The Dead King

by Pamfiloff, Mimi Jean

  “We’re busy here, miss. You’ll have to come back later when Nelson or Franco is in.”

  I didn’t want to come back. Jack was waiting outside, expecting me to carry out his bizarre request. And if I did this, maybe he’d go away. “The thing is, if someone from the crew is responsible, especially given the violent nature of the crime, I don’t think anyone should be there. I mean, the body was fresh, right? The company is going to have to halt work if there’s some psycho running around on our crew.”

  He gave me a weary look.

  “The barge is coming in tomorrow, and the National Guard still needs our help clearing the port. They’re not going to get it if the boss calls us home. And he will. I know him. He doesn’t like putting his crew at unnecessary risk,” I lied. Ripley had made it clear that we were all making bank because the work was inherently dangerous. Downed powerlines, no power, looters, limited communication, fallen debris, nails, glass, sharp metal. Ripley called us disaster janitors.

  “Fine. Let me see what I can do.”

  Yes! I didn’t know why I was celebrating. I’d just lied to a police officer, and I had a dangerous delusional man outside in my car.

  A few minutes later, the officer returned with a set of keys in his hand. “Follow me.”

  He took me down a long hallway, into what looked like a giant closet with heavy-duty steel racks piled high with boxes. We cut straight through that room and exited out a different door to a garage with five bay doors. A few cars were parked inside. One looked like it had been in a wreck.

  “There. In the corner.” He walked over to a coffin-sized box covered in clear plastic with a big sticker on it. The sticker had a number and the name Nelson on it.

  The officer reached for the edge of the plastic and lifted. “Look. Don’t touch.”

  I crouched down and inspected one side of the black steel container. It was about four feet wide and six feet long with weld marks on the seams, like it had been built to last or hold something extremely heavy.

  Wait. It’s a safe.

  The officer helped me lift the plastic to inspect the door on the top. Sure enough, there was a spot to insert a key, but the front had been bent. I guessed the guys from the crew did that when they opened it.

  I glanced up at the impatient officer.

  “Oh, um. I can’t tell if this is one of ours. Mind if I look at the other side? There are usually stickers on these containers. Hazmat warnings and stuff,” I lied. I’d never actually seen an explosives container. And apparently this cop hadn’t either because he was buying my bullcrap story.

  “Be my guest,” he said drably.

  “It’ll only take a second.”

  He lifted each edge of the plastic sheet while I pretended to search for something. Each time I shook my head.

  “Well?”

  I couldn’t remember if Jack wanted me to look inside. What does it matter? This request was insane.

  “Thank you. This isn’t the same.” I made the phew gesture and swiped my hand over my forehead.

  “Glad to hear it.” He jerked his head toward the door.

  I followed him back the way we’d come and thanked him again. “Oh, and can you let Officers Nelson and Franco know I stopped by? Again, my name is Jeni Arnold.”

  “Sure.” He walked away, not bothering to write down my name. He probably thought I was a loon, not worth anyone’s time.

  I walked outside to the parking lot, finding Jack standing next to the driver’s side door in the pouring rain. He stared at me, his blue eyes seeming to grow darker. Those lips, a sensual shape for a killer, were in a hard flat line. His back was rigid.

  “You forgot to look inside,” he growled.

  How did he know that? “No. I did what you said.” I reached for the handle, wanting to get out of the rain, but he blocked me with his tall body.

  “Do not lie, Jeni.” His words carried the threat of pain.

  He can’t possibly know what I saw.

  He added, “If you have not figured out by now that I know everything going on inside that head of yours, that is your problem. I’m not here to convince you of anything.”

  I stared at him. Was he really serious? He thought he could genuinely read my thoughts.

  “The box,” he said impatiently. “Tell me everything you saw. Go over it again in your mind,” he commanded.

  He was crazy.

  “Do it,” he barked.

  Maybe I should walk back inside the station and tell them what really happened with Randall. This situation kept getting stranger and more terrifying.

  “Jeni,” he growled, “you will not make it two steps inside that door if you do not do as I say. What did you see?”

  I gritted my teeth. I just wanted this to end. “I think the box is actually a safe, made of heavy steel. There were no markings. No letters.”

  “The lock? Did you see the lock?”

  I nodded. “Just your normal everyday safe with a keyhole instead of those dials with numbers. Why?”

  I noted a hint of disappointment in his eyes. “I inspected the container yesterday and hoped I might have missed something—to tell me where it was made.”

  He was searching out clues to support his delusions. Wonderful. “I’m sorry this didn’t pan out. Can I go now?” I wiped the water from my face with my hands. I was sopping wet now.

  “You will go when I say so, and if you attempt to leave, there will be consequences.” His tone was as cold as this afternoon.

  “I don’t understand why you need me.” He could easily find someone else who had more money. I was nearly broke. Every dime I made went to helping my dad and me keep our home in Tallahassee.

  “You have enough. And it must be you because you are the only person I know I can trust.”

  “Sorry?” I frowned.

  “I saved your life. You owe me a debt.”

  Maybe I did, but that didn’t mean I could get past how dangerous Jack was. “You tortured him. Why?” I said in a low voice. “Why not just tie Randall up or something?” We could have had him arrested.

  “He got what he deserved. If you had seen inside his mind, you would not argue.”

  What’s inside that mind of yours? “What do you plan to do to me?”

  He reached out and grabbed my wrist, squeezing so hard it felt like my bones were bending.

  He lowered his head and stared deeply into my eyes.

  Ohmygod. I felt him pushing against the walls of my mind. Death. Despair. Evil. That was what I felt.

  Suddenly, I was staring down at myself, at my own face getting rained on.

  Fuck. He wasn’t inside my head. He’d pulled me into his. I was looking through his eyes.

  How? How was he doing this?

  Either way, I knew that nothing good lived inside this man. There was only pain and rage, and he didn’t know why. He just wants to kill everything that gets in his way. Even me if I didn’t do as I was told.

  I had to get away from him.

  I snapped my arm free and ran for the station. My fears of going to jail didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did except for getting away from Jack.

  “Jeni, do not do that,” his calm voice called out as I hit the station’s front door and ran inside.

  “I need help!” I called out.

  The female officer at the front desk stared at me but didn’t move. In fact, everyone inside the station was frozen in place. Even the officer, the one who’d helped me before, stood to the side of the desk with a glazed look in his eyes, his hand on his sidearm.

  My eyes followed his gaze toward a thin blonde woman. She looked to be in her forties and wore skintight pleather pants and a red pleather jacket.

  She turned, and when her pale gray eyes met mine, I could hardly breathe. Whoever she was, whatever she was doing to me, she’d just done it to everyone in this room, too.

  “Well, well, and who do we have here?” Her voice was sugary sweet, like a treat laced with cyanide.

  I felt her sta
rting to rummage through my head—it was like a painful prickly itch, followed by pressure.

  “Dear God.” She flashed a sinister smile with her blood red lips. “I knew it! I knew the fucker wouldn’t stay dead. Where is he? Tell me!”

  Somehow, I understood she was talking about Jack. What I didn’t know was why I suddenly wanted to help him. Maybe the devil outside was better than the one in here.

  I shut my eyes and flooded my mind with thoughts of random crap. Numbers. FEMA forms. Randall’s tobacco-stained teeth.

  “Very fucking funny.” The woman marched over and wrapped her cold boney fingers around my neck. “Tell me where he is, you little cunt, or I will leave you paralyzed.”

  An image of my father flashed in my mind. He wasn’t paralyzed, but after the accident, he’d been unable to walk for months. The doctors said he might not be able to regain full function again. Both his legs had been crushed. Dozens of pins and hundreds of hours in therapy would be his only shot. Even then, he’d always need help getting around, and the pain would be with him forever.

  “Awww…” The woman stuck out her lower lip and crinkled her hook nose. “Did your poor daddy get hurt?” Her narrowed eyes turned into a promise of my pain. “That’s right, girl. I’ll break your legs and make you just like him.” She snapped her fingers, and everyone in the room fell to the floor, convulsing and clawing at their own necks. “You’re next. Now, where is he?”

  As terrified as I was of this woman, I couldn’t bring myself to give her what she wanted. Something inside me didn’t want to betray him. I had no idea why. “I don’t…know…who you’re talking about…” I choked out my words.

  She tilted her head to one side. “Fine. Then I guess I have no more use for you.” She raised her free hand to snap her fingers.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw something fly toward the back of her head. The woman fell over, blood gushing from her skull.

  Jack stood there holding a two-by-four. “We must go now.” He grabbed my hand and yanked hard, dragging me out into the pouring rain. I felt like my head was about to explode from the pressure.

  “Who was that?” I asked as we got to my car.

  “No clue.” Jack got behind the wheel this time.

  “Will the people in there be okay?”

  “No clue.”

  “I should call for help.” I dug out my phone and dialed 9-1-1. The line was busy. I’d have to keep trying.

  “Do whatever you like, but we cannot stay.” He started the engine.

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  “We are about to find out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I eventually got through to 9-1-1 and reported a “medical emergency” in progress at the station. As for us, it turned out that Jack did know how to operate a vehicle, but whatever else he knew, he kept it to himself.

  Oddly, though, I believed him when he said he hadn’t recognized the blonde woman. But she sure as hell knew him. She also has his same bag of evil tricks.

  “No. Not the same,” Jack said, his shockingly blue eyes glued to the road. “She was something entirely different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I cannot explain.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” I asked.

  He ignored me.

  I ground out a frustrated groan. Whoever this man was, being anywhere near him was getting increasingly dangerous. People were after him. And how had that woman known where to look? How did she know I was connected to him when I walked into the station? The only answer was that she had read my thoughts. Just as he’d been doing all along—something I wasn’t ready to accept but couldn’t ignore any longer. Mind reading? Seriously?

  “It’s real, isn’t it? This is really happening,” I muttered, looking out the window at the fallen trees littering the side of the road.

  Again, he didn’t reply, but after a long moment of silence, he asked, “Why did you attempt to shelter your thoughts from her? Why not simply tell her I was outside?”

  I didn’t have an answer other than, “She seemed more dangerous than you.”

  “Doubtful.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not making a very good case for yourself.”

  “I am not here to win you over.”

  No. I suppose not. But then I realized something: That woman back there knew who he was. She had the answers he was looking for.

  “Why didn’t you…?” My voice faded. “Never mind.” Whatever reasons he had for not trying to grab her or get inside her head, he wasn’t going to tell me. I was just grateful he’d saved me for a second time.

  “A very wise choice, Jeni.”

  “Please stop listening in.”

  “Why would I do that?” he said.

  “Because my thoughts are private.”

  He let out an arrogant chuckle. Just then, the rain started coming down in sheets instead of buckets, and the car began hydroplaning, forcing him to take his foot off the gas to keep us on the pavement. “We will stop at your motel to allow this storm to pass. Then we will continue north.”

  “North?”

  “Yes. We will need access to a functioning airport.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked but had no intention of traveling anywhere with this man, which he probably knew.

  Like usual, Jack was tight lipped. In contrast, I’d never felt more talkative in my life. Something had happened back there to pull me out of my shell, and for the first time ever, I felt alive. Still, that didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with the man behind the wheel.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll give you my money and a credit card. I’ll buy you a ticket to anywhere you like, but I’m not going with you.”

  “Yes. You will.”

  “Look, Jack or whateverthehell your name really is, my father is ill, and he depends on me for money. Now, thanks to you, my job is fucked, which means he’s fucked.” Not like I could go back to work if that woman might be looking for me.

  “She will find out where you live, too. Then what?”

  I turned to fully face him while he kept his eyes on the road. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I am saying that she very likely ascertained your full name while digging around inside your head, which means she will discover where you reside and be paying you a visit in a day or two. I am guessing she is the sort of woman who will have no qualms about harming whoever answers the door, including your father.” He paused. “Of course, I could be persuaded to ensure he is protected.”

  Oh God. Every second I spent with Jack sent me deeper down the rabbit hole. “How?”

  “Do you want my assistance? Yes or no, Jeni.”

  “So now you’re offering to help me?” A few minutes ago, he’d been threatening me.

  “Not help. Trade. Your compliance in exchange for your father’s safety.”

  He got me into this fucking mess, and now he was using my father’s well-being as leverage. I couldn’t believe this.

  “Everything in this world comes with a price,” he added darkly.

  “So let me get this straight: You don’t know who you are. You think you rose from the dead, and you claim you can protect my father from a woman who wants to find me to get to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me, but how do I know you’re not just making this up to keep me under your thumb?” Not like I can trust him.

  “I saved your fucking life, Miss Arnold. Twice. What is not to trust?”

  “Everything.”

  “If I wished to harm you, I would have done so by now.”

  Says the man who—I suddenly noted a shrinking sensation in my chest. My need to hide from the world was trying to make a comeback.

  “No. Do not retreat into old patterns now, Jeni. You were not born to be a timid mouse, afraid of every foot that crosses your path. These last few hours are proof of it.”

  He was right, in a way. I hadn’t even thought about running and hiding since that moment in the pol
ice station when I heard the voice and something clicked inside me. But I attributed it to the chaos of the situation. I wasn’t the strong and defiant type. “I’m—I’m…” I faced forward. “Forget it.”

  “You will see.”

  I hated this arrogant man and his cryptic ways. I hated him more than I hated people.

  “You do not hate me,” he said. “You fear me. As you should. However, when it comes to the rest of the world, it is they who should fear you.”

  Yeah. Right. For a stranger who claimed to have amnesia, he made some pretty bold statements.

  “I said that I do not recall who I am, not what.”

  “And what exactly are you?” I snapped. “Because I’d sure as hell like to know.”

  He glanced my way, keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel. I noticed he wore a thick gold band with a diamond embedded in it on his index finger. “A man who has been wronged.”

  How does he know that but doesn’t know who he is? The guy was playing games.

  He fell silent for the longest time, the sound of sloppy raindrops pelting the windshield. Oddly, it reminded me of popcorn cooking in the microwave.

  Finally, he said, “The emptiness inside my chest. It feels as though my soul has been ripped out, like the entire world could be shoved inside the hole and it would not come close to filling it.”

  My heart squeezed inside my chest. I knew that pain. I knew it so well that it had left a permanent stain on my soul. It tainted the lens through which I saw the world, like a fog made from a thick layer of scar tissue.

  I said nothing after that, because what I felt couldn’t entirely be explained with words. In a split second, I went from fearing this man to wanting to help him. Without reason, his need for answers was my need. His need for revenge was mine. Something was pushing me from the inside.

  No, I didn’t understand.