passenger in the back seat.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Winthrop,” the man said, as though he saw half-dead men every day of the week.

  “You, too, Vern. Has my father called out for anything tonight?”

  “No, sir. He’s workin’ real hard in the office up at the house.” Vern scratched his chin. “I thought you told me he didn’t want to be disturbed. Otherwise, I would’ve—”

  “No, Vern, you’re exactly right. In fact, make a note. I don’t want anyone coming near the house the rest of the night. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roger eased the car forward.

  “Where do you find these vermin?” Courtney asked.

  “Money buys a great variety of parasites, my dear. All shapes and colors and creeds.”

  Roger pulled up to the house and switched off the car. “My earlier threat still applies,” he said smoothly. “You’re too familiar with the grounds. I wouldn’t want you trying anything foolhardy. If you do, Sullivan won’t be alive to thank you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Roger.”

  “So compliant. If you’d managed to do a little more of that during our marriage, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to get so angry.”

  She didn’t dignify his pathetic excuse with a reply.

  Inside the house she kept pace with Roger as he headed toward her father’s study. Behind them, William and Julio dragged the near-motionless form of the man she loved. She hadn’t heard Jack so much as moan on the thirty-minute drive out here. What if he’d suffered some kind of reaction to Roger’s illicit drug? He could be dying.

  Her fears were hardly eased when they stepped into the study. Fletcher Winthrop was there all right. Tied to a chair behind her father’s antique, mahogany desk. The big man’s head drooped onto his chest. He was mumbling something she couldn’t understand, oblivious to the fact that he now had a roomful of company.

  “My God, Roger, you drugged your own father?”

  “It seemed the thing to do,” he said. “Father never did appreciate me, or my ideas to take Winthrop-Hamilton into the twenty-first century. Never so much as a word of credit for the millions of extra dollars I brought in. Not one word.”

  “Maybe he didn’t appreciate those extra profits coming from cocaine.”

  “He didn’t give a damn how the money came in. As long as it came in.”

  “Then why is he tied to a chair?”

  “Because of you, my darling. My father could look the other way when it came to a minor bit of moral turpitude like drug trafficking. But he was much more intract
able about kidnapping you. He finally agreed to having you removed from the scene. ‘Kept out of harm’s way,’ I believe was the way he put it.”

  Courtney took some comfort in that at least. Fletcher had not wanted her killed.

  “I countermanded his orders, of course. I couldn’t see any purpose in having you return and cause me all sorts of legal hassles.”

  “Excuse us, Mr. Winthrop.”

  Roger turned toward Julio and William. They had continued to hang on to Jack.

  “What do you want us to do with him?” Julio asked.

  “Let him go.”

  They did exactly that. Unsupported, Jack still handcuffed and groggy collapsed like a rag doll. Courtney winced as his head hit the polished wood floor with a decided thud. These bastards were killing him an inch at a time. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take. If they continued to hurt him, she would have to do something, no matter how reckless, how hopeless.

  “You want us to take care of that other matter?” Julio went on.

  “Yes, I think now would be a good time. The shovels are behind the house. You’ll find a nice grove of aspen about two hundred yards south. Three holes, very deep. Correction, make that four. I forgot about our friend in the trunk.”

  The two gunmen started out of the room, but Julio paused. “You sure you’ll be okay, boss?”

  “Please, I can handle a half-dead father, a doped-up cop and a woman who is afraid of her own shadow. Besides, I’ve got a little insurance.” He held up his 9 mm. To Courtney, he said, “I find guns terribly vulgar, don’t you? But they can be very...efficient.”

  Julio and William left the room. A couple of minutes later Courtney heard the back door open and close. She thanked God for Roger’s unrelenting arrogance. By sending his hired guns off to dig graves, he just might have given her and Jack the chance they needed.

  “Now we’re going to get to the heart of it, darling,” Roger said. “The reason I’ve gone to all the trouble and expense of coming back to the States.” He opened his briefcase and spread out a sheaf of papers on the desk. “I need your signature here and there. You can blame your father. If he hadn’t stipulated that ridiculous mandate that you have his power of attorney, you could have stayed in Philadelphia. And if Quentin didn’t have the constitution of an ox, I could even have gotten around that somehow.” He shook his head in what seemed amazement. “I still can’t believe he survived the drug I gave him.”

  Courtney’s stomach dropped to her toes. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you know that there’s a perfectly exquisite little flower that grows in the Brazilian rain forest that can precisely mimic the symptoms of a heart attack?”

  “My God, my father loved you.”

  “Even love is expendable when a billion dollars is at stake, Courtney. Besides, the past couple of years he began to argue with some of my business decisions. I wasn’t going to stand for that. I’d already endured thirty years of that nonsense from my own father.”

  “What can these papers do?”

  “They’ll give me complete control of Winthrop-Hamilton. My father’s already been kind enough to sign his share over to me. I’ll liquidate as much of the company as I can for cash, before the government gets wise.”

  As Roger rattled on, Courtney dared a glance at Jack. He was beginning to stir. With seeming nonchalance she moved around the desk toward Fletcher. Roger did as she had hoped. He mirrored her movements, shifting the gun and his body so that he continued to face her. Jack was now out of Roger’s line of sight.

  “My signature would never stand up in court. The lawyers will know what you did.”

  “How naive you are, Courtney. Still. When you have a platinum-plated phalanx of lawyers on retainer, one has his own personal bought-and-paid-for set of rules. No one will suspect anything amiss about this little transaction. For one thing, they’ll be too caught up in the sordid details of the passion play you and your lover are about to play out. A quarrel, a tragic murder-suicide. The kind of thing those tabloid reporters eat for breakfast.”

  “Fletcher won’t let you get away with it.”

  “Ah, yes...my dear father.” Roger retrieved a second hypodermic from his briefcase, this one with a protective plastic sleeve on the needle. “In three days Father will suffer an untimely passing. It seems he will have come down with a dreadful disease that will baffle the finest doctors money can buy. They’ll search valiantly, but they won’t be able to discover the cause. And even if they did, there’s no antidote. One by one his vital organs will deteriorate, shut down. The pain will be exquisite.

  “Throughout it all, I will play the grief-stricken son, holding vigil at his bedside.”

  “He’ll tell them you did it, that you killed him.”

  “Ah, that’s the beauty of it. The drug incapacitates the vocal cords. Muscle spasms make it impossible to communicate in any way.”

  “How can you do such a thing to your own father?”

  “It’s easy. Maybe the easiest thing I’ll ever do. For all the pain he’s inflicted. Every slight. Every belittlement.”

  “What about all the pain you’ve inflicted, Roger? What do you pay? You’re a grown man. You can’t keep blaming Daddy for your failures.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” He yanked off the plastic sleeve that protected the needle.

  “You’re sick, Roger. You need help.”

  “Maybe you need a little taste of how it used to be.” He curled his hand into a fist.

  Though inwardly she trembled, she let no fear show on her face. “You can beat me. You can kill me. But you can’t touch my soul, Roger. Not anymore. You can’t ever make me feel less about myself again.”

  “Can’t touch your soul? Is that a fact?” He stomped over to where Jack lay and held the hypodermic just inches from his belly. Jack didn’t so much as flinch. Even if he had the strength, Courtney knew he didn’t dare jump Roger with that needle exposed. “Would it touch your soul to watch your lover die in agony, darling?”

  “Don’t. Roger, please.”

  “Ah, now I get a little respect. It’s going to be such a pleasure to kill the two of you.”

  “You’ll be back in South America. The government won’t be able to touch you. Why do you have to kill us?”

  “I don’t have to, my pet. I want to. But who should I kill first, that’s the question? Do I kill him, and let you watch? Or do I kill you, and let him watch? Decisions, decisions.”

  Roger nudged Jack with his shoe. “Wake up Sullivan. I want to kill you. But I want you to know it’s coming.”

  In front of her, Fletcher moaned softly. He was coming to. She touched his shoulder. “It’s all right, Fletcher. It’s me. Courtney.”

  Roger gripped the syringe like a dagger. “Get away from him.”

  Fletcher’s eyes fluttered open. “Courtney,” he rasped, seeming to have trouble focusing. “My God, forgive me. Forgive me.”

  “Shut up, Father,” Roger snarled. “I don’t want to hear the hoodwinked saint routine.”

  “Give it up, Roger,” Fletcher said. “This is madness. They’re closing in. They know what we’ve done. The dummy corporations. The drugs. They know it all.”

  “Shut up! You wanted it as much as I did. The company. Always the company. At any cost.”

  “Not murder. Damn you. Not murder! How can you do this? How can you be this way? I never raised a hand to you a day in my life.”

  “There are other kinds of fists, Father.”

  Behind them all, Jack had gained his feet. Hands cuffed, he swayed drunkenly, but there was a cold fury in his cerulean eyes. Roger must have heard him, because he started to turn.

  “Here’s what I think of your papers, Roger!” Courtney cried, grabbing up a fistful and flinging them to his left.

  Roger flinched. Jack slammed himself bodylong against him. Both men tumbled to the floor. The syringe went flying.

  Between the drugs and the beating he’d taken, Jack knew his strength was
dangerously depleted. He needed this fight over with in a hurry. But more than that, he needed Roger Winthrop to pay. For Courtney. For Pete. For Mark. For himself. With a cry of undiluted rage he wrapped the chain of his handcuffs around Roger’s neck and pulled. With everything in him, he pulled. In seconds, Roger’s eyes bulged out. His face turned a ghastly shade of purple. Still, Jack did not let go.

  “Jack!” Courtney rushed over to him. “Jack, he’s not worth it. Let him go!” She tried in vain to pry Jack’s hands loose. “Jack! You’re not a murderer. Let him go!” She touched his bruised and bloodied face. “For me,” she whispered. “Please. Let him go.”

  The blaze of fury subsided. He relaxed his hold. Roger fell forward, gasping, his hand going to his throat. “I’ll sue you,” he croaked out. “I’ll sue you for every last dime.”

  Jack jerked him to his feet and flung him onto the divan. “Move, and I’ll kill you.”

  Courtney untied Fletcher.

  “Is he okay?” Jack asked, barely able to stand.

  “I think so.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fletcher mumbled. “So sorry.”

  Courtney went to Jack, locking her arms around his waist. “It’s over. It’s really over.”

  “Not quite.” Still cuffed, he leaned over and grabbed Roger’s gun. “Keep an eye out for Frick and Frack.”

  She’d forgotten about Roger’s grave-digging gunmen.

  Awkwardly, Jack picked up the desk phone and managed to dial out.

  “I’ll look for the keys,” she said.

  He nodded gratefully. “The FBI has this phone bugged. Before I finish talking, we should be swarming with law enforcement. Then we need to see to Mark.” A minute later he hung up the phone, looking puzzled, but pleased. “It seems help is already here. The place is surrounded. Julio and William are on their way to jail. Mark’s on his way to the hospital.”

  “How did they—?”

  “A concerned citizen. How about that? Some guy walking a dog called the cops. Gave ‘em the number of a suspicious Mercedes. It seems that Roger—arrogant guy that he is—rented the thing in his own name.”

  A half-dozen officers in flak jackets burst in. Two hurried over to Fletcher. The rest started toward Roger. “No.” Jack held up a staying hand. “I want this one all to myself.”