HER FINAL WORD (JACK RYDER Book 6) Read online

  As The White Lady swung the saber at the girl, the girl reacted quickly. She reached out her hand and grabbed the woman's arm. While looking into her eyes, she bent her arm backward and, when pushed, The White Lady dropped the saber. She grunted, annoyed, then threw herself at the girl, but the girl was both bigger and stronger, and soon she had her pinned to the ground, holding her down with both arms.

  "Quick," she said. "Grab the saber."

  She then reached inside The White Lady's mouth and pulled out her tongue, pulling so hard the old woman screamed. Then, as Dylan returned with the saber, she looked up at him, and their eyes met in a rush of arousal and excitement.

  "Cut it off," she said, sweat springing from her forehead. "Cut it off. Do it NOW!"

  Dylan's nostrils flared, and his cheeks turned red as he swung the saber through the air and it cut through the tongue. The sound of it slicing through the flesh and the veins would haunt the girl for years to come, but only as a delightful shiver when remembering her first kill.

  Just like they had done with Carla, the two of them watched The White Lady bleed to death on the cold floor, while holding hands over her lifeless body, and this time they both knew this was a defining moment in their short lives. One they would always try and return to, to revive that feeling of total power.

  They decided to place her at the end of the table and put her tongue in a jar, to always remind them of how it all began.

  But before they did, the girl stripped the old lady of her white dress, becoming who she had always dreamed of being. As she put it on her own body, Dylan stared at her in awe, smiling from ear to ear.

  "You answer to me from now on, you hear me?" the girl said, and Dylan nodded.

  "Yes…Mama."

  74

  Lyford Cay, Bahamas, October 2018

  "All I know is that she was The White Lady, the first one."

  Sydney looked up at me, then back at the dead woman. "My mom told me they killed her."

  I stared at the girl, not quite fitting all the pieces to this puzzle completely yet. "So, this is Mrs. Chauncey?"

  Sydney nodded.

  "And now there's a new one?"

  She nodded again. "Mr. Chauncey was the first White Lady's son. I never met her, but my momma told me she was terrified of her. She wasn't as bad as the new White Lady, though. Not according to my momma."

  I stared at the skeleton, then at Sydney, while trying to figure it all out. The woman in front of me had been dead for quite some time. I shook my head. Maybe the details didn't matter right now. The guy killed his mother, yes, but worst of all was that he had Coraline and there was no telling what he was capable of doing to her. And besides, whoever this mysterious new White Lady was, she was dangerous. There was no doubt about it. She needed to be stopped.

  "We should call the police," I said and found my phone when I heard a sound coming from upstairs. It was followed by a scream.

  Emily and I locked eyes.

  "Coraline."

  Gun clutched in my hand, we rushed up the stairs and into the kitchen, then stopped to listen. I wanted to know where the sound was coming from, but now everything was completely still.

  "Where are we going, Dad?" Emily asked.

  "Sh," I said. "We need to listen."

  "But it’s all quiet," she said. "And the house so big she could be anywhere. How will you…?"

  I shushed her again. I was certain I had heard something, but then it all went quiet again.

  Until I heard an engine roar.

  "The garage," I said, panting, and looked to Sydney for guidance. "Where is it?"

  She pointed. "Through that door and then down the hall to your right, but…"

  "Let's go," I said and jolted forward.

  Emily was right behind me as we ran in our wetsuits. We didn't have to run many steps before realizing it was hot and hard for our skin to breathe inside the neoprene. By the time we reached the door leading to the garage, I was sweating heavily already.

  I grabbed the handle, then slammed the door open, holding the gun out. Just in time to see an old Rolls Royce drive off, out of the garage. It was gone so fast I couldn't even get a clean shot, so I decided we'd have to follow them instead and turned to look into the garage where what looked like fifty Rolls Royces were staring back at me.

  75

  Lyford Cay, Bahamas, October 2018

  I found the keys on a wall in the garage. I guess it was our luck that living in a gated community made people less cautious as to where they put their car keys, so we didn't have to search for them. I picked a white seventy-six Silver Shadow and, seconds later, we bumped out of the garage and rushed down the street toward the gate, hardly even noticing that I was actually driving the car of my dreams.

  Right now, my focus was Coraline and getting to her alive. There was no way I was letting her out of my sight.

  The other Rolls had already left through the gates and, as I drove up to the gates, my heart started racing in my chest. I was worried the guard would stop us and see me, knowing he had just denied me access to the neighborhood a few hours earlier and yet here I was.

  I drove close to the entrance, then slowed down, my heart pounding. I spotted the guard inside of his little house. He was watching some game on his TV and didn't even look outside. And, much to my luck, the gate opened on its own when someone was going out of the community. The guard didn't really care much who drove out since it could only be someone he had already let in, so he didn't even look at us as I drove right through the gate without being noticed.

  I then roared down the street in the old yet beautiful automobile, pushing it to its limits, holding it steady around the curves, not letting Emily's loud shrieks of terror get to me.

  As I floored the accelerator and the Rolls roared to its max speed, I soon spotted the other Rolls—the big red one, a nineteen sixty-five Silver Shadow—a little further down the road.

  "Do you think we can catch up to them?" Emily asked, her voice trembling, her hands resting on the dashboard in front of her, her knuckles turning white with effort. Sydney was being quiet in the back seat, but I sensed she was just as scared as Emily. Driving on the other side of the road was still a challenge to me, even in this car that was created for it.

  I held my breath as we sped down a curved and narrow street. I dodged a street sign in one of the sharp turns and almost hit an old broken-down wall where there had once been a house before regaining control of the car and getting it back on the small road. After the next turn, we reached a straight road, the town of Nassau rising in front of us, the tires making crisp sounds on the asphalt.

  "I do," I said as I took the turn onto the bigger road and the car skidded sideways.

  "How?"

  "Our model is newer than theirs. They changed the engine and made it bigger."

  "Oh."

  I looked ahead. There was no traffic at this hour, complicating things. As I pressed the Silver Shadow further, I sensed we were getting closer to them, as I could almost smell the exhaust.

  76

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  "Get her to shut up."

  "Yes, Mama."

  The girl was screaming in the back seat, and Dylan tried to cover her mouth. Then, when it didn't work, he slapped her a couple of times. It only made her scream louder. The girl sighed deeply. She was annoyed by this situation. Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to, how it usually went. And now they were running away.

  "What do we do with her once we get to the airport?" Dylan asked, his voice shivering in fear. "Why can't we just kill her now?"

  "We need her," the girl said. "In case we need to negotiate. They won't touch us as long as we have her. She's an American citizen."

  The girl looked briefly at her own reflection in the mirror. The white scarf on her head felt tighter than usual.

  Who are you? What have you become?

  The girl had become The White Lady after killing the woman who had terrorized her all throu
gh her upbringing. She had become her. Taken over her bedroom, taken over her dresses, and taken charge over the people working in the house. Even baby Ella had become hers. She had raised her like she was her own, even though Dylan had grown quite jealous of her affection for the girl over the years. The girl was his sister, and nothing but an infant when her mother was killed, yet he felt no affection for her whatsoever, and as the years went by, he grew to hate her more than anyone. Maybe it was because The White Lady had ended up killing their dad after she had their second child. The girl knew Dylan blamed Ella for the death of his father, even though the girl didn't quite understand why. They had both been outside the master bedroom, listening in, when he had asked for the divorce and said he wanted half of The White Lady's money. They had heard him say that he would go to the police and tell on her if she didn't do as he told her, if she refused to give him what he wanted.

  Together, the girl and Dylan had watched through a cracked door as The White Lady dismembered his body in their bedroom and put all the parts in a suitcase that she later dragged downstairs, bumping it on every step, then asked Juan to bury it in the yard. The girl guessed that Dylan needed someone to blame for the loss of his dad, and so it might as well have been Ella. She was an easy target.

  The girl and Dylan loved one another, even though they weren't really capable of loving the way you're supposed to. But they shared a love for killing. They were murderers already before they even started killing. Growing up under the murderous rule of the first White Lady, what else could they be expected to become?

  In the midst of all the terror, the killing, the burying of bodies, they had found one another, found each other in a twisted form of love, a lust, you might call it. A lust for the kill. And so, they had continued as they grew older. Dylan's mother had been the first of many.

  Life after that had been a feast for the girl. She had become the master of the house, and she now made the decisions. The workers began fearing her like they had feared her predecessor, maybe even more. She had total power and total freedom. She could leave whenever she wanted to, and Dylan even taught her to drive a car. Life became luxurious, and she felt like a queen, even though the neighbors still believed she was a servant and she pretended to be one when guests came over, which was rare.

  Seven years after getting rid of Dylan's mother, things began to go downhill between them, and Dylan grew tired of the girl. He went into town and got himself drunk one night and met a girl in a bar. Laurie Roberts was her name. He brought her back to the house, and that was where the girl found her the next morning. Sleeping next to him in one of the guesthouses. She stood by her side and watched her as she slept, thinking about The White Lady and then tasted the metallic taste of anger in the back of her mouth again.

  So, she beat her up. In a fit of jealousy and anger, the girl threw herself at her and beat her senseless. Waking up from his heavy hangover sleep, Dylan watched her as she beat Laurie to a bloody pulp while feeling strangely aroused. He then left the room and came back with a knife from the kitchen and, together, they cut out the girl's tongue, then watched her bleed to death on the bed, while holding hands across her dying body.

  Killing the girl had, in a sick way, brought them back together, back to what they had initially shared.

  And so, they had continued.

  Three years later, when they sensed they were once again drifting apart, Dylan had been to a party at the neighbor's house, Mr. Sakislov. That was back when they tolerated one another and pretended to be friends, even though Dylan couldn't stand him and his ways. There he had been presented to a girl that the playboy next door had met downtown. The next night, Dylan Chauncey had parked his Rolls downtown near a bar and picked up Annie Turner, wearing a silver wig, pretending to be the pretentious neighbor, hoping he would take the fall if it should come to that.

  They had trapped Annie Turner in the panic room and kept her for days. The girl had beaten her up, getting rid of all that rage inside of her, rage against white women, while Dylan had cut out her tongue, and then tattooed her final word on her back, just like they had ended up doing to Laurie and just like they would later do to other girls.

  And, of course, the girl had a plan B that came in handy when Sakislov managed to pay his way out of being a suspect. After the third kill, Jill Carrigan, she sacrificed Juan, whom she had grown tired of anyway.

  You might say that the girl took over Dylan's mother's position in his life. She wore the white dresses, and she told him what to do, and he started calling her mama. The girl didn't mind; she liked it when he looked at her the same way he had looked at his mama; in awe and fascination along with a good portion of fear.

  As she rushed down the road, Coraline Stuart screaming in the back seat, the girl couldn't stop thinking about The White Lady and the way she had looked at her just before she died. The contempt in her eyes. The vibration of her tight upper lip. Vermin, she had called her.

  She had no idea how right she was.

  The girl glanced at herself in the mirror once again; then she spotted a set of headlights reflected in the mirror, the lights growing closer and closer till they almost lit up the cabin of the car.

  77

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  "You're almost there, Dad. You're almost up on their side!"

  I pressed as hard as I could on the accelerator and managed to get the old car up to a whopping hundred and twenty. I couldn't believe this old car could actually go so fast, and soon I passed the taillights and then the back of the car.

  "I see her," Sydney yelled. "I saw a hand on the window."

  "Was it Coraline's?" I asked.

  "I think so," Sydney said. "It looked like she was trying to signal us, let us know she was in there."

  "I see it too," Emily said. "But someone keeps pulling her hand away."

  "Let me get up on their side," I said, as the car sped up past the driver's window. I honked the horn to make them understand that I wanted them to stop, then raised my gun and placed it in the window. Then I turned my head to look at the driver. The sight that met me made me ease up on the accelerator in surprise.

  "Is that…Rosie?" Emily asked just as confused. "The housekeeper?"

  I nodded, baffled. The lady that had shown us inside the first time we were in the Chaunceys’ house, the lady who had stared at me with her chilling eyes while Emily and Sydney got to know one another? She was The White Lady? I guess I should have known since she was wearing a white dress when I saw her; I could just never have imagined that she would…that she would be…her. I guess it is needless to say that I was quite startled.

  "So, one of the slaves became the master, huh?" I said.

  "Rather be the hunter than the prey, right?" Emily said as I once again put pressure on the accelerator and the car pushed forward.

  Rosie stared at me, then at the gun in my hand, and I rolled down the window to signal for her to stop, that it was over, there was nowhere for them to go.

  Yet, she didn't. Of course, she wouldn't give in that easily. Instead, she turned the steering wheel and her car slung to the side, straight into ours, pushing us off the road.

  We bumped into a grassy area, ran through a wooden fence, then back up on the road, right behind her again.

  I then raised my gun again, and fired a shot at their car, hitting the back. It was a warning shot, to make sure she understood I meant business. Still, she continued like nothing had happened. I tried to get up on her side again, but this time, she wouldn't give me room for it. Every time I tried, she would change lanes and block my way.

  "You need to shoot out her tire," Emily said. "That'll slow her down."

  "I’m trying to," I said. "But I can't get good aim."

  "Here, let me do it," Emily said and reached out her hand like she wanted me to put the gun in it.

  I gave her a look. She gave me one back.

  "Dad. I can do it."

  "No."

  "Yes, I can," she said and reached over
and grabbed the gun from my hand. "How many times do I have to tell you, I’m nineteen," she yelled, leaned out the window, took aim, and planted a perfect shot straight in the right tire. The car in front of us started to skid sideways, first to the right side, then left as Rosie was trying to regain control, and then it was slowing down, just like Emily had foreseen. Seconds later, we were in front of it, blocking its way and both cars came to a halt.

  78

  Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018

  I grabbed the gun from Emily, then got out of the car, holding it up in front of me, pointing it at them, still staying covered behind the car door so it would protect me in case they too were armed.

  "Come out," I said. "Hands over your head."

  Nothing happened.

  "I said, come out, hands over your head!" I repeated, my heart still pounding from the car chase, worrying for what they were doing inside that car. Why weren't they coming out? Didn't they realize it was over?

  I heard loud, agitated voices coming from inside of the car and, seconds later, a gunshot went off.

  Emily and I exchanged a look right before I stormed to the car and opened the front door. Out fell Rosie, bleeding from her forehead, where a bullet had gone through. She slid to the asphalt, her brown eyes staring into thin air.

  I stuck my head inside and found Coraline sitting in the back seat, a terrified expression on her face. Next to her sat Dylan Chauncey, the gun in his hand, placed on his temple, his hand shaking.

  "Come any closer, and I'll pull the trigger," he said, sobbing. He stared at Rosie's dead body, sweat springing from his forehead. "She always told us this was our only way out. We couldn't go to jail. People like me disappear in those jails, she said. It was the only thing in life she was truly afraid of. She could face everything else. Seeing her grandparents die. Being locked up for her entire life. Watching the woman she loved like a mother being killed. Being broken and beaten over and over again. Anything. She was the strongest woman I have ever known."