Mason's Run

by Mellanie Rourke

  The kitchen, dining and living room all shared open space specially adapted for Lizzie’s mobility challenges, while a hallway led down to the three bedrooms and bathroom.

  For all its amenities, I couldn’t help but compare it to a cabin in Ohio, where a certain sexy Uber driver made me scrambled eggs and bacon…

  “Earth to Mason, come in Mason,” Dreyven squawked at me. I glared back at him.

  “What?” I snapped.

  His hand flashed out and slapped me across the face. “Watch your tone, bitch. I own you. You do what I say, when I say it, and the only questions you ask better start and end with a sir, you hear me?”

  I glared at him for a moment longer, but we both knew I’d obey. Anything, to protect my friends.

  Dreyven flopped down on the couch, legs spread as he sprawled comfortably.

  “C’mere, bitch,” he said. I moved forward a few steps, but it wasn’t good enough. He pointed to the spot between his legs. I reluctantly moved between them and shuddered. I had a pretty good idea of what he planned. He’d made comments all the way home about wanting to get my mouth on his cock.

  My fears were confirmed a moment later when he said, “On your knees.”

  I knelt, but the banked anger in my chest began to crackle. He unzipped his fly and pulled his thick, blunt cock out of his pants. The smell of him made me want to vomit, and I started breathing through my mouth so I could experience as little of it as possible.

  “Oh, look at that. Good bitch, got his mouth all ready for me, hasn’t he?” he asked. He wound his fingers in my hair and pulled me toward him, the pain wringing a cry from me.

  “Suck my cock, bitch,” he said, forcing my head down to his crotch and forcing his dick between my lips and down my throat.

  I tried to pull away, but Dreyven wouldn’t let me. He forced my head down, cramming his dick into my mouth. I choked and gagged, more because of the smell of him than my gag reflex. I’d taken longer and thicker dicks in my mouth before, but the smell… it just wasn’t Lee’s, and my whole body knew it.

  Just as he started pistoning his hips in and out of my mouth, a loud knock sounded at the door.

  “Fucking Christ!” Dreyven exclaimed, tightening his hands in my hair even more, continuing to fuck my mouth as he spoke. “Go the fuck away!” he yelled.

  Jamison’s voice came through the door, “You left something at the front desk, sir,” he called, his voice still filled with good cheer. “I think it’s your wallet? It has quite a bit of money in it, so I knew you wouldn’t want to lose it,” the doorman called through the door.

  “Hah!” Dreyven eyes lit up and he laughed, the greed bright in his eyes as he shoved me aside. “Money? Yep, must be mine!” he said gleefully. He got to his feet and pushed past me, tucking his dick back in his pants. I knew the wallet didn’t belong to him, but that wouldn’t bother Dreyven.

  I sat there in front of the couch, brushing the tears away from my eyes that the gagging had caused, trying to catch my breath. I had to figure a way out of this, but how?

  In the reflection of the window I saw Dreyven walk over to the apartment door. He checked through the peephole first, making sure it was Jamison at the door before unlocking it. As he opened the door, I saw light flood into the darkened apartment, then I heard a click and a loud “Boom!” that I felt in my bones, then everything went black.

  31

  Mason

  When I regained consciousness, the steely gaze of David Jarreau was the first thing I saw. The years seemed to have been kind to him, a few more laughter wrinkles around his eyes, a touch of gray in his hair. Overall, though, not much had changed.

  “Good to see you again, kiddo,” he said, helping me sit up. “How’s the head?”

  “Um, okay?” I answered, reaching up and rubbing a tender spot on the side of my head. “Ouch! That hurt…” My voice trailing off as I looked around the room in confusion. The room looked like, well, like an explosion went off in it, papers and bits of ceiling littered the room.

  Wait, ceiling?

  “What—?” I started to ask, looking around.

  “Well, I got your message, obviously. Took a little bit of doing with our federal friends, but we managed to delay your flight back long enough to get your friends to a safe house and get Jamison in place,” he said. I could hear him speaking, but my ears were still ringing from the explosion, and I was having a hard time following the conversation. I saw Dreyven kneeling on the floor by the door, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  Oblivious to my confusion, Jarreau continued. “That security guard of yours, Joe, was it? Feisty fellow. He was dead set against leaving you unprotected. We told him he had to leave so that we could control the scene, but he refused. Did you know he used to be a Texas Ranger? Tried to pull rank on me! Ha!” Jarreau laughed and scratched his chin.

  “He’s a stubborn old man, but it sounds like he cares a lot about you and your friends. He only let us take over his post on the condition that, in exchange, we let him ‘guard’ Everett and Lizzie at the safe house. I had to have one of my agents drive him over there. We had just enough time to place some cameras in the apartment before you and Dreyven showed up,” Jarreau said, leaning back in his chair.

  “You delayed the plane? Fuck, I didn’t know you could do stuff like that,” I said in amazement, finally started to track the conversation. Jarreau grinned at me like a kid in a candy store.

  “We don’t get to do it all the time, but once in a while, if the need is great, we have a few people we can call,” he said smugly.

  I rubbed my head again, which still stung pretty badly.

  “Damn, sorry about that,” Jarreau said, tilting my head back gently to get a better look at the side of my face. “Popper! Get the kid some ice for his head.” He turned back around toward me. “Had a flash-bang that malfunctioned, and it looks like it sent a piece of plastic into the side of your head. Knocked you for a loop. You were out for a few minutes. We’ll be taking you to the hospital to get checked out shortly, but the medics said they think you’ll be fine.”

  “Lizzie and Ev, are they okay? Where are they? How did you even find us?” I asked, the words pouring out of me, even though I knew I should let him speak to answer my questions.

  Jarreau looked at me like I was a simpleton.

  “Mason, I’ve known where you were every day of your life since you left that hospital,” Jarreau said solemnly. I felt my eyes widen in surprise. “Dreyven Reckner needs to be taken down, and I can’t do that if I don’t have your help.”

  Thoughts were rolling through my head when one of the officers came over to us.

  “Detective Jarreau? Can I speak to you a minute, sir?” the young officer asked nervously.

  “What is it, Fitz?” Jarreau asked.

  “The suspect…” Fitz began. “His ID says he’s a cop from Ohio.”

  “Does it now? Is he one of Dreyven’s men, Mason?” Jarreau continued, the suspicion heavy in his voice. He turned his sad eyes toward me as I considered his question. “I know you weren’t ready back then, back in the hospital, son. The question is, are you ready now? Are you ready to stop running?”

  I tilted my head around the detective and looked at Dreyven where he knelt on the ground next to the broken door. He watched me smugly, the corner of his mouth curled up, his eyes confident and knowing. I thought about Lee, the Devereauxs, Zem. I thought of the twins in the ICU, and the damage that Dreyven and his people had already done to the those I loved.

  I could keep running, and hope that I might, someday, outrun all the evil in this world. Or I could face it. I could fight it. It was time.

  Something in my face must have shown my decision, because as I looked over at Dreyven, he began swearing at the officers, who pulled him to his feet. I thought back to all the lives mine was now touching: Lizzie, Ev, Lee, his family, hell, even my fans. It wasn’t just about me anymore.

  “Don’t say a word, Mason!” Dreyven yelled as he was helped to his
feet. “You know what will happen if you say another fucking word.”

  I nodded slowly as he spoke. I did know. I looked back to Jarreau.

  “I have friends, back in Ohio,” I said, my voice hoarse. I cleared my throat as he looked up at me, his fingers paused over his notepaper. I glanced over at Dreyven and took a deep breath. “They’re in danger. If you can help me protect them… it’s time I stopped running,” I said.

  Jarreau nodded.

  “I will guarantee their safety, above all else,” he said.

  I nodded toward Dreyven. “That is Dreyven. Dreyven Reckner. He’s the one you’ve been looking for,” I said to the detective. “He was Ricky’s partner. He raped me, repeatedly, and killed at least one person that I’ve personally witnessed. Her name was Shirley Kurl. He also recently ordered two murders in Akron, Ohio, which resulted in near-fatal injuries.”

  Jarreau smiled like a kid at Christmas. He walked over to where Dreyven stood with two uniformed officers holding his arms. Jarreau smiled and began speaking. “Dreyven Reckner, you have the right to remain silent…”

  The promised trip to the hospital occurred, where I found out that the cameras they had place inside our apartment, with Lizzie’s permission, had caught Dreyven on video, forcing me to have oral sex with him. When Jarreau saw the video, he insisted that I get a full rape kit done.

  I was seated in an examining room, fingers slipping back and forth across the face of my broken phone as I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, trying to warm up in the loaned scrubs a nurse had gotten me. Why were hospitals always so god damned cold?

  They’d done an x-ray and a cat scan on my head, but I was fine, more or less. Just a little bit of a headache remained. The kit had been embarrassing and painfully thorough, though the staff at the hospital did everything they could to make me feel more in control.

  The physician I spoke with told me that while I had some obvious physical trauma from my assault, seventy-two hours was generally the limit for the kit to obtain usable DNA, so they weren’t sure if it would show anything conclusive, but every shred of evidence counted at this point. He wrote me a prescription for some painkillers, antibiotics and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis, also known as PeP. The courts would compel Dreyven to be tested, but wouldn’t be able to do so until there was a conviction.

  The last nurse had just left with my clothes, swabs and samples, when a knock sounded at the door and it was abruptly pushed open, only to reveal my Lizzie rolling into the room, Everett not far behind her.

  All she had to do was hold her arms out to me and say, “Oh, Bug…” and the tears started. The three of us huddled together, our arms intertwined. I even saw Everett backhand some rogue tears that tried to escape his stoic countenance. These two people were the closest thing I’d had to family in the last eight years, and my relief at knowing they were safe was profound. Jarreau had guaranteed that the Devereauxs were protected.

  They were keeping Dreyven’s arrest under wraps until they could capture all the members of his team, including Bill Conyers. Dreyven had been funneling a large amount of money through the church and Conyers’ bookstore. They didn’t want Conyers to know they were on to him and start destroying evidence.

  “Are you guys okay?” I asked, when I could finally catch my breath, desperate to confirm what I’d been told.

  “Yeah, man, we’re fine,” Everett reassured me as Lizzie nodded. “Didn’t even know there was anything wrong until the cops showed up earlier this evening and talked to us. They said someone was… was… coercing you, and that you’d reached out for help.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Bug,” Lizzie exclaimed as I blushed. “I know that must have been one of the hardest things you’ve done.”

  She hugged me even tighter as the tears fell. I’d shared my history with her years ago, and while she had never judged me, I knew it had disappointed her that I didn’t feel I could stand up to Dreyven and tell the police everything I knew.

  As I pulled back she saw my fingers tracing absently across the front of the phone.

  “Your poor fingers! Your phone! What happened?” she asked. I raised an eyebrow at her without saying anything. “Bastards,” she muttered.

  “I have a spare screen repair kit at home, Mason. I got it for Lizzie’s old phone before we decided we were just going to go ahead and get a new one. I can see if I can fix it for you.”

  “Thanks, Ev,” I said, handing it over to him. “If that doesn’t work, I can always get a new one, but if you can just get my contacts and some of the pics off there, I don’t want to lose them. I had some of Lee and his family, and I’d love to show them to you guys.”

  “Lee, huh?” Lizzie asked, grinning mischievously as I handed the phone to Everett. “So, what happened?” Lizzie asked. I told her the whole story, starting from the day I arrived in Ohio to the flash bang going off in our apartment.

  “Hrmph. Here’s hoping the rest of them get their asses kicked, too,” she said.

  Everett had been unobtrusively working on my phone while I talked with Lizzie when suddenly a sound started playing, and I heard my own voice screaming “No! I’ll do what you want! Don’t hurt them!” Ev stabbed at a button on the phone and the sound stopped.

  We stared at each other in shock for a moment, then I grabbed the phone and ran to the hallway yelling, “Jarreau!”

  Jarreau and his team examined my phone and discovered that, despite Conyers’ efforts, the phone itself hadn’t been broken, just the screen. Somehow I’d turned the camera on while it was still in my pocket, and when he shattered the screen, all Conyers had managed to do was ruin the display, not the actual workings of the phone. It had recorded the whole attack, including the confession of both Conyers and Dreyven.

  Jarreau’s team downloaded all the information from it and I sat in a borrowed office, finger hovering over the play button. I insisted that I wanted, no, needed, to see it. I needed to know what would be played for a courtroom, for strangers, for the public, if I agreed to move forward with this. Jarreau sat next to me, his hand on my shoulder reassuringly. I clicked the button and watched the images play out on the video screen. When we got to the attack, I barely made it to a trash can in time.

  Now, I sat in an office sipping water quietly, trying to answer the question that Jarreau had posed me.

  I struggled with the thought of sharing what had happened to me with the world—especially with Lee. What would he say, when he found out I'd been raped yet again? When I was the reason his brothers had almost been killed?

  I knew, logically, he wouldn’t blame me, but I couldn’t help but blame myself. As much as I wanted to be a hero, to be as courageous as Lee was, I didn’t know if I had it in me.

  I sat in Jarreau’s borrowed office as he made notes on the video, the sound muted.

  “Mason, we need to go through and get the names of each of the people you have pictures of,” he said.

  Jarreau activated the phone gallery and started going through the pictures with me, asking me to identify each person. As a picture popped up of Tobi, Jeri and I at the signing, I took a deep breath. I realized I wasn’t any less frightened than I'd been before, but I couldn’t back down. Not when there were kids like me, like Tobi, who needed their own Dark Angel to save them.

  A thought occurred to me, I might not be Dark Angel material myself, like Lee was, but maybe I could make sure that the men and women like Jarreau, who were heroes every day, had what they needed to help these kids.

  32

  Lee

  “Where the hell is he?” I growled, checking my watch for the umpteenth time between customers. How could he be doing this to me, to us again? How could I be letting him?

  Lines of people were doing the slow shuffle up and down the too-close aisles of the Akron Convention Center, and the people in the queue that ran past our booth for entry to the main auditorium were starting to get restless as word somehow spread that Mason was a no-show. Again.

  The week since Mason
had left had been a roller coaster. My instincts were telling me there was something really wrong here, that everything he was doing was out of character. But then, did I really know what Mason’s character was? I’d only known him a few days. Maybe what I had seen in that waiting room had been the real Mason, not the funny, sweet, talented man I’d been getting to know. As much as it bothered me, the situation at home hadn’t allowed me the chance to get to the bottom of it.

  The twins were still in the hospital. Sonny had gotten a nasty infection in his leg, most likely from the dirt and gravel at the accident site. Hicks was still having major memory problems.

  Mason had gone radio silent. I hadn’t heard a thing from him since he left the hospital. In the week since he’d been gone, I’d reached out to him several times, in several ways, but there was no response. I'd even gone so far as to try calling Lizzie and the Talent Management Group he worked with, but while the agency confirmed he would be back for the convention, as contracted I got no other information.

  I found Lizzie’s cell phone number in some of the paperwork the twins had in their office, but when I’d called her, I was told by her assistant that she was on a medical leave and they didn’t know when, or if, she would be back.

  I paused for a moment and considered the possibility that Mason’s “emergency” might have been real, and he was just pissed at me for not believing him. I knew Lizzie’s Mom had medical issues. That was why Mason had come on this trip alone. Could her mom have taken a turn for the worse? Could something have happened to Lizzie, herself? I really hoped not. Losing Lizzie would devastate Mason.

  My thoughts kept circling as I bagged books, just like they had for the last week. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of Bill Conyers standing nearby, his sweaty t-shirt sticking to his beer belly, a smug look on his greasy face as he caught my eye. I felt my eyes narrow automatically as I looked at him. I’d never really liked Bill, and the way he had fleeced the boys didn’t make me inclined to either. It was all I could do to not walk over and beat the smug look off his fat face.