Jack Stone - Deadly Revenge (14 page)

Twenty-Eight.

The
re was a man lying on the cold hard ground. Lying at the foot of the staircase that led up to the back door of The Cage. He was sprawled on his back, with one leg twisted beneath his body, and his arms flung out wide. He was lying in blood that was pooling from around his head.

Stone recognized the man. It was the guy who had let him through the back door of the club – the guy who had so casually fondled the blonde submissive woman in the corridor.

Stone knelt beside the man. Clutched at his wrist and felt a feathery irregular pulse. The man’s eyes were closed. He was barely breathing.

Stone pulled back one of the man’s eyelids. The eye beneath was glazed and unfocussed. Then, suddenly, he saw the flashing red and blue lights of a police car bouncing off the narrow walls of the alley and a moment later he heard a car screeching to a ragged stop somewhere out of sight. He heard doors slamming, the sounds of running footsteps and he got to his feet and started up the stairs.

The two cops came into the alley at a full run. They were carrying weapons. One of the policemen had a pistol thrust out in front of him as he came around the corner and cleared the area of risks. The second guy was close behind him, running with a shotgun held high across his chest.

The cops saw the guy on the ground. Then saw movement and glanced up. Stone was half way up the stairs.

“No visible wound,” Stone said. “I think he fell from the top of the staircase. He still has a pulse.”

The cop holding the shotgun ducked his head to his shirt collar and spoke urgently into a small radio receiver. His partner holstered his pistol and went down onto his knee. He did the same thing Stone had done – snatched at the guy’s wrist and checked for a pulse.

Stone kept climbing the stairs, taking them two-at-a-time, driving himself onward, pushing off the handrail, eyes on the door at the top of the landing.

The door was open. Stone reached the top of the stairs and burst straight into the narrow corridor beyond. He started to run. Open doors flashed past. He didn’t check any of them. He ran on until he saw the concealed panel at the end of the passage. It was open too.

Stone lunged into the room.

He saw the card table, lit by the low chandelier. He saw the three submissive women cowering in a dark shadowed corner. He saw the Dom, sitting at the table, his palms laid flat on the green baize.
The man’s face was pale, but his lips were curled back into a vicious snarl and the expression on his face was one of smoldering hatred and barely suppressed malevolence.

And
then he saw Celia, standing across the table. She was turned to face Stone. Her blouse had been ripped open. Stone could see the lace cups of her bra and the heaving soft flesh of her breasts. He could see the wild, dreadful look in her eyes. And he could see the barrel of the gun Celia was holding.

It was pointed straight at him.

Twenty-Nine.

“Stone.”

“Celia. Are you okay?”

She nodded, but her hands were shaking like she was feverish. She wheeled around until the gun was pointed back at The Dom.

“I thought you were him,” Celia said over her shoulder.

“Him?”

“The guy on the door.”

Stone shook his head. He walked
carefully around the wall of the room until Celia could see him without taking the gun from The Dom. “He’s down in the alley,” Stone said. “He’s in a bad way. The police are with him.”

Celia nodded. Her lips were quivering. “He thought I was you,” she said. “He opened the door when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. But when he saw it wasn’t you, we struggled.” She looked down at where her blouse had been ripped. “We fought,” she said. “And he went over the railing. I didn’t know how badly he was hurt.”

“He’ll live,” Stone said.

Celia nodded. Swallowed nervously. Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t stop them. The gun felt heavy in her grip. She felt the sting of tears and her vision began to swim. She took one hand off the gun to cuff at her eyes, and the
weapon wavered.

She heard the Dom hiss. One of the girls in the corner began to sob.

Stone took a step closer to Celia, his hands raised. He was against the wall opposite the card table, approaching Celia from her left. Her eyes darted to him, but the gun stayed on the Dom.

“Celia, it’s over,” Stone said calmly. “Put the gun down. You don’t want to do this.”

She sobbed. It was a painful choking sound wrenched from the back of her throat, filled with bitterness and frustration.

“He killed Katrina,” Celia said. “I know he did. I told you I wanted deadly revenge, Stone.
An eye for an eye. Well this is it.”

Stone took another step closer. Celia’s expression became wary. Her eyes darted to him with hectic uncertainty.

“Katrina is not dead,” Stone said. “She’s alive.”

Celia froze. Her head turned. She stared at Stone
, and for a moment the gun dipped down to her side.

“You’re lying.”

“No. I’m not,” Stone said. “Katrina is alive. I have just seen her. I’ve just spoken to her.”

“Where?” Celia’s eyes were wide, confused.

“The police have her,” Stone said. “She’s in a bad way. She’s been badly injured – but she is alive. And she will recover.” Stone took another step closer. He was just a few feet away.

Celia’s head snapped back to the Dom. The gun came up again, this time straight and level. “I don’t believe you!”

Stone lowered his hands. Lowered his voice. Took all the strain and tension from it and just stared at Celia for a long moment. “I’m not lying,” Stone said. “And if you kill this man it will be murder – and you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life. Katrina has been badly hurt. Both her legs have been broken and she hand some internal injuries. She needs you now, Celia. Don’t make a mistake that will ruin both your lives.”

Celia wavered. The gun came back down to her side. She half-turned to Stone and tried to read his eyes.

“The police told you she was dead,” Celia said softly.

Stone nodded. “To protect her,” Stone said. “Katrina is giving evidence against the Dom. She is testifying. The police let me think Katrina was dead to keep her safe.”

Celia blinked. The gun came up, aimed at the Dom, and then wavered, as though she just didn’t have the energy or the will to hold it there. She felt her legs begin to tremble. She felt the breath catch in her throat and then release in a long weary exhalation of relief. She sagged. Stone lunged for her. Caught her before she fell. Took hold of her and the gun at the same time. Cradled Celia in his arms and pulled her close to him. She began to sob.

“Take the girls downstairs,”
Stone said. His voice was urgent now. “And take the gun. There are cops down in the alley. Maybe paramedics by now too. Give the cops your statement. Tell them everything. Take your time. I want you to keep them busy for me.”

Celia looked up into Stone’s face.
She was crying softly, and all the tension had gone from her body so that she was soft in his arms. “For how long?”

Stone looked across the card table at the Dom’s hard tensed face. “Five minutes,” Stone said, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice. “That’s all I want.”

Celia nodded. She drew away from Stone and turned to the three submissive women who were still clinging to each other in the corner of the room.

They edged
fearfully around the table towards where Celia and Stone stood. Stone peeled off the jacket he was wearing. “After I’m done with the Dom, I’ll take you to Katrina.”

Thirty.

It was quiet.

Stone stared across the room at the Dom.

“Get up,” Stone said, and his voice crackled like a bushfire.

The Dom raised one brow in a pantomime of arrogant surprise, but his eyes were hard black little chips that glittered with malice. “And what if I don’t?”

“I’m still going to hurt you,” Stone said. “I’m still going to tear you apart. Your only chance of escape is to get past me. You can’t go out the back way – it’s crawling with cops. Your last hope for freedom is to get out through the front door of the club.”

The Dom stood. Stepped around the edge of the table.

The two men
faced each other. They were about the same age – both tall men, but different in every other way.

Stone was big and muscled across the shoulders and chest, his body fined down narrow in the waist.
The summer sun had browned his skin and the lines of his features were all sharp hard angles.

The Dom’s body was heavier, paunchy from indulgence and a lifestyle of excess. The weight across his upper body lacked muscle and there was a soft plumpness that filled out the silk of his shirt so that his whole bodyline was vaguely blurred. There were
limp little pouches of skin around his jaw and eyes. He stared at Stone and his fists were clenched, his body racked tight.

“You want to know about your sister?”

Stone nodded. “Last time I asked you and showed you her photo, you said you couldn’t help me,” Stone said. “You lied.” His voice was pitched low but it shook with fury.

The Dom said nothing, but his eyes narrowed.

“Katrina Walker said you had her captive in one of your rooms. She said you kept her for a couple of weeks. She said it was last year sometime. She said you sent her back to the Animal Trainer.”

The Dom stared, his expression blank, but
Stone could see turmoil and a flurry of cunning calculations going on behind the man’s eyes. He glanced away and then back at Stone, and in that flicker of a moment, his expression somehow became reptilian. Snake-like.

“Let me go,” The Dom said. “And I’ll tell you everything.”

Stone shook his head. “The only way you are leaving this room is on a stretcher,” he said. “The only question left is whether the stretcher you are on goes to a hospital or a morgue.”

The Dom’s tone suddenly became conciliatory. “Look, Stone. I didn’t harm your sister. I barely remember her. I took care of her for a couple of weeks…”

Stone held up his hand. “Not yet,” he said. “Don’t tell me yet. Because I want to beat it out of you. I want you to understand just a small fraction of the pain you have put every woman through. You’re filth. You have traded in the lives and bodies of young women like my sister, and you have become rich off their misery and humiliation. Now you’re going to get a taste of their pain.”

The Dom raised his hands in a defensive gesture. His eyes were wild with panic. He could see the dangerous glare in Stone’s eyes and the rock-steady menace in his voice. He got his hands as high as his shoulder before Stone’s first punch smashed into the man’s jaw, hurling the Dom backwards. He was thrown back over the table. One of the timber legs shattered under the weight of his body. The table splintered to the ground and the Dom fell with it. He lay sprawled on his back for a moment, stunned and dazed.

Then Stone went after him.

He reached down and grabbed the Dom’s
shirtfront. The man scrabbled for a weapon. His hand found the heavy glass ashtray and he swung it round-armed at the side of Stone’s head. The glass shattered and Stone lurched sideways. His ears were ringing, and there was a flash of white-hot pain. He felt blood trickling down from his ear and from a gash in his scalp. He reached out for the back of a chair to steady himself.

The Dom scrabbled to his feet. He stumbled over the broken pieces of the table. Picked up one of the thick table legs and swung it at Stone’s hunched back like a baseball bat.

Stone saw the blow coming at the very last instant. He rolled his shoulders, ducked his head, and lunged toward the Dom. The table leg came down in a vicious arc, but Stone’s sudden move had brought him inside the circle of the heavy timber. It smashed against the back of the chair – and then the full weight of Stone’s body was crashing into him, like a heavy hit from a linebacker.

The two men went to the ground together, Stone’s weight crushing the air from the Dom’s lungs in an explosive gasp. Blood from Stone’s head spattered the Dom’s face and shirt and flung d
roplets into the carpet. Stone bunched his fist and cocked it like a hammer beside his bleeding ear. His fist was red and slick with his own blood. He drove a punch into the Dom’s face but his weight was badly distributed and the Dom was writhing beneath him. The blow glanced off the Dom’s forehead.

The Dom grunted. Stone punched him again – and this time the full force of his fist and the weight of his body was behind the blow. The punch split the man’s lips open
; mashed bone and flesh and teeth all together into a pulp. The Dom howled – a sound of pure pain. His head snapped sideways and there was a gush of bright red blood across the floor.

Stone heaved the man to his feet.

The Dom was limp – like a life-sized rag doll. His neck and shirt were awash with his blood. Stone took a double-fist of the man’s shirt and heaved him bodily against the nearest wall. The Dom slumped. His body sagged. He began to slide down, buckling at the knees and folding forward. Stone had just enough time to line himself up. He kicked out hard, lifting his foot into the man’s face as he was slumping towards the ground. Stone’s boot caught him under the chin and the Dom’s head smacked back against the wall with the sound of a vicious crack. His eyes rolled up and his head lolled heavily on his shoulders.

He went down hard and didn’t get up again.

Stone wiped away the blood from his face. It was spilling into his eyes, pulsing down from the wound in his scalp in runnels and then dripping from the line of his jaw onto his t-shirt.

He crouched beside the Dom. The man was dazed, his eyes glazed and bleary
. Stone took a handful of his hair and smashed his head back against the wall.

“Talk you son-of-a-bitch!” Stone hissed. “Tell me what you know about my sister, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

The Dom said nothing. Stone bounced his head off the wall again and the Dom groaned weakly.

“Talk!” Stone’s anger flared. There was a growing bloom of murderous rage burning behind his eyes. He snarled at the Dom and raised his blood-covered fist.

“Talk!”

The Dom groaned. Blood was pulsing from his shattered mouth. “I
didn’t own your sister,” the Dom’s voice was reedy with pain. “She was dropped off here. Picked up a couple of weeks later. She was in transit…” he choked off the words and spat bloodily onto the ground.

“Who?” Stone hissed, and his face was twisted with his fury. “Who dropped her off? Who pic
ked her up? Where was she going? Who owned her?”

The Dom shook his head. “I took her as a favor,” the Dom said
weakly “Made a little money while she was here, that’s all. I swear.”

Stone crashed the man’s head back against the wall again.

“Not good enough.”

The Dom’s eyes were filled with hateful tears of pain. He wheezed
and tried to feel the inside of his mouth with his tongue. Stone clamped his big hand tight around the man’s throat and began to squeeze the life out of him.

The Dom’s eyes bulged in terror. He could feel the crush of Stone’s fingers pressing and constricting. He felt a sudden surge of fear and panic and he began to flail his hands uselessly. Stone slapped them away. Kept squeezing.

“Big guy….” The Dom gasped. “No names…” His legs began to thrash, and his heels began beating like a mad drum on the carpet. “A guy with a southern accent. Drove a small panel truck. A Ford…”

Stone squeezed once more. He could sense the knuckles in his hand whiteni
ng from the force of his grip. The Dom gasped. Began to choke on the blood in his mouth. But he said nothing more.

Stone let him go. Got to his feet and reeled away. Stood over the man, breathing hard, flexing and clenching his fists, forcing the red mist of rage from his eyes.

Susan had been here. But she had never been the Dom’s property. The Cage had been just a holding place for his sister for a couple of weeks. Stone didn’t know why, or where she had been taken. It was another dead end.

He
walked away. Walked back down the passage and out into the cool night air, his steps heavy, weighed down by a kind of lonely sadness and frustration.

There was a woman paramedic standing beside an ambulance down in the alley. Her and her partner were loading a steel stretcher into the back of the vehicle. The guy Stone had seen at the bottom of the stairs was strapped to the gurney and the woman was holding a plastic fluid bag. She took a look at Stone’s bloody face as he came down the stairs.

The paramedics wanted to shave half of Stone’s head to stitch the gash in his scalp. Stone looked at the woman like she was mad. He compromised. Let her bind his forehead with a swath of bandages and then swallowed a handful of pain tablets.

Celia was waiting for him. She was standing, frail and small and fragile, lit by the flashing lights of the ambulance. She was standing
alone by a steel-sided trash bin, hunched inside a heavy cop’s jacket. She looked up at him and her face was stricken with concern and turmoil.

Stone put his arms around her. She collapsed within the strength of his embrace. “Come on,” Stone said
gently. “It’s over. I’ll take you to see Katrina.”