No Stopping

by Nolon King

  “Damn.” She stood and checked her GPS.

  Her body throbbed with every new step on the journey back to her car.

  Her head pounded and her hands shook as she entered her hotel room. A cold sweat licked her back. She thought about the sweet kiss of her pills.

  Don’t do it.

  You don’t need them.

  You fucked this operation up. You left the door open and almost got yourself killed.

  You deserve the pain as a reminder not to do this stupid shit anymore.

  Somehow, Mal managed to ride out the shakes and refuse her cravings.

  Ibuprofen instead — a poor substitute, but at least it would cut into the pain a bit.

  She took a long hot bath. While soaking, she checked the news on her phone, looking to see if there’d been anything on Eddie the Rapist. Or on last night’s colossal fuck-up.

  There was a story on the Times-Union’s website about an unnamed man who’d been attacked. He claimed to have been drugged and couldn’t provide further details. It was being treated as a sex crime, hence the victim’s anonymity.

  Mal laughed at the irony, that she could be charged with a sex crime against a rapist.

  But he’d kept his mouth shut like a good boy.

  But now sober, and in such excruciating pain from her impact with the tree, Mal was seeing her attack in a different light.

  Gone was the anger that had fueled her rage. Now, as she sat in the spacious hotel room tub with jet of hot water massaging her back, she felt something close to remorse.

  What the hell am I doing?

  Mal closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, desperate to think of anything else.

  Then she returned to the dream, to Paul Dodd pumping her with heroin, above her on the bed, forcing her to play his sick and twisted game.

  Ah, look who’s growing up. Such a sweet little girl. Have you been wanting Daddy to touch you?

  She shuddered from the memory, screaming before sinking under the surface of the tub’s water.

  The jet sprays muffled the world above. She opened her eyes, staring at the bathroom lights through the bubbling surface, wondering if she could drown herself. Would her body allow it?

  What was the point in living? She’d lost everything that had ever meant anything.

  Her chest tightened as Mal remembered being a kid and going underwater to see how long she could hold her breath at the bottom of the pool. Her record was 86 seconds.

  How long until I drown?

  The world was a cesspool full of wolves preying on sheep. And Mal could never stop them all.

  Even if she spent every night for the rest of her life cutting the dicks off every rapist she managed to track, Mal still couldn’t end the violence being done to innocents.

  Her lungs burned as she struggled to hold her breath.

  For every Jessi Price, how many would go unsaved? How many women and children getting raped or killed, not just here, but across the country, or in places around the world that she could never get to?

  I can’t ever get to all the bad guys.

  Her eyes joined her lungs in burning as the world above her continued to froth and bubble.

  Now, let us begin, Ashley … Whose been a naughty birthday girl?

  She thrust herself upward, drawing a deep breath, inhaling and hating herself for the very air she was so desperate to draw in.

  Then she closed her eyes and allowed the tears to fall.

  Down in the hotel’s restaurant, Mal took a tall booth in the back, away from most of the Saturday lunch crowd which was mostly families and loud talkers. The bar wasn’t yet crowded.

  She ate a burger and fries, nursed a frosty beer, and scrolled through the news. Former Sheriff Claude Barry’s “guest editorial” — Where are Calum Kozack and Brianna Gilchrest? — caught her eye. He was demanding answers from Creek County Sheriff’s Office.

  Why was the newspaper printing this shit? The sort of hit piece that could be found on Cameron Ford’s garbage blog, not a respectable newspaper.

  Barry ended the piece by writing, Oliver Kozack isn’t just a parent. He’s one of the most successful job creators in Creek County. If the Sheriff’s Office can’t keep his family safe or offer him justice, what hope do the rest of us have?

  It might as well have ended with, Vote for me in November.

  Mal wanted to call her ex, Ray, to ask what he thought of the depths his former employer was sinking to, but she couldn’t. He was trying to move on, and she had to let go.

  Their marriage had been falling apart even before Ashley’s death, but there was still a part of Mal that missed him and wished she could go back in time to preserve those moments when they were all together.

  But Ashley was dead, and Ray was with someone else.

  Mal was all alone.

  A sudden crash of glass exploding made Mal yelp. Adrenaline pumping, she gripped the gun in her purse and scanned the room for danger.

  The bartender had dropped a tray of glasses.

  He and two men at the bar looked at Mal with widening eyes.

  Maybe she’d yelped louder than she thought.

  Or maybe I look like a fucking maniac.

  She was shaking, fear a punch in her gut, tears welling in her eyes.

  Why the hell am I so afraid?

  Panic constricted her chest.

  Her heart pumped fast enough to give her a heart attack.

  She had to get out of the bar, now.

  Mal dropped cash on the table, grabbed her phone and purse, then started toward the exit.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  Two familiar faces were on the other side of the door — the fucking parasitic blogger, Cameron Ford, walking with Claude Barry.

  They were looking at each other, so Mal was still invisible.

  She couldn’t let them see her this freaked out. What if one or both of them said something to trigger her? Then she might very well end up putting one or both of them into the hospital.

  The three of them were on a collision course. They’d pass one another in the doorway in moments.

  To her left, a woman walked out of the restroom. Before the bathroom door swung shut, Mal dashed inside to the closest open stall. She slammed the door, engaged the lock, then collapsied on the toilet seat and started to cry.

  She needed to calm the fuck down. More than that, she needed her pills.

  Don’t do it.

  Don’t do it.

  One image invaded her thoughts, tormented her relentlessly — Dodd’s beady, evil, child-raping, daughter-murdering eyes.

  Even dead, the monster still haunted her memories. How could she ever expect to escape her past when it felt just as real and threatening as her present?

  Mal couldn’t run, so she dug into her purse.

  Don’t do it.

  Don’t do it.

  She found the bottle.

  Don’t do it.

  But then, of course, she did.

  Chapter 11 - Spider

  Spider hated these fuckers. If they hadn’t put a chain on her wheelchair’s arm, she would have tried to escape already. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.

  She’d been blindfolded when they brought her in, so she didn’t know where she was or what the building was like. All she had to go on was the large room she was being held in. It was sparsely furnished with a sofa, an empty bookcase next to a desk, and two tables, one of which Spider was confined to. Though there was no bed, it was probably a bedroom because it had an adjoining bathroom. Well, it was the size of a bedroom, but it felt more like a basement without any windows. Not that she knew of too many basements in Florida.

  She occasionally saw others in the hall outside her room — lots of men in black, like the SWAT uniforms the Butler PD wore whenever they rolled in to take down some smalltime dealer and make a show of force. But these men weren’t cops. They were mostly German, mercenaries who’d come to her apartment to kidnap her and kill anyone trying to stop t
hem.

  Spider heard suppressed gunshots from the men in black, then explosive ones from her neighbors, friends, and protectors. The Germans must have killed a lot of her people to finally get her.

  And now she was a prisoner of Victor Forbes, stuck in some room where she was being forced to finish cracking the encryption. She was running a brute force program on the drive. The rest was out of her control, as it would take as long as it took.

  Forbes also ordered her to kill a website he didn’t even have a URL for. According to him, the site wasn’t live. Spider didn’t buy that, figuring its content was just hidden from the public. That meant she needed to find, hack, and delete anything that might possibly expose the members of Voluptatem.

  She had a trio of laptops belonging Wes Richardson, the man who had presumably set up the site. Spider was poring through their contents, those she wasn’t brute-forcing, to reach the encrypted partitions, searching for something that might help her.

  So far, nothing.

  Spider liked a good challenge, just not like this. Not helping fuckers that killed her friends. Not for monsters running a pedophile ring. Not for dicktips that would likely put a bullet in her head the minute she finished her job — assuming she could.

  What the hell did the Professor get me into? And is he going to be able to get me out?

  Or … is he among the bodies?

  Clark, the other person in the room, cleared his throat from a seat at the table behind her. Spider’s only Internet-enabled computer mirrored to the laptop in front of him. White dude. Mid-thirties. Short brown hair, crewcut, glasses. Handsome. Quiet. Wore a black suit and was obviously packing.

  He was tasked with watching her, making sure she didn’t try to use the computer to contact the authorities or anyone who might be trying to find her.

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Be right back.”

  He left the room, leaving the door partially open.

  Is this a test?

  Spider didn’t know, or care. She’d already tried to access the Internet via Richardson’s computers, but he wasn’t connected and she didn’t know the router’s password.

  With Clark gone, Spider could open a command prompt and quickly find the saved password along with whichever connection she was using.

  She closed the launcher, her heart at a gallop as she glanced at the door.

  Spider strained to hear footsteps, but instead picked up on Clark saying something to one of the other men. She wasn’t sure how large the room was, but he seemed far enough from the door.

  She still had time.

  She quickly entered the connection details into Richardson’s computer and established a connection.

  Bingo — online.

  Footsteps as Clark returned.

  She killed the wireless connection, just in case he happened to look at the screen. Then she kept searching through email as Clark approached from behind carrying a thermos and a can of soda. He set a Sprite on the table beside her and kept the coffee for himself. The man was always drinking coffee.

  “Thank you.” She cracked it open and took a sip. The can chilled her fingers. The bubbly liquid was cold on her tongue.

  Clark returned to his seat. He spun the cap off his thermos, poured some coffee, then took a long swallow.

  She avoided looking at him, certain he’d see her guilt if she did.

  Okay, now what?

  Spider had a back-up plan for instances like this, having put it into place after seeing the Professor’s grand plan. She’d set up an encrypted dead drop site for her hacker friend Cyphillest to check on. She’d get the IP address, send a message to contact the Professor, then give it to him. He’d know how to track her, assuming he was still alive.

  If not, she’d have Cyphillest send that same info to the cops and hope like hell they could save her. Or that they weren’t compromised by their relationship to BlackBriar or Victor Forbes.

  She’d give it ten, fifteen minutes. Maybe wait until Clark had to use the bathroom.

  The next time he left the room, she’d connect and send the message. It would be encrypted traffic, so the contents would be disguised. But if someone was paying attention to network traffic, they could see that one of Richardson’s devices had connected to the web. Then she’d be fucked.

  But Spider couldn’t worry about that. She had to hope they weren’t paying attention, that they’d overlook shit because she was a teenager and only a girl.

  Clark knew she was up to something. She could feel him staring at the back of her head.

  She kept herself looking busy, going through Richardson’s email, searching for anything from a web host provider or domain registry, doubting that she would ever find what she was looking for.

  If Richardson was sophisticated enough to create, or hire someone to create, a poison pill website for him, he probably used anonymous email clients and didn’t leave shit on his computer to unravel his plans.

  After twenty minutes of finding nothing, Clark’s phone rang.

  Please leave the room to take it. Please leave the room to take it.

  He answered in an intimate sounding voice. “Hey … no. I’m going to be late.”

  I could scream for help. ‘Hey, your boyfriend or husband kidnapped me!’

  “What? No, I don’t know. Sorry.” His voice lowered.

  Clark was aware of her listening, maybe he was protecting whomever was on the other line from her curiosity.

  Now. Send the message now.

  Spider enabled the Internet connection on Richardson’s laptop, watched as the little icon showing her now online. She opened another command prompt window, grabbed the IP address, copied it over, then closed the window.

  “How did it go?” Clark asked the person on the other line. His voice sounded different,

  Her heart was racing, sure he was watching.

  She kept her head the same as it had been, hoping her body was shielding the screen. She couldn’t look to see if Clark could see what was on it. He would notice if she tried.

  Spider went to the website, pasted the IP address, then started to type her message as something sharp pressed into her head.

  Fuck!

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Clark said in his southern drawl, the barrel pressing into her forehead.

  She turned, about to play dumb, but his knowing eyes were a warning.

  “Okay,” she said, chagrined.

  “Close it.”

  Spider closed the browser.

  “Turn off the wi-fi.”

  She did.

  He holstered the gun in his jacket, leaned on her table, and met Spider’s eyes with a deadly stare.

  “Let’s walk through your little scenario, shall we? Let’s say you do manage to contact someone to get you. What exactly do you think will happen then? Mr. Forbes has taken many precautions. It’s his job, and mine by extension, to evaluate every possible scenario and mitigate anything you might do to try and escape. He won’t let you leave until the job is done. Anyone you send here will be dead. That I can guarantee you. This place is fortified. If someone does manage to get through all the guards out there, they still have to get through me. And” — Clark gave her a slippery smile that sent a chill right through her — “that ain’t going to happen. Now, all things being equal, I don’t want to kill you, but I’ll do that before letting you walk out of here. Do you understand, ma’am?”

  Spider nodded.

  “Good. This is your one and only warning.”

  He sat back behind her and picked up the phone. “Sorry about that. Now, what were you saying?”

  Spider wanted to vomit.

  Chapter 12 - Jasper Parish

  Kim was high as fuck, smoking copious amounts of weed as Jasper told his tale. She stared at him with zero expression and took another epic hit from the bong.

  “You serious?” she finally asked, a cloud of smoke escaping her lungs.

  “Yes, that’s ev
erything.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “What the fuck, indeed.”

  “So? How you gonna get her back?”

  “First I need to find out where he’s got her.”

  “And how you gonna do that, Professor?”

  “Do you have anything of hers?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need something of hers, like an article of clothing, jewelry that had some meaning, something I can get a signal from.”

  “A signal?” she took another hit. “So, Spider wasn’t kidding about that psychic shit?”

  “Oh, did I leave that part out of my story?”

  “Yeah, kind of. What kind of psychic? Like, you can see the future an’ shit? Can you tell me what happens to me? When will I die? Maybe you can get me some lottery numbers? Tell me who’s gonna win this weekend’s games?”

  Jasper didn’t tell her his daughter received most of the psychic flashes, not him He had to protect Jordyn from people who might want to abuse her abilities. Best to let everyone think it all went through him.

  “It doesn’t work like that. I don’t control what I see. But sometimes, if I have a personal item, I can get a flash of where someone is or what they’re doing.”

  “Shit, I don’t have anything. And the cops got her place on lockdown.”

  “I’ll need to get inside.”

  “I can have someone get in for you.”

  “Best I go myself. The more people touching an item, the more clouded the link.”

  “What happens when you find out where she is?”

  “Then I go and get her.”

  “You heard what kinda army those fuckers rolled in with, right? I’m only alive because they told me to give you that phone.”

  “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”

  “I don’t think you understand what I’m sayin’. I’m offering our services. Lotta people ’round here like that kid. Would die for her, even. Others, well, they wanna settle the score against the fuckers who came into our place and killed our brothers and sisters. The rest, well, they’ll play for pay. You got enough scratch, I can round up an army to take those fuckers out.”