Her Last Breath - Debt Collector 9 (A Jack Winchester Thriller) Read online

  Her Last Breath

  Debt Collector 9

  Jon Mills

  Direct Response Publishing

  Contents

  Also by Jon Mills

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  A Plea

  Newsletter

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Jon Mills

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Debt Collector 9: Her Last Breath is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Jon Mills

  Click here to receive special offers, bonus content, and news about Jon’s new books, sign up for the newsletter.

  Undisclosed

  Retribution

  Clandestine

  The Debt Collector

  Debt Collector 2: Vengeance

  Debt Collector 3: Reborn

  Debt Collector 4: Hard to Kill

  Debt Collector 5: Angel of Death

  Debt Collector 6: Prey

  Debt Collector 7: Narc

  Debt Collector 8: Hard Time

  The Promise

  True Connection

  There is no friend as loyal as a book.

  Ernest Hemmingway

  Prologue

  Jack Winchester was strangling the man when the phone interrupted him. At first he ignored it, but when the buzzing started again for the third time, he released his death grip to answer. “Damn it,” he snapped and pointed two fingers at the man. “Don’t you go anywhere.”

  The muscle head rolled around on the floor, gasping and clawing at his neck, sucking in lungfuls of air. Outside light attempted to poke through the blinds. The noise of the city seeped through the thin walls. Jack stepped over the coffee table that was turned on its side, along with two chairs. The entire motel was in shambles. He’d been hiding out there after his girlfriend filed a report against him. There were clothes strewn all over the floor, the TV was smashed and most of the cutlery was scattered. He was usually clean in his work but this guy had got under his skin. Though he had to give him some credit, he sure put up one hell of a fight.

  He fished into his leather jacket and glanced at the caller ID. In the darkness of the room, the display was bright — almost too bright. It was the middle of the day but by the color of the guy’s pasty skin, it didn’t look as if he’d ever opened the blinds. Jack squinted at his phone. The same number? That made eight calls in the past six days. What was the deal with this woman? He raised a finger to the tattooed tweaker and told him to wait while he checked his messages. It was rare that he didn’t reply to potential clients but he’d been trying to stay off the radar after his recent run-in with the law in Texas.

  Jack leaned against the wall and kept a good eye on the asshole. He tapped the phone a few times and brought up his voice mail.

  “Mr. Winchester, this is Jenna Whitmore. I’m not sure if my messages are getting through but I really need to speak to you. Look, I’ll pay you whatever you want. I’m in over my head on this one. A friend of mine gave me your number; she said you’d be able to help. Please call me back.” She reeled off her phone number and when she would be around.

  Now under most conditions, he would have called her back immediately, especially since she said she’d pay him whatever he wanted. That was an offer too good to refuse. However, he wasn’t done with this fool. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and ambled over to the meathead.

  “Please. No more.”

  “So, sissy boy has finally found his tongue. Now you want to tell me where you put the dog?”

  He groaned and muttered something.

  Jack cupped a hand over his ear. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  “In the shed at the back of my house.”

  “And where is the leash?”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  Jack grabbed him by the neck and hauled him to his feet.

  “Please.”

  “Not such a big man now, are we?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just trying to get her attention.”

  “By strangling her dog on a live video?”

  “I was pretending. I didn’t kill it.”

  “Pretending? You better hope that dog is alive otherwise I’m going to finish what I started.”

  Jack tossed him on the bed and went over to the camera and peered through, adjusting it ever so slightly for the best angle. He played back the recording of strangling the guy. He was going to send it to the guy’s ex-girlfriend who’d hired him to get her dog back. It was a crazy situation, she didn’t want him dead but she wanted him to suffer. The guy was a complete meathead. He was loaded up on steroids, and by all accounts not the kind of person anyone in their right mind would have approached. But it was all a front. The very second Tina had told him what Bradley had done, he took the job. Nothing pissed him off more than someone taking out their frustration on a helpless animal.

  He looked up from the camera and smiled.

  “Strip.”

  “What?”

  “Are you deaf? I said strip.”

  “Oh no, you’re not—”

  “Hell no. I wouldn’t touch your ass with a barge pole.”

  The guy at first was reluctant as if he thought Jack was joking. He wasn’t.

  “Do I need to come over there again?”

  “No,” he said, his neck red and raw from being taken to the edge and brought back again. Strangling a person wasn’t as easy as it looked. But after his time in the mob, he’d perfected the art. He knew how to take a full-grown man down to his knees and bring him to the point of where he blacked out, only to bring him back and do it again. Meathead was wearing tight jeans, and a black T-shirt. Once he stripped down to his undies he stood there, holding his hands over his privates and looking vulnerable.

  Jack gave a nod. “And the underpants.”

  “No, come on, man.”

  Jack walked over to him and he
flinched before quickly dropping them. Jack couldn’t help but see the amusing side to what he had in store for him. Occasionally he liked to toy with them, change things up and make each job a little interesting.

  “Where’s the dog food?”

  “In the cupboard over there.”

  Jack whistled to himself as he crossed the room and pulled out several cans of wet dog food. He searched around on the counter for a can opener and took the tops off before returning and handing it over.

  “Right, smear that shit all over you and make sure you get it into every cavity in your body.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”

  The guy stared down at the can. He grimaced but slid two fingers into the nasty smelling sludge and began smearing it over the front of his own chest. Jack went back to the kitchenette.

  “You got any beers?”

  “In the fridge.”

  He opened it and pulled out a cold one, cracked the top off and took a hard swig. He strolled back into the room, took a seat across from him and watched.

  “Now don’t hold back. I want to see you covered from head to toe.”

  “Do you get off on this?”

  “Oh yeah, I just love to see grown men covered in dog food. Nothing else gets me hard like the smell of Pedigree Chum.” He chuckled and took another swig before pulling out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one.

  “You know, Bradley, this could have all been avoided if you had just gone on your way.”

  “I love her.”

  “Strange way to show your love.”

  “She wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Well, there is a surprise. You’re a fucking idiot. What the hell she saw in you originally is anyone’s guess. But here’s the thing… Taking your frustration out on her dog.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Bad move. I have a good mind to go back to strangling you. But I think that would be too easy. So I’m going to do you a favor. Hell, I’m going to do dogs all over this town a favor.”

  Bradley’s face screwed up. “I don’t get it.”

  He leaned forward. “Of course you don’t. But you will. And here’s the thing. If I discover that you have gone anywhere near her or her dog after this, or any animal for that matter, I will hunt you down and make what’s happened here today seem like child’s play. Do you understand me?”

  He didn’t nod but just got this scowl on his face.

  “You better wipe that scowl off your face and butter up those balls with that dog food before I make this far worse for you.”

  Once he was slathered in chunks of stewed meat, he looked as if he’d taken a bath in dog shit. Jack went over and picked up the leash off the counter and tossed it at him.

  “Put it on.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself. I hate repeating myself.”

  “I was just going to say I don’t have the collar.”

  “That’s okay, I can remedy that.”

  Jack hopped up, placed his beer on the counter, took a hold of the leash and tied it around his neck so tight it was almost cutting off his ability to breathe. “Now, get on the ground.”

  The hulking man’s expression changed, and a chunk of meat fell from his face. Jack was tired of him dragging ass so he kicked out his feet from beneath him. “There we go. Now we’re going for a little walk. How about that, huh? But before we do that, let’s give you something to make you more compliant.” He crossed the room and picked up a bag of heroin belonging to the man and took a few minutes to heat up a spoon of it before filling a needle with the dark liquid.

  “Put your arm out,” he bellowed.

  Again he was slow, so he tugged it out in front of him. Jack stuck him with the needle and watched as his eyes rolled back. He then proceeded to drag him out the door of that shitty low-end motel and over to a clapped-out old car. He tossed him in the trunk and wiped his hands clean on a towel before dropping it and starting the engine. It sputtered to life, and he reversed out. As he was backing up, the owner of the motel gave him a strange look. Jack gave a nod and drove away.

  Ten minutes later he pulled into a busy dog park in Chicago. It was an expansive green that was full of all kinds of dogs running off the leash. He let the car idle until he saw an area where he could pull in without being noticed. He pushed out of the car, popped the trunk and dragged the man out. He was disoriented and barely able to resist. That was exactly how he wanted him. From there he took him down to a small gate and tied him up to a chain-link fence. He breathed in deeply as he looked at his naked body lying there in the grass with dog food all over him. Jack turned and walked a few feet away, around a cluster of trees to an area where there were tons of dogs. Owners were busy chatting, drinking coffee or watching their dogs play. He brought two fingers up to his lips and whistled as hard as he could. Dogs perked their ears and turned his way. He did it again and then proceeded to run. He glanced back to find six or seven of them racing his way. Perfect, he thought.

  As soon as he got around the corner, he hopped over the fence and watched as they burst around the bend and came rushing up to the gate. Jack chuckled as he watched them lick the guy all over. One of them bit him as it tried to get a chunk of meat out of his ass. Bradley let out a howl in agony as Jack walked off with a smirk on his face.

  He could see the headline now: Naked Man Found in Dog Park Smeared with Dog Food. It was humiliation at its finest and a hard lesson but some people only understood the hard way.

  When he arrived at Bradley’s home, he let himself into the backyard and spotted the shed in the far corner. The asshole had placed two large tires against the doors to prevent the dog from escaping. Jack went over and peered in through the window. The dog was lying on his side panting hard. There were no bowls of water or food.

  Bastard.

  After pulling away the tires, he opened the door. The dog didn’t move. He was breathing hard and looked like he was suffering from heat exhaustion. Jack went in and scooped him up and quickly made it back to his vehicle. There he took a bottle of water and managed to get him to drink some of the liquid from his hand. Not wasting any time, he placed the dog inside, and drove to the nearest veterinarians. On the way he made a phone call to the girl who’d hired him and instructed her to meet him there.

  The look on her face when she saw her dog was full of both horror and joy. She cried into his fur as the vet went about treating the dog.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s dehydrated, and malnourished but he’ll bounce back,” the vet said before heading back into the room where the dog was laying on a table. The girl turned to Jack before he headed out.

  “Are you sure I can’t give you some money?”

  “Use it on the dog. Get him some toys.”

  He extended his hand, but she leaned forward and hugged him.

  “Thank you.”

  He offered a faint smile and then exited. Outside he pulled out his phone and made a call to Jenna Whitmore. He slowly paced back and forth in the parking lot waiting for her to pick up.

  “Jenna, it’s Jack.”

  “Oh God, thank you for calling back.”

  “How can I help?”

  Chapter 1

  The conversation was bizarre. Five women had gone missing over the past two years and had washed up in streams and creeks. She’d been investigating it because according to her, the cops were doing little to nothing because of the type of women they were. Jack probed her for specifics but she was too nervous to speak on the phone and wanted to meet in person. Initially, all he could manage to get out of her was that she was a small-town journalist living in the sleepy West Virginia town of Marlinton.

  He generally didn’t take on a job without getting the full scoop. It was sloppy and hard to gauge the true level of risk. Of course, missing people was his expertise. Years of working for Gafino in New York, and hunting down debtors had honed his skills. But they were usuall
y alive. What did she expect of him?

  “Look, Ms. Whitmore. I’m currently in Chicago. It’s a good ten-hour drive from you and without specifics, I really don’t want to go to all the trouble of driving that far only to turn you down.”

  “If money is a problem, I can wire you some this morning.”

  He snorted. “Money isn’t the issue, I don’t take on every job that comes my way. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. You mentioned you have compiled a lot of information on people of interest. Why not just take that to the police?”

  Her voice became muffled. The hum of a highway could be heard in the background.

  “Things work very different down here, Mr. Winchester.”

  “But surely with five dead women, the FBI is involved?”

  “If you call showing up for a few days and interviewing the families, sure. But they are not here now.” There was silence, then she sighed. “You don’t get it, do you…? It’s because of what these women did for a living that they aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Police are a piece of shit down here. Several have been caught picking up women. As far as they see it, this isn’t a murder investigation.”

  Jack stood back from his black Shelby GT with two silver lines over the top. He’d wanted to get another since his got destroyed in Maine. He’d finally bit the bullet. He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw.

  “Look, I need a day or two to consider this. This is too rushed for my liking. I still have a few things to wrap up here before I give you my final decision.”

  “Okay, I’ll wire a quarter of the money through Western Union.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I want to show you that I’m serious,” she said. “Just…” she paused for a second. “Don’t take too long to think it over.”

  With that said she gave her address in Marlinton and hung up. Jack exhaled and leaned against his car. There was nothing left to tie up in Chicago, he’d lied to her simply to get her off the phone. That was thing about the clients he took on. He had to filter out the crazies, and those who were trying to screw him over from the legit. He wouldn’t know what category she fell into until he went back to his hotel and looked into the disappearances himself.

 
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