Reckless

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  It wasn’t Dave at all. It was never him.

  Feeling a sense of clarity he hadn’t felt in years, he dialed Mia’s number as soon as he climbed in his car. The call went straight to voice mail. Fine, you can be as pissed at me as you want. He found Jess’s number and hit it as he pulled out onto Clairmont Road heading to I-285 and her house.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jess, this is Jack Burton.”

  “Why, hello, Jack. I’m glad you called.”

  “I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. I thought it was a good idea for Mia to spend the night there tonight.”

  “Oh, lovely. I’ve missed the company, I must say. Although little Daisy does go a long way to making up for having a house full of people.”

  Traffic began to slow a good mile before the exit off of I-285 to Peachtree Industrial. Burton saw a red tailed hawk circling high above and wondered what in the world he had spotted in the way of prey on a six-lane highway.

  “Can you put Mia on for a sec?” he asked.

  “Mia? She’s not here. I thought she was with you.”

  The feeling that had been nagging him in the back of his mind came roaring to the front.

  “I dropped her off at your place three hours ago,” he said tersely. “Is your car in the driveway?”

  The phone went briefly silent and Burton had an image of Jess running to the front room, the phone clasped to her breast, to peer out the living room window.

  “Yes, my car is still here,” she said gasping. “Is everything okay, Jack? Is Mia okay?”

  Jack drove past the pummeled remains of someone’s family cat on the side of the road.

  ****

  The thing that woke her was the cold. If not for that, Mia was sure she could have ignored everything else. The pain, the insistent, grinding ache in her shoulders. She came up, clawing and breathless, from the dark bliss of oblivion, urged relentlessly on by the biting cold that wouldn’t let go of her.

  “Come on, babe,” a voice near her said. A blast of onions and apples accompanied the words. She opened her eyes to see his face close to hers.

  Dave’s best friend.

  “Wake all the way up, beautiful,” he said, his lips only inches from her face. “I need you awake for this.”

  She didn’t want to be awake but her eyes widened as she looked over Keith’s shoulder into the darkness. Even moving her head that little bit shot a bolt of agony up through her arms and down her back.

  She was chained with her arms over her head, her feet flat on the bare cement floor. When she jerked her arms to try to get them down, the pain cascaded down her back.

  How long had she been here?

  She looked wildly at Keith. “Help me,” she whispered, her voice wobbling with fear and the cold. A chill trickled across her stomach and looking down, she saw that she was wearing only her panties. She wrenched again at her arms held firmly by the cuffs over her head and twisted her head to try to see her surroundings.

  “Help you?” he said, laughing, his face a cavern of bad breath and chipped teeth. “I put you here, beautiful. I’m going to help myself, is what I’m gonna do.”

  “Why?” she gasped. “Why are you…why…”

  “Why am I doing this?” He reached out and cupped both her chin with a hard hand. She recoiled and convulsed to escape him but he held her tight. “Why am I taking ownership of Dave’s little sis?” He dropped his hands and bent down. When he straightened back up, she saw that he held a small leather whip in his hands.

  “Because I’ve always wanted to, that’s why,” he said, snapping the whip against his hand. “You know how long I’ve thought about this moment?” He leaned in close and when she turned her face away, he grabbed her chin and pulled her back to him. “Ever since the moment your brother broke my nose because I said you looked so fine.”

  Mia closed her eyes and when she did, she felt her head spin as if the drug wasn’t done with her yet. She clenched her eyes tightly, hoping, praying she could force herself to pass out.

  “No, you don’t, beautiful,” Keith said, slapping her face. “I need you awake for this part.”

  He turned her from him and she could see that they were in some kind of warehouse or underground room. The walls were cinder block studded with a few shelves of boxes. There was a small set of stairs that led to a landing and a door…

  She heard the crack of the whip before she felt it and at first she didn’t recognize the scream that followed as hers. A trail of fire crawled across the back of her hip and bottom and she didn’t have time to react more before she heard the whip snap again. This time, she knew what to expect and she twisted her hips to avoid it. The whip caught her high on her waist and snaked down her bottom.

  “You move around, girl, I’ll beat you anywhere I can hit you—your stomach, your face, your arms. Trust me, you’re gonna wanna take it on the butt. Fewer nerve endings there. Now hold still or I swear I’ll cut you to ribbons.”

  Mia focused on the door and waited, willing herself to stand still. She looked at the door and imagined someone coming through it…any minute now…someone coming through it to help her, to save her.

  Every lash stung worse than the last until she was sure he was hitting her harder with each stroke. She could hear him speaking to her but she closed her thoughts to what was happening in this cellar. All she could see was that door...

  When she awoke, it was quiet and this time what awakened her was the pain in her shoulders. She staggered to her feet to relieve the agony of her shoulders carrying her weight and she gasped in pain as she did. She must not have been out very long and when she twisted around to see where Keith was, she heard the flush of a toilet behind the door at the top of the stairs.

  Will I live through this? Does anyone know where I am? Have I been here for days or hours?

  “Awake, I see,” Keith said as he opened the door and came down the stairs to her. “That drug I gave you is unpredictable. When you wouldn’t take it in the drink, I had to go to Plan B and I wasn’t sure you’d be awake enough for this. My God, you’re beautiful.” He stopped a few feet from her and seemed to be honestly appreciating what he saw.

  Her arms were stretched out over her head, her face streaked with mascara, tears and sweat, her back a latticework of welts and bruises.

  He took out his cellphone and snapped a picture of her, then walked behind her to take it from that angle.

  “Yes, please,” Mia said hoarsely, her acceptance of her torture and death now vying with her anger and mounting hatred of this man. “Please make it as easy as possible for them to build the case against you.”

  He studied the screen of his cell phone before looking up at her. “These’ll keep me warm on many a cold night,” he said, grinning. “And the best part? No one will ever know I have them, or what happened here. No, correction. The best part? Your buddy Burton will be on the hook for it.”

  Mia tried to focus past her fear. Even helpless and almost certainly soon to be dead, as long as she could talk, she had some hope. But the pain, the remnant effects of the drug, and her own terror were all coming together to make it difficult to understand him.

  “You think the cops will think Jack did this?” she said. Her lip was swollen from where he’d slapped her. “The cops need evidence to pin this on Jack.”

  “Oh, they’ll have evidence…and something better,” Keith said, picking up the whip again from where he’d dropped it. “They’ll have your accusation.”

  “Why would I accuse him? That’s mad.”

  “You will because first, after being missing for two days, when you are finally found in Jack’s garage, battered and raped, and the police ask you what happened…wait for it…you won’t remember any of this.” He waved the whip to take in the confines of the small cement floored warehouse.

  “I…I won’t remember?”

  “That’s right, beautiful. I injected you with a very special concoction of Ecstasy and Ki
t-Kat or Ketamine.” He glanced at his wristwatch with a dramatic flourish.“I figure I have about two more hours before you fade out on me and become totally unresponsive. After that…” He shrugged. “You won’t remember a thing.”

  She rattled the cuffs over her head, the anger building in her. “You think I won’t remember this? You’ll never get away with it.”

  He leaned in close. “This ain’t my first rodeo, honey,” he said, squeezing her bottom until tears of pain sprang into her eyes. “You won’t remember a thing. I’ll call the tip in that I saw Burton carrying what looked like a rolled carpet into his garage and I’ll make sure he doesn’t have an alibi that’ll stand up for the time period. Then, I’m sure your lawyer, your mother and the rape counselors—I hear they’re very good—will all help convince you to testify against him.”

  He released her and smiled. “And I’ll have my photos of our time together to enjoy again and again…until I arrange for a repeat performance which, trust me, beautiful, I will.”

  Is this possible? He’s done this before? And nobody knows?

  She shivered and gripped the ends of the chains that held her arms over her head. Two more hours, he said. Two more hours and then it’s over. I can last that long. Please God, let me last that long.

  “Ready for round two, beautiful?” he said as he grinned and slapped the whip in his hand.

  16

  Burton drove straight to Jess’s, parked and walked the perimeter of her house before coming inside. There was no evidence that Mia had been forcibly taken and every reason to believe she had left on her own.

  Jess met him in the living room with a tray of cake and coffee. The little dog nearly leaped into his arms when he walked in the door. He put them both aside briskly and began to pace Jess’s small living room.

  Where would she have gone? If she was on her own steam, where would she go? Carol was dead, and he had just come from Diane’s…

  Trish.

  It wasn’t much but it was all he had. He didn’t have Trish’s cellphone number so he called Information and got it. The phone rang and rang. Who doesn’t carry her cellphone with them? he thought impatiently as he waited. Did he even know a woman who wasn’t constantly checking her phone to see who had called?

  “This is Trish Barnes’ phone,” a familiar voice said on the other line. “Who’s this?”

  “Karen?”

  “Jack?”

  “What are you doing with Trish’s phone?”

  “What I’m doing is screening her calls while she lies in a hospital bed a few breaths shy of a coma.”

  Burton heard a faint voice in the background say, “Don’t exaggerate, Karen. I’m fine.”

  Karen spoke to Jack. “She is not fine. That turd of a husband of hers broke her arm.”

  “Who? Keith?”

  “Yes, Keith. This time he put her in the hospital. I’m forcing her to bring charges against him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who knows? But they’re out looking for him.”

  The voice came back stronger from the hospital bed. “And he’ll be madder than ever when they find him.”

  Karen turned from the phone to speak to Trish. “Him being mad is not something you need to worry about ever again, Trish. Do you understand me?”

  Burton heard a muted response from Trish but couldn’t hear what she said. “I was hoping maybe Trish had heard from Mia today,” he said. “She’s gone missing.”

  Karen spoke to Trish. “Did Mia Kazmaroff call you today?” She came back to the phone. “She says no. She was too busy getting the crap beat out of her to take phone calls. I hope they nail that bastard to the Lawrenceville water tower.”

  “When did he attack Trish?” It wasn’t much to go on but if Mia went to talk to Trish, maybe she got in the middle of something? Or maybe she found Keith instead?

  “Four hours ago. Why?”

  Yeah, the timeline fit. Mia had been missing for three. But how would the two meet up?

  “Hold on, Jack, I just remembered when Trish called me, she had to use the landline because she couldn’t find her cellphone at first.”

  “You think Keith took it?”

  “Well, I’ve got it right now so he didn’t take it with him, but he definitely moved it from her purse where she usually keeps it.”

  “Karen, do me a favor and check out the recent calls, will you?”

  A moment passed as she scanned the list of calls on the phone. “Crap,” she said.

  “She called, didn’t she? Mia called?”

  “No, it’s an outgoing call, Jack. Keith called her about three and a half hours ago.”

  Burton turned and stared out the picture window in Jess’s living room. She and the dog had retreated to the kitchen to make dinner and give him the quiet he needed on the phone.

  Why would Keith call Mia? Why would Mia agree to meet him?

  “Jack?”

  He snapped his attention back to the phone. “Yeah?”

  “Trish wants to know why you think Mia would have called her.”

  “It’s not important.”

  Karen gave a sound of disgust. “It’s because she suspects Trish, doesn’t she? That woman is certifiable. Come on, Jack. Trish? Seriously?”

  “Can you ask her if there’s any place Keith might go, you know, to be alone or lick his wounds? They got a cabin up in the mountains or something?”

  Karen turned away to speak to Trish and it was all Burton could do not to urge her to hurry. Finally, she came back to the phone. “Sorry, Jack, no. She says they never went anywhere and trust me, Keith isn’t the kind of guy to lick any wounds. He has no conscience whatsoever.”

  “Okay, well, thanks, Karen, and tell Trish thanks too and I hope she feels better.”

  He hung up and sat in the living room, holding his phone, as the light leached from the sky. It got dark by five o’clock these days. He knew, if Mia was in trouble, every minute was critical.

  Jess came to the opening from the kitchen, a mixing bowl in her hands, the little dog at her feet. “Is it too soon to report a missing person?” she asked quietly.

  He knew she knew the answer to that as well as he did.

  “I’ll find her, Jess,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He stood up and looked back outside the window but there was only darkness. Why would Keith want her? What was Keith’s state of mind? Had he just lost it? If Karen put Trish’s feet to the fire about the domestic abuse charge, that could finish things for Keith in the department.

  Could make a man pretty desperate…

  Fact is, Keith was Dave’s partner in crime as far as using Ecstasy and screwing the world. Did they have a falling out? It would explain why Carol—the other part of the threesome—might not live too long to tell any tales. Especially if she knew who killed Dave…

  “Jack?”

  He looked away from the window and saw Jess pointing to the coffee table where his phone was vibrating. He picked it up and looked at the screen.

  “Hey. You think of something?”

  “Trish said maybe Keith might go to their storage unit.”

  “A storage unit?”

  “She says it’s really more like a small warehouse space. They were trying to start an eBay business and they—”

  “The address, Ange. What’s the address?” He was jogging to his car before he even finished speaking.

  “Four ten Orleans Court. It’s off of Johnson Ferry in East Cobb.”

  * * *

  Burton knew it wouldn’t help to get pulled over for speeding and he didn’t have time to explain if he did. He hesitated to call 911 on a crime he wasn’t sure was being committed and then decided he couldn’t be hated any more than he already was downtown.

  It was the week before Thanksgiving and the traffic jam during rush hour between Doraville and East Cobb was almost not navigable. He forced himself not to jump on the Perimeter—what had been an average speed of seventy miles an hour this afternoon
would have ground to a stop by now. He would have to take surface roads, blow past every stop sign that wasn’t attached to a school bus, and hope there wasn’t construction on top of the usual delays.

  Doraville to East Cobb the week before Thanksgiving? He’d be lucky to make it in an hour. He called in a suspected B&E and gave the address for the storage facility. If Dispatch checked his phone number and ID’d him, they might pass that information on or they might not. If they did, he hoped it didn’t result in them canceling the 911.

  He checked his GPS to confirm the address was where he thought it was. As crazy as taking Holcomb Bridge to Roswell was in order to get to East Cobb, it was even crazier to take the more direct route of Abernathy Road since that went right past the second biggest mall in the southeast and was the whole reason for the crap traffic this week in the first place.

  Assuming the traffic cops had their hands full, he pulled out of his lane of stalled traffic on Mount Vernon and drove onto the sidewalk to reach Holcomb Bridge. There he gunned it, expecting and getting seasoned Atlanta commuters’ forbearance.

  Spend six months in Atlanta traffic, he thought, as he swerved around an ill-placed fire hydrant, and you’ve seen it all.

  He knew the back entrance to Johnson Ferry and thanked God for it. Coming from the south, Johnson Ferry, the main artery through East Cobb and the tract home neighborhoods of Woodstock and Roswell, would be jammed for at least two hours with everyone coming home from work. Nobody came at it from the north heading south—not at six in the evening unless you were some poor sap working the night shift on Pill Hill.

  His GPS told him that Orleans Court was a dead end street and when he finally turned into it, careful not to squeal his tires in the process, he saw the only business on it was a warehouse of storage facilities. And not a single cop car in sight.

  Damn! Did they ignore his call or were they all playing by the rules driving through Atlanta rush hour traffic?

  The parking lot was empty but he knew that didn’t mean anything. Most of these places had rear parking for their loading docks. He turned to the back and saw a lone truck parked there. He stopped four spaces away, hopped out and opened his trunk.