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Retribution
Chapter
Nine
“Have
you missed me?”
The
voice was sickly sweet and did nothing to disguise the noxious evil of its
owner. Her only purpose was to terrify, to break down Sara’s last remaining
walls, to make her completely vulnerable.
Sara
felt bile rising in her throat. Unbidden, the image of Hank sprung into her
mind – shot, bloody, his once handsome face eaten away by the caustic acid that
Jill had poured over him in death. He had not deserved that. No one, no matter
what their faults or transgressions, could possibly deserve such a horrible death. And the knowledge that he had been
nothing more than a pawn – his death’s only purpose was to set in motion Jill’s
sick game of revenge – made his murder all the more unspeakable.
Anger
surged in her chest like a vengeful ghost, rage bubbling up, pushing her fear
temporarily to one side.
“What
do you want, Jill?”
“You
sound angry, Sara.” Jill sounded both surprised and arrogant. “You should be
careful. If you lose your temper, you might do something rash. Considering
your… family history.”
“Killing
you would be letting you off too easy,” Sara said. “You’re going to rot in jail
for what you’ve done.”
Her
laugh was cold and derisive. “You and your boyfriend
will have to catch me first. And I have plans for the two of you. I’m just getting warmed up – the real fun is
still to come.”
“Go
to hell!”
“Poor
Sara. The victims’ champion. How does it feel now that you’re the victim?”
“I
am not your victim, you bitch!” Sara found herself screaming at a dial tone.
“Sara?”
Grissom
stood in the bathroom doorway, dripping from the shower. He looked from Sara’s
face to the phone in a panic.
“Honey,
what’s wrong?”
Unmindful
of his wet skin, he moved towards her with the intention of wrapping his arms
around her. Before he could reach her, Sara had flung the phone down onto the
bed and stalked away towards the window. She did not want to be comforted right
now. She wanted to seethe.
“I’m
sick of this,” she said. “I’m sick of waiting around, waiting for her to call
or to show up. God! She’s got me feeling so pathetic and helpless. I hate that
she has that much power!”
Grissom
nodded. He understood all too well.
“I
am not her victim!” she continued to
rage. She could not seem to stop herself. “There’s a difference between being victimized and being a victim.”
“What
do you want to do?”
She
shook her head and rubbed her face, trying to find the answer. It was one thing
to be fired up enough to want to fight back. It was quite another to know
exactly what to do.
“I
don’t know,” she said, a hint of defeat in her voice. “But we have to do
something.”
“Then
we will,” he told her. “Let’s start by getting out of here. We’ll go back to
the guest house and pick up your things. Then we’ll figure out where to go from
there.”
---
“What
do we know so far?”
Catherine
sat before her team, looking from face to face. Everyone was exhausted, but
each person’s eyes were alert and ready, prepared to puzzle this case out to
resolution, even if it meant a week without sleep.
It
was personal.
“Archie’s
managed to get into Graham Price’s e-mail,” Greg began. “Both his AOL account,
and a bunch of e-mails that were saved on his hard drive. Most of them are from
Jill.”
“All
recent?” Catherine asked.
Greg
shook his head. “So far? It goes back about two years.”
“They’ve
been planning this for a long time,”
Nick added. “Jill’s been feeding Price a lot of details about Sara, Grissom,
the Tom Haviland case. She also asked him to
follow Sara, and to send her any photographs he took.”
“So he was her eyes and ears here while
she was in
“It looks that way,” Greg agreed. “He must
be as psychotic as she is.”
Warrick sat forward in his chair and
nodded. “He is. We spent the past few hours interviewing one of his victims – Denise Jones. She told
us that Price isn’t just into poisonous plants. He likes torture, rape and
threats too.”
Catherine
was shuffling through the e-mail printouts that Nick had handed to her.
“Any
indication that Price was the one who provided the rohypnol that was used to
drug Sara the night Hank was murdered?”
“No
direct evidence,” Nick replied. “But it’s sounding more and more likely to me.”
“So,
now we have two psychos to worry about, instead of just one,” Greg said.
“That’s
for certain,” Catherine replied. “Denise told us that Price spent hours
bragging to her about people he’d murdered over the years. And, apparently,
there were a lot.”
---
They
lingered no longer than necessary in the guest house. The few clothes Sara had
hanging in the wardrobe were summarily scooped out and dumped unceremoniously
into her suitcase. The couple of dresser drawers she had been using were
quickly emptied.
Grissom
picked up the suitcase as Sara stuffed the last of her things into a satchel.
She took one last look around the room to ensure nothing was forgotten, before she
picked up her laptop case and nodded to him.
“Let’s
go.”
Once
they were on the coast road, Grissom took a moment to consider their options.
The sensible thing would be to return to Vegas. But that was a decision for
Sara to make.
As
if she were reading his mind, Sara turned to look at him and sighed. “Let’s go
home.”
He
glanced sideways at her. “You sure?”
“Yeah.
Let’s stop off at my mom’s so I can let her know what’s going on. Then take me
home.”
He
reached across and squeezed her hand, taking a moment to caress her soft skin
with his thumb.
“I
love you.”
She
smiled. “I love you too.”
Out
of nowhere, headlights blazed behind them, shining through the rear window and
making it hard to see. They lurched forward as a car slammed into them.
Grissom
pressed down harder on the gas, speeding up in the hopes of eluding the
pursuer. Momentarily, it fell behind, but soon picked up speed and was on their
tail once more.
Grissom
glanced to his right. A railing was all that separated them from a steep, rocky
drop into the
The
car hit them again, sending them fully onto the wrong side of the road. To
their left was a forest, dark and dense with trees. The gas pedal was to the
floor now as they careered along at break-neck speed.
Sara
fumbled for her cell phone and managed to push a nine and a one before they
were hit again. The car swerved; Grissom overcorrected. Suddenly they were
tumbling over and over, down the embankment and straight into a tree.
Sara
thought she heard Grissom say her name before the world turned black.
TBC.
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