She reeled. All the fights she had once had with her mother seemed to encapsulate her. She tried to measure what those battles had meant. She could think of only one lesson: After a fight, people are mean. They want to hurt. They want to punish.
She shuddered at the idea that whoever came through the door to her prison next would have nothing but pent-up rage, and she would be where it was delivered.
This thought made her retreat back to the bed, as if that was the only place she could be safe.
She cringed. Fear and uncertainty overcame her. She could feel tears forming and her breath came in sharp, small bursts, as if whatever the fight was about it involved her. She wanted to scream, I’ve done nothing wrong! It’s not my fault! I’ve done everything you wanted! even if these protests weren’t completely true.
She was enveloped by the darkness of her blindfold, but she couldn’t hide. She shrunk back, dreading the next sound, whether it would be the door or another obscenity or something else breaking.
And then she heard the gunshot.
Two second-semester juniors at the University of Georgia were lounging inside their room at the Tau Epsilon Phi house when the unmistakable sound of the gun being fired crashed through the speaker set. One student lay on a metal frame bed beneath an army recruiting poster urging readers to “Be All That You Can Be.” He was flipping through a copy of a magazine called Sweet and Young, while his roommate was seated in front of an Apple laptop computer at a scarred and battered brown oaken desk. “Jesus!” the first student said as he lurched up. “Did somebody shoot somebody?”
“Sure sounded like it.”
“Is Number Four okay?” the other demanded quickly.
“I’m watching,” replied his roommate. “She seems okay.”
The first student was lanky, long-legged. He wore pressed jeans and a T-shirt that celebrated “Spring Break in Cancun.” He crossed the room rapidly.
“But scared?”
“Yeah. Scared. Like usual. But maybe more so.”
Both boy-men leaned forward, as if by moving closer to the screen they could put themselves into the small room where Number 4 was chained to the wall.
“What about the man and the woman? Any sign of them?”
“Not yet. Do you suppose one of them shot the other? Remember they had that big fuckin’ gun they were waving in Number Four’s face earlier.”
These were questions they didn’t answer, because they knew enough to wait. The two students were prelaw and business management, which made them mildly sensitive to the legal issues associated with what they were watching, but not so outraged that they did anything other than pay the money—as they had to numerous pay-for-entry porn sites—and pay attention, which they did religiously. They, like so many of their classmates, had been raised on video games and were accustomed to spending hours engaged with a computer screen and some unfolding interactive drama, such as Grand Theft Auto or Doom.
“Watch her. See if she hears anything else.”
The two roommates listened as carefully as Number 4. They were unaware that they mimicked her movements—craning their heads, bending toward sounds. From down a hallway in the fraternity house, someone started up thumping Christian rock music, which made the roommates curse in unison. Hearing what was happening in Number 4’s small world was critical, they both thought, without saying this out loud.
“It’s going to scare the piss out of her,” one said. “She’ll head to the toilet.”
“Nah, it’ll be the bear. She’ll start talking to the bear again.”
On the screen, the camera angle changed to a close-up of Number 4’s face. They could see anxiety and tension in the set of her jaw, even with her eyes hidden. Each of the roommates imagined that Number 4’s skin was prickling with fear. Each of them wanted to reach out and stroke the small hairs on her arms. Their frat house dorm room seemed just as hot, just as stifling as Number 4’s cell. One of the students touched her on the screen.
“I think she’s fucked,” one said.
“Why?”
“If the man and the woman are really fighting, maybe it’s because they’ve got some sort of disagreement over the entire show. Maybe it’s the rape. Maybe the woman is jealous of the man getting it on with Number Four . . .”
They both glanced at the clock ticking in one corner of the screen.
“Did you put down our bet?” the roommate asked abruptly.
“Yeah. Twice. First time was far too quick. We lost. It was your fault. Just because you wouldn’t waste any time if Number Four was here.” He paused, and both frat boys grinned at the suggestion in his words. “Anyway, you had to know they would string it out. Makes good business sense. Now we’re locked into an hour tomorrow or the next day, I think.”
“Show me.”
The first student clicked on a couple of keys and the image of Number 4 in her room instantly compressed into a smaller screen. A single message played across the remaining page. It was in a Bodoni Bold Italic script. It said: “Welcome TEPSARETOPS. Your current wager is HOUR 57. There are 25 Hours remaining before your wager is in play. Your wager position is shared with 1,099 other subscribers. Total pool is currently above euro 500,000. Additional wager positions remain available. Wager again?”
Below the message were two boxes. yes and no.
The student moved the cursor over to the yes box and turned to his roommate, who shook his head. “Nah. I think my card is close to maxed out. And I don’t want my folks asking questions. I told ’em that this was an offshore poker site and they gave me a really long and exceedingly boring lecture and told me to quit making bets.”
“They’ll probably follow up with something about a twelve-step program and wonder if you’re going to church on Sunday.”
He shrugged, moved the cursor to no, and clicked. Once again, Number 4 immediately filled their screen.
“You know, this would be a lot cooler on a big LED flat screen.”
“No shit. Call your folks.”
“No way they’d spring for it. Not with my last semester’s grades.”
“So,” the first student said, as he leaned back, “what happens next?” He glanced over at a wall clock. “I’ve got that damn Uses and Abuses of the First Amendment seminar in half an hour. I hate missing anything.”
When he said “missing” he wasn’t talking about the lecture.
“You can always go and watch anything you missed in the catch-up window.”
The student clicked another couple of keys and again relegated the real time image of Number 4 to a corner. As before, a Bodoni Bold Italic message appeared. This said: menu and contained a number of smaller images. They each had a title like “Toilet Use” or “Number 4 eats” or “Interview #1.”
He clicked out of the menu, back to the full screen.
“Yeah, but I hate that. The fun is watching in real time.”
He reached for a pile of textbooks. “Shit. I’ve got to go. If I miss another class, it will cost me a half-grade point.”
“Then go.”
The student shoved books into a backpack and grabbed a tattered sweatshirt from a pile of laundry. But before exiting he leaned forward and kissed the image of Number 4 on the screen. “See you in a couple of hours, darlin’,” he said, adopting a fake southern accent. He actually hailed from a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio. “Don’t do anything. At least, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And don’t let anyone do anything to you. Not for twenty-five hours.”
“Yeah. Stay alive and stay a virgin while my asshole roommate goes to his class so he doesn’t flunk out and end up flipping burgers for a living.”
They both laughed, although it wasn’t totally a joke.
“Let me know if you see something. Text me right away.”
“You got it.”
>
His roommate stroked the screen and settled into the chair in front of the computer. “Hey,” he said, “your disgusting wet French kiss left a mark.”
The roommate gave him the finger and exited. The remaining frat boy imagined that the echo of the gunshot still reverberated in the cell. He tried to picture what he would do if he heard someone firing a gun in another room. He believed that he would have many options, including flight. That this wasn’t available to Number 4 only fascinated him more. He loved what he considered her resourcefulness, while at the same time he really didn’t want to miss the rape when it took place. He found himself fantasizing, wondering whether it would be quick and violent or some protracted theater of seduction. He suspected the latter. He wondered whether she would give in and just let it happen or whether she would fight and claw and cry. He wasn’t sure which he wanted. On one hand, he loved the domination of the man and the woman over Number 4. On the other, he sort of liked rooting for the underdog, which she clearly was. It was what he and his roommate loved about Series #4. Everything was predictable yet completely unexpected. Sometimes he wondered whether there were other students on campus paying to watch Number 4. Maybe we all love her, he thought. She reminded him a little bit of a girl he’d known in high school. Or maybe of all the girls he’d known in high school. He was uncertain which. The one thing he was sure of was that Number 4 was doomed.
The gunshot might have been the start of the end, he thought. But then maybe it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell.
But he knew she would die in the end.
He looked forward to seeing how it happened. He was an aficionado of jihadist tapes and YouTube–type postings of gory auto accidents. He loved television shows like Cops and First 48 and he secretly wanted to be on Survivor more than any other aspiration he might have had about his future. He absolutely 100 percent knew that if he went on the show he would win the million-dollar prize.
Number 4 was shaking again. He had come to anticipate her loss of bodily control. It told him that her fear wasn’t faked.
He loved this.
So much of what he watched was fake. Porn stars faked orgasms. Video games faked deaths. Television shows faked drama.
Not Whatcomesnext. Not Number 4.
Sometimes, he believed, she was the most real unreal thing he’d ever watched.
His speculation stopped abruptly. There was some movement in the room. He saw Number 4 turn slightly. The camera panned with her. Something was happening.
He heard what she heard. The door was swinging open.
Jennifer twitched to the sound.
She could hear the crinkling noise that told her the woman in the jumpsuit was entering the room. But instead of moving slowly her pace seemed to be hurried. One second she was at the door, the next she was hovering over Jennifer, her face only inches away.
“Number Four, listen carefully. Do precisely what I say.”
Jennifer nodded her head. She could hear anxiety in the woman’s voice. The ordinary cold, modulated tones were accelerated. The pitch had gone up, even with the whisper that she used. She could sense the woman had lowered her lips very close to her forehead, so that hot breath swept over Jennifer’s face.
“You are not to make a sound. You are not to even breathe heavily. You are to remain exactly where you are. Do not move. Do not shift about. No noise whatsoever, until I return. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Jennifer nodded. She wanted to ask about the gunshot but she didn’t dare.
“Let me hear you, Number Four.”
“I understand.”
“What do you understand?”
“No noise. Nothing. Just stay right here.”
“Good.”
The woman paused. Jennifer listened to her breathing. She was unsure whether it was her own heartbeat or the woman’s that pounded, reverberating in the small room.
Suddenly Jennifer felt her face being grabbed. She gasped. She froze as the woman’s fingernails dug into her cheeks, squeezing her skin tightly. Jennifer shivered, fought off the urge to tear at the hands that seized her, tried to toughen herself to the abrupt delivery of hurt.
“If you make a sound, you will die,” the woman said.
Jennifer shook, trying to reply, but she could not. The quivering that raced through her body must have been enough of a response. The woman’s hand relaxed, and Jennifer stayed rigid in position, afraid to move.
The next sensation she felt was unfamiliar, yet fierce. It was a sharp point. It started at her throat and then traveled down her center, circumscribing her body—her neck, her chest, her stomach, her crotch—in a steady, sliding movement, accentuated by small jabs, like a needle being touched against her skin.
Knife! Jennifer realized.
“And I will make your dying terrible, Number Four. Is this clear?”
Jennifer nodded again, and the knifepoint scraped against her stomach a little deeper.
“Yes. Yes. I understand,” she whispered.
She could sense the woman withdrawing. The crinkling noise she made when she walked faded. Jennifer listened for the door closing but she did not hear it. She remained frozen on the bed, bear in arms, trying to figure out what was happening.
She listened intently, and just as she formulated the thought that something wasn’t right, she felt a hand grasp her throat and she was being choked. She could feel an immense force, stealing every bit of air from her chest. She felt like she was being crushed beneath a huge concrete slab. Fear and surprise threatened to make her pass out. Pain sheeted behind the blindfold, red as blood. She kicked out, at nothing but air. She reached up without thinking but her hands stopped when she heard the man’s voice.
“I can do just as bad, Number Four. Maybe I can be worse.”
Her body quivered. She thought she would black out in the darkness of her blindfold, and then she wondered whether she had blacked out, as she choked on slivers of breath.
“Don’t forget that,” the man whispered.
She shuddered at the sound as much as the message.
“Remember. You are never alone.”
The man’s hands suddenly relaxed. Jennifer coughed, trying desperately to fill her lungs. Her head reeled. She’d had no idea that the man—dressed in his skintight black balaclava and long underwear, ballet slippers on his feet—had silently trailed the woman into the room. Now everything was disjointed, disconnected. An argument, a gunshot—that had invented one scenario in her imagination. But both of them in the cell together, acting in unison, acting in tandem, acting in a coordinated fashion, simply pitched her into a vortex of confusion. She could feel herself spinning and she struggled to hold on to anything that might stop her from falling into the pit of darkness.
“Silence, Number Four. No matter what you hear. What you sense. What you think is happening outside. Silence. If you make a sound, it will be the last thing you do on this earth, other than experience unimaginable pain.”
Jennifer squeezed her eyes tightly together. She must have nodded slightly. She did not think she had spoken out loud. But she heard the door close. The man, she realized, had crossed the room without her being able to hear a thing. This was as terrible as any of the explicit threats.
She remained in the darkness, as if encased in ice.
A part of her wanted to move. A part of her wanted to peek out. A part of her wanted to leave the bed. These were the dangerous parts, which warred against the safe parts that told her to do exactly as she’d been told.
She tried to listen for the man or the woman. No sound greeted her.
But this thick absence of any noise except for her own labored breathing didn’t last.
What she heard was something familiar. Something that was both awful and frightening in its own way. It took her only seconds to realize what it was.
>
A siren. A police or fire siren.
It was distant but closing rapidly.
34
Adrian swerved hard to avoid the other car and was greeted with a horn blasting, tires squealing. The noise resounded through the Volvo’s interior, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the accompanying angry curses and shouted obscenities. He glanced up and saw that he had clearly run a red light, and he avoided an accident only by a couple of lucky yards. He muttered, “Sorry, sorry, my fault, I didn’t see it change . . .” as if the other driver, who was speeding away, could actually hear him or see the apologetic look on his face.
“That’s a bad sign, Audie,” Brian said from the passenger seat. “Things are sliding. You need to stay sharp.”
“I’m trying,” Adrian replied, a touch of frustration creeping into his words. “I just get distracted. Happens to everyone at some point or another. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re wrong about that,” his brother answered. “You know it. I know it. And probably the guy in the other car knows it now too.”
Adrian drove on, more than a little angry, deflecting fears about his own capabilities into fury at his brother.
What Adrian wanted to say was that Brian, like Cassie and Tommy, had left him alone with nothing but questions. Every question was its own mystery. But he couldn’t quite say that for fear he would be demanding too much of his dead brother.
Brian was quiet for a moment. Adrian steered the car down the roadway. A sheet of bright noonday sunshine filled the window in a flash, and then faded, as he maneuvered the car around a bend. They were only a few blocks away from Mark Wolfe’s house, and Adrian thought he should be formulating what he was going to say to the sex offender. He reminded himself that a proper detective would be anticipating whatever it was that Wolfe had uncovered in his computer searches, because whatever it was it had caused him to summon Adrian to his house.
What Comes Next Page 32