Chapter Twenty-One

This time they were lodged in a house that was the last word in suburbia.

Over-tended lawns, lush with chemical fertilizer and automatic rain. Perfect plantings in beds strewn with shredded bark and the occasional rock to fake a natural look. Inside there was white carpet everywhere like no one’s feet ever touched the ground. No wonder kids were overweight. Mom probably preferred the cleanliness of video games over the messy footprints from running outside.

 “You know, I lived a completely mundane life before this.” Brett led the way inside.

“Those mundane days are over for good, if you spend time with me.” Jacie warned.

“I’m counting on it.” He slid his hand into hers.

Jacie meant to reword her warning so he was appropriately scared. He nuzzled her neck, and she forgot about trying to save him.

At breakfast Kaplan nodded at the coffeemaker and delivered his usual cool report of progress. Jacie wondered how many people Kaplan was keeping up night after night.

“I’ve got all I need on O’Donnell to nail him if we get him back. I’ve got ten separate episodes about his treatment of female co-workers and students. But, more importantly, I’ve got a money trail from O’Donnell’s account to an account in the name of George Fithian. It goes back a lot of years, then Fithian must have wised up and learned to work with cash or offshore accounts, but O’Donnell has still made withdrawals that match most of the complaints against him. All the complaints were dropped by the way. So the money goes out of O’Donnell’s bank, and some woman changes her story.”

Jacie filled a cup with coffee for herself and sat at the beautiful oak kitchen table. “This George Fithian threatened them?”

“Or assaulted them,” Womack said. “Or harmed a family member, there are several deaths that, until now, have been registered as accidents. There were car accidents that included a flat tire.”

“Like that first night when we were driving back to Long Pine and the Camry had a blow out.” Jacie exchanged a long look with Brett.

Womack refilled his cup and got one for Brett. It occurred to Jacie that she should have done that. Not because it was a woman’s place, but because it was good manners. She was too used to being alone.

Kaplan sat across from them. Womack produced a white sack from inside a cupboard and spilled bagels onto a plate in the center of the round table.

Jacie reached for one. “So, O’Donnell’s enforcer is The Destroyer. He’s still going back to the same guy after all these years.”

Womack nodded. He didn’t sit. He stood near the table and spread cream cheese on half a bagel with two quick swipes. “We can prove it. The account number never changes, and we’ve got a line on Fithian. We’ve tracked a Lear jet to a private field near Long Pine and we have a home address.”

“Let’s get over there. I want this done. I want my life back.” Jacie set down her coffee cup with a sharp click.

“It's going down now,” Kaplan said with an unexpected spurt of amusement. “Did you really think we’d make you bring him in yourself, Jacie?”

“Well, I am a cop,” she said.

Womack leaned against the nearest counter juggling his coffee and his bagel. “Sort of.”

“When will we know?” Brett asked, tearing a bagel into several pieces and eating it plain.

“You know right now.”

A voice from behind them turned them all around.

In two blows, so quick they were a blur, Jacie saw Womack’s head slam into the wall cupboard behind him and crumple to the floor. A bullet drove Kaplan backward.

Brett swung around with his own rapid-fire reaction, and met a gun butt. He fell face down on the floor. Jacie was the only one left standing. She stared straight into the barrel of a serious, expensive weapon.

Her eyes shifted to the gun’s owner. He was a small man, balding, with a prominent Adam’s apple, a wrinkled forehead and a weak chin. He was dressed in a yuppie casual uniform, khaki slacks and a brown plaid shirt, hanging open and untucked over a white T-shirt. The perfect shirt to conceal his shoulder holster.

She would never have looked at him twice under normal circumstances. But his diminutive size and nervous, weak features, didn’t match the wasteland she saw in his eyes. They were cold to the point of death, with something lurking behind the chill, something demented that told her he could easily have been the man shrieking in the woods at Brett’s house.

“George Fithian,” she said.

“I’m The Destroyer.” His voice was high. He said his name so intensely that she was afraid to call him anything else. “Finding you is my dream. You’ve been so hard to kill, but I expected that. I wouldn’t receive the reward if the trial hadn’t been so great. I think you...” his voice broke under a nervous, high-pitched moan. “I want you to know that I consider you the most worthy opponent of my life. You’re life force is all I need to...” His voice wavered again. He didn’t seem able to continue.

Jacie caught a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye, Womack regaining consciousness. She tried to keep Fithian’s attention on her, even though the madness in his eyes terrified her. “Why me?”

“I know your strength.” His voice rose higher as he talked. He faltered, then gathered himself. “I want every ounce of your vitality. When you die, it’s mine. And until you die, every moment I have mastery over you, I will increase my strength. No one will be able to stop me.”

She thought frantically. ‘Every moment I have mastery over you’ that didn’t sound like he intended to kill her immediately. So, going with him wasn’t a death sentence. Not right away.

“I will grant you mastery over me on one condition, Destroyer. We leave now, together. If these men live, I will allow you to rule over me until...” With a sick rush of insight Jacie thought of Chita. Was that Fithian’s definition of mastery?

Tears bit at her eyes. Her stomach twisted with terror. She almost lost her nerve. Then Brett groaned.

She acted fast. “I will allow you to rule over me for as long as you wish, Destroyer. In exchange for the lives of these men.”

“These men hunt me,” the Destroyer snarled. “Me! The Destroyer! They have to be punished for their arrogance.”

“I’m telling you if you kill them, I’ll never let you rule, even if I die.”

Fithian opened his mouth and closed it. Brett groaned again, loud enough that Fithian turned the gun on him.

“It’s your choice, Destroyer. If he dies, you lose everything. Decide now,” she shouted.

Fithian wavered between Brett and her. She considered jumping him, but he was too far away and, however detached from reality he was, his hand on the gun was steady. And if she failed, everyone in the room would die.

Finally, Fithian motioned with his gun. “Come now, quickly.”

She walked away from what she was afraid would be her last safe house. She let her eyes linger on Brett for a second, sure she’d never see him again. If she died, at least Brett would survive.

They stepped outside in the clear suburban air. The world was normal, and she had an assassin holding a gun on her. The universe almost tilted.

The Destroyer put his gun back in its holster. “Go straight to the car, Angel. I have a bomb set on the house we were just in. If I don’t get to the car to defuse it, your savior will die.”

He pointed to a navy blue sedan with darkly tinted windows parked in the street a few feet beyond the property line of the safe house.

“A bomb? I told you if they don’t live...”

“Keep moving. Until we reach the car, they’re in danger. We don’t have much time left.”

She increased her speed. He opened the door for her like a fine gentleman, then rounded the car and got in himself. A little black box sat between them on the seat. A bright green light glowed out of it with a white, digital readout below it, that read 02:24...02:23.

Fithian reached across the little device, no bigger than a garage door opener. She expected him to hit a kill switch. Instead, he slipped a hard, thin strip of plastic around her wrists and yanked it tight. He took a second tie and secured her hands to a metal bracket over her head. The bracket had no other purpose she could think of except to control a prisoner. No one could see her arms extended above her because of the darkened windows.

She looked down at the menacing black box.

“I agreed to your pathetic pleading for their lives because it suited me to have you walk away willingly.”

“Shut down the bomb, Fithian,” Jacie demanded. “I did what you asked.”

Fithian started to laugh. He picked up the little device as the timer blinked 02:00 and pressed a swift kiss on its side.

“No!” Jacie turned frantically back toward the house.

His laughter raising to a near scream, Fithian lay the little control down beside him, started the car, and pulled sedately away from the curb. His precise control of the vehicle was completely at odds with his frenzied cackling.

Jacie turned in the seat and tried to get her foot up to knock the detonator within reach. Fithian lifted the box off the seat and convulsed with the maniacal high-pitched laugh that she’d heard at Brett’s house.

Jacie was yelling, and fighting her shackled wrists. She jerked on them, trying to dislodge the bracket from the car’s roof.

She swung her legs up again and kicked at him, he laughed more wildly and shoved her feet back to the floor, like she was a pesky insect.

Jacie screamed, “I’ll fight you every inch of the way. I’ll never give you power over me. You want me alive, but I won’t submit to you.”

01:28...01:27...

Fithian choked over his hysteria. “Don’t you see? That’s perfect.” Fithian turned his face to her and all the madness that had lurked below the surface boiled out of him. His eyes bloodshot and wet, seemed to bulge out of their sockets. His skin was mottled with patches of red. Veins pulsed across his forehead. His lips were reddened with blood where he must have bitten himself. White lather, tinged with red, frothed from the corners of his mouth and dripped down his chin.

He truly was The Destroyer.

“I knew you would never willingly allow my mastery of you.” Flecks of the foam splattered on her face,

He slammed his open hand against her cheek, missing a stunning blow because her cuffed hands sheltered her head. “If you had, you would not have been worthy. It’s always been something I had to take.”

00:48...00:47...

Jacie saw her death in his eyes. It was hopeless to try and penetrate his insanity with reason. He was obsessed with death. Her death. Killing Brett, and anyone else who stood between The Destroyer and his goal. She jerked on her bindings and twisted back to look. The house was out of site.

She looked back at the descending numbers.

00:21...00:20...00:19.

She heaved her body off the seat, spinning around and kicking at The Destroyer’s head. He ducked the kick, but the motion made him swerve the car. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. He dropped the timer. It fell to the floor between his legs. She prayed it would activated the off switch.

The Destroyer’s high-pitched shrieking was an unearthly sound, earsplitting in the close confines of the car. The Destroyer clawed at the device and she kicked him again, lifting herself with her now-bleeding wrists and landing a solid blow to his face.

He produced the timer from the floor and she glimpsed the digital readout still slipping downward.

00:08...00:07...

He shifted the timer into his left hand, driving and holding it at the same time and he struck her again. He aimed at her ribs this time and delivered the kind of blow he must have used on Womack. The pain was so severe she thought her heart had stopped. He followed the gut punch with a direct blow to her chin, her head cracked against the window behind her. He began cackling again as he contemptuously shoved her feet to the floor.

The Destroyer pulled politely to a stop at a red light. She cried out Brett’s name and The Destroyer silenced her with a wicked blow to her mouth.

As the darkness took over, in the distance, Jacie heard her world blow up.