The Thriller Collection

by S W Vaughn

  Roman shuddered inwardly. “That’s a hell of a feeling you’ve got,” he managed. “Unfortunately, it makes a lot more sense than I want it to. You think this colonel is Top?”

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty damned far-fetched, but…he’s in D.C.”

  “So he’s an hour from here. Shit.” He crossed the room and started powering on the main system. “While we’re waiting on that tape, I’m going to check the club feeds from the last few days. See if we can learn anything more from our soldier pals. What they did here, who they talked to.” He glanced at Stone. “Would you be able to find Fischer, if we went looking for him?”

  The man’s expression darkened. “Absolutely.”

  Roman just about recoiled from the rage coming off him. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Glad I can count on you, but I still hope it won’t come to that. We might find something out from those two assholes.” He pulled up the archives and selected the date he’d first seen Tim and Johnny, then he returned to the smaller workstation to check the tape. It was backed up about a third, so he stopped it and hit play. “Hey, Stone. Can you sit over here and watch this? Let me know if Teryn shows up, and pause it if she does.”

  “Sure.” He moved over to the other chair.

  Roman decided to work standing. It still hurt too much to sit. When Kat came back with the coffee, he’d take one of the painkillers Antonio gave him—he wasn’t convinced they helped, but at least they didn’t make him drowsy. If not for the insomnia, he’d have blacked out by now.

  He found the approximate time he’d seen them on the feed and started the playback there. He’d remembered it right—almost immediately, he spotted them at the back of the club, apparently just waiting. But he wanted to see everything they did, so he slowed the speed and played it in reverse.

  And watched them reverse their way through the back door.

  “Son of a bitch.” He paused the playback with the door closed on them. At once he recalled the minute-long skip in the outside rear footage, and knew exactly what they’d done. Johnny Smartass must’ve looped the feed so no one would see them coming in the back. And it wouldn’t have shown up as a glitch. Crude, but effective for short-term uses.

  That meant they didn’t have cards. And someone had let them in.

  Just as he popped up the zoom controls, a voice directly behind him said, “You found something.”

  He managed not to jump out of his skin, but his breath caught. “Jesus, Stone,” he said. “How does a guy as big as you move like that? Never mind, don’t tell me.” He centered on the back door and started zooming in. “I might’ve found something,” he said. “They came in the back. Means somebody had to know they were coming, and open the door from the inside.”

  “Was it Teryn?”

  “Don’t know. But I’m about to find out.” He enlarged the image as much as he could and upped the resolution, until the faces were relatively clear. Then he advanced the video frame by frame. Eventually, a hand grabbed the door handle and started pulling it back.

  A group of three had been walking past as the door opened, so it took a few more frames to view the face attached to the hand.

  “Corvair,” Stone practically growled.

  Roman wasn’t sure he could get his mouth to work. His jaw had unhinged too far. Just when things had started to make some kind of fucked-up sense, they’d rolled snake eyes and won a trip to Lunatic Land. What the hell could the CEO of MacroCon have to do with any of this?

  “Can you focus any more on him?”

  He gave Stone an incredulous look. “Why? That’s not going to make anything clear. I’m starting to think this is all just a bunch of random bullshit.”

  “I know him from before,” Stone said.

  “Before what?”

  “Prison. And I think I remember how I know him.”

  Roman shook his head and opened the master controls. “You know, I kind of hope you’re wrong,” he said, making incremental adjustments to clean up some of the noise. “For once I want to believe in coincidence. Because if this is all connected, whoever’s doing it is slicker than the goddamned NSA.”

  Eventually he reached the point of diminishing return. “All right,” he said, closing the control box. “That’s as good as it gets.”

  Stone stared at the face for a full minute. At last he said, “I’m not wrong.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Corvair was at my court martial,” he said through clenched teeth. “As an expert witness for the prosecution—called by Colonel Matthew Fischer.”

  Chapter 34

  Ozzy couldn’t stop staring at the screen, and those cold blue eyes. He should’ve remembered those. But he’d been in a state of semi-shock from the moment he was arrested, and it had only gotten worse as he realized they were actually going to send him to prison for a made-up crime that never happened—and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop them.

  Even now he couldn’t get much of an objective distance. But he had enough to recall Corvair on the stand, and sitting with Fischer, and leaving the courtroom with him. More than once.

  “You’re sure about that,” Blade finally said.

  “Yes.” He made himself look away from the image. “Him and Fischer were tight. Hung around together the whole time.”

  “Well. Fuck.”

  “That’s pretty much what I was thinking.”

  Blade punched a key and reached for the mouse. On the screen, the image started to draw back from Corvair. When there were whole people in the shot, he played the video in slow motion and they watched Tim and Johnny slide in through the back entrance. Corvair appeared to say something to them before he walked away. Neither responded.

  “Damn. Wish I could isolate the audio for that.” Blade paused the feed again. “Okay, so now what do we do?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But whatever’s going on, Corvair and Fischer are in it together. Didn’t you say MacroCon works on government contracts?”

  “Jesus. Yeah, I did,” Blade said. “And most of their projects are military applications. So…maybe Corvair is Top?”

  Before Ozzy could respond to that, the control room door opened and Kat walked in, carrying a tray with three mugs and a handful of single-shot creamers and sugars. “I decided to skip the bourbon,” she said, closing the door with a foot. “Did you find anything?”

  Blade shook his head. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?” Kat set the tray on the big desk next to the main system and handed a mug to him. “Just black,” she said. “How do you take yours, Ozzy?”

  “The same.”

  “Well, ain’t you easy.” With a quick smile, she handed him a cup. The third already had cream in it, and she picked it up and sipped. “Okay, fill me in,” she said, heading for the single computer where Blade had set up the tape. “What do you mean by—oh, God.” She paused halfway to sitting down and stared at the monitor. “That’s Teryn.”

  Ozzy stepped over, with Blade right behind him. The screen showed the girl at a slight angle, walking slowly away from the hospital toward an ambulance van parked on the circle drive, just beyond the low wall. The figure leaning against the back of the van was half hidden in shadow.

  Kat dropped abruptly into the chair. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she whispered. “Oh, honey. What did you get yourself into?”

  “Nothing good,” Blade murmured.

  On the monitor, the leaning figure straightened into the light. It was definitely Johnny. His lips moved, and Teryn held out a small, dark object toward him. The camera was too far back to see it clearly.

  “Stone, hit the pause button on the drive,” Blade said.

  He did. “Can you find out what that is?”

  “I’m going to try.” Blade pulled the keyboard toward himself and started typing. “Looks like they opted for higher quality video instead of video with audio,” he said as windows opened over the image on the screen. “If I screen capture the feed, I can run it through the s
ystem’s program and zoom in. The image shouldn’t degrade as much as that one.” He jerked his head, indicating the larger main setup.

  A moment later, he nodded and said, “Okay. Play it.”

  Ozzy pushed the play button. On the monitor, Teryn completed the handoff, and Johnny held the object up for a second before pocketing it. Then he turned and opened both back doors of the ambulance van. Tim was inside, with something that looked like a stretcher bed. After a minute, he jumped out and went to Teryn, and leaned in to say something in her ear. She stood there when he finished, and finally she climbed into the back of the van without prompting or force.

  Tim got in after her, and Johnny shut the doors and headed for the front. The ambulance van pulled away.

  “Stop.”

  A minute after Ozzy stopped the playback, the image vanished and a new window opened, running the video from the handoff point. As Johnny held up the object, Blade froze it and zoomed the view in. “That’s a pinhole camera,” he said.

  Ozzy looked at the small, slender object. “About the size of a tampon,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “They came to the club and gave it to her,” he said. “It was in a plastic package. I saw them hand it over before I kicked them out. They said it was a tampon, and Tim had a fetish and wanted it back…used.”

  Blade snorted. “They used it, all right,” he said. “Johnny said they were recording a feed from a playroom. That must be how they did it.”

  “What?” Kat pushed the chair back and stood. “How did these assholes get into my club?”

  Ozzy glanced at Blade, who nodded slightly. At least they both agreed it wasn’t a good idea to tell Kat everything—probably for the same reason. All of this was more dangerous than they could’ve imagined, and it was getting worse with every discovery. But this, she should know about. “Corvair let them in,” he said. “Through the back door.”

  “Why, that lowdown, sorry, toad-faced son of a polecat.” Kat bared her teeth and glared across the room at the main system screen, where Tim and Johnny were still frozen. “I swear to Jesus, I’m gonna—” A muffled ringtone made her cut off with a gasp. She pulled her phone out and frowned at the screen. “It’s the hospital,” she said slowly.

  They waited in silence while she answered.

  “Hello?...Speaking.” She paused a moment. “No, I don’t know where she is.” Kat lifted a stricken gaze. “I’ve been trying to get hold of her myself. I…she what? Oh, no.” She closed her eyes and folded an arm across her stomach. “All right,” she said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes. Thank you.”

  “That was about Teryn, wasn’t it?” Blade said when she ended the call.

  Kat shook her head. “It’s Presley,” she said. “She went into arrest and started having convulsions. They can treat her so it doesn’t happen again—at least, not for awhile. But they need authorization, because she’s a minor. And someone has to stay the rest of the night with her. She has to be watched for twenty-four hours, and the hospital doesn’t have enough overnight staff to spare.” She let out a breath. “I’m her contact for consent, after Teryn. Those girls don’t have anybody else.”

  “Well, then you should go,” Blade said. “We’ve got this. Right, Stone?”

  “Right.”

  She gave them a grateful smile. “Thank you, boys,” she said. “If you need to go anywhere, just lock up before you leave.”

  “Will do.”

  Once she was gone, Ozzy moved aside to give Blade more space to work. “Any idea why they’d want to record a playroom?” he said.

  “Not a clue.” Blade started tapping keys, and the paused image of Johnny holding the camera shifted across the screen. “But I want to get a look inside that van, if I can,” he said. “You see that on the roof?” He pointed at the monitor.

  “It’s a satellite dish.”

  “Yeah. I think they’ve got a mobile system in there—and if I can get to it, I bet I could use it to find Teryn.”

  He centered the image on the van’s back doors and zoomed in, until the license plate number was readable. Then he started the playback at a slowed speed. After Tim jumped out of the van, he paused it again and enlarged the image. “Jackpot,” he said softly.

  The left inside wall looked built out of electronics. There were multiple screens and drives, and a slim counter with a few keyboards mounted on it. A few gadgets Ozzy recognized—fuzz buster, CB unit, scanner—and a bunch more he didn’t.

  Blade stepped back from the computer and frowned. “Hell of a setup,” he said. “I’m still pretty sure I could crack it. Problem is, how are we going to find them?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Ozzy said.

  Blade gave him a look. “What should we worry about, then?”

  “What to do when they find us.”

  “But they already have Teryn. Why come after us?”

  “They tried to have you arrested,” he said. “You didn’t stay that way.”

  “Shit.” Blade glanced over at the monitors for the main system, and then did a double-take. “Oh, shit,” he said. “The back camera. It’s still out.”

  Ozzy followed him across the room and looked at the screens. The lower left one showed the back entrance, lit and deserted. “Doesn’t look out,” he said.

  “That’s a looped feed. Part of the setup so Corvair could let them in.” Blade leaned over the keyboard and started typing. “I can fix it, now that I know what’s wrong. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  “All right.” Ozzy stood back and watched, steering his thoughts away from Fischer and Corvair for the moment. They didn’t have enough information to establish either of them as a primary target yet. And if they chose the wrong one, they’d miss the opportunity to find the girl. He was sure Tim and Johnny would come to them.

  It’s what he would do, if he was commanding the mission. Send them back to clean up the loose ends they’d created.

  Blade did something that made the back camera monitor turn off and back on. Nothing appeared to change, except the quality of the light. “Well, that’s done,” he said. “And I need to go take a piss. Coffee went right through me.”

  Ozzy nodded. “Be careful.”

  “Of what? There’s nothing out there.”

  “Says your cameras.”

  “Hey, man. Cameras don’t lie…unless someone’s fucking with them. And I fixed that.” Blade hitched a faint smile. “If it makes you feel better, you can come with me.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Suit yourself. Be right back.”

  When the door closed, he watched Blade on the monitor walk across the main room and enter one of the bathrooms next to the stage. It was true that the screens showed nothing out there. Empty vestibule, deserted back entrance. Only his car in the parking lot. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something unpleasant was about to happen.

  Maybe it was just because of all the unpleasant things that had already happened.

  He sighed and went for the coffee he’d barely touched. It was probably cold by now, but he could use the jolt. No drinking, no sleep—he was running on pure willpower, and he wasn’t sure how long that would last.

  Just as his hand closed around the mug, everything went black.

  It was a long, dizzying moment before he realized the power was out. That put him on instant alert, driving the exhaustion away like a cold shower. He lunged in the direction of the door and found the knob on the second try.

  The hallway and the main room beyond were just as dark as the control room. Ozzy flattened against the wall for a minute, letting his eyes adjust as much as they could—he didn’t dare call out for Blade, not even to see if he was okay. This was not a random power outage. All he could do now was hope he got to Blade first.

  But as he edged past the bar counter into the open, there was a loud pop from across the room, like an air rifle. Then a brief, pained shout, followed by a series of ticking buzzes and blue flashes. A thud sho
ok the floor—but the buzzing and flashing went on for a long minute. Silence ballooned through the room when it stopped.

  One of them had just shot Blade with a Taser gun.

  His blood froze. If these two weren’t shooting to kill, they probably had a lengthier and more painful death in mind. He fell back silently, feeling for the bar, then circled and crouched behind it. If he could keep them from finding him, maybe he could follow them and get Blade back.

  As he took slow, shallow breaths, he heard faint footsteps approaching. Just one of them—the other had probably stayed with Blade. Hopefully this one would try for the control room, and Ozzy could get behind him.

  He heard the pop seconds before incredible pain filled his body, and his muscles promptly gave out.

  It seemed forever until the flashing volts stopped, but the pain didn’t leave with the light. Drool slopped from his mouth onto the floor. He couldn’t even twitch a finger.

  “You’re not a very good soldier, Brutus.” The voice swam from the darkness, beating against his throbbing eardrums. “You’re supposed to be prepared. Didn’t you have your night vision gear with you? I’ve got mine.”

  He would’ve responded, but his tongue failed to cooperate. Then the pain came back.

  This time it didn’t stop until the blackness was complete.

  Chapter 35

  When Roman came around, his first thought was to strike Tasering off the potential list of recreational pain. There was nothing satisfying about this. He couldn’t even control it—everything in him was slack and unresponsive. He could only stand here, hurting.

  Well, hang here. He’d been handcuffed to a cross, and his legs wouldn’t hold him up.

  The power was back on, and he and Stone were in playroom 14, the medieval dungeon scene. He had a pretty good idea who’d brought them down here, even though he hadn’t seen or heard anything until he fumbled his way out of the bathroom and into about a million volts of agony.