The TAKEN! Series - Books 13-16 (Taken! Box Set Book 4)
Page 5
“Good, maybe she’ll be able to find him from that end.”
“It’s a long shot, but worth pursuing.”
“Call me if anything happens.”
“I will, and oh, did you see the twins?”
“I did, and they’re adorable,”
“Dr. White is a lucky woman.”
“Have you forgotten that there’s a serial killer stalking her family?”
“Jeffrey Mitchell? Mitchell’s days are numbered, Cassandra will see to that.”
“Yes dear, now you take care,”
“I will, Mom, and I love you.”
“I love you too, dear, goodbye.”
Lawson came into the room and sat across from Elena.
“How is it going?”
“Very well, and by the way, I was just speaking with your sister.”
***
Maggie stepped out of the car and gazed up at her home, while knowing that she would never live in it again.
“It feels so weird to be here without Mom.”
“Yes, it does,” he agreed.
Jace was coming to join them. He’d been dropped off at a local car rental agency after it had been decided on the way there to rent a van. Her brother wanted Maggie to return to the house as seldom as possible, as he thought that being there would be hard on her, and with a van, they could load more of her things.
They went inside and as Maggie looked around, she began to cry.
“She was just taking me to school on her day off. Then she was going to come back here and veg out, but then she crashed the car, and, and then... oh God, I hate Jeffrey Mitchell so much.”
He took her in his arms until her tears stopped. Afterwards, he guided her to sit with him on the sofa.
“I’ve something to tell you, something I’ve feared telling you, because it might make you think less of me.”
Maggie touched him on the cheek.
“No, I love you, and I thank God that I have you and Jessica, otherwise, well, I don’t even want to think about it.”
He took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
“Jeffrey Mitchell, he’s my brother,”
“What?” How?”
He told her about his past, about Amanda’s past, about Billy Gant, but he did so while leaving out the more horrific aspects, such as Amanda’s rape and his father’s diabolic nature. When he was finished, he searched her face.
“I hope that this doesn’t change things between us.”
“Of course not! Oh, how could you think that?”
“Jessica said that it wouldn’t, but still I worried that it would.”
“Mitchell being your brother by blood is meaningless. You’re my brother and we don’t share the same blood, but we share our hearts, and that’s what makes us family.”
He smiled.
“You’re becoming quite wise, young lady.”
The sound of raised voices came from outside.
“That’s Jace,” Maggie said.
When they opened the door, they found Jace in a heated argument with Maggie’s neighbor, Tony Hicks.
“What’s the problem here?”
When Hicks saw him walking his way, he put his hands up. He was a tall man with a beard, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Hey dude, I don’t want no trouble with you.”
“Fine, but what’s going on?”
“This kid parked his van in front of my house so I asked him to move it.”
Jace waved a hand at him.
“You didn’t ask, you went all Alpha Male on me and said you’d kick my ass if I didn’t move, then, when I got out of the van all you wanted to do was talk.”
“We’ll move the van, and I apologize for blocking your spot, okay Hicks?”
Hicks nodded at him. “All right,”
He handed Maggie the keys to his car.
“Move it down by the fence, please, so Jace can park the van in front of the house.”
As Maggie walked away, Hicks called to her.
“Hey, kid!”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry about your mom, ya know?”
“Thanks.”
While Maggie moved the car, and Jace, the van, Hicks spoke to him.
“Your boy is lucky I didn’t go off on his ass. If I can’t park in front of your house than you shouldn’t park in front of mine neither, right?”
“I’ll see you around, Hicks.”
“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, right?”
He ignored him and went back to his mother’s house to stand on the porch. As Maggie returned from moving the car, she gestured at the house.
“What should we do with it?”
“It’s yours, but I suggest that you sell it and invest the money.”
“Can I do that?”
“Jessica and I can do it for you, and when you’re of age, you can use it however you wish.”
Maggie stared at the house.
“Can we keep it? I don’t think I’m ready to let it go yet. It would be like another way to lose Mom.”
“It’s up to you, honey, so for now, we’ll just leave it as it is.”
“Thank you.”
Jace joined them as they reentered the house. He was carrying a bundle of cardboard boxes and a tape gun.
“This is nice. You should see the hole I grew up in.”
Maggie took off her coat and headed up the stairs.
“My room’s up here, Jace, you want to see it?”
“Sure,”
He took hold of Jace’s arm and stared at him.
“Leave the door open.”
“Sure man, I ain’t gonna jump her bones or nothin’, you know?”
He relaxed.
“Thanks for helping out with this.”
“No problem.”
Maggie called down the stairs. “Jace?”
“I’m coming.”
After Jace left the room, he wandered about downstairs, and on the kitchen counter he found a bottle of Scotch sitting beside a tumbler.
After pouring a drink, he swallowed it and lofted the glass towards the ceiling.
“For you, Mom,”
***
Jessica returned to the living room and found Elena admiring the photographs on the mantel over the fireplace.
“Is this girl your sister?”
“Yes, her name is Gabriella.”
“You two look much alike, but she’s younger, no?”
“Yes, by a dozen years,”
Elena tapped a photo of her husband.
“His energy is quite strong, and comes through even in a photo.”
“This... ability, you say you have, how does it work, is it visual?”
“It is, but it’s hard to explain, men such as your husband appear as different to me from other men, as to you a wolf differs from a dog.”
“Yes, he’s said similar things as he’s tried to explain it, but I never quite understand. When I first met Jeffrey Mitchell, all I saw was a well-dressed, handsome man, in fact, he even fooled my husband, although, there was some spark of recognition there, or perhaps remembrance.”
“He didn’t fool your husband. The blood relations of predators don’t have the ability to see them for what they are, even if they themselves are a predator.”
“Really? But how would you know that?”
“Colt was my mother’s maiden name and I adapted it as my own and kept it even through my marriage, but my true maiden name is Kroll.”
Jessica repeated the name, “Kroll,” and then she gasped. “You’re Jude Kroll’s daughter?”
“I am. So you see I do know something about predators.”
“I mentioned him in my book. That must have been difficult to read.”
“Everything you wrote was fact. He was a murderer and a cannibal and he raped and killed sixteen girls, one of them was a friend of mine.”
“And you never suspected?”
“No, and at the time of his arrest I had just beco
me aware of my gift, but when I was around him, he seemed the same to me as any man.”
“You must have been devastated.”
“I was, but I was helped through it by a handsome, young psychiatrist.”
Jessica smiled. “Dr. Harven?”
“Yes, my Emile,”
“You still love him.”
“I’ll always love him, and he loves me, but when we came to realize that our lives were going down separate paths, we too went our separate ways.”
“Dr. Harven’s way is prevention, early intervention, and imprisonment, but only as a last resort. What’s your way?”
“Death, eradication, and mercilessness, and at this point in time I’m directing my resources to bringing those things to bear on Jeffrey David Mitchell.”
“And these resources consist of...?”
“Women Jessica, women like yourself,”
Jessica cocked her head.
“You’re here to recruit me?”
“Absolutely, I think you’d be invaluable.”
Jessica stared at Elena for a few moments, but then gestured towards the doorway.
“I’d like some cake to go along with our coffee. Would you join me in the kitchen?”
“I’d love to.”
As they walked down the hallway, a question popped into Jessica’s mind.
“You and these other women, what do you call yourselves?”
“PREY, we call ourselves, PREY,”
“But you aren’t prey at all, are you?”
“Oh no my dear, not by a long shot,”
CHAPTER 6
Cassandra Smith sat with a big plastic smile on her face as she listened to Ellen Campi go on and on about how similar Jeffrey and Hanna were to the infamous bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde.
She was in Campi’s apartment with two other girls and they were smoking pot and drinking beer while talking. Cassandra smoked along with them, but lay off the beer. Although she was in her early-twenties, she sometimes had to pass for a teen, and so she made sure to keep her weight down.
Her brown hair was tinted purple at the tips and her large green eyes were very distinctive.
She had been tasked by Elena to infiltrate Circe Doyle’s loose-knit collection of serial killer groupies in the hope that they might somehow lead PREY to Mitchell. Cassandra thought that the chances of that happening were slim to none, but the assignment came from Elena herself and so Cassandra became fast friends with Ellen Campi.
Becoming a friend of Campi’s was easy. All Cassandra had to do was show up at the restaurant Campi waitressed at wearing a Ted Bundy T-shirt. One look at the shirt and Ellen Campi was all smiles.
A squeal came from the kitchen where a girl named Kira was browsing the web on a laptop.
“Circe! Circe just left a new blog post on the website.”
Every girl there pulled out a phone or tablet and went to the website, and sure enough, there was a new posting.
“She’s in Texas,” Campi said, “See in the third paragraph, she writes, ‘My Jeffrey and I have returned to his hideout,’ and you know he’s been living in Texas since his escape. Oh, we have to go to Texas, maybe we can find them.”
You’ve read my mind, Cassandra thought, as she sent an email off to her people.
***
Jessica and Elena were laughing together when Elena’s phone rang.
Elena took the call and learned that Cassandra had news of Jeffrey’s whereabouts. When she got off the phone, she smiled at Jessica.
“It looks like Jeffrey Mitchell is back in Texas, and one of my people has confirmed that Circe Doyle is still with him. The girl stupidly posted to her website by using a cell phone.”
“That’s great news, with luck the FBI will be able to trace her location and have it lead them to Jeffrey and Hanna.”
“They already know that the phone was used near the Dallas/Fort Worth area and a search there is in the beginning stages.”
“This organization of yours, PREY, do you have any people in the area?”
“Yes I do. There are two women on assignment in Dallas.”
“Are you going to reassign them to search for Jeffrey?”
“I may not have to. With a little luck, what they’re working on now won’t take very long and they should be free by tonight.”
“And just what is their assignment?”
“I would be taking a risk to tell you that.”
“Yes, but you’ll tell me if you want this conversation to continue. I won’t be joining anything until I’m certain I know what it’s all about.”
Elena smiled.
“I like you Jessica. You’re smart and you’re direct, two fine qualities for a woman to have.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but you haven’t answered my question.”
“A man will be killed tonight in Dallas, and because of his death, several children will be saved.”
“And is that the sort of thing you want me for, to be an assassin?”
Elena laughed.
“No dear, I want you for what you already are, Dr. Jessica White, a celebrated Criminal Profiler. Your reputation and assistance would prove invaluable to us.”
“This man being murdered, what has he done?”
“He’s a pimp who specializes in underage girls. He uses the Internet to set-up ‘dates’ for them, and so the law has proven ineffective at catching him. Once he’s dead, the children he uses will be free and may find the help they need.”
“He sounds like he won’t be missed by anyone. What’s his name?”
“His name is Roth, Tobias Roth,”
***
Dallas, Texas
Tobias Roth studied the girl seated across from him at the bus station, studied her with a practiced eye, and guessed that she was fifteen at the most.
The girl was dressed in a pair of faded jeans, ratty sneakers, and a Montana Tucker T-shirt that was too large for her. The breasts beneath the shirt were small, even for a girl of fifteen, but Tobias knew that with enough skin showing and a liberal use of make-up, that the girl could easily clear him five-hundred dollars a day.
Tobias was a pimp and had been one for most of his thirty-seven years, starting in high school where he would arrange “dates” for his fellow classmates.
Life outside of school taught him the meaning of competition, after a rival pimp shot him and left him for dead in the parking lot of a strip club he frequented. Tobias survived the shooting, however, his rival did not, and over the years Tobias found murder to be a satisfying way to settle disputes, whether with other pimps, or, as he would put it, “The occasional uppity hoe,”
He was white, a handsome man with dark hair and light gray eyes who looked younger than his years, and when he was out hunting for “fresh meat” as he was now, he dressed in khakis, colorful Nike’s, and wore a graphic tee that invariably featured a music star, on this day he was wearing the face of Eminem.
As he watched the girl, he saw that she was also watching someone. It was a young, Hispanic woman in a stylish business suit who had just purchased a foot-long and a soda from a food vendor.
With every bite the woman took, the girl seemed to lean farther forward in her seat, and when the woman tired of the hot dog and tossed half of it into the trash, a smile lit the girl’s face and she left her seat and rushed towards the trashcan. However, before she could retrieve the discarded food, the woman dumped the remainder of her soda all over the hot dog, turning it into a soggy mess.
Tobias came up behind the girl as she was staring into the trashcan.
“You don’t have to eat that; I’ll buy you your own hotdog.”
The girl spun around, looked him over, and then rushed past him.
“I know what it’s like to be hungry!” Tobias called out.
The girl stopped, but she didn’t walk back over to him.
“I’m not hungry. I’m starving. I haven’t eaten in three days.”
Tobias pointed towards the food stand.
Tobias did as he said he would, and when he sat down with his food, the girl sat down across from him.
“Go ahead, help yourself,”
The girl grabbed one of the hotdogs and wolfed it down, then stared at the other one.
Tobias smiled.
“You know, I’m not as hungry as I thought, you want mine too?”
The girl nodded and grabbed the second hotdog, and this time she ate at a reasonable pace.
“My name is Tobias, what’s yours?”
“I’m Amber... and thanks,”
“You’re welcome, Amber, and I wasn’t bullshitting before, I know what it’s like to go without food.”
“I just ran out of money on the trip. I came here looking for my friend, Maxine, but Maxine’s phone number changed and she must have moved.”
“So where have you been crashing?”
Amber shrugged.
“The park, but I barely sleep, I keep thinking that someone’s gonna hurt me and there’s these guys, bums or something that stay there.”
Tobias held up a finger and took out his phone.
“Let me call my sister, she’s got a big place and her friends are always crashing there.”
“You think she might let me stay there?”
“Probably, she’s cool.”
“Oh, that’d be great, and I’d pay her back as soon as I find a job as a waitress or something.”
Tobias grinned and spoke into the phone.
“Yeah, Sis, I just made a new friend, but she needs someplace to crash, you got room?”
Tobias looked as if he was listening, and then he passed the phone to Amber.
“She wants to talk to you.”
Amber took the phone from him timidly. “Hello?”
***
Tobias escorted Amber into a large home in South Dallas.
As they walked in, several teenage girls greeted Tobias, referring to him as, “Daddy”, while eyeing Amber with disdain. None of the girls were wearing pants over their underwear, and their breasts jiggled beneath thin T-shirts. The oldest was sixteen; the youngest, eleven, and all of them wore more make-up than a beauty contestant.