by Dee Davis
It would be too easy.
He still wanted more. And he’d take it. She tried to remember the rest of what Tracy and Madison had said. The cyber killer tortured his victims for at least twenty-four hours. She had no idea how long it had been—but she also knew that, with A-Tac searching, he’d most likely speed up the timetable.
Maybe that should be a relief. The thought resonated in her head, and she rebelled against it. She wanted to live. She needed to live. Angry, she tried to raise her head, but the effort was simply too much, the pain spiking with the movement. She stopped moving, concentrating instead on breathing. She needed to keep her blood pressure down.
There was no question that she was dying, bleeding to death. Slowly, but inevitably, if she didn’t get to a hospital. Time was running out. But he hadn’t brought her here to leave her to die alone. Draper would definitely be back. He’d want to witness life slipping away from her. And he’d want to make it as painful as possible.
At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d be leaving him frustrated. That she hadn’t given in to her fear—depriving him of the terror he needed so desperately to get himself off. If she was going down, she sure as hell wasn’t giving him the satisfaction he craved.
She swallowed, pushing thoughts of Draper aside. It was better to try to use the respite to build her strength. So instead she visualized Harrison. His oddly colored eyes, one brown, the other green. And his hair—the way it curled over his ears, and the way he ran his fingers through it when he was frustrated or tired. She pictured his smile—crooked and endearing.
God, she loved him so much. It had snuck up on her. Surprising her with its intensity and passion. But nevertheless, she’d never been more certain of anything in her life. She was in love with Harrison Blake.
She laughed at the irony, wincing at the pain. Typical that she’d realize how very much she cared only when it was too late.
But there was still an inkling of hope.
She turned her head so that she could see the yellow sign. She still hadn’t figured out the significance of the color, but she knew that it mattered, so she’d included it in the clues she’d given Harrison. Of course, he could be dismissing everything she’d said as pain-induced rambling, but she prayed that he’d understand. Hear her words for what they really were. If they didn’t come soon…
She closed her eyes, the pain overwhelming her now. In front of her, with her mind’s eye, she could see an open door. And she longed to go there. It had saved her when she was a child. And now, she knew it offered an escape from the pain. But if she crossed the threshold, she knew that this time, she might not come back.
So as much as she longed for the solace it offered, she turned away, forcing herself to remain conscious. All she had to do was wait.
Harrison would come. He had to come.
“I’m telling you, she’s trying to tell us something,” Harrison said, turning away from the images projected onto the screen to the team assembled around the conference table. They’d moved to the war room. Everyone present, the enormity of figuring out Hannah’s clues better served with all of them working together.
He knew they were working against time, the fact that Hannah was bleeding to death also playing into the schedule in Draper’s twisted mind. The break in the feed had scared him at first, but Tracy was certain that it was because Draper wanted to stretch the moment—build the fear.
So they were frantically trying to figure out what Hannah had truly meant to say.
“How can you be sure,” Tyler asked, her voice gentle. “She’s in a great deal of pain. She could have just been talking nonsense.”
“No.” Harrison said. “I know her. She’d never waste the opportunity like that. Look at her eyes.” He pointed to the frame frozen on the screen. “She’s alert. She’s thinking, for God’s sake.”
“All right then.” Avery nodded. “Let’s figure it out.”
“I’ve made a transcript,” Simon said. He was sitting in Hannah’s place, using her computer console, the effect jarring, but under the circumstances, necessary. “I’ll put it up on the screen.”
Hannah’s words looked even more bizarre on the screen, but Harrison forced himself to try to look at them rationally.
“So what do you see?” Drake asked.
“Well, first off, she’s making it up,” he said. “Because I haven’t told her I love her yet. At least not in so many words…” He trailed off, knowing that he’d revealed too much, but then suddenly he realized he didn’t care who the hell knew. He loved her. So fucking what?
“Which you think she said to get you to pay attention.” Tracy stared up at the screen, frowning as she, too, tried to make sense of seeming nonsense.
“Exactly. And look at the way some words stand out,” he said, pointing to the places where she’d paused, marked on the screen with ellipses. “Especially in the middle when her voice gets stronger.”
“Okay. So we need to break it down.” Drake was pacing in the back of the room, but he stopped now, studying the words on the screen. “Did you guys go to GTAHAS?”
“Is there even such a thing as GTAHAS?” Simon asked, his expression skeptical as he mangled the acronym.
“It’s GA-TA-HAS,” Tyler said, pronouncing it for him. “It’s a party we have every year here. The dorms all participate. It stands for Good Things Are Happening At Sunderland. There’s a big basketball game and the dorms compete in contests. It’s steeped in tradition.”
“Okay…” Simon said, clearly still not quite understanding. “So did you guys go?”
“No. But see how she pauses when she says ‘GTAHAS’?” Harrison asked. “I think it means she’s emphasizing the word or the event.”
“All right,” Simon said, moving the cursor to highlight and underline the acronym. “Next she talks about you telling her you love her. Which we’ve talked about. So the next break is at gazebo.” Again he looked at the group askance, clearly still too new to Sunderland to recognize all the landmarks.
“The gazebo sits between the girls’ dorms. It’s used a lot for various functions,” Avery mused, “but not as far as I can remember for GTAHAS.”
“The next break is after girls,” Simon continued. “Do the girls sing at GTAHAS? Or at the gazebo?”
“No to both,” Tyler said, shaking her head. “It’s the boys who sing. For shirttail serenade. And it’s not at GTAHAS, and they start out at the gazebo but they spend most of their time at each of the women’s dorms individually.”
“Okay.” Simon frowned. “So far we’ve got an event that Harrison and Hannah never attended together and a gazebo that doesn’t play into the party either. And we’ve got girls who don’t actually sing. And next up we have Hannah beneath you in a yellow dress—emphasis on ‘beneath’ and possibly ‘dress.’ ” He underlined both words along with “gazebo” and “girls.”
“Well, that helped,” Drake said, his frustration fueled by anger. “What the fuck are we doing in here? We need to be out there looking for her.”
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Avery consoled, “but Harrison’s right. Hannah wouldn’t waste words. We have to believe she’s trying to tell us where she is. So all of us need to focus.”
Drake nodded, pulling out a chair and straddling it, his eyes on the screen again. “Well, there’s no way Hannah would ever wear a dress unless she absolutely had to—yellow or otherwise.”
“So yellow is probably the key,” Tracy said, as Simon removed “dress” and underlined “yellow.”
“Okay, let’s start with the fact that there’s no way Hannah could know that we know that she’s somewhere on campus.” Harrison frowned, his mind working to decipher the clues. “So she’d need to tell us.”
“GTAHAS,” Simon said, pronouncing it correctly this time.
“Exactly.” Harrison felt a stirring of hope. “And by talking about the gazebo—particularly when it has nothing to do with GTAHAS, she’s pointing us in a direction.
”
“The word ‘girls’ would seem to substantiate that as well,” Tracy added. “You said the gazebo was between the girls’ dorms, right? How many are there?”
“Three,” Avery replied. “Varsley, Regan, and Gallant.”
“Is any one of them closer to the gazebo than the others?” Tracy asked.
“No.” Harrison shook his head, hope fading. “And there’s still the words ‘beneath’ and ‘yellow.’ ”
“Wait a minute,” Tyler said, jumping up so quickly she knocked her chair over. “Varsley. It’s got to be Varsley. I was their sponsor a couple of years back. For GTAHAS, actually. Anyway, the point is that all of the dorms have colors. They use them for intramural sports, for posters—basically, anytime they want something to signify who they are. And Varsley’s primary color is yellow.”
“So we’re thinking she’s being held in Varsley?” Simon asked. “But aren’t there still people in residence?”
“No,” Avery said. “When I closed the campus, the dorms were the first places we cleared.”
“And she’s not in the dorm,” Harrison said, the last highlighted word suddenly making sense. “She’s beneath it.”
Drake pushed to his feet, but before anyone could move, the video feed sprang to life again.
“Son of a bitch,” Harrison said, his heart constricting. Hannah was still bound, but Draper had retied her feet—each one now secured to the posts at the end of the bed. It could only mean one thing. He was planning to rape her. And rape was the last thing he did before killing his victims.
“Harrison, can you interrupt the feed?” Avery asked, pulling him away from the hellish image on the screen, the other team members already springing into action, Drake and Tyler heading for the door.
“If I can tap into the computer he’s using to broadcast, then it’s possible.”
“And would he know it?”
“Yeah. He’ll be monitoring to make sure we’re actually getting live footage. If I interrupt the feed, it’ll show up on his computer, too.”
“Well, if you can interrupt it, then maybe Draper will stop to try to reconnect. After all, he wants you as a witness. That could buy us enough time to get to her.”
“But I can’t stay here,” Harrison protested. “I have to be there—I have to go to her.”
“You have to do whatever it takes to help her,” Avery countered.
“I can do it,” Simon said, his voice commanding attention. “I’ve done this kind of thing before. And Harrison’s already handled the hard part. I just have to follow the path he left for me until I find the original IP address Draper’s using.” He was already typing. “From there, it’s all about satellites. I promise I can do this. You guys go.”
Harrison grabbed his gun, and after shooting Simon a grateful look, followed the rest of the team out the door.
CHAPTER 30
Hannah was losing control, the pain winning the day. It filled every part of her mind. Taunting her. Threatening her very existence. Draper had cut her again, this time the knife sliding just between her ribs. She could feel the life draining out of her, her blood soaking into the mattress beneath her. It wouldn’t be long now.
He’d retied her legs, spreading them apart. His intentions obvious. After everything she’d been through as a child, the idea didn’t particularly frighten her. What scared her was the fact that this would be her last memory. The very last thing she thought about.
He approached her slowly, his gaze moving from her head to her feet. His eyes were cold—lifeless. This wasn’t about passion. It was about control. He hated everything she stood for. And now he was going to destroy her.
He hit her, waiting for her to respond, but she refused. There was no way she was giving in to him. No way she would show her fear.
Behind him, the computer beeped insistently, the sound oddly out of place in the shadow-filled room.
He spun around with a curse, moving to the machine.
Hannah closed her eyes—accepting the reprieve, but knowing it wouldn’t be enough. Her time had run out. The door inside her mind beckoned her, the light spilling out from it warm and inviting. It would be so easy now to let go. To walk into the warmth. Accept the solace it offered.
She could hear Draper moving again. It wouldn’t be long now before he came back. She had fought a good fight, but it hurt so badly. And there was only more to come. Better to surrender. To go where she knew she’d be safe. Her mind had protected her from the horrors of her childhood. Now it would protect her from the grisly reality of her death.
So she let go, falling through the door like Alice through the mirror—the white light warm and enveloping.
“It has to be here,” Harrison said, consulting the blueprint he’d downloaded to his phone. They’d searched Varsley’s basement twice, finding nothing except the remnants of Varsley’s past—a lot of it tinted yellow—but nothing to point to where Hannah could be.
So now they were turning to the tunnels. Except that Varsley’s had been sealed off years ago, and where the door was supposed to have been, there was nothing but wallboard covered with stacks of boxes and shelving—all of it coated with a thick layer of dust.
“Maybe he came in from another direction,” Tyler suggested.
“There’s got to be at least seven different ways one could have accessed the building through the original tunnels, and no way to know which ones are passable and which have been completely sealed off.” He scrolled through the pages again looking for something he might have missed.
“We’re running out of time,” Drake said to no one in particular.
“Simon, are you still jamming the feed?” Avery asked, speaking into his comlink.
“Yes.” The bud in Harrison’s ear crackled to life. “It’s down. But I’m not going to be able to jam it much longer. I’d say only a couple more minutes. I’m bouncing off a satellite that’s moving out of range.”
“Copy that,” Avery responded. “We need to keep moving, people.”
“Well, there isn’t time to explore every other access point to the tunnels,” Nash said. “So I say we break through the wall.”
“Won’t be necessary,” Tyler said, pointing to a free-standing shelf behind a stack of boxes. “That shelf is empty. And look, the wallboard behind it isn’t attached. The kids must have figured out how to get in.”
Harrison and Nash shoved the boxes aside, and then Tyler and Drake moved the shelving. It took only seconds to pull away the wallboard—it wasn’t attached at all. Behind it, the framework of a metal door emerged. It was locked. But Avery made short work of it with three well-placed shots, the silencer on his gun keeping the action fairly quiet. Guns drawn, the team fell into place, flanking the door on either side. Avery reached out and pulled it open, Harrison moving into the tunnel, Drake and Nash right behind him.
The brick-lined corridor stretched out ahead of them, all but the first couple of feet shrouded in shadow. After Avery and Tyler had joined them, Harrison flipped on his tac-light, the beam cutting through the darkness. This part of the tunnel extended about twenty yards and then dead-ended into a wall of brick and earth. A cave-in. But just before the pile of rubble, there was a tiny slit of light. A door. Harrison’s heart rate ratcheted up. They were close, he could feel it.
He killed the tac-light, and the team, on Avery’s command, began to move forward. The tunnel was quiet, the only sound coming from water dripping from the ceiling, the floor slick with it.
“We’re down to seconds, guys,” Simon’s voice crackled in his ear. “If you’re going to make a move, do it now.”
Avery nodded, motioning everyone into place.
“We’re out in three… two… one,” Simon warned.
There was another moment of silence as they inched forward, and then Hannah screamed. Everyone moved at once, Harrison and Avery bursting through the door, guns leveled. At first, all Harrison saw was the blood. It was everywhere. But then he saw Hannah, still tied to the bed, an
d still alive. Her eyes were closed, but she fought against Draper, who was holding a knife.
“If you take another step, I’ll gut her like a pig,” Draper threatened, not even bothering to turn to look at them.
“But if you kill her, then you lose your power,” Avery said, his eyes signaling Harrison to shift to the left, blocking Draper’s view of Nash, who was standing just outside the doorway. “As soon as she’s dead, so are you.”
“Maybe I don’t care,” Draper hissed.
“You don’t want her,” Harrison said, holstering his gun and raising his hands as he inched closer. “You want me. This is between us, Draper. Let her go.”
The man looked at him then with a calculated smile, and it was everything that Harrison could do not to reach for his gun to shoot. Any move he made Draper would see. And he still had the knife to Hannah.
“Come on, Jeremy. Surely, we can settle this ourselves. We don’t need her. Hell, we don’t need anyone.” Harrison had no idea what he was saying. He just needed to keep the man listening until he could move into place and give Nash a shot.
“I needed someone,” Draper snapped. “I needed Eileen.”
“But you killed her, Jeremy,” Avery said, tilting his head slightly. Harrison moved a little to the left, Draper’s attention now on Avery.
“I couldn’t stop myself. It was his fault.” He jerked his head toward Harrison. “He brought it all back.”
Harrison moved into position, eyes on Draper, as he lowered his hand to signal Nash and then rolled to the left out of range as his friend fired. The bullet tore through Draper’s chest, and he lifted both hands in surprise, dropping the knife to the floor. With a fluid motion, surprising in such a big man, Avery grabbed Draper before he could fall on Hannah, pushing him back against the wall.
Harrison rushed to her side, calling her name as he cut her bindings and Tyler searched for a pulse.
