The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17)

by Jonas Saul

  Clara stirred in her sleep. He glanced her way and watched her facial expressions. Her ankles and wrists were bound with white plastic cuffs. A ball gag filled her mouth. Short of squirming around the room, there wasn’t much she could do to escape. The ball gag only came out to feed her. Every bathroom break was done together. It didn’t matter what she had to do in there, he joined her. The risk of her breaking glass and cutting herself loose or killing herself was too great. He would even bathe her when the time came each day.

  Clara didn’t seem to mind the toilet arrangement, as long as he wasn’t too invasive. And he wasn’t. A true gentleman. But that wouldn’t last. It had to for now as Clara might be required to speak on the phone in a proof-of-life phone call. Violating a woman before a proof-of-life call didn’t always work out well.

  Her eyes fluttered, then opened. She looked around furtively as if coming out of a dream and just then realized where she was.

  “You’re awake?” Ansgar whispered. “Thirsty?”

  She looked up at him and recoiled, then her face softened. Understanding dawned there, recognition of her situation. She nodded slightly.

  He brought a water bottle over and leaned down beside her, the gun in the back of his pants digging into his flesh. He ignored the irritation and eased the ball gag out of Clara’s mouth. After letting it drop below her chin, he uncapped the water and placed it against her lower lip. She swallowed twice, then gagged, coughed, and pulled away.

  “Take it easy,” he whispered. “There’s lots of water.”

  Clara rested her head back on the carpet and watched him. He capped the bottle and tried to put the ball gag back in place.

  “Wait,” she muttered.

  He paused, the gag still in his hand, one eyebrow raised in a question.

  “Were you the one I talked to online?” She swallowed. “Did you lure me here?”

  He shook his head. “Not me. I was hired to keep you company for a week.”

  He lifted up the gag. She turned her face away, an expression of fear filling her eyes as they widened.

  “Wait,” she moaned. “Please.”

  “What?”

  “Can we talk?”

  “We’re not here to talk.”

  He grabbed the side of her face to force it back up to jam the gag in.

  “Please,” she begged. “Just tell me what’s happening. Why are you doing this—?”

  It was easy work gagging her again. She moaned under the gag, her bloodshot eyes watering.

  “I do this for money.” He rose to his feet and stared down at her, the pressure from the weapon easing off the small of his back. “Nothing more. Just a paycheck.”

  Back at the hotel window, he stared at the rain as it eased off a bit. “Just a paycheck,” he repeated.

  Clara moaned and squirmed on the floor.

  Ansgar’s cell phone dinged.

  The screen lit up with the client’s message. He needed a picture. Something current. Something with her bound.

  “That’ll be easy.”

  Ansgar grabbed the newspaper that was left at his door that morning and held the date of the paper close to the camera with Clara squirming on the floor in the background. He took several pics, then sent them on his burner phone to the client.

  Moments later the client thanked him.

  “Pics sent. More money in the bank. Easy job.”

  Clara squirmed when he went to stare out the window again. He could do this in his sleep. Sitting still for hundreds of hours as a sniper had prepared him for jobs like this. He had to be right in the mind to take this on. He had to be right with himself. The time spent alone was enormous, the time spent thinking, deducing the life of the target. What had they done to warrant a death sentence that someone else was willing to pay for? When it came to those fuckers in Afghanistan, he knew it was the religious fundamentalists who had ruined Islam for everyone because the Koran was quiet and peaceful as a rule. But when it came to non-religious hits, he always wondered why.

  With Clara it was different somehow. Being young and pretty, with her whole life ahead of her, made him doubly curious why she had to be held for a week, then executed. What could she possibly have done to deserve this?

  Ansgar headed over to the minibar and poured himself a glass of wine. The bottle was almost empty from earlier, so he topped his glass up to the rim. He would watch the rain and in the distance, the Toronto airport, then take a nap. It would be a long week. A time to offer reflection. A time to imagine and plan his next move, his next country.

  Back at the window, the instant his wine glass touched his lips, someone knocked.

  Then came a muffled female voice. “Housekeeping.”

  Clara swung her head toward the sound and moaned loudly.

  “Not today,” Ansgar shouted as he stepped closer to Clara.

  The woman on the other side of the door tried the handle.

  “Housekeeping,” she called again as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “I said, not today,” he shouted.

  Clara wouldn’t be quiet. She thrashed on the floor between the wall and the bed, moaning quite loud now. He had to shut her up.

  The door clicked like it was being opened.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered.

  Ansgar set his wine down on the bedside table and dove over the bed to Clara’s side. With his shoes still on, he lifted his foot and kicked her in the side of the head hard enough for any Striker to appreciate.

  Clara quieted instantly, the fight knocked out of her.

  The door clicked behind him.

  He spun around. It was still closed.

  Without a second to lose, he hopped off the bed and rushed to the hotel room door.

  Someone was going to lose their job today.

  “Or I’ll just fucking kill you along with Clara,” he whispered as he grabbed the door handle and tore it open.

  Chapter 15

  In the hotel lobby, Benjamin was nowhere in sight. Soaked through from the rain, Sarah headed for the hotel restaurant while Daniel and Alex fanned out to search the common areas. Aaron went up to check the room they had rented for the week, which kept him less visible to members of the public as he was supposed to be dead. They agreed to meet back in the lobby in five minutes.

  Sarah found Benjamin in the hotel restaurant nursing a coffee. He’d strategically taken a table that gave him visual access to the lobby.

  “Sarah,” he said as she approached his seat. “So good to see you.”

  They embraced. “Sorry, I’m soaked. We had to run through the rain from the parking garage, but now we’re heading up to Clara’s room.”

  “I’ve watched the elevators all day. I haven’t seen either Clara or Ansgar. They haven’t come down.”

  Sarah pushed his coffee away, took him by the hand, and led him to the lobby where she filled Benjamin in on their plan to get Clara away from Ansgar. She shivered twice as her wet clothes lay like a coating of ice on her skin. She would be changing into a maid’s uniform soon anyway, providing they found one without too much trouble.

  Alex and Daniel showed up moments later. Aaron came off the elevator and joined them.

  It was time to go for Clara.

  Sarah left the group and started down the corridor toward the restaurant until she came upon the maid’s room. She entered and scanned the shelves looking for anything resembling a uniform. The shelves were loaded with towels, bedsheets, paper coffee cups, creamers, little packages that held stir sticks and coffee mate, and many other items that the maids filled rooms with, but no uniforms.

  She moved deeper, lifted towels and a bag of laundry out of the way to see what was behind them.

  Nothing to wear. Nothing resembling clothes anywhere.

  The door opened, startling her.

  “Can I help you?” a woman asked.

  Sarah righted herself and faced the woman. A fully uniformed hotel maid, a name tag on her chest. How convenient. On the other hand, Sarah couldn’t
take this woman’s uniform. Not if they were going to stay in the hotel for a few days.

  “I’m soaked through,” Sarah said. She lifted the edges of her shirt, looked down, then back up, a sheepish grin on her face. “Just wondered if I could get an extra towel for the room.”

  At first, the maid didn’t look like she believed her. The expression on her face was one of distrust. She grabbed two towels and held them out to Sarah.

  “Here’s two towels. There’s nothing over there,” she added, referring to how far inside the room Sarah had gone.

  Sarah looked down at the floor, trying her best to appear self-conscious. “I’m sorry.” She met the maid’s unwavering eyes. “Just wanted to get new bedsheets as well. Had an issue last night. Kinda didn’t want to bring it to anyone’s attention.” She scrunched up her face and looked away. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Like a cloud lifted off the woman’s face, she smiled and the suspicious gaze turned to one of warmth.

  “It’s okay. Here, let me help you.”

  The maid moved into the room, close enough for Sarah to see her name on the tag over her breast pocket. Pam Prall.

  “Thanks, Pam,” Sarah said, relief in her voice. “I really appreciate it.”

  Pam handed her a clean white sheet.

  “Is that all you need?” Pam asked. “I can have more brought up to your room.”

  “No, this is perfect.” Sarah stepped around her. “Thanks.”

  “What room number are you in so I can write it down on our inventory sheet here?”

  Pam grabbed a clipboard and held a pen over the paper attached to the board.

  Without knowing the number of the room Aaron had gotten at the hotel, she had to make one up on the spot.

  “Room 1025.”

  Pam frowned, then wrote the number down on her clipboard.

  Sarah backed out of the room and started for the elevators. When she knocked on Ansgar’s room, she would have to go dressed as she was, but at least she carried bedsheets and two towels. It would look somewhat authentic with the explanation that her uniform got wrecked in the rain.

  She waited for the elevator, the details going through her head with less importance the more she thought of them. The only important thing she needed to focus on was getting access to Ansgar’s room.

  She got on the elevator, pushed the number ten and mentally prepared herself for what she was about to find. Hopefully Clara was still alive and in good condition. With four men like Aaron and his dojo teachers, Ansgar—ex-Navy Seal or not—was in for a world of hurt if he had damaged Clara in any way.

  On the tenth floor, she exited the elevator and read the signs for which way to go to. Ansgar’s room was to her right. Heading down the length of the hall, she felt alone, but knew at least three of the four men she was here with watched her. Aaron and Alex were in the stairwell beside Ansgar’s door and Daniel was at the other end of the hall. Benjamin was hiding farther back, still not fully recovered from a bullet wound courtesy of the Enzo Cartel. Even though Aaron had lost a finger to that cartel, he wasn’t letting that stop him from being a part of this operation.

  As she stopped in front of Ansgar’s door, Sarah leaned closer and listened to the room beyond. Silence. She leaned closer still. Nothing.

  The stairwell door opened a crack. Reinforcements were close. Their plan was solid. Things could go wrong, but they were ready.

  Sarah knocked. “Housekeeping.”

  A man’s voice offered a muffled reply.

  Sarah scanned the hallway, hoping no one opened their room doors and stepped out to see her.

  She knocked again. “Housekeeping.”

  Then she tried the door to make Ansgar think she was going to walk in.

  “I said, not today,” he shouted.

  Sarah was sure she heard someone moan from the other side of the door.

  She pulled on the handle, harder this time.

  A muffled male voice said three words that could have been, “What the fuck?”

  She was getting to him. A loud thump, like someone jumped and landed on the floor hard, resonated from the room.

  She played with the handle some more, hoping it drove him insane.

  Then someone moved toward the door. As he stomped toward her on the other side of the door, Sarah couldn’t make out what he was saying. She stepped back and prepared herself.

  The stairwell door behind her vibrated as Aaron and Alex got ready.

  Ansgar’s room door clicked as the lock disengaged, then it was yanked back to reveal a large man who looked part bodybuilder, part UFC fighter. The man’s neck was thick, a vein pulsing by his collar bone. In a tight T-shirt, his thick chest, broad shoulders and meat hooks for arms, almost made her stumble back out of reach.

  “New towels and sheets for your room, sir.”

  Sarah moved toward him. Ansgar’s meaty hand clamped down on Sarah’s shoulder as he leaned out and looked down the length of the hallway. When he righted himself, the door to the stairwell behind her ripped open.

  What they didn’t account for was how strong Ansgar was. One second Sarah was in the hotel hallway and the next Ansgar’s hand tightened on her shoulder and yanked inside his room. He slammed the door closed with his body, engaging the lock at the same moment Aaron and Alex smashed into the door.

  Sarah had stayed on her feet. She took the entire room in with one quick look. Clara’s feet stuck out from behind the bed by the outer wall of the room. White ties were wrapped around her wrists and ankles. She wasn’t moving. A redness, like a bruise starting, formed on her cheek.

  Sarah pivoted back to face Ansgar.

  She was too late.

  Something careened off her jaw. The impact was so hard and fast that she lifted off her feet, dropped the bed sheet and towels, and flew onto the queen bed. Before she had a chance to turn over and get up off the bed, Ansgar was on her. A fierce thunder of pounding smashed into the hotel room door as Aaron and Alex tried in vain to come through it.

  Ansgar was fast. Too fast. Sarah flailed at him as he grabbed her arms in a vice grip, crossed them over her chest and leaned his body weight down onto her. She spat at his face and bucked under him, but he remained in place like a large boulder, his weight enough to subdue her.

  “You’re not housekeeping,” he breathed out through a tight jaw.

  She bucked again, harder.

  He tightened his grip to the point where her wrists felt like they’d snap like brittle twigs with another ounce of pressure.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, an inch from her face.

  “I’m the one,” she breathed deep, his weight making it hard to fight and talk, “who is going to,” she forced breath in again, “break your nose.”

  She jerked her head up, her forehead smashing into the bridge of Ansgar’s nose with a sickening crunch. His hands released her instantly as he reached for his face. He had made a mistake by getting too close to her. With her pinned down, Ansgar had felt safe.

  He sat up, his weight still wedging her into the bed. Blood poured from his nose, dropped over his lips, and continued down and off his chin. She couldn’t get out from under him, though. He had to weigh in at 220 pounds. She thrashed left and right, but he stayed on like he rode a bronco at a local rodeo.

  Frantic that he would rain fists down on her in the helpless position she found herself in, she looked to the bedside table for a weapon. Her jaw where she had been sucker punched felt twice its normal size.

  The pounding on the hotel room door hadn’t abated. Sarah needed this to end before a hotel guest called the authorities.

  A full glass of red wine sat on the bedside table.

  Sarah grabbed it, turned back to Ansgar as he let go of his nose and balled up a fist, and thrust only the liquid at him, keeping the glass to use as a weapon.

  His arm dropped to block the glass of wine, which stopped her hand suddenly, spilling the glass’s contents all over herself. Red wine covered her already wet chest and
face. It got into her hair, her mouth, eyes, and up her nose.

  Sarah gasped, cough and braced for a fist, but it didn’t come.

  The fire alarm sounded throughout the building.

  Ansgar twisted on top of her and stared at the door.

  “Fuck!” he roared.