Nothing Ordinary, M J Marlow [ebook and pdf reader .TXT] 📗

together before we meet with your grandfather’s lawyer.” “All right,” Annie nodded. She hoped she’d be alive later. She heard the man leave and leaned against the door with a sob. She heard the shower curtain move aside. “Please don’t hurt me.” “That is up to you, pretty girl,” the man said as he pulled out a pair of cuffs and fastened her wrists behind her back. “You do exactly what I ask of you, and I won’t have any reason to hurt you.” He clamped his hand on her left arm and opened the door. “Show me where his files are.” Annie took him into the second bedroom and she nodded towards the stack of boxes by the desk. He shoved her down on the bed and pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket to gag her with. She watched him as he went through the files one sheet of paper at a time. “What is this?” he exclaimed and shoved the boxes over. “Nothing!” He yanked Annie off the bed and shoved her up against the wall hard enough to daze her. He removed the gag. “Where are they, girl?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Annie whimpered as she felt pain exploding through her head. “I’d show you if I knew what you were looking for.” “Damn!” the man hissed. He shoved her out into the hall and back into her bedroom. “I knew we shouldn’t have shot him without finding out where he hid the files.” He shoved her towards the bed. “That’s too bad. He was told it was the files or you.” “No!” Annie sobbed. “You can’t!” “It was the bargain,” the man laughed as he got her down on the bed. “You can’t give us the files, so your child and you will be our hostages.” He put the gag back in her mouth and reached underneath her t-shirt to undo her bra. He laughed as he saw the terror in her eyes and knew he had found himself a perfect play toy. He was so locked on assaulting her that he did not see the man coming up behind him. Annie passed out at about the same time Clark struck the man over the back of the head with his gun and sent him falling. “Annie,” Clark cried as he patted her cheeks. She opened her eyes and saw him leaning over her and she began to sob. He removed the gag and picked her up in his arms. He set her down in the rocking chair by the fire and got the key for the cuffs. “Nick!” Annie cried as the man came up fast. “No!” She was on her feet and running as the two men struggled for dominance. She heard a man groan and knew one of them had fallen. She ran for the front door and had just managed to get it open when the intruder caught up to her and slammed the door shut. He locked it and put on the chain. “Let me go!” “I’ve gone to far too much trouble,” the man laughed as he hefted her over his shoulder and carried her to her room, “to stop now!” He dumped her on the bed and gagged her and cuffed her wrists again. Then he found a scarf to bind her ankles together. “Stay put, pretty girl, while I deal with your friend.” He kissed her on the forehead and then dragged Clark out of the bedroom. Annie could hear him moving around in the other room and she wondered what he was doing with Clark. It was almost as bad as imagining what he was going to do to her when he came back. She started using her tongue and teeth to work the gag out and then she screamed. “I was going to be nice to you, pretty girl,” the man snarled as he came running. He straddled her struggling body and clamped his hands around her throat. She felt him pulling down her underwear and then heard him unzipping his trousers. “But now I’m going to hurt you.” Annie kept screaming and struggling and she heard him hiss as he knee connected hard. He yanked her up and slammed her into the wall. Annie could feel his fingers tightening on her throat and she willed herself to calm down and breathe shallowly. There was a pounding sound and she thought it was her heart as she began to panic again. But the man suddenly stopped and she realized someone was trying to break down her door. “I’m coming back for you, pretty girl,” he said as he held her to the wall. “And when I do, you are going to wish you had turned over those files.” He slammed her up against the wall one more time and Annie lost consciousness. She came to as she was being carried down the stairs to the waiting ambulance and tried to get up. Her head screamed with pain and she fell back with a whimper. “Don’t worry, Annie,” Captain Ryan’s voice sounded nearby. “Mr. Clark is all right. He said your screams drew the man’s attention before he could be harmed. You probably saved his life, Annie.” Annie nodded and the pain exploded behind her eyes again. She wanted to fall asleep but Ryan kept talking and making her focus on him. She wanted to hurt him by the time they were at the hospital. His father met them in the exam room and his kind smile made her cry. She winced as he flashed the light in front of her eyes. “We should just give you an apartment here, Annie Weber,” he teased as he continued the exam. “The bastard did a number on your head. What did he hit you with?” “The wall,” Annie told him. “Three times, I think. He was trying to make me stop screaming.” “From what I heard you saved a man’s life by screaming,” Doc smiled at her. “You’re a remarkable young woman, Annie.” “I don’t feel remarkable,” Annie said softly. “I hurt.” “We’ll take a few x-rays to make certain he didn’t crack anything,” Doc said as he looked over at the nurse, “and then put her in a private room. Captain Ryan already has two officers standing by. They’ll go with you.” He laid his hand on her shoulder as he looked back down at Annie. “I’ll talk to you later, Annie.” He left the room and the nurse helped her into a wheel chair. Annie was having a hard time keeping her head up and her eyes open. The pain was making her vision blur in and out and this was making her feel ill. The nurse told her to concentrate on taking deep breaths when she noted her expression. They went to the X-ray department and she was put in a machine where she had to lie still. Once the X-ray was taken, she was put in a private room with the two officers standing guard. The nurse stayed with her. “I don’t want to wake up,” Annie snapped irritably the fourth time she was woken up and asked to count fingers. “Leave me alone!” “She always was a crabby kid when she was ill,” Jeffrey’s voice came into the room. “Hey, Streudel!” he smiled as he came over to Annie’s side and gripped her hand in his. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “You should have come with me.” “Did you at least have fun?” Annie asked him, wanting to think about anything but what had nearly happened to her. “It was all right,” Jeffrey shrugged. He looked very serious and Annie wished she could laugh. “Did they catch the bastard who used her as a racquetball?” “He got out before we arrived, Lieutenant,” Ryan spoke up from the doorway. “Do you feel well enough to answer a few questions, Annie?” “I don’t know what kind of help I can be,” Annie said wearily. “He was wearing a mask over his face. All I know is that he was the same man who called me and demanded Grandfather’s files and he had dark blue eyes. He smelled like cherry and tobacco. He was calling me from inside the apartment!” she gasped at the realization. “That’s the only way he could have been there to attack me so soon afterwards.” She turned white. “How did he get inside?” “The investigators are looking into that now, Annie,” Ryan said to her. “You are going to be in the hospital for tonight at least. Norman and Petrie are on the door for the next eight hours. They will be replaced by Owens and Birney.” He smiled at her briefly. “You have your own security force, Annie.” “I’d rather have this man leave me alone,” Annie replied. “He didn’t find what he was looking for,” she told Ryan, “but he said he was coming back and next time he would hurt me bad.” She shivered at the thought of what he had nearly done. “If I hadn’t managed to fight him off he would have raped me.” “What was he looking for, Annie?” Jeffrey asked her from where he sat holding her hand. “He said Grandfather had information,” Annie said to him. She thought it over and shook her head very slightly. “I have no idea what he could have been talking about.” She closed her eyes. “He was so mad when he didn’t find what he was looking for in Grandfather’s boxes. He-he said if he couldn’t have the files, he’d take me.” “That’s enough!” Doc Ryan snapped as he came into the room. “Annie needs rest, not interrogation.” He looked at his son. “You know better, Peter.” He looked at Jeffrey. “Take the lieutenant with you for now, son. He can come back in a few minutes.” Annie leaned back and smiled at the doctor gratefully. She had never felt such pain before and she was tired of it. She did not fight as the nurse came in and put a very mild painkiller in the IV line “We can’t give you more, Annie,” Doc told her, “until we know if you have a concussion or not. We have to be able to wake you up every hour or so.” Annie nodded and then wished she hadn’t. She bit her lip and leaned back to relax. She was stuck in the hospital again because someone had tried to hurt her. She fell asleep as she started to remember what Barney had told her just before she had died. Baxter had what she needed to stay safe, he had told her. Had he hidden the files these people were looking for in the bear? And even if that were true, just whom could she trust enough to hand them over to once she found them? “I want my grandfather,” Annie sighed as she woke up a couple of hours later. “He’d know what to do.” “He made a lot of wrong decisions at the end, Annie.” Annie opened her eyes and saw Agent Taylor standing in the doorway. He came inside and sat down beside the bed. His expression was quite somber and she knew what he wanted to talk to her about. “I know he withheld the transfer of his files,” Taylor said to her as he settled, “because he was told you would be hurt if he turned them over to us.” Annie nodded and he was impressed. “He told you?” “I walked in on a conversation between him and a lawyer,” Annie told the agent. “The man told him point blank that my grandfather should turn over the files or his employer would take me in exchange. He also said my grandfather would find himself in prison if one or the other was not handed over.” “Could you describe this lawyer, Mrs. Owens?” Taylor asked. When she did, he was even more impressed. “You have a fine eye