CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jesse took one last look at the place that he’d called home for the past two years. He had a little box full of stuff that the property officer had already picked up. He would get it back at the sally port on his way out. The place was now nothing but four walls and a mattress with a stainless steel sink and toilet in one corner and a long thin window on the back wall. He won’t miss any of it— not one thing. He was in jeans and a t-shirt. For the first time in two years, he was wearing regular clothes. For two years he’d rotted inside of the protective housing unit in a single cell with only six hours of natural daylight every twenty four on a tiny little yard that was fenced in just for him and his neighbors. He’d been housed there because of his father’s status. It was doubtful that he would have lasted more than a day in general population amongst the murderers, rapists, and thieves that his father had put there.

Here, he was neighbors with some of the most notorious criminals in the state while they waited for trial or like Jesse, served the time they’d been given in a plea deal. They were, of course, all innocent as he had discovered in conversation over the years. Not that he gave a fuck about any of them. There had been only one thing on Jesse’s mind for the two years he’d had to endure this hellhole. Kelly Ward should have been dead that night. During the day the heavy cell doors opened, and they could come out and mingle amongst each other in the drab, olive green day room with the stainless steel table and benches in the middle. Jesse rarely came out. He didn’t have anything to say to any of these losers. He stayed in his cell, and he worked out and got stronger, and he focused his inner rage. He was biding his time until he got to see her again. Until he got to look into her eyes and see the fear and submission there, right before he got to watch the life drain out of them. That was what kept him going here. He would find her, and he would kill her, but he was going to take his time doing it. She was going to suffer, and she was going to beg for her life…and then, he was going to kill her.

“Donovan!” He turned and waited in front of the cell door. The correctional officer that stood in front of it opened the little food port, and Jesse turned backwards and stuck his hands through. The cold steel handcuffs were slipped over his wrists. That had been a hard thing for him to acclimate to when he first got here. Being in a cage was bad enough, but being dressed in a jumpsuit and shackled and led around like an animal was the most dehumanizing thing of all. Once Jesse’s hands were cuffed, he stepped forward, and the officer signaled to the officer in the control booth— the man with the gun. The officers on the floor didn’t carry any weapons other than a club and O.C. pepper spray. The buildings were all “covered” by a man up in a glass tower with a big gun.

The door slid open slowly, and Jess waited until it was all the way open before he stepped out. The correctional officer held loosely onto Jesse’s arm as they walked along the tier. Some of his neighbors said good-bye and others gave him the finger. Jesse gave them all the finger in his mind. He knew he was better than this, better than all of them. He should never have been here in the first place. The bitch should have just died. She was going to wish that she had. He was looking forward to seeing her again. He could hardly wait to see the look on her face when she saw him. He wanted to see the realization there that she was a dead woman.

The officer pushed a button at the next door, and that one slid open. Then they had to go through one more before they were outside. It always reminded Jesse of ‘Get Smart’ with doors opening in front of you and closing behind you at the same time.

He was put into a van once they got outside and they drove to the jail to the other side where the sally port was. Any inmate that came or went had to go through the sally port and be accounted for. Jesse was walking out a free man. He wasn’t on probation or parole. His father had gotten him a sweet deal. It had ruined his law career dreams though, which really, really pissed him off. If he hadn’t already planned on killing the bitch that caused all of this, he would do it for that reason alone. He had a lot of reasons now, and no one was going to stand in his way. It was his focal point. The rest of his life he would worry about later. He didn’t care about anything else right now. He had to accomplish that one goal first. He had to see Kelly’s lifeless body and then he could move on. He knew one thing for sure. No one would ever put him in a cage again. He would die first.

The van had to drive around to another side of the jail until they got to the front gates. Jesse saw the black BMW waiting in the visitor lot, and he knew that it must be his father’s most recent car. Vince Donovan hadn’t been able to visit his son often. He had done all he could for his son by making sure he only served two years. It wouldn’t do for him to be traipsing in and out of the county jail as a visitor. It wouldn’t look good come election time. Jesse’s arrest and conviction were already a set-back for him, but like Jesse, his father always won somehow.

The van stopped, and when Jesse stepped off, the officer unlocked his cuffs and took them off. He handed Jesse his box of personal belongings and said, “Don’t come back.”

“Don’t worry,” Jesse said.

He saw his father now, leaning against the shiny, freshly detailed car. Vince smiled as he came close and said, “I wouldn’t have recognized you on the street.”

Jesse grinned and hugged him. “Yeah, I had a little more time than usual to work out,” he said. Jesse was never a small guy. He was five eleven, and before he went in, he had weighed about 185. He’d been lean muscle then, without any fat at all on his body. Now he was bulky muscle. His chest was stretching the material of his large t-shirt, and his biceps were bulging. He noticed his dad looking at his right one.

“What’s up with the tattoo?” Vince said with a raised eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going to ink up in there.”

“It’s just a band. I can cover it with long sleeves.” It commemorated the scar. The puncture wound Kelly had made in his arm had turned into an ugly scar. The scar was now the mouth of a viper and the viper wrapped around his now massive arm.

Vince opened the car door, and Jesse went around to the other side. He stuffed his box into the back seat and took his seat on the passenger side. “This is nice. I haven’t been in a car or on a leather seat for so long I forgot what it felt like.”

Vince put the car in gear and started out of the lot. “I had your car detailed for you and the apartment I rented for you is on Madison. It’s really nice; you’ll like it.”

“Thanks,” Jesse said. “Any other news for me?”

“I’m sure I have a lot of things I need to catch you up on, but let’s take it slow for now.”

“You know there is only one thing I’m interested in hearing.”

Vince suddenly pulled the car into the lot of Denny’s restaurant. “Suddenly craving a Grand Slam?” Jesse asked him with a laugh.

“No, but there’s something I need to tell you.”

Jesse sat forward. He could tell by the look on the old man’s face that it was something about Kelly. “You found her?” he asked, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“Sort of. More aptly, she found me.”

Jesse looked confused. “What? She found you?”

“I was at the fundraiser for Peter Ross’s kid and the hospital that I go to every year. I got stepped on by this tiny little woman with nice curves, light brown hair, and stunning blue eyes.”

“Is this leading anywhere?” Jesse asked, looking bored already.

“At first I didn’t recognize her, but it was her.”

“Kelly? With blue eyes and brown hair?”

“She calls herself Chloe Green now. She was there with Derek Stark, as his date.”

“What the fuck?” His date? Little slut! “Do you think Stark knows who she is?”

“I got the feeling that he didn’t. When she saw me, she freaked out. She ran out of the party, and he ran after her. He looked completely confused.”

Jesse smiled again. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch. It must have been fate.”

His father looked worried. “Jesse, I thought about not telling you. You really need to stay away from this girl. You’re going to end up right back in jail, prison this time.”

“No,” Jesse said, “I won’t ever come back here. They’ll have to kill me.”

“Great! Fucking great, Jesse! So you either end up in prison or dead? Do you know what it has done to your mother that you were in here for the past two years? Your life is permanently affected by this and so is ours even with a misdemeanor. The next time they will charge you with a felony, and I won’t be able to help. Or you’ll be dead. Imagine what it would do to us if you were dead, Jesse. Think about someone else for a change!”

Jesse didn’t want to fight with his father. He needed him. The old man was his only source of money right now, and he would need plenty of that while he was looking for her and carrying out his plans. “I’m sorry, Dad. You’re right. I just want to talk to her. I want to tell her that I’m sorry I hurt her. It was one crazy night. I was drunk, and I never meant for any of it to happen, you know that. I know that she knows that. She’s probably ready to apologize. I love her. I need her. You must understand that a little bit. You told me about seeing her.”

His father understood that you had to keep your women in their place. Jesse knew that he wouldn’t condone him killing her though, no matter how much she needed it. He would stand by him when it was all over though. Jesse knew that without a doubt.

“I told you because I know that you won’t let this go and you’ll be out there looking for her on your own. I don’t want you getting into any trouble, Jesse. I don’t want you locked up again or worse. There are so many other girls out there, Jesse. What is it about this one?”

“I love her,” he said. “I want her.” Jesse leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes. He was finished talking about it to his father. He knew what needed to be done and his hands almost ached with the desire to wrap themselves around that skinny neck. Once he watched the life almost drain out of her, he would let her breathe, so that she was still alive when he cut her insides out.

The night they had taken him away in cuffs he was confident that she would come to her senses and drop the charges. She knew that she was nothing without him. She had to know that she would be better off dead. She was walking around wasting oxygen while he was rotting in that fucking cell. It was so hard when she’d actually showed up in court to testify against him. It was so hard to sit there and not jump out of his seat and grab the mousey little cunt by her hair and slam her face into the floor. She’d lost her fucking mind that night. She stuck a nail file in his arm. Who the fuck did she think she was? It was like she’d been begging him to kill her. She didn’t have to beg for that though, that was the plan all along. He did want to hear her beg him for her life. That sound would be a sweet one.

Jesse thought about how she had sat there in court and cried and acted like she was so fucking innocent. She’d been doing things for years to purposely piss him off. He always knew that she liked to cause trouble and then act like she was a victim. If she wanted to be a victim, he would make her one. She was going to be the “victim” of a homicide as soon as he found her.

He’d also been thinking about that little slut friend of hers, Chantelle. Kelly called her that night when she finally figured out that she had pushed him too far. That bitch had gotten up in court and talked about his and Kelly’s relationship like she knew anything. She was the one who had called the cops. If she’d never done that, Kelly would be a rotting corpse by now. Jesse smiled. He might just find that bitch first, and once he was done teaching her a lesson about minding her own fucking business, then, he would find Kelly and set things right with her. He could feel the tickle of anticipation in his gut. He was so close.

He thought about Derek Stark. He hadn’t even seen the guy since they were both teenagers. The last thing he’d heard about him other than the stupid commercials for his real estate business was that his wife died in a car accident or something. That was too fucking bad for him. Hopefully, he wasn’t too attached to his new little slut because that one was about to die too.