Passion's Fury (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 2) (33 page)

“Hey, don’t be sorry, Jason.  Now that we know where he’s
not
goin’, we might be able to beat him to where he
is
goin’.  Might even have enough time to do a little recon before he arrives.  Should take us around forty minutes to get there, so call the minute he turns down the road leading to the cabin.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant.  Wish I was there with you.”

“We need you right where you are.” Caleb smiled down at Jason’s image on screen.  “Caleb out.”  He glanced around the conference table where he, his brothers, the two state troopers and the two FBI agents were seated.  “He loves this shit.”  Everyone nodded with knowing smiles.  They loved this shit, too.

Like Caleb, all of them were now dressed in black, trousers, shirts, boots, gloves, and Kevlar vests.  They also had Kevlar helmets with night vision goggles and com units.  Flash bangs hung from their utility belts which were stuffed with ammo, and all kinds of handy tools and gadgets. The roll of duct tape was tucked into Ash’s vest, since he’d been assigned to break in through the bedroom window.  Every man wore a holstered automatic pistol strapped to his thigh. 

Caleb slipped his phone into a pocket.  “Okay, guys.  Let’s get this show on the road.”

Twenty minutes later they were just barely clearing the suburbs of Harrisburg when Jason’s excited voice came over their headphones.  “Guys, guys, a car just turned into the driveway and stopped.  Lemme see if I can zoom in a little closer.  Ummm, oops, not that one.  This one.  Okay.  Here we go.”  Jason seemed to have forgotten he was talking to anybody but himself.  “Okay, okay.  Ummm...guys?”

Caleb stiffened, instantly alert.  “What?  What do you see?”

“This place is like a fuckin’ fortress!  Eight-foot steel gate, six-foot barbed wire fence—uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh!  What uh-oh?” Simon demanded.

“Uh…looks like the fence might be electrified.”

“Great.”  Simon’s heart sank.  How the fuck were they ever going to get to Kylie without getting all of them killed?  “Any more good news?”

“Actually…yeah.  Looks like only the top and middle wires are live.  So you can cut the bottom three wires.  That should give you about a foot and a half of clearance.”

“Crap!”  This from Simon.  “We’ll have to take off all our gear to get through that!  We’ll lose time!”

“Sorry, Simon.  There’s no other way in.  Heads up, gentlemen, he just passed through the opening, heading toward the house.  Who’s driving your car, Caleb?”

“I am,” Hank Graham said.  “Hank Graham, Pennsylvania State Police.”

“Pleased to meet you, Hank.  How far away are you?”

“At least twenty minutes,” Hank Graham answered.  “Plus another twenty minutes—at
least—
to cut through the fence, gear up again, and run the three klicks to the house.”

“Jesus!  That gives him over forty minutes to do God knows what with Kylie!”

As soon as Jason’s words were out, the car being driven by Thomas Dwyer swung around them and shot off down the road, lights and sirens blazing.  Caleb lowered his window, took the “cherry”, a red strobe light on a magnetic mount, and placed it on the car’s roof, above his head as Hank sent the car leaping forward.  With any luck they could shave a good ten to fifteen minutes off their time.

“What’s he doing now, Jason?” Caleb asked.

“He’s pulling up in front of the house.  Okay.  He’s getting out, going around to the trunk.  Jesus, she’s been in the trunk for the last six hours!”

“What’s he doing?”

“God, Caleb, I don’t think I should—”

“Tell me!” Caleb roared.

The reluctance in Jason’s voice was palpable.  “He-he just ripped a strip of duct tape off her face.  Now he’s pulling something out of her mouth.”

Caleb’s blood froze.  “Jesus Christ!  He gagged her?  She has trouble breathin’ through her nose!  Being gagged could suffocate her!”

“He’s slapping her face, trying to bring her around.”

Oh, God, please let her be all right, please, please, please, ple—

“She’s moving!”  Jason shouted.  “She’s moving!  Coughing her guts out, but breathing.”

“Oh, thank God!”

The breath left everyone’s lungs in a whoosh.  Even though they weren’t Catholic, Ash and Simon both crossed themselves. 

“What’s he doin’ now?” Ash asked.

“Ash, I-I don’t—”

“Jason, you have to!”

“Dammit, Ash!  He’s taking out a knife!”

There was a collective gasp in both cars.  Caleb squeezed his eyes shut. 
Jesus, God, no! 
Everyone stopped breathing.  The sudden, harsh scraping of chair legs told them that Jason had stood up abruptly.  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”  They could hear him pacing back and forth in front of his computers and Caleb knew both his hands were tugging at his hair.  Since he’d left the Navy and let it grow out, it always looked like a haystack after a high wind.

“Jason, tell us—”

“I can’t!  God damn it, Caleb, don’t you get it?  What if he kills her?  You want me to describe that to you?  Like some…play-by-play announcer at a golf tournament?”

“We want you to describe everything, Jason, just like you’ve done with all of our other, standard rescue ops.”

“But this
isn’t
a standard rescue op, now, is it?” Jason demanded.  “This is your woman and I’m not sure—” 

“Please, Jason.  We have to know.”

“Jesus, Caleb!  God!  You don’t want much, do you?”  He huffed out a breath.  “All right.  All right.  Just…gimme a sec, here, okay?”  Jason took a few deep breaths and his voice calmed.  “Okay.  The knife.  Back to the knife.  He’s—okay, her wrists and ankles are bound.  He’s not using it to cut
her. 
He’s just cutting through whatever’s binding her—looks like duct tape.  Okay.  And just for the record, this is why I left the SEALs, remember? When I had to watch those motherfuckin’ tangos slit that poor woman’s throat—”

Remorse hit Caleb like a brick wall.  “Christ, Jason, I’d forgotten.  I’m so sorry.  But we need to know.”

“I know. I know. I’ll try to keep my shit together. Okay. He’s pulling her up out of the trunk.  Shoving her forward.  Oh!  Christ!  She stumbled.  She’s down!  He’s not helping her up—why aren’t you helping her up, you son of a bitch?”  Jason groaned.  “Sorry, guys.  Just…sorry.  He—he’s standing over her, yelling at her and waving the knife around.  She’s getting her legs under her, crouching…she—oh!  She just sprang up and rammed her head into his gut!  She knocked him down!  Way to go, Kylie!  She’s trying to run…but the driveway’s gravel and she’s barefooted…wait, she stumbled.  Oh, God, she just went down.  Now he’s yanking her up. Shit!  He just gave her a slap across the face and he’s shoving her toward the house.”

An anguished growl left Caleb’s throat.  All three Raffertys were sick to their stomachs, listening to their colleague describe the horrors Kylie was being forced to endure even as they hurtled through the darkness in their desperate attempt to reach her.  The entire scene had taken on a surreal aspect, as if the world had suddenly become a grotesque Salvador Dali landscape, with time melting away before their eyes.

Caleb thought he was going to crawl out of his skin.  His teeth dug into his lower lip so hard they drew blood.  His body was rigid with the effort it was taking him to keep his despair at arm’s length.  He’d kept telling everyone that they had to look upon this dispassionately, just like any other op.  But this wasn’t just any other op.  This was
Kylie
they were rescuing.  “Jesus, Hank, can’t you drive any faster?”

“On this narrow mountain road?  We’re already doing ninety. Anything more would be suicide!”

“Just do it,” Caleb ground out.

“You hear that, Dwyer?” Hank directed his comment to the federal agent driving the lead car.  “Get your ass in gear.”

“Roger that.  Suicide it is.”

Both cars increased their speed, but not even a hundred miles per hour was enough for Ash and Simon.  They were practically pushing their feet through the back floorboards. 

‘Okay.”  Jason’s voice.  “I can’t see them anymore, they’ve gone inside.  Where are you guys?”

“According to the GPS, we’ve got another seven miles to go before we come to the gate,” Hank Graham said.

“Wow!  You must be really flying!  All right, let me adjust…okay, I see you.  If your sirens are on, go ahead and turn them off.  You don’t want to take any chances that he’ll hear you.”

After a few more miles driven in total silence, Jason said, “Okay, guys, start slowin’ down.  The entrance is coming up on your right.”

Roscoe Sweeney turned on a high-powered spotlight, aiming it off to the side of the road.  Everybody gaped at what was revealed in the glare of the spotlight. A six-foot-high barbed wire fence, eight strands across about nine inches apart, mounted on aluminum poles.  However, as Jason had described, only the first and fourth wires were capped with black ceramic insulators on every post.

“Jee-sus!”
Sweeney muttered beneath his breath.  “This guy does
not
want company.”

“Too bad,” Caleb’s voice was grim.  “’Cause he’s about to get some.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kylie tripped over the threshold and stumbled forward into the dark cabin, banging her right knee on the hard stone floor and wrenching her right shoulder as she tried to catch herself.  Her hands and feet were just now beginning to lose the numbness resulting from being tied up for so long, making the pins and needles from returning blood flow excruciatingly painful.  She sucked in a hissing breath.

“Get up, bitch,” Bullard snarled, giving her a sharp kick on the thigh, making her cry out again.  “Get up, go sit in that wooden chair over there.”

Sobbing, Kylie struggled to her feet, tears flowing freely down her face.  She stumbled over to the plain wooden chair and sank gratefully into it, looking around the home’s interior.  On the outside it had appeared to be a rustic hunting cabin.  But on the inside it was homey and, under completely different circumstances, would have been welcoming.  The wood-paneled main room combined a living area, dining area and functional kitchen under a vaulted, beamed ceiling.  A huge, natural stone fireplace occupied the center of the left wall.  Kylie speculated that the closed doors on either side of the fireplace led into bedrooms and a bathroom.

Bathroom. 
Just the thought reminded her of how desperately she needed to pee.  She’d been locked in the trunk for over six hours, the constant movement of the car only aggravating her need.  “Please.”  She caught herself pleading and stopped.  She would not beg this man for anything.  He was obviously going to kill her, most likely even torture her first.  All she had to do was hold on until Simon, Caleb and Ash came to get her.  And she knew they were coming to get her.  She just hoped she’d still be alive when they finally got there.  She’d never considered herself as particularly brave.  She guessed she was about to find out.  “I have to pee.”  She raised her chin and looked over at him defiantly.  He was standing at the kitchen table, zipping open a large, green nylon duffel bag.  “Unless you prefer I pee all over your furniture and floor.”

“You might want to tone down the attitude, Ms. Ferrell.”  Bullard’s tone was belligerent.  “Or I might be forced to give you a badly-needed attitude adjustment.”  He inclined his head to the right of the fireplace.  “Bathroom’s through there.  Leave the door open.”

Her chin lifted stubbornly, but one look at the madness in the detective’s eyes and her defiance withered and died, along with her hope for a quick, painless death.  This man was going to torture her, rape her, and make her suffer for hours, possibly even days before the sickness in his soul was satisfied. She got up and limped into the bathroom, frantically casting about for something—anything—she could use as a weapon.  There was nothing.  Nothing long enough, or big enough, or heavy enough.  Even the lamps on the end tables were fat, squatty porcelain things that would be extremely difficult to hold onto while trying to bash someone’s head in with them.  With a resigned sigh, she walked stiffly into the bathroom, grateful that, for the most part, the toilet was concealed by the bathroom wall.  The only thing he could really see through the partially-closed door was her legs from the knees down.  It wasn’t until she lifted her skirt and sat down that she realized she was still wearing one of the cocktail dresses she’d been trying on at Granny Grace’s. 
Oh, well. 
Her men would get the bill after she was dead.

She also realized that she was still wearing the butt plug Ash had so lovingly inserted this morning before they’d left the house.  As comforting as its presence was, she knew it had to go.  It would never do for the coroner to find it inside her dead body.  So she pulled it out, wrapped it in toilet paper and dropped it in the trashcan.

“Hurry up in there,” Bullard yelled.  “And if you’re thinking of trying to escape, don’t.  The property boundary is nearly two miles away and the fence is electrified barbed wire.”

She washed her hands, splashed some water on her face, and limped back out into the great room.  The bottoms of her feet were bruised from walking on gravel.  But at least they weren’t bleeding.  Her shins and both knees, however,
were
bleeding from where she’d fallen on them, as were the palms of her hands.  The side of her face was beginning to swell and turn purple from where he’d backhanded her.

Avoiding looking at him, she resumed her seat in the wooden chair and closed her eyes, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. 
Simon.  Caleb.  Ash.  Please hurry.  This guy’s going to kill me and I need to see you one last time.  I need to tell you how much I love you.  And how happy you have made me.  And how grateful I am to you for loving me.

“Hands behind you.  Spread your legs.”  He approached her, carrying a long length of rope.

She complied, acutely aware of how naked she was beneath the thin silk of the dress, although not in a good way.  She winced as he wound the rope around her ankles and wrists, pulling it tight, securing her arms and legs to the chair.  Then he walked back over to the kitchen table and picked up the hunting knife.  Mouth dry, she watched in horror as he advanced toward her, brandishing the knife, tossing it from hand to hand, the blade flashing as it caught the light.

“You’re wearing way too many clothes,” he said.  The look on his face was malevolent as he shoved the tip of the knife forward, puncturing a hole in the plum-colored silk of her dress, right between her breasts.  She felt a sharp tug as he sliced upward, just barely jerking her head back in time to avoid getting a nasty cut on her chin.  He took hold of the fabric with both hands and ripped downward as far as her waist.  The two sides of the bodice fell aside, just barely hanging onto her nipples, revealing the generous slopes of her breasts.  She held her breath, unable to tear her gaze from the sharp blade as Bullard sawed at the fabric gathered along her waist.  The razor-like point of the knife punctured her skin over and over until she was bleeding freely all over the silk.  Tears flowed down her cheeks.  Finally satisfied, he pushed the fabric aside, staring down at her, a greedy expression on his face.  “Oh, yeah,” he whispered.  “Look at the size of those tits.”  The sheer animal lust in his voice set her teeth on edge.  Bile flooded the back of her throat.

She lifted her pain-filled eyes to his.  “Why are you doing this?”  Her voice was barely more than a croak.  “What did I ever do to you?”

“You destroyed my life!”

“You did that on your own!  I didn’t do
anything
to you!  I never even met you before last Saturday!”

“You were a spy for the FBI!” 

“That’s crazy!”

“You told them where Moretti hid his secret books!”

“I didn’t even know Moretti
had
secret books!”

Quivering with anger, he barely managed to keep himself from plunging the knife into her heart right then and there.

She made one last desperate try.  “Look, let me go.  You haven’t done anything really bad yet.  I’ll tell the feds that I went with you willingly, so they can’t even charge you with kidnapping.”

He bit out a harsh laugh.  “Guess again, bitch.  I’ve been doing bad stuff for the Righettis for years.  Besides, before I left Philly, I killed my partner.  He thought he could take me in.”  His expression hardened.  “Nobody’s taking me in.  No matter what, I’m not going to prison.  I wouldn’t last five minutes behind bars.  Hell, half the guys
in
there are people I
put
there.  I’d be dead before I ever made it to my cell.”  His face took on a cunning look.  “So, I’ve decided to go out with a bang.  And, unfortunately for you, little Miss Kylie Ferrell, I’m taking you with me.”

“But why?”

“Because I can,” he snarled.  “Because I want to.  You’ve been a thorn in my side ever since you stumbled onto your dead boss and reported it to the cops.  You ripped my future away from me, bitch, so I’m going to rip yours away from you.  But first, we’re going to have a little fun, you and me.”

“You’ll never get away with this.”

“I never planned to get away with it.”

“My men are coming for me.”

He let out a harsh bark of laughter.  “Dream on, sister.  No one’s coming to get you.  I have covered my tracks very, very carefully.  The only thing anyone will ever find of either one of us is tiny pieces.”

What?

Leaving her staring at him in bewilderment, he walked over to the kitchen table and began pulling things out of his duffel bag.  Her bewilderment turned to mounting horror as he held up a pair of pliers, making sure she saw it before he placed it on the table in front of him.  “When those two FBI assholes found Moretti’s books, I knew I was done.”  He smiled, lifting a nail gun out of the bag.  “In that one moment, my entire life turned to shit.”  A sledgehammer came next.  He placed it on the table beside the nail gun.

Kylie’s heart ricocheted around her chest, as if seeking a way out.  She shivered as the heat drained from her body, carried away by the blood trickling down her belly from the line of cuts across her waist. 
God
, she needed her three men.  They would keep her warm.  But they weren’t here.  And she didn’t think she would ever be warm again.  She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry, it felt as if she’d swallowed hot sand.

“Since all the local airports were being watched, I couldn’t leave the country,” he went on conversationally, as though she were an out-of-town visitor who’d dropped by for cake and coffee. He pulled out a drill, holding it up and turning it on again and again, like he was revving a motorcycle engine.  “Did you know,” he continued in that same, weird conversational tone, “that if you drill a hole into the brain in just the right place, that you wouldn’t be able to think anymore, but you’d still be alive and you’d still be able to feel everything that was happening to you?  Sort of like a zombie.”  A bone-chilling smile crossed his face as he put down the drill and reached back into the bag.  This time his hand emerged holding a whip.

Kylie stopped breathing.  Despair grabbed her in its teeth wrenching a whimper from her throat.  Bile rose up behind the tiny sound, filling her mouth with its sour taste.  Icy tendrils of fear snaked through her belly, making her shiver so hard she thought her bones would snap.  And she knew then that before this night was over, in spite of her determination not to beg or cry or plead or scream, she was going to do all of those things.  He would make sure of it.  She also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that none of that was going to work.  This man was on a mission and nothing she said or did was going to sway him from his diabolical course.

The last item to come out of the duffel bag was a black plastic box around the size of a cell phone.  He pulled up an antenna and a red light started to blink.  She stared at him, her eyes filled with despair.  “You’re going to blow us up?”  Her voice quivered, choked by tears.

He shrugged.  “Too bad it didn’t work a week ago.  If it had, you’d be dead and I’d still be in business.”  He zipped up the duffel bag and stowed it under the table.  Then he picked up the pliers and walked toward her.  “You may have noticed that I haven’t gagged you,” he said, as if he were talking about whether or not he liked sprinkles on his ice cream.  “There’s no need, actually.  No one can hear you here.  This house is situated on fifteen hundred acres.  The nearest neighbor is over three miles away.  So, go ahead and scream, bitch.  I’m going to enjoy listening to you.”  He approached, opening the pliers, letting the gripping teeth hover just in front of her left nipple.

Terror swept through Kylie. 
Oh, God!  This is really happening. 
“Please,” she begged, sobs tearing from her throat.  “Please don’t do this.”  She watched the instrument move forward.  Felt the cold steel touch her skin, making her nipple tighten, giving him the perfect target.

With a smile that froze her blood, he fitted the tip around her nipple.

Kylie screamed.

* * * *

“Simon.”  Caleb’s voice came over the com unit.  “Report.”

“Just unlocked the cellar door,” Simon whispered, shoving the bolt cutters back in the nylon bag hanging down his back.  He tossed the ruined lock into the dirt and carefully lifted one of the wooden panels that opened onto the concrete stairs leading down to the space beneath the house. 
Thank God the hinges didn’t squeak. 
“Goin’ down the steps.”  A quick sweep with his Maglite revealed a dirt floor and stone walls.  That damp, musty, smell typical of such spaces enveloped him.  “There’s an old coal furnace over in the far corner and a newer, natural gas furnace…wait.”  He approached the new furnace, which was centered on a concrete slab near the open wooden stairs leading up to what was most likely the kitchen.  He paused, sniffing cautiously.  Simon had seen enough action with Delta Force to have much more than just a basic working knowledge of plastic explosives like C4.  He was very familiar with all of its properties, including its slightly oily smell.  A smell that certainly had no business being in a cellar with no oil furnace.  Creeping closer, he looked around behind the furnace and his heart froze.  “Ho.  Ly.  Shit!”

Caleb’s head jerked up.  “What?” he and Ash asked in unison.

“Five M112 blocks of C4 behind the furnace.  Enough to blast a hole in the universe.”

“Can you disable it?”

“Dunno.  Lemme see.”  He hunkered down and played his light all around the device, giving it a thorough inspection.  “Doesn’t appear to be booby-trapped.  Bastard didn’t even bother to take the stuff out of its wrapper.  Just opened one end and shoved in a bunch of blasting caps.”  He pulled them out, removed the wires, and put them in his pocket, quickly scanning the rest of the cellar.  “Okay.  Don’t see anything else.  Hopefully, that was the only charge he planted.  I’m gonna climb up to the top of the stairs.”