3 TERRIFYING THRILLERS

by Jude Hardin

  There was some kind of plastic underneath her. A large trash bag or something. She could hear it every time she shifted. Her legs were naked, and her panties had been replaced with something thick and soft and spongy.

  A diaper.

  Jason must have put an adult diaper on her. Of course he did. He was a nurse. He thought about things like that.

  Lisa had no idea what time it was, but she figured that several hours had passed. She guessed it was Monday morning now. Maybe the sun had even risen already. She had no way of knowing.

  She heard footsteps approaching. The knob rattled, and then the door creaked open. Jason was in the room with her now. She could hear him breathing. She could smell his aftershave.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I was going to kill you last night, but I decided to sleep on it. It’s a serious thing, killing a fellow human being, a decision I’ve never taken lightly. Oh, wait. You thought you were going to be the first? That’s funny, Lisa. That’s really funny. Well, you’ll be the first nurse, so you’ve got that going for you. The first person was several years ago, and since then I’ve spread them out rather nicely, I think. So far, nobody has caught on. Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, I almost screwed up recently, with Elsie Shaw and Trey Remington. Staging two codes in a row was mighty risky. Kind of stupid, when I think back on it. But, since Elsie ultimately survived—thanks to you, I might add—I think everything’s going to be all right.”

  Lisa moaned. She tried to scream, but there was a rag or something stuffed in her mouth. Jason had jammed it in there and had secured it with a strip of duct tape. The sounds coming from her throat now were no louder than those a mewling kitten might make. There was certainly no way anyone outside the house would ever hear her.

  Lisa was astounded by what Jason had said, that he’d actually killed some patients. She was shocked, and appalled, and sickened that she’d ever been involved with him.

  That she’d actually been obsessed with him.

  “By the way, you were the one who killed Trey Remington,” Jason said. “You realize that, right? He called for pain medicine, remember? And I handed you the syringe and told you to give it to him. I pretended to be busy with another patient while you injected poor Trey with a whopping dose of insulin and enough Anectine to keep him from hitting the call button.”

  Anectine. Succinycholine chloride. It was a paralytic agent used to relax a patient’s muscles during surgery or intubation. Jason must have stolen a vial from the ICU or the operating room. The drug wasn’t available on the telemetry unit.

  Now Lisa knew exactly what had happened to Trey Remington. He’d been aware of everything going on around him, but his muscles and vocal cords had been completely paralyzed. When he started feeling the effects of the insulin—the symptoms of his blood sugar dropping rapidly—he couldn’t move his hands to press the call button, and he couldn’t even shout for help. A terrible way to die, for sure.

  Jason must have given Elsie Shaw the same lethal injection before he left the unit for lunch at 3:30 Thursday morning. It was only by the grace of God that Lisa had found Elsie in time.

  Now Lisa knew what she was dealing with. Jason Powers was a monster. A serial killer. No telling how many patients he had murdered over the years.

  And now he was going to murder her.

  Danielle

  Monday morning, St. Augustine

  Danielle knew in her heart that she could never actually kill another human being, even one as repulsive as Mark Taylor.

  But she needed to get rid of him somehow. She thought about trying to make herself as unattractive as possible, so unattractive that he wouldn’t want her anymore.

  She could arrange for a meeting, and then stop bathing and brushing her teeth for a couple of days beforehand. Maybe stop shaving her legs and armpits for a couple of weeks beforehand. She could bleach her hair out and then color it with some sort of cheap and garish drugstore dye, and she could chew her fingernails to the quick. Then, a few hours before the date, she could stuff herself with bean burritos, guaranteeing another olfactory assault to augment the body odor and bad breath.

  All that might have worked with an ordinary guy, one with most of his brain cells still intact. But Mark Taylor was a drunk, and he was totally obsessed with Danielle. She feared she would go to all that trouble only to disgust herself in the end. If Mark was drunk, he wouldn’t care about any of those things, and if he was sober, he would see it for the masquerade it was.

  There had to be another way to get him off her back for good.

  Then it hit her. Maybe…

  She picked up her cell phone and punched in Jason’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Danielle?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Were you still in bed?”

  “No, I’m up. What’s going on?”

  “Will you marry me?” she said again.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I have a problem. Actually, my problem is very similar to your problem. My ex-boyfriend is having a hard time letting go. He’s stalking me, if you want to know the truth. Not in person, but by phone. I thought if I told him I’d eloped, that I was married now, he might finally realize it’s over and leave me alone.”

  “So tell him you eloped,” Jason said.

  “Well, telling him might not be good enough. I’ll probably need to show him.”

  “Is this the personal problem you mentioned before?”

  “Yes. I really didn’t want to drag you into it, but I’m running out of ideas. It would only be a pretend marriage, of course. We could buy some cheap rings somewhere, and I could bring some clothes and stuff to your house, and then I could invite him over one night and let him see for himself.”

  There was a short pause, and then Jason said, “Okay. I guess we could do that.”

  “What was that noise?” Danielle asked.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I thought I heard someone moaning. Or something.”

  “Must have been the television. Hold on.”

  Danielle waited. She heard what sounded like a door being closed.

  The moaning stopped.

  “Are you there?” Danielle said.

  “I’m here. So, this marriage thing, do you think we could do it at your apartment instead?”

  “I don’t know. My apartment’s so small. And I think a house would be more convincing. Like we bought it together, you know?”

  “I guess so. When did you want to do it?”

  “Are you off tonight?”

  Another pause.

  “I’m off,” Jason said. “I’ll just have to tidy up a bit. What time?”

  Danielle told Jason a time, got directions to his house, and then she said goodbye and disconnected. Finally, she was going to nip this thing in the bud.

  She felt almost giddy just thinking about it.

  Mark

  Monday morning, Key West

  Mark’s phone chimed. It was Danielle. Fifteen minutes ago she’d hung up on him, and now she was calling him back. Maybe she’d finally come to her senses. Maybe she was finally ready to let him back into her life.

  He answered the call.

  “Hey,” Danielle said.

  “Hey, baby. I’m so glad you called back. I’m really—”

  “Listen, Mark. I have something to tell you, and it’s not something you want to hear. I didn’t tell you before, because I knew how much it would upset you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I’m married, Mark. I got married about a month ago. We eloped.”

  The phone slipped from Mark’s hand and hit the floor. He felt like stomping it to pieces, but he didn’t. Danielle was lying. There was no way she would have married someone that soon after breaking up with him. He knew her better than that.

  Unless she’d been seeing someone before she broke up with him. Unless she’d been cheating on him the whole time.
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  He thought about it for a few seconds. It was definitely a possibility.

  He picked up the phone.

  “Are you still there?” he said.

  “I’m still here.”

  “Sorry. I dropped the phone. I know you didn’t get married, baby. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I did get married. His name is Jason. It was love at first sight. I want you to come up here and meet him. Just so you’ll believe me. There’s no reason we have to be enemies, Mark. We can be friends from now on, but nothing more.”

  “Come up where?” Mark said.

  “We bought a house in a little town called Hallows Cove. It’s not far from Jacksonville.”

  “Jacksonville. That’s an eight-hour drive.”

  “If you leave your place at noon, you could be here for dinner around eight o’clock.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Mark thought about it. He really didn’t have any plans, and it might be a good idea to get off the island for a while. He’d been a nervous wreck all morning, thinking the cops might knock on his door any second.

  And of course he would relish the chance to see Danielle under any circumstances. Maybe this was some kind of test, to see how much he really loved her. And if it wasn’t a test, if she really had married some asshole named Jason, it meant that she’d been seeing him while she and Mark were still together. It meant she’d been cheating, and if that was the case…

  No more Mr. Nice Guy.

  “Tonight will be fine,” Mark said.

  Danielle gave him directions.

  Jason

  Monday morning, Hallows Cove

  Jason walked back to the spare bedroom, knelt beside Lisa and gently removed her blindfold. There was a crusty white sheen around her eyes where she’d been crying.

  “You got lucky,” Jason said. “I have some guests coming over tonight, so I’m not going to be able to deal with you right away. And do you know what I mean when I say deal with you? Well? I didn’t think so. See, I’ve never had to kill someone at my home before. This is new to me. All the others were in the hospital, so the bodies were no problem. They were taken to the morgue, or directly to the funeral home. There was only one family who requested an autopsy, and the tox screen did show elevated insulin levels, but guess what? The patient was diabetic. She was on insulin four times a day. Any number of nurses could have accidentally overdosed her, or she could have done it herself. There was an internal investigation, and I sweated it for a while, but nothing ever came of it. Hell, you might even remember that one. I think they interviewed all the nurses on the unit. Anyway, I’m going to have to dispose of you discreetly somehow, and I haven’t quite figured it out yet. My cousin has a wood chipper, and I know he’d let me borrow it for a couple of days, so I’m thinking that might be the best way. Just take you deep into the woods and feed you through the chipper. I’ll have to pull your teeth first, though. Someone might find one and turn it in, and the police might be able to identify you that way. I don’t want any chance of that happening. So I’ll pull your teeth and toss them into the river, and the rest of you will go into the chipper. Sound like a plan? I think so, but I’m not going to have time to deal with it today. So you got lucky, babe. I’m going to let you live another twenty-four hours or so.”

  Lisa moaned. She started writhing on the floor, but there was no way for her to get loose. Jason had made sure of that.

  “So you just sit tight, pretty lady. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”

  Jason stretched the black bandana over Lisa’s eyes and retied it behind her head.

  He changed her diaper and then left the room.

  Danielle

  Monday night, Hallows Cove

  Danielle had a GPS unit, and her handwritten directions, but she still had to turn around a couple of times before finally finding the turnoff to Jason’s house. It was a dirt road, and it hadn’t been very well maintained. By the time she steered her car into Jason’s driveway, she felt as though she’d been on some sort of unpleasant carnival ride. A rickety wooden roller coaster or something. She checked the fillings in her teeth to make sure they hadn’t been jarred loose.

  She grabbed her things, climbed out of her car, mounted Jason’s front stoop, and knocked on the door.

  The house was nothing special. Brick, ranch-style, probably two or three bedrooms. Treed lot. No way to tell how large the property was, because there were no neighboring houses nearby. The closest one was back at the turnoff, a double-wide trailer with rusted skirting and a sagging roof and a garden of decaying car parts in the yard. It wasn’t a very nice looking place, but the glowing porch light told Danielle that some poor soul was still living there.

  Compared to the trailer, Jason’s place looked like a mansion.

  He answered the door.

  “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

  She stepped into the foyer, set the suitcase and paper bag she’d been carrying on the linoleum floor.

  Jason gave her a hug and a short kiss.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” Danielle said, trying to be polite.

  “It’s a work in progress. I bought it really cheap, and I’m trying to fix it up. It’s a roof over my head, and it’s paid for.”

  “You paid cash for it?”

  “Yeah, I had some money saved up. It’s kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t mind that. It’s only a fifteen minute drive to work.”

  Danielle followed Jason into the living room. There was a sofa and a recliner and a flat screen television and a stone fireplace. A cluster of framed photographs decorated the mantle, and there was a long steel sword mounted on the wall above it.

  “Where’s your dog?” Danielle said.

  “I took him to a kennel for the evening. I thought it might be best. He’s not used to having much company, especially other men. If it was just you, it would have been okay. He likes you. But I thought he might get a little edgy with your ex coming over.”

  Danielle thought it was strange that Jason never invited any male friends to his house, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe he just preferred to be alone most of the time. Some people were like that. It didn’t mean that he was a serial killer or anything.

  She almost laughed at herself for even thinking such a thing.

  “I brought some clothes to put in the closet, and some makeup and other girly things to set around the bathroom. Mind if I go ahead and take care of that now?”

  “The bathroom’s down the hall. I’ll take the suitcase and hang your clothes in the bedroom. Meet you back here in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Danielle grabbed the paper grocery sack and walked to the bathroom. She set some makeup items, a curling iron, and a can of hairspray on the vanity. Shampoo and conditioner went on the ledge of the bathtub, and a partial box of tampons in the towel closet. As a final touch, just in case Mark was really nosy, she placed a bottle of Midol, an eyelash curler, and some fingernail polish remover in the medicine cabinet. Apparently Jason never kept anything in there. The cabinet was totally empty.

  She walked back to the living room. Jason was standing there looking out the window.

  “All done?” he said.

  “All done.”

  Danielle took a seat on the couch. She expected Jason to sit down beside her, but he didn’t. He seemed a little anxious. Understandable, she guessed, under the circumstances.

  “Something smells good,” she said.

  “Hope you like chili. It’s sort of my specialty.”

  “You’re very kind to go to all this trouble for me,” Danielle said. “I owe you one. Big time.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a small brown envelope.

  “Are those the rings?” Jason said.

  “Yes. Here, see if yours fits.”

  She opened the envelope and dumped the thin gold bands into her palm. She slid the smaller of the two onto her ring finger an
d handed the other one to Jason.

  “It’s a little tight,” he said. “But a guess I can tolerate it for a couple of hours.”

  “Good. Like I said, I owe you one.”

  “No problem. I’m going to go check on the food real quick. Make yourself at home. Want something to drink?”

  “Maybe just a soda, if you have any.”

  “Sure. I have Sprite and root beer.”

  “Sprite.”

  “You got it.”

  Jason turned and walked away.

  Danielle looked at her watch. 7:37. Mark would be there in about twenty minutes. If he could find the place. If not, he had Danielle’s number. Boy, did he have it. He’d called it about ten times a day since she’d dumped him.

  Pretending to be married to Jason was an extreme thing to do, but if the con worked it would be well worth it. Danielle was excited that the ordeal was almost over, that soon she would be free from Mark Taylor forever.

  She stood and walked to the fireplace and looked at the pictures on the mantle. There was one of Buddy the Labrador retriever, one of Jason on the day he graduated from nursing school, and one of a silver-haired woman that Danielle assumed was Jason’s mother. She was very pretty for a woman her age, and Danielle could see where Jason got his blue eyes and his smile.

  “She died eight years ago.”

  Startled, Danielle turned abruptly and saw that Jason had been standing behind her. She pressed her palm against her chest.

  “You scared me,” she said. “I didn’t hear you walk back in.”

  “Sorry.”

  He handed her a tall plastic tumbler filled with bubbly liquid and ice cubes. She took a sip.

  “And I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” Danielle said.

  “She raised me by herself. She worked two jobs, and she still managed to be the best mother in the world.”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but—”