Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) (37 page)

K took his good hand off the one that was still smoking, pointed it at Jack Daniels, and said, “Your turn!”

M
y trick for buying time had backfired.

“Lucy should go first,” I said, trying not to lose myself to panic.

“I vote for Lucy,” Herb agreed.

“We’re tied up,” said Harry. “But Lucy has both of her hands free. I’m happy to help by counting for her.”

Luther seemed on the verge of passing out. Lucy reached out and stroked his cheek. “You can trust yourself now, K. Who do you think should go next? Me, who has been your good friend for years? Or some cop who came here to kill you?”

“Hand… hurts…”

“I know it does. And I know how to help.”

Lucy hobbled to the door and yelled something.

“I’m bringing you some purple, K. That will make it all better.”

“You’re a princess, Lucy.”

“I just want you to be okay.”

Luther put his head on Lucy’s shoulder, and she stuck her scarred tongue out at me.

Guards came in, with a clear plastic bottle of pink syrup. Lucy took off the top and held it to Luther’s mouth.

“Not too much, K. We don’t want you falling asleep before Jack proves you can trust her.”

Lucy ordered the guard to uncuff one of my hands.

I was out of ideas.

Was this how it all ended? Being tortured to death by two maniacs in the desert, alongside my friends? Without even knowing what happened to my husband?

“We’re not the only ones here,” I said, trying to lean away as the guard approached.

“Brought some more people along, huh?” Lucy asked. “Was one of them a short guy, really good at back flips?”

“Where is he?”

“That guy was fun. He died well, if that means anything.”

Tequila. Oh no…

“Uncuff her,” Lucy ordered.

“WAIT!” McGlade roared. “The sky machine robot things command that I go next! You must obey!”

Lucy shrugged. “Okay. Do him next.”

The guard unlocked Harry’s wrist, and Lucy held the hot plate in front of him.

McGlade plopped his hand down on the burner.

Unlike Luther’s hand, it didn’t begin to sizzle.

It began to melt.

“You have been chosen, Luther Kite,” McGlade said as his prosthetic skin dripped down the sides of the hot plate, acrid fumes swirling into the air. “We are not as we seem. We are vengeful robot overlords…” He lifted his hand and his metal endoskeleton wiggled. “From the future!”

Everyone stared. Then Lucy said, “It’s just a fake hand, K. Burn his other one.”

“Jack should go first!” Harry yelled. “She started this!”

Then the door swung open, and Katie was there, the Colt King Cobra in her hand. She shot the guard twice, looked at Lucy and Luther, and burst into tears.

H
er baby was perfect. Beautiful. The prettiest newborn ever.

She unabashedly gaped at the child, no more than three pounds, wiggling her little hands as if she was waving at Mommy.

In the months since getting away from Ben and Winston, she’d managed to get out of Detroit, find a halfway house to take her in, and kick heroin. She was even going to try and enroll in high school next semester, even though she was only thirteen and had no school credentials. She didn’t even know the last grade she completed.

Back in her maternity room, she stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the past.

So much of it was cloudy. She’d been abducted before she’d hit puberty, forced into a life of sexual abuse, violence, and drugs. Thankfully, she had very little of those years that she could recall with clarity.

But before Ben and Winston, there had been a family.

She didn’t have complete recall. But bits and pieces had come back to her. The beautiful Maxine, her mother. Her sweet, sweet father, Rufus. A younger brother.

She couldn’t remember his name. Or her own last name. Her counsellors said to give it time. Memory was like a puzzle, they said. Pieces may be missing for years, and then, suddenly, they pop into place.

She fell asleep, dreaming of being part of a family.

A sharp pinch woke her up.

She sat up in bed, and found herself staring into two terrible green eyes.

“Ben and I have been calling every hospital within a fifty mile radius, looking for young, single mothers. If you’d made it to Lansing, or even Toledo, we never would have found you.”

Her eyelids fluttered, and a glorious rush coursed through her whole body. Winston held up the syringe.

“You missed it. Admit it.”

“No…” she moaned.

“But you do. I can see how you do. Now here’s what’s going to happen. We’re getting the paperwork ready. In a few hours, you’re going to sign away your parental rights. And then you’re going to come work for us again. And there’ll be plenty more of this candy for you.”

He tucked the needle into his pocket, then stood up.

“Just ride the wave. See you in a little bit.”

He left. And she melted away.

Then she came back, not knowing how long she’d been out.

Fighting the heroin, she managed to flop out of her bed. Her clothes were in the drawers, and she dressed as fast as she could, missing a button, putting her shoes on the wrong feet.

She had to get out of there before they came back. Take little Lucy and go…

Go where?

Lucy was a preemie. She needed special care.

And no matter where she ran, Ben and Winston could find her.

She wracked her drug-addled brain, trying to figure out what to do.

Get away. She had to get away. As far away as possible. Find a job. Make some money. Become the kind of mother that Lucy needed.

The window only opened halfway, but she was still a kid herself, and she slipped through.

Katie took one last look at the hospital, and made two promises.

I’ll be back for you, Lucy.

And I’m going to make those two motherfuckers pay.

It took Katie more than thirty years to make good on those promises. But when she did, she did it with a vengeance.

S
he left the fast food place dressed as a junkie, and took a cab to the pawn shop on Independence. Within two minutes of roaming the street, she found a prostitute with that vacant, strung-out look Katie knew all too well.

Katie described who she was looking for. Two men, dealers and pimps. One with a big chest and big thighs. Another with bright green eyes.

The first girl didn’t know them.

Neither did the second girl, two blocks over.

But the third girl did. And the address was close.

The apartment was the kind of shithole Katie expected. It didn’t even have a security door. It was nice to know that Ben and Winston hadn’t become successful in their old age.

She knocked on the door, the X26 Taser in her fist, and mumbled something about needing some shit, keeping her head down so he didn’t see her face through the peephole.

It wouldn’t have mattered. When he opened the door, he didn’t recognize her, and she almost didn’t recognize him. Age had bent his back and wrinkled his face and whitened his hair.

But Katie knew those green eyes.

She shot him, the tiny electric barbs shooting into his chest and shooting a million volts through him. As he flopped around, she took out her Colt, checked the rest of the apartment.

Found a young girl locked in the bedroom, obviously high, but no one else. Katie left her there for the authorities to find later.

Using duct tape, she bound Winston to the radiator, gagged him, and then began breaking his fingers until he agreed to call his buddy, Ben.

Ben showed up twenty minutes later, dropped like a sack of shit when the Taser hit him, and Katie made sure his bonds were extra tight. Then she locked the door, put a chair under the knob to make absolutely sure no one else would come in, put on her work gloves, and began.

Katie hadn’t brought much with her, other than her basic kit. But there were plenty of things around the apartment to play with.

She tried a hammer.

A clothes iron.

A cheese grater.

Pliers.

A cordless drill.

An electric sander.

Salt.

Tabasco sauce.

Even lemon juice.

She took plenty of pictures, and some of their expressions were precious.

They took a long time to die. But not long enough. Winston died first. Probably a heart attack. Ben lasted another half an hour, then blood loss took him.

After Katie was finished, she took off her bloody junkie clothes and gloves, put everything that could incriminate her in a garbage bag, and dressed in the outfit she’d worn when she left the Holiday Inn.

On her way out the door she saw a hypodermic needle on the desk. Katie didn’t want the girl in the bedroom to overdose, so she dropped it in her purse, intending to throw the shit away. But just after ditching the bag in the alley, the cops rolled up and busted her for heroin possession.

Katie was barely able to keep her game face and not burst into hysterical laughter.

I
t had been simple to sneak inside the mission building, but then all hell broke loose. Gunfire. Guards and servants running around. Katie had just managed to make it inside the pantry before being discovered, hiding behind several sacks of rice.

When the noise died down, she came out. The mission seemed to have been abandoned. It appear everyone had left. Katie began checking rooms, becoming more and more frantic.

Please don’t let them be gone. Please don’t…

But they weren’t gone. They were there, behind a steel door. Katie shot the guard, and then saw them.

My daughter…

My brother…

My family!

She immediately burst into tears.

“Lucy… Luther… I’ve found you both. I’ve been searching so long, and I finally found you.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Lucy asked.

Katie could hardly speak. She’d been waiting, hoping, wishing for this moment for over three decades.