The Antagonist (A Sarah Roberts Thriller, Book 10)

by Jonas Saul

  “So you’re doing this for someone else?” He shook his head in disgust and looked at the floor. “I can’t believe that. No one is that selfless. Tell me something.” He looked back up at her. “Who kidnaps an RCMP officer and ties him to a chair at gunpoint for someone else?”

  “I do. My name is Sarah Roberts and I do it for all the girls you’ve hurt in the past and all the girls you were planning to hurt in the future. I do it for girls like Lesley Wright.”

  He coughed up phlegm and spit on the floor. “Fuck you, Sarah. You know nothing about me.”

  She stepped back and admired her handiwork. “If you yell, I will tape your mouth and it won’t be a single strip. I will wrap tape around your head like I’ve done with your chest.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t yell. I will sit here and enjoy our time together. They’ll find me eventually and you will go to jail. People saw you take me out of the Garden of Eden.” He laughed. “You’re so stupid.” He laughed again, like this was all just one big party gag. “The police will be here within the hour. I’ll be having dinner tonight at home while you’re rotting in a holding cell until your arraignment in the morning.” His arrogant smile irritated her. “So, tell me, what have you brought me down here to talk about?”

  She flicked on the light. It shined in his face. The DVR would be recording as there was plenty of movement in front of the camera. She stepped into the storage room and grabbed a small handsaw, a wooden block and a roll of paper towels.

  When she came back out, his body glistened with sweat.

  “You okay, Barry?”

  “Yeah, just a little warm.”

  “It’s cool in this basement.” She offered a wry smile. “Or are you afraid of the basement?”

  He blew air out of his lips. “Shit, I’m not afraid of them. I just hate basements.”

  She set the wooden block and the handsaw on a table and then pulled it over beside the chair.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “We’re going to play a game.”

  “What kind of game involves a handsaw?”

  “A truth game.” Vivian, I hope you’re right about this.

  “Interrogation?”

  “Game sounds more fun.” She gave him a crazy smile and blinked erratically, trying to look as insane as she could muster. “Doesn’t it?”

  Sweat dripped from his brow. “I have to take a piss. How am I expected to do that?”

  “You don’t.”

  “What?” He sounded shocked. “I have to piss. It’s not something you just decide not to do.”

  “Piss in your underwear. Shit where you sit, for all I care. When our talk is over and you’ve told me everything I want to know, I will untie you and you’ll be able to use the restroom. I’ll even let you shower before the real police get here. Cool?”

  “You’re crazy. You can’t do this—”

  “Ahh, but I am doing it.”

  She held out her hand, her baby finger extended toward him.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Pinky swear.”

  “Are you crazy? What are we, in high school?”

  She wrapped her pinky around his. “Now, pinky swear that you’ll tell me the truth and nothing but the truth and you will never break that promise to me. When I ask a question, you answer it. Got it?”

  “I’m not going to pinky swear to anything—”

  With her right hand free, she came around fast, formed a fist on the way, and sucker punched Barry in the jaw. His head snapped to the side, straining the duct tape around his chest.

  “What did you do that for?” he asked.

  “In my house, in my basement, you honor and respect me. There will be no talking back and no fucking around.”

  “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Certifiable.” She blinked twice, widened her eyes and tilted her head. Then she slipped her pinky inside his again. “Pinky swear you’ll tell me the truth and answer every question or face the consequences.”

  “Okay, fine, whatever you want. I pinky swear.”

  “Perfect.” Sarah pulled her hand away and moved to the side table with the wooden block and the handsaw. “When Greg and I walked into room number four at the Garden of Eden Massage Parlor today, you had Lesley naked on a massage table, or a bed or whatever you call it. She had something shiny on her butt. What was that?”

  “Lubrication.”

  “What for?”

  He turned to look up at her. “You don’t know what lube is for? You’re a pretty girl. I’m sure you’re not that stupid.”

  “What was in the needle in her arm?”

  “Red Bull.” He chuckled again. “We inject that shit so the sex is extra good.”

  “Was she a willing partner?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I understand flash blooding involves the sharing of the blood from someone high on heroin.” His head snapped to look at her. “Since there was only the two of you, and your flash blooding game involves more than one girl at a time, what were you doing to Lesley? Trying to rape her? Or were you assisting in her wish for suicide?”

  “How do you know—” He swallowed. “Where did you hear about flash blooding?”

  “Raping her or killing her? Answer the question.”

  “What does it matter?” He turned away. “I’m done talking to you. Get out of my face. I’ll just sit here like a good little boy until the police come.”

  “Wrong answer.” She cuffed the back of his head. “One more time. Raping her or trying to kill her? Last chance and I don’t bluff.”

  “Fuck you, Sarah.”

  An image of Aaron flashed into her mind. A physical ache drifted through her chest. She thought of Parkman and the times they’d had together. The image of him on his knees in front of her saying he would rather die than beg Sarah Roberts for his life because if he did, she wouldn’t respect him anymore. Aaron and Parkman were real men. Barry Ashford was a piece of shit on the bottom of their shoes.

  A cop was tied up in her basement. Without a real confession on tape, she would face ten years in prison for this. Without something earth-shattering to go on, she had passed the point of no return. There was no coming back from this, no recovery except for a full confession on everything Vivian had sent her to discover.

  Desperate, alone, and angry, she was stunned into inaction. Was all this about drugs? Sex with girls who worked at a massage studio? If that was the case, hundreds, if not thousands of men would need to be rounded up and arrested.

  Sarah had gone too far this time and she knew it. But Barry had also gone too far. He was about to rape Lesley when they had stopped him. He was probably trying to kill her, too. Laws didn’t punish the rapist as much as the tax evader. That sent the wrong message.

  Since Sarah was young, she had hated the police, even the sight of their uniforms. Rationally, she knew they weren’t all bad. It was something she couldn’t explain, something she couldn’t change. But it was real.

  And this rapist cop sitting in front of her was real. When this was all over, the worst that would happen to him would be paid leave until his day in court and anything on the DVR would be inadmissible as it was obtained under duress. In the end, Sarah would be arrested and go to jail because she kidnapped him and caused the duress.

  Her pulse quickened at the injustice of it all. She ground her teeth together, and a rage brewed as she stared at him. She wanted to hurt him for what he had been doing to all the women at The Garden of Eden.

  She grabbed his bounds hands, pulled them to the side and then pressed them down onto the wooden block. Holding Barry’s hands steady, bracing his forearms against her hip, she picked up the handsaw.

  “Did you know that the pinky swear originally meant the person who broke the promise had to cut off their baby finger?” Sarah asked.

  “What?” he yelled. “No!”

  “You swore you would answer my questions and tell me the truth. You lied.”

  S
he applied the handsaw to his baby finger, added body weight to the pressure, and thought about Lesley, naked and about to be raped. She saw the cop touching her when she was a young girl, threatening her mother’s life if she told anyone. Hatred for the violations men like Barry perpetrated on women made her hand move.

  Sarah sliced back and forth across Barry’s baby finger as he screamed.

  And then he screamed some more.

  Chapter 19

  Deborah Ashford was pretty sure Sarah hadn’t seen her in the window. Living at the end of such a quiet street, she could hear a car coming from a mile away. She always knew when Barry came home, just as she had known Sarah pulled up on her motorcycle that first night. But where was her bike now? Sarah was driving a new Jeep. Had she rented it? Why would she when she had a motorcycle? Deborah assumed the vehicle change was because the police were looking for Sarah.

  The drapes had fallen back into place as Sarah pulled in next door. The slit between the drapes was wide enough to watch Sarah easily.

  Sarah had opened the back of the Jeep and pulled out a man, naked but for his boxers, bound at the wrists and a shirt tied over his head. Deborah would recognize that body anywhere.

  It was Barry Ashford, her husband.

  Deborah stood on her carpeted guest room floor and stared through the slit in the curtains until long after Sarah had taken him into her house. What could have possibly transpired for that nice young girl, a writer visiting from the States, to abduct Barry and take him into her rental home? Joan and Mike would be quite upset when they found out.

  Deborah eventually moved to the kitchen, where she made a cup of loose leaf tea. She had to think. She was missing something. There had to be a reason for what Sarah was doing.

  Barry had said something about Sarah harassing him. That was why the police were looking for her. But she seemed like such a nice girl. Why would she harass an RCMP officer? What could she possibly gain from it? Abducting him was very serious and that scared Deborah. But there was something subtly attractive about it. What if Sarah hurt Barry? Or worse, killed him?

  She smiled as she sipped her tea.

  After all the years of abuse, the hitting, the punching, Deborah was happy that Barry was getting his. She knew what he did with those sluts at the massage parlor. Her heart had blackened years ago, with no chance of ever regaining its original vitality. She was too old to find another man. In the back of her mind she always wondered if Barry would die in the line of duty. Being a cop was risky business. But nothing ever happened to Barry. He would come home drunk, smelling of other women’s perfumes and fall asleep. He would yell at her, hit her and complain about how much money she spent.

  There were times when she wondered why she was even in Barry’s life. It was clear he wanted to live the life of a swinging bachelor. But what if she left? What would she ever amount to? Staying at home and making the best of it was all she had. There had been good times, but those were in the early days. Now she drank too much and spent too much money and blamed everything on Barry.

  Whatever Sarah was up to was fine. Deborah’s face still ached from the last time Barry hit her. Maybe Sarah would hurt him. When he gets rescued eventually, maybe he would be humbled. He hadn’t felt real pain in a long time. He dished it out often enough, but he never felt any. No one ever went after Barry, and maybe that was why this was happening.

  Perhaps he pissed off the wrong girl.

  You just never knew who you were dealing with. Sarah could be connected to the underworld where a cop’s life was worthless. Or she could be undercover FBI from the States and during her investigation had found out what Barry was doing at the massage parlor.

  Deborah smiled again.

  After all these years, Barry might just be getting his own medicine.

  Her stomach twitched with excitement.

  She moved to the living room where she would sip her tea, read her Jack Ketchum novel, Off Season, and wait for someone to come to the door. It would either be Barry coming home or Sarah coming over to ask her questions about her husband’s activities.

  Or it would be the police looking for her husband, in which case she would lie.

  “No, Officer,” Deborah said out loud. “I haven’t seen Barry in days. I have no idea where my husband has taken off to, but he’s done this before. Sorry I can’t help you more.”

  Soon, she would learn the whole story and she admitted to herself, guiltily, that it would please her to find out her husband got a little hurt in the process.

  After all the beatings she had to endure over the years and the humiliation of being violated when he would come home drunk covered in another woman’s stench, she secretly hoped Barry was being tortured next door.

  “You go, Sarah.”

  She sipped her tea, staring out the window at Okanagan Lake, her novel forgotten for the moment.

  A plan began to form. She thought about it some more and then made a decision.

  Her smile widened as she raised her mug to toast the air.

  “Oh how devious, Debbie, how devious you are. Barry won’t even see it coming. Neither will Sarah.”

  Chapter 20

  Greg paced the waiting room floor, eager to hear anything on his sister’s condition. A door opened on the side of the room and the doctor emerged.

  “How is she?” Greg asked.

  The doctor’s white coat was stained red in some places and a jaundiced yellow in others. It looked like he had personally attended to the victims of a bus accident at the scene of the crash. His glasses looked too thick for him to see properly, but Greg’s sister was admitted for an overdose. Even though Greg’s anxiety grew at the doctor’s appearance, maybe the man was qualified enough to handle Lesley.

  “She’s going to make it,” he said. “Close call with that much heroin in her system, but she’ll pull through. You’re going to have to consider an intervention and rehab after this. Her arms indicate this wasn’t the first time.”

  Doors opened behind him. Greg turned around. Two uniformed police officers and a man in a suit walked through and stopped behind him.

  “I had to call them,” the doctor said. “She was half naked when she got here and it appeared that she had been violated. These men are going to want your statement and when Lesley wakes, they’ll want to speak to her as well.”

  Whatever they were going to do to him for taking a gun into the Garden of Eden was nothing now that Lesley was okay. He would get a lawyer and fight Barry Ashford. When it was all over, he would close up shop, grab Lesley and leave town. As far as he was concerned, the Wright family was done with Kelowna. They could keep their crime and their rogue cops.

  “Mr. Wright. I’m Detective Colin Lang.” He held out his ID. “Could you come with us?”

  Greg turned back to the doctor. “If I’m not back by the time she’s ready to be released, will you at least tell her to get in touch with me? Tell her to call her brother.”

  “I will, Mr. Wright.” The doctor patted him on the shoulder.

  Greg followed the officers through the hospital corridors until they got outside. One of the men opened the back door of an unmarked cruiser.

  “Where are we going?” Greg asked.

  “Get in.”

  Detective Lang’s tone warned Greg not to ask any more questions. He got in the back and squished his legs against the steel barricade at the back of the front seat.

  The uniformed officers got in beside him and Lang drove away from the hospital. Were they bad cops taking him to a dumpster where they would kill him with a gun that had the serial number filed off?

  Maybe I watch too much TV.

  As they pulled in front of the police station off Ellis Street downtown Kelowna, he realized he was only freaking himself out. They didn’t cuff him, which he took as a good sign. He could handle this. For Lesley, he would get through it.

  After escorting him inside, they led him down a long corridor to a series of doors, where they opened one and gestured for him
to go in.

  A metal table and two chairs. Classic interrogation room.

  The officer shut the door, leaving him alone.

  He sat and waited. It gave him time to think about how he was going to get out of this mess. What Barry had been about to do to his sister was horrific. Going in with a gun and pulling Lesley out of there couldn’t get him in too much trouble. Unless it turned into his word against Barry’s.