by Sean Black
Carmen closed the bathroom door behind her. She was light-headed and her legs felt alien, like ghostly appendages that might, at any time, stop supporting her weight.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her long hair was greasy, dank and tangled, her face was puffy, her eyes dull. She splashed some water over her face, trying to shake off the sensation that her brain had been wrapped in cotton wool.
Crossing to the tub, she pulled back the plastic curtain, and turned on the shower, which ran directly into the bath. She got in and set to work quickly scrubbing the worst of the grime from her body, and the blood that had dried between her thighs.
A minute was all she would allow. She counted down from sixty as she cleaned up. At one, she left the shower running, and quietly stepped out, dried off, and broke open the box of tampons.
She removed a tampon, ripped open the packaging, and inserted it. She dried off, grabbed the shorts, bra and T-shirt she’d been given. Her hair was even more tangled. That couldn’t be helped. She had maybe three minutes left of the time she’d been allotted. She hoped it would be enough.
She walked the three feet to the door, and slowly turned the handle. She would pop her head out and, if he was there, she’d ask for toothpaste and a toothbrush.
And if he wasn’t, if the corridor was empty, she’d make her move. If she was caught after that, she would take whatever was coming.
* * *
That goddamn dog.
It was out there in the yard, barking its fool head off about something. A few days before it had cornered a cat under the house. Rance had practically had to Taser the damn thing before it would give up digging. That was all they needed, some little old lady coming round looking for her missing kitty and seeing a woman tied to the bed.
He could hear the shower running. She’d be good for a few more minutes yet, and it wasn’t as if the bathroom window was big enough for her to climb out of.
He walked outside and called to the dog. “Hey, Bito. Here, boy.”
The dog loped across to him and stuck its muzzle into his groin. He pushed its head away and it growled. It looked up, saw the mask and started barking, the ridges on its back quivering. Not a good sign.
Rance peeled off the mask. The dog seemed to calm a little, but kept barking. Rance pulled another frozen chicken foot from the bag he was holding, opened the truck door, and tossed the foot in. The dog took off after it. Rance slammed the door. It would have to stay there for now.
He walked back to the house. It was time to tell the woman that shower time was over. She should get her ass dried and back in the bedroom. In the kitchen, without thinking, he put his mask on the table.
Outside the bathroom door, he stopped and knocked. He could still hear the hiss of the shower. What was it with women and long-ass showers? Growing up, Rance had had three sisters and getting into the bathroom had proved a near impossibility. And when he did get in, there was never any warm, never mind hot, water left.
He knocked on the door again, this time a little more insistently. “Hey, time to wrap it up in there.”
The shower stayed on. He didn’t want to barge in on her, like some pervert, but she was testing the limits of his patience.
He knocked a third time. “Okay, I’m going to count to ten, and if that shower ain’t stopped, I’m coming in, whether you’re decent or not. Y’hear me?”
* * *
As Carmen flitted past the truck, a huge caramel-brown dog lunged against the window, barking frantically, its teeth bared. Not that she needed any encouragement to speed up, but she did, sprinting for a copse a hundred yards away. The trees were about the only cover she’d seen anywhere near the house. Otherwise the only feature was the rough dirt track running up to the house.
With no idea how long it would take to reach a road, and other people, from the track, she’d decided to make for the trees, where at least she’d be concealed from immediate view of the house.
As she ran, small rocks and the hard scrabble ground cut into the soles of her feet. She picked her steps with more care, but that only slowed her down. She tried to block out the pain and discomfort and kept running.
Slowly, she found sensation returning to her body. The fog in her brain began to clear. It was as if her body was on auto-pilot.
One foot in front of the other, she told herself. That was all she needed to do.
She’d had frightening experiences before. Things she’d thought she would never get through. Her first time in court had been one. As stupid as it might have seemed, that had been almost as scary as being kidnapped. Maybe worse, because here she had only herself to worry about. In front of a judge, she had shouldered the responsibility for another human being.
Her right ankle folded under her. She stopped, brought up short by the fresh jolt of pain. For the first time, she dared to glance behind her. She couldn’t see anything, apart from the dog locked inside the cab of the truck, its vast square head pistoning up and down as it barked at her. Its chest heaved and the ridges along its back rippled so hard that Carmen shivered with terror. If it was between a kidnapper with a gun and this monster of a dog, she would take her chance with an itchy trigger finger every time.
Come on, Carmen. It’s a twisted ankle.
She pushed on toward the copse. Soon she had breached the tree line, and was hidden from the house. She sank down, her back to a tree trunk, and massaged her ankle.
Gingerly, she stood up again, placing more weight on the ankle. It was painful, but she was sure she had only twisted it. At worst, it was a sprain. Something she could power through. She moved forward through the trees.
Twenty feet later she had reached the tree line on the other side. She blinked, not sure whether she could believe what she was staring at. A road. A big, beautiful two-lane blacktop road.
In the distance she could see a car on the horizon. It was heading straight toward her.
Tears of sheer relief welled in her eyes. She was safe. Or at least within touching distance. She stepped out onto the blacktop and held her arms up above her head, ready to flag down the car that was heading straight toward her.
37
Rance kicked open the door. The bathroom was empty. She must have snuck out of the house when he was dealing with the dog. Point was going to be P-I-S-S-E-D. But only if he found out. If Rance could get her back before that, there was no need for Point to know.
Outside, the dog was still barking. Man, that was all he needed.
He caught himself.
The dog. Of course.
Why go hunting for this stupid beaner bitch when he could let the dog do the job for him? Hell, Bito lived for shit like this. He’d think he’d died and gone to doggy heaven.
Rance walked back into the bathroom. He looked around for something that would have her scent. It didn’t take long.
Perfect.
He reached down to the floor and came back up with a pair of blood-stained panties. Pinching the edge between his thumb and forefinger, he ran back out.
At the truck, Bito was practically foaming at the mouth. Rance pulled his Taser from its holster, just in case the dog turned on him. They had a shock collar for it, but Point got all sensitive about using it on Bito.
Rance pulled out the key fob and lowered the window. He shoved the bloodied panties through the gap. The dog pushed its muzzle into the cloth. Its tail whipped back and forth with excitement as it inhaled the scent.
“Okay, Bito. You ready?”
Rance stepped to the side of the truck, the Taser in his hand, and ripped open the door. The Ridgeback bounded out. It swung round to look up at Rance. His hand tightened around the trigger of the Taser. “Go on, Bito. Seek!”
That was the command he’d heard Point use with the dog. It worked. The dog’s head slumped forward. It nosed the ground. It moved forward, sniffing. It began to head toward the trees.
That made sense, Rance thought. Make for cover.
The dog padded forward, its nose still glued to the gro
und. Rance fell in behind it, the Taser still gripped in his hand. He might not have to use it on the dog. But he had a feeling he’d be using it real soon.
* * *
The car slowed as Carmen flagged it down. She could see a woman behind the wheel. No other passengers. The woman had long blond hair, and was wearing a T-shirt. She stopped the car next to Carmen, doubt entering her eyes as she saw her bedraggled state. For a second Carmen thought she might drive on.
Carmen motioned at the woman to lower the window. To her immense relief, she did, the window gliding down and the woman leaning out.
“Please, I need a ride.”
The woman looked at her. “Where?”
“Anywhere. Wherever the nearest police precinct house is. Or if we see a patrol car we could flag it down.”
The woman was still staring at her.
She was freaking her out with all this talk of cops. And she was probably speaking too fast. She must look like some crazy lady, probably high on meth, who had just crawled out of the woods behind them.
Carmen took a deep breath. “I know I look . . .”
The woman’s expression was slowly shifting from one of puzzlement to something approaching nerves, all the way on through to fear. It took Carmen a second to register that she wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the woods behind her.
Carmen glanced round. The dog that been in the truck, the huge brown one, was running through the trees. It was headed straight for them. A ways behind it, she could see a figure following, struggling to keep up.
The woman was fumbling to open the rear door. Carmen grabbed the handle. It was locked.
“Please, open it,” she screamed at the driver.
“I’m trying,” the woman yelled back, panic-stricken.
The dog was getting close. A few seconds and it would be right on top of her.
The more panicked they became, the more the woman fumbled. Finally there was a click. Now Carmen could hear the dog, as it raced, panting, toward the car. She could hear the man too. “Go on, Bito. Go on!” he shouted.
Carmen grabbed the door handle. This time it opened. She launched herself into the back seat.
“Close it!” the driver screamed. “Close the door!”
Carmen twisted round, and made a grab for the door. She slammed it just as the dog reached the blacktop a few yards in front of the car.
There was a reassuring clunk as the woman hit a button to lock all the doors. Meanwhile, the dog had skidded to a halt, its back legs shooting out behind it as it struggled to keep its balance and gain traction on the road surface.
It was Carmen’s turn to scream. “Drive!”
The dog was facing the car. It wasn’t barking, just staring intently at them.
The driver had frozen, her hands gripping the steering wheel tight. She was staring at the huge dog as it began to move to the side of the car. She reached down and placed the car in Drive. The color had completely drained from her face.
Carmen wanted to reach into the front and slap her. “Hit the gas, lady.”
The woman seemed to finally snap out of her terror-induced daze. “Right,” she said, her foot moving to the gas pedal.
Suddenly the dog launched itself at the driver’s window. There was the sound of shattering glass, quickly followed by a series of growls, and the sound of tearing flesh. Instinctively, Carmen pushed herself into a corner of the back seat as the dog set about the blond woman.
With its back legs still outside the car, its teeth clamped around her neck. Its front paws came up, raking their way down her chest, tearing first her shirt and then into her flesh.
Blood spattered across the inside of the windshield. The woman’s screams only seemed to drive the huge animal into more of a frenzy. It let go of her neck, and Carmen’s could see its muzzle was covered with blood.
More blood arced across the seats and the windshield as the attack continued. The dog’s back legs raked frantically against the side of the driver’s door as it forced its way further inside the cabin. Its weight pressed down on the woman’s chest, pinning her into her seat as it clamped its jaws around the top of her head, and slowly began to peel her scalp away from her skull.
Carmen was in the very corner of the back seat now. She reached her hand back, feeling for the handle. Even though her captor had to be outside, she had to get out of the car. If she stayed it would be a matter of time before the dog turned on her. If she had to die, she didn’t want to die like that.
The tips of her fingers found the groove of the handle and she pulled it back. The door opened and she tumbled out backwards. The driver’s screams had fallen away to silence.
Lying on her back, Carmen pushed herself to the other side of the road. She could still see the dog’s torso pressing the driver back into her seat, but the blood spatters thankfully spared her any more detail.
There was the sound of a Taser crackling. The dog gave a whimpering cry. Another shot. The dog twitched, the arc of its spine arching, then slumped forward, its head flopping onto the dashboard.
Carmen looked up to see a man holding a Taser standing above her, looking down. The mask was gone. She was surprised by how young, almost boyish, he looked. He had blue eyes and sandy-brown hair. Only his stare, hard and unflinching, told the story of who he was. He pocketed the Taser, coming back up with a handgun.
“Look what you done,” he said, waving the gun toward the blood-soaked interior of the car. He reached down and grabbed Carmen by the hair. He hauled her up and onto her feet. The gun prodding painfully into her spine, he drove her round to the driver’s side of the car.
“You stand there,” he told her. “Move and, so help me God, I’ll kill you right here.”
She did as she was told. She had no other choice.
She watched as he opened the driver’s door and hauled the the dog out of the car, grabbed its collar, opened the rear door and manhandled it into the back seat.
When that was done, he cut the woman’s seatbelt with a knife and shoved her across into the passenger seat. He got out and waved the gun once more at Carmen.
“Get in.”
Shaking uncontrollably, she clambered into the back seat with the dog. It panted and drooled thick gobs of bloody saliva but otherwise it was quiet. The gunman climbed into the driver’s seat, spun the wheel and drove the car off the road and into the woods. Threading his way carefully through the copse, he brought them back to the house.
When they got there, he ordered Carmen out. They were both covered with blood, their clothes saturated. He moved the dog back into the kennel area before coming back to get her. Ordering her out of the car, he marched her straight into the bedroom, made her lie down, then tied and cuffed her to the bed.
He walked out of the bedroom, slamming the door and cursing under his breath. A few minutes later she smelled gasoline. Then she saw the orange glow through the bedroom window as he torched the car.
Finally, there came the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh.
38
About an hour after the stench had been carried off on the wind, the bedroom door opened. Carmen had been staring at the ceiling, scared to close her eyes because each time she did she relived what had happened in the car.
She twisted her head round. The man stood in the doorway. No mask.
“You can get a shower in a little while. If you want to,” he told her. He sounded sad more than angry.
She knew his dispensing with the mask was bad news. Kidnap victims who had seen their captors were less likely to be released alive. Especially in cases where the kidnappers had gone to great pains to conceal their identity.
“Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t warn her about trying to escape. He didn’t have to. Not after how her first attempt had ended.
39
It was dark by the time Ty and Lock pulled into the parking lot of Casey’s Irish pub in Lancaster, forty-five miles north-east of Los Angeles. Lancaster was less than twenty miles
from the army base at which the email had been sent. The proximity of the meeting to the base wasn’t a coincidence.
Ty sat next to him, his cell phone in his left hand, his right resting on the butt of his gun. They were waiting for a phone call from someone who might be able to tell them more about what they’d discovered.
Those few frames of security-camera footage had finally given them the break they needed to find Carmen. At least, that was Lock’s hope. More detailed examination of the images had not only confirmed Ty’s hunch about the tattoo, it had narrowed the field from ‘These guys look and act like people with military training’ to something much more specific. They needed a guide to this uncharted territory. Ty had hit his contact list hard and, after a lot of false hope and dead-ends, had found someone.
They were there to meet with an infantry staff sergeant by the name of Kyle Miller, a multi-tour combat veteran, still serving out what was likely his last few years. His value to them was two-fold. First, he had inside knowledge of the precise unit they were looking at. Second, and perhaps most crucially, he was prepared to talk, albeit off the record.
Ty’s cell buzzed. He tapped the answer icon. “Yeah?”
He listened for a second and gave Lock a nod. It was Miller. “Got it,” said Ty, ending the brief call. “He’s inside. Back booth. Said we can’t miss him.”
* * *
Miller was correct. He was hard to miss. Even sitting down, he was a mountain of a man. He sat, as promised, staring into his beer, at a booth in the very back of Casey’s. The bar was crowded enough that they had to muscle their way through the crowd to get to him.
Lock pushed his way through the crush at the bar as Ty went to sit down with Miller. With a twenty held out in front of him, he managed to wave down one of three bartenders. He ordered three beers.
Someone nudged his elbow. He looked round. A guy with a John Deere ball cap scowled at him. “Hey, buddy, I was next.”