An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel (19 page)

1

Pruitt looked at the computer screen, then checked his watch and said, “It’s eight o’clock, and Peter still hasn’t replied. Why?”

“Maybe he’s busy,” Sam said.

How much longer could he stall? Would Pruitt agree to wait until tomorrow night?

“Or maybe you gave me the wrong email address.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Patrick, hit him in the face.” Pruitt touched his cheek.

Patrick nodded, got up, and slammed a fist into Sam’s face, almost knocking him off the chair. Pain exploded through Sam’s head, bringing tears to his eyes, and he let out a groan. He felt dizzy for a moment.

“What the fuck?” Sam muttered, and sat upright, his left cheek throbbing. He tasted blood in his mouth.

Patrick was grinning.

“Did you give me the wrong email address?” Pruitt asked.

Sam ran his tongue over his teeth to see if any of them were broken or missing. His teeth seemed intact.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “It’s the right email address. He’s probably not home.”

“Does he have a cellphone?”

“Yes.”

Pruitt placed his hand on the mouse and moved it forward and backward a few times. “If Peter’s not at the office at nine, Ryan will shoot you in the foot.”

“Come on, Eric! Let’s wait until Peter replies.”

“No. And if we don’t have the brain-scanning cap by midnight, we’ll kill you.”

“I have a question. Who am I going to do the procedure on?”

“You’re not going to perform the procedure. You’ll just show how to perform it.”

“How will you know that I’m telling the truth?”

Pruitt was silent for a moment and then said, “I’ll think about it after we get the cap.” He looked at the screen. “Still no reply.”

“Are you going to kill me after I show you how to do the procedure?”

“No.”

“Will you let me go?”

“Yes. But not right away. A few days later.”

Most likely, Pruitt was lying. He had no reason to let Sam go.

At five past nine Pruitt called one of his minions and asked if Peter had arrived at the office. After hanging up, he sighed heavily, glanced at the computer screen, and said, “Peter’s not at the office. Ryan’s going to shoot you in the foot, Jake. I’m sorry.”

Ryan rose to his feet, drew his pistol, and walked over to Sam.

“You want me to do it right here?” Ryan asked Pruitt.

“This is unnecessary,” Sam said, his heart fluttering wildly.

“The bullet will damage the floor.” Pruitt paused to think. “Let’s just cut off his finger.” He got up. “We’ll do it in the kitchen.”

“Eric, I have to tell you something,” Sam said.

“Go ahead.”

“I lied to you.”

“About what?”

“About the procedure. There’s no brain-scanning cap. I made it up. And these computers were in the office just for show.”

“What do you mean?” Pruitt frowned.

“We didn’t use computers to transfer your son’s consciousness to Luke’s body.”

“Then how did you do it?”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

When Pruitt opened his mouth to reply, a shot thundered, and a moment later Ryan jerked and collapsed to the carpet, a crimson splotch blooming below the breast pocket of his shirt. Before Ryan’s body hit the floor, another shot was fired. The bullet entered Patrick’s stomach, and a choked groan escaped him. Sam looked toward the archway connecting the dining room to the foyer and saw the shooter.

It was Jeff Phillips.

“Don’t kill Pruitt!” Sam shouted, his ears ringing.

He needed Pruitt alive because Pruitt owed them twenty million dollars and he wanted to collect it.

The smell of burnt gunpowder struck Sam’s nostrils. Patrick’s hand began to move toward the holster, and Jeff pulled the trigger again. Patrick’s face exploded, splattering blood and pieces of bone everywhere. Sam felt two drops of blood land on his cheek. He’s definitely dead now, Sam thought. As Patrick fell down, Jeff put another bullet in Ryan, this time in the hip.

Had the neighbors heard the gunshots?

Sam jumped up, wheeled around, and saw that Pruitt lay on the floor, staring at Jeff, his face shocked, his body contorted.

The whole shooting must have taken less than five seconds. In just five seconds he had gone from prisoner to captor, and his life was no longer in danger.

Four shots, four hits. Bravo, Dad!

Sam’s ears were still ringing.

“Are you okay?” Jeff asked him.

“Yes.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“A little.”

Jeff pointed his pistol at Pruitt and said, “Hands behind your head. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

Pruitt put his hands behind his head.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief and wiped Patrick’s blood off his cheek with his palm. “Great job, Dad.”

Jeff was wearing black leather gloves, which was very prudent of him.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” Jeff asked Pruitt.

“No,” Pruitt replied.

“There’s no one else here.” Sam searched Ryan’s pockets for the handcuff key, found it, removed the cuffs, and then picked up Ryan’s pistol. 

“What did they want from you?” Jeff said as Sam pulled the gun from Patrick’s holster.

“He wanted me to show him how to do the procedure.” Sam pointed at the table. “These are our computers.”

The pools of blood Ryan and Patrick lay in were slowly growing larger. They’ll have to replace the carpet, Sam thought.

“They stole our computers?” Jeff said. “I’m very disappointed in you, Mister Pruitt.”

Sam gave Patrick’s gun to Jeff and told Pruitt to get up.

“Let’s talk, guys,” Pruitt said. “There’s no need for violence.”

“Sure.”

Pruitt thought he had a chance of getting out of this alive. What an idiot!

His joints creaking, Pruitt rose from the floor. He looked scared and dumbfounded.

“Hands up,” Sam commanded. “No sudden moves, okay?”

When Pruitt raised his hands, Sam reached into the millionaire’s right pants pocket and withdrew the phone. Then he pulled his burner phone from Pruitt’s back pocket. He opened his messages and discovered that Jeff had sent him a text at 1:42 p.m., which read: “What’s up?” As he fumbled in Pruitt’s left pocket, he said, “Who has the keys to the Mercedes?”

“Ryan.”

Sam lifted Pruitt’s pant legs and saw that he had no guns or knives strapped to his ankles. Smiling, he transferred the pistol to his left hand and punched Pruitt in the mouth. Pruitt grimaced with pain, baring his bloodied teeth. Sam was about to hit him one more time, and then changed his mind. He didn’t want Pruitt to think he was a violent psychopath. People tended to distrust violent psychopaths, and right now he needed Pruitt to trust him. The ass-kicking could wait until he got his money.

Pruitt didn’t complain about the assault, perhaps because he knew he deserved to be beaten. He rubbed the underside of his nose with his finger, and Sam said, “Keep your hands in the air.”

Sam went to Ryan’s corpse, slipped his hand into his left pants pocket, and felt in it. There was nothing there but a phone, which he took out. He found two car keys in the right pocket: one had a BMW logo on it and the other a Mercedes logo. He wiped the keys, which were covered with Ryan’s blood, on the carpet, put them in his pocket along with Ryan’s phone, and patted the body down for weapons.

“You didn’t bring your regular phone with you, did you?” Sam asked Jeff.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Good.”

Sam took Patrick’s phone, patted Patrick’s body down for weapons, and then handcuffed Pruitt.

“What city are we in?” he asked Jeff.

“Bartonville.”

Sam looked around for a telephone. He saw none.

“Where is it?”

“It’s near Grapevine Lake.”

Grapevine Lake was about twenty miles northwest of Dallas.

Sam went into the great room, unplugged the phone, and returned to the dining room.

“Are there surveillance cameras in this house?” Sam asked Pruitt.

“Yes. But I turned them off last night.”

“Where’s the recorder?”

“The study, the cabinet to the right of the desk.  Jake, I apologize for what we did to you. I’m very sorry. I made a mistake. But I was never going to hurt you.”

“You told Ryan to cut off my finger.”

“I wasn’t going to let him cut off your finger. I just wanted to scare you, that’s all. And I was never going to kill you, please keep that in mind.”

“Relax, Eric. If you pay us the twenty million you owe us, we’ll let you go. We’re businessmen, not killers.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll pay you the money, just don’t kill me.”

“Jake, I parked my car on the side of the road,” Jeff said. “Let me put it in the garage.”

“Okay.”

Jeff came back ten minutes later.

“What are we going to do with the bodies?” he asked Sam.

The gun his father had used to kill Ryan and Patrick was unregistered, so they didn’t have to extract the bullets from the bodies.

When the police found the bodies, they would interrogate Pruitt and he might tell them about Jeff. This meant that the millionaire had to die. (It was only in the movies that you could massacre a bunch of people while rescuing a captive, and be called a hero. In real life you went to prison for it, unless you were a law enforcement agent.)

Had he touched anything in Pruitt’s Mercedes?

No, he hadn’t.

Had he touched anything in the garage?

No.

The great room?

Just the phone. He’d have to wipe it.

He had left no fingerprints in the guest bedroom he had been held in.

In the dining room only the computers and the table had his fingerprints on them. They should take the computers with them because the police might be able to figure out that they belonged to New Horizons.

They would kill Pruitt after they got their twenty million dollars. How long would it take Pruitt to arrange the payment? If he had twenty million in his bank account, it should take minutes. If he needed to sell some stocks, it might take a few hours.

Would the cops get suspicious when they discovered that Pruitt had wired twenty million to an offshore bank account shortly before his death? They would if it appeared that Pruitt had been murdered.

They would have to make Pruitt’s death look like an accident or suicide.

“Do you have trash bags in this house?” Sam asked Pruitt.

“Yes,” Pruitt said.

Pruitt was going to be the prime suspect in the murder of Ryan and Patrick because they had been killed in his house and because he had no alibi. If the cops found the murder weapon in Pruitt’s pocket, they would surely pin this crime on him. They would have no trouble thinking up the motive.

He thought Ryan and Patrick were screwing his wife, so he shot them dead.

“After we leave, you’ll put the bodies in trash bags and bury them,” Sam said.

“Okay.”

“Do the guys that brought the computers know that you kidnapped me?”

“No.”

“Who else besides you and these two morons knows that you kidnapped me?”

“No one.”

“You can’t tell the police about Peter or me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Do you have a computer in this house?”

“Yes. It’s in the study.”

Sam heard Jeff’s stomach rumble angrily.

“Are you hungry, Dad?” he asked.

Jeff smiled. “No. I just ate something that disagrees with me.” Jeff rubbed his belly.

“What was it? Milk and cucumbers?” Sam chuckled.

“I think it’s the sushi I had for lunch.”

Sam pulled out Pruitt’s phone and put it on the table. “I want you to call your wife and tell her you’re on business in Los Angeles. Tell her you’ll be back in a few days.”

“Okay.”

After Pruitt dialed his wife’s number, Sam pressed the Speaker button.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said.

“Hi, honey,” Pruitt said. “I’m in Los Angeles. I’ll be here for a few days.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I’m working on a deal.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, honey. Goodnight.”

Pruitt hung up.

“I’ll check the house,” Sam said to Jeff.

There were seven rooms on the first floor and six on the second floor. Sam covered every light switch and every doorknob with his handkerchief before touching them. In the study, he found the surveillance recorder and saw that it was switched off. When he finished checking the house, he went into the foyer, opened the front door, letting in the cold night air, which smelled of damp earth, and looked down the concrete driveway. He couldn’t see the road, not because it was dark but because the road was far from the mansion. The sparse trees scattered around the property loomed like black ghosts.