Driven to the Limit (5 page)

He pulled her closer and let her nose burrow into his chest.
True, Klaus had designed him for Lauren, so he could hardly do anything but
love her. But still, no one could hold her and not want to keep her with him.
For her family not to want her -- despite what she’d put them through -- didn’t
make sense.

Nor could all the places she’d applied for work have
rejected her. Education or not, she had a valuable talent and lots of work
experience. No public figures in their right minds would refuse to at least
give her an interview.

None of this made sense. The outside world must have tried
to contact her. Why hadn’t they gotten through?

Despite the late hour, noises still echoed through the
house. Dagger and his crew clearly partied into the wee hours. If so, they’d
sleep much of the day. Tomorrow, he’d look around and see what he could find
out about why Lauren had become so isolated from the outside world.

* * *

The next day, Jake helped himself to some clothes from one
of the men’s rooms and went looking around the compound. Sure enough, at eight
in the morning, everyone still slept, even Lauren. She had to be exhausted
after everything that had happened the day before. If Jake had been merely
human, he’d probably still snooze beside her.

He didn’t find much of interest in the main house. Nothing
but bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs held the dining room, kitchen, and recreation
room with pool table and huge plasma television. Where most people would have a
formal living room, Dagger’s staff had a fully equipped gym.

What was he looking for, anyway? Probably some kind of
command and communications center. With all the laptops in the house and the
equipment in the recording studio, Dagger had to have some powerful computers.
Probably an Internet and e-mail server. If anyone had tried to contact Lauren
electronically, he might find the information he wanted there.

Dew was just burning off the lawn as he walked past the pool
to the closest guesthouse. One of them might serve as an office.

The first of the cottages was empty, but a second one -- set
farther away from the main house behind some trees -- held more promise. The
door was locked, so he peeked into a window. Sure enough, he caught sight of a
desk and executive chair. Several file cabinets of polished wood stood off to
one side. They’d hold records and correspondence. Just what he was looking for.

He walked around the cottage, testing windows for another
way in as he went. Finally, at the back, he found an open window. Before he
could make for it, two male voices came to him.

He inched slowly to the opening and quickly glanced inside.
Two of the crew – Steve, in shorts and a torn T-shirt and Howie in jeans -- sat
at a large conference table. Steve hunched over a computer terminal while Howie
looked over his shoulder. “Did you find anything?” Howie asked.

“Shit, no, I didn’t find anything. There’s nothing to find.
Dagger’s gone ’round the bend again.”

“He says someone’s beaming rays at him.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “That’s nuts. Just more of his
paranoid ravings.”

“I dunno. He seems serious.”

Steve swiveled his chair around and glared up at the other
man. “You know he gets batshit crazy when he does too much coke. Was he into it
again last night?”

“We all were.” Howie fidgeted, shifting his weight from one
foot to the other. “Come on, man. You gotta find something.”

“You’re as crazy as he is, asshole.”

“Okay, okay.” The other man started pacing. “Fake something.
Make it look like you found the rays and disabled them.”

“There aren’t any fucking rays!” Steve yelled.

“Just pretend there are, or Dagger’s gonna go ape.”

“Did he sleep at all last night?” Steve asked.

“No, man.”

“Well, shit. You know what happened last time.”

“That’s why I’m telling you you gotta do something!”

“Maybe I can cook something up,” Steve muttered, “but it’ll
be as crazy as Dagger is.”

Steve tapped the keys furiously, and Howie hung over him,
staring at the screen. Jake leaned against the cottage wall and let his mind
work. To get in there and into the computer files, he’d need to get the other
men to leave. Perhaps if he thought up some distraction, he’d get a few minutes
alone. If he alerted the compound that the Mannhof had disappeared from its
garage, the whole staff would check it out. How could he best do that?

Before he arrived at an answer, someone pounded on the front
door of the guesthouse. “Steve? Howie? You in there?” a female voice called.
After that came more knocking. Loud and frantic, as if she’d crash right
through the door if she could. “Open up. It’s serious.”

“Yeah, yeah,” one of the men answered.

“I’m not kidding, Steve,” the woman yelled.

Jake peeked into the window to find that the man in jeans
had let Jill into the cottage. Her face was red and her eyes full of fear.

“Dagger’s flipped out,” she said. “He’s going to get his Uzi
and start shooting.”

“Shit,” Howie said. “Aren’t the guns locked up?”

“He’s threatening everyone to unlock them,” she answered.
“He says we’re all part of the conspiracy to kill him.”

“Shit, he’s out of his mind,” Steve said.

The woman grabbed him by the arms and shook him. “Someone
has to talk him down.”

“Either that or sit on him until he comes down on his own,”
Howie said.

“Come on, both of you.” She turned and left the room. The
two men only hesitated for a moment before they followed.

Jake waited a bit to make sure they’d all left and then
climbed in the window. Dagger and his insanity ought to keep them busy for a
while, and he’d have time to check the computer and the files and get away
before anyone came back.

Software had changed since Klaus had taught him about e-mail
and electronic files, but just about every program had a search icon somewhere.
He’d probably pull up thousands of files if he searched for Lauren, but with
any luck, something would jump out at him. Because this machine worked so fast,
the results appeared in under a minute.

One folder stuck out immediately. Inside Lauren’s directory
of e-mails, these lay in the subdirectory called “résumé.” The first several
came from Lauren sent to outside addresses. Each consisted of a cover letter
and an attached résumé.

Following those came more messages coming from the outside
to Lauren. He opened the first -- from a talent agency -- asking to arrange an
interview. They hadn’t ignored her application. They’d responded with interest,
but obviously, Lauren had never received the reply.

With each click of the mouse, he found another reply to her
query -- from musicians, authors, television and radio networks. Almost all of
them asked for more information. The only negative ones suggested that she
contact them later to see if they’d had an opening.

Jake pounded his fist against the table. Someone had
intercepted these e-mails and kept them from her.

Bastard. Dagger kept his people like serfs. He made them
dependent on him for the drugs they were hooked on. Then, if one of them
managed to get off the drugs as Lauren had, he convinced them the rest of the
world didn’t want them. Who knew how many of his staff could live happy and
productive lives somewhere else? Lauren would, starting today. Then, when she’d
gotten away from him and had a chance to clear her mind, the two of them would
figure out what to do about the others. Dagger would
not
get away with
this forever.

He clicked through a few more e-mails. As the talent agency
got more and more frantic to talk to Lauren, they mentioned letters they’d sent
through the regular mail. She’d had paper correspondence she’d never seen.

He swiveled away from the computer and looked around for a
place Dagger’s people might have hidden those letters. His gaze fell on a side
room. Little more than a huge closet, it had no windows, but it did have file
cabinets in it. The storage room. If they’d saved Lauren’s letters, he might
find them in there.

He walked in and switched on the overhead lamp for a better
view. The first several drawers he opened held what one would expect. Sheet
music with various arrangements for Dagger’s songs. Contracts. Directories.
Calendars. Nothing very interesting.

One drawer was unlabeled except for a symbol -- a skull and
bones. Humor, perhaps, but also a clear warning. Of course, that drawer was
locked.

He went back into the main room. If he couldn’t find the
keys to the cabinets here, he might find some other way to get into that
drawer. No keys appeared, but a toolbox sat on the floor in one corner. He
knelt by it, lifted the top, and found a heavy screwdriver and a hammer. With
those in hand, he went back into the file room and began to work on the locked
drawer.

After a few minutes and quite a bit of work, he managed to
force it open and looked inside. Sure enough, it held lots of letters to
various members of staff. Dagger hadn’t singled Lauren out for mistreatment.
None of his people got all their mail. Included in the pile, he found the
letters from the talent agency, but he found another one too. The return
address had the name Tim King. Timmy? Lauren’s little brother.

He took the letter from the opened envelope and read.

Dear Ms. King,

I found your name on Kid
Dagger’s website. I’m writing in hopes that you’re my sister who disappeared a
few years ago.

A picture slipped from the
envelope. It showed a teenage girl and a younger boy. Lauren -- his Lauren --
and her brother, the author of the letter. He turned the letter over and read
the end.

If you are my sister, I want
you to know that your family loves you and misses you. Please get in contact
with us so that we can patch things up and be a family again.

Love, Timmy

Verdammter Scheisskopf
. Dagger had kept Lauren away
from her own family. She thought they hated her. Losing the world was bad
enough, but it didn’t come close to losing the people who loved her.

Now, at least, he’d be able to convince her to leave. If he
took the rest of the letters, maybe he’d be able to get the whole crew to quit.

He scooped all the paper up into his arms and only then
noticed a plastic bag in the bottom of the drawer. When he put the letters
inside, his hand hit something else. A leather binder. He scooped that out -- a
ledger of some sort. Inside was page after page of entries. Some kind of
transactions with weights in grams and kilos and sums of money. Huge sums of
money. Whatever these weights were, they cost a lot per gram. Like caviar or
white truffles. Or cocaine.
Lieber Gott
. Dagger’s drug bookkeeping. Huge
amounts. If his people had taken all this cocaine, they’d all have died by now.

Actually, if you read across the fold of the pages, like a
spreadsheet, the type of transactions became clear. The drugs were coming into
Dagger’s compound and going out in smaller quantities. He didn’t just give his
staff poison. He dealt it and on a large scale.

Good. With this information he could shut Dagger down. He
could send the bastard away to prison for years, if not for life. Dagger
wouldn’t ruin any more human beings.

With everything stashed in the plastic bag again, Jake
headed toward the main room. Before he got there, the sounds of voices came to
him. Several of them, one Dagger’s.

“Find the goddamn rays, Steve,” Dagger shouted.

“There aren’t any rays, Dagger,” Steve answered.

“Sure, there are,” Howie said. “You found them and destroyed
them.”

Steve groaned.

“You’re part of the plot!” Dagger howled.

“Come on, man,” Howie said. “Sit down and chill.”

“I can’t chill. My fucking head is splitting open from the
rays. If it doesn’t stop, I’m going to fucking kill someone.” Something heavy
crashed against the wall. Dagger had thrown something with glass that shattered
and fell to the floor. He’d whipped himself into a rage with the help of
cocaine. He’d gone past irrational and volatile to outright dangerous. If only
they’d go away again, Jake could call the police before Dagger hurt someone. Or
worse.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop the rays,” Steve said.

Things got quieter in the outer room. Keys clicked as Steve
worked on the computer. Someone paced the room, probably Dagger. Back and
forth, back and forth. Then, the footsteps stopped.

“Who’s been in the file room?” Dagger demanded.

“No one. Why?” Howie said.

“The door’s open.” The footsteps approached where Jake hid.
He couldn’t escape. If Dagger found him here, he’d lose any connection to
sanity. Jake’s only choice to avoid detection was to shift. He dropped the bag
and shifted, not even getting out of his clothes. They ripped apart and fell to
the floor.

Dagger stood in the doorway, Howie and Steve right behind
him.

“That fucking bike,” Dagger said. “I should have known. The
thing is trying to kill me.”

“It’s just a machine,” Steve said.

“Oh, yeah? Then, how did it get here?”

“Someone put it here as a joke,” Steve answered. “Lighten
up.”

Dagger pointed to the open file drawer. “It’s been in my
personal shit.”

“Chill, Dagger. It’s a machine,” Howie said.

“Bullshit. I should have killed it before. I’m going to do
it now.” Dagger slammed the door closed. Keys rattled, and the lock clicked.

The three men trooped out of the other room, leaving silence
behind them. What now?

Jake shifted back to his human form and tried the door.
Locked, as he’d expected. How in hell could he get out of here? Before he had a
chance to think of a solution, the other men returned.

“Don’t do this, Dagger,” Howie said. “It’ll bring the cops
down on us.”