by J. E. Taylor
“Can we change the subject?”
“Sure.” Jack didn’t want to talk about this either. He had an uneasy feeling about the whole operation now. He hoped like hell Steve would heed his orders and stay away, but after the information he was just fed, he doubted that would be the case. A sharp inhale from Jennifer caught his attention and he glanced her way.
Her pasty skin met his gaze and her eyes, her eyes were cloudy and distant. She looked like a breathing, muttering corpse, and he shivered. Jesus, she’s having a vision. Steve was right, it is scary as hell.
* * * *
With a blink, the interior of the car disappeared.
A gurgling wail filled the room as he pressed the blade against her throat. “Oh, yeah,” he whispered in her ear. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, her fear and pain fueling him to the point he craved. The knife sliced through the tender flesh of her throat, sending an arc of blood onto the bed. The force of it splattered all the way to the ceiling. The tremors that followed brought him close to release but then the feeling fizzled, replaced by rage and frustration.
“No!” The roar echoed off the walls. He pulled out of her and plunged the knife into her back, severing the spinal cord. Closing his eyes tight, he began to stroke his throbbing member, playing a fantasy, a fantasy of the woman who got away, finishing what he started, savoring it, having her every way possible before tearing the life from her piece by piece and relishing her cries for mercy, mercy that would never come.
Jennifer breathed in as if she’d been underwater for the last five minutes. Heat rushed into her face and the car began to spin. “Pull over,” she whispered.
Jack transitioned to the breakdown lane, stopping as the wheels crunched gravel.
As soon as the car stopped, she threw the door open. The vomit splattered on the gravel and speckled the inside of the door. She spit a few times. “Do you have any napkins?”
“In the glove box.”
She opened the glove compartment and pulled out a couple of napkins, wiping her mouth before cleaning the door. “I’m sorry,” she said and closed the door.
“Are you all set?”
Jennifer nodded and Jack pulled the car back on the road.
“Another vision?”
“He’s going to kill again, tonight.”
“I gathered. Can you tell me anything more about him than the tattoo and knife?”
“No, that’s all I ever see besides the victim.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Dark hair, fair skin, almond-shaped blue eyes and she is terrified.”
Jack inhaled. “With good reason.”
Jennifer closed her eyes. “Yes. He’s no longer in control. There is no sense of seduction before he kills them, now it’s just fury.”
Jack raised his eyebrows, glancing sideways at Jennifer. “What do you mean seduction?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Before, he played with them, was always calm and rational, making them undress themselves and get into the position he wanted on the bed. It was a seduction of sorts and that’s part of what fuels him, brings him that high. It isn’t there anymore, which means he’s much more dangerous and unpredictable.”
Jack’s jaw hung open and he blinked, looking out at the thinning traffic. “Your assessment parallels that of the profile we were given early on. You sure you don’t want a job as a profiler?”
Jennifer burst out laughing. “Yes, very sure. This insight has nothing to do with studying patterns and ways that he acts out his aggression. I’m partially in the bastard’s head and it freaks me out. I can’t imagine intentionally putting myself in that space and that’s what profilers do, correct?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Jack took the exit ramp and turned right onto a suburban area north of Boston. “What do you think triggered the change?”
She was quiet and when he pulled into the driveway of a modest colonial, she glanced at him. “I triggered the change.”
Jack considered the possibility and grabbed the suitcase out of the back seat.
“Where are we?”
“My house,” he said and led her inside.
Chapter 48
“What do you mean?” Steve held the phone to his ear, staring at Carson. “I’m on my way.” He flipped the phone closed. “The shit just hit the fan.” He didn’t wait for a response, just took off out the door, leaving Carson with the new bodyguard Charlie had sent over.
“Steve!” Carson yelled from the doorway.
He turned toward her. “Stay put, Jen.” And with that, he bounded down the stairs and across the street to his car. He slipped his badge and gun out from under the seat, sliding them into his coat pocket, and tore out of the garage, wheels spinning on the wet pavement as he took the turn into the morning fog, heading toward Brooklyn.
A crowd had already formed, blocking the route he wanted to take. “Shit,” Steve swore. He pulled into a free parking spot and flipped open his ringing cell phone.
“Whatever you do, do not go into the warehouse!”
He looked at the phone and brought it to his ear. “Jenny?”
“Do not go inside. Please promise me.”
Her voice was scratchy and strained and he thought he heard a slight wheeze to boot. “Jenny, what’s wrong?”
“If you go inside, he’ll kill you. He knows.”
Steve looked up at the crowd in front of him. “Where are you?”
“I’m safe. I’m at Jack’s house.”
He closed his eyes. He had slept through the call but Jack had left a message that she was safe and sound. “How does Charlie know?”
“I have no clue—but he does and if you go in there, I’ll be a widow.”
He exhaled. “I won’t go in.”
“Promise me!”
“I promise, Jenny, I will not set foot in that warehouse.”
The muffled sniffle came through the line. “I love you,” her hoarse voice whispered.
“Me, too. I gotta go.” He flipped the phone closed and stepped out of his car.
Steve fought his way through the crowd.
An officer stopped him at the barricade and he reached into his inner pocket, pulling out his FBI badge. After an inquiry in his walkie-talkie, the officer waved him through.
Chapter 49
Charlie rocked in his chair at his desk in his office with the six girls from downstairs sitting on the floor within his field of view. The police had taken out the outside cameras after the explosion rocked the warehouse. The workers panicked and pandemonium broke out to the point Charlie shut off the secondary defenses.
Under false pretense of safety, he corralled six of the office girls in his control room. With a gun trained on them, he tossed each girl a pair of handcuffs and watched as they clasped one end around their wrists and the other to the exposed heating pipes low on the wall. Littered across his desk was half a dozen handguns, a shotgun, and a large bag of cocaine, and he settled into a long morning of negotiations.
After securing the girls to the radiator, he ventured downstairs and set more explosives to a trip wire near the door in case the police were stupid enough to try again. With that, he grabbed a couple of automatic weapons and headed back to the office, re-engaging the perimeter and the floor panel sensors.
His first call was to Steve. He wanted a lawyer present and while Steve wasn’t a criminal lawyer, he was sure he could negotiate a fair deal and maybe even help him walk away from this.
A half hour had passed and the first contact had already been made by the feds. Charlie told them to go pound sand. If they didn’t get him a helicopter out of there, he was going to start killing the hostages, one every hour. His cell rang and he flipped it open.
Pictures. What the fuck?
Charlie glanced at the girls and opened the first message. His heart tripped, skipping a beat or two. The screen filled with a picture of Steve handing a badge to one of the cops at the barricade.
Maybe he asked for t
he cop’s credentials.
He blinked and scrolled to the next picture and his cheeks burned with instant anger.
Steve pocketed his badge and was waved through the barricade.
“Son of a bitch.” He flipped through the remaining photos, all of which confirmed that the bastard was a cop. Fucking MOLE!
“God damn it!” If Steve thought he would get away from this unscathed, he was sorely mistaken.
Charlie punched in a text message to the new bodyguard. “Kill the bitch.”
A few minutes later, “Done” appeared in his message box. Charlie smiled and looked up at the girls.
“We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” He poured a small amount from the bag and cut it into lines, snorting them while nervously flicking the hammer back and forth on the gun.
Chapter 50
Steve crouched behind the car as the bullets whizzed past him. His heart pounded so hard he could almost hear the rattling against his ribs and he couldn’t produce saliva no matter how hard he tried. Bullets rained down around him and all he wished for was a simple bottle of water.
He exchanged a glance with Jerry, shaking his head slightly as Charlie’s ranting drifted through the cloud of gun smoke. The raging artillery masked the metal clang of the warehouse door.
Steve’s ears rang and quiet descended on the street. He cast a quick glance over the hood. Charlie had retreated into the warehouse with the wounded hostage.
Sitting on the pavement, hidden from view, he leaned his head back against the tire, squinting as the early afternoon sunshine peeked through the skyscrapers. The mixture of rubber, oil, and gun smoke assaulted his nostrils and he sneezed three times in succession.
His cell phone rang again and he checked the number. Closing his eyes, he flipped it open.
“What the hell are you doing?” This was the fourth call Charlie had made to him since he’d arrived, and each conversation was the same.
“Get your ass in here,” Charlie growled into the phone.
“Look, Charlie, they won’t let anyone within a couple of blocks of the building and honestly I’m not so keen on the idea anymore.” He faked exasperation, keeping eye contact with Jerry who was sitting on the pavement next to him.
“Why aren’t you keen on coming in?”
“Look, you’ve killed hostages. I am not interested in dying today and I have a feeling if I went inside that’s exactly what would happen.”
“You don’t think you could negotiate your way out of this one?”
Steve looked at his partner and raised his eyebrow. “I’m not a criminal lawyer, Charlie. That’s really what you need.” He was quiet for a moment. The beginning of a headache had formed behind his right eye and he pressed his thumb on his temple to quiet the throbbing. The telltale sniff filled the other end of the line and he closed his eyes. “How many lines have you done?”
A sinister chuckled bled through the line. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“If you let them go…”
He cut him off. “If I let them go, what? You think I don’t know what will happen? You think I’m dumb?”
“I never said that.”
“But you must have thought it plenty of times, snowing me like you did.”
“What are you talking about?”
Charlie hung up the phone and seconds later, a photo came through on Steve’s display. He was handing his badge to the cop at the barricade. Steve swiveled the display, showing Jerry the photo. Jennifer had been right, yet again. Someone had recognized him in the crowd and now he had no negotiation room. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his arm. When the phone rang again, he opened it.
“Let me ask you a question,” Charlie began. He chuckled and the sound of more cocaine filtering up his nose came over the line. “How does it feel to know I felt up your girlfriend?”
Steve was silent.
“Was she even your girlfriend?” he asked. “Or was she part of the show?”
“Jenny’s my wife.” He had no reason to keep up the pretense. “We were married in November of last year.”
Charlie snickered. “That’s even better.” Laughter belted through the line. “And now you’re a widower.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re responsible for your wife’s death. How does that feel?”
Steve closed his eyes. He had left Carson with one of Charlie’s people. “You ordered a hit on my wife?” he growled into the phone, exchanging a glance with Jerry.
“That’s right. You’ve got a mess to go home to.”
“Bastard!”
“Why don’t you come in and we can snort some blow and see who’s a faster draw.”
“Let the hostages go.”
The line went dead. Steve stared at the phone in frustration. Charlie hung up on him.
“Get someone over to my apartment,” he said and redialed the phone. Jerry pulled out his cell and made a call.
When Charlie answered the phone, he said, “Charlie, do you really think I’m that stupid?”
“You think I’m bluffing?”
It was his turn to laugh. “I’m betting you’re bluffing. You have a thing for my Jenny, don’t you?”
“I had a thing for Desiree, too.”
The laughter died in his throat and Jerry shook his head, conveying that what Charlie had told him was true with one exception; Carson was the one who was dead, not Jennifer.
“You really think I’m that stupid, Charlie?” he asked again.
Charlie was silent.
“You think for a minute I’d leave my wife in the care of one of your psychos?”
More silence.
“It wasn’t my wife you killed.”
“Fucking cop!”
“Actually, I’m with the FBI and if you don’t let the hostages go, you won’t be leaving here alive.”
Jerry made a frantic cutting motion. This was not the protocol for hostage negotiation.
“I’m going to kill you,” Charlie said.
He laughed. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens. I outsmarted you at every turn, Charlie, admit it. You got lucky today. Someone recognized me and snapped a picture. Without that, you would have never known it was me. You would have died here today, never knowing who infiltrated your organization. How does that make you feel?”
He held the phone away from his ear. Charlie’s scream of rage was in stereo, acute and clear through the cell phone and muffled through the closed office window. Steve heard the clang through the receiver and a shot rang out, sending high-pitched feedback through the phone line and cutting off the only connection he had to Charlie.
“Fuck!” He closed his cell phone and leaned back, watching as the officers scrambled around.
“That was a stupid move!” Jerry reloaded his gun and slid it in his holster, peeking around the car.
“Charlie was tipped off,” he mumbled, checking his watch. “Someone sent him that photo of me, but I have no fucking clue who’s feeding him the information. He’s got to have a mole in the NYPD." He sighed and pushed his palms to his eyes, analyzing every conversation over the last ten months in the span of a few seconds. He shook his head. “How the hell did I miss that?” Steve racked his brain for any sign and came up empty. He glanced at his watch again. Fifty-five minutes had passed and they still hadn’t found a way in.
Like clockwork, another body fell out of the small office window on the second floor of the warehouse. It bounced lifeless on the pavement next to where the last victim had landed, blood splattering from the impact.
Screams filtered out the window, echoing off the buildings. They were abruptly muffled as the windowpane slammed closed.
Steve closed his eyes in frustration. A low grumble rose from his chest. “We have to do something!”
“If we go in there, he’ll blow the whole block to bits.”
He gritted his teeth and banged the back of his head lightly on the tire. Inaction was driving him batty.
He wanted to get up and pace but that wasn’t an option.
“Then let me go in and take him down.” The words spit out between his clenched teeth.
“We can’t do that,” Jerry said.
“We have to do something,” he insisted, getting to his feet.
Jerry pulled him back down. “Sit tight,” he ordered. “You shouldn’t even be here. It’s bad enough that Charlie knows who you are. If the news crew gets your face on camera, your undercover career is over.” Jerry glared at Steve. Jack had been clear when he found out Steve was on site. Protect his identity. As the day wore on, that was getting increasingly difficult and Steve refused to leave.
Gunfire erupted inside the warehouse, followed by a muffled shriek. Another burst of gunfire cut off the rogue screams.
The silence on the street was unnerving and the officers glanced at the building, trying to determine whether or not any of the hostages were still alive.
Steve peered over the car toward the quiet warehouse and sat back down. His eyes drifted to Charlie’s punked-out SUV close to a hundred feet behind them and the police barricade blocking the crowd a few hundred yards beyond the car. They were the only officers guarding Charlie’s vehicle. The rest were flanked outside the warehouse entrance, keeping watch in case he made a run for it.
Steve exchanged a glance with Jerry. The futility of the situation was visible in his partner’ eyes.
“It’s not your fault, Steve. Sometimes the best laid plans turn to shit.”
He leaned his head back on the tire and closed his eyes. They snapped open to a ruckus behind them.
What was left of the warehouse door banged open and Charlie charged with guns roaring in both hands.
Steve glanced to his left in time to see a gunshot annihilate an officer’s shoulder. The screams broke out as a couple of officers were hit from Charlie’s assault. Charlie dodged between containers lining the side of the warehouse, weaving in and out, as he sprayed the cops with gunfire. A few bullets hit him, but they were not enough to stop his drug-induced rampage. He headed in the direction of his truck.
