Hunted: A Suspense Collection

by J. L. Drake

  “Great,” he said. “I was hoping everything would be here when I arrived. I wanted to get here early so I could look over things and form a plan of attack.”

  “Which is why I’m here early,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been assigned to assist you while you’re here and help you find anything you might need. We’ve set you up in the conference room—I hope that’s okay.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “I’m not picky.”

  “Okay,” Croce said. “Let me grab a couple things from my desk and I’ll show you the way.”

  David waited while Croce collected a laptop, pen, and a couple of case files. Once she had what she needed, she smiled at him and nodded in the direction of the far wall before walking that way. He took the hint and followed her.

  The conference room they had him set up with was modest in size; it would accommodate his needs just fine. There would be enough room for the three of them—once Limmon arrived—to each have a section of the table to work on.

  “I hope this will work…” Croce said. “This is our smallest conference room. If there’s not enough space I can see about moving to a larger one.”

  “No,” David said, “this is perfect. Agent Limmon, from Memphis, will be joining us sometime and it will be plenty of space.”

  Croce frowned. “I hadn’t heard about Agent Limmon coming for a visit.”

  “I asked for him last night when I was notified that they’d found the woman’s picture,” David said, hanging his shoulder bag on the back of a chair before sitting in it. “He’s the one who set up the internet searches for me in Memphis. He knows exactly what I’m looking for and he’s great with a computer.”

  “He sounds like a valuable associate,” Croce said with a laugh. “I’m okay with a computer, but I’m better in the field.”

  “I guess that makes you my hospital search partner then,” David said, showing her the list he’d made. “Do you know of any hospitals that aren’t on this list?”

  “No…” she said, looking it over, “…but I can do a quick search and double check it for you if you’d like.” She sat down in the chair beside David and opened her laptop without waiting for his reply.

  “Please do,” he said, turning to pull his own laptop out of his shoulder bag. “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

  She smiled and quickly wrote it on the top of the hospital list for him before returning to her search.

  David was on the internet and checking his email and the search results when she announced it was a complete list.

  There had been no hits on the woman’s picture yet, which didn’t surprise him because the picture was worse than he’d hoped. But it was still a picture they hadn’t had before so he didn’t get upset over it. He quickly sent an email to Limmon to have him add searches for street and security footage around the bar where Housen had gone missing. He was hoping they’d get a clearer picture from a new and known location.

  “So…what’s the plan?” Croce asked when he stopped typing.

  “First, we need to get a warrant for all morgue paperwork for the last month, for every hospital,” David said.

  “Why? What are we looking for?” Croce asked, frowning and looking at the list again.

  “I’m fairly sure we’re looking for a team of medical professionals who are kidnapping people and killing them for their organs,” David said. “The first logical place to look is at the local morgues to see if anyone there is helping them.”

  “Wow,” Croce said. “You really think that’s happening? That’s messed up.”

  “Nothing else makes sense,” he said, and shrugged. “I’ve asked the local police to send someone undercover, putting out feelers for human organs. While they’re doing that, I plan to go from morgue to morgue and check out their paperwork to make sure there’s nothing fishy.”

  “It might take a little while to get the warrants,” she said. “I’ll call the director and see if he can get a judge to sign off on them fast.”

  “Okay,” he said. “After that, we’ll map out a route to take so we can hit most, if not all, of the hospitals once we have the warrants in hand.”

  She smiled and pulled her cell phone from her pocket to make the call.

  David planned to make sure Croce was up to speed with everything that was going on and familiar with the case files they were looking into while they waited for the warrants. They would start with Daniel’s—ground zero of his investigation. He just hoped he could hold himself together while he shared the news aloud, for the first time, that he believed his twin brother was dead.

  Chapter 34

  Lloyd was waiting in his car when Sonya came casually walking out of the formidable beige stone building of the bank. She stopped and casually played with her cell phone for a few moments before she slowly walked out into the parking lot and toward the car. He chuckled, knowing she was putting on the calm cool act of a rich woman who didn’t give a shit about anything.

  “How’d it go?” he asked as she opened the passenger’s door and slid into the seat beside him.

  She gave him a look that said: Duh!

  He laughed.

  “Everything went well, as you know,” she said, buckling her seat belt. “How’d things go for you?” She nodded to the laptop that was closed and standing between their seats.

  He grinned. “Everything went great. Got everything transferred as soon as it came in—it took some fast talking though. They wanted to hold everything for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but I convinced them otherwise. I had to threaten to take my business to another bank in a fit of rage before they’d consented. They did say they were putting a trace on the accounts though, for a while, to make sure nothing strange was going on, which I agreed to. I plan for Jennings to be dead before he knows what we’ve done.”

  Sonya laughed.

  “You’ve thought of just about everything, haven’t you?” she teased, and leaned over to kiss him. He kissed her back.

  “We’d better get going,” he said, ending the kiss and tucking a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”

  “But being rich makes me horny,” she complained, stuck out her bottom lip, and blinked her big green eyes at him.

  Lloyd laughed.

  “Maybe I’ll think of something to take care of that issue on the way back to your house,” he said. “But it won’t be here in the bank parking lot.”

  Sonya snickered, sitting back in her seat.

  “I’ll be a good girl as long as I can,” she said with a serious, innocent expression on her face.

  He laughed again and shook his head. With a turn of the key, he started the car and they were off. A smile stayed on his lips as he drove—he couldn’t believe it had been that easy to rob Jennings blind. He knew the old bastard deserved it—and that most of the money was what Jennings had stolen and they were just taking it back—so the payback theft felt like a huge victory.

  “Do you think we left enough for him not to notice?” Sonya asked, looking at Lloyd. “We still have to work with him for days…”

  “Yes,” he said, “we left plenty. I don’t think he’ll notice until he goes to pay Butch and doesn’t have a million dollars to throw around anymore. Oh, what was in the safe deposit box?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” she said, opening her purse to dig inside. “The safe deposit box was a very small one, which was probably why they didn’t give me too much of a hard time about not having a key—not like they knew what the contents were anyway. I did have to scream and almost burst into tears, saying there was something of my beloved dead grandmother’s in there. I also started dialing my phone like I was going to call my lawyer, and they finally let me in, since I knew all the account information and answered every other damn question they threw at me.”

  “See!” Lloyd exclaimed. “I told you all that studying on the way there would pay off—why do you think I printed so much of that damn information out and put it in the file?”
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br />   She nodded, still digging in her purse.

  “Ah, here it is!” she announced, pulling a small ring box out of her purse.

  “A ring?” Lloyd asked, looking skeptical.

  “Not just any ring,” she said, opening the box to show it to him. “There’s a certificate too, saying that the diamonds are all real.”

  Lloyd frowned at the piece of jewelry held within the dark velvet box, and took it from Sonya so he could hold it where he could look at it and drive at the same time. The setting was of various colored stones in a rose formation with the petals spread open and leaves around the flower.

  “Those don’t look like diamonds, I mean…they’re all different colors.”

  Sonya laughed. “Diamonds come in various shades—some of the colored ones are very rare, so this ring is probably worth a lot of money.”

  “You said there was a certificate?” he asked, handing the ring back. “Does it say how much the ring is worth?”

  She shook her head “no.”

  “There’s nothing about an appraisal for insurance value either,” she said, and sighed. “Either he has that information or he never had it appraised.”

  “Strikes me as custom made,” he said, frowning. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Me neither.” She closed the box after looking at the ring again, and slipped it back into her purse. “I suppose we could get someone to look at it, see how much it’s worth, and sell it.”

  “Maybe…” Lloyd said. “I have a better idea though.”

  “Oh,” she asked, and turned her head to look at him. “What’s that?”

  “Well, I haven’t gotten you an engagement ring yet…” he said, and winked at her suggestively.

  “Really?” she asked excitedly.

  “Yes, really,” Lloyd said. “You deserve something rare and beautiful.”

  She didn’t reply, so he glanced over at her and saw that she was grinning broadly and staring at him with love in her eyes.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too,” she replied. “Now I’m even hornier.”

  Lloyd laughed. “Do you want me to find a hotel?”

  “Yes,” she said excitedly. “Can I wear the ring while we fuck?”

  “Sure,” he said, “since you can’t wear it again until all this crap is over. You might as well enjoy it for a little while.”

  He took the next exit off the highway and made his way to a hotel. They checked in and spent the rest of the afternoon doing anything and everything pleasurable they could think of to each other while Sonya wore nothing but the ring and a smile.

  ***

  It was almost midday before McCoy and Croce had all the warrants they needed. During their wait, he’d brought her completely up to speed with the investigation. He managed to tell her what had happened to his brother without getting too emotional, which pleased him. She’d expressed her sympathies and he could tell she understood what drove him to pursue the case with fervor. It was personal.

  As they went over case after case that had little to link them, she also realized how much work he’d put into the investigation. If it hadn’t been personal, she knew he wouldn’t have pursued it as hard as he had and that the cases would have been added to the mountain of cold cases that went unsolved every year.

  As soon as the warrants were official, they headed out. They’d mapped out a route that would save them time and help them visit as many hospitals as possible that day.

  They left the FBI office with optimistic enthusiasm.

  ***

  Roger grunted as he and Butch carried one of the large generators into the new building they were going to be using for their makeshift harvest center. Honestly, he liked the new building better; it wasn’t visible from any of the nearby roads and someone would have to know it was there before they could ever find it. He’d asked Jennings how he’d found it, since it was so far from everything else. Apparently the site had been recommended by Peter, who’d lived in the area for a short while when he was younger.

  One of the main perks of the new seclusion was that they didn’t have to carry everything down into the basement of the ancient, decaying, brick and wood building, because no one would see the lights when they were on in the middle of the night. They could also dispose of any of the body parts they didn’t use and the victim’s identification in the woods surrounding the place.

  Finally reaching the spot where they wanted the generator, the two strong men set it down, both sighing with relief as they stood.

  “I won’t have to work out for a month after this,” Roger joked, half-smiling.

  Butch laughed. “Me neither.”

  They looked around at what they’d accomplished that day and felt pleased. All of the heavy items—like the generators—had been moved and placed in the chalk outlines Jennings had made before they’d gotten started.

  “Doesn’t look like we’ll have much to do tomorrow,” Butch said. “Do you think we can call it a day?”

  “I was just going to ask you the same thing,” Roger said, looking out a missing corner of a grime-covered window. “It’s getting dark, so we might as well stop for the day.”

  “Great!” Butch exclaimed, clapping his hands once. “I could really use a beer. Want to join me?”

  “Thanks, but I better not,” Roger said. “We have to be careful not to be seen together if we can help it.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Butch said, and frowned. “What time do you want to get started tomorrow?”

  “I’ll meet you at the old building around eight o’clock,” Roger said, picking up a couple of coiled extension cords from the floor and laying them on the generator, getting ready to go.

  “In the morning?” Butch asked, joking around.

  “Yes,” Roger said, “in the morning.”

  They headed through the door they planned to use as the main entrance and exit, and closed it behind them. Roger secured it with a padlock to keep anyone who might happen by out of their newly claimed space. They’d spent the first couple of hours after their arrival earlier in the day securing the building before they’d unloaded anything out of the moving truck Jennings had rented. It had been meant for the family harvest, but was coming in handy with the move of base as well.

  “So…” Butch said as they were climbing into the moving truck, “…how serious are things between Lloyd and Sonya?”

  Roger—who’d just shut his door and was about to slide the key into the ignition—froze and looked over at Butch.

  “Who said there was anything between them?” he asked cautiously.

  Fleetingly the memory of Jack’s questions and outbursts ran through his mind. He knew Butch sniffing around in Sonya and Lloyd’s relationship for any reason would end badly, as was evident by the picture Lloyd had sent Jennings of Jack’s mutilated body.

  Butch smiled. “No one, but it’s the vibe I’ve picked up from them.”

  “You’d have to talk to them,” Roger said, finally sliding the key in and starting the engine.

  “They don’t seem to want to talk about it,” Butch said, watching Roger, sure he knew more than he was letting on.

  “Then I guess it’s none of your business,” Roger said, still focused on driving.

  “You’ve worked with them for a long time, haven’t you?” Butch asked, frowning and looking out the windshield, watching the woods go by as they bumped along the forgotten, cracked road that led to civilization.

  “Not so much with Lloyd—a year or so—but I’ve worked with Sonya for a long time,” Roger answered flatly.

  Knowing about Butch’s agenda to kill Lloyd, Roger was wondering where this line of questioning was going. He sincerely hoped Butch didn’t try to enlist him in the plot, because he didn’t know what Lloyd would want him to do. On one hand, the man could want him to go along with Butch so he had inside information on the murder plans and enlist him to help foil it, but on the other, he might see it as a betrayal. Everythin
g that was going on was already stressing him to the limit and cracking his resolve. He was already a double agent, plotting on Jennings―he didn’t know if he could take on yet another deception act and be a co-plotter to Lloyd’s death.

  “You ever been in a relationship with her?” Butch asked.

  This wasn’t what Roger had expected and he frowned at the turn in a conversation he’d thought he’d mapped out.

  “No,” he said slowly, cautiously, “we’ve never been in a ‘relationship.’”

  “Why not?” Butch asked, looking at him funny. “You aren’t gay, are you?”

  Roger laughed. “No, I’m not gay. I just don’t see her that way, and she doesn’t see me that way.”

  Butch grunted and frowned.

  “Are you sure you’re not gay?” he asked again. “She’s fucking hot and a wicked lover. You mean you never fucked her? Not even once?”

  “No,” Roger said, shaking his head. “I’ve never had sex with Sonya. She’s like a sister to me.”

  “You’re gay!” Butch announced.

  “I am not,” Roger retorted, starting to get mad.

  “Okay,” Butch said, raising his hands in surrender. “If you say so.”

  Roger shook his head and once again focused on driving, but he couldn’t help but fantasize about ripping Butch out of the truck and beating the crap out of him for saying he was gay. He didn’t have issues with anyone being gay—his brother was—but he didn’t need someone who didn’t know him accusing him of being something he wasn’t. If he was gay, he’d admit to it.

  They traveled the rest of the way in silence, Roger fuming over Butch’s ignorance and Butch laughing inside knowing he’d upset Roger.

  “I’ve fucked her,” Butch announced proudly, watching for Roger’s reaction.

  “Yeah, right,” Roger said, with a smirk.

  “We were really tight years back,” Butch said, nodding. “Couldn’t keep her off me back then, or me off her for that matter.” He paused and laughed. “But she decided she didn’t want me anymore since I wouldn’t be her little boy toy puppet. Stupid bitch.”