“Now that’s more like it,” she purred, lifting up the robe and removing a Taurus PT111 from the woman’s belt. She held it up, feeling the reassuring weight in her fist. She looked over at Welles. “You good?”
“Yeah,” he gasped, getting to his feet and holding up a matching pistol. “No sweat.”
“Cool. Let’s go. The elevator.”
Before Welles had chance to respond, she was already over there and stabbing her finger on the round silver button displaying an up arrow.
“You sure about this?” Welles asked as the doors sucked open and they stepped inside. “What are we gonna walk in on?”
“No idea.” Acid shrugged. “But screw it. What have we got to lose?”
Thirty-Four
As the elevator doors glided shut Acid scanned the control panel, opting for the button marked Viewing Platform and jabbing at it a few times for good measure. As the metal box shuddered into life, she glanced at Welles.
His face said it all.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Who is this crazy woman?
Acid knew the expression well. She’d seen it on the face of pretty much everyone she’d ever worked with. Man and woman. One more reason she preferred working alone. But regardless, she was enjoying herself. Taking down those guards just now had hit every one of her pleasure receptors. She felt powerful, unstoppable, and she wanted more. Even if a part of her knew this was all part of her condition. Millions of chemical equations erupting across her nervous system, making her feel invincible.
If she had time to consider her current heightened state from a logical perspective, she might tell herself to slow down. To step careful. She knew from experience that being this way was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the manic energy surging through her system allowed her to take insane risks, do things no one expected of her. But on the other hand, it made her take insane risks, do things even she didn’t expect.
Either way, the bats were in charge. They were ready, and they wanted blood. As the elevator slowed to a stop, she raised the Taurus, put one in the chamber. Next to her, Welles got into a firing position.
Time to go to work.
The doors slid open and they vacated the elevator swiftly, leading with their pistols and moving around the space, covering the area from both sides. It took them all of three seconds to discover the room was empty. Acid lowered her weapon, taking in the huge open-plan room. Part of it had been set up as a lounge area with high-backed leather seats and round dark mahogany side tables. The seating area had been positioned so it faced a large glass wall, and beyond it the lush greenery of the island. On the opposite wall, a marble-topped bar displayed an extensive selection of expensive liquor bottles and buckets of ice. Acid’s eyes grew wide at the sight of it all.
“Not the best of ideas,” Welles said, reading her mind.
“Just a little one?” she pined, holding her finger and thumb up to exemplify the tiny amount she was considering.
“You serious?”
She let her shoulders drop defensively. “I don’t know. Probably not. Half the time even I can’t tell whether I’m joking or not.”
Welles didn’t reply, but the look he gave her said it all. Same look he’d given her in the elevator. Maybe it was time for Acid to stay quiet and let her actions do the talking.
Leaving the pull of the liquor bottles behind, she moved over to a high table on the adjacent wall. It was made of the same dark mahogany as the other tables. On top was a pile of cards coloured a pale yellow. Acid picked one up and scanned the page, her lip curling with anger as she did.
“What you got there?” Welles asked, coming over.
Acid held the card up so he could see. “Scorecards,” she told him. “Sick bastards.”
Each card pertained to a different member of this year’s hunting party. The one Acid had hold of belonged to a Peter Van Tam. Never heard of the guy, but no doubt he was another of Engel’s nefarious billionaire acquaintances. He was also dead, if the large red stamp reading DECEASED was to be believed. At least that was something. The people they’d brought to the island, those being hunted, none of them had gone down without a fight.
“Let me see.” Welles took the card from her, shaking his head incredulously as he read. “Shit. It really is a game to these people.” He chucked it back on the tabletop. “You know, I wish I could say it was a shock, that happens. But it’s not. Not really.”
“And people say my old line of work was bad.” Acid sniffed, her eyes scanning the names on the other scorecards. “Yet the people I killed – corrupt politicians, despots, cartel bosses – you ask me, they always deserved it.”
Welles didn’t look convinced. “That what you tell yourself? Because—”
“Oh, spare me the fucking speech,” she spat, rolling her eyes. “I haven’t got time for a lecture.”
She was already striding towards the elevator when it shuddered into action, the light display above showing it coming down from an upper level. They darted towards it and splayed themselves against the wall as the elevator doors slid open.
A short man wearing a terrible outfit of oversized board shorts and a light blue polo shirt wandered aimlessly into the room. His thick brown hair was sticking out at all angles, as though he’d only recently got out of bed. Acid shot Welles a confused glance. Got an over-the-top shrug in response. The man was standing in half-profile a few feet from her, his face illuminated by the tablet he was furiously swiping at. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe younger, if the smattering of puss-filled spots around his mouth was any sign. Though as he nervously touched his fingers to his chin, she reasoned it was likely this tick, rather than adolescent hormones, that was responsible for the repellent red and yellow display.
Welles widened his eyes at her. What do we do? But Acid had already decided. Gripping the Taurus handle tight, she strode over to the man and pushed the gun muzzle into his cheek.
“Make a sound and you’re dead,” she told him.
The man let out a squeak and held his hands up. “Don’t shoot,” he whimpered. “Please.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
The man looked at her feebly and pulled a face. “J-J-Jerry,” he stammered. “Jerry Mankowitz. I’m Luther Clarkson’s personal assistant. Please don’t kill me.”
She adjusted her grip on the gun as Welles stepped over to join them. He flapped his hands, making a silent whistling motion. Doing that annoying thing people did when they were trying to calm a situation. The effect was it only wound her up more. The bats were screaming.
“Where is everyone, Jerry?” Welles asked, keeping his tone steady and his voice friendly. A typical cop.
Jerry looked frantically from Welles to Acid and back again, perhaps assessing who the leader was. To help him with his decision, Acid raised the Taurus and smacked him on the top of the head with the barrel.
“He asked you a question, dickhead.”
“Okay, okay,” Jerry gasped. “But if you’re here looking to save those girls, you’re already too late.”
“What does that mean?” she asked him. Another answer like that and Jerry was going to get his brains painted all over the elevator doors.
He gestured meekly out the window. “You can see for yourself.”
Acid shoved the kid at Welles. “If he moves, kill him.”
With Jerry whimpering in her wake, she marched over to the window. Down below a trail of jeeps leaving the complex and driving down a wide track that ran around the side of the island. There were four people in each jeep. A driver, two passengers and an armed security guard hanging out the back. The fact the guards were poised with assault rifles and scanning the surrounding area told her they weren’t there for show. They knew Acid and Welles were still alive, and they weren’t taking any chances.
“Where are they going?” she asked Jerry, not turning from the window.
“Don’t you know?” he replied, a twinge of peevishness undercutting
his whine. “The closing ceremony starts in one hour.”
Acid narrowed her eyes at the last jeep leaving the complex. Along with the security guards, there were three women onboard. In the front seat, a tall woman dressed in a white robe, blonde hair tied up in a bun. Same get-up as the guards downstairs. But she wasn’t the reason Acid’s breath caught in her throat. On the back seat, huddled together, were sat two smaller women with dark hair. Despite the weird, leafy outfits and bizarre headdresses, Acid recognised them straight away. She watched the jeep disappear around the side of a large rock formation before moving her attention back to Jerry.
“Where is it held?” she demanded. “How do we get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t bloody well know?” In a beat, Acid was on him. She grabbed the snivelling wretch by the collar and flung him over her hip. He landed on his back and didn’t have time to catch his breath before she was straddling him with a knee on each arm, the muzzle of the Taurus into the middle of his forehead.
“I’m just an assistant,” he cried, any hint of bravado now gone. “I’m only here because Mr Clarkson sent me to fetch his scorecard.”
“Yes, we’ve seen them.”
“Well, you’ve also seen that my name isn’t on one. Take a look. Jerry Mankowitz. I don’t have one, because I’ve not killed anyone. I would never. I swear.”
“But you’re here. With them. Enabling them,” Acid rasped, spittle flying from her lips. She screwed the gun into his skull. “That’s as good as guilty in my book. So talk, or I swear, I’ll kill you.”
She sensed Welles beside her, silently judging her, but she didn’t care. He had his values. She had hers. She’d kill him too if she had to. She leaned over Jerry, her finger twitching on the trigger. There was no idle threat here. Right now she wanted to kill him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. But the intensity of her stare, the ferocity of her demeanour. It also had the desired effect.
“Fine. Fine,” Jerry spluttered, not taking his eyes from Acid’s. “The ceremony is held in the arena basin over on the south-east of the island. You can get to it by driving along the track that runs down along the east side.”
“Driving?”
“There’s a big garage on the lowest level,” he said, screwing his eyes shut and sending tears cascading into his hair. “There’s a bunch of jeeps. There’ll be extra, I’m sure of it. Take the elevator down to the entrance hall and then go along a corridor which leads to another elevator down.”
“Do we need codes? Any access issue?”
Jerry shook his head. Tried to, at least. Difficult with the gun pressing down hard. “No. Mr Engel is pretty relaxed about that kind of thing. I guess you can be when you own the island and have a security team like he has. They’re dangerous, you know?”
“Yes? So am I,” Acid told him. “Thanks for that, Jerry. I guess you’re now surplus to requirements.”
“Oh shit. No,” he wailed, appealing to Welles. “Man, I don’t want to die. I’m just an assistant. I’m not one of these people. I make less than fifty grand a year, for fuck’s sake. I just got caught up… I never…”
Acid didn’t move. Her trigger finger was white with tension. She heard Welles say something to her, but the words swam into the ether before they registered. The bats though, she could hear. Kill him, they told her. He deserves to die. Think of Spook.
Spook?
It might have been Jerry’s wounded expression, or that look in his eyes, a mixture of confusion and fear – it might have just been his nerdy, thick-rimmed glasses – but in that moment Acid saw her friend staring back at her.
Bollocks.
She glanced up at Welles.
“Hey, you do what you have to do,” he told her.
Great. Not what she wanted to hear. She turned back to Jerry, her hand quivering on the trigger of the Taurus.
Do it.
Do it.
She lifted the gun, the muzzle leaving a fleshy indent on Jerry’s forehead. “You’re bloody lucky I’ve got a cop with me,” she said. “Otherwise you’d be dead.”
She spun the pistol around so she was holding it by the barrel and smashed it around the side of the kid’s head, knocking him out cold.
“He got off lightly,” she told Welles, ignoring his arched brow as they raced over to call the elevator. “Now let’s get down to those jeeps. We’ve got a closing ceremony to crash.”
Thirty-Five
Spook leaned into Sofia, lowering her voice in case the other passengers heard. “Do you really think he’s still out there? Your friend?”
Sofia looked straight ahead, her head rocking inadvertently from side to side as the jeep negotiated the uneven terrain. “He ain’t my friend,” she whispered back. “But he seemed legit. A Bureau guy. Knows what he’s doing.”
“So we’ve still got a chance,” Spook told her. Told herself. She gripped Sofia’s upper arm in way of reassurance. This too done more for her own benefit than that of the gruff New Yorker. “Acid’s tough as hell,” she added. “I don’t believe she’s dead.”
Sofia let out a loud sigh. She might as well have said, Don’t be so ridiculous. It’s over.
Because it was. Wasn’t it?
Spook could tell herself whatever she wanted, send herself crazy with a bunch of empty words and gestures, but deep down she knew the truth. She was going to die today. Here on this island. And for what? So a group of braying billionaires could have a good laugh at her expense.
She peered out at the dense jungle that spread out over the mountainous landscape. Above them, the hot sun was already making its presence felt. She had a passing thought to mention how the journey was reminiscent of Han and Luke being taken to the Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi, but she thought better of it. That was her disassociating again, and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do it. Even when, by rights, it would most definitely help. Take away this tightness in her throat. The shakes in her hands. The other reason she didn’t say it, was she suspected Sofia wouldn’t get the reference. No one did these days. But that was Spook’s generation for you. Millennials. Even Acid Vanilla would get a Star Wars reference, and that was saying something.
She sat back, fiddling with one of the large leaves that made up the dress skirt she was wearing. “Please, Acid,” she whispered. “Please be alive. Please save us.”
Beside her Sofia took a sharp intake of breath. “Motherfucker.”
“What is it?” Spook asked, but as soon as the question had left her mouth she knew what Sofia was referring to.
In another hundred yards the track sloped down to a large clearing. Spook’s old geography knowledge told her this was once a lake. The flat surface giving it away. The grass here had been cut back uniformly. Short and tidy, like a football field. Around the outside of the basin were two rows of seats, with a small wicker table set up beside each seat all the way along. A set of binoculars and a decanter of water on each table. A little way from the seating in the centre of the arena, a small stage had been set up, no more than ten metres wide with rich purple velvet draped over the entire structure. On each side of the stage (more like an altar, come to think of it) stood marble plinths holding flaming torches, grey, wispy smoke spiralling into the blue dome above. It was an imposing sight, but not the reason for the goose bumps or the shiver of icy fear coursing through Spook’s body. Because behind the altar, towering at least twenty foot over the arena basin, was a large wooden totem pole, chilling in its grandness.
“What the hell?”
Spook took in the wooden structure. The top section had been carved into the head of a goat, painted white with devilish red eyes. It leered down on them with a ghoulish grin as the jeep got nearer. Underneath the goat, Spook made out the carvings of two human heads, ugly and distorted, one on top of the other, and identical except for the paint work. One pink, one brown, with insane, rolling eyes that dripped with cartoon tears. Spook gasped back a sharp breath as she
noticed the heads were hollow and the eyes small windows about the size of her head. A small door hung open at the side of each of the heads revealing the space inside. Big enough for a person. The final section of the totem pole was an actual devil, classic, macabre, and painted bright red, with a forked tail wrapped around the grotesque squat body. A large hooked nose hanging over two rows of sharp yellow teeth completed the look. The entire structure was unsettling, but it was what had been placed around the devil’s feet that made Spook cry out.
“Sofia,” she gasped, turning to her fellow prisoner. “They’re going to…”
“Yeah. I know,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the bundles of straw and dry timber. “They’re going to set fire to that thing. With us inside.”
Spook’s stomach back-flipped as the jeep came to a stop in front of the imposing monolith.
“End of the road, ladies.”
Spook looked over her shoulder and was met with the yawning mouth of a large rifle. The guard holding it gestured towards the door where Sofia was being dragged out by one of Engel’s female security team. He snarled at Spook, “Get out.”
Without a word she shuffled along the bench seat and followed on behind Sofia. Now, under the vigilant watch of more armed guards, they were shepherded around to the front of the jeep where they stood side by side, arms folded over the ridiculous, leaf-covered bra-tops they’d been forced to wear. More jeeps were arriving now, people taking their place in the seating area.
“Get them into position,” a voice ordered.
Spook’s breath caught in her throat as a man stepped into view carrying a wooden ladder. He placed it up against the malevolent carved structure and backed away.
“You first,” the female guard snarled, pointing a rifle at Sofia.
“What you going to do?” Sofia said. “Shoot me? Well go for it, hun. What the hell have I got to lose?”
The outburst got her a backhand across her face, the force sending her stumbling over onto one knee before a rifle butt around the side of the head finished the job. She fell to the floor unconscious.
The Acid Vanilla Series Page 69