Grant Mckenzie Page 21

  Sam moved forward until the tunnel dead-ended at a narrow wooden door.

  Instead of a handle, a thick piece of knotted rope dangled from a thumb-sized hole bored near its right edge. With hope in his heart, Sam tugged on the rope. The rope slid partway out of the hole until the knot on the other end hit home. The door swung open effortlessly to reveal a heavy red curtain.

  102

  ‘What the fuck! How did you get down here?’

  Vadik stood up at his desk as Sam pushed through the curtain to find himself in the same office where he had betrayed his old partner for a briefcase full of cash. Vadik’s overgrown bodyguard was nowhere in sight.

  ‘We want Lucas,’ said Sam.

  Vadik stepped out from behind his glowing bank of computer monitors. Despite his short stature, he looked tough enough to rip the interlopers limb from limb without breaking a sweat.

  ‘You got your money,’ he said. ‘We have no more business.’

  ‘Lucas has my daughter.’

  Zack stepped through the curtain. ‘And he killed mine.’

  Vadik twisted his head in surprise. ‘Dr Parker, I did not know.’

  ‘We don’t care what you knew,’ Sam said. ‘We just want Lucas.’

  Vadik curled his lip in distaste. ‘I do not care for this venture you say that my boss is on. There is no profit, but what kind of a man would I be to betray him after all he’s done for me?’

  ‘Like we give a fuck what kind of man you are.’ Sam raised his gun and pointed it at Vadik’s face.

  Vadik raised his hands and shrugged again. ‘It is one thing to point a gun. Quite another to pull the trigger.’

  Sam pulled the trigger and an explosion of rock blasted from the wall directly beside Vadik’s head.

  ‘See?’ said Vadik, his voice perfectly calm. ‘Professionals don’t miss.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  Vadik roared as he lowered his head and ran directly at Sam. His broad shoulders slammed into Sam’s chest and sent him flying backwards. Sam hit the floor with a loud clap, his gun firing by mistake, the bullet smacking harmlessly into the low ceiling.

  Sam gasped with surprise and tried to recover, but Vadik was too fast. With a move Sam had only ever seen on TV wrestling, Vadik dived on top of him with a body slam. The air whooshed from Sam’s lungs and he felt ribs crack, but he had too much rage to lose focus. Using the only weapon at hand, he drove the butt of the gun into the man’s skull with such force he heard bone crunch.

  Vadik grunted, but instead of rolling away from the pain, he bore down, his muscled arms encircling Sam’s waist. He began to squeeze. Sam felt his spine twist and his kidneys scream as he continued to hammer away at the man’s thick skull. Blood was pouring from a dozen cuts when Sam’s strength began to ebb.

  He gritted his teeth, willing himself not to black out, when suddenly a heavy metallic clunk snapped Vadik’s head to one side. The unexpected blow made Vadik’s eyes roll in his head and his grip finally released.

  Sam inhaled sharply as Zack stood over them with a bronze Degas statue in his hand.

  Sam rose up on his knees to match his stunned attacker. He stared into Vadik’s cold eyes and instinctively knew that whatever secrets they held couldn’t be pried out with force.

  His body shook with adrenalin as he also realized they couldn’t risk Lucas discovering how close they were getting, and Vadik had been very clear about whose side he was on.

  Until these last few days, Sam had always considered himself a pacifist, but that resolve had never been truly tested. Now, with his family missing and in grave danger, that resolve was a distant memory.

  There was only one choice.

  Sam slammed all of his weight down on top of Vadik’s skull until the light went out in the criminal’s eyes and he crumpled unconscious to the floor.

  And God help me, Sam thought, but the violence felt good.

  103

  Dragging himself to his feet, ignoring the pain that flared across his chest, Sam moved to the bank of computer monitors in the corner.

  He beckoned Zack to follow. ‘Come on. You’re the genius.’

  Zack pulled up a chair in front of the computer and hit the Enter key. Instantly, the four monitors came to life, each displaying a blank desktop. Zack tapped a few more keys and a series of large icons appeared.

  From over Zack’s shoulder, Sam pointed at the icon that represented a movie camera. ‘Click that one.’

  Zack grabbed the mouse and clicked the icon. Instantly, four windows opened on each of two monitors, simultaneously displaying eight different locations. Four of the locations were outside: one showed the loading dock of a warehouse, another an empty field of grass, a third showed the rear entrance to the Fish House, and a fourth displayed an empty gravel lot.

  The second series of windows were all interior and they glowed in hazy, night-vision green. Sam studied the four windows carefully, noticing a subtle movement of shadow in the lower right.

  ‘Can you enlarge that one?’ He tapped it with his finger.

  Zack punched a few keys and the window enlarged to fill the screen. It was difficult to discern exactly what they were seeing, but it appeared to be a small cell. Sam could make out the shape of a bucket in one corner and what looked like the legs of a metal cot in the other. The movement was coming from a bundle wrapped in a blanket on the bed.

  As if startled by their presence, the bundle moved again and the blanket slipped to expose a pale and frightened face.

  ‘MaryAnn,’ Sam groaned as his hand reached out to touch the screen.

  Sam’s daughter didn’t look at the camera. Instead, she seemed to recoil from something out of sight.

  ‘Where is she?’ Sam asked, his voice tortured, pleading.

  Zack punched a few more keys and a series of letters appeared in the corner of the screen. Zack pointed at them. ‘Looks like Union Street?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Never heard of it.’ He looked at the letters. They didn’t spell Street, just the abbreviation: ST. ‘Union Station,’ he said. ‘They’re under the station.’

  They looked at each other and in unison said, ‘Davey’s tunnel.’

  Sam touched the screen again. Whatever was frightening his daughter hadn’t moved any closer and he wondered if it was something she was hearing, a noise approaching from beyond her cell.

  ‘Hang on, MaryAnn,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Dad’s on his way.’

  Zack and Sam dashed back through the tunnels like the bulls of Pamplona, fear driving them blindly forward, rage strengthening their resolve to gore anyone who stood in their way.

  104

  MaryAnn recoiled in fright as the cell door opened and the large man with the shaved head entered. His boss followed behind, a wiry bleached ghost whose skull-like face and tiny nose reminded her of a barracuda.

  ‘It’s time to come with me, MaryAnn,’ the ghost said. ‘We’ll be meeting your father soon.’

  MaryAnn shook her head vigorously from side to side, not trusting a single word uttered from the man’s thin colourless lips.

  ‘Don’t defy me now, MaryAnn,’ he warned, his voice like ice. ‘You’ve been a good girl and I’ve treated you as such.’

  MaryAnn choked back a sob. Her skin crawled within filthy clothes; her body burned from lack of food, water and even the barest of essentials. Every part of her felt gross and her heart ached with longing for her parents to gather her up and take her home.

  MaryAnn would have given anything to be back in her own house now, her own bed, her own bathroom with shampoos and soaps, toothpaste and floss.

  She felt a stirring beside her. Another flash of guilt as she knew she had eaten more than an equal share of what little food they had received. The woman protected her as her own mother would have – risked her own life to help her when she had tried to escape.

  The ghost turned to his guard. ‘Bring her.’

  The massive man strode forward and snatched away the blue blanket. The girl shrie
ked and kicked her skinny legs as he reached for her.

  Then MaryAnn heard a growl, and a blur of nails and teeth sprang from the bed. The guard released a high-pitched squeal as he tried desperately to fight off the demon.

  MaryAnn looked on in horror, barely recognizing the woman within the beast that clawed and bit the massive guard. She was so entranced by the battle that she was taken by surprise when the ghost grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off the bed.

  MaryAnn screamed, the pain in her scalp deeper than anything she had felt before, as the man dragged her, kicking and squirming across the dirt floor. At the cell door, he yanked her into the tunnel with a final tug.

  MaryAnn rolled across the ground and slapped heavily into the wall. She gasped, her arm going numb as her shoulder collided with stone. She heard the cell door close, shutting out the sound of a fierce struggle still echoing inside. When she looked up, the ghost was grinning down at her, his small, sharp teeth the same pale white as his skin.

  Taking to heart everything the woman in the cell had taught her, MaryAnn launched herself at her abductor.

  But the ghost didn’t even flinch, and as MaryAnn closed in, a hardened fist shot out to smash the side of her skull.

  MaryAnn dropped to her knees, her eyes rolling back in her head, and she crumpled forward into blackness.

  105

  Sam had barely scrambled inside when the Mercedes leapt into traffic and headed for the park.

  ‘Did you get him?’ Davey asked.

  Sam turned in his seat, wincing at the pain in his ribs. ‘Lucas is holding my family under Union Station. Does your tunnel connect to his?’

  Davey nodded. ‘Yeah. Lucas is bad, man. He had people chase me out when I went in too deep. I got to be real careful now.’

  ‘Is that why he wanted you dead?’ Sam said, thinking aloud. ‘Not because of high school, but because you were trespassing in his tunnels?’

  Davey shrugged. ‘What do I know?’

  ‘You weren’t one of the gods,’ Sam said. ‘Lucas simply saw an opportunity to get rid of a nuisance.’

  Davey pouted. ‘Great.’

  ‘We have to stop him, Davey. You have to get us inside that tunnel. Do you remember how?’

  Davey tapped the side of his head. ‘Fuckin’ right, I do.’

  Zack pulled a tight right-hand turn, tyres sliding effortlessly across the slick asphalt. Then, as if channelling his teen years in the Mustang, he flattened his foot on the accelerator. The Mercedes roared as it chewed up Third Avenue.

  The heavy rain had stopped falling, leaving the streets glistening. The Mercedes slashed through the puddles like a mechanical shark, all teeth and chrome.

  Zack showed no sign of slowing as the road dead-ended at the park. Sam braced his hands against the dash as the Mercedes hit the concrete kerb with a sickening crunch. The steel-belted radials, however, took the punishment without blowing-out and the car leapt off the road. Its blunt nose hit the flimsy park fence and ripped through without hesitation.

  On the wet grass, the car’s rear-end fishtailed wildly, but Zack controlled the slide and pressed the accelerator even harder as they whipped past a stand of trees.

  The park was practically empty except for a few brave pedestrians with wet rain slickers tied around their waists and dog leashes firmly in hand. But those who noticed looked on in disbelief as the large car soared over the lush, green lawn. Even the ever-present joggers put the digital soundtrack to their lives on pause to stare open-mouthed at the silver-grey beast as it glided past.

  From the back seat, Davey waved at everyone, his face alight with the thrill of it, as if he was a teenager again.

  106

  The cell door opened and Lucas’s guard staggered out, blood dripping from several long gashes across his face.

  Two of the deepest wounds ran across his left eye – one had torn the eyelid – and ended in a chunk of broken nail that protruded from his gashed cheek. Other wounds covered his arms, the nastiest being a bite that had torn a ragged half-circle of flesh from his arm.

  ‘Did you kill her?’ Lucas asked casually.

  The guard shrugged his over-developed shoulders. The muscles that had erased his neck barely able to rise.

  ‘Bitch hurt me.’

  He reached up to touch his cheek, his fingers brushing the broken piece of nail. He plucked it out with a spurt of blood and threw it to the ground in disgust.

  Lucas smiled. ‘We all have an animal inside us, Richard. As civilized human beings we attempt to contain it, but given the right circumstances, it is quickly unleashed.’

  The guard stared at his boss with blank eyes, the speech obviously lost in translation.

  Lucas was only slightly annoyed. He hadn’t hired the man for his brains.

  ‘Tie the girl up,’ he ordered. ‘I need to attend to a personal matter.’

  The guard hesitated and glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Lucas sighed. ‘Once I leave, you can finish with the woman.’

  Lucas entered the cell and sat beside his other captive. His experiment had been a failure. The creature beneath the blanket was nothing more than a pitiless animal, a husk without meat.

  He stroked the blanket, feeling the frail woman shiver beneath the tattered wool.

  ‘I know you love me,’ he said, ‘but I need to hear it in your own words.’

  A soft whimpering sound fluttered from beneath the cloth.

  Lucas lowered his face and pulled back the corner. The woman’s face was hollow and bruised, with two terrified red holes where her eyes should shine.

  ‘Tell me,’ he cooed softly, ‘why you love me?’

  The woman licked her misshapen lips, but no words escaped her throat.

  Lucas had memorized all the correct answers to his father’s questions, but none of them helped him escape the burnings. His father believed that fire was the only enemy the devil knew. It was the one element that kept him deep beneath the soil and the only thing that could drive him back down when he surfaced in the body of a sinner.

  ‘The devil don’t burn,’ his father would say as Lucas writhed, ‘but he fears the flames.’

  Lucas dropped the woman’s blanket and stood up. If she loved him even a little, she would have known the right answers.

  He looked at the armada of photos he had pasted to the wall. She wasn’t the woman he had thought she was.

  With an irritated sigh, he pulled out a tiny squeeze bottle of lighter fluid and poured its contents across the blanket. The woman didn’t move, not even after he flicked a lit match in her direction.

  Lucas exited the cell and locked the door as the blanket caught fire with a noisy whoomph.

  Lucas returned to his temporary office. The windowless dirt cell was sparsely furnished with a simple rug on the floor, a desk and chair. On the desk sat a high-end Apple laptop computer with a wide seventeen-inch screen.

  When the laptop had powered up, Lucas ran his fingers across the keyboard to tap into his mainframe and take control of all his systems.

  He slid his finger across the trackpad as eight windows opened on his desktop. Each window showed a live feed from one of his security cameras. He frowned at the sight of a familiar car speeding across the green lawn behind Union Station. He tapped the button to fill the monitor with that camera’s view.

  As the car stopped and three men exited, Lucas angrily reached for his phone.

  107

  Zack, Sam and Davey climbed out of the Mercedes and headed for the wire fence. They were alone: few visitors ever bothered with this empty corner of the park, especially on a damp afternoon.

  Davey loped ahead, grinning like a kid at Disneyland. His face clearly showed the thrill he felt at once more being Sam White’s sidekick just as he had been in the glory days of high school.

  As Sam neared the fence, his cellphone rang. Both he and Zack stopped in their tracks, worry evident on their faces.

  Sam lifted the phone from his pocket and pre
ssed the Receive button.

  ‘You lied to me, Sam,’ said the scrambled voice.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You didn’t kill Davey.’

  Sam’s breath caught in his throat as he quickly scanned the area above the fence. He spotted the box-shaped security camera attached to a pole, eight feet above the entrance to the tunnel.

  ‘You didn’t tell me to kill him.’ Sam kept his voice calm. ‘You wanted him to burn and to scream. I delivered that.’

  The line hissed. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Sam. Your deception will cost you.’

  Sam swallowed hard, his strength of will crumbling.

  ‘I have your daughter here with me, Sam.’

  ‘Don’t hurt her,’ Sam blurted. ‘Please. I’m begging you.’

  ‘The choice is yours, Sam. Do you still have your gun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Sam quickly swapped the phone to his left hand and pulled the gun out of his vest pocket with his right. He held it up to the camera.

  Beside him, Zack tensed as he realized that they stood right in the centre of the field of grass they had seen on the screen in Vadik’s lair.

  Davey stood by the fence, confused. He cocked his head to one side and scratched an itch on his scalp.

  ‘Very good,’ said the voice. ‘Now you don’t want me to harm your daughter, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’ Unwelcome tears began to blur Sam’s vision.

  ‘Then, in exchange, I need you to do something for me. A third task. Are you willing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Anything.’

  ‘No tricks this time.’

  ‘I have none.’

  The line crackled with a burst of static. ‘Remember I’m watching you.’ A pause. ‘Kill Zack.’

  ‘What?’ Sam gasped and spun to look at Zack with panicked eyes.