“Of course I could do nothing in front of Jason. I simply wasn’t ready yet. But I followed your cab. I saw you both go up to his apartment.” Charles’s voice became steadily more strident as he recited Zachary’s crimes. “I listened to your violation of Jason’s body. I heard you throw him around and use him. Every breath, every move. And then, after all of that, when you finally had the decency to leave, I heard him give you words he denied everyone else.”
Charles pressed a button on his cell phone, and a recording of Thomas’s baritone played over the sound system. “If I could let anyone in, Zach, it would be you.” Zachary’s vision blurred with tears.
Ah, Thomas. You really did feel something for me.
He deeply wanted to apologize to Thomas for the terrible things he had said in their last conversation. Was it only yesterday? But despair sapped his strength, and he sagged against the leather bench. Once he would have done anything to hear those words. Now strapped and helpless, he recognized them for a death sentence.
Charles nodded at Zachary’s tears. “You’re a clever one. I saw that early on. You understand what this means. But I also knew I had to handle this more carefully than I had the other one, that Gallagher.”
“Were you… were you trying to make me love you?” Zachary choked out. “To love Sam?”
“It seemed so simple, with your febrile tastes. I went through your books and your movie collection, found what you liked, and then I pretended to like those same things.”
“You were in my apartment?” Zachary asked, trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
“Of course. Simplest thing in the world. Identify a construction or a maintenance team going in, slip some money to join the crew, break away once inside the building. Piece of cake,” Charles gloated. “Once I was in, I planted a few cameras, added some software to your computer, that sort of thing. That’s how I knew about your work trip to New Orleans, of course. I simply showed up as Sam and took things from there.”
“But why go to so much trouble?”
“I needed Jason to see how faithless you really were,” Charles said with a grimace. “I wanted him to see how easily you’d abandon him for another man. Otherwise he’d simply pine for you, and I couldn’t have that. No. When Jason comes to me, I want all of him, every bit of his attention.”
“Did you delete that picture from my phone from when we went to the Captain America movie?” Zachary asked, desperate to keep Charles talking.
“Of course. When you went to the bathroom and left your phone in your jacket. I couldn’t have you show that around, just on the off chance Jason would see it before I was ready.”
A piece shifted into place for Zachary. “You knew Jason went to the shelter sometimes. That’s why you didn’t want to come there.”
Charles scoffed. “Obviously. Besides, I had no sympathy for those children—weeping and wailing because their families didn’t want them. I survived that on my own.” Anger glinted in his eye. “Family is a trap. Only love can save you, and that never comes from family. All family gives you, ultimately, is disappointment and punishment and disapproval.”
Zachary tried a different tack. “Couldn’t you have loved me? I really believed in you, as Sam. We had so much fun together.” He tried to put longing into his tone.
Contempt dripped from Charles. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jason is the only man for me, and he’ll understand soon that I’m the only man for him.” He smiled cruelly then and asked, “Now would you like to get a look at my present?”
Charles moved out of Zachary’s line of sight and wheeled over a device. A silver-colored arm protruded from a Lucite box, and the gears and mechanism inside the box reflected the lights in the room along hard edges and sharp corners. Charles pressed a button on a remote and the gears began to turn powerfully. They thrust the rod forward and back and picked up speed until it punched the air.
Charles shut down the mechanism, stepped away, and returned with a long box. He reached inside and, with his eyes on Zachary’s face, removed a dildo longer and thicker than Zachary had even imagined existed. It had to be more than a foot long and bigger around than a beer can. And covering the head of the dildo were….
“Nails,” Charles said in satisfaction as he bent to bring the monstrous thing closer to Zachary’s face. The nails were driven in all around the rubber head, each protruding about a quarter of an inch.
Charles returned to his machine and fitted the end of the dildo over the steel rod. He looked Zachary in the eye again as he pressed the On button. The gears started to churn once more and thrust the phallus with its evilly glinting glans forward and back through a smooth piston motion, faster and faster.
Zachary gasped as he understood. Soon it would be ramming into his body—Charles’s ultimate punishment for daring to have had Thomas. The nail heads would rip and shred him from the inside. He would die horribly.
His bladder voided suddenly, and Charles chuckled in appreciation. “See. I knew you were clever,” he said. Then he picked up a ball gag and leaned over Zachary’s head.
Chapter 26
THOMAS CLIMBED into his Maserati where he had parked it next to Mata Hari. He slumped in the darkened car for a minute and tried to process that Charles had come for him again. He pictured poor Brian Gallagher—just a horny young guy who was looking to have a little sex, and Thomas fit the bill. If Thomas had turned him down, had never taken him home, he’d still be alive.
He remembered the scorn heaped upon him by his father and then by August Drake when he pushed him out of the law firm. They blamed him for the stalking because he was too foolish to see the danger. At the time it seemed monstrously unfair.
But two years older and confronted with the consequences—ones that others were paying far worse than Thomas himself—he knew they were right. He had believed so firmly in his own intelligence and savvy that he was sure he could spot a danger a mile away. He had been so confident in his own charmed life that it had never occurred to him that his promiscuity could cause him to bring home a man as dangerous as Charles. Brian Gallagher suffered for that blind spot. Somehow Daniel Owen suffered too. Though Thomas didn’t understand the connection, he had no doubt the responsibility fell at his feet.
And worst of all…. He clenched his jaw and pounded on the leather-wrapped steering wheel of his car. Worst of all Zachary would pay for Thomas’s hubris. Zach—the other man he never saw coming—the beautiful and happy transplant from Utah who burst into Thomas’s life and who, without even trying, caused Thomas to dream of abandoning his careful rules. Zach, who gave his time to abandoned gay and lesbian teenagers, who sang torch songs he was too innocent to understand, who liked Star Wars and Star Trek and God knew what else. Yet he could turn that naïveté and charm around to dominate Thomas in bed.
Zach had brought Thomas to question everything he ever knew about himself and his desires, and Thomas absolutely craved more. His eyes welled with tears. He wanted more of Zach, but Zach was going to be hurt or killed by Charles because he made the huge mistake of sleeping with Thomas. Thomas had indeed infected Zach with his bad judgment. He made him a target for a madman.
He started his car, drove out of the parking lot, and headed toward his apartment. He leaned his cheek on his left fist and held the steering wheel in his right as he made his way through the quiet night. Childhood prayers rose in his mind. He prayed first and foremost for Zachary Hall—that he might be spared from evil.
His phone rang in his suit-jacket pocket, and he assumed it was Randy. When he pulled the phone out, however, Zachary’s name appeared. Heart instantly pounding, he accepted the call on speaker mode.
Charles’s voice filled the cabin of his car. “I’m ready at last, Jason,” he said, and excitement made his voice quiver. “It’s been so long, but I found my way back to you. I can’t wait to show how Zachary deceived you, so you’ll finally understand that no one can love you as completely as I do.”
Thomas fought down the urge to screa
m and to rage at Charles. That had failed every time before. Begging for Zachary’s life would get him nothing either and might drive Charles to harm him sooner. “What do you want me to do, Charles?” he asked as steadily as he could.
“I need you to come to me, Jason,” Charles said, and fervor shaded his tone as he recited an address off Pennsylvania Avenue. “I hate to make our reunion tense, but I must remind you not to tell anyone where you’re coming. Not the police detective, not your friend at Mata Hari. Nobody. Do you understand?”
“Is Zachary alive?” Thomas asked, unable to keep his voice from cracking.
“Oh yes. You’ll see him soon.”
“I’m not coming until I know he’s alive.” Thomas held his breath and hoped he hadn’t pushed too hard. “Please, Charles. Give me some reason to believe you,” he requested in a softer tone.
The phone was silent for a moment, and he heard Charles snort. “Fine. You’ll receive a video as soon as we disconnect so you can see the creature is alive. Now you’re about fifteen minutes away from my apartment. If you aren’t here at my door in twenty minutes, I make no promises that the creature won’t suffer early. Are we clear, Jason?”
“Yes, Charles. We’re clear.”
“Good. I’ll see you very soon, Jason.” Charles’s tone was kind, and that was almost worse.
Thomas disconnected the call. He threw his phone onto the passenger seat and waited for the promised proof as he drove toward the address near the Capitol. In moments the phone chimed, and he reached out to activate the video attached to the message.
It started with a close-up of Zachary on his back. His eyes were wide and afraid, and a ball gag was in his mouth. Off camera, Charles recited, “We’re giving Jason assurances that you are currently alive, so nod for the camera, please.” Thomas saw Zachary hesitate and then nod slightly. Charles continued, “Now let’s give Jason a little preview of what a whore you are, shall we?”
The view pulled back to show Zachary naked and strapped to a leather bench by a band buckled across his chest. Restraints on his ankles and his wrists were connected together by hooks of some kind and forced Zachary’s legs up and back. What was Charles doing? It made no sense to Thomas.
A horn honked, and he swerved the car as he jerked his eyes back to the road. He had nearly driven over the line into coming traffic. His heart pounded as he pulled sharply over to the right shoulder to play the short video clip again and tried to understand the way Zachary was being held. He couldn’t, but the threat was clear.
He froze the video on the close shot of Zach’s terrified face. As he stared at it, certitude gripped his heart. More than anything in the world, Thomas wanted Zach safe, at whatever cost to himself was necessary. He looked at the road and the oncoming traffic. If he thought it would save Zach, he realized, he would drive into a median or over a railing. If Charles could be distracted enough by Thomas’s own death…. But no, that would accomplish nothing. Charles would still blame Zach and kill him before anyone could find them.
Thomas selfishly wished he could tell Zach—just once—how much he had come to mean to him in such a short time. This terrible situation was Thomas’s fault, and Zach could never love him back after the danger Thomas had brought to him. But dear God, he wished he could at least beg forgiveness.
None of that mattered while Zach remained in danger, though. Thomas was wasting precious moments on the clock Charles had set for him, so he pulled back onto Massachusetts Avenue and continued toward the address he finally realized was in the Newseum, a few blocks away from the Capitol itself.
He had no weapon in the car and no time to stop and get one, but Thomas would do anything in his power to prevent Charles from hurting Zach. He would strangle the maniac with his bare hands if he got the chance and take the consequences gladly. If he had to pull Charles out a window with him, it didn’t matter.
Charles would not harm Zachary. No. Fucking. Way.
Chapter 27
RANDY PACED around his office, and his mind worked like in the old days when he was planning a trip into a hot zone for his protectee. His resources were limited, his lines of communication were little better than tin cans tied together with string, and he was acutely aware of the fact that he had no official role anymore. But Thomas was his friend. And despite Randy’s natural reticence, he genuinely liked Zachary too. If twenty-five years of training could help save that good kid, then Randy would do what he must and apologize later.
He jumped at his cell phone when it buzzed with the ringtone he had set for Lily. “What do ya know?” he growled into the phone.
“I talked to Detective Torres. She understands the situation and she’s combing through the file again for anything that might help. All searches for name combinations with Rumson, Scarborough, and Milliken had turned up nothing relevant. The only name that did hit checks out for a seventy-five-year-old man who’s lived in the same place for forty years. I have a call in to the Seattle PD myself in case Secret Service jogs something loose that they forgot to tell a DC detective. Any other ideas, RV?”
“The mother has to know he’s still alive. Can we do anything there?” Randy asked.
“Yes, she likely knows Charles is alive,” Lily said cautiously, “but we have nothing concrete yet. The Rumson family is too well connected in Washington State politics. If I make a call to her without going up the chain first, the shitstorm will wipe us all away.”
Randy had to agree. “Okay. Dead end for now. Even if she knew he survived the crash, it’s gonna take a lot of work to connect her to some murders two years later.”
Lily was quiet, and Randy recognized a peculiar quality in her silence. It was why they worked well together for years when she was his deputy. “Out with it, Lily. What are you thinking?”
“If Rumson is alive, then the suicide was faked. Right? So whose body did Mrs. Rumson identify?”
Randy felt the hair on his arms stand on end as he let the ramifications wash over him. “Brilliant, Lily. Run with that thought. How would you come up with another body?”
“You’d need someone unlikely to be missed,” Lily said slowly as she worked her way through the puzzle. “Homeless, maybe. But he’d have to have enough superficial similarities to Charles Rumson to make the initial identification plausible. Let me dig a bit, and I’ll call back.”
Just as Lily hung up, his office door opened, and Randy yelped as his bar back, Malcolm, stuck in his head. “Holy shit, Mal,” Randy gasped. “What the hell are you still doing here? I thought the place was empty.”
Malcolm laughed. “I guess I was taking out the trash when you looked. Sorry, boss. Do you need me to do anything else before I go?”
Randy leaned forward eagerly. “Mal, do you have a cell with you?”
“Sure, boss. Why?”
“I need to borrow it for the night. I know that’ll crimp your style, but it’s a matter of life and death. No shit.”
Malcolm pulled a cheap phone out of his back pocket and handed it over, his eyes wide. “Fuck, boss. What’s going on?”
“Not tonight. Thanks, Mal. I’ll get this back to you tomorrow,” Randy said. I hope. Using Malcolm’s phone, he immediately dialed and hoped she would pick up despite the strange number.
“Torres,” he heard over the line.
“Maria, it’s Randy at Mata Hari. I’m using a different phone I don’t think Rumson can know about.”
“Good. That agent friend of yours is hell on wheels.”
“She really is. Do you have anything new?”
“No. I’ve been through the case file twice, and I can’t find anything we missed.”
“Lily pointed out that if that wasn’t Rumson’s body on the slab two years ago, maybe the key is to find out who actually was pulled from his Porsche that day.”
“Hang on, that….” She went silent, but Randy could hear pages flipping on her desk.
Malcolm was still standing in the door, and Randy asked him, “You know where I keep the Magnum?�
�
Malcolm nodded.
“I need you to get it and bring it to me, but try to hide what you’re doing. I’ll explain later, but there’s a camera aimed at the bar. Can you be cool about this?”
“On it, boss,” Malcolm said and slipped away.
“Here it is.” Torres spoke in his ear, and Randy could hear excitement. “What you said reminded me of a note in the log. Before the body was officially ID’d, the processing officer noted that another officer had contacted him about a missing person case and wanted to bring the person who filed the complaint to the morgue. He wrote the word Ryder, but I can’t tell if that’s the second officer or the missing person. Our guy notes twenty minutes later that Rumson had been claimed, and he apparently either didn’t respond on the missing person case or failed to note it. That happens all the time, Randy, when there’s a John Doe brought in.”
“Anything there we can use to follow up on the missing person report—a case number?”
“I’m checking… Wait. It’s Agent Woods calling on my other line.”
“Maria, can you patch us all in together?”
“I’ll try, but I’m terrible at these tech things. Hang on. Okay. Randy? Agent Woods? We all on?”
“I’m here,” Randy said.
“I’m here, and call me Lily, please. I’ve got something. The same day Rumson crashed his car, Seattle PD recorded a report for a male escort who went missing. He was five foot nine, about one fifty, brown hair, and brown eyes.”
Torres said, “Those stats match Rumson.”
“Right,” Lily continued. “The boyfriend said this guy had gone out on a call two days earlier and never returned or answered his phone. The case file still indicates the missing person is open. Since he was a prostitute, you can guess how much police resources were designated to follow through.”
“What’s the escort’s name?” Randy asked, knowing already that was the lead they needed.
Every Breath You Take Page 21
