Jessie Slaymaker's Rules of Engagement (The Jessie Slaymaker Series Book 2) (26 page)

‘What do you want, Charlie?’ Jessie said coolly as she closed the door to the flat and deposited her bag on the floor. She was attempting to hide just how unnerved she felt at coming home to an uninvited Charlie Davenport. He was standing between the sofa and the television, filling the space. Although he was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, he was sporting a beard and his fair hair was in need of cutting, giving him a general air of being slightly unkempt.

‘Nice to see you too, Jessie,’ he said, stepping towards her and running a finger down the side of her face, whilst snatching her phone away with his other hand.

‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she snapped, swiping his hand away with a loud smack.

‘Don’t worry yourself on that front. Having had Jack’s sloppy seconds that one time was enough for me. We won’t be going down that road again,’ Charlie said, his voice dripping in distaste. ‘You haven’t been reading your mail, though,’ he said, walking over to the side table and picking up the contents of her mailbox. ‘Now. What have we here? Junk. Junk. Junk. Oh, and look at this,’ he said, holding up a piece of paper which looked to be the same as the nasty note she’d received a couple of weeks previously.

‘I’ve received your notes,’ Jessie said, trying to think clearly as she concentrated on short, shallow breaths. She really had no clue if Charlie was there to hurt her or just talk to her. She hoped just the latter. That she could cope with.

‘Then why haven’t you taken any notice of them?’ Charlie asked loudly, shaking his head at her.

‘Why would I? This is my home. I have a life here now. I have Jack.’

‘Jack,’ Charlie scoffed. ‘If you’d just done as you’d been told and disappeared quietly like you were supposed to, then we wouldn’t have to hurt you. All we need is Jack, but
you
just won’t go away. Well, what about now? Now that your career is non-existent? Are you going to go away now?’ He edged closer to her, clearly trying to intimidate her with his physicality. Why she’d ever been attracted to this monster, she couldn’t for the life of her understand.

‘No,’ Jessie answered definitely, forcing her chin up. ‘I repeat: what is it you want?’

‘For you to go away and for Jack to hand over Sonia’s documents. It’s quite simple, really.’

‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ Jessie replied, folding her arms across her chest, in an attempt to create a barrier and stop him from coming any closer.

‘Do you know where they are?’ he asked, suddenly switching on his persuasive tone.

‘Where are what, Charlie?’ Jessie asked with the impatience a mother might use on a troublesome child.

‘The politburo minutes, of course,’ Charlie replied.

‘What are you talking about?’ Jessie said, looking completely lost.

‘Don’t play dumb with me. It doesn’t become you,’ Charlie said. His attempt at being persuasive now vanished, replaced by a cold disdain.

‘Get out, Charlie. I can’t help you. Not that I would if I could,’ Jessie said firmly, eyeballing what she hoped were the socks off him. To Jessie’s surprise he then whipped out his phone and began making a call, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on Jessie. Unsure of what to do, and with nowhere to go, Jessie sat down in an unrelaxed pose on the sofa, ready to earwig on his conversation and glean as much information as possible.

‘Hi. She’s pleading ignorance. Not sure if it’s genuine or not,’ Charlie began talking down the phone, presumably to Sonia. ‘So, I was thinking about a change of plan,’ he said, then listened to the voice at the other end for a few seconds. ‘Do you want Jack to give you what you want or not? It’s the only way,’ he went on, talking sternly. ‘At the moment she’s the only leverage we’ve got, and it’s high time we escalated things and proved to him that we’re deadly serious.’ After a series of nods, whilst he seemed to receive further instructions, he hung up the phone.

‘That’s enough,’ Charlie said with finality as he pocketed his phone. ‘Let’s go,’ he added with a sadistic smile.

‘Go where?’ Jessie asked, unable to conceal her panic. She almost wished she hadn’t overheard his phone conversation. From the sounds of it, things did not bode well for her.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ Charlie replied, clearly enjoying her anxiety as he took a step towards her.

‘Can I at least change my shoes first?’ Jessie asked, looking down at her impractical work stilettos, trying to think of anything that might buy her more time. ‘I’d be quicker and no doubt annoy you less if I could walk properly,’ she added when she sensed his hesitation.

‘Very well. But hurry up,’ he conceded, seeing her point. Silently, Jessie went over to her wardrobe and pulled out her rather unused running shoes. She carried them over to the sofa, where she proceeded to slip off her heels and tie up her trainers as slowly as she dared. But Charlie had lost interest in watching her like a hawk, and was now nosing around in the kitchen drawers.

‘You got anything to eat?’ he asked casually, as though he were just a friend who’d popped round for a chat and wasn’t threatening her in the slightest.

‘There’s some chocolate cake in the fridge, at the bottom,’ Jessie replied, remembering his penchant for all things sweet from back in the days when she used to work for him.

As Charlie bent to extract his snack, Jessie came up behind him quietly, raised her work shoe high above her hair, and brought it down, stiletto spike first. It landed with a thwack in what she hoped was somewhere in the vicinity of Charlie’s jugular.

‘Aghhhh!’ he screamed. He lost his balance and fell to the floor. After a momentary shocked pause, the adrenaline kicked in, and Jessie gave him a kick in the kidney for good measure. Then she scooped up her bag and legged it out the door and down the stairs as fast as she could. Not daring to stop and look behind her, to see if he was chasing her, she hitched up her hemline and ran as fast as she could, weaving left and right down the side streets of her neighbourhood, making a mental note to sort some form of gym membership out once and for all when all of this was over. At some point during her run, it started to rain that incessant Hong Kong rain, and soaked her through to the skin in minutes.

When she felt she was far enough away from her flat and surrounded by enough people, all now shielding her with their brightly coloured menagerie of umbrellas, she allowed herself a few glances back, trying to pick out a bearded Charlie Davenport bearing down on her, possibly with a trail of blood trickling down his shirt from a neck wound. She saw no sign of him, but she kept moving at a brisk walk anyway.

Remembering why she’d wanted her handbag, she pulled out her work phone as she continued on her zigzag path, aided by the higgledy-piggledy streets. It had been a stroke of luck that Charlie had been such an amateur back at her flat and not thought to confiscate her work phone as well. He of all people should have known that work phones were, and had been, standard issue at the bank for years.

First she called Rachel, leaving a breathy and garbled message on her boss’s voicemail when she didn’t answer, to say that Charlie Davenport was after her and that he and Sonia Shum were after Jack’s company and that she was heading for the police station to follow up with PC Cheung.

Next she tried calling Jack, but that, too, went to voicemail.

‘Where the hell
is
everybody?’ she wailed in frustration as she mounted the steps of the same police station she’d visited previously to report the initial threatening note. Breathless, soaking wet, and running low on steam and high on shock, she practically fell through the doors.

PC Cheung took Jessie’s statement patiently while she bumbled through recent events and sipped sweet tea, wearing an itchy blanket. He didn’t seem all that alarmed at her attempted kidnapping, considering Charlie hadn’t actually touched her, let alone harmed a hair on her head with physical force. He’d widened his eyes at her when she’d admitted she’d stabbed him with her shoe to get away, and for a moment Jessie thought she was going to be in trouble for assault.

‘But what about the fact that he was in my flat, waiting for me? When he shouldn’t have been,’ Jessie pointed out. ‘Surely breaking and entering is still a crime? He must have picked the lock or something. And there’s still the notes. He more or less admitted to sending me the notes.’

‘We have his description on file, and will put out an APB for him to be brought in for questioning. In the meantime, I will send an officer to your flat to view the scene. Do you have any idea where he would have taken you?’

‘No. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out,’ Jessie replied, realising she wasn’t able to give the police a lot to go on.

‘Do you have anyone you can stay with tonight?’ he asked.

‘My boyfriend is in Shanghai today,’ Jessie replied glumly.

‘Maybe a friend you can stay with?’ he suggested kindly.

‘I’m new here,’ she said, even more downheartedly.

‘Well, just to be safe, I would advise you to check in to a hotel for a few days, until we have any concrete leads,’ PC Cheung said solemnly.

Taking PC Cheung’s advice, Jessie booked into a nearby hotel, in Central. As she lay on the bed in a fluffy white dressing gown, she waited for her phone to ring. She was expecting callbacks from Jack, the police, and possibly Rachel. The police called first to say that they’d been to her flat and had found nothing untoward there, other than a shoe lying randomly in the middle of the floor.
At least there wasn’t a dead body lying there
, Jessie silently congratulated herself. Clearly, Charlie wasn’t dead, but that meant he could still be looking for her. The police gave her instructions to contact them should she have any further sightings of him, to which she’d wanted to point out that probably wouldn’t be possible if he kidnapped her and took her phone.

As time ticked by, one thing was worrying Jessie more than the whereabouts of Charlie Davenport: why the hell hadn’t Jack called her back? Surely he must have picked up one of her messages, or at least noticed the dozens of missed calls from her? Unable to wait any longer, and with worry starting to build inside her, she decided to do something proactive.

It was a long shot, but she did it anyway.

She pulled up a number on her phone and pressed the call button.

‘Cicely Davenport,’ the voice answered in her crisp, well-to-do accent.

‘Mrs Davenport. It’s Jessie Slaymaker. How are you?’

‘Jessie, how nice to hear from you. How are you getting on, dear?’

‘Well, not so good. Jack went to Shanghai this morning, and I haven’t been able to get hold of him. You haven’t spoken to him at all, have you?’

‘No, Jessie. I’m afraid I haven’t. Have you two had a falling out?’ she asked. She was always quick to get to the bottom of things.

‘No. Nothing like that. He said he went to check on something with his company, and now Charlie is here in Hong Kong.’

‘Charlie? My Charlie? In Hong Kong?’ Cicely asked, clearly surprised. ‘Well, you can tell that waste of space from me that it would be nice of him once in a while to actually return one of his mother’s numerous messages and give her the common courtesy of calling her back,’ she added angrily.

‘I think Charlie is up to something with Sonia Shum. Something illegal,’ Jessie explained tentatively.

‘Not again,’ Cicely said as though she weren’t entirely surprised. ‘I can’t stand that woman, as you well know,’ she added with undisguised disdain. Then she sighed. ‘I’m sure it can’t be all that bad. Charlie is not such a terrible person deep down. He was never like this as a child, you know. A bit of a troublemaker from time to time, but mostly harmless.’

‘Mrs Davenport, will you ask Jack to contact me on my work number if he does get in touch with you?’ Jessie asked, choosing not to argue with Cicely Davenport’s opinion of her son.

‘Of course, dear. And if you see Charlie again, ask him to phone his mother, won’t you? Oh, and do feel free to bop that nasty Sonia on the nose from me,’ she added with a chuckle.

‘Will do,’ Jessie replied, and opened up the internet browser on her phone to follow up her next lead.

Next, she tracked down the telephone number for Jack’s Shanghai office. Castigating herself for not having called earlier, Jessie waited for the call to connect, fully expecting it to be another answering machine or to just ring off. It was after nine and she considered there was a low likelihood of anyone still being in the office that late. Jessie was therefore surprised when a female voice answered after only the fourth ring.

‘Hi there, my name’s Jessie Slaymaker. I’m Jack Davenport’s girlfriend and I wanted to see if he was there,’ Jessie said, introducing herself in one long continuous breath. There was a pause, and Jessie couldn’t tell if it was due to a delay on the line, or if maybe the woman hadn’t understood her English.

‘Miss Slaymaker. I am Yu Lan. Jack was here this afternoon, but he got a phone call,’ she said very carefully in precise English, clearly trying to enunciate all the words. ‘He then left in a hurry to go back to Hong Kong. Did he not arrive?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jessie replied, an audible wobble in her voice. ‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Only that he had to be on the next flight and then he used foul language at not having charged his phone. That is all I know, and he hasn’t contacted me since.’

‘Did you hear who he was on the phone with? Did it sound like a man or a woman?’ Jessie asked, trying to pull out even the tiniest detail.

‘A man, I think,’ she answered.

Jessie thanked Yu Lan and left her contact details, along with instructions to get in touch if she heard from Jack again. As soon as she’d hung up, her phone rang—an unrecognised number. Maybe he’d got another phone.

‘Jack!’ Jessie answered hopefully.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ came Tom’s familiar voice. ‘It’s only me.’

‘Tom,’ Jessie said, not even trying to hide the disappointment from her voice.

‘Thank Christ I’ve gotten hold of you. I’ve been trying your other number all day and couldn’t reach you. I’ve only just remembered you have this number as well. Are you okay? When you hung up on me earlier I got worried as you sounded odd, so I called Jack.’