The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (27 page)

“I know a lot of things about this town,” Brenden said as he adjusted his position on the bar stool in hopes of hiding the growing firmness between his legs. “What kind of action is a girl like you looking for?”

She kissed his nose again, then smiled and touched her index finger against the side of her nose. “I dunno,” she said, in a voice more fitting for a woman who earns her rent money swinging naked on poles. “Just a little something to give me a push so I can feel better about all the bad decisions I’m thinking about making.”

 
Brenden’s smile practically reached both of his ears. He held up one finger as he stood, saying, “Do not move and do not make any of those decisions till I’m back.”

Nikkie watched Brenden walk outside with his cell phone pressed against his ear. Lance, seeing Brenden walking outside, walked down the bar to where Nikkie was sitting. “Things going okay?” he asked.

“Perfectly,” Nikkie said.

Five minutes later, Brenden came back inside and walked quickly to Nikkie’s side. “I have a fantastic idea. Wanna hear it?”

“Please.”

“Why don’t you and I go back to my apartment and talk about those bad decisions you’re thinking about.”

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” Nikkie said, a seductive smile playing on the corners of her lips.

“The kind of girl that wants a little powdery courage. I have a friend who says he’ll meet us down in a parking lot in a strip mall a few miles from here. It will only take a few minutes, if that, before we can get back to working on those decisions.”

“As long as your friend won’t be expecting to share in whatever bad choices I make,” Nikkie said.

“Honey,” Brenden said as he pulled Nikkie’s face to within an inch of his, “ain’t no one on God’s green earth gonna share in your bad choices but me.” He kissed her then, and, despite the foul taste of cheap booze and stale cigarettes in Brenden’s mouth, she accepted his kiss and added a bit more passion to it.

“Give me five minutes to use the ladies room.”

“I’ll be outside. Dark green Accord. I’ll have it running.”

Nikkie kissed him again quickly, waved to Lance then walked to the bathroom. After checking to make sure she was alone, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Derek’s number. She spoke briefly, telling Derek she was leaving Route 69 with Brenden, making a stop somewhere to meet with Brenden’s presumed drug dealer, then onto Brenden’s apartment. Before Derek could have even begun to try to dissuade her from going through with the next steps of the plan, she ended the call by saying, “Make sure you don’t follow us too closely. If he notices someone following him, he may just take me back to his apartment and expect me to do whatever the hell it is he thinks I’m interested in doing.”

She walked outside, giving one final wave to Lance who was standing behind the bar, arms folded across his chest and a deeply etched look of worry and concern on his face. Nikkie knew, as did Derek and Lance, that any meeting with someone who makes a living selling illegal drugs is a dangerous way to spend an evening. Though the plan had Derek keeping Nikkie within eye sight at all times, the chances existed for things to turn south in a heartbeat. And considering how Derek’s innocuous enough planned meeting with John Mather had turned out, both his and Nikkie’s guards were raised.

When she spotted the dark green Accord, she took a deep breath, painted a smile on her face and walked to the car. Once she was seated and buckled in, Brenden reached across the front seat, grabbed Nikkie by the back of her head and pulled her face into a passionate and extended kiss. She felt his hands wandering across her breasts and had to steel herself to prevent knocking a few of his front teeth down his throat. Instead of flying elbows, Nikkie gently pushed Brenden back, saying, “Not in the front seat of your car. I’m not some sixteen year old, you know?”

“I don’t care if your sixteen or sixty-seven,” Brenden said, “you got me so fucking turned on right now, I can’t wait to be inside you.”

Nikkie noticed a few reactions welling up inside her. First, the possibility that she was sitting beside a man who, apparently, thought urges trumped morality and the legal system, made her wonder if ripping his balls off might be a better plan than what she and Derek were in the process of executing. Secondly, she wondered how many girls and woman had fallen for Brenden’s continual mastery of assholery. He was vile and, she noticed by the slur of his words, he was also about to drive drunk: an act she could not have thought less of. Her best friend in college was paralyzed by a drunk driver. A childhood friend was killed by another. And she had seen or heard about way too many accidents where alcohol was the main factor in the crash. Now she was sitting in a car, with an intoxicated driver behind the wheel, driving to some unknown location to meet with some unknown man, to purchase drugs so that Brenden might continue his hallucination that she was going to make “bad choices” with him in his apartment. As he shifted the car into gear and applied pressure the gas pedal, getting to the drug dealer in one piece was foremost in her mind.

“You want me to drive?” she asked, sliding her hands across his thigh and settling it onto his crotch.

Brenden twitched a bit, causing his foot to press down harder on the gas pedal. “Damn,” Brenden said, “you keep that up and I promise you we won’t make it back to my apartment.” He didn’t bother answering Nikkie’s question.

Nikkie was relieved when, after less than three miles, Brenden pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid drug store. He circled the lot a couple of times before noticing the car he was looking for was pulling in, parking as far away from the road and the store’s entrance as the lot allowed.

“Here we go,” he said in a staccato voice. He drove his car towards where the Pontiac Grand Am was parked, then backed in right beside it. “Bad choice number one, coming right up.” He leaned over, kissed Nikkie again, then scurried out of the car. Nikkie wiped her lips clean, wishing it were possible to wipe away the sickening feeling Brenden’s kiss had created.

She watched him walk over to the Grand Am, open the passenger’s side door and then climb into the car. Her phone, which she had tucked beneath her right leg, vibrated. She pulled it out, and read the text message Derek had sent.

“U OK?”

“So far so good,” she responded.

“Parked across street.”

“Good. This guy is creeping me out”

The plan Nikkie had designed was for Derek to follow the drug dealer—assuming that was what he had chosen for his occupation—after Brenden bought the cocaine and drove Nikkie away from the area. Derek would confront the drug dealer, using necessary force, and find out who the drug dealer was getting his supply of cocaine from. Nikkie would wait for a text message or call from Derek, then would deliver to Brenden the biggest letdown of his life, walk outside and towards the fire station, which was under a half of a mile away from Brenden’s apartment. John Mather would be at the station, just in case Brenden didn’t take the letdown well and tried to use any persuasive force to convince Nikkie to reconsider.

That was the plan.

But Derek knew the plan was a dangerous one and when he saw a flash of brilliant light fill the cabin of the Grand Am, then saw the car’s driver scramble out of the Grand Am, tear open the passenger’s door of the car Nikkie was sitting in, rain down three or four punches directly towards her, then saw the man race around the car, jump into the driver’s seat and tear out of the parking spot and head towards the back of the Right Aid, he knew the plan had fallen apart.
 

Derek slammed his car into gear, pressed the gas pedal to the floor and headed towards the Rite Aid parking lot. By the time he crossed Main Street and waited for traffic to allow a turn into the parking lot, the dark green Accord, that had Nikkie sitting in the passenger’s seat, was out of sight. Derek sped to the back of the store where the Accord had sped off towards, and looked for an exit road. He saw two roads; one heading west and the other south. Derek turned south and after five minutes realized he had chosen the wrong road.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Nikkie’s number. The voice answering the call was not Nikkie’s.

“You don’t listen, do you, Cole? We told you to stop digging, but here you are, sending your hot little associate to do your dirty work.”

“You so much as lay a finger on her, and I swear to God, I’ll make you regret the day you were born.”

“Very original, Cole. Listen to me and listen closely: You had your chance to back the fuck off, but you didn’t listen. Hell, if you had half a brain in your head, you would have pulled up stakes after your time at the movie.”

“You think I won’t find you? You think I don’t know that you’re working for Louis Randall?”

The man on the phone who was not Nikkie, started laughing. “You have no fucking clue, do you? Louis Randall? You think Louis Randall has the balls to pull off what we’re doing? You should go back to chasing ghosts, Cole, and leave real work to real men.”

“I’m going to turn you into a ghost, you piece of shit.”

“Good luck with that.” There was a short spell of silence before the man spoke again. “I will give you kudos for one thing, Cole. You sure have a tasty looking black bitch for your partner. I’ve been looking forward to spending some quality time with her.”

The call was disconnected,

Derek screamed with rage.

The first call he made was to Investigator Mark Mullins. Derek found it extremely difficult to speak at a tempo and with enough clarity of thought to ensure Mullins understood what had happened.

“Slow down,” Mullins said. “Tell me again, where is the car the suspect drove?”

“The Rite Aid Drug Store. On Main. Son of a bitch must have shot Brenden Lull then jumped in the car with Nikkie and took off.” Derek was a cyclone of emotions. On the outside of the cyclone was intense anger. Anger at himself for not being able to prevent the drug dealer from getting in the car with Nikkie and driving off. Anger that he agreed to Nikkie’s plan, despite knowing the type of degenerates they were dealing with. But most of his anger, the type of anger that burns white hot and leaves nothing but ash in its wake, was targeted at whoever was behind everything. Crown was attacked and though the most recent report from the hospital was encouraging, chances existed that Crown would never be the same. And now, Nikkie was gone; taken by a man who had just shot and killed one man and who Derek strongly suspected was the cinema shooter. What he had said, the murderous bastard, was what created the feelings on the inside of the cyclone.

“You sure have a tasty looking black bitch for your partner. I’ve been looking forward to spending some quality time with her.”

“Why did he say he’s
been
looking forward to spending quality time with Nikkie?” Derek said to emptiness surrounding him.”It’s like he’s been watching her or knows her. Think, dammit. Did I recognize his voice?”

What had almost happened between the two of them, Nikkie and he, was the culmination of many months of growing attraction. She had become—silently—much more to him that just his partner, his associate. Nikkie had become the promise of hope for Derek. Though no words had ever been exchanged between the two that revealed his feelings, the thoughts and passions had been given life and were the catalyst of words yet spoken.

It was sorrow that the cyclone’s winds swirled angrily around. Sorrow mostly for Nikkie and the fear and feeling of impending doom that she must be feeling. But there was also sorrow for himself. He had watched his wife murdered by a madman and had denied himself to ever allow himself feelings for another woman. But he had seen Lucy’s smile flash in his mind’s eye when he admitted his feelings for Nikkie to himself, and, for what seemed like the briefest of moments, he had removed the self-applied chains holding him down.
 

As he drove without direction, praying to his distant God to inspire and lead his turns, Derek pushed his sorrow deeper into the concealing winds of the cyclone, calmed himself as best he could, and began planning.

“Cole, listen to me.” Mullins’ voice was streaked with both confidence and understanding. He could sense the fear and anger in Derek’s voice and clearly understood the catalyst behind those emotions. And, he also sensed in Derek’s timbre and tone, a deeper emotion which was driving Derek. “We’ll have a squad car on-scene in two minutes and we’ll find out who the driver is. You need to stop driving around town, trying to find them. You finding them would be the worst thing that could happen.”

“What the hell do you suggest I do?” Derek snapped. “Grab a cheeseburger and a beer at Route 69 and sit back and see what happens?”

“While I highly doubt you’d do that, it would be better than driving around, searching for Nikkie. If you find them, she won’t be alone. And we already know what this bastard is capable of. He won’t hesitate to take you out and Nikkie as well to cover his ass. Stand down, Cole. I can’t give you an order but I sure as shit can issue you a directive. Stand down.”

It took Derek several more minutes of random driving before he pulled his car over to the side of the road. He slammed the gear shifter into park and sat and stared into the growing darkness of the night.

His state of emotional paralysis was broken by Ralph Fox’s call.

“How’s my freelancing friend doing tonight?” Ralph said when Derek answered his call.

The damn holding back his emotions, which was more than just a tad bit compromised, crumbled behind the mounting pressures. Derek explained everything that had happened to him since he arrived in Ravenswood, finishing with an odd feeling, yet undeniably accurate admission, “Goddamn, Ralph, I can’t let anything happen to Nikkie.”

Ralph knew what Derek had done a few months after Lucy was murdered. He knew Derek stuck a pistol into his mouth, pulled the trigger, and if not for a quick turn of his head a split second before he had applied enough force onto the Glock’s trigger, that Derek would have never become a freelance detective and would not be involved in the case that was now ripping him apart emotionally. “First off,” Ralph said, in a voice more compassionate that either he or Derek believed he possessed, “you’re too damn good of a detective to allow anything to happen to your partner. Secondly, you’re also too strong a person, despite your history, to ever give up on Nikkie or yourself. You need to think this thing through. You have a talent, Derek, an annoying talent but a talent nonetheless. I guarantee you already know where that son of a bitch brought Nikkie. You just need to let that talent out from behind all those other emotions keeping it hidden. Tell me, right now, where’s Nikkie being brung to?”