DeadlySuspicious.epub (2 page)

she had been whipped hard with a leather strap on her naked back and legs. Denby refused to cry when the pain cut into her. She also refused to behave. Each time she had run away from the school, she had been dragged back, whipped and locked in her room and ordered to conform.

When she turned seventeen, Denby had left the school unannounced. She’d endured enough. No one knew where she was and she doubted they would’ve cared less. Her father certainly wouldn’t have. He’d sentenced her to that school and never once visited so it wasn’t like he would miss seeing her. She travelled around fruit picking, waitressing and trying to learn what she could about life from everyday people who understood pain, heartache, happiness and independence. It wasn’t an easy life but at least it was real. She ignored her father and, for three years, Denby did as she pleased. That was until the Jacobson mess started and she was thrown in jail for being ‘recalcitrant.’

It was the standard charge given to any woman who had no fixed abode and no gainful employment. It would be another year before the ruling that any woman over twenty-one and not married would be jailed. Denby was only inside the small prison for two days before suddenly being released. The deference she received as she was let out of the cell was bordering on creepy and obsequious.

When they ordered her out of the small, cramped cell in the basement of the police station, Denby was suspicious. Up until that point they had ignored her. She had heard such treatment of women was becoming more frequent but it never occurred to her she would be subjected to it.

When she had demanded legal counsel and they had just laughed and walked away. But now they were freeing her. Why? “What’s going on?”

“We weren’t aware who you father is.”

She looked the pot-bellied, uniformed officer up and down. “He’s no one special. Just your basic, anal lawyer with a God complex.” And the last man on the planet Denby wanted to see.

The other officer looked at her in disgust. “You have no idea what a great man your father is and how lucky we are to have him.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, all the time thinking if they believed her father, Joseph Armstrong, was important, then that was weird but of no concern to her.

As Denby left the jail, a large, black, expensive looking car pulled up to the stairs. It had the now familiar symbol of black dragon crushing a white bird crest on the hood. It was said to represent strength over weakness. All the Jacobson committee cars had the same crest. Once it had been easy to spot a government car by the license plate. Now the black dragon was becoming more familiar and ominous.

She saw the door open but ignored it. Denby wasn’t in the mood to be preached to about feminine morality by some guy in a suit. She walked on, thinking about whether to hitchhike or to jump on a train. “But to where?” she murmured to herself.

“Denby.”

She stiffened slightly but didn’t look behind her. That the person in the Committee car knew her name didn’t bode well and she wasn’t about to see what they wanted. She wasn’t scared.
I just know
I’ll get into a fight with one of those anal pricks.

“Turn around, Denby.”

“No thanks.” She kept walking. “I’m not interested in whatever erosion to female rights you’re trying to sell to the ‘recalcitrant’.”

“Get in the car.”

“Piss off.”

“Denby, do as you’re told.”

She almost turned then. If she did, a fight would have ensued. That these men felt they had the right to hound women made Denby clench her fists to try and refrain from retaliating. “I’m not about to start now, face-ache.” She heard the car door slam. Good. They had given up.

But they hadn’t. Instead the car sped up and drove in front of her, blocking her path. The door opened once more. “Get in the car or else.”

Denby squinted inside the dark interior. “Says who?”
Who am I about to get in a fight with?

“Says your father.”

“What the fuck!” She was shocked. He was the last person she expected to see and why now? It wasn’t like she was about to suddenly become the dutiful daughter, nor he the doting Dad.

“Watch your mouth, young lady.”

Yeah. That sounded like her father. She was no more interested in him or his opinion as he was of hers. She wasn’t a powerless teenager any more. “I do what I like and I’m not about to get in a car with you, old man.” Denby wanted nothing to do with Jacobson and wondered what her father’s connection was.

“You’ve clearly learned nothing.” He got out of the car and came to stand before her.

He was older, taller, harder and scarier looking than she remembered. His face was lined with a harsh cragginess that bespoke a bitter man. That didn’t surprise her. As a child, he had looked terrifying to her. Denby had thought aging would have changed the harshness of his features, making him more mellow.
Clearly not
. “What do you want?” His black eyes bored into her.

Denby’s were the same color. She wasn’t about to be intimated by the disgust she saw in them.

“You.”

“Why?”

“You’re my daughter,” he bit out impatiently.

“So? Why would you suddenly care about me now?” To Denby, he was looking at her like she was the scum of the earth. Why the need to find her if she was an inconvenience? She looked from him to the car. “And what’s the deal with the creepy Jacobson people car?”

He scowled at her. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

She shrugged, deciding to play this casually and not show the surging apprehension building inside her. “Yeah, pretty much.” The jailer’s words ‘we weren’t aware who your father was’ came back to her.
Who is my father?
She looked him up and down, unimpressed at the man she saw.

Blood may be thicker than water but they were no more than strangers.

“Get in the car.”

The way he said it was like she was some feral animal he was trying to deal with. He commanded. He didn’t ask. He glared at her. There was no fatherly interest in his eyes. She had the feeling she was just a thing he had to deal with.

“What?” He barked at her.

Denby turned once more to the car. “Who are you?” What was this about? He didn’t care for her.

Why track her down now?

“I’m someone you do not want to thwart.”

His eyes had a wild, intense gleam she only saw in the fanatical or junkies. “Thwart? Who do you think you are? Master of the universe?”

His laugh was hard and arrogant. “Yes. I do and I am.”

“Whatever.” It sounded like something one of those creepy Jacobson Committee members would say. She heard those pompous assholes on the television all the time with their proposed rules designed to crush women’s rights. Undoubtedly, because he was in their car, he had to be one of them. “Why are you tracking me down after all these years?”

“Because you’re my daughter and I need to bring you to heel.”

“You need to what?” Denby was agog at his words. It made her sound like a mongrel dog who had to be taught a lesson.

“You see, it makes it very hard for me to carry on the Jacobson Committee work if my daughter is openly defiant. If my followers know that, as their leader I’m found wanting, then that lack of power annoys me.”

A sudden surge of fear rushed up Denby’s spine at his words. Their leader? Followers? Defiant?

Power? The car? “Who the fuck are you?”

“Stop swearing!” he commanded.

“Fuck off,” she retaliated just because she could.

“I’m the last person you want to mess with because I promise I
will
crush you if you refuse to obey me.”

His words shocked her and that in itself was strange because Denby had seen too much to be surprised anymore. But this? No normal person spoke as he did. His words replayed in her mind. …

it makes it very hard for me to carry on the Jacobson Committee work if my daughter is openly
defiant.
She stared at the hard, angry features of the man before her. A terrible, sick thought came to her. “No…” It couldn’t be. Her father was an asshole but even he couldn’t be that evil. Like a film on rewind, her mind sped back over the horrible years of her childhood. She looked him in the eye.

They were dark, cold eyes that held no interest or fatherly affection for her. “Who is Jacobson?”

Even as she said the words, in her heart Denby knew the answer.
I am the devil’s spawn
.

“Why?” Her father asked.

“Because.”
I
need to have reality smack me in the face so I can deal with it and move on.

“I don’t have time for this.” He made a grab for her arm.

Denby stepped back before he could touch her. Coldness was coming in waves off him. “Answer me! Or are you scared of the truth coming out? Is it easier to hide behind dragon symbols and archaic laws?”
I won’t be my father’s daughter in name or character.

“You want the truth, you little bitch?”

“Stick and stones old man.” Denby no longer felt any pain from him. She stood her ground, not flinching.

“I am Jacob’s son.”

“Jacob’s son.” She repeated the words. She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand his meaning. Denby looked at him. He appeared pleased with himself. The twisted smile on his face made her stomach lurch. He wanted her to be shocked. There was no way Denby was going to show that. What he just told her sickened her but she wasn’t going to allow him to terrify her as he did other women. She swallowed the nausea she felt down. “You’re Jacobson.”
Of all the times not to
have a gun.

“Yes. My father, your grandfather, was called Jacob. My bitch of a mother dumped me, her baby, when she was a teenager into a foster home. It took me a while but I tracked down who my parents were.”

“And now, because you feel inadequate that your childhood wasn’t what you wanted, every woman has to pay for it?” Her childhood was hardly a walk in the park but Denby didn’t try to ruin other people’s lives.

“Yes.” He smiled at her.

That he found amusement in telling her, made Denby sick. He had ruined the world because of a vendetta against a scared teenage girl. “Normal, strong people would’ve built a bridge and gotten over it.”

“I’m not like anyone else. I’m unique. I’m a leader among men who follow my every word.”

Not only was it terrifying that he said it, but he believed it was true. “You’re an asshole.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Your opinion is irrelevant to me. However, as you’re my daughter—Jacobson’s daughter—I need to keep you in check so you don’t make me look bad. Your running around doing as you please is a problem I intend to solve right now.”

“How? Going to marry me off to some man who’ll impregnate me so it makes you look normal to your followers? If so, I have to tell you,
father,
you’re playing with yourself.”

He made a grab for her arm. “You
will
come with me.”

Denby side stepped him. “Oh, fuck off.” There was no way she would go with him.

He seemed unperturbed. “Gentlemen,” he called out. The front doors to the car opened. Two large men dressed in suits stepped out. “Please teach my daughter some manners.”

Denby had no time to think or move as she was grabbed by the two men and slammed to the ground. She wanted to scream out in pain as one of them drove his knee into the small of her back to hold her down while the other pulled her feet up behind her. Denby swore and bucked up to get them off her but they were big, hard and merciless. She felt a rough rope cinch her feet tightly together as her hands were dragged behind her and she was hog-tied and helpless.

“See what the consequences of not obeying your father are?”

“Fuck off!” she roared as they picked her up. Her limbs were on fire due to the awkward angle and the tightness of the rope.

Her father walked around the car and opened the trunk. “Dump her in here.”

Denby was thrown, face first, like a bag of garbage into the trunk of the car. She had landed hard, her nose smacking into floor. She felt the blood dripping down. The lid slammed shut and she was trapped. She rolled onto her side and looked wildly around her, the fear of suffocation racing through her. It was dark and cramped. While she could just see the lever, which was installed on all new cars to pop the trunk, there was no way she could reach it tied up as she was. When the car started, Denby knew she had no hope of escaping. She was their prisoner and her father was making sure she knew it.

After a bone shaking, body bruising trip where she was thrown aimlessly around the small compartment, the car stopped. She was dragged out. Denby saw the planes and knew she was at an airport. She yelled and screamed. People looked at her bloody face, bound body and disheveled appearance but no one reacted. She wondered how much her father paid them or how much they feared him. She was carried by the two men to a nearby, private plane, up the stairs and dumped inside on the floor. Denby landed hard but made no sound of the pain which tore through her. There was no way she would let them know what she felt. They stood beside her and waited for their leader to appear.

“You’re a mess.” Her father stepped over her and sat down on an expensively upholstered seat.

She didn’t doubt it. Denby could taste the blood on her lips and her hair was in her eyes. She was still trussed up, hands and legs together behind her back.

Her father buckled his belt and crossed his legs. “If you can behave you can have a seat.”

“Did I tell you to fuck off before? If so, it still goes,” she responded in her best smart ass voice.

Her words were greeted with a hard kick to her ribs by one of the men. Denby refused to cry out.

Her father picked up a newspaper. “You’ll learn, my dear daughter, hatred for me is what I thrive on.”

In Brisbane she had been imprisoned in his home for a week until she promised to behave. So she did. Promises to him meant nothing to Denby. She would have promised the devil, or in this case her father, for freedom. For a week after that promise she pretended to be good to lull her father, and those who were brought in to watch her, into a false sense of security. The first moment she got, Denby escaped. It wasn’t hard. She mentioned to one burly captor she had her periods and exaggerated the blood, pain and mess until he didn’t want to hear anymore and left her to lock herself in the bathroom to deal with it. As a teenager, Denby regularly climbed out of windows. The drop from this one was a couple of yards onto concrete below. She didn’t doubt it would hurt like hell but she also knew her fate would be worse if she stayed. Hearing her father talk of marrying her off made her sick to her stomach. She was a ‘thing’ and an inconvenience to him that had to be dealt with so he didn’t look bad.