Prey - Debt Collector 6 (A Jack Winchester Thriller) Read online

  “What I find ludicrous is that nowhere can his information be found, not in the database nor our website. He is no longer listed, as one of the FBI’s most wanted. I would have imagined after what events transpired that he would be at the top of this list.”

  Erica Wright closed the file. Thorpe leaned across and whispered something into her ear. She nodded a few times, glanced at him and then looked back at Isabel.

  “While I appreciate all you have done for the department in trying to catch this fugitive, there still appears to be a lot that doesn’t add up. Are we to believe this man is Houdini?” she scoffed. “Without hard evidence, what information we have on Jack Winchester will be filed away until such evidence presents itself and gives us cause to pursue further action. How it is handled is our concern, not yours. Besides, nearly everything that you have stated is full of holes.”

  “Holes? What I find incredible is that his name was never mentioned in the statement given to the media at the time of his arrest. If this man is of such importance to the bureau, surely his arrest should have made headlines and yet not a word was mentioned. As far as I am concerned you have what you required from Jack Winchester. As much as I am disappointed that he escaped custody, that error or lack of judgment is not down to me. I can account for my whereabouts and with the fire, any number of electrical circuits may have malfunctioned causing the doors to open.”

  Erica snorted. She wasn’t buying it, none of them were but being as Isabel was the only one who was able to extract the information they wanted from Winchester, and little had been mentioned about his capture or escape, she knew they would have to be content with having tied up the loose ends in New York.

  “Please understand, Agent Baker, while we are closing this case, if it comes to our attention that you have in any way withheld facts related to this, it won’t just cost you your career. Am I clear?”

  “Crystal. Though I don’t imagine the FBI has the resources or a unit properly qualified to investigate this any further than they have.”

  “You are dismissed.”

  Isabel rose from her seat, turned and moved towards the door.

  As she was about to leave, she heard Thorpe call out to her. He was already up from his seat. The rest of the agents were discussing the report among themselves. The hearing had been short and straight to the point, nothing more than procedure to appease those above them. They weren’t looking to threaten her, but merely go through the motions of policy, and policy dictated that someone had to be held accountable for the fuck-up. She knew it wouldn’t go any further than today. This was the last of what remained of a potential embarrassment for the department.

  Thorpe gestured for her to go out into the hallway. She led the way and he closed the doors behind her. As soon as they were out of earshot, he gripped her left shoulder.

  “I appreciate you not bringing my name up in the report regarding the statement that was released to the media.”

  “I doubt it would have mattered. You all seem to be in cahoots with one another.”

  He chuckled. “Agent Baker, you make it sound as though you are sleeping with the enemy.”

  “Am I?”

  His gaze locked on to hers and she could feel his eyes scanning her face.

  “What matters is this is behind us. As much as I would love to know how he escaped, there are bigger things on the agenda. I was wondering…” he trailed off. “Would you be interested in going for a drink sometime?”

  She balked at his question. “With you?”

  “Right. Well, that kind of answers that.”

  “No, I didn’t expect that.”

  “I mean it would be strictly business, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  She hated being put in that kind of position. It reminded her of all the knuckleheads that had asked her out over the years. She had never been one to mince words or lead a man on and she certainly didn’t want to give him any ideas. Isabel had already endured one awkward drink with Cooper.

  A band of warm sunlight bathed Jack’s face as he awoke from a deep sleep. His head was throbbing and his throat felt parched. He took in his strange surroundings. It was a simple bedroom; there was a chest of drawers with a mirror off to one side. He twisted and saw a TV hanging on the wall. Deep red curtains that barely covered the window were letting in light. A flood of memories came in and he remembered the flow of drinks, the laughter and conversation. He leaned back in the bed and rested his head against the pillow. It smelled like cheap perfume. He rolled over and lay prone for a short while on the king-size bed before glancing over to the woman beside him.

  It was Blair.

  The top half of her back was exposed as well as a portion of her ass cheek. He wanted to roll over and run his hand down her back but he decided that he’d already made a mistake. No doubt she would take the previous night’s sex as a proposal or some form of communication that he wanted to enter into some long-term relationship. He sat up and eyed the door and considered slipping out before she woke up but then began to feel guilty. That was the kind of thing he did when he was younger. And besides, she was a good woman. There was nothing about her that turned him off. How she had remained single for so long was a mystery though.

  She began to stir, and he realized the window of opportunity was gone. He laid back down and gazed up at the ceiling, waiting for it. Any second now she was going to say how great it was, and how she was in love and maybe he should stick around.

  “You still here?”

  He glanced over. “I think so.”

  “Well, you are certainly unlike any of the others.”

  “Others?”

  She rolled over onto her elbow and then ran one of her soft fingers up his abs and over his chest.

  “Visitors passing through.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to ask how many times she had done this. For a second he began to feel a little cheap. The idea of leaving was soon overtaken by the thought of a hot shower. She slipped out from under the covers completely naked and padded across the room. He watched the way her ass wiggled in the daylight. He could get used to that. He did get used to that. His thoughts drifted to Dana before the sound of gushing water brought his mind back to that shower.

  Inside the bathroom, Blair was taking a shower. Steam filled the air and covered up the mirror. Her naked silhouette was enticing. Without giving it another thought he entered the shower and joined her. Over the next ten minutes they lathered each other up before stepping out and making love for the second time. Sober sex was something he wasn’t used to, his mind would go all over the place. One second he would be lost in pleasure, the next thinking about where he would go next. His mind was restless and alcohol seemed to be the only thing that reined it in.

  Jack was still lying in bed after they were done. He watched Blair get dressed. As she snapped on a metal watch around her wrist, she glanced at him.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Jack. I gather you’ll be gone in an hour or two?”

  It sounded more like a request than a question. He nodded and she exited the room after a brief smile. It seemed a little strange to find himself on the other end of the stick and yet as much as he enjoyed her company, and it was probably one of the best nights he’d had in the past year, he couldn’t stick around. Familiarity attracted problems but more specifically questions. Questions that he didn’t want to answer.

  As he got dressed, he flicked on the TV and surfed through channels until he reached the news. He couldn’t help wonder if he should look into the disappearance of the young boy. It had been a couple months since he had gone missing. Surely he was dead. Most of them were within the first twenty-four hours.

  And yet the reward was enticing. It wasn’t exactly a job and there was no guarantee that he was going to get paid. At least with the other jobs he did, he was assured fifty percent up-front. With all the attention that the media had given this case, he assumed that they would have had some strong leads in two months.


  What was her name? He couldn’t think of the mother’s name that was mentioned in the interview but the boy, his name stuck in his mind — Billy Carson.

  When Jack came downstairs, there was no music playing like the night before. Off to his right through the double set of doors was a dimly lit bar with chairs overturned on the tables. He could hear Blair clinking around in the kitchen and the smell of coffee wafting in the air.

  “You have a computer?” he asked when he came into the kitchen. She was standing by the kettle pouring water over ground coffee in a French press. She nodded and gestured to a laptop over on the counter in the dining area.

  “What do you know about the case of that missing kid?” he asked.

  She glanced at him and gave him a look that made him think that she wondered if he was related to it.

  He continued to clarify. “I look into things. Help people out.”

  “Oh, right.” She pressed down on the French press, and then pulled out two cups. She continued talking as she poured him a cup.

  “The abduction happened one state over. Down in Oregon.” She began filling him in on the known details that had been released on the news while he pulled up a search engine and ran a search on Billy Carson. His face came up, along with a composite of a suspect and then there was another of his mother and her boyfriend: Trish Carson and Richard Garand.

  “From what I heard the police haven’t had many leads. It’s like he just disappeared. They are calling him a runaway but the mother doesn’t believe it.”

  She set a cup of coffee in front of him, and then went and placed some bread in the toaster.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone they knew. Seems a lot of these missing people cases turn out to be some pervert who lived next door or across the road.”

  Jack nodded, sipped at his coffee and focused in on the grainy photo of the young boy.

  Chapter Three

  Billy had no idea what state or even country he was in. When they transported him, it was always blindfolded. He feared the times they removed it as it meant more pain. When he wasn’t being transported, or made to perform sexual acts, they kept him with other boys locked in a room together. He’d seen six so far, all of them were as equally as scared as him, except for one who was three years older and was put in charge of keeping them in line.

  Another boy had arrived two days ago. He hadn’t stopped crying since they had brought him in. He was a year younger than Billy and from what he knew, he’d been taken off the street, just like him, except from a different state. For the longest time, he couldn’t tell if it was day or night as the room they kept them in had no windows. The door was made of reinforced steel and covered in locks from top to bottom. The ground contained nothing more than a few old mattresses. If they were well-behaved, they didn’t have to wear ropes around their wrists and ankles or be gagged. For the first few days after being abducted he had learned the hard way.

  The oldest in the group, Neville, told one kid he needed to stop crying, accept that he wasn’t getting out of it and if he did what they told him, the chances of him living were a lot higher. Of course he didn’t listen to him and so he suffered the consequences.

  Billy remembered them coming and taking him away. That was the last he saw of that boy. Darren, one of the other boys, told him that if they came and took you away by yourself, the chances were you weren’t coming back. When Billy asked what happened, he uttered only two words — snuff film.

  He’d never even heard of it. When they explained what it was, he couldn’t believe it. How was it possible that they could do this and get away with it?

  The new kid in the corner sat weeping, his arms behind his back, tied to his ankles. Tears streamed down his face. Billy approached and tried to tell him it was going to be okay. It wasn’t but that’s what one of the other kids had told him when he first arrived and for a short while it put his mind at ease. The truth was they were being passed around like meat to the highest bidder.

  As Billy sat there cross-legged beside the bound boy, he told him lies, the same ones they told him. His mind drifted back to that morning when they took him. He’d never felt so terrified in his life. When he came to, his head was throbbing hard, he was naked and he was no longer inside the vehicle. He was inside a home. Where? He had no idea. He remembered squinting at the camera flashing in his face, and could vaguely recall being moved around.

  That’s when the pain began.

  He wasn’t sure if he blacked out from the pain or from whatever they had given him, he was just glad that he wasn’t conscious. His next fleeting memory was of feeling the rumble of a vehicle and awakening to find himself bound, gagged and surrounded by the same boys he was now with.

  When the vehicle stopped and the back opened, one by one they were strong-armed out of the vehicle and forced forward. Very little was said to them in that time. Occasionally they were told to shut up or stop crying but that was it.

  Days passed, weeks and the continual cycle of being handed around to men continued. It was sick and there were moments he just wanted to die. A few of the men beat him, and seemed to find delight in it. There were others that just wanted to humiliate him and make him perform acts that made him vomit after. All kinds showed up. Well-dressed businessmen, others reminded him of hunters, dirty and smelly. There was no way of telling what a person was going to be like. It was the unknown that terrified him. Some of the other boys would tell each other how they managed to get through it without losing their minds. It became almost like a game of wits. They each had their way of speeding up the process, reducing the amount of pain, and yet just when a person thought they had managed to prevent the worst shit happening to them, they would return with their face bruised and bite marks all over them.

  There was no mercy shown to them. They were treated worse than prostitutes.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” Louis said. Louis was the youngest out of them. He had clamped his hands over his ears to block out the sound of the new boy’s wailing. Louis was ten and as skinny as a rake.

  “Louis, get a grip on yourself.”

  “Stop his crying. He’ll bring him in here.”

  Billy knew what he meant. It was down to them to calm newcomers. If they didn’t stop his crying, the Mexican would come in and beat all of them with a heavy-gauge industrial rubber hose. It hurt like hell but didn’t leave bruises as easily. It had already happened on three occasions. After each time, they could barely stand.

  The newcomer continued crying despite Billy pleading with him to be quiet. Louis was rocking back and forth in the corner repeating over and over, “Shut up. Shut up.” Then he lost it. He jumped up and lunged at the young kid who was bound and began wailing on him with both fists. Darren and Neville immediately got up and dragged him away. Fighting was prohibited as it meant bruising and they were in the business of selling meat without bruises. Those were their very words. Now it was Louis who was crying.

  Any one of them could lose their mind in this place. There were no good days if compared to those who lived free. From their point of view, the only good days were the ones they weren’t beaten by their captors.

  It had dawned on Billy that the room must have had some sort of surveillance setup inside as they knew exactly when they were acting up and yet for all the time they had been in that room, they never found any. It’s microscopic, Darren had said.

  No sooner had Darren pulled back Louis when they heard the familiar sound of the wall partition being removed. The few times they had been taken from the room and paraded naked in front of clients, Billy had seen bits and pieces of his surroundings from below a small gap under the rag around his eyes. The room they currently kept them in was hidden behind what looked to be a utility room. He’d glimpsed a box of detergent below the rag. How many other boys had been kept in there before them? How long would they continue to use them? So many questions had gone through his mind while he was there. They did nothing but think. Occasionally, one of their
captors would give them a few books to read. Neville said it was done to keep them from losing their mind. It worked, at least for a while.

  After two months of confinement Billy still hadn’t got used to being abused. He didn’t think he ever would. It was brutal and most often humiliating. And yet it was strange how the mind adjusted to what had now become his life. He often thought about his parents and wondered if they were still looking for him. Those who asked when they would go home were told in no uncertain terms that their parents were no longer looking for them. To others they said that their parents were the ones who had sold them. Billy didn’t believe a word they said. His parents were good people and he knew if anyone was still looking for them, it would be them. That’s what kept him going. The thought that perhaps tomorrow he would escape this hell and it would all fade into his memory like a bad dream.

  The sound of the vault-like door being opened caused panic to rise in his chest. All of them pressed back against the wall waiting for what they knew was coming. No matter how much they tried to brace themselves, nothing scared them more than the Mexican.

  Without a word spoken, he rushed into the room and took hold of the newcomer.

  “I told you to stop crying, now you are going to wish you had.”

  The boy let out an even louder cry, as the Mexican motioned to the other captor who came in to give him a hand carrying out the unruly boy. Once he was gone, he returned holding the rubber hose in his hand.

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you little shits or how many times I have to beat you for you to understand but one thing is damn clear. I will not tolerate crying.”

  He grabbed a hold of Darren first and dragged him out into the middle of the room, yanked his pants down, tugged his shirt up and began beating as hard as he could across his bare skin. Darren instinctively put his hands back to protect himself but that only enraged him more.

  “Get your hands out of the way.”

  “Please. I promise.”