Shadows of Doubt (43 page)

After a status rundown from all the teams, there was little new information to be gleaned. Abby was running down the vehicle and trying to sniff out the front company Albert was using to lease, rent or to have purchased his hidey-hole under. That was the critical piece that Max felt Shevaun was right about. Something in his memory, some little thing would tip him off as to where to find Lou. Max walked out into the pitch black of the garden and looked at the stars that shone brightly in the cloudless night sky. It was cold as hell and he found that odd since he was used to Washington winters. The dead of night wrapped around him as he walked through a row of rose bushes that had been pruned down to nubs. He imagined it would have been silent all around him if not for the comings and goings between the two bungalows. Lou was in the dark, he thought, and she was all alone with a madman. He pushed the image out of his head and scolded himself for letting his emotions play into things. Lou was not the focus of Albert’s rage, she was a means to his end was all. It could have been Corinne or even Abby had Max never laid eyes on Lou. It was about him, or really Nila choosing him over Albert, when you got to the root of it all. Max had had no clue that Albert had any interest in Nila whatsoever and she had never mentioned any advance he may have made on her. Nila had been the daughter of one of the regents, middle class by today’s standards at best. Women were very different and were treated very differently back then. It had been her gentle and quiet nature that drew Max’s heart and he sought permission from the Senatus to indoctrinate her since her father deemed her worthless to do so himself. Max thought of how different Nila was from Lou and how different he was now from who he was then. It saddened him to think that he may not have truly loved Nila as much as he thought. That perhaps she was a charming caretaker who would tend to him as a good wife was expected to in those days. Nila was lovely, kind and gentle but fragile and easily subdued which Lou certainly was not. Max thought about Lou’s fire and defiance and it made him smile.

A thought occurred to him that made him bolt inside at once. It seemed so obvious he hardly thought it viable but anything was worth a shot at this point.

“Abby!” The three women in the room jumped in surprise.

“Christ, you scared the shit out of me.” Abby sank back into her seat. “What?

“Sorry ladies but Abby, I need you to run all permutations of the name Nila and perhaps my name in your searches.” Max leaned over her shoulder as she typed. “It will probably be some kind of refuse company or trash, anything that might be dirty, even a cleaning company.”

“Yes! Yes! Now you’re thinking!” Shevaun got out of her seat and moved to watch the screen with Max.

“I get it, you both are nothing more than trash so use your names to front a company to hide behind?” Caroline was reasoning it out.

“Shit!” Abby exclaimed.

“That is it!” Max said as he grabbed his headset and began getting locations for all dispatched teams.

“AnilaMax Exterminating Services, for all your pest problems. The catch phrase for the company on their website is ‘We take extermination to the Max!’ How freaking loud and clear is that?!” Abby turned and looked to the other women in disgust.

“Address, Abby!” Max demanded.

“I already sent GPS coordinates to your phone.” She said with a soft smile.

Max tore off his vest then grabbed the house phone. “I need my motorcycle brought to the front immediately.” He ordered, then slammed the phone back down on the hook. “Abby, send GPS to Niko and the others...” He opened a case that Frank had brought in hours ago and took out a Katana sword that was housed in it’s sheath and was securely attached to some sort of back-strap, holster type apparatus. Max slung his arms into each loop so that the weapon sat snugly between his shoulder blades. He reached over his head and grasped the handle of the blade and pulled straight up to unsheathe it and test that it was properly secured, but easily accessed. When he felt comfortable with it’s placement he grabbed his leather jacket off the couch and pulled it on so that the weapon was completely concealed underneath.

“My Dom...” Abby got up and approached him with a serious expression radiating on her face. “...you’re not planning on going in without Niko or back-up are you?” It wasn’t a question so much as a plea.

“Abby, he is too arrogant to think that I’ve found him and he’s been out of the game for too long to remember how demanding I am about keeping in shape and on my toes.” Max smiled at her. “You think I can’t take him myself?”

Abby didn’t dare try and answer that. Either way she would sound like an idiot. “Watch your back. Don’t accidentally slice Niko’s head off when he gets there, please.”

As he turned for the door, Shevaun stepped in his path and placed a hand on his chest. “Be careful, please. But bring my baby back to me.”

Max put his hand over hers. “I vow it.”

She stepped out of his way and he was out the door, running up the path to the main building of the hotel. A quick glance at his watch had him praying that Caroline had been right with her calculations of the sedatives. The bottom estimate of four hours had just passed and Lou could very well be coming to already. Max picked up his stride as he ran around the side of the hotel to the entrance and saw the MV-Augusta ready and waiting for him. He fished some bills out of his pocket, not looking whether they were singles or hundreds and stuffed them into the valet’s hand before strapping on his helmet. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and pulled up the GPS coordinates that Abby had sent him and got his bearings as to where he was headed. He just prayed that he would get there in time.

Lou had dealt
with enough victims, sifted through enough depravity and waded through enough bloody crime scenes to know the capacity for evil certain people had. Dealing with it and living through it, however, were two totally different things. She had been the victim of a crime before but this was on a whole other level. Although, if Sawyer had been a creative psychopath with sadistic tendencies, he might have come up with a similar scenario. Her mind was going a mile a minute which was a good thing given the fact that every time she thought about where she was and how she was utterly helpless, it was a little hard to keep calm. She had to keep reminding herself that how she was staged was designed for maximum panic and fear and she could not afford him one ounce of either, no matter how bad it got. He wanted her scared to death, whimpering, begging and more than likely screaming. She had a gut feeling that the screams were what really got him off.

In the eternity she had been sitting, strapped naked to that chair in blind silence, she had run through the files of the rogue’s four victims in her head. She had only seen the Scott crime scene photos but the others she had seen up close and personal and knew the guy that had her was a sick twist. Snatching her up was not a crime of opportunity and it had been a really risky move. It was a reasonable expectation that Lou would visit the restroom at some point in the evening so that took patience. But why? What purpose did she serve in the line of victims? That was something she couldn’t get past as she sat there and tried to make sense of it. In the off chance he took the ball-gag out of her mouth, she could try to get under his skin enough to get the upper hand somehow. So what was it that she knew for certain about this guy and all his victims? Lou knew that he had started in London ages ago just after Max had been elevated to Dominor status, but that the killings stopped there right before he was sent to North America. There had been sporadic murders all over Europe over the following years but never two consecutively in any one place until now. Lou thought about that for a while, the long gap between sequential murders. In London there had been ten women murdered, but she questioned that number given that the lack of forensics, technology, record keeping and communications were less then reliable. It could have easily been twice that number and they wouldn’t have had a clue. The ten though, those were the ones he wanted known for certain. At least known to the Sanguinostri and to Max. That is when it clicked. With the echoing of Max’s name in her thoughts it became clear that he was the one the rogue was taunting. With everything Lou had been brought up to speed on, not just with the rogue but with the Sanguinostri corruption on the West Coast, Max having to come out and deal with everything personally, the rogue knew. That was the entire point in his coming to Los Angeles to start up his spree again so that he could rub it in Max’s face as he had been doing all along. Some sort of superiority complex in having eluded Max all these years? Lou had no clue of Max’s history really to come up with any candidates for who would have a grudge against him. She was certain having lived as long as he had, there would be an extensive list. The problem was that she had only heard of one dig against Max since she had met him and that had been just that evening. Shit. It was just that simple wasn’t it? The only person who Lou knew of having anything against Max was also the person who had an all access pass to his own party and could easily come and go with little to no notice from staff. Dammit all to hell, she thought, wanting to scream it but not daring to flinch an inch. If Abby and the guys had no clue why good old Albert would have given Max a verbal dig, they sure as shit wouldn’t be suspecting him as the rogue. His staff maybe, which she knew Max had already been checking out, but wasn’t sure how far he had gotten. All she could do was hope and pray that he pieced it together, and fast. In the meantime she had to try and remember everything she could about this Albert freak.

She had read a little about him when she was looking hard into Winslow but she was a civilian then, not Sanguinostri. She was at a serious disadvantage. Fortunately her little revelation had calmed her a good deal. It wasn’t so difficult to breathe and she felt like she had a tiny grasp on something useful. Putting the fragments of knowledge she had together to form a strategy in case she got the chance to talk to him, was key. He liked to hear them scream so he would have to take the gag out eventually. Suddenly a new smell drifted into the room and it made her heart pick up a little faster. She listened carefully and tried to tune out the pounding of her own heart. She heard a door up ahead of her and to the left opening, what sounded like like a couple of soft crunches, then the door closed. He was there.

“Are you awake yet, my dear?” The smug tone in his voice made her legs go hot with anger but she didn’t flinch. “You should be awake by now.”

She heard his footsteps but they sounded off, as if walking on paper. She considered carefully her observations of the room that she had tried to make in her blind state. She was able to smell plastic, wood and bleach but the plastic had been the most prominent smell. When she thought it through, she decided that was the sound she was hearing in his footsteps, walking on cellophane. Christ he must have had the floor covered in plastic wrap of some sort which would make for handy dandy cleanup. The wood was probably from the chair, especially if the straps had been fastened to it recently. The bleach, well that had to have been a remnant from secondary cleanup. She could smell him getting closer. His cologne was far too overdone for a man. She knew he was going to see if she was conscious and she really would rather he not know she was. Niko’s relaxation thing popped into her mind and she focused on remembering what he had taught her. She let her breath rise and fall naturally. Let the weight of her body fall into the chair, letting her body sink and let go. She focused on that grounding and when Albert pulled off her blindfold, she was too heavy in her own space to let her eyes react or flinch. She needed to remember that if she got out of this alive, she owed Niko some serious thanks.

“Hmm. You are out still. Pity. Perhaps I didn’t calculate properly with the champagne. That would make sense since I have no idea how much you drank.” His footfalls moved away from her and to the right some and she could hear him sigh and mutter something in what she thought might have been German. “Stupid fool. I probably should have asked him what he did with my bag before I killed him.” His inane laughter following his comment to himself grated Lou like fingernails on a chalkboard but she stayed heavy and limp in spite of it. She heard him sigh again then move from right to left. The door opened and closed again and the wafting of his cologne began to dissipate. He must have gone looking for whatever bag it was he was talking about.

Lou waited a few minutes and listened before she risked opening her eyes so she could take stock of her surroundings. Fortunately the light was dim so the shock wasn’t so bad and her eyes adjusted relatively quickly. The room was medium in size and was in fact completely covered wall to wall in plastic. It looked like he had hung white shower curtains around the perimeter and covered the floors in cellophane. If he did have a camera trained on her, it was shooting through plastic so he wouldn’t see anything clearly. She noted the table to her right that was covered in plastic also but on top she saw several knives of all different shapes and sizes as well as an old fashioned straight razor. The straps that held her were far too thick to rip and there was no way to get her hands on that razor to cut through them. What she could see of the chair she was strapped to led her to the conclusion that it was not going to split apart very easily. She was stuck and stuck good. Her only weapon was going to be her wit and a cool head. She resumed the exercise Niko had taught her and let her peripheral vision see the edges of the room as best as possible since turning her head was not an option. There was nothing there but plastic walls and plastic coated floors. Resigned she had gained all she could from looking, she closed her eyes and went limp and heavy again, just in the nick of time too as she heard the door open.

“Here we are, my dear. Sadly, I do not have the luxury of time for you as I did with the others. I’ve been recently informed that my ship will be sailing sooner rather than later. So, we need to get you up and at it the artificial way. One little zip of this and you should be right as rain in fifteen minutes or so. Just enough time for me to slip into something more comfortable.”