Jack Stone - Deadly Revenge (11 page)

He leaned ove
r the table so his face was lit in highlights and shadows from the chandelier. He stared at the Dom and his eyes were black. “I’m going to get the diary,” he said again, “but before I go, answer me one question first.”

The Dom sat back in his chair and studied the glowing tip of his cigar thoughtfully.
Then he looked hard at Stone. “If I can…”

“I know who you are – you’re a trafficker in women as sex slaves. You either trap them or trick them – and then you trade or sell them to other men. And I know you killed Katrina Walker – because she knew too much about what you were doing. But I want to know if you have ever seen this girl.”

He reached into his wallet and opened it. Inside the clear plastic window was a picture of his missing sister, Susan, who had disappeared three years ago.

“That’s my sister, Susan Stone. My family thought she was dead. We mourned her. Then one day someone saw her in a BDSM bar in Washington. She was on a leash and wearing a collar. She hadn’t
died, she had been kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. I’m looking for her.”

The Dom looked at the photo but his expression never altered. He glanced back up at Stone. “So that’s why you’re in town. And that’s why you’re looking for Katrina Walker’s killer. You think there might be a connection.”

Stone nodded. “Is there?”

The Dom shook his head. “I can’t help you.”

The two men stared at each other for long seconds. Stone said nothing. Finally the Dom glanced away and tapped his cigar against the edge of a glass ashtray. His face was suddenly grim. “And I resent your accusations, Mr. Stone. You’re treading on very dangerous ground. Ordinary men have died for saying less.”

Stone didn’t flinch. “I’m not
ordinary,” he said. “I thought you would have realized that by now.”

Twenty.

The
blonde submissive led Stone silently through the concealed door, which opened into a passageway. There was a door on the left which was open. As they passed, Stone glanced into the room and saw the big dark man who had been at the card table. He was standing, one hand gripping the back of a chair, while the submissive who had been given to him by the Dom was on her knees. Her head bobbed quickly backwards and forwards as she used her mouth to pleasure the man.

Stone walked on.

The blonde girl lead him to the end of the passage where another man stood waiting. The guy watched Stone approach. His body became more aware, like he was taking precautions. He changed his stance and pushed back his shoulders. He was wearing a suit, but it didn’t look right on him. He had the rough swarthy look of a thug. He was an inch or two shorter than Stone, with a scarred face and oily black hair and cunning eyes under thick eyebrows.

The woman stopped. The guard looked her up and down, leering at her. Stone stayed back a couple of paces.

The man stepped close to the girl and cupped one of her breasts in his hand. Then he lowered his head and sucked on her nipple. The woman didn’t move. Just kept staring past the guy. Stone saw him slide his free hand down inside the elastic band of her panties. The woman spread her legs. Kept her back erect, her eyes straight ahead. The man’s fingers slipped deep inside the woman’s sex. She gave a small gasp. The guard smiled knowingly.

“You want it, don’t you slut.”

The woman nodded. “Yes, sir. If it pleases you,” she answered, her voice a whisper of obedience.

“Oh, it does,” he
said. “It always pleases me.”

He glanced past the girl’s shoulder at Stone. Dismissed him as no threat. He turned and unlocked a door. Held it open.

Stone walked out into the night. He was standing at the top of a narrow iron flight of stairs that lead down to a dark alley at the back of the club.

Behind him, Stone heard the door slam and then the turn of a single lock. He started down the stairs.

The alley was clogged with large industrial waste bins, smaller trash cans, and stacks of discarded timber crates. The still night air was thick with the stench of refuse. There were black plastic garbage bags piled haphazardly against cold brick walls and he heard the furtive scurry of rats.

A single light on a pole, haloed by the moist night air, threw a dull yellow glow over the alleyway, darkening the shadows.

Stone walked on.

He came out on a side street and walked back towards the
Lexus. The town was quiet. The door to The Cage was shut and padlocked. Heston’s Cove was asleep.

Stone tossed the bundles of money he had won into the trunk of the car and settled in behind the wheel. He took a deep breath.

The night had gone better than he had expected, but he knew he was minutes away from facing the biggest danger of the evening.

Celia would still be tied, naked to the bed.

And she wasn’t going to be happy.

Twenty-One.

The Dom came down the passage.
He had his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, and a brooding, dangerous scowl on his face. He saw the blonde girl up against the back door of the club, bent at the waist with her panties down around her spread thighs. His guard had his trousers unzipped, thrusting into the girl with vicious pumping strokes that drew a new sobbing gasp from the girl every time he lunged.

The Dom clamped his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Don’t take too long,” the Dom said, barely glancing down at the girl. She was weeping quietly, her tiny hands balled into fists as she braced herself against the driving impact as the guard used her for his pleasure.

The guard nodded, and there was a sudden curious expression of alarm on his face.

“Problem?”

The Dom nodded. “The guy who just left is coming back.
Maybe in an hour or so. He’s going to have a diary. I want you to search him when he arrives. I want that book.”

The guard nodded. “And then…?”

The Dom raised an eyebrow, like he was surprised the question even needed to be asked. “And then you kill him, of course,” he said. “But get the diary first – or you’ll be the one in a dumpster.”

Twenty-Two.

It was just a few minutes driving from The Cage back to the hotel. The streets were deserted. There was no traffic. Stone slowed down to take the turn off the main road, and saw a police car parked across the hotel’s entrance. Stone braked and pulled into the curb.

It was a Crown Vic black and white. The car was dark, but as Stone killed the engine in the Lexus, he saw the driver’s side door crack open and the overhead light in the cop car came on. He saw two officers. They looked young. They both had short, military-like haircuts. Serious faces.

Stone got out of the Lexus. Pushed the door shut. Stood by the hood and waited.

The driver got out of the cop car. He was a young broad-shouldered guy, maybe twenty-five. He was wearing a tan uniform shirt covered in badges and insignias, and dark brown trousers. He left the door of the car open and adjusted the big belt around his waist. Rested his hand casually on the top of his weapon holster. Not tense. Not strung out like he was expecting trouble. Just like it was a precaution, or maybe just good training that had turned into an even better habit. He stared at Stone but said nothing.

The other cop was still in the car. Through the open door Stone could hear the distorted voices of radio chatter. The guy picked up a microphone and spoke quickly, his eyes on Stone as he reported in. Then he got out of the car and came around the trunk, so the cops were approaching Stone from both sides.

Stone leaned against the hood of the Lexus and waited.

“Evening officers.”

“Evening,” the guy who had been
in the driver’s seat said. “You’re Jack Stone, right?”

Stone nodded.

“Mind if I see your license, Mr. Stone?”

Stone shrugged. He reached into his wallet and handed over his license. The driver
passed it to his partner. The guy was holding a long heavy flashlight. He studied the license. Glanced back at his partner and nodded. Then
he handed the identification back to Stone.

“What’s this all about?” Stone asked.

“Routine,” one of the cops said vaguely.

“Routine what?”

“Routine traffic stop,” the cop said again, and then his tone became a little more formal. “We need you to come with us.”

Stone frowned. “Where? Am I being charged with something? Are you arresting me?”

The cop closest shook his head. “No, sir.”

Stone paused. The two cops weren’t giving him attitude. They weren’t bristling, or tense. They weren’t on edge. They were just polite and formal.
Doing their job. Following orders. “Then what is this all about?”

“I can’t tell you that, sir,” the cop said.

“Then what can you tell me?”

The two cops exchanged brief glances.
“The sheriff wants to talk to you. He’s waiting,” one of them said.

“At the police station?
At this time of night?”

The
cop shook his head. “No, sir. He’s waiting for you at another location. We’ve been instructed to take you to him.”

Stone thought quickly. “Is it far away, officer? I have someone waiting for me in the hotel. She’s expecting me.”

“It’s not far, sir,” the cop shook his head. “You can follow us in your vehicle.”

Twenty-Three.

The
police car headed out of town. Crossed the bridge, and blew past the big roadside billboard welcoming visitors to Heston’s Cove. Then just kept on humming north and east at a steady seventy miles an hour.

The night was dark.
There was no moonlight. Low thick cloud had blown in off the Pacific since sunset, hanging overhead like a heavy blanket. The woods closed in tight around the Lexus as Stone kept the cop car’s taillights in sight. The road narrowed, and then began to twist and turn upon itself.

Then suddenly –
in the middle of nowhere – the cop car’s taillights flared red and urgent, and the vehicle’s speed bled away quickly. Stone reacted. He squeezed the brake and felt the Lexus dip down a little on its front suspension as the car slowed to a crawl. The cop car was turning off. Turning onto a dirt trail that branched at right-angles away from the road and disappeared into the dense dark woods.

Stone followed. Saw a mailbox on an old wooden post. Saw a name and number but couldn’t make anything out in the dark. He fl
icked his lights up to bright and the extra glow cast the towering trees that pressed in on each side with an eerie, menacing glow of highlights and black twisted shadows.

The track was just a pair of deep parallel ruts put there by the passage of time. There was a raised hump of loose gravel between them and the Lexus lurched and bounced as the trail dipped then rose again following the natural contours of the land it had been cut into.
Bushy outcrops rose left and right, scrubbing against the car as the woods closed in all around like a black impenetrable wall.

Stone glanced down at the dashboard. Figured they had gone a mile or so from the road, still following the billowing cloud of dust that was thrown up by the Crown Vic. The cop car was bouncing and swaying and rolling like a
boat, crawling deeper into the night.

Finally the track seemed to widen. The dense wall of trees filtered and faded away until all Stone could sense was dark
wide-open space to his left, and more dark wide open space to his right.

The track became smoother. Stones and rocks smacked and skidded under the car, crunched under the tires. Then the co
p car was slowing to a crawl, turning hard right, and parking on a wide area of beaten down earth.

The Lexus’s headlights swept over the wide dark shape of a house, built up off the ground. Stone saw a verandah and steps. Saw another black and white
police car parked up alongside the house. The vehicle was turned nose-out facing back down the track. Right next to it was a dark colored little compact.

He eased the Lexus to a stop alongside the cop car and killed the engine. The two cops were already out of their car, waiting for him with their thumbs hooked into their bulky belts and their hats on their head like they were on a parade ground about to undergo inspection.

Stone got out of the car. It was quiet. Not city quiet – country quiet. There were no ambient sounds. No familiar distant hum of traffic, no sense of energy or activity. No sense that other people surrounded him.

There was just nothing but real silence.

“The sheriff is waiting for you,” one of the cops said. “He’s inside.”

A lamp came on suddenly, lighting a pool of area around the porch steps and the front door of the house. A moment later Stone saw the door crack open. Then another floodlight on a high post came on, a
nd the whole area was lit up. Stone could hear the sudden hum of electricity, and somewhere in the distance the sound of a motor. Maybe a generator, he guessed. Maybe in a shed somewhere out back. He saw no power lines leading to the house.

There was a man standing in the doorway of the house, silhouetted against interior lights. He was just a
heavy, broad-shouldered shape. Stone started walking towards the steps.

The house was old – a sprawling
clapboard farmstead that had probably seen a hundred summers. There were dark screens on the windows and a chimney jutting up through the roof. The steps were a simple wooden assembly, four thick faded slabs of timber that creaked with every step under Stone’s weight, and the porch was weary with neglect and sagging on its supports.

Stone stood under the lamp and caught his first real sight of the man waiting in the doorway.

He was a couple of inches shorter than Stone, and about ten years older. He was a big man, not muscled and toned, but a man who might once have been – before too many donuts and too many hours behind a desk had turned muscle to fat and turned a bulky chest to a solid gut. But he had bright, intelligent eyes. They were the kind of eyes that had seen a lot, and knew a lot. Searching eyes that had survived enough perilous situations in their time to now be guarded and calculating.

In another life he might have become a carpenter, or a farmer, or maybe a forest ranger. He had the ruddy complexion of a man who enjoyed the outdoors
and working with his hands.

The man was wearing a thick dressing robe, tied loosely around his waist over a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. The man had white skinny legs. His hair was black, but streaked with the kind of grey a man earns the hard way. His hair was tousled, like he had just been woken.

They didn’t shake hands. Stone didn’t think it seemed like it was that kind of moment. The guy looked like he had plenty he wanted to say. It was all there in his face – frustration or maybe concern and worry, Stone wasn’t sure. He stared at Stone for long moments and then opened up with both barrels.

“Son, m
y name is Sheriff Walter Ripley,” he said in a deep drawling voice that sounded like it had its origins back in Texas. “And you are a giant-sized pain in the ass.”