Deep as the Dead

by Kylie Brant

  Chapter Sixteen

  …Behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out.

  –-Numbers 32:23

  Frustration ate at Anis Tera like a fanged beast, feeding in the night. He paced his motel room in a fit of temper, fists clenched. Praying hadn’t lessened his sense of failure. Or his anger.

  Alexa had betrayed him. And that made him feel like a fool.

  Yes, it’d been a mistake to stray from the plan he’d been carefully developing. But he’d been transfixed by her message at the latest press conference. No mere mortal could comprehend his holy crusade, but she understood that it was holy. That he was Christ’s soldier. She’d said as much.

  Like a weary soldier returning from battle, he can put down his sword. And if that wasn’t enough of a code, she’d included parts from one of his favorite Bible quotes: For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

  She’d signaled her awareness of the divine purpose that drove him. His fist clenched at his side as he crossed the room. Back again. Yes, he’d been exultant when he’d heard the words, shared specifically with him. It was like listening to music only the two of them could hear. Had anyone ever understood him before in his life? Certainly not the man who called himself his father. And not even later, when he’d been removed from that home and lived with the pastor and his wife for a time. While the minister had done his best to show Anis the way of the Lord, he’d never once tried to comprehend what was in Anis’s heart.

  He’d been certain she’d be at the vigil. The RCMP sergeant had said as much. She was part of the task force, was she not? What possible reason would there be to keep her away?

  Anis knew the answer to that question. He’d been outwitted, and the thought was infuriating. Lured like an ant to a picnic, he’d responded as the police had figured he would.

  But they hadn’t trapped him, had they? His fingers uncurled, and a hint of the tension that had been riding him dissipated. Of course not. Because God’s cloak of protection shielded him from the machinations of the police. He allowed himself a tiny smile. Was the sergeant as frustrated as Anis right now? Oh, more so. He’d have to be very angry that Anis had evaded him once again.

  Calmer, Anis sat on the edge of the bed. Had Alexa known of the attempt to catch him? Had she perhaps suggested it? It wasn’t undue pride that had him doubting it. She wanted to meet as much as he did. She thought it would be on her terms.

  But she was very wrong about that. The Lord would choose the time and date and filter His wishes through Anis.

  And he, Christ’s soldier, would either redeem Alexa…or destroy her.

  His cell rang. He only received calls from one person. And never when there was good news. Anis snatched up the phone. “Is everything all right with the dragonflies?”

  The boy’s voice on the other end was timid. Weak. “Yes, everything’s fine. But I’m out of sandwiches and fruit. I ran out yesterday. When are you coming back?”

  A measure of tension escaped him. His beauties were safe. That was all that mattered. His voice cold, he said, “I told you to ration the food carefully. You disobeyed, and going hungry is the price for that.”

  “I’m out of water, too.” The boy’s voice was piteous. “I’ve been drinking out of the hose we keep the pond filled with, but I need to eat. Will you be back soon?”

  His mind racing, Anis said, “No.” He’d left the boy extra food, but he’d never been gone this long before. Hadn’t planned on it this time, but the assigned had changed. Alexa Hayden had revised everything.

  There was an ample supply of water with the hose, but how long could the boy go without food? No more than a few days, probably. And if he were no longer able to take care of the insects, Anis’s collection would be destroyed by the time he returned. He couldn’t risk that.

  There was only one option. “The door that I use to enter the shed leads to a garage where I keep a freezer.”

  “But it’s locked.”

  “Of course the door’s locked, fool,” Anis said impatiently. “Turn on the light in the enclosure and go to the door. The code to the keypad is eight-six-four-zero. Can you remember that?”

  “Eight-six-four-zero.” There was newfound life in the kid’s voice. He probably thought he’d find a way out from the garage. He’d soon learn that it was every bit as secure as the shed was.

  He had the kid repeat the code a few more times. “Don’t touch anything else in the garage. I’ll know if you do. You’ll be severely punished if you disobey again.”

  “I won’t.”

  Anis hung up, his earlier frustration returning. This was the plight of fathers everywhere, he supposed. To be saddled with ungrateful children who couldn’t think for themselves. He’d warned the boy to ration the food. Now he’d have to eat whatever he could unthaw from the freezer, and eat it raw. Nearly starving would provide a well-learned lesson.

  Logan crept to the door that he hadn’t dared touch in over a year. The man had once entered through it when he was lurking on the other side, trying to figure out how to get out. The door had slammed into his head, knocking him to the ground. That had earned him a goose egg on his forehead and a vicious beating. After that, he’d remained on the other side of the shed as ordered, tending to the enclosure.

  But he’d never stopped looking for a way out.

  There were no windows. No light except the one that lit the enclosure where the dragonflies were kept. It was on during the day and dimmed at night. He’d explored his prison many times. There was only the single door that had always been locked.

  His hands shook so badly it took him two times to punch in the key code correctly. The garage was between the shed and the small house. He’d been in the home once when Anis Tera had rescued him from the flooding. He’d fetched a blanket and gave Logan an ice-cream bar. The man had pretended to call his parents and then asked Logan if he wanted to see something beautiful.

  That’s when he’d taken him to the shed, where Logan had been kept ever since.

  When the green light flashed on the keypad, his hand closed around the knob. Fear trickled down his spine, despite the man’s words on the phone. When his parents were training Sadie, Logan’s dog, she’d worn a collar that had shocked her whenever she got too close to the edge of their yard. Later, she hadn’t needed a collar. She still couldn’t be lured out off of the property, not even with her favorite treat.

  Logan didn’t have a collar, but he felt like Sadie now. Too scared to go outside his territory.

  Finally, his stiff fingers turned the knob. He was panting as if he’d run a race as he slowly pushed the door open. More darkness met him. He squinted into the shadows. There would be a light switch somewhere. He tried to remember from the one time he’d been here. Like a dumb kid, he’d just been happy with his ice cream, thinking that his parents would be coming to pick him up soon. He hadn’t known then that the ordinary-looking man who’d been kind enough to save him from drowning was really a monster.

  Logan made his way across the interior of the garage, hands out in front of him like a blind person until he reached the opposite side. He felt along the wall for the door to the house. And then searched beside it. There. With a feeling of triumph, he flipped the switch, and dim light split the darkness.

  The sight of the small freezer sitting on the other side of the door had him salivating. He rushed over to it and opened the lid. His stomach growled in hunger at the sight of the packaged food inside. No ice cream, but there were sandwiches sitting on the top in a Ziploc bag. He took it out and rummaged around inside for more. Most of the contents were packaged meat. Hamburger and pork chops and chicken. Logan felt a little queasy thinking about having to unthaw some of it and eat it raw, but he would if he had to.

  For now, he took the sandwiches and closed the lid. Then he scanned the rest of the interior. His dad’s garage was messy, with tools and overflowing shelves everywhere. If Logan had a tool,
he could find a way out of the garage. Or into the house, and out a window or door there.

  But the garage was tidy. There wasn’t a workbench with a pegboard hanging above it. There were no shelves, stuffed to overflowing. A small TV hung on the wall with a DVR player beneath it on a small table. Logan’s uncle had a big-screen TV in his garage, with chairs and a sofa just like a room in the house. He called it his man cave.

  If this was the stranger’s man cave, it was pretty pathetic.

  He went to check out the row of tall metal cupboards with double doors along one wall. Logan crossed to them and yanked on the doors, but they were locked.

  Then he turned his attention to the door that led to the house. That, too, was secured. A little desperate, he went to examine the double garage doors. Not automatic like the ones that went up at the touch of a button at his house. They were wooden doors that swung outward with a big wooden bar on the outside to keep them locked. He remembered seeing it when the man had first brought him here.

  Logan set down the sandwiches and pushed against the doors. They didn’t move. He backed up a few feet, then ran up and rammed them with his shoulder. Pain sang through him.

  It dawned on him then. He’d been allowed out of his prison, into a jail of another sort.

  Tears welled in his eyes, and he bent to pick up the bag of sandwiches before trudging over to turn off the light. The man taught him prayers and made him repeat them regularly. He would never know that Logan prayed every night that somehow he’d get out of this place.

  His hand on the light switch, he hesitated and looked at the TV again. Maybe the man watched movies out here. But there were no chairs or a couch like there would be in the house. He didn’t know why anyone would watch a movie when they couldn’t sit down.

  He crept closer to the TV. Logan hadn’t seen a movie in…however long he’d been here. He wouldn’t even care if the man only had old ones. And maybe the TV worked alone. Maybe Logan could actually see some cartoons or shows on it before the man came home.

  The thought of getting caught doing so made his stomach hurt. But the temptation was too great to ignore. He went closer and picked up the remote. Turned the TV on. It showed nothing but static, no matter the channel. He should have known.

  But when he checked the DVD player, there was a DVD inside. Without much hope, he spent a few minutes figuring out how to make the thing work. He clicked through the TV channels until he found the one that showed the movie.

  He grimaced. It looked like a horror movie. Logan’s big brother, Kevin always called him a baby, but he didn’t like to watch scary films. They gave him nightmares.

  And this…he backed away. Something was wrong with this movie. A man had a plastic bag over his head, taped around his throat. He was sitting in some kind of chair and couldn’t move. The guy was sucking in air in the bag until the plastic was plastered against his mouth. Logan watched in horrified fascination until the man stopped breathing.

  After a few minutes, there was a pause in the film. Then moments later, the movie flickered to life again. Only this time there was a different man sitting in the same chair. The clear bag was over his head, and his eyes bugged out as he tried to get air.

  Logan finally realized the truth. These weren’t movies. And the men weren’t actors. The guys on the disc were really dead. Someone had put the bags over their heads. Someone had watched them die.

  And Logan already knew who had filmed their deaths. Anis Tera. The same man who had rescued him from the flooded stream and then locked him up in the shed. The one who’d almost let him starve to death.

  He was backing away from the TV now. So fast that he tripped over his feet and landed on his butt. When the man on the screen slumped forward, his eyes wide and staring inside the clear bag, Logan opened his mouth and began to scream.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Sergeants Ian McManus and Jonah Bannon walked into the briefing at the RCMP headquarters the next morning, Alexa was the only one in the room who seemed surprised. There’d been no conversation on the way here from the hotel. Ethan had been on the phone the whole time while Nyle drove. There had, however, been coffee, and Alexa was grateful for that.

  She smiled when the two newcomers seated themselves on either side of her. “Good to meet you in person, Doc,” Ian said gruffly. His tie today was eye-popping fuschia with a pink and purple flamingo on it.

  “I thought you’d be taller,” deadpanned Jonah.

  Alexa laughed. “I used to be. Ethan chewed a couple of inches off me yesterday.”

  Ethan looked up, the phone still pressed to his ear and frowned in their direction.

  “He’s got to realize he can’t treat civilian consultants the way he does the rest of us,” Jonah remarked. “Especially when you don’t have inches to spare.”

  Nyle fiddled with the video conferencing equipment. It seemed odd, once it was turned on, to see only two participants instead of four. Steve Friedrich and Captain Campbell.

  “Feels sort of lonely on this side,” remarked the wise-cracking Friedrich.

  “Believe me, it was nothing you said,” replied Jonah. “Or wait, maybe it was.”

  “Gentlemen.” The Captain looked sober. “I’m anxious to hear about what went down in Victoria Park last night.”

  Alexa leaned forward. She’d heard only the barest details from Nyle on the way here this morning. But as Ethan recounted the events from last night, a cold pool of dread pooled in her stomach.

  They’d been right. The offender had taken the opportunity the vigil offered and shown up.

  “We believe he came armed with Scopolamine,” Ethan said grimly. “When he first started to approach the stand-in, he was holding what looked like a needle.”

  Alexa’s trepidation intensified. Not for what might have happened. She didn’t waste time on could-haves. No, her foreboding was reserved for the evidence of the UNSUB’s recklessness. She’d seen the map Ethan had put up yesterday. It was a green space smack dab in an urban area, with streets bordering all four sides of it. Yes, there were plenty of trees, but she didn’t think there was enough cover that he could have possibly expected to escape detection.

  Either he’d quickly hit upon a foolproof plan, or he’d taken an incredible risk. The type that had, until the last few days, been foreign to him.

  “…IT to get us a clearer picture of the keys he was holding. One of the officers spotted an insignia on it that might be the CarsNow logo, but we need to be certain before we get a production order for the rental records.”

  “Oh.” She snapped to attention. “When we do get that order, we’ll be looking for a Toyota Camry. Black or navy, with a light-colored interior.” She smiled in satisfaction when all the men stared at her. “After Ethan gets done filling you in on the events of last night, I’ll tell you about my evening.”

  “And this is why I don’t like to let you out of my sight,” Ethan muttered, as he and Alexa walked to the IT area in the Halifax RCMP facility.

  “You have to realize how illogical that is,” she remarked airily, “when you’re the one who refused to let me go with you last night.”

  “I specifically told you to stay here and answer messages left on the tip line.” He wasn’t angry, not exactly, but she’d describe his mood as smoldering.

  “You didn’t tell me to stay here.” They descended the stairway. “You assumed I’d stay since I had no way of getting home with everyone gone. So as long as I was going to have to summon an Uber anyway, you can hardly quibble that I took one to conduct some interviews in person.”

  “I think you’d be surprised by what I can find to quibble about in that plan.” He was silent for a few moments as they walked down the hallway to the IT offices. “How sure did Owens seem about the vehicle?”

  “He was useless when it came to describing the person with Lawler, but was unshakeable when it came to the car. I’m sure that’s a guy thing. Said he drove a red one like it.”

  “I may need to talk
to him.”

  “I hope you do.” She rather liked the idea of Owens coming up against Ethan’s implacable persona instead of a woman he thought he could charm.

  Ethan stopped suddenly enough that Alexa bumped into him. “Looking for Officer Peters.”

  The area was a rabbit warren of desks, with electronic equipment taking up the rest of the available space. “You’ve found him.” A stocky balding man stood up and gave them a wave. “I’ve got some photos for you. Blew up that insignia on the keychain from the video you sent over.” Alexa and Ethan headed for the man’s desk and looked at the sheets he’d spread out on it. “Here’s the clearest I could get.” It was a close-up of a logo, taken, Alexa knew, from this morning’s briefing, of the UNSUB’s keychain. It was still fuzzy enough to make positive ID uncertain.

  “I looked on a site we keep of product logos and insignias. I downloaded the ones I think looked close, blew them up to the right size for comparison.” He sat down at the desk and tapped a few keys on his laptop. The insignias appeared. He picked up the image taken from last night’s film and held it up to each on the screen by turn.

  “The interlocking ‘C’ and ‘N,’” Ethan said certainly.

  “It’s the closest,” Peters agreed. “The item on the film was too small and too far away to enhance without losing detail in the picture. But here,” he reached an index finger to trace the photo he’d made, “you’ve got a half-arc, straight lines on either side of the bottom letter with a diagonal. That looks like the insignia you have. Here’s another with a ‘C’ and ‘H’ for some fashion designer and her products.” He brought the appropriate image up on the screen. “But going with the law of probability, a rental car agency is far more likely to put their logo on a keychain tag than some fancy designer who sells purses for what I spend on groceries every month.” He handed the image to Ethan. “Does that help at all?