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“Um,” she said. “Ah, no.”
“There is a house, outside of Cedar Mills. Number 6 Wrigley Lane. Google maps will have no trouble finding it. A humble place, on high ground, with a clear visual for three hundred and sixty degrees. You will bring Solokov to this house at ten o’clock this evening. I personally will not be there, so please, no clever tricks, no heroics, no police. Or Carrie and Josh…need I go on?”
“No,” she whispered.
“My men will be waiting for you there. You will be covered by hidden gunmen. All must be exactly as I dictate. Or both your siblings will die tonight. Along with you and Solokov. Very, very slowly.”
“I understand,” she said.
“Till later, then.” The line went dead. Becca’s hand dropped, limp.
“And?” Nick prompted. “Ten o’clock, in Cedar Mills,” she said dully. “Number 6 Wrigley Lane. A house, I suppose, in a rural area. He says he won’t be there. No police, no heroics, or he’ll kill everybody.”
“Hmm. OK.”
Nick’s voice sounded so detached. She glared at him, incredulous. “Huh? Hmm, OK?” Her voice vibrated with strain. “What are we going to do, Nick? What the hellcanwe do?”
“Calm down, and let me think it through,” Nick said in that weirdly cool, distant voice. “We’ve got time.”
“Time?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “What do you mean, time? My brother and sister have a knife to their throat! Three hours until—Jesus, Nick! There’s no thinking through this! There is no way through this!”
“Panicking won’t help. Shut up and breathe,” was Nick’s pitiless rejoinder.
Becca covered her face in her hands and tried to do exactly that. Breathe. Oxygenate her body. She had to stay functional. It was hard. She’d never tried breathing with a thousand-pound weight of pure terror weighing her lungs down. Her rib cage would not budge.
The miles flew beneath their wheels. The sun was down. It was getting dark. She saw signs for SeaTac, and for Southcenter Mall. Nick was driving with more purpose than before. They had entered an industrial area. Warehouses, towers of giant, multicolored shipping containers. Chain link fences, semi trucks. Nick pulled up outside a big steel gate and got out, leaving the truck idling. He picked at a combination lock that closed it. Pushed the gate wide, with a rusty, protesting screech of metal.
Becca stared at him as he got back into the truck. “What is this place? Where are we?”
He accelerated into a big, dim complex of deserted buildings. “You’ll see,” he said.
“Hey, Nick. Now’s not the time for you to get cryptic on me. What the hell is—”
“Shut up and let me think. You think you’re the only person who’s stressed out? Do not fucking scold me, Becca.”
She flinched at the brutal edge in his voice, and shut her mouth.
Nick braked in front of a blank-looking building with huge, sliding metal doors. The place had an air of decay and abandonment. Some of the windows were broken. There was a chain held by another heavy-duty combination padlock. Remnants of faded yellow crime scene tape tangled on the ground and stuck to the door. What on earth?
Nick picked that lock too and wrenched the thing loose. He reached into the back seat of the truck, grabbed a couple plastic bags that were stowed there, yanked the passenger side door open, and grabbed Becca’s arm. “Out you get.”
She slid out of the truck. “But where are we—”
“Later. Move.” His tone was like the flick of a whip. The jolt to her tortured nerves got her going.
He shoved her before him in a stumbling trot, into the big, empty building. Dim light filtered in from the high, filthy windows. There was a little more light from the open door. The ceiling was vast, many stories high. There was a huge metal scaffolding system, designed to hold industrial quantities of who knew what. The scaffolds were empty now.
Startled bats fluttered and swooped. An owl hooted, whooshed down over their heads and soared, flapping, out the open door. Becca smelled the reek of animal shit, mold, dust, rot. The place was cold, damp. Incredibly desolate.
“What is this?” she whispered.
“A few years ago, there was a big drug raid here,” Nick said. “This was a storage point for heroin coming out of the southern ex-Soviet republics. The owners are rotting in jail.”
“But why are we here?” she asked.
He crouched, did something with his hands inside the plastic bag that she could not see. She heard the clink and rattle of metal, like the links of a chain. He grabbed her hands, yanked them unexpectedly downward.
Snick. Snick.“Because this is the only place I know of where no one will find you, and no one will hear you scream,” he replied.
