3 TERRIFYING THRILLERS

by Jude Hardin

  In his pants.

  Jason

  Sunday Night, St. Augustine

  Danielle opened the door, and Jason stepped inside.

  Danielle had a troubled expression on her face.

  “Who’s Lisa?” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  She handed him an envelope. “This was in my mail from yesterday,” she said.

  Jason opened the envelope, pulled out the single sheet of white paper, unfolded it and read the handwritten note.

  Stay away from him. Or else.

  Lisa

  “I can’t believe she did this,” Jason said.

  “Who is she?”

  “Mind if we sit down?”

  Danielle didn’t say anything. She walked from the foyer to the living room and sat on the couch. Jason followed and sat beside her. A courtroom scene from Law and Order played out on the flat screen TV a few feet away, the volume audible but not intrusive.

  “I’m sorry,” Danielle said. “I should have offered you something to drink. You want a diet Dr. Pepper?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay, then. I’m all ears.”

  “Lisa’s one of the nurses I work with on the telemetry unit at Hallows Cove Memorial,” Jason said. “I went out with her for a while, and she seems to think there’s still something between us. Believe me, there’s not.”

  “And you’ve made that clear to her?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Then she needs to leave you alone.”

  “I agree. I’ll talk to her again. She’s kind of kooky, but I never thought she would resort to sending threatening letters through the mail.”

  “Pretty outrageous,” Danielle said.

  “It is, and I’m so sorry that it happened.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, we’re still on for Wednesday, huh? You still want me to call you?”

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.”

  She slumped into the corner of the couch with her arms folded over her chest.

  “Is this where you give me the big brush-off?” Jason said. “I figured it was coming. The old you’re a great guy, but speech, right?”

  Danielle laughed, but it was a nervous laugh.

  “You are a great guy,” she said. “And I like you a lot. Really. It’s just that I’m not going to be in Florida much longer, and—”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Colorado, probably. When I left Key West, I signed on with a traveling nurse agency. I’m just waiting for my licensure paperwork to come through, and then I’m out of here.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Some personal reasons. And I’ve always wanted to see that part of the country. But I do like you, and if I planned to stay in St. Augustine—”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Jason said. “We can hang out and have some fun while you’re still here, and when it comes time for you to go we’ll say goodbye. No strings, no commitments.”

  Danielle leaned forward. She picked up the remote control and turned off the television.

  “Are you sure that’s even possible?” she said. “I mean, what if you fall madly in love with me? Which I’m sure you will, by the way.”

  She smiled. Her mood had lightened, which made Jason’s lighten as well. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips.

  “So I’ll talk to you Wednesday?” he said.

  She looked at him with those big, beautiful eyes of hers. “You make it hard for a girl to say no,” she said.

  Mark

  Sunday Night, Key West

  Mark Taylor drove back to Jake’s Key West Saloon. He felt stone cold sober now, and stone cold sober wasn’t what he wanted to be. He wanted to be plastered. He wanted to drink until he couldn’t see straight.

  The place was loud. The band had started, and the main room was congested with people dancing or gathered in clusters talking or sitting at tables tapping their feet. Mark shuffled his way through all that and out the back door to the beer garden. It was quieter back there, and there was a full bar where you sit and have a drink and a smoke and enjoy the breeze coming off the ocean.

  “Hey, Mark,” the bartender said. It was a chick named Wendy. Mark had gone out with her a few times, before he’d met Alison. Gorgeous redhead with a nice ass.

  “Hey,” Mark said. “I already started a tab up front.”

  “That’s no problem. I’ll just transfer it back here. What can I get for you?”

  “Let me get a Corona. And a shot of Cuervo.”

  Wendy opened the beer and poured the shot. “Pretty good band tonight, huh?”

  “Yeah, pretty good. From Jacksonville, right?”

  “I think so. You all right, Mark?”

  Mark lifted the lime wedge from the lip of the beer bottle, sucked the juice out of it, drained the shot of tequila in a single gulp. “I’m OK. Why?”

  “You just look kind of tired or something. A little pale maybe.”

  Mark tapped a cigarette out from a pack of Marlboros. Wendy lit it for him. “Gee, thanks. A little pale, huh? Maybe I better start going to the tanning bed again.”

  “Or the beach. You’re not surfing anymore?”

  “Not much.”

  “What happened to the hot babe you used to bring in here all the time?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Mark said.

  “You’re not seeing her anymore?”

  “No.”

  Wendy walked to the other side of the bar and tended to another customer. She’d asked if Mark was OK, then said he looked tired and pale. He felt tired and pale, so no wonder he looked the part. He felt absolutely sick. You can’t just put a gun to a man’s head and accidentally blow his brains out without feeling absolutely sick about it.

  Mark got up and walked to the bathroom. He locked himself in one of the stalls and leaned over the toilet. He thought he was going to puke. He wanted to. He wanted to vomit out everything that had happened since he got up that morning. He thought he was going to puke, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t. He stood there and heaved, his mind reeling and his chest burning and sweat trickling down his back in streams. Fuck it. Maybe some more alcohol would help. It was worth a try.

  He went back out to the beer garden and ordered another Corona and another shot. It was almost ten o’clock, six more hours until closing time. He tapped out another cigarette, and Wendy lit it for him again.

  “What time you get off?” he asked her.

  “Depends. If it stays busy, I’ll probably be here till four.”

  “What can we do to make it not stay busy?”

  “Why?” she asked. “What do have in mind?”

  “I thought I might buy you a drink,” Mark said. “You know, for old time’s sake.”

  “You’re just drunk and horny and on the rebound.”

  “So?”

  She smiled. “I’ll think about it. But like I said, I’ll probably have to close anyway.”

  “You think about it. I’m going to go check out the band.”

  Mark grabbed his beer and strolled back into the main barroom. He drank a couple of more shots, listened to the band play a couple of songs, and then walked outside to his car in the parking lot. He opened the door, took one of the long-stemmed red roses out of the box in the backseat. Walked back through the saloon to the beer garden. He was starting to feel better.

  “Is that for me?” Wendy said.

  He handed her the flower. “Who else would it be for?”

  “Well aren’t you sweet.” She put the bloom to her nose. “Where did you get this?”

  “I was a Boy Scout. Didn’t you know that? I’m always prepared.”

  Wendy giggled. “Well, Mr. Boy Scout, are you prepared for this? Jake said I can go ahead and close out my register. I’m off for the rest of the shift.”

  Bingo. That’s what Mark wanted to hear. Now, just in case he needed it, he would have an alibi for the entire night.

  “Ring me
up another shot before you run your tape,” he said.

  Wendy looked around, poured two fingers of Patron Anejo into a rocks glass. “Forget about it,” she said. “This one’s on the house.”

  Jason

  Sunday Night, Hallows Cove

  Jason had wanted more than a goodnight kiss, but he figured he better not press his luck. Danielle was out of his league, really. He knew that, and he felt fortunate that she’d agreed to spend some time with him before heading out west.

  So he would enjoy it while it lasted.

  He pulled into his driveway, killed the engine, sat there in the dark and collected his thoughts for a minute.

  Some personal reasons…

  That had been Danielle’s response when Jason asked why she was leaving Florida. Some personal reasons, she’d said, and because she’d always wanted to visit the western part of the country.

  Jason wondered what sort of personal reasons could possibly drive Danielle so far away from her home state. He was naturally curious, but he hadn’t wanted to press the issue at the time. He’d felt that she was on the brink of dumping him, that he was skating on thin ice. Maybe he would bring it up next time he saw her. If she gave him an answer, great. If not, that was okay too. It was certainly her prerogative to keep it to herself if she wanted to. Fun, Jason reminded himself. That’s what this was going to be about. Having some fun until it was time for her to leave. He would tell her goodbye, wish her well, and that would be it.

  He climbed out of the car, walked to the front stoop and slid his key into the deadbolt. As usual, he could hear Buddy on the other side of the door. Happy panting, claws dancing excitedly on the foyer’s linoleum. It didn’t matter if Jason had been gone for five minutes or five hours. The metallic sound of the key entering and turning the lock was Buddy’s cue to welcome him home, and the big yellow goofball never missed it.

  When he opened the door and switched on the light, Buddy jumped up and rested his paws on Jason’s chest and gave him a nice big lick in the face.

  “I love you too,” Jason said. “Get down now. You know you’re not supposed to jump on people. Get down. Come on, want a treat?”

  When he heard the word treat, Buddy finally fell to all fours and darted toward the kitchen. Jason started to follow him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when a female voice said, “He wouldn’t still be doing that if you’d let me throw some training on him.”

  Beyond startled, Jason turned to his right with a quick jerk. It was Lisa Webber, sitting on the recliner in the living room, lounging there in the dark as if she owned the place.

  “What are you doing here?” Jason said.

  “I was in the neighborhood. Just thought I’d drop by.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “You gave me a key,” she said. “Remember?”

  “Yeah. And I remember asking for it back when we broke up.”

  Lisa laughed. “They make duplicates at Walmart all day long,” she said.

  “Great,” Jason said. “Now I’m going to have to get the locks changed. Get out of here, Lisa. I think I’ve made it clear—”

  “That you don’t want to see me anymore? And I think I’ve made it clear that you’re going to. So get used to it.”

  “Lisa—”

  “Remember that time we did naughty things in this chair? I do. Those were good times, and we’re going to have them again. You just need to wrap your head around the fact that I’m never going away. I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

  “You have about three seconds to get your ass out of that chair and out the door,” he said. “Then I’m calling the cops. We have anti-stalking laws in the state of Florida. Want to go to jail tonight?”

  “You’re not going to call the cops. That’s the last thing you want to do. Trust me. I’ll bang myself against the doorframe and tell them you beat me up. It’ll be my word against yours, and I’ll be the one with all the fresh bruises. So how about it, Mr. Badass? Want to go to jail tonight?”

  Jason stood there and kneaded his eyebrows with his fingertips. He felt a migraine coming on. This bitch was crazy. Reasoning obviously wasn’t going to work with her, and neither were threats to call the police. At that moment, Jason realized that there was only going to be one way to get rid of Lisa Webber.

  He was going to have to kill her.

  Mark

  Monday Morning, Key West

  Mark Taylor squinted the green numbers on his bedside digital alarm clock into focus. 5:48. It was still dark outside. He got up and used the bathroom and climbed back in bed, briefly startled that there was a person lying beside him.

  He looked at her face. Wendy. Wendy the bartender from Jake’s Key West Saloon. He vaguely remembered talking to her at the bar last night, but he certainly had no recollection of bringing her home with him. Did he have sex with her? Did he enjoy it?

  Suddenly a vision of a man’s head exploding flooded his consciousness, and he remembered the apartment and Smitty and burying his Smith & Wesson .38 in the woods. Did all that really happen?

  Mark quietly slipped into a pair of gym shorts and walked out to his car. He opened the passenger side door and checked the glove compartment.

  The gun wasn’t there.

  All that really happened.

  Damn it to hell.

  The gun was missing, and so was the diamond tennis bracelet he’d bought for Danielle. Then he remembered the cop. He’d bribed the cop with the bracelet. Amazing. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all was that he hadn’t been arrested for one thing or another. He’d dodged a bullet on that deal. You might even say old Mark Taylor had lucked out last night. You might say that, if he hadn’t accidentally blown a guy’s brains all over the wall.

  He walked into the house, sat at his computer desk and looked up the website for one of the local news channels. Sure enough, there it was, video from the 6:00 a.m. broadcast embedded front and center on the home page.

  Man found shot to death in local apartment complex…

  He wanted to click on the video and watch it, but he couldn’t. Watching it would make it real, and it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be real.

  But it was.

  Key West resident Howard K. Smith, 39, was discovered by his fiancé early Monday morning, a gunshot wound to the head the apparent cause of death…

  “Good morning.” Wendy stood at the bedroom door, wearing the navy blue Ralph Lauren button-down Mark had murdered Howard K. Smith in last night.

  “Good morning,” Mark said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, just looking at the news.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “No. I was just procrastinating, really. I need to get busy working on my income taxes.”

  Mark had no intention of working on his taxes, but he needed an excuse to get Wendy out of that shirt and out of his house.

  “I won’t keep you,” she said. “I need to get going, anyway. Mind if I take a shower first?”

  “Go ahead. There’s some clean towels in the closet.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mark closed his Internet browser, picked up his phone and called the only person in the world he really cared about.

  Danielle

  Monday Morning, St. Augustine

  Danielle was in the kitchen filling the Mr. Coffee reservoir with water when her phone rang.

  It was Mark.

  What the hell?

  She answered, very upset that she was still having to deal with this jerk.

  “Why are you calling me?” she said. “I thought I made it clear—”

  “I need to see you, baby. I need to see you today. Please.”

  “Mark, what part of leave me alone do you not understand?”

  “I know you don’t mean it, baby.”

  “I do, Mark. I mean it. Am I going to have to change my phone number, or what? Even if I wanted to see you, which I don’t, it
wouldn’t matter because I’m not in Key West anymore. I’ve moved on, Mark, and you need to move on too.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Far, far away, in a place called none of your—”

  “What about us?”

  “There is no us,” Danielle said. “Not anymore. Why is that so hard for you to understand? I’m seeing someone else, Mark. I’m seeing someone else, and I really, really, really need you to leave me alone now.”

  She hung up. Maybe he would get the message this time. Maybe it would finally sink in that she was through with him. And if it didn’t sink in, if he ever tried to call her again, she would contact her cell phone company and have her number changed. It would be a pain in the ass to notify all her friends and business contacts, but if that’s what it took, then that’s what she would do. She never wanted to hear that asshole’s voice again.

  Ever.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat at the table and tried not to cry. As she stirred in a spoonful of sugar and a healthy dose of cream, she suddenly realized—with absolute clarity—that there was only one way to get rid of Mark Taylor.

  She was going to have to kill him.

  Lisa

  Monday morning, St. Augustine

  So how about it, Mr. Badass? Want to go to jail tonight?

  It was the last thing Lisa Webber had said to Jason Powers before he walked over to the recliner and backhanded her across the face. Hard. The blow had nearly knocked her out. She was blinded for a few seconds, and bluish white arcs of electric pain shot through her in pulsating waves. After hitting her, Jason had yanked her stunned and useless body out of the chair and had thrown her to the floor headfirst.

  “I asked you to leave me alone,” he shouted. “I asked you nicely. Many times.”

  Lisa tried to speak, but in her semi-conscious state all she could manage was a faint, “Please.”

  “Please, my ass,” Jason said. “You had the chance to walk away, and you blew it. Now you’re going to pay.”

  The next thing she knew, Jason was gagging and blindfolding her and binding her wrists and ankles with duct tape. He dragged her into the spare bedroom, and that was where she lay now, on the floor, on her back, unable to move her arms or legs, unable to see or speak.