Bryn stared at the barista, hoping desperately that he’d do something…but he stared back at her without any expression at all. She glanced over at the man working the register, the other new employee. Same blank indifference.
They knew. More than knew. They were part of the team.
“Do you want me to start shooting some of these nice people?” the voice whispered in her ear. “Move it. Now.”
She did, but only to put a little distance between herself and the man herding her. She passed a woman seated next to the display of coffeemakers, beans, and grinders. She was sipping and reading a folded newspaper, which she put down as Bryn made eye contact. Help, Bryn mouthed.
The woman raised her eyebrows, looked past her at her captor, and then turned casually toward the center of the room. “Carl. Get up and lock the door and flip the sign. Do it now.”
No one in the coffee shop even moved other than Carl, who looked deathly pale now and very shaky. He did as directed. One of the other customers began pulling the shades down.
It wasn’t just Carl. It wasn’t just the baristas who were in on this.
It was all of them. The whole shop. God.
Her captor shoved her down into the chair opposite the woman. She was just…there. A soft, rounded face, dark hair, unexceptional but presentable. Even her clothing was nondescript. “So. You’re Bryn Davis,” she said. She reached down next to her and pulled a cell phone out of her purse, which she laid in the center of the table. “Let’s be clear. I know you can cause me trouble, and that’s why we’ve gone to these lengths. But you won’t cause any trouble, and this is why.” She took the phone and activated it, scrolled, and then faced it toward Bryn.
The same video setting as before—Jeff, sitting bound hand and foot on a box. Only now, his gag had been removed, and he was blinking into the camera’s spotlight. His jaw was set in an expression that Bryn recognized as being straight from his dad. Stubborn. “My dad’s going to kill you,” he said to the videographer, in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone. “But my mom’s going to kill you way more.”
The video shut off, but that was all Bryn really needed to see. “Fuck you,” Bryn said softly. “Fuck you for using kids.”
“Not just kids. Oh, don’t look at me like that, sweetie. I’ll use anybody I need to use to finish the mission. Now. We’re going to go into the bathroom, and I’m going to strip you naked and do the kind of search that requires rubber gloves inside of body cavities. Then you’re going to put on the clothes I brought.”
She gritted her teeth until she saw stars. “What happened to these people? The regulars in here?”
“They’re safely sleeping it off in the storage room.” The woman’s eyes weren’t any remarkable color, just a plain dull brown, but the expression in them was extraordinary. “Why, do you really care about them more than this precious little boy? That’s just sad, and if you insist on asking me stupid questions, we’re going to have a problem that gets little Jeffy hurt.”
“No,” Bryn said tightly. “No problem.”
She cast a filthy look at Carl as she got up, and he flinched. “It’s not my fault,” he blurted. “I didn’t have a choice.”
She did know; it just didn’t make it any better. “You know they’re not going to let either of us go now,” she said. “You know that.”
He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t actually believe it. He thought there would be a chance for escape, or mercy; he thought that he could clever his way out of it.
Bryn already knew. She’d seen it in the other woman’s dark, chilling eyes.
Twenty-four hours until the nanites begin to broadcast our position.
That didn’t matter. She needed to make sure Jeff was released unharmed. That was her primary, her only concern right now. Everything else—the pain that was sure to come, the eventual end of her life—all that had to be secondary.
She wouldn’t let this happen.
Bryn glanced into the tote bag of clothes that the woman thrust into her hands. “Not my color,” she said. “But I’ll make do.”
The woman’s smile wasn’t much warmer than her eyes. “Move it.”
The strip search was humiliating and efficient. Bryn’s clothes were bundled into a trash bag, and everything else—earrings, watch, necklace—went as well. The cavity search was unpleasant in every way possible, except that it was fast. It took a total of one minute to reduce Bryn to…nothing. No identity, nothing to call her own. Just a walking corpse.
Well, she thought, that’s not new, at least. Odd how that could be comforting at a time like this.
After that, it was simple. She put on the plain pants and shirt, and her captor walked her out the back door to a brown SUV waiting there—not a flashy bulletproof model like the one Manny Glickman owned, but the kind thousands of soccer moms drove every day. There was even a baby-friendly sun screen on the rear window with SpongeBob featured on it.
Bryn took a seat on the passenger side, and belted in when ordered. Her captor wasn’t alone; two other fake customers from the coffee shop got in the back. As the SUV pulled away, another took its place in the alley, and Bryn looked back to see Carl being loaded in with his own escorts.
“Eyes front,” said the woman. “Hands on your lap. Don’t bother trying the door; the child lock is enabled, so you can’t open it yourself. Don’t want you throwing yourself out at high speed from the vehicle.”
Too bad. Bryn had been considering the possibilities. “What do I call you? Bitch?”
“Well, it has a ring to it, but you can call me Jane.”
“Jane Doe.”
“Something like that.” That seemed to entertain Jane a little, from the smile on her face. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your questions answered when it’s time.”
Bryn leaned forward, testing the limits of their patience, as the SUV accelerated for the freeway entrance.
Something metallic flashed past her eyes, and as she jerked instinctively back, she felt the cold bite of something snugging tight against the fragile skin of her neck.
Jane sighed. “Oh, Bryn, we discussed this. My friend John Smith in the back has this little thing called a commando saw. Do you know what it is? Diamond-coated wire, can saw through wood, metal, bone, spinal cords…really very easy to use. If you move again, he’s going to start practicing his technique. Maybe he’ll only saw through to your backbone and then let you heal. Or maybe he’ll just take your fucking head off. I really don’t know. How do you feel, John? Particularly into beheading?”
John didn’t answer. He wasn’t paid to banter, apparently, just to play lumberjack. Bryn stayed very, very still, hyperconscious of the cool, rough texture of the wire around her throat. “Don’t hit too many bumps,” she said. “Or your detailer will be really unhappy.”
“Not my car, not my problem,” Jane said. “Now shut up or I text my friend and little Jeffy gets a few bones broken for your attitude.”
Bitch, Bryn thought, but she couldn’t do anything, anything at all, except sit quietly, and breathe.
Chapter 13
The car had traveled only a few miles down the road before Jane said, “Time for lights out for our guest. Mr. Smith, if you please.”
For a heart-wrenching second, Bryn thought he was going to cut her head off, but instead, the wire noose’s threat kept her pinned in place while he slipped a blinding bag over her head. It was suffocatingly heavy, but by keeping calm she could draw in slow, thickened breaths.
The problem was keeping calm. She had this terror ingrained in her cells; she still woke up every night from a cold sweat, feeling that wet plastic bag molded to her skin like a cheap, oily shroud.
It’s not the same; they’re not trying to kill you, just keep you disoriented. She had to keep repeating that like a mantra and, when it failed, forcing herself to count seconds for each slow breath. The inside of the bag started out dry and dusty but quickly became hot and moist, and that added to the mounting tide of fear inside her. Please not again, not like this again…not suffocating.
They seemed to drive for hours after that, but Bryn had lost any sense of time. All she could do was…endure. Try to count her breaths.
Try to survive, one minute to the next.
“Out,” said a muffled voice, finally. The SUV had stopped, and her door had come open; she hadn’t even noticed, immersed in fighting off her own demons. She pushed the seat belt release, stepped down out of the vehicle, and stumbled as her captor yanked her arm in a bruising grip. The noose tightened around her neck from behind. “Remember your pretty diamond necklace. Don’t go losing your head.”
Bad enough she was wearing her own personal guillotine, but stumbling along blind wasn’t helping her feel more secure. One misstep, and even if it didn’t actually cut her head off, the wire was thin and sharp enough to slice deep into veins and arteries. She was as careful as she could be, given his impatient shoving hand at her back.
Bryn could tell that they’d entered some kind of building by the blast of cool, dry air that washed over her skin, though her face remained hot and damp under the bag. The place was quiet, but over the harsh rush of her own breath she heard what sounded like someone crying weakly. Then the slow creak of wheels…a distant, sharp, angry cry…an old woman’s voice saying, viciously, “No, you can’t have it. It’s mine!”
There was carpet under her feet, thin and industrial. She heard a phone ringing shrilly off to her right, but it dopplered away as they moved on. More wheels passing them by—gurneys? Wheelchairs? And then the creak of a door. She and her leash-holder continued into what sounded like a small room, and the door slammed behind them.
The bag on her head suddenly tugged free, and she pulled in a deep, explosive breath, then coughed. Her tongue and lips tasted like dust and lint, and as she blinked and her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that she was standing in a lifeless little room about twice the size of a prison cell, with a barred window up near the top of the far wall that let in a weak amount of light. The walls were a plain though dingy white, and marked with scuffs and scratches. One heavy gurney-style bed that looked at least two decades out-of-date. A cheap thrift-store dresser with two drawers and a chipped corner. A metal prison-appropriate mirror bolted to the wall, over a stained porcelain sink. There was a toilet cubicle with no door.