Phish NET Stalkings

by Denise Robbins

  “What? What? I didn’t do her.” Bob sniffed and his lip quivered. It was everything Cooper could do to prevent himself from choking a full confession out of the man. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere and he knew it. Patience. Patience and timing, and Bob would spill his guts.

  “Why should I believe your ass? I’ve got you on assault, and without a doubt I will put you away on several accounts of rape and murder. Why should I believe you? What’s one more account of assault?”

  “But I didn’t do it,” he screamed. “It was her!”

  “Her, who?” he pressed, shoving his arm against the man’s chest.

  “My ex-girlfriend,” he wailed. “It was all her idea. Jane. Jane was her target. I helped. It was the only way she would take me back.”

  “You want to tell me about your ex-girlfriend?” he asked in a friendly man-to-man tone, lessening the pressure on his chest. Just two buddies confiding in each other. “You want to tell me? Go ahead.”

  “Jane,” Bob simpered. “She was actually nice, but she rejected me too.” His voice rose taking on an angry tone. “But that’s okay, she was just a setup.”

  The hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck stood at attention. “A setup? What do you mean?”

  “It was all Amy’s idea. She was jealous so she asked me to be Jane’s date.” Bob shook his head. “I swear Amy loves Jane more than she loves me.”

  “Amy who?” He swallowed already knowing the answer, but he had to have it confirmed.

  “Bouchercon. She’s with her right now.”

  “Fuck!” Cooper sprang away from the man, spun on booted heels, and started to sprint. “The Bouchercon Hotel,” he yelled to Jack. “Let’s go.”

  Thanks to the fucking skirt, Jack beat him to the car, started the engine, and was pulling away from the curb before Cooper yanked the door shut.

  “Go!”

  The car lurched forward as Cooper reached below the seat and found his cell phone. With the punch of a number and the talk button, he waited for the phone to ring.

  “Come on, baby. Answer the phone.” Closing his eyes, he prayed for Jane to answer her phone.

  When he got her voicemail, he hung up and tried again. “Damn!”

  He called a second time then left a voicemail. “Jane, honey, it’s me. Listen carefully. It’s Amy. I don’t know why, but Amy is the one. Please stay away from her until I get there. I’m on my way!”

  As Jack turned the corner on squealing tires, he hit redial and this time someone picked up. He started to say something then stopped when he heard, “Amy, what are you doing with that gun?”

  His heart took a nosedive as he put the phone on speaker so he and Jack could hear everything as they sped their way to Jane.

  Hang on, baby. I’m on my way.

  FORTY

  “Don’t answer that.” Amy shoved the pistol in her face. “Lock the door and get over here.” She waved her gun in the direction of David.

  Jane pulled her hands from her pocket and held them up. She hoped whoever had called could hear what was being said.

  “Amy, what are you doing with that gun? You don’t want to hurt David.”

  The evil look in Amy’s emerald eyes sent shivers up Jane’s spine. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re what’s wrong,” she yelled. “You and Mr. Green Jeans over here.”

  “Amy.”

  She whipped the pistol around and held it out, aimed straight for David’s heart. Jane’s own heart dropped to her stomach and she instinctively stepped in front of David.

  “See… See how you protect him. You love him more than you love me.”

  “What?” she asked in stunned surprise.

  “What you have you owe to me,” she told her, thumping a thumb against her chest. “If I hadn’t taught you about antiques you would not be in the position you are today. You would never have met David, and you would not own the business that made you a millionaire.”

  “Amy.” What should she say? How could she get her to put the gun down?

  “If it weren’t for him you would have depended on me and we would have been in business together. You would have loved me!”

  “I do love you,” Jane implored. “You’re my best friend.”

  “If I’m your best friend then how come you don’t buy me wicked ass expensive presents like you did David, huh? Huh?”

  Jane swallowed, unsure of how to answer Amy without making the situation worse.

  Amy flipped open the lid of the box that held David’s present. “When Bob told me about the flea market where you had gone that day, I knew what you had gone for. I knew you had found that special gift for David.”

  “Bob? You know Bob?” Disbelief tinged her voice as she reached into her pocket and pressed the volume up button on her phone.

  Amy bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. “Oh, yes. When you decided to do the online dating service, I decided it was the perfect time to take my revenge. I told Bob how to play you.”

  Jane started to take a step forward and stopped when David laid a hand on her arm. She shoved the bile back down her throat and willed her fear and anger aside. She had to think.

  “I knew Bob was a hacker because he hacked my computer once. He put that Loverspy software crap on my computer and knew my every move. That was when I broke up with him.”

  “You dated him?”

  “See,” Amy whined. “If you cared about me and not him you would have known who I dated.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He was just a distraction until I could get your attention. Then he was a means to an end.”

  “What end, Amy?”

  “This end,” she said with a wave of the gun hand. “The end where David dies and I comfort you. Then you rely on me. You bring me into your company and we become partners.”

  Amy stepped forward, reached out with her free hand and stroked her face. Jane swallowed a knot of disgust and fear.

  “You want me to be your partner, don’t you? You love me. You said so.”

  “I do love you.” She agreed hoping Amy would let down her guard. She turned her face in the palm of Amy’s hand and kissed it. “I always have.”

  Amy stepped back, her gaze never straying. She reached into the box sitting on the table, riffled sightlessly through the tissue paper and extracted a ceramic frog.

  “Jane,” David murmured. “You shouldn’t have,” he said and she could hear the tears in his voice.

  She reached behind her back and grasped his hand as much to reassure herself as him.

  “Isn’t that touching!” Amy snarled and cracked the frog against the table. It shattered into tiny pieces of ceramic.

  “You!” David shoved Jane aside.

  As she fell to the floor, the gun went off. The sound echoed in her head. “No! David!” She reached for him as the door slammed open behind her.

  At that moment, Jane shoved herself up and threw herself at Amy. Together they tumbled to the floor.

  “Jane!” Cooper yelled, his heart in his throat. He rushed into the room and fell on top of Amy, wrenching the gun out of her hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  Jane shook her head. “How did you?”

  “Your phone.”

  “Get an ambulance in here!” Jack shouted into his radio.

  “David!” Jane screamed and turned her attention, falling upon the bleeding man while he handcuffed Amy.

  “No! You can’t do this!” She kicked at him.

  After getting Amy to her feet, he thrust her into the hands of two uniformed police officers then turned his attention to Jane.

  “Was this your costume for the party?” Jane asked. “I don’t even want to know what you have underneath that skirt,” she said and broke into tears.

  As the paramedics entered, he wrapped her against his body and reassured her that David would be all right. She prayed he wasn’t making empty promises.

  When the ambulance loaded David into the back of the bus, he helped Jane into it and sen
t her to be with her friend while he took care of the two people that had wreaked havoc on his little town. On his woman’s life.

  FORTY-ONE

  Hours later, Jane left the hospital and David’s bedside to go to the police station. Unbelievable. She was walking into a police station. Standing at the entrance, she took a deep breath and steeled herself against the onslaught of badges, and jerked open the heavy glass doors. At the dispatch desk, she asked for the Chief of Police. Not fifteen seconds later, Cooper came out and greeted her.

  “Jane,” he whispered as he took her into his arms and pulled her in tight for a hug. “How’s David?”

  She shoved back tears and spoke into his chest. “The doctor says he’ll be fine. The bullet lodged in his shoulder, but they got it out. Relatively minor, according to the surgeon. Minor? Can you believe that?” she sniffled.

  Cooper chuckled and brushed his hand over her hair. “I’m so glad, sweetheart.”

  He wrapped an arm over her shoulder and escorted her to his office. “You didn’t have to come down now but I appreciate that you did. Your statement is just a formality since, thanks to your quick thinking, Jack and I heard everything.” He kissed her forehead and set her in a chair across from his desk. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know it was you on the phone. I just hoped someone would hear the call and understand what was going on.”

  “And call the police?” Cooper offered with a smile.

  She swallowed the unshed tears and answered. “Yes. And call the police. I’m so grateful, Cooper. If it weren’t for you and Jack showing up when you did I don’t know what would have happened. David might be dead instead of in the hospital where all kinds of female nurses are already doting on him. I could have been killed.”

  She grasped the hand that he had laid on her shoulder. She looked up into his steel-blue eyes. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “I don’t want your thanks, Jane. I did my job to protect and serve. It’s what I do.”

  He was going to make this difficult, she thought. How was a woman supposed to apologize when a man was so stoic?

  Taking another deep breath, she took a leap of faith. “David told me something this morning and I realized he was right.”

  “What was that?” he asked as he crouched down in front of her, taking her hands in his.

  “He told me I knew in here.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “And in here.” She pressed the same hand to her head. “If I just listened.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Oh, Cooper.” She threw her arms around his neck and held on tight, held on for dear life. “I love you. David knew it. You knew it. I just needed to let myself know it.”

  With his thumb and forefinger, Cooper lifted her chin until her gaze met his. “Was that really so hard?”

  Her smile was tremulous. “You have no idea.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Is there any wonder why I love you?”

  Jane shrugged and gave a quiet chuckle of her own. “Do you forgive me for doubting you this morning? For not trusting you?”

  “Hmm. I could be persuaded.”

  Jane’s eyes widened with suspicion. “How?”

  “If you love me for the rest of your life.”

  For a second, her heart stopped and then it kicked into overtime. She glared at him with a narrow-eyed gaze. “What does that mean?”

  “I want you to marry me Jane—Cleopatra,—whatever name you choose to go by. Look at me. I’m down on my knees. Will you marry me?”

  A bubble of laughter escaped as Jane threw herself at Cooper and kissed him. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said and kissed him again, only softer, sweeter, and with tongue.

  * * * *

  Later, after they had made up, she wrote out a statement as to the events, and then Cooper walked her to the front of the station. As they wended their way to the dispatch center, rounds of applause greeted them.

  “Congratulations!”

  “Congratulations, Chief!”

  Jane tugged on his arm and they stopped in front of the dispatch desk. “Did you tell them?” she whispered fiercely.

  “No.”

  “How did they know?”

  He shrugged. “You got me.”

  She eyed him with skepticism then turned away as he handed the desk clerk her statement. A glass case of pictures and plaques caught her attention. She moved away from the throng of people and went to stand in front of the case. It was a display of awards and recognition for a job above and beyond or of bravery in the line of duty.

  A picture of the older police officer caught her eye. He was saluting the camera and on his arm, she saw the wings of a hawk and a spider. Her heart stopped and her stomach bottomed out. Her mouth went dry, and when Cooper put his arms around her waist, she couldn’t speak. She looked at him in wide-eyed horror then back at the photo before she pointed at it in silence.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded but didn’t mutter a word.

  “Okay. Go home, Jane. Go to my home and wait there.” He pulled the keys from his pocket and shoved them into her palm. “Go inside and lock the door. Do you still have your 9-millimeter?”

  “Yes. In the car.”

  “Lock yourself in the house and stay there with the gun trained on the door. That’s probably overkill, but better safe than sorry. Stay there until I call or come for you. Do you hear me?”

  Absently, she bobbed her head up and down. Then she spun around and ran out of the police station. Her heart was racing, pounding out of control. Once inside the car, she contemplated her next move. Her bag was in the trunk. She could take off, just bolt for nowhere, and disappear.

  Resting her head on the steering wheel, she thought about it, truly considered running away. Then David’s words rang in her mind. “It’s time you stop running, stand up and fight for what is yours.”

  “Damn straight!” she announced to the empty car and slammed her fist against the steering wheel. She put the key in the ignition and started out of the lot to do just as Cooper asked, to trust him and let him do his job to protect and serve.

  At Cooper’s, she hefted her duffle out of the trunk, rushed up the stairs, and let herself in. Once inside, she pulled out her CZ 9-millimeter, took off the safety and tucked it beneath the pillow by her side as she took a seat on the sofa. She riffled through the duffle and looked at what her life had almost become.

  “A shell of a life,” she muttered and extricated the contents. When she got to her bear, she paused, hugged it to her chest then sniffed it. After all these years, she could still smell her mother.

  As the perfume wafted through her senses, her mother’s words played in her mind. Eight years old, her mother used to say, “Cleo, no matter where you go, you take your teddy bear with you. A piece of me will always be with you and protect you.”

  She smiled at her innocence, believing something so unbelievable. Resting her head against the back the sofa, she replayed her mother’s words again. “The bear will protect me.”

  How?

  Sitting up, Jane examined the bear. “The bear will protect me.” Her mother wouldn’t have said such a ridiculous thing if she hadn’t believed it was true.

  How? She checked all the seams on the bear’s stitching. Nothing appeared to have been re-sewn. She slid her fingers up behind the heart the bear held in his paws. Her heart stopped. Flipping the heart over in the bear’s hands, she saw what her fingers had run across. “A zipper.”

  Blood whooshed in her ears, sounded like the inside of a seashell. Dizziness threatened, but she pushed it aside and eased the tiny zipper down and open. Something sprang out of its depths. She stopped and reached in, tugging the hidden treasure to freedom.

  “Holy shit! A FLASH drive.” Jane rushed to her purse, snatched it up and brought it back to the couch, extricating the laptop as she moved. In her haste, she fumbled the computer but managed not to drop the thing.
She groped for, found, and pushed the power button, waited for it to come to life.

  As soon as she logged in, she stuffed the drive into a USB slot and waited for the little application to come up and ask her what she wanted to do next.

  She clicked the option to view the files. There were two. One was a video and the other a text file. Nerves shook her fingers as she used the mouse to double-click on the video.

  Immediately, the screen filled with an image of her mother. “Oh. You were so beautiful.” She reached out and touched the screen, stroked her mother’s hair. Tears slid down her cheeks as her mother offered words of love and encouragement. Why hadn’t she known this existed before? She could have used this so many times over the last twenty years.

  She swiped at the tears and listened as her mother explained the other file on the drive. Her mother told of police corruption, not just within the department, but across the state and multi-state vicinity. She documented every case that came across her desk and all the men involved in the trafficking of young children, the departmental cover-up and involvement.

  Jane gasped as the words sunk in. The selling of young children for perverse reasons. She ran for the bathroom and made the toilet just in time to empty the contents of her stomach.

  “Your mother was a beautiful woman,” a low voice whispered from the dark.

  She shrieked and straightened.

  “I hated like hell to kill her.”

  “How did you…”

  “Know where you were,” he finished. “I was at the station. I had just walked in when I saw you. I would have known you anywhere, Cleopatra Jane. You look just like Cassandra. Then I saw you fixated on the case and knew you had recognized me.”

  He aimed a gun at her chest. “You didn’t know, did you?”

  She shook her head. “Not until just now when I saw my mother’s video. Is that what you were after all these years, Lieutenant Callahan?”

  He nodded. “I never wanted to kill a little girl. I never wanted to kill Cassandra. I loved her like a daughter.”