PRESENT DAY

Winifred walked up the steps to Lucy House and tried the door, but it didn’t open. She took out a set of keys from her bag and tried one of them, but the door still wouldn’t open. She went around the back of the house to try the other door, but it didn’t open either.

She came back to the front and knocked, but there was no answer. She was about to knock again when she received a call.

“TROUBLE IS NEAR. LEAVE NOW.”

The caller hung up. Just as she walked briskly back down the steps, she received a text.

“Compliments of Hell.” A wink followed after that.

Then she heard a ticking sound like an old digital watch. She immediately took off and had barely crossed the gate when the rubble from the explosion filled the air.

She ran to her car and sped off.

*****        

The three-car convoy sped down the dusty road on the island, heading towards the small plane that was parked a few miles away. Five more minutes and Jenny would have Caris and Carol up and on their way. All things considered, it had been a pretty straightforward mission. Once she’d handed them off to the pilot, there would only be the question of obliterating the island with the two women who had started all of this mess.

She was double-checking the coordinates for that next phase when she felt her phone buzzing. She took a look and saw a text.

“IT’S A TRAP! GET OUT OF THERE NOW! REGROUP AT THE CROWN!”

Just as she raised her head, the car in front of her flew upwards in a fireball, and the one behind her flew sideways and into the bushes. Then she saw a helicopter hover above them and turn to face them with a cannon pointing right at them. She was about to reach for her phone again when she felt a hand on her other arm and a cold metal on her neck.

She turned and saw the driver shaking his head at her while the guard at the back held the business end of his gun to her head. The car began to slow down.

“No hasty moves, lady. You do as you’re told and we all get to go home in one piece.”

Jenny moved her hand away from her phone.

“Excellent. I appreciate your value for life. Now, you could make this easy and tell me who your boss is.”

Jenny looked at him with the nicest smile. He got the hint and parked the car.

“Don’t say I never tried to help you.”

******

It was late night at an abandoned building on a side of town that no one but crackheads still went to. It was cold and windy, and rodents were the only living creatures around, but they scattered when the bright lights from a limousine lit up the street. The car parked, and two men stepped out of the front. One of them stood beside the driver’s door, while the other one opened the back door. A cane popped out, followed by a man’s foot, and then the rest of the man was revealed.

It was Kane.

As the three walked into the building, they could feel the floor vibrate, and there was a faint, muffled sound coming from below. They stopped in the middle of the room, and vibrations continued. Kane looked at one of the men and nodded in approval, and the man nodded back. Then they made their way to a door on the far side of the room. The other man opened the door, which led to a stairwell going only downwards.

The muffled sound became increasingly louder once they were in the stairwell, and it became raw and bloodcurdling once they entered the room it was coming from. It looked like an interrogation room, complete with a two-way mirror. On the other side of the mirror, there were two women who were applying advanced interrogation techniques on a poor soul who barely seemed alive.

One of them was dark-skinned and had red hair, and the other was light skinned with green hair and two sleeve tattoos. There was a rack behind them complete with pliers, hammers, and surgical equipment. There was also a power drill on the table, and a blowtorch.

The red-haired woman walked stood behind the man who was being tortured, holding dental pliers high up in the air so he could see. The green-haired woman stood beside him, licked his ears and then playfully bit him on the cheek.

“I really don’t want to do this to you, Mr. Warden, but you keep making it hard for me not to. Someone had you remove Seth Goosman from the prison and replace him with a murdered lookalike, and then you gave his cellmate a sweetheart deal. You had a man who was scheduled for execution take an early death, and then somehow his family magically won the lottery. Now, we don’t care about the money or the man, but we do need to know who you are working for.”

The red-haired woman rubbed her cleavage against the back of his head, still holding the pliers in the air. She leaned over and licked his other bloodied cheek and excitedly spoke up.

“Are you ready to tell us who your employer is, Warden? Are you ready to tell us?”

The man, whose face was so bloodied and mangled by the amount of punishment he’d taken, weakly looked at her and made a sound. The woman leaned in, smiling as she listened to him. Then she gasped and clutched her pearls as she looked at him.

“Did you say no? You had the opportunity to make two bombshell babes love you, and you said no? Wow, you must be enjoying this punishment as much as I am!”

The two women laughed and high-fived each other as the red-haired one said, “I think he likes how much it turns you on to hear him scream. He wants more. Please, give him some more adrenaline.”

Kane looked on like a proud father while the two men beside him grew squeamish. He finally noticed their demeanor when the deathly screams began as the women began to pull out a tooth from the victim. He shook his head in disappointment.

“Come on, you little schoolgirls. Grow a pair. You look like a pair of bitches.”

One of the men spoke up. “If I may, boss, where did you find them?”

Kane smiled as he continued to watch the women work. “It helps to make friends with people who match your freak. Those two get off on pain, and I love to supply them with victims. The only time they’ve ever turned on me is when they had no one to torture. Now, watch and learn.”

The men could barely watch as the blood oozed out of the victim’s mouth like a fountain. Kane quietly said to himself, “By the time this is over, we will know how to get to the boss of those two silly girls who tried to double-cross me.”

*****

Katherine waited in the lobby as she read her book. The secretary had gone into the main office to announce Katherine’s arrival, since she was not on the schedule for that day. The secretary came back out after a few minutes.

“He’ll see you now.”

Katherine nodded and walked into the office.

“Bishop. I was not expecting to see you at all. I must say, it’s a honor to have you visit us today.”

Katherine extended her hand and took his in a handshake. “I’m thankful that you had a few minutes in your schedule for me.”

“Anything for you, bishop. Please, have a seat. How can I help you today, woman of God?”

Katherine sat down. “Inspector, I am here about the recent explosions of the police stations. One of my members was affected. A lady by the name of Mary Lester.”

“Inspector Kpodo’s secretary.”

“The very same. I was wondering if you could fill me in on what’s going on. Confidentially, of course. Whatever you say to me will not leave the four corners of this room.”

That was one wild episode! At least we know who took Caris and Carol, but that switch of events was something else.

As for Kane’s tormentors… geez! Psychotic much?