They all sat in astonished silence until Jeannie summoned the will to finish her tale. “When I caught him with Jorge, at first I thought what you thought, Wanda. So I hid and listened. They were speaking Spanish, so it was fuzzy. Though, by then I’d picked up a little of the language, and it was enough to know Victor was doing something illegal. I finally got the big picture when I saw him show Jorge the packets of drugs next to the piles and piles of money I’m assuming he’d promised little Jorge. I admit I was naïve, but I knew drugs when I saw them. But Victor sold dreams. Jorge’s family, like most of the people he drew into his web, bought into the dream.”
“Jesus, that motherfucker! I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Nina muttered.
Sloan tensed next to her, and Jeannie guessed it was because he never had the chance to have at Victor. “If he ever comes near you again, I’ll kill the bastard,” he growled.
“There’s more?” Wanda prompted softly.
There was more. The worst of it was yet to come. The problem was just getting her tight throat to let the words loose.
Jeannie closed her eyes and recounted the horror she relived almost every night. “So, I didn’t tell Victor I was home, and I waited until Jorge was on his way out the door. I told him to run as far away as he could and go to the nearest police station, explain what Victor had done to him. And that’s where it began. The plan was to get away from him as fast as I could and tell the authorities, but . . . He caught me calling home,” she said, her voice hoarse, her nerves raw.
Wanda reached out and squeezed her hand. “So you confronted him, threatened to tell the police?”
Jeannie’s fingers tightened on the ends of her sweater, twisting them. “I did and it’s something I’ve regretted every day of my life since. If I had just shut my big mouth and made him think I was going to go along with it . . .” One stupid choice. Just one, and it had ruined so many lives.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “When I finally understood exactly what was going on and the true horror of it was staring me in the face, yes. I reacted. Now, looking back, it was just foolish. Ridiculously foolish. I didn’t think. I didn’t even consider, in all my youthful arrogance, that Victor would be able to stop me. I knew nothing about drug cartels and blackmail and everything else he was involved in. I’m from a small town in South Dakota where the most exciting thing that happens is when someone discovers roadkill.” Her laughter was acidic and bitter. “I don’t even remember being afraid when I told him I was going to the police. I just remember thinking he had to be stopped. How’s that for moron?”
“You were so young, Jeannie . . .” Wanda sympathized.
“It’s no excuse!” She shouted her stupidity into the room so everyone would know what a fool she was. There was no excuse for thinking she could just threaten Victor with tattling on him like she was simply telling the teacher he’d pulled her hair.
The rage of that insane notion, that one misguided choice that had left seven people dead, still had the ability to consume every cell in her body. It made her quiver, ache, and fight to quell the urge to crawl out of her skin.
Charlie Gormon from Nowhereville, South Dakota, who’d once thought her life was boring and staid, had been a foolish, impressionable, immature idiot.
When Victor was done with her, her life had been anything but boring.
“By the time I was done being ‘so young’ and making foolish choices,” she spat sourly, “seven people were dead.”
* * *
WANDA didn’t say anything. Instead, she put a hand on Jeannie’s shoulder and squeezed it in comfort.
Sloan was so filled with rage—so hot to bash this Victor’s head in—he almost couldn’t think. What had happened to Jeannie explained so much. That it had happened at all made him want to take her somewhere where she’d never be frightened again. He wanted to shelter her—protect her—and the emotion scared the shit out of him.
As Jeannie continued, he had to war with himself to stay seated and not yank Nina’s cell from her hands, call Sam, and demand he tell him where this bastard Victor was.
“Anyway, after he caught me, it’s a bit of a blur. Victor had one of his emotionally stunted goons of a brother tie me up and handcuff me to a bed in the basement of his house. After all this time, I still don’t know why he kept me alive. I guess it was so he could terrorize me—toy with me. He said he was beating me because he loved me, and that I’d made him do it. He said it was because I belonged to him, and when he was done, I’d never forget it.
“The FBI tells me it was just asserting more control over me. Victor had far more control over me than I ever realized. He told me how to dress. He told me what to do, what to eat, what to wear. He had people watching me all the time. They went everywhere with me. He convinced me it was because he was so rich and powerful and with those riches and power came enemies, and I didn’t even realize it was all bullshit until it was too late. The FBI says it’s kind of a conditioning, because in his sick, twisted mind, I was his possession, and he couldn’t stand to lose me.”
“But you got out?” Marty encouraged, pulling the throw blanket up under her chin with a shiver.
Jeannie’s face distorted. “I got out. But not before a lot of people were hurt and a little boy was brutally murdered. Because of me, he’s dead. He was just trying to help me like he thought I’d helped him . . . God. The sight of that poor baby . . . will never, ever have less impact. It never goes away.”
Sloan had to physically hang on to the couch to keep from rearing up and howling his fury—tearing something into small, angry pieces.
“Sweet Jesus,” Darnell whispered.
“Jorge came back for you, didn’t he?” Nina asked, her tone quiet.
Jeannie nodded, letting her head drop to her chest. “Yes. Yes, he came back. The FBI told me later that he told his parents what was going on, but they didn’t believe him . . . What I didn’t know was the FBI had been watching us for months, and when Jorge snuck in unnoticed, thinking he could untie me and help me escape, was the exact moment the FBI raided Victor’s house. But Victor wasn’t going down without a fight. He caught Jorge in the basement with me . . .” She sobbed, closing her eyes tight, as though that would block the horror. “I heard the chaos, the footsteps. Doors breaking. Windows smashing. I wanted to scream for help, but Victor told me not to scream. He said if I screamed for help, someone would die.”
And Sloan was guessing he hadn’t lied.
Jeannie dragged her knuckles over her wet eyes, making his gut ache. “Victor always kept his word,” she whispered, her eyes wide with a terror Sloan couldn’t bear. “He dragged us out of the basement at gunpoint. I could hardly see because my eyes were almost swollen shut. I didn’t see the signal from the FBI agent, or I swear I would have protected Jorge,” she rasped. “All I saw was a gun—a big gun—and I screamed to Jorge to run . . . I forgot. Jesus forgive me, I was so panicked—it was so hard to see anything, I forgot that Victor ordered me not to scream.” There was no controlling her sobs. They ripped through her, wracking her chest visibly.
Sloan wanted to make it stop. He wanted to put his fingers to her mouth, to hush the painful memories, but he couldn’t without letting on that he was interested in Jeannie and, thus, risk the wrath of the women. Jeannie needed another hassle like she needed a hole in her head. So he fought to stay still.
But Nina was there then, putting her arms around Jeannie and rocking her while tears streamed from Marty and Wanda’s eyes, and Darnell gripped Sloan’s shoulder.
She’d had so much bad, so many years of it haunting her. But saying it out loud didn’t appear as though it had cleansed her one bit. Rather, her pain was so physical, so palpable, it looked more like it was tearing her in two reliving it.
“Jorge, as well as our housekeeper Rosalita, an FBI agent, two of Victor’s brothers, and two of
the groundskeepers were killed in the shoot-out with Victor,” she said into Nina’s shoulder, inhaling a deep breath. “It was a massacre. I’ll never forget the sound of that first bullet exploding from the barrel of a gun or the roar of helicopter blades circling overhead. The stench of gunpowder and death. And the screams. The terrifying screams.”
“So Victor got away, and they put you in the Witness Protection Program to keep you safe,” Sloan finished with tight words, his nostrils flaring.
She lifted her head and accepted a tissue from Sloan, who dabbed at her eyes with his thumb. “I was unconscious for a few days—or at least that’s what the FBI told me. When I woke up, they offered me the program as part of my stoolie package. Truthfully, I wasn’t much help. I really didn’t know a lot about anything other than what I witnessed. But I knew Victor considered me a betrayal. He was always very big on honor and familia, as he called it.” She snorted in irony. “I knew he’d kill me, if he could get his hands on me. He told me he would when he tied me up in that basement.”
He couldn’t take any more. As Jeannie finished out her story, he had to clench the arm of the couch to keep from ripping it the hell apart. This Victor would pay. He’d find him and make the fucker pay.
* * *
THE basement. That ugly, moldy room with peeling paint and nothing but a filthy bed.
It was where she’d derived her fear of the dark and of dirty sheets. She could still summon up the vile odor of her own sweat on those sheets, and it never failed to make her gag. “I don’t remember a lot of what he did to me while I was in the basement. I was in and out of consciousness. My therapist calls that a blessing. I only know when I woke up, I wasn’t Charlotte Gorman anymore. Not literally or physically.”
Nina held up her phone, her face grim. “The text from Sam says you had three reconstructive surgeries. I shoulda killed the fuckwad that day. I should have chewed off his filthy limbs and buried him in my fucking backyard.”
Jeannie’s nod of acknowledgment was defeated. Three. Three had been the magic number. Victor had beaten her so badly that it had taken a team of government doctors to patch her up. He’d punctured her spleen, broken her arm and two of her toes, deflated one of her lungs, and changed her face forever, but worse, she’d lost the child she was carrying. She hadn’t even told Victor yet; the pregnancy had been so new. “I look very different than the old Charlie. She was, in my estimation, much prettier. She always got lots of attention from the boys. Jeannie’s nose is crooked and her left eye droops just a smidge more than her right. But she can still see out of it—which was a little touch and go for a time. That’s something, right?”
“Oh, Jeannie,” Wanda whispered, wiping her eyes. “I wish you could see what we see.”
It was uncomfortable for her to talk about what she’d looked like before Victor. She’d wooed him with those good looks. In fact, she hadn’t been that much different than Sloan. Okay, maybe she hadn’t been as active as he was or had near the amount of partners he probably had, but she’d smiled and winked on more than one occasion to get what she’d wanted.
At times, since she’d met Sloan, she’d wondered if he would have been attracted to Charlie. Charlie had been right up his alley minus the height deficit.
“I lost a child, too,” she whispered in hushed tones. “I was only ten weeks pregnant, but that was why I was so nauseous that day I went home and found Victor with Jorge.” She’d told herself it was for the best. What would hiding have done to a child? Yet, it still ached.
Wanda sucked in a long breath, her face hard. “I will kill him, you know. Without hesitation. I will pulverize the bastard.”
Jeannie gulped. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I am who I am now. Or that’s what my therapist says. So they put me in the program, taught me all kinds of things, conditioned me for beginning again all alone. Made me come to terms with never seeing my family and friends again, not that I had any left anyway. Then they gave me a job here in New York at a restaurant. I worked as a waitress for a while. Then I managed a restaurant, and finally I decided to take the money I’d saved and start my own business. The rest you already know. There isn’t much that’s interesting about Jeannie Carlyle’s life after that, and I like it that way.”
“So where do you suppose we can find this Victor?” Sloan asked, his jaw clenched, the veins in his hands pulsing as he made a fist.
“Yeah,” Nina crowed her agreement. “You didn’t have us back when Victor was beating the shit out of you and killin’ little kids. No fucking way he can get near you now that we’re around. Especially with Sloan tied to your ass. He knows to look out for the motherfucker. We’ll all just be at DEFCON Five.”
Jeannie shook her head. “And what happens if Victor doesn’t show back up or we can’t find him, we finally find an answer to this crazy genie thing, and you all go home? I have to tell someone Victor’s on the loose, or I lose my protection as part of the program. I have a business I worked hard to build. It’s all I have. And there’s more than just me to consider. I’m not the only person he wants dead. According to the FBI, he had a mole in his organization who disappeared after the big showdown. I don’t know who it was, but he was the person who gave the FBI the final information on where I was located.”
“Maybe I can find out from Sam who the stoolie was?” Nina offered.
Jeannie tightened her sweater around her. “The stoolie helped save my life. Does he deserve to die because I withheld new information? If I contact Fullbright again, that’s whose memory Nina erased, I would put all of you in jeopardy because they’ll want to investigate everyone who’s been in contact with me. And Fullbright said they’d relocate me the second I said Victor’s name. If I don’t contact him, Victor’s out there freestyling with a grudge list a mile long.
“I don’t even know who’s on the list. I just know there were more. Maybe some of his mules turned on him? God knows those poor women he mutilated should have lined up to hand over evidence on him. How fair is it that I get the chance to survive because you can erase memories, and I have vampires and werewolves to protect me, but no one else does? I can’t take any more deaths on my conscience. I just can’t.”
“Here’s something to ponder,” Marty said, slipping to the end of the armchair. “Can genies die? Do they have a kryptonite like werewolves and vampires? Victor’s chances just slimmed big-time if not.”
Jeannie scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Confessions were exhausting and so was that book of djinn law. “I don’t know, but when Nekaar gets back from wherever he’s gone off to, to find out who kidnapped the Grand Poo-Bah of Genie-ville, I’ll be sure to ask. In the meantime, my life span is insignificant at this point. I don’t care what happens to me. It’s those other people Victor wants dead who’re mortals that worry me.” She gnawed one of her nails. Everything just kept getting bigger and bigger. Badder and badder.
Wanda rose from her chair, her phone in hand. She gave Jeannie a quick hug before saying, “We won’t let that happen, Jeannie. I promise you, Victor won’t hurt anyone anymore. Not if I have to take him out myself. Just give me a little time.”
Time.
She had plenty of that if the djinn law book was right.
But could she really afford to just carelessly throw around the time other people might not be granted if Victor found them?
Tick-tock.
CHAPTER
12
“Hey,” Sloan called softly from her bathroom door, still sexy-damp from his shower. “You did it.”
A floating candle almost crashed to the ground when she heard Sloan’s voice. Jeannie nodded and smiled distractedly. She had, in fact, done two things, un-impregnated all those women and that poor man from the bridal shop, and made sure all those customers from the burger joint were out of hell for good. Yay, Nekaar and his skills. She’d also done this—made inanimate objects float. Not for long,
but long enough to know it was possible. She could make things levitate all on her own. It wouldn’t save the world, but she was becoming more genie by the second.
Lou Rawls crooned in soft tones in the background, caressing her ears. Her mother had loved Lou Rawls. Jeannie played his CDs often, and when she did, it was like her mother was right here with her, singing in the kitchen as she made dinner.
The big book of genies was on the bed, open to the page where, among other menial genie abilities, levitating items was detailed. It was a small feat, but it made her proud to have simply read the directions and performed the task.
Sloan crossed the room and stuck his finger in the air with a smile, his eyes taking in the rather romantic setting she’d created. “Pretty great.”
Jeannie nodded, hoping that losing her focus wouldn’t make the rest of the twenty or so candles she’d levitated fall. “Well, I’m sure it’s not as amazeballs as shifting into a werewolf or scoring a super-blonde, but it’s a start.”
The room’s soft glow, glittering with star shapes illuminated from the floating decorative tin holders, twirled through the air with kaleidoscope grace. Practicing what Nekaar had taught her brought her a small measure of peace. It gave her mind something to do while Wanda and the others looked into how to find Victor, and she waited to find out what happened next. She’d told them everything Victor had threatened her with. Confessed every detail she could remember about their conversation.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
The shapes swirled above their heads, the flames flickering and dimming. “It’s pretty, right? Not terribly useful for anything more than atmosphere, but a start. I just followed the directions and relaxed like Nekaar said to.”
Sloan came to stand in front of her, a towel around his lean waist. She looked past him and right over his shoulder. The sight of his naked pecs and rippled abdomen made her mouth water and her legs quiver, but she would lose her concentration if she didn’t ignore him.
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