Gone Black (12 page)

Inside the sleek black aircraft, Claire found the familiar trappings of a top-of-the-line luxury private jet. It was a great deal similar to the fancy Learjet that Black used to own before these freaks blew it to smithereens. The decor was maroon and black, all very plush and lush and with a look-at-me-I'm-so-freakin'-rich motif. Apparently, psycho torturers/bombers/assassins did quite well in today's world.

One man sat alone at the very back of the main compartment, all relaxed and right with the world and comfortable as pie in his large black leather recliner. He needed a big one, too, because he probably weighed two hundred and fifty or sixty pounds, or more even, and no diet plan on the horizon. It looked to Claire like he was all hard muscle. He had hair the same rusty color as Jaxy's stupid cartoon braids, and he had a lot of it, hanging down around his shoulders as if he was starring in an Herbal Essence shampoo commercial. It was all shiny and silky, probably used vinegar as a rinse, and everything. Oh, yeah, it was his pride and joy all right. A regular Samson. Maybe she'd get a chance to cut it off and then kill him deader than a doornail. That would be the best-case scenario. He had a goatee and mustache, too, trimmed neatly and quite close to the line of his big lantern jaw. He was fairly nice looking, in a dangerous, hardnosed way, sort of like a great big male Jaxy. He had his legs crossed demurely and looked so extremely relaxed, as if bored to distraction with all his family's horrific abductions and bloody tortures and nasty coercions. Probably thinking:
Poor me, just tryin' to keep my hair lookin' nice, while Sissy and Papa keep killin' everybody.
The guy was so laid back, in fact, that his sustained repose made Claire wonder if it was for real or if he was really nervous under all that display of calm. And she knew at once that he was Max Soquet. A true devil in the flesh. Creep Number Two starring in the Soquet Traveling Freakshow.

Zeus, Max's big black scary Rottweiler, which was also mentioned in Black's reports, the one trained to scare the living daylights out of captives/victims, lay at his master's side, panting, his tongue hanging out and dripping saliva on the nice maroon and black carpet. The hellhound was watching Claire with cocked ears, as if waiting impatiently to hear his master's command:
Go Zeus, kill woman, good doggie.

Max looked exactly like the photographs in Black's Maximilian file, which was pretty much a plethora of wanted posters from just about every country in the inhabited world. He was a man who liked his female victims to fight him while he beat them to a pulp with his fists. But fists that were encased in his own special, made-for-Max leather gloves that resisted bloodstains and kept his hands nice and soft no doubt. The beatings would go on until the women were too black and blue and bloody to put up any more fight, and then he tied them down on a bed and raped them, probably so he could watch them bleed for his added prurient enjoyment. That was just one of his little sick and salacious idiosyncrasies. But Claire did remember that little grotesque habit of his. She also remembered fairly well that he hated any kind of weakness or begging for mercy as he abused his victims. Actually admired courage, which was rich, with him being the kind of coward who tied women up so they couldn't fight back. But Black had emphasized in red letters that he treated his victims much worse if they pleaded or got on their knees and begged for mercy. Something Claire had better remember, and remember well.

“Welcome to our little world, Miss Morgan,” he said finally in a very deep and cultured voice while she continued to stare at him. And oh, so pleasantly, too. Yeah, what a peach of a guy. Then he just stared at her for several more highly uncomfortable moments. No doubt designed to intimidate her and make her cringe, right off the bat. She didn't oblige. He didn't smile, either, didn't rise to his feet like a true gentleman should, didn't do anything but watch her with some very cold and close-set demon-black eyes.

So Claire said nothing to him, either, and made sure she didn't show fear on her face. Not that it wasn't there, deep down and well hidden. Or at least she hoped it was. Nope, she wasn't feeling exactly sure of herself and on top of the situation. She had entered the lion's den all right, with nary a weapon on her person. But she had come forewarned, thanks to Black's detailed files, and thank you, God, that Booker still had Black's GPS blinking steadily and was following her across the River Styx and down into the darkness of hell and an underworld filled with monsters.

The girl, the always lovely and despicable Jaxy, ended their staring match when she shoved her hard in the back, so hard that Claire stumbled forward a few steps. That's when Claire spun on her so quickly that the other girl wasn't expecting the attack. Claire shoved her back. Hard, with both palms slamming against the other girl's chest with enough force that Jaxy fell over the seat behind her and sprawled down on the floor on her back. All unladylike and everything. Maybe even broke one of her spike heels or black dagger fingernails.

Jaxy got over her shock pretty damn quick and scrambled back onto her feet, her face so dark with rage that she looked almost apoplectic. Her cute little pink girly sap was already off her belt and in her right hand. She raised it high and rushed forward to strike Claire down. Claire tensed to defend herself against the coming blow.

At the other end of the cabin, Max said quietly, “Don't.”

Jaxy stopped in her tracks, but she looked as if she might explode at any second, still experiencing a full-boil rage that had nowhere to go. She was practically gnashing her teeth and foaming at the mouth. That's when Claire knew for sure that Jaxy was not in charge, not at all, at least not on this flight down into Hades. Max was the boss, just like Black had written. No question about it. It also meant that Claire could probably safely stand up to everybody, and he'd appreciate her courage. At least at first. She hoped. But that was only when he was around, and there would probably be a limit to what he would allow her to do. Or it just could be that he didn't want Jaxy to kill her before they landed in France.

Claire turned then and looked back down the cabin at the big guy, appraising him with newly assessing eyes. He looked quite a bit older now than he'd been in Black's pictures. Handsome and elegant, maybe, but in a rough and rugged, French lumberjack sort of way. Even in his light blue dress shirt and black pants. But he looked extremely competent, too. Totally in charge and relaxed, as if he was used to giving orders that better be obeyed or a knife would be inserted forcibly into the offending one's gut. His cease-and-desist command had certainly worked wonders with his insane sister. He continued to sit there, all serene and pleasant, but he was a sadist, too, just like the rest of his family, and she knew it. He was just the kind of sadist who displayed a quiet demeanor when not committing atrocities.

Claire bet he was very quick on his feet, too, and with his fists. She looked to see if he was wearing those custom-made gloves with which he liked to beat people to death and not bruise his knuckles. That would not be a good indication. She would have to be much more careful with what she said to him. Jaxy was emotionally charged; he was not. He was slow to anger and ruled by practicality and good, calm common sense. If psychopaths could even have common sense. Claire thought not.

“Please sit down, Ms. Morgan. We really have no desire to hurt you. Not yet. We have been instructed to bring you back home as our guest with no undue injuries that will interfere with our future plans for you.”

Well, that was a helluva good news bulletin. Sort of. Claire decided to try some smart-ass to impress him. What harm could it do? He just said he wasn't gonna hurt her now, and she was probably gonna die, anyway, so what the hell? If Max liked gumption, he was gonna get a whole load of it. “Gee, thanks, mister. And since you guys are so civil and friendly and upstanding, how about givin' me back my weapons and letting me fire a couple of slugs into your brains? Wouldn't take long. Just a minute or two. I'd like that. Now that would be some kind of fun.”

Max gazed evenly at her and said a lot of nothing. Not exactly biting on her barbed hook. Psycho Bitch started growling like a rabid dog, all low and crazy, and looked pretty much like one, too. A tall, skinny fox terrier, maybe. Zeus growled, too, getting into the act, but the animal did not move. He was trained very well. But Jaxy obeyed her brother and kept her sap on her belt and off Claire's head, trained, too, apparently. All that made Claire pretty damn sure that the idiot girl's hands were pretty much tied when it came to abusing Claire, at least for the moment. And that was a very good thing.

“Just sit down in that chair before I knock your teeth out,” Jaxy ground out through a tightly clenched jaw.

This girl is hovering on the edge of losing control already
, Claire thought. It hadn't taken much more than a shove to make her act stupid and make mistakes. It would not be difficult for Claire to goad Psycho Girl into making the wrong move at the wrong time, one that would give Claire a chance to escape. And Claire was positive that she could take Jaxy down, given a fair fight, at least, and she'd just have to figure out when and how to push her over the edge into Unleashed and Hysterical Crazy Town.

When the engines suddenly roared alive and the cabin started its slight vibration in readiness for takeoff, Claire chose one of the deep, upholstered recliners, one that was angled in such a way that she could see everybody on the plane and where nobody could sneak up behind her and knock her head off with a sap. She said nothing else. Neither did any of her new deadly enemies. She had stood up to them right off and hoped that earned the big guy's respect. Even more than that, she hoped that Black's analysis had been right. And he usually was right on target. Or Max could simply be waiting until they landed in Marseilles before beating her to a bloody pulp and feeding her to the sloppily drooling Zeus.

Everybody buckled their seatbelts as the plane slowly rolled forward. Then the engines screamed and the plane was rushing down the runway. They were pressed back against their seats as the aircraft went up into the air at a steep angle and then finally leveled off high, probably somewhere above Columbia, Missouri. After that, everybody ignored her and just did the things any ordinary traveler would do on very long flights. Max and his dog read a hardback novel with a French title printed on the front above a picture of a bloody corpse, par for the course for his life's work. Probably a how-to-inflict-bodily-pain manual.

Jaxy filed her sharp black talons to even sharper points, no doubt for use on Claire's eye sockets as soon as she was given the green light. The two hired goons stared at Claire with even more stupid and noticeably lustful stares. Since they were all so ultra-relaxed and settled in, maybe they'd doze off, and she could just kill them all in midflight, commandeer the plane, save Black, and take him home in time for a quick wedding. Well, it was a good daydream, anyhow. And took her mind off her imminent death and what Marcel Soquet might be doing to Black while they were in the air.

After about an hour of flight, Goon One did drift off to whatever kind of dreams defective cretins enjoyed, and Claire hated to think what was going through his head. Max Soquet seemed utterly engrossed in his novel. Maybe it was
Fifty Shades of Grey
or something of a similar sadomasochistic ilk, and Claire wondered if he really was all that absorbed with the book, or if he was observing her every move for some ulterior and painful motive and/or to report to Papa Soquet.

Several more hours passed in a similar fashion, and Claire sat rigid and poised on the straight edge of a mental razor, trying to figure out what direction they were going. She hoped to God they were headed to Marseilles and to Black's location. She was fairly certain they had to be. Booker and company were probably in the air now, too, right behind them somewhere. Her major concern centered more on Black and the state of his health. They did horrible, inhuman things to their captives. She had read about their torture techniques in detail, and it had turned her stomach. There was no good reason to think that they weren't torturing him and would torture her, too, once she arrived at their dungeon of death. But she couldn't worry about that. She had to think positively, that she would get away and so would Black. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.

After a time, Psycho Girl sat up from where she'd been dozing, stretched out luxuriously, like some kind of lithe but ugly stray cat with long dangling silver earrings on, and then she put her newly polished devil fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle. Everybody looked up, and Claire frowned and stiffened in her seat, not sure what was coming next. Maybe Zeus's signal to take a chunk out of Claire's body. She jerked her head to the right when she heard a cabinet door click open. A very small child crawled out, a little boy, who looked to be around eight or so. Maybe even younger. He was a tiny thing, very thin, very frail-looking, and very scared to death. He was filthy, too, his dark curly hair matted with dirt, his face smeared with grime, and he had a pink sequined dog collar around his tiny neck. She could see the tear tracks streaking down through the dirt on his cheeks. Rage began to rise up so fast inside Claire's chest, and she became so furious that she didn't think she could stand it. She froze where she sat, trying desperately to control her anger.

Grinning at Claire, Jaxy reached down into a side pocket on the wall beside her chair and retrieved something. Some kind of pink strap studded with rhinestones. It took Claire a moment to realize that it was a dog leash. Then the awful girl grabbed the little boy by the back of his shirt and jerked him over to her so hard that he fell down. She snapped the leash onto the dog collar. Then she presented Claire with her baby-toothed, crazy-ass smile.