Her Last Breath - Debt Collector 9 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

  A female voice behind Jack made him turn towards the bar.

  “Thank you for doing that, but really, you shouldn’t have.”

  “And let him slap you?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “It’s fine.”

  She extended her hand. “I’m Bonnie Ratlin.”

  “Jack,” he replied before shaking it. It was soft, void of calluses, giving him a sense that she hadn’t done many hard jobs in her time. There was a beat, a pause as they both looked over to where the guy was.

  “Aaron Gance. Thinks he owns me. I wish he was still in jail.”

  “You, uh—”

  “Bonnie, you okay?” The dark-haired pretty little waitress came rushing over and cut him off.

  She gave a faint smile. “It’s okay, Meghan. Really. Nothing I couldn’t have handled.”

  “You want me to call the cops?”

  “No. It’s not worth it. It’ll only rile him up more.”

  “Meghan Palmer?” Jack asked. She glanced at him while holding Bonnie by the shoulders.

  Her brow knit together. “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “No. But you knew Jenna Whitmore, right?”

  Her expression changed and the color in her face vanished. “Are you a friend of hers?”

  “I’m with her brother over there.” Jack turned and noticed that the same man he’d had the confrontation with was talking with Corey. The exchange looked to be quite heated but from where he was standing he couldn’t quite hear what was being said. He was about to go over when the guy walked away. “Um. Yeah, she’s gone missing,” he said turning back to her. “You wouldn’t know where she is, would you?”

  “She’s… what? Missing? But I was with her only the other night.”

  “What night?”

  Meghan turned to Bonnie. “Listen, if you want to go serve the customer at the end of the bar, I’ll clean up the glass.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, go.”

  Bonnie went to walk away. “Thank you. Again.” Jack nodded. She smiled and wandered off. Meghan turned her attention to the shattered glass on the floor. She turned her back momentarily and reached for a broom and dustpan. As she swept up, she looked back at him, conscious that he was staring.

  “Look, she wanted to speak to me about…”

  “The Green Bank Five?”

  She nodded, casting a nervous glance around the room. “Look, I really shouldn’t be talking about this here. I’m working.”

  “What was your involvement?”

  She stopped cleaning up and cast a gaze down at the floor. Hesitation. Embarrassment perhaps? “I’m involved in the industry.”

  “So what happened the other night?”

  Before she could say another word, there was a slight commotion behind him. Jack turned at the sound.

  “Is this the guy?” a ratty-looking fellow said.

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  He tensed automatically readying himself for what was coming. It was always the same. Egotistical pricks just couldn’t walk away. Once pumped up on liquid courage they had to take it to the next level. The same guy who had grabbed the girl was standing behind him, holding a pool cue, his eyes glassy from having drunk too much beer. Beside him were three other guys. The way they shifted around, he could tell they were trying to decide whether to throw a punch or not. The crowd at the bar, sensing trouble, began to fan out.

  Meghan immediately was up and jabbing her finger at them. “Listen, Aaron, you want to start something, you do it outside otherwise I’m calling the cops.”

  “Shut the hell up, woman,” he said without taking his eyes off Jack. Seeing that things were about to kick off, Meghan hurried towards the phone but one of the men hopped over the bar and blocked her way leaving the other two flanking Aaron. Jack stared hard at them while they returned narrowed gazes without moving. The two arced out as if preparing to jump him. Jack was holding a bottle at the time; he brought it to his lips and took a hard pull on it before placing it down.

  “Listen, this can go one of two ways. You can head over to the pool tables and continue on like nothing has happened, or you can leave here in an ambulance. Your choice.”

  Aaron snorted, and the others shook their heads. He turned to his buddy beside him and in an instant threw a punch. Jack blocked it with his left forearm and flipped up the bottle, grabbed it by the other end and smashed it across the top of his head. Chaos erupted as the other two lunged with pool cues. Moving fast, Jack grabbed Aaron, throwing him into his buddy, sending both of them down, while grabbing the pool cue that rained down on him. He stabbed his boot into the man’s knee causing him to buckle and reel in agony; he followed through with a knee to the face, bursting his nose like a fire hydrant. By the time he was down, the one who had hopped over the bar tackled him to the ground. Jack took a jab to the face but parried the next with a hard crack to the ribs before pulling the guy’s upper body down and slamming his elbows into the top of the man’s head. Out the corner of his eye he saw Aaron stagger to his feet. He had to move fast. Jack plowed an open palm into the man’s face and shoved him off before rolling out from underneath. He’d just managed to get to his feet when a chair hurtled through the air sending him flying back, crashing into a table. Beer glasses went everywhere. The next thing he knew someone grabbed him from behind and drove a fist into his kidney. Jack reached over his shoulder, latched on to his attacker and then jerked forward in one smooth motion sending him straight over the top. Still bent over, he saw another coming in hard from behind, he reared back his leg and drove a boot into his shin, sending him off balance and collapsing.

  Once he turned to see who remained, he found all of them laying on the ground groaning in agony. As he was brushing himself off, he heard his named called.

  “Jack!”

  He whirled around just in time to see Meghan break a glass bottle over the top of Aaron’s head. He’d gone for a gun in his waistband. Had she not acted in that moment, chances were he would have been dead.

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  Out of breath, she hurried over pushing him towards the exit. “You should go. I called the police, they’ll be here soon.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  Jack nodded and motioned to Corey who had been watching the whole thing unfold from the safety of the booth. Before leaving, Jack told Meghan that he was saying at the Locust Hill Inn. “I’d really like to continue our conversation.”

  She pursed her lips, nodded and then looked around at the mess. Shattered glass was everywhere, tables had been overturned and one chair was broken. It was liable to cost them a small fortune to get it fixed up. Jack fished into his back pocket and pulled out a few hundred-dollar bills, he stuffed them into her hand. “Towards the damage.”

  “You don’t need to…”

  Before she could finish he’d turned and headed towards the exit. As he and Corey stepped outside, sirens could be heard in the distance. As they made their way back to the vehicles, Corey seemed eager to educate him on the gravity of the situation.

  “Do you know who that was?” Corey blurted. “That was Aaron Gance you put on the floor back there. Not a smart move.”

  “And letting him beat a woman is?”

  “No, but most of those women in there are known for egging guys on.”

  Jack scowled at him. “What is it with the people in this town?”

  “I’m just saying they’re not worth going to jail over.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jack said, stepping out into the night’s cool air. “Anyway, what did he say to you?”

  “I told him to drop it. I’ve known him for a while. He’s a hard man to reach but the Lord doesn’t give up on any of us.” His words went in one ear and out the other. Jack gave a nod and upon reaching his car hopped inside. Corey tapped on his driver’s side window. He brought it down, and he handed him a scrap of paper with a number on it. “In case you
get into any further trouble. Call me.”

  “You a lawyer now?”

  Corey smiled and slapped the top of the vehicle before walking away. The Shelby tore out of the lot. Gravel spit as he headed north on 219. It would take him the long route around but he needed some time to blow off steam. His adrenaline was still pumping hard and his heart was pounding. He smiled ever so slightly as he gripped the wheel. It felt good to exchange knuckles. The look on those guy’s faces after he was done with them was priceless. At least he would think twice before raising a hand to a woman again.

  Jack drove for the better part of forty minutes, weaving his way through the back roads of West Virginia, lost in thoughts of the past and mulling over the challenge ahead of him. It wasn’t until he was within five minutes of the inn that he noticed the vehicle following him. It was hard to tell how long it had been tailing him as the roads he’d been on didn’t have many streetlights and he’d seen a number of vehicles on the road. It was a dark Chevy sedan with tinted windows. He was unable to see who the occupants were but after making several turns, he was confident that they were tailing him. As he pulled into the driveway that led up to the inn, he let the car idle and watched as the sedan rolled by. The window was partly cracked. A cigarette sailed out, landing a few feet from the back of his vehicle. Figuring they had been spotted, they drove home the accelerator and tore off into the night. He waited there for a few more minutes contemplating turning the tables on them and following but after what had happened at the bar, getting into a car chase through a sleepy town was the last thing he needed. He’d already drawn enough attention. He drove on deciding to turn in for the night. Though he wished he could have extracted more information from Meghan and Corey, at least he’d made some progress. There was no telling what tomorrow would bring but one thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to let small-town intimidation shake his nerves.

  Chapter 11

  It was like taking candy from a baby; he thought as he prowled though the ads. He could have killed more if he wanted to but he had to be careful. The recent involvement of the FBI, and questions by State Police had set all the girls on edge. Before, they were careless, greedy, and it made it that much easier to control them. The sound of the woman’s muffled cries seeped up through the cracks in the floorboards. He usually didn’t let them live beyond the first few days as it was too dangerous but this one, this was different. For the first time since he’d started, this was one he wasn’t sure about. She knew too much but… the man trailed off in his thinking, returning to looking at the laptop before him. The screen light illuminated his face in the darkness of the cabin. Long gone were the days of stalking women on the streets, the Internet made it so much easier. His eyes scanned over the many ads littering backpage. Searching for the one, the right one required time. With Susan Holt, it had taken six hours; Rachel Dixon, three days, and Brenda Norris, well that had taken him up to a year. He wasn’t sure about her. He went back and forth just like he was doing now.

  “Too fat, too thin, odd-shaped face, no ass, too much makeup, claw toenails, not enough meat. Ugh. Sluts.”

  He continued going through his list of the things he didn’t like. It wasn’t perfection he was after but a certain look. He didn’t care if they were dark, blond, red-haired or using some of that fake coloring in their hair. They just had to have that look in their eyes.

  He groaned again.

  All of them were whores, worth nothing to him. How many of their family members knew what they did? He was doing the world a favor — ridding them of the filth one by one. Of course after they were dead, people acted as if they cared but did they? He chuckled to himself. No one cared about these women. They were the lost ones. The outcasts of society. Under any other circumstances, the public would have turned up their noses and shunned them. But murder one, and there was an outcry. He wasn’t fooled by that fakery. He knew the truth. It infringed on their little bubble of reality. The suburbanites sickened him with their high-end cars, their white picket fence homes, their perfect lawns and their stories of what they were doing with their lives. Who gave a shit? He didn’t, that was for sure. It was nothing but noise to him, noise that he wanted to smother.

  He took a break for a second to load another computer beside him. He sipped at his glass of bourbon, relishing its taste as the woman whimpered in the background. He hadn’t decided how he would kill her. Up to now it had been simple, he’d used narcotics and let the women overdose. From there he transported them to their final destination where they would later be found. He wanted them found. He wanted the town, state, and the world to take notice. This was art, and the rivers and streams of the world were the wall on which he carefully placed them. On a few occasions with Dixie Stokes and Paula Roberts, he’d returned to their watery grave to look upon their waterlogged skin, and bask in the beauty of their final resting place. But it was getting harder to do that. A neighborhood watch had been started, the public was mindful that a predator was among them. He smiled at the thought — predator. That’s what he was. This was a form of big-game hunting — the greatest form.

  He gazed at the local news article. A possible link in the Green Bank Five.

  They’d given his work a name, and yet they didn’t know the half of it. He’d been working for much longer than this. They thought five was a lot. Five? He chuckled to himself. Five was the number of women he’d allowed them to find. He’d killed much more than that. These were just the next level in his game. The ones before were buried out of sight and would never be found. Hell, they had barely got a mention in the press. Families had disowned them, forgotten they existed. Pimps moved on to the next girl, assuming they had run away. No one was searching for them. That’s what made them the perfect target. All he had to do was choose them.

  He returned to the second computer and scanned the ads:

  NEW in Marlinton, baby. SWEET JUICY BLOND BARBIE 28

  HOT, wet and juicy, I’m jaw-dropping sexy and sweet 23

  Sexy THAI Busty Beauty to kiss and shower. Fantasy 20

  Your #1 CHOICE Singaporean Josie 29

  He clicked on one and it brought him to another ad. Six photos of the woman not showing her face were off to the right and to the left was an ad listing her stats. He clicked away. He avoided the ones that didn’t show their face. That was an important part. He could tell a lot about a woman by her eyes, that and of course the fact that many had shown up at his door and turned out to be nothing like what their photos had shown. For their deception, he treated those with extra care. Their exit from the world was drawn out and painful.

  He clicked on another ad, then another, over the years he’d gained a good sense for the ones that would be easy to manipulate. The ones that were addicted. There were signs. Even the best photos and makeup in the world couldn’t hide the withdrawn, junkie look. They wore it like a medal of honor. He could almost hear them crying out. “Kill me.”

  He reached for his drink, his pulse pounding faster.

  Another muffled cry from below and he slammed his foot against the ground in anger.

  “Shut up!” he cried out.

  She was throwing off his concentration. Didn’t she know she was ruining it? He delighted in finding the next one as much as he enjoyed killing them. Of course, he didn’t see it as murder. It was more of a cleansing, a purging of the scum from the world around him. This wasn’t sexual in nature. He wasn’t driven by the demons that other serial killers were tormented by. Oh no, he didn’t touch them in that way. To do so would have been to lower himself to their standard. No, he made them think that he was going to touch them. He led them in with the high hopes of a wild time beneath the sheets only to ply them in his hands like putty. Before they knew what was happening, it was over. In many ways, he was merciful to them. He could have used any number of painful methods to snuff out their light but he gave them what they wanted. The deepest sleep. Rest from their miserable lives, a home on the other side where no one could touch them again. No one cou
ld label them.

  His eyes fell upon his next victim. She was breathtaking. Perfect in every way. His mouth watered at the thought of watching the light disappear from her eyes. He leaned back in his seat and allowed his eyes to roll back in his head as he envisioned the moment, the smell of her skin and the sound of her last breath exiting her lips.

  That last breath. It was exquisite.

  Another muffled cry.

  He slammed his hand against the table and kicked his chair back before crossing the room and pulling back a large rug to reveal a trap door. He took off the key from around his neck and inserted it into the steel lock. A twist of the hand and it came away, and he pulled back the heavy door. He stomped down the wooden stairs like an annoyed child, pausing only to tug a cord. A dim light illuminated the stony prison.

  “You just don’t listen, do you? I told you to be quiet. I told you that if you were good, I might let you live a little longer. But you just couldn’t do it, could you? You’re just like them. Full of lies. Filthy. The world would be better without you.” The sound of his boots echoed in the cavernous hole beneath the cabin. There in the center of the room, handcuffed to a steel foundation pole, was the woman. He approached her, crouched down and placed both hands on the sides of her head. Her eyes were full of terror. Her mouth gagged. She was still fully clothed. He didn’t need to see her body. He leaned in and smelled her sweet hair before slamming her head against the steel pole. That was all it took. One good knock and she was out. Her body went limp, and he stood there gazing at her form while a smile danced on his lips. He went back and forth on whether to kill her. He could dispose of her in the North Fork River. It was close. That had always been a location he’d enjoyed visiting. The fish he’d caught there were gorgeous. The idea of setting her body down into the water excited him. The visual image of her lying lifeless. Another photo to add to his collection. He crossed the unfinished concrete basement to a shelf on the wall that was lined with photo albums. He ran his finger across the spines, mumbling under his breath and trying to recall some of the women inside them.