“He’s awake,” the man on the bed said to his partner, then focused his attention back on the magazine.
The other man pushed away from the desk on the rolling chair and wheeled over to Jordan. “Welcome back. You’re a real lightweight. Usually I gotta hit people twice with that pepper gas, but you went down in a heap, first shot.”
“Why’d you kill him?” Jordan’s voice cracked.
The stocky man from the bed didn’t look up, just said, “Collateral damage”
The lankier, shaved-headed man directly in front of Jordan nodded. “Yeah, war is hell.”
Both men were muscled and looked menacing. Jordan tried to break down his options, but his eyes were stinging so badly it was distracting to his concentration.
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small folding knife. He flipped it open and started trimming his nails. “So, we can do this thing two ways. We got the hard way, and we got the really-hard way. I’m not going to lie. They’re both going to suck for you. But, if you just cooperate, it will be over quickly. So I’m going to ask you, where’s your partner, and where’s the data?” The man did not look up from his fingers as he carved the nails short.
“My partner? Are you suggesting I’m gay?”
The man backhanded Jordan across the face.
“Don’t play games with me, wiseass.” The man held the knife in a menacing pose.
“Well, you seemed so ripe for the picking.” This was not a typical predicament for him, but he didn’t know how to be anything but himself. And, yes, sometimes he was a wiseass. Only to those that seemed to beg for it. This clown was a typical alpha-male asshole, with a typical alpha-male asshole job.
“For every minute you fuck around with me, I add it to the minutes I’ll let Cyclops over there torture you.”
Jordan looked at the man on the bed. There was no obvious indication he had an eye in the middle of his forehead. But at this point, he expected anything.
“What am I supposed to tell you?” Jordan asked.
“I want to know where your partner is. Did she give you the hard drives or USB sticks? A CD-ROM perhaps? Anything with data on it? Or are they still with her?”
Jordan could only shake his head. He knew there was nothing he could say to appease this man. There was every chance he was probably going to die here and for no good reason. Since death had been stalking him for eighteen years, he expected it would find him like it had found all those around him, in some random, spectacular fashion.
It didn’t seem to matter what he did here. He was likely going to die anyway. And right now he could not seem to muster the energy for a wiseass remark of any kind. Jordan finally said, “She’s not my partner. I helped her out, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. I hate her, and if I knew where she was, I’d tell you.”
“Don’t play me for stupid. We know she visited you after she left her brother’s house,” the man said. “If her brother had no managed to blow away one of my guys, she’d probably be dead already.”
From the bed, Cyclops spoke “C’mon, Nitro, let me play him up. I’ll tune him like a fiddle, and he’ll sing.”
“Shut it down.” Nitro waved his hand at Cyclops.
Jordan wondered to himself if these men used these names in their regular lives. Did they have regular lives? Was there a Mrs. Cyclops? As much as he wanted to laugh, he started to feel dizzy again. His thinking was not really on point. He felt like an alien was trying to invade his mind. Maybe it was a natural chemical reaction to the impending pain and eventual death. He’d read that death was usually painless because the body released hormones and chemicals to ease the pain and even cloud the mind. Maybe this was it.
“Hey, asshole, I’m talking to you!”
Jordan snapped out of his daze. This entire thing started taking on a dreamlike state, and he felt like something was puling him into another realm. This was it, the pre-death anesthesia. Maybe he should say a prayer or something.
“Where the hell is she?” The man was inches from Jordan’s face. He could feel the spittle of breath and closed his eyes.
The next instant he felt the impact of a heavy fist to the gut, then another to the face. Jordan’s ears wailed in a siren only he could hear. His vision swooned as he struggled to reel in a new breath.
“Where is she? You’re going to tell me eventually, so just save yourself the pain and tell me now.” The man backed away and stood from the rolling chair.
Jordan tasted the copper of his blood as he ran his tongue into the split on his bottom lip. He watched the man pull a gun from a shoulder holster and place it on the desk.
“I’m going to ask one more time. Then I’m going to shoot you in the foot. If that pain don’t compel you to talk, I’m giving Cyclops here the green light to treat you like the insect you are and have him pull off your legs. So, now, once again, where’s your partner?”
The man picked up the pistol and aimed it down at Jordan’s foot. “I’m going to count to three.”
“Look, dude, I don’t know her. I don’t know where she is.”
“One”
Jordan closed his eyes, wondering if he could steel himself against this coming pain.
“Two.” The man punched him in the face again, harder than before. “Tell me, you moron.”
His words faded with the ringing of Jordan’s ears. The punch nearly knocked him out, but he held a precarious thread of consciousness. Time seemed to crawl, and everything in his vision twisted.
“Nitro, don’t shoot him. It’s too loud.” Cyclops pointed to his knife.
Nitro stuffed the gun back into its holster and pulled the knife out. “Okay, change of plans. I’m going to sink this knife into your thigh.”
Cyclops interrupted. “No, Nitro, slice the ligaments behind his knees, very little bleeding, excruciating pain, and debilitating injury. He won’t walk for weeks.”
“Good call, Cyclops. You really are the torture professional. In fact, maybe you should do it.” Nitro stood and backed away.
There was a loud crashing noise and commotion seemed to fill the room. Flashes, cracks, and pops assaulted the air. Everything was a chaotic mess of shapes and shadows. Jordan thought for sure he was going to feel a bullet hit him or a knife sink into his flesh at any second, but then everything was still.
As his vision cleared, he saw her standing in front of him kicking away the gun of the man on the floor.
“You okay?” She bent over to check the pulse of the man.
Jordan couldn’t speak. He wanted to, but for some reason the words only came out in a sigh. Kayci started undoing his restraints, and in a few seconds, he was free.
“C’mon, we have to get out of here.”
Jordan slowly got his legs back under him as they headed out the door into the parking lot where the black Ford sat idling. The second his head hit the seat, he closed his eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
Jordan looked around the room but didn’t recognize the place. It appeared he had woken in 1977 or a place that hadn’t been updated since. It was morning outside the shade-covered windows. He’d slept through the night with no memories of a dream or how he’d gotten here.
He reached up to the back of the ugly tan sofa and pulled himself to a seated position. The more in focus his eyes became, the worse the place looked. The ugly wood paneling was only half the problem. But, then, he saw it, the bright orange shag carpet under the dinning room table. It was beautiful.
He was seeing clearly now.
A car door closed. Jordan could feel his body tense as the footfalls came toward the door. When the door flew open, he saw Kayci. He didn’t know whether to love her or hate her. If not for her, he would’ve never been in this position, on the other hand, she did save his life.
“Welcome back, slugger,” Kayci twisted sideways as she walked in the door with a couple of shopping bags.
“I hope you have food.”
“Hope you like sandwiches.” Kayci placed the
bags on the counter.
“Who doesn’t?” He stood up and stretched his arms over his head.
“Feeling better?” She was emptying the contents of the bags onto the brown counter top.
Stretching his jaw, wagging it side-to-side, it was sore. “I’m not dead, so that’s good.” Jordan eyed the sub sandwiches and the Sun Chips. “Thanks for busting me out…again.”
“I guess I didn’t have a choice, after all, it is my fault you’re in this mess.”
“You think?” He reached out, took hold of the long sandwich, and tore open the plastic wrapping. “You stole my money too, didn’t you?”
She brushed her hands through her hair and left it disheveled. Jordan could not deny it made her look sexy. Something about the way the sunlight was hitting her through the tiny window over the sink made her especially fetching. He almost wanted to forgive her for stealing his money.
“I’m sorry about that too, but I will pay you back. I planned to pay you back all along.” She took hold of the other sandwich, the Sun Chips, and two cans of cola, and walked to the small yellow laminate table on top of the orange carpet.
Jordan followed and sat across from her. “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yeah, of course, but here’s the thing: I’m a complicated guy.”
“You don’t want to know.”
She was impossible. Jordan just wanted to eat. He was wickedly hungry. He could tell she wanted to explain. He would give her a chance to get around to it before he got pissed off again.
***
After a silent lunch, Jordan watched her type furiously on a laptop. “So what do we do now?” He plopped on the long couch, as far away from Kayci as he could.
Kayci looked up from the laptop. “I’m going to need your help.”
Jordan laughed. “Yeah, sure, fool me twice. We’ve been through this. I already said no way.” He tipped the cola can to his mouth.
“I know it sounds crazy, but you have to trust me.”
He smacked his lips and let out a small burp. “Trust you? You’re kidding me, right? I’m not helping you. And you’ve given me zero reasons to trust you.”
“I saved your life.”
“You had me arrested.”
“I saved your life,” she repeated.
“You stole my money.”
“I saved your life.”
“You almost got me killed.”
“I saved your life.”
“Stop saying that! You’re the reason someone had to save my life, lest we forget. And, yes, okay, you saved my life. I thank you very much for that. I really do appreciate it, but I would not have been there if not for you, so the way I see it, we’re even.”
She sighed. “I know. And I’m sorry.” Kayci moved her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes. “I never meant for this. I used you. I admit it. But those charges were never going to stick. I wasn’t going to let an innocent man end up in jail. I just needed a few hours, and that was a good way to create it. I never meant for you to get dragged into this.”
“Well, you did. You took an already mixed up life and ripped apart what little I had left.” Jordan wanted to be furious. He wanted to hate her with the fire of at least ten suns. But a sadness in her eyes disarmed him.
“I didn’t ask for this either.” Kayci bit one corner of her bottom lip. “I didn’t ask to be ripped out of my car, beaten up, stripped naked, and locked in a trunk.” She paused a long moment. “They killed my brother. When I found that out, I knew you were in danger, so I came back.”
Jordan saw her internal struggle. To cry or not to cry. He’d been there before many times. He had so many reasons to hate her, so many reasons to run away and hide. But he couldn’t do it. Fact was when he’d kicked her out of the house yesterday, he hadn’t really wanted her to leave.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” he said. “I’ll help you, but you’ve got to come clean with me. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I don’t want to hear about plausible deniability. And you’re going to pay me back double what you stole.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Fair enough”
“And,” Jordan paused and forward, “you’re going to help me understand why the FBI has some sort of file on me. You’re a government agent. You have connections. When this is all sorted out, you’re going to use them. You’re going to help me get answers to a few things I need answered.”
“Like what?”
“Help me find out why I keep seeing people die.”
“Who’ve you seen die?” She tilted her head with curiosity.
“I’ve seen them since I was thirteen.”
She looked at him as if she were trying to see into his head. “Are you telling me you see dead people?” she didn’t try to hide the skeptical tone, but there was a hint of something Jordan could not place.
Jordan sighed. “No, I don’t see dead people. I see people die. It’s quite a different thing. I don’t see spirits, I don’t see ghosts or hear voices or have premonitions about their deaths. It’s just random death, random places, and random people.”
“So you think you’re some kind of death magnet?”
“That’s one way to look at it.” Jordan wiped a bit of cola from the corner of his lips with his hand. “When I was thirteen, my best friend Christie was chasing me on my bike. We used to play bike tag.” Jordan smiled, recalling the good memories of those times with a few nods.
He continued after another sip of cola, “Christie was chasing me. I went flying down a hill, across a lawn, and across the street. I looked both ways and he coast was clear. But I must have missed something because about two seconds after I made the turn I heard a screech and a thump. I looked back and saw Christie flying, twenty, thirty feet. She slammed into the pavement just ten feet from me.” He bit back his sadness. “For a few seconds she was alive, looked up at me, blood spilled out of her mouth.” Tears started to blur his vision. He sniffed and drank another sip of soda. “Her eyes, she had these amazing crystal blue eyes. She looked up at me just begging me for an explanation of what happened. Then I saw the lights go out. The life just leaked right out of her eyes.”
Jordan pulled himself out of the memory with a deep, grounding breath. He hadn’t told anyone that story, ever. Which would explain why the look on Kayci’s face was different than it had ever been since he’d known her. She didn’t seem anxious to jump to any conclusions that he was a freak who had some fascination with death.
“Is it always someone close to you?”
“No” He shook his head. “What freaks me out the most is ever since that day, I have this compulsion to look at their eyes. I always try to see the eyes, but sometimes I don’t get to see them. I never got to see Larry’s eyes. I know it wasn’t my fault he’s dead. But I’m sure the cops are there right now looking to pin that one me.”
“Actually, if I know Majestic at all, they didn’t leave a body. And chances are no one will ever find your friend.”
“He wasn’t my friend. I just worked with him. He’s kind of a dope, but he didn’t deserve to die.”
“You’ve seen all these people die. You can’t stop it. There’s no rhyme or reason for it.” She leaned back from the laptop and into the fluffy couch. “That has to be hard.”
“I’ve tried to understand it. I’ve read books, watched movies, prayed to every God I could find. I visited psychics, witches, you name it.” He took a deep breath and blew out through his mouth.
“It can’t be coincidence,” Kayci said.
“I doubt it.”
“What makes you think I can help you?”
Jordan had no answer. He just shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just something I blurted out. I guess I just wanted to tell someone. And since you’re forcing me to help you, and I’m stupid enough to agree, I figured even if you knew, you wouldn’t run away. It’s stupid, I know. I’m sure you can’t help me, but I grasp at any straw.”
&
nbsp; “There has to be some meaning, some lesson.” Kayci raised her brow.
“I’d love to find one. I don’t even know where to look anymore.”
Jordan met her eyes again and she actually looked like she believed him and his plight like no one ever had. If it weren’t for the fact he hated her, he might actually like her.
“Well, Jordan Callahan, I think I can help you.” She gnawed on her bottom lip with a sinister smile. “But first, you have to help me.”
“Sounds great” He exaggerated a smile and flashed a thumb up in mocking excitement. “But what the hell good is it if helping you gets me killed?”
She shook her head. “I won’t get you killed. I just need you to help me not get killed.”
Jordan nodded and met her glance with suspicion. He didn’t want to trust this woman. But her tantalizing tease about helping him understand his condition was too much to resist. Even if she was playing him like the sexy spy she was, it was a chance worth taking.
“Okay, I’m willing to play along.” Jordan downed the last gulp of his cola. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
She leaned towards him but didn’t sit up from the back of the couch. “I don’t need you to do anything really dangerous. I just need backup. Worst case scenario is you’ll have to kill someone.”
Her flippant tone with that last part almost caused Jordan’s mind to pass right over that small detail. But after a few seconds it sank in. He directed his gaze to her, and she flashed him an I’m cute smile that caused him to wince.
“I’m sorry, did you say kill someone!?”
Chapter Eighteen
Jordan had never pointed a gun at a person. He’d once shot targets with his neighbor in Florida. Sadly, his neighbor preferred to shoot oranges off a nearby tree. Seeing those beautiful orange globes of sweetness explode sent him reeling. His neighbor was nice enough to provide some paper targets as alternatives. It turned out he was a good shot from about twenty-five feet away. That was apparently long distance for a handgun.
Savior Frequency (Frequency Series Book 1) Page 7
