Dawn of Forever (Jack & Jill #3) (35 page)

Jillian stared at the photo, but didn’t say anything.

“I asked you a question. Do you need incentive to answer?” Irene nodded at her sidekick.

He pulled out a long knife, but not just any knife. It was identical to the one Four used on Claire. He took a step toward Luke.

“She’s stunning,” Jillian answered, looking at Luke.

His face tensed with pain.

Irene gave the cutter a nod and he stepped away from Luke. “What about this one?” She held up a photo of Luke and Charlie holding hands while taking Jones for a walk. They were both smiling. “How does he look?

Jillian watched the guy with the knife. His hand squeezed the handle.

“Happy,” Jillian said.

One rule: Luke lives
.

“He does, doesn’t he? How do you think he looks here?”

She held up a photo of Luke kissing Charlie by the pier, his hands tangled in her hair, hers fisting the back of his shirt.

“Answer me.”

“Hungry.”

Luke wouldn’t look at her. It pissed her off. He had no reason to feel guilty, but the look on his face fed Irene’s desire to continue with her mind-fuck games.

“Hungry? I like that. I’d say from how far his tongue is in her mouth that he’s starving. Were you starving, Dr. Jones? Did your mouth devour every inch of her body?”

“I didn’t fuck her.”

Irene nodded to cutter guy, but he didn’t move toward Luke, he came at Jillian.

“No. No! Stop!” Luke’s eyes widened, his body wriggling against the restraints.

Jillian looked only at Luke. She didn’t flinch, not even a blink as the sharp tip of the knife pierced her skin on the swell of her breast. Blood oozed from the one-inch cut.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut, twisting his neck to the side. She needed him to stay focused on her. She needed him to know that she was okay, the pain was hers to take and if it meant saving him, she could take absolutely
anything
.

“Dr. Jones, clearly you’re new to this game and not as experienced as Jessica—Jillian—whatever the hell you want to call her. Let’s review the rules: Don’t speak unless spoken to. Answer only the question asked. And be honest.” Irene
tsked
. “If you don’t master the rules soon, I fear your
baby
won’t last long. Understood?”

He nodded.

“I can’t hear you.”

The cutter stepped toward Jillian again.

“Yes.”

“That’s better. Now … sadly I don’t have any more photos of you and Charlie, but I do believe she flew out to Houston to be with you. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Now you’re getting the hang of it. Next question. I know my dear ex-husband spoiled your plans, but if my sources were correct, she was on her way to the hotel where you were staying. True?”

“Yes,” he answered through gritted teeth.

“Were you two going to share a room?”

He did it again … he diverted his eyes. Jillian silently begged him to not look away, to not give Irene anymore control.

“Yes.”

“And were you going to fuck her?”

Tears filled his eyes.

Jillian didn’t want him to answer, not for her, for him. She’d let them cut her … forty-four times if necessary to take away Luke’s pain.

“Look at her when you say it. It’s the only way she’ll know you’re telling her the truth.”

He met Jillian’s eyes, a single tear rolled down his cheek. “Yes.”

Irene faced Jillian. “How does that make you feel? And don’t lie. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

She searched Luke’s eyes for something more than pain and regret, but that’s all she could see. “Empathetic.”

Silence settled over the room as Irene studied Jillian, her eyes narrowed, lips twisted. “I can see that.”

She turned and grabbed the other two envelopes, one in each hand as if she couldn’t decide which one to open next. “Knox, sweetie pie, you’re next.”

He grunted as the guy tore the tape from his mouth.

“I know you taught physical torture techniques used to acquire information from less-than-cooperative people, but I’ve never found them to be near as effective as psychological torture. Physical scars heal. Emotional ones don’t. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Jones?”

Luke glared at her.

“That’s fine. Don’t answer that now. We’ll revisit it later.” She opened the envelope. “I had some stills taken from the video footage of the private training session you had with Jessica after her kidnapping.”

“Irene …”

“Knox …” She leveled him with a stern glare. “First Sunny and then Jessica. You could have just hit me, or cut me, or physically done anything to me and I would have recovered. Those wounds would have healed, but instead you treated me like a whore not worthy of your time, your attention, your love. And then you snuck around with a married woman. Do you know how humiliating that was for me? How
torturous
that was for me? And then this …” she pulled out several large black and white photos and tossed them on the floor so everyone could see them.

Luke closed his eyes. Knox and Jillian did not. They were there. She wasn’t showing them anything new.

“Sunny rejects you so … what? You fuck her daughter. How did that work out for you? Oh, yeah … you left on a gurney. And you …” She shifted her attention to Jessica. “If he raped you, then why didn’t you tell anyone? Is it because it wasn’t rape? Is it because it was consensual? I watched the tape over and over and I saw what the two of you did to each other. I think you’d have a hard time convincing anyone that it wasn’t some BDSM fetish the two of you have.”

She bent down and grabbed one of the photos then fisted Luke’s hair, jerking his head back until he opened his eyes. “See this? Count yourself lucky that you dodged this bullet. You just about married one sick bitch.”

Jillian glared at Knox.

One rule: Luke lives
.

She didn’t want a single hair on his head injured and it infuriated her to see Knox sit there and allow Irene to touch Luke. She would have lunged at her, intent on further mangling her nose or sinking her teeth into Irene’s carotid. Knox just sat there.

“This is upsetting. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Jones? Could you really blame this man’s wife—me—for completely losing it after seeing this video? Look at you. I can see it in your eyes. You want to fucking tear him apart. Does that make
you
a crazy person?”

“You blew up my house.”

“SHUT UP! You cheated on me! I read the letters you wrote to Sunny. I saw this video.” She shoved the photo in Knox’s face. “You brought me to my knees. YOU made me crazy. You and fucking Edgar drugged me, thinking I just needed an antidepressant to ‘chill out’ about you and your goddamn wandering dick! Then you sent me to a mental institution for five. Long. Years. No visits, just divorce papers.” She stepped back, her face taking on a blueish cast as she fumbled though the stuff on the table for her inhaler.

The man with the knife rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine,” she whispered after taking a puff. “I need some air.” He helped her up the stairs, leaving photos of Knox raping Jessica scattered on the floor.

“If we make it out of here, I will kill you.”

Knox chuckled at Luke’s threat. “Get in line, buddy.”

J
ackson’s phone lit
up. He was seconds away from raining hell down on that shithole of a house. After seeing Luke bound and escorted inside the night before, he decided to wait until morning for a text and go in if they didn’t send one.

A, B, or C?

“Fucking amateurs,” he mumbled.

D, E, or FU?
He typed back.

A it is then.

That’s all he needed to sit back and wait a little longer. He wanted a better sign than letters in the alphabet. Luke would buy him time. Whoever had them was not affiliated with their parents’ murder. Drug lords didn’t have the time or patience to play games.

Bullet.

Head.

Done.

He assembled his long-range sniper rifle. Next he ordered a pizza, cracked the window, and waited. Forty minutes later his pizza arrived. Jackson paid for the pizza over the phone and left very specific instructions to set the pizza on the porch, ring the doorbell, and leave immediately. To his surprise, the guy did exactly as he requested.

Just as the delivery guy got back in his car, a woman came to the door. She tried to wave the delivery guy down, but he had already pulled away from the curb.

Jackson looked through his scope. He didn’t recognized the woman, but with her pink hood pulled over her head and large sunglasses hiding most of her face, it would have been impossible for anyone to recognize her. However, her build was not Jessica’s and that’s all that mattered. He pulled the trigger and she went down.

“Un-fucking-believable.” Through his scope he watched three cars pass by, one slowed in front of the house but then kept going. No wonder Four picked this neighborhood. A woman shot in the head, sprawled across the front porch steps, drew no more attention than a flattened squirrel in the street.

A few moments later, an arm reached out the door and grabbed her leg. Someone, fractionally smarter than the corpse, took cover while dragging the body back inside, confirmation there were at least two involved.

Once again, it was time to wait.

*

“She blew up
your house?”

Knox laughed.

Luke didn’t. He said nothing and looked at no one. Jillian wanted to say something to ease his mind, but she knew the worst was yet to come. That third envelope was hers. It had to be. There was little doubt that whatever was in it would destroy Luke forever. AJ would destroy Luke forever.

“Yes. It didn’t make the news. Edgar made sure of it. But it was all we needed to put her away … at least for a while.”

“Where were you?”

He chuckled. “In the house. My office was in the basement. Irene didn’t realize my office was also the bomb shelter. I fucking crapped my pants, but other than knocking over a gun cabinet and a few things on my desk, I walked away unscathed. You should have seen the look on her face when I showed up at G.A.I.L. The first words out of her mouth were, ‘What are you doing here?’ Code for ‘how the hell are you still alive?’ Had we lived in town she would have leveled three blocks. It was pretty amazing she didn’t trigger San Andreas.”

“Okay, kids. Change of plans.” Irene marched down the stairs, her composure back intact. “Brother dearest doesn’t want to join the party. So let’s just get on with things. I’ll deal with him later.”

Jackson was close. Jillian knew it.

Irene picked up the remaining envelope while cutter guy cleaned Jillian’s blood from the tip of his knife. “What’s in the envelope, Dr. Jones?” She waved it in front of Luke. “And bear in mind, I don’t like asking more than once.”

“Pictures,” Luke said.

“Yes, of course, but of whom?”

“Jessica.”

Irene
tsked
a few times. “Now, I think someone with your background would realize how dangerous it is for you to think of her as Jessica. I think you will
need
to think of her as Jillian.” She brushed away a few strands of hair from Luke’s forehead. “You feel guilty about Charlie. Don’t you?”

He glanced up, meeting Jillian’s eyes.

“Well there really is no need. I can assure you, Dr. Jones. You’ve been a boy scout compared to your whore of an ex-fiancée.” With the toe of her boot she slid one of the photos on the floor closer to Luke.

It made him furious with Knox, but he was about to see something that would make him furious with Jillian. She felt it in her gut.

“Who is this?” she asked Luke.

He stared at the photo of AJ in uniform, hand to his temple saluting someone. Jillian hadn’t seen it before, but just the image of him took her breath away. Luke shifted his gaze to her.

“Aric … I assume.”

Jillian nodded like a silent introduction between her ex-lover and her dead lover.

“How messed-up is it that she gravitated toward someone in uniform after her experience with Edwin Harvey? Just … on a scale of one to ten?”

Irene lost her name. She was straight up Psycho Bitch again.

Luke sighed. “Five.”

Jillian narrowed her eyes a fraction. It stung that he thought it was messed-up at all. It hurt that he didn’t trust her judgment.

“I would have said ten, but … whatever.” She pulled out another picture.

Knox smirked, maybe at Irene or maybe at the absurdity of the whole situation.

“Oh … this is one of my personal favorites.”

It was Jillian getting the mail in her red boots, panties, and thread-bare tank top.

“Do you find her sexy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you approve of her traipsing around outside looking like a whore?”

“She’s not a—”

“Uh-uh … it’s a simple yes or no question.”

“No.” He didn’t blink.

The man staring at her was Dr. Jones. She knew that look and his ability to ignore her over-the-top antics. However, his disapproval still pissed her off.

“God doesn’t either,” Irene mumbled, tossing the photo onto Luke’s lap.

“Here they are on a motorcycle.” She held up that photo of AJ driving, Jillian holding on tightly to his back. “Did you ever take Jessica for a motorcycle ride?”