Red-Hot Vengeance Read online

  “The place was ransacked,” she informed him. “They won’t tell me who did it or why. I don’t even know what happened at the pub. I knew that job wasn’t good for him.” She started sobbing again.

  Carter rolled his eyes. Women, always crying and complaining instead of looking for answers.

  “I bet you know,” Mariela said, pointing an accusing finger at him.

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah,” Carter answered, still watching the cops.

  Mariela suddenly slapped him. Carter jumped up. He blinked a few times to get back to his senses. She’d aimed for the cheekbone, right under his left eye, and it felt like his eyeball was sent on a roller-coaster.

  “Ouch,” he grumbled. “What was that for?”

  “My brother is in the hospital because of you. How can you act so casual? I thought he was you friend.”

  “Is,” Carter corrected. “Rafa’s not dead. And yes, he’s my friend. And yes, I probably have something to do with the whole thing, but—”

  “I knew it!” She was about to slap him again, but Carter grasped her wrist firmly.

  “Please, don’t do that again,” he said. “I’m willing to help, really.”

  Carter was still holding Mariela’s wrist when he caught a glimpse of a reflection of sunlight in black Ray-Bans not far from him. He looked at her for a minute. He knew she was staring at him, and he knew she knew he’d noticed. Carter remained calm so that he wouldn’t frighten Mariela and make her angrier at him than she already was.

  Carter considered his options. They were sadly not very numerous. He could of course run to save his life and leave Mariela, but Vaughn would probably hurt her like she’d hurt her brother. Or he could give himself up to Vaughn, but he didn’t feel like dealing with a crazy murderous bitch. Carter sighed when he thought about the last option.

  “Mariela, sweetheart, I know you won’t like this, but you’re gonna have to trust me,” he told her slowly.

  “Why? What’s going on?” she worried.

  “Don’t turn around. There’s a woman there who wants me dead and attacked your brother,”

  “She’s here?” Mariela panicked, slightly turning.

  “Don’t turn around,” Carter repeated, motioning her to look back at him. “Calm down, everything will be fine.”

  “Yeah, like everything’s been fine for Rafa,” she said with irony.

  “Trust me.” Carter looked into Mariela’s wet eyes and saw fear. “Do you trust me?” he said in a tone he wanted to be reassuring.

  “No,” she slightly lied.

  Carter smiled. “Good. Take my hand, walk fast, and don’t turn back.”

  Mariela reluctantly did as she was told. She offered her hand with a wince.

  “Oh come on,” Carter said. “Am I really that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  Carter took her hand despite her resistance. He started for the police cars parked in front of the building. He knew Vaughn was on his trail, but he didn’t turn back. He zigzagged in between the people on the pavement. The walk toward Williams seemed oppressively long. With each new step, Carter expected to feel Vaughn’s gun between his shoulder blades.

  When they eventually arrived, Carter surprised everyone by opening the back door of a police car. He helped Mariela inside before being violently tackled against the car with an arm twisted behind his back. Carter grumbled an insult at Williams, but relaxed when he saw Vaughn suddenly stop her chase and turn around.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Williams yelled in his ear, while clamping his wrists in handcuffs.

  “I’m saving this young woman’s life,” Carter said with apparent calm, while he was actually boiling inside.

  Without releasing his grip on Carter’s arm, Williams peered into the car. He saw a frightened young woman pressed against the seat.

  “You might have met Mariela López,” Carter continued.

  “Yes, you’re Rafa’s sister, right?” Williams asked her. She nodded. “What do you mean, saving her life?” Williams said, turning his attention back to Carter.

  Carter forced his shoulder back so that Williams would let go of his grip. He turned around to face him. Williams’ eyes were sparkling with anger and frustration.

  “As you’re here, I guess you know what happened to Rafa,” Carter said.

  “Yes, I know. I was there,” Williams growled, still angry. “He told me some woman wanted you dead.”

  “So she talked to him,” Carter deduced.

  “Yep. And you’re gonna talk to me. Get in.”

  “Oh come on! What did I do?” Carter complained.

  “Get. In,” Williams repeated on a very authoritarian tone, which made Carter instantly comply.

  Carter sat next to Mariela who smiled widely at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “That was your big plan?” she laughed. “Surrendering to the cops.”

  “It worked,” Carter made her notice. “You’ll be safe now.”

  Mariela considered him for a while. He was struggling with the handcuffs, and lifting his eyes now and then to watch Williams’ moves.

  “It’s good to see you like this for once,” she said.

  “Like what?” Carter asked without looking at her.

  “Overpowered.”

  “Overpowered? Me?” Carter grinned. “Think again, sweetheart.” He handed her the handcuffs. “I hope you’ll be clever enough to stay in the car and trust Williams.”

  Carter looked outside. Williams was talking with some colleagues with great gestures. Apparently he wasn’t very happy with them. Carter tried the door. Locked. He groaned. Another look outside informed him that the situation hadn’t changed. As discreetly as he could, he made his way in between the seats and over the parking break to the driver’s seat.

  “What are you doing?” Mariela asked in astonishment.

  “Running away,” Carter answered factually.

  “But you can’t,” she exclaimed.

  “Shh,” Carter ordered. “Remember I saved your life.” It was a very soft threat, but it was enough to silence Mariela who wasn’t used to being confronted to police and criminals.

  Carter opened the door. He crawled out of the car. He suddenly heard Williams’ voice and footsteps getting closer. Carter held his breath. His heart was bumping loudly in his chest. Rushes of adrenaline made his ears hypersensitive. It sounded as if Williams was only inches from him.

  With his hand flat on the door, Carter pushed it as slowly as if he was scared it would explode. His effort to be silent wasn’t vain, yet the door still closed with a clap. Carter prayed that Williams hadn’t heard it. He risked an eye over the outside mirror. He expected to find himself face to face with Williams. But he didn’t. Williams was actually standing a few feet away. Carter breathed a little better. He didn’t stay to know how long it would take for Williams to notice he was gone. He ran.

  Her Place

  Vaughn and her henchmen quickly found Carter’s place. Vaughn didn’t deem it necessary to search the place; she knew Carter didn’t have the ruby. Anything else he possessed wasn’t of any interest to her. She only wanted him to suffer for deceiving her. Vaughn placed her minions next to the door, she sat on the couch, and waited.

  She didn’t have to wait for long. Carter arrived about ten minutes later. Vaughn had left the door open, and thus wasn’t surprised to see Carter enter with his gun in hand. He aimed at her without hesitation. Perhaps a bit of hesitation would have made him notice the two men framing his door.

  “Good evening, Reese,” Vaughn said with horrible tenderness.

  “What do you want?” Carter asked sharply.

  “You.” Her tone was soft and loving.

  Despite the air of déjà vu, Carter didn’t lower his gun. “Not interested,” he said.

  Vaughn laughed. A little childish giggle that made Carter’s blood run cold. He shivered slightly and tightened his grip on the gun. Vaughn got up slowly, taking her time to enjoy
Carter’s confused and somewhat anxious expression.

  “Get out of my flat,” Carter said.

  “Okay,” she answered in a smooth and sugary voice. “Why don’t we go to my place instead,” she offered.

  “What?”

  Carter lowered his weapon no more than half an inch. Vaughn made an almost imperceptible signal to her subordinates. The two men fell heavily on Carter. One of them stroke his forearm, making him let the gun fall on the floor. Carter tried to fight, but the other man hit him on the neck. Carter saw flashing lights dancing behind his eyelids. He wanted to get up and keep fighting. But the next strike made him crumble to the carpet, unconscious.

  **

  Carter woke up tied to a chair, with chains. Those would be harder to escape than handcuffs. He moved a leg and regretted it immediately. He then tried to move his upper body, but the pain was just as excruciating. He sat back and breathed deeply. Every single one of his muscles hurt. Carter wondered what on Earth had happened to him. He remembered being beaten up by Vaughn’s men, but a few strikes couldn’t possibly have left him so bruised.

  To try and distract his mind from the pain, Carter inspected the place. It looked like a huge garage. The hall was dark and large. Carter was locked in a sort of cage in one corner of the hall. His ankles and wrists were chained to the chair. There was a table next to him.

  Carter’s blood froze when he saw the syringes on the table. He became suddenly aware of his own body, and of the fluid running in his veins. He noticed the mark of a little incision on his left arm, where his shirt sleeve had been roughly torn away.

  Who the hell was that woman? How could she be so evil? Carter did his best to calm down, but his pulse was racing. Now was not a good time to panic. He had to stay calm and lucid, and think about a prospective opportunity to escape.

  Carter saw a lock on the door of the cage. He imagined that he could probably pick the lock with a syringe. But to do that, he would first have to escape the chains. Why couldn’t she just use handcuffs like everyone? Carter gritted his teeth to counter the pain and moved his right arm to see how loose the chains were. They weren’t. He could hardly even lift his wrist from the chair. It was the same for his ankles.

  Carter painfully leaned forward. The chains were twisted around the chair. That was very clever. Carter was held in place by his own weight. And as the pain made him almost incapable of moving, it was almost impossible to get free. Almost. If Carter could make the chair fall on the side, he would certainly hurt himself to the point of blacking out, but he would then be able to break free from the chains.

  Carter leaned back up. He had to close his eyes and stop moving for a while to ease the pain. He didn’t know what he’d been injected with, but it was strong stuff. When he was able to breathe a bit better, he looked around the hall once more. It was hard to see through the dark, but Carter discerned a door on the far left of the hall. A door which suddenly opened to let Vaughn come through with her loyal henchmen.

  “Good morning, Reese,” she said while she unlocked the metallic door. “I hope the night wasn’t too… um… unpleasant,” she continued with a smile.

  Carter didn’t answer. He had a feeling he would need all his energy in the moments to come.

  “How are you doing?” she asked, not departing of her smile for a second.

  “What do you want?” Carter articulated with difficulty.

  “Hm?” She seemed surprised by his question. “Nothing in particular.”

  “Then why don’t you just kill me right away?”

  “That wouldn’t be much fun, would it?” She answered with a little laugh.

  Carter closed his eyes. She was even crazier than he’d thought. Her slap woke the terrible pain in his whole body. Carter was used to being slapped by women, but that one felt like a train smashing in his face.

  “Wake up,” Vaughn yelled.

  Carter groaned. “How did you do that?”

  “What, this?” she asked, and slapped him again.

  Carter waited for the pain to pass. It felt less violent this time. Perhaps the drug was wearing off.

  “Oh yeah,” he growled. “Keep it coming, baby, I could do this all night.”

  “Well, if you’re enjoying it, it’s no fun either,” Vaughn stated.

  Vaughn picked up a syringe on the table. She put on her most dreadful smile and walked toward Carter. He swallowed. Carter didn’t like syringes, especially when he didn’t know what they contained.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Just a little homemade medicine. Gets your muscles as tense as rock. And then the slightest pressure feels like… well, you tell me,” she laughed.

  Without warning, she planted the syringe in Carter’s left arm. He couldn’t help screaming with pain. The syringe was huge and left a wide bleeding mark next to the other one. Carter almost instantly felt the drug run through his veins. A few spasms shook his arms and legs. After that, every move would be synonymous of terrible pain. Carter was amazed at how fast the drug worked.

  Despite all his efforts to relax, Carter was tense and breathless. It was a nightmare. A dreadful nightmare whose villain’s name was miss Vaughn. Carter clenched his teeth to restrain the cries every time she slapped him. After a while, the pain was so excruciating that Carter lost consciousness.

  Yet Vaughn would come back a few hours later and start over her terrible enterprise. Carter wished he hadn’t escaped from Williams’ car. He wished the wounds on his left arm would drain him of his blood so that she would stop, finally. But he survived, and kept surviving after each strike.

  Once, Carter didn’t open his eyes. He was awake, but desperate. Vaughn entered the hall with her minions. Carter could hear them vaguely.

  “He’s still out,” Vaughn noticed.

  “If you keep injecting him so often,” a male voice answered, “he’ll be dead in a few hours.”

  The silence which followed made Carter nervous. He wasn’t ready for another crisis of Vaughn’s anger.

  “You’re right,” she eventually said. “Now that he knows what to expect from me, I’ll be able to use him. Let’s go.”

  Carter heard the door slam and breathed. Use him, huh? Well not if he had anything to say about that. Carter felt suddenly reinvigorated. He opened his eyes, lifted his head, and tried moving his arms. It still hurt a lot, but the rush of adrenaline made the pain less horrible.

  Carter breathed in once, twice. And he made his move. He forced all his weight on the right and fell on the floor with the chair. Carter repressed a cry of pain. He lifted his eyes toward the entrance to make sure the noise hadn’t attracted anyone. The way seemed clear.

  Carter got rid of the chains. When he got up, he felt like his limbs had been smashed under a plane. According to his plan, he used a syringe to pick the lock. It was longer and more difficult than planned because of his aching muscles.

  Once he was out of the cage, Carter walked on tiptoe toward the door. He had absolutely no idea who or what hid behind that door. But he was past the point where he actually cared. He pushed the door and peered through. Still no one. It must have been his lucky day.

  Vaughn suddenly appeared at the end of what seemed to be a long corridor. Carter reacted quickly. He closed the door and made himself as flat as he could against the wall. Carter exhaled the pain away from his body. Vaughn opened the door. Carter held his breath. Followed by her two favorite henchmen, she took a quick step into the hall.

  “Where is he?” she yelled out in anger.

  Carter didn’t wait for her to turn back. He slipped through the door, and locked it behind him. At the end of the corridor was another door. Carter wanted to run, but the lingering pain and his tense muscles prevented him from doing so.

  He’d almost made it to the door, when he heard a gunshot behind him. In less than a second, Vaughn’s men were on his back. Carter was too weak to fight back. Wounded and beaten, he soon blacked out once more.

  **

  Wil
liams and Cowley had some difficulty to find Vaughn despite López’s description. After a lot of research and questions to people here and there, they were eventually able to put a name on her face. But that was only the beginning. Finding her was yet another problem.

  Kathleen Vaughn seemed to be a sort of ghost. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She appeared and disappeared at will. Williams grew progressively annoyed of having to face an empty flat because Vaughn had just fled, or an angry landlord because she’d actually never been there.

  However, two tiresome days later, Williams, Cowley, and their numerous colleagues surrounded Vaughn’s place. The police officers were getting ready to enter the building. They had every possible exit covered and wouldn’t let Vaughn escape. Williams wanted everyone to be exactly in place before launching the attack. Any mistake would provide Vaughn with an opportunity to run away.

  Suddenly, a gun was fired inside of the building. Williams didn’t wait any longer.

  “Go, go, go,” he shouted.

  Police uniforms invaded the place like ants on sugary water. Men were arrested in the corridor and hall of the huge garage. Others were found in two rooms at the end of the floor. But no sign of Vaughn. Williams was starting to lose patience when someone called his name.

  “What?”

  “Sir, I think you might want to see this.”

  Williams sent Cowley to check out the big cage in the hall, and went to find the officer who’d called him. “What’s going on?” he asked when he reached the young man, bending over a wounded body. Williams’ eyes widened with surprise when he recognized Carter.

  An ambulance was called while the building was being drained of its criminal inhabitants. Cowley went back to the police office to deal with the men they had arrested, and Williams accompanied Carter to the hospital. He didn’t want to leave him alone and risk losing track of him once again.

  In the ambulance, Williams was thinking about Vaughn—or rather Vaughn’s absence—when Carter grasped his arm.

  “Josh,” he said under his breath. “Thank you.”

  “Just doing my job, Carter,” Williams answered, but he wasn’t sure Carter had heard him. The poor man looked completely smashed. Although unconscious, Carter kept wincing because of the pain.