Walker (Bowen Boys) (14 page)

“I don’t know if I can or not. How will
I be able to do my job and keep all of you from being killed too? Do you have
any idea…do any of you have any idea what I’m up against? If this person finds
me and all of you, he’s not going to play around. He’s going to hurt me until I
beg him to kill me and then kill me slowly. I’ve really fucked up his plans.”

Plans that she didn’t know fully what
they were yet. She’d told him that she and her partner were going into what the
vice president was using as a meeting house. They had been there to get them
all together and take them down when Melvin was killed. The man had taken a
bullet meant for her and she’d been captured and beaten pretty badly. She had
escaped only because they hadn’t expected her to have a second gun. That was
why she’d been at home the day the Ingrams had kidnapped her. She believed they
were to kill her, but had wanted to have fun first.

His phone went off on the counter and he
wanted to ignore it. But he was on call and needed to go when needed. Picking
it up, he saw that it was indeed the hospital and he told them he’d be right
there. “I have to go. Will you be…” He laughed. “Of course you will be fine. But
when I get back, I expect you to be naked and in the bed. I want to bury myself
deep inside of you several times before morning.”

“Okay.” Her grin made him laugh again. With
a quick kiss on her nose, he grabbed up her keys and left. He thought more and more
about it being the right time to open his own practice and staying at home
more. Of course, he’d probably not get a damned thing done with her there next
to him all the time, but it would be worth it.

He frowned when he thought of Khan. He
missed his brother something horrible. He wanted to make this right between
them, have his brother see that Caitlynne wasn’t anything like Roseann had been,
but he couldn’t do that with his brother avoiding him all the time.

He decided to talk to his mom. She’d
know what to do and she’d make Khan meet with him. Not really the way he wanted
to get things going, but he had to do something. Khan and he used to be so very
close until Caitlynne. And he wasn’t giving her up.

Chapter Eleven

Jerry threw the book across the cell and
looked around for something else to throw. The mother fucking bastard had taken
the easy way out and he wished he had Garrett here right now so that he could
throw him against the wall as well. Jerry turned when someone started clapping
their hands slowly.

“You need more things to toss? I can
have it arranged so that you can have some plastic cups brought to you.” Russo
was looking at the mess as he spoke again. “You can’t have any glass, however. I
don’t want you taking the coward’s way out like your partner did.”

Jerry stiffened. He hadn’t been made
aware that Russo knew about him and Garrett, and he stretched his neck to try
and buy himself time before answering. It would be just like the man to fish
for something he had no idea about. “Partner? What partner? I’m just pissed
about being held here when you have no grounds for it. I demand that you let me
out of this hell hole so that I can resume my duties.” Russo was shaking his
head before he finished. “You have nothing on me but what that little cunt gave
you before she died.”

“McCray isn’t dead.”

That startled him. Last he heard from
Garrett was that he was sure she was dead, that the house that had gone up had
had her in it. “Good. A girl like her would be a great asset if we needed her
for anything in the future.”

Russo only laughed.

“You don’t believe I had anything to do
with her house going up, do you?”

Russo leaned back against the wall. Jerry
didn’t like the knowing look on his face any more than he did the man himself. He
tried to think what had made him look like he’d just won the lotto when he
spoke again.

“I didn’t tell you her house blew up. Nor
do you have any way of hearing about it on the news, and there aren’t any
newspapers given to you. As far as I know, you have no cell phone, and computer
time is limited as well as monitored. So I can only surmise that you have
something you shouldn’t.” He nodded to his left and suddenly five armed men
were there. “These nice gentlemen are going to toss your cell. And you
personally if they don’t find anything in here. I certainly hope for your sake
they don’t.”

As he walked away the men opened the
cell door and one of them ordered him to strip. He nearly refused, but noticed
that the man had his fingers on the trigger and Jerry started to undo his tie. He
was going to make them all pay for this. Just as soon as he was out of here.

He was led, naked, to another cell. There
was nothing in the room but a cot with a thin mattress on it and a blue blanket,
as well as a commode that hung on the wall. He looked around and then at the
man who still held the gun to his head.

“I can’t stay here. This is a prison
cell.” The man indicated that he sit on the bed, which he did. “I demand that
you take me back to my original cell this minute. You aren’t going to find
anything in there that you didn’t—”

“Found his stash.”

Jerry looked up at one of the other men
who had a large box in his hand. “An iPad, cell phone, and a laptop. There are
also a few things that look like they might be video recordings. I’ll put them
with the other things.”

As the gunman backed out of the cell
Jerry realized this was his new digs. He reached over and pulled the blanket, a
wool one that had seen better days, to cover his body. He was going to kill
that McCray girl as soon as he killed off Russo.

Jerry knew that at that moment his
chances of getting out of this cell, or any cell for that matter, were getting
pretty slim. He didn’t doubt that when they saw the videos they were going to
know where he’d gotten them, and that little pisser Nestor was going to be in
the cell next to him. He’d been bringing him the information as well as the
equipment needed to see beyond the four walls since he’d been put in the other
cell so long ago.

He began making a mental list. There
were things he knew that no one else knew, and when he’d received the call an
hour ago, the woman would be dead within a few days anyway. The one thing that
Garrett had done right before he’d killed himself was contact another piece of
the puzzle. He’d made arrangements to have her killed, as well as the president.
The man may have been a coward, but he had been a smart one.

McCray held the key to him being here. She
had information that was going to have him sentenced to certain death by firing
squad rather than a long prison sentence. He was sure he knew what it was, but he
wasn’t positive. She was too untrusting to share that information with Garrett.

She knew or had something that put him
there when he’d had his family killed. In fact, he’d been the one who had drugged
them all and set fire to the house they were in, burning them alive. If he was
really down he’d simply remember their screams. All of them from his parents to
his grandparents, as well as his younger siblings. Jerry had wanted something
badly enough to not want them to tell anyone they were related, not to mention
all the dirt they had on him.

Jerry lay down on the cot and didn’t
move when a box was shoved into the room with him. The same man held a gun on
him when the door had been opened and he stood watching him as the box was
pushed in. When they were both gone, he got up to see what it was.

Books that he’d never read, but had
asked for because he could, a single plastic glass that had a small crack in
it, toilet paper, a small hand towel that was marked with a number on it, and
last but not least, his iPad. It was shattered and all the insides were stripped
out. He simply laid it on the floor and tried not to think about what had been
on it as well.

There was nothing of use to him here. Not
if he didn’t count the necessities. He wondered if he’d get his clothes when he
noticed the orange jumpsuit in the bottom of the box. The number on it matched
the one on the tiny towel. He thought about refusing to wear it, but thought it
would be better than being naked. He had one more thing that they hadn’t found
and reached to the mattress he’d been sitting on to pull it out. Nestor had
told him the cell phone was there months ago, just in case. He told him that
he’d hidden one in each cell inside the mattress so that if he ever had to move,
he’d be covered. Jerry took it out and turned it on. Time to make things
happen.

~~~

Walker opened the door a little after
midnight. He’d been gone for nearly six hours and he wasn’t really surprised to
see Caitlynne still sitting at the table working. She looked up at him when he
cleared his throat.

“There’s something here I can’t find. Something
that connects the dots that I’m not seeing.”

He looked at the large board that was
covered from top to bottom, then back at the table. She had three computers
running something and a small device hanging out of each one. There were papers
everywhere, including the counter a few feet away. He didn’t see any plates, only
a single glass that had water, but no ice. He would bet she’d not touched it
since he left.

“I’m hungry, are you?”

She nodded absently.

“Okay. I need to move some of these
things. Will that be alright?”

She didn’t answer, but got up to move
them to the already overflowing table. She sat back down and looked at the computers
again. Smiling, he decided that he’d distract her after he fed her.

He made them a simple sandwich of ham
and cheese. She picked off the lettuce and tomato and ate it nearly in three
bites. When she eyed his sandwich he handed it to her, made himself another one,
and gave her a glass of tea. She drank it down in one drink. She was going to
be hard to keep filled if this was any indication. He finished his dinner and
watched her for a few minutes. When she looked up, he smiled.

“You were supposed to be waiting for me
in our room.” She looked around as if seeing what she’d been doing for the
first time. “You’ve been too wrapped up in this to remember, I understand.”

“You’ve only been gone what…thirty
minutes, forty-five? I only just got a good start on this and now you’re back. I
thought I’d have more time.”

“I’ve been gone for six hours, love, and
you probably haven’t moved a bit, have you?” She started to protest, but looked
out the window over the sink. “How about we go to bed and maybe after you sleep,
you’ll find your dots.”

“I can’t let him harm you guys. It’s not
right that he can do whatever he wants to me, but I know you guys had nothing
to do with any of this.”

He nodded and helped her stand.

“You still want to fuck me?”

He laughed. “No. I want to make love to
you. Fucking is for strangers. I want to make love to you.”

“It’s the same thing, Walker. The end
result it exactly the same.”

He picked her up and started to the
stairs.

“I’m quite capable of walking on my own,
you know. Besides, I should go back to that hotel and stay there. It would be a
lot safer if I—”

“You mention leaving me again and I
swear I will beat your ass. The sooner you get it through your thick skull
you’re mine, the better off things are going to be.” He opened the door to his
room, realizing that this was the first time she’d been in here. “If you want
to change anything, I don’t care.”

She walked around the room when he put
her down.

Walker tried to see the room through her
eyes. It was large and full of windows. He loved the outdoors and in the deep
of summer, he would open them all and let the earth in. There were times when
he would sleep out on the large second floor deck he’d had put on just for that
reason.

His bed was huge to accommodate his
large frame. Walker was a little over six-foot-five and most mattresses were
just too small for him. He was glad that Caitlynne was tall. He wasn’t sure
what he’d have done of if she’d been small.

“It smells like you do.” He wondered
what she meant when she continued. “I mean very earthy, I guess. Sort of what
you’d think of if you camped outside in the summer. I guess that’s about right,
huh?”

“I smell like that to you as you smell
like something similar to me. We have a unique scent to each other that no one
else can smell.” He sat on the bed as she moved around the room. When she
picked up a picture he laughed and told her who they were. “It’s all of us when
we went to the Smoky Mountains when we were kids. Reed is the baby and in that
picture he’s about five. Monster of a kid too.”

“I like most of your brothers.” She
turned to look at him. “Now what?”

He wanted to tell her to come to him,
but was sure that wasn’t what she meant. “We can start over if you want. The
end result will be the same, but it might make it easier on you. I want you. Desperately,
but I won’t force you into anything. My cat would like a taste of you, mostly
to bind with you, but I can control him.”

“Taste as in bite me?” He nodded. “I
don’t know about all that. That part of you has very sharp teeth and I’m
reasonably sure he had big claws too.”