Cold Jade (3 page)

T
he Spencer home
sat high on a hill overlooking Des Moines. It was a sprawling Tudor made of stone and wood, with immaculate landscaping and a wide, expansive yard. The estate bespoke of wealth, power and influence.

In the circular driveway, two patrol cars sat with their engines idling, while two unmarked Crown Victorias were parked along the street.

The police cars bookended a black limousine that was double parked in front of a towering wooden front door that featured black, wrought iron hardware.

Inside the home, there were detectives from the Des Moines police department, FBI agents from the Bureau’s office in Omaha, Nebraska. Their office’s jurisdiction included Iowa, and several members of Senator Archibald Spencer’s team.

The Senator stood in the middle of the great room, his suit jacket off, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his sleeves rolled up.

“I goddamn know about the twenty-four-hour rule as much as you do,” he barked at the lead FBI agent who had just mentioned the need to find Rebecca within twenty-four hours. “Don’t fucking tell me about that shit. Fucking find her.”

Archibald Spencer was a man of angles. He had broad shoulders that were so perfectly square his fraternity brothers used to joke that he would make a perfect coat hanger. His thin face was hatchet-like, with broad cheekbones that narrowed to a sharply pointed chin. With his height, at least six inches over six feet, his presence was imposing, and when he wanted it to be, menacing.

The senator looked over at the couch where his wife sat.

Their family doctor had given her a dose of Valium which she’d washed down with a gulp of wine. Now, she was alternating between bouts of sobbing and dazed periods of silence.

The FBI’s hostage negotiator had arrived fifteen minutes earlier and now sat on one of the Spencer’s dining room chairs that he had turned around to face the living room.

“When do they usually call?” the Senator asked him.

“Usually within hours of the abduction,” he said. The negotiator’s name was Sherman and he spoke with a steady, even voice. “But no two abductions ever go the same way.”

“That’s fucking great,” Spencer said.

He went into the kitchen, got a glass and poured himself a stiff shot of Irish whiskey. Spencer took the drink, went into his library and shut and locked the door.

From his pocket he took a cell phone, thumbed through his contact list until he found the name he wanted.

He sank into the brown leather chair behind his immense mahogany desk. He pressed the phone icon on the screen and put it to his ear.

While it rang, he looked at the wall of photos opposite his desk. Presidents, politicians, celebrities.

None of them could help him now, the useless bastards.

Spencer knew the fucking twenty-four-hour rule, all right. That something like eighty percent of all child abductions ended with the victim killed in the first twenty-four hours. He thought he’d read that it was actually far worse. That something like seventy-five percent of abducted kids are killed within
three
hours of their capture.

For that reason, he needed someone who could work fast and smart.

Someone who was the absolute best at this sort of thing. And someone he knew personally.

A voice on the other end of the line spoke.

Spencer let out a long breath.

“Mack, it’s me,” he said.

M
ack steered
the boat into the hoist’s cradle, shifted the engine into neutral and shut it off. He caught the nearest post with his right hand to hold the boat steady and then thumbed the power button to raise the hoist.

The hoist locked into place and Mack hooked up the freshwater hose to the engine to clean out the saltwater, drained the livewells and lifted the coolers from the boat and placed them onto the dock. He clambered out of the boat onto the dock, and slid the cooler with the fish over to the cleaning shelf. He quickly filleted the tuna, rinsed everything off and fed the scraps to a pelican who had flown in, landed, and was waiting patiently in the middle of the river. Mack put the filleted tuna back in the cooler and carried the cooler to the house.

Mack’s home was quintessential Florida – a three-story structure with the first level being primarily the pool, garage, an outdoor kitchen and a sitting area. The second floor was the main living space, with a wide open lanai that offered sweeping views of the Estero River.

The outdoor areas of the first and second level were screened in and there was many a night when Mack sat on the second floor lanai, overlooking the river, with a beer in hand. He loved to listen to the river as it gently made its way out to the Gulf.

The third floor was Mack’s private sanctuary. It included his bedroom, bath, and home office. The home office was where he spent most of his time, reading various law enforcement blogs, news websites, and exchanging email with some of his former colleagues, most of whom were still with the Bureau.

Now, he went to the outdoor kitchen, rinsed the tuna again, placed it on a platter with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge.

He used the small bathroom off the pool, washed his hands, went back outside, dumped the ice from the fish cooler, and overturned it next to the steps that led to the dock.

Back on the dock, he opened the beer cooler and looked inside. He had three bottles left.

He dragged the cooler over to the simple wooden bench at the end of his dock. The dock itself was a T with the base of the T being the walkway back to the house. The bench sat on the right side of the dock, with a clear view of the river, and the sanctuary on the other side of the water.

Mack pulled one of the beers from the ice, twisted off the cap, and closed the lid of the cooler. He sat on the bench, drained half of the beer in one long pull and smacked his lips.

The river was high, but the tide had started to go back out, and Mack listened as a soft breeze stirred the palmettos behind him.

He finished the beer, grabbed another from the cooler and saw an osprey fly along the river before landing in a towering tree across from him. The tree was dead, its long branches spread out like fingers on a hand, perfect fishing spots for the osprey.

“Who are you?” a voice said.

Mack turned and saw his sister watching him from the end of the dock. She was tall and thin, and in some ways looked very much like Mack. But a much older, and much more tired version. Now, she didn’t look scared, she just seemed curious.

“Hi Janice, it’s me, Wallace. Your brother.”

Her eyes seemed to flutter as hints of recognition struggled to connect. Mack was never sure just how much registered with Janice, or how much didn’t. She suffered from Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome brought on by years of severe alcoholism. The condition, known in politically incorrect circles as ‘wet brain’ had left his sister with a collection of ever-changing psychological maladies that included memory loss, hallucinations and general confusion.

“Oh,” she said. “Why are you sitting out here?”

“I just got back from fishing. What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been painting with Adelia,” she said. Adelia was Janice’s live-in nurse, a no-nonsense woman who was as good for Mack as she was for Janice.

Mack had noticed the paint on Janice’s fingertips. It was an activity his sister enjoyed, but it was also excellent therapy. Anything to challenge the brain, make it connect its circuits. The theory being that one day, if enough connections were made, healing would take place. Janice enjoyed painting with Adelia, but the connections, and the healing, hadn’t happened yet.

Janice turned on her heel as Mack’s cell phone rang.

He slid the last beer from the cooler, and looked at the caller.

Archibald Spencer
.

R
ebecca Spencer opened
her eyes and saw a sheet of white metal. It took her a moment to realize that she was looking at the ceiling of a van. And that she was inside the van, and it was moving.

Her other senses quickly sent other messages flooding in. Her head hurt. Her mouth was horribly dry. Her body ached.

Worst of all, she couldn’t move because her hands were tied behind her back, and her feet were tied together.

The van occasionally bounced and jostled, but the movements were slight. But she could sense the momentum. The sound of an engine running at an even pitch. Rebecca guessed they were driving on a somewhat smooth, and fast surface, probably a freeway. The sense of touch came over her and she could feel the ropes binding her wrists beneath her, and the tightness of tape across her mouth.

And then fear. It came like a great wave of cold water that splashed over her soul, and shook her to the spine.

She closed her eyes as the tears came.

Rebecca saw herself in the restroom at the mall. She had been sitting on the toilet in the stall, texting her friend while she relieved herself. When she was done, she’d gone to the sink to wash her hands. She’d set her phone down, and then she’d knocked the phone through the hole in the counter that led to a wastebasket. She had cursed herself, finished drying her hands and was about to dig through the wastebasket for her phone when someone grabbed her and slapped something across her mouth.

She remembered a chemical smell.

And then there was nothing.

And now this.

Who had taken her and why?

She thought maybe it was a practical joke, but then quickly realized that no one would play a joke like this on her.

No, this was real.

Someone was taking her somewhere.

Rebecca tried to calm herself. It all had to have something to do with her father. He was a Senator and she knew that he had a lot of enemies. He had a lot of friends, too, but there had been plenty of hate mail that reached their house. Phone calls that were somehow made even though their phone number was unlisted, all with messages that in no uncertain terms expressed a severe dislike for Archibald Spencer and his policies.

But what if it wasn’t about her Dad?

She squeezed her eyes shut even harder. What if it was some kidnapper rapist who just wanted to take her somewhere and do awful things to her and kill her? Then dump her body in a ditch somewhere?

Rebecca closed her eyes and thought of church. They went pretty much every Sunday to St. Paul’s just down the street. It was a beautiful church and Rebecca enjoyed going even though sometimes she pretended to have too much homework to get out of going to Mass.

Now, she pictured the church, the priest, and the feeling of holding her mother’s hand during the ceremony. She heard the sound of the church choir singing praise.

Rebecca prayed like she had never prayed before.

And then she started crying again.

B
ernard Evans nearly gasped
.

The newest product on The Store immediately spoke to him. It was the kind of girl he always looked for as he endlessly surfed through porn sites and triple xxx videos.

A farm girl. Pale white skin. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Rosy cheeks. Solid and wholesome with meat on her bones and the kind of sweet body you could rock all night long.

And young.

So young she was probably illegal.

He laughed.
This whole thing
was about as illegal as you could get.

He couldn’t believe it. For years he’d sought out escorts, street prostitutes, strippers, and worst of all, ordinary women on dating websites just to find his farm girl.

There had always been so much disappointment. The women were either lying online, or using fake pictures, or just somehow never lived up to his expectations.

But this, this was different.

Evans instinctively knew that this girl was the real thing. An honest-to-goodness young, virginal farm girl with flawless skin and a succulence that only came from fresh air and unspoiled innocence.

Now, at long last, here she was.

With a price tag of two million dollars.

Evans smiled. Two million dollars was chump change. Especially considering what he would get for his money. A long weekend alone with this girl in a remote location where he could do whatever he wanted, with no fear of being caught and arrested. His brilliant but clueless partner, Reese Stocker, could manage the day-to-day activities of Burn while he was away.

All of his rape fantasies, his darkest dreams of screwing an innocent young girl literally to death could all come true. He would be completely alone with this girl and free to do whatever he wanted to do to her.

At this price, it was the steal of the century.

Evans was tempted to click the buy button, but he didn’t want to rush it. He stood, not an easy task considering the mega erection he was sporting, and crossed the room to refill his glass of scotch. He swirled the amber goodness around the heavy crystal glass and gulped it.

The fire from the liquor warmed his belly, and it matched the heat in his crotch.

He topped off the glass again, then sat back down in front of his computer.

The truth was, he loved this part, almost as much as the rest of it. The waiting, the tension, the possibility that one of the other “customers” would take his dream girl off the site by purchasing her, made it all so tantalizing.

Sometimes, he waited a long time.

Tonight, though, this was different.

He didn’t want to risk losing her.

Evans stared at the picture of the girl. His breath became shallow and a flood of images washed over him.

He clicked the button.

And bought her.

And then he had an orgasm that shook him to the core and nearly rocked him from his chair.