by Elen Chase
"I… I'm a lot better, thank you."
"Also… somebody else accompanied me today," he said. I moved my eyes around, and a man came out of the next room: Nicholas Hutchison.
The two of us took a walk outside, and he confirmed all that I had learned about Dan and Shallie and what happened in that villa.
"I didn't think the friend you were investigating with was him. When I found out about Ms. Wilson's death, it occurred to me that maybe that boy had the knife they were looking for, so I went back to the center to look for him. There I learned that he had come back to Rosedeer and was helping you out. I came here, hoping I could talk to you two, but he had already left, and I was told by Madame Papillon that you were ill. Finally I went back to the center, and here I am now."
"I'm sorry about Ms. Wilson," I said. "You were trying to keep her safe, and I put her even more in danger… on top of it, I was too late in the end."
"It's nobody's fault when these things happen… yet everyone bears the consequences of their mistakes in their own way. When we met last time, I was hard on you. I mostly wanted you to be careful and to rely on others, to prevent you from getting hurt like what happened to Ian… I mean, Dan. I sounded arrogant, and you were right: I talked big and couldn't help anybody."
"I was quite immature too. You're right, it's nobody's fault. And you managed to help him, didn't you? You brought Dan away from that place. I'll never thank you enough for that."
"I heard about your plan from your friend Sara. You did well until now."
"Once this is over, I will need you. Or more like, I will need all the evidence you've gathered until now."
"Of course, you can count on me," he told me with a polite smile. "You remind me a little of Bart Jr. Determined, bright and always drawing people to you. It's a compliment."
I felt strangely happy to hear that. I wondered if it was really the case, though "… thank you, I guess," I said, fazed.
“Even in the darkest days, that man was able to raise everyone's spirit. From the way your friends talk about you, it seems you’re good at doing the same.”
"That’s good to hear, considering I’ve hit rock bottom in the past month. But it’s true that I don't want them to think that something might happen to us. I really need everyone to stay positive, myself included."
“I respect that, I really do.”
◆◆◆
"So, we'll be leaving now," said Miller once we returned from our walk. "Please keep me informed on Dan's situation."
"Sure," I said.
"Sara, it was a pleasure to meet you," he added and greeted her kissing her hand. That gesture bothered me considerably.
"The pleasure is mine, Mark." She flushed red. Do women still fall for that sort of thing?
After the door closed behind his back, I stared at Sara. "Mark?" I said.
"Why the disgusted face?" she asked me, smiling.
"What was that? That old man is creepy."
"Come on, it was just his way of being nice," she said.
"Oh really… then why didn't he kiss her hand too?" I pointed at the old lady.
"Leave me out of this, kid," said the old lady, whose attention seemed captured entirely by her coffee pot.
"He kissed your hand," I continued, "because you’re young and beautiful, and creepy old men love young and beautiful women."
"Drew, first of all he's not an old man, he's just forty-two." She talked to me like I was a little kid. "Then you're misjudging him, he's a real gentleman. You don't often meet men like him."
"There's a fourteen-year gap! And forty-two is definitely old, right Madam?"
"You've pissed me off enough Drew. I give you five seconds to leave my house before I start shooting," she said, now drinking her coffee with an evil look in her eyes. There I realized the gaffe I had just made.
"I apologize!" I exclaimed, but she kicked me out of her house for real. Sara came out with me, laughing, and we went to my apartment, where Sean was waiting for me while working on his software to crack the cameras. I sat on the couch by his side.
"What's with the long face?" he said when he saw me.
"Sara likes Dan's uncle."
"What?" said Sean.
"Drew just has a great deal of imagination, Sean." She slowly shook her head. There were no signs of nervousness or tension in her attitude, so maybe she really didn't like him. "He's a handsome man, though," she said.
"Seriously?" I questioned.
"Must be the blue eyes," added Sean.
"You shut up… and why are you still here?"
"Checking on you, in case you try to kill yourself again."
"What?" I said.
"How old is he anyway?" asked Sean to Sara.
"Forty-two," she replied.
"Too old."
"See? He thinks that too."
"And maybe he's married," hinted Sean.
"No, he's single." Sure thing, she knew a lot for not being interested in him.
"Divorced, even worse," I said.
"He never got married." Now she was starting to look a little annoyed.
"Suspicious," he said, turning my way, "maybe he's gay."
"Stop looking at me when you say that."
"Enough," said Sara, her hands on our heads, securing a tight grip on our hair. "Do you want to eat your dinner tonight or not?" she asked with an unusual evil smile.
"Dinner, dinner please," I said, and she let us go.
I was glad to have them by my side in those days Dan wasn't with me. Even though a single instant didn't pass without me thinking of him, I was glad I wasn't alone. I wondered if he was feeling lonely, if he was thinking of me, and if he was crying. I wanted to see him more than anything else.
Chapter 71
Days passed, and the designed time to go place that camera in the bunker finally came. Sean easily hacked their security camera so they wouldn't see me enter the trapdoor. It was located at the bottom of the hill of the old graveyard, under some bushes, in a well hidden position considering that all the land behind it was Domme's private property. I uncovered the trapdoor and went down a staircase to a corridor. The light was turned on, and I walked toward the main entrance. Like Jim had said, it was a blinded door which needed an access code to go in, but it didn't seem to require any other special system. Nervously I took out of my backpack the camera Jim had spent a fortune to find for us. It was smaller than a nail, transparent and able to record in HD. I opened a software connected to it on my watchpad, which allowed me to see on the hologram what it was recording, and I began to look for the best position to place the camera in order to see the code. When I finally found it, the very same door I was working on suddenly opened.
It's over, I thought. We never saw anybody go in; there wasn't supposed to be anyone around. I screwed up. Before I could react and try to run away, a strong grip on my neck pushed me to the wall, with all the intention to strangle me.
"Look who we have here." Joseph Finnick seemed to have been looking forward to it. I moved my hand to my pocket as fast as I could, took out a cutter and stabbed him in the arm. The pain distracted him for but a moment, in which I kicked him in the ribs and managed to free myself. Despite my best intention to run away, my body was blocked in a strong coughing fit, desperately trying to regain breath. He stood up immediately, flashing hatred at me through his eyes, and I realized he must be unarmed, or he would have shot me already. He rushed on me, and I managed to dodge, rolling on the floor. His attacks seemed somehow more uncertain and weaker compared to the last time we had fought.
"I'm tired of you, brat," he screamed at me. "You've been sneaking around too much!" He was out of his mind. As Bill taught me, the one who loses his cool first has already lost. I ran toward the stairs leading out with him on my trail. I climbed up a few steps and then turned around to jump on him with my arm pressing on his neck. I shoved him down, hoping his head would hit the floor, but his reflexes were too good for that. The sudden realization of the presence of my
gun in my backpack, fallen on the floor beside the blinded door, determined my next move. I jumped up and ran to it, ignoring the absurd speed at which he stood up, ready to attack me again. I don’t know how, but he figured out what I was trying to do and jumped forward, grabbed me by my leg, making me lose balance and hit the ground. Fortunately, I was close enough; I took my gun in my right hand, turned around and pointed it at him, just to find him ready to hit me with the cutter I had stabbed him with before. A single second of delay and he would have cut my throat. Blood froze in my veins as I was asking myself what to do next; I have to shoot him. It's my only way out. I didn't want to become a murderer. Dan had also told me that he didn't want that for me. But I had to see him again. That thought alone was enough to make my determination grow stronger. Strong enough to kill someone.
However, something was off.
Finnick was standing still, as if he was waiting for it. Is he hiding something?
"Shoot," he said, "even a pussy like you can't miss from this distance."
"Why?" I asked, my finger heavy on the trigger.
"I'll count down to one, and if you don't shoot, I'm killing you."
"You weren't taking it seriously." I was trying to understand, more thinking out loud than actually talking to him.
"Nine," he said.
"Why? You really tried to kill me last time."
"Seven."
"What changed?"
"Six."
"You're the trustworthy assistant of the leader."
"Four."
"You'd kill anyone for him."
"Three."
"Or maybe not."
"Two."
"You know the victim."
He stopped counting. Bingo.
"That's how it is. You know the victim this time."
"The order is the pillar of this world. Sacrifices are necessary," he said.
"But you can't murder her. To the point that you're ready to be killed here, now, just to avoid seeing her die."
"What we're doing is right!" he shouted. "It’s all for the sake of our children's future. To avoid the catastrophe to fall on this world!"
"No," I shook my head, "your boss started this because he's insane… He planted those ideas in your head so that you would execute his orders with no buts."
"You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Who is she?" I insisted. "Your girlfriend? Wife? I bet she was chosen among your relatives to keep the casualties to a minimum. If not even her family cares, things just get easier."
"I care for my sister. But this is not human; what decided her destiny is transcendental."
"So she's your sister," I couldn't help thinking of An. "I’m sick of you, I think I'll shoot you for real. But first let me tell you one thing; my sister and my girlfriend died because of a pack of fanatics following a mad man in his psychopathic fetish. And even if you die here to avoid looking at it, your sister will be killed by those very people. And her death will be useless, because this world, for how corrupted and disgusting it might turn out to be, is not gonna end anyway."
"You have no right to disgrace our belief."
"But you have the right to disgrace her life. All to please those fishy old men. I wonder to what point their necrophilia takes them. Do they take pictures of the corpses? Or maybe they have fun with them at the end of the ritual, passing it for a propitiatory charm?"
"How dare you," he said, through clenched teeth.
"Deny it," I said. "Tell me that it's impossible."
"The cult doesn't do these things."
"But they could. What’s to prevent it? They can just find an ambiguous sentence in that book and interpret it to pass it as an important ceremony. Guess what, they can bend the rules at their will. It's not that a dead body is gonna complain after all."
"Shut up!" he screamed.
"You can save her, damn it!" I screamed louder than him. "I was too late! An and Shallie died without me knowing shit!" I let go of the gun, grabbed him by the collar and head-butted him. "You’re still in time, yet you're gonna have her killed anyway!"
"I should betray all I've believed in for years, then? For my own personal attachment to the sinner?"
I was tired of that absurd conversation. "Yes," I said, catching breath. On his knees in front of me, he was looking into my eyes, contemplating all I had said to him.
"Can you save her?" he asked me, after a moment of silence, his voice giving away his uncertainty.
"I can," I replied, "if you don’t sell me off or kill me now."
"Are you going to murder us all?" he asked, and he looked ready to accept any answer I was going to give him.
"I'm not like you," I told him.
"You want to put us in jail?" he said, with an ironic smile. "Naive brat."
"I'll save your sister's life. That's all you need to know."
"That’s a camera." He passed his gaze on the instruments fallen from my backpack.
"I need the door code to get inside in time to save her."
"Pure blind luck you got me," he told me, and he threw me a small black device on which a red signal was showing the sign “ALARM DOOR 1”.
"What’s this?" I carefully looked at it.
"An alarm telling me you’d entered the trapdoor. The door is furnished with a motion detector," he explained. Fuck. We had considered the most technological security systems and we fell for a stupid motion detector like the ones they have in shopping malls. "But as I said, you were lucky, because I am the only one to have this thing." He took it back and deleted the alarm signal. "You win, brat," he said. "I want to save my sister."
"How can I be sure you’re not gonna betray me when push comes to shove?"
"I won’t ask you about your plan. I’ll just pretend I never saw you."
"Fine," I said, "but you’ll answer my questions."
"What do you want to know?"
"‘ALARM DOOR 1’ means there’s also a door 2, am I right?" Also because we were controlling the area and their security camera, and we never saw anybody getting in from where I entered.
"Right. Inside the bunker there’s a tunnel leading to an exit in the grove of Mr. Domme’s property. That’s where we usually enter from." That implied they could also run away from there. Good to know.
"Show me inside. You're alone, aren't you?"
"I am. Come with me." I pointed again the gun at him.
"Remember that you and I won’t be the only ones to die if you try to trick me."
"I know. But you’re smart to remind me." He went ahead, showing me the way. The inside of the bunker was a big hall, already equipped for the ritual; in the middle of the room the altar was placed with five chairs circled around it, and on the ground lay various candles, that assumed the shape of a spiral when seen from above. At the center of the altar, resting on their symbol, was a thin knife with a decorated handle and a scabbard protecting the blade. I immediately thought of Dan, but I forced myself to stay lucid to avoid ruining everything. If Finnick was planning to betray me, asking about Dan would only put him in danger; also I had to focus to put the new information I had learned into use. I was unable to understand who was coming and going from that place, and I couldn’t trust Finnick to cover for me again if I were to be back there a second time. I had to place the camera inside now; it was my only way of success. But I didn’t want to do it in front of him, but I didn’t trust him enough to ask him to go out and leave me inside alone either.
"I’ll give you the code to enter, if that’s all you need," he said.
"It’s not all," I said. "There’s something I have to do in this room."
"Something you don’t want me to see."
"Better for you, so you won’t have to fake surprise when the day comes," I told him, "but I don’t trust you to go out while I’m here." I noticed next to the door a toolbox. I opened it and I found a small bottle inside of it.
"It’s chloroform," he said.
"Chloroform? Seems like a throwback t
o another century."
"I’m a soldier, not a fairy."
"I got it," I said. "I'm going to use this on you and put you to sleep. Is that fine?"
He looked at me, suspicious; I could tell he was still processing the fact that he had just decided to betray all he had believed in for years.
"Fuck it," he said, "let's do this."
"But first you have to give me the code to get in and tell me exactly where the other entrance is."
He passed me the code to open the door, letting me try it twice to verify it really worked, and later he explained to me the exact location of the second door and the whole path it was following to the bunker. Then he breathed in the chloroform and lost consciousness. Once he was knocked out, I first placed the camera inside the room, like we had planned to do during my second visit to the bunker. Then I went back to the corridor and cleaned up the drops of blood which had fallen from the cut I made on his arm. Trusting him was risky, but at least I could control his actions thanks to the communications coming to Domme's watchpad that we were still monitoring. If he decided to betray me, I was sure to find out.
I left that place, finally just a step from the end of it all.
Two days later Ray and Nick brought us news of Cruise, the poison maker that had escaped from the casino. They found him in his old laboratory, absorbed in his test tubes, making God knows what. He didn’t even try to resist when they brought him back to his prison. He never revealed who let him out or for what purpose.
Chapter 72
The soldier really didn't betray me. In the following days everything proceeded smoothly, with the sect finalizing their next murder and us controlling them from a distance, thanks to our camera and the indications the soldier had given me. I was quite busy organizing everything on our end too; Sean and his friend Martin, from Bill's group, were having fun hacking blogs, social networks, tabloids and private TV networks, getting ready to spread the images from that camera worldwide. I did my part too and got in touch with William Walker, the journalist Dan and I met as the first stop when we started our investigation. I talked with him, explained in detail all we had found out, and he promised me he would be on the front line during that night.