The Altruism Effect: Book One (Mastermind Murderers Series 1)

by Kristin Helling

  The defroster melted away the fog on the windshield enough for her to make an attempt at getting on the road. Her apartment in Noe Valley was a little less than a thirty-minute drive. She never understood why Marcus liked to be so far out of the city. He must have liked the idea of suburbia.

  She pulled her seatbelt across her chest and clicked it into the buckle, then eased out onto the street. She set off down the road, squinting through the fog. It felt better to lean against the steering wheel, her muscles tense, and she pushed through water on the pitch black, waterlogged road. The wind pushed her back and forth, the pellets of rain smacking into her windshield. It was almost hard to not stare off into the raindrops. The rain in her headlights looked something like a spaceship going into hyperspace in Star Wars.

  As she rounded a corner, her front wheels dropped into a pothole and she hydroplaned. Her stomach flipped, like on the downhill of a roller coaster, as she straightened her spine.

  You’re not invincible. It was enough to snap her back to attention, squinting between the droplets. The windshield wipers beat against the glass like the sound of her heart.

  Luckily, as expected, there weren’t many cars on the road. The fewer cars there were, the easier it was to see the white lines on the road. She blinked each time a lightning bolt shattered the sky on the horizon in front of her. The two lane road wound through trees on both sides, just one lane for her and one for oncoming traffic.

  She checked her rearview mirror. There were headlights on the road behind her. She sped up to try and distance herself from the car, to keep from being blinded by its high beams.

  She sped up, but she was no match for the car behind her. They tailgated her, the lights so bright she couldn’t even tell what the vehicle looked like.

  “Get off my ass!” she yelled out into the car. Her eyes moved from the road in front of her to the rearview mirror and back again.

  She reached forward and flipped her hazard lights on.

  Hopefully that’ll get them to go around me, she thought as she approached a wide turn in the road.

  It didn’t.

  The car swerved over to the oncoming traffic lane, then moved back into the lane behind her.

  She gasped, instinctively jerked her car away from them and slammed on the brakes. The cell phone between her legs went flying to the floor in front of her and settled at the pedals by her feet.

  “What in the world!” she yelled, angry as she tried to locate her phone safety blanket.

  Panic set in. It was clear the car was trying to run her off the road. She moved over to the left lane and desperately hoped that no oncoming traffic emerged around the next bend. The other car duplicated her move, refusing to pass.

  They were definitely following her. Her breath quickened.

  She couldn’t reach her phone.

  She eased back into the correct lane and pressed her foot down on the pedal as far as she could. The car accelerated, pushing her back into her seat. She was almost panting, whimpering in terror.

  The lights continued to blind her, and before she could react, the road opened up to an intersection. She broke away from the car behind her, blew the glowing red octagonal stop sign, and sent her car into a spin.

  Her vehicle rotated several times and stopped. The lights bore down on her.

  There was an ear-wrenching screech.

  She gripped the steering wheel as she saw the shadow of a dark figure inside the vehicle in front of her. The events proceeded in slow motion.

  Grinding metal.

  Smash.

  Her neck snapped forward.

  Red.

  Black.

  Heartbeat.

  Buh bum. Buh bum. Buh bum.

  A faint ringing sound pierced her semi consciousness.

  She moved her left arm, the only thing she could move, up to the pain in her face. Crimson wet liquid smeared her hand.

  Her thoughts were jumbled. Fearful.

  Through the shattered glass of her windshield, the dark figure appeared again. It rounded the car and yanked open her door.

  She tried to call out to them. “Help-” Her voice was hoarse and low, her throat burned.

  The pain of a thousand needles pierced her body as her seatbelt was cut away and she was yanked from the car.

  Her consciousness was fading now. Lying down on the wet pavement. The figure stood and moved to the twisted metal. They fumbled with something. A bright orange-red light burst in front of her, and suddenly her aching, shivering body was warm.

  The figure loomed over her.

  There was a sharp prick in her arm, more defined than the cocoon of pain she was enveloped in. And then the sleep came, and robbed her of her broken consciousness.

  SIXTEEN

  Raine squirmed in her restraints. The straps on her wrists tightened. She resisted, the ache of her memories surging through her.

  The Warden grazed her hipbone with the back of his hand as his fingers closed around the syringe once more. She pressed her chin into her neck, trying to see her forearm. The crook of her elbow was black and blue, bruised from all the times she’d been pricked.

  How long have I even been here since the crash? she thought, her perception of time or even time of day was completely shot. She watched the Warden as his thick, large framed glasses slid down the bridge of his nose again. He squinted as he shoved the glasses back up with one hand, and looked down at her forearm. He tapped her arm again, trying to raise a vein.

  He’s having trouble.

  He reached into his pocket and grabbed out a strap of the same material her restraints were made out of. She concluded this strap was probably for her mouth, though he didn’t feel the need to use it. He slid the strap underneath her bicep and tied a knot, pulling it tight around her arm. Too tight.

  Raine winced as he squeezed. The circulation cut off, a tingle replaced the flow of energy. The blue lines in her arm swelled.

  “Please,” she pleaded, trying to catch his eye. “Please can I be awake for this? Don’t put me to sleep again.”

  He ran his calloused hand up her arm.

  “I’m sick of falling asleep and not knowing what’s happened.” She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut as the Warden pierced the skin of her arm with the needle.

  He held it there a moment, the needle wobbled in her sore skin before he slid it back out and dropped it on the table.

  She was still conscious. She opened her eyes; he had turned away. The syringe lay by her side once more, liquid still intact.

  Should I say thank you? Her mind raced.

  Without turning back around, he walked away from her table and slammed the door behind him.

  SEVENTEEN

  Her family thought she was dead. There were news clips and articles written about it. Did that just happen? Had it been weeks? She had been so close to escaping this hellhole, before she wandered right into the spider’s web. And he’d tried to use his venom to impair her again. But he didn’t. She didn’t know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Time was nonexistent in that small, white room. Mere minutes could have passed, or it could have been hours that she lay on that table. She moved herself into a meditative state, trying to block out all other stimuli. Her aching body. The vulnerability of exposure. The lack of control.

  The arm where the needle entered was crusted with a trickle of dried blood. As she lay in her meditative state, the door creaked open. She startled, and stared straight up at the ceiling. She anticipated the worst.

  “My god… “ The soft voice dripped with empathy.

  She turned her head. It was the night guard that confided in her. The nice guard that had without a doubt, purposely left her cage unlocked.

  She watched him approach her, reach above and grab a tool from a tray above her head.

  He loo
ked her in the eyes, his face flushed. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  Her eyes welled up. I don’t know. “I’m okay,” she croaked, “What’s going on? Were you the one that unlo-”

  “I was instructed to escort you back to your cell.” The tone of his voice changed as he cut her off. It sounded authoritative.

  He’s watching, Raine gathered.

  The Warden orchestrated everything. This was all a big experiment of human nature to him. She was a lab rat. The guard in front of her was also a lab rat.

  Her arms were limp as he used the tool to unlatch the restraints from the hooks on the wall. He undid the strap at her wrist. Her arm flopped off the table. She had no control over it. The surging pain wrestled through her muscles, the effects of staying in the same position for so long.

  He lifted her arm and put it back on the table, so that it wasn’t dangling.

  She pulled her achy arms in, one by one, and covered her breasts.

  The guard looked away a moment, then turned to work on her ankle restraints.

  She saw his look of disgust as he worked to set her free of the bonds. She noticed how he avoided looking at her. His hatred at the situation and for his captor radiated through his fingers as he cut the leather restraint.

  “Can you stand?” he asked.

  She moved her legs. They were wobbly, like a baby giraffe learning to walk. She lifted her head too quickly, the room spun, and she swayed back down.

  He reached forward and caught the small of her back, helping her put one foot on the floor at a time and hoisted her up.

  “Do you have clothes?”

  “If you cooperate, I won’t have to put you in cuffs when we head back upstairs.” As he spoke, his eyes searched the room.

  She nodded her head in compliance. I’ll cooperate.

  He guided her through the door.

  She looked over her shoulder at the table that the Warden must have set up in the room after she’d been knocked out. There was a medical tray on wheels directly above the top of the table, with all kinds of tools. She exhaled a shaky breath as she eyed all the different contraptions. It could have been much worse for her on that table. For some reason, he must like me. Or I wouldn’t still be alive. I’m one of the only ones that’s seen who he is, and he didn’t kill me… yet. She was hopeful that her words, her experience as a psychologist, and speaking to those with mental instabilities had paid off.

  As they exited the room, she looked straight ahead. The loft was gone.

  It wasn’t gone entirely, but down the hallway, there was a galvanized metal steel door blocking the hall from the rest of the loft. This guard doesn’t even know there’s a living space on the other side of this wall! It’s all jail for him! She couldn’t believe her eyes at the transformation that had been wrought and what it covered up. To the guard, who was assigned to come down and retrieve her, this was just another level of rooms.

  As they crossed over the threshold, Raine in front of the guard, she tripped over something squishy. They both looked down to find her gown. She looked over her shoulder and the guard nodded. She bent down and picked it up. It was the same gown as before, bloodied, dirty, and stained. She slipped it over her head and it dropped over her aching body. To have some sort of privacy again was a privilege, and she was happy to have it, even though it wasn’t the most ideal.

  The guard guided her through the door on their right, the door that she thought was a bathroom before.

  It wasn’t a bathroom. It was another staircase. She couldn’t understand the logistics of this building, except that it had been engineered and designed for the Warden’s little game. Nooks and crannies everywhere. Different vacant rooms for different purposes. Staircases that only led up from this floor. The area where he himself lived, that was apparently hidden from the rest.

  She didn’t understand it.

  She continued to walk in front of the guard, one step at a time up the stairs and into the familiar hallway outside the warehouse. She kept her eyes peeled for signs of cameras, something she’d looked for before, but hadn’t seen. If the Warden wasn’t watching her before, she was sure he was watching now. The Warden had been one of Troy’s clients. The problem was, he could have been treated by Troy at any time in the history of their practice. It might or might not even be one of his current clients. Either way, she’d never be able to identify him, because all of their client information was kept locked up and private. There might not even be any records that indicated this guy had ever visited their office, if it was far enough in the past. And all sessions with their clients were kept confidential, unless of course the patient was a danger to themselves or others. Troy missed the bus on this one.

  Unless… was it possible he still could have something to do with this? The way he’d been treating her. The fact that in the last week or so he’d been busy and kept to himself. There was that one late night in the office. The scratches on his arms. The human scratches.

  She shook her head to clear those thoughts as they rounded on the double doors to the warehouse. It was crazy. Did she hate Troy that much? So much that she’d just met her captor, the psychopath who turned the penthouse of a building into a prison, after he’d kidnapped people from their daily lives and kept actual humans locked up for some twisted experiment he needed to prove to humanity about their behavior. She’d just met this person, yet she still continued to contemplate whether or not Troy could have had something to do with this.

  “Hey, night shift.”

  Raine turned her head to see the guard with the sickly green eyes, the one with authority, poking his head out of a door behind them.

  “I’m on assignment, Buck,” he grunted back, as he reached forward and gently grabbed her wrist.

  The mean guard, who she could now refer to as Buck, with his head shaved bald, had walked out of the room and into the hall. He eyed Raine. “Was she with him?” he asked, nodding at her.

  “I can’t talk right now.”

  “You could bring her in here before you take her back.” He laughed nastily.

  Raine straightened her shoulders, her brow furrowed. Her insides flamed up.

  “I said I’m on assignment, asshole. I’ll be in later.” He turned Raine back around, away from the guard, and held her arm while fishing around his pocket and pulling out a set of keys. “All right. Handcuffs for the sake of the other prisoners.” He whispered into her ear.

  His face grazed hers and she felt his breath on her ear. He secured her hands behind her back. Even though he’d shown her kindness, and confided in her, he was still playing his part. She was grateful for the feeling that he was on her side, but in the end, he was really only on his own side. Part of her felt she should be angry about that, but he needed to be on his own side for his wife. For his daughter.

  The metal cuffs were cold against her wrists.

  He clasped them together, squeezing them shut. Even though he didn’t tighten them completely up to her wrists, just the metal of the handcuffs resting on her skin was painful. Her wrists had just been bound for several hours at least, and her wrists felt raw and sore. She hung her head as he opened the creaking door to the warehouse.

  There had to be a little bit of irony in the fact that this guard had left her cage unlocked to assist her in an escape, and he was assigned to take her back. She couldn’t help but think that the Warden knew about all of this, and he was messing further with their minds, to see how they’d react.

  The musty room before her was depressingly familiar. And even though it was the last place on Earth she wanted to be, it was better than being at the mercy of the Warden, or any of the other guards for that matter.

  The guard walked behind her, holding onto her handcuffed hands and guiding her down the row of cages. She looked back and forth, her eyes darting from person to person. There seemed to be fewer people in the cages.

&n
bsp; Her heart pounded in her chest as they approached Arie’s cage, and hers next to that. Before they arrived, she saw both of Arie’s hands curled around the bars.

  When she finally made eye contact, she saw the hope drain from his face. She shook her head back and forth, defeated.

  She’d failed him. She failed Arie.

  He dropped back into the shadows of his cage. The guard continued to guide her. She felt resistance against her wrists as she turned to her cage, and he kept them walking straight.

  “I’m not going back in my cage?”

  “I’m just following orders,” he said quietly.

  They turned the corner, and he stopped her in front of a door that had a mail slot in it set at eye level. He let go of her cuffed wrists and unlocked the door.

  She peered inside. It was a cell, completely enclosed by solid walls. Though still small, she could stand up in it. It had a twin mattress against one wall, and a toilet in the other corner. There was even a small showerhead next to the toilet, with a drain underneath. No curtain. No shower walls.

  She longed for a shower. It’d been so long since she’d had a proper shower, apart from when she was blasted with jets when she arrived here. Though there were luxuries inside this cell, it was completely isolated from anyone else, aside from the small slot in the door that she could look through.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the release of her wrists from the cuffs. Her arms dropped to her sides.

  The guard motioned for her to go inside.

  “Is this… am I getting special treatment?” she asked, the uneasiness evident in her words.

  “I’m sorry.” The guard looked into the corner of the cage.

  She followed his eyes. A conspicuous camera mounted in the corner.

  He looked at the floor as he pulled the gate closed and turned his key in the lock, she heard the click of metal as the latch caught.