Only the Strong

by Ethan Cross

  “We’ve been over it. He’s gone. Don’t worry about where he was. I need to know where he’s at right now or where he’s headed.”

  “If he isn’t in that transport, then he’s beyond your reach.”

  “Then why do you need to see the truck?” Marcus yelled over the thumping of the blades.

  “Because he could still be in there,” Ackerman said as he reached the transport and looked inside. He added, “Has anyone actually stepped up inside?”

  “Of course we have. I had guys crawling all over this thing. He’s not hiding in there, but we’ll tear it apart to be sure.”

  “Have you verified the identities of the guards who were driving?”

  “Yes, before they left with the prisoner and then double-checked here. This is definitely their vehicle. It hasn’t been switched out or anything like that. It’s secure.”

  One of the officers ran up and asked Marcus, “Sir, we’re moving the transport inside. Should we have the drivers go ahead and take it in there?”

  “No, have someone else drive it. And keep those two in custody and under guard until we figure this thing out.”

  Maggie cursed under her breath and asked, “What about the camera in the back? Weren’t the guards checking on him during the drive?”

  “According to the camera, he’s still in there,” Marcus said. “The video feed has been compromised. Not sure how yet.”

  Cocking his head to the side like a curious puppy, Ackerman stared into the empty vehicle. The rear of the transport was all gray metal, with the world’s most uncomfortable benches along each side. But there was no way out except for the rear doors. Not so much as a window. Considering that Marcus and the officers with him hadn’t noticed the rear doors opening up and their prisoner jumping to the ladder of an awaiting helicopter, how did he escape, leaving nothing behind but his empty shackles?

  Marcus felt the weight of guilt pressing down. He had dozed off a few times during the drive. Maybe he had missed the whole escape as it took place right in front of him. He balled his fists until his nails penetrated the skin of his palms.

  Abruptly, Ackerman started laughing. A small giggle grew and swelled into a coughing belly laugh. It took a moment for him to stop and collect himself. Finally, he said, “It’s a locked-room mystery. That. Is. Awesome.”

  Doing all he could to keep from choking his brother, Marcus slammed the rear door of the transport four times in quick succession, each impact shaking the armored vehicle with four clangs of metal on metal.

  “Nothing about this is funny!” Marcus screamed.

  “You seem to be taking this rather personally.”

  “We may never know how much innocent blood is on that bastard’s hands. Putting him away could be the one good thing that you and I are meant to do, the whole reason we exist.”

  Ackerman shook his head. “Hardly. Merely one episode in a grand saga.”

  “Just tell me where he is. Come on, Frank. You’re the escape artist. Where should we be looking?”

  Ackerman seemed to consider this for a long moment and then replied, “I have no idea.”

  Marcus leaned in close and, through clenched teeth, whispered, “You’re always looking for a chance to show off. Here’s a golden opportunity.”

  “Don’t try and play on my vanity, little brother. It’s bad form. And it doesn’t really matter at this point. I’m afraid our Scottish friend is long gone.”

  “If you have any idea how he did this, I need you to tell me now. Please. Besides, you want to know how just as much as I do.”

  Ackerman rolled his eyes. “Touché. If you insist, we’ll need to start by going for a little ride.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Eight

  Corin could tell something was wrong. Her home had an energy. An aura. It was as if she could sense a disturbance in some type of force. She never understood why some people laughed in her face when she shared such feelings. A friend had once explained that it was in reference to some popular film, but Corin had never been interested in stories or games.

  All she cared about was increasing her quality of life and furthering her own knowledge. At least, those were the only two things she could allow herself to care about right now.

  Her fiancé, Blake, had been boring her to tears lately, and she didn’t fully understand why. But that was an issue to contemplate at a later date. All her brain power had been used up for today.

  She slowed the Subaru in front of their jointly owned condo and whipped into their single reserved parking space, which Blake had insisted she use. He was always making nice little gestures like that. It made him hard to hate. And she didn’t really want to hate him. She simply wondered if Blake, soon-to-be doctor, was truly the man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. Her doubt about him was hard to quantify. Blake looked great on paper. But there was something missing. Some spark that had either burned out or was never there to begin with.

  Thoughts of Blake and their eventual nuptials filled her attention for the rest of the walk inside and up the stairs to her condo. It was a two-bedroom unit, but all the dimensions had been shrunken down. It made her feel claustrophobic, as if it was one step above a cardboard box.

  She pulled out her knife and released the spring-assisted blade before placing her key in the lock and going inside. She shut the front door behind her without turning on the lights. Then she stood in the threshold, waiting, the knife up in a fighter’s stance.

  She listened for sounds of an intruder, but the constant murmurs of the city around her made it hard to distinguish between the yuppies cackling at the bar around the corner and the slow, deliberate steps of a stalker.

  Thirty seconds passed.

  Forty-five.

  She flipped on the lights.

  One good thing about living in a shoebox was that you could look from left to right and pretty much see the whole place. It made searching for an intruder easy. She scanned both bedrooms, checked the tiny kitchen and eating area. All clear.

  But should she take it a step farther?

  A voice that sounded an awful lot like her sister Samantha whispered, Don’t be an idiot. You’re just being paranoid over some stupid prank and a fake article. The whole thing was probably a trick to drive in ad revenue for a fake website. The same trick that all of those faux celebrity death articles capitalize on.

  But still, Corin didn’t move.

  Should she check the closets?

  Samantha’s voice in her head replied, And then what? Under the kitchen table?

  She wished Blake was there. He would have gladly checked the house for her. And, if the man in the skull mask was waiting in the shadows, Blake would die first, giving her a chance to escape.

  Waiting a few breaths longer, she stuck the folding knife into her pocket. Refusing to give in to irrational fears, she threw her keys and purse onto the counter.

  But, again, a small voice against the back of her neck told her to, Check the closets.

  The skull face popped into her mind.

  Pulling out her phone, she tried to check her Twitter account as if everything was normal.

  Part of her subconscious whispered, Just get it over with. Like pulling off a band-aid.

  “Ughhhh! Fine,” she said aloud.

  Pulling out the knife and extending the cutting edge, she marched into her bedroom and ripped open the closet door, ready to plunge the blade into Skullface’s chest.

  Nothing jumped out at her.

  She probed the depths but found no signs of life. Feeling like a frightened child, she moved to the closet in the spare bedroom.

  She tore open the door quickly, just as she had with her own closet, the knife leading the way, ready to bury itself into any terror that may lurk in the shadows.

  But this time, as she pulled open the bi-fold door, a dark for
m erupted toward her. She didn’t even have time to scream before it was on top of her.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Nine

  Ackerman sat with his eyes closed, his feet shackled to his hands, and both shackled to a metal bar running across the bench seat of the armored transport. He could feel Marcus’s impatient gaze on him from the opposite bench, but he didn’t share his brother’s sense of urgency. Demon was long gone; he could feel it. There was no reason to rush.

  Besides, he didn’t believe in rushing. Every moment should be savored, whether that moment be one of pain, pleasure, or both. Discovering how Demon escaped wasn’t something that could be rushed; it would simply take how long it was going to take.

  “You better not be wasting my time here, Frank.”

  “If I were in Demon’s situation, I would be listening and studying. But I’ve always been a solo act. My escape would depend upon unearthing an inherent flaw or weakness in the current system. On the other end of the spectrum, Demon has nearly endless resources and a whole agency of murderers at his disposal. I assumed he would go big and bloody. It wouldn’t take all that much firepower to take down the convoy.”

  “But they didn’t know which convoy actually held the prisoner.”

  “Information like that is hard to keep hold of. Doesn’t really matter anyway. He didn’t attack. He chose to disappear right under our noses. As if he were truly a creature of immense power whom we could never contain. It’s beautiful psychological warfare.”

  “Focus, please. If you had Demon’s resources, how would you do it?”

  “I’d cheat. Kind of like stacking a deck of cards. I would arrange the playing field in such a way to ensure my victory.”

  “You’re saying the truck has been sabotaged in some way? We’re interrogating the drivers now, but they say it’s the same truck they drive every day. They claim to know it like the backs of their hands.”

  “Demon’s associates probably altered the actual vehicle while it sat on the lot.”

  “The transports are under twenty-four-hour surveillance in a secure area. Nobody is going to roll up with a cutting torch and start going to town on the thing.”

  “Perhaps they copied the vehicles and switched them at some point. It would require a moderate degree of analysis, but it could definitely be done. All the details wouldn’t have to be exact. You’d just need to find a few of the vehicle’s major character flaws, and the ape brains of the two officers would fill in the rest.”

  “Okay, let’s assume for now that they were able to switch or alter the vehicles, which would be another lead to follow.”

  Ackerman said, “That avenue of investigation will be a dead end. A waste of our time and resources.”

  Marcus cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck. It was a small tick, indicative of anger and fight mode, an idiosyncrasy that Ackerman had witnessed his brother display on numerous occasions. Marcus said, “Assuming the van is altered in some way for it to allow his escape, what would the alterations be?”

  “I think you could be better at this game than me, dear brother. Just close your eyes and listen. What does that beautiful mind of yours see? Break down each element. Find what’s wrong. What doesn’t make sense? What’s broken?”

  Marcus didn’t close his eyes, but Ackerman could see the wheels turning. His brother’s brain was falling down a rabbit hole, analyzing every small sound inside the moving transport. After a moment, Marcus reached out, grabbed the bar securing Ackerman’s shackles, and began to twist and push. After a little work, it broke free from its supports. This allowed Marcus to slide the bar down a couple of inches, which in turn gave Ackerman unrestricted movement inside the cabin.

  Ackerman laughed. “Nice work, little brother.”

  “That only gets him away from the bench. He would still need something to pick the locks on the cuffs that he left behind. But you were right, Frank, I did notice a few odd rattles and scrapes. And a few details that don’t belong. Like this bolt.”

  Reaching down, Marcus squeezed the head of an inconspicuous bolt on the floor and pulled it free. He didn’t need to twist it because it wasn’t actually a bolt. It was a key.

  Marcus handed it to Ackerman. “Well, I guess that confirms the transport was altered somehow. But how did he get out of the back without us noticing?”

  Ackerman used the hidden key to unlock the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Then he said, “Switch benches a moment.” Marcus moved over to the metal seat on the opposite side of the transport’s rear cabin. Ackerman got down on his hands and knees and started pressing against the bottom of the van.

  Marcus said, “We’ve been over all of that. There are no secret escape hatches.”

  “But you didn’t check while the vehicle was in motion. I have a feeling that the mechanism was designed to withstand close inspection.”

  Marcus leaned back with a nod and a narrowing of his eyes. “And a close inspection would never be done while the transport was in motion.”

  Running his hand across the metal and feeling for a release of some kind, Ackerman looked back fondly on his days inside so many cages. He hated being confined like an animal, but even though he hated cages, he found great pleasure in escaping from them.

  Toward the end of the bench closest to the main cabin, Ackerman pushed and was rewarded with the click of a lock being released. He pressed up on the bench, and it moved easily, having been hinged to the sidewall. The hidden hatch opened into the vehicle’s wheel well and undercarriage.

  Ackerman studied the craftsmanship of the concealed release mechanisms a moment and then closed the bench, shutting out the sounds of the road. He sat down and said, “Well, there you have it.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Okay, now he has access to the undercarriage. But he still can’t go anywhere while the convoy is moving and two other vehicles are right behind him.”

  “It was dark. We were all tired. He merely waited for a switchback turn while we were in the mountains. When the transport slowed to round the sharp curve, he rolled to freedom.”

  Marcus banged on metal leading into the front cab of the transport, telling Maggie to drive them back. “Nice work. We’ll find every spot along our path that held switchback curves and focus the manhunt there.”

  Ackerman sighed. “I told you that searching for him like that is pointless. What you seem to be missing is that Demon had no contact with his associates and yet all of this went down, and he knew that it would. He knew exactly how his minions would orchestrate the release. Probably because it’s a plan of his own design. Now, do you honestly think a man with his resources wouldn’t have a car waiting? Or a helicopter? Keep in mind that we’re dealing with a killer as talented myself, who has nearly unlimited resources. Imagine the kind of things I would have done with his power and finances during my dark years. He’s already five steps ahead of us. Most likely, he’s already slipped the nets and traveled far beyond your reach.”

  “I’m not giving up!” Marcus yelled. “If he’s five steps ahead of us, then let’s start gaining ground. How do we catch him?”

  “Our deceased friend, Judas, left his diaries and a path for us to follow. Why did he do that?”

  “Because he wanted to use us as an instrument of revenge against his mentor. And yes, he clearly states that Demon’s files are in the possession of another killer he mentions, but those leads have stalled out. We don’t know where to find this Gladiator he talks about in the journals.”

  “We’re overlooking something in what he’s left behind for us. Judas’s big production isn’t over yet. Don’t forget that Dmitry Zolotov grew up in the theater. We may not even have reached the end of act one.”

  Marcus ran a hand through his brown hair. “We’ve been over those journals a thousand times. And we can’t trust Judas anyway. His whole game was about betrayal and proving superiority and never allowing yo
urself to trust others.”

  “But that’s the point. He’s not playing against us. He’s playing us against Demon. He wants us to win. Avenging the murder of one’s soulmate is a pretty damn personal vendetta.” Ackerman was referring to the betrayal which set all of this in motion—Demon’s murder of Judas’s soon-to-be wife.

  “That may be, but I’m not letting Demon just walk away from this. I’m not giving up yet. We’re going to run him down. Trace back whoever helped him and how. He’s only a few hours ahead of us.”

  Ackerman sighed. “I want to go on record as having told you that all that is a waste of time. We need to play Judas’s game. Our path to the Demon’s network of killers and his files is through the Gladiator.”

  “Then find me the Gladiator. Until then I’m going to chase that Scottish bastard to the ends of the earth.”

  Ackerman smiled. “As always, brother, your stubborn, mindless determination is simultaneously endearing and yet as annoying as stepping in excrement.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Ten

  The Gladiator listened as Corin stomped around the house. He heard her check the first closet and approach the second.

  Then his trap sprung.

  She screamed in terror. Then she grunted some unintelligible curse words.

  He smiled beneath the skull mask.

  At the last minute, he had decided that leaving a decoy to frighten her in the closet would cause her to lower her guard, which extended the experience and allowed her to be more easily overtaken.

  With this in mind, the Gladiator had crept from the closet in the spare bedroom, found Corin’s ironing board, and propped it up in such a way that it would fall out onto the next person who opened the door.

  He had known she would check the closets. She had followed the same routine on the previous two evenings. He was inside her mind now, her personal boogeyman. Every noise she heard became his footsteps. She could feel him coming for her.