Chapter 12 #2
I knew he was used to getting blood on his hands. I had seen it with my own eyes. But part of me . . . part of me didn’t want to believe it.
He had helped me hustle at the casino. Why would he do that just to kidnap me and kill me?
Instead of agreeing not to run, I said, “You didn’t strike me as an electric car kind of guy.”
My answer must have been good enough for Jude because he opened his door. “Call it a long-term exit strategy. Grab your bag and get out.”
Airports had security guards. Police officers. TSA agents. Cameras and security measures out the wazoo.
No way did he plan on killing me here.
My brain was focused on self-preservation, but my gut told me to go with him. At least, for the time being.
All those true crime adages about not allowing the bad guy to take you to a second location went out the window as I slid out of the car and stood up on wobbly legs.
My head spun as whatever he drugged me with came back for round two.
I listed to the left, but Jude was freakishly fast for someone so big. He caught me before I hit the ground.
“Sorry about the chloroform. It tells a good story, but it’s a bitch,” he muttered as he wrapped a supportive arm around my ribs and ushered me toward the tarp-covered vehicle.
My feet skidded across the asphalt as he came to a stop, propped me up against the driver’s side door of the electric car, and ripped the tarp off the truck.
“Are you stealing a car?”
He balled up the tarp and tossed it into the backseat of the electric car. “Not stealing. Borrowing.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Looks a lot like stealing.”
He glared at me, steel eyes sharp as a blade. “Do you want to live?”
“I want to know what the hell is going on.”
Jude yanked open the passenger side door. “Then get in the truck.”
I went with my gut again and climbed in on weak, shaking legs. When I reached for the seatbelt, Jude grabbed my bag. “Hey!” I shouted.
He pawed through the chips and grabbed the cash. Just when I thought he was going to steal it, he set the cash—a few thousand dollars—in my lap, then tossed the bag and the rest of the chips into the electric car.
I was more than curious, but I was also acutely aware of what happened to innocent cats when they were curious. And I wasn’t exactly innocent.
Jude popped the trunk of the electric car, grabbed a backpack and shouldered it, then pulled his wallet and phone from his pocket and tossed them into the car beside my bag.
He shut the door on my side of the truck and, without a word, climbed behind the wheel. He unzipped the backpack and set it on the floorboard at my feet. “Stick the cash in there.”
But I didn’t move. I didn’t want to let go of the cash that I had earned.
The chips he had discarded in the other car were worth far more than what was in my lap.
The cash was just what I had brought to start with.
The chips nearly closed the gap of what Joel owed.
I just hadn’t been able to cash them out. I couldn’t let any of it go.
“Amelia. If you want to live, put the money in the bag.” His tone was low and menacing. The sharp snap of my name hit like a lightning strike. The instructions rolled like thunder.
I swallowed as my fingers curled around the stacks of bills. “I can’t,” I whispered.
“You have to.”
I shook my head. “It’s not even for me.”
“I know. And if you want your brother to make it out of this alive, you’re going to put it in the bag.”
I snapped my head over to look at him and immediately regretted it. A wrecking ball of a headache rolled through my skull, making me nauseous all over again. Damn chloroform.
“H-how do y-you know about Joel?”
“Because I know that you collect baseball memorabilia. And I know what swinging that signed bat feels like.”
This time, I did throw up. Thankfully, I still had the barf bag on hand.
“You . . . It was—it was you. You tried to kill my brother,” I rasped when the heaving subsided. Tears stung my eyes at the reality that I’d had a crush on a monster.
“I did what I was ordered to do,” he clipped with a roll of his eyes. “Better me than someone else. You’ve been counting cards to pay his debt. But do you know who he owes that money to?”
Gingerly, I shook my head as tears rolled down my cheeks. “He said ‘a guy.’”
Jude let out a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “A guy . . .” He faced me. “He owes John Valentine.” Jude’s eyes narrowed. “And do you know who owns the Four Horsemen?” There was a patronizing lilt to his words.
John . . . The gentle old man I had played beside time and time again? The man who had offered tips and treated me kindly.
. . . The man who had been sitting beside me the night Jude pinned me in a supply closet and begged me to not touch my drink.
“John Valentine,” I whispered as reality set in.
My hunch was right. I was winning money off the very person Joel owed.
I had won an ungodly amount of money off someone who was credited anytime some horrific, unsolvable crime happened. Someone who was, allegedly, one of the most untouchable, violent mob bosses in recent history. Someone who was East Coast folklore.
But folklore always came from a thread of truth.
“And he told you to kidnap me? To scare me?” I asked.
Jude didn’t even flinch. “He told me to kill you.”
For some reason that defied logic and reason, I lifted my chin. “Are you going to?”
For a fleeting moment, something akin to humanity flashed across his eyes. But as quickly as it came, it was gone. “I will do everything in my power to keep you alive.”
And much like my answer about not running, he skirted the question with an answer that was good enough.
“That’s not a no.”
“Do you want me to lie to you?” Jude asked.
He had me there. “I can’t leave Joel. If I don’t win enough tonight, he’s as good as dead.”
Jude just shook his head as his voice softened into something regretful. “Hate to break it to you, but there are worse things in life than dying, little fox. Even if he had all the money, he’d never truly be free.”
“He’s the only family I have left,” I whispered.
“Then we need to keep both of you alive.”
Slowly, without peeling my eyes away from him, I put the money in the bag. It felt like stacking chips on a blackjack table and sliding them toward the dealer to place a bet.
There was a good chance I’d lose it all.
“There’s a phone in there. Hand it to me,” Jude said as he cranked up the truck. The engine spat and sputtered but roared to life after a moment.
I rummaged in the bag, found a cell phone that looked like a museum relic, and handed it to him.
Jude turned it on, dialed a number he knew from memory, and waited. “It’s me,” he said without so much as a hello. “I’m borrowing the truck.”
Oh. So he’s actually telling the owner he’s borrowing it. That’s something.
“How fast can you get to New Haven?” Jude asked, pausing to hear the answer on the other end. I stiffened as he rambled off my address by heart. “Your mark is on crutches, so good luck getting him down the stairs. Tell a good story. I’m going on vacation for a while.”
He didn’t even say goodbye before ending the call. He pressed on the brake, put the truck into drive, and pulled out of the space. With one hand, he sent a text to a five-digit number, then turned the phone off and tossed it into the bag. “Zip it up.”
“You sent someone to my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“You said you’d keep me alive,” I croaked as tears leaked from my eyes. “You have to keep my brother alive too.”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm as he slowly eased between the rows of cars. Freaking out wouldn’t get me answers. Panicking wouldn’t keep me safe. How, not why. How was I going to get out of this?
“What did you mean when you said to tell a good story?” I asked, trying to glean a little more clarity as to what the fuck was going on. I had a hunch that, if I asked him directly, he wouldn’t tell me. “You said that chloroform told a good story. Are you sending someone to drug my brother?”
Jude’s gaze was trained on the road. “Telling a good story means making it look like you were kidnapped by leaving your car running with the door open. Maybe it was a mugging since I spilled some of your chips. It means leaving my car at the airport so John Valentine will think we’ve hopped a flight.
And I just happened to have a car waiting for me in a spot that isn’t covered by the security cameras.
It means driving an electric car since they’re known to have batteries that spontaneously catch fire and are nearly impossible to extinguish.
It means leaving our wallets and IDs and the last pieces of who we are in that car until they turn to ash. ”
Jude opened the dashboard console and pulled out a prepaid debit card as he neared the ticket kiosk. He paid, waited until the mechanical arm raised, and pulled onto the service road just as the night sky lit up in a hellish glow.
I jerked in the seat, craning to look through the window, and watched as the last remnants of my identity melted in a ball of flames.
I had no idea what was going to happen.
I didn’t know if Jude was my savior or a very patient devil.
I was fairly certain I needed to make an exit strategy of my own.
And as those flames disappeared in the distance and turned into a glowing nightlight, I was sure of two things. John Valentine wasn’t folklore and Jude was a master storyteller.