by Mary Stone
This time, the familiar voice triggered a visceral reaction. Gabe’s internal organs mashed together into a single, giant lump before plunging to the soles of his feet. His head jerked backward, snapping his teeth shut in the process.
Laughter boomed out. Sinister. Familiar. A sound that had haunted his nightmares for far too long for Gabe to deny the truth any longer.
Del Rey and Kingsley were one and the same.
“So, what do you think of my new look? A nice change, don’t you agree? The old one was getting a little dated.”
Del Rey/Kingsley presented Gabe with his left profile first, then his right. Like they were old buddies, discussing the results of a little Botox. Gabe tasted bile and wished he could will himself back into unconsciousness. Anything to escape this living nightmare. “H-how?”
“A good plastic surgeon can do wonders these days. Not that you’d have any reason to know that, what with your exquisite bone structure and skin. A shame, really, to carve up such a beautiful face, but what can you do when the boy you pulled out of the gutter and granted a new life stabs you in the back?”
Del Rey/Kingsley began whistling as he examined each of the knives on display. Gabe wanted to close his eyes but found himself glued to every detail of the horror movie in which he starred. Del Rey selected a long, thin weapon and tested the sharpness of the blade on his index finger. A red drop welled up at the faintest touch. Red, like the blood that had spurted from that man in the video’s head.
That man. The video. Oh god. The awful reality crashed over him like ice water in a snowstorm. This was the same room from the video.
The room where Gabe had condemned a stranger to death.
Gabe started shivering and couldn’t stop.
“Excellent, Milos. Thank you for getting these into tip-top shape for tonight’s festivities.”
Kingsley bounded to his feet and approached, waving the knife like a baton. Gabe’s gaze flitted between the shiny blade and the strange new face. Back and forth, like a metronome. As if his panicked brain was struggling to choose the bigger threat.
Gabe swallowed the plea climbing up his swollen throat. Gabe knew his former boss well enough to accept the truth. Sociopaths like Kingsley delighted in the suffering they inflicted. Begging would only push the sociopath’s joy over the top. Gabe’s eyes fixated on the knife, and he trembled. Not that Gabe was deluding himself about his pain tolerance. Sooner or later, Kingsley would break him. Probably sooner.
Like Gabe’s racing mind was an open book, Kingsley cackled, and his eyes glittered. “Aren’t you adorable, showing some backbone? We’ll see how long that lasts as the night progresses.” Those odd brown fingers reached out for Gabe’s leg, causing his entire body to tense, but all he did was smooth the material of Gabe’s pants. “There, that’s better.”
Kingsley lifted his arms up high, and for a solitary, breathtaking moment, Gabe hoped he might retreat.
“Now, let the games begin.”
Metal sparkled overhead. In a blur of silver and flesh, the knife whizzed past Gabe’s face and plunged into his thigh. White-hot pain seared his quad.
Drawing on an internal strength he’d never realized existed, Gabe bit back the first scream. The second scream wrenched free. By the third scream, Gabe stopped counting.
Pain swallowed him whole as Kingsley sawed tiny squares into Gabe’s muscle and plucked them out one by one.
23
By the time Clay parked their SUV rental in front of the driveway of Gabe’s neat little McMinnville safe house, Ellie had already chewed off all the nails on her left hand. The hour-long drive from Portland to the suburb had started out pleasant enough, but toward the end, every mile they traveled increased the anxious twist of Ellie’s gut.
She grimaced at her self-manicure, glad her mother wasn’t there to witness her failing. Nice young ladies keep their fingers out of their mouths. How many times had Ellie stuffed her hands under her thighs at the dinner table to hide the evidence, only for Helen Kline to arch one of her cool reddish brows until Ellie caved and allowed her to assess the damage? Too many to count.
Oh well. Ellie felt certain that nice young ladies also didn’t inspect dead bodies, or study blood spatter patterns, or chase serial killers all over the country, either. Good thing she’d given up on fitting into that well-mannered Southern belle mold a long time ago.
Ellie checked her phone one more time, deflating when her screen showed zero new alerts. Still no word from Gabe. She raked her teeth over her lower lip and jumped out of the SUV. The sooner Gabe contacted her, the quicker her stomach would end its internal tumbling act. She spotted Clay waiting for her on the brick path, so she broke into a jog to catch up.
As she and Clay approached, Frank unfolded his tall frame from where he sat on the front porch. “Any word yet?”
Ellie shook her head, sending a jolt of pain down the back of her neck. One of the many downsides of air travel mixed with stress. She massaged the taut muscle while Frank tossed Clay a small cardboard box. Clay plucked two latex gloves from the opening and passed the box to Ellie. After she slipped her own gloves on, Ellie covered her shoes with a pair of blue paper booties. Gratitude that Frank had covered their bases filled her. Best to preserve the scene, just in case.
Once she was ready, Frank bent down to shove the key into the front door. The lock clicked, and the marshal ushered them into a tidy, well-lit home with an open floor plan. “Divide and conquer?”
Ellie nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s start in the back of the house and work our way out? I’ll take the hallway bathroom.”
Clay nodded. “Frank and I can split the bedrooms.”
Single file, they headed down the hall. Ellie flicked on the bathroom light and settled in to search. She divided the room into four quadrants, beginning on the top left with the medicine cabinet. Only three items were inside. After popping the top off the deodorant and checking for hidden items underneath the white stick, she discarded the tube and moved on from the cabinet to the mirror and counter. She continued her search, slow and methodical, pulling out the drawers all the way to ensure nothing was taped beneath them and testing every toiletry item to check for hiding spots.
Nothing yet, so she moved over to the toilet and removed the lid to peer into the tank. Clear. The porcelain clattered when she replaced the lid. So far, not even the tiniest of clues, at least in the bathroom. Ellie straightened and prepared to move on.
“Got something!”
At Clay’s announcement, Ellie raced to the bedroom. She skidded to a stop inside the door. Over by the bed, Clay gripped a tiny plastic square between his thumb and pointer finger. “What did you find?”
Clay glowered at the object in his hand. “This was taped under his nightstand.”
Ellie hurried over, baffled by Clay’s reaction. When she got close enough to identify the thin square, she wanted to scream. A SIM card. Dammit, Gabe.
Frank’s mouth drooped. “Whelp. At least now we know how he was found. What the hell was he playing at, taking a risk like that?”
Ellie wished they could question Gabe in person to find answers. She checked her phone again. Nothing. Her stomach lurched, kicking off a fresh somersaulting routine. “I’m done in the bathroom, so I’ll take the closet.”
She opened the door of the small walk-in. Not much inside beyond hangers and a few discarded t-shirts. A single pair of gray tennis shoes sat in the middle of the scuffed wooden floor. Ellie didn’t expect to find much, but she took her time anyway, carefully inspecting each item. Was the SIM card really the only reason Kingsley had tracked Gabe?
After examining and discarding the shirts, Ellie sighed and picked up the first tennis shoe. She checked the laces, the tread, removed the sole, and shined her flashlight app inside while her fingers felt for any inconsistencies. Nothing there, so she replaced that shoe and moved on to the second one, repeating her process all over again.
Once again, she detected nothing in the laces or the tread
. But when she pulled up the insert and traced her fingers over the material, her breath caught. Was that a slim crack in the lining on the interior side, halfway to the toe box? She aimed her camera light at the spot and spied a narrow slit. Too perfectly straight to be a tear.
Praying that, in her desperation, her mind wasn’t conjuring leads out of nothing, Ellie pried open the crevice with her remaining intact nails and turned the shoe upside down. A tiny disc fell to the floor. “Uh, guys? I don’t think Gabe taking risks was the only reason Kingsley found him.”
She scooped up the minuscule device, no bigger in diameter than a Cheerio and less than a tenth as wide. Clay appeared over her shoulder to investigate what she’d found, so she lifted her palm to show him. “GPS tracker in his shoe. Maybe part of Gabe being found is on him because he hung on to that SIM card, but my guess is that a big part is due to the very smart man with nearly unlimited resources who was determined to hunt him down.”
“Can I see that?”
Ellie passed the tracker to Frank, whose expression turned pained. “Damn, that’s on me. I should have caught this. I thought when we moved him to the new safe house…”
Clay shook his head. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. That was a reasonable assumption to make. Plus, this device is so tiny, not many of us would have known to look for it until after the fact.”
The marshal’s dejected posture didn’t ease up, so Ellie decided to distract him. “How was Gabe acting these past few days? Did you notice anything different?”
Frank straightened. His brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure. There was this one time where his eyes looked a little red, but I figured—” A loud ringing interrupted him. Frank dug his phone out of his pocket. “Excuse me one second.”
Ellie and Clay continued searching the room until Frank’s footsteps thudded down the hallway. He reappeared in the doorway, his ruddy skin ashen beneath his dark hair.
Ellie’s heart stalled. Gabe. “What’s wrong?”
“That was the home office in D.C. One of the secretaries there and her two children were killed in a car accident. I knew the family, so they called to let me know.”
Ellie’s initial relief over not hearing bad news about Gabe gave way to sorrow. “Oh no, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. What a tragedy. Those poor kids.”
Clay clapped a hand on the marshal’s shoulder. “My condolences, Frank. That’s rough.”
Ellie’s phone rang, making her miss whatever Clay murmured next. Hope raced along her veins when she checked the number. Unknown Caller. This could be Gabe! Finally.
In her excitement, Ellie forgot to answer her phone with her usual Detective Kline greeting. “Hello? Is that you, Gabe?”
“You look so pretty standing there, but are you getting enough sleep? Those circles under your eyes suggest otherwise.”
Every hair on her body bristled at the familiar voice. Not Gabe.
Kingsley.
Ellie lifted her other hand to tap the speaker button.
“Ah ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. This conversation is intended to be private.”
At Kingsley’s warning, she froze, with her finger a mere inch away from the button. Goose bumps erupted across her flesh. What the…? How?
Without alerting the others, she performed a slow scan of the room. Nothing, nothing, nothing…there! The teeny-tiny camera peeked out from the corner of a picture frame on Gabe’s desk.
Sonofabitch!
“Why, hello there, my puppet. It appears that you’ve finally found me.”
Ellie glared into the lens, stepping even closer as Kingsley gloated into her ear. “This hardly seems fair. You can see me, but I can’t see you. I know,” she snapped her fingers, “why don’t we meet face-to-face?”
Kingsley’s laugh made her skin crawl. “Aren’t you a funny girl? I promise we’ll meet soon enough, but I’m a little…tied up at the moment. Or, more to the point, your friend is.”
Her hand vibrated as her phone announced an incoming text. Ellie checked the message, and what she saw ripped the oxygen from her lungs. Kingsley had sent her a photo of Gabe, tied to a chair, dripping blood from too many parts of his body to count. She stood statue-still, transfixed by the horror.
“You remember our game, don’t you?”
Kingsley’s question penetrated her daze. Her heart slowed, then accelerated. Please, no. Gabe. “Not this time. I refuse to play.”
He chuckled. “Refusing to play is a choice, my puppet. Surely you remember that much?”
Acid pooled in Ellie’s stomach. This couldn’t happen. Not again. She whirled, stumbling in her frenzy to do something. Anything. Clay grabbed her arm to prevent her from face-planting on the floor. He ducked his head and mouthed the words. What should I do?
The skin-on-skin contact of his hand to her arm grounded her, transferring enough calm to tame her racing thoughts and concentrate. Who could help them right now, who? A name popped into her head.
Carl.
The Charleston Police Department’s IT guy had come through for her in the past. Maybe he could trace the call. Ellie understood the idea was a long shot, but Carl was all she had for now, and anything was better than nothing. They had to at least try. They owed Gabe that much.
A scream ripped her back to the phone. To that terrible room where Gabe was strapped to a chair. His life draining away.
“Are you ready to play now?” Kingsley’s lilting voice held a sharp edge this time.
“No.” Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, but of course, that did nothing to block out the next round of screams. The sound was worse than a thousand nails screeching down chalkboards, scraping along Ellie’s nerves until her fingers burned with the urge to cut every last neuron out.
She grabbed Frank’s arm and mouthed a command. Katarina! Find Katarina! Kingsley’s former protégé knew more about the man than anyone, but she was in WITSEC, so her whereabouts were guarded. As a marshal, Frank was the only one of the three of them in the room who might be able to track her down on short notice.
Frank’s forehead creased as he stared at her lips. He shook his head. What?
Find. Kat-a-rin-a. Frustrated, Ellie tried exaggerating each silent syllable. Frank shook his head again and lifted his hands. Ellie dug her nails into her palm to keep from shrieking the command out loud. Too risky by far, with Kingsley listening in. The element of surprise might prove to be their sole advantage.
This time, the scream broke off halfway through, which chilled Ellie to the bone. Her hands grew clammy, and her pulse thundered in her ears.
“Gabe is begging you to play, my puppet. Can you hear him over your frantic pantomime?”
A howl of useless, bitter rage built in Ellie’s throat. She pivoted to face the camera again and opened her mouth to scream. “Fuck you!”
Kingsley’s amused cackle blended with Gabe’s shriek this time, forming a discordant, hellish melody. “Come on now, Ellie, don’t be that way. Play with me.”
Gabe screamed again, but his voice petered out at the end, dropping into a hoarse, anguished moan. Ellie gripped the phone tight, bracing against a wave of helplessness. Desperation chipped away at her convictions, and tears stung her eyes as she felt herself begin to cave.
She hated to let Kingsley win his sadistic game, but she hated to let Gabe suffer even more. No one deserved this kind of agony, and Kingsley got off on it. Gabe’s tormentor wouldn’t stop until either he got what he wanted or he’d tortured poor Gabe to death.
She licked her dry lips. Opened her mouth. Commanded her mouth to form the words. But her vocal cords clamped down, refusing to sentence yet another person to death.
“P-please!” Gabe’s sobbed plea cracked her heart in two. Ellie felt trapped, in a hell worse than most people ever imagined. Condemn a good man to die, or say nothing and listen to him suffer? Both choices were brutal and filled her mouth with ash.
“Hear that? He wants you to play too. Three little words, my puppet. That’s all you have to say. Then th
is round can be over for good.”
Ellie dug her fingers into her hair and pulled, welcoming the physical pain. Anything to relieve the emotional torture. But the burn only helped for an instant and brought her no closer to a decision. Ellie couldn’t…wouldn’t say the words, but she had to.
In the end, the thing that sent her over the edge was Gabe’s soft whimper. Ellie licked her lips again, swallowed the lump that clogged her throat. She inhaled and lifted her chin. Determined that this time, she’d force the words out. No matter how much they hurt.
“Die—”
Before she could get past the first word, a hand flew out of nowhere and yanked the phone from Ellie’s grip. She spun, lunging to reclaim her device. “Wait, stop! Please, don’t hang up—”
Too late. Clay stabbed the end call button before she even stopped talking. Ellie gaped at the phone. Kingsley was gone.
And Gabe. Gabe was gone too.
24
“…but with a twitch of her black tail, the fierce warrior leopard leapt from the tree branch and landed in front of the wild dogs, her muscles bunching under sleek skin as she prepared to pounce.”
Katarina glanced up from the pages of the fantasy novel to savor the joy of her own fantasy come-to-life. Curling up together with Bethany on the bed while reading her daughter a nighttime story was one of Katarina’s favorite parts of the day.
Even after two months together, the sight of the little girl’s face, a miniature of hers except innocent with clear eyes, round cheeks, and a splattering of freckles, still filled Katarina with that otherworldly sensation, like her heart existed outside her body and inside Bethany’s. She smoothed the fine blonde hair, still damp from the bath, and inhaled the sweet fragrance of strawberry shower gel.
So perfect. The two of them, all warm and cozy. Cuddled together like a regular mom and child. No one better dare threaten to steal that from them.
A fierce protective instinct flooded her limbs, causing Katarina to squeeze Bethany tighter. The little girl squirmed in protest, so Katarina slackened her grip and told herself to chill.