Just then, the plywood ceiling thundered with hurried footsteps.
An electric jolt of adrenaline flooded Andrew’s veins. He flew across the basement and hid under the unfinished stairs.
“Melanie?” a gruff voice called. Footsteps pounded down the stairs.
Andrew’s entire body tensed, ready for action. He judged his moment, and then sprang out of cover and grabbed the man’s ankle through the wall of two-by-fours beside the stairs. “Mela—what the hell?” Andrew yanked his legs through the wall, jamming David’s crotch into one of the two-by-fours. He grunted, and a handgun went skipping down the stairs. Andrew aimed his own gun at the man’s chest and thumbed off the safety.
“David?” he asked, still gripping the man’s ankle and squeezing it as hard as he could.
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked, blinking rapidly.
“I’m the last person you’re ever going to meet if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
* * *
Andrew tied David Wilkes up with zip ties from the garage, and then chained him to one of the two-by-four posts in the basement, just like his victim. That woman remained unconscious. That was for the best. She didn’t need to see this.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” David spat. “If you let me go, I’ll do you a favor and forget this ever happened.”
Andrew ignored him.
“Hey! Are you listening to me?”
He didn’t even spare the man a glance. When he was satisfied that David couldn’t go anywhere, he went upstairs to gather a few things.
He returned with a jerry can from the garage that he’d filled with water, a rag, and a high-backed dining room chair that he could tie David to in order to get the angle right.
David seemed to recognize the purpose of those articles immediately, but he showed no signs of fear. The opposite, in fact; he smirked and shook his head.
“You’re not going to get anything out of me with torture,” he said. David was a big man, fit and symmetrical, with a broad jaw, slick black hair, and sharp blue eyes. He wasn’t a garden-variety perv or psycho, or at least, he didn’t look like one. Adding to that impression, he was wearing an immaculate black suit and a thin red tie.
Andrew smiled thinly at the man and placed the chair on the floor, barely out of reach. He set the jerry can full of water and the rag beside him before taking a seat on the chair, facing David. He withdrew the P320 from the waistband of his jeans and aimed it at the man’s chest.
“If torture isn’t going to work, then maybe I should just shoot you now and save us both the trouble,” he suggested.
“Do that and you’ll never find out what happened to them.” A slow, quirky smile spread across his face. “Not that I’m going to tell you.” With that, David began to laugh in an unhinged way that made Andrew’s skin crawl. The laughter cut off abruptly, and David’s expression blanked.
Andrew’s brow furrowed. “Them? You mean the people you abducted?”
David seemed to realize that he’d already said too much, and he didn’t elaborate further.
Andrew’s aim strayed to one of David’s feet. “We can see how many bullets you live through before the end. That’s a nice compromise between torture and death, don’t you think?”
David began laughing again, and his eyes rolled around in his head like marbles.
Is he high? Andrew wondered. He nodded to the unconscious woman on the other side of the basement. “I bet she’s been wishing she was dead. Who is she, and why did you chain her up?”
“She’s a loose end.” David adopted a giant grin that somehow looked wider than his entire face. “She came looking for her husband. Guess she missed sharing a bed with him.” He chuckled. “I filled in for him as best I could...”
Rage boiled inside of Andrew as his worst fears were confirmed. So David had raped her. It took everything he had to keep from shooting David right then and there, but death was too good for him. “Who was her husband?” Andrew demanded.
“Some professor. I must be getting sloppy. First her, now you. That’s two people who found me.”
“Was the professor’s name Hughes?”
“Does it matter? Maybe. I’m losing track.”
“Here’s one for you. Valeria Miller. Ring a bell?”
David’s face blanked again, and he shook his head. “Why? Is that someone you care about?” He looked genuinely concerned for a moment, but then he began laughing like a maniac again.
“All right, that’s enough. Let’s get started. See if we can clear your head a bit.” Andrew rose from the chair and rested his gun on the other side of the basement, right beside David’s own weapon. When he was done, he dragged the chair into range of David, along with the package of zip ties.
David took his chance, but Andrew was expecting it. He rushed Andrew with what little slack his chain and zip-tied hands and legs could afford. He came waddling like an insane penguin. Andrew sidestepped before David could head-butt him, and stuck out a leg to trip him. With no hands to throw out to cushion his fall, David fell flat on his face with an audible clack of teeth and a nasty crunch. He rolled over, laughing again, his nose broken and leaking blood in rivers down his face.
“Come on!” Andrew hauled him up and shoved him in the chair. Then he zip-tied him to the chair frame and dragged the chair over to a stack of cinder blocks. He used the blocks as a fulcrum to tilt the chair back and keep David’s lungs above his head. That was the key to avoid actually drowning him. With all of that in place, Andrew got down to business, using the jerry can to flood David’s mouth, nose, and upper respiratory tract with water. He added the rag and held it tight over David’s airways while pouring extra water over to keep him from simply coughing the water out. David still tried, and to some extent he succeeded. After about a minute of letting him suffer, Andrew removed the rag and let him cough out the water.
“Tell me about Valeria Miller!” he screamed as tears streamed from David’s eyes.
But as soon as the man recovered enough to breathe, he began laughing like an idiot again. “We’re all going to be dead soon, anyway, so what do you care if I took your daughter? You’re not going to be around to see her!”
Andrew felt a cold shock go through him. Everything went deathly quiet and still.
David seemed to realize his mistake, and he paled.
“I didn’t tell you she was my daughter,” Andrew said.
Before the man could reply, Andrew was waterboarding him again. This time he did it three times in a row, without even taking a break for a question in between. He kept going until David was delirious and sobbing. “It’s not personal!” he cried.
“It is to me! Where is she?” Andrew screamed in his ear.
“Screw you!”
“Wrong answer!” Andrew grabbed a fistful of David’s hair and yanked it right out of his head. He screamed like someone had set his head on fire—an idea that Andrew was seriously toying with. “Tell me where she is, and I let you go!”
“If I tell you, they’ll kill me! And my son.”
“Your son?”
“Yes.” David nodded, sounding somehow less crazy now. Was he somehow a victim in all of this, too?
No. The woman chained up in his basement was clear evidence against that. Growing impatient, Andrew released the chair and went to fetch his gun. He grabbed the P320, flicked off the safety, and marched back over.
“What are you going to do, kill me? Go ahead!”
Andrew placed the gun to David’s kneecap. “Where is she?”
The crazy look was back in David’s eyes, and another wide grin sprang to his bloody lips. His teeth were stained crimson by the river still trickling from his broken nose.
“She’s dead, but we had a real good time first. Me and Valeria. Mmmmm-yeah.” David’s eyes rolled as if with ecstasy. “She was a real fine piece of—”
BANG.
Gore splattered the concrete behind David’s head.
Andr
ew stared in shock at what he’d done, an instant-replay repeating it in his head. He’d lost all sense of reason, his body moving before his brain could catch up. Before he could stop himself, he’d jammed his gun into one of David’s rolling eyes and pulled the trigger.
The monster stared one-eyed back at him, his bloody lips frozen in a grin.
Andrew recoiled from the corpse, shaking with horror and disgust. But he wasn’t horrified so much by what he’d done as by what David had just said. It couldn’t be true. He refused to believe it. It didn’t fit the MO. This guy hadn’t randomly abducted a few women and girls for his entertainment. That was a side plot to something much bigger. He’d abducted a professor, and Val’s friend Ana, and her friend’s brother Justin, and possibly others. They’d all been taken somewhere, for some reason. And wherever they were, Val was with them.
But now that David was dead, how the hell was he going to find them?
“Shit,” he muttered. He flicked the safety back on his gun and slipped into his waistband with a shaking hand.
As he did that, he heard chains rattling, followed by a soft moan. He turned to see the woman on the other side of the basement sitting up. Hope soared. Maybe she knew something about where the others had been taken.
He ran over to her, and she scuttled away from him, her eyes wide with terror. “Leave me alone!” she cried.
Andrew raised his hands in a placating gesture. “It’s okay! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to free you, okay?”
He cast about for something he could use to break her chains, and he found the padlock dangling from the cuff around her neck. He also noticed the blood crusted around the chain, and the scabbed skin underneath.
“Where’s the key?” Andrew asked.
She pointed with a dirty, shaking hand to where David’s body sat, tied to the chair. “Is he...” She trailed off in a cracking voice.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t let him off easy,” Andrew said.
She nodded, her eyes drifting out of focus.
Andrew went to check David’s pockets. He found the keys for the padlock in one of David’s pants pockets, attached to the same ring as his house keys and Tesla key fob. His cell phone was in his other pocket, and his wallet in the back. Andrew took all of those items and hurried over to unchain the woman. She stood up, hugging herself and looking terrified.
Andrew realized she was still in her underwear, and he grimaced. “I’m going to find something clean for you to wear upstairs, okay?”
She nodded absently, her eyes on a discarded pile of clothes that he assumed belonged to her. He left David’s keys, wallet, and phone in a heap on the floor. “I’ll be right back!” he said.
Andrew vaulted up the stairs. Soon he was rifling through David’s closet, finding suit after suit, and very few actual clothes. Eventually he settled on a black long-sleeve sweater, black pants and belt, socks, and a pair of tighty-whities. It was all probably far too big for the woman downstairs, but at least it was clean.
Andrew ran out of the bedroom and back down the stairs to the basement. “Got something for you to...” He trailed off, looking around for the woman.
She was gone. So were David’s gun, his wallet, and his keys. She’d left the phone, but Andrew could see that the screen was on, with the lock screen visible. She’d only left it because she couldn’t unlock it.
He heard a door slam somewhere upstairs. He flew back up the staircase and ran down the hall to the front door. He yanked it open just in time to see the woman speeding away down the street in David’s Tesla. Garbage and beer cans went flying as she blasted through the remains of the noise trap he’d set for David.
Andrew’s mind raced, his heart thundering in his chest and ears as he struggled to catch his breath. She was a witness to the murder he’d committed. Where was she going? Probably straight to the police.
“Damn it!” Andrew rushed inside, hurrying into the basement. He snatched David’s phone off the floor. If he could open it, there might be some other leads he could follow. He hunted through the rest of the house, moving as fast as he could. It didn’t take long to find David’s briefcase—loaded with items he’d used for his abductions: chloroform, a rag, a taser—and his laptop. There was a chance that the computer contained leads he could follow. Andrew snagged it off the kitchen counter and fled the house, slamming the door behind him and running down the street to his truck.
He needed to get the hell away from here before that woman told her story to the police. No doubt he’d left plenty to tie himself to the scene: fibers, hairs, fingerprints. But with all of the shit about to hit the fan, it wouldn’t matter. The cops were evacuating, just like everyone else.
The FBI agent he’d run into came to mind. She’d been following all the same leads as him. What if she found David Wilkes from that partial plate?
Andrew shook his head. He only had to stay ahead of the authorities long enough to find Val. Saving her was all that mattered.
Fifteen
Val
5 Days Left…
Val sat on the dusty metal floor of the container truck, feeling every bump in the road. The air was close, and stagnant with the sour smell of sweat and urine. They had a few buckets for toilets in the back, but the rough roads had made them slosh over. Val didn’t have a watch or a phone, so she couldn’t be sure, but her best guess was that they’d been on the road for at least half a day.
All around her, people were whispering about their situation, others sobbing shamelessly. Her friend Ana sat beside her, holding her hand in a tight, sweaty fist.
“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Ana whispered.
Val turned her head and caught a glint of her friend’s eyes in the darkness—a sight only possible thanks to a few empty screw holes in the container walls and roof. She took a moment to consider the question. If it were still just the two of them in the trunk of that guy’s Tesla, she would have been too scared to even venture a guess, but this wasn’t that kind of abduction. There were almost fifty people crammed into this 40-foot container: Ana’s brother Justin and his professor from university—along with dozens of men, women, and children that she’d never seen before in her life.
“What if this is some kind of human trafficking setup?” Ana added, her voice spiking to a panicky register. That speculation set off murmurs of fear from nearby passengers.
“No,” Val breathed. “We’re staring down the barrel of a dozen different natural disasters. The last thing anyone wants right now is more mouths to feed. This is something else.”
“How can you be so sure?” Ana asked.
“For one thing, look at the demographics. We’re not all kids. There are middle-aged people here, too. Human traffickers prey on children and young adults, not university professors.” Val added that last part as she gazed past Ana to her brother and his professor. The two of them were engaged in a hushed conversation.
When Val mentioned the professor, he glanced their way. Faint glimmers of streetlight flashed off his glasses. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the danger to us any less.”
The truck skipped through a pothole, and the passengers in the back screamed collectively, knocking shoulders and heads.
Justin and his professor came crawling over. “I think I know what this is about,” Justin said.
“What do you mean?” Val asked.
“A few weeks back, I entered a competition sponsored by Mensa. It was a recruitment thing for this super-secret group called Final Days. It’s supposed to be about saving the human race and preserving its knowledge in the face of the looming environmental crisis.”
“And?” Val prompted.
“And I passed, and they said someone would be contacting me soon for a face-to-face interview.”
“So what?” Val shrugged. “You missed your interview?”
Justin’s professor spoke next: “I entered the same competition. I also passed.”
“And the next day both of us are abducted by t
he same guy as you two,” Justin said.
Val frowned, shaking her head. “But Ana and I didn’t enter that contest. We’re not even members of Mensa.” She nodded to the others in the container truck. “And I doubt the rest of these people are here because they wanted to join some apocalyptic fraternity.”
“That’s not the point,” Justin said. “The point is, whoever these people are, they’ve been recruiting in a variety of places and in a variety of ways. And the recruitment method represented by the competition from Mensa suggests a purpose to all of this. Someone is organizing a group of people that they think will be able to reboot the planet after the dust settles.”
“So you’re saying it’s a good thing that we were abducted?” Ana asked.
The professor pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. “I think what Justin is trying to say is that we shouldn’t give into despair. At least, not yet.”
Val nodded along with that. “I agree.”
“Well, I don’t,” Ana said. “If this were about saving the planet, why send some creepo to abduct us? Why not just tell us what’s going on? And why cram us all into a container like animals? This is what they do with slaves, right before they inject them with heroin and start pimping them out on street corners. I’m not waiting around for that. If I see a chance to escape, I’m taking it.”
“Ana, you could get yourself killed,” Justin said. “These guys all have guns. You saw it when they herded us in here from that basement. They’re not messing around. They’ll shoot us if we try anything.”
“Exactly!” Ana blurted. “Guns, dingy basements, and container trucks! Does that sound like the Illuminati conspiring to save the world to you?”
Val winced, hoping Ana was wrong.
The truck lurched to a stop and they heard doors banging open, followed by muffled voices and footsteps crunching in gravel.
“We’re here,” the professor whispered, his eyes going wide behind his glasses as he turned to look at the back of the container.
Val felt Ana tense up beside her.
Metal bolts screeched, and the rear doors groaned open. Dazzling white light barreled in from glaring spotlights, along with a cool, acrid mist.
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