by Blake Pierce
The whole time, he’d manipulated his pulse to give the impression his internal organs were failing him.
“About time this happened,” one of the guards said.
“Tell me about it,” the other replied.
Two nurses wheeled Campbell up the ramp, through the hospital doors and into an elevator. One nurse stayed behind. In a few minutes, Campbell would be taken to a secure hospital room of which escape was impossible.
He couldn’t let things get that far.
One nurse. Two guards. Three total.
He squeezed the ball in his armpit, cutting off the blood supply to his pulse. The monitor around his arm began to beep. All eyes in the elevator turned to the dying man.
One nurse grabbed the monitor and checked the data. “He’s fading,” she shouted. “He needs midazolam.”
“He’s on his way out,” the guard said.
“Leave him be,” the other laughed.
Tobias felt the moment in his bones. His vision was impaired due to his method acting, but he could always sense the right moment to strike. Another trick from the magician. You just felt the best moment to misdirect the participant.
As the sedative came down, Tobias’s predatory instincts returned. It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for fifteen years, but it was like they never left. He rose from the cusp of death, grabbing the woman’s hand and jumping from his stretcher bed in the same movement. The woman didn’t have time to move or think. Tobias used her needle as his weapon, driving it into the neck of the uninterested guard on one side of the elevator. Tobias pushed the syringe down himself, emptying the extreme sedative into the man’s bloodstream. With the other hand, he picked out the guard’s electric taser.
“Fuck!” the other guard screamed, reaching for his pistol. Tobias moved like a predator, crossing the elevator in the blink of an eye. Before the guard even had his pistol pointed at him, Tobias had the taser buried into the guard’s stomach, launching him into rapid shock. The nurse cowered into the corner, hand over her mouth. She frantically pushed buttons on the elevator control panel.
“Stop the elevator and I’ll let you live,” Tobias said calmly. He walked towards her, taser aimed at her stomach. “Three, two…”
The nurse pushed the HOLD button and the elevator stayed in place.
The gullibility of man, he thought. “Make a sound and I’ll kill you,” Tobias said. “Get over there, in the corner.”
The nurse obliged, cowering in fear. Covering her head, like it would somehow keep the man at bay.
Tobias went back to the first guard, limp on the ground, but still breathing. Tobias locked his arm around his neck, twisted, and snapped the bones like frail twigs.
He’d already predicted the nurse’s reaction at the sight of murder. “Shhh,” he said before her screams emerged. “Behave and you’ll get out of here alive.”
The second guard sat crumpled in the corner, powerless and vulnerable. Tobias approached him and assumed the same position.
“Toby, please don’t. I’ll…” the guard breathed.
Snap. Neck bones shattered in two. It had been a long time since Tobias took a life, least of all two in one sitting, and he’d all but forgotten just how good it was. That feeling of playing God, the lord of life and death.
“And then there were two,” he said to the nurse.
“You’re… not ill?” she cried. “But how did you…”
He slowly approached the cowering woman and cornered her. Killing someone was one thing but instilling a sense of oncoming death in someone was unlike anything else in the world. In that moment, you were bigger than God. You controlled destiny.
Tobias buzzed the taser.
“Please. You said you’d let me live.”
“I say a lot of things.” He dug the taser into the nurse’s neck and relished the physical breakdown that followed. She went into a fit of seizures and crumpled on the ground. With no one around, he took his time.
Tobias savored the aroma of death. It was like an old friend had finally come to visit again. He pushed the button for the top floor of the hospital. The hard part was over. The fact that no alarms were sounding meant his people had done their jobs correctly. This was the culmination of a long, complex plan.
At his destination, he walked out, leaving behind an elevator mass grave in his wake. The fire exit door was already lodged open for him. A few seconds later, he was out in the cool night air, with nothing but a staircase between him and freedom. He felt no need to rush. This moment had been a long time coming. The slower he walked, the bigger the insult to the prisons, the politicians, and the FBI directors who thought they could keep him locked in a cage for the rest of his life.
The world was his again. Alive and undead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After a delayed flight, Ella Dark finally got back to D.C. in the early evening. She picked up her car at the airport and, instead of heading back home, detoured to the FBI offices. Before she’d left for Delaware, she’d run her dad’s mysterious receipt through the graphology software at the HQ, and by now she should have had the results back.
There was also the matter of her relationship that she didn’t want to address yet. She had enough trauma to worry about, and she still felt woozy from her arm wound. She wasn’t in the right headspace to break up with an abuser just yet. As far as Mark knew, she was still in Delaware. It would stay that way until tomorrow.
Ella made her way to her desk in the Intelligence Division. A couple of late-night workers were still around, a few of which seemed happy to see Ella back in her old haunt. She set up her laptop and opened the graphology program she had installed.
TIME ELAPSED: 51 HOURS
DOCUMENTS CHECKED: 3,215,497,411
RESULTS: 17
95% MATCH: 4
“Wow,” she said. She never expected to get a match, let alone four of them. Ninety-five percent match results were considered to be so accurately matched that they could be entered as evidence in a court of law.
She checked the four documents. The first was a form for planning permission written in 1998. Back when forms were done by hand, Ella thought. The permission had been requested by a man named Owen William Angels for his new business.
“Oh my God,” she said. She remembered the initials on her father’s receipt. OWA.
This must be the man.
She looked at the rest of the forms. The next was a tax relief bill from 2001 in the same handwriting. Next was a letter of appeals to the local government.
The last one was where her dread peaked.
According to the document on her screen, this Owen William Angels man had been arrested on suspicion of murder in 2003. He’d signed the document by hand with the same OWA Ella saw on her dad’s receipt.
Who was this man, and why was her father acquainted with him?
She dug a little deeper and searched the FBI database for the name. His information popped up immediately.
Name: Owen William Angels.
Born: 05-31-1970
Occupation: Unknown
Address: Unknown
Prior Offences: 13
She went back to the documents and found that the tax relief bill was for Angels’s company: Red Diamond.
“Oh Christ,” she said. Red Diamond was a very well-known, very underground operation that operated in Virginia when she was a kid. Everyone in her old town had a story about the group, some people even claimed to have a brush with the members themselves. Whenever someone passed away in Staunton, Virginia, someone would start a rumor that the Diamonds were involved. Back when her dad was alive, the group would have only just been starting. Now, everyone knew their names.
Had they started out as loan sharks? It wouldn’t surprise her. Every operation had to start somewhere. Was her dad one of their first customers perhaps?
She had to find someone from this seedy organization; the only problem was they kept themselves underground. Back in her youth, the rumors were that group memb
ers sewed blades into their boots, and that every member was branded with a diamond scar somewhere on their body. But that might have just been high school talk.
She needed to dig deeper and find them. Starting tomorrow, she was going to find this Owen Angels for herself.
Her cell phone began buzzing on her desk. She checked the screen.
INCOMING CALL: WILLIAM EDIS.
The director, probably wanting a review of the case. She sometimes wished he’d give her more time to prepare them, but she understood the urgency. The media would want the lowdown by the morning.
She picked it up. “Hi director. Me and Nigel are back. Case closed.”
“Miss Dark, are you sitting down?”
Damn it, he wants me in his office already. “Yes I am. I’m at my desk. Do you want me upstairs? I can run you through the…”
“No, please,” Edis interrupted. “This isn’t about the case. This is something else.”
“Oh, certainly. I’m all yours.”
“I’ll warn you in advance. You won’t like what you’re about to hear.”
Ella’s felt a sense of vertigo, like she was at the top of an impossibly high skyscraper looking over the edge. “Okay. What is it?”
“Miss Dark, Tobias Campbell escaped from prison tonight.”
In her vision, she fell from the skyscraper and hurtled towards concrete at terminal velocity. Her last thoughts were a barrage of questions, the loudest of which was how the hell is that possible? Ella found herself unable to utter a reply. She tried to speak but some invisible force prevented her from doing so.
You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you?
“Ella, are you okay?”
“No.”
“If you like, we can put you somewhere safe for the time being. Is that an option for you?”
I’ll see you soon.
The notes were from him. They weren’t some pranks or some relationship test from Mark. Tobias Campbell had eyes on her in Delaware. Her sense of vulnerability reached an all-time high. The thought of this psychopath knowing her exact whereabouts made her entire body itch.
“Miss Dark?
Ella lost herself in the white light of her computer screen. She remembered her moment with Byford in her motel room. She was calm and capable. She had weapons, fighting skills, allies. Other serial killers had fallen at her feet, and Tobias was flesh and blood just like them. If that son of a bitch wanted to fight, he was going to get one.
“No, director. I’m perfectly fine thank you.”
She hung up, overflowing with questions but not quite ready to learn the answers just yet. She grabbed her bag and headed home.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Ella didn’t go straight home. She drove around for a while, collecting her thoughts. She’d once read that the best place to reflect was either in the car or on the toilet, and she believed it to be absolutely true. She pulled into her apartment complex around ten pm. Before exiting the car, she checked her phone for messages. Nothing from Mark; he must have given up, thank God.
But she didn’t care about him anymore. There was someone else she needed to talk to. Someone who knew her problem like no one else.
Ella entered the complex and took the stairs to her apartment. She trod lightly, taking every corner and every door slowly. Tobias knew where she lived, and if she was smart, she knew she couldn’t live here for the foreseeable future. If she did, she’d be constantly on edge, wondering if the noisy pipes were actually an intruder sneaking through her windows. She couldn’t live like that, so she needed a new place to go. Maybe she could rent somewhere or take the director up on his offer. She’d make her decision once she’d thought it through.
Her hallway was clear. No signs of intrusion. No dead animals on her doorstep. She put her key into the door, pushed it open but remained in the hallway.
This wasn’t normal.
The lights were all turned off. Jenna never turned the lights off before she left. She always blamed her forgetfulness, but the truth was she was scared of the dark. There was no way Jenna hadn’t been back here in three days.
Ella instinctively reached for her pistol, knowing full well it wasn’t there. She switched the hallway light on and listened for any signs of life from inside.
“Hello? Jenna?”
Then something from inside the lounge. She knew that sound. It was the sound of the boards below the sofa creaking.
Should she turn and run? Call the police? It wasn’t like anyone inside could escape from a top floor apartment without her noticing.
No. These colors don’t run from cold bloody war.
“You’re not going anywhere,” a voice called from inside.
Her insides knotted up. She knew the voice. She’d done everything she could to escape it.
She opened the door to another layer of darkness, but she saw a figure sitting on her sofa, black on black.
“Mark,” she said. “What the hell?”
“Exactly. What the hell,” he said, rising to his feet. He flipped the light switch beside him. The sudden light blinded Ella.
“Why are you here? How did you get in my home?”
“Your roommate is careless,” he said. “So, you’re in Delaware, huh?”
Ella took her bags to the adjoining kitchen and dumped them on the worktop. She couldn’t believe the nerve of this guy. Watching her, keeping tabs on her. She already had one stalker to worry about, she didn’t need another.
“No, I was in Delaware. Now I’m in Washington, D.C., okay?”
Mark stood dead center in the middle of the lounge. “You didn’t think to tell me you were coming back?”
“I didn’t know I was coming home until this morning.”
Mark checked his watch. “Right. And it’s ten pm now, so what have you been doing for twelve hours?”
“Clearing up. Talking to police. Filling out reports. Talking to the director. You know how it works. You’ve done it long enough.”
“Yeah, I have, and not a single time did I completely ignore my partner all day. And after the conversation we had the other night? I’m suspicious,” Mark slammed his palm against the wall. “I’m suspicious as hell.”
The noise made her take a step back from him. “Suspicious? How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t be this jealous; it’s not normal. You have nothing to worry about.”
Mark moved in front of the door, blocking the only exit. “Ella, I’m looking at the facts here. My girlfriend flies out to another state all on her own, with a new man by her side. And she texts her boyfriend, what, a few times over 48 hours? I’m not an idiot.”
She’d had enough. This was wasted energy. She thought maybe when she saw Mark in the flesh, her feelings for him might surge back.
They didn’t. She disliked him as much as she did yesterday. Ella moved over to the sofa and sat down. “Come here,” she said sternly.
“I’m not coming anywhere. You need to start explaining yourself. Admit it, have you been sleeping with this new guy?”
Ella dropped her head back in her seat and sighed. “Mark, sorry, but I’m all out of shits to give.” She got out of her chair and stood in front of him. “This isn’t working for me. I don’t want to be with you…”
Smack.
Her cheek burned red hot. The sting traveled through her jaw, up her cheek and into her eye. One side of her face went numb with pain. In the past two days, she’d seen sights no human being should ever see, but being slapped in the face by the man supposed to be her boyfriend was an even greater shock.
Mark lowered his trembling hand. His mouth fell open in a look of horror. “Oh my God. Ella, I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t.”
Ella said nothing. She gently felt her cheek with her hand. Her skin was scalding to the touch. Mark reached out to put his arms around her, but Ella moved back and held him at arms’ length.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
“Please, that was a
n accident. I can’t control my temper. I’m seeing a therapist about it, I swear.”
Ella had reached her limit. After the past few weeks, her body and mind were both worn down to the nub. Humans were not designed to be exposed to this much stress, this much tragedy. She felt like every little thing chipped away at the very core of her being until there was nothing left but an empty shell.
“Ella? I’m sorry. Can we talk?”
No, they couldn’t.
Ella pushed Mark out of the way, the force burning her forearm injury. She ignored it. She didn’t care anymore. Pain be damned, she could handle it.
“Don’t go. We need to talk.”
She pushed herself up against Mark, brought her eyes to his. She curled her fist so hard it felt like a ball of granite on the end of her wrist.
“When I get back, you better not be here.”
She wasn’t going to hit him back. No way would she stoop so low. Ella stormed out of the front door and didn’t look back.
She had somewhere else to be.
***
Ella had never been here before, but she found the address in one of her old files. She stood out in the road, in the impenetrable country darkness, looking up at the lone house. Forbidding, unknown, silent.
The house was a grandiose piece of work. A driveway big enough for ten cars, three-stories of magnificent brick work and acres of green in every direction. It overlooked the beautiful Ozette Lake, and the nearest neighbor must have been a mile away or more.
It didn’t surprise her.
Ella shuffled up the cobblestone driveway to the front door, telling herself over and over again that this needed to be done. When she reached it, she raised her hand to knock, then lowered it again.
Midnight had come and gone. Would this be better at a more appropriate hour? Or was it equally as inappropriate at any hour?
Ella smelled the homely scent of the porch, saw the coats and boots hanging up on the inside. This was someone’s home, and she was invading it. Just like Mark had done, just like Tobias has done. Maybe she should learn lessons from those monsters and do everything she could to be the opposite of them?