The Iron Ring

by Matty Dalrymple

  The Iron Ring

  A Lizzy Ballard Thriller

  Matty Dalrymple

  Copyright © 2019 by Matty Dalrymple

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Locales, events, and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, or institutions is completely coincidental.

  * * *

  Cover design: Juan Padron

  * * *

  All rights reserved

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Matty Dalrymple

  About the Author

  With love to my partner in the dance of life, Wade Walton,

  and to all the authors who showed me what was possible.

  1

  Lizzy Ballard tried to sort through the voices—some clear, some faint—coming from just outside. As she strained against the tape that bound her ankles and wrists to the arms and legs of the decrepit chair, her eyes tried to find a gap at the edges of the dirty blindfold. The shaking in her body was no longer caused only by the frigid air of the room, but by her terror.

  “You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “Sure, but I didn’t bank on her being such a goddamned pain in the ass. I’m having second thoughts.”

  “Leave him alone!” Lizzy yelled.

  “Be quiet!” one of the voices shouted back in reply.

  “I won’t be quiet!” She began rocking the chair on which she sat, the legs thumping onto the concrete floor. “Let me go!”

  “Little hellcat, ain’t she?”

  Now she could hear the third voice more clearly. It was a voice she would have known anywhere, in any circumstances. It was close. Right outside the freezing shack.

  “You’re a bully!” she screamed. “You’re a bastard! You’re a miserable excuse for a human being!”

  “That’s it. All bets are off. You expect me to just ignore such insults?” The tone suggested the speaker was only too happy to have an excuse to renege on his promise.

  “Now!” Lizzy screamed. “Do it now!”

  From outside the shack came the sounds of bodies colliding—of grunting and swearing. She could see it like a movie playing in her brain—hands grappling for a weapon amid a confusion of rage and terror. It seemed to go on forever, although perhaps it was no more than half a minute.

  Then there was a cry from one of the combatants, another stomach-churning pause, and then that voice.

  “My God, what did he do to you?”

  2

  Two Weeks Earlier

  Lizzy sat in a chair next to the hospital bed where her godfather, Owen McNally, lay. He stirred and gave a snuffling snort, then a muffled yelp. She stood and squeezed his big hand where it lay on top of the blankets.

  “Uncle Owen?”

  He woke with a start, and after a few seconds his eyes focused on her face.

  “Hey, Pumpkin,” he croaked.

  “You okay?”

  “Bad dream.”

  “I’m right here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  He gave her a weak smile. “I’m in good hands.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  He nodded, his eyelids already drooping. “Yes, I think …” He settled and, a minute later, resumed his snoring.

  Lizzy stroked the back of his hand for a moment, then sat down. She winced as the scrapes on her shoulder blades—mementos of her escape from the basement of Louise Mortensen’s Pocopson mansion—hit the back of the chair, and she shifted into a more comfortable position.

  What could be the subject of Uncle Owen’s nightmare? There were all too many possibilities. And if Uncle Owen had been a different kind of person, he might have laughed at her assurance that she wouldn’t let anything happen to him. If it hadn’t been for her, none of them would be in the situation they were in.

  She jumped when a figure filled the hospital room door, but relaxed when she saw who it was. Like his brother, Andy McNally was several inches over six feet, red-haired, and fair-skinned, although Andy’s complexion was more fair than pasty. A mustache and recently grown beard were other similarities, although Andy’s were were shorter and fuller than Owen’s somewhat scraggly versions.

  The primary characteristic that set him apart from his older brother was that he was missing about a hundred pounds of Owen’s heft—although Lizzy realized that with the stress Uncle Owen had been under during the previous few months, the weight difference was probably not quite as much as it had once been.

  “Hey, Andy,” she whispered.

  “Hey,” he whispered back. “I talked with the doc—he says Owen’s still coming along well.”

  Lizzy’s throat tightened. “That’s good. That’s really good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you doing?” Lizzy asked.

  “Livin’ the life,” he replied with a bleak smile.

  “You look like you could use a nap,” she said. “Maybe there’s some kind of doctors’ lounge you could use. I can keep an eye on Uncle Owen.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. I should probably go check on Philip.”

  She stood. “Can I come?”

  “Hey, I thought you were going to keep an eye on the patient,” he said in a tired version of his usual teasing manner. Before she could reply, he continued. “There’s really no point in you visiting Philip until he’s alert enough to appreciate it. In the meantime, if you’re willing to tear yourself away from Sleeping Beauty, the room at the hotel is all ready when you feel like taking a nap somewhere more comfortable than a hospital guest chair.”

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nbsp; “That’s okay. I think I’ll stay here a little longer.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and then I can walk you to the hotel and you can get some rest.”

  “Will you call me when you find out how Philip’s doing?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks, Andy.”

  She heard his normally light tread recede heavily down the hall, on his way to yet another visit to yet another victim of the situation she had gotten them all into. She hated the fact that Uncle Owen and Philip had been injured, but, she thought bitterly, they were probably safer in their hospital rooms than they had been at any time since the three of them had joined forces back in Sedona.

  She pulled the chair closer to the bed and rested her hand on Uncle Owen’s. So far, her power had brought them more suffering than safety, but she would find a way to keep them all safe.

  She couldn’t imagine how, but she’d find a way.

  3

  Louise Mortensen had driven away from her burning home—and the burning outbuilding behind which she assumed Mitchell Pieda lay—in Owen McNally’s SUV. When she passed Pieda, Elizabeth Ballard, and the injured Philip Castillo on the rural road behind her Pocopson property, she didn’t fool herself that they wouldn’t recognize the vehicle.

  As she drove west, she placed a call from a cell phone she had been assured was untraceable and, as instructed, set her GPS to a twenty-four hour diner outside Harrisburg. The gray gloom was lightening grudgingly to a weak March dawn when a limo pulled up in front of the diner. She gathered up her coat and handbag and, having already settled the check for the coffee she had ordered but not drunk, worked her way off the sticky vinyl of the booth and stepped outside. A young blond man in a chauffeur’s uniform got out of the limo. A heavyset man, not in uniform , got out on the passenger side.

  “Good morning, Dr. Mortensen,” he said in a heavy Scandinavian accent. “If you’d like to give me the keys of the vehicle you drove here, I’ll make sure that it’s taken care of.”

  Louise nodded. “Toyota SUV,” she said, and gestured toward where the vehicle was parked. She handed over the keys.

  The man nodded and strode off.

  The chauffeur opened the back door of the limo and she climbed in. He pressed the door shut behind her, got back behind the wheel, and rolled out of the diner parking lot, headed south.

  An hour later, the limo pulled off a wooded country road onto a wide paved drive. Like her own home in Pocopson—her former home, she reminded herself—the drive was blocked by a gate, but rather than the decorative metal gate of her drive, this one was substantial, with an eight-foot-high metal fence running out of sight into the woods on either side. The gate and the fence were set back from the road, so neither would be visible to a casual passerby.

  The road wound through wooded hills, for about half a mile, then, with little warning, ended in a circular drive. Louise recalled that on her first trip to the house, almost twenty years before, she had been momentarily confused about where the drive led, until she’d noticed the house. It was all mirrored windows and brushed metal, built low to the ground and blending seamlessly into the western Maryland landscape.

  Even on her previous trips, made under less dire circumstances, she had arrived in a limousine sent by her host—he was not a man to give out directions to his home. And even having watched the scenery pass during the drive, even having tried to note road signs and landmarks, she would have been hard pressed to get to the house on her own. She suspected that the chauffeur took a circuitous route for just that reason.

  She recalled her conversation with Gerard the one time he had accompanied her to the compound.

  “He has to control every little thing,” Gerard had complained over dinner when they returned home to Pocopson. “If I go away for the weekend and decide I don’t like the company, I want to be able to get into my own car and drive away.”

  “But look what he’s been able to accomplish by controlling every little thing,” she replied.

  “If becoming a recluse in the wilds of western Maryland is the price one has to pay for those accomplishments,” grumbled Gerard, “I think I’ll take my own humble achievements.”

  Louise smiled indulgently. “Gerard, are you fishing for a compliment?”

  He flashed her that wonderful smile. “Why not?”

  The limo glided to a stop at the entrance and the chauffeur jumped out and opened her door. She climbed out, expecting to be greeted by a butler or other majordomo as she had been on her previous visits. Instead, her host himself stepped out of the house and crossed the flagstone terrace, hand extended.

  “Louise, I’m so glad to be able to welcome you back,” said Theo Viklund with a slight Swedish accent, “although I wish it could have been in happier circumstances.” He was of medium height and slender, with short gray hair cut with military precision, and assessing gray eyes.

  She shook his hand. “Theo, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you providing me with a refuge.”

  Theo waved her ahead of him through the front door. “It is entirely my pleasure.”

  Inside, they were greeted by a grave-faced woman whom Louise recognized from previous visits.

  “Maja can take your coat,” said Theo.

  The woman eased Louise’s coat from her shoulders, then handed it to a man standing to one side of the door whom Louise had not noticed. He disappeared down a wide hallway leading back from the entrance hall.

  “I can only imagine how tired you must be,” continued Theo, “and I would not ask you to tell me your story before you have rested. Maja can show you to your suite. I’ll have some food sent to you. Then, once you are refreshed, we can talk.”

  “I would appreciate that, thank you very much.”

  During her previous visits, Louise had stayed in one of the guest rooms off the hallway that ran straight back from the entrance hall, but Maja gestured to the right. “If you would like to follow me, Dr. Mortensen,” she said, and led Louise to an unobtrusive corridor leading off the entrance hall.

  Louise was struck, even more strongly than she had been during her previous visits, by the impression that Theo Viklund’s compound was more like a spaceship than a house. The corridor curved slightly to the right, with a wall of windows on the left side giving a view across the wooded grounds. Louise glanced back just before the curve of the corridor took the entrance hall out of view. Theo stood in the hall, his hands clasped behind his back, gazing benignly after them.

  After some distance, the corridor descended a short flight of steps, then ended at a door. Maja opened it, then stood aside to let Louise enter.

  She stepped into an expansive suite, floor-to-ceiling windows on the left hand and far walls giving views of the surrounding woods. The furnishings were minimalist and elegant, in tones of ivory, cream, and gray. A large geometric painting in white, gray, and black, with touches of amethyst purple and emerald green, hung over a gas fireplace. With the slope of the land, Louise surmised that the right-hand side of the suite was actually built into the ground. A hideaway indeed.

  Maja gestured toward the right side of the room. “Kitchen, bath, and bedroom. I regret we have no clothes for you to change into at the moment, but if you would like to put on the robe that you’ll find in the bathroom, I’ll have your clothes cleaned so they’ll be ready for you after you’ve rested. There are pajamas on the bed, and we will be able to provide you with other clothes later today.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Just leave your clothes in the closet in the bathroom and I’ll get them.”

  There was a knock at the door and Maja opened it. Outside was a young man holding a tray, and Maja indicated with a gesture for him to set up the meal at a table near the windows.

  She removed a mobile phone from her pocket and handed it to Louise. “When you have rested and would like to be taken to Herr Viklund, just press zero and I’ll come and get you. Is there anything else we can get for you, Dr. Mortensen?”
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  “No, thank you. You have all been most accommodating.”

  Maja and the young man stepped out of the room, each making a slight bow to Louise before they departed, and Maja closed the door of the suite soundlessly behind her.

  Louise crossed the main room to the bathroom, which was walled with white marble seamed with gray, and found a brilliantly white terrycloth robe hanging on the back of the door. She removed her clothes—a tailored dress that had been crisp and neat a dozen hours before and low-heeled Christian Louboutin pumps—and put these, along with her handbag, in the closet.

  She returned to the main room and went to the window. The trees were tall, the canopy twenty or thirty feet above ground strewn with mouldering leaves, the view broken only occasionally by lower undergrowth. From this vantage point, with the contours of the ground and no doubt because of the curve of the hallway leading to the suite, no other part of the complex was visible.

  She went to the table where the young man had set out the food. She had not expected to be hungry, but it was so appealingly presented that she sat down to have a few bites.