As stealthily and as quickly as he could, Hunter got to the new door and tried the handle – unlocked. He carefully pulled it open just enough to dislodge the door from its frame. As he did, he also saw light come from inside the next room.
‘One of the workers,’Hunter heard Garcia say, but his voice was labored and heavy, and full of pain. He sounded like he was fighting for breath with every word.‘…is a truck aficionado. Can tell a truck just by its silhouette.’
Hunter peeked through the door opening, but he couldn’t see anything. The door opened onto what looked to be a five-foot-long walled strip of nothing – like a mini entry corridor before the main room, which was located to the left, and that was lucky. That meant that Hunter could pull the door fully open and step into the room, but he would still be protected by the wall.
And that was exactly what he did – quickly and silently.
Once inside the room, Hunter flatbacked his body against the wall at the edge of the mini entry corridor, looked left and took the quickest of peeks.
What he saw shocked him.
Just past the corridor, a few feet to the right, he could see a couple in wheelchairs. They looked old – really old – but Hunter could be mistaken because, truthfully, they both looked to be at the brink of death… mummified even. Their gazes were unblinking and straight ahead, as if they were either hypnotized or watching something they just couldn’t tear their eyes from.
Whoever they were, Hunter knew that they couldn’t have been the ones who had taken Garcia. So who the hell were they?
The conclusion that Hunter came to was that they had to be captive victims, just waiting to die.
To the left of the couple, Hunter caught a glimpse of a table of instruments covered in weapons – most of them blades of some sort.
‘All right.’Hunter heard a new voice that came from deeper inside the room. The voice was male, strong and threatening.‘How about the fingers? How did you find out about that? And think before you reply, Detective, because if I suspect that you’re lying, the next thing that I’ll burn… will be one of your fucking eyeballs.’
Time to act.
From his flatback position, Hunter rotated his body left, 180 degrees, landing him at the opening to the room. The old couple in the wheelchairs were just a little to his right and a couple of feet ahead of him – just at the edge of his field of vision. Hunter’s arms were stretched out, double-gripping his weapon. His eyes were ready to search left, right and center for his target, but they didn’t need to. The target was about twenty-five feet directly in front of him, a little bent over in front of a terrified-looking and shirtless Garcia, who had been tied to a high-back chair.
‘Are we clear, Detective?’
Hunter aimed his weapon at the man’s back. ‘Somehow… I really don’t fucking think so.’
Sixty-Eight
Back inside the torture chamber, Garcia was still waiting for an answer from Hunter.
‘So,’ he asked again. ‘What took you so long? Mr. GrillChef over here was just about to turn me into a burger.’
‘You do know that if he had taken your phone with him,’ Hunter countered, ‘or destroyed it right there on that parking lot, I would’ve never found you, right?’
From the floor, Russell looked back at Hunter with pure hate in his eyes.
‘Hands behind your back,’ Hunter commanded, getting down on one knee and using his left hand to roll Russell over – face to the ground… back toward Hunter. The movement wasn’t a delicate one.
‘Arghhhhhh! Fuck you!’ Russell shouted, as Garcia helped Hunter on the ground, pressing Russell’s face hard against the concrete floor, while Hunter cuffed Russell’s wrists behind his back.
With a shattered humerus head, the behind-the-back arm twist would’ve felt like the shoulder joint was rolling on barbed wire. Russell screamed and kicked, with spit flying off his lips, bouncing against the floor, and returning to his blood-splattered face – the nose, the eyes, the mouth… everywhere.
Hunter holstered his weapon, grabbed Russell by the back of his shirt and hoisted him up into a sitting position against the back wall.He was about to go check on Jennifer, when he and Garcia heard a new voice coming from just behind them.
‘James.’
In a blink of an eye, Hunter and Garcia swung around to find Russell’s father standing by the instruments table.
While their attention had been on securing Russell and cuffing his hands, neither of them noticed Russell’s father get up from his wheelchair and approach the weapons on the table.
He chose the pistol, which he had firmly in his grip, aiming directly at the two detectives before him. The weapon looked enormous in his frail hands.
‘Sir…’ Hunter said, his hands up, palms facing forward in a ‘surrender’ gesture. ‘Please, put the gun down.’
‘His real name is James,’ the old man said. ‘James Richard Whitely. Not Russell… not Trevor… not Michael… James.’
