The Avenger

by Jo Robertson

  Last night, he believed, not this afternoon, but he couldn't be sure. Not Olivia, he thought, not with the hideous hair color. His pulse raced with dread that he might be wrong. Pray God, not Olivia.

  While Jack waited for the reverse address information to come on his laptop, Slater knocked on the guest house door. Jack waved him into the kitchen, eyed him thoughtfully, and thought it was time to come clean with the man who'd once been like a brother to him.

  Slater was a man driven by reason rather than instinct. A man of rational thought would have a hard time believing someone could change physically like Jack had in such a short time. Even with the explanation of the special designer drugs pumped into his body, Slater would scoff at the idea.

  "I need to talk to you about… about what happened when I left," Jack began. By the time he finished fifteen minutes later, Slater was pacing the living room, looking agitated and horrified. "Damn it, Jack! We all thought you were dead. I heard your foster parents got a death certificate from Texas."

  He threw himself into a kitchen chair. "I can't… I don't understand it."

  "You were meant to think I was out of your life. Permanently. They didn't want anyone to come looking for me."

  "Shit," Slater said, jumped up and began his pacing. "Shit, shit."

  "Invictus held me in isolation three months, used me as their own private guinea pig, told me I was unique."

  Jack remembered the white-walled, clinical cell and the endless questions and interviews, the blood draws, the x-rays, and the recently developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the MRI. The incessant psychological and endurance tests.

  "When they finished with me, I understood who I was, what I had to do, where my future lay. I couldn't go back."

  A pregnant pause dominated the kitchen for long moments.

  Finally Slater said, "That story's too damn bizarre to be made up."

  Jack felt dizzy with relief. Olivia had believed him. Slater believed him now.

  He took a few minutes to explain his unexpected "lead" and offered the name that'd just come through from the reverse directory. A man named Theodore Burrows had just jumped to the top of the suspect list.

  Slater frowned. "You want to explain how you came up with this lead?"

  "Nope," Jack said calmly. "You probably don't want to know."

  "Figures."

  As they walked to his truck, Slater glanced across the top of the truck and spoke without inflection. "Jack, if you hurt her again, I'll kill you."

  Jack didn't answer. What would he say to that? After a moment he spoke quietly. "I'd like you to have a deputy check at her house. Can you do that?"

  "I guess you're not explaining that either."

  "Just a gut feeling. I'm probably wrong."

  Slater used his shoulder mike to order Waylon Harris to drive to Olivia's house.

  They arrived at the Sacramento address of Burrows thirty minutes after the call to Harris. Slater had a judge who owed him a favor and agreed to a no-knock wire warrant. Jack wouldn't have followed protocol even without the warrant. Not when he couldn't be sure Olivia was safe.

  "On three," Jack said, taking the lead as they hovered at the front door of 2776 Mitchell, their weapons drawn. He gestured for Slater to take the backup position behind him. On three, Jack turned the door knob. It was locked. He waited fifteen seconds, kicked in the door, and let Slater go in low, while Jack wrapped himself around the entryway. Left, then right.

  "Clear."

  "Upstairs." Slater indicated with his head toward the staircase.

  Jack raced up the staircase two steps at a time, reaching the landing seconds before Slater. He nodded toward a room at the far end of the hallway where a reddish glow emanated from the partially-open door. He pointed with his left hand, keeping his gun hand firmly wrapped around the handle.

  If Burrows was in the house, he would have heard them by now, but they crept carefully forward anyway. Slater nudged the door open with the barrel of his gun, placing his body to the right of the door frame. Jack slowly pushed the door open wider.

  He saw the woman first. Confusion froze him for a second. Not a redhead, but a blonde. This girl was a new conquest, and that meant Burrows had been with another woman last night, a redhead. Not Olivia.

  The blonde appeared unconscious or dead as she lay on the bed, her legs and arms spread in a grotesque caricature of obscenity. The man sprawled between the girl's legs sprang off the bed, stumbling onto the carpet in a comical parody of the cheating husband. Jack would've laughed if the situation hadn't been so revolting.

  Slater checked the woman's vitals and called the EMTs. Jack kept his weapon carefully trained on the man he presumed was Theodore Burrows. "Got a strong pulse," Slater said.

  Burrows' handsome face twisted in protest. "Hey, man, she's not dead. We're just having a little fun. Private fun," he added growing bolder. "You have no right – "

  Slater growled, "A warrant's our right, asshole."

  Jack picked up a pair of pants from the floor and tossed them to Burrows. "Get dressed. You look pathetic."

  Slater lifted one of the woman's eyelids. "She's got a pulse, but I can't rouse her." He reached for a blanket lying next to the bed and covered the woman, then turned toward Burrows who was struggling to get into his jeans. "You drugged her, you bastard."

  "No man, no way. She's into this kind of thing. I promise." He gestured toward the unconscious girl. "This is what she wanted."

  "Oh, she asked you to drug and rape her?" Jack holstered his gun and jerked Burrows' right arm around his back, twisting harder than necessary. Then he yanked the other arm around and handcuffed him.

  "Ow, man, take it easy."

  The familiar stripping away of human emotion descended on Jack, the animal preparing to hunt with a deadly, calculated purpose. He batted the feeling away, strained to hold on to his humanity in the face of a punk-ass reprobate like Theodore Burrows.

  He shoved the man into a chair next to a large mahogany cabinet.

  "Shut up." Jack leaned forward, withdrew his weapon, and dangled it carelessly in front of him, piercing his captive with a hard look. "Where is she?" he asked on a hunch.

  "Where is who?"

  "The redhead."

  "Burrows frowned and began shaking his head. "I don't know what you – "

  "Shh." Jack softened his voice. "Here's how this is going to go, Teddy-boy. You're going to tell me where the other girl is." He smiled grimly. "And then I won't bust both your knee caps."

  "Hold on, Jack," Slater said. "There's something over there." He walked closer and peered around the back of the cabinet. "It's a red… what the hell?" He examined the unit and retrieved the camera hidden behind the console. "It's still operating." He pointed toward the bed where the unconscious girl lay. "Take a look at where the lens is aimed."

  Slater pulled the camera out of the cabinet. "Well, what have we here? Looks like Mr. Burrows is into the whole art photography scene."

  "You've been videoing her?" Jack clamped down on the instinct to rip the man's throat out with teeth and claws.

  Burrows darted his tongue out to moisten his dry lips. "I haven't done anything illegal."

  "Maybe, maybe not." Jack heard the sirens wailing in the distance. Then the subsequent slamming of feet through the downstairs.

  "Upstairs," Slater yelled to the paramedics.

  Jack turned back to Burrows. "You'd better hope nothing shows up in the girl's bloodstream, Teddy. GHB, Rohypnol, whatever you used to subdue her hasn't passed through her system yet, and toxicology will find it."

  "I want a lawyer," Ted demanded, narrowing his eyes.

  "Good move," Jack snarled, dragging him from the chair and shoving him towards the bedroom door. "You sure as hell are gonna need one."

  Within a short time, the ambulance had stabilized the drugged woman and transported her to Sutter General Hospital in downtown Sacramento. Slater dispatched a squad car to transport Burrows to the county jail.

 
"I thought he had Olivia," Jack confessed as they watched the ambulance pull away. He slid a glance sideways at Slater who stood on the front steps of Burrows' house.

  "She's probably safe at home in bed."

  Jack stared at the cloudy sky. "Yeah, she wasn't ever here. I've been running down the wrong lead. Burrows isn't the UNSUB, but it doesn't mean he's innocent."

  "Hell, no," Slater rejoined. "I figure we've got any number of charges to bring him up on." He slanted a knowing look at Jack. "And you're not going to tell me about some redhead, are you?"

  "Nothing to tell," Jack said.

  The raid had been an absolute fiasco as far as the DLK case was concerned. But if not Burrows, then who the hell was the Dead Language Killer? Were Jack's visions failing him?

  He thought back to the interview Isabella Torres and Olivia had with Diego Vargas. Torres was convinced Vargas was capable of that kind of violence, but that didn't make him Jack's suspect. No physical or circumstantial evidence tied the Councilman to the DLK, and Jack couldn't rely on an ADA's instincts.

  The two-way radio jangled as Slater pushed Burrows into the waiting patrol car. He jabbed the mike key.

  "Chief?" Waylon Harris' voice over the radio sounded rattled. "Dr. Gant's not here, sir. The house is empty."

  He knew before Slater spoke that something had happened to Olivia.

  God, he should've paid attention to the fleeting warning he'd had about her, Jack thought. Panic rippled through him. Where was she?

  "We're on our way," Slater said, turning to Jack. "Check the university. She might've left without Waylon seeing her."

  But Jack was sure the sharp-eyed Harris wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Slater and Jack jumped in the truck and drove the scant seven miles to Olivia's house while Jack tried calling her cell and the university office phone. No one had seen her since she left school last night. She'd missed her morning classes. Minutes later they stood on the neatly clipped lawn at the front of her house and stared at the brick façade of the outside walls. The ivy curled charmingly over the red and gray stones toward the second floor.

  During the perimeter walk Harris showed them the unlocked back door, but when they searched the house from top to bottom, they found nothing to indicate foul play. Although the bed was unkempt, nothing seemed out of place.

  Only the unsecured back door.

  "She would've locked up," Jack said. He turned to Harris. "You're sure the door was like this?"

  "Yes sir, I knocked at the front and when I got no answer, I went around to the back, tried the knob first… uh, you know… I didn't want to damage Dr. Gant's… "

  "Thanks, Harris, we'll take it from here," Jack said, effectively dismissing the deputy.

  Inside the house, Slater stood in the kitchen looking around thoughtfully. "We'll do another sweep. See if we missed anything the first time through."

  "Yeah." Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, his gun dangling by his side. What next? He holstered his weapon and noted the slight tremble of his hand. He glanced quickly at Slater. He'd noticed too.

  "Don't worry. We'll find her."

  "Yeah," Jack repeated. They'd find her, but would they find her in time? Someone had taken Livvie, but if not Ted Burrows, then who? Diego Vargas? A suspect he hadn't even thought of?

  In the second sweep through the library, Jack found the evidence. The stain from the spilled wine spread across the carpet behind the desk. The long-stemmed crystal glass lay on its side, the splotch of wine a blood-red cry of warning.

  Something or someone had interrupted Olivia. A phone call? She would've cleaned up the spill. A knock at the door? It had to have been the back door. Whatever it was, she'd knocked over the glass. Or dropped it. Didn't matter which, but he thought it showed that she'd been startled, not overpowered. No sign of a struggle. He'd have Slater's people print the back door, see what they found.

  Jack walked to the foot of the stairs. "Slater, down here." The tone of his voice – loud, but calm – sounded normal. He returned to the library and stared at the ugly stain. It reminded him of the blood of the killer's victims, shocking stigmata clamoring for justice.

  Slater stepped into the library at the moment the cell phone rang. He grabbed it from his waistband. "Sheriff Slater," he barked into the receiver. "When? Where?" He snapped the phone shut and turned to Jack, his face solemn. "A patrolman just found Olivia."

  Jack felt himself stagger. Not a physical movement that Slater would notice, but an internal collapse of his heart, his bones, muscles, and flesh melting with the hot pain of grief.

  Slater must've read the emotion in his stance. "No, man, she's okay. They found Livvie, not her body."

  Jack couldn't process the information. For that split second, he'd felt his world tilt and spin around, upheaved by some cosmic earthquake, and it couldn't right itself again for several long moments. He dragged in an agonizing breath, as though his ribs had been crushed and his lungs couldn't pull in the requisite air.

  "I – I thought… " Jack recovered and slowly pushed away from the desk. "Where is she?"

  "Under the Falcon Street Overpass off I-80."

  Jack worked his jaw. "Some bastard left her there?"

  Slater nodded. "She's dressed in her underwear, cold and a little scraped up, but she's okay."

  "He took her when it was still dark."

  "Here's the thing, though. Where was Burrows? With the blonde?"

  Jack nodded, thinking of the redhead in his vision.

  "He didn't use all that elaborate filming equipment and his perverted video games with Olivia," Slater pressed.

  Jack echoed that line of reasoning. "Right."

  "Who then?"

  Jack turned toward the door. "Let's find out," he threw over his shoulder.

  *

  Olivia sat in the back of the ambulance, wrapped in a scratchy gray blanket. An earnest patrolman, freckled-faced with glasses and jutting ears, hovered on the periphery, waiting to get her statement. She couldn't imagine anyone she'd like less to tell what happened.

  She felt stupid. Kidnapped by an ex, how clichéd.

  With shaky hands she took the cup of coffee the EMT handed her. Another medical attendant worked on cleaning the scrapes on her legs while a third tilted her head backward and flashed a light in first the left, then the right eye. "Some uneven dilation," he murmured.

  Possible concussion was what he meant. She must've banged her head on the ground at some point during the abduction, either at her house or during captivity. She thought of Bill's twisted expression and possessive hands. Bastard!

  She turned away from the EMT and leaned her shoulder on the edge of the open van door. A wave of nausea engulfed her right before she threw up.

  Gradually, she brought her queasy stomach under control, and she found the methodical workings of the paramedics calmed her. She was safe now. She had survived and everything that could be done for her was being done. Even though the reprieve was brief and by sheer chance, Bill hadn't killed her. But she'd read in his eyes the hard knowledge that he wanted to, that he'd come close to it, and that he'd try again.

  She knew that with absolute certainty. Not today or tomorrow. Maybe not even next month, but sooner or later, she'd look over her shoulder and find him stalking her. Or carelessly open her door and feel the bottom drop out of her world again.

  When Jack and Slater arrived minutes later, their faces looked strained and worried with an underlying anger that unsettled her. As soon as Jack spied her, he reached her side in an instant and briefly touched her shoulder. He didn't speak, but the heat of his large hand on her bare skin made her feel safe.

  After she gave a brief statement to the patrolman, Jack tried to bully her into going to the hospital, but she refused. Merely bruised, scraped, and sore, with nothing broken, she had no intention of spending wasted hours in an emergency waiting room.

  "I want to go home and clean up," she insisted, pulli
ng the blanket closer around her.

  "Ma'am, they'll want to do a rape kit," the young EMT cautioned, his steady hazel eyes kind. "You really should go to the hospital."

  Olivia flinched at the words and felt Jack stiffen beside her. "It's not necessary," she said firmly and repeated, "I want to go home." She clamped her teeth together to keep her jaw from quavering.

  "Olivia," Jack began.

  "No!" She heard the near hysteria in the rise of her voice. She felt as though she were holding herself together with nerve and sheer will, which was ironic, she thought. She hadn't been seriously hurt, hadn't been assaulted, or…

  The fragile control she'd maintained began to unravel. "Get me out of here."

  "Okay, I'll drive you home," Jack muttered, no doubt eyeing the stubborn set of her jaw.

  Good. She wasn't the young girl he'd once known. She wouldn't be pushed around by a baby-faced EMT or a man who no longer had a real place in her life. As she eased into the truck, mindful of her sore ribs and abraded legs, she saw Slater draw Jack aside and speak quietly to him. Jack nodded once, glanced her way, and said something back.

  "What did he say?" she asked suspiciously when Jack slid into the driver's seat.

  "Nothing. Just business."

  Sure, she thought. Business, my ass.

  "Did they find him?" She'd identified her kidnapper as her ex-husband and given the particulars. A judge had issued an arrest warrant and deputies were attempting to serve the warrant right now.

  Jack shook his head. "No luck so far. Slater's riding back in a patrol car. I'll take you home." His eyes flashed like volcanic glass. "Christ, Olivia, why didn't you tell me about Bill Gant?"

  "It was nothing," she retorted snidely, "just business – my own business."

  His hands clenched on the steering wheel. "You could've been hurt, raped, killed." He glanced at her and his voice softened. "I was worried about you."

  "I'm a big girl," she reminded him, feeling like a child instead.

  "So you keep saying," he muttered and fell silent.

  At her home in Sacramento Jack walked Olivia around to the rear of the house and fidgeted on the porch while she fumbled to find the spare key. If possible, she was edgier than ever. She'd overheard the patrolmen talking about Ted Burrows and the way he'd been caught. How could she have been such a bad judge of character about both her graduate student and her ex-husband?