“He told you about that, right?” Sally was saying, scrutinizing her face.
“Yes, he did.”
“Sucks to be there. If you’d give me a minute, I’d like to tell you about my experience in that horrible place. You work for a publishing company, don’t you? I have a draft that might interest you.”
Before she could stop her, Sally walked into her room. As soon as she did, Jessica hurried to the pink book and opened it, flipping through it until she got to the last page. What she read baffled her.
“I need to make the Cage family pay for everything they did to me. First off, I’ll kill Jerome Cage when he goes to the warehouse to drop the money. It’ll look like a failed negotiation with the kidnappers. Then I’ll poison Rita Cage and make it look like a suicide. Afterward, I’ll drown Vanessa and implicate one of her siblings in her death. Then I’ll try killing Jessica West again, probably by setting her house on fire while she is asleep. Haha, sounds fun.”
Sally had abducted Xavier, and she was prepared to kill his family, including her!
“I was hoping you’d read that.”
Jessica had been engrossed in the diary that she didn’t hear Sally return. The lady grabbed her neck from behind and began to squeeze it with the sheer intent to strangle her. Jessica had no idea where the strength came for, but she desperately needed to survive, and she wasn’t going to be killed by this lunatic. She slammed her elbow into her stomach and heard the lady gasp as the pain overwhelmed her. Her grip on Jessica’s neck loosened.
She moved away from her, brandishing her walking stick like a weapon. Sally wasn’t ready to give up. She got over the pain in her belly and raced towards Jessica, her eyes now revealing her madness. Jessica was ready. She hit the stick on her, but Sally seemed too strong. Her fist collided with Jessica’s jaw before she even saw it coming.
“You deserve to die!” Sally was saying, scratching Jessica with her long fingernails.
Jessica tried to push her away, but it proved abortive. For a petite girl like Sally, she was powerful. It was the vase on her dining table that helped her. Sally realized too late that Jessica had found a weapon. She hit her head with it once, and Sally fell to the ground, unconscious, blood oozing from the wound in her head.
With quivering hands, Jessica dialed Kendall’s number. The detective picked it at the first ring. Jessica couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Kendall, it’s Jessica! I think I hurt Sally Mayland! Please come down here. I think she knows where Xavier is.”
Chapter Six
It had not been easy for Xavier to get Raymond, the leather guy, to unchain him. He had to lie that an ant was biting him in the crotch, and he needed to go to the bathroom to get it out. Raymond was formidable, but Xavier found it easy to knock him out cold because he knew the right places to punch. He searched the guy’s still body and found the key that would take him out of that room.
Sally had fooled him. She had no evidence against his grandfather. She’d only used that to lure him out of his house and from the bodyguards who protected the family. Her plan was to keep him while he watched her as she destroyed his loved ones. He should have known better that the lady was still crazy. He just hoped someone had seen the message he had scratched on the chair.
It hadn’t been easy, though. Xavier happened to have found a nail in the bathroom. Whenever Raymond left the room, he’d take the nail and start scratching slowly with his hands still chained, not relenting until he got the letter perfectly written. Sally had asked for ransom. It was a hoax. She wanted to use that to kill his father, so it’d look like a failed bargain.
As he found his way out of the warehouse they had been keeping him, there was only one thing that mattered to Xavier.
He needed to save his father.
***
Jerome Cage got out of the car right after he’d switched off his phone. The money was in the trunk, so he went to the back of his car, opened it, and brought out the bag of money. Everywhere was quiet. The only sound was his heavy breathing as he wanted for the abductors to arrive with his son. The warehouse had turned out to be a deserted one, located almost outside the city.
He began to get nervous after waiting for ten minutes. Where were they? Had something happened to his son? He remembered the abductors calling him again and instructing him to bring the money in the night. They said they weren’t prepared to wait. Vanessa urged him to go. He’d informed Kendall, and the detective had had no choice but to agree that he should since the abductors had now fixed a deadline. Vanessa would be mad at him if the bargain turned out to be a failure.
Twenty minutes. Were these people planning to come, or was this merely a trick? Unfortunately for Jerome, he figured it out a little too late. It took him a while to notice the tiny red beam reflecting on his shirt.
***
“Damn! His phone is switched off!” Jessica yelled as Kendall sped towards the Phoenix Bridge, cursing under his breath as other drivers honked at him for driving recklessly.
Jessica had just told him of Sally’s plan, and he was one of those people who had sent Jerome Cage, unknowingly, to his death.
“That was my idea. I didn’t want the abductors thinking he was with the cops if someone called him.”
“Oh no, now we can’t reach him. That’s bad! Really bad!”
“We are almost there.”
Jessica prayed, “I hope it’s not too late.”
They got to the warehouse just as the sound of a gun went off.
***
Xavier was about taking the stairs to the ground floor of the warehouse when he sighted Arnold disassembling his sniper gun. If he was doing that, then that meant he had carried out his mission. He had just killed his father!
Blinded with rage, he raced towards Arnold, who had not been expecting him and rammed his fist into the back of his head. The skinny guy fell forward, knocking his head against the floor railing. True enough, when Xavier peered downstairs, his father was lying in a pool of blood.
Arnold was back on his feet and attempting to pull out his handgun. Xavier held him by the scruff of the neck and slammed his head into his nose. The crunching of bones could be clearly heard.
Arnold cursed, “You motherfu…”
Xavier hit him again, this time around pushing him to the ground and ignoring the guy’s blood he now had on his shirt. During the struggle, Arnold had pulled out his gun, but Xavier wriggled it out of his grip, pointed it straight at him, and shot twice.
Breathing heavily, he dragged himself downstairs, where Kendall was already beside his father’s corpse, barking instructions into his phone. Jessica was there too, kneeling beside the dead Jerome Cage and crying. When she saw him, she limped towards him, ignoring her cane and hugged him. Xavier couldn’t even bring himself to stop staring at his father’s body.
“I’m so sorry, Xavier. So sorry,” Jessica was still crying.
“Xavier, are you alright? The medics will be here soon. Do you need anything?” Kendall asked him.
He didn’t say anything and wrapped his hands around Jessica, his gaze still fixed on the corpse in front of him. It was when he lowered his head that he began to cry.
This was going to change his life forever.