by Strand, Jeff
“You think she did that with her mind?”
“You saw the bodies. How do you think she did it?”
“Well, I certainly didn’t think she did that with her mind,” said Cody. “There were stab wounds and burn marks and stuff. I figured she was savage with a knife. Is that seriously why I’m here? Because you think she’s some sort of witch?”
“For all I know, she’s a ninja. I just wanted your perspective.”
“No, she never said anything to me about sorcery.”
“All right.” Winlaw smiled. “Congratulations. You’ve convinced me that it’s worth keeping you alive for a while longer. I can fake a text, but not a phone call or your face on video chat, so I’m not going to kill you right now.”
“Thank you.”
“Put him in storage,” Winlaw told the other men.
They picked up Cody and carried him out of the office and down a short hallway. Matt let the top half of Cody drop as he opened a door. He picked Cody up again, and they tossed him into the room, slamming the door shut as soon as he struck the floor.
Cody was in a very small room, about the size of a handicapped stall in a restroom. The walls were bare.
He wasn’t alone.
“Hi,” he said to the pregnant woman.
“Hi.”
“I see that you’re still pregnant.”
“Yeah.”
“Hmmm. I’d heard differently.”
“It was a con.”
“I’m Cody.”
“Maggie.”
“Did somebody punch you, or did you get that black eye by accidentally bumping into something?”
“Somebody punched me.”
“You have to be a real piece of shit to punch an expectant mother.”
“Yeah.”
“You also have to be a real piece of shit to make somebody think that she killed your baby.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“Daxton’s?”
“None of your business.”
“We’ll go with Daxton. I wasn’t real impressed with his moral compass when we hung out.”
“Whatever.”
“Do you want to, I don’t know, join forces? I’m scrawny and you’re pregnant and we’re both duct-taped up, but there are two of us now. Three, technically.”
“What’s the baby going to do for us?” Maggie asked.
“Nothing,” said Cody. “It was just something to say. I’m not trying to imply that we aren’t utterly screwed, but if we work together we’re a little less screwed, right?”
“If you say so.”
“The logic holds up.”
“Daxton was supposed to be here by now. They’re going to kill me—slowly—if he doesn’t give himself up. It looks like he’s just going to leave me to die. So forgive me if I don’t have bright hopes for the future right now.”
“Maybe he’s stuck in traffic.”
Maggie glared at him. “Go to hell.”
“I’m sure he’ll do the right thing.”
“And I’m sure he won’t.”
“Can you at least promise me that if an opportunity comes up to escape, we’ll take advantage of it?”
Maggie shrugged. “Sure.”
The door opened.
“I need to take your picture,” Matt told Cody.
“Okay.”
“The problem is that except for the cut on your neck, you look pretty good. I need you to look bad. So I’m going to kick you in the face a couple of times, maybe three, so that you look right for your photo op.”
Cody didn’t protest. He just braced himself for the pain.
Having never been kicked in the face, Cody found that the pain was quite a bit worse than he expected, and his expectations had been high.
“Good job,” said Matt. “You sure how know to take a kick. I’m going to give it a few minutes for the swelling to really look nice, and then I’ll be back to take your picture. You’re on Facebook, right? You can have a new profile pic.”
Cody just lay there for those few minutes. Maggie said nothing.
Matt returned, took Cody’s picture, and then closed the door, chuckling.
20
The exit sign for the next town showed that they had several fast food restaurants and hotels, so hopefully they’d have a library as well. Allison didn’t think she could safely enable the Internet on this cell phone, but if she used a public computer to send a message to Cody, it shouldn’t tag her location.
She didn’t know that for sure. It might. Somebody proficient with such things might be able to trace where she’d sent the message from, but she’d take the risk in order to make sure that Cody knew she was cancelling their get-together. If she ghosted him, he might head over there after work anyway. He might decide that she simply wasn’t home, or he might call 911 and report her as a possible suicide. In theory, if the police broke down her door they’d find nothing of interest inside, but she had no reason to believe that she could completely trust Winlaw’s cleaning crew. Best to just keep Cody away.
She took the exit. If she was lucky, she’d be able to find a library, or a sign directing her to one, by just driving down the main street.
The phone rang. Winlaw again.
Allison didn’t want to answer but she probably shouldn’t ignore him. She touched the screen to accept the call. “Yeah?”
“Hi, Allison,” said Winlaw.
“I said I needed twenty-four hours. If you’re going to harass me, I don’t know how we can work together.”
“I apologize. Shall I hang up?”
“No, just tell me why you called.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“I’m driving.”
“You should pull over.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re about to become very upset, and I don’t want you to get into an accident.”
Allison pulled into the parking lot of a furniture store. She parked in the spot furthest from the store but left the engine on. “What did you want to tell me?”
A text message popped up. It contained a picture of Cody. His face looked like somebody had beaten the shit out of him.
“Did you get it?” Winlaw asked.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t look very good, does he?”
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want to meet with you.”
“I hardly know him,” Allison said. “He’s a nice enough guy, but he doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Yeah, he said you weren’t close. I figure it’s win-win for me. Either he gives you the incentive to return home, or I get to enjoy my hobby of making people scream. There’s no time limit. You want to wait a few weeks? That’s fine. Cody will still be alive, even though he’ll wish he wasn’t.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“No.”
“I’m not coming back if I can’t talk to him.”
“He’ll be very disappointed to hear that.”
“How do I know he isn’t already dead?”
“Well, Allison, I guess you’ll just have to trust that I’m not staring at his severed head right now, with its lifeless, glassy eyes. It took a while. The blade wasn’t very sharp.”
“I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Oh, no, no, no, let’s not go there. Let’s keep this civil. I’m kidding about his head, of course. I haven’t killed him yet. And I wouldn’t expect you to trust me without hearing his melodic voice. So I’m going to open the door to his cage—don’t worry, it’s not really a cage—and let him speak to you.”
Allison felt like she could crush the phone in her fist as she waited.
“Say something to Allison,” Winlaw said, not speaking directly into the phone.
Cody was almost shouting when he said: “It was a lie! The baby’s fine! I’m with the mother right now!”
“All right, that’s enough,” said Winlaw into the phone. Allison heard a door close. “Is that enough proof? Or do you wan
t to listen to me saw one of his toes off?”
“I believe you.”
Allison’s mind was reeling in two completely different directions. They’d kidnapped Cody. They were going to murder him if she didn’t return. But the baby was a lie! All of that anguish over a lie! She wasn’t sure how to process both emotions at once.
“How far are you from home?” Winlaw asked.
“A couple of hours.”
“That’s disappointing. I hoped you were closer. So you just sped right off, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can just speed right on back home. And you’re going to do me a little favor. When we’re done with this call, you’re going to go into Settings on the phone, and then Privacy, and then you’re going to turn Location Services back on. It’s how I track my employees, and you basically work for me now. If you don’t answer a call, I’ll have to assume that you ditched the phone, and then I will be very angry. I can’t take my anger out on you, so...well, you know how this is going to play out.”
“I won’t ditch the phone,” said Allison.
“I’ll give you a meeting place when you get closer. Do you have any questions?”
“No.”
“Good. Drive safely.”
Winlaw hung up. Allison just stared at the phone in her hand.
She needed to get back on the road. Not simply to follow Winlaw’s instructions—if somebody happened to walk by her parked car while she was in this emotional state, their skull would probably burst apart.
She drove out of the parking lot.
She didn’t have to change her plan. She didn’t have to turn back. She could throw the phone out the window and keep on driving as before. Why should she put her life in danger for a guy she’d just met? They’d shared some secrets, had a nice dinner, and they worked on a jigsaw puzzle together. That was all.
Why was she bothering to pretend that she might abandon him?
She wasn’t going to leave Cody to die. She wasn’t going to trade one source of nightmarish guilt for another. Even if he was a complete stranger, she wouldn’t let Winlaw murder somebody because of her.
Cody had been trying to help her. And she was going to help him.
She wasn’t going to surrender. She wasn’t going to negotiate.
No, she was going to kill Winlaw. And if anybody else stood in her way as she rescued Cody, she’d kill them, too.
She hoped they did stand in her way.
Rivers of blood. Piles of broken bones.
Allison was coming for them.
21
After filling up his gas tank, Daxton decided to check to see how many enraged calls he’d missed from Winlaw. He opened the back door, picked up his cell phone, and glanced at the screen. Only two. Plus a text message.
I’m offering you an extension if you call ASAP.
That seemed very much unlike Winlaw, but he couldn’t torture Daxton to death through the phone, so he might as well return the call.
Winlaw picked up immediately. “My offer had almost expired.”
“Let me talk to Maggie.”
“No. She’s still alive, but it doesn’t matter to me if you believe me or not. I’d like to make you a deal. Information in exchange for a twenty-four hour extension on your deadline to turn yourself in.”
“What kind of information?”
“I want to know exactly what Allison looks like, and what kind of car she’s driving.”
Daxton had no intention of turning himself in, but there was a very strong appeal to the idea of having twenty-four more hours before Winlaw tried to hunt him down. “Sure, I can tell you that, no problem.”
Dominick Winlaw didn’t have an army of highly trained assassins at his disposal. He had a few guys who he could use for more dangerous jobs—most of whom were dead now—and the rest of the people who worked for him were mostly lowlifes. Drug dealers, pimps, and thieves weren’t going to stop somebody like Allison...unless he had a lot of them. All hands on deck. She could kill a few men who rushed into her own home, but she couldn’t kill five times that many, when they were ready for her.
A couple of his men were making the calls. Gathering as many people as they could. He couldn’t bring them all here, since there might be gunfire and screaming, but there was a campground, closed for the season, that he could use. He was friends with the owner, and the noise level would not be a problem.
If he was lucky, bringing everybody to the campground would be an unnecessary effort. There were multiple parts to his plan, and now that he had two men headed out to intercept her, this might be over before she even made it back to town. He’d tell everybody at the campground that it was a surprise party. He should send somebody out for lots of beer, just in case.
Somebody knocked on his office door. It was the timid knock of Karl, who jokingly called himself Winlaw’s secretary. Technically he did perform many of the duties of an administrative assistant, but Winlaw thought of him as more of a bodyguard.
“Come in.”
Karl opened the door. He was a huge guy who looked like no secretary ever employed. “I know you didn’t want to be bothered...”
“And yet you’re doing it anyway.”
“Well, it’s Olivia.”
Winlaw cursed under his breath. “Send her in.”
A moment later, his daughter walked into his office. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her mascara was streaked. Since she’d spent the past couple of weeks crying, it was pretty clear that she kept wearing mascara to emphasize the fact that she was doing all of this crying, just in case Winlaw wasn’t paying attention.
She closed the door behind her and sat in front of his desk.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.
By “this” she meant pretend that she believed the story that Sam had gotten cold feet about their marriage and left town. Her timing might seem to be bad, except that she’d said this almost every night since her fiancé “went missing,” and Winlaw had always been able to talk her down.
“All right,” said Winlaw. “What are you going to do?”
“I want to know what you are going to do. I know he’s dead, and I know he’s dead because of you. What are you going to do about it?”
The same conversation. He’d insist that he had no idea what happened to Sam, and she’d scream and curse at him, while also being careful not to step too far out of line and risk causing a rift between her and a father who paid all of her bills. The conversation broke Winlaw’s heart every time. He wished there was something he could do, but he knew Sam wasn’t coming back. Vincent and Matt had shown him a picture of Sam’s body, taken when they cleaned up the mess.
Maybe he could change the conversation this time.
“I’m working on it right now,” he said.
“You are?”
Winlaw nodded. “You remember Daxton Sink, right?”
“Yeah. He’s always staring at my ass.”
“Sam’s death was his fault.”
Olivia lowered her eyes. “So he is dead.”
“You already knew that.”
“Daxton killed him?”
“No, he got him killed through negligence. Sam got shot in the head, so it was quick and painless. Daxton is on the run, but we’ll catch him, I promise.”
“And when you do...?”
“What would you like to happen?”
“I’d like to spend some time alone with him.”
Winlaw smiled. “That can be arranged.”
Allison needed a better plan than “kill them all.”
She couldn’t think of one, though.
She’d been driving for about an hour now, and Winlaw had indeed called a few times to make sure she answered. Once he called within thirty seconds of the previous call, just to make sure she didn’t think she had a window of opportunity. She didn’t know how well he could pinpoint her location, but for Cody’s sake, she had to assume that he could tell if she stopped to buy machine guns and ammunition.
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She had ten thousand dollars in her bug-out bag. She was toying with the idea of bribing somebody to go get weapons for her. This plan would require her to stop long enough to find a Good Samaritan, and then stop to meet up with them later. It also required her to be a good enough judge of character to pick somebody who wouldn’t speed off with her cash or report her to the authorities. It wasn’t much of a plan. She probably wouldn’t do it.
Winlaw, knowing what she could do, would take precautions.
And if Allison went on a murderous rampage, how could she be sure she wouldn’t find a broken, dead Cody at the end of it?
For now, her plan remained “kill them all.”
Winlaw sat up straight as his phone vibrated. The incoming call was from Buster Dreys.
Buster was a skilled employee, a jack-of-all-trades. Valuable enough that Winlaw didn’t kill him for skimming off the top of some of his cash deliveries, or helping himself to a bit of the merchandise when running drugs. He’d let it go for a while, since the amounts were too small to impact his bottom line, but then he decided that he didn’t like the idea of Buster thinking he was pulling one over on his boss. Winlaw had calmly but firmly told him not to ever steal from him again. Buster had promised that there would never be another incident, and then he literally shit his pants.
“We found her,” said Buster.
“Are you serious?”
“Unless there’s another black-haired middle-aged woman driving a silver Prius V where the GPS says her phone is transmitting from, yeah, we’re on her. I’m right behind her now. Paul and I will trade off so she doesn’t get suspicious.”
“Don’t lose her.”
“We won’t.”
“Hold steady. She may need to stop for gas.”
“We can’t just nab her at a gas station, can we?”
“Not in front of a dozen witnesses, no. Look for an opportunity. Don’t get impatient. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. If you have to follow her all the way back here, that’s fine. Do your best.”
“We will. I’ll keep you posted.”
