Jesse (8 page)

Josephine came out of the bathroom and
stood in the hall. She glanced at the elevator several times and he was sure
she was going to bolt. But true to her word, she went into the spacious office.

~~~

Joey sat at the table as indicated by
one of the suits. She’d never been interviewed by the FBI before and hoped
never to have the experience again. The man across from her introduced her to
all the people in the room.

“I’m Agent Alan Levy; this is my partner
Agent Louie Velasquez. Now then. Miss Foster I’m going to send the others out
and then we’ll—”

“No.” She didn’t say anything. She
waited for him to tell her that he was in charge and she would simply get up
and leave. Instead, one of the Hunters, she thought his name was Daniel, spoke.

“Miss Foster, whatever you say needs to be
said to these gentlemen without us being in the room because we he wants to
verify the story. If we stay then—”

“You weren’t there. None of you were
there and the time that Mrs. Hunter was, she was out cold. No. If they don’t
stay, then neither do I.” She glanced at Jesse to see if he would do as he said,
but wasn’t able to read his face. She thought he looked like he was going to
explode with laughter.

“Miss Foster, I don’t think you
understand the gravity of the situation. There have been major—”

“I don’t think
you
understand,
Mr. Levy. I don’t want to be here and the only way I’m staying is if they do. I
don’t want anyone coming to me later and saying that I said this or that. You
do this my way or I’m booking it.”

“We could have you arrested for obstruction
of justice, Miss Foster. This is a serious crime and with it there are serious
consequences.”

She stood up to leave.

“You win,” the other man, Velasquez,
said. “Please have a seat and we’ll proceed your way. You’re going to have to
give us everything if we play by your rules, all right?” She nodded at Mr.
Levy. “But you’ll need to have a lawyer. I think I want to insist on that.”

“I’m going to represent her.” She
watched Jesse sit next to her. She noticed that he’d removed his jacket. Holy
hell, the man could fill out a shirt. She flushed when she realized he was
staring at her as she ogled him and she turned back to the agents.

“I was in my area having just gotten off
work when I smelled the smoke.” She closed her eyes, knowing somehow this was
going to come back and bite her in the ass. “I found the two ladies on the
third floor. Mrs. Hunter was on the floor with a bloodied forehead and the
other woman was standing near the window. When I came in the first thing she
said was that the woman on the floor was dead. She said that she’d had a heart
attack and that she would verify it if asked.”

“How did you know Mrs. Jennings was not
telling you the truth?”

She looked at the other agent. “You mean
how did I know she was lying? I didn’t. Not until I checked her pulse. Then she
told Mrs. Hunter that I had planned on leaving her. I hadn’t.”

“She did too,” Mrs. Hunter interrupted
her. “Joey told me that she’d had no intention of leaving me. She said that I’d
probably prefer a sore head rather than a burned one. I agreed.”

“What did Mrs. Jennings do then? Did she
try to strangle you then?”

She looked over at Jesse, wondering how
the agent found this out and he shrugged. So much for helping her. “She tried
the elevator. I explained that getting in, it if it worked, would be like being
in an oven. About that time another explosion went off. It knocked Mrs. Hunter
sideways and out again.” Joey closed her eyes trying to remember what had
happened next. “She told me that ‘I’m getting the hell out of here. You two can
burn the hell up for all I care. No commission check is worth getting my suit
all smelly for.’ And with that, she left us.”

“Those were her exact words?” She looked
over at Daniel when he asked. “You sound as if you knew exactly what she said.”

“Yeah, well I can do that. It’s a trick,
I guess. I can remember words like they’re written in front of me. My
grandmother used to make me recite books to her and it came in handy.” She felt
embarrassed about her weirdness and before they could ask her anything more
about it she continued with her tale. “I hurt my arm at some point and my leg
got a good burn when the last explosion went off. Mrs. Hunter was out again and
I had to drag her out. The other bit…woman wasn’t around, so I took Mrs. Hunter
to the sidewalk.”

“You were right the first time, she’s a
bitch. I remember Joey asking Sondra for help. Several times. There was a
verbal fight at some point, but I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”

Joey was glad; she’d not been all that
nice to the other woman. Joey glared at Jesse when he laughed. She just knew
he’d figured it out. “I went back in. I could see the lady at the window. It
was probably twenty feet or so from the exit. I thought maybe something was
blocking her way. I didn’t figure her to be waiting for me to come back for
her.” Joey looked at Mrs. Hunter before she finished. “I know this lady is your
friend so if you want to leave, I understand.”

“No. You tell it. Tell me what she did
when you went back in to save her sorry ass. And for the record, she wasn’t my
friend, but a realtor that we’d used occasionally.”

Joey nodded. “I didn’t see her at first.
She wasn’t near the windows, but when I turned to go back the other way she hit
me with something. I fell forward and hit my head, but not hard enough to hurt
all that badly. My arm was burning and my leg felt as if someone was holding a
poker at it. I tried to stand up, but she threw me back and straddled my chest.
She kept screaming that…” Joey looked at Mrs. Hunter again. “I’m sorry, but she
kept telling me if I’d just stayed out of her way she’d be a millionaire. I
couldn’t talk and I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about. Then she said
that had you died in the fire she would have gotten double the pay off. She
said it was a rider or something.”

“It is a rider. It’s a special
circumstance policy that specifies that should you or someone else die as the
result of an accident, the insurance company will pay double, sometimes as much
as three times the policy’s value.” Jesse looked at Daniel as he continued his
explanation. “If this is true, then this was premeditated.”

“There’s more, isn’t there, Joey? What
else happened in there?”

She stared at Royce and thought about
what else had indeed happened in the burning building. “You have enough?” she
asked the agents. Joey stood when they didn’t answer. She was moving toward the
door when Royce spoke again.

“She said if my mom couldn’t die then
you had to, didn’t she? She was trying to kill you so that the insurance
company would have to pay regardless of who died.”

Joey stood at the door with her hand on
the handle. “The next explosion knocked her off me and I fought to get up. I
wanted to leave. She said that no one would miss a person…I staggered to the
door and she hit me again. I went down this time. By the time I came around
there were trucks and people all around Mrs. Hunter.”

“Josephine, what did she call you?”

Joey didn’t turn to answer Jesse. She
wasn’t going to tell him that she’d called her a worthless piece of shit. It
wasn’t because she didn’t believe the woman, it was that she did. “I’d like to
go now,” she told them without turning around. “If you have any more questions,
you can find me at Doyle’s. I’m there most nights now.”

She was at the elevator before the door
opened again. She slipped in the doors as they were still opening and then
pressed the button until the doors closed again. She didn’t look to see who had
come out and since no one spoke, she had no idea who had. She didn’t even slow
down as she went past the security desk and tossed them the badge they’d handed
her on the way through.

Chapter 8

Sondra wanted to go home. She’d been
stuck in this same cheap, crappy hotel room for over a week and she wanted out.
Pacing the small room took less time than it did when she walked across her
bedroom floor to her closet, which was probably bigger. She glared at the man
lying on the bed drinking a nasty-smelling beer. Clint Hampton was as handsome
as he was a bastard.

“The least you could do is drink
something that doesn’t smell like your feet. I swear you are out to make this
more difficult than it needs to be.” She slapped at his foot when he raised it
up at her. “And put something on. I’m sick of seeing you half-naked all the
time.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with
me being naked twenty minutes ago.” She flushed at his bold statement. “In
fact, if you want, I can take off a bit more of my clothes and we can have
another go at it.”

“I fucking hate you,” she told him. She
watched him stroke his cock, which hardened beneath his hand. Her body
responded to his; her nipples peaked and her pussy moistened. “Stop that. You
know that we don’t have time for that.”

“Take off your clothes. Right now,
Sondra, or I’ll do it for you.” His voice when he spoke to her like that made
her need spike. She didn’t move, waited to see if he’d follow through.

When Clint stood up he walked toward
her, stalked if she was truthful about it. When he was less than a foot from
her he slapped her. Her head jerked around and she whimpered. This time, when
he commanded her to strip, she did so without hesitation. He was going to hurt
her again and she couldn’t wait.

When she was standing before him naked
he grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her to him. He was grinning,
sadistic and mean. She could see his teeth and knew what they could do to her
when he decided to bite her, what they made her feel. Before he could follow
through on anything a phone began to tweet at them. Clint tossed her away from
him and went for the ringing phone while she picked herself up off the floor.

“Yeah,” he said as he watched her. Motioning
her with his crooking finger, he laid back on the bed and pointed to his cock. “Yeah,
we got in last night. There was a mix up at the airport and our plane was
delayed coming out of Kennedy.”

His wife, her sister. Dawn Hampton had
no idea what sort of fun her husband liked to play during sex and she didn’t
even suspect that he did it with her sister. Sondra went to the bed and knelt
between his legs. At his nod, she unbuckled his belt and then undid his pants. His
cock lay there hard as stone and uncovered by anything as mundane as boxers. As
he continued to speak to her sister, she took him into her mouth.

His cock tasted of her from earlier. When
he twisted her hair again in a tight grip, she looked up at him. His need
showed in his face and she could see the cords of his neck straining as he
lifted his head to watch her. Moving his cock slowly to her mouth, he begged
her to make him come now. Come now. She accepted the challenge and went to
work.

Everything else faded around her. She
could hear him speaking, but not the words. Cupping his balls in her hand and
squeezing them tight he surged into her waiting mouth. Before very many minutes
passed, she heard the phone close.

“Ride me. Get the fuck up here and ride
me. But you’d better not come, bitch, or I’ll make you pay.”

Aching in a way that was delicious to
her, she did as he said. They’d been playing this game enough she knew how to
get herself off without him ever knowing.

Taking him inside of her, she rode him
fast, hard, and without any thought to her own pleasure. Reaching behind her
she cupped his balls again and abused them as much as he was abusing her
nipples. When he leaned up, took one into his mouth, and bit, she pinched his
nuts hard enough to have him cry out in pain and his cum shoot into her. He
rolled them over and pounded into her hard as he came, each time hitting her
clit in a way that had her wanting to beg him for release. But she knew if she
did, he’d stop, jerk off, and leave her there. He dropped on top of her, his
breath branding her breast like a hot poker; her body hummed with need. When he
rolled to his back, leaving her lay there, he looked at her.

“Come. Do it. Come.”

There wasn’t a buildup of her release. She
responded to him as if he’d been a puppet master and he held the strings. Her
climax ripped from her and her scream only served to make him smile bigger. As
she convulsed over and over, he pulled her to him and kissed her, gently this
time, then held her to him. She loved how he treated her afterwards.

For five minutes she savored him as
hers. When he finally spoke, she leaned up on her hand and looked at him from
his chest.

“That was Dawn. She wondered if I’d
heard from you. Seems to think you might be in trouble with the Hunters.”

“No trouble, right? You said you’d take
care of that girl and, when you do, it’ll be over. I don’t know why they’d
listen to some street person anyway over me. The stupid cunt messed everything
up by coming by when she did.” He laughed; she felt the rumble through his
chest. “What are your plans for her anyway? You never said.”

“And I won’t. The less you know, the
better.” He moved her off him and stood up, adjusting his clothes as he
continued. “I have to get home. The little woman is expecting me. What are you
going to do for the time being?”