Dunbar appeared to warm at the memory. “Oh yes. Such a pleasure killing him. I did him first so that I could describe for him exactly what I intended to do to Sidney. In detail. I wanted him to know it was his fault that she would die and that he was helpless to stop me. I had watched him for quite some time to learn his routines, his weaknesses. I shadowed him for weeks. Day and night. Brant was too arrogant to be cautious. Too arrogant for his own good. So I followed him and studied him. I patiently developed a plan, patiently formulated exactly how I would kill him.”
Kline folded his arms over his chest. “How’d you do it?”
“I followed him home to his boat late one night. Surprised him at his car. Had him at gunpoint. Walked him to his boat and went inside. Chatted about Sidney. I wanted to know everything about their relationship. All the juicy details. He told me how they met. How long they’d been sleeping together. I asked him how she liked it, what she liked him to do to her. I bound his wrists and ankles and put a gag around his head. Held the .38 to his brain so there’d be no confusion. Then I injected him with a muscle relaxant called succinylcholine that causes temporary paralysis. He was fully conscious but couldn’t move a muscle. It was such a thrill to see the absolute terror in his eyes. He had no idea what was happening to him.”
“And then you threw him overboard.”
Dunbar’s eyelids fluttered open. He smiled. “It was very early morning. A dense fog had rolled in, blanketing the marina. I had come prepared, and when I saw that Brant was completely paralyzed and immobile, I walked from the boat to my car and retrieved the tools I needed.”
“The concrete block and the chain,” Kline said.
Dunbar nodded. “Yes. We were inside the cabin of the boat with the lights off. I sat on the floor next to him, right up beside his head. He was horrified. I wanted him to understand what I was about to do. How I was going to kill him. I wanted him to know he was going to drown. He was going to sink to the bottom of the marina and breathe his lungs full of ocean water. There was nothing he could do but listen in horror. The fog was thick. I dragged him by his arms to the rail. I dropped the heavy block overboard, then I rolled him over the side and let go. He was paralyzed so there wasn’t a struggle. He disappeared into the fog, a muffled splash in the dark water. Then the world was silent except for the lapping of the water against the hull. I went home and slept like a baby.”
The pounding in Kline’s head was rising again.
“Is that what you did to Sidney and Robin? Drown them?”
“No.”
“How did you do it?”
“I think I’ve said enough.”
“Not even close.”
Dunbar rose from the bed and paced to the far end of the cell. He stood with his back to Kline.
“I will tell you this…I killed Robin first. I wanted Sidney to suffer, to hold her dying child in her arms and watch her baby girl bleed to death.”
Kline felt his stomach clench.
“Robin was too much like her mother. I shot her in the back of the head. The girl never felt a thing,” Dunbar said with clinical detachment.
Kline closed his eyes.
“And Sidney?” he sighed.
“I told her what I did to Kenneth Brant. Told her how I followed him, how I planned it. She begged for mercy. I made her say she loved me with the barrel of my gun shoved in her mouth. And she actually said it. Tears streaming down onto the cold steel, she told me she loved me. Then I pulled the trigger and blew off the back of her head.”
“What did you do with them?” Kline tasted bile rising at the back of his throat.
Dunbar turned slowly to face him, then he spread his arms wide and smiled.
“Very simply,” he said. “I put them where no one would ever find them.”
“Where? Where did you put them?”
Dunbar looked him hard in the eyes. “Come back tomorrow,” he said.
CHAPTER 65
Night in the high desert.
Archer sat without movement among the shadows. The landscape was a dim, jagged silhouette. The only light was that of stars that had died and gone cold lifetimes before dinosaurs roamed the earth. His night-vision field glasses portrayed the vast terrain in ominous thermal shades of green.
Raj updated him by radio. The Toyota Prius was still sitting outside the first gate. No movement, inside or out, though it looked like someone was still inside. Archer decided that if the car still remained in place at the end of his shift he would investigate.
His walkie-talkie crackled. He was surprised to hear Lindsay’s voice.
“Archer?”
“I’m here,” he answered.
“Watch for me. I’m coming out.”
Archer frowned. “Bad idea.”
“I want to stretch my legs and get some fresh air.”
There was no point arguing with her.
Archer stared at the monotony of the horizon until he heard her scrabbling up the path behind him. He turned to look and saw movement in the dim moonlight, then eased down to give her a hand.
“There you are,” she said, out of breath.
“Here I am.”
“It’s actually chilly out here.”
“Should have stayed inside where it’s warm.”
“Nice try.”
Archer held her by the arm and helped her to the crest of the bluff. They sat shoulder to shoulder in the grit among the desert scrub.
Lindsay hugged her arms around herself.
“It’s beautiful up here,” she said. “Look at those stars.”
Archer wasn’t interested in the display above them. He’d seen those same stars from mountaintops on each of the seven continents, from battlefields and through the bars of a POW cell, from jungles and rice patties half a world away. The stars never changed and wouldn’t in ten thousand generations.
“How are you doing?” Archer asked her.
“I’m fine, I think.”
“Kline told me about Brentwood. You handled that very well. I’m impressed.”
“That was a nightmare. It’s all a nightmare.”
“You protected your kids. Got them out of there alive. Most people would have panicked and gotten themselves killed. Your children are alive right now because of you.”
“What’s your connection to Kline?” she asked.
“Long story.”
“Give me the short version.”
“Once upon a time he was my boss.”
“Wow. Really?”
He nodded.
“You were FBI?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But not anymore?”
“No. Kline fired me.”
“What happened?”
“I killed an unarmed man.”
“Why would you kill an unarmed man?” she asked hesitantly.
“His name was Rivero. He was a rapist and pedophile. We nailed him but his lawyer got him off on a technicality. Completely ridiculous. He walked out a free man.”
Lindsay’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me.”
“He walked out of the courtroom and out onto the sidewalk for a late lunch like it was any other Tuesday in June. Free as a bird. Head held high.”
“Oh my God. How can something like that be allowed?”
“That’s the system we live with.”
“What happened next?”
Archer sighed. “Not six months later, an eleven-year-old girl went missing, walking home from school. I looked at the case and something clicked in my brain. There were certain distinct similarities to earlier abductions in the same area.”
“Rivero again?”
Archer nodded. “That was my suspicion. I talked to Special Agent Kline, told him my thoughts on it. Told him we needed to move on it, to pay Rivero a visit, but Kline was hesitant. He was afraid if we went knocking on Rivero’s door and there was nothing going on and he had nothing to do with the missing girl, Rivero would sue the city, sue the FBI. Pissed me off. The evidence was clear. Th
at little girl was missing, and the case had Rivero’s fingerprints all over it.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to see Rivero on my own. I hopped the fence and kicked in the basement door.”
“Oh my God! What did you find?”
“Rivero and the missing girl. Both were naked. The video camera was rolling. She had tape over her mouth and her arms and legs were bound. He was on top of her. When I busted the door down, he jumped up, naked as the day he was born. Both of his hands were empty and I could see that very clearly. But I didn’t care. I decided right then and there, in less than a split second of time that I wasn’t going to let him hurt anybody else. So I aimed my gun at him and unloaded on him. Fired every bullet in it until it was empty and the gun just started clicking. He was probably dead when the first bullet hit him between the eyes, but I wanted him all the way dead. Didn’t want there to be a chance for the paramedics to rush in and revive him. That decision cost me my job, my career, and I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. I’d so the same thing over again a thousand times without even thinking.”
Lindsay was silent. She lowered her head. Slowly pressed her hands to her face.
“How could they fire you for that? Why would they even consider it?”
“Rivero’s mother sued. Her son was unarmed and in the privacy of his own home. There was no search warrant. No arrest warrant. I didn’t knock. Didn’t announce myself. I simply busted down the door, saw what I saw, and blasted her son straight into the next life.”
Lindsay slid her hands down her face and turned her eyes toward the stars above.
“What about your life before the FBI? Was that what you always wanted to do, or were there other stops along the way?”
“Straight out of school I went into the Army. Special Forces. That led to a few other opportunities.”
“Such as?”
“That’s a story for another day.”
She nodded. “Understood.”
“Tell me about Dunbar,” Archer said.
“He made his first fortune selling real estate to Silicon Valley billionaires. Then he turned his attention to the stock market and fell in love with the oil industry. He was worth three hundred million before he turned forty.”
“Tell me about the murders”
“They disappeared on Sydney and Gaston’s fifth anniversary. Sydney and Robin spent the day shopping on Rodeo Drive. A family friend recalled seeing her loading bags into the backseat of her Aston Martin convertible, dressed in Prada and spiky black Manolo Blahniks. She called me around noon, said that the rest of the afternoon would be busy with errands. She sounded happy but tired. That was the last time I spoke to my sister. They had a late dinner at Sydney’s favorite Beverly Hills bistro. Gaston later told detectives he left separately because he needed to deliver contracts to a client on his way home. Sydney and Robin left in the Aston Martin. The car was never seen again, as if it had simply evaporated into thin air.”
“Did you suspect Dunbar?”
“Not in the beginning. He seemed genuinely distraught. He poured a ton of money into the search effort.”
“He probably would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for the death of a man named Kenneth Brant.”
“What was the connection?”
“Brant was a playboy living on a yacht in Marina del Rey who turned up missing the same week Sydney and Robin disappeared. Divers found his body chained to a concrete block at the bottom of the harbor. A bloody thumbprint was lifted from one end of a marble countertop in the yacht’s galley. The blood belonged to Brant, but the print did not.”
“Let me guess. It was Dunbar’s print”
“Bingo. Brant and Sydney had been having an affair and Dunbar found them out.”
Archer’s gaze drifted to her profile, then back toward the dusky landscape. “Why do you think he’s doing this?”
“Because he can. To show that he still has power over me, even locked away behind those thick prison walls. He wants me to fear him.”
The shrill cry of a coyote lifted up from the desert flats, fading with the breeze.
Archer was thoughtful for a few beats, then asked, “But why would he wait until now?”
She shrugged. “This is simply one last narcissistic display of hatred before they turn out his lights.”
Archer wasn’t convinced.
She hugged her arms across her chest again. “So what’s the story on this place? This bunker thing underneath us? Why is it here?”
“It’s a remnant of the Cold War, back in the days when everyone spent all day long fretting about somebody nuking us.”
“Must have cost a fortune.”
He nodded.
“Unbelievable,” she sighed.
“I’m sure they have a similar plan in place in the event of another major terrorist attack.”
“How did Raj and Simeon end up here?”
“I don’t know.”
“They seem like interesting men.”
A breeze stirred. Lindsay shivered. She rubbed her arms again.
“It’s cooler at this elevation because of the wind. Let’s get you back inside,” he said.
CHAPTER 66
Archer climbed aboard the Polaris four-wheeled ATV as Simeon summarized the basics of operation. Archer pushed a pair of goggles up to his forehead.
Lindsay had followed them out through the door. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Going out to the gate.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Sorry,” Archer said. “I brought you here to keep you safe. Goes against the whole idea if I haul you out there into the unknown. Go sit with your kids. I’ll be back in a while.” Archer turned the key and pressed the ignition switch. The Polaris rumbled.
Lindsay glared at him disapprovingly.
Archer popped the goggles down over his eyes, punched through the gears with the toe of his shoe until he found reverse, and then backed out of the parking slot. He punched it into first gear and wheeled the ATV in a tight arc, the headlights swinging across the big wall of the cavernous hub.
The front end bumped onto the ramp. Archer eased back on the throttle and felt the twin-cylinders surge forward. He passed a laser eye mounted in the wall which activated the automatic door-opening mechanism. The metal panels lifted open on their pneumatic arms. The ATV bumped out onto the desert floor and he turned it down the set of narrow ruts that led away from the underground compound.
The panel doors eased gently shut behind him, the pneumatic arms retracting inward with a hiss of air.
CHAPTER 67
Soji had Green Day playing on his iPod. Turned up real loud. Rocking out to the jangling guitars on American Idiot. He had the earbuds in and his seat racked way back so that if he opened his eyes he’d be staring at the ceiling of the car. But his eyes were closed. He was half asleep. He was rocking out so he wouldn’t drift off. It had been dark for hours and getting colder.
Smackdown had called with an offer. A hundred grand to just sit tight and wait for the Hummer to move. That’s all he had to do. Soji could do that for a week for a hundred grand, plus he could still sell the photos he’d already emailed to the office.
The battery on his laptop was running low. He had an adapter for the cigarette lighter, but that was only going to do him good as long he had juice in the car battery, and he had to watch his fuel. He couldn’t sit out there in the desert for twelve hours with the motor running. He had to conserve his resources because he didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Every half an hour he would fire up the laptop for a few minutes and get an update off the GPS linkup. The Hummer hadn’t budged. Soji tweaked the attachment in the USB port and refreshed the GPS application. Still nothing. He had decided to sit tight and wait it out, see if anything happened. Watch for signs of the Hummer and hope that the problem was just a glitch in the software or a glitch in the satellite linkup. Surely somebody somewhere would notice the error and m
ake the proper adjustment. He powered down the computer and racked his seat back. He shut his eyes and turned up the volume in the earbuds. He was almost asleep when the window next to him exploded.
Soji flinched and turned his head. Glass blew inward, raining down on him. He crossed his forearms over his face. The motion of his arms jerked the headphones from his ears. The music snapped off.
Someone jerked the door open and pulled him up and out by the front of his shirt. Soji shrieked. Small glass fragments that had covered his front side fell away, tinkling to the ground. Hands pressed him hard against the side of the car. His eyes were squeezed shut. A hand had him by the throat.
“Look at me!” a stern voice ordered.
Soji nearly crapped his pants.
“Look at me!”
Soji squinted, blinking rapidly. He was stunned by what he saw. It was the man from the Hummer. The same man from the woods in Malibu the previous night.
Archer had the same stunned reaction.
“I’ve seen you,” Archer said.
“No, man!” Soji insisted. “I don’t know you, man!”
Archer pressed the Beretta to the side of Soji’s head.
“Yeah. Last night,” Archer said, nodding. “In Malibu. I knew I should have killed you.”
“Oh God, please dude! It’s not what you think!”
Archer applied pressure to his throat.
Soji struggled to breathe.
Archer drilled the muzzle of the Beretta into Soji’s skull, half an inch above his left eye. “What are you doing here?”
“Pictures, dude! Just pictures! That’s my job, dude! Nothing else!”
Archer knew from what Lindsay and the kids had said that he was probably mostly telling the truth. He shoved the Beretta down the back of his pants and then patted him down with the free hand. The little man was clean. Just baggy shorts and the Lakers jersey.
“Stay right here,” Archer said. “Don’t even blink or I’ll blow your head off your shoulders. Got that?”
Soji nodded, eyes wide.
Archer released the grip on his throat and took a step back. He assessed the little Asian man.
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