Cold Vengeance

 

Chapter Nine – Hell Hath No Fury...

 

 

A white light shone into Sara’s eyes, almost blinding her. The back of her head throbbed, as she tried to adjust her eyes to the glare. She couldn’t remember what had happened at first. Then pieces of it began to flood back to her. Jill with her gun. Being forced at gunpoint out to her car. The sudden pain across the back of her head, as Jill hit her from behind.

 

 

Slowly Sara’s vision cleared and she could make out Jill’s silhouette standing before her, shining a flashlight into her eyes. She could feel a pair of handcuffs digging into her wrists.

 

 

‘Rise and shine, Sara,’ Jill’s voice said in the darkness.

 

 

‘What are you doing, Jill?’ Sara asked in a groggy voice. ‘Why…’

 

 

‘Always with the big questions, Sara. Always questioning. Here’s one for you,’ Jill replied, her tone becoming increasingly enraged. ‘What could you have possibly done to piss me off so much that I had to resort to this?’

 

 

‘How did I piss you off, Jill?’ Sara asked, forcing herself to remain calm.

 

 

Jill lowered the flashlight slightly, allowing Sara to glimpse her face. Sara had never seen her so… unhinged.

 

 

‘Well, maybe if you quit whining for one second, you might know what’s been going on in my life,’ Jill ranted. ‘It’s always “Oh Jill, my life sucks. I work all the time and I don’t have a life. I have a big hunky boyfriend, but I don’t love him and my wonderful, brilliant genius of a boss doesn’t know I’m alive…” You were never this pathetic in college.’

 

 

‘You’re doing this because I talked too much about my problems?’ Sara asked incredulously. ‘Christ, Jill, you tell me to shut up. You don’t kill a man.’

 

 

‘Why not?’ Jill retorted. ‘You took mine away from me. Why shouldn’t I deprive you of yours?’

 

 

‘Hank and I broke up a year and a half ago, Jill. If you wanted to get at me, why didn’t you just come at me, instead of killing an innocent man?’ Tears began to well in Sara’s eyes. She had been right all along. Hank’s death had been her fault.

 

 

‘Oh, he wasn’t innocent, Sara. But it wasn’t Hank I was planning to deprive you of. He was just the warm up act. To get your attention. Didn’t you get my notes?’ Jill began to pace up and down, agitated and excited.

 

 

‘Grissom,’ Sara said in a small voice.

 

 

‘The man you really love,’ Jill replied. ‘I figured you took the man I love from me, I should return the favour.’

 

 

Sara shook her head, trying to figure out what the woman she thought was her friend was talking about.

 

 

‘Who did I take away from you?’

 

 

Jill stopped pacing. She stormed up to Sara and drew back her hand as though ready to slap her.

 

 

‘Tom!’ she raged at Sara.

 

 

Slowly, she lowered her hand. Turning away from Sara, she began to pace again.

 

 

‘Tom?’ Sara asked, totally confused now. ‘Who the hell is Tom?’

 

 

‘My boyfriend,’ Jill yelled at her. ‘He was the only man I ever loved. And then you and the two men in your life conspired to put him in jail.’

 

 

She stopped pacing and glared at Sara.

 

 

‘25 to life. I might never get to see him again. All because your boyfriend planted evidence and your beloved boss made up some crap about the scar on Tom’s knee.’

 

 

Sara’s mind was working furiously. Something sounded familiar. Then it clicked.

 

 

‘Tom Haviland?’ Sara asked. ‘The movie star? He was your boyfriend?’

 

 

‘Yes,’ Jill replied, sounding totally exasperated by Sara’s stupidity.

 

 

‘Nothing was planted or made up in that case, Jill,’ Sara replied reasonably. ‘Tom killed those two people. He belongs in jail.’

 

 

‘No, no, no!’ Jill screamed, lunging at Sara. She roughly grabbed Sara by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Your boyfriend planted that bra because you told him to!’ she yelled. ‘And then Grissom made all that other stuff up. And all that crap came out in the press about Tom being with a man that night. No! You made it up to take him away from me!’

 

 

‘Jill, come on. You gotta know that’s not true,’ Sara tried to reason with her. ‘You… you need help, Jill. Let’s just get out of here and we can go someplace and talk.’

 

 

‘We are talking, Sara,’ Jill replied, suddenly calm. ‘And finally, you’re hearing me. Anyway, we can’t go now. Not before our guest gets here.’

 

 

Alarm bells went off in Sara’s mind. She was afraid to ask the question, but she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. ‘Who’s coming?’

 

 

‘I left another little note for your boss. He should be here soon.’

 

 

Sara blinked the tears out of her eyes. ‘Please, Jill. Don’t do this,’ she pleaded.

 

 

‘Well, if those stupid teenagers hadn’t come in here and found the body so soon, I wouldn’t have to do this, Sara,’ Jill told her. ‘It should have been a day or two, not a couple of hours. By then the drugs would have been long gone from your system…’

 

 

‘And I’d have lost my only alibi,’ Sara concluded. ‘You wanted me to go down for Hank’s murder.’

 

 

‘It would have been poetic justice,’ Jill sneered. ‘Even with the body being found early, I was still hoping that there’d be enough evidence against you. But your beloved Grissom had to swoop in and get your blood tested for drugs. Otherwise, you’d be in jail and you’d have lost the respect and trust of the one man you actually give a damn about.’

 

 

Sara didn’t have the words. Everything was falling into place, but nothing made any sense.

 

 

‘But this will be so much sweeter, Sara,’ Jill went on. ‘The only problem with my original plan was how passive it was. Cause and effect. All I had to do was sit and wait. I like this better Sara. I’m more of a ‘hands on’ kind of person.’

 

 

‘What are you going to do, Jill?’ Sara asked, trying to minimise the shaking in her voice.

 

 

‘I didn’t make you watch when it was Hank. Wouldn’t have had the same effect. But, Grissom…?’ Jill smiled, ‘That’ll really hurt, won’t it?’

 

 

A single tear ran down Sara’s cheek. She prayed that Grissom wouldn’t come to the warehouse. That he’d send the police. That he’d stay away. Deep down, she knew better.

 

 

‘You lured Hank here, didn’t you?’ Sara asked, cold fury beginning to well up inside her. ‘You pretended to be me.’

 

 

‘Wasn’t hard,’ Jill replied, amused. ‘He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, was he? I thought you liked them smart, Sara? I emailed him from your account.’

 

 

‘How?’

 

 

‘You’re so predicable. I guessed your password on the first attempt. Newton,’ she said with disdain. ‘Asked him to meet you… I mean, me, here. Said we needed to talk. When the idiot turned up, I let him walk in past me. Got a clear shot at his back. He never saw it coming.’

 

 

Tears slid freely down Sara’s face now. She didn’t recognise this person in front of her anymore. Panic seized her with the realisation that she was completely helpless. She could no more save Grissom that she could have saved Hank. A sob of despair escaped her throat.

 

 

Jill looked at her with disgust. She circled around behind her captive and placed the gun to Sara’s temple.

 

 

‘So much for the tough-girl act,’ she sneered. ‘A girl with your background should have realised long ago that she was destined to end up alone.’

 

 

‘So, then just kill me, Jill. Get it over with,’ Sara choked. ‘But leave Grissom out of it.’

 

 

‘Where would be the fun in that?’ Jill replied. ‘I want you to finally realise how alone you really are before you die.’

 

 

‘She’s not alone,’ said a voice from the doorway.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

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