The Antagonist (A Sarah Roberts Thriller, Book 10)

by Jonas Saul

  The nightmare would be over for Lesley and all of the girls he had been raping.

  How ironic.

  It was a cop who had violated Sarah when she was a preteen. She hated all cops after that, and started pulling her hair out, eventually falling into a deep depression that lasted years, until Vivian began talking through her.

  Funny how life came full circle.

  She hated men like Barry. He couldn’t be allowed to exist. He was a cancer on an otherwise healthy society.

  And it was time to excise that particular cancer.

  She got on her bike and pulled out of the pub’s parking lot, revving her bike’s engine in anger.

  Barry Ashford was in for a world of pain. Lucky Sarah would get the pleasure of exacting it.

  This is going to be fun.

  Chapter 8

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Deborah shouted. “Are you saying some bitch showed up out of nowhere and claims to know who you are and what you’ve been up to and you haven’t dealt with it yet? And you don’t even know where she is?”

  “Yep, that’s it.” Barry leaned on the kitchen counter, both hands tightened into fists. After cleaning up at the restaurant, his colleagues left him there, but not before expressing how pissed they were at him. He owed them big time for what happened. The situation with the strange girl had gotten out of hand. He didn’t know where it was headed and he had no idea how to stop it.

  “You see? That’s what I said last night.” She threw back the rest of her wine into her mouth, swallowed and set the goblet down beside his hands. “We need to leave. Get out while the gettin’s good.” She belched in his ear. It always disgusted him, but she did it anyway. “Do you have any better ideas? Should I start packing?”

  He pushed off the counter and punched the cupboard by her face. Deborah jumped. “Do. Not. Pack. Anything. I will not be driven from my own city, or my own home.” He pointed at her. “I will find out who this stranger is and what she wants and if she doesn’t fuck off, I will bury her in a dumpster somewhere before I leave with my tail between my legs.”

  Debbie stepped back to place the island between them. She leaned against the fridge. “Be careful what you say. When you got into the whorehouse business, I objected. But you won me over with all the cash. It paid for all this.” She raised her hands like she was a girl on the Price is Right showing off the brand new house he could win. “I know about the drugs, too. I’m not stupid. Those girls need to be jacked up to have sex a dozen times a day with a dozen different men. I get it.” She lowered her eyes and looked away. “I lost my husband when you started this project.”

  “Oh, come on, honey,” he said in a softer voice.

  Her head snapped up. “Don’t try to placate me. I know about the heroin parties. You come home smelling like pussy. Don’t worry. I sold my soul to the devil just as much as you did because I didn’t want the money to stop flowing. The only thing I ever worried about was you falling in love with one of those young hot bimbos whose tits still sit straight up. Not like these.” She held her breasts for a second, bouncing them. “Then I saw you with that Maxine Freeman girl.”

  “You what?”

  “I saw you. She was in your car.”

  He thought back to the last day he saw Maxine. He had driven her to the bus depot. She wanted a ticket to a city as far from Kelowna as possible. That was their deal. Go quietly or end up in jail. She chose Halifax. He never saw her again.

  “She’s gone,” he said. “If you saw her in my car it was because I was driving her to the bus station.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. I just thought I would be replaced one day. So I saved up some money.”

  His anger returned. “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Enough to get out of Kelowna. Start fresh in another city. Maybe another country. I’ve been doing some research. There’s a country in the Caribbean called St. Kitts where you can buy a house that’s worth four hundred thousand or more and they’ll give you a passport. You can literally buy citizenship there. We could retire to the beach in the Caribbean and revoke our Canadian passports. But that’s not all. St. Kitts doesn’t have any tax. No sales tax and no income tax. We retire. You collect whatever pension you have and we live happily ever after, never to do a tax return again. How does that sound?” She moved closer, trying to soothe and coo an answer out of him. “Would you like that, honey?”

  Manipulation, coercion, and the beguiling smile from his wife incensed him. He formed a fist. All the stress of the last two days coursed through his knuckles. They tingled with the need to connect with something. For a brief moment, that annoying girl’s face flashed before his eyes and before he knew what he was doing, Barry drove his fist into Deborah’s cheek so hard she lifted off her feet. Her body floated for a brief moment completely parallel with the floor before she landed on her back. The hard landing knocked the wind out of her, her cheek already bleeding.

  “You stupid bitch!” he screamed. “How dare you save my money without telling me. How long have you been setting up this little escape plan of yours? Huh? Tell me! Were you going to run away on me and take all my money?”

  He leaned over her squirming form on the floor, hating her for everything she was, spitting on her as he shouted. All she ever did was shop at the mall and then sit around the house and drink red wine. When he came home from work, she would harass him about what he was doing with his other ventures and offer unsolicited advice on how to do things better all in the name of maintaining the freedom to shop all day and drink more wine.

  “How dare you!” he shouted again. “It would’ve been better if you had kept your mouth shut and just thanked me when I gave you your month’s budget.”

  He straightened and swung his arm across the counter, knocking her juicer to the floor. “Goodbye, juicer.” He grabbed the cord to the rice steamer she had bought at Costco and yanked it to the floor. “No more rice cooker.”

  Deborah screamed for him to stop. “Please, I’m sorry!”

  “You have everything you could possibly want. All the money, the shopping and the booze and you’re still unhappy. There’s nothing I can do to please you, is there? No nice home, loaded with everything most women would kill for. No fancy car or vacations. No, you want to escape this wonderful life. You want to run at the first sign of trouble. One snotty, big-mouthed girl has gotten in my way. That’s all this is. I will remove her. The stain will be taken out. Everything is normal and we need to act as though it is.”

  “I know,” Debbie said as she leaned up against the cupboard, holding her cheek. A small amount of blood seeped through her fingers and her eyes were wet with tears. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should be more grateful.”

  “Fuckin’ right.”

  He grabbed a paper towel and wiped his knuckles, then the moisture from his face.

  “I’ve got an officer friend of mine coming over tonight during his night shift. Somewhere around two in the morning. I’m giving him a description of this lunatic woman. We’re going to finish this tomorrow at the latest. Soon I’ll have every cop looking for her. Once she’s gone, it’ll be business as usual.”

  “What about Lesley?”

  “What? You don’t think I handled that?”

  “Yes, of course you did.”

  “She has been warned and so has her brother. There’s nothing they can do or will do. Lesley comes back to work tomorrow and then we’ll see.” He stared out the kitchen window into the dark night. “Maybe she just needs an extra dose of smack.” He turned to Deborah as an idea came to him. “She has already proven she wants to end her life. Once she overdoses, I’ll have one of the other girls find her. Problem solved.”

  “And Greg, her brother? He’ll become a problem.”

  “I’ll issue an arrest warrant for him in the morning. We’ll raid his business and clean him out. I know the judge and I’ll do my damnedest to make sure he doesn’t get bail. We’ll see what stories he has while stuck in prison
. No one will believe shit because he’ll be trying to smear the cop who put him away. Does that make you happy? That annoying bitch goes away, and Greg and Lesley Wright get dealt with. Do we still need to run with our tails between our legs? Huh?”

  Debbie shook her head back and forth. “I was thinking about you and your safety.” She took a Kleenex off the counter and held it to her face. “Can you really kill someone?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “I’m not killing anyone. The smack is. I’m just helping her have the ride of her life.” He kicked chunks of plastic pieces from the rice cooker’s lid out of his way and headed for the fridge. He pulled a beer, twisted off the cap and drank it back. “The answer is yes.” He felt a pulse behind his eyes. “Yes, I would kill another human being with my bare hands to protect us. If it was me going down or them, it’ll always be them. That includes you.” He pulled hard on the beer. “Don’t forget that.”

  He turned away from the disgusting look on his wife’s face and left the kitchen. If he hadn’t, he would’ve punched her again.

  But if he started hitting her, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Chapter 9

  In her kitchen, peeking out the window with the lights turned off, Sarah sipped a glass of Mission Hill Shiraz from a local winery. It was almost two in the morning and the last of the lights at the Ashford house had gone out half an hour ago. She would wait ten more minutes and then head outside to plant the tracker under Barry’s front fender or behind the grill, wherever she found the best purchase.

  Deborah’s car was the cute Volkswagen Bug. As Sarah had hoped, Barry had driven home an unmarked cruiser. He had backed in, parking in front of Deborah’s car so he would be the one to leave first.

  Sarah closed the curtains in her dark kitchen and headed back downstairs. She had moved the furniture into the spare room and cleared the floor space in the center of the basement. The carpet had been difficult to roll up on her own, but she had managed it and ended up exposing a six-foot square area of cement.

  Now, if blood spilled on it, cleaning it would be easier. Then the carpet could be rolled back in place and the furniture set on top of that. No one would ever know what she had done.

  No one except Barry Ashford.

  She closed the vents so none of the cold air from the conditioner would reach the basement. When he arrived, he needed to sweat.

  She checked that the chair in the center of the floor was secure and that her floor lamp was aimed at the chair. When Barry confessed to whatever he had been up to, she would see his face and so would the small nanny camera and digital video recorder that she had bought at Spy vs. Spy. It only recorded when it detected movement and the memory on the DVR was enough to handle a couple of weeks, but his confession would only take a day or two.

  The camera was hidden in a wall clock. The lens of the camera sat at the base of the number six in the clock. She had affixed it to the wall beside the basement closet. Tiny wires fed to the DVR on the top shelf in the closet, unseen by anyone unless they opened the closet door and knew what they were looking for.

  Now that everything was in place, she turned off the lights and closed her eyes tight. She waited until her eyes had adjusted to the dark and then headed upstairs. Once the GPS tracker was turned on and her cell phone had locked in on the signal, she placed it in the container with the highly magnetized exterior. Then she donned a black jacket, black gloves and a hat, and slipped out her back door.

  As she listened to the sounds of the night, nothing odd stood out. Waves lapped the docks at Okanagan Lake below. An engine revved somewhere far away. Crickets shouted their mating call. Nothing seemed out of place. The air was still and warm. Sweat moistened her hat around the brim.

  She crept around the house and along her driveway. At the edge of the property fence, she stopped and stared at the dark front of the Ashford house. The curtains were pulled shut. Nothing moved.

  Her house was the second to the last, and the Rankins’ house was at the end of their street. Bennett Road wasn’t a thoroughfare. The only traffic this far down was heading to one of these three houses. The Rankins weren’t home and the Ashfords were asleep. Since no one visited Sarah, or even knew where she lived, she didn’t expect any interruptions.

  Sarah stepped out from the cover of the fence and headed for Barry’s unmarked RCMP cruiser, watching their front windows for movement or light. She crossed the distance silently, the black socks she wore to keep noise to a minimum doing exactly that.

  She walked around to the front of the vehicle and took one last look at the street behind her.

  Empty.

  She ducked down to the level of the hood, then stopped.

  Something had caught her eye by the Ashford’s front door. She stared, waiting it out.

  What had moved?

  Then she saw it again. A cigarette. The glow of the heater at the tip as someone pulled on the smoke.

  Someone was standing outside their front door, smoking.

  How did they not see me?

  She counted her lucky stars. She was here now. Plant the GPS tracker and crawl away. It was a strategic advantage to live next door to Barry and not have him know that yet. Blowing it because of carelessness would be tragic.

  Slowly, making sure she didn’t drop the box in her hand or bang the car’s grill needlessly, Sarah got down on her back and edged under the front of the car. Blind in the dark, she felt around behind the grill for a safe place to clamp the box. After a few surfaces proved too small, she decided to place it on the inside of the fender. A tiny spot just above the lower lip in front of the axle had just enough room for the magnetized box.

  As soon as the magnets took hold, it would smack down. She took her time, using both hands and carefully brought the box close to the spot, waiting for the pull of the magnets.

  A car’s engine revved, this time closer. She waited a moment, listening for another loud report from the engine. When it came, she brought the box up to the metal and felt it snap forward, attaching itself to the car.

  Her job was done.

  She edged her head out from under Barry’s car and rolled onto her stomach. The car that had revved its engine was getting closer. Its headlights cast their extended beam along the dead end road.

  Shit.

  Footsteps drew close. Whoever had been smoking by the front door of the Ashford’s house had been waiting for someone to show up. Now that person was walking beside Barry’s unmarked cruiser.

  The approaching car was one house away as Sarah rolled around the front of the cruiser and leaned against the passenger side door. She curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs in an attempt to make herself unseen as the headlights swung into Barry’s driveway. They flashed across her black form so fast she was sure the driver didn’t see her in the dark.

  A door opened. “Barry, you doing okay?” the driver asked.

  Sarah saw enough of the car to know it was a RCMP cruiser.

  “Yeah, Colin,” Barry said. “I just need your help with something.”

  The car door shut as Colin walked around the front. As he passed each headlight it blinked out for a second.

  “Anything. You know that.”

  Sarah lifted up to see both men. They embraced, patted each other’s backs and then stepped back.

  “I’ve got a problem,” Barry said.

  “Your problem is my problem, brother.”

  “That’s why I called you.”

  “Remember that biker’s cocaine lab we busted?”

  Barry nodded. In the headlights of the car, Sarah saw Barry’s face clearly.

  “What a day that was,” Colin said. “Remember how we’d cleared the rooms. Everyone was accounted for. But that big fucker got a gun somehow and shot at us.”

  Barry nodded and placed a hand on Colin’s shoulder. “I was there.”

  “You had a cool head. I froze. You pulled your weapon. I shit my pants. You fired and hit his shoulder and st
omach. I fired piss into my shorts. He went down and you saved my life. I was a dead man if I hadn’t been standing beside you. There’s not many men who I’d clear a room with, but you’re one of them.”

  “I know. And I appreciate that.”

  “I owe you more than I can ever repay. Tell me what you need and consider it done.”

  “I need one girl arrested.”

  “What’s she done and why don’t you arrest her yourself?”

  “She’s annoying the shit out of me. Harassing me. And I can’t arrest her myself because she’s trying to make a case against me.”

  “A case? How?”

  “Castanet has seen me with her twice and each time she turns out to look like the good guy. If I arrest her, I don’t think the charges will stick.”