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They didn’t drive me very far, or very fast. The car slowed down after only a few minutes, which made me think we were probably at the Braithwaite facility. I was very close to Kat and Holly right now. Not that I was of any use to them at all, alone, unarmed, hooded, cuffed. In this state, I was just a weapon to hurt them with.
Though I was the one, of the three of us, with the goods these assholes wanted. Chances were good that I was the one who would have to watch someone I loved be hurt.
Don’t think about that.No point in it. Moment by moment. Just breathe. Wait. Be alert for openings, opportunity, change. It was all I could do.
They left me in the trunk for what felt like a long time, but my sense of time was skewed. Right now, time was marked only by panting breaths, frantic heartbeats, terrified imaginings. I tried to slow those down, insofar as I could, but I clenched up in wild panic when heavy footsteps came near, and the trunk finally popped open.
I saw light, behind the mesh of the black fabric. Air, at least on my skin. My lungs were still crying out for it, inside that smothering bag.
They grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me out of the trunk and onto my feet, more or less. I was yanked along so swiftly I kept stumbling.
From the feel and sound of the place, I got a sense of wide-open space. Just from the vague outlines I could see through the bag, the way it echoed. It seemed like the machine room of a factory. Massive mechanisms, hoses and tubes and pulleys and panels. My brain kept on in its frantic and probably useless efforts to process information. As if any detail I could glean at this point could help our cause.
It couldn’t. I had no cards to play. All I could do was hope for rescue. They had Holly. They had Kat. They had me in a fucking vise, ever since that helicopter left my house.
They shoved me through some kind of big portal, like an airport scanner. I could barely see the outline. Must be the thing that checked for electronic signals. I passed, evidently. Then rough hands put some kind of heavy metal collar around my neck, like a horseshoe shape, snapping it into place. It was painfully small, pinching the side of my neck. When they closed it, I felt a thin wire, cutting across the front of my throat.
Hands groped at the back of my neck. I heard a loudsnickas a big lock snapped to, connecting me to a chain. I could tell from the rattle, and the slither of the heavy metal links on my back. I let out a gasp as the chain went suddenly taut, jerking me up onto my toes. The wire cut deep. Fuck, that stung. Maybe it was the same device Shane had worn in that video.
The chain stopped short before my toes left the ground, or my own body weight would have slit my throat then and there.
“Cut off his cuffs. And take off his hood. He’s harmless, now, and he’ll need to use the keyboard for us.” It was a man’s voice, not one I recognized. Smug, preening.
The hood was wrenched off. I sucked in a deep breath of air, blinking in the light, and taking it all in.
Yes, it was a warehouse. Brightly lit. I saw the machine room I had been dragged through beyond a big open door. The place was huge, with high ceilings, like the warehouse in Tacoma. It took a while for my eyes to adjust enough to see the two people standing in front of me. One was Nicole, and the other was a man, slightly taller than her, and about the same age, early to mid-thirties. He was slim, unremarkable-looking, and wore rimless glasses, and elegant casual clothing. Both were smiling. Their smiles seemed weirdly similar. Maybe it was the madness in their eyes.
“At last,” the guy said. “I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Vincent Egan. And of course, you’re acquainted with my sister, Nicole Volange.”
I was visibly bewildered. “Sister? Her?”
“Half-sister,” Nicole corrected. “His mother was German, and mine was Japanese. Our father really got around. He begat many children.”
“But why should I introduce you?” Vincent said, his voice taunting. “I’m sure you remember her. After all, you fucked her, right? Or don’t you remember?” He studied my bewilderment, and slanted Nicole a mocking look. “He looks puzzled, Nicole. I would have thought you would be a more interesting lay.”
“Get stuffed, Vin,” she said, expressionless.
I stared at Nicole, trying in vain to remember any sort of sexual encounter with a woman who looked like her, but felt no spark of recognition. Admittedly, there had been a lot of them over the years, but damn. Not so many that I forgot them completely.
Nicole saw me struggle to remember, and snorted. “I worked for MasterTech for a while, five years ago,” she said impatiently. “It was a temporary contract. We hooked up at a tech conference in Vegas. You left my room while I was in the shower.”
“Oh.” Brief erotic adventures with strangers in conference hotels were a common enough occurrence in my former life, but damn. “So, is that why you’re doing this? Because I was a dick the morning after in a Vegas hotel?”
“Not at all,” she said. “The experience was unmemorable for me, too. It was your approach to writing algorithms that really turned me on, during my time at MasterTech. So when I heard about SmokeScreen, I had to have it.”
“Wehave to have it,” Vincent corrected. “We, Nicole. I’m the head of this team. Remember that.”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Oh, yes! Of course, Vin! We. Never doubt it.”
Vincent held up a small white remote control. “That collar you’re wearing? I designed it. One wrong move, and I push a button that winds you right up to the ceiling, so we can enjoy watching you hang. Or I can push this other button, which tightens the tension of the wire until your throat is cut.”
I felt it with my fingers. It exerted a painful, knife-edged pressure.
“Let me show you how it works,” Vincent went on briskly. “I’m quite proud of it. Grab the chain, though, and hang on to it tightly, or that wire will garotte you! Up, up, up you go!”
I grabbed the chain over my head just in time to take the pressure off my throat as it jerked me up off my feet. I dangled and swayed six feet off the ground, arms shaking with the effort of keeping the wire on the collar from cutting my throat.
“You put Shane in this thing,” I said, my voice breathless and choked. “In that warehouse in Tacoma.”
