The TAKEN! Series - Books 9-12 (Taken! Box Set Book 3) Read online

  She broke eye contact and looked down at the floor.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I would die before I would ever hurt you. I thought you knew that.”

  Dr. Harven smiled.

  “Nice words, but meaningless, you can’t be trusted, that secret room proved that. It opened her eyes at last.”

  “It wasn’t a secret room, it was a—Nevermind. Just tell me what the hell is happening.”

  “It’s very simple. Your old life has ended, from now on, you’ll be my guest.”

  “You expect to keep me locked in here for the rest of my life, or are you going to kill me?”

  “No one will be harming you; this is just a way station. Your ultimate new home will be in a far more remote location. This is really for the best. You’ll never have to be afraid of hurting anyone ever again, because you’ll never get the chance.”

  “Jessica, speak to me. Why are you doing this?”

  Dr. Harven took Jessica’s elbow and began guiding her away.

  “There’s no point in prolonging this, Dr. White. It’s best if you don’t look back.”

  “Jessica!”

  No answer, and then the sound of the door closing,

  He sat back on the bed, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “This doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t do this.”

  The kid laughed.

  “Face it dude; she’s done with you. You must have lied one too many times.”

  The door opened again, but this time it was Victor, along with a young woman pushing a metal cart. Before they even reached him, he could smell the food.

  The kid smiled at the girl.

  “Hey there, Karen.”

  “Hi Jace.”

  “Damn, you are lookin’ good enough to eat.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Victor shouted. “She doesn’t need you hitting on her.”

  Jace smiled and blew Victor a kiss.

  “Who says I was talking to her, sexy?”

  Karen giggled as she slid a tray of food into the cell. It was a meal of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and corn, on the side was a bowl of chocolate pudding.

  Karen gestured at the different drinks on the cart. There was milk, ice tea, and soda.

  “What would you like to drink, Jace?”

  “Seven & seven, but I’ll settle for a can of coke.”

  The woman handed Jace his soda through the bars and, as she did so, she smiled and touched his hand. Afterwards, she pushed the cart to the front of his cage and gazed in at him in curiosity, her eyes lingering where the torn shirt exposed his chest.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  She smiled. “The food’s good. I cooked it myself.”

  Victor rolled the cart away.

  “He said he doesn’t want any, so the hell with him, I’ll eat it.”

  Jace spoke with a mouthful of food.

  “Like you ain’t fat enough, at least lay off the pudding, Victor.”

  “Shut up jerk,” Victor said, and then he and Karen left the cells.

  When Victor and Karen had gone, he asked Jace a question.

  “How many times a day do they feed you?”

  “Three, and no lying, the food’s damn good.”

  “Do they always come at the same time?”

  “They ain’t all OCD about it, but it’s usually the same time, why?”

  “Is it always the same woman, and does she always have an escort?”

  Jace smiled, stood, and moved closer, so he could whisper.

  “There’s no need to plan a break-out. Karen is going to help me escape.”

  “When?” he whispered back,

  “Tomorrow night, the doc is leaving the ranch and taking one of the guards with him.”

  “Night time is no good. It’ll be pitch black out there and we’ll be the only thing on the road.”

  Jace waved off his words.

  “All right then, stay your ass here, no one invited you along anyway.”

  He watched as the kid went back to eating, and then studied his new surroundings. When he looked up, a plan of escape began to form in his mind.

  ***

  With traces of the drug still in his system, he slept well and only awoke when Victor and Karen arrived with breakfast.

  This time he ate, and washed the bacon and eggs down with two cartons of milk. He would need the food for energy to make his escape.

  By mid-morning, he grew bored and decided to exercise. He removed the torn shirt, got down on the floor, and began doing push-ups. Jace spotted him and began doing the same on the other side of the bars. When they had both done more than a hundred repetitions, Jace laughed.

  “Hell, you’re in good shape for a guy your age.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Old as shit, like thirty or something,”

  He smiled and continued doing push-ups, and Jace kept pace with him.

  “I’ve done over a thousand in a row, how many can you do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t count.”

  “Bullshit, everybody counts,”

  More minutes passed with both men going up and down like well-timed pistons, but then he rose from the floor and began to stretch.

  “Next time we count and the first one to quit loses,” Jace said.

  “Loses what?”

  Jace shrugged.

  “I don’t know, just...loses,”

  He went into the bathroom and washed up before changing his clothes. He then sat on the edge of the bed and waited, listening.

  Jace tried to engage him in conversation, but when he didn’t respond, he gave him the finger, then lit up a cigarette and began playing solitaire.

  The instant he heard a noise at the door, he got up, stood on the bed, then, leapt up and ripped the long pull chain from the overhead light. By the time Karen pushed the cart through the door, he was standing by the front bars of the room and ready to attempt escape.

  Jace was staring at him, but said nothing, and then flirted with Karen as he always did. When it was his turn to receive food, he refused to move back from the bars, and Victor threatened him by holding up a Taser.

  “Back up or I’ll give you a taste of this.”

  “Leave him alone, tubby,” Jace said.

  Victor turned towards Jace and scowled, and that’s when he made his move. He reached through the bars and looped the pull chain around Victor’s neck, and then yanked him backwards against the bars. Victor bent the arm holding the Taser and tried shooting behind him. When the twin prongs missed their mark, Victor dropped the weapon and began frantically digging at his throat, as his face turned crimson.

  He lessened the pressure on the chain slightly and whispered in Victor’s ear.

  “Give me the key card.”

  Victor fumbled at his pocket and came up with the card.

  “Here, don’t kill me,”

  He grabbed the card, held the chain in one hand, and reached outside the cell to swipe the card.

  A clicking sound came from the door and he let Victor go and pushed it open, then, he swiped the lock on Jace’s cell.

  As Victor sat on the floor getting his breath back, Karen stood in the corner looking fearful.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said.

  “I won’t. How do we get out of here?”

  She pointed to the door at the end of the hall.

  “There’s an elevator and stairs, they both go up to the house.”

  “Is my wife still here?”

  “No, she left with Dr. Harven hours ago.”

  Victor pointed at the cameras on the ceiling.

  “You won’t get away. They’ve seen everything.”

  “He’s right, man, we gotta get going or they’ll be all over our asses,” Jace said.

  Victor’s only weapon seemed to have been the Taser, which he carried in a holster on his belt, but when he checked his pockets, he found the knife they had taken from his boot.

  Jace k
issed Karen and then the three of them headed for the door.

  Victor called to him.

  “Don’t kill anyone. No one here was going to hurt you; it’s why we don’t carry guns. We were just keeping you locked up for your own good.”

  They left the cell area and went into the hallway. He had expected to hear footsteps on the stairs, but the hall was quiet. He took Karen by the arm.

  “How many guards?”

  “Just Victor and two others,”

  “They must keep guns somewhere, where are they?”

  “Dr. Harven keeps a .38 in his desk, but other than that there’s just the shotgun. That’s kept in the security office.”

  “Take us there.”

  They went up the stairs without meeting resistance and he began to feel uneasy. Everything was going too well.

  The stairway led to a hallway off the kitchen, and as they stepped into the hall, one of the security guards walked towards them carrying a tray of food.

  The man cried, “Shit!” as he dropped the tray and reached for his Taser, but Jace was on him in a flash and tackled the man to the floor.

  “What do we do with him?” Jace said.

  “Use the Taser,”

  “No! No!” the man cried, and then Jace shocked him into silence.

  Karen pointed down the hall.

  “The security office is this way.”

  Once they reached the office, he didn’t bother with the keycard, but kicked the door in. The door should have been reinforced, but was just a regular door and it flew inward and broke away from its top hinge.

  The last of the guards had been asleep in his chair; he awoke with a start when they burst into the room.

  “What the hell?”

  He walked over and placed the tip of his knife under the man’s chin, as Jace removed his Taser.

  “Where do you keep the guns?”

  The man’s eyes shifted to the left and he spotted a sawed-off shotgun leaning against a file cabinet.

  “Where are the rest of the guns?”

  “That, that, that’s it, just the shotgun, but it’s loaded, both barrels,”

  He let the guard go.

  “Shock him, Jace.”

  The guard tried to run, but Jace hit him with the Taser and he fell to the floor.

  He picked up the shotgun and checked it. It appeared to have been kept clean and was loaded as the guard said.

  There were keys hanging on a pegboard, and he grabbed the set that belonged to the jeep he had ridden to the house in, from the airfield.

  Karen pointed at the keys.

  “That jeep is parked out front, but Jace and I will take my car. I’m parked out back.”

  He nodded, said goodbye, and headed down the hall to the front door, while thinking again that everything had gone so easy.

  That’s when Harven’s granddaughter, Cindy, stepped out of the doctor’s office and pointed a loaded .38 at his face.

  The girl was stricken with fear as she pointed the gun at him.

  “Put the gun down, mister... please?” she said in a high voice.

  “If you pull that trigger you’ll kill me,” he said, and took a step towards her.

  Cindy squinted in anticipation of the blast and then pulled the trigger.

  The bullet went by near enough to his head that he actually heard it.

  “I’ll shoot you,” the girl said, and now the gun was aimed at his chest. If she fired again, she wouldn’t miss.

  He had to get past her and he had to do it soon. The three guards would regroup and possibly call in reinforcements.

  The front door was a few yards past the girl, and he could see the jeep sitting there, once he got by her, he would be home free. He had both barrels of the shotgun aimed at her legs, and for a moment, he nearly pulled the trigger, hoping to wound her. But the girl was small, petite, and the blast would be massive. He realized that by pulling the trigger he wouldn’t be wounding her, he would be killing her, she’d bleed out in no time.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, as he slid his front foot towards her.

  Cindy squinted again, and he knew she was preparing to shoot.

  “I’m putting it down,” he said, and leaned the shotgun against the wall. He had no choice. It was kill or be killed if he wanted to escape, and he wasn’t going to kill a guiltless child.

  As he raised his hands in surrender, a smile lit Cindy’s face.

  “Congratulations,”

  A moment later, Jessica walked out of the office with Dr. Harven, as Jace and Karen appeared behind him in the hallway.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said.

  “The last two days have been a test, sir, and I’m happy to say that you’ve passed.” Harven said.

  “A test?”

  “Yes, everything led up to this moment, this choice. If you wanted to escape, you would have had to be willing to murder Miss Simmons, Cindy, someone you believed to be an innocent.”

  “Miss Simmons? She’s not really your granddaughter?”

  “No, just a talented actress and sharpshooter,”

  He looked at Cindy again. She was done pretending now and he could see that she wasn’t quite as young or innocent as he had thought, not a girl at all, but a woman.

  “Why go through all this?”

  “I had to know what you were capable of, whether or not you could kill an innocent, particularly a young female. By refusing to fire that gun, you told us that you weren’t capable of it, and that you wouldn’t do it even to avoid capture and captivity.”

  He looked down at the shotgun.

  “What’s it really loaded with?”

  “The shells contain confetti, it stings, but it doesn’t really hurt,” Cindy said.

  “You’ve tested other people like this?”

  “Many, including Jace,” Harven said. “His solution to the problem was... unique.”

  He turned and looked at Jace.

  “What did you do?”

  “I distracted her by dropping my drawers. When she got a look at little Jace she forgot all about that gun and I yanked it out of her hand.”

  Cindy let out a little cough, as her face reddened, and for a moment she looked like a girl again.

  Jessica had been staring at him without saying a word, but her face showed a mixture of pride and relief, and she walked up to him and put her arms around his neck as she stretched up to kiss him.

  “I knew you wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “Then why do all this?”

  “After finding that room... I began to doubt you. I had to know, I had to know if I could really trust you, and now I do.”

  He gazed down at her with cold eyes and then slid her arms off from around his neck.

  “Trust goes both ways,” he said, and then headed for the front door.

  Victor appeared from around a corner and held out his hand.

  “You can leave, but the jeep stays here. Give me the keys.”

  He hit Victor in the stomach with a right that was so powerful it lifted the man off his feet and dropped him on his knees, then, he stepped past him and out the door, as behind him, Jessica called for him to stop, to come back, to talk.

  He ignored her pleas to stay and drove off in the jeep. In the rearview mirror, he could see her standing alone, watching him, and for a second he nearly turned back around, but in the end, he kept driving.

  Eighty miles later, he came to a town of some size and left the jeep parked at a strip mall with the keys lying under the floor mat. He then walked over to a bar and began drinking.

  By nightfall, the bar had grown busy with after work revelers and he watched them dance, laugh, and flirt with each other, as his heart grew ever colder.

  He’d been sitting at a small corner table for hours, nursing whiskey after whiskey, when the woman approached him.

  She was dressed in jeans that hugged her shapely body, and her turquoise blouse gapped, revealing a hint of enticing cleavage. Her long raven hair hung
loosely about her shoulders, and her green eyes washed over him with undisguised interest.

  She raised a booted foot and placed it on the chair between his legs, and then leaned over, thus enhancing the view down her blouse.

  “Hello there, Big Boy, fancy meeting you here.”

  Her name was Blue Steele.

  CHAPTER 4

  He sent Blue a half-smile and gestured at the table’s other chair.

  “Jessica asked you to find me?”

  “She did and I have, now tell me, what’s the story?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said that you two were going through a ‘rough patch.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” he said.

  “She’s worried about you. Why don’t you give her a call?”

  “I can’t. I don’t have my phone or my wallet.”

  “What do you have?”

  “A knife,”

  “Figures,”

  They said nothing more for nearly a minute, but then something occurred to Blue.

  “If you don’t have your wallet, how are you paying for your drinks?”

  “There was money in the cup holder of the jeep I borrowed.”

  “Borrowed?”

  “The person I took it from had it coming.”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “I didn’t count, am I the only one who doesn’t count things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nevermind,”

  Blue stood up and offered her hand.

  “Come on, you’re taking me to dinner.”

  “I spent all my money on whiskey.”

  “Then I’ll buy, but you need to eat something,”

  He stared up at her and said nothing.

  “Please?” she said, “I’ll buy you dessert,”

  He didn’t take her hand, but he did get up, and soon they were outside.

  Blue pointed across the street to a chain hotel. The sign outside boasted that they had a steak house inside.

  “We’ll eat there.”

  They walked over, through the lobby, and got a table by a window. After the waiter took their drink orders, Blue pointed to a corner of the restaurant, where there was a payphone, and then slid several quarters towards him.

  “Call Jessica, let her know you’re safe.”

  “No.”

  Blue sat back in her seat.

  “What the hell did she do to you? Was she cheating?”

  “It’s not that, and I don’t want to talk about it. She shouldn’t have involved you, you or anyone else.”