by Janet Dailey
The lens had a milky look. Like an eye with a cataract. But she knew that the lens—and whoever was using it to watch her—saw her clearly.
Kenzie waited for the audio part of the creepshow to kick in. Commands. Taunts.
The silence was almost peaceful.
She placed two fingers on her wrist. Her heart rate was slow and her breathing irregular. An aftereffect of the black cloud of gas, she thought dully.
She could scream. But it would only make her head hurt more.
Kenzie staggered to her feet, using the wall to brace herself. The smoothness gave her nothing to hang on to.
She sank back down. There was no vent, no way to crawl out. This wasn’t a movie with a grand finale.
She would die in silence.
Linc was in his car when his cell phone rang. He saw Kenzie’s number. Thank God. He picked it up. “Where are you? Did you get my message?”
He heard a man’s voice. “Don’t hang up. She’s with me.”
“Who is this?”
He already knew. Vic Kehoe hadn’t waited. He might have been monitoring Linc on the net, could know exactly what Linc had been reading—Linc hadn’t been careful enough.
“Tell him, Kenzie,” the other man urged. “Say hello.”
He heard her get the word out. Her voice sounded far away. It echoed as if she were walled up.
“That—that’s Vic,” she confirmed.
“Good girl,” he said.
Linc’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Where is she?” He didn’t waste energy on cursing Vic out.
“Didn’t you geotag her phone?” the other man asked.
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you. She’s at SKC with me.”
Linc was sickeningly aware that Kenzie had become the bait in an unknown trap. He didn’t care. He was on his way. “That’s a big complex, Kehoe. Where exactly?”
He couldn’t call Mike. He had to stay on the line.
“Go around the back of Building B. To the village. The door will be open. It leads right to the path you saw with Slattery. His favorite street.”
“Is he there?”
“No. Slattery borrowed someone’s jet for the weekend.”
Linc heard Kenzie moan.
“Don’t hurt her,” he said. He turned onto the road that led to the blocky buildings and vast warehouse. He couldn’t see them yet.
Kehoe only laughed. “I’m going to let you do that.”
Linc stepped hard on the accelerator. Almost there.
“Are you alone with her?”
“Yes,” Kehoe assured him. “There’s only a skeleton staff here on weekends. There is a guard at the gate, though. Probably asleep. Wake him up and ask for the pass I left for you.”
“Okay.” He knew better than to say anything to the guard. He knew who would suffer. He just had to get there.
There was a pause. He heard Kenzie cry out and then a thump, as if she’d been hit. Linc gritted his teeth.
“Go ahead,” Kehoe taunted her. “Make all the noise you want. I haven’t even started.”
Linc slammed to a halt in front of the gates. He would have blown through, but the tire spikes had been reversed.
The guard, a shuffler with bad eyesight, peered at him through the glass of the little enclosure. “There’s only one pass,” he said. “You must be the Bannon fellow.”
He held it out. Linc wanted to snatch it and roar on to Building B, but he had to wait for the spike shift.
Vic Kehoe. The man was certifiably crazy. He didn’t look it. But when did psychos ever look it? They all lived on quiet, tree-lined streets with neighbors who never saw a thing.
The spikes rolled in reverse and he was through. The parking lot was empty.
The noonday sun shone on the back wall of Building B. He screeched to a halt in front of a small open door, grabbing the phone. The call was still connected.
“You there, Kehoe?”
“Tell him, Kenzie,” the male voice said.
She screamed.
“Does that answer your question?”
Linc ran inside. He had to stop to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. The vast structure looked the way he remembered it. There were a few things that seemed to be different.
A construction crane had been moved to a flat field of dust behind the village. Ramps connected its highest section to the catwalks near the ceiling.
“Where is she?” He fought the shaking he could hear in his own voice.
“Take a guess. And be quiet, Kenzie. Or I will shoot him.”
Linc fell silent, looking around. He was well aware that he was an easy target.
“I’m waiting,” Kehoe said impatiently.
Linc’s gaze moved over a steel box about the size of a small truck trailer. At first he’d thought it was attached to the warehouse wall, but on closer look he realized that the crane supported it.
Two giant prongs like a forklift were under its floor.
Very faintly he heard a switch click somewhere. With a jerk the steel box began to move. He could just hear Kenzie cry out again.
“Sit down,” Kehoe told her. “In the middle.”
She was in that thing. Linc recognized it as a mobile prison. Used, by the looks of it. Not shiny enough to impress clients. Maybe Vic Kehoe’s résumé was enough to do that.
Wide range of skills. Specialist in close confinement and intel extraction.
The box stopped its downward trajectory.
Linc turned, startled when a large flatscreen, the type used in arenas, came down from the ceiling. It flickered to life.
He saw Kenzie. If she was in that box, it was pure white inside. But it was still a cell.
“There you go. Now you can see her. I dumped her there. And I can see both of you.”
Linc kept his gaze fixed on her. He knew Vic Kehoe didn’t care if he did. The bastard was bent on playing his sadistic little game for a good long time.
Her face filled the screen. Then the camera on her pulled back. She was sitting in the corner of a white space, a square of light to one side above her. He could just see a bloody handprint. Her mark.
He knew she’d left it on purpose. Just in case no one found out where she was in time.
“She fights hard,” said Kehoe’s booming voice. He was having fun with the sound effects on the PA system. He even experimented with a laugh.
The sound died away as the steel box continued its slow descent. The landing platform of the crane was suddenly illuminated. The spotlight beams moved over the fake street lined with mud houses.
Then the steel box hit the platform with a jolt.
Linc saw Kenzie’s head bang against the cell wall. She came up, looking dazed.
“I’m out of practice,” said the deep voice. “Maybe I should try again.”
An invisible button was pressed and the steel cell rose several feet. Kehoe took his time about lowering it. It came down again, hovering several inches over the floor. Then he dropped it. The impact was less—it startled Kenzie instead of making her crack her head. Linc saw her hand rise and move over the wall.
Maybe she was looking for an inside opening that he could see from his outside vantage point. The platform rumbled and the giant tractor belts began to move.
Kehoe controlled it with skill.
The door to the cell lined up perfectly with the end of the fake street.
“Slattery showed you this, didn’t he? And all that paintball crap he thinks is so much fun?”
Linc nodded.
“There’s a real mine in it now,” Kehoe said. “Spits nails and shrapnel. I rigged it myself. Spotted it yet?”
Linc looked. “No.”
“Do me a favor. Walk down Mud Street and help her out of the white room.”
The door swung open. Linc saw Kenzie drag herself toward it. Had she heard what Kehoe just said? He had no way of knowing.
Linc held up a warning hand. He willed her to understand the words his lips forme
d. Stay where you are.
She shrank back.
“And now the moment has come,” Kehoe announced. “You actually don’t have a choice about taking that walk. If you don’t do it, I’ll raise the box.”
Linc waited, trying to hold Kenzie’s gaze.
“The door is open. If I tip it, she falls out.”
Linc obeyed the silent command from his invisible enemy and took a step.
“That’s it. Keep going. One hint to make it fair—there is only one real mine. The others just look real. You can tell the difference if you kick them.”
Linc hesitated.
“The real one can blow off your legs. Maybe not both. Get going.”
Linc walked slowly, step by step. Kehoe hadn’t told him to run. Linc studied the dust on the path, looking for a trace of the buried mines. There was one area where the light reflected differently.
“I said get going.” The flat voice was laced with anger.
Linc looked to his right, at the dry watercourse filled with stones. He searched with his eyes for two flat ones and picked them up. In another fraction of a second, he skipped them like stones over water. He used to be good at that. The heavier one hit the patch that reflected.
He turned his head away and prayed Kenzie would have the sense to do the same.
The shock wave deafened him. He didn’t hear the fake mines pop. He looked back when the shrapnel stopped pinging off things.
A nail had hit his calf. He pulled it out of the muscle right through his jeans and ignored the blood running down into his shoe. Only one. He’d gotten off easy.
There was a huge hole midway down the path. The hidden mine would have blown off his legs and some other body parts he valued, and fragged the rest of him.
Kenzie cowered in the cell. There was shrapnel stuck in the steel and cracks in the plastic interior. Miraculously, none had hit her. He ran toward her and dragged her out.
“Good aim,” Kehoe said nastily. “Now what are you going to do with her?”
Linc didn’t know. She shook uncontrollably.
He searched the dark, echoing ceiling of the warehouse, scanning every inch of it for the other man. Kehoe stayed out of sight. He knew the layout. Linc didn’t.
Linc could sense the depth of Kehoe’s training in war games. Keep the enemy off balance. Take advantage of overconfidence.
Strike at close range.
CHAPTER 24
There was a rattling noise too loud to comprehend. Linc saw the source of it.
“Don’t move,” he said to Kenzie. “He wants to isolate us.”
Steel cage doors were unrolling, coming down with lethal speed from high above. It took only a few seconds for the first to reach the cement floor. They would be pinned and killed if they ran for it.
“They keep the employees out,” Kehoe’s voice explained. “Slattery gets a little carried away sometimes. War games can get crazy.”
“Linc,” Kenzie whispered. “We can hide.”
“No.” He didn’t want to die like a rat in a trap. She let go of him and ran through a mud doorway. The darkness inside swallowed her.
He had to follow. Then a bullet rang out, burying itself into the path a foot in front of him. A plume of dust rose and he coughed, trying to see inside the house.
“Run, Linc, run,” the voice mocked. “You have to save her before you can save yourself. If you don’t try, then you both die. Kenzie first,” Kehoe added. “You get to watch.”
Linc hesitated, listening for the actual location of the voice. He could just hear the delay between it and the PA.
“Leave her alone.”
“I can’t,” Kehoe said calmly. “Something about her just gets to me. It’s hard to explain.”
Linc heard her cry out. Faintly.
“She must have touched the hot wall. Don’t let that worry you,” Kehoe’s disembodied voice soothed. “The warehouse has a sprinkler system. We test it from time to time. Here goes.”
Linc felt the first few drops. They stung his skin. Whatever was in the pipes wasn’t water.
“Did that hurt? Let me switch it off. Stay still,” Kehoe added.
Linc didn’t hear a sound from the house Kenzie was in. But the drops from above stopped.
“Let’s talk,” Kehoe said. “Man to man. Although I don’t mind if Kenzie listens.”
For a fraction of a second, Linc glimpsed Kenzie within the house, near the mud doorway. Then she moved back into the darkness.
If Kehoe was focused on him, she might be safe.
“Remember when you joined the army, Linc? They took blood, so they have your DNA on file. One drop on a three-by-five card.”
Kehoe knew what he was talking about.
“Yeah. So?” he said to the ceiling. At least this weird conversation gave him a reason to look up.
“That’s all they need to identify your remains. Except there won’t be any. You’ll be vaporized. A mist of blood and bone.”
An accurate description of a bomb victim, if the explosion was big enough.
Linc turned his head at the sound of a hiss. Kenzie was waving him into the house.
He heard Kehoe chuckle. “I guess she likes the layout. Want to check it out? No down payment. Quiet neighborhood.”
Linc ran toward the door. The air inside was stifling. There was only one tiny window. Kenzie had backed into a corner. Her eyes glittered.
“Step away from the wall. Don’t touch anything,” he ordered. She obeyed.
He checked the walls and ceiling for dangling wires or a detonation cord—but not with his hands.
The imitation mud looked smooth and hard.
A square in the wall began to glow. He quickly stepped between her and it, holding out a hand to sense heat.
Kenzie coughed. “It cooled off. The light in the cell—it looked like that.”
Kehoe’s voice crackled loudly.
“I control that. There’s one in every house. And there’s a gift box in every house. Find it yet?”
Linc saw it. On the floor. The cardboard was the same color as the polymer the house was made of.
“Guess what’s in it.”
Another bomb. Linc wasn’t going near it.
“Bulletproof vests.” The voice laughed. “X-Ultra. You two get to test them. Not on a firing range. On yourselves.”
Linc and Kenzie looked at each other.
“The box is open. Take one for her and one for yourself. And come out before I blow up that house.”
A pause.
Kenzie dodged around him to the box and yanked out a vest before Linc could stop her. She pulled out another for him, clawing off the plastic bags.
A bullet smashed into the door frame.
One in ten. No way to tell the bad from the good.
Kenzie struggled into hers. It was loose on her. She fumbled with the side clasps.
“Got ’em on?” the jeering voice asked.
A second bullet hit, an inch above the first. Kehoe was a marksman.
“Tick-tick-tick.”
Linc took a last desperate look around for a remote activator. It could be behind the square of light.
“You’re running out of time.”
Kenzie thrust the other vest at him. “Just put the damn thing on!”
She had snapped out of her trance. Cursing was a good sign.
Linc pulled out his gun. “Hold this.”
She took it from him. “Got an ammo clip?”
“No. Just what’s in it.” He snapped the vest open and dragged it over his head, then fastened it. He took the gun back from her and stuck it into the back of his jeans.
Linc moved to the open doorway to show himself.
He knew Kehoe was above them, close enough to hit his targets with accuracy.
No bullets. No comments.
“What now?” Kenzie said softly.
He turned his head to the side to talk to her. “I shoot out the two spotlights over us, we run to the rock wall.”
&nbs
p; “Up to the catwalks?”
“If we can get there.”
A third bullet hit the door frame. Linc jumped back. He blinked and brushed pulverized fake mud from his face.
Kenzie gave him a fast once-over. “He missed.”
Linc kept her behind him while he craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the catwalks. There was a dark flash of movement. Kehoe was changing position, setting up for his next shots.
“Say when,” Kenzie muttered.
One long stride took Linc to the doorway. He took aim but the lights blinded him. He missed a few shots, then made two. The spotlights shattered into sparks and went black.
“Now!”
He stuck the gun into his pants and grabbed her hand. They stumbled over the cratered path. Kehoe opened fire and missed again. Kenzie tripped and went down. Linc yanked her up.
Another shot rang out. The impact knocked Kenzie from his grip and left her rolling in the dust, stunned and gasping. He bent down and felt her legs for fresh blood, then her torso. Nothing. His hands slipped under the vest. Still nothing. The vest had taken the hit, not her. They’d picked one good one. That was something.
His vest—open question. Linc knew it was a matter of time until he was shot. A psychopath like Kehoe would want him to see Kenzie get hurt first.
Cold fury flooded him. He swept her up in his arms and carried her at a dead run to the rock wall. Kenzie had a few seconds to get her breath back. She twisted free the second they got there, grabbing the first handhold and heading up.
“Go for it,” he muttered. He was right behind her, then to the side. Halfway up. Three-quarters. The darkness helped.
They reached the top of the wall and hauled themselves up and over onto a catwalk, lying flat.
Kenzie lifted her head and cursed. Linc looked where she was staring and saw Vic Kehoe. The other man smiled.
The rifle he’d used to take potshots at them was slung over his back. There was a .357 in his hand.
“Who wants to go first?” he asked nastily.
Linc put his hand over Kenzie’s. He could hear her raw-throated breathing. She’d swallowed dust when she hit the path. His heart banged in his chest.
The catwalk creaked. Kehoe took a shooting stance. “Answer me.” The barrel of the big gun moved from Kenzie to Linc.
