Anonymous Caller (Chapter 7)
At her desk in the FBI office, Karen Maura read the short e-mail for the fifth time.
“Meet me in the coffee shop across the street at noon,” it read. “Come alone. -Rob.”
She’d been so careful. She’d forwarded her phone to a junior agent, with strict instructions not to let any strange male callers through. When she got home at night, she drove past her building twice before parking, to make sure he wasn’t waiting on the street. It hadn’t occurred to her to worry about e-mail.
But there it was, as irresistible as any spoken command. She checked her watch: 11:55, time to go.
He was waiting at a table in the corner, nursing a cup of coffee. She sat down across from him. “You son of a bitch,” she said.
Rob held up his hand. “Just listen, it’s not what you think.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“I know where Jenny is. She answered her phone this morning. She told me.”
“So what? We can’t go after him. You know that.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. It’s true that we can’t look for him. But does that mean we can’t go after Jenny?”
She thought about it, testing the idea in her mind. “So we’d just be looking for her? A missing person.”
“Exactly. She gave me the town, and the state. And you said you could get her exact position from the phone company if she used her cell, right?”
“Yes. I think you’re on to something. If I focus on Jenny, and not him...”
He smiled.
She stole his coffee and took a sip. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“I want to come. I owe it to her.”
“No way. Let me do my job.”
“I really—”
“No,” she said finally.
“Take me with you.”
She splashed the hot coffee across the table onto his shirt as the command sunk into her brain. He yelped and jumped to his feet.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said. She glared at him for a long moment. “Let’s go.”
The ice cube was melting in Jenny’s fingers, leaving a trail of freezing cold droplets in the cleavage of naked girl lying prone on the rug. Tiffany responded by arching her back and inhaling sharply between her teeth, eyes closed, goose bumps breaking out on the tender swells of her breasts.
Jenny watched the reaction, then steered the ice up the curve of redhead’s right breast and traced a circle around her erect nipple, drawing a moan from the girl. She bent over Tiffany and let her mouth gently graze the young woman’s parted lips, while her free hand skittered over Tiffany’s toned thigh and into the ready moistness between her legs. Tiffany gasped helplessly, breathing into Jenny’s mouth.
Jenny snuck a sidelong glance at Tim, who was watching from the sofa, a glass of lemonade in his hand. He looked almost bored with the game. That just meant she’d have to try harder; pleasing him was the only thing that mattered. She scrambled over Tiffany to get to Margot, who was laying in the same position, nude, her eyes closed and her arms over her head.
The point of the game—Tim’s invention—was to drive both girls to the brink of orgasm, then keep them there for as long as possible. It required moving back and forth between them to keep them going, like the plate-spinner at the circus. Margot was already panting from Jenny’s ministrations. Too much stimulation now would send her over the brink.
Jenny stretched out next to the girl and cupped her breast gently, letting Margot’s nipple barely touch the softness of her palm. Then she flicked her tongue at her delicate earlobe. The girl whimpered and opened her mouth. “Oh, God,” she breathed. “Kiss me... Someone kiss me.”
Another glance at the couch, and Jenny’s heart sank. Tim was gone.
Tim closed the door and plopped down on his old bed. He hadn’t slept in here since Jenny arrived; just two weeks, and the bedroom already seemed like a faded museum of juvenilia. He’d experienced so much, so fast. Why did he feel so alone?
It was Jenny, of course; she was happy and pliant now, but he missed her. Paige was devoted to him, and energetic in expressing it, but she lacked the touch of acid that had made Jenny interesting.
He lifted the glossy entertainment magazine from his nightstand and turned to the page he’d been studying when his father had burst in a lifetime ago. A lithe Jessica Turner looked back at him from some Hollywood set, her body and skin airbrushed to perfection, an artificial sparkle in her eyes. He laughed at the boy he’d been, the things he’d thought he wanted. Then he rolled over and picked up the phone.
A recording answered after two rings. “The number you have reached has been disconnected...” He frowned, hung up and called again—he hadn’t used a push-button phone in ages, maybe he misdialed. On the second try he got the same recording.
Amy had changed her number. He couldn’t blame her. His hope had been that she would answer for him when she saw his house phone, and not “anonymous,” pop up on her Caller ID.
He could easily get her new number with the machine, by beginning with one of her friends, or a friend-of-a-friend, or even someone three or four friends removed, then hopscotching in. What did they call it? Six degrees of separation. There was nobody he couldn’t get to, given time.
But what would he even say?
Edward Spickle watched the snowfall outside the window of his cabin, while his computer loaded the airline reservation system.
He’d been slacking off on his counter surveillance, so many days having passed with no sign of danger. But something told him that could be changing. He typed in the name: Karen Maura. Bile rose in the back of his throat when the results popped up. A hit.
Spickle relaxed as he read the details. It was a flight from JFK to an airport in Indiana, nowhere near his Pennsylvania hideout. Then his relief simmered into anger. It was only two weeks since this woman destroyed his carefully laid plans, and now she was already on another case?
She couldn’t be troubled to hunt for a washed up schemer like him.
He clenched his fists thinking about her arrogant smile as she interrogated him at his dining room table. Even then, she’d seemed to know that she would defeat him. How he’d love to wipe that grin off her lovely face.
Spickle stood and made his way to the cramped bathroom, studying himself in the mirror above the sink. He’d grown a slight beard, replaced his glasses with contacts and died what was left of his hair a deep red. Out of context, in an unexpected place, he doubted that Maura would even recognize him now.
He smiled at himself, and then went to pack a bag.
Rob sighed impatiently as Karen slowed down and pulled to the side of the road to check the GPS again. Gravel crunched under the tires and a low wind whistled through the window.
“I told you,” he said. “It’s less than half-a-mile, if the address you got is right. You should have let me drive.”
“My case, my car,” she said. “Let me see the file again.”
Rob handed her the folder, and shuddered at the flood of adrenaline when her finger touched his hand. He eyed her full lips. He’d spent the drive from the airport concentrating on Jenny, doing all he could to ignore Karen. He wished they were at their destination already.
He watched her fingers—closely trimmed nails and clear polish that shouldn’t be exciting him this much—as she leafed through the pages. With a few words, she’d be crawling in the back seat with him, tearing off her clothes. It was maddening.
Karen examined the top page: the DMV printout for one Timothy Forrester, 18-years-old. He’d read the file already more than once. Forrester had one curfew violation and two speeding tickets. The driver’s license photo was a textbook image of an underachieving teenager, staring at the camera disinterested and unsmiling. The next page was his criminal record. It was blank.
“You shouldn’t be looking at that,” Rob said stiffly. “We’re not looking for him, remember.”
“Right.” She tossed the file in back and put the car in drive. “We’re looking for Jenny.”
Two minutes later they were pulling the car alongside the road again at the mouth of a long driveway. She killed the engine, and they stepped out.
The wind whipped through them as they walked up the drive toward the two-story farmhouse. It was white, and in relatively good shape, except for a loose clapboard swinging in the wind. They mounted the steps to the porch together. Despite the chill in the air, Rob noticed that Karen left her jacket unbuttoned.
“What now?” Rob whispered, when they reached the door. “We break it down?”
“We knock.”
She rapped on the door decisively. There was the sound of footsteps on hard wood, and the door swung open. Rob gasped.
It was Jenny, and not-Jenny, both at the same time. She was wearing an ill-fitting French maid’s costume, so frilly and revealing that a porno director would reject it as clichéd. It boosted her breasts high while barely covering them. He flashed to the last time he’d seen her, when he squeezed those perfect orbs at the command of a stranger.
“J—Jenny?”
“Rob?” She blinked at him. “No!”
Jenny tried to slam the door closed, but Karen quickly stuck her foot in the frame. Rob threw his weight at the door and it crashed open, the two of them tumbling into the house. Jenny wailed at them. “Nooo! Get out! I don’t want you here!” Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor in evident despair.
The gatehouse door flew open. Tim covered the mouthpiece of the phone and squinted into the sunlight at Paige. “No lemonade?”
“People,” the blonde gasped, out of breath. “There are people at the house. They’re hurting Jenny. I heard them from the kitchen.”
He slammed down the phone and jumped over the desk “Who? How many.”
“At man and a woman, I think. I don’t know who they are.”
“C’mon.” He broke into a run, Paige beside him, the open door of the gatehouse flapping behind him.
Rob crouched in front of Jenny and touched her arm. She withdrew, squeezing her eyes shut like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.
“Jenny,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”
“We really do,” said Karen. She was standing point at the door. “There’s a car coming up the drive. A red Mustang.”
Jenny breathed deep and opened her blue eyes. Then she smiled at him. “Rob. Do you love me?”
“Wh—what? Jenny, we have to go.”
“I know you want me,” she said in a soft voice. She touched the back of his hand. “Do you like my clothes?”
“No.”
She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his fingers, tickling them with her tongue. “I want to stay,” she whispered, her breath warm and moist on the back of his hand. “If you promise you’ll let me stay, I’ll do anything you want, Rob. Anything.”
“You’re not staying.”
She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “I’ll be a whore for you. I’ll be your slut.”
There were rapid footsteps from the next room, and the teenager from the photo burst in, a young blonde girl at his heels. Karen’s hand flew into her jacket. Then she was pointing her gun squarely at the boy. The girl screamed; the boy froze, realization dawning on his face.
“Karen?”
“Agent Maura,” she corrected.
“How?”
She smiled. “We weren’t looking for you. This is just a happy coincidence. Get in here, Tim.”
He walked in dejectedly. Karen holstered her gun and grabbed his arm, twisting him around. She pulled a pair of handcuffs from a leather holster at her waist and ratcheted them around his wrists.
Jenny jumped to her feet and launched herself across the room at the agent. Rob grabbed at her, and she twisted away. “Leave him alone!”
“No!” Tim shouted at her. “Stop it Jenny. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
She stopped in her tracks, trembling. Another group showed up at the open front door, pausing uncertainly at the scene inside.
“Tell them to come in.”
They entered single-file like a parade of ghosts. The boys wore jeans and flannel shirts, the redhead and petite brunette were in jeans and tight tee shirts. Their eyes were tinged with alarm.
Karen shook her head at the procession. “My God,” she whispered.
The boys’ bodies tensed when they saw the handcuffs on Tim; they glared at Karen menacingly. Karen’s hand slipped casually back into her jacket. “What’s going on?” asked the redhead.
“Nothing,” said Tim. He nodded to Karen. “Do whatever she says. All of you, do whatever this woman says.”
Karen had them all sit down wherever they could find a spot, and Rob listened, rapt, as Tim gave his confession, the bizarre story gushing from his lips as though he’d been dying to share it.
Tim’s gaggle of love slaves listened impassively as he told it all: the mysterious gatehouse at the back of his farm; his initial experiments; stealing the affections of his best friend; taking Jenny; and more, culminating in his phone call to Rob’s house, when he filled Rob with an animal’s desire for the FBI agent, then cruelly programmed Karen to obey Rob’s every utterance.
“I was angry,” Tim explained. “I don’t know why I did it.”
Rob’s mind began to wander. The reminder of the power he held over Karen was like a hot poker in his brain. He snuck a glance at her perched on the edge of her chair, taking notes from Tim’s statement. Her round ass; that dark, alluring skin. I could still do it, he thought. Right now. She could be mine, right here in front of all of them.
She looked up from her notepad directly at him, as though reading his thoughts. He looked away.
Karen seemed to ponder things for a second. “Where can we put these people for a while, where they won’t get into trouble?” she asked Tim. “Do you have a cellar?”
He nodded. “The door’s in the kitchen.”
She stood up and addressed Jenny and the other five victims. “Okay, all of you, go to the cellar and stay there until we come and get you.”
The six of them rose obediently and filed towards the kitchen.
“Rob, I’m going to get Timothy to show me the upstairs, and then take me to the gatehouse. Someone needs to guard the victims and make sure they stay safely locked up until we’re done.”
“What? You expect me to leave you alone with him?”
She took a few steps closer, but stopped at a safe distance. “Listen, Rob,” she said, lowering her voice and making meaningful eye contact. “You shouldn’t be around me any longer. We both know it.”
Those eyes. Right now, he thought. Fuck this kid and his harem. Fuck all them. He’d take Karen on the sofa, then run away with her someplace they’d never be found. She’d screw him day and night.
Jenny passed him on the way to the kitchen, silly and helpless looking in her ridiculous costume. He steeled himself. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll watch over them.”
Karen smiled at him gratefully, then faced Tim and pointed. “Let’s go. Upstairs.”
Rob followed Jenny and the others into the kitchen and down the cellar stairs. “Hold on,” he said, stopping them at the bottom. He stepped into the basement. It was dank and sour smelling, with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets littering the floor alongside random agricultural implements. A shelf in the back was lined with wax-sealed jars under a thick layer of dust.
Satisfied that there was no other exit, he gestured for the group to enter. Jenny filed in last. All these long weeks, he’d imagined her in just such a place; not in the sunny farmhouse where she’d been living, but locked in a basement. How ironic that he was the one finally putting her there.
“I’ll be right outside,” he told them. “Knock if any of you need to use the bathroom. I’ll take you one-by-one.”
They stared at him, blonde, brunette, redhead, boys and girls, as he closed the door. He turned the antique key in the warded lock and removed it, placing it on the stairs. Then he turned to go back up to the kitchen—
There was a man standing at the top of the stairs.
He was too old by far to be one of Timothy’s playthings. He was nearly bald, with a thin smile on his lips, and there was something in his hand. A Taser, Rob realized too late. With a pop, two projectiles flew from the gun, wire unspooling behind them. The electrodes snared in his shirt, pricking his skin with barbs. Then an ozone smell filled his nostrils and his muscles convulsed. He fell with a thud.
The man walked down calmly, hooked his arms under Rob’s and pulled him like a sack of grain up the stairs, into the kitchen and to the back door. A wheelbarrow was waiting outside in the chill air.