Oblivion - Debt Collector 13 (A Jack Winchester Thriller) Read online

  OBLIVION

  The Debt Collector 13

  Jon Mills

  Copyright © 2019 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.

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  The Debt Collector 13: Oblivion 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.

  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

  Epilogue

  A Plea

  Readers Team

  About the Author

  Also by Jon Mills

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  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

  Debt Collector 9: Here Last Breath

  Debt Collector 10: Trail of the Zodiac

  Debt Collector 11: Fight Game

  Debt Collector 12: Cry Wolf

  Debt Collector 13: Oblivion

  Lost Girls

  I’m Still Here

  The Promise

  True Connection

  Prologue

  The Butcher of New York crouched at the corner of the auto store, scanning the darkened crossroads that separated him from the boarded-up red tavern. All around, a thick green forest swallowed the rural town of Apalachin in Tioga County; a tiny community that the world wouldn’t have known had it not been for the huge mob bust back in 1957.

  “You sure this is it?” Jack asked the gangly kid with holes in his jeans. He didn’t expect him to be certain but one thing he knew, small-town kids rarely lied, especially when money was at stake. Upon arrival he’d taken the old-school approach of seeking out information. He didn’t have the luxury of lingering, and he sure as hell didn’t want whoever was behind Dana’s disappearance to know he’d arrived, and yet he couldn’t ignore the gut feeling they already knew.

  The boy nodded. “Positive. It’s been empty for months. My old man asked the realtor. It’s had no interest. Yet, I’ve seen men coming and going from there for over two weeks, mostly late at night.”

  It was a shot in the dark but in a town of this size, small details were hard to overlook.

  Jack nodded, fished out of his pocket a fifty dollar bill and handed it to him. The teenager’s eyes lit up as he stretched it out. “And I’ll get another if I’m right?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the green.

  “Sure, kid.”

  But first he needed to find out. Three days. Three days since he’d arrived in upstate New York. Teased by the words of a dying man, his drive to find answers had taken him on a long journey northeast across multiple state lines. Over a thousand miles from Arkansas, cutting through sleepy towns, he had thought of nothing else but Carl Bianco, the head of a notorious syndicate that ran out of New England.

  None of it made sense. Bianco was dead. Jack had personally watched the life fade from his eyes as he squeezed his neck with his bare hands, then decapitated him and dumped his remains in brown paper bags at locations in Providence. It was a savage attack; one that had earned him the nickname — the Butcher — but that was when he was twenty-one and the mob was his life. Twenty-three years later it was just a vague distant memory.

  An hour of waiting and no sign of anyone.

  All he could do was hope that this was it.

  In all his years of tracking and dealing with the worst of society, nothing had rattled him more than tracking Dana. It was personal, and one way or another, whoever was behind it would pay.

  “I’ll meet you back at the café tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? I thought I was getting it tonight.”

  “I’m good for my word, kid. Now you should get going.”

  The kid looked pissed but he took off while Jack crossed the street heading for the tavern, nothing more than a silhouette in the night. He removed a Glock from his jacket and held it low. All the windows were boarded up. The two-story, weathered structure looked as if it needed to be demolished, not sold. He circled the faded wooden building searching for a way in while at the same time keeping an eye on Pennsylvania Avenue. Making his way around to a side door, he turned the handle expecting it to be locked only to find it open. Huh. Inside it was pitch dark. Jack stood there for a second listening, anticipating an attack, but it was silent. Jack pressed in, making his way down a corridor that was in shambles. The wooden floor had suffered from rainwater getting in. It was as if the owners had left the place to rot. A rat darted across the creaky floor, startling him. It scurried beneath the dusty furniture.

  Thin rays of moonlight seeped through cracks in the warped wood paneling, providing just enough light to see his way into a larger room. At the center was a small stage with a long bar that was off to the right. There were multiple long tables, each one covered in upturned chairs on either side of foundational posts. A musty smell, a mix of dust, spilled alcohol and rotten oak, attacked his senses. Jack listened for movement, his eyes lifting to the catwalk around the second-floor perimeter. Nothing. Cautiously he moved in, past peeling and faded posters of live bands on the walls. His gaze washed over empty bar shelves and abandoned contents in the room, expecting trouble to appear out of a darkened corner.

  Where are you?

  Jack cleared the lower floor before making his way to the steps that went to the next tier. Every step let out a creak, each one threatening to break under his weight. Keeping his back to the wall he slid up until his eyes were level with the second floor. The upstairs was much brighter as none of the windows had been covered and yet it was still dark. Keeping his gun in front of him, he took in the sight of multiple doors. He squinted. There, at the far back of the room was a figure seated in a chair with a burlap sack over the top half of their body. They wore jeans, but no shoes or socks. Expecting some kind of trap, he gazed back down the stairs, listening for movement before continuing on. As soon as he was up he didn’t waste any time crossing to the covered body. In the darkness he couldn’t tell if there was b
lood on the ground or if they were even alive. He used the tip of his boot to prod the leg. The second it touched, the person who was leaning forward shot upright and let out a muffled cry. Keeping a tight grip on his handgun, he reached forward with the other hand and grasped the bag. A quick tug and it lifted.

  “Dana!?”

  Her arms were tied behind the chair, her ankles secured to the legs, and she had a dirty rag in her mouth, and one covering her eyes. She let out a cry as he slipped his Glock into his waistband and removed the rags from her eyes and mouth. “Jack,” she said in a slurred way as if she’d been drugged. She began to cry. He clasped her face with both hands and brought his lips to her forehead.

  “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”

  She tried to speak but it only came out as an incoherent mess. He cut her free of the restraints and she sank forward into his arms, her face nuzzled in his neck. Jack ran a hand through her matted hair. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”

  He lifted her face to see if there were any cuts or bruises but it was hard to tell in the dim light. He helped her to her feet and that’s when he noticed how unsteady she was.

  “Who did this?”

  She muttered something but he couldn’t make out what. Her eyelids drooped, and her body was like a deadweight as he scooped her up, one arm around her back, the other beneath her knees. Moving quickly, Jack descended and exited the same way he entered. All the while he completely expected to come face to face with whoever was behind this, but no one confronted him. Something about it was too easy. All this trouble and they were just going to let him walk?

  There was no time to question it.

  In his arms she groaned, her cheek resting on his shoulder.

  After all this time he couldn’t believe he’d found her. He was sure he’d find her dead with some sick note attached to her body. Why not? What was their goal? He hurried across the street and made his way to a black truck hidden in the shadows. Jack set her down and opened the passenger side door then slipped her in. She looked at him for a second, and he swore he saw the faintest smile before her head flopped back. He took a second to secure a seat belt around her before getting in and starting the engine.

  As it growled to life he placed a hand on her leg and told her it was okay, she was safe now. He gave it some gas and swerved out onto Main Street and hung a left heading southwest on Pennsylvania Avenue. Jack glanced at the old tavern in his rearview mirror before flooring it.

  Dark open fields and dense forest flew by in his peripheral vision as he gripped the steering wheel tight and let the reality of finding her sink in. A mix of emotions welled up, elation, sadness, rage. He’d hoped to find her behind a group of assholes just so he could send them to their maker but that wasn’t to be. After searching for weeks, collecting her had been easy. Far too easy. What game were they playing now?

  Jack gave Dana’s leg a reassuring squeeze and she groaned a little. She rested her head on the window and managed to lift an eyelid. “It’s just me. It’s all right,” he said.

  They were roughly six miles away when they approached a hidden intersection. He looked at Dana then back at the road. A flicker of light off to his right caught his attention. Seconds. That’s all it took. A bright light filled the inside of the truck. Jack swerved but it was too late.

  The passenger side was struck with such force, the truck instantly flipped.

  Brakes screeched, glass smashed and steel collided.

  Spinning, turning, the world around shifted like a kaleidoscope, then blackness.

  What came next occurred in a series of snapshots. His eyelids fluttered and blinding light stabbed his eyes. He squinted and felt something warm running down the side of his face. Pain. So much pain. His shoulders. His ribs. His neck. Excruciating pain. A few seconds of disorientation then the memory came back. Dana. Although it was painful, he managed to turn his head to the right There she was, slumped over covered in blood.

  He tried to move but his legs were pinned or no longer working. “Dana!” he muttered in his hazy pain but his voice was lost in the continual blare of the horn.

  He squinted, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

  The sound of gravel crunching below tires, a door slamming and boots approaching.

  A looming figure cut into the bright headlights that filled a side mirror that was barely hanging on by a strand of wire. The driver? Police? EMT? His vision blurred.

  He squinted, looking at a face twisting and morphing, a blurred mess as his mind tried to make sense of it. For a brief second it snapped into view. “Impossible,” he muttered. “You’re dead.”

  Jack squeezed his eyelids tight and snapped them open. The face of the stranger once again blurred. Was it a dream? A nightmare he couldn’t escape?

  Rage overwhelmed Jack as he struggled to free himself from the steel tomb, to get a grip on reality. Warm blood streamed into his eyes, making his vision worse. Hot searing pain shot through his body as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his head, and shot him in both kneecaps. His limbs screamed; his lungs threatened to collapse.

  One final attempt to move, then he blacked out.

  1

  Four months later

  The cuffs bit into his skin as the shuttle bus jerked to a standstill outside the secure gates of Holbrook, a huge state forensic facility in upstate New York.

  Located on NY 86, set back inside a sprawling forest of white pines between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, the secure treatment area of high-risk units was hidden from view. They didn’t want the public seeing this, although a well-known Federal Correctional Institution was only a few miles away. No, Holbrook was an eyesore, a blotch on the face of society, a place for the discarded and dangerous. Dedicated to the care of the chronically insane, it had earned a reputation for being violent after the facility underwent a renovation in the early ’90s and began taking in mentally ill patients from the criminal justice system.

  Jack glanced out the window at the four-story gray building guarded by a twenty-foot high safety fence topped with three feet of coiled razor-sharp wire. It looked more like a tired college campus than a psychiatric hospital. Beyond the heavy mesh, the crowded lot had police patrolling. Off to his left through the opposite window, a stream of workers entering a sally port were handed security badges before being wanded down and allowed to proceed.

  A loud buzzing erupted, then the tall gates before them eased open. The bus rolled in and the gates sealed shut. The sound tore at his soul. As the driver stepped out to speak with uniformed security, Jack’s thoughts drifted. Today would mark the first day of his court-ordered sentence as an NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity). A judge had deemed him unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of his offense due to what they were calling mental illness. Whether it was true or not was hard to tell. His memory of that fateful night in Apalachin four months ago was as hazy as the arrest, hospitalization and temporary incarceration that followed. Upon his wounds healing he was brought before a judge and had his day in court. The accusation of massacring a family of six didn’t make any sense. Women, children, there was no way he would have done that. Still, because his memory was foggy, his fate was sealed in less than an hour by doctors who’d evaluated his mental status and police who’d performed an investigation.

  The assigned attorneys and doctors didn’t appear to have his best interests at heart so he didn’t stand a chance. No one listened to him. He had no memory of the so-called murders. Jack remembered seeing flashing lights, police shouting at him to put a knife down, and seeing bodies, and blood.

  What was real?

  The door hissed open, snapping him back into the present.

  The driver boarded and was given the all-clear to head on in. It was a short stretch to the administration building where they’d been instructed on the process. “You’ll be handed off to hospital staff for a brief medical examination before being given scrubs and directed to your unit,” he remembered them saying. A garage door
rolled up and the bus entered an opening on the east side. Almost immediately several brash cops at the front jumped up and began bellowing out orders to make sure no one got out of line.

  Once the preliminary details were cleared away and he was out of cuffs, Jack was given an armful of clothing and told to go change. The shirt and sweatpants were khaki, with white Velcro shoes. After, Jack was guided by two muscle-bound psychiatric technicians dressed in navy blue uniforms, he entered a maze of beige cinderblock hallways. He passed through multiple reinforced steel doors. Each one had a small double-pane window. They were taking him and five others to Unit C, one of fifteen high-security units. A guy on the bus had said that every unit was different. One was for sex offenders, another was co-ed, one was for those about to be discharged and the rest outside the fence were for conservatorship. Through a window he noticed that security was outside, traversing the expansive space between the two fences in golf carts.

  Continuing on, they passed a nurses station with thick, smoky plexiglass, and offices for the unit manager, psychologist and therapists. Something that struck Jack was the lack of uniformed guards. There were none inside. Even though it appeared that everything was locked and secure, the facility was nothing like Rikers or any prison for that matter. Only nurses and psych techs were on hand inside to deal with trouble and none of them were armed. How did they protect themselves? His answer came fast. No sooner had they entered the next long corridor than an ear-splitting siren blared and strobe lights began flashing.

 
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