Chapter 22
Claire came back to awareness slowly, feeling extremely weak and nauseous. Her mind was fuzzy, but her first realization was that she was shivering with cold. Then she realized that her wrists were bound together and her arms were stretched up over her head. That’s the moment when she remembered Jonesy Jax―right after that, she recalled Bob Brady.
Oh God, Brady was the killer and he’d drugged them both with some kind of dart. She could still feel the drug, clouding her mind and warping her thoughts, making her feel woozy and strange and as if she was going to throw up. But she knew she had to shake that fog off, and shake it off fast. She had to think straight, because she was in a world of hurt. She didn’t know how much yet, but she was going to find out as soon as she forced open her bleary eyes and looked the devil in the face.
For the first few moments after regaining her faculties, she did not want to do it. Couldn’t make herself face what had to be some extremely bad odds. She didn’t want to see what was happening around her, either. She did not want to face Brady or know what he was doing. But she could hear voices, and it sounded like two men talking to each other. They were not far away from her.
“Okay, Claire, man up, pull it together before it’s too late,” she told herself firmly, it came out weak and muddled up. Brady had taken her Glock; she couldn’t feel the weight of it under her arm. She shifted her rightfoot enough to realize with a sinking heart that he’d also found the .38 snub nose in her ankle holster. She was completely unarmed. Not good. She sucked in a deep breath, held it inside a second to calm her racing pulse, and told herself firmly that she could do this, that she’d gotten herself out of plenty of tight scrapes before. With monsters just as bad as the one who she feared had her in their control right now. Just do it, do something. Just get yourself free. You have to do it, so go ahead and do it now.
It still took a few minutes to garner the courage. When Claire forced herself to open her eyes, she wished she hadn’t. She was in some kind of big, open room, but her vision was a little off―everything still looked blurry. The voices were still there. Somewhere nearby. There was a different sound, too, in the background but also close. It sounded like a repetitive sloshing of water—swish, thud, swish, thud, over and over, with spattering and splashing, as if water was raining forcefully down into a pool.
She struggled desperately to clear the cobwebs in her head. Once she did that, she realized that she was in some kind of gristmill, the old-fashioned kind with the big waterwheel. That’s what she’d been hearing. It was directly in front of her, and very big, maybe twelve feet high and three feet wide, turning very slowly, with lots of creaking and grinding and groaning of ancient wood. There were steps leading down to a lower floor on the right side of the wheel. Okay, there was a way out, right there in front of her. No door, no lock. And there was a big pool of water around the wheel, it looked like. If she recalled, wheels like that had to roll down into a river where the current pushed it around and up again. Another escape hatch, maybe. She shut her eyes again and tried to force herself calm.
A moment later, Claire blinked away the drug daze impeding her vision and tried to focus on the gristwheel again. It was chugging away, the top rolling forward and down like a Ferris wheel and plunging back into the pool below, or stream, or whatever it was. Then she blinked some more and caught her breath in horror as a body suddenly appeared out of the water, slowly coming up, lashed to the wheel. The head appeared first, and oh God, it was a woman. She was bound to the wheel with ropes. Her body looked frozen solid from the frigid water, her skin white and limbs rigid, but her eyes were open and staring straight at Claire. Then the woman’s body rolled up over the top with the turning wheel, her feet disappearing down the back. Then it rolled on, and to Claire’s horror, a second body appeared tied to the other side. This time it was a man, dressed in a dark suit and tie, a huge red wound on his forehead, the blood frozen in streaming icicles down over his face. His body was frozen, too, eyes hidden under the red ice as he rolled upward and disappeared. Claire stifled a groan, not wanting to see those bodies when they came around again. That was probably what Brady was going to do to her: strap her on a wooden wheel and roll her down into icy water, over and over until she either drowned or froze to death. It was a cruel and medieval method of torture, and she was going to die on that thing, if she didn’t do something about it.
That’s when Claire’s heartbeat jump-started and sped into overdrive, beating so hard and fast against her breastbone that her body actually moved with it. She had to get loose before somebody strapped her to that wheel! She pulled at the bindings above her head. Her arms were attached to an open ceiling beam. The ropes held tight. Her feet were barely touching the ground but her captor had left them unbound. Okay, that was a good thing, maybe. That gave her the opportunity to kick.
At that point, Claire made herself suck it up big time, and she inhaled a deep, cleansing lungful of air and tried hard to tamp down her quick-rising panic. Okay, think, Claire. Bob Brady had her. She had to be smart. She had to look around and gauge the situation. She had to see if he was acting alone, find where he was and how she could escape him. So she forced herself to do that. Didn’t like what she faced.
Off to her right, she could see three other people inside the big room. They were sitting several yards away at a big, round table. There were four chairs, and some kind of game board sitting in the middle of the table. One place left. Her place, she feared. They were waiting for her to wake up and then she was going to have to sit in that empty chair. The game board could only mean small Detection tokens jammed down into body orifices.
Claire squeezed her eyes shut, and let herself be scared to death for a few seconds. Then she pulled it back under control again and tried to figure out what to do. She opened her eyes but only to a mere slit. She did not want them to know she was awake, because right now they weren’t paying any attention to her. She turned her head slightly and scanned the other side of the room. Over to her left, there was a table sitting against the back wall near a window. She could see her holsters and weapons lying on top of it, both the Glock and the .38. If she could get loose somehow and make it to them, she might have a chance. She chanced a glance back at the two psychopaths, but they hadn’t been watching her. They were too busy torturing their captured rock star.
Jonesy Jax was sitting in the chair facing her. It looked as if his wrists were tied down onto the table somehow. He was groaning out loud, as if in awful pain, and rolling his head around on his shoulders, maybe fighting to stay conscious. The other two guys were sitting close on either side of him. Neither was bound. They were the nightmare duo, she guessed. She recognized the man on Jonesy’s left right away: that was Bob Brady. The other guy had on glasses―he was the one she’d seen playing chess that day in Games Galore. They were the killers, some kind of tag team from hell. They were smiling at each other, talking, laughing, having a good old time as Jonesy suffered terrible fear and groaned with pain.
Okay, Claire thought, squeezing her eyes shut again. You cannot panic. You cannot go to pieces. Okay, okay, hold it together. Black was going to miss her and track her with GPS. Unless the killers had disabled her phone, or thrown it away on their way back to this hellhole. They probably had done that. They had showed exemplary skills at the game of murder so far. She knew that, if only from the modicum of clues left behind at the Heather Jax homicide scene. Practiced and proficient killers, for sure, both of them. Who they really were didn’t much matter anymore.
Buckeye and Shaggy would surely report her missing when she didn’t show up at the morgue. Or at least call her to find out why. She never missed appointments without calling them first. That would alert them, and they would contact Black and he would come and try to find her. But she couldn’t count on help arriving in time to save her life, or Jonesy’s―no way could she just hang there and wait. She had to use her head to get herself out of this godawful mess, and she had to save Jonesy, too. In no way was he capable of getting free on his own. He was already injured and moaning with pain. Claire only hoped he had some residual courage somewhere inside that he could summon up when he needed to. She was going to need his help to get them both out of this hellhole.
Subtly, she exerted more pressure on the ropes, testing their strength further. They still held fast. Apparently her movements hadn’t been subtle enough―Bob Brady had seen her moving.
“Well, well, now, look who’s awake, and just in time for game night,” he said in a loud, sarcastic voice. Brady scooted back his folding chair and swaggered over to her while his partner sat watching. He was grinning at her, real friendly-like. He stood right in front of Claire for a moment or two, just staring into her eyes. “Hey there, good lookin’. Bet you’re not feeling so hot right now, are you? That dart had some potent drugs in it. Our own special recipe, made just for victims like you.”
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
Brady only smiled. “Ah, don’t you worry. You’ll know all our secrets soon enough, I promise. You’re not gonna like them, though. I suppose you noticed our frozen FBI agent over there on the wheel? He’ll come up again in a second, if you missed the show. There’s a lady, too, that we grabbed the other day, just for practice with the tranquilizer gun, you understand. Didn’t want to get it too strong for you to survive. Both of them are losers. They didn’t take to Live or Die well at all. In fact, they were downright terrible at it. Maybe you’ll do better. Hope so, for your sake. I’d like to keep you around for a while, if that’s okay. I’ve got some fun plans for me and you. You shouldn’t’ve treated me so badly, my love. It’s gonna cause some blow back on you in the next few days, you know.”
After that, Claire kept her mouth shut. Right now, she had to be careful. These guys were lunatics, and she had faced off with these kinds of sicko freaks before. She did not want to get him rattled too soon, so she just stared back at him and attempted to look unafraid. He chuckled softly, and then he pulled a twelve-inch butcher knife off a sheath strapped to his thigh. “Okay, game time, sweetheart. Come along now. I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna give us a run for our money, more than most of the idiots we’ve invited to play with us.” He leaned in close and put his tongue in her ear. She jerked her head away, and then he whispered softly in a rasping voice meant to frighten her. “I wanna play a game. And I wanna do things to you that you just won’t believe. You see, Detective, I saw those pictures of you. That’s why I chose you.”
Claire set her jaw. “Untie me, you creep. If you want me to play games with you, get ready. I’m good at games. I’ll give you a beatdown at anything you want me to try.”
Brady looked surprised, and then laughed. “Oh goody, we got us some fire in our girl. I do so like that about you, Claire. I saw it from the beginning. Guts and gumption and always on full display. Better not push your luck, though. Junior over there, he is definitely not as into you as I am. Push the wrong buttons on him, and you’ll end up tied to that wheel before Jonesy even gets his turn.”
Then he raised the knife. Claire tried not to cringe as he swiped the sharp blade through the taut rope holding her arms aloft. She sagged, but her wrists were still bound together as he jerked her up by one arm and shoved her roughly toward the card table. He slammed her bodily into the empty chair and sat down beside her.
“Hello, Detective,” said the man he’d called Junior. He was staring intently into her face, a slight smile curving his lips. “You already know Lucky here, so I guess I ought to introduce myself, too, before the games begin.”
Claire watched warily, but she was also appraising the situation. Nothing about it was good. Not in any way.
“My name is John Scott Jax II, legally, but everybody calls me Junior. You see, Jonesy here is my daddy dearest. Of course, he abandoned me when I was just a little kid. Didn’t give a fuckin’ thought to me after that. He just left me alone in the hands of my crazy mother, to suffer her abuse all the days of my life.” Then he moved so fast that Claire jumped, doubling his right fist and slamming it into the side of Jonesy’s head. Jonesy jerked sideways with the violent impact and slumped to one side, only half conscious. “That’s how my mom liked to punish me when I was in elementary school. Hit me in the head, just like that. Maybe not that hard, but that’s not the point, now is it? That’s why I drowned her in our swimming pool.” He grabbed up Jonesy by one braid and sneered viciously down into his face through gritted teeth. “I’m going to drown you, too, Daddy, over there in that pool of ice water. Then I’ll just let your body float down our stream, into the lake. They won’t find you until spring, and we’ll be long gone by then.”
Jonesy only moaned. Frowning at his lack of response, Junior slapped his face a few times, hard enough to draw blood from the side of Jonesy’s mouth. Then he continued speaking to Claire as if nothing had happened. “It takes a long time for a person to drown on that wheel, you know. I just want to give you some warning before it’s your turn. It all depends on how fast the wheel moves, you understand. Sometimes it just stops on its own, you know, down there under the water, when some poor soul is holding his breath. It’s kinda old and cantankerous that way. That’s when you drown quickly, and then your body freezes nice and hard. Other times, you freeze first, from hypothermia and frozen skin and tissue. That’s not a fun way to die, either. The body simply turns to ice. Like the real Special Agent Bob Brady over there on that wheel. First things first, though: We like to play a game with our selected victim. Remember how we used to play games before you walked out on us, Daddy?”
Jonesy tried to lift his head. He’d been beaten, mostly around the head and face, it looked like. He spoke through swollen lips and bloodied teeth. “She kicked me out. Wouldn’t let me see you.”
“Oh, nice try, but I don’t believe that, not for one second. I watched your sweet little parting scene from upstairs on the night you left. That was the last time I ever saw you. And this is the last time you’re ever gonna see me. Then we’ll be even. But I do want to show you this game that I invented. Lucky helped me, too. You remember Lucky, he’s sitting right over there. See him? He’s my best bud ever. This game? It’s been just hours of fun for us. Victim after victim has just died to play. You’ll see. You and Lucky’s pretty little detective here.”
“I like to play games,” Claire told them. She had to buy herself some time, all right. She sure as hell didn’t have much left. These guys were stone cold killers. Maybe they were sociopaths, but she had a feeling they were out more to get their jollies. It was the process, maybe, for them, the learning how to end lives without being caught and then using creative methods to keep killing. They were partners in multiple murders, and they’d already told them they were both going to die strapped to that wheel.
“I knew you would like to play,” Lucky told her. “I just felt it in my bones. But are you good at it? That’s the question. I still can’t believe you fell for my FBI impersonation. It was pretty lame, but easy for me, you know? I had his name, and his badge, and that thick file he’d compiled on my life’s work. You understand now.”
“So you are Troy Edward Wood?”
“That’s right. Killed my traitor mom and haven’t stopped since.”
“Then who is Oliver Wood?”
“My big brother, who hates my guts. He’s been trying to catch me for that mom thing. He just can’t seem to get over me running her down. He’s been in the military, but apparently he’s out now and trying to track me. Not gonna catch me, because I’m smarter than he is. You really fell for all that crap I fed you. Not feeling so smart anymore, now are you?”
Claire ignored that last crack, but it brought things into a clear focus. She wanted to play their game, all right. And make it last as long as she could. “Boo-hoo, Lucky. You think you’re the only one who had a tough childhood? Get real. I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve always been damn good at games. Any kind you want to play. Just name it. Try me. I’m lucky as hell, even luckier than you are, I’ll wager. Untie my hands and let’s get started. I bet you that I can beat you both on the first try.”
Lucky looked shocked. “Yeah, right. Please allow me to point out your stupidity: You were partnered up with the guy you were hunting down. Now that’s not so intelligent on your part, is it? But in all fairness, your sheriff didn’t blink an eye, either. The whole lot of you were pretty easy to play, especially after Junior ran down your dopey partner.”
“So you killed an FBI agent and took his identity. How did you manage that?”
“We got the jump on him first. Then we gave him a bit of the water torture treatment, as you can see. Wait a second, and Agent Bob will come right up out of the water again. It’s just like clockwork, you see. Well, what do you know? There he is again, right on time. Special Agent Bob Brady, in the frozen flesh. Yep, he made the mistake of sniffing around out here at our new lair, but we happened to see him first. Not sure how he found us, but he’s been on our case for years. Not anymore. He’s gone to his heavenly reward, and you just might get to meet him up there. When we are ready to clear out of here, we’ll be ending a lot of our past problems and tying up all our loose ends.”
“Meaning your brother?”
“Yes, ma’am. My brother. You don’t know how much I want to finish him. He’s the one who convinced my parents to put me in that first looney bin. He despised me from the day I killed his stupid favorite dog. My parents thought he hung the moon in the sky. It was always all about my brother. You know him. I saw you with him down in the lobby one night before you sent him packing. Yep, old Ollie, he’s the hero of our family. Did it all. Mr. Wunderkind. Basketball star. Honored Marine. The whole nine yards of glory and flag waving. I’m gonna hunt him down and kill him, too, one of these days, when I’ve got the time.”
Claire had heard enough. What she wanted to talk about right now was playing the game. She wanted him to untie her. “Blah, blah, blah. Seems to me that you’re putting me off. What? Too chicken to play your own game? Afraid I’ll beat you? That why you’re boring us with all this family history?”
Lucky and Junior glanced at each other. They looked surprised, and then they looked angry. “You want to play, huh? Well, okay, miss hot shot detective, let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Game on,” she said tightly, challenging him with her eyes. These guys wanted to win, had to win. Maybe if they got enthralled in the game they’d make a mistake.
“You just might regret being in such a hurry, once you know what you’re getting into.”
“Well, Lucky, like I told you: I’m a lucky kind of gal. No reason to think I won’t be this time, too.”
“You better hope so,” Junior said in his quiet voice. When Claire looked at him, his eyes were scary cold. Not like the intensity of Oliver Wood’s, or the cruelty in Lucky’s gaze. Junior’s eyes were dark and masochistically excited. He loved having them as captives at his mercy, that was abundantly clear. So did Troy Wood, but he seemed to have a soft spot for Claire, one she hated to consider very long, but she was going to have to use that to her advantage. Right up until she took that knife out of his belt and plunged it into his jugular vein.
“You’ll see how good I am.” Claire looked down at the board. “So what’s this game called?”
“It’s called Live or Die. And you are gonna love it. We’ll just watch you and Daddy play,” said Junior.
“He’s not going to be much competition for me, not if you keep hitting him in the head. That can’t be good for his concentration.”
“I’ll help him out. You know, sort of a silent mentor, like he never was for me.”
“That’s why you killed Heather? You were jealous of her and Jonesy’s relationship?”
“Nothing to be jealous about anymore, now is there, Detective?”
Apparently halfway alert, Jonesy raised severely swollen eyes to Junior’s face. Maybe he’d been faking some of his stupor; maybe he wasn’t as out of his mind as he wanted them all to believe. Claire hoped to hell he wasn’t and could help her when the chips were down. “You killed your own sister,” he muttered to Junior. “How could you do something like that? You didn’t even know her.”
“She wasn’t my sister. She wasn’t anything to me.” Junior was really angry now. “She was just a little bitch from some one-night stand whore after your money. Like Momma, like daughter, I always say. But your money will be all ours very soon.”
“Half-sister,” Jonesy managed through cracked lips.
Junior leaned back. “You loved her. You never loved me. So I made her pay the price and play by my rules. She wasn’t nearly as brave as you are, let me tell you. She was way too scared, so we didn’t even waste time. We just put her out of her misery so we wouldn’t have to listen to her screaming anymore.”
“Enough bellyaching and crying about how daddy doesn’t love you,” Claire said to Junior. She sensed some tension between the two killers―maybe she could exploit it, unless she went too far. She braced for the blow she had a feeling was coming, and coming fast.
Troy Wood, aka Lucky, laughed softly. Junior leaned over and slapped her across the face. Her head slung to the side and her cheek stung like fire, but she clamped her jaw and did not react, just kept her eyes leveled on Junior’s flushed face.
“Don’t mess up her face, Junior. That’s the best thing about her. That and her guts. It’ll be fun to break her down, just like that wild filly I once had to work with in Oklahoma. And I got dibs on her, remember?”
“Do you want to play this game or not? Looks to me like you’re both stalling because you’re scared to death I’ll beat you. After all this big talk, you don’t even want to play me.”
“Nobody survives this game. You won’t, either.”
“You survived it,” Claire said.
“Yeah, that’s true. But we cheat. We cheat at just about everything we do. It suits our purposes.” Then he smiled and kissed her on the cheek.
Fear started rising up inside Claire again, a towering wave of dread that threatened her false bravado. Jonesy groaned some more. His face was so cut up and bruised that he was having trouble breathing. His nose was bleeding again, running down the front of his white dress shirt.
Lucky grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at him. “Okay, Claire, since you’re such an eager beaver. You go first.”
“Untie me. I won’t try to escape. I want to beat you in the worst way.”
“Yeah, sure. What do you take us for? Idiots? Just for your information: we both register at the genius level. IQs over 160.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Keep telling yourself that, while I kill you at your own game.”
“Go ahead, draw your first card, big mouth,” Junior said to her. He was getting angrier. Good. Angry people made stupid mistakes. “Right here. From the Live or Die pile.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You draw the die card. One of us gets to kill you. Easy as can be. Go ahead. Game on, as you taunted us a moment ago. What color do you want to be? You know, which token do you choose?”
Claire only stared at him. These two guys really were crazy as loons. Evil as hell, but they meant business. She looked down at the game board. It appeared professionally made, as if they’d had somebody make it by hand to their specifications. All business. Four game pieces were sitting at the start square. “Okay, I’ll take yellow. It’s so sunshiny.”
“Go ahead, draw. Let’s see if you get to live another minute.”
“Thought you said you wanted to keep me around, for entertainment. What? Don’t like my personality so much, after all? Am I too tough for you, Lucky?”
Lucky was not taking the bait, damn it. “No, I like everything about you. Especially that tough girl thing you got going on at the moment. So go ahead, draw your card, before Junior goes berserk and puts a blade in you. He’s such a loose cannon at times like this.”
Claire glanced across the table at Jonesy. He looked more alert now. His injured eyes were latched onto her face, and she had a feeling he was warning her not to draw the card. He knew something she didn’t know, all right.
Lucky noticed her hesitation. “What’s the problem, sweetie? You gettin’ cold feet already?”
Heart escalating, Claire moved her bound hands up to the pile of small white cards. She got hold of the top one. She turned it over. The word ALIVE was printed on the other side. She laid it down on the table. Her heart slowed down again.
“Oh, oh, oh, my new girlfriend’s as lucky as she claims.” Lucky threw back his head and enjoyed a good laugh. Nobody joined him in his good cheer. “Know what that means, Claire? That means you aren’t slated to die this time around, but you’re slated to kill somebody else. Lucky you. And it won’t be me or Junior. So guess who you get as a victim?”
“I’m not gonna kill anybody.”
“Think again,” said Lucky. This time his voice was deep and harsh.
“My turn now.” Junior appeared eager to take his turn. That couldn’t be a good sign. “I get to draw a token out of this little bag. Watch and learn, Daddy.”
His hatred for Jonesy was so deep and palpable that it almost oozed from his pores. He opened the drawstring bag and reached inside. He pulled out a weapon and held it up. It was a small metal revolver, like the one in the Detection game she’d bought.
“Well now, girl, you just got lucky again. This is gonna give old Jonesy Jax here a quick death, depending how good a shot you are. We’ll probably back you off so you’ll have to shoot him multiple times.
“All right, your turn now, Dad. You get to draw from the Live or Die pile. Good luck to you. Hope like hell it’s the dead card.”
Jonesy looked at Claire again, both of them trying to figure out a way to make the game work to their advantage. The game made little sense. No sense, actually. It was just a means to find a unique way to murder someone. Jonesy drew off the top. His card read ALIVE.
“Well, you two are damn lucky, I’ve got to hand it to you.” Lucky shook his head. “Almost as lucky as I am. Not quite. That’s why my friends call me Lucky. You can call me that, Claire. Until you lose the game, and then I’ll call you ‘Unlucky.’” He and Junior seemed to enjoy his joke. “But now it’s my turn to draw a weapon for Mr. Rock Star over there to use on you.”
They watched Lucky open the bag. Claire didn’t recognize the weapon he chose at first, but then he smiled and held it up in front of her eyes. “Oh boy, Jonesy Boy gets to kill Claire with a nail gun! We had this one specially made for our game. Uh oh, Claire, not so lucky anymore. That’s gonna hurt, all those nails going in that sweet little bod of yours. You know how long it takes to die from nails being shot into your body? It takes a long time, and lots of nails and lots of blood. Hope we’ve got enough to do the job. We’ll nail you up on that wheel afterwards. Let you get nice and frozen for us.”
Claire tried not to react, but terror was slowly creeping up and threatening her willpower. These guys were as serious as sin, and this game had only one outcome. The two people drawing the cards were both going to die―and at each other’s hands.
“Okay, Claire, it’s your turn to draw again. Now we’ll see just how lucky you really are. Wouldn’t want to be you. Nail gun deaths are awful things to behold. Well, in our case, we like to watch, but you and Jonesy won’t.”
Claire stared at the pile of cards. She was going to have to make a move. She could not draw a die card or it would be over. Hesitating, she tried to think what she could do to distract them. Problem was, she couldn’t think of anything. She was out of ideas and out of hope. She stared across the table at Jonesy. He was crying now, silently, tears running down his cheeks and smearing the blood. He knew it was just a matter of time before they killed him. Junior and Lucky just sat there, smiling in anticipation.