Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

The microphone they implanted in Richard Davies’s steering column is giving pretty decent audio. But he asks them to check it anyway. The connection’s good.

  Davies and Charley aren’t saying anything.

  Good, Cole thinks. Breathe, Charley. Just breathe.

  Davies turns the truck into an alleyway.

  The truck slows to a stop, but the engine’s still running.

  On the TruGlass feed, Cole watches the truck’s headlights wink out.

  “How’s this?” he hears Davies ask.

  Davies appears on the monitor. A dark shadow, one side of his angular face fringed by a distant streetlight.

  “Yeah,” he hears her say.

  Davies makes a subtle jerk of the head.

  A nod, really.

  A gesture.

  Directed at his crotch.

  The TruGlass feed jerks slightly, then it begins to slide down Davies’s shadowy torso.

  It’s so quiet inside the control center suddenly, Cole’s sure he can hear the earth settling outside the room’s subterranean walls. The female tech lowers her gaze from the displays overhead to the monitor in front of her—just stats and metrics for all the surveillance devices involved in tonight’s op. She’s looking away without looking away.

  Cole wishes he could do the same.

  He wanted to talk about this part with Charlotte. Come up with some sort of game plan. But Charlotte refused. We need an abduction, she’d said. I’ll do whatever gets us there.

  9

  Shayla Brown’s mother used to collect Beanie Babies.

  She died when Shayla was seven, Charlotte remembers, leaving Shayla only some credit card debt and her collection of big-eyed stuffed animals. Right after the newly minted orphan moved in with her aunt Margot, her only living relative, Margot installed some shelves right next to Shayla’s new bed so the girl’s tiny inheritance could watch over her while she slept.

  On the one-year anniversary of her last phone call from Shayla, Margot posted a picture of the stuffed animals on her Facebook page alongside a school photo of her niece taken when the girl was fifteen, a year before she shot heroin for the first time and became hopelessly lost to everyone who loved her.

  Charlotte runs these details about Davies’s first alleged victim through her brain again and again as she undoes the top buttons of his plaid shirt with her teeth. She’s not just trying to delay the inevitable; she wants to frustrate him so he accelerates the proceedings.

  Maybe he makes his girls blow him, but she doubts it. A killer as methodical as he is, she can’t see him wasting a bunch of time in this dark alley. And she can’t see him getting off on something as simple as a blow job.

  He grips the back of her head and pushes her gently toward his crotch. But he hasn’t unzipped his jeans. That’s her job, apparently.

  She breathes deeply.

  There’s no tingle in her skin.

  No tremor deep within her.

  No bone music—the sure and unmistakable sign that the Zypraxon in her system’s been triggered.

  She unbuttons his jeans.

  Janelle Cropper was a C student. But she’d memorized the name of every type of bird that passed through her uncle’s neighborhood. She’d bird-watch from the front window of his house outside Portland for hours on end while her mother turned tricks. Until she became old enough to fight off her uncle when he’d come to her bedroom drunk. Around then, her uncle made it clear she couldn’t live there anymore. That was the last time any of Janelle’s friends ever saw her. When they were interviewed by the local paper for a piece after her disappearance, they all agreed they hoped she was watching birds, this time in peace. But to the reporter writing the piece, Janelle was just another local girl lost to drug addiction, not the victim of a serial killer.

  Shayla. Janelle. Maryanne. Patrice. Deborah.

  Their stories are all similar. Broken homes. Guardians turned abusers. Heavy drugs before they’re out of high school. The same barrage of spirit-breaking obstacles before adolescence that only a detached and suspiciously self-satisfied observer would consider easily overcome.

  Charlotte says their names to herself, remembers the smiles in their old childhood photos. Then she unzips Richard Davies’s jeans, releasing a little swell of boxer shorts underneath. Just then, Davies’s grip on the back of her head tightens. But he doesn’t force her face into his crotch. It’s a different pressure. Like he’s steadying himself. Keeping his balance while his other hand . . .

  Sensing what comes next, she forces herself to take a deep, slow breath through her nostrils.

  Then she hears a quick, sharp sound like a tiny car whizzing past on a miniature highway. Her right calf explodes with pain. It’s some sort of tranquilizer dart. He’s fired it into her leg. She doesn’t feel bone music in response. Doesn’t feel anything like a trigger event caused by this sudden, fierce stinging impact.

  She controlled it. She’s proud of herself. And even though she’s the one going limp, the last thought Charlotte has before darkness closes in around her like a shroud is, Got you, fucker.

  10

  “What was that?” the tomboyish tech whispers.

  “Tranquilizer dart,” Cole hears himself say.

  He knows the sound well. Remembers the insectile concert they made as they went whizzing one after the other into Project Bluebird’s first test subjects, whereupon they did absolutely nothing to stop those Zypraxon-filled trained killers from chewing on their own hands like they were fried chicken breasts.

  He closes his eyes, forces himself to focus.

  The TruGlass feed’s gone dark, indicating that Charley’s eyes are shut, but a human tail is crouched at each mouth of the alley. Their shoulder cams have night vision, but the microdrones don’t, so the overhead angles make Davies’s pickup look like a mood-lit art piece surrounded by a sea of oil. Parked in the shadows of the surrounding block is enough firepower to start a small siege—stationary green blips on the GPS map that’s also tracking Davies’s truck.

  Baby-Faced Nerd Boy’s in charge of the camera feeds. He’s alternating between the two shoulder cams until Davies pops out of the driver’s side of the truck, holding a hog-tied Charlotte in his arms. Nerd Boy switches to the rear view because the truck’s closer to it.

  Silently, they all watch Davies place Charley in the cargo bay, then snap its cover shut over her as though he’s transporting a bag full of newspapers he doesn’t want to blow away.

  “Blood ox is still ninety-six,” the white, balding med tech says. “Pulse rate’s dropping.”

  “I can see her vitals, thank you,” Cole says.

  “Ground tail wants to know if they should respond,” the only female of the group says.

  “To what?” Cole snaps. “We’ve got an abduction. And right on schedule.”

  The med tech says, “Pulse rate’s still dropping, consistent with a sedative.”

  “I can see her vitals. Thank you.”

  “She’s not triggered.” It sounds like the med tech’s speaking through clenched teeth. At least he didn’t turn and shoot Cole an accusing look.

  “I know. That’s how she wants it.”

  “Seriously?” asks the baby-faced nerd.

  So I’ve got the whole peanut gallery to answer to now, Cole thinks. Well, fine, maybe they’ll learn to listen to me, and not just Ed.

  “Yes. That’s what the breathing was about. She doesn’t want to burn up her Zypraxon time pretending to be passed out in the trunk of his car. She wants to get to his kill site first.”

  Davies’s truck starts forward, headed for the opposite end of the alleyway.

  The microdrones lurch, then follow its path.

  “All right, follow positions. Alert the team outside his farm. Once he leaves the city, the microdrones are useless because we won’t have enough light sources. Put your focus on the tracker inside his truck and our ground tails.” The female tech begins quietly relaying Cole’s instructions to everyone listening on the other end. �
��And remind the ground tails they can’t go up the mountain. The road’s too isolated. They’ll stick out.”

  She mutters into her mic, then turns to face Cole for the first time. “They’d like me to remind you they’re skilled in evasive and surveillance driving and they’d—”

  “I don’t care!”

  She bows her head, clears her throat, and turns to face her computer again. For a few seconds, all he can hear in the room is their collective heavy breathing and a low mutter of radio traffic from the ground teams muffled by the techs’ headsets.

  “Look,” Cole says, steadying himself. “I know this is not like anything you’ve ever done before. But we’ve got enough men and firepower to pull her out at a second’s notice if it goes wrong. So I need everyone to take a deep breath and stay objective. This is a field test, and nothing more. Got it? It’s a field test.”

  “Got it,” the baby-faced nerd says.

  But the woman and the med tech just nod.

  They’re not calmed, Cole can tell. And that should be his job, shouldn’t it?

  “Names,” he says.

  The med tech looks at him for the first time.

  Baby-Faced Nerd Boy follows suit.

  “Tran,” the woman says without turning. “Shannon Tran.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Stockton, California.”

  Cole locks eyes with the baby-faced nerd, realizing that the guy’s actually pretty cute. If they ran into each other at a hotel bar and the guy did something outwardly gay—whatever that is these days—Cole just might buy him a drink. “Tim Zadan. I was born in Stockholm, but we moved to Boston when I was four.”

  “Love Boston,” Cole says. “Don’t love the winters, but love the town.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tim says, then turns his attention back to the camera feeds.

  Cole finds the med tech staring at him.

  “Why are we doing this?” the tech asks.

  “Because pretty soon I was going to start calling you guys by nicknames, and I don’t want to sound . . . impolite.”

  Smart as you guys are, you’re all about to freak and I can’t have that, so play along, nerd.

  “But we’re not supposed to—”

  “I know what Ed said, but he’s not here. What’s your name, friend?”

  “Paul Hynman. South Carolina, mostly. Then San Diego. Then Virginia.”

  “Military family?”

  Paul nods.

  “Great.”

  “Not really,” Paul says. “I switched schools every five minutes.”

  “Seems like you turned out OK.”

  Paul Hynman just glares at Cole as if whatever set of circumstances landed him in this secret subterranean room taking orders from Cole doesn’t exactly qualify as OK.

  Serves me right, Cole thinks, expecting to chitchat with some science geeks.

  When all three of them return their attention to their computers, Cole’s quietly relieved.

  He looks at the feed from the ground tail’s shoulder cam, and the relief leaves him instantly. The feed is shaky and occasionally blurry. Without the microdrones and their godlike view of everything that happens below, Cole now feels as if he’s sealed up in the back of Davies’s pickup right beside Charley.

  11

  Maybe she’ll try climbing a tree like the second one did, Richard thinks, or maybe she’ll start begging for her life like the fourth.

  This is his favorite part—when he’s safely perched inside the deer blind, waiting for his prey to regain consciousness and find herself lost in a sea of shadows and thick forest. Even better, tonight he’s got snow and ice to play with. That’s why he took off her shoes before stringing her bound wrists to a tree branch about six and a half feet off the ground.

  Once, only once, did one of his prey undergo a startling, admirable metamorphosis upon waking up and realizing how fucked she was. One minute she was shuffling and disoriented and confused. The next, she tore off a branch the size of her arm and used it to beat a path through the darkness as if she expected a bear to explode from underneath a nearby bush and was ready to fight it to the death. That was the same one who tried to keep climbing the fence even after she realized it was electrified at a strength that could stun a cow.

  That wasn’t pretty.

  But he doesn’t bring them here to make them pretty; he brings them here so they can have a chance to find some deep reservoir of inner strength before he removes their sickness from the world.

  What will this one find within herself?

  Will she cry out for the daddy she betrayed?

  Richard watches her through night vision googles as she sways gently in the frigid winds. It’s another world at this altitude, which is how he’s always liked it. Any spot where the earth kisses the clouds is a special place, a place where primal truths reveal themselves to those who’ve acquired the wisdom of solitude.

  The course he’s built is as big as he can make it, though it’s barely an acre. But when you’re having trouble seeing, it might as well be the Hundred Acre Wood. It’s full of holes and baited with bad hiding places. The deer blind’s not that well camouflaged, and most of them are able to make it out after a few minutes, which is how he likes it. And then there are the traps.

  The first time he practically lined the fence with them. But upon reflection, it didn’t seem like the makings of a fair fight, so he’d knocked it down to three. One is close to the string-up spot, its placement a reward for the prey who doesn’t panic the minute she wakes and start running in mad circles. The ones who take their time to get a sense of their surroundings, to let their eyes adjust to the dark.

  The other’s close to the farthest section of fence, designed to punish the bitch who foolishly assumes escape is an option and just starts running for her life. And the third’s right in front of the deer blind, should she be stupid enough to try to approach him directly.

  His favorites are the ones who try to hide.

  Because he likes finding them.

  Which one will this one be?

  Young and confident, skin firm like Stephanie’s.

  She might be a fighter.

  She might be . . .

  She’s awake, he realizes.

  He almost missed it. A few seconds before, she was swaying in full forty-five-degree rotations, her torso and face coming into view. Now her movement’s been reduced by half. Probably because she’s tensed her right forefoot so it creates a little drag on the snow. Awake, and trying to get her bearings, without letting him know it.

  That’s a new one, he thinks.

  12

  Charlotte can see the bear trap. The giant steel jaws have a subtle glint in the branch-filtered moonlight. Maybe they’re fringed with ice. She can’t tell.

  She figures the placement’s designed to punish a victim careless enough to lean against the tree trunk in an attempt to catch her breath.

  She focuses on it, hoping the sight will flood her system with fear. It’s not working. All she feels is silent, quivering rage.

  Anger’s not enough to make bone music. What she needs is stark terror. A sudden shock.

  And that’s not as easy to come by when she knows trained mercenaries are perched in the woods nearby watching her every move.

  Davies hasn’t tied her wrists tightly; she can get free if she wants. And he’d love her to try, she’s sure. He wants her to run, beg, suffer.

  But what she needs is something that will trigger a sense of powerlessness so total it unleashes Zypraxon’s impossible power.

  I know too much, she realizes. I let Cole tell me too much about the operation, about how safe I am, about how nothing could go wrong. And now, something actually is wrong. I’m too safe. Too protected. I need . . .

  “I see you, lady,” Richard says from somewhere in the shadows behind her. “Not moving much anymore, are you? Don’t be looking for a way out ’cause there isn’t one. This is gonna be about you digging deep and finding out what you’re really mad
e of. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find something stronger and better than you’ve ever been.”

  “How many?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “How many women have you done this to?”

  He lets out a small, self-satisfied laugh. “I don’t get interviewed by whores, sweetie. How about you focus on what you’re gonna do next?”

  She manages to wriggle her wrists free from her restraints. The loose coil of rope smacks to the snow right as her knees do. There’s a vague structure nearby, some sort of hunting blind. It must be where his voice is coming from.

  They all went through this. Trapped in the middle of nowhere, a psychopath addressing them from the shadows like they were feeble children. But the thought brings no terror. Just more anger.

  Only a split second separates the puff of air above her head and the deafening crack of the rifle shot. Gooseflesh coats her skin. Has she been triggered? But it passes, leaving a ringing in her ears and a body that feels woefully normal, nothing like the bass beat deep inside her bones that tells her Zypraxon’s in full bloom.

  Does he always fire a warning shot? Maybe it’s his way of showing them what a good hunter he is. Or maybe she pissed him off.

  “I’ll give you a three-minute head start. Then it gets serious.”

  The way she can see it, there are two strategies.

  One: piss him off and see if he’ll fire closer, if not right into her leg. They’ve got lab tests galore to prove that a sudden shock on the order of a bullet wound would be more than enough to trigger her. But the wound itself is another story. If it’s bad enough, if it strikes an artery, wreaking untold havoc inside her in the seconds before Zypraxon’s unleashed, there’s no telling whether the drug will heal the initial damage fast enough for her to recover in time to keep fighting.

  The second option’s more of a sure thing, but it’s more frightening.

  “Three minutes, you fucking whore!” he shouts. “Three minutes and then we find out if you’re worth anything underneath that sack of flesh you’ve been selling.”

  Charlotte gets to her feet and runs. She’s not sure if the bear trap she spotted earlier is out of his sight line or not. Either way, there’s no hesitating. As she nears it, she’s hoping the prospect of what she has to do next will trigger her, but it doesn’t. So she runs right up to the trap and sticks her foot into the middle of it.