by Banks, R. R.
“Thanks for caring,” I say with sincerity.
“Caring?” she asks. “You're writing a bloody good series, and if we increase circulation to a certain point, I get a bonus. That's all this is. Don't want to get the golden goose nicked.”
I laugh and shoot her the bird. She gives me a warm smile and blows me a kiss before she turns and leaves for the night. The series of articles I'm writing have actually been received pretty well. It's even garnering national coverage. People are talking, and my name is getting out there.
But, of course, with increased coverage, comes increased scrutiny, increased heat, increased anonymous death threats, and increasingly whacked-out trolls. It all comes with the territory. Such is my glamorous life.
Truth be told though, I'm excited, and have a real fire in my belly. Freaks and crank calls notwithstanding, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Since the first article hit, I haven't received less than five anonymous death threats a day. I would likely guess many of them are coming from members of our esteemed local law enforcement department. They haven't taken too kindly to me making them look bad in the papers.
Through it all though, Ava's been my rock. She's really stepped up and made sure my security is a priority. Though I bristle at the idea of needing a babysitter, she's shown me the error of my ways. In graphic detail. After she showed me pictures of other journalists who didn't think they needed protection, I gave in, and let her assign a security detail to the building.
After all, I've been working some late hours, and I'm often the only one in the building. So, as much as I hate to admit it, having extra bodies floating around – especially large men with guns who are directed to shoot first, ask questions later – makes me feel a bit better about things.
As I proofread what I just wrote, I twist open the water bottle on my desk, and take a drink, scanning the copy for any obvious mistakes. Movement from the corner of my eye draws my attention, and I look up suddenly, my heart stuttering in my chest. One of the security guards, a tall, aging bald man named Jerry, strolls past my office. He gives me a nod and a little salute.
“How you doin’ in there, Ms. Simmonds?”
His voice is surprisingly high for such a large man. To look at him, you'd think he'd have a deep, booming voice. But, that's not the case, and it always makes me laugh. At least he has a good sense of humor about it. I can appreciate that about Jerry a lot.
“Doing great, Jerry,” I say. “Thanks for checking on me.”
“That's what I'm here for,” he replies. “Me and the boys. We're around if you need us. Let us know.”
“You guys make me feel safe. I appreciate it.”
He continues his rounds, and I listen to his heavy footfalls fading as he walks away. I check my watch again and see that I only have about forty-five minutes left before Brice picks me up. If I'm going to have the copy to Ava by the morning, I really need to get cracking.
But, first I need to go to the restroom.
Getting up from my desk, I walk down the long hallway to the bathrooms located near the back of the building. The hallway is dimly lit and completely silent. Being in the office after hours never fails to creep me out. I've obviously seen one too many horror movies and read about three dozen too many true crime books. I see bad guys and bogeymen in every shadow.
I make it into the bathroom without being attacked by a chainsaw wielding maniac, which I count as a plus. I do my business and am standing at the sink, washing my hands, when movement once again, catches my eye.
The windows are frosted but face the employee parking lot in the back of the building. I can make out the shadowy form of somebody walking by the windows. It's nothing but a dark, indistinct form, but it sets my heart racing anyway.
“It's one of the guards, you idiot,” I chastise myself.
The guards are on constant patrol, doing continuous laps in and around the building. I've met all four of the night shift guards, and they're all very competent and dedicated to their job. I have the utmost faith in them to keep me safe. I have to. Most of the time, they’re the only thing standing between a serial killer and me.
As I'm drying my hands, my cell phone chirps with an incoming message. I'm expecting it to be Brice, telling me he's either here early or coming late. When I look at the display though, I see it's neither. It's from an unknown number.
Drop the story. Walk away and leave me be.
A sliver of ice pierces my heart as I look at those nine words. This is my private number. Not very many people have it, so I can't imagine it's one of the trolls who send anonymous emails to my work address. No, the fact that this came through on my private line – it means something.
I don't want to believe it's Carlyle. Don't want to believe he went through the trouble of tracking down my private line, because that means I'm firmly on his radar. But, I can’t think of anybody else I know that it could be. Yeah, it's Halloween time, and my friends can be pranksters, but none of them would cross this line. Nobody would try to freak me out like this, given what’s going on.
Which means, it must be Carlyle. And that scares the hell out of me.
Knowing I can't show any weakness – predators like him thrive on that – I key in a quick response I hope shows strength and resolve.
And if I don't?
I wait for a few moments, my heart thundering in my breast, and a fear-fueled electricity coursing through my veins. My phone chimes again. I look down at the display.
Last chance. Drop it, or you'll be sorry.
I'm feeling increasingly unnerved by the moment, but I know I can't give in. Carlyle can't know that he's rattled me. It'd be like feeding a stray cat – he'll just keep coming back for more. I key in another message and hit send.
I will expose you. You will pay for the 23 lives you took. Your time is up.
I stand there, looking at the phone in my hand, waiting for another message to come through. When it rings a second later, I scream, nearly dropping the phone. My pulse racing, I look at the display and see that it's Brice. I stab the button to connect the call and press the phone to my ear.
“Brice, hi,” I say, doing my best to sound composed.
“Hey,” he replies slowly. “You okay?”
Other than playing text tag with a brutal killer, I'm fine.
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “Your call just startled me. Nothing major.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “What's up?”
“Oh, I was just calling to tell you that I wrapped things up over at CEM earlier than I expected,” he says. “I'm on my way there to pick you up now. Give me twenty?”
“Sounds good,” I say and really mean it. “I can finish up my copy at your place.”
“Absolutely.”
“Great,” I say. “I'll see you soon. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I disconnect the call and lean heavily against the counter, taking a moment to let my pulse slow down to normal again. As I stand there, one question keeps rattling around in my brain – how in the hell did Carlyle get my private number?
After splashing some cold water on my face, I dry myself off and head for the door. I need to get my things packed up so I can work on my piece at Brice's place. The click-clack of my heels echoes off the tile in the bathroom, and I grab the door handle, pulling it open.
Once outside the bathroom, I open my mouth to scream, but he's on me before a single sound can escape.
Carlyle Hawkins drapes the rag over my face, and I'm forced to breathe deeply, inhaling the pungent chemicals. Chloroform. I struggle in his grasp, trying to break free, but he's too strong. He overpowers me, and as the darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision and my world turns to black, tendrils of ice slither up my spine, as I hear his deep, gravelly voice.
“Actually. I think it's your time that's up.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brice
; “Good evening, Mr. Kelly.”
“Hey, Jerry,” I say. “Here to pick Emma up.”
He nods and smiles. “She's a driven lady.”
“You don't know the half of it,” I say with a rueful laugh.
He buzzes me in through the front reception area, and I pull the door open, stepping onto the newsroom floor. We put the new security doors and safety protocols in place, partly because of the threat to Emma, but mostly, because of the threat to journalists everywhere. We live in dangerously uncertain times, and all too frequently, the media has been used as a convenient punching bag. And, after what happened in Maryland not all that long ago, Ava and I decided that we couldn't be too careful.
The newsroom is eerily quiet and dark, everybody having already left long ago. The lights in Emma's office are on, so I head in that direction. When I get to her door, however, I find the office empty. Figuring she's probably in the bathroom, I step inside and drop down into her seat to wait.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call up the ESPN app, checking on the day's scores and news. Even though I'm removing myself from the sports world, I still enjoy sports. But, after scrolling through the headlines, and checking my email twice, I glance at my smartwatch. I've been sitting here for five minutes, and there's still no sign of Emma. I look down and see her bag on the ground under her desk, so I know she hasn't gone anywhere.
Her paranoia must be rubbing off on me, because I'm starting to get concerned. She's been in the bathroom an awfully long time. But then, I know she's also had a pretty dodgy stomach lately. There are some days she can't keep her food down at all. The stress of having Carlyle Hawkins know who she is must be getting to her. I've tried to talk her into walking away from the story. It's out there, and hopefully, the police will pick it up, and do their job.
No matter how many times I try to persuade her to leave it, she refuses every time. She's tenacious and won't walk away from it. Emma is adamant that she’s going to finish what she started, and that Hawkins will go to prison for the rest of his life for what he's done.
And, if there's one thing I've learned about Emma, it's that she’s true to her word. She doesn't make idle, empty threats. I almost feel sorry for Hawkins, because he doesn't know the can of worms he opened all over himself. At least, not yet. I’m sure he’ll figure it out soon enough.
I check the time again and after seeing that another five minutes has passed, I get out of the chair, and head down the hallway to the bathrooms. I get to the women's room and knock on the door.
“Em, you in there?”
Silence.
“Em,” I say, knocking again. “You in there?”
I wait another few moments as dread rises up within me like a malignant tide. I pull the door open and step inside to find the room empty. All the stall doors are open, and Emma is nowhere to be seen.
Something at my feet catches my eyes, and when I look at it, I see that it's a handkerchief neatly folded into a square. I don't know why I bothered with it, but I picked it up, and was immediately assaulted by the acrid scent of the chemical on the rag. My mind instantly flashes to movies and TV shows I've seen, and I automatically assume the handkerchief has been coated in chloroform.
My pulse racing, and my heart tripping all over itself, I look around the room for anything else, and notice Emma's cell phone behind the trash can. I move quickly and pick it up. The screen is spiderwebbed with cracks. It's obviously been dropped.
As I look at the two things I'm holding – a rag soaked with what I suspect is chloroform, and Emma's now-broken cell phone – I feel the hard flutter of panic inside of me. Something happened here. Something bad.
Rushing out of the bathroom and back down to Emma's office, I grab my cell phone and dial Ava. She answers on the first ring.
“Ava Drake.”
“It's Brice,” I say. “Get down to the paper right now.”
“What's going –”
“Now, Ava,” I growl. “Get down here now.”
I stab the button to disconnect the call and drop my phone on the desk. I sit down in the seat and look at Emma's bag again. There is no way in hell she would have gone anywhere without her bag or her phone. At least, not willingly.
Which only means that Carlyle has gotten to her.
Fuck.
I pick up Emma's office phone, and punch in the number to connect me with Jerry at the front desk, and he answers before the first ring is even complete.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Kelly?”
“Count your men,” I say. “Figure out who is missing, and then figure out how Hawkins got into this fucking building, grabbed Emma, and got back out without being seen.”
“Ms. Simmonds is gone?” he asks, sounding stunned.
“Now, Jerry!” I bark. “Find out now.”
I slam the phone down and stare at Emma's cell phone. Fear is twisting my gut into knots, and I want to punch something. I open Emma's cell phone and look at her recent calls list. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ditto that with her voicemails. Next, I check her social media, and find nothing interesting.
Finally, I call up her text messages, and strike gold.
I see a text string from right around the time I called her to tell her I was coming early. Reading the messages, it seems clear to me that it was Hawkins. Why had she defied him so blatantly? Why had she provoked him like that?
And more importantly, what in the hell happened after that? Where was she now?
About fifteen minutes later, Ava steps into the office, and looks at me with an inscrutable expression on her face.
“What's going on, Brice?”
“Hawkins has her,” I growl. “He's got Emma.”
She recoils like I just slapped her, and stares at me in open disbelief. I show her what I found, having her read the text message exchange, and then hand her the rag. She grimaces when she smells the chemicals on it, but her eyes grow wide, as the implication is perfectly clear.
“Jesus, Brice,” she says. “What are we going to do?”
I shake my head. “I don't know,” I say. “I have Jerry checking to see how Hawkins got in here.”
“Shit,” Ava says, as she paces the room, her arms crossed over her chest protectively. “Shit, shit, shit. I never should have left her alone. I should have demanded that she knock off when I did.”
“You couldn't have made her do anything she didn't want to do,” I say. “This isn't your fault, Ava.”
Jerry steps into the office, his face flushed, an expression of worry on his face.
“What did you find?” I ask.
“Came in through the back doors,” he says, his voice grim. “Tommy never saw him coming, but the attacker knocked him out and stole his keycard. Then, he gained access to the building through the rear doors. Which is how he got Ms. Simmonds out unseen. Couldn't have happened all that long ago though. Tommy checked in on his rounds about five minutes before you got here, Mr. Kelly.”
Great. Knowing I just missed him pisses me off. Knowing I sat in this goddamn office for ten minutes while they were getting away, enrages me. I should have gone to check on her sooner. I should have gotten here faster. If I hadn't stopped to have a drink with Pete...
There are a million what-if's here, and I realize there is no way I could have seen this happening. No way I could have foreseen this. All I can do right now, is deal with the situation at hand, as it is.
“Is Tommy okay?” I ask.
Jerry nods. “Should be. He's a tough old bastard,” he says. “Alan's taking him down to the hospital now.”
“We need to call the police,” Ava says.
I scoff. “Yeah, I'm sure they'll be dying to help her out after she's been trashing them lately,” I say. “They've made their position on Emma very clear – not her biggest fans.”
“It's their job,” Jerry offers.
“So was finding this fucking lunatic before any of this happened,” I snap. “Right now, I need to know how we find her.”
&
nbsp; Jerry nods. “Okay, do we know if she's got the panic switch on her?”
“I told her to keep it on her at all times,” Ava says.
“Yeah, because Emma's great at taking orders,” I groan. “Besides, what good will it do? She's already been taken. It's not like we need her to trigger that alarm. That ship has already sailed.”
“Each unit comes equipped with a location tracker, just in case a problem ever arose where a client couldn't push the button,” Jerry says. “For situations just like this.”
A surge of hope flares within me as the three of us start searching her desk, her bag, and the rest of her office for the panic switch. It's small and looks like the remote for a car alarm. It's discreet and may not draw a lot of attention – exactly what it was designed for.
“I don't see it,” Ava says.
“Neither do I,” I say.
“Okay,” Jerry says. “Let's hope she hasn't dropped it anywhere and still has it on her then.”
He sits down behind the computer at her desk as Ava, and I crowd behind him. He pulls up a website and logs in. I tap my foot impatiently – this is taking forever. I'm keenly aware of the passage of time – in a way I've never been before. Each tick of the clock represents one less second Emma has to live if we can't find her.
Finally, a grid map comes up on the screen. Jerry types in a few commands, and all of us lean forward. The air in the room is crisp with tension. With anticipation. With fear.
“Any second now,” Jerry says, though it sounds more like a hopeful statement than one of confidence.
The clock marches forward as we wait, and it's like I can feel Emma's life getting shorter and shorter. I've never felt as sick or as scared as I do right now.
Tick... tick... tick...
A blue dot suddenly appears on the screen, and Jerry claps his hands. Ava straightens up and looks at me, a look of relief on her face. I don't know why they're so excited – it's a blue fucking dot on a computer screen. It's not like we have her back unharmed.
“That blue dot is Ms. Simmonds,” Jerry says. “They're on the move.”
I look at the map and the direction they're headed.