The Debt 5 (11 page)

“Leave me alone!” she yelled, but her
voice wasn’t very loud.
 
The near
accident had taken all of the fight out of her.

The door to the car that had nearly hit
her swung open and Max shoved her into the backseat and then got quickly in
behind her, shutting the door.
 
“Drive,” he said, and the driver floored the gas, as they screeched away
from the intersection.

Raven was sandwiched in between Max and
another man.
 
The other man was as
short of stature as Max was tall.
 
He couldn’t have been much over five feet tall, but he was stocky, with
dark curly hair that was receding in front.
 
His eyes were heavy-lidded, reptilian,
and his lips were thick and wet.
 
“Raven, how nice to finally meet you.
 
I’ve heard so much about you,” he said.

“Let me out of this car,” she replied.

Max shot her a glance.
 
“Watch it with the demands.
 
I’m getting pretty fed up with you.”

“Ease up on the girl,” the short man told
Max.
 
“She’s been through a lot.”

“Who are you?” Raven asked him.

“My name’s Zeke,” he said, smiling with
his blubbery lips.
 
His eyes were
dark and watchful as he turned his head to look at her.
 
He held out his small hand and she shook
it, not knowing what else to do.

His hand was clammy but soft, and he
didn’t hold her hand very long.
 

“Zeke, I really don’t know why you all
won’t leave me alone.
 
I’m not
seeing Jake anymore.
 
I did exactly
what Club Alpha asked me to do, which was leave and never speak to him again.”

Zeke was wearing a dark, finely tailored
suit with polished shoes.
 
He
examined his fingernails as he spoke.
 
“Was that before or after you told Jake about your little meeting with
Scott, and Jake went and assaulted him in the restaurant?”

“I didn’t know Jake was going to do
that,” she said.
 
Her entire body
was shaking uncontrollably now.
 
“Please, I just want to be left alone.”

“I’m afraid the time for that has long
passed,” Zeke said.
 
“We tried to
keep you out of the fray, but you refused to listen.
 
And now things have changed yet again.”

“I don’t understand,” Raven said.
 

Max glared down at her.
 
“Shut up for a minute and he’ll explain,
maybe.”

She closed her mouth and tried to slow
her erratic breathing.
 
She was
getting a horrible feeling that these men intended to do something awful to
her, perhaps as payback for what Jake had done to Club Alpha’s CEO.

 
“Everyone knows Jake Novak was in the
military,” Zeke said, as he dug into his pocket and pulled out a pair of nail
clippers.
 
“It’s common knowledge,
isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Raven said.

Zeke began clipping his nails, which were
already quite neat and tidy.
 
But he
seemed to find new angles, new little bits to shave off to make them even more
perfect.
 
He clipped and clipped as
he spoke.
 
“What most people don’t
realize is that Jake’s service overseas is only a small part of the story.
 
Jake Novak wasn’t just some regular
soldier fumbling around in the desert until he got sent home again--he was the
member of a top-secret elite force that was sent on very special missions.
 
Very dangerous missions to do work that
nobody else could or would do.”

Raven swallowed.
 
Was Zeke just messing with her
head?
 
She couldn’t tell.
 

He continued hypnotically clipping his
nails as he talked.
 
“You may wonder
why you’re sitting in this car with me right now, being told such a strange
story.”
 
Zeke glanced up into her
eyes.
 
“Am I right?
 
Are you wondering?”

“I—yes.
 
Yes, I’m wondering why you’re telling me
any of this.”

He smiled at her.
 
The kindness of his smile struck more
fear into her than harsh threats from Max Mendez.
 
She suspected that behind Max’s anger
was a man who didn’t want to have to hurt her.

However, behind Zeke’s kind smile, she
sensed the killer instincts of a remorseless and calculating psychopath.
 
“Unfortunately, this situation has
become very complicated, Raven.”
 
He
went back to daintily clipping his fingernails.
 
The little white shavings drifted onto
his black pants and clung there, like dandruff.
 
“Things have evolved to where you can no
longer be protected from the truth.”

Protected?
 
Since when was Club Alpha protecting her
from anything?

She thought these things, but kept
silent, guessing that asking such questions might be bad for her health at this
point.
 
The goal now was to say
anything she needed to say to get the hell out of the car alive.

“Sir,” she began.

“Call me Zeke, please,” he smiled.

“Zeke, I’m fine staying ignorant.
 
Really.”

“Yes, they say ignorance is bliss, so I
can understand why you say that.
 
But you must know that if we’ve gotten to this point, all possibilities
have been explored and we’ve arrived here out of necessity.
 
As I said, the time for you to walk away
blissfully unaware has now expired.
 
So you must tread very carefully, now,
Raven
.”
 
Zeke once again looked up into her
eyes.
 
“Very, very carefully
indeed.”

“I’ll never speak a word about Club
Alpha,” she said, her throat tightening.
 
“Just please don’t hurt me.
 
Jake is out of my life.
 
I
promise, I swear.”

Zeke exchanged a bemused look with Max
Mendez.

“Jake won’t be out of your life for very
long,” Zeke replied, giggling slightly.
 
“You see
,
this has become a very fluid
scenario.
 
One moment something is
asked of you, the next, something different.”

“I thought you wanted me out of the
limelight,” she said.
 
“I was told
that my very presence in Jake’s life could compromise the secrecy of Club
Alpha.”

“That’s very true,” Zeke said.
 
He nodded thoughtfully.
 
“However, the risks and rewards are
constantly being weighed and sometimes a new consensus is reached.”

“Please,” she begged.
 
“Can you just let me out of the car?”

“Stop asking that,” Max warned, his voice
gravelly and angry.
 
Suddenly, Raven
realized that tough Max Mendez was also terrified, and that made her so
frightened that she almost threw up.

If
I say the wrong thing, Zeke will kill me
, she thought.
 
He’ll kill me as calmly as he sits there
clipping his nails.

It’s
really true, and that’s why Max is acting crazy.
 
Max might be mean, but he doesn’t want
my blood on his hands.

 
“It would appear on the surface that Club
Alpha is nothing but a glorified escort service,” Zeke said.
 
“And in fact, as far as most everyone
involved is concerned, that’s exactly what we are.
 
Our function is to service our rich and
powerful clients with the kinds of women who meet all their needs, and provide
discretion and secrecy that guarantees those same powerful men won’t have to
worry about any messy scandals.”

“But that’s not really what Club Alpha
is,” Raven said, her mouth as dry as desert sand.
 

Zeke’s smile died on his lips.
 
“Oh, no.
 
No, we’ve never been anything as
simplistic as a brothel.
 
In point
of fact, we have never wasted our access to the personal lives of the most
powerful and influential men the world over.
 
In reality, Club Alpha is and always has
been primarily an information gathering service.”

The enormity of what Zeke was telling her
dawned on Raven, and her stomach dropped, as if she’d just been pushed off a
ledge and into an abyss.

“Club Alpha is full of spies,” she said.

Zeke smiled.
 
“Let’s not get carried away,” he said,
but his eyes told her that she was correct in her conclusion.
 

“So now you want me to be a spy?”

His heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her, his
pupils seeming to get larger as spoke.
 
“Jake Novak engaged in a particular mission his last week in Afghanistan.
 
Our intelligence tells us that it is of
the utmost importance that we find out exactly what that mission was in as much
detail as possible.”

“Jake would never tell me about any
top-secret mission in Afghanistan,” she said, her voice rising despite her best
attempts to keep it under control.
 
“Jake wouldn’t even tell me what he had for breakfast.”

“Be that as it may, you’d better find a
way to learn about his breakfast, and whatever else we tell you to learn about
Jake Novak.”

“Jake’s not speaking to me,” she said.
 
“He sent me away, he broke off our
relationship.”

Zeke’s dead eyes just stared at her.
 
“Our sources tell us that’s not the
case.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we know that Jake Novak is
still susceptible to your power of feminine persuasion.
 
It means that he has a weakness for you,
and you only, as far as we can determine.
 
Therefore, you will find a way to
rekindle your relationship with him, and you will begin telling us everything
he tells you.”
 
Clip.
 
Clip.
 
Clip.
 
“That means you’ll dig for the truth
about what Jake did in Afghanistan, and you won’t rest until you find out.
 
And I won’t rest until the truth has
been told to me,” Zeke said, spittle flying from his lips.

Raven looked down and saw that he was
gripping the nail clippers so tightly that his hand had gone white around the
knuckles.

He’s
crazy
, she thought.
 
Whoever
this man is—he’s completely out of his mind
.

“I’ll…I’ll think about it,” she said
softly.

“No, you’ll do it,” Max told her.

Zeke glanced at him and slightly shook
his head before turning to
Raven
with a renewed
smile.
 
“I’ve laid all of our cards
on the table,” he said.
 
“I didn’t
need to do that, but it’s my way.
 
I
presented you with the opportunity, and I explained our point of view.
 
Now it’s up to you,
Raven
.”

“I don’t seem to have much of a choice,”
she said.

“Oh, but you do.
 
Everyone has choice.”
 
He went back to clipping his nails.
 
Clip.
 
Clip.
 
The thumbnail, in particular, seemed to
be getting rather short.
 
“Everyone
has a choice,” he repeated.
 

“Will you kill me if I don’t help you?”
she asked.

He didn’t even pause.
 
“Not at first.”

“But you will eventually.”

“No, I believe that eventually we will
convince you to do what’s needed.”

Raven’s insides felt wrung out, empty and
barren.
 
“What if Jake turns me
down?” she asked.

“That would be very unfortunate for you,”
Zeke said.
 
“It would be unfortunate
for you, and your friend Skylar, and your mother, your father, even your
brother Daniel.”

Raven was frozen from the coldness of
Zeke’s eyes, and the chilling words that had crossed his lips.
 
He had just threatened everyone in the
world that was close to her without hesitation.

“Leave my family out of this,” she
whispered.

Zeke sat up in his seat and craned his
head.
 
“Oh, look what we have
here.
 
Some kind
of concert?
 
See all the
teenyboppers running around—what a silly thing it all looks from a
distance.
 
And yet, this silly
little event is worth millions of dollars.”