by Kylie Walker
“Donovan!” He turned and waited in front of the cell door. The correctional officer that stood in front of it opened the little food port and Jesse turned backwards and stuck his hands through. The cold steel handcuffs were slipped over his wrists. That had been a hard thing for him to acclimate to when he first got here. Being in a cage was bad enough, but being dressed in a jumpsuit and shackled and led around like an animal was the most dehumanizing thing of all. Once Jesse’s hands were cuffed, he stepped forward and the officer signaled to the officer in the control booth…the man with the gun. The officers on the floor didn’t carry any weapons other than a club and O.C. pepper spray. The buildings were all “covered” by a man up in a glass tower with a big gun.
The door slid open slowly and Jess waited until it was all the way open before he stepped out. The correctional officer held loosely onto Jesse’s arm as they walked along the tier. Some of his neighbors said good-bye and others gave him the finger. Jesse gave them all the finger in his mind. He knew he was better than this, better than all of them. He never should have been here in the first place. The bitch should have just died. She was going to wish that she had. He was looking forward to seeing her again. He could hardly wait to see the look on her face when she saw him. He wanted to see the realization there that she was a dead woman.
The officer pushed a button at the next door and that one slid open. Then they had to go through one more before they were outside. It always reminded Jesse of Get Smart with doors opening in front of you and closing behind you at the same time.
He was put into a van once they got outside and they drove through the jail to the other side where the sally port was. Any inmate that came or went had to go through the sally port and be accounted for. Jesse was walking out a free man. He wasn’t on probation or parole. His father had gotten him a sweet deal. It had ruined his law career dreams though, which really, really pissed him off. If he hadn’t already planned on killing the bitch that caused all of this, he would do it for that reason alone. He had a lot of reasons now and no one was going to stand in his way. It was his focal point. The rest of his life he would worry about later. He didn’t care about anything else right now. He had to accomplish that one goal first. He had to see Kelly’s lifeless body and then he could move on. He knew one thing for sure. No one would ever put him in a cage again. He would die first.
The van had to drive around to another side of the jail until they got to the front gates. Jesse saw the black BMW waiting in the visitor lot and he knew that it must be his father’s most recent car. Vince Donovan hadn’t been able to visit his son often. He had done all he could for his son by making sure he only served two years. It wouldn’t do for him to be traipsing in and out of the county jail as a visitor. It wouldn’t look good come election time. Jesse’s arrest and conviction was already a set-back for him, but like Jesse, his father always won somehow.
The van stopped and when Jesse stepped off, the officer unlocked his cuffs and took them off. He handed Jesse his box of personal belongings and said, “Don’t come back.”
“Don’t worry,” Jesse said.
He saw his father now, leaning against the shiny, freshly detailed car. Vince smiled as he came close and said, “I wouldn’t have recognized you on the street.”
Jesse grinned and hugged him. “Yeah, I had a little more time than usual to work out,” he said. Jesse was never a small guy. He was five eleven and before he went in he had weighed about 185. He’d been lean muscle then, without any fat at all on his body. Now he was bulky muscle. His chest was stretching the material of his large t-shirt and his biceps were bulging. He noticed his dad looking at his right one.
“What’s up with the tattoo?” Vince said with a raised eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going to ink up in there.”
“It’s just a band. I can cover it with long sleeves.” It commemorated the scar. The puncture wound Kelly had made in his arm had turned into an ugly scar. The scar was now the mouth of a viper and the viper wrapped around his now massive arm.
Vince opened the car door and Jesse went around to the other side. He stuffed his box into the back seat and took his seat on the passenger side. “This is nice. I haven’t been in a car…or on a leather seat for so long I forgot what it felt like.”
Vince put the car in gear and started out of the lot. “I had your car detailed for you and the apartment I rented for you is on Madison. It’s really nice, you’ll like it.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said. “Any other news for me?”
“I’m sure I have a lot of things I need to catch you up on, but let’s take it slow for now.”
“You know there is only one thing I’m interested in hearing.”
Vince suddenly pulled the car into the lot of a Denny’s restaurant. “Suddenly craving a Grand Slam?” Jesse asked him with a laugh.
“No, but there’s something I need to tell you.”
Jesse sat forward. He could tell by the look on the old man’s face that it was something about Kelly. “You found her?” he asked, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Sort of. More aptly, she found me.”
Jesse looked confused. “What? She found you?”
“I was at the fundraiser for Peter Ross’s kid and the hospital that I go to every year. I got stepped on by this tiny little woman with nice curves, light brown hair and stunning blue eyes.”
“Is this leading anywhere?” Jesse asked, looking bored already.
“At first I didn’t recognize her but it was her.”
“Kelly? With blue eyes and brown hair?”
“She calls herself Chloe Green now. She was there with Derek Stark, as his date.”
“What the fuck?” His date? Little slut! “Do you think Stark knows who she is?”
“I got the feeling that he didn’t. When she saw me, she freaked out. She ran out of the party and he ran after her. He looked completely confused.”
Jesse smiled again. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch. It must have been fate.”
His father looked worried. “Jesse, I thought about not telling you. You really need to stay away from this girl. You’re going to end up right back in jail, prison this time…”
“No,” Jesse said, “I won’t ever come back here. They’ll have to kill me.”
“Great! Fucking great, Jesse! So you either end up in prison, or dead? Do you know what it has done to your mother that you were in here for the past two years? Your life is permanently affected by this and so is ours even with a misdemeanor. The next time they will charge you with a felony and I won’t be able to help. Or you’ll be dead. Imagine what it would do to us if you were dead, Jesse. Think about someone else for a change!”
Jesse didn’t want to fight with his father. He needed him. The old man was his only source of money right now and he would need plenty of that while he was looking for her and carrying out his plans. “I’m sorry, Dad. You’re right. I just want to talk to her. I want to tell her that I’m sorry I hurt her. It was one crazy night. I was drunk and I never meant for any of it to happen, you know that. I know that she knows that. She’s probably ready to apologize herself. I love her. I need her. You must understand that a little bit. You told me about seeing her.”
His father understood that you had to keep your women in their place. Jesse knew that he wouldn’t condone him killing her though, no matter how much she needed it. He would stand by him when it was all over though. Jesse knew that without a doubt.
“I told you because I know that you won’t let this go and you’ll be out there looking for her on your own. I don’t want you getting into any trouble, Jesse. I don’t want you locked up again…or worse. There are so many other girls out there, Jesse. What is it about this one?”
“I love her,” he said. “I want her.” Jesse leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes. He was finished talking about it to his father. He knew what needed to be done and his hands almost ached with the desire to wrap themselves around that skinny neck
. Once he watched the life almost drain out of her, he would let her breathe, so that she was still alive when he cut her insides out.
The night they had taken him away in cuffs he was confident that she would come to her senses and drop the charges. She knew that she was nothing without him. She had to know that she would be better off dead. She was walking around wasting oxygen while he was rotting in that fucking cell. It was so hard when she’d actually showed up in court to testify against him… so hard to sit there and not jump out of his seat and grab the mousey little cunt by her hair and slam her face into the floor. She’d lost her fucking mind that night. She stuck a nail file in his arm. Who the fuck did she think she was? It was like she’d been begging him to kill her. She didn’t have to beg for that though, that was the plan all along. He did want to hear her beg him for her life. That sound would be a sweet one.
Jesse thought about how she had sat there in court and cried and acted like she was so fucking innocent. She’d been doing things for years to purposely piss him off. He always knew that she liked to cause trouble and then act like she was a victim. If she wanted to be a victim, he would make her one. She was going to be the “victim” of a homicide as soon as he found her.
He’d also been thinking about that little slut friend of hers, Chantelle. Kelly called her that night when she finally figured out that she had pushed him too far. That bitch had gotten up in court and talked about his and Kelly’s relationship like she knew anything. She was the one who had called the cops. If she’d never done that, Kelly would be a rotting corpse by now. Jesse smiled. He might just find that bitch first and once he was done teaching her a lesson about minding her own fucking business, then, he would find Kelly and set things right with her. He could feel the tickle of anticipation in his gut. He was so close.
He thought about Derek Stark. He hadn’t even seen the guy since they were both teenagers. The last thing he’d heard about him other than the stupid commercials for his real estate business was that his wife died in a car accident or something. That was too fucking bad for him. Hopefully he wasn’t too attached to his new little slut because that one was about to die too.
PART THREE
CHAPTER ONE
“Chloe…?” Derek reached out to put his hand on her shoulder. Chloe pulled away from him again but this time through gritted teeth and she spat out, “Don’t touch me!”
Derek held up his hands, palms up and said, “Okay, I’m not touching…but you need to tell me what the hell is going on. What happened in there?”
She put a hand over her mouth because she still felt like she wanted to vomit and the other one was still firmly gripping the tree. Her eyes were wide open, but she wasn’t really seeing anything, it was like darkness had descended upon her and taken away most of her senses. She was left with fear and anxiety and sadness…practically paralyzed by it. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she’d held them back for so long, it was like they instinctively knew not to fall. They just gathered there and caused her eyes to burn and her contacts to swim in their depths. Her breathing was ragged and uneven and she was beginning to feel lightheaded from the lack of oxygen getting to her brain. She knew that Derek was talking to her, but she wasn’t really processing what he was saying. There was too much stimulation going on in her head.
“Chloe…do you want me to take you home?” Derek had lowered and softened his voice. He was talking to her as he might a mental patient that was standing on a ledge.
She lowered her hand a little. Her arms were beginning to feel numb now, as were her legs. All of her blood was racing to her head. She was in a shock-like state and everything around her was a little foggy…out of focus. It took everything in her but she finally managed to breathe out a “Yes.”
“Okay, let’s get our things…”
She shook her head from side to side. Her eyes were wide with fear and the pulse in her neck was throbbing.
Derek looked frightened as he said, “Okay, that’s fine, I’ll go get them. The car we were going to use for the weekend is here. Did you still want to stay in New York tonight?”
“No! No, I need to go home. Just take me to the train station. You can come back to the party. I’ll be fine…I’m fine…” she was concentrating hard on calming herself down.
She couldn’t lose her head. She had to stay focused and alert. Vince Donovan was here…and Derek knew him. He didn’t just know him, he was friendly with him. What if he knew Jesse too?
“I’d rather take the train,” she said. Her body was calming down, but there was still the trace of a little tremor in her voice.
“Chloe, you’re not fine, not even close. I’m not sending you home alone. Let me put you in the car and I’ll get your things. I’ll drive you back to Rhode Island tonight…but I’m not leaving you alone.”
She wanted to argue with him. She didn’t want to be alone in a car with him all the way to Rhode Island. She wanted even less to be here where the man who had spawned the monster who wanted her dead was. She finally nodded. Her breaths were coming too fast again and she couldn’t seem to get a handle on them. She was scared to death that she was going to pass out. She needed to sit down.
Derek put his arm out to her and against her better judgment, she took it. They were far out in the country and she didn’t know anyone here but him. She was more or less at his mercy. He led her over towards the valets and he left her standing near the podium they used while he went to talk to one of them.
When he came back he said, “I’m going to go get our things and I’ll be right back.” She nodded and with what looked like real concern in his pretty blue eyes he said, “Are you okay?”
She nodded again. It was a lie.
Chloe watched him go and a few minutes later one of the valets said, “Excuse me, Miss? This is Mr. Stark’s car.” She looked at it. It was a shiny black SUV. She thought maybe that’s what he was driving the day he showed up at the park…right after she first met him. She wasn’t sure though and her paranoid mind started telling her that it might be a trick.
“Can I help you in, Miss?”
“No. I’ll wait for Mr. Stark,” she said.
What if she got in and they locked the doors and took her prisoner to give her to Jesse? She knew her thoughts were out of control. She was being paranoid…but with good reason, she thought. She felt like everyone was looking at her suddenly, even the valets. If she didn’t get out of here soon, she was going to have a complete breakdown. She looked back at the valet who offered to help her into the car. He was having a conversation with another man and he had his back to her. She made a split second decision and walked quickly over to the driver’s side of the SUV. She was obscured from the valet’s vision over here. She quietly pulled open the door and was just about to slip in when she heard Derek’s voice behind her, “You were going to ditch me and steal my car?”
She jumped and turned to look at him. She thought about lying, but decided it would take too much effort and she really didn’t care what he thought at this point. She just lifted her chin and looked at him defiantly. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he should frown or smile. His brow was furrowed but there was a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Come on, I’ll help you in the other side,” he said.
“I can do it myself, thanks.”
She turned and walked around the back of the SUV. Derek left her alone and by the time she climbed up into the other side, he was behind the wheel. He sat her wrap and her purse between them and put the car in gear. As they drove away from the house, Chloe could have sworn that she saw Vince watching them from the door of the tent. Her stomach lurched again and she hoped that she could make it all the way back to Rhode Island without getting sick.
“Chloe, are you sure you’re up for a three hour drive? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” she told him again.
Derek pulled the SUV onto the Interstate and once they merged into the steady traffic he said, �
��You can keep saying that, but I don’t believe you. Something happened back there at the party and I don’t understand why you won’t tell me. I thought we were okay…you were beginning to trust me…”
Chloe snorted, “Yes, a huge mistake on my part!” She said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? What did I do?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Never mind? You’re acting like you saw a ghost and somehow I’m getting blamed for it. You at least owe me an explanation, don’t you think?”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she said.
She was feeling angry and mean and Derek was the only one around. She knew he didn’t deserve her wrath…or at least she still wanted to believe that he didn’t, but she didn’t have anyone else to direct it at.
“Fine, you don’t “owe” me anything. But can you at least understand why I would be concerned about you and wondering what I may have done to prompt this sudden hostility?”
“How do you know Vince Donovan?”
“What? Vince? That’s what this is about?”
