30DaystoSyn (17 page)

“Who the hell are you and how did you get
my number?” the voice on the other end demanded.

It was Sakova, she thought. The thick
Russian-sounding accent could belong to no one else. She tensed, quickly going
over the carefully thought out and worded scenario she, Jono, Craig and Jake
had devised. She’d placed the call to Sakova’s cell, hating the bitch for all
she wasn’t worth. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and strove to put
normalcy in her tone.

“I still have friends at McGregor
Industries,” she said.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.
What is this McGregor Industries?” the woman asked.

“Don’t play games with me, Miss Pavlova. I
know what you’re trying to do and without my help, it won’t be the slam dunk
you anticipate.”

There was a long pause then a snort. “It is
Sakova, not Pavlova. What is it you think you know, slut?”

“I know you may have some trouble getting
Syn McGregor convicted without me.”

“Say nothing about the money she’s
trying to get from him,”
Jake had advised.
“There’s
no way you should know about it.”

“If what my friend at MI tells me is true,
you have as much right to hate McGregor as I do. Maybe not as good a reason but
that’s neither here nor there.”

“What are you talking about?” Tatyana
demanded.

“He attacked you,” she replied. “Roughed
you up?”

“That is a matter of public record.”

“True but he has a damn good legal team.
They could make mincemeat of your story. It’s your word against his unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you have me to testify.”

“Were you there?” came the sneer. “Did you
see what happened?”

She didn’t answer, letting Tatyana smirk.

“I thought not,” Tatyana said.

“He raped me,” she said quickly, afraid the
woman would hang up.

Another long pause, then, “Excuse me?”

The line had been thrown and the float was bobbing
in the water. She had her sniffing the bait.

“Two years ago he got me alone in the
executive bathroom, pushed me against the wall and raped me. For ten-thousand
dollars I’ll give you the evidence I kept from that afternoon, get on the stand
and put that fucking bastard away for life. Teach him a lesson he so richly
deserves.”

“What kind of evidence?” There was
eagerness in the thickly accented voice.

“The torn panties I used to wipe off my
blood and his semen.”

“Let’s talk,” Tatyana said, swallowing the
hook. “Meet me at my—”

“No. I don’t trust you any more than you
trust me. You could be Russian mob for all I know. Drecker’s Sub Shop,” she
said. “Tomorrow at noon. I’ll be the one with the long brown braid.” She hung
up.

Night Thirteen

He’d been expecting one of the prisoners to
sidle up to him for something other than to exchange complaints about the
conditions of the county jail. A couple had been eying him at breakfast that
morning and another had made kissy faces at him on the way back. He didn’t
think any of them was a real threat but he kept a surreptitious eye on all of
them.

He’d learned to do so the hard way. You let
down your guard in jail and bad things happened.

When the oily skinned, lank-haired and
decayed-tooth meth head with the yellow tint to his eyeballs approached him in
the shower, he tensed but he didn’t feel a threat. For one thing the young
man—twenty-two if he was a day—had nothing in his hands or anywhere else for
that matter. His pathetically thin, emaciated, drug-cooked body wouldn’t have
posed a threat to the egotistical nerd kid on the TV series about
twenty-something nerd kids much less a man who had probably a hundred pounds
and years of brutal street fighting experience on him.

“Whatcha want, kid?” he asked the boy.

“Got a message for you,” the boy said. He
had his trembling hands over his junk as he sidled closer as though he expected
to be mauled.

He ran the soap under his arm pits and
turned so he faced the kid over the half wall of the shower stall. “Then spit
it out.”

“She said to tell you she has evidence that
can convict you.” He shifted his eyes like the weasel he was. “And that the
price done went up to one point five.”

“What kind of evidence?” he asked though he
knew because it had been his mind wandering that had cooked it up.

“Didn’t say,” the boy replied and lifted an
arm tattooed with old needle marks up to run under his dripping nose. “Just
said to tell you she got it and the price went up.”

“Well,” he said as he put the soap back in
its tray, rotated around to let the water sluice off the suds covering his
chest the turned off the shower, “lemme ask you something.” He picked up his
towel and began to wipe himself down. “What are you getting in exchange for
delivering that message?”

The boy sniffed. “Pack of smokes,” the boy
answered.

“What if I gave you a whole carton of those
coffin nails?” he asked. “Would you give me the name of the person who told you
to come to me?”

“Don’t know no name. Was one of the guards.
Big fellow with the crooked nose and scar on his chin.”

“Albrecht,” he said, having made it a point
of finding out the name of every guard and prisoner in the jail. It wasn’t the
same guard who had delivered the original extortion gambit.

The meth head shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Otto.”

“Okay, Otto. I’ll see to it you get your
ciggies.”

A deep frown marred the addict’s face. “My
what?”

“Your smokes,” he said. “What brand would
you like?”

“They contacted him this morning,” Jono
told her.

She was on her way to Drecker’s, using the
cell phone Jake had provided her with at the meeting the day before.

“Obviously she’s fairly confident I have
what she needs if she threatened him with it already,” she said.

“Would seem that way.”

“Everything set up?”

“Bug went under that table in the corner as
soon as we opened this morning,” Jono replied. “Jake and Craigie are already in
the back and waiting. Lina?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful. If something happened to you,
he’d kill all three of us with his bare hands.” When she laughed he said, “I’m
serious. He’s bad news when he’s mad. He takes no prisoners and doesn’t care
how he settles things, either, if he gets what he wants.”

A shiver ran down her back. He didn’t sound
as if he were kidding.

There were no cars at Drecker’s when she
drove in so she pulled all the way over to the side of the building to park. It
was early yet and the lunch crowd wouldn’t start coming in for another half
hour. She had nearly an hour to wait for Tatyana to show up.

It wasn’t Jed behind the counter when she came
in but Jono.

And a Jono she barely recognized. His long
hair was stuffed under a Drecker’s baseball cap. His scruffy two-day beard was
gone and he was wearing glasses.

He nodded politely and cut his eyes over to
the dining section of the shop where a lone policeman was sitting, munching
away on a BLT. She gave Jono a pleading look at this unfortunate development
and he shrugged helplessly.

“The usual?” Jono asked her.

She knew he didn’t have a clue what she
usually ordered. “Not today. I think I’ll have a hot ham and cheese on rye.
Dill pickles and hot mustard.”

He handed her a small cup.

“Gonna have chips with that today, miss…?
I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”

She was very impressed with his Southern
accent and indicated as much with her eyebrows lifted. She realized he had
asked just to let her know he could mimic her accent.

“It’s Chelsea and no, no chips today,” she
said as she sauntered over to the drink dispenser. The cop looked at her and
she smiled. He nodded but didn’t return the smile. He seemed preoccupied.

While Jono made her sandwich she moved over
to the woman behind the register. It wasn’t the usual straw-haired blonde she
was accustomed to seeing and wondered if she was one of Jono’s friends.

“That’ll be four forty-five,” the girl said.

She paid for her sandwich, took it from
Jono and went to sit at the table in the corner. She felt the cop’s hard stare
on her and realization came like a shove between the shoulders. He was part of
the scheme to fleece the Kiwi and she wondered if Jono had made the connection
as well. She slipped her shoulder bag strap over the back of her chair, sat
down and picked up her drink to take a sip, looking at him over the rim of the
cup.

Yes, she thought he was watching every move
she made. His rigid attention was glued on her and when the front door opened,
his gaze never wavered.

She knew the red-haired woman coming toward
her was Tatyana. The con woman was early and from the look on her face and the
slight shift of her eyes toward the cop, she knew Tatyana wasn’t pleased to see
her there already. Behind her was a bulky man with arms the size of tree
trunks. His deep scowl did nothing to improve the broken nose, dented
cheekbones and scarred forehead of a man she suspected had been—or still was—a
professional boxer.

“You the one who called me?” Tatyana asked.
She didn’t take a seat.

“You the woman trying to send McGregor to
prison?” she countered.

“Get up.”

She arched her eyebrows. “For what?”

“Get up or I’m leaving,” Tatyana snapped.

She slid out of the chair and the side of
beef put his hands on her. If she hadn’t already known the cop was one of them
she knew it the moment the oversized thug ran his hands expertly along her
sides and hips and thighs, around and up her back then over her breasts. The
cop sat where he was without so much as moving a muscle or questioning the odd
behavior.

“She clean,” the brute said. He folded his
arms and stepped back, his beady black eyes devoid of all emotion.

Tatyana sat down. “All right, let’s talk,”
she said. “Where is the so-called evidence you say you have?”

“In my purse.”

“Let me see it.”

She pretended to be shocked. “Here?”

“Let me see it or I will leave.”

She unhooked her shoulder bag and put it in
her lap. She opened it, took out a clear plastic quart-size sandwich bag, and
laid it on the table—her hand firmly atop it.

“Ten grand,” she said. “I ain’t handing it
over until you cough up the dough.”

“How do I know this is the real thing?”
Tatyana asked, eyeing the bag.

“You don’t but why the fuck would I lie?”
she asked. She leaned forward. “Let me clue you in to what happened to me,
lady, then you decide if I’m lying or not.”

Tatyana nodded. “I am listening.”

“That son of a bitch thinks all he needs to
do is flash those baby blues at a woman and she’ll drop to her knees at his
feet, drooling to have his dick in her mouth. I heard he has a girlfriend now
to satisfy those perverted needs he has but back then, he was humping
everything in sight.”

“Yes, he has that reputation,” Tatyana
agreed. “Go on.”

“Well, he decided he wanted to fuck me but
I wasn’t having none of that,” she said. “I was saving myself, you know?” She
made tears form in her eyes. “I was a good girl. I was
clean
.”

Tatyana’s lips twitched with amusement.
“You were a virgin,” she said. “How quaint.”

“I was and I was proud of it!” she said as
though she hadn’t recognized the sarcasm for what it was. “I was saving
myself!”

“Did he know this?” Tatyana asked.

She lowered her voice. “One day in the
board room I was putting director packets on the table and he came up behind
me. He ran his hands over my ass and I turned around, asked him not to do
that.” A single tear slid down her cheek. “I told him I was a good Christian
woman.”

“I am sure he stopped as soon as you told
him this news,” Tatyana said.

“He laughed,” she said. “He laughed and
told me I didn’t know what I was missing.” She hung her head. “I thought it was
over until a few days later when he got me in the bathroom and…and…” She shook
her head.

“He sexually assaulted you.”

“He shoved me against the wall and when I
fought him, he backhanded me. I was afraid he’d really hurt me so I just stood
there while he pulled up my skirt, ripped off my panties, unzipped his trousers
and raped me, Miss Pavlova.”

A sharp frown shifted over Tatyana’s
beautiful face. “Sakova,” she corrected.

“I want that bastard behind bars for what
he did to me! I want to teach him he can’t have everything he wants just ‘cause
he wants it!”

“Why are you coming forward now with this
information?” Tatyana asked. “Why not when it happened?”

“Who would have believed me?” she asked.
“Yeah I had the panties but I was afraid if I told anyone, he’d do something to
me. It was the word of a rich man against mine. He could afford the very best
lawyers. Until you, no one has ever called him on what he does. I would have
been the first and my reputation would have been destroyed. They would have
made me out to be the worst kind of slut.”

“And you don’t think that will happen now?”

They had covered just that question during
the meeting the day before and she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m
damaged goods. No decent man would have me so what difference does it make?”
she asked bitterly. She clenched her teeth. “McGregor made sure when he fired
me that I’d never get another good job. He put the word out as a warning. The
only job I could get was tending bar and since then…” She shrugged. “Let’s just
say my reputation is no longer an issue. He assaulted you—and God knows how
many other poor women—but you had the courage to come forward. One woman they could
ignore but two? Maybe other women will also come forward to nail his slimy
ass.” She nodded. “They will put the asshole in a cell, let some other pervert
shag him ‘til he drops then throw away the key.” She narrowed her eyes. “They
don’t like rapists in prison. You and me? We could have been one of their
daughters!”

Tatyana sat back. “You are very vehement
about this, aren’t you?”

“I am
determined
is what I am, Miss
Pavlova.”

“Sakova!” Tatyana snapped. “My name is
Sakova and you have not told me yours!”

“Chelsea Spinner,” she replied, giving the
name of an actual employee fired two years earlier just in case Tatyana and her
associates checked. The real Chelsea Spinner was on her way to
Cancun—compliments of an anonymous benefactor. Records would show Chelsea
worked at the Watering Hole, the bar owned by Rachel’s father Ed Morrison.

Tatyana looked down at the plastic bag on
the table. “Give me that,” she said. “I want to have it tested.”

She shook her head. “Nothing doing. Until
you give me my money I ain’t giving you squat, lady.”

“Give it to me or I will have Sergei break
your wrist,” Tatyana said sweetly.

She looked over at the cop as though
seeking help and Tatyana laughed.

“He is with me,” she said. “Now hand over
the bag.”

She tightened her hand over the bag. “If
you want me to testify—”

“I don’t need you to testify,” Tatyana
said. “All I need to do is show this to McGregor’s attorney and I’ll get what I
want.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not he
goes to prison. I just want his money and I’m going to get it.” Her face turned
glacier cold. “Now hand over the bag or I promise you will wish you had!”

Removing her hand from the bag, she put a
look of helpless anger on her face. “This isn’t fair. He owes me for what he
did to me.”

“Life isn’t fair, Chelsea,” Tatyana said,
getting up from the table. “The sooner you learn that, the better off you will
be. He owes me too, and I’m going to make him pay through the nose to get this
little bag. He pushed me away as though I was shit beneath his feet. He didn’t
want to fuck me? Well, I’m going to fuck him instead!”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, widening her
eyes. “He didn’t attack you! Are you blackmailing him?”

“Shut your mouth, you little whore!”
Tatyana spat. “You say one word of this and I swear you won’t live to see your
next birthday!”

She watched the Ukrainian woman and her
henchman walk out of the shop. When they were in their car and pulling away,
the cop gave her a snide smile and got to his feet.

“Life sucks, don’t it?” he queried before
turning and leaving.

“There isn’t a cop car in sight,” Jono said
as he hurried over to her table. “I doubt that prick is for real.”