Fool's Ride (The Jenkins Cycle Book 2)

by John L. Monk

  Lana, however, didn’t answer.

  One thing I wouldn’t do was shoot through the knob, for fear of hitting the woman. So I knocked again, harder, more insistently. I needed that door open, but again nobody answered.

  I ran back to Ernest’s door and opened it up. The death metal intensified, blaring from the speakers Lana had turned on before leaving me trapped there.

  “Brian!” Ernest shouted angrily, a confused expression on his face. “Get me out of this chair, dammit! What’s going on?”

  The woman in the other room was pleading, barely loud enough to make out: “No, please let me go. Please!”

  Ignoring Ernest, I looked through the window and saw Lana consulting a thick book resting on a stainless steel table, her back turned toward me.

  Somehow, the woman on the gurney was free from harm. But Lana had been busy in my time away. Across the woman’s belly and breasts, and at various places along her arms, legs, and face, Lana had drawn surgical lines with a black magic marker.

  Why would anyone…?

  Lana shut the book, apparently satisfied with whatever she’d been looking at. Then she put the magic marker down and picked up a scalpel from a tray with a bunch of clamps and odd tools I didn’t recognize. She smiled down at the sobbing woman and waved the scalpel dangerously close to her tear-streaked face. Then, with a sadistic smirk, she traced the scalpel down the woman’s cheek and neck, languidly across her chest, then down and around her exposed belly.

  Lana’s face appeared almost … not motherly, exactly, but enraptured. Fascinated by every scream or shudder or sign of terror she managed to elicit from her victim. She was savoring it, drawing it out like the world’s most demented foreplay.

  “No!” I shouted, but Lana didn’t hear me.

  I didn’t know if the gun had been loaded with hollow-points or not. If not, they’d pass through the window mostly straight, even if I hit it from an angle. Though I could name every head-of-state in the last hundred years, I wasn’t a ballistics expert, or even a ballistics novice. For all I knew, hitting the window with a hollow-point would shoot pieces of metal everywhere, and possibly hit the woman on the gurney.

  “Brian!” Ernest shouted. “What are you doing with that gun? Come help me!”

  When Lana lowered the knife to a point just below the woman’s bellybutton, along one of the black lines, I pointed the gun away from both of them and shot through the glass.

  The glass cracked into a million little pieces. This would have worked out perfectly, but the glass stayed mostly in place except for a three-inch circle where the bullet had passed. Now my view through the window went from a clear view of Lana and the woman to a hazy, fractured view of something tall and black next to something white and horizontal.

  With the window compromised, the death metal blared louder than ever, but not so loud as to occlude the woman’s wails of terror … wait, no, that was Ernest. I couldn’t hear much else through the ringing in my ears from the gunshot.

  Heedless of cutting myself, I bashed the gun hard into the broken glass, widening the hole. When I looked through it, the door was open and Lana was gone.

  The woman’s stomach was bloody.

  No, please!

  I ran into the hall and saw Lana stumbling as fast as her stupid dominatrix boots would carry her. I hesitated, locked between two decisions: try shooting at her or help the woman. Lana glanced back once, and the look on her face wasn’t fearful or shocked. It was hateful, livid, unholy.

  Lana turned the corner, and I went in to check the pregnant woman.

  Her belly had a jagged cut along the side, as if Lana had been startled by the gunshot and jumped. She was bleeding, but not a lot. Trying not to panic, I felt along the cut with my fingers. The scalpel had sunk a quarter inch in one spot, but no farther. She’d need stitches to close it. The bleeding worried me because, slow as it was, I didn’t know if it would stop.

  The woman said something I couldn’t hear over the music, which was driving me nuts. I found the switch on the wall Lana had flipped and turned it off.

  “—don’t kill me!” the woman shouted, too loudly in the now quiet room. “What did I do? Why am I here?”

  I wanted to ask her who brought her here. But with a crazy dominatrix on the loose, I needed to stay focused.

  It didn’t help that Ernest kept yelling, “Jacob! Lana!” and “Get me out of this fucking chair!”

  Ignoring Ernest and the crying woman, I glanced around for something to stop the bleeding. There weren’t any bandages in Lana’s surgical tray. From Lana’s warped perspective, I figured, the more blood the better so long as the woman didn’t bleed out and die too soon. Probably what those clamps were for. I didn’t know how to use them without causing more damage, so I took off my shirt, bunched it up, and pressed it against the cut. After holstering the gun, I worked the leather strap holding her right arm until she could pull her hand free.

  “Hold this until I get back,” I said.

  “Are you letting me go?” she said. “Who are you people?”

  For the first time, I got a good look at her. About thirty years old, she had long brown hair, a generous mouth, and big brown eyes. Though scared to death, she was coherent. And there was something in her eyes … A hidden strength. She’d do whatever it took to stay alive. She had a baby to protect, so of course she was brave.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Denise.”

  “Do you remember who took you? Was I one of them?”

  “What do you mean?” she said, and then her eyes widened. She sort of drew back from me, straining against the straps, shaking her head. “It was dark, I didn’t see anyone. Please, I won’t tell anyone about you or the others. Let me go and I’ll make something up. Nobody needs to know anything.”

  She thought I wanted to silence her.

  “No, Denise,” I said. “When you get out of here, I want you to tell everyone exactly what happened, just as it happened, and don’t leave me out of it. Now, keep that wound under pressure and stay quiet while I take care of a few things, okay?”

  I couldn’t protect her and hunt down Lana, too.

  After a brief hesitation, Denise nodded.

  Chapter Eleven

  I hadn’t explored beyond the basement and the main floor, and I hadn’t been outside since my arrival.

  When Lana ran down the hall, she’d gone left. Though the trail was cold, I followed after her—cautiously. This was her lair, and all Brian’s muscles and even his gun couldn’t help shake the nagging feeling I was walking into a trap.

  I peeked cautiously around the corner and saw the way was clear. A set of doors was open on the right, and another set stood closed on the left. The open doors led to a wide, ornate library with a circular couch in the middle and a few tables and chairs scattered around the room, but nobody was there. I turned to leave but then stopped. Wall-to-wall bookshelves in a library made sense, but one of the shelves was poking rudely my way.

  After a quick look up and down the hall, I stepped inside, shut the doors behind me, and walked over for a closer look. The bookcase was pulled out about a foot from the wall.

  “Wow,” I said. “An actual secret door.”

  My first secret door ever.

  Tentatively, I nudged it open. It moved slowly at first, then faster, as if counterbalanced. Beyond it, the way ahead was smooth and painted, which was somewhat of a letdown after all the movies I’d seen with stone-cut tunnels and spiral staircases delving deep into the earth. At the end of the passage, recessed lighting offered a dim view of the way ahead. Arguably gloomy.

  With my gun out in front of me, fearing an ambush, I followed the gloomy secret passageway to a stairwell descending four feet into the very depths of the mysterious mansion. The walls switched from painted drywall to gray concrete at the bottom, then opened into a twenty-by-twenty foot room that had been turned into a jail. Thick steel bars ran wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, and in the middle was a reinf
orced door. A large steel plate framed the lock, with a box around the mechanism to keep probing hands from tampering with it through the bars.

  “Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “An actual dungeon.”

  My first dungeon ever.

  Other than a small pile of clothes on the floor, the cell was empty, and there were no other exits.

  I needed to go after Lana, but I had reason to pause.

  In addition to being a dungeon, the room doubled as an armory. One wall had an assortment of pistols hanging from hooks. The other wall had a rack of AR-15s and pump-action shotguns. Either they hadn’t bought enough guns to fill the rack or one of them was missing. My problem was I couldn’t tell if it was a shotgun or a rifle because they were all mixed together. Beneath the rack was a lower shelf with loaded magazines and boxes of ammo, also more or less jumbled together.

  I thought about replacing my pistol with one of the rifles, but instead grabbed two additional magazines. Despite knowing what an AR-15 was, I’d never actually fired one, and I hadn’t had much experience with shotguns. Maybe if I got through this without dying I’d go shooting in that indoor range.

  One more thing to live for.

  Taking the steps two at a time back to the secret entrance, it occurred to me a rifle might not be the best choice for slipping around a house. Too bulky, unless Lana was also in the SWAT team and trained to storm houses. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a big scary military-looking weapon would appeal to someone like her, even though a shotgun made more sense in tight quarters.

  I peeked through the bookcase into the library, but nobody was there. Outside the library, I saw the doors across the hall were open, and I was pretty sure they’d been closed before. When I’d come down the hall, Lana had probably been listening for me. To her I was still Brian, the trained security guy with a gun, so she hadn’t risked opening the doors to take a shot.

  A cursory look in the room showed another bedroom, empty of people. Lana must have doubled back on me.

  “Denise,” I said, then turned and ran back.

  When I got to the corner, I popped my head quickly around and back again, then flinched when the wall behind me became perforated in a shatter of rifle fire. These weren’t simple AR-15s—they’d been modified fully automatic.

  That’s right. First they try to torture a pregnant lady and raise her baby as some sort of uber-villain in their war on good taste, and now this: illegally modified weapons.

  “Not on my watch,” I said, diving around the corner, twisting and shooting through the air like I’d seen this one time in a movie. Lana must have left after the initial burst, because nobody fell down and died or shot back. I did bang my elbow and get the wind knocked out of me, but I’d never looked cooler, and that was something.

  When I got to the torture room, I had a moment of panic: Denise was gone.

  I moved to Ernest’s room and saw her standing there naked, clutching my shirt to her stomach with one hand and jiggering with Ernest’s restraints with the other. She’d almost gotten one of them off.

  “Hey,” I said. “Quit it. What are you doing?”

  Denise threw her hands up and around and turned toward me, fingers hooked into claws, startled and frightened and ready to fight.

  “Stay away from me!” she shouted, her initial fear now tinged with fury.

  I peeked out the door, back to where Lana had run, but the hall was still empty.

  Looking from Denise to Ernest, then back again, I said, “You do know who he is, don’t you?”

  “That’s the man I was telling you about!” Ernest said, pointing a finger at me. “He kidnapped me and brought me here. He brought both of us here. If he harms me, you’re my witness!”

  “Leave us alone!” Denise yelled, taking a step back.

  Perhaps sensing his henchman had personal reasons for releasing Denise, Ernest had pressed the only advantage he had—he thought I wouldn’t hurt the woman. In his mind, if he could get her on his side, he’d have something he didn’t before. Maybe I fancied her, and if I hurt him I’d blow my chances.

  “Yes, my dear,” Ernest said to her, a devilish twinkle in his eyes. “This man knows we’re worth much more to him alive than dead—especially me. So what happened, Brian? Did you want more money? It’s yours—it was always yours, if you’d but come to me and asked. There’s no reason we can’t go our separate ways without butchering each other.”

  He smirked like he had me precisely where he wanted me.

  After I shot Ernest in the head (wet, messy, loud), I waited for the woman to stop screaming. I suppose I could have kept him alive so I could ask where he’d gone after I’d taken over his body. But if I really wanted to know that, I could always visit Nate Cantrell and ask him.

  My working theory was my rides went to a Great Wherever kind of place and waited in limbo, just like I did, and that was good enough for me. On some level, ignorance isn’t just bliss, it’s simply practical. Imagine if Ernest said he had not gone elsewhere after I’d taken over—that he’d been able to read my mind the whole time, or something awful like that? Then every future ride would be this weirdly self-conscious affair where I’d worry about being watched every time I went to the bathroom. No thank you.

  When Denise stopped screaming, I said, “What’s with you anyway? Ernest was the one who told me to bring you here.”

  “Who?” she said. “That man? Why did you shoot him?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “Right now I need to get you somewhere safe, okay? I’ll tell you about it later, but we need to move.”

  “But you shot him!”

  “Yes,” I said, “because he was evil. Now let’s go. Or do you want me to shoot you too?”

  I checked the hall again—still empty—then turned back and said, “You coming? Or do we wait for Lana to come back with her knife?”

  Reluctantly, Denise followed me out. When she saw we were heading to the library, she stopped in the hall, shook her head, and said, “I’m not going back in that cage. No way.”

  “Sure you are,” I said, pointing my gun at her. “If I wanted you dead you’d be dead. See? So it must mean I don’t want you dead. Your clothes are back there, there’s guns, lots of books to read—now please, can we get out of this hallway?”

  After we got to the dungeon/armory, Denise moved quickly to gather her clothes.

  “Stop looking at me!” she yelled, holding them modestly around her lady bits.

  Unbelievable.

  “I wasn’t looking at … never mind,” I said, and turned around.

  Not like I hadn’t seen everything already.

  When I sensed she was dressed, I turned back and said, “You stay here while I go find Lana and shoot her, okay? She’s a bad person, and I am too. Just because I saved you doesn’t mean I’m the good guy.”

  Denise snorted. “That’s pretty clear. Where’s the other one?”

  “Lana?”

  “No, the other man—the white one? Did you kill him too?”

  Wondering if she referred to Jacob or Sean, I said, “Did he have a big tattoo on his arm?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Why are we here?”

  “What am I, a philosopher?”

  “What?”

  “Now listen,” I said. “Lana’s up there, and she’s totally nuts. Those two—the dead guy in the wheelchair and her—they do this thing where they take nice people like you, torture them, get all hot and bothered about it, and then write horror novels and make movies out of them. You following?”

  She shook her head, no.

  Sighing, I said, “They torture people like you and then they write books about them. They make lots of money. Please just nod.”

  Denise nodded. “It’s messed up … whatever. All I want is to get back to my husband. I promise not to say anything, I swear. Just let me go.”

  “Would you stop saying that? I am letting you go. But when you get out of here, tell people the truth. That’s your
job—tell them what happened here. Somewhere on this property, the police are going to find a bunch of corpses. You were this close”—I held my fingers an inch apart—“to being one of those corpses.”

  She looked like she might start crying again, but kept it together.

  I grabbed one of the pistols, shoved in a loaded magazine, chambered a round, and put it on the floor where she could see it. Then I readied another pistol the same way and set that one down, too.

  “You see those guns?” I said. “They’re loaded, ready to fire. All you need to do is pick them up when I’m gone and keep them pointed the way we came from. Anyone comes in here you don’t like, you get to shoot them, okay?”

  Her demeanor changed subtly at the looming possibility of arming herself.

  “What about one of those shotguns?”

  “Just use these,” I said. “If I’m not back in an hour it’s because I’m dead and Lana is still alive. In that case, find a place to hide and shoot her when she walks by. Don’t leave the house. Big and slow as you are, she’ll cut you down with that rifle she has.”

  With new hope suddenly pulled away, her face tightened with premature grief.

  “For what it’s worth,” I said, “I’m sorry. You seem like a nice lady. I need to get up there now. Remember the guns—just pull the triggers, that’s all you have to do.”

  Without a backwards glance, I left her there and returned to the main floor.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I got to the foyer, I took the stairs and started my search on the second floor. It made sense to me that Lana would be in an upper-story window covering the driveway with her rifle, ready to pick off anyone who tried to get away in a car. It was the logical choice, even if she didn’t at times seem the most logical of women. Which isn’t to say I thought women weren’t logical, because that’d be sexist. Which I wasn’t. I’d all but banished any qualms about killing evil women, which was basically proof I wasn’t sexist.

  Buoyed by enlightened thoughts like these, I spent the next five minutes creeping around the upper floor. I cleared the rooms like they did in the cop movies, pointing the gun one way and then switching quickly the other way. After the first few, I gave that up and just poked my head in for a looksee, then moved on to the next room. Way simpler.