Jack Stone - Deadly Revenge (2 page)

“Jack…”
She reached between his thighs and tentatively cupped the heavy weight of his manhood, surprised to feel him beginning to stir and leap with new life. She made a shaky little mewling sound of disbelief and tightened her grip.

“I’m not finished with you,” Stone said gently.

Melanie sighed. “Jack… I can’t…”

He looked at her, his eyes smoldering and black and piercing. “I think you can.”

His hand slid down across her abdomen and her legs fell apart intuitively. She felt him slide two fingers across the sensitive lips of her sex and she shuddered with the delicious ecstasy of his demanding caress. “We’re not finished until you’re broken and shattered Melanie, because it’s only then that I can begin to re-make you as a submissive,” Stone whispered as his fingers reached all the way inside her. Melanie’s back arched off the bed. “It’s only once you are exhausted and you have been pushed to places you never knew existed that you can finally reach within yourself and start to explore what the thrill of surrender is all about.”

Melanie sighed, lost in the power
of Stone’s words and the deep mesmeric sound of his voice. She felt his fingers gently sliding within her, slick and smooth with the mingled rush of their juices. She closed her eyes, ready to give herself up completely to him.

And then the phone rang.

But not her phone.

The sound was a muffled electronic tone, repetitive and somehow urgent, despite sounding so far away. Stone frowned. He glanced down into Melanie’s face. She shook her head, her expression puzzled.

Suddenly Stone realized. He rolled off the bed in one fluid motion, and wrenched the flap of his haversack open. At the bottom of the bag, his cell phone was ringing, the sound now loud and insistent.

Stone picked up the phone and
flipped it open. Looked at the number. It was another cell. Not a number he recognized.

H
e felt his heart begin to thump with a sudden surge of hope. He felt the pulse of blood at his temples. For eighteen months he had scoured the country looking for his sister, leaving his cell number with hundreds of people, in hundreds of places. Not once had his phone rung. Not once – until today.

He pressed the green button to accept the call.

“Hello? This is Jack Stone.”

There was a brief pause, like maybe the person was surprised to he
ar his voice, or maybe it was the delay of vast distance. And then finally a woman spoke, her tone heavy with despair and fear.

“Hello, Mr. Stone. My name is Celia Walker,
” the woman said softly. “And I desperately need your help.”

Three.

Stone held the phone to his ear. Didn’t say anything for a long moment. Slowly turned away from Melanie on the bed and w
alked out into the living room.

“Who gave you this number?” Stone asked the woman.

“Peter Boltz.”

Stone paused again. Peter
Boltz was the director of
‘The Venture Group’
, the hostage rescue firm Stone had worked with when he had mustered out of the military. Peter Boltz was ex-army, and a friend. A man he liked and respected. Stone had a sudden mental image of Boltz – mid-fifties, grey haired, buzzed close around his ears. A hard man with hard flinty eyes. An old warrior who had traded a military uniform for a business suit and built a respectable business helping families in times of trauma and crisis.

“How do you know Peter?”
he asked.

“He’s an army buddy
of my father,” the woman explained. “They were marines together back in the day. I called Mr. Boltz, and he told me to call you. He’s the man who gave me your cell number.”

The woman’s voice still sounded unsettled over the line, like maybe she was upset, or maybe she was lying and doing a
nervous job of it.

“If you know Peter, then you would know his nickname.” Stone said to test the woman. He had asked for
Boltz’s nickname, but within The Venture Group it had been his call-sign during all field operations.

The woman sighed. “My father called him Thunder,”
she said. “Thunder Boltz. Are you satisfied now, Mr. Stone?”

Stone smiled wryly. Some of the tension
left his body as he went past the initial instinctive stage of wariness, and his mind moved on to the subsequent stage of attention. He had been taught to assess and analyze. Trained to take nothing presented at face value. To check and check again. It was the training that had saved lives, including his own.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Celia Walker.” There was an edge of impatience in her voice.

“Okay, Miss Walker. Tell me why you are calling. Tell me why Peter gave you my number.
”

Stone heard th
e woman take a long deep breath, but it wasn’t an impatient sound any more. It was the kind of sound a person makes when they are calming themselves and clearing their minds. It was the sound people make when they have something to explain, and it is important that it be said in the right way.

“My sister Katrina is missing. I haven’t been able to contact her for
the past three days. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know what has happened to her – if she has been kidnapped, or maybe worse,” she said in a rush, as though the deep breath had all been for nothing but she couldn’t contain herself. Then she added softly, as though it was all too late, “I need your help to find her.”

Another pause. Stone stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the office chair and the tangle of discarded rumpled
clothes strewn across the floor but once again his mind suddenly flashed back to another time and another place.

South Ameri
ca.

He remembered o
ppressive, energy-sapping temperatures and narrow dirt paths baked hard and worn into the jungle floor while teeming foliage pressed in from every side. He remembered the dense canopy of trees and vines overhead, holding in the oven-like heat and blocking out the sunlight, as Stone and three other operatives trekked non-stop for six days and nights in country to rescue another missing woman and return her to another desperate family.

It came to him like a memory from such a
long time ago… but not so long as to ever be forgotten. No mission was. Stone remembered them all, but more than the operations he remembered the families, and the faces of the people left behind to wonder and worry about the fate of a loved one.

It was a feeling he too knew.

He clenched his fist and shook away the memory like he was shrugging off a heavy cloak. This woman’s tragedy wasn’t his responsibility.

“Sorry,” he said again, putting a hard edge to his voice. “I can’t help you.” He went to end the call, pulling
the phone away from his ear, when he heard the woman’s voice loud and metallic and urgent through the tiny receiver.

“Wait! Please, Mr. Stone. Please!”

Another pause. This one longer. He put the phone back to his ear, but said nothing.

“Mr. Stone, Peter gave me your number for a reason. He said you were the best at this work. He said you were the only one he would recommend.”

Stone sighed. “Peter has a dozen good operatives who could help you find your sister, Miss Walker. I’m sorry, but there is only one woman I am looking for – and that’s my sister, Susan.”

The woman’s voice wavered on the line, suddenly filled with emotion and maybe desperation. “Peter told me about Susan,” Celia Walker said
softly. “I understand – but Peter insisted I call you.”

Stone stared off into space. Cut his mind off and
distanced himself from the phone call. Made himself remote from this woman’s crisis. Reminded himself that this wasn’t his problem. Women went missing across America every day. He couldn’t find them all, and to Jack Stone, only one woman mattered. Finding his kid-sister Susan was his one and only priority.

He
said nothing.

Celia sighed, a sound that was tragedy and defeat and hopelessness all wrapped up in one long sound. “You don’t care do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Stone said grimly. “If you know I am looking for my sister, then you would know that I cannot help you. I am sorry Katrina is missing. I truly am. But I don’t think I am the man to find her, Miss Walker. I would strongly suggest you contact the local police, and ask Peter at The Venture Group to send one of his other operatives to help you.”

The woman went silent for a long moment. Stone could hear her sobbing softly, like she was covering her mouth with her hand to stifle tears. “Mr. Stone, you are the
only
man who can help me,” she insisted. “Because you are the only man I know of whose sister was taken by men involved in the BDSM lifestyle,” Celia said urgently. “Well, I think that’s what has happened to my sister too. I think Katrina became a submissive sex slave to someone in California.”

“And…?

“And now she has disappeared.”

Suddenly
Jack Stone was paying attention.

Four.

Stone thought quickly. It was possible that if Celia Walker’s sister was involved in the BDSM lifestyle as someone’s submissive or sex slave that she had met or maybe even known Susan. It was possible Stone’s sister had been moved to California after she had been kidnapped and forced into the world of sex slavery.

He glanced around and saw a small notepad and a pen by Melanie’s telephone. He tore off a page.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

“Ohio.”

“Ohio?”

“Yes. It’s where I live. It’s where Katrina lived until June last year. She moved to California to do modeling work. I’m flying out there to begin looking for her in one hour.”

“
Last June? That was fourteen months ago. How often were you in contact with Katrina?”

“Every day, every second day at the mo
st,” Celia explained. “I would phone her every morning.”

“Morning? That’s not usual,” Stone said. “Most people call family in the evening.”

Celia sighed. “Yes, and so did we, for the first few months,” she said softly. “Katrina was picking up some modeling work – mainly bikini-type photo shoots. But then she was offered work in a club, and she wasn’t contactable in the evenings, so we talked every morning.”

“
What kind of a club? What kind of work did she do?”

Celia
went silent for a long time. “I… I don’t know what kind of work she did, Mr. Stone, but I think I can guess – and I think you can too. When Katrina moved to California she was full of hopes and dreams. But once she started working at the club, the tone of her phone calls became… well darker, I guess. She didn’t talk about travelling or modeling anymore. She didn’t talk about her future. She just started talking about BDSM. Her whole personality seemed to change. Not overnight. It was a gradual thing, like she was sinking into depression – or being drawn into something very dark.”

“Didn’t you try to get her to move back to Ohio?”

“Of course,” Celia suddenly snapped, and there was genuine anger and frustration in her voice. “I tried every damned week to convince Katrina to come home. I offered to send her the airfare. I even tried to find modeling work for her back here. But she wouldn’t listen. She just went quiet, and changed the subject.”

Stone
switched the phone into his left hand and started to write notes.

“Do you know the name of the club she worked at?”

“It’s called The Cage.”

“Where is it?”

“California. A little place called Heston’s Cove. It’s a seaside tourism town, south of San Francisco.”

“Have you
ever been there?”

“To the club?”

“No. To Heston’s Cove.”

“No,” Celia said.
“Katrina didn’t want me to visit. All I have are a couple of postcards.”

“Do you have an address for your sister?”

“No. Just a post office box.”

Stone frowned
and thought for a moment. “Did Katrina say why she didn’t want you to come visit?”

“
Not directly… but I can guess,” Celia said darkly. “I think it was because she was involved in something to do with the club and the BDSM lifestyle and she didn’t want me to know.”

Stone glanced down at the notepaper.
“The Cage,” he said the name of the club again. “Is it a BDSM club?”

“Yes,” Celia said. “But Katrina didn’t tell me tha
t. She said it was a nightclub, but nothing she said about her work added up. I got suspicious and started to do some research. I found out about what went on there through the internet.”

Stone nodded. It seemed that Celia’s sister had been drawn into the submissive lifestyle, maybe as a sex slave, maybe as a prostitute, and she had done everything to hide her shame from her sister. It wasn’t an unusual story. Same thing happened all around the world every day. Young girl with stars in her eyes goes to the big smoke to find fame and fortune, and soon finds she can’t pay the rent.

“Have you talked to the local police?”

“In
Heston’s Cove?”

“Yes.”

Celia sighed again. “Yes. I called them on Tuesday morning, and yesterday morning – and again this morning. They have nothing. They have no reports, no information. The detective I spoke to told me he would file a missing person’s report.”

He
glanced around the room, not seeing anything, but instead reviewing the past week in Phoenix. He had spent every night on the streets, so far without success. He knew there was nothing more he could do if he stayed here.

He made a decision.

“I’m coming to California,” Stone said. “I’ll be in Heston’s Cove by this time tomorrow.”

He heard Celia sigh her relief, heard the sudden leap of hope in her voice above the background noise of airport announcements and the murmur of voices. “Thank you, Mr. Stone,” she said. “I’ll give you anything you want.
Anything at all. Name it and it’s yours.”

Stone said nothing for a long time, and then he held the phone close to his mouth to make sure his next words were clear and audible and unmistakable.

“All I want, Miss Walker, is answers. I want five minutes alone with whoever is responsible for your sister’s situation. Five minutes. That’s my price.”

Stone ended the call
. Looked around the living room again. His eyes came back into focus, his attention came back to where he was standing. He saw Melanie leaning within the frame of the bedroom door. She was still naked. Her hair was softly tousled, her eyes dark and luminous. She had one hand high up on the doorframe, her fingers splayed so that her breasts were lifted into a firm rounded shape, and all the weight on one leg to tilt her hip upward and accentuate the curve of her body. Behind her, the bedroom was filled with bright afternoon sunlight.

“You’re going,
” she said.

Stone nodded. “To California.”

Melanie looked down at the ground and gave a sad little sigh. Then she looked up into his face and smiled bravely. “When?”

“Now,” Stone said.

Melanie nodded. “Will you be back?”

Stone said nothing.