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“No,” she says. “Please.”
My fists clench so tightly it feels like my knucklebones are going to burst through the skin. I shut my eyes and wince.
I hear him slap her. She cries out in agony. “That’s right,” he says. “Start with the blouse … good girl. Okay, now the skirt …”
I shift my weight from my right foot to my left and back to my right. I feel like throwing myself through the wall. I’ve got to give Creed as much time as possible to do whatever it is he’s trying to do. But I don’t want this man to hurt my wife.
“Now the bra …”
“Please,” she says.
He hits her again. But this time, it’s not a slap. I think he punched her. It sounds as though she slammed into something and crumbled to the floor. Maybe I’m reading that into whatever happened, imagining the worst, but I’m not imagining her sobs. I hear her whimper, “Please. Don’t hit me again. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The man’s voice says, “You hear that, Sam? Okay then, Rachel, show me the rest.”
My heart is in my throat. My breath is coming out in short gasps, like a pregnant woman giving a Lamaze birth. Just when I think I’ll get through this part, I hear Rachel’s voice say, “Sam … I’m so sorry.” It’s more than I can bear. The cell phone vibrates in my pocket again, and I answer. “Where are you, Sam?” the man asks. “In the upstairs closet,” I say. “Please. Stop hurting Rachel. Tell your men not to shoot. I’m coming out.” Thirty seconds of silence pass before he comes back on the line. “Okay, Sam, come on out. They won’t hurt you.” “Where’s Rachel?” “We’ll take you to her.” “Promise you’ll leave her alone?” “I’ll promise nothing. But if you cooperate, it’ll go easier for her.”
I push the bookcase open and exit the closet; eight men are standing in a semicircle, pointing rifles at me. I don’t know much about guns, so I can’t give you the makes, model numbers, calibers, or whatever. I can tell you that all the rifles are equipped with silencers, but that’s about it.
Someone orders me to get facedown on the floor with my hands behind my back. I do what they say, and someone else ties a couple of pieces of plastic around my wrists. Then that person—or someone else—plunges a hypodermic needle into my neck.
Chapter 19
I don’t know where I am.
I’m lying on my back on a hard surface, and it’s so dark I can’t see my hand moving in front of my face. I lift my head slightly and try to look around, but I get nothing, like I’m caught in a black hole.
How can anything be this dark?
I have a strong sense of breathing stale air, like maybe I’m in some type of enclosure.
Where’s Rachel?
I shout, “Rachel!” and listen to the sound my voice makes. It’s muffled, but not extremely so, which tells me at least I’m not in a coffin. I’m in an enclosure of some sort, but thank God it’s not a coffin.
Where’s Rachel?
I call her name again but get no response. I raise my arms up, like I’m doing a bench press, and get nothing but air, so I figure there’s probably enough height to sit up. I jerk myself up to a sitting position and raise my arms high above my head. There seems to be plenty of height, so maybe I’m not in an enclosure, though possibly a small room of some sort.
My inner voice says, How long have we been unconscious?
I have no way to tell. It’s too dark to see my watch. Hell, we—I could have been here an hour, a day, a week …
No. Not a week. Not even a day. I would have had to pee by now.
If I’d peed in here, surely I’d be able to tell. I sniff the air and touch my clothing. No, I haven’t peed. So I’m guessing I’ve been unconscious a couple of hours—however long it took them to carry me out of my house and transport me to wherever I am.
I slowly attempt to stand. My legs are wobbly, but I manage to get to my feet. I reach up until I touch a smooth surface, which I estimate at about seven feet high. I put my arms in front of me and take a few tentative steps before touching a glass wall. I follow it sideways a few steps until I feel the intersection of another glass wall. I follow the surface the entire length of the rectangle and realize I’m in a glass cage, approximately eight feet wide and fourteen feet long. I wonder if Rachel is in a similar cage. Wherever she is, she doesn’t deserve this shit.
Suddenly, a light comes on and then more lights. Lots of incredibly bright lights are coming on above and around me in all directions. The sudden brightness is too much for my eyes. Though I’m desperate to see what’s happening, I have to shield my eyes for more than a minute before they can adjust. While I manage a few short peeks, all I gain is watery eyes and only the blurriest information.
I allow enough time for my vision to acclimate. I blink a couple of times to finally bring the world around me into focus. I wipe the remaining tears from my eyes with the tail of my shirt and see that the walls of my cage are not made of glass, but rather a thick slab of Lucite. Beyond the walls that hold me captive, I see that my Lucite enclosure sits in the middle of a huge, empty room that looks like an indoor parking lot. The bottom of my enclosure is made of wood and metal and is elevated several feet above the parking lot’s concrete floor. I try to see what’s holding up my cage, but I can’t find any angle that allows me to glimpse the structure beneath me. But wait, I turn to one side and look through the clear material. I see something that takes me by surprise: the giant cab of a truck, the kind of cab used to haul large flatbed trucks across the country.
My Lucite container is attached to one … only, in this case, I’m the cargo.
I turn my attention to the area inside my cage and find a camper toilet, an insulated cooler, a blanket, and a pillow. There’s one more item, located on top of the cooler: a laptop computer.
I appear to be alone in this giant underground parking lot. I’m assuming “underground,” because there are no windows and no natural light, and moments ago, the room was so dark it seems impossible it could be located above ground.
My inner voice says, How long have we been stuck here, Sam? I look at my watch: April 22, 2009. That doesn’t make sense. It was April 12 a few hours ago. There’s no way I’ve been here ten days!
But what if you have? My inner voice says. Not in this cage, maybe, but what if they put you in a room somewhere to monitor you?
“Monitor me for what?” I ask myself.
What if they were waiting for you to shit out the monitoring device you swallowed? Maybe they kept you sedated somewhere all this time, and when you finally gave up the device, they brought you here.
“No,” I tell myself. “Wherever they would have put me, Creed would have found me in less than ten days. I’m still holding the device. He’s coming for me. He’ll get us out of here.”
I look at my watch again. Three hours have passed, and it’s now April 2, 2008. I watch the hours, minutes, and calendar going forward and backward randomly through time. Every few seconds, my watch resets to a different date and time, none of which hold any significance that I can determine.
I shout, “You people are nuts! Just tell me what you want and let us go!”
Across the parking lot, I see a huge garage-type door start to rise. When it gets to full height, the cab of a large truck enters. As it continues through the door, I can see that the bed of the truck is made of Lucite and has the same dimensions as my cage, which confirms everything I suspect about what’s beneath my cage.
I’m trapped in a Lucite container attached to a flatbed truck.
The other truck pulls up alongside mine and stops maybe twelve feet away. The windows and windshield of the truck’s cab are mirrored, so there’s no way to tell who’s driving it. I concentrate on the part I can see. I’m staring at a Lucite cage just like mine, equipped just like mine, except that it has no laptop that I can see. In the cage across from me, the blanket is covering what appears to be a body. I bang my fist against the transparent wall that holds me captive and shout, “Rachel!”
I bang the Lucite wall again and continue to shout her name, but I already know these units are completely soundproofed because the huge truck across from me entered the room and stopped a few feet away from me and I never heard the slightest sound as it did so.
I scream my wife’s name again and again. I kick the wall in frustration. I pick up the cooler and smash it against the wall, but it rebounds like a rubber hammer hitting a concrete wall. Several water bottles and wrapped sandwiches fly out and scatter across the floor of my cage. I stand with my palms pressed against the Lucite wall and stare at the motionless form under the blanket for what seems like an hour.
Could they have killed her? Beaten her to death? Have I lost the love of my life because of a stupid computer program?
Then I think I see the slightest movement. Are my eyes playing a trick on me? No—there it is again. She’s alive! Thank God! It’s destroying me to think about seeing Rachel like this, but I need to see her, need to reassure her, need to let her know how sorry I am to have caused all this to happen. The blanket finally pushes away, and I can see it’s not Rachel who’s trapped in the cage twelve feet away from me. My heart sinks. It’s Donovan Creed.
Chapter 20
A voice comes through a hidden speaker in the floor of my cubicle.
“Mr. Case, I believe you already know the man in the unit before you. His name is Donovan Creed. Mr. Creed is a former CIA assassin and currently works for the Department of Homeland Security as a clandestine terrorist assassin. He tests crowd control weapons for the United States Army and performs freelance contract killing for various people, including a regional underworld crime boss.”
The voice goes silent. I look at Creed hopefully, but he’s offering no expression to encourage me. I wonder if his cubical is getting the sound. I turn my palms upward in the universal gesture, “What’s going on?”
Creed shrugs.
“That’s it?” I scream. “You promised me! I was counting on you! You were my only hope!”
Creed appears disinterested. He looks away, walks over to his toilet, and starts peeing.
The voice in my cubicle says, “Mr. Case—may I call you, Sam?” The voice pauses a moment and then continues, “There will be no rescue, Sam, not until you give us the codes. You do this by powering up your laptop and entering them. You can start with Mr. Creed’s.” The voice pauses again and then says, “Don’t waste your time trying to access the Internet to attempt a rescue. Your computer is not equipped for online access.”
When Creed finishes peeing, I start pounding my hands on the wall of my cell to get his attention. I hurl a number of curses at him for good measure, but he appears completely oblivious to the commotion I’m making. Instead, he goes to the far corner of his cell and presses his hands against the Lucite edges. He works his hands up and down the clear material, staring intently at the intersections of Lucite, as if trying to see what he’s gotten himself into and how he might possibly get out.
“It’s useless!” I shout.
The voice comes back on. “You’re right, Sam; it is useless. But don’t fault Mr. Creed. He’s not accustomed to being helpless. Nor is he likely to accept his plight quickly. You, on the other hand, are fortunate. You have something we want. Creed’s going to die in his cell eventually, but you can leave whenever you wish. All you have to do is enter the codes.” “So … you can hear me?” I say. “We can hear you.” “Where’s Rachel?” “Somewhere safe,” the voice says. “And she’ll continue to be safe as long as you cooperate.” “I want to see her.”
“You’re in no position to make demands, Sam. However, if you’re willing to give us Mr. Creed’s code, we’ll arrange for you to see her briefly.” “I don’t know Creed’s code or any of the others.” “You told our associate you had them memorized.” “I lied. But if you can get me my personal computer, I might be able to access the data files—” “Not going to happen, Sam.” “I might be able to reproduce them,” I say, “but I’m going to need some time.”
“Take all the time you need, Sam. If you ration properly, you’ve got several days worth of food and water. But be advised, when your provisions run out, they won’t be replenished.”
“You’d let me starve?”
“Your health, like Rachel’s, is in your hands. You are free to go as soon as you provide all eighteen access codes.”
“You are aware,” I say, “that the access codes only begin the process, correct? My clients are the only ones who can access the funds by entering a second code, known only to them.”
“That being the case,” the voice says, “it’s not such a big deal for you to reveal them. And when you do so, we’ll set you free.” “If I give you the codes, you’ll kill me,” I say. “Not true.” “Prove it.” He pauses. “We’ll do that, Sam. All in good time.”
I glance at Creed. He’s still inspecting his enclosure, moving his hands across the surfaces, slowly but surely, inch by inch. I notice he hasn’t pushed or hit or kicked the walls or thrown anything against them, as I did. Perhaps when he gets to that point, he’ll realize there’s no way out. Then maybe he’ll give me some sort of signal or at least attempt to communicate.
I remove a sandwich from my cooler and begin eating. No need to worry about passing the metal tracking device Creed made me swallow. He’s found me already, for whatever that’s worth.
For the time being, I appear to be okay. While I’m not convinced they’re going to let me go after I give them the codes, I’m encouraged that they’re saying they will and even more encouraged by their comment about proving it to me “in good time.”
Chapter 21
Many hours have passed. I have no way of knowing the exact number. I’ve been unable to sleep because the lights have been burning since the moment they were turned on. There is a ventilation system that recirculates the air every fifteen or twenty minutes. I still haven’t powered up the computer in my cell. The voice has remained silent since making the promise about offering proof.
I glance at Creed’s cell. In all this time, he’s never taken his eyes or hands off the walls. He’s lying on the floor now, moving his hands along the bottom edge. He’s really pissing me off. I wonder how long he intends to touch the glass before trying to do something useful.
Suddenly, the lights go off and stay off for a couple of minutes. When they come back on, Creed’s truck begins moving. I wonder why they don’t want me to see the driver, but I’m thinking that’s a good thing. If they intended to kill me, they wouldn’t care if I could identify them, right?
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