Divas Prison Ch67
Very little had changed by the time the sun began to come up the next day. Stephanie drove her SUV down the highway with her father in the back seat. He had, at the urging of his daughter slept for a short while, as he was exhausted. She would have loved to have slept as well, but rest wasn't the most important thing on her mind. Escape was the only thing she was thinking of. She knew it wouldn't have taken long for the police to have caught up with her, and indeed it wasn't. But she also knew she was in charge as long as she had her hostage. It hadn't been the typical high speed chase that people hearing about the situation on the early morning news would have hoped for, she was driving sensibly, well under the speed limit, keeping her wits about her for any trick that they might try to stop her from getting away.
Jericho, in one of the lead pursuit vehicles, was the reason that they hadn't tried any of the usual tricks to end the pursuit. He knew Stephanie well enough that she would carry out her threat to hurt the Governor of the state if they did anything that she didn't want them to. He wasn't going to attempt anything that wasn't guaranteed to end in the safe retrieval of a very important public figure. It was a huge inner conflict for him as the idea of losing his target when he was seconds away from having her in custody was making him feel sick. His partner, sat next to him driving the car, not knowing what to say, as he knew that Jericho was very much on the edge and he didn't want to rock the boat too much. But at the same time, the silence was not doing him any good at all.
"Where do you think she's going?" He eventually asked when he couldn't stand it any longer.
"She's not going anywhere, no matter what she thinks. I've got her, and no little stunt is going to stop us. Not this time."
"Chris, calm down, we aren't going to lose her, half the cops in the state are behind us. She's got nowhere to run to. She can't just get on a plane."
"She's not going for a plane. She's going for a boat. I'd bet the family owns a boat or two somewhere, or she's got one of her own. If she makes it to international waters, she's gone for good. Cuba, Brazil or anywhere in South America. If I ever see her again, it'll be if I'm on vacation, and I won't be able to take her back with me. We have to get her, now. We can't just keep following her or we end up waving her off."
"What about the coastguard? Could they help us stop her leaving our waters?"
Jericho gripped the wheel tighter in anger and frustration. "Coastguard? You gotta be kidding. They don't have the units or the ability to do anything useful unless she falls out of the damn boat, and that won't happen unless my luck changes."
"Well if we can't keep just following her, and we can't try any of the usual things we would do to end the pursuit, what do we do?"
"I don't know, dammit!" Jericho was ready to explode, and when he looked over, his partner could see how on edge he was from the look in his eyes alone. "Did they find out her cellphone number?"
"Let me check." His partner didn't know if it was worth finding out, but wasn't going to argue. He made a call of his own, and a few minutes later had the information. "Yeah, Kane Jacobs gave it up under questioning. Trying to look cooperative it sounds like."
"That won't work. He's in it up to his neck." Jericho scoffed. "What's the number?"
Wight relayed it and Jericho dialled, putting it on speaker. After several rings it went to voicemail. Jericho hung up immediately and dialled again.
"Who is this? What do you want?" Came an unmistakable voice.
"Stephanie, it's Agent Chris Jericho. I want to know what it's going to take for you to pull over and let the Governor go."
"You. All of this is your fault. You couldn't leave me alone. If you didn't like the job we did, then vote against us, just stay the hell out of my life!"
With his target clearly agitated, Chris made sure he kept calm. "You know I can't do that. Don't act dumb with me, we both know everything you've done, and look at what you're doing now. It's over, and the best thing you can do now, is pull the car over and stop. I promise that things will go a lot better for you if you release your father."
"Better? I know you want to see me hang Jericho, so don't pretend anything else to me. I would recommend treating me with respect for the first time in your life."
"Respect is earned Stephanie. But that's not what all you are after here. I'm the only one who is going to talk to you, so, I'll ask again, what do you want to let him go safely?"
"I told you, I don't want anything, except for you to take all your boys in blue and turn around, go home, have a donut, and let me go. I'll even sweeten the deal, I promise that I will never darken your doorway again. I'll let my Dad go, but only when I am certain there isn't a cop for miles."
Jericho tried his best to hide his annoyance. "We can't just stop the pursuit and let the Governor out of our sight. I don't know why you are even asking for it."
It's a fair deal Jericho. Him for me. You know which of us you have to save, and I promise you will have no choice but to scrape what's left of him up off of the ground if you do anything to try and stop me. No roadblocks, no stingers, no cop car comes any closer than you are now. I have no need for him anymore, and I will do what I have to. Your call."
Stephanie hung up the call, threw the phone onto the seat next to her and focused on the road, but only moments later, there was a noise that made her jump and nearly swerve into the safety barrier on the outside, missing it by inches only.
"How could you?"
There was no response from the driver of the vehicle until she had gotten the car to go the right way down the highway again.
"Geez Dad, what the hell do you think you're doing? You almost got us both killed!"
"Stephanie, what have you done?"
"What I had to do. You've all ruined this for me, and I'm not having all my hard work, everything I've given to this be for nothing."
"What are you talking about? We did great work together, and..." Governor McMahon stopped talking as he realised more, or his thoughts came back to him after the blow to the head. "My god, it's all true isn't it?
You had Dixie Carter murdered. And you've been dealing drugs. In my state. You've sold my stance of crime for years, got me elected on it, and all this time you've been a criminal? How can this be?"
Stephanie snorted in laughter. "Give it a rest. All I ever wanted was power, and by putting you in office: Congress, then the Governors mansion, I got it for you. I got your policies across and I made the sort of connections that made me rich. It was child's play. I had the police in my pocket. They loved the kind of man you were and would do anything I asked them to if it meant you would keep being that man. So I used that to my own ends. Crime really does pay when there's nobody to stop you. You will never see as much money in your life as I made these last couple of years. Ok, so there was a cop who saw through me and I had to take care of him. That was a long time ago. But they had nothing on me and by suing them, they left me alone too. But then she had to come along. Dixie goddammed Carter. If she had lived, we would have been watching her victory party on tv."
"No, we wouldn't." Vince tried to interject, he heart being torn out by his daughters words. "You were a great Chief of Staff. We would have won."
"God, you're so naive. I told you that to keep you positive. She was creaming us. If she beat us, that would have ruined everything. All my power, gone. I was going to take you to the White House Dad. We would have everything. But if we lost the election to her, we were done. So I did what I had to do."
"You murdered her?" Vince asked rhetorically.
"I didn't. I couldn't risk any link to us. So I arranged for the 'extraction' of my best operative. I'm not just a good negotiator in Washington, Dad. Made a deal to get Sasha out, and if she hadn't lost her touch in the slammer, none of this wouldn't be happening. She should be dead too, but the Russian let me down as well."
Maybe your recruitment skills aren't as good as your negotiating. You're evil Stephanie, and you need to turn yourself in. Stop this car at once." Vince tried to talk down to his daughter, as he did when she was young, but it wasn't working.
"Are you really that stupid? Maybe that's why I couldn't get people to keep supporting you over Carter. I'm not letting them take me. I'm going to take the boat, and head to Cuba. I've got a safe house set up there with enough money to live out my life without a care. Not what I wanted, but it would be stupid not to prepare for the worst. Barely 100 miles away and untouchable."
"What are you going to do with me?" Her father asked, a little fear in his voice.
"Once I'm out of the country, I don't care what you do. Jump out and swim, or find your way out of Cuba. Not my problem."
"Not your problem? You're my daughter."
"Oh please, I wasn't that since I started working for you. You never cared about anything but winning, and I gave you that."
"And you clearly never cared about anything but money and power. You're a murderer. My own child." Vince moved forward, wanting to look Stephanie in the eye, but she spotted this and elbowed him in the face knocking him back onto the seat.
"Dad, I don't want to have to kill you, but I swear that I will if I have to." Stephanie took the fact he wasn't moving as a sign the conversation was over. She checked on the chasing police, to see that they had not changed since the last time she checked. They passed a sign that told her that they were barely ten miles from the harbor, so she grabbed her phone and hit the option to call back.
"Jericho."
Listen asshole. This is all ending in a few minutes. I'm going to our boat, with my Father, and disappearing. You know you can't stop me. If I see one cop get out of his car, or any already there that could even think of trying to stop me, I will put a bullet in his head and dump him in the middle of the ocean. Do what I say, and he will be set free when I reach my destination, can call you, and you can come get him."
"Listen Stephanie, I can't let you just vanish. We can figure this out. Just let the Governor go."
"You can and you will, unless you want to be responsible for his death. No cops, no problems, and nobody dies."
Jericho knew he had no cards here. "Fine. No cops. You go. But you leave the Governor behind."
"Do you think I'm mad?" Stephanie asked. Jericho didn't respond, biting his tongue. "If I leave him you'll have some police boats, or the Coastguard stop me before I've gotten anywhere, or have a sniper ready. With him I'm safe. Sorry Chris. I guess you really did let your partner down after all. So much work for nothing. And since this is the last time we will ever talk. Let me leave you with this." And Stephanie started laughing maniacally. Jericho couldn't listen to it, hung up the phone and threw it across the car.
Stephanie kept laughing, but in her enjoyment she had not realised her father had stirred. He had heard the conversation and was enraged that his daughter was such a heartless criminal.
"I can't let you get away with this." he said to himself. He slid into a better position and then threw himself forward, grabbing the steering wheel and pulling down on one side hard.
In Jericho's mind, the next few seconds played out in super slow motion as she watched the vehicle in front suddenly swerve into the crash barrier, which had no chance as the larger vehicle collided with it at such an angle and with such force, that it went through, but the impact sent the SUV onto its side, then the roof and repeated many times over, rolling down the slight hill on the other side, and continuing its rolling over and over until it came to a stop on it's roof, a good forty feet from the road.
"God, no. Not like this." Jericho said as his and the other Police cars stopped, looking at the smoking wreck.
A.N: Thanks for reading.
Hope you aren't too mad I left it there. Is Stephanie alive? Is her father? We know she's not escaping anymore, but is she going to jail, or to the morgue? Let me know what you think.
