After she screamed and ran towards the front door, Manuel caught up to her and grabbed ahold of her nightgown, which ripped open, revealing her nakedness. Their struggle took them to the floor with Manuel lying atop her back, and as Kathy Dawkins opened her mouth to scream again, he killed her with the handiest thing available, a screwdriver that was still in his pocket, after having used it to make an earlier repair.
As he sat on the floor in shock beside her corpse, Kathy Dawkins’ mother came to the door, and when her knock wasn’t answered, she used her key to enter.
Manuel heard the woman’s mournful cries even as he scrambled down the shaft and, upon his return, he hid the murder weapon in his protégé’s locker.
***
He smiled across the table at Jessica as they sat in the local coffee shop.
“If not for you, I might be in jail.”
“What a night that was, and poor Juliet, she was unconscious through most of it.”
“It was probably for the best, she would have been scared to death.”
“I don’t know, I found it exciting,”
He stared at her.
“What?”
“You, you climbed up that shaft in the dark, alone, just to see where it went, and for all you knew a killer was waiting on the other end. I think you have a bit of danger junkie in you.”
“It was exciting, and I’ve never been easily frightened.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“Are you talking about us?”
“I abducted you, tied you to a bed and held a knife over you, and a week later we were dating.”
“It wasn’t the usual flowers and candy routine, I’ll give you that.”
“Are you... are you ever afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Even though you know what I’m capable of?”
Jessica stretched across the table until her lips were an inch from his, and her eyes mirrored his own.
“You, baby, are capable of great love, and despite all the pain and loss you’ve experienced, you and I will one day live the life of our dreams.”
He kissed her and when she opened her eyes, she found him shaking his head in wonder.
“What is it?”
“You, you’re a miracle.”
The bell over the door tinkled, announcing the arrival of a new customer. When they looked up, they saw Juliet headed their way.
Juliet slid into the booth beside Jessica.
“Did you guys hear what happened?”
“No, what is it?” Jessica said.
“The Chinese restaurant got robbed. Someone broke in overnight and emptied the safe. They say that they got their payroll and everything, but the weird thing is, all the doors and windows were locked from the inside.”
“So how did the thief get in and out?”
“That’s just it, no one can figure it out. It’s a real mystery.”
Jessica whispered, “A mystery?” as across the table her boyfriend watched the light in her eyes grow brighter.
“So hey, are you guys ordering food, I’m starving.”
Jessica smiled at him.
“I never did get that Chinese food you promised me.”
“No, you didn’t, did you?” he said, and then he stood and offered a hand to each of the ladies. “Come along, Juliet, Jessica has a taste for Chinese.”
“Oh, okay, hey guys, wouldn’t it be weird if the Chinese place had a secret tunnel like at the apartment house?”
Jessica squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
“That’s funny; I was wondering the same thing.”
CHAPTER 26
THE PRESENT
After their plane landed, they retrieved the car and stopped by the kennel to pick-up their dog, who, despite his wagging tail, glared at them for daring to go off without him.
On the way home, they took him for a walk in the park, and the dog, a pit bull named Stitches, quickly forgave them for their neglect, as they played with him and fed him dog treats.
While strolling back to the car, they came across a couple pushing along a baby carriage, and each one smiled at the other as they thought about the future.
***
That night they slept in their own bed for the first time in days and Jessica sighed in contentment as she snuggled closer to her husband.
“It’s good to be home.” Jessica said.
“Yes, but if we hadn’t gone I think that Steven might have succeeded in framing Wilde, and could possibly have killed more women.”
“There won’t be many more trips like that, not once the baby comes. I don’t think either one of us realizes how much our lives will change.”
“Our circumstances will change, but we’ll still be the same.”
“I do love it, you know? I mean, you’re not the only one who gets a kick out of facing danger.”
“We are what we are.”
“And soon, we’ll be three,”
He laid a hand upon her stomach.
“The bad guys won’t stand a chance.”
TAKEN! - KIDNAPPING THE DEVIL
By
REMINGTON KANE
PRELUDE
SIX MONTHS AGO
They were in South Carolina.
Five people had been murdered over a two-month period and the ballistics proved that the same .22 gun had fired all the shots.
Jessica was consulting on the case at the request of an old college friend. Her name was Dr. Juliet Hamden and she herself was a consultant brought in by the FBI.
They were sitting inside a conference room at a suburban police station. The murders had all taken place in or around a small section of the normally sedate town and the community was on edge at the sudden outpouring of violence and death.
Jessica closed her file on the case only a moment after her husband had finished perusing his own. She looked over at him.
“What do you think?”
He smiled at Juliet.
“I see now why you sought out a second opinion; she’s not your average serial killer, is she?”
Juliet leaned forward. She was a very attractive brunette with light green eyes and a slim figure.
“You see it too? And what about you, Jessica?”
“It’s the child; the killer is a child, this Samantha Ryan. The little girl said to have been present when two of the murders took place; she also lives in close proximity to the other three murders.”
Juliet fell back in her seat and sighed.
“Thank you, both of you. When I told Rob and the Chief of Police that I thought the little girl was the killer they both looked at me as if I were insane, but all the evidence fits, especially the odd upward angle of the shots.”
“Is she really only six-years-old?” Jessica said.
“Yes, but why is she killing these people? I don’t blame the FBI for not believing me, I barely believe it myself, but the evidence fits.”
The conference room door opened and in stepped the FBI agent in charge, Rob Stevens. Stevens was forty, with sandy-colored hair and a muscular build. He was also Juliet’s fiancé.
“Dr. White, what’s your take on all this?”
“I agree with Juliet. The little girl is your prime suspect.”
Stevens pulled out a chair and sat.
“This is not good. Do you realize what this means? I have to convince a judge to issue warrants on a six-year-old girl who’s cuter than a puppy. We have to collect DNA samples, hair, fiber, confiscate her wardrobe and test it all for the victims’ blood, and worse of all, I have to interrogate her. Are you two absolutely certain that it’s the little girl? Couldn’t there be a homicidal midget on the loose?”
“I know it’s hard to wrap your head around, Rob,” Juliet said. “But the evidence fits, both forensically and also given the eyewitness statements. Mrs. Cromwell, she’s says she was just about to open her front door to greet the mailman when she heard him say...” Juliet reached for the file and read. ‘Hi there, sweetie; what are y
ou doing hiding in the bushes?’ Then, an instant later, he was shot from below and when Mrs. Cromwell opened her door, she saw Samantha Ryan running away.”
Rob Stevens rubbed a hand over his face.
“She’s six, if she’s doing this then she must be insane, right?”
“Yes.” said Juliet, as Jessica answered, “No.”
Stevens threw his hands in the air.
“Great, my two experts disagree. Now listen, regardless of why she’s doing it... I believe you, it’s her, but, I’m not ready to bring the hammer down on her just yet. I’ve spoken to her parents and arranged for you two to interview her under the guise of helping her to cope with the trauma of being present while two murders took place.”
“When is she coming in?”
“Tomorrow morning,”
***
Little Samantha walked into the police station the following morning with her mother and father at her side.
She was dressed in a pink dress with white ribbons that matched the ribbons in her honey-blond hair, and as she walked along, her big blue eyes took in everything.
When she spotted him standing beside Jessica, she stopped walking and stared at him, and as he stared back at her, she nodded to him almost imperceptibly, before following along with her parents.
Both Jessica and Juliet smiled down at Samantha as they greeted her parents, and within a few minutes, they were seated across from her in the police station’s break room.
Juliet slid coins into a machine.
“Would you like a soda, honey?”
“No, thank you,” Samantha said, while eyeing them both closely.
“How about a candy bar?” Jessica said.
“Why am I here?” Samantha said.
Jessica smiled at her, as Juliet sat beside her with a can of soda.
“We just want to make sure that you’re all right. It must have been scary for you when you heard those gunshots.”
“I didn’t see anything though; I don’t know who killed the mailman or Mrs. Perkins.”
“Have you ever seen a gun, Samantha?”
“Only on TV, but the shots were really loud.”
“What about Mr. Timmons, the mailman, and Mrs. Perkins,” Juliet said. “Did you like them?”
Samantha shrugged.
“I didn’t know them.”
“Wasn’t Mr. Timmons your mailman?” Jessica said.
“Mommy gets the mail. Who was that man you were talking to in the hall?”
Jessica sat back in her seat, as the question caught her off guard.
“That man is my husband, why?”
“He’s good at games, isn’t he?”
“Well, yes, in fact, he’s created a few of the ones that people play on their phones.”
Samantha smiled.
“I could tell. I always know when someone’s good at games. Can I go home now?”
“In a little while, honey, if you don’t mind?” Juliet said. “We just want to talk with you for a few more minutes.”
“Why?”
“We just want to make sure that you’re okay?” Juliet said.
Samantha grinned at her.
“You’re not very good at games, are you?”
“Maybe not,”
“I am. I’m very good at games, and I’m going to win this one too.”
“What game, honey?”
“You know.” Samantha said, and then she jumped out of her seat and ran outside into the hall.
When Jessica and Juliet followed, they found her hugging her mother, while crying real tears.
Samantha’s mother screamed at them.
“What did you say that upset her so?”
“We, we... nothing, “Juliet stuttered out.
A few moments later, Samantha was leaving in her father’s arms, and right before the door closed, she looked up and sent the two psychiatrists a bright smile.
“That little psychopath,” Juliet whispered, as Rob Stevens walked over to them, with Jessica’s husband at his side.
“Well?” Stevens said.
“It’s her,” Jessica said. “I’d bet my reputation on it.”
Stevens nodded.
“I’m going to do just that, Jessica, along with my own and Juliet’s. As soon as I can find a judge to okay it, we’ll go in her house with search warrants and get the evidence we need.”
***
Samantha rang the doorbell of her next-door neighbor. When the door opened, she smiled.
“Hi, Mrs. McCray, can I play with Amber?”
“Sure honey, Amber’s in her room, but does your mommy know that you’re here?”
“Uh-huh,”
“Well, okay then, and let me know if you get hungry.”
“I will,” Samantha said, as she climbed the stairs.
After playing all day with Amber, Samantha returned home and asked her mother a question.
“Mommy, can I sleep over at Amber’s tonight? Mrs. McCray says it’s okay with her.”
“She did? We’ll okay then, but let me call Amber’s mommy and make sure it’s still all right.”
***
2:06 a.m.
Samantha slipped quietly out of Amber’s room and made her way silently out the back door in the kitchen.
She entered her home through the window she left unlocked in the dining room, after climbing atop the central air unit to reach it.
The candle and the matches were right where she left them, hidden behind the armoire, and when she entered the living room, she found what she hoped to find.
The coffee table was littered with beer bottles, along with an empty pizza box, and in the ashtray, there were the remains of the strange cigarettes her parents smoked whenever she wasn’t around.
Good, they would sleep right through it.
Samantha crept up the stairs slowly and placed the candle atop the landing. After two tries, she had the candle lit and turned to walk back downstairs.
Three steps down, she turned and sent a little wave toward her parents’ bedroom door, before continuing down and into the kitchen.
The gas jets on the stovetop were all hissing loudly as she left the house the same way she came in. She returned to the McCray home and snuggled in next to Amber, secure in the knowledge that she had won yet another game.
Within minutes, she was asleep.
***
When the blast occurred, it was more powerful than Samantha could have imagined, and she awoke on the floor amid rubble, to find a fiery hole in the wall of Amber’s bedroom.
As Amber clung to her while shaking and crying, Mr. McCray entered the room and scooped the two girls up in his arms to carry them outside, where they sat in the McCray’s SUV and watched the smoke and flames rise from the crater that was once Samantha’s home.
***
Hours later, Jessica stood down the block from what was left of the Ryan home and watched along with her husband, Juliet, and Rob Stevens, as the fire department battled the blaze.
Stevens sighed.
“Any hope we had of finding evidence is gone, along with her parents. Is it really possible that she’s this damn sick, I mean, to do this, she’d... she’d have to be pure evil.”
“Did you ever get warrants?” he asked.
“No, despite the opinions of both your wife and Juliet, I couldn’t find a judge who would sign them, and now, with what’s happened here, well hell, I can barely believe it myself. I mean for God’s sake, the kid is six-years-old.”
“She did it,” Jessica said. “She did all of it, the murders, this arson, killing her parents, it’s all her and we’ll never prove it.”
***
Crying had always been easy for Samantha to fake, as were most human reactions, and she cried much in the following days.
The court had placed her in the care of her Grandparents and the older couple doted on her as if she were a princess, and, in fact, had even bought her a pony.
The servants were all kind as well and everyone was
determined to see that she had everything she wanted, given the tragic circumstances that she had recently suffered.
Her Grandparents were wealthy, and as fate would have it, she was their only heir.
Samantha smiled as she rode her pony about the grounds of the estate, because, as everyone knows, all the really fun games are played with money, and someday, someday when she was older, when she was finally an adult, she would play the grown-up games, and she had no doubt that she would win them all.
CHAPTER 1
Jessica White sat before the desk of Brendan Ryan inside the billionaire’s estate. Seated beside Dr. White was her friend, Dr. Juliet Hamden and Dr. Hamden’s fiancé, FBI Agent Rob Stevens.
The three of them have traveled to Brendan Ryan’s home in an attempt to make him aware of the circumstances surrounding his son and daughter-in-law’s recent deaths and also to warn him about his young granddaughter, six-year-old Samantha Ryan.
It is their belief that despite her young age and angelic looks, that Samantha Ryan deliberately caused the explosion that killed her parents and left her former home in rubble. This act was not done out of malice toward her parents, but was performed out of need of expediency.
By destroying her home, little Samantha destroyed evidence, evidence that could have linked her to a string of murders.
Her parents were simply collateral damage and a means to an end. The end being her occupancy inside the high walls of the Ryan family estate,
***
Brendan Ryan stared across the desk with a look of incredulity lighting his mature but still handsome face.
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that my granddaughter is a psychopathic murderer?”
Jessica was sitting with her hands in her lap, hands that were clasped together tightly.
“Mr. Ryan, I know that what we’re telling you must sound incredible, but sir, please believe me when I tell you that none of us would be here if we had the slightest doubt of her guilt.”
“If that were true, Dr. White, why was she not taken into custody?”
Agent Stevens spoke up.
“Charging your granddaughter, a six-year-old, with several counts of murder wouldn’t result in justice; it would only create a circus atmosphere, and, quite frankly sir, given your considerable resources, I have no doubt that she would be found innocent, one way or another, and that wouldn’t help her or you. By coming here today we’re hoping that you’ll get her the help she needs.”
The TAKEN! Series - Books 5-8 (Taken! Box Set Book 2) Page 10
