Jessie Black Box Set 2

by Larry A Winters

  “No, Emily!” Jessie tried to break out of Briscoe’s grip, but she couldn’t. She swung her head in Briscoe’s direction, trying for the headbutt she’d imagined, but all she managed to do was flail. Briscoe laughed at her. On the floor, Kelly continued to wail.

  “Don’t touch her!” Leary broke free of the man who was holding him and punched the other man with enough force to make him stagger back and drop to one knee. Briscoe cursed and dragged Jessie toward the door. Leary hurtled himself toward them, but the other man grabbed him again and threw him against the wall.

  “Let her go!” Graham said.

  Briscoe sneered. “Or what?” She tugged at Jessie. “You’ve got loyal friends. But will it last when they have to choose between you and saving their own skins? We’re going to find out after I take a scalpel to your face.”

  “You obviously don’t know anything about loyalty.” Jessie wrenched sideways, but she could not get free.

  “I know enough about it.” Briscoe’s grip was like a vise. She was much stronger than she looked. Fueled by insanity, maybe. By mindless rage. Against what? What had Jessie ever done to her? She realized it didn’t matter. The world had failed Vicki Briscoe, and the world was going to pay for it.

  “That’s why you dumped Trevor Galway the second he got in trouble with the law? That’s your idea of loyalty?”

  Briscoe’s face twisted with pain. She glared at Jessie, and drove her fist into her chest. Pain exploded and the breath was forced out of her lungs. Her knees almost gave way, but Briscoe held her up. Her vision swam. She heard nothing but the meaty sounds of the two men beating Leary, the sound of Graham protesting, and the sound of Kelly sobbing on the floor. She struggled to breathe.

  “Don’t ever say his name again,” Briscoe said. “You don’t know anything about Trevor and me. You don’t know anything about my life.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Briscoe threw Jessie through the doorway and into the hall. She followed her over the threshold and kicked the door shut with her boot. It slammed, cutting off the sound of Leary’s final, agonized shout.

  41

  Briscoe thrust Jessie outside. She staggered, almost losing her footing. The downpour had ceased, but the grass was still wet and her shoes slid on the slick, spongy surface.

  “Keep moving,” Briscoe said.

  With the woman shoving her every few feet, Jessie crossed a short expanse of damp grass to another building on the compound. The night was dark—almost pitch black—and the air smelled like rain. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. She stopped at the door and dug in her heels, all too aware that his momentary exposure to fresh air and open sky might be her last.

  Briscoe shoved her inside. She faced another dark and cramped interior. A smell hit her with such force that she almost threw up. Panic flooded her system and she elbowed Briscoe, trying to flee. Briscoe gripped her arm painfully.

  “This way.”

  Briscoe marched her down a hallway. The smell intensified. It was like something from the morgue, or a crime scene. Blood and death, and the sweaty stink of fear. Briscoe seemed to be watching Jessie’s expression as she thrust her toward a room at the end of the hall.

  Briscoe opened the door and thrust Jessie inside a small, square room. The stench of the space seemed to propel itself into her nostrils and mouth. She coughed and gagged, overpowered by it. With her wrists bound in front of her with duct tape, she swayed unsteadily and almost collapsed. She forced herself to stay upright, to stay alert. She needed any advantage she could get. She certainly needed to remain standing.

  She blinked to clear her vision. There was an operating table in the middle of the room, but it didn’t look like anything you’d see in a hospital, or even like the table she’d seen in the other building.

  This table wouldn’t even pass muster in a hospital from a hundred years ago, or from a war zone. There was no attempt at sterility, little effort at organization or order. The bed was dark with blood, a collage of dried, crusty stains and fresher, damp puddles, different shades of maroon. Jessie smelled sweat, too, a smell that brought to mind feverish perspiration.

  This is where she tortures Kelly.

  Beside the operating table was a shelf covered in surgical implements. Scalpels, saws, needles, drills. Unclean, darkly stained. Clumps of something clung to the edges of the blades—skin, she realized with a punch of visceral revulsion. Flesh. Jessie shuddered, not wanting to look.

  This was where Kelly Lee had spent the last week while everyone thought her dead. Taken into this room, worked on, made to scream and sob and cry as her skin was cut apart and she was stabbed and sliced and drilled.

  And now, apparently, it was Jessie’s turn.

  42

  Briscoe’s grip tightened around Jessie’s arm. “Get on the table. Or I’ll put you there.”

  “Who was the woman in the car?” Jessie said.

  “What?”

  “The woman whose body was found in Kelly’s car, after the accident. Obviously, that wasn’t Kelly. Who was it?”

  “Do you really care, or are you just trying to postpone what’s coming next?”

  Jessie tried to remain calm, but the surgical instruments—stained and filthy—drew her gaze. The tools of torture. “A little of both.”

  Briscoe let out a short, harsh laugh. “She was nobody. Just one of the many people stupid enough to cross my father.”

  “The councilwoman,” Jessie said, remembering what Lorena Torres had said at the diner.

  Briscoe’s laugh abruptly cut off. “You should be begging for your life. Instead, you’re giving me more reasons to kill you? I thought you were smart.”

  “I try to be.” Jessie forced herself to be smart now. To look more closely at the surgical instruments. Just think of them as tools. How can you use them?

  Only minutes ago, she had been wishing for anything with which to cut the duct tape binding her wrists. Here was a table full of sharp implements.

  Tools.

  If she could manage to get to one, somehow maneuver it with her bound hands in a way that could cut the tape, then she could get free. Or at least give herself a chance.

  Jessie kicked backward with her right leg, trying to connect with Briscoe’s shin. The woman dodged her, seemingly without effort, and laughed. “Did they teach you that move in self-defense class?” She punched Jessie hard in the kidneys from behind and Jessie staggered forward, almost crashing into the filthy operating table. She swerved in a different direction and used the momentum to get closer to the table of instruments.

  “I thought we established our relative fighting prowess the first time I kicked your ass.”

  Jessie didn’t respond. She inched toward the table of instruments.

  “I think I’m going to start with your legs,” Briscoe said. “Give you some nice long scars. Maybe slice your Achilles tendons so you can’t try to kick me again. Maybe cut off a few toes, make your handsome detective friend eat them like Chicken McNuggets. How does that sound?”

  “Leary’s more of a Big Mac kind of guy.” The closest instrument, a long, extremely sharp-looking scalpel, was almost within reach.

  “Get on the table.” Jessie braced herself, flexed her hands—which luckily, although bound, had not gone completely numb—and made a quick grab for the scalpel. She got the instrument into her hands and fumbled with it, trying to rotate it so that the blade reached the tape between her wrists. Briscoe watched her with a bemused smile. “Seriously?”

  Jessie struggled against rising panic, but she couldn’t get the leverage she needed to saw at the tape. Briscoe closed the distance between them and reached for her hands. She was going to take the scalpel from her, and probably inflict a little damage as a punishment. Jessie watched Briscoe’s hand come toward her, and a thought flashed into her mind. Surgeon’s hands, Briscoe had called them, the day she’d panicked at the coffee counter of a University City bookstore. She said she needed to protect her surgeon’s hands.

&
nbsp; Jessie had an idea. She stopped trying to maneuver the scalpel toward the tape. She held it out toward Briscoe and charged toward the woman. Briscoe jumped back, surprised. But she wasn’t fast enough to get out of Jessie’s way. The blade connected, slashing across Briscoe’s right palm. The skin separated into ugly flaps and blood spurted out. Briscoe wheeled away. “My hand!”

  Jessie dropped the scalpel and thrust her hands at the rest of the instruments on the table. There was a heavy looking saw—maybe for cutting through bone?—that looked like it might serve her purposes. She placed her wrists over its teeth and started to piston her arms forward and backward. The tape loosened.

  “You ruined my hand, you stupid bitch!”

  Jessie sawed faster. The tape separated with a snapping sound. Her hands burst apart. She was free.

  Briscoe’s eyes were filled with rage. She bared her teeth like an animal. Her fist came up fast. She punched Jessie in the throat. Jessie flew backward. She couldn’t breathe. Black spots swam in her vision for one second, two seconds, as she watched Briscoe come at her. Finally, she sucked in a huge lungful of air.

  Blood streamed from Briscoe’s fisted right hand. Jessie threw her own punch, but missed. “Get on the table!”

  “Make me.”

  Briscoe reached for her. It was what Jessie had hoped she would do. When her right fist opened, exposing the slashed palm, Jessie grabbed it and dug her nails into the wound. Briscoe screamed and ripped her hand free.

  Jessie saw the scalpel she’d dropped earlier, still on the floor in a small pool of Briscoe’s blood. She lunged for it. Briscoe saw what she was doing and tried to beat her to the weapon. Jessie let herself fall to the floor, swept up the scalpel, and rolled onto her back. She let out her own scream and thrust upward. The blade entered Briscoe’s chest just as the woman crashed on top of her.

  Briscoe’s eyes, inches from Jessie’s, filled with a look of confusion. She let out a soft, “Urk.”

  Jessie let out a sigh of relief, but in the next instant, Briscoe’s eyes brightened again, full of hate. Her hand came up and her fingers wrapped around Jessie’s throat.

  Jessie felt her airway cut off. She gritted her teeth and forced the blade deeper into Briscoe’s chest. Blood flowed down the metal handle and coated Jessie’s hands. She pushed harder and felt the steel scrape past the resistance of Briscoe’s ribs. It sank into her heart.

  Briscoe’s eyes went out of focus. Her fingers loosened. Jessie could breathe again. The scalpel slipped out of her grip but stuck in Briscoe’s chest. Blood pumped out of the woman, flooding the floor. Jessie breathed heavily, watching the woman on top of her die.

  She felt a sickening sensation, but forced herself to roll out from under the body. She was still in danger, and so were Leary, Graham, and Kelly. She got to her knees in the blood and searched Briscoe’s clothing. She was looking for two things. She found one of them in the pocket of Briscoe’s jeans—a ring of keys. She did not find the second thing she was looking for, which was a phone.

  Jessie took the keys. After a second’s hesitation, she took one of the other surgical instruments as well—another scalpel. Then she hurried out of the room. There was no one in the hallway. She crept forward until she reached the building’s exit.

  The night was still chilly and damp, the grass wet beneath her shoes. She could hear men talking in the distance, rough laughter, the clink of bottles. She couldn’t see anything in the darkness. She moved forward, slowly and silently, in what she hoped was the direction of the other building. No more than ten feet away, she saw a flash of light as someone lit a cigarette. Her breath caught in her throat. After a moment, she moved forward.

  She crept past the smoking man. The main building came into sight. There was no one in front of it. No guards.

  Thank God.

  With her goal in sight, she moved more quickly. One step. Two steps. With one more sprint she could reach the door….

  A low growl stopped her in her tracks. Turning her head, she saw the eyes of the Rottweiler glittering in the darkness not more than six inches away.

  She froze and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain of the animal’s teeth tearing out her throat. But no pain came. The growl subsided into a husky panting sound.

  She opened her eyes. The dog was still watching her, but his gaze didn’t seem as menacing. She remembered seeing the animal in the light. An older dog, overweight and placid. Maybe even friendly.

  “Shhhhh,” she whispered. “It’s okay. Good doggie.”

  The Rottweiler wagged its tail. Jessie let out a breath of relief. She petted the dog on his head, then behind his ear. Then, leaving him behind, she continued her progress toward the biker gang’s main building.

  The door was not locked. She slipped inside. The front room was empty. She gripped the scalpel tighter, hoping her luck would hold. She went down the hallway, found the room she was looking for, and started trying the keys on Briscoe’s ring. The third key fit. She unlocked the door and opened it, stepping into darkness.

  A shape came at her and knocked her to the ground. Pain flashed through her body.

  43

  In the darkness, someone tackled Jessie and drove her to the floor. A surprised cry escaped from her throat. She cut it off quickly. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention.

  “It’s okay. It’s just me.” She whispered as loudly as she dared.

  The person who had knocked her over was Leary. In the darkness, his eyes looked wide and unbelieving, shiny with tears. His hands searched her body, her face, as if he couldn’t believe she was here. He must have imagined her being tortured. He’d been trapped in here with Graham, tending to the wreck that was Kelly, and imagining what was happening to her.

  “Mark, I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  “What did she do to you?” His voice broke. His hands continued to roam. “You’re covered in blood.”

  “Her blood.”

  “Where is she?” Graham said. Looking past Leary, Jessie could see the detective standing near the wall.

  “Dead.” Speaking the word sent a tremor through Jessie’s body. She had killed the woman. She knew, rationally, that she had had no choice. That Briscoe meant to do her incredible harm. But for some reason, that didn’t stop the guilt. It never did.

  Leary stared at her, as if having trouble comprehending what she was telling him. “How?”

  “I stabbed her in the heart.”

  “You’re sure she’s dead?”

  Jessie shuddered again. Now tears slid from her own eyes. She nodded. “We need to get out of here before someone finds her body.”

  “They took my car keys,” Leary said.

  From the darkness, Graham muttered a curse. Jessie thought she heard Kelly groan as well.

  “I have Vicki’s keys.” Jessie held up the keyring, squinting to see the keys. One of them was attached to a Mercedes key fob.

  “When Graham and I got here, we saw a Mercedes parked out front,” Leary said. His composure seemed to be quickly returning, and with it, a sense of purpose. He turned to Kelly. She lay curled up in a fetal position. Leary crossed the room and gently touched her shoulder. “Kelly, can you stand up? We need to leave.”

  Kelly didn’t move. Jessie wasn’t even sure she’d heard or understood him.

  “She’s traumatized,” Graham said.

  “Can you carry her?” Jessie said to Leary.

  “I think so. But that means I won’t be able to fight if we get surprised on the way out.”

  “Emily can fight,” Jessie said. “And I’m not so defenseless myself.”

  “I think you proved that tonight,” Graham said. Leary looked uncertain.

  “We can’t leave her here,” Jessie said.

  “I know.” Leary bent down and gathered Kelly into his arms. Her limbs hung limply from her, swaying slightly. Leary grunted as he hefted her up and over one shoulder. “She’s heavier than she looks.”

  Jessie was already on her feet. She gripped the
scalpel in one hand and grabbed the doorknob with the other. “It’s a straight shot up this hallway to the main room of the building. Then through a door to the outside. Briscoe’s car should be right in front.”

  “Okay,” Graham said. “We move fast and quiet, get Kelly into the back seat, get in the car, and go. You ready?”

  “Hold on.” Leary adjusted the weight he was carrying. Kelly’s black hair, disheveled and blood-caked, hung down his back. “Ready.”

  Jessie started to turn the knob, then paused. She realized they might not make it. She looked back at Leary. “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  A smile spread across his face, bright even in the darkness of the room.

  “As novel as it is to watch a proposal in a dungeon,” Graham said, “I’d really like to get the hell out of here.”

  “I love you,” Leary said.

  “I love you, too. So let’s try not to die.” Jessie turned the knob and opened the door.

  44

  Jessie and Graham entered the quiet hallway, with Leary a step behind carrying Kelly Lee. There was no sign of the bikers. Not yet, anyway.

  They made their way up the hallway as planned, and entered the main room where they’d first met the bikers and Ray Briscoe. There was no one there now. The lights were off and the room was quiet. Jessie opened the door to the outside.

  At first, Jessie thought Briscoe’s car wasn’t there. Her heart slammed in her chest and her mouth went dry. Then her eyes found the vehicle’s sleek, black form, almost invisible in the darkness. She led the way and they hurried to the Mercedes. Jessie unlocked it with the key fob. The car emitted a chirp that seemed excruciatingly loud to Jessie. She froze, cringing, waiting for discovery. The dog barked once, but there were no other sounds. Letting out her breath, she opened the rear passenger door.

  Graham helped Leary lever Kelly into the back seat. Her body flopped lifelessly across the seats. Leary pushed her legs into the car and closed the door. Then he turned to Jessie. “Always fun when we get to work together.”