A low thud inside the room, off to their right. Ricky turned his light toward the sound and lit up one of the captives, standing at the end of her box. She looked right at them, her mouth moving, but they couldn’t hear a word. She slapped the box, creating another thud.
Ricky glanced back at the main door, hoping the sound didn’t carry that far.
Thud.
Rosario ran over, so he followed.
The woman was yelling, or at least looked like she was.
“We cannot hear you,” Rosario said, cupping her ear and shaking her head.
The captive said something else and pointed toward the floor. Ricky and Rosario looked where she indicated, but saw nothing. Another thud drew their eyes back to the woman. She spoke again and pointed down, this time adding a hooking motion.
She meant under her cell.
He knelt and felt under the end of the platform. “There are switches here.” He lowered his head until he could see them. There were five switches in all, each with a different label: O2, AUX1, AUX2, COMMUNICATIONS, SPKER VOLUME.
He flicked the communications switch and straightened back up. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” the woman said, her voice coming out of a speaker by the switches. “Yes! Oh, my God! Get me out of here, please!”
“We will,” Rosario said. “We prom—”
“They’re going to kill us!” the woman said. “You have to get us out!”
“We understand. Just calm down and let us—”
From across the room came the clunk of metal slipping into metal.
Vander Keane put the empty cart in the prep room. He then took a few minutes to lay out the instruments and set up everything he and the others would need to prepare the remaining participants for that night’s trials. After he finished, he returned to the lobby and sat down at the desk, intending to enter the events of the last half hour into the log.
A message was flashing on the computer screen.
CAMERA MALFUNCTION – HOLDING ROOM
He frowned and brought up the feed. The image was only digital noise. He scrolled back, trying to find out when the problem had started. Turned out it was only about a minute before, but that wasn’t what commanded his attention. In the image, a crack of light ran partway up the wall, right where the doors to the lobby were.
He looked over at them, thinking one of them had somehow slipped open, but both doors were shut tight.
He rose and moved to the doors. As he reached for the handle, he heard voices coming from somewhere deep in the room. A conversation that could not happen unless one of the talkers was outside the tanks.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
One of the prisoners must have gotten out. That wasn’t possible, but what other explanation could there be?
He rushed back to the computer, turned on the holding-area emergency lock, and activated the escaped-prisoner protocol.
Ricky and Rosario ducked behind the woman’s cage.
But instead of the door swinging open in a blaze of light, they heard a low hiss.
“Gas!” Rosario said.
They raced across the room, no longer worried about concealing their presence. Ricky reached the door first and tried to yank it open, but it didn’t budge.
He whirled around and shined his light through the room, focusing on the walls. “There has to be another way out.”
Rosario made her own scan and shook her head. “There’s not.”
“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
He began feeling woozy and knew they didn’t have much time. Perhaps they couldn’t do anything to save themselves for now, but they could protect their friends. He threw his phone on the floor and stomped on it, breaking it apart. He dropped to his knees and sifted through the debris until he found the SIM card.
Before he snapped it in half, he looked at Rosario. She was standing there, pointing her light at him. “What are you waiting for?” he asked.
“Would you rather do that in the dark?”
“Oh, right,” he said.
As soon as he broke his SIM card, Rosario popped out hers and destroyed it, too.
Ricky, closer to the floor, began coughing uncontrollably. A few seconds later, Rosario convulsed in her own fit. She cocked her arm and let her phone fly.
Ricky watched its light shine until the phone crashed against the wall. He heard its shattered body fall to the floor only a few seconds before Rosario did the same.
Vander waited two minutes after the gas cycle had completed before turning on the exhaust system. Once the green light came on, he entered the room, holding the M4 rifle he thought he’d never need down here.
Having heard the pounding on the door, he knew he’d find the attempted escapee not far inside. What he hadn’t expected was to discover two bodies, neither of which was one of the prisoners.
He checked to make sure both were knocked out before he ran back to his desk and called Mr. Slater.
Slater marched out of the elevator exactly eleven minutes later.
Vander was waiting for him once more near the door, this time clearly nervous.
“Where?” Slater said.
“In the holding room, sir. I put them in two of the empty tanks.”
Slater veered toward the holding room and flung the doors aside. “Lights, goddammit.”
“Right. Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The flood lamps lit up, and a few seconds later, Van joined Slater inside.
“Which ones?”
“I’ll show you.”
Vander led him to a transparent box a couple of spots from the door. The cot had been removed so the body inside lay directly on the platform. The man was what some might call Caucasian, but his tanned skin and Mediterranean features spoke of inferior blood. Six foot. Maybe six two. And three or four days past due for a shave. His hair was neatly trimmed, however. He wore dark blue jeans, a leather jacket over a black T-shirt, and black boots.
“The woman’s two down.”
A Mex, or whatever she wanted to call herself. From somewhere south like that. Tiny. Five one, if she was lucky. Dark hair and dark clothes.
“Did they have anything on them?” Slater asked, his eyes still on the intruder.
“He had some loose cash, two hundred and forty-four dollars. And these.” Van moved around the side of the tank and picked a few things off the floor.
In one hand, he held several small black squares Slater couldn’t immediately identify. In the other was something he knew well—a Beretta pistol and attached suppressor.
Slater grabbed the gun. Brand new, with a full magazine. He could tell the suppressor was high quality.
Who the hell are these guys?
When Vander had called, Slater had assumed the intruders were FBI or ATF. But a fed wouldn’t snoop around with equipment like this. CIA? Maybe, but he doubted it.
Could be private investigators.
Maybe someone actually cared about one of the unwanted and had hired these two to find him or her. But even that seemed far-fetched. Not only were the collection teams trained to take only those who wouldn’t be missed, but Slater and Yates had also taken great pains in setting up the organization so that it would be nearly impossible to connect the different segments.
Someone had found them, though.
“This was it? No IDs? Nothing else?”
Vander hesitated.
“What?”
“They both had phones. But—”
“Phones? Goddammit, give them to me!”
Vander looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he jogged back into the lobby and returned a few moments later with two plastic bags.
“What are those?”
Vander held out one of the bags. “Their phones, sir.”
Slater grabbed it and looked inside. The broken remains were gathered at the bottom. “What the fuck happened?”
“I’m…I’m not sure, sir. I found one on the floor near the guy, and the ot
her lying next to the wall.”
The intruders must have destroyed their phones on purpose. “Did you dig out the SIM cards at least?”
“They’re in there, too. Um, both snapped in half.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“I-I’m not, sir.”
Slater swore under his breath and looked at the other bag. More plastic items, but these appeared intact. “What’s in there?”
Vander handed him the second bag. “I found these on them. I’m not sure what they are.”
Slater pulled out one of the items. It was a small plastic square that had a sticky surface on one side, covered by a thin protective sheet. He knew exactly what it was. A tracking bug.
“At least tell me you know how they got in,” he said.
“I don’t know for sure, sir. But-but-but I would guess it happened when we were-were loading the product onto your truck.”
As mad as Slater felt, he was clearheaded enough to realize Van was probably right. He also realized the other potential ramification. If the captives had been able to get into his truck while he was in the barn, they may have bugged it. He kept the bag of bugs, but handed the other one back to Van. “Get rid of this crap.”
“Yes, sir.” Vander hesitated. “What do you want me to do with them?”
Slater thought for a moment. Whoever these two assholes were, they were problems that would only get bigger if they were let go. The only sound option was to get rid of them. He walked over and pulled the red sticker from the tank of the Mex kid whom he’d wanted to sell to the Arab. He did the same on the tank holding the twentysomething, mixed-blood woman, as they’d be able to get a little cash for her, too.
Slater transferred the stickers to the tanks of the intruders. “Send them over with the others tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Slater hurried back topside, conducted an exhaustive search of his truck, and found two bugs. He put them into the bag with the others, stomped them with his boot a couple of times, and tossed the whole lot into the pond.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ananke checked her phone as she returned to her hotel room after her lunch with Scudder.
Ricky had texted her about fifteen minutes earlier, while she was talking to Scudder.
He and Rosario had found the truck at Green Hills Estates. Ananke’s immediate thought was to wonder if she’d misread Scudder. Was he involved?
She hurried over to her computer and brought up a satellite image of Scudder’s property at the estates. Ricky had mentioned a pond, but there was no pond at Scudder’s.
She zoomed out until she had a view of the entire development. She spotted a body of water several properties west of Scudder’s place. As she magnified the area, she remembered her conversation with Toni Mahoney when the woman had told her about swimming in a pond at the farm that used to be in the valley. It seemed likely they were one and the same.
Near the pond stood a big building. A garage or barn, or perhaps even a guesthouse. The main house sat to the south, a mansion bigger than most of the others in the development.
She opened a video chat window and called Shinji.
“Hey, boss,” he answered.
“Something I need you to check out right away.” She described the house and told him its location. “I need to know who owns it.”
“Shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Do you want me to give you the info on the people in Ricky’s pictures first?”
It took her a second to remember what he was talking about. The pictures would be the ones Ricky had taken while witnessing the delivery the previous evening. Rosario had asked Shinji to ID the security personnel.
“You’ve got names?”
“Of course I’ve got names. This is what I do, remember?”
She rolled her eyes. “All right, Mr. Hotshot, let’s hear it.”
She heard him click a key, and his face was replaced by one of Ricky’s pics, cropped close to focus on one of the guards. “This one’s name is Patrick Monroe. He is twenty-four, and has worked for Scolareon for three years. His personnel file is nice and clean, regular yearly raises in line with company norms and no mentions of trouble.”
The image switched to another guard. “This is Ryan Porter, twenty-five, also been at Scolareon for three years. Clean record, regular raises. Though it’s not in either of their company files, he and Monroe are first cousins. Their family has been in the Bradbury area since the early 1900s.”
“Related? That’s interesting.”
“It is a small town.”
“True.”
The picture changed to a guard a couple of decades older than the other two. “Man number three is named Leonard Yates. He is forty-four, and has been with Scolareon for nearly five years, and, get this, he’s their head of security.”
“Yates? I met a Yates at the party, but he was a lot older.”
“Let me guess. He was the chief of police.”
“Yeah, he was.”
“He’s Leonard Yates’s father.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“I know, right? But that’s not all. Though Leonard isn’t related by blood to Porter or Monroe, he is via his brother’s wife, Katherine Porter, who is Porter and Monroe’s aunt. You want to guess her married name?”
“I don’t know. Scudder?”
Shinji laughed. “That would have been good, but no. Slater.”
“Slater? As in Dalton Slater?”
“One and the same.”
“They’re brothers?”
“Technically, half brothers. Same mom, different dads. Slater’s older by two years. Yates’s dad basically raised them both.”
“Holy crap.”
“I’m not done. Before Yates the younger was hired at Scolareon, he and his brother started a security company called Riverside Trusted Security. Still up and running, ostensibly with Katherine Slater in charge. RTS provides security services, including guards, to many of the businesses in town, such as U-Jay Soft, Klay Tone, Digital Paste, Remakers 2100, and—given what you just asked me to find out, you’re going to love this—all the guards at Green Hills Estates.”
Ananke said nothing as she processed what this all meant. Clearly, the Yates/Slater family was like a fungus infecting the entire area. “Excellent work, Shinji.”
“Thanks, boss. Now if you give me a minute, I’ll track down who owns the house.”
“Take two if you need it.”
While he worked on that, Ananke called Ricky for an update. The line didn’t ring even once before “Ricky ain’t here, but Ricky will get back to you when Ricky can. Only if you leave a message, though.”
After the beep, she said, “It’s me. Call back.”
She tried Rosario but was also sent to voice mail. Thinking maybe they’d been able to get a bug on Slater and were following him, she opened her tracking program. The only bugs that showed up were the ones she’d put on the police cruisers.
“Got it,” Shinji announced from the computer.
It took her a moment to remember what she’d tasked him with. “Whose house is it?”
“It’s owned by a corporation.”
“A corporation?”
“I believe you’ve heard of them. Digital Paste?”
Within six minutes, Ananke was parked in the lot next to Digital Paste’s headquarters, mentally transforming herself back into Shawn Ramey. When she was ready, she headed inside.
Perky Chad was behind the reception counter again. “Welcome to Digital Paste. How can I—oh, Ms. Ramey, so good to see you again. Were we expecting you?”
She smiled apologetically and said, “Not exactly. I was hoping maybe Devon might have a moment to chat.”
Chad’s own smile faded. “I’m so sorry. Mr. Rally isn’t feeling well so he didn’t come in today.”
“Oh, no. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”
“He gets migraines sometimes. I’m sure he’ll be back in a day or so. Is there someone else who co
uld help you?”
She hesitated a moment before saying, “Is Elijah in?”
Elijah Chan rose as his executive assistant ushered Ananke into his office. “Good to see you again. Please, have a seat.”
“Thank you.” She settled into one of the chairs in front of his desk.
“Can we get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”
“Water?”
“Of course.” Chan looked at his assistant. “A water, please, Chloe. Actually, make that two.”
Ananke casually surveyed the room. It was more cluttered than what she remembered from the glimpse she’d gotten of Rally’s office. Not messily so, but in a way that denoted someone who was elbows deep in a lot of different projects.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said.
“Not at all.”
“Are you sure about that?” she said, nodding at the thick, three-ring binder opened in the middle of his desk. It had little Post-it flags sticking out from the tops of dozens of pages.
He chuckled. “We have a new app that goes live next month. There’s always a few last-minute glitches that need to be sorted first.”
“Don’t you have people to do that?”
“Sure, but another set of eyes never hurts.”
“Plus, it’s your company.”
“And there’s that. Well, mine and Devon’s, of course.”
“Confession time,” she said. “I actually came by to see him. He’d mentioned that if I had any questions he’d be happy to answer them, but I understand he’s out today.”
“He is. Sorry about that. Is there something I can help you with?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Thank you.” She leaned forward. “One of the things I’m concerned about is housing. I’ve been told that a new phase of the tract north of downtown is about to start, which is great, but I’m wondering if I’m just having smoke blown up my ass or it’s really going to happen.”
Chan laughed again, louder this time. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
Town at the Edge of Darkness Page 22
