The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 1-3: Redemption Thriller Series 7-9 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  A moment later, the water shut off. That was when I realized I’d been moved to a chair, my arms tied behind me, my feet tied to the bottom of the chair. I was still naked. But I could finally breathe. My brain begged and pleaded for more oxygen, and my lungs pumped as hard as they could go.

  A stinging sensation on my stomach. With blurry eyes, I looked for the man, but he had disappeared. Dropping my head, I could see cut marks on my torso, straight lines at different angles. Shifting my sights to the concrete, I watched blood chase water as it searched for a drain.

  My blood.

  The searing pain was unbearable—worse with each passing second—and I couldn’t help but scream with what little energy I had. The monster had carved me like a turkey while I was passed out. What else had he done? I didn’t feel like I’d been raped, but it was difficult to differentiate a real injury or an imagined one, given my battered body and mind.

  I looked up and saw what looked like a window in front of me, covered partially by something I couldn’t quite make out. Was there any way I could get to it, somehow break the glass and jump out? I might shred my skin, but it didn’t matter. It was a possible escape.

  I leaned forward, then slammed my back against the chair. The front legs lifted off the floor, then scooted forward a couple of inches.

  There was hope.

  I repeated the same exercise four more times until I paused to catch my breath. I’d moved about a foot. I had no idea when he’d return, and I still had another six feet to go. I kept going, throwing my body into the chair repeatedly.

  Another foot.

  A smidge of optimism sprouted inside, spawning more energy. I did it six more times and moved another foot.

  “Keep going, Ivy.”

  A hand touched my shoulder.

  “You never had a chance.”

  The male voice sounded strange, as if he had a cold. Or maybe it had been altered somehow.

  “Why are you doing this? I’ve done nothing to hurt anyone,” I said, but I could only hope this person didn’t know Russell.

  He chuckled twice. “Over time you will learn who and why. For now, we continue our festival of torture.”

  “What?” A wave of panic erupted inside. I spit up more water from the earlier blast, then I felt the chair jerk forward. He was moving me closer to the window, right up against something hard and plastic.

  More ropes around my body, tied to hooks on the wall. I couldn’t move an inch in any direction. Then a motor flipped on, and I felt chilled air blowing against my body. It was a window air conditioner.

  In only seconds, the chill invaded my bones, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

  “W…w…w…why are you doing this?” I begged to know.

  Then I heard a door slam.

  “He…hello?”

  I only heard the wet hum of the AC unit. Seconds turned into minutes, and from there I lost track of time. The parts of my body that I could see turned blue, my blood moving through my veins like oily sludge. Coherent thoughts were a distant memory. At some point, I couldn’t feel a thing on my entire body. I only wanted to die.

  39

  Cristina wasn’t the type to sit around, hold hands, and pray to something invisible that a miracle would take place. Nothing like that had saved her in the past.

  She turned the sound up on her burner cell phone and texted Stan and Zahera to call her if they heard any news about Ivy. Then she took to the streets. It was all she knew, and it was a path that Stan and his legion of detectives could never follow. They had few if any real contacts in that part of the world.

  With a stiff northerly breeze blowing right in her face, she headed up Clark Avenue, the bright lights of the Spurs basketball arena creating a glow on the dark horizon. She snaked in and out of every alley, stopping to talk to people she knew and people she didn’t, asking if they had any knowledge or even a rumor of a man wanting to pull off a kidnapping.

  She mostly only received head shakes, although one man asked for a cigarette in return for what he knew. She found one buried in her backpack and promptly gave it to him. But he didn’t know anything. He started piecing together a web of lies that even had him confused.

  “Can I use any of what you’re telling me to find my friend?”

  “I wouldn’t take it to the bank, if that’s what you’re asking,” he exclaimed. Then he grabbed his grocery cart and padded down the alley.

  Undeterred, her quest to find Ivy or some evidence of her kidnapping continued. She must have stopped another two dozen times, asking every person if they had anything to share. After striking out on the first fifty people, she started offering a reward—a thousand bucks to anyone who had solid evidence that would lead her to Ivy. She didn’t have the cash, but she’d worry about that later. Unfortunately, that offer only brought about more outlandish theories. One woman mentioned seeing Spock from Star Trek a day earlier and wondered if he might be involved.

  She didn’t bother telling her that the original actor, Leonard Nimoy, had died.

  She reached a section of the city with bars and clubs. Every hundred feet or so, the type of music would switch. Traditional Latin salsa to rhythm-and-blues, and then past a heavy-metal club. She cut across the street, looking to put the yuppie crowd behind her. At the next light she turned right. A jazz band from the Corner Club hit the last few chords. She could hear claps and whistles through the door that had just opened.

  “Hey,” she heard behind her. She didn’t bother turning around. There were twenty other people near her, and she knew no one in this crowd.

  A second later, a hand grabbed her arm. On instinct, she jabbed her elbow behind her and swung her fist around. It caught nothing but air, the man ducking out of the way.

  “Hold on, I don’t want to fight you. I want to talk to you.”

  Her hand was still rolled into a fist. “You a perv or something?”

  “No, no,” he said, backing up a step. “You know Ivy, don’t you?”

  She took hold of his wrist to keep him close. “How do you know who I am?”

  “Your picture is on TV, media websites, even the San Antonio Express-News.”

  She could feel a wave of heat wash over her face. “Why?”

  “Last night, catching Russell Gideon.”

  “Okay, two minutes of fame and all that. What do you care?”

  “Sorry, I should have led with this. My name is Saul, and I work at the law firm that sued CPS and Ivy for Tommy’s death.”

  She moved under his chin, poking her finger in his chest as she said, “You’re scum. Why you stopped me I have no idea, but Ivy is missing now.”

  He took another step back. “I know. Just listen to me for a second, will you?”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Ivy and I had drinks the other night…and let’s just say she’s quite a woman.”

  This Saul fellow was attractive, but he was the enemy. “Maybe she was just trying to get inside information from you.”

  He paused, shuffling his feet. “It’s possible, but we’re getting off topic. I’m devastated that she was kidnapped. And I think—”

  “Okay, well, you’re keeping me from trying to find her.”

  “Listen, Cristina,” he said, grabbing hold of her arms, “I think I saw the man who kidnapped Ivy.”

  “How? When? And why haven’t you come forward before now?”

  He let go of her arms and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes. And while he had these dreamy, honey eyes, dark circles hung under them.

  He took in a breath. “Last night, I was sitting in my car on the street by her apartment complex, waiting for her to come home. It got to be late…really late. The streets were empty, until I saw this one guy walk by around one thirty or so. He stopped and looked at the complex, and then disappeared into the park. I thought nothing of it at the time, but as I’ve thought more about it, I’m wondering if I saw her kidnapper.”

  She turned away, weig
hing the story, then shifted her attention back to him. “You were there for a booty call?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “No, it’s not that at all. I just feel like we have this connection. I’d been out with a few friends, and I wanted to talk to her.”

  She wondered if he could be reaching out, creating this fictional story, just so the cops didn’t look at him as a suspect. But what if he was right? “Description?”

  “A big, burly guy. Maybe six-five, scraggly blond hair, a scruffy beard. And his clothes didn’t match.”

  “You think he was homeless?”

  “Kind of looked like he didn’t have much money.”

  She took a glance up at the red bar sign.

  “If you’re so upset about all of this, why are you hanging out at a bar?”

  “I’ve been looking for her ever since word got out that she was missing. I love the jazz music in there, and I needed a place where I could think things through. That’s when I recalled that random guy walking by.”

  “You’ve got all the answers, it seems.”

  “Hey, I knew it wouldn’t look good if I went to the cops and told them I was waiting for Ivy outside her place late at night.”

  “You’re right about that.” She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen.

  “Who are you calling?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Ghostbusters, dude. Who else?”

  40

  The first sensation I felt was something metal and sharp burrowing into my skin. I forced my heavy lids open. I was flat on my stomach on top of a wooden table, a cone of light covering me. I tried turning my head, but restraints kept me locked in the same position.

  “What are you doing?”

  I heard metal clank and then the feeling of a cotton towel against my lower back. It stung like hell.

  “Don’t want you to get an infection,” he said in monotone.

  “Who are you?” My jaw ached from the tension of nearly being frozen to death.

  No response.

  And then the digging started again. Using a sharp blade, he cut through my skin. I held my breath as long as possible, but I could actually hear the layers of skin peel apart. Then I let it all out, and I screamed until nothing was left in me.

  The sick freak paused, giving me a moment. My chest rose and fell rapidly, and I wondered if he was finished.

  His hand gripped my ass, then started massaging it. My body clenched. Maybe this would be the time that he assaulted me. I kept my mouth shut, only because I didn’t want to provoke him. But he began to move lower, his fingers touching every part of me. Squeezing my eyes shut, more tears spilled out, running down my face. I couldn’t help but think back to when I was younger and this type of perverted act happened all too frequently. I’d thought that was in my past.

  Wrong.

  Who was this guy? Outside of the person who left the note, I had no true enemies that I was aware of. He had to be the one who had broken into my place and tried to make me think that Zorro was dead. Suddenly, the back part of the table collapsed, and my feet dropped to the floor. Then he spread my legs and tied them to something that felt like wood.

  I heard a zipper, and a moment later flesh touched my inner thigh. I could hear him breathing faster, a phlegmy sound. He smacked my ass, and then again. A few grunts. He sounded frustrated. And then the touching stopped.

  My legs were untied, the table lifted back into a horizontal position, restraints around my legs and torso. And then he went back to carving me like a pumpkin on my lower back.

  I couldn’t help but cry out in pain. He didn’t tell me to shut up. We had to be in a remote location, away from people. Which only meant no one would hear me. No one would help me.

  He cut my flesh for an eternity. I begged him to stop, the agonizing pain so unbearable it felt like my head would burst into a million pieces. I bit into my lip, hard. Blood filled my mouth, but I chomped down with even more force.

  Finally, the cutting ended. I heard him jostling around the table, but I didn’t bother looking. Exhausted, I dropped my face onto the wooden surface. I was lying in my pool of tears. A few moments passed, and there was no sound. Had he left the room? Opening my eyes, I saw a cell phone sitting on a table in front of me. I pulled my arm up…and it came loose from the restraints.

  This was my chance to call for help.

  I reached for the phone, but my fingertips could just touch the metal edge. I tried to shake my body forward, each lunge moving me a hair closer. I grunted and kept rocking forward. My knuckle reached the phone, and I slid closer and picked it up, my heart now racing out of sheer excitement. Turning my head so I could see the screen, I used my free hand to dial Stan’s number, and then I tapped the green button.

  At that exact moment, a jolt erupted in my foot, an electric shock buzzing through my entire body. I broke out in convulsions as I lost control of every bodily function. A few beats, and I could hear myself breathe, then a chuckle from the other side of the room.

  “I knew you couldn’t resist the temptation,” he said.

  Another intake of air, and then a damp cloth was pressed onto my nose and mouth. Just like before, it was sweet. I just lay there, unmoving. As my world faded to black again, I could hear the echo of my own muted screams. I knew I’d be nothing more than his bitch for the rest of time.

  41

  Cristina sat in the passenger seat of a car that shook like its engine was a jackhammer. The nonstop reverberation had dislodged nearly every component of the silver two-seater, including the warped dash that rattled against her knees.

  “This is a piece of shit,” she said, stretching her eyes beyond Saul in the driver’s seat to look a block down the street.

  “I take offense to that. This RX-7 is a twenty-year-old classic. I call it the Rotary Rocket.”

  “I’ve seen fireworks with more power than this pile of crap.”

  “You must not be a car person, because—”

  “SWAT team is on the move,” she said, punching his arm.

  With Stan’s permission to watch the raid as long as the pair stayed a block back, she and Saul kept their sights on the home of Stephan Schaffer. Saul had spent most of the last twelve hours at the southwest police substation with Stan, a sketch artist, and countless other detectives and uniforms, trying to recreate a persona of the man who most likely had kidnapped Ivy. She had enjoyed a front-row seat to the grueling question-and-answer marathon, with the stipulation that she would stay quiet. She’d behaved admirably…until it got to the twelfth hour. They had made some headway, but could not find a match to the man Saul had seen. She began to see doubt on the faces of the detectives, Stan included. Doubt that had them thinking that Saul was purposely trying to throw the blame to some random person who didn’t exist. She’d felt it—they were beginning to think Saul was the kidnapper. Then she saw one of her street friends being escorted to a holding cell. She learned he’d been arrested for trespassing—apparently, he was trying to shower in one of the private health clubs. She had a hunch, so she grabbed one of the sketches and, through the cell bars and with Stan’s approval, showed him the rough picture of the man Saul had seen.

  Her street friend, who had always claimed he knew everyone on the street, said he’d seen Schaffer surveying an elementary school’s playground three separate times while he worked part-time as a janitor for the school. It was Stephen Schaffer, without a doubt.

  From there, it hadn’t taken the detectives long to learn that Schaffer had been arrested and convicted of sexual assault to a minor and recently released from prison. They’d also discovered a residence belonging to his deceased brother not five miles from the substation.

  “How many men in black do you see?” Saul asked, their eyes glued to the scene playing out before us.

  “Men and women?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Easily fifteen visible.”

  Tear gas was shot through windows, and then a battering ram was used to smash down the
front door. The scene was hazy, and she could only see people moving about—nothing specific.

  “Come on, Ivy, show us your face,” Saul said out loud.

  A moment later, a tall man in handcuffs emerged from the smoke, a SWAT team member on either side. He wore a white T-shirt and shorts.

  “That must be him,” Saul said. “But where’s Ivy? I hope she’s okay.”

  Cristina felt her cheap phone buzz. She pulled it from her pocket to see a text from Stan.

  No sign of Ivy or any struggle. CSI will investigate further, but he’s probably not our guy.

  Her heart sank, knowing that Ivy might be dead and buried by now.

  42

  A cool breeze brushed across my head—the first sign that told me I was alive. Pulling my arms close to my body, I could feel I was clothed. I opened my eyes a crack and hesitantly peeked at the world. My ass felt like I was sitting on a stump—and I was, with my back against a tree. Pushing my butt up off the stump, a wave of pain rippled through my body, every muscle and joint aching. I felt like my entire body might crumble.

  But I was alive.

  A single breath, and a waft of dirt lingered in the air. Trees all around, even some patchy grass. I noticed a purple glow on the horizon of the dark sky.

  How did I get here?

  A second later, a Great Dane came out from behind the tree and licked my face. It was gross, but welcomed. Someone, even if it was an animal, cared.

  “Buster, leave that homeless person alone. She might be a drunk.” A woman, whose face looked like an overripe prune, pulled back on Buster’s leash. I wanted to smile, but it hurt to move my mouth.

  “Ah, Marilyn, quit thinking the worst of everyone.” A gray-haired man with a bushy mustache pulled up next to the woman who must have been his wife.

  “What happened to her hair? Is she one of those cancer patients? Or maybe she’s so messed up they performed brain surgery on her,” Marilyn said. “Oh dear God, look at her face.”