Jasmine (20 page)

Leaving Fred in the van she rolled
the girl out onto a tarp to drag her inside. She’d planned for this to happen
and had everything she was going to need to make it as easy as possible. Another
dose of chloroform kept her from waking before she was ready and Verrie threw
her on the floor and tied her up. She was just getting ready to leave again
when Tank showed up.

“I thought I told you to wait
until I called you.” She reached for her gun only to remember that she’d left
it in the van. “I have this under control and I was going to call you when I
had it set up.”

He nodded before speaking. “I know
what you told me, but I want to be a part of all of it. That was the deal I had
with the other one. She knows. Ask her when you talk next.”

Verrie didn’t like this. He seemed
to know something and, anyway, she wasn’t sure she completely trusted him
to…well, she didn’t trust him to be a bad guy like her. She smiled to herself
thinking that was the stupidest thing she’d ever thought and then went to the
kitchen to find the cleaning solutions she’d left the day before. When she came
back, Tank was laying out a sleeping bag. She stiffened as she watched.

“I don’t want you sexually. But
I’m staying here until I leave this place. There are too many things…cops are
all over the fucking place just waiting for someone to fuck up and I’m keeping
myself outta sight.” She moved into the room as he continued. “Besides, you
need to have someone watch over the girl, right? I can do that while you get
whatever it is you need.”

She knew this guy was supposed to
be the killer, but he seemed to have this little boy idiot thing going on that
she couldn’t understand. She supposed that was the way he got his victims to
come to him. Charm them then kill them. She’d seen his little book of wonders
too.

“You can stay, but I’m not fucking
carting shit around for you. You want food, you fucking will walk into town to
get it or starve. I won’t—” He pulled a backpack from behind the chair and
started to take things out. “You knew I’d be here?”

“No. I just followed you. I also
put the woman you killed somewhere else. I don’t want anyone coming here
either. You’d do better to hide stuff than to just let it go. ‘Cause no matter
how much you think you got it all, you still leave bits of you behind.”

Verrie finished cleaning the girl
off. She didn’t want anything to bring them back on her ass; she wasn’t that
stupid. She wanted to ask the big man if he thought she’d missed anything, but
that would be like admitting that she didn’t fucking know what she was doing. She
stepped back and admired her work.

There were cuts all over her face.
Not that it mattered; she’d be dead in an hour anyway. The bruise to her jaw
was unexpected. Verrie hadn’t realized that Fred had hit her. Again, not that
it mattered. She made sure the ropes were tight around her arms before she
moved out of the room. Verrie noticed that Tank was asleep. She wanted to rest
too, but didn’t know when she was supposed to find the time. She kicked his
foot as she was pulling on her jacket.

“I’m going into town. There’s more
knock-out shit on the table. Make sure she is always out when you’re here. I
want her terrified when I kill her, but I don’t want her screaming her head off
before I get back. You going to be here when I return?” She hoped so, but
didn’t comment when he nodded.

She slipped her gun in the back of
her pants as she got under the wheel of the van again. She had some things to
tell Ginny when she saw her next. Like not hiring stupid people for one thing
and for another, she wanted her to acknowledge that she’d done what they both
hadn’t. She’d gotten one of the brats.

Chapter 19

Drew looked at his watch again. He
didn’t like this. Jazzie was really late and the girl was never late for
anything. He tried her phone again and it only rang.

“Maybe she’s having a nooner with
that boyfriend of hers. Nathan somebody. Could be, you know. I’ve never seen
two people more in love than those two.”

Drew looked at Chastity hoping
that she was right. “Nathan Howard and I don’t know. I should call him and see,
but I don’t want to worry him if it’s not necessary.” He picked up his phone
again and decided that he’d better, especially with all the other shit going
on. “I’m going to call. What harm can it do?”

The other guests had called to say
they were running late. The man, Patrick, said that there was a big to-do right
around the corner from them and they had been stuck in traffic. Drew hadn’t
given it much thought as there was always some to-do or another going on. But
Jazzie being late and not calling made him nervous. Nathan answered on the first
ring.

“No. I talked to her about an hour
ago,” Nathan said when he’d asked if she was there. “She said she had a
terrible time with the realtor, but nothing more. She’s never late. Let me see
if I can call her at home. Maybe she went there and is too upset to get going
or something.”

Drew had a sudden horrible
feeling. “I’m going to call Cait. There was something going on around the
corner. Maybe she’s…Christ, I don’t know. Call me back if you, you know, call
me back no matter what.”

Cait called him back. He’d had to
leave a message with her dispatcher and in just a few minutes, he was speaking
to her. “I was just trying to call Cain.”

Drew felt as though his entire
world came to a halt. He scribbled a note on the pad he’d brought and shoved it
at Chastity. He nodded when she looked up at him alarmed. He started toward the
entrance to the restaurant as he started barking questions at the police
captain.

“We were notified by this kid that
swears he saw some broad—his words not mine—pop this big fucker, again his
words, in his head. He said she shoved him in the back end and closed up the
doors on him. Said she screwed around in this little four wheeler before she
and the dead guy took off. I’ve run the plates. It’s Jazzie’s car.” Cait was
talking to someone else before she continued. “They have done a thorough search
and she’s not here. There was a body found not ten yards from her car. And
Drew…there’s blood and a bloodied chloroform rag still at the scene.”

He couldn’t seem to breathe. He
had to sit down on one of the cars that were along the sidewalk and lean over.
He loved Jazzie like he would his own sister, and his wife… “Where are you
right now? I’m coming there.”

“It’s…I suppose telling you it’s a
crime scene won’t matter, will it? Fucking families never listen. I’m at the
south lot of the Four Seasons. Do you know where that is?”

Drew slid to the ground. “I was supposed
to be having lunch with her in the restaurant. She was supposed to meet me
here. Fuck, what am I going to tell Cain?”

“I have an officer going to his
office now. And one to Alyssa’s. They won’t be here for at least another twenty
minutes. I thought if I had someone drive them that… What the fuck am I talking
about? There isn’t a man on my force that wouldn’t do anything for either one of
them. Shit, if I know either one of them, they are fucking driving the cruiser
here themselves with my men in the back tied up. Fucking families. You’re all
alike. I know. I have one just like yours.”

He was walking now, but not
steadily. He told Cait he’d be there in a few minutes and called his wife. Quinn
was already making arrangements with his granddad to come and sit for the
babies. Cain had just called her. They were going to the scene en masse it
seemed. Drew came up on the scene just as the coroner was pulling up. There, in
the middle of the yellow tape was Jazzie’s car.

He wasn’t sure what to do, but he
wasn’t leaving. He called Nathan next who had been informed by his sister what
was going on. He was frantic with need for information. Drew tried to tell him
what little he knew, but the man was barely listening.

“You have to tell me it’s not her
body. Please, Drew, I can’t live…I won’t live without her. I need her. I need
her so much.” Drew assured him several times that it wasn’t her. “Thank you. What
do you know? I checked my phone records; I talked to her eighteen minutes
before you called me. She said she was headed to the restaurant to meet you and
her publisher. Something about a meeting with the movie people.”

“Yes. That was right. I wonder if
someone knew she was meeting us here today and that’s why they were able to
take her. She and I set this up last week so any number of people knew she was
coming here, I suppose.” Drew tried to remember who he’d told. Or for that
matter, who he hadn’t. It had been all over the paper that she was meeting with
the director today. Hell, anyone from the other office to the newspaper could
have told the kidnapper.

“I’m coming there,” Nathan said. “I’m
coming with Alyssa and Cain. There’s a cruiser here now to…they don’t think we
had anything to do with this, do they?”

“No. They didn’t think you guys
would drive safely. Actually, I think it’s a great idea. Just come here. There
isn’t much we can do, but maybe you can see if anything is missing from her
car.” Drew started to hang up when he hear Nathan sob. “We’ll find her. I
promise you, we’ll get her back.” Drew hoped so. He didn’t know what he’d do if
anything happened to his Quinn or their children.

~~~

Tank watched the girl. She wasn’t
coming around as quickly as he’d hoped, but still… He wondered what the fuck he
was doing. There was no reason in the world he should be getting involved in
this crap, but here he was. He shifted on the hard floor and tried to think
through the women.

There was the first one, the
mother. She seemed off most of the time and he wasn’t so sure she even realized
that she was. She could and did justify everything she did as a matter of
course, and everything she blamed on the “money-grubbing whore.”

Then there was the second one,
Ginny. She wasn’t just off, but he felt she had an unhealthy obsession with the
man Cain. She hated the wife too and called her the same thing that Guinevere
did, but Cain… Again, he wondered if there was something there that he wasn’t
seeing. Or if he ever would. Then there was the third one.

He’d seen her before when one of
the women would drift away only to have her come to the surface and smile at
him. Not a lot, but enough to know she was crazy. Not the kind he was, and he
knew that he was off his own rocker, but this one would kill her own mother and
not think anything of it. But he supposed that was what Guinevere was basically
doing.

But this one was kill-whoever-and-fuck-the-consequences
kind of nuts. She was the kind of killer that would shoot someone in front of
the cops and dare them to arrest her. He’d seen her kind before. They were
dangerous. He supposed that was why he was here. Control.

And that was another thing he
didn’t understand. Why? Why would they need the adult children dead? Didn’t
they realize that there were kids from these people and those kids would inherit
the money? And what the fuck? Why not just, well, he didn’t really understand
why they didn’t try to make nice with the money holders and be pissed off at
them all when they were at home. People drove him nuts, more so when they
thought they could get something for nothing.

As for his own dose of crazy-city,
he knew that he wasn’t any better than they were. He’d been a killer most of
his life and didn’t foresee himself changing any time soon. And if he was
honest with himself, he wasn’t even sure that he’d want to. He liked what he
did. Tank smiled. Okay, he loved what he did. Killing got him off and he liked
that sated feeling he got after it.

But his own kids? No, he knew that
he’d never do that. Of course, he had killed pretty close to his own gene pool
before. His brother, for one. But he’d been trying to kill him. Then there was
his uncle. He’d been trying to molest Tank when he’d been a kid. Tank supposed
that was his first real rush with death, the death of his uncle.

The girl moving around brought him
to the present. He stood up and walked over to her. “Do you know what this is?”
She nodded when he ran the knife blade across her throat. “Don’t make a sound. If
you do then I’ll slit your throat and walk away and leave you here to rot. I’m
watching you. And I want some questions answered.”

When he was satisfied that she
would remain quiet, he went back to his sleeping bag. She didn’t seem the type
to scream her head off and he was glad that she hadn’t.

“I’m going to ask you some
questions and I want you to answer them truthfully. I’ll know if you’re lying
to me.” She nodded again. “Why are you here? And don’t pretend to not know what
I’m talking about.”

She seemed to be thinking about
it. He let her. Unlike some people, he didn’t feel the need to fill in the
silences with fuck talk. That’s the type of talk where someone just continually
emptied their head and didn’t say a fucking thing. Made a person want to
fucking bash in their brains. He hated people like that more than anything.

“I don’t…someone has been trying
to kill off my family for… I honestly don’t know. I have a theory if I can tell
you that.”

He told her she could. He admired
her in that moment. She wasn’t like some of his other victims because she
wasn’t freaking out. He supposed that was why he’d not killed her yet. She
was…well, hell, he was impressed with her so far. And he found he wanted to
know what she thought.

“I think it has to do with money. You
see, it all started with my father. He…he was going to kill Quinn, she’s my
sister. He wanted to kill her because he felt that Alyssa, my sister-in-law,
owed him millions. Something about finding her first. But he hadn’t. Cain did.”

“I thought your father was dead.” He
tried to remember what he’d been told by Ginny. Something to do with a ransom,
but he couldn’t remember right now. He thought he should have brought his notes
with him too.