The TAKEN! Series - Books 13-16 (Taken! Box Set Book 4)

by Remington Kane

“Jimmy stopped by; he wanted to borrow a thousand dollars.”

  “Borrow?”

  “I know, but he’s trying, and I think his new business will take off in time.”

  “That’s fine, is there more?”

  “Elena, I’ve decided to help her organization out, but at my discretion.”

  “Invite her over for dinner. I’d like to get to know her better if you’ll be working with her.”

  “She’s coming next week,”

  As they entered the house, he went into the living room and sat on the sofa.

  “Hand them here,”

  Jessica passed him the babies, and they both cooed up at him.

  “Amanda thinks he has your eyes.”

  “Then may God help him,”

  “I love your eyes; they’re very sexy.”

  He looked around, saw the playpen in the corner and the stuffed toys in the chairs, and in his arms were two gurgling growing responsibilities, while outside, his teenaged sister was flirting with first love.

  “Jessica.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a whole new world we’re in, isn’t it?”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “And it’s only going to get better,”

  CHAPTER 21

  A few days later, he was at the bagel shop.

  He was still getting used to maneuvering around, but he was down to one crutch and he could drive normally, because it was his left foot that was injured and not his right.

  He hobbled back to the car while gripping the bag of bagels, opened the door, and tossed the crutch and bagels onto the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he settled behind the wheel and closed the door that he smelled it.

  Lilacs?

  As he sniffed the air, he caught movement in the rearview mirror and saw Circe Doyle pointing a gun at his back.

  “You killed my Jeffrey.”

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Five shots passed through the seat and four of them entered his body, while a fifth one struck the steering column and ricochet into the driver’s side window, shattering it.

  He moaned, fell forward, and became still.

  Circe looked down at her feet and saw that the tan carpet beneath them was turning bright red with blood.

  With tears in her eyes, she looked upward.

  “I’m coming, Jeffrey,”

  She then placed the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 22

  At the sound of the first five shots, Alan Brewer put down the bagel sandwich he’d been eating and looked at his girlfriend, Alexis.

  “Those were gunshots,”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Alan said, and he was. He had just completed his training at the police academy, and he now knew the sound of a gunshot when he heard it.

  A sixth shot echoed, and Alan got up to walk over and look out the front door.

  “That sounded like it came from the side of the building, stay here.”

  He went outside and saw other people looking around, as if trying to determine where the sounds had originated from.

  He turned left and saw the parked car, and then he noticed the blood and brain tissue splattered across its back window.

  Alan moved towards the car slowly, stepping sideways, ready to run or dive for cover, but unable to walk away until he knew what had happened.

  As he moved past the rear of the vehicle he saw the bits of broken glass littering the ground outside the driver’s side door, and the man slumped over the steering wheel.

  “Mister? Hey! Mister!”

  No answer, not even a twitch,

  Alan moved closer and saw the man’s bloody torso, and then horribly, the girl in the rear seat.

  Oh Christ, half her head is gone.

  After taking a deep breath, Alan reached in and felt for a pulse on the man’s neck.

  “Alan!”

  He pulled his hand away in shock as he heard his name being called from only a few yards away.

  “Alexis, don’t come any closer. Trust me; you do not want to see this.”

  “All right, but that man, is he okay?”

  Alan reached back in, kept his hand steady on the man’s neck, then moved it lower, then moved it back. After giving it another twenty seconds, he looked over at his girlfriend and shook his head.

  “He’s dead.”

  TAKEN! – RISEN!

  By

  REMINGTON KANE

  PART ONE

  “Everything has to come to an end, sometime.”

  ―L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

  CHAPTER 1

  Ten months ago, Gainesville, Florida

  The man with the knife smiled at the woman tied spread eagle to the bed and once more felt a surge of power.

  The woman was Julie Mercer. She was twenty-eight and an RN. Julie was a brunette, not the man’s usual choice, but after eight blondes in a row, he felt like a change of pace.

  The man’s smile widened as he studied Julie’s curvaceous form. He had chosen well this time, very well.

  His choice of Julie as a victim was not a rash one, he had been watching her for months, had been inside her home on several occasions, and had even filmed her as she slept.

  But, as they say, timing is everything, and so he waited until the time was right.

  Julie had recently broken up with her boyfriend, a hospital orderly named Chad. The man thought that Julie could have done better than Chad, who was an obvious jerk; nevertheless, Julie moved Chad into her house, that is, until she came home unexpectedly one day and found Chad in bed with his ex-girlfriend.

  The man knew that Chad’s infidelity had hurt Julie a great deal, because he had bugged her phone and recorded her conversations with her friends, sisters, co-workers, and anyone else who would listen to her prattle on about how hurt she was by “Chad’s betrayal.”

  He also had access to her laptop, including its webcam functions, and on his two previous visits, had taken note of what was in her medicine cabinet, her files, and her pantry.

  Julie moaned against the gag and he moved his gaze upwards and looked into her eyes.

  There was terror there in the emerald green eyes, terror, and fear. His eyes, the eyes looking back at her were more like the eyes of a shark. Two dark holes that radiated nothing, revealed nothing, and yet, took in every detail.

  He’d come into the house by using his key and input the correct code into the alarm pad by the door.

  On one of his visits to the house, he had gone through Julie’s desk drawers and found her spare keys and a slip of paper with the alarm code written on it. At the time, Julie was in the shower getting ready for bed, and he had almost taken her then, but no, planning was important, and the time wasn’t quite right, and so he stuck to his plan.

  Julie kept her purse on a table by the front door, and her keys were in it. After exchanging her key for one of his own, he then went to work changing the cylinder in Julie’s back door lock. The procedure took him less than five minutes, and when he checked, Julie was still washing her long hair.

  He then replaced Julie’s spare key with one of the new keys and left the home by the back door as if he lived there. He currently had access to the homes of four other women by using similar methods.

  Julie’s house had belonged to her mother, who left it to her in her will. The plan had been that Julie would sell it and split the proceeds with her two sisters, but after deciding that she couldn’t bear to part with her childhood home, she made a deal with her sisters to pay them over time for their shares. The sisters agreed and Julie kept the house.

  She would soon die in it. The man would see to that before he left her.

  The home sat behind manicured hedges that obscured the view from the street and beneath oak trees that left it in shade. He had come and gone through the rear of the home by slipping over a six-foot wooden fence, which bordered a split-level owned by a couple who worked long hours, and wh
o kept the blinds shut constantly.

  He entered the home at two a.m., after having sat in a corner of her backyard and watching it since midnight. Julie went to bed around one and wasn’t due back to work until the following Monday.

  He had first taken note of her while he was stalking one of his previous victims. A blonde named Marie who liked to perform yoga in a nearby park. And perform was the right word for it, because Marie was an exhibitionist who often had sex with the shades up and the lights on.

  When he had killed Marie, he made certain to respect her wish to be seen, to be noticed, and had left her body out in plain view, legs spread wide on her front lawn.

  The paperboy discovered her, and every time the man thought about that, he just knew that, dead or not, seeing the tasty, blonde Marie spread open and inviting must have turned the kid on.

  Hell, she looked more asleep than dead, because he had killed her by jamming the tip of his antique knife into the base of her skull. Other than the clot of dried blood on the back of her neck, she was still as hot as ever and had only been dead for an hour when the paperboy found her.

  Julie, on the other hand, was more of a private person, and so he would leave her corpse inside on the bed.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was nearly six a.m.

  He would have to leave soon, but was in no rush, since the people who lived in the house behind Julie’s rarely stirred early, and besides, they kept their blinds down.

  He tapped his thigh, while wondering if he should take the time to rape her once more. He had already enjoyed her four times, but there was something about her, about the tautness of her abdomen, the firmness of her large natural breasts that kept arousing him, and for the first time he understood why some of his ilk preferred to take their captives to a lair and keep them hostage.

  He could enjoy her for days without becoming bored, but no, as the saying goes, there are plenty of fish in the sea, and he saw no need to keep specimens inside an aquarium.

  He studied Julie as his hand wandered towards his crotch. He was as naked as she was, yet he could be dressed and gone in mere seconds if needed. He felt the firmness return beneath his hand and smiled.

  Yes, one more time, a new record,

  He slipped on a condom and rubbed his left hand across Julie’s taut, tan body and then closed his eyes and listened to her moan against her gag.

  Ah, the fear, the helplessness, he lived for moments like this. This woman had spent her life believing that it was up to her who got to use her body, had gone her entire existence picking and choosing among his brothers, but he was not of their class, the weak ones. He was a predator, a taker, and he had taken her and made her his, his to do with as he pleased.

  A cry of despair issued forth among a wave of fresh tears and he looked down at Julie and laughed.

  “You belong to me, you and every other woman, and I’m the one who gets to pick and choose.”

  After speaking those words, he waited for it, watched her eyes and was not disappointed when it came.

  Hatred.

  Intense, unadulterated hatred, blazing in her eyes and directed solely at him,

  It only made him harder.

  He joined her on the bed, squeezed her nipples and licked her cheek. Then, he entered her, forgoing the lubrication this time as payment for her impertinent gaze. When he reached the point of no return, he grabbed the knife from the bedside table and slid it between her ribs.

  The pain caused her to arch her hips upward, and it felt as if she were simultaneously climaxing with him, as he intended it to, but then she sagged back on the bed as a sad, little moan escaped. He flicked his wrist upward and the tip of the blade punctured Julie’s heart, and while still in her and on her, he grabbed her chin with his left hand and watched as the light faded from her eyes.

  The radiance receded from the green orbs like the onset of dusk, and he knew night had fallen when he saw the pupils dilate.

  He lay there for a few moments, luxuriating in the feeling of absolute power, but then he withdrew himself from the corpse, removed the condom, and yanked the knife free.

  The knife was an antique and had been a gift to him from his grandfather when he turned eighteen. The weapon had been fashioned in India over a hundred years ago and was long, with a curved tip. Its handle was carved from the antlers of a Sambar deer, and it was adorned with silver fittings.

  He etched the number, 47, into the flesh of Julie’s left thigh before padding towards the bathroom. After slicing holes in each of the condoms, he flushed them down the toilet and washed off the knife thoroughly. Afterwards, he showered.

  He was a fit man, tall, handsome, late-thirties, with wavy dark hair. He worried little about DNA or fingerprints, but neither did he see a reason to make things easy for the authorities by leaving used condoms laying around.

  He knew that if it came down to a cop asking for his DNA or fingerprints, well then, he had already been caught, but he would never be caught, he was too good at it, and had been preying on women for most of his life.

  He chose this life and loved it.

  After getting dressed, he went around the house removing his equipment. This included the listening devices he’d hidden, and also the item he had named, The Doomsday Device, something he used to insure that he’d never be taken alive.

  He then replaced the locks in her doors with their original cylinders, and swapped the keys on Julie’s key ring. When her sisters inevitably used their own keys to enter the house, they would find the locks the same as they’d always been.

  When he was done with his work, he looked in on Julie, looked back on Number 47, and smiled.

  Five times, what a stud,

  He left her with a wave, and departed by the back door, while making certain that it locked behind him.

  A few minutes later, and he was headed towards the home of a future victim, while thoughts of her conquest and murder danced through his mind.

  His name was Numerical, and he was a serial killer without peer.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gainesville, Florida

  FBI Special Agent Robyn Dyer stared down at the two-day-old corpse of Julie Mercer and tried to decipher the numbers carved into her leg. She couldn’t decide if they read forty-seven or forty-nine, but in either event, Julie Mercer was a victim of the serial killer dubbed, Numerical.

  Another FBI agent, Russ Smith, came over and studied the numbers.

  The gray at Smith’s temples gave voice to his experience, while his compassionate eyes spoke of his humanity.

  “It’s a forty-seven,” Smith said.

  “Are you sure? I thought that was a nine.”

  “We’ll know for certain once they clean the body, but I think it’s just the dried blood that makes it look like a nine.”

  “Thank God, I thought there were two more victims somewhere.”

  Smith studied her.

  “You okay, Robyn?”

  “Yeah, I was just wondering how I came to be the Bureau’s resident serial killer hunter.”

  “It’s easy; you were partly responsible for the capture of Robert Rothman and helped stop Jeffrey Mitchell and Hanna Jones, you’re now the Bureau’s go-to-gal when it comes to these creeps.”

  “I had little to do with Mitchell’s end and we both know that.”

  “That’s not how Lawson spun it; he made sure that you got the credit for that.”

  Dyer looked away from the body as she asked Smith a question.

  “What do you know about Thomas Lawson, what’s his story?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that he’s got clout like I’ve never seen and the resources to back it up, and it’s no wonder, they say that he always delivers.”

  “Yes, I asked John Brice about him and he said the same thing. An interesting man,”

  “And not bad-looking either,”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that too,” Dyer said, and then she stared at Smith. “Are you saying he’s gay?”
r />   “Lawson? No, not if my gaydar is working. I was just stating a fact.”

  “Good.”

  “Look at that smile, you like him, don’t you?”

  Dyer laughed.

  “This isn’t high school. Let’s step outside and you can tell me what you’ve learned about the crime scene so far.”

  They walked out into the home’s backyard, where the air was free of the putrid odor of decomposition. Overhead, a news helicopter circled nearby. Smith took out his notebook.

  “Preliminary findings say that this crime scene is much like the others. One victim, young female, she appears to have been in excellent condition like the others and lives alone. Hair and fiber samples are pending, but there doesn’t appear to have been any attempt to clean away trace evidence off the body.”

  Dyer nodded as Smith closed his notebook.

  “I’d say that he’s overconfident, except for the fact that he’s been doing this for well over a decade. This is now his forty-seventh victim and the psych profile says that he already has at least three more picked out. We have to find this bastard, Russ. We have to find him and we have to do it before there’s a number forty-eight.”

  Dyer’s phone beeped an instant before Smith’s. When they checked, they saw that they had each received a text. Smith read from his.

  “Whoa, this is from the Deputy Director’s office. We have a meeting in Washington tomorrow morning to discuss growing the Numerical Task Force. It looks like you’ll be getting more agents to work on this.”

  “Thank God, it can only help,”

  “Art Cashman will be there, but I thought you asked that he’d be reassigned?”

  Dyer sighed.

  “I did, but it was denied, and in fact, he’s been given more authority by the higher ups; apparently, Cashman’s got more juice at the Bureau than I thought, but I still believe he was the one leaking info to Summer Gray. I saw them with their heads together in Dallas while we were hunting Jeffrey Mitchell.”

  “Her stock has gone up as well, ever since she and her husband helped to find that girl Mitchell abducted, Missy Collins.”