“I’m on it.”
Phin hung up, examining the hole in the window. Jack’s home had been invaded before, and she had since beefed up her security. That included foiling the windows—running a paper-thin strip of metal along the perimeter that was hooked up to electricity. If the window was shattered, the alarm went off. The doors also had magnetic sensors, which were supposed to go off if they were opened without a key. A quick look on the outside doorjamb revealed why it hadn’t worked; a larger ceramic magnet was stuck to the frame, preventing the mechanism from springing.
Fighting nausea, Phin hurried back into the house. He grabbed the .45 ACP he kept on top of the fridge, jacked a round into the chamber, and shoved it down the back of his jeans. Then he marched down the hallway to the bedroom. The sheets were still tousled from their night of sleep. Phin remembered popping some Compazine for nausea and codeine for pain, half asleep and groggy when Jack finally came to bed—late as she always did, watching infomercials until three a.m.
“How are you feeling, hon?” she’d asked.
“Better, now.”
He fell asleep holding her hand.
Staring at the bed now, he tried to imagine someone coming in the room and grabbing Jack while he slept off the effects of the drugs. Why hadn’t she struggled? Screamed? The antiemetic and painkillers he took were strong, but if she’d woken him coming to bed, why hadn’t she roused him while being dragged off?
Phin rubbed his eyes, then extended the motion down his face and chin, trying to imagine how he would abduct a woman with her lover sleeping beside her. Especially a woman who was a former cop and no doubt had guns in the house.
He examined the bed, the blankets, the pillows, then scanned the carpeting, following it out into the hallway.
There. A smudge of dirt. Faint, no more than two inches long. It repeated, a foot later, and a foot after that, the dash-dash-dash pattern continuing into the kitchen. Phin went back into the hallway and saw the smudge had gotten longer, now a continuous, muddy line. He walked out the back door and into the yard, spying the narrow wheel track in the patch of dirt where the grass had been thin. It hadn’t rained last night, but dew collected on the lawn prior to dawn, making it damp.
Phin walked into the tree line, where the grass ended, into a copse of trees. Plenty of places to hide and watch and wait for Jack and her boyfriend to fall asleep.
He folded his arms across his chest, feeling a chill even though it was warm. Then he went back inside and got on Jack’s computer. First he checked her e-mail, including her deleted files and spam folder. Without finding anything out of the ordinary, he logged onto Jack’s cell phone account and printed out a list of all her recent calls, going back a week. Most of the numbers he recognized, but a few he didn’t. Using an online reverse directory, Phin worked his way through several restaurants, cable TV shopping channels, and two unknown numbers that either Herb or Harry could help with.
Then he opened up Firefox and looked at Jack’s browsing history. Netflix. Amazon. Clothing retailers. A planned parenthood site.
Phin accessed that and quickly read the page. It was about pregnancy in women over forty.
He left the computer and went to the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet. He found Jack’s birth control pills, ten still left in the pack. Then he checked the garbage can next to the toilet.
An empty box that read “EPT,” along with a wrapper for one of the tests.
Phin dug deeper, but the pregnancy test wasn’t in there. He went into the kitchen and checked the garbage can under the sink. Nothing.
Where was it? And where was Jack?
Chapter 5
Controlling my breathing was the first step. Once I slowed that down, I was able to stop crying, relax my cramping muscles, and think through the panic.
My wrists were ridiculously sore, as if someone had branded them with hot irons. I wiggled my fingers, keeping the circulation going, and then tried to reason out my situation.
Mr. K had me. That was obvious. But I didn’t see how that could be possible. Too much didn’t make sense.
Could it be a copycat? Someone imitating Mr. K?
I wished I could remember how I got into the storage locker. My last memory was watching infomercials in the living room, Phin asleep in bed. He was doing another round of chemo after an ultrasound had found another tumor on his pancreas. How long ago was that? A few hours? A day?
I must have been drugged. That would explain the loss of memory.
Could Mr. K somehow have tracked me down and—
The loud CLICK! was accompanied by an explosion of light. I slammed my eyelids closed, but the glare still burned my corneas, causing an instant headache. After a few seconds, I peeked through the painful brightness, squinting at the spotlight hanging on the wall.
Blinking away motes and halos, I began to look around. I was in a storage locker, as I’d guessed. Metal walls. A metal door. The concrete block I was tethered to was larger than I’d assumed, at few hundred pounds at least. I swiveled my head around, looking for the machine making the whirring noise.
When I saw it, my whole body puckered.
It was a wheel. A large, spinning wheel, with straps for a person’s arms and legs.
The Catherine Wheel.
But this one was unlike any I’d seen before. Attached to it was a metal pole, which looked like the rotating spit from a gas grill.
I immediately knew what it was. I remembered John Dalton’s description of the Guinea Worm, and I could picture someone strapped to the wheel, their broken bones grinding together, while the turning metal bar slowly disemboweled them.
Next to the wheel, on the floor, was a digital clock. It was counting down the seconds.
1:59:43…1:59:42…1:59:41…
After a brief, internal battle to squelch panic, panic won out. I screamed into the gag. Screamed until my throat was raw, until the tears came again, until I was hyperventilating so badly that I passed out.
Chapter 6
Phin showed Herb Benedict and Harry McGlade the mud lines on the carpeting in the hallway.
“He must have wheeled in a gas canister on a hand truck,” Phin said. “Stuck the tube under the door and filled the bedroom. That’s why he didn’t wake us up when he took Jack.”
“So he’s a doctor?” Herb asked. He was jotting things down in his notebook. “He has access to anesthetics?”
“Not necessarily,” Phin said. “You can get nitrous oxide—laughing gas—at any welding supply store. When I woke up, I had a metallic taste in my mouth that could have been nitrous.”
Herb blinked at McGlade, who was staring at him. “What?”
“Every time I see you, you have another chin,” Harry said.
Herb scowled. “Have you taken your pill today?” he asked.
“What pill?”
“Your shut the fuck up pill.”
Harry’s brow crinkled. “Where did I hear that before?”
“Guys, stay focused,” Phin said.
Herb gave McGlade a lingering glare, then turned back to Phin. “How did he know when you went to sleep?”
“He was watching the house. Or maybe a listening device.”
“I’ll check for bugs,” McGlade said. “I brought my spy gear.”
He set a metal suitcase on the floor and opened it up, spilling contents all over the carpet. One of the items that rolled away was a sex toy.
“That’s spy gear?” Herb said, pointing at the pink dildo.
“It’s got a listening device in it. I swapped it with a woman’s vibrator and put it in her desk drawer, trying to catch her cheating on her husband.”
“Did it work?” Phin asked.
McGlade frowned. “I got the switches mixed up. All I recorded was three hours of bzzzz-zzzz…oh God…bzzzz…oh my God…bzzzz. I should have put a camera in it, too.”
“You’re an idiot,” Herb said.
“And you’re a miracle of evolution,” Harry replied. “Somehow a sea
cow grew limbs and learned how to talk.”
Phin stepped between them. “Harry, put away the dildo microphone. Herb, unclench your fists. Do either of you have any idea who could have Jack?”
Herb let out a slow breath, then shook his head. “Not so far. We normally get alerts when someone we put away gets out. All the major ones are still in there. Got a few baddies who were up for parole recently, but they were all denied.”
“Were there any cases Jack was working on before she quit? Any open cases?”
Herb’s brow crinkled. “Only one. But it couldn’t be him.”
“Harry? Were you and Jack working on anything?”
“Nothing big.” McGlade picked up a slim black case with an antenna sticking out of it. “Bug detector,” he said. Then he held it next to Herb and said, “Beep, beep, beep! Crab lice alert!”
Herb shoved the device away, then got behind Harry and roughly pressed him up against the wall. “You keep it up, and the next thing your magic dildo is going to record is you going pbbthhhh when I shove it up your—”
“Enough,” Phin said, pulling Herb off of McGlade. “I will personally kick both your asses if you don’t cut this shit out and focus. Harry, have you noticed anything weird lately? Strange phone calls? E-mails?”
“There is the one guy, keeps e-mailing me, telling me I won the Nigerian lottery. I’m thirty percent sure it isn’t legit.”
Phin forced himself to unclench his own fists. The best way to deal with Harry was excruciating patience. “Seen anyone hanging around the office? Anyone following you or Jack?”
McGlade’s eyes lit up. “Actually, there was this one guy. A few days ago. Spooky looking mother. Black, greasy hair. Pale as the sickly, white underbelly of a morbidly obese sea cow.”
“Where did you see him?”
“Outside the office. Just standing on the corner, staring up at our window.”
“Did Jack see him?” Phin asked.
Harry scrunched his eyes closed. “No. She was on the phone with a client. I was playing FarmVille—I just earned enough from my turnip patch to buy a tractor—and I noticed him down there. Checked again a few minutes later, and he was still there.”
“What did you do then?”
“I plowed my field in like one-tenth of the time. That tractor is epic.”
Herb began searching the floor, and Phin guessed he was going to make good on his threat.
“Did you go down and talk to him?” Phin asked Harry.
“Naw. When I checked again, he was gone. Hey, how come we aren’t Facebook friends?”
“Because I’m not on Facebook,” Phin said. “I actually have a life.”
“You should get on there, and friend me, and then send me fuel for my new tractor.”
Now Phin got in McGlade’s personal space, backing him up against the same wall Herb had shoved him against.
McGlade’s eyes went wide. “Hey, easy buddy.”
“If you kill him,” Herb said, “I’ll call it suicide in the police report.”
“You’re not taking this seriously, McGlade.” Phin spoke softly. “Someone has Jack. We need to stop screwing around.”
“Relax, Phin. How many times have we been in this situation? So many times, we already know how it’s going to end. It’ll be a close call, but me, or you, or Tubby the Talking Manatee here will save her at the last possible second. That’s what always happens.”
“Strangle him,” Herb said. “We’ll make it look like autoerotic asphyxiation.”
“Check the house for bugs, Harry,” Phin ordered. “And don’t say another goddamn word.”
Phin released him. Harry smoothed out his rumpled suit and said, “When I win the Nigerian lottery, I’m not giving either of you a penny.” Then he turned on his bug detector and walked into the bedroom.
“We might need help on this one,” Phin said to Herb.
“Way ahead of you. Every cop on the force who ever met Jack Daniels is on the lookout for her. They’re not going to let one of their own slip away.”
Phin nodded. He knew how hard Jack worked, all of those years on the street, trying to earn the respect of her peers. Having them rally behind her would have made her feel good.
“The media?” Phin asked.
“We’re keeping it on the down low for now. If some psycho does have her, we don’t want to egg him on with press. Have you considered this might be someone new?”
“You mean, like a ransom thing?”
“Maybe. Or maybe some unknown whack-job read about her and wanted to get his name in the true crime books.”
Phin didn’t like that scenario at all. If it was someone from Jack’s past, at least they had a chance at finding her. How could they find someone completely new?
“The bedroom is clean,” Harry said, returning to the hall. “Except for those sheets. I saw several stains of dubious origin.”
“Check the rest of the house,” Phin said.
“Kidnaper might have also been watching from outside,” Harry said. “In one of those Hannibal Lector movies, the killer watched the house from the backyard and left all sorts of easy-to-follow clues behind.”
“Finish in here,” Phin said, “and Herb and I will check outside.”
Phin led the portly cop through the garage, out the back door. He located the tire track in the mud, then followed the direction of the treads back into the tree line.
“Take the left side,” Phin said. “I’ll take the right.”
Phin waded into the bushes. After four steps, he had to hold up his bare arms so they didn’t brush the nettles. Turning around, he saw there was no good view of the house—it was too obscured by foliage. He looked up, scanning the trees, finding one nearby.
At the base of the tree, half-hidden by the nettles, were two empty boxes of candy. Lemonheads. They appeared relatively new. No sun bleaching, and they were dry even though it had rained two days ago.
Phin let his eyes wander up the tree, and found a low-hanging limb. Though he wasn’t feeling his best, he managed to get up onto the bough. From there, he could see over the bushes, a direct line of sight to the bedroom window. Jack insisted on always keeping the shades closed, but it would be easy to tell if the lights were on or off.
“Found something!”
Phin looked over at Herb, who was thirty yards away, in the bushes near the garage. As he was getting down he found a Lemonhead candy stuck in the tree bark. He left it there and walked over to Herb.
“Footprints, right here.” Herb pointed at the ground. “Also some twigs broken off the bush so it was easier to see the house.
“Back there, someone was in a tree. You thinking two vantage points?”
“Either two vantage points,” Herb said, “or two abductors.”
They walked the perimeter of the property, trying to see if anyone else could have been watching. All they found were old, spent shell casings—the reason Jack now insisted on keeping the shades drawn, and why she’d installed the new burglar alarm. But there was no evidence of recent surveillance, except in those two spots.
Herb and Phin went back into the house. Harry was in the kitchen. He’d made himself a submarine sandwich and was finishing a bite. “No bugs in the refrigerator,” he said, mouth full.
“How about the rest of the house, jackass?” Herb said.
McGlade stared at Herb and protectively hid the sandwich behind his back. “Whole house is clean. At least, it was.”
Harry pointed his chin to the floor, which was dotted with nettles Phin had dragged in. Phin pondered that for a moment, wondering if it meant something. Wondering what they were supposed to do next.
Chapter 7
He stares at the iPhone screen. It’s much easier to see Jack Daniels now that the lights are on. That green night vision was blurry and didn’t allow for much detail.
But now, the details are perfect. Crystal clear. He even has controls to zoom in. To pan. To tilt. It’s amazing how far technology has come, and it’s t
hrilling for him to see this woman, his nemesis, bound and gagged and waiting for the pain to begin.
She’s sleeping. Or pretending to.
Rest now, he thinks. Enjoy unconsciousness while you can, whore.
Then he slips his hand inside his underwear and watches, a line of drool dripping down his chin, waiting for Jack to wake up.
Chapter 8
I was having a horrible nightmare where I was tied up and someone was going to torture me to death. So there was no feeling of relief when I woke up and realized I was tied up and someone was going to torture me to death.
The Catherine Wheel, with its horrible Guinea Worm attachment, whirred in my vision, and next to it the digital clock continued its countdown.
1:40:26…1:40:25…1:40:24…
It reminded me of a case I had a few years ago. Another countdown, on a digital watch.
I hoped this one would end better than that one had.
My brain was still fuzzy, and I couldn’t remember what had led up to this point. I also had no idea how I’d get out of this. If I didn’t know where I was, how could anyone else?
I scooted backward, peering behind me, eyeing the concrete block I was tethered to. Then I looked at my burning wrists. There was blood, but not as much as I’d expected, and the pain was far out of proportion with the actual damage. The wounds were no more than bad scrapes, but the glistening salt crystals made every millimeter of exposed flesh scream.
Unfortunately, the damage I’d done to the rope was even less impressive than the damage I’d done to myself. For all of my hard work, the nylon cord was barely frayed.
But seeing the Catherine Wheel had steeled my resolve. If I had to saw off both of my hands to get free, I would.
I closed my eyes and began to rub the rope against the corner of the block, whimpering in my throat, biting the ball gag so hard my jaw trembled.
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