Mason grunted, picturing his hands around this guy’s throat. “Right.”
“Or you can die trying to save them all. What will it be, Mr. Black? Freedom, or die beside your nearest and dearest?”
Chapter Sixty-Four
For Mason, it was a no-brainer. If the people he loved were in any kind of danger, he would do anything to help them. And as the voice in the walls guided him to a door of metal wire, he had to ask himself, what’s expected of me?
“You’ll see a door in front of you,” Anarchy said. “Only I can buzz you through, so you need to follow my instructions to the letter. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” And I hope you’re at the end of all this so I can wring your goddamn neck.
A buzzer rang, followed by what sounded like an automatic lock. Mason tried pushing it and was relieved when it swung open with ease. He followed the narrow corridor to the next room, where a video camera was set up on the center table. There was rich décor here, but it’d mostly been replaced by the prison-like theme set up for him.
“Four minutes left,” Anarchy told him, inflicting yet more pressure and an unnecessary reminder there was a bomb in the building. “Are you ready for your first test?”
Mason’s mind was still on the bomb. Even if he could make it there—and on time, too—what would he do? He had no experience with explosives—wouldn’t even know where to start, and would probably be too scared if he did. “I’m ready,” he lied.
“In front of you is a video camera. All you have to do to access the next room is sit in front of it, hit Record, and then confess… to murdering Marion and Bianca Healy.”
“You’re insane!” Mason gawked at the camera, wondering what he would use the footage for. Would Cox understand that he’d been forced to confess in order to save his family? Would the FBI have a say in what happened to him if he got out of there alive?
“Fuck you!” Anarchy screamed. “Just get on with it. You have three minutes left.”
Mason hurried over to the camera, reached around to turn it on, and lowered his face into the shot. “My name is Mason Black,” he said, tripping over his own rapid flow of words. “I’m a PI, and I used to be a cop. It’s…” He looked around for something that might help. There was nothing. “I hereby confess to the murder of both Marion Healy and Bianca Healy. I did it. I killed them both.”
The door beside him buzzed, and Mason ran through without looking back. Whatever he’d just done would be used against him. He knew it, but he had no choice.
And if that was only the start of his tests, what else was to come?
Chapter Sixty-Five
Since Mason had disappeared into the building, Captain Leanne Cox of the SFPD was left feeling helpless. There was obviously a camera on them, but its location and how much it could see was impossible to tell.
Cox shuffled back to the police team. “You guys stay put. I’m going to take a look around, see if I can’t find another way in.” She looked up at the manor, her attention drawn to the balcony that ran along the outside. It was difficult to see anything through the lights, but maybe that was a good place to start.
“You want me to come with you, Cap?” one of the policemen asked, clutching his pistol.
“No. We’re being watched. There’s less chance of being spotted if only one of us leaves.”
Cox moved through the crowd of men and ducked into the trees. From there, she ran around with the gun in her hand, keeping an eye on the manor. She was relieved to see the floodlights didn’t extend to the sides or back of the building, and the balcony spanned the entirety of the house. If she was lucky, it could be a way in.
Checking her surroundings, she dashed out from the cover of the trees, and sprinted toward the building, ready to fire at anyone if she absolutely had to. Once there, she used the drainpipe and window ledges to climb onto the balcony.
Cox slipped more than once but regained her balance. Looking down, the fall from this height wouldn’t kill her—it would hurt her more than she cared to imagine, maybe cripple her (which was worse, in her opinion).
When her feet were firmly on the stone balcony, she peered into the window. A large bed covered most of the room. She tried the door, and it clicked open. Whoever had lived here before Anarchy had set it up like a twisted training mission had been careless. Cox would thank them if she ever got the chance.
Once inside, the cables on the floor were the first things she noticed. They were thick, bundled with many similar kinds, and led out of the room. By the look of them they powered a large machine.
Then, Captain Cox heard a low, relaxed voice from another room.
“You have three minutes left.” It was a man’s voice.
Three minutes until what? Cox wondered, creeping across the creaking floorboards. Her hands were shaking. It’d been years since she’d been in a real combat situation, and she wasn’t sure she was ready. Not that it would stop her.
Slipping the safety off the gun, she tiptoed out of the room and followed the voice.
Careful now, she told herself, praying she wouldn’t get caught.
Chapter Sixty-Six
The next room Mason entered was as bare as the last. There was nothing within the four walls other than a knee-high wooden table. On the table was a large carving knife, glimmering under the chandelier like a shining threat.
I dread to think what he wants me to do with that.
Mason swallowed, a large dry gulp, and crept toward the table. Ever paranoid, he kept checking behind him for some sort of attack. In reality, an assault would have been a pleasant relief compared to what he felt was about to happen.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“In front of you is the only tool you’ll need to honor the elusive Lullaby Killer. All you have to do is remove your pinkie finger, and you’ll be granted immediate access to the next room.”
Mason spun around, looking for the camera he was being watched by. “This is a joke, right? You can’t honestly expect me to—” Something occurred to him then, something Anarchy had said. What was it? The elusive Lullaby Killer. Whatever Shaun Chambers thought he knew, he was clueless about what had really happened to Marvin Wendell, and that ruled out the possibility of this being about vengeance.
“I’m completely serious, Mr. Black, and I would expect you to be as well. The clock is ticking. Two minutes.”
Mason saw Diane’s face in his mind’s eye, giving him a warm smile before she kissed him. Then there was Amy, who’d already been through far too much. And now to die before she ever really got a chance to live? Bill was in there, too, he suspected, and he’d always been a loyal friend. Mason made his decision: he would not allow these people to die.
Hand trembling, he picked up the carving knife, placed his empty hand upon the table, and spread his fingers.
Closing his eyes, Mason told himself his family was worth the loss of one small finger.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
The cables led to another room, and Captain Cox snuck toward it. Floorboards creaking below her small feet, she peered around the doorframe and saw exactly what she’d hoped to see.
A man—who she suspected to be none other than Anarchy himself—sat at a range of monitors. His back was to the door, and he obviously hadn’t heard her. Distracted by his disturbing project, he sipped from a mug and spoke into a microphone.
“All you have to do is remove your pinkie finger,” he said.
What? Cox stood stunned, realizing he’d been talking to Mason via a range of speakers. Whatever was going on here, it seemed he was putting Mason through a test. She wouldn’t accept that.
Cox closed her eyes, counted to three, and burst into the room with her gun trained on Anarchy. “SFPD! Don’t move!” she screamed, nerves lacing her voice.
The man turned his head ever so slightly, revealing his identity. It was Shaun Chambers, the man who looked so much like his picture but seemed somewhat chubbier in real life. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.�
��
“Yeah? Why’s that?” Cox fiddled with her belt, feeling for her cuffs.
“Because the bomb goes off in two minutes, which should be just enough time to get out of here.”
Cox froze. “Bullshit.”
Anarchy smiled. “Look at monitor three.”
As Cox turned her head, distracted by her fearful search for evidence of a bomb, Anarchy spun around, bringing something long and metallic down on her arm. She cried out in pain, dropping the gun and clutching her wrist. She’d never known pain like it.
Seizing his opportunity, Anarchy sprang from the chair and bolted out the door. He was lightning fast—surprisingly so, considering his portly frame.
Captain Cox, her arm searing in agony, had no time to run for her gun. Knowing she would be pursuing an unarmed man, it felt wiser just to take off after him, following him into the corridor until he ran into a room and out of sight.
By the time she reached the doorway, he was tipping something over, blocking her entrance. It was wooden and bulky—a large chest, perhaps. But this was the master bedroom, the one she’d used to enter the building. If there really was a bomb—she had no reason to doubt there was—her chances of saving Mason had become a lot slimmer.
“Target’s on the east-side balcony,” she yelled into her radio, running back to the room she’d found Anarchy in. “I repeat, east-side balcony.”
When she entered the room and leaned over the desk, her eyes went blurry with so many screens to look at. Her heart racing, she scanned each one until she once again located Mason. He was holding a knife now, and his other hand was on the table in front of him.
What the hell is he doing?
Arm still throbbing, Cox reached for the microphone. She fumbled for the switch to turn it on, her gaze fixed on the glint of light on the blade raised above Mason’s head.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
High on adrenaline, Mason brought the knife down in one swift swipe.
“Wait!” the speaker chimed. But the voice had changed. Now, it was lighter, more familiar yet demanding in its urgency.
The blade was a mere inch from Mason’s finger when he stopped it. Something must have been happening behind the scenes, but wasn’t that too good to be true? Mason, recognizing the voice on the speaker, tossed the knife to the corner of the room and hurried to the nearby security door. “What happened, Captain?”
“There’s no time for that. Listen, there’s a bomb in the—”
“I know. My family is inside.” Saying it aloud made it feel more real.
“A team is sweeping the building as we speak. But… Mason, there’s less than a minute on the timer. We have to get out of here.”
Mason shook his head, unsure if she could see him or not. “No. I have to get them out.”
“You have to—”
“Cap, listen to me. I’m not leaving without my family. The best thing you can do is help me. There’s a security door in here, and I need you to open it. Is there some kind of panel where you are?”
There was silence for a moment. Mason could almost hear the ticking of the bomb. Is that what happens with bombs in real life? he wondered. Do they tick? He still had no idea how to disarm the thing, but if he could get everyone to safety in time, then he wouldn’t have to tamper with it.
“Yes,” Cox said through the speakers. “Which one?”
“Open ’em all up. Every one of them.”
There followed a chain of buzzing sounds as all the doors swung back. Mason ran through, his leg still tender from the explosion at the office. It wouldn’t slow him down, however, because his priorities had correctly arranged—for once he was seeing things clearly, even though it was probably too late.
He ran between rooms, passing by the tests that had been laid out for him. There was what looked like an electric chair, some kind of choke chamber, and in the last room, something that turned his blood cold.
All around him, the room had been stripped and put back together, making it identical to Alison Wendell’s woodland basement. This was where Joshua had died—or it felt that way, at least. Mason decided then that if Anarchy didn’t hold a personal vendetta, he must have poured a phenomenal amount of effort into researching him.
“Thirty seconds,” Cox said, desperate.
Mason shook off the nefarious nostalgia and reached the final room. Inside was the bomb, which was counting down at twenty-five seconds. If he was lucky, he’d be able to grab his family and take them to the front door. He spun round, his heart in his throat as he anticipated the sight of his family. When he saw the vacant space, the weight of his soul crushed him.
“They’re not here,” he said. It felt like he’d been struck in the stomach and winded. Beside the bomb lay three photographs: Bill’s ID photo, a picture from Amy’s yearbook, and Diane, whose face must have been trimmed around to cut Mason out of the picture. On the wall behind this display was a spray-painted message in bright green.
Psych!
“What’s going on, Mason?”
But Mason could barely speak. His mouth had dried up like a desert, and his legs were trembling. “They’re… It was a bluff. He was bluffing. My family isn’t here.” He’d been completely played, made a fool of. And for what? To kill him? To humiliate him first?
With less than twenty seconds on the clock, Mason turned and sprinted for the front door. There was no way in hell he would make it, but he had to try. At least if he was going to die, he could do so knowing he’d done everything he could to save his loved ones.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
There was no explosion.
Mason had made it to the front door, surprising both himself and the team he met in the hallway, who escorted him outside in a hurry. They’d then made it twenty yards outside—thirty, forty yards, and still no deafening blast of fire.
Mason waited by the van with Captain Cox, who’d also found an opportunity to escape the manor. They sat in silence while the bomb disposal team was inside, still awaiting a belated boom.
Even Anarchy, who’d been tackled during his run from the building, was now cuffed and standing outside the only police car. Four officers guarded him, and although it didn’t quite seem like enough, he had little or no chance of breaking out of there.
A half hour later, the disposal team came out and gave the thumbs-up. “It was a dud,” the leader said, shaking his head. “Nothing but a timer strapped to an empty box.”
“Wait.” Mason stepped forward, addressing him directly. “Could it be that the timer was in one place, but the explosives elsewhere?” He knew how dumb the suggestion sounded but couldn’t understand why he’d been made to jump through hoops.
“Afraid not, sir. We swept the whole building, checked every electronic device, and—”
Electronic device. Mason’s attention went to the video recorder, where his confession of the murders had been made. He planned to speak to Captain Cox about this as soon as he could get her alone, but soon realized he wouldn’t have to. “The video recorder?”
“Nope.” The team leader shook his head. “We had a look inside. There was nothing suspicious about it. There wasn’t even a tape.”
Mason felt like he was being attacked by a swarm of bees. Everything was stinging, pricking him, a thousand questions poking around in his mind at once and causing severe pain. No tape? He’d assumed at the time it was a more modern camera that recorded digitally. But if there was no tape—and no bomb, for that matter—then he was looking at cold, hard evidence Anarchy had only wanted to humiliate him. Worse yet, he’d succeeded.
“You’re weak, Mr. Black!” Anarchy shouted from a distance. Though, now restricted in his cuffs and guarded by the team who’d tackled him, he was little more than Shaun Chambers. “You’d confess to something you didn’t do, take your own finger, and God knows what else? For what? A few people who are going to die anyway? This is what he—”
Mason had no more patience for the nutjob’s words. He stormed over, passed the offic
ers who didn’t flinch, and delivered a devastating punch to the guy’s face.
Shaun Chambers hit the ground in an instant, cupping his own nasal blood in his hands. He looked up, now pitiful and small. There was nothing to the man, now he’d lost his alleged power, but he was no less infuriating.
“You’re garbage, you hear me?” Mason spat. “Absolute fucking garbage. You’re a nobody, and you’re going to jail for a very, very long time.” He turned back to Captain Cox, who closed her eyes as she nodded approval at his actions.
“You don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand. This is it for you. Anything you wanted to prove, whatever this little plan of yours was, it’s done. Got it? You’re going to rot behind bars, and nobody will even remember your name.”
The FBI was flying in now, and Mason returned to Cox.
You don’t understand, Chambers had said, and it was playing on his mind. Anarchy had been stopped and nobody else could get hurt. The ordeal was over.
It just didn’t feel like they’d won.
Mason pushed the thought aside, took the cell phone from his pocket, and called Diane. He had to hear her voice again, and Amy’s, too. If this evening had proven anything, it was that he would give anything for them.
Hell, he almost had.
Chapter Seventy
Somewhere in the struggle to understand her own identity, Evie Black was putting together her portfolio. It was in her best interest to find work in her own field—investigative journalism—and she finally realized that now.
Mason & Morgan- The Serial Killer Collection Page 44
