Page 79 of The 1 Lawyer

He cursed and gave her a vicious kick in her ribs. As she writhed on the rug, she saw the other man stumble into the room to join them. He was breathing hard.

The man who stood over her said to him, “You want a turn? Payback for kicking you in the nuts?”

The other man shook his head. The bigger one bent down, grabbed her arm, and jerked her up off the floor with such force that he dislocated her shoulder.

While he beat her, Jenny heard herself scream over and over until she passed out.

When she came to, she was sitting in the back seat of a car. The movement of the vehicle as it bumped over the road brought fresh agony to her dislocated shoulder, her ribs, and her head. She had to lock her jaw to keep from crying out.

The man riding beside her said, “Hey, she’s awake. Should I knock her out again?”

The driver glanced at them in the rearview mirror, then shook his head.

She whimpered when the car slowed to a stop. The man riding in the back seat with her—the one who’d beaten and kicked her in her living room—opened the car door and dragged her out. After she made a pitiful attempt to resist, he carried her down a driveway and up the front steps of a house.

It was a house Jenny knew.

When she realized she’d been delivered to Stafford Lee’s front porch, she was afraid to believe it. She thought she might be out of her head, hallucinating from trauma.

He dumped her on the doormat. When her injured shoulder hit the hard surface, she cried out.

The man pushed the doorbell more than once; she heard it ringing in the house. Right before he ran down the steps to the waiting car, he snarled, “Tell your buddy we said hello.”

CHAPTER 61

IN THE middle of the night, my doorbell rang.

“The hell?” I sat up in bed, groggy. I hadn’t imagined it; the bell rang again and then a third time. I’d just gotten out of bed when I heard a knock at my bedroom door.

Rue was out in the hall. “Did you hear that?” she said.

I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. “Yeah. I’m up. I’ll go check.”

I grabbed the bat. I was thinking about the caller who’d left a message on my office line, wondering if he was trying to throw another scare in me. I gripped the wooden handle, determined to let him know exactly how I felt about the early-morning wake-up call. In my present mood, I was inclined to knock someone’s head in.

Rue followed me as I stormed down the hall. When we reached the living room, I stopped abruptly. “You stay back, Rue. This has nothing to do with you.”

She held up her cell phone. “Want me to call the cops?”

“No. This could be someone’s stupid idea of a joke. You know my crazy friends.”

Through the picture window over the couch, I saw a car back out of my driveway and speed away with its headlights off. I ran up to the window, trying to get a look at the license plate.

The car didn’t have any plates.

Rue was at my shoulder, peering through the glass. “I guess that was your late-night door ringer. Looks like he moved on. We can go back to bed.”

I pushed the buttons on the keypad by the door to disarm the alarm system. “You go on. I’d better take a look around, see if he did any damage.”

I don’t know what I expected to find. Something vandalized, maybe. When I pulled the door open, I almost stepped on her.

It was a woman. Laid out at my front door. Someone had beaten her badly. Her face was covered in blood; her hair was matted with it. I knelt beside her on the front porch, trying to figure out who she was and what she was doing on my doorstep.

Rue stood in the doorway, her hand over her mouth.

I said, “Rue, turn on the porch light!”

When the light came on, I couldn’t believe it. Not Jenny.

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