Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “That came from a security camera at the hospital,” Ed said. She looked at him, her vision a little unfocused, still trying to sort fact from fiction and integrate the past with the present, and registered the anger in his face. His voice was silky-soft. Dangerously soft.

  This was bad, she realized. Her heart lurched. Her stomach dropped clear to her toes. The sour taste of fear was sharp in her mouth. Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath.

  He came toward her, gripped the arms of her chair, and pulled her around to face him. The blue caps popped off her fingers to hang dangling from their thin black wires. The chair’s casters squeaked over the smooth linoleum. Her heels dragged helplessly along. One of her shoes loosened, fell off. The seat rocked as the force of the forward motion pressed her back against the smooth leather. For a moment, one stupid, hopeful moment, she thought he was getting ready to unbuckle the restraints that held her to the chair.

  Then he straightened.

  “You lying bitch.”

  Without warning, he backhanded her across the face. Pain exploded across her cheek. Her head rocked to the side under the force of the blow. She cried out in pain and shock. Her cheek stung. Her eyes watered. Her mouth fell open in disbelief.

  “Ed—”

  She got no further. He hit her again, slapping her face so hard that the chair went scooting sideways, causing her face to burn and ache, bringing more tears to her eyes, making her ears ring. She was helpless, unable to get up, unable to get away, unable even to lift a hand to ward off another blow.

  “Why?” she cried, blinking up at him through welling tears. “What did I do?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me.” He was breathing hard. Though her vision was hazy with tears, she saw that his face had turned scarlet with rage. “You sold me out, didn’t you? I knew there was somebody on my tail. I knew it. The signs were all there, these last couple of months. Things out of place, somebody logging on to my computer when I was out, the tinny sound the phone gets when somebody’s listening in. I knew I wasn’t imagining it. It was you all along, wasn’t it? You’re working as an informant for the goddamned FBI.”

  “No!” Katharine shook her head, desperate to convince him of the truth. Fear tightened her stomach, her throat. “No, Ed, it’s not true! I—”

  “Don’t lie to me.” He took a hasty step forward, grabbed the arms of her chair, and pulled her to him, sticking his face right in front of hers. His eyes were black with fury. His jaw worked with it. He was so angry he was practically spitting in her face. “What do they know? What did you give them?” His voice crescendoed until he was shouting in her face. “I want to know what you gave them.”

  Her heart knocked against the walls of her chest. “Nothing. Nothing. I didn’t give them anything. It isn’t true.”

  “How long have they known? How much do they know?” Veins bulged in his temples. His heavy brows met over the bridge of his nose. “Did you find out what I was doing and go to them, or did they come to you?”

  “Neither.” Her voice was high-pitched, shaking. She was practically pushing the back of her head through the back of the chair in an effort to put as much distance between them as she could. “I didn’t sell you out, Ed, I swear to God.”

  “They were trying to get enough on me to take me down before I knew anything was up, weren’t they? Thank God I found out in time.” He sucked in air through his teeth. “Were they the ones who broke into your house? So they could get their hands on the things I was keeping in the safe without me suspecting what was really going down?”

  “No.” Katherine shook her head, desperate to convince him of it. “No, it’s not true. None of it’s true.”

  But he didn’t believe her. “You traitorous bitch, don’t you know I have enough shit on everybody in the whole damned government to make this go away? Poof, like a puff of smoke. But it won’t go away for you. You’re going to tell me everything you gave them, everything you know, and then you’re going to die.”

  He pushed her away from him abruptly, so that her chair went careening back until it crashed into the edge of the counter. As her head was flung forward by the jolt, Katharine grabbed onto the seat arms for balance, her eyes burning with tears that were brimming over now, her cheeks stinging, terror forming a huge, cold knot in her chest.

  “Ed, you have to listen to me!” she cried even as he strode for the door. “I’m not working for the FBI! I’m not working for anybody! If somebody sold you out, it wasn’t me. I swear it. I swear it.”

  “Hendricks,” he roared, sticking his head out into the hall, completely disregarding her words as he flung open the door. The man appeared almost instantly, leading Katharine to believe he had been lurking outside. He was puffing away on a cigarette, and the fact that Ed ignored it told her how absolutely beside himself he was: Ed hated anyone smoking around him. Behind Hendricks was his shadow, the other man whose name Katharine had never learned. Hendricks’s gaze slid over her as he entered the room, and he lowered the hand holding the cigarette to smirk at her.

  Her heart pounded like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow before she could get another word out.

  “Ed . . .” she begged. “Please listen.”

  “I want to know everything she knows,” Ed said to Hendricks, ignoring her completely. “Everything. I’ll meet you at the Plantation in—what?—say, three hours. That should give you plenty of time.”

  “Don’t imagine I’ll need a third of that.” Hendricks looked her over appraisingly.

  “I didn’t do it,” Katharine cried, knowing time was running out. Adrenaline rushed like speed through her veins, and she jerked at her arms, trying to free them from the restraints without success. Every instinct she possessed screamed run, but there was nothing she could do. “I’m not working for the FBI.”

  Ed turned to her, his expression savage.

  “You know what Hendricks here does?” There was not one scrap of feeling for her in his eyes, she saw as their gazes locked. “He’s an independent contractor for us. His specialty is, he gets people to talk. Real tough guys beg for the chance to sell out their mother before he’s done with them.” His gaze swung to Hendricks. “What was it you did last week, Hendricks? Peel the skin off some guy’s face like it was a grape?” He looked at Katharine again as Hendricks nodded confirmation. “Did you know a person can still be alive with no skin on his face? And talk and cry and everything? Pretty gruesome, though.”

  Katharine’s stomach turned inside out.

  “Oh, God, Ed, no. Please. You’re making a mistake. It wasn’t me!”

  Her frantic pleas fell on deaf ears. He was already walking out the door, only pausing to say “Three hours” over his shoulder to Hendricks, who nodded.

  “Ed, no!” Katharine screamed, desperate. Her life was on the line, she knew. “Please, please listen!”

  The door closed behind him with a click that reverberated loud as a gunshot through her head. Her heart pounded. Her pulse shot through the roof. She jerked vainly at her arms again and tried to open the lap restraint by heaving against it. The chair scooted across the floor, but the straps held.

  She was trapped in the damned chair.

  Her gaze shifted fearfully to Hendricks. She could feel tears tracking down her cheeks, the salt in them stinging the abused flesh.

  Hendricks walked up to her, slowly, shaking his head, puffing away, his skin gleaming under the overhead light. A thin, gray finger of smoke floated behind him. The smell of the cigarette hung in the air.

  “Well, good golly Miss Molly, who woulda thought we would end up like this, you and me?” he said to her in an affable tone. “It’s a shame, but there you are.”

  As Hendricks reached her chair, the other man approached on her other side. He was probably in his forties, too, but he had hair, light brown, in a regulation military cut that did nothing for his round face and puffy blue eyes. His complexion was florid and he had a little goatee, and
, all in all, looked almost as scary as Hendricks.

  “Shame,” the second man echoed, his eyes running over her. She watched him warily. Her skin crawled at the expression on his face. She felt boneless suddenly, as if fear had turned all her muscles to jelly, and her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest.

  “This is Lutz,” Hendricks said by way of an introduction. He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, contemplated the glowing tip for an instant, then put it down on the back of her hand and ground it out.

  Katharine screamed.

  Hendricks grinned as he lifted the cigarette away and flicked the spent butt into a waste can.

  “She’s got a real girly scream. I like that,” he said to Lutz, tapping another cigarette out of the pack he pulled from his shirt pocket and lighting it. Sweating and gasping, sick from the burning pain in her arm, able to smell her own scorched flesh in the air, Katharine watched in terror as he put the fresh cigarette between his lips and took a drag.

  “We ain’t done a woman in a while,” Lutz agreed.

  Watching that glowing cigarette, Katharine panted and flinched and trembled.

  Get a grip. You can’t fall apart. They’re going to kill you if you can’t think of a way to stop them.

  She took a deep, shaky breath.

  “Look.” Her voice was unsteady as she fought to regain some semblance of composure, of control. “You don’t have to hurt me. I’ll tell you anything you want to know right now.”

  Hendricks took another deep drag on the cigarette, then pulled it out of his mouth.

  “I know we don’t have to hurt you,” he said, and smiled at her. “But it’s fun.”

  This time he moved slowly, grinning and watching her terrified face as he touched the cigarette to her arm just above her wrist, only inches from the first burn.

  Katharine screamed again. The searing pain rocketed through her nerve endings to her brain. The scorching smell wafted to her nose. When he lifted the cigarette away at last, tears were streaming down her face.

  “All right, let’s go,” Lutz said, sounding bored. “They’re probably waiting to turn out the lights.”

  “That would be us,” Hendricks replied, but they both got to work unbuckling the straps holding Katharine to the chair.

  When she summoned up the wherewithal to ease off her other shoe and get her feet solidly under her, when she would have exploded out of the chair, doing her best to break free of the two of them and bolt through the door even though she knew she had no chance, absolutely no chance, of making it, Hendricks forestalled her by grabbing her wrist just as the lap belt was undone, yanking her up out of the chair and at the same time twisting her arm hard behind her back.

  The pain was excruciating.

  “You give me trouble, I’ll break it,” he told her, and she believed him.

  They frog-marched her out of the building, which now appeared to be deserted. On Hendricks’s say-so, Lutz turned out the lights behind them. When they emerged into the breezy warmth of the night, Katharine saw that the Mercedes was gone.

  She was all alone with Hendricks and Lutz.

  The knowledge made her heart pound like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.

  “We’ll go in her car,” Hendricks said as he shoved her toward it. The gravel dug into her bare feet, but she barely felt it. Her arm felt like it was being wrenched from its socket. And she was deathly, deathly afraid. “Barnes told me to get rid of it, and gave me a set of keys. When we’re done, we can catch a ride back here for ours.”

  If Lutz said anything, Katharine missed it because they had reached her car by that time and Hendricks shoved her into the backseat, then climbed in beside her while Lutz got into the driver’s seat.

  Muffy greeted her with a meow as her carrier was jostled when Katharine slid over. She picked up the plastic crate, cradling it on her lap, with some thought of using it as a weapon or at least protection. Something. Anything.

  It was pathetic, she knew, but it was the only thing she had.

  “Hi, cat,” Hendricks said, and stuck his fingers through the grate, which was pointed toward him. Muffy hissed.

  Smart cat.

  “Just so you know,” Hendricks said as Lutz started the car and began backing out, tires crunching over the gravel. “If you give me any trouble, if you try to escape, the first thing I’ll do is put out your eyes.”

  He smiled at her as he said it. She believed him. Shivers of horror prickled over her skin. Her shoulder ached. The burns on her hand and arm throbbed. Her cheeks felt swollen and numb. But the worst thing, positively the worst thing of all, was the absolute icy fear that coursed through her veins. Unless she could somehow think of a way to save herself, they were going to hurt her horribly. And before the night was over, she was going to die.

  Her breath was coming in ragged little pants.

  Get calm, she ordered herself. Think. Try.

  “You know,” she said in the calmest voice she could muster, turning her head and looking Hendricks in the eye, “I have money. A lot of money. How much would it cost for you to just let me go?”

  They were on pavement now, passing the rows of for-sale cars, rolling inexorably toward the road. It was dark in the car, but not too dark that she couldn’t see his expression. He was interested, she could tell by the way his eyes flickered. She could feel Lutz looking at her through the rearview mirror as the car paused at the junction between the car lot and the road.

  “Where you got it?” Hendricks asked.

  She had to take a deep breath before she answered, but she tried not to let him see. “In the bank.”

  “Suppose we mosey on by the bank on the way to where we’re going and you withdraw all that money and give it to us? Then we can have the money and still have fun.”

  Katharine was just opening her mouth to explain to him how that wouldn’t work for her, when his door and Lutz’s door both flew open unexpectedly and they whipped around with startled cries. Her eyes were still widening in shock, she was still in the process of registering dark-covered arms, and hands gripping pistols, thrusting into the car, when her own door was yanked open and her arm was roughly seized.

  She screamed, jumped, tried to yank free of this new threat—then saw Hendricks’s scalp explode into the front seat. To her stupefied horror, he had just been shot in the head.

  22

  "It’s all right, it’s me, it’s me,” her captor shouted in a rapid-fire burst of words as Katharine was hauled shrieking from the car, which was now slowly rolling forward. “Jesus, quit screaming, would you please?”

  But she couldn’t, she was on autopilot, the terror and horror of the last few hours amped up a thousandfold by the new terror and horror of seeing bloody murder committed right in front of her eyes, by the rawness and extremity of her fear for her own life. In the front seat, she saw Lutz slump over out of sight, his blood spraying the dashboard and windshield. Her bare feet hit rough, warm pavement, and the night sky tilted crazily overhead as she stumbled forward, out of the car. Muffy’s crate, which was on her lap, slid toward the ground and would have crashed into it if she hadn’t retained the presence of mind to grab the handle as it fell. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two black-garbed men push the bodies of her erstwhile tormentors farther inside the car as they, too, jumped into the vehicle. It stopped moving, and she guessed that the man who was now in the driver’s seat had stepped on the brake.

  “Get rid of them and the car,” her captor ordered, his hand still tight on her arm, keeping her on her feet, keeping her knees from collapsing and smacking into the ground, even as he pulled her away from the car. Another scream was tearing out of her throat of its own accord when she recognized the voice, recognized him, saw that it was Dan, no, Nick, yes, yes, Nick. Thank God for Nick.

  Nick dressed all in black, with a black watch cap over his golden head.

  He had come for her, and the frantic beating of her heart began to slow by infinitesimal degrees.
r />   The scream died in her throat.

  “I’ll take her with me and we’ll all meet up at Gardens Park,” he said, dragging her around behind his Blazer as she heard grunts of agreement and slamming doors and tires gripping pavement as her Lexus and a black SUV peeled out of the car lot, heading away from McLean. In the meantime, Nick had opened the front passenger door and was in the process of thrusting her inside the Blazer when the cat carrier smacked into his legs.

  A vicious-sounding hiss came from the carrier.

  “What the hell?” He took the plastic crate from her while bundling her the rest of the way inside.

  "C-cat,” Katharine managed, although she was shaking all over now and breathing so fast that she knew she was in imminent danger of hyperventilating. “Don’t leave it.”

  He muttered something—she thought it was probably a curse—as he closed her door, but an instant later the door behind her opened and the carrier landed on the backseat. A glance over her shoulder found Muffy’s eyes, as big and round as hers felt, shining balefully at her through the darkness. It was enough to tell that the cat was unhappy, but all right.

  Nick’s door was yanked open and he dropped into the front seat, closing it behind him. It was only then, when she registered that he didn’t have to start the car, that she realized it had been running all along.

  “Put on your seat belt,” he said, his eyes raking over her, and when she didn’t move because she just couldn’t, her muscles wouldn’t work, he cursed and leaned over, securing it for her. He pulled the watch cap from his head and tossed it in the back, running his fingers through his hair. She saw the gleam of metal on his chest as he moved, and realized that he was wearing a shoulder holster that was almost invisible amid so much black. His pistol was shoved into it.

  Then the Blazer was on the move, peeling rubber as they headed in the opposite direction from the others.

  “Wr-wrong way,” she pointed out through chattering teeth as she lay back in the seat and tried to get some kind of equilibrium back.

  “We’re not going where they’re going,” he said, slowing down as they passed through the jumble of lights and buildings that was all she managed to absorb of McLean. She was cold, icy cold, freezing to death, so cold that she would have wrapped her arms around herself if she wasn’t absolutely too spent to move, and she knew it wasn’t from the air conditioner because it wasn’t even on. She was shivering, long, tooth-rattling tremors that she knew were caused by shock.