Fool's Ride (The Jenkins Cycle Book 2) (6 page)

“Hold this until I get back,” I said.

“Are you letting me go?” she said. “Who are you people?”

For the first time, I got a good look at her. About thirty years old, she had long brown hair, a generous mouth, and big brown eyes. Though scared to death, she was coherent. And there was something in her eyes … A hidden strength. She’d do whatever it took to stay alive. She had a baby to protect, so of course she was brave.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Denise.”

“Do you remember who took you? Was I one of them?”

“What do you mean?” she said, and then her eyes widened. She sort of drew back from me, straining against the straps, shaking her head. “It was dark, I didn’t see anyone. Please, I won’t tell anyone about you or the others. Let me go and I’ll make something up. Nobody needs to know anything.”

She thought I wanted to silence her.

“No, Denise,” I said. “When you get out of here, I want you to tell everyone exactly what happened, just as it happened, and don’t leave me out of it. Now, keep that wound under pressure and stay quiet while I take care of a few things, okay?”

I couldn’t protect her and hunt down Lana, too.

After a brief hesitation, Denise nodded.

I
hadn’t explored
beyond the basement and the main floor, and I hadn’t been outside since my arrival.

When Lana ran down the hall, she’d gone left. Though the trail was cold, I followed after her—cautiously. This was her lair, and all Brian’s muscles and even his gun couldn’t help shake the nagging feeling I was walking into a trap.

I peeked cautiously around the corner and saw the way was clear. A set of doors was open on the right, and another set stood closed on the left. The open doors led to a wide, ornate library with a circular couch in the middle and a few tables and chairs scattered around the room, but nobody was there. I turned to leave but then stopped. Wall-to-wall bookshelves in a library made sense, but one of the shelves was poking rudely my way.

After a quick look up and down the hall, I stepped inside, shut the doors behind me, and walked over for a closer look. The bookcase was pulled out about a foot from the wall.

“Wow,” I said. “An actual secret door.”

My first secret door ever.

Tentatively, I nudged it open. It moved slowly at first, then faster, as if counterbalanced. Beyond it, the way ahead was smooth and painted, which was somewhat of a letdown after all the movies I’d seen with stone-cut tunnels and spiral staircases delving deep into the earth. At the end of the passage, recessed lighting offered a dim view of the way ahead. Arguably gloomy.

With my gun out in front of me, fearing an ambush, I followed the gloomy secret passageway to a stairwell descending four feet into the very depths of the mysterious mansion. The walls switched from painted drywall to gray concrete at the bottom, then opened into a twenty-by-twenty foot room that had been turned into a jail. Thick steel bars ran wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, and in the middle was a reinforced door. A large steel plate framed the lock, with a box around the mechanism to keep probing hands from tampering with it through the bars.

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “An actual dungeon.”

My first dungeon ever.

Other than a small pile of clothes on the floor, the cell was empty, and there were no other exits.

I needed to go after Lana, but I had reason to pause.

In addition to being a dungeon, the room doubled as an armory. One wall had an assortment of pistols hanging from hooks. The other wall had a rack of AR-15s and pump-action shotguns. Either they hadn’t bought enough guns to fill the rack or one of them was missing. My problem was I couldn’t tell if it was a shotgun or a rifle because they were all mixed together. Beneath the rack was a lower shelf with loaded magazines and boxes of ammo, also more or less jumbled together.

I thought about replacing my pistol with one of the rifles, but instead grabbed two additional magazines. Despite knowing what an AR-15 was, I’d never actually fired one, and I hadn’t had much experience with shotguns. Maybe if I got through this without dying I’d go shooting in that indoor range.

One more thing to live for.

Taking the steps two at a time back to the secret entrance, it occurred to me a rifle might not be the best choice for slipping around a house. Too bulky, unless Lana was also in the SWAT team and trained to storm houses. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a big scary military-looking weapon would appeal to someone like her, even though a shotgun made more sense in tight quarters.

I peeked through the bookcase into the library, but nobody was there. Outside the library, I saw the doors across the hall were open, and I was pretty sure they’d been closed before. When I’d come down the hall, Lana had probably been listening for me. To her I was still Brian, the trained security guy with a gun, so she hadn’t risked opening the doors to take a shot.

A cursory look in the room showed another bedroom, empty of people. Lana must have doubled back on me.

“Denise,” I said, then turned and ran back.

When I got to the corner, I popped my head quickly around and back again, then flinched when the wall behind me became perforated in a shatter of rifle fire. These weren’t simple AR-15s—they’d been modified fully automatic.

That’s right. First they try to torture a pregnant lady and raise her baby as some sort of uber-villain in their war on good taste, and now this: illegally modified weapons.

“Not on my watch,” I said, diving around the corner, twisting and shooting through the air like I’d seen this one time in a movie. Lana must have left after the initial burst, because nobody fell down and died or shot back. I did bang my elbow and get the wind knocked out of me, but I’d never looked cooler, and that was something.

When I got to the torture room, I had a moment of panic: Denise was gone.

I moved to Ernest’s room and saw her standing there naked, clutching my shirt to her stomach with one hand and jiggering with Ernest’s restraints with the other. She’d almost gotten one of them off.

“Hey,” I said. “Quit it. What are you doing?”

Denise threw her hands up and around and turned toward me, fingers hooked into claws, startled and frightened and ready to fight.

“Stay away from me!” she shouted, her initial fear now tinged with fury.

I peeked out the door, back to where Lana had run, but the hall was still empty.

Looking from Denise to Ernest, then back again, I said, “You do know who he is, don’t you?”

“That’s the man I was telling you about!” Ernest said, pointing a finger at me. “He kidnapped me and brought me here. He brought
both
of us here. If he harms me, you’re my witness!”

“Leave us alone!” Denise yelled, taking a step back.

Perhaps sensing his henchman had personal reasons for releasing Denise, Ernest had pressed the only advantage he had—he thought I wouldn’t hurt the woman. In his mind, if he could get her on his side, he’d have something he didn’t before. Maybe I fancied her, and if I hurt him I’d blow my chances.

“Yes, my dear,” Ernest said to her, a devilish twinkle in his eyes. “This man knows we’re worth much more to him alive than dead—especially me. So what happened, Brian? Did you want more money? It’s yours—it was always yours, if you’d but come to me and asked. There’s no reason we can’t go our separate ways without butchering each other.”

He smirked like he had me precisely where he wanted me.

After I shot Ernest in the head (wet, messy, loud), I waited for the woman to stop screaming. I suppose I could have kept him alive so I could ask where he’d gone after I’d taken over his body. But if I really wanted to know that, I could always visit Nate Cantrell and ask him.

My working theory was my rides went to a Great Wherever kind of place and waited in limbo, just like I did, and that was good enough for me. On some level, ignorance isn’t just bliss, it’s simply practical. Imagine if Ernest said he had
not
gone elsewhere after I’d taken over—that he’d been able to read my mind the whole time, or something awful like that? Then every future ride would be this weirdly self-conscious affair where I’d worry about being watched every time I went to the bathroom. No thank you.

When Denise stopped screaming, I said, “What’s with you anyway? Ernest was the one who told me to bring you here.”

“Who?” she said. “That man? Why did you shoot him?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “Right now I need to get you somewhere safe, okay? I’ll tell you about it later, but we need to move.”

“But you
shot him!
”

“Yes,” I said, “because he was evil. Now let’s go. Or do you want me to shoot you too?”

I checked the hall again—still empty—then turned back and said, “You coming? Or do we wait for Lana to come back with her knife?”

Reluctantly, Denise followed me out. When she saw we were heading to the library, she stopped in the hall, shook her head, and said, “I’m not going back in that cage. No way.”

“Sure you are,” I said, pointing my gun at her. “If I wanted you dead you’d be dead. See? So it must mean I don’t want you dead. Your clothes are back there, there’s guns, lots of books to read—now please, can we get out of this hallway?”

After we got to the dungeon/armory, Denise moved quickly to gather her clothes.

“Stop looking at me!” she yelled, holding them modestly around her lady bits.

Unbelievable.

“I wasn’t looking at … never mind,” I said, and turned around.

Not like I hadn’t seen everything already.

When I sensed she was dressed, I turned back and said, “You stay here while I go find Lana and shoot her, okay? She’s a bad person, and I am too. Just because I saved you doesn’t mean I’m the good guy.”

Denise snorted. “That’s pretty clear. Where’s the other one?”

“Lana?”

“No, the other man—the white one? Did you kill him too?”

Wondering if she referred to Jacob or Sean, I said, “Did he have a big tattoo on his arm?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “Why are we here?”

“What am I, a philosopher?”

“What?”

“Now listen,” I said. “Lana’s up there, and she’s totally nuts. Those two—the dead guy in the wheelchair and her—they do this thing where they take nice people like you, torture them, get all hot and bothered about it, and then write horror novels and make movies out of them. You following?”

She shook her head,
no.

Sighing, I said, “They
torture
people like
you
and then they write
books
about them. They make lots of
money
. Please just nod.”

Denise nodded. “It’s messed up … whatever. All I want is to get back to my husband. I promise not to say anything, I swear. Just let me go.”

“Would you stop saying that? I
am
letting you go. But when you get out of here, tell people the truth. That’s your job—tell them what happened here. Somewhere on this property, the police are going to find a bunch of corpses. You were this close”—I held my fingers an inch apart—“to being one of those corpses.”

She looked like she might start crying again, but kept it together.

I grabbed one of the pistols, shoved in a loaded magazine, chambered a round, and put it on the floor where she could see it. Then I readied another pistol the same way and set that one down, too.

“You see those guns?” I said. “They’re loaded, ready to fire. All you need to do is pick them up when I’m gone and keep them pointed the way we came from. Anyone comes in here you don’t like, you get to shoot them, okay?”

Her demeanor changed subtly at the looming possibility of arming herself.

“What about one of those shotguns?”

“Just use these,” I said. “If I’m not back in an hour it’s because I’m dead and Lana is still alive. In that case, find a place to hide and shoot her when she walks by. Don’t leave the house. Big and slow as you are, she’ll cut you down with that rifle she has.”

With new hope suddenly pulled away, her face tightened with premature grief.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I’m sorry. You seem like a nice lady. I need to get up there now. Remember the guns—just pull the triggers, that’s all you have to do.”

Without a backwards glance, I left her there and returned to the main floor.

W
hen I got
to the foyer, I took the stairs and started my search on the second floor. It made sense to me that Lana would be in an upper-story window covering the driveway with her rifle, ready to pick off anyone who tried to get away in a car. It was the logical choice, even if she didn’t at times seem the most logical of women. Which isn’t to say I thought women weren’t logical, because that’d be sexist. Which I wasn’t. I’d all but banished any qualms about killing evil women, which was basically proof I wasn’t sexist.

Buoyed by enlightened thoughts like these, I spent the next five minutes creeping around the upper floor. I cleared the rooms like they did in the cop movies, pointing the gun one way and then switching quickly the other way. After the first few, I gave that up and just poked my head in for a looksee, then moved on to the next room. Way simpler.

I kept coming back to that bizarre smokestack of death following my kick from Ernest Prescott. I’d counted them, and what a morbid little surprise that was—a thousand and one deaths. As in,
A Thousand and One Soup Recipes
. Or more aptly,
A Thousand and One Nights,
the story of Scheherazade, the princess forced to tell a story every night to King Shahryar. Sentenced to death, she survived each reading by adding to the story and never reaching the end—thus staying her execution another day and inventing the cliffhanger at the same time. And if that wasn’t a threat from the Great Whomever I didn’t know what was. His meaning was clear: do not tempt me, I’m in charge, and you’re just the help.

After I’d searched every room, I got a drink from the faucet in one of the four upstairs bathrooms. Then I padded back to the staircase and returned to the foyer. I still hadn’t seen the kitchen yet, which was a shame. Another reason why this ride sucked so bad. If I lived through this, I’d make myself something good to eat.

When I got to the foyer, I considered checking on Denise, but decided it wasn’t worth scaring her and getting shot. I still hadn’t heard any new gunshots, so she must have been fine.

I’d almost decided to check out the basement again when I thought I heard a door open and shut down in the direction of the room with the whipping wall and demon-claw stirrups. After the gunplay in the viewing room with Ernest, it had gotten harder to hear, especially out of my right ear. Still, it was worth a look.

When I got to the doors, I noticed they were partially open, so I angled myself a little to the left—a good thing too, because a section of door the size of a softball vanished in a flurry of splinters and gunfire.

I peeked through the hole. Lana was on the bed, on her knees, with the gun raised to her shoulder.

“Missed me!” I shouted, and ducked back in time for the next volley. “Missed me again!”

Lana shouted, “What the
hell
is wrong with you?”

“I wanted more money,” I said.

“Are you serious? You said you loved your salary! Why didn’t you ask for a raise like a normal person?”

“I was tired of being pushed around,” I said.

A second later, she said, “What are you talking about? Everyone liked you! Jacob had some kind of man crush on you, for Christ’s sake. What’s this about?”

“I wanted evil henchman training, but you made me shoot Sean and now I gotta cover his shift!”

It had to be the stress. I covered my mouth to keep from laughing.

“What the
hell
are you
talking
about?” she yelled. “Look, is this about that girl? You take a shine to her or something? Why didn’t you say so?”

That was a damn good question.

“I didn’t think Jacob would approve,” I said, finally.

Let’s see her get out of that one.

“That’s ridicu … Never mind. Where’s Jacob now?”

“Jacob’s dead,” I said. “Ernest too.”

I thought I heard her gasp, but again, my hearing wasn’t so good.

“Perfectly fine,” she said, moments later. “Actually, I’m glad. I always liked you, Brian. Bigger, stronger, better looking than either of them. I married Jacob in secret because I couldn’t be sure Ernest would succeed. And when he did, I didn’t need Jacob anymore. But now that you’ve killed them both…” She paused, as if choosing the right words. “I’ve always had a thing for you, Brian, and I’ve seen you looking at me when you thought I wasn’t watching. We’d be good together. And anyway, Jacob was beginning to bore me.”

Jacob may have been boring to
her
, but there was a .50 caliber Desert Eagle leveled about two inches from my nose, and it was very interesting to
me
. Likewise the tattooed arm straining to hold it up.

Jacob’s face was puffy, and a vessel in his eye had burst from being strangled nearly to death in the gym. Now he had a bad case of Terminator-eye. I started to raise my gun, but he froze me with a look:
I’ll shoot you if you move
. With his other hand, he raised a finger to his lips in the universal sign for
shush
.

“Ask her more about me,” he whispered, nodding toward the room.

As long as he wasn’t shooting me with that hand cannon, I felt obligated to try.

“Yeah, so Lana,” I said. “Uh, could you tell me more about Jacob?”

“What for?” she said.

Jacob nudged me.

Shrugging, I said, “Turns me on?”

Lana laughed wickedly, like it was no surprise and was now reveling in my confession.

“Oh, so
that’s
what you like,” she said. “Let’s see … The little poodle would cry after he beat me. Like father like son. At first it was cute, but then it got tiresome. I don’t do well with tiresome.”

I remembered that Wikipedia article mentioning how Jacob’s father died of heart failure. Given everything I’d seen from her, I wondered about that. And since she felt like talking…

“So about that dad of his—how did he die again? Heart condition, something like that? There was speculation in the tabloids…”

“He was old,” she said. “Too old for the Spanish Fly he was taking.”

Despite the tense situation, I laughed. “Spanish fly’s just a myth.”

“That’s what he thought. But blister beetles are as real as the cantharadin they produce. They only work on men, however, and they kill you if you take too much.”

Jacob nudged me with the gun and nodded, like he wanted me to ask her more about that.

“Did, uh, you ever give any to Jacob?”

Lana chuckled darkly. “After Vegas, we
had
planned a trip to Mexico…”

“And?” I said.

“And if you hadn’t killed him, in a few months the tabloids would have gone crazy.” She laughed again. “
Lana Sandway’s pussy wipes out whole family!
Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

I stole a glance at Jacob. He looked like he’d been slapped in the face by an ugly truth. If she’d killed his father, which it was starting to look like, he obviously hadn’t known about it. Now Jacob knew she wanted to poison him the same way.

Lana wasn’t done. Proudly she said, “The coroner assigned to the case was a fan of my old movies. That’s real power, Brian, and that should be a warning to you—be interesting, but don’t get too clingy. Now, are you going to fuck me or do I call the police and tell them my disgruntled manservant went on a shooting spree? Between the cops and me, you won’t stand a chance.”

Jacob’s eyes were raging, staring at me like … no, not at me—through me—like I was in the way. Testing the theory, I edged back against the door. Yep, he wasn’t looking at me.

For a moment there it seemed like he might … no, he was biting his lip and frowning. Not good. He needed a push.

Through the door I said, “Ernest heard you two getting busy today. He told me he called you something weird after you finished, but I gotta hear it from you.”

Lana didn’t say anything for a second, and I wondered if maybe I’d pushed the act too far. Then, in a tone of suffering patience, she said, “When Jacob was feeling sorry for himself I made him call me
mommy
. Now come on, I’m putting the gun away. Get in here and slay me with that big bronze dick, I can’t take it anymore.”

To Jacob I whispered, “You’re up.”

He didn’t look at me or register my existence in any way. He walked past, kicked open the doors and got shot to pieces for his trouble. Mostly through both legs and his pelvis area. I turned the corner, ready to unload—and then a backpack nuke went off.

Jacob had shot that .50 caliber gun, and it was
loud
.

I was watching Lana when it happened. The round tore through her neck, taking her head almost completely off but for a little flap of skin. She sat like that, leaning against the back of the demon bed in her bizarre dominatrix outfit, her head flopped upside down on her chest, the rifle still aiming our way.

Jacob hadn’t finished dying yet, but he was close. He was leaning with his back against the doorjamb, staring into space and gasping for breath like a fish. His eyes found mine.

“Why … man … why?”

Staring down at him, I tried to come up with something to help when he got to the other side. He was bad, sure, but this was the end for him. A special moment. I wanted to say how evil always destroys itself in the end or some other cliché, but all I said was, “I wish I knew.”

Jacob’s eyes drifted beyond me, as if looking far away to an afterlife only he could see. He raised his gun, as if to shoot said afterlife. Then his face tore away with the sound of a thunderbolt—from
behind
me.

Through my mostly working ear, I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped.

Denise…

“I wish I knew too, asshole,” she said, before shooting me next.