Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 04 - Jupiter Returns (16 page)

Tears were streaming down my face as I held the gun on Jupiter and all the time Tracy was begging me not to shoot, “I’m not begging for Jupiter’s life Judith.
I’m begging for you. If you pull that trigger, it will do something to you. You will never be the same again.”

I didn’t realize someone had come behind me but I was all of a sudden tackled from behind and the gun was taken away from me.

I screamed as I fell to the ground and I loo
ked up and saw Burt Jamison. I started using language like I didn’t know I knew. He laughed the whole time and it made me even angrier.

“Believe me, Judith you don’t want to kill anyone,” he said as he helped me up.
“It takes a long time to come to terms with taking another human life. I know what I’m talking about.”

Tracy put her arms around me, “It’s true, Judith I’ve had to kill and it’s horrible to live with.
I believe in what I do but there have been times when I didn’t know if I could go on after having to do some of the things I’ve had to do.”

CHAPTER 33

I couldn’t believe it was finally over.
Jupiter was taken to the hospital and Burt Jamison and the rest of the guys went out to celebrate after Tracy told them they could do their paperwork tomorrow.

Tracy, Julia and I just wanted to go home.
As soon as we got out of the car, everyone ran out of the house including the kids.

Julia ran into the arms of her professor, hugging and kissing him and calling him “Walt baby.”
Tracy hugged and kissed Mark and seeing the two couples like that wrenched my heart.

I hugged and kissed the kids and then Mimi had a tearful reunion with Julia and me.
We gathered in the back den and everyone was talking at once and there were plenty of questions for Tracy especially.

We waited until after the kids had been put back in bed and we had been served coffee before Tracy began to explain.

“Umm, where to begin. Okay, Judith you didn’t like Burt Jamison right away and that gave us an idea. We suspected that Jupiter was watching you and we decided that Burt would be as obnoxious as he could so you wouldn’t like him.

“Then he became unreliable, on purpose, and was supposedly kicked out of the FBI.
We were hoping he would attract Jupiter. We figured she would grab him up and she did.”

I was having a hard time making sense out of any of this, “Tracy, how did y’all know about the design of the house?
How did you know there was all that crawl space throughout the house?”

She laughed, “We chose the house.
The house was designed and built a couple of years ago for the FBI as a safe house. The crawl space was put in there to give added protection, as an escape route.”

We looked at each other and Mark said, “Tracy, honey how did Jupiter come to be in that house?”

Tracy laughed, “Jupiter got sloppy for the first time in her life. She trusted Burt to find a house large enough to carry out her plan. That part was just luck, pure and simple, for us.”

I thought a moment then said, “I think by then Jupiter had reached such a high level of grandiosity that she thought she was like a god.
It was her downfall. What was her plan, by the way?”

“Her people have been smuggling terrorists in through Mexico from the middle east, mostly Afghanistan and Iraq.
Most have been in the country for about as long as she was in Charters.

“No wonder those who worked for her was scared of her.
She had very long arms and still so many people working for her.

“I believe she only turned over half of what she promised in exchange for the deal we gave her two years ago.”

“I’m still worried about her pulling a fast one again, Tracy. Is someone guarding her at the hospital?”

“Judith, we have four men guarding her.”

“I want to see her, Tracy. No, don’t argue with me. I want to see her to confront her just like Julia confronted Mr. Reynolds. I deserve to confront her after what she’s done to our family.

“Don’t the rest of you want to confront her?”

Everyone was behind me and we left for the hospital immediately. We had had little or no sleep but we didn’t care. Julia was the only one who chose to stay home with “Walt Baby.”

We were all talking at once on the way to the hospital when I suddenly noticed Tracy on the two-way.
All conversation ended when we heard her say, “She what? Where were all the guards?”

She was yelling over the radio, giving out instructions so fast it was hard to keep up with her, but I gathered from what I heard that Jupiter had once again escaped.

Tracy broke all speed limits getting to the hospital, hitting the steering wheel and yelling.

Mark put his hand on her arm, “Calm down, honey.
You’ll get her again.”

I looked over at Mimi and she was white as a sheet.
Tracy came to a screeching halt just outside the emergency room and Wade Russell was standing there waiting for us.

“Okay, everyone is to stay here with Wade except John and me,” Tracy called over her shoulder as they streaked past us.

Wade hugged me and he felt good, like a shelter in a storm. Introductions were made and then I asked him what happened.

“Well, a nurse went into to her room carrying a hypodermic needle and I figured it was a pain shot.
She later came out and walked down the hall and got on the elevator.

“There were four of us outside the room but we took turns going to the men’s room and getting coffee.
I was just coming down the hall toward the room when I noticed the nurse get on the elevator.

“She had a hypodermic in her hand and it didn’t look just right, I mean a nurse getting in the elevator with a needle in her hand.

“I ran into the room and the nurse was in Jupiter’s bed with her head covered up. I threw the covers back and, if I hadn’t been prepared, she would have shot me in the face.

“I grabbed her wrist and threw her to the floor while yelling for the others to stop Jupiter who was on the elevator.

“We think she is still in the building. The FBI was smart enough to have guards posted at every exit. What we’re worried about is that she will take a one of the patients as a hostage.”

As I listened to him my eyes were darting everywhere.
Jupiter was a master of disguises and probably didn’t need a hostage.

An old woman walked out of the emergency room door.
She was wearing a heavy coat and a scarf on her head. It was April in Houston and although we could still get some cold fronts, it was too warm to be wearing a heavy coat.

She kept her head down as she shuffled along past us.
I didn’t take time to think at all, I just pushed Wade aside and dove on top of her. I could have been wrong and injured a poor old woman but I was very sure it was Jupiter.

She was caught off guard and went down but recovered quickly and before Wade had time to react, she drove the needle into my neck and pushed in the plunger.

I lost consciousness immediately.

CHAPTER 34

The first thing I heard was crying.
Julia was crying and begging, “Judith, please come back to us. We love you!”

I tried so hard to open my eyes but couldn’t and I heard someone say as I blacked out, “It’s up to her now.
We’ve done everything we can.”

It seemed like only a few minutes between when I was conscious enough to be aware of the voices and when I was in a black void and knew nothing
.

When I was finally able to open my eyes for the first time, I saw Wade Russell sitting in a chair close to my bed with his head on his chest.
He was snoring.

I was going to say something to get his attention but I realized something was stuck in my throat.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I began to panic and the whole time Wade was sitting there snoring.

I grabbed the bed rail
ing and started shaking it. It finally woke him up. He jumped up and ran out of the room. When he returned, seconds later, a nurse was with him. She pulled the thing out of my throat and it hurt like crazy.

She raised the
head of the bed and Wade came over and stuck a straw in my mouth. I sucked the straw and felt the coolness of the water. The finest wine never tasted so good.

“I’ll go call the family,” the nurse said and left the room.

Wade bent over the bed and grinned from ear to ear. He was the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on and I began to feel guilty about even looking at another man so soon after losing Ben.

“We never had our lunch date,” he said.

I looked out the window. It was dark out and I said, “Why don’t we go to breakfast today. It’s only a day late.”

“More like six weeks late,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like only a half a day at the most that I had been in the darkness.

“Did you get Jupiter?”

He glanced out the window even though I knew he couldn’t see anything out there, “We got her.”

He had tears in his eyes when he looked back at me.

“You’d better be glad you didn’t kill her before, Judith. It doesn’t make you feel good to kill someone even though you know they’re evil.”

“You killed her?”

“I had to. I’m on suspension with pay right now.”

“She didn’t deserve to live, Wade.
I wish I had been a better shot myself.”

“I’ve
been on the police force for sixteen years and have never had to kill anyone before. Can you believe that? I have to see a psychologist for another two weeks before they let me go back to work.”

I felt bad for him
, that killing Jupiter had hurt him, but I was glad she was dead. I was glad to see that Wade was so sensitive, like Ben.

CHAPTER 35

My family came in making a lot of noise and the nurse shushed them while smiling.

They had even let Brad, Bettina and Trudy in but John and Rosa were missing.

“They had to get back to New Orleans, Judith,” Tracy said when she saw me looking around.
“John is on his way to Monroe Beach, Georgia. He was called on a case there.”

It took a mom
ent to register, “Wait a minute,” I said. “I went there as an FBI consultant a couple of years ago. That was when I still had my private practice and could only spare a few days.

“There was a guy who called himself Twoon and got sexual satisfaction by slashing people on the beach.
They called him the beachfront stabber. Don’t tell me he’s escaped too.”

“No, he hasn’t and I don’t know why John is assigned there.
There is trouble there and the Atlanta FBI asked for you but I told them you couldn’t go, that you were in a coma.”

“I’m not in a coma now, Tracy.
I can go, I want to go.” I turned to Wade, “It has the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. It is a beautiful little town.” Then I said to myself, “I need to go to get away. I deserve it.”

Tracy and I argued back and forth until Brad spoke up, “Don’t be mad with Judith, Mommy.
She’s been sick. I’m glad you’re better, Aunt Judith.”

“I am
too, Brad.” Everyone hugged me again and then I said, “When can I get out of here?”

The doctor released me two days later and I was mad as a wet hen.
He told me I had been injected with sodium pentathol which is sometimes used as a truth serum and is one of the three ingredients used for lethal injections.

He said it was a good thing I had already been at the hospital because she had given me such a large dosage it could have killed me.

Everyone has gone back to their own homes and Tracy and Mark are looking for a house to buy. Mimi and I don’t want them to leave and we’re hoping they will take Mimi up on her offer to let them rebuild behind the mansion.

I’m still working with Bettina and
she’s doing better every day. Tracy is very secretive about what’s going on in Monroe Beach and we’re still arguing about me going there. It must be a dangerous case.

I see Wade from time to time but have kept him at arm’s length.
We will have lunch but that’s it. We haven’t even kissed yet.

Jesse and Arnold have announced they will be married in June and Mimi wants them to live in the mansion and still work for her.

I still grieve over Ben’s death and still have guilt but Dr. Anna is helping me with that and it’s getting better. I’m looking forward to another case and wish Tracy would let me go to Monroe Beach, Georgia. We’ll see.

###

About the author

After retiring from three major careers, I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing. I had read one to two books a day for over forty years and decided I could write too. This is the fourth Judith McCain thriller. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Look for my self-help book, The Answers Are Within, my suspense novel,Double Shock, and my science fiction/fantasy, 3037, and the final Judith McCain novel, Monroe Beach.