So he swiped in to check the headlines.
It was a terrible habit, he knew. No matter how many times he told himself it was his job . . .
What he saw made him throw off the bedspread and stand, reaching for the remote to turn on the television.
There were mass protests. Again. People all over the country taking to the streets.
Thousands, tens of thousands, on college campuses and in city centers all over the country, in reaction to the Supreme Court nominee.
Upping the ante, news stations were reporting that Bitch had released a list of names—accused rapists, anonymously reported rapists, domestic abusers, johns, pimps. They were calling it a death list, and promising that it was only the first of many lists to come. The lists were eclectic, and in many instances, treasonous. Not just misogynistic Twitter trolls, but half of the cabinet—and the president.
WE ARE COMING FOR YOU.
YOU’RE NEXT.
Assassination threats.
Roarke highly doubted that Bitch was going to be sending assassins after government officials. But they’d just crossed a line that the Bureau and national agencies were not going to allow them to walk back from.
It’s war. Just like Singh predicted.
He pulled on trousers and grabbed a shirt from the clean ones in the closet. He was having his clothes cleaned and ironed through the hotel. It cost a small fortune, but what the hell—it was all billed to Sandler.
He made coffee with the Nespresso machine, his eyes glued to the screen as reports started coming in of online trolls suddenly receiving floods of threats, including castration images, and being doxxed—their addresses, phones, emails being posted online.
Roarke found himself unable to call up any sympathy.
A knock came at the door. He crossed the floor and pulled it open.
Epps stood in the doorway, holding a newspaper in one hand and his tablet in the other.
“Yeah,” Roarke said. “I’ve been watching—” He gestured toward the TV.
“Not that. There’s a ransom demand for Stephens.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
It wasn’t an ordinary ransom demand. It wasn’t for money.
It was in the form of a video sent to Mr. and Mrs. Stephens’s private email accounts. Roarke and Epps watched it in the Stephenses’ library, along with Topher’s parents and Sandler.
It was stomach churning.
Topher is in some kind of barn, chained to the wall, obviously groggy—so drugged he can barely move. There is total silence.
There is someone in the stall with him, dressed in a black cloak and hood with a skull mask beneath. The figure rips the blanket off his body. Topher is naked underneath.
The figure turns, steps to a fire blazing in front of a Santa Muerte altar.
It took Roarke a moment to focus against the firelight, to make out that the fire is contained in a barbecue grill.
Another cloaked figure turns from the fire, holding a long metal implement . . .
Roarke stared at the screen. He wasn’t sure what she was holding. A poker? The shaped tip of it glowed red.
Not a poker. A branding iron.
“Oh, shit,” Epps muttered beside him.
The silence is broken by screaming as the video suddenly reverts to sound.
And the camera lingers on the flesh of Topher’s back as the brand burns into his shoulder.
Roarke’s jaw, his whole body, clenched at the sound. Those screams weren’t faked. They were spontaneous screams of agony.
He could feel Epps equally clenched beside him.
“Turn it off,” Mrs. Stephens gasped. “Please, please, please.”
“Wait,” Roarke ordered.
The figure blocks the camera with her back when she bends over him.
Then the figure steps back, and the camera focuses on the burned, bleeding wound—in the shape of the letter R.
The screen went dark and silent as the video ended.
Mr. Stephens paced the living room, raging. “I will kill them. I will sue them. I’ll . . .”
He was hyperventilating, his hands clenching and unclenching, grasping at nothing. His eyes were unfocused. Roarke was starting to worry the man could have a stroke right in front of them.
“Mr. Stephens, you’re going to need to calm down and focus.”
He turned to Mrs. Stephens, looked her over quickly to make sure she was breathing. Then he started with “I want to stress that what we’re seeing could be faked.” He thought it extremely unlikely, but there was a chance, nonetheless. He nodded to Epps. “We’ll forward the video to our lab, and analysts will be looking at the footage from all possible angles, with all possible methods, to see what’s really going on here.”
Epps stepped to the side of the room with his phone. Roarke turned back to Sandler and the Stephenses, and now his voice was hard.
“But it’s time for all of you to stop this charade. Bitch’s targets are extremely specific. They abducted your son because they think he’s a rapist.”
“That’s outrageous—” Sandler began.
“Enough.” Roarke cut him off. “We know that there was a gang rape at the fraternity—”
“That’s not true—” Stephens protested.
Roarke overrode him. “And if you’re at all interested in saving your son, we need to know everything. Anything at all that would have given the abductors that impression.”
“I’m not listening to this bullshit. You can go straight to hell.” Stephens slurred the words slightly. Roarke was sure the man had been drinking.
Sandler stepped in, eerily smooth. “It’s slander. No rape was ever reported to the Isla Vista or Santa Barbara police. We’ve already checked. It didn’t happen.”
Roarke had to fight the urge to school Stephens and Sandler on the dismal percentage of rapes ever reported to the police. He looked around at them: the Stephens family, Sandler.
“What about the vandalism at the KAT house three nights ago? The spray-painting, the hanging dummy?”
It was only the slightest moment. But for that instant, both Sandler and Stephens froze.
“Tau members cleaned up that vandalism in secret and for some reason, didn’t see fit to report it to authorities. You’ve known about that since it happened, and you never said a word about it to us.”
Stephens and Sandler were silent. Mrs. Stephens looked bewildered.
“We’re done with this investigation.” Roarke nodded to Epps, who straightened and stepped to his side. “You’ve been withholding evidence from the start. It’s deliberate obstruction of justice. I’m not going to pretend we can do our job with that kind of game going on.”
As the agents turned to walk from the room, Roarke paused and looked back at Mrs. Stephens. “I hope you get your son back, ma’am. I honestly do.”
“All right. All right,” Sandler called from behind them.
Roarke and Epps turned back to look at Sandler.
“There was damage done at the Tau satellite house,” he ground out. “Spray-painting. A dummy.”
“We know that,” Roarke said flatly. “We need to know what you know about the gang rape that allegedly occurred there.”
“There was no rape,” Sandler said. “Hundreds of campuses across the country were similarly libeled that night. Anyone can make accusations. It’s no proof of wrongdoing.”
Roarke gathered himself and turned to Stephens.
“Do you people not get it? Your son is terrified. He’s in mortal danger. If there was an accuser, we need to find this girl. And if you’re holding anything back, it may end up killing your son. We need to know the truth—”
“What truth?” Stephens said loudly. “How can there be any truth here? These animals can . . .” For a moment, he faltered. “They can torture him into saying anything they want him to.”
That was literally true, Roarke knew. And as much as the lying, the denial, the covert collaboration disgusted him, he could never condone torture.
“Is there anything—anything more that you’re not telling us? Anything that came with this video? Any demands?”
“There was a message,” Stephens said finally. “But it’s not true,” he said, louder. “I can tell you right now, it’s a filthy lie.”
“We’ll have to see it,” Roarke repeated. By now he had a pretty good idea of what it said.
Stephens pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it out to Roarke.
It was an email message, short and to the point.
One a day until he confesses.
Roarke and Epps looked at each other.
“Get it to Singh,” Roarke said. “See if she can track where it came from.”
Epps nodded, stepped away from him with the phone as Roarke turned back to Stephens.
“We need to take a look at this video on a larger screen. And I don’t want to waste time going back to our hotel.”
After a long, smoldering look, Stephens nodded.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
She drives out of the desert wilderness on Indian Route 15 and heads west again on I-40. In a hundred miles she turns south on 17 toward Phoenix, not just because it is somewhat faster, but so as not to use the same interstate she came out on.
Her route takes her through several suburbs on the outskirts of Phoenix proper. Scottsdale is a desert version of South Beach, with an airbrushed Western theme. Galleries, boutiques, bars, and nightclubs. Postcard-perfect resort hotels with lush and carefully tended desert landscaping. Around her the sidewalks are trafficked with a brisk tourist business of snowbirds and golfers.
After the pristine, isolated, haunting beauty of de Chelly, everything about this place is too bright, too harsh, too crowded. Her senses are screaming, and she wants to flee. Everything in her wants to retreat to the canyon.
And yet she can feel something happening here. She hits the button to lower the window and feels a gathering electricity in the air.
She passes a gallery with Catrinas in the window, the Mexican skeleton dolls arrayed in fiesta finery. She stares out the car window at the skull faces.
The empty eye sockets seem to follow her as she drives past, and she feels herself go on alert for whatever is to come.
As she drives farther into Phoenix, the traffic slows to a crawl, then a standstill. The streets are lined with people carrying signs and banners, in some massive demonstration.
The sheer number of them is staggering, intimidating.
Waves of people, masses of them, the majority women. They are marching in the street with protest signs, wearing T-shirts with printed slogans.
THAT JUSTICE—NO PEACE
DUMP JUSTICE ARMSTRONG
NO JUSTICE STRONGARM
KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY PUSSY
THIS IS NOT NORMAL
Among the knitted pink hats dotting the crowd and the rainbow signs, the marchers wearing NASTY WOMAN shirts and jerseys, she sees dozens of the demonstrators wearing skull masks with robes or lacy wedding dresses, the symbols of Santa Muerte.
As Cara watches one of the skeleton figures, it turns and stares straight at her, then deliberately looks toward a side street.
Abruptly Cara turns the wheel, maneuvers the truck slowly past groups of people to head down that side street. There is no way to move forward in the traffic, anyway, and she is certain this delay is meant.
Miraculously, there is a truck-sized parking space open several blocks down the street from the main route.
She backs the truck into the spot, turns off the engine, and surveys the street. Despite the massive numbers of people a few blocks ahead, there is no one walking on this block.
She takes a moment to fill the pockets of her parka with essential equipment. Then she exits the truck and starts walking back toward the street with the marchers. Alert. Always alert.
Almost immediately, her purpose becomes clear.
Ahead of her, three bulky middle-aged men are getting out of a tricked-out truck. It is remarkably similar to the one she has hijacked.
Another sign.
Her body stiffens, and she tastes metal in her mouth. Danger.
She slows, hovering at the mouth of an alley, watching them. There is arrogance in their posture, in their belligerent swagger.
She watches as a man on her side of the sidewalk reaches into the back seat of the truck and withdraws a rifle.
He passes it to the man waiting on the sidewalk beside him, then reaches into the back seat once more to withdraw another rifle. Both men sling the harnesses over their shoulders. The driver joins them from the other side of the truck, also wearing a rifle.
Open carry. Legal in Arizona. But it takes on another meaning when the men carrying are wearing T-shirts emblazoned GRAB ’EM BY THE PUSSY and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
The planned intimidation is clear.
And she feels herself filling with cold rage.
Not today.
Moving silently, she follows as the men walk in a triangle formation toward the main street.
Even from this distance, she can smell whiskey on them. Liquid courage.
“Gonna put the fear of God into some pussy-ass liberal bitches.”
“Let’s melt some snowflakes, boys.”
She catches up at the corner of the next alley, glances down it. It will do.
She darts forward toward the man who brings up the rear, grabs him by the rifle harness, and before he can shout, pulls him backward into the alley and shoves the Taser into his gut, shooting him point blank, a twenty-second, 500-volt shot with twin barbed electrodes.
His body arches backward and a jagged, strangled scream rips from his throat.
She lets him drop, leaves him seizing on the ground. She has to force down sympathetic memory pains of her own recent tasing. She knows too well how incapable he is of moving. But the scream will bring his companions.
She turns, slips behind one of the recycling bins, and drops to a crouch, pressed against the steel side, listening . . . barely breathing . . .
She can hear his companions’ boots pounding on the sidewalk, heading back to the alley. Their shouts: “Lionel? What the fuck—”
The bootsteps come to an abrupt halt as they catch sight of their friend on the ground, alone in the alley.
“Lionel!”
Cara peers around the Dumpster. One of the men drops to his knees beside the man on the ground.
She aims and shoots the Taser at the standing man.
He shrieks and goes into convulsions. The kneeling man struggles to get up, bug eyed—and gets hit with the third and final Taser shot. This one emits a weirdly reverberating cry.
All three down now, the last two still quivering from the electricity.
She moves out from behind the Dumpster, stands above the men’s bodies, panting. Her head is spinning, her heart pounding.
She glances to the mouth of the alley. Still no pedestrians in sight.
One of the men is still rolling from side to side, barely able to speak in a snarling gasp. “Bitch. You bitch.”
Quickly, before the moaning, fallen men can even think of recovering, she shoves the Taser into one pocket of her jacket.
And pulls out her razor.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
In a side study of the Stephens house, Roarke watched the video while Epps continued to search the lists released by Bitch. He had not been able to find Topher Stephens’s name on the lists, and so far there was no statement by Bitch, online or elsewhere, that they were claiming responsibility for his disappearance or the video.
Roarke started the film for the seventh or eighth time. He’d gotten past the visceral reaction to the torture and had progressed to studying it.
It was in the style of Bitch’s video. But it wasn’t the same. It had a more improvised, copycat feel.
He was intent on studying the movement of the black-robed figure. He couldn’t shake a feeling of familiarity. Of course he’d compared what he was seeing to the database of Cara image
s in his head, unlikely as it seemed that she would be behind the attack. But the person on the screen didn’t have Cara’s ruthless strength or animal awareness.
And it’s not her style at all. Cara kills, quickly, efficiently. There is no lingering on her victims’ pain.
Next, he pulled memories of Rachel and Erin out for comparison: Rachel’s slow, deliberate, almost-languor, and Erin’s focused stillness—and her disjointed edginess in stress. He could eliminate Erin right away: she’d become far too thin to be the person in the video.
None of the three women really fit what he was seeing. He would bet it was someone younger. Slim, agile, flexible, a high center of gravity, and lacking the body strength of even a slightly older woman.
But the anger made up for the lack of strength. Oh yes, the anger was there in spades—
His phone buzzed in a pocket, startling him. He picked up to Singh’s voice.
“Chief, are you alone?”
Roarke could hear the urgency in her tone. He glanced toward the door to the library. He knew the Stephenses, and Sandler, weren’t far away.
“Not at the moment, but I could be. Why?”
“I believe I have located Lindstrom.”
He felt that familiar adrenaline rush. And was ashamed that he could be so electrified by the words. Every time he thought he was over this, he was reminded that he was not. Not in the slightest.
He moved through the French doors, out into the large side yard.
The grounds were perfectly landscaped, with a central fountain and dramatic groupings of plants, flowers, trees. A gazebo covered in rose vines overlooked the valley. He stepped inside the structure for extra privacy, and looked out over the valley view. Cloudy, with a chance of rain.
“Go ahead, Singh.”
“There was a demonstration in downtown Phoenix today to protest the nomination of Judge Armstrong for the Supreme Court vacancy. A group of women protesters arriving to join the march found the bodies of three men in an alley.”
Roarke felt the familiar, queasy feeling rising from the pit of his stomach. Singh continued.
“Before calling the police they took photos and video of the bodies, which they have uploaded to the Internet and which are being widely circulated. I have sent through photos.”
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 19
