Bell to Pay

by Jeremy Waldron

  King glanced at his watch. He knew they had an impossible lead on him. “Anyone get the plates?”

  The officer frowned and diverted his eyes.

  King thanked the officer and hurried to his car with Alvarez one step behind. Someone took Sam. King needed to learn who and why. Falling into the front seat of his sedan, King thought about who Sam was with before she responded to Garcia’s text. Then he called Susan Young.

  “Is Samantha with you?” he asked as soon as she answered.

  “No, why? What’s going on? I just talked to her.”

  “You did? Do you know what she was doing?”

  “She’s looking for Damien Black.”

  King cursed Sam for not telling him where she was going. “Did she say who she was with?”

  “Travis from work. I think he’s IT or something.”

  Susan didn’t have a last name or a phone number, but King didn’t need it. He had resources that could find the information he needed.

  “What’s going on? What kind of trouble is she in now?”

  King couldn’t get distracted by his own fears. “If you happen to speak to her, just tell her to call me.”

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Within minutes, King had Travis Turner’s home address and the entire force was on the lookout for both Travis’s vehicle, and Damien Black. This time, King wasn’t taking any chances. Loxley had targeted Samantha from the beginning. Now he couldn’t stop thinking that he’d finally gotten to her.

  The tires squealed as King slammed on his brakes. Parking outside Travis’s apartment building, the detectives kicked their doors open and hit the ground running. They knew what they were up against—knew time was against them.

  Bounding up the stairwell, they stiff-armed their way onto the fourth floor and hurried down the hallway before taking position at Travis’s front door.

  Gripping his department issued Glock in one hand, King looked Alvarez in the eye and his partner nodded, giving King the go-ahead to knock.

  “Travis Turner. It’s the police.” King’s knuckles rapped on the door. “Open up.”

  King held his breath and listened. It was quiet inside. He pounded on the door again. “Denver Police. Open up, Travis.”

  Alvarez’s finger brushed the trigger guard as he stared at the door knob, waiting for it to turn. Suddenly, the sound of cautious footsteps approached the door. Slowly, the knob turned and as soon as the door cracked open, King shoved a shoulder into the door, knocking the man behind it to the floor.

  “Get on the ground,” King shouted. “Put your hands behind your head.”

  “What the fuck?” the man protested, lacing his fingers behind his head as he lay flat on his stomach. “I didn’t do anything.”

  King holstered his weapon and took the man’s tattooed wrist behind his back, binding his hands together with a zip-tie. Once the threat was eliminated and the scene was secure, King asked, “You Travis Turner?”

  “What?” The man’s eyes locked on King’s “I’m not Travis.”

  Alvarez said, “Let’s see some ID.”

  The man’s brow furrowed as he jutted his chin across the room. “My wallet is on the desk.”

  King watched as his partner approached the elaborate set of computer monitors towering over a long glass-topped desk. There were four monitors in total, each of them on, different images populating each screen. Empty Red Bull cans littered the work area. Alvarez immediately recognized the two faces in the photos nearby and didn’t like what he saw.

  “King, you got to come take a look at this.”

  King told the man to stay put or risk getting shot and made his way to the workstation. Edging the desk, he stared into the eyes of both Susan Young and Damien Black, together, inside a car. Alvarez found the wallet, removed the identification card, and shook his head when handing it to King.

  Pinching the corners of the card, King said, “Aaron Martinez.”

  “See, I told you I wasn’t Travis Turner.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I’m house sitting for Travis while he’s gone.”

  King handed the card back and headed into the back bedrooms to conduct a thorough sweep of the place. The first room had only a futon with sheets, tossed like someone had been sleeping on it, and cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. The smell of a kitty litter box was coming from somewhere near the closet. King checked that but found nothing inside. The second room King stepped into had something far more interesting.

  After sweeping the closet, he moved to the dresser and stared into the eyes of his girlfriend. Then he flicked his gaze to the next framed photograph. Again, Samantha’s bright eyes were gleaming. It was a shrine worshiping Samantha Bell, and next to her framed photographs were cut-out articles she had written—even her latest one on Richard Thompson.

  King squeezed his hand into a fist and flexed his muscles.

  Damien Black wasn’t Loxley. It was Travis Turner.

  As soon as he joined up with his partner, he heard Alvarez ask Aaron, “Did you take these photos?”

  “Why? You like them?” Aaron grinned.

  King’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t even know who they’re of, do you?”

  “Just trying to cash in on the hype, brother.”

  “Hype?” King’s nostrils flared. “Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

  “Travis swore to me he could get me a shot of the vigilante. Said I could make an easy grand. And he did. Earlier today, I captured those images.”

  King couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Travis had orchestrated it all. Treated this like a game and played his cards well. But he wouldn’t get away with it. King swore to himself he’d kill him if given the chance.

  Alvarez was staring at King when King said, “This asshole is lying.” He mentioned the shrine in the bedroom. Alvarez pinched his lips and stood frozen in the headlights. “Travis is Loxley and this scumbag is covering for him while he makes his getaway.”

  “What? That’s not true.” Aaron protested, suddenly looking confused. “What are you talking about? And who the hell is Loxley?”

  King marched straight up to Aaron, gripped him by the collar, and threw him up against the wall. Breathing down his neck, King bared his fangs when saying, “You better start talking before I really lose my temper.”

  “Yeah. Anything.” Aaron nodded his head vigorously. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “You can start by telling us where Travis said he was going.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Aaron cried. King tilted his head and shoved his knuckles deeper into Aaron’s chest. “I swear. He just gave me access to his equipment as long as I took care of his cat.”

  Suddenly, Alvarez’s cell phone rang.

  “You better not be lying.” King dropped Aaron to the floor. He stepped to the couch and caught sight of the cat. Scooping it into his arms, he read the cat’s name imprinted on the gold collar. “Little John, of course.” King shook his head in disbelief.

  “Call came in,” Alvarez said once he was off his phone. “Someone reported a suspicious male-female couple entering the house of Brett Gallagher.”

  King dropped the cat to the floor and flipped his head around.

  “It sounds like it’s Travis and Sam.”

  King turned to Aaron. “It’s your lucky day, punk.”

  “You can’t arrest me.” Aaron kicked and screamed as King pulled him up to his feet.

  “I’m not arresting you.”

  “Then where are you taking me?”

  “Outside.”

  “But my things—”

  “Are now part of our investigation.”

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  I felt groggy, my body heavy with sedative, as I woke up. My eyelids felt glued shut, but not as weighed down as the bags beneath them that draped like hammocks. I struggled to keep my eyes open. I didn’t know how long I had been out.

  As soon as my lids clicked open,
they quickly snapped shut again. Over and over it went, as I lay strapped to the bed, suspended in time.

  I wasn’t sure how long it went on like that, but by the time I had the strength to lift my head, I realized the predicament I was in.

  “Shit,” I whispered as my head hit the pillow.

  “I bet you’re thirsty.”

  Travis’s voice caused me to tense. When I opened my eyes, I flinched at the sight of his hand coming straight for my brow. With nowhere to turn, he brushed my sweat-drowned bangs out of my eyes. I sucked on my tongue that tasted like a dried-out sponge. Smacking my lips together, my body screamed for liquid. I was dehydrated and drugged.

  “Yes, you are,” Travis said, petting me like a dog.

  He smiled and stared, then reached to the nightstand, retrieving an unopened bottle of water. I watched him twist off the cap and drop a straw through the mouthpiece before bringing it to my lips. It took all my strength just to hold my head up, but as soon as I sucked back the first gulp of cold water, I knew it was worth the pain.

  “There you go, sweetheart.” Travis tipped the bottle to make the suction easier. “That will make you feel better.”

  I finished half the bottle before spitting out the straw and gasping for air. A cool wave chilled my body and prickled my exposed skin. Suddenly, reality hit me. Travis had stripped me out of my clothes and had me tied to his bed in only my underwear.

  I asked, “Where are my clothes?”

  Travis hovered over me, following the movement of his finger as it grazed over the top of my underwear. Breathing harder, I watched as his erection grew, pressing against his zipper. Anticipating his desire, I thrashed against my restraints, unable to fight them off.

  “No use in trying to break free.” Travis’s voice was as light as his finger strokes now circling my navel. “It will only hurt you.”

  I bucked my hips and blinked the fog out of my vision. “Travis, what do you think you’re going to do?”

  He bent over and pressed his wet lips against my stomach. I felt his tongue swipe against my skin. Then he murmured, “I’ve been waiting for this day when I could finally touch you.”

  My body was cold. I was scared. No one knew where I was, and only Susan knew I was with Travis. I started regretting my decision to go after Damien. Now I was sure that was Travis’s plan all along—to create the perfect diversion in order to kidnap me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them wide. I could feel my sense of awareness coming back—the strength in my arms flexing and releasing, battling for survival. “I should have known you were Loxley.”

  “That’s just it.” Travis grinned. “Everyone should have known, but no one was listening.”

  He touched my breast and I squirmed beneath his heavy palm. The front of his pants pitched taller and I was afraid of what he was planning to do with me now that he had me awake.

  “You’re an amazing journalist,” he hooked my hair behind my ear, “but you failed to read between the lines.”

  I recalled the events that led us here. The more he spoke, the more sense it made. Then I remembered what I found in the bathroom—what I saw in the garage. “Where are we?” I asked.

  Travis’s hand ironed over the flat of my stomach as he leaned back to reveal the one secret that made me scream.

  “Oh, no,” I cried. “You killed him, too?”

  Travis draped his torso over my pelvis and lay on top of me. His warm, solid flesh made me squirm. Looking me in the eye, he shrugged. “I suppose I did.”

  Skinny Tree Brett Gallagher was slumped in the arm chair in the corner of the room, his head hanging back, looking like he had been propped up just so I could see the monster Travis was. If he wanted me to be scared, it worked. I knew if I didn’t go along with his master plan, I would be next to die.

  Without thinking, my entire body went into a fit as I thrashed against the leather restraints, snapping against the bedframe, trying to break myself free.

  Travis watched and laughed. “You’re a fighter, Samantha.” He clapped his hands. “That’s why I chose you.”

  After a minute of giving it my all with nothing to show for it, I finally gave up. “Chose me for what?”

  Travis’s voice raised with delight. “To tell my story.”

  I couldn’t look him in the eye. Didn’t want to. “I didn’t tell your story,” I said to the wall.

  “No, you’re right. You didn’t.” He sounded disappointed. Then he sighed, “But you will.”

  I couldn’t stop glancing at Brett. I felt guilty for blaming him for something I now knew Travis was responsible for. It wasn’t fair. I was ashamed with jumping to conclusions before getting all the facts.

  Travis saw me staring. “Brett was too smart for his own good.”

  Our eyes met. “And that’s why you killed him?”

  A spark caught his eye. “You didn’t like him either.”

  “But not enough to want him dead.”

  Travis crawled his way up my body until I could smell his breath on my face. Turning away, he palmed my cheek and forced me to look into his crazed eyes. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

  I thrashed my neck back and forth, shaking his hand off my face. It worked, but only for a second. He came back harder than before, pinching my mouth between his fingers as he shoved his tongue into my mouth. The taste of energy drink had me spitting him out as quickly as I could. Now I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

  Travis rolled off the bed, laughing, and grabbed his crotch as he moved to stand next to Brett. He fisted Brett’s hair, held his head up, and laughed.

  Inside, I began to cry. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “He should have just kept quiet about what he found.” Travis looked at Brett as he spoke. “But he didn’t.”

  Soon, anger replaced my feelings of sadness. “What are you talking about?”

  Travis stepped to the bed, ran the backs of his nails up the middle of my foot, causing my toes to curl. I regretted it the moment it happened because I knew what he’d say next.

  “Do you do that when you orgasm, too?”

  Ignoring his comment, I asked, “What did Brett find?”

  The bed sank beneath Travis’s weight. He kept touching random parts of my body that made me squirm, no matter how hard I tried to resist. He was playing with me—as he had done all along, even before he had me nearly naked in his bed.

  “Brett came to me and said he discovered who hacked the paper.”

  “It was you. He beat you at your own game.”

  Travis turned and looked at Brett. “If you consider that winning, then I guess he did.” He laughed.

  I thought back to the night I thought I was being framed for Richard Thompson’s murder. The gunshot that took Garcia’s life was still ringing in my ears, and I remembered the chase Loxley put us on when trying to learn who was behind these killings. It stung to know I missed the clues. All this time, Travis hid in plain sight and made me trust him.

  I said, “Brett knew the truth.”

  “Only about the paper. But even that was too much to risk. I could feel the walls closing in around me.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  Travis dropped his head and chuckled. “People were happy that I was killing these greedy bastards.”

  “It doesn’t make it right.”

  “You know,” Travis looked at me with glimmering eyes, “it was your Richard Thompson article that made me realize something had to be done.”

  He must have hacked my computer to learn about Thompson. “He would have gone to court. Justice would have been served.”

  Travis was staring at his hand running up and down my thigh. “I never thought I’d enjoy killing as much as I did.” He looked me in the eye, his pupils tiny pinpricks of sin. “You should have seen Richard’s face when I told him why I was killing him.”

  I spat, “You disgust me.”

  “The world and its children couldn’t afford to have a few bad men destroy it for
the billions of others.” Travis was still staring when he said, “But Richard Thompson threatened you, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.”

  I was afraid how long he’d been watching me, reading my emails, probably monitoring my phone calls. What else did he know about me? How deep did it go?

  “But then I learned what Garcia was doing to extort Richard for money. And, well, ironically, I was given an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up after discovering Richard wasn’t Garcia’s only client.”

  “Garcia gave you an opportunity? I don’t understand,” I said.

  Travis smiled. “He was my way out. With him extorting millionaires and billionaires, all I had to do was make sure he would take the blame if things started to get out of control.”

  I scrolled through Garcia’s suicide note inside my head. Suddenly, even that came into clarity with what Travis was saying happened. Garcia killed himself not because he killed those people himself, but because he extorted them for money and was about to get caught.

  “Your story should have been front page,” Travis said. “Not his. You were the much better pick.” Travis scooted up the bed and petted my hair. “What you were forced to endure because of what Garcia did, you must have been so scared.”

  Not as scared as I was now, I thought. “But you said Brett had a Bitcoin account.”

  Travis swung his legs over the side and was removing his pants when he said, “And he did. Just not one connected to any of this.”

  Travis tossed his pants to the floor, removed his shirt, and crawled into bed, snuggling up beside me. I trembled when he started peppering kisses across my body and squeezing my breasts inside his hand.

  “Travis, stop.”

  He picked his head up. “All I ever wanted was for you to see me.”

  “I see you.”

  “No, Precious. You don’t. And that, my dear, is the problem.” He stared at my face as he wedged his fingers under the elastic waistband of my underwear.

  I swallowed a single breath and kept asking him to stop. He only seemed to be inspired by my pleas. Soon, my underwear was pulled down past my knees. He positioned himself over me and I turned my neck, retreating someplace deep inside my mind, not wanting to remember what was about to happen.