Captured

by Johansen, Tina

  He heard her step inside.

  Why hadn’t she just accepted the email from Kirsty? He should have known she’d been a problem. They had only met a handful of times, but she was so opinionated. And she’d been the one to put the idea in Kirsty’s mind. She’d never have left if it wasn’t for Grace. Suddenly he wished she was a stranger so he could have a little fun with her. As things stood, they were connected, and he couldn’t risk being uncovered.

  Damn, he thought. If he’d been clever, he could have drawn Simon over too and implicated him in the whole thing. There was still time; though it would be a bit of a logistical nightmare with Kirsty. No, with two of them now...

  “Kirsty?”

  No. She isn’t worth it. He didn’t have anything here to pin things on Williams.

  Chapter 17

  “Don’t move.”

  Grace’s heart thumped, but she obeyed. Was he going to shoot her? She heard the clink of metal and then, after a beat, a prolonged tearing sound. What was he doing? The question escaped her lips before she could stop herself. He didn’t answer.

  A shadow crossed her face momentarily, before she found herself even more suffocated than before. He had put something else over her head.

  She heard him shuffling around in the closet again; the flump of fabric followed by a long scrape of metal against a something hard. Then the tearing sound. And again.

  Suddenly, he grabbed her arm and turned her around roughly. He tugged her back towards him. Slamming into something hard and flat, she cried out as she felt something pull against her waist. She tried to move away but was held fast. She felt the same drag at her hips, and again at her chest.

  He still hadn’t spoken when he pushed her forward.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. Whatever he had pushed her against was still there: he must have tied her to it.

  He didn’t answer. She had heard a strange echo following the last word. She tried to turn around but he pushed her again.

  They stopped moving.

  She heard nothing for several seconds. Was he still there?

  She heard water run close by, and what sounded like a glass filling. She started when she felt herself move backwards; the water was still running.

  Her feet were off the ground now. She felt herself tilt backwards. The crown of her head met with something cool and hard.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked, trying to free herself from the unnatural position.

  Splashes of water drizzled against the fabric covering her head. She heard the gushing sound soften, but the water kept flowing.

  There was something else on her face now. She felt even more muffled from the world. What was happening? She couldn’t hear Daniel now; didn’t have a sense of whether or not she was in the room.

  She was engulfed. The sudden torrent of cold water knocked the air out of lungs in a sharp exhale. She tried to breathe and the cool wet mass on her face clung to her nostrils, as the water that had seeped in was sucked deep into her lungs.

  She coughed reflexively, gasping for breath against the oppressive weight on her face. She tried to sit up but felt a firm hand on her shoulder curtailing her movement.

  “How did you find me,” he asking, making no move to help her.

  Grace tried to answer, but her words were lost in the strangling gasps that escaped her mouth.

  She felt another blast of cold water; the sound muffled by the layers on her face.

  Suddenly, she felt herself moving upwards, or downwards: she couldn’t tell anymore. The pillowcases were ripped off her head, along with - she saw vaguely – a towel that had been layered on top of them. She saw the legs of an ironing board dangling in the air beside her struggling legs.

  “Neil,” she yelled desperately, water still streaming from her mouth and nostrils.

  “Who?” he asked, expressionless, tipping the balance of the board to lower her upper body again.

  “Neil Lennox. My ex. He works in IT for my company,” she spluttered desperately. “I asked him to trace Kirsty’s email. He found this address.”

  He stopped moving and stared at her.

  “Did you come alone?”

  “Yes, yes. No one knows I’m here.”

  He seemed to consider this a moment, before lowering the board to its original position. “Really?”

  “Really,” she nodded, panicked. “I’m telling the truth. No one knows, not even Neil. Check my phone, check my emails. Please don’t do it again, please.”

  He shook the pillowcases out and made a show of wringing out the towel.

  “Please, don’t. It’ll be worse for you when you’re caught. Let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. No one even knows I’m here.”

  He placed the pillowcases and towels on her face, dulling the sound of her pleas, soon silenced as she felt the claustrophobic dampness pressed against her face.

  “Why couldn’t you just stay away?”

  The third onslaught was worse than the other two – her anticipation of it lengthened the experience. He didn’t bother taking off the coverings when he lifted her up this time. As she bent forward on unsteady feet, trying to cough all the fluid out and regain her breath, she heard the tap twist, silencing the flow. The towel fell off her face, allowing her to gasp in jagged breaths of air.

  He pushed her roughly, the board still affixed to her back, but dragging downwards now; her bonds loosened. He stopped and pulled the sodden cotton off her head without a word. They were back in the living room she saw.

  He reached his hand backwards for his knife; making her wince. Reaching forward, he sliced through the strips of damp cloth that held the board to her. It stood there behind her until he reached further back and pushed it away to the floor. She was motionless, watching him.

  “I trust you’ll take the pills now?” he asked, reaching into his pocket.

  Grace couldn’t control the sob this time. She opened her palm and accepted the unknown pills, watching him unblinkingly as she bent down to pick up the dirty cup.

  Chapter 18

  Kirsty listened. The voices were fainter now. Grace still hadn’t entered her room. She wriggled, but it was futile against the full-body restraints. She tried to scream but the only sound to escape her mouth was a muffled moan. Would Grace hear it? She screamed until her throat hurt, but there was still no sign of Grace.

  It was quiet now. Where was Grace? Had she come alone? Kirsty’s mind raced with the possibilities as time passed. At one point, she thought she heard a dragging noise followed by the soft click of a door closing, but she wasn’t sure. She knew that she’d go insane if she did nothing. She wriggled against her bonds again, hoping she’d notice some tangible loosening this time. It felt as restrictive as the last time. She tried again. No difference.

  Then she heard it. Shuffling and scraping. Then Grace’s voice – unmistakable. The volume made her throat constrict even more: Grace rarely raised her voice, and now she was yelling, and it sounded like she was right outside the door. She sounds desperate, Kirsty thought. The tears were flowing freely now; she inhaled sharply with a sigh and sucked the tight wad of cotton to the back of her throat, choking herself. She exhaled, unable to hear over the gagging noises emanating from her own body; trying to make some room at the back of her throat. Maybe it was better to die than lie here forever. Grace obviously wasn’t in control. Who else would come looking for her?

  She moved her head so she was looking at the ceiling, and tried to quell the instinct to put as much distance between her larynx and the restrictive cloth as she could. Could she do it? Just let herself die here? She inhaled through her mouth again and felt her stomach start to convulse in response. Her mouth was watering; any moment now.

  “Shit!”

  Kirsty had been so focussed that she hadn’t heard the door open. Daniel was by her side before the word had even left his mouth, pulling the sodden fabric away from her. She turned her head in time to dispel a flow of
foul-tasting watery liquid onto the bed and the greasy hair at the side of her face.

  Daniel’s face was ashen. “I’m so sorry Kirsty,” he said, wiping the side of her mouth with a dry section of the sheet. “I didn’t know I’d be gone that long.”

  She looked away, exhausted. Had she missed her only chance? He didn’t say or do anything for a moment, then started to stroke the side of her face with the backs of his fingers, gently pulling away the hair that stuck to the side of her face.

  “Where’s Grace?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  Daniel lay on one of the couches, with his feet resting on the far arm. He had retrieved Grace’s SIM card from his pocket and was now feeding it slowly through his fingers, thoughtfully.

  Over his index finger. How did she find me?

  Under his middle finger. I need more rope.

  Over his ring finger. Puts a dampener on tonight.

  Under his pinkie and over again. Gamble or consolidate.

  He sat still for a moment, summarising his dilemma in his mind. Simon had obviously seen through the group email he’d sent out in light of the flurry of concerned missives he’d received –by way of Kirsty’s email account—about Kirsty’s whereabouts.

  “If you hadn’t sent that fucking email,” he said, kicking Grace’s calf. It was unresponsive; like kicking a corpse. The drugs were working at least, but her pulse was still there; weak, but still there. This annoyed him. He had an overpowering urge to kick her again but resisted. It was about time he stopped acting on impulse, he reasoned.

  She found him. And he’d been so aggravated by her stubborn unresponsiveness that he hadn’t found out how. Grace wasn’t the only person he felt like kicking: how could he have been so stupid? He lay back against the couch.

  The little piece of plastic offered him the opportunity to draw Simon out. He would never go to the police, Daniel was certain. He was growing tired of Simon and Kirsty. This would be the perfect opportunity to get them both out of his life if he wanted. He just wasn’t sure.

  For the first time in his life, he found himself second guessing himself. It was a strange feeling for him.

  Come on Daniel, he urged himself.

  He tried to work it through by turning his options into outcomes like in game theory. Game theory was one of Jones’s fads at the moment; all that repetition must have would its way into his consciousness.

  Simon comes and I kill Kirsty. Simon comes and I keep her. Simon doesn’t and I kill her. Simon doesn’t and I keep her.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, regretting it immediately. He didn’t want Kirsty to hear him lose his temper.

  He snapped the SIM card in half, and didn’t regret it. Let Simon come. Maybe he’d involve him in his other decision.

  He looked down at Grace again. “How did you find me?” he thought back to that day in the internet cafe. No, Kirsty definitely hadn’t had time to send Grace a message. He hadn’t even told her the address: the three of them had walked over together. He had been careful to put his laptop away before he went to find them. His eyes landed on the laptop sitting on the table. “Damn.”

  He remembered now. He’d been working in the apartment, and had absentmindedly clicked out of the window he’d used to proxy into his office PC, and checked Kirsty’s email. The emails from Grace had started arriving straight away and he’d ignored them. But there had been a message sitting in her inbox from her parents.

  He still hadn’t decided what to do about her family and friends. She had told him several times that she wasn’t close to her family. He made a snap decision and wrote a concise reply, letting them know that ‘she’ was taking some time out. He knew they rarely spoke: at the very least he knew it would buy him some time. Grace was a bit more difficult; he had spent far more time composing the message to her, staying as vague as possible.

  Another rash decision, he thought. She’s a bloody lawyer. Of course she thought of tracking my email.

  He rubbed his chin. Several days’ growth prickled against his fingers. Then he remembered the group email he had sent earlier, and exhaled. Even if she had told anyone of her plans, he’d just made her look like a pathetic obsessive. He smiled to himself.

  “Let’s find you somewhere to sleep,” he said neutrally, lifting Grace’s face with his foot as he spoke to her.

  Neil Lennox tapped a pen against his temple, absently staring though the glass wall of his office. His job as head of information security for Calder & Simmons usually kept his mind occupied throughout the day, but he had been unable to concentrate since his brief conversation with Grace Harris days before.

  He had been surprised to hear from her; even more surprised that she was calling from Thailand. It wasn’t like her to take a holiday. It was several hours now since he had sent her the last message, and he had tried calling her five or six times now – her phone went straight to voicemail each time.

  Removing his thick-rimmed glasses, he leaned his bulky frame as far back as the chair would allow and wriggled his shoulders in an attempt to relieve the uncomfortable tension in his muscles. He had discovered several years previously that it didn’t matter how sophisticated or expensive the chair was - it wasn’t going to be comfortable when you were six foot four.

  Closing the threats report he was working on, he hesitated a moment before opening mapworld.com. Clicking back to his email, he quickly found the message with the address Grace had sought, and brought it up on the map. He had spent six months working on a contract in Bangkok some years ago, and was familiar with the city. Frustratingly, there were no street pictures of the location and satellite view offered little detail.

  Sukhumvit... he thought, trying to picture its streets. Hookers and upmarket hotels. It didn’t strike him as the type of place that someone like Kirsty would choose if she had decided to disappear.

  He knew just the man to contact.

  Chapter 19

  Hanging up the phone, Neil Lennox squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. His old friend Mike in Bangkok hadn’t been able to dig up any more information on the apartment, except to confirm that the rent had been prepaid in cash for three months by a young expat.

  Reluctantly, he opened up Grace’s corporate email account. As head of information security, he had company-mandated access to the email accounts of every employee. Quickly scanning her inbox, he noticed two day’s worth of unopened emails. That wasn’t characteristic of Grace, he thought, noting the arrival time of the last email she had read, and checking the delivery time of her last text. She had checked her emails three hours after sending him the message. He opened his sent messages. He had sent her the address in Thailand a few hours before that.

  Shaking his head, he skimmed through the subject lines in her inbox and sent items. There was nothing of a personal nature. He opened a new browser window and hesitated. It had been a long time now since he had accessed anyone’s emails or computer without their permission: it hadn’t ended so well for him the last time. But this was different. Something had happened to Grace, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his fault.

  This has something to do with this Simon guy, he thought, typing in Grace’s username and password, relieved to find that she hadn’t followed his advice and chosen a stronger password, not that that would have been much of an obstacle to him now. Her inbox was filled with a familiar subject line: “Kirsty Anderson”. His attention was drawn to a later subject: “Flight Reservation Confirmation”. Where was she flying to?

  Opening the message, he scanned the message for the destination and departure date. He quickly calculated the time difference. “But she messaged me when she should have been on the flight,” he said to the empty room. He opened several other emails but found nothing of use.

  He looked at his phone for a moment, remembering that she had used her work phone to message him. He returned his focus to his computer, opening a program and typing in a series of codes. Almost immediately, a l
ong list of numbers displayed on his screen: Grace’s recent outgoing and incoming calls and messages. His own number dominated the list. Aside from a couple of one-off numbers, he noticed another series of digits recurring on the list. He picked up his phone and searched for the application he needed.

  Once it had loaded, he copied in the number on the screen, followed by a six digit code, and pressed send. He sat back and waited, out of options. The reply didn’t take long, and cause him to inhale sharply when did. His message had requested a name and home address, and current GPS coordinates of the phone number.

  Simon Lamb, 5 Bayham Street, NW1 0EY. Current location available: 51.5382316 -0.14057346

  He typed the coordinates into the map, and was confused when they showed that Simon was at his home address. He could have camouflaged the location of his computer, but these coordinates were solid. He jotted down the address and left the office.

  Simon didn’t look surprised when he saw who was leaning against his porch. In fact, he looked relieved.

  “Thank god. Come in,” he stood aside and gestured Neil inside. “Did Grace call you? Is Kirsty okay?”

  Neil cleared his throat, appraising Simon. “I noticed you called her several times.”

  Simon seemed to be weighing something up. “Has something happened to Kirsty?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  Simon sighed. “It’s not that simple...”

  “Oh for christ’s sake. Grace called me asking me to trace an IP address in Bangkok. I did, and sent her the address. She... did reply to me after that but I haven’t heard from her since. It’s not like her. Your turn. Why are you so desperate to get in touch with Grace all of a sudden?”

  Simon scratched his head. “I was out of the office for two weeks, and when I came back and saw Grace’s email,” he paused, “you got it, too? About Kirsty not showing up?”

  Neil nodded.