I got a spot in the front and I dashed inside, going right to the staging area, where I knew they’d be doing a full dress rehearsal, when I saw Patrick coming my way, with the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Kyle, calling Samantha right now. Or is she with you?”
I stopped dead in my tracks. It was as if you’re on a plane and there’s a sudden dip in cabin pressure and your body and brain are jolted in a way where you don’t know which end is up.
“Patrick, she left on time this morning. She should’ve been here forty-five minutes ago.”
His face fell, looking like he just got hit by a truck. His eyes diverted to his phone, then he looked back up at me. “It went right to voicemail.”
Now all I could see was red. Then all I could picture was Samantha in the hands of that sick bastard. Just then, the front doors opened and the police officers that the prosecutor had called walked in.
“Zeltzer sent you?” I barked out.
“Yeah, where is…”
“Schiller’s got her,” I interrupted, then, turning to Patrick, “You need to show these guys all the exits to the theater. Anywhere Schiller could’ve grabbed her.”
He nodded, and one of the officers went with him while the other was calling in for backup. Meanwhile, I called Max. He picked up on the first ring.
“He’s got her.” I barely recognized my own voice. “That motherfucker piece of shit has got my girl.”
I could feel Max’s rage through his quiet on the phone line. “Where are you now?”
“At Woolly Mammoth Theater, on Sixth and D Street in the city.”
“I’m five minutes away,” he answered, revving his engine as he spoke. “Now I’ve gotta ask, man. Am I coming as your bud or am I coming in a different capacity?”
I knew what he was asking. Max was a member of the Order, an underground vigilante group. Consisting of ex-cops, former special ops, data hackers and bounty hunters like Max, they had a reputation for cleaning up the messes the traditional criminal justice system failed to do. Usually outside the boundaries of the law.
What he was asking was I willing to be an accessory to a potential crime and, as an officer of the court, if anyone ever found out, I’d get disbarred and possibly thrown in jail. And I knew, without a second of doubt, my answer to his question.
“Do it. Make whatever calls you’ve got to, man. Meet me here.”
“We’ll get her back. I promise.”
I hung up without answering. Because the idea of not getting Sam back was something beyond my capacity. And wondering what Schiller was going to do to her made me wish I’d murdered him when I had the chance.
Samantha
My first thought when I woke up was that my head felt like it was jam-packed with cotton. Cotton that had been soaked in gin and valium. Because I was so tired and woozy. All my strength had been drained from me and my bones had liquefied, congealing with my blood to make me one big puddle of goo.
My second thought was the recognition I was moving. With the little strength I had, I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in the back of a van with blacked-out windows. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious, but suddenly I remembered all at once how I got there.
Derek Schiller had been waiting for me. One minute I saw his face, and the next? I felt an electric shock throughout my body and I immediately collapsed. He stood over me and then I saw the needle. I started to panic, but didn’t get much of an opportunity to freak out because the pinprick delivered the drug to my system fast. One minute I was looking at his face. The next, I was surrounded by a dark ether. Not death. No, I knew what that one felt like when my parents had been killed. I was floating somewhere in between. Another kind of quiet, solemn purgatory. A space whether everything and nothing resided.
Now I was up, and as I tried to move something, any part of my body, I realized my ankles were bound and my wrists were tied behind my back. Even though the windows were covered in some kind of black paint, he must have missed some spots because streaks of daylight shone through and I could see there was a closed duffel bag next to me. When I turned my head, I saw a glass partition, like the kind you’d see in a taxicab, and a partial view of Derek’s head. He was totally focused on the road, and I kept quiet, hoping I could think clearly enough to figure a way out of this mess. Or at least to survive long enough for someone to find me.
Kyle
“You see that opening there? This was Schiller’s point of entry and exit. He must have waited here and he must have known Samantha always came early to rehearsal and would come here to lock up her stuff before coming to the stage.”
I was listening to one of Max’s vigilante partners, an ex–New York cop only going by the name Train. Even though the DC police had been on the scene an hour longer, members of the Order were figuring out what had happened much more quickly. Right now we had three Order members with us, the DC police, Patrick and some of the theater staff members who’d been around when Sam was abducted. Unfortunately, no one had seen anything.
“He must have really scoped this space out in advance,” one of them said, a college-aged goth girl who also worked in their costume design department.
“Why do you say that?” Max asked, his steely focus not wanting to miss a thing.
“Well, because very few people even know about this side entrance to the back alley,” she answered. “Usually, this way is blocked by costumes and props. The whole vestibule is like a second storage closet.”
“Right,” said Train, leading the group through the side door and going right into the alley. He peered up at me and pointed to the ground. “See these tread marks?”
I gave a barely there nod, feeling like I was crawling out of my skin.
“The son of a bitch must’ve had the vehicle parked right outside the door. No one looking out from the alley or the street would’ve thought anything was off because it looks like a loading zone. He probably got your woman out within five minutes.”
I shoved my hands in my hair, pulling hard. “Fuck!” I yelled, starting to pace back and forth. Like a caged animal, which is exactly what Schiller was hoping I would feel. “We’re wasting time,” I barked, my veins pulsing so fiercely it was a wonder I wasn’t having an aneurysm on the spot. “That psychotic piece of shit has got my woman and he’s going to unleash a truckload of hurt onto her unless we find him fast.”
“We’ve got an ABP out for him and we alerted both the Maryland and Virginia boys as well.” It was one of the cops, and while I’m sure he was just doing his job, following protocol, he looked like he was barely twenty years old.
Then coming from around the corner was Detective Watson, a buddy of mine for many years, who had worked his way up the ranks fast, from walking a beat in southeast DC through domestic then vice and had made detective a few years back. He was a good man, a sharp cop, but I took one look at his face and knew he was pissed off.
“Masterson, you called in the Order? Are you fuckin’ nuts?”
Max took a step forward. “My boy did no such thing. We ride together and I’m the one who brought my brothers in. He’s got not one thing to do with our presence here.”
“Gonna make my job that much harder, Kyle,” Watson lamented, his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket back, exposing his sidearm and detective shield. Then eyeing Max, Train and the two other men, he said, “We’ve got this. You can go now.”
Train stepped forward, a quiet anger seething through him. “You don’t got shit, Watson. Do what you have to do but don’t get in our way.”
Watson was about to get into it with him. “Enough,” I ordered, slicing the air with my hand. “Schiller’s got her. We’ve got to figure out where he would take her.”
Max was immediately on his phone. “Hacker? Yeah, it’s me. Need you to look up all holdings, properties under the name Derek Schiller.”
“He�
��s from New York,” I interrupted. “If he has anything, it’ll be all the way up there. Think he’d drive that far?”
“Gotta look into everything,” Train answered. “How do you know where he’s from?”
“Represented his wife in her divorce from the prick about five years ago,” I answered. “She’s from here, though, and was a resident of New York and DC. All their properties were in the city and Long Island.”
“Does he got any friends around here? Someone who would lend him a place for a weekend? Someplace fairly remote where he could haul a body in and out without being seen?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know who he’s friends with?” I scoffed, more pissed about Train referring to Samantha as a body rather than as a person. My person.
Max got off the phone. “Cool it, man. He’s just doing his job. Now think, if you don’t know who he hangs with, who would?”
“Hold on, I got an idea.” I picked up my phone and called Petra. She answered right away but didn’t know any of Schiller’s friends. I felt my heart sink into my stomach, each minute passing and trying like hell not to imagine where he was taking her. What he was doing to her.
“You should call his ex,” Petra interrupted my thoughts. “She stays away from Schiller like the plague, but they travel in the same circles. Want me to get her number?”
“Yeah, we’ll try anything.”
Within two minutes, I had Gia Schiller on the line. I didn’t even have to finish what I needed from her when she stopped me.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle,” she lamented on the line to me.
“Appreciate the sentiment, Gia, but right now I need you to think of where he would possibly take her.”
“I never thought he would go this far,” she answered, still in her own head, lost in the nightmare that was her three years’ marriage to that animal.
“Gia,” I stewed, using every reserve of patience I had. “The longer you take, the more hurt he gets to inflict on my woman.”
She sucked in air and started getting nervous. “Right, yes, of course… Let me think…”
Jesus, I was going to have a fucking heart attack.
“Oh! I know,” she called out. “He has this good ol’ boy he likes to go hunting with. His name is…is…Billy Conroy! I think he has a cabin in West Virginia somewhere. He lends it out to Derek quite a lot. For hunting, supposedly.”
“Hold on.” I put the phone to my shoulder and directed to Max, “Have your boy Hacker look up holdings under the name Billy Conroy. Has a hunting spot in West Virginia.”
Max nodded and got on the phone. I put the phone back to my ear. “Gia, can’t thank you enough. We’ll talk soon.”
“Kyle?”
I let out an exasperated breath, “Yeah?”
“You have to find her. And you have to find a way to stop Derek because otherwise, he’ll never stop. The only reason why he doesn’t mess with me is because of all the dirt I have on him.”
“Yeah, I know, Gia. I handled your divorce, remember?”
“Right,” she answered. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
“Thanks. Hope this lead is the one.”
“Me too, Kyle.”
I hung up, with Max barreling over in my direction. “Hacker got an address for that hunting lodge. It’s three hours away. Fairly remote. And he’s got a ninety-minute jump on us. We gotta go. Now!”
Watson nodded and turned to his men in uniform. “Call the boys at the WVSD. They’ll be able to get to them before any of us.”
“Let’s take your car,” Max ordered, slapping his hand on my shoulder and giving it a hard squeeze. I knew what that meant.
“What’s up?”
“In the car. We’ll talk on the way.”
As soon as the doors closed, he turned and said, “Tell me right now if you want cops or not.”
“What are you saying?” I was confused and, frankly, getting sick of the delays.
“I’ve got a helicopter on the ready for us, ten minutes from here. We can be at that cabin right after he gets there. But if the West Virginia State police get there first, it’s out of my hands.”
“You’re asking if I want Schiller dead.”
Max’s expression was impassive. “He’s a slippery son of a bitch. Got out of jail once. He has friends in high places. And the minute, the minute he got out, he went hunting. For your woman.”
“Not telling me anything I don’t know,” I bit out.
“Just need to know how you want this to go down.”
I stared at him, knowing this was a moment that I’d remember over and over again for the rest of my life. It would make all the other shit in my overworking memory pale in comparison. I’d be crossing a line I could never uncross.
And I wish I could say I had enough humanity to tell you I wrestled with it. I struggled hard and deep in my soul, with my God, to come to the right answer.
But that would be a lie. Because I didn’t care if it meant I was going to hell. I didn’t care if I lost my ability to practice law or if I went to jail. I needed Samantha back with me and I needed Schiller permanently out of our lives in order for my woman to rest easy again.
“Tell me how to get there,” I answered, looking Max dead in the eye because I knew he would need to see my resolve there in order to give the go-ahead.
He nodded and gave me directions. And it was stone-cold silent in that car.
As I drove up to the tarmac and started toward the helicopter, Max gave my back a slap.
“I’d do the same thing, man.”
I gave a nod and a chin lift but didn’t answer. I just wanted to get to her as soon as possible.
We buckled into the copter, put on the headphones, and we were off. I had never been in the military, but it sure felt like we were going on that kind of mission.
Train threw a camouflage jumper and hiking boots my way. “These should fit you. You’ll have one minute to put them on. We’ll be a quarter mile off the perimeter of the target site.”
I nodded and stared off into the sky. Washington, DC, was quite a sight from high above.
“She’s going to be okay,” Max directed at me. “We’ve got this.”
Without looking at him, I answered, “Never even told her I loved her.”
I heard him groan in response. “Man, don’t do this to yourself.”
I shook my head, trying to remember to breathe. “Best thing that ever happened to me. Never met a woman who could challenge me while giving me a sense of calm, of peace, like I’ve never had before. And what does she get in return for being with me? A psychotic who’s doing God knows what to her.”
“If this is the site he’s taking her to,” Max said while bringing his elbows to his knees, leaning over to me, “he’ll be there in another ninety minutes. And we’ll be there shortly after that. He’s not going to have time to do what he plans on doin’.”
“Let’s hope we’ve made the right call on this one.” I shut my eyes after that, not wanting to talk anymore. Max left me to it and, for the first time since I was a kid, listening to my parents throw plates at each other during another heated argument, I prayed to God. And I begged for her to be okay. To come out of this ordeal as unharmed as possible.
And I prayed for Him to let me be the one to end Derek Schiller. If I was going to hell for ordering a man’s death, I wanted to be sure he was going to be there too.
Chapter Twelve
Samantha
“Makes my dick hard, seeing you like this. Fantasized for a long time about fucking you. Having you at my mercy. Goddamn, this is going to be a good time.”
After driving for what felt like forever, Schiller hauled me out of the van and into some log cabin surrounded by woods. Inside the cabin was fairly ordinary looking, except for the St. Andrew’s cross set up where li
ving room furniture should be. He had taken me there and when he cut me out of the bindings from my hands and feet, I tried to get away. I screamed and clawed and scratched. I even managed to nail him in his groin, but he smacked me around a couple of times and knocked me unconscious.
Now I had come to and my wrists and ankles were bound to the cross. I also had a ball gag in my mouth. Derek was sitting in a foldout chair in front of me and next to him was a table filled with an array of instruments. Some of them looked like the stuff you’d find in the BDSM section of a sex shop. Nipple clamps. A flogger. A whip. But he also had a long knife, scissors and a cocked-and-ready-to-go Beretta handgun on the table too.
And that’s when I knew I’d never survive what was about to happen. He was going to rape me. Torture me. Then kill me. It was going to be a slow and painful and humiliating death. But the part of it that broke my heart was what my death was going to do to Jessica and Kyle.
My poor sister would be completely alone in the world. I was the last of any family that meant something to her. And to lose our parents and then me within a year? She was strong but this might break her, especially if she ended up finding out the way I’d died.
And Kyle…the only man I had ever loved with every molecule of my being. And I never told him so. Why hadn’t I told him? Why did I let my pride and fear get in the way? God, I was so stupid. Now he would never know. And he’d also be tortured for a long time, the memory of how I ended looping in his mind over and over again.
Of course I didn’t want to die. I was terrified of the pain this monster was about to cause me. But I was more afraid for the people I loved. So I was determined not to give Schiller the satisfaction of breaking me. Maybe how I left this mortal coil would get back to Kyle and Jessica and they’d gain some satisfaction knowing I was a spitfire ’til the end.
So even with Derek’s lewd comments, I kept my face blank and said nothing. I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. I would try my hardest to be an empty kill for him.
It was working too. I could tell because as he sat there and spewed his venom with no response from me, the veins in his neck bulged and throbbed, with the muscles in his temple practically vibrating with his rage. He sprang up from his chair, knocking it down in the process, and backhanded me across the face.
Heart Breaker (Break on Through) Page 15
