Attorney's Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (9 page)

“Yes.”

“There’s a sticker on that window. What’s it say?”

“I don’t remember a sticker,” she said.

“Think.”

She did and then remembered.

“It says, Warning—Guarded by Attack Ferrets. It’s not ours. The previous renters put it there.”

The line went dead.

JEKKER SMILED, PATTED THE WOMAN on her head and said, “You did good. Did you recognize the person talking to you?”

“No.”

“You don’t have any idea who he was?”

“No. Who was he?”

Jekker shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She looked hesitant, as if she wanted to ask him something but was afraid.

“What is it?” Jekker asked.

“Can I come outside for a while? I don’t like being alone in the dark. I won’t do anything wrong, I promise.”

Jekker stood up and shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Then he hopped out, closed the door and relocked it, picturing the darkness closing in on the woman.

FIVE MINUTES LATER HIS CELL PHONE RANG.

“That went well,” the voice said. “I was afraid that she’d shout something out.”

“I had a knife in her face,” Jekker said.

“Good move. I’ll be in touch. Remember, we’re not going to want her body found if we decide to kill her.”

Jekker nodded.

“I already have a place,” he said.

23

Day Four—June 14

Thursday Evening

THE WIND KICKED UP AFTER SUPPER and then the rain came. London and Venta wound through the side streets of Lakewood with the windshield wipers on full until they became confident that no one followed. They ended up in a dim hole-in-the-wall bar on Union, sipping bad wine and nibbling pretzels, in the booth near the restrooms, Venta’s treat.

Outside the weather pounded.

Soft country-western music played, barely audible above the storm, just enough to dampen the air.

London kept her back to the seat and one eye on the door.

“The big question we have at this point is—how do we proceed?” London said. “I have to admit, when you first told me your theory, I didn’t think we’d actually find anything to support it. I mean, face it, most law firms aren’t in the slave trade business.”

Venta cocked her head.

“Most law firms aren’t international in scope,” she said. “They don’t have the connections.”

“True, but still—”

“Having been there, I can tell you one thing,” Venta said. “It’s very lucrative. There’s a real demand for tall, blond women like me in that part of the world. Lots of men are looking for a different flavor and are willing to pay insane money to get it. There’s a lot of sick little perverts out there with deep wallets.”

London nodded.

“How sick exactly? Give me an example.”

Venta retreated in thought. A deep-seated seriousness washed over her face. Then she told a story so vivid and detailed that London felt as if she was right there.

VENTA WOKE UP NERVOUS, primarily because they hadn’t booked a single session for her yesterday, and in fact let her spend most of the day getting sun and stretching her legs outside in the courtyard. That wasn’t because she hadn’t been demanded, she had, no doubt about that.

No, it was because they wanted her well rested and in good shape for today, meaning something brutal for an important client, one who would reach deep in his pocket and would expect an equal amount in return.

They didn’t come for her until mid-morning, after she had paced back and forth in her cell for hours. They took her to a dungeon she hadn’t seen before—bigger than the others and stocked with more devices, no doubt reserved for special clients.

Unlike the prior times, they didn’t fasten her down anywhere. Five minutes after they left, an Asian man entered, fifty or so, with thinning black hair and a stern look.

He was short, incredibly short, no more than five-one or two, and thin.

Venta’s first thought was that she could take him in a fair fight. Her second thought was that she better not try. Something in his eyes was wrong, off, diseased almost.

“I have purchased you for the whole day,” he said. The words didn’t surprise her as much as the fact that he spoke English, very good English. “You will do everything I say without protest. Things are going to be bad for you, but if you resist me in any way, or if you show me even the slightest disrespect, things will be a hundred times worse. Do you understand what I just said?”

She nodded.

“Say it!” he said.

Her lower lip trembled.

“I understand,” she said.

He bound her in a standing spread-eagle position, stretched tight and gagged, with her feet poised on large air-filled balls. He felt every nook and corner of her body, twisting her nipples and playing with her, until her leg muscles lost control and her feet slipped off the balls.

She fell into a hanging position, supported only by her wrists and ankles.

She swung and wiggled as much as she could in protest, hoping against hope that the little freak had at least some measure of decency left in his soul.

Instead of letting her down he walked over to the wall and lifted a small, sharp whip off a hook.

“I think we’re warmed up now,” he said. “Let’s begin.”

LONDON WAVED HER HAND, not able to listen to any more.

“Enough,” she said.

Lightning suddenly exploded, so close that London lifted up. When she realized that the building hadn’t been hit, she took a long swallow of wine.

Then she looked at Venta.

“We know V&B is dirty,” she said. “But we still don’t have any tangible proof.”

“What about the check they offered?”

London shook her head.

“That was tendered in connection with what the law calls a settlement discussion,” she said. “That means that nothing that happened in the meeting, including the fact that they offered payment, can be used as evidence at trial. It’s excluded from admission under Rule 408.”

“Well that sucks,” Venta said.

London nodded, very true.

But she said, “The law works that way to encourage settlement discussions. If a party’s offer could be used as evidence against them, then no one would ever make an offer, meaning no cases would ever settle, meaning five times as many cases would end up going to trial.”

“So what do we do?”

London drained the rest of her wine, then got the bartender’s attention and held up two fingers.

He poured two new glasses, carried them over and set them on the table. Venta handed him a ten and told him to keep the change. He grinned as if he had just won the lottery and said thanks in a voice that meant it.

London twisted the new glass.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she said. “The thing that impresses me about the whole operation is that they have to get the woman—in this case, you—to voluntarily travel to Bangkok. Like you said, it would be too messy to try to abduct someone here in the States and then try to sneak them halfway across the world. Commercial airlines would be out of the question, meaning they’d either need private planes or some sort of water travel. Either way, there would be a thousand things that could go wrong.”

“Right,” Venta said.

“That’s the key,” London said. “They need to get the woman to go to Bangkok of her own volition. But that’s only half the battle. Once she’s there, they need her to go to the abduction site—in your case, a bar. Being a P.I., you were the perfect type of target.”

Venta nodded.

“Notice I said type of target,” London said.

Venta wrinkled her forehead and said, “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that other female investigators would be equally susceptible to the same charade,” she said. “Have you done any research to determine if other female P.I.s went to Bangkok and ended up missing?”

Venta shook her head.

Then she clinked London’s glass.

“You’re brilliant,” she said.

THEY TALKED FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR. “By the way,” Venta said at one point, “the man I’m seeing—Nick Teffinger—doesn’t know anything about any of this.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No. I’m too afraid to tell him.”

London tilted her head.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid he’ll see me as tarnished,” Venta said. “I’m going to tell him, eventually. But I need to get a more solid foundation with him first.”

“Does he know about me?” London asked.

“No. If I tell him I have a lawyer he’s going to want to know what for.”

“Understood.”

WHEN THEY FINALLY GOT UP TO LEAVE, the storm still hadn’t let up. “This is like San Francisco on steroids,” Venta said. Of course, neither of them had an umbrella. They took a deep breath, ducked out the door and ran for Venta’s car, splashing through puddles.

Something about the vehicle was wrong.

It looked too low to the ground.

Then they figured it out.

All four tires were slashed.

Venta slapped her hand on the hood.

London swallowed, pushed rain out of her eyes and said, “This is another warning. But how the hell did they know we were here? I’m positive we weren’t followed.”

Venta said, “They’re sneaky little bastards. That’s for sure.”

24

Day Four—June 14

Thursday Night

TEFFINGER SPENT THE DAY tracking down and interviewing anyone and everyone in the world who knew Tessa Blake—friends, relatives, co-workers, you name it. In the end, no one had the vaguest idea why anyone would want to abduct or harm her.

No one had heard from her.

No one knew where she could possibly be.

He drove to her apartment, searched through every square inch, again found nothing and then slumped down on the couch.

He cleared his mind and waited for something—anything—to fall out of the sky and land on him.

Nothing did.

“Damn it! Give me something!”

He got silence, only silence, inescapable silence where there should be the ordinary, everyday sounds of two young women going about their ordinary, everyday lives.

Anxiety washed over him, a dark anxiety.

He tried to shake it but couldn’t.

Time kept passing and each minute that disappeared into oblivion meant one less to find the woman before it was too late, assuming it wasn’t already too late.

Thunder crackled outside, pulling him to the window for a look. Charcoal clouds rolled in with a furious pace from the mountains; mean nasty clouds on a mission. In another ten minutes the sky would drop with a vengeance.

He called Venta.

She didn’t answer.

His stomach growled, suddenly starved.

He looked at his watch—8:12 p.m. No wonder he was so hungry. He rummaged through the refrigerator, found the makings for a sandwich, then decided that he better not. He slumped down on the couch and closed his eyes, just to rest them for a second.

He was sound asleep when his cell phone rang.

He fumbled for it.

Light no longer came through the windows.

The room was dark.

Night had come.

THE VOICE OF LEANNE SANDERS CAME THROUGH. “Do you have paper and pencil with you?” she asked. Teffinger heard rain in the background and could tell that she was in the meat of the storm, not inside a vehicle. He pictured her walking down a dark street.

He stood up, groggy, and headed to the kitchen.

“Yeah, where are you?” he asked.

“Following my target.”

“That French guy?”

“Right. He’s on foot and paying a lot of attention to a house over here in the east side of the city. My gut tells me he’s ten minutes away from making a hit. Write this address down,” she said, giving it to him.

Teffinger grabbed a pencil and scribbled the digits on the countertop.

“Can you find out who lives there and call me back?”

Teffinger paced.

“You need backup,” he said.

“No.”

“But—”

“Can you get me that name or not?”

He kicked the chair.

“Give me two minutes,” he said.

“Damn it!”

“What?”

Then the phone went dead.

“Leanne?”

No answer.

“Leanne!”

TEFFINGER RAN DOWN TO THE TUNDRA, squealed to the 6th Avenue freeway and headed east with the windshield wipers on full blast. Just as he brought the vehicle up to speed he realized that he remembered the street name but not the number.

Suddenly a vehicle in the adjacent lane shifted, a Hummer.

Teffinger felt the impact somewhere in the side bed of the truck and fought to keep from spinning out, then he put his foot to the floor.

25

Day Four—June 14

Thursday Night

JEKKER DROVE DOWN THE TWISTY MOUNTAIN road towards Denver through a dark night, smack dab in the middle of a terrible storm, with the windshield wipers swinging back and forth as fast as they could and still not able to keep the slop off. Duran Duran’s “Rio” came from the radio, loud, the way it was supposed to be. He sang when the chorus came up, barely able to hear his own voice. It reminded him of his days as a lead guitarist in a so-so rock band back in eleventh grade.

That was eternities ago, before his first kill even; the carefree days but the poor days too, the trailer-trash days.

Would he go back if he had a chance?

Good question.

Then he decided, no.

No way.

Screw poverty.

Poverty was overrated.

WHEN THE LIGHTS OF CIVILIZATION APPEARED Jekker headed straight to his favorite strip club off Santa Fe in southern Denver. The women there weren’t necessarily the hottest in the world but they were the loosest and the private-dance area was the darkest.

He had five hundred dollars in his pocket and didn’t care if he spent every penny.

Tonight he was going to chill out.

Tomorrow would be different.

Tomorrow he would kill Tessa Blake. He’d give her a choice—a bullet to the back of the head, a knife to the heart, or she could do it herself in private with a razorblade. He didn’t care and had no interest in having her suffer.