The place had no alarm. Luke didn’t want this place on any security grid. But the front lock was gouged and scarred. Someone had forced it.
The door opened without resistance.
“Shit,” Noah muttered. “Totally trashed.”
Couches and chairs had been slashed and overturned. Through the door into the bedroom, he saw that the mattress had been pulled off, sliced open. Every drawer in the bedroom and kitchen was yanked out and overturned, every cupboard and cabinet emptied onto the floor. The electronics were on the floor, in a haphazard tangle of black cables and wires.
“Someone got here before us,” Caro said bleakly.
At the same moment, they saw the pile of envelopes below the mail slot.
“It could have been delivered after this break-in happened,” Caro said. “Bea told me she retrieved the video from a remote server after the murder” She crouched down and started sifting through dusty envelopes.
Noah joined her, rapidly tossing aside junk mail, brochures, credit card offers, past due notices, debt collection threats. On the floor beneath all of it was a small white padded mailer. The address was scrawled on it in bold black pen. No return address.
Caro hefted it. “Chicago postmark,” she said. “Dated about two weeks after Luke Ryan disappeared.”
Noah hid his impatience, waiting as she ripped the padded envelope open and shook a flash drive into her hand.
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears. “Do you think . . .”
“Let’s go,” he said harshly. “Right now. We’ll look at it when we’re home.”
Caro gave him a puzzled look, reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to be personally invested in this. He had no stake in this but hers, as far as she knew. But he was intensely affected, and she saw it.
She saw everything far too clearly for an unmod.
But now was not the time to tell Caro about Mark, or Luke, or Midlands, any of the rest of it. She’d just witnessed Bea’s violent death. She’d barely started to trust him.
He had to go slow. He turned away. “I have to make a couple calls.”
“To who?” she called after him.
“People who need to see this footage,” he said, quickly adding, “People who can help you.” But it felt like an afterthought, even to himself. Fuck.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Her voice had an edge. “Wait, Noah!”
He punched in a number he knew by heart, and Zade picked up fast.
“Yo, Romeo,” he drawled. “Chilling with your fugitive lady fair? Having fun?”
“I’m at Luke’s cabin on the lake,” he said. “Bea got killed this morning. And we found a flash drive. Something Bea sent to the lake. Could show Luke’s meeting with Mark. We haven’t looked at it yet.”
Zade was dead silent for a few beats. “Holy fucking shit,” he breathed.
“Meet me at my place in three hours. Tell Sisko.” He killed the call, and turned to find Caro’s shocked eyes blazing at him.
* * *
“Wake up, you piece of shit. Malcolm! I’m talking to you.”
The building superintendant woke with a gasp, knocking over the warm beer that sat next to his bare foot. Beer foamed over his toes as he tried to bat away the huge fist which seized his shirt front and heaved him upward.
“Huh?” he asked, looking around wildly. “Who?”
Two men looked down at him. A big one held him suspended over his sprung out couch, watched by a smaller, beady-eyed bald one. A porn film played on the TV behind them, a cluster of bodies, lips and holes and hands, pumping and sucking.
“You’re the super of this dump, right?” the smaller man asked.
Malcolm struggled to breathe against the pressure of the huge fist at his throat. “I—yes—but—”
“Shut up,” the smaller one said. “We’re looking for a woman. She lives in this building. Hold on. Where is that photo?” He patted his pockets. “Tell us which unit and we’ll leave you to jerk off in peace.”
Malcolm realized that his pants had been left open and were now starting to fall. “I have no idea who—”
Whack. The blow rocked his jaw. Hurt like a motherfucker. The big man let him fall back down onto the lumpy couch cushion and wandered off.
“This is her,” the smaller guy said. “Take a good look.”
Malcolm’s eyes watered as he peered at it. The girl in the photo was hot as hell. Big eyes, lush lips, long dark hair. Out of his league and his budget.
He shook his head. “Never seen her.”
“She could look different,” the guy said. “You know, like wearing a wig, or glasses. Think about all of your tenants. Rule out the ones that couldn’t possibly be her. Tell us what’s left. We’ll do the rest. Of all the young white female tenants in your building, which one of them could be her?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said desperately.
“Check this out.” The big guy held out another photo for his colleague to look at.
Malcolm blinked to to focus on it. His six-year-old niece and eight-year-old nephew at a birthday party. He’d taped the picture on the fridge.
“Love to Unky Malcolm from Emil and Isla,” the guy read from the back of the picture. “How sweet. So, Unky Malcolm. If you give us the unit number, we’ll walk out the door, and we won’t hunt down Emil and Isla and do things to them that oughta make their bodies impossible for their mother to identify.”
“There’s a young white woman in six-oh-eight,” Malcom blurted. He kept on babbling. “It could be her, but maybe not. She came about four months ago. Thought she gave me a fake ID, but I didn’t argue, not with four months rent in advance and—”
“Thanks, Malcolm. We don’t need the details. Of course, you never saw us.” The bald man smiled, showing off silver eye-teeth. He tucked the photo of Malcolm’s niece and nephew into his coat pocket. “I’ll keep this. Do we have an understanding?”
Malcolm nodded frantically.
“This woman will be gone soon,” the man went on. “Clean out the room. Rent it again. She never existed. Any records you had of her have to disappear. Understand?”
“What did she do?” he blurted out.
“She’s bad to the bone,” the bald guy said. “Your building will be safer without her. Good man. You did the right thing.” The man’s glinting teeth flashed again. “Thanks for your help, Malcolm.”
Malcolm sat there after the door closed behind them, his feet resting in a puddle of beer. After a while, he realized that the couch beneath him was soggy with warm piss, and he was still nodding.
He just couldn’t seem to stop.
Chapter 19
Mark looked around the restaurant table at the faces of the five prototype slave soldiers he’d awakened. He was struggling with rage. His AVP bubbled hot and crazy.
It had been easy to pick them up. They had been situated relatively near to each other. After taking Brenner in Cheyenne, he’d picked up Rich Hobbs from a gym in Rock Springs, and then driven to collect Ty Matthews at a stereo store at a strip mall in Logan, Utah. Then came Raquel Mendoza who cashiered at a pharmacy in Baylor Flats, Utah, and Mike Breyer, who worked on a road crew outside Salt Lake City.
Gathering them was no big deal, but now that he had them, they were bugging the shit out of him. They were perfectly capable of speaking, but none of them would speak a word to him unless directly commanded to do so.
They defied him constantly in the only way they could. With passive silence. Although the place was otherwise empty, so no one but him was noticing.
Brenner’s huge hands kept flexing and clenching as he stared at Mark. His fingernails were still stained with the dummy’s fake blood. The man’s unrelenting rage had been unsettling at first, but Mark had quickly gotten used to it. Sort of like riding a half-broke horse.
But now the phenomenon was multiplied by five. They glared at him en masse. He recognized the look of trapped, seething rage. He’d felt it on his own face.
&nb
sp; Too fucking bad. Everybody had their time to squirm. He’d done his time and now they could do theirs. In his service.
They’d pay for their attitude. At his earliest convenience, at the highest pain setting and for the longest time he could risk without causing neurological damage.
But in the meantime, they needed fuel. Which dovetailed with his last pickup.
This was the last of the prototypes. A female, R-Gen 57-1221, also known as Sierra Horst, aged twenty-four. She was a waitress at a strip mall steak house outside Salt Lake City. She’d just served them all big glasses of ice water.
She gave them a big smile as she brought the man across the room his bread basket and soup. Like the others, she was a stunning specimen. Tall and stacked, with blue eyes and a bouncing blond ponytail, she did the waitress uniform more justice than it deserved. Maybe her shoulders were a little too heavily muscled and her calves too stringy and defined for his tastes, but even so. She’d had a much more advanced iteration of Braxton’s muscle-and-bone cocktail vectored into her genes than Mark, and would have been brainwashed into compulsive exercising just like her other fellow slave soldiers, so it was hardly her fault. They’d been sculpted by psychopaths.
Mark’s eyes slid over Raquel’s smooth golden skin and perky tits, and then eyed Sierra’s eye-catching ass. He was rethinking his plan to skip stopping for rest as they drove toward Seattle. An hour in a roadside motel exploring the possibilities of using a control freq wand as a sex toy would be better than sleep.
She approached them with a bouncy step and gave them another brilliant smile as she poured their coffee. “Have you folks decided what you’re having?”
Mark looked around the table. The five slave soldiers glared at him fixedly. For fuck’s sake. “Bring us all steak, baked potato and string beans,” Mark said.
Sierra scribbled on her pad. “Right away!” she chirped.
Mark assessed the restaurant as they waited. It was late for the lunch rush, early for dinner, and their section was empty. He decided to activate Sierra now. Risky, but he was trading one risk for another.
When she came back with the tray of plates, he waited until she had set them all set on the table before pulling out the freq wand and giving her a long, hard zap.
She stumbled forward with a grunt, hitting the table. A water glass fell over, scattering ice cubes and water across the table and onto the lap of R-Gen 57-629, also known as Ty Matthews. Ty did not react to the ice water. He just kept staring.
Mark put his hand on her shoulder, speaking low and clear, keeping the freq want pointed at her. “You real job just started, Sierra,” he said. “I own you now, and you’ll do everything I say. Do you understand?”
Sierra swayed drunkenly as the spilled water soaked into the front of her apron. Her sig showed the same violent color upheavals as all the others had done. Her lips were forming words, but she couldn’t force them out. Or wouldn’t.
He dialed up the pain setting, careful not to overdo it. He didn’t want her to make a scene or fall to the ground. Just a sharp jab. To show her how things were going to be from now on.
The sudden shocking pain made her bite her lip. Blood welled up on the full, sexy curve of her plump lower lip. It made his cock stiffen and throb. He smiled at her.
“Come closer, Sierra,” he ordered. “Lean down . . . and kiss me.”
She took her time, so he took his. He just let the freq wand buzz. The combo of intense, racking pain and her obedience programming finally won out.
She slowly bent over him. Her formerly rosy face had gone sickly pale, shiny with a sheen of sweat. The blood on her lip was a striking contrast to her pallor.
And she still hesitated, inches from his lips. Fighting it. Dumb, stubborn cow.
He seized her chin, his fingernails digging brutally hard into her smooth skin as her lips touched his. His cock thickened at the contact, a hot pulse of lust, sharpened by the revulsion showing in her sig. He licked the salty drop of blood off her lower lip. Thrust his tongue into her mouth. Intensive retraining was in order for this one.
He could hardly wait to administer it.
Fresh blood had welled into the bite wound on her lip. He spread it with his fingertip like lip gloss, covering the bluish pallor of her lip. He took his hand from her chin. His nails had dug half moons into her skin. They too had filled with blood.
“Nice to see a bitch who knows her place,” he whispered. He pinched her nipple through the white polo shirt with his bloodstained fingers. His fingers left a rusty smear.
Her face contracted, mouth trembling. But she couldn’t say a word.
“Listen carefully, Sierra,” he said. “We’re going to eat our meal. You will continue as if nothing had happened. Bring us refills on coffee. Bring us our check. After we leave the restaurant, follow us to the parking lot in back of the fabric warehouse at the end of the mall. I want you out there in ten minutes. No longer.”
Her eyelids fluttered. She made a short, choked sound.
“Go,” he snarled. “Go do as I told you.”
She lurched across the room, knocking over a chair in the process.
The distilled loathing in the eyes of the other slave soldiers had intensified, if that was even possible. The puddle of ice water kept dripping steadily onto Ty’s lap. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Eat your fucking food,” he snarled.
They picked up their forks. He wondered if he’d have to tell them when to piss.
Sierra came back to refill their coffee. She was sweaty, hands trembling, but still functioning. She offered no more chitchat.
Mark paid the check that Sierra had left. The other slave soldiers clumped along behind him, not even pretending to behave normally. Still defying him.
They walked in absolute silence to the remote, empty parking lot at the end of the strip mall where he’d left the truck. When they arrived, he got out the freq wand and turned the pain setting to the highest level.
“This is what happens when you show me attitude,” he said.
He punished them all, one after the other. Their shrieking and writhing felt good. He prolonged the session for the last one, Raquel. He particularly enjoyed the way all that violent arching and twisting made her tits bounce.
“Mommy? What’s that guy doing to that lady?”
Mark spun around, startled. He’d been so involved in Raquel’s punishment, he hadn’t even heard them approach. A young, pimply woman with messy pink hair and an old army coat was gaping at them. She held the hand of a little boy in a gray down jacket. Her hand was covered with tattoos. The kid was maybe four years old.
More footsteps, but a glance behind him showed that it was only Sierra, following his orders. She hadn’t changed her clothes or put on her winter coat. She was still in her waitress uniform, displaying an attractive nipple hard-on in the frigid wind.
Which meant he would have to dress her himself. Fucking great. Details. Multiply them by twelve hundred, and his head was going to explode.
“Mommy? Is that a mean guy?” the kid quavered.
The pink-haired girl edged away. “Let’s just go, baby.” Her voice was high and thin.
The girl took off running, dragging the kid behind her. In a moment, she picked him up and continued onward through the empty parking lot in a heavy, awkward lope.
Mark turned to Sierra. He couldn’t have devised a more perfect maiden voyage for her if he’d planned it to the last detail. “Kill them,” he ordered.
Sierra’s eyes were bleak as she looked at the pink-haired girl with the kid on her hip, who lurched onward, casting panicked looks back over her shoulder. She was calling for help, screeching like a bird, but there was no one in earshot to hear her.
Mark pointed the freq wand at her. “I said to kill them, you dumb bitch.”
Sierra gasped at the pain. She let out a sharp, desperate sound and took off.
The pink-haired girl had gotten a good lead by now, but Sierra ran faster than any profession
al sprinter. She soon overtook the girl’s clumsy trot.
But just before she made contact, she veered off to the left. She ran incredibly fast, her feet in the white waitressing kicks a blur of movement. Right past the pink haired girl . . . and onward . . . and then she curved back around the way she came.
She couldn’t run away. She was resisting her programming to the absolute limit, but it was dragging her back to him in a big parabolic loop.
But she’d let the pink-haired girl and her kid go free. They were now scrambling into a battered pickup which peeled away, tires shrieking. Off to tell her crazy story to whatever meth-head pal of hers would listen, the trashy slut. His secrets were safe. But still.
He’d been disobeyed.
Sierra was almost back, but her pace was faltering. She staggered, stumbled.
About thirty feet away, she fell to her knees. She tried to get up. Fell again.
She began to crawl toward him.
Mark walked out to meet her. She was bleeding from her nose and ears. The auto-destruct was punishing her. Cheating him of the pleasure. She gasped for each gurgling breath. Blood flecked her lips. Her lungs were probably full of blood by now.
He turned to Raquel. “Bring one of those big sheets of plastic from the truck,” he ordered her. “And duct tape. She’s leaking. I don’t want a mess out here.”
Raquel did as he asked, and stood there, looking down at Sierra. Tears streamed down Raquel’s face.
The tears irritated him. Raquel had no business feeling emotions. She was just a tool, a doll, a fucktoy. “Wrap her up in plastic,” he snarled.
Raquel knelt, spread out the plastic and did as he’d directed, but the manner in which she did it annoyed him. So careful. Wrapping Sierra like she was swaddling a goddamn baby. Just another subordinate cunt getting in his face. Enough of this shit.
He shoved her roughly to the side and finished wrapping Sierra himself, jerking the flap down over her face. Duct taping her until she looked like some sort of strange, oversized larva. The less bodily fluids that stained the asphalt, the better.
When she was fully contained and sealed into the plastic, he started kicking her.
Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) Page 20
