The Closer (21 page)

“The Stalking Ground,” Jack said.

“Of course. It’s a very useful tool, and I think I could make much better use of it than you. I’m rather—
inventive.”

“How’d you find me?” Jack asked. He was starting to be able to make out dim shapes beyond the light. Things hanging on the walls.

“I’ve been trying to trace the website’s physical location for some time. Impossible, as you know. But luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity—recently you started to access the site from remote locations, and you weren’t quite as thorough in your precautions. You should be ashamed—no one could ever find
me
through
my
remote connection. But I traced
you
right to the motel room you’re staying in. I watched. I followed. I dangled the bait.”

Jack could make out Dwight’s form, moving around behind the light. Heard a sound he couldn’t quite identify—metal on metal.

“Bait you couldn’t resist, could you? A sweet story about tribal loyalty, spiced up with a Big Bad Lawyer as villain. The perfect lure, even for someone as cynical and paranoid as yourself.”

Dwight’s face was suddenly inches from his own. He’d taken off the Yankees cap, and his bald head gleamed in the lamp’s glare. “Djinn-X, the webmaster,” Dwight said softly. “Well, you’re in my web, now.”

Jack met his eyes. “Go fuck yourself, Gourmet,” he said.

“You know, I never did understand your obsession with trust,” Dwight said. “A pack isn’t based on loyalty, it’s based on
strength.
The leader of the pack is always the strongest, the fiercest.”

He pulled back, becoming only a silhouette once again. “The
smartest.”

“And you think you’re smarter than I am?”

“Of course. I’ve proved it, haven’t I? I found you, I maneuvered you, I caught you.”

“Should have looked in that fucking suitcase, huh?”

“It still would have taken you out—it was rigged with a hundred-thousand candlepower flashbulb and a capsicum grenade. Less noise than a firecracker, but you would have been blinded and choking in a fog of pepper spray within seconds. Of course, the handle trigger is much more elegant; it’s wired to a taser capacitor that pulses every two seconds. I add a little superglue at the last moment to keep the target from disengaging—if you’d have checked under the back wheel you would have found the tube.”

“Guess you’re just two jumps ahead of me,” Jack said.

“More than that. I know why you’re here.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“The Closer, of course. You intend to hijack the delivery. Consume his power yourself.”

Jack said nothing.

“You see? You can’t outsmart me. I’ve eaten the brains of people brighter than you for breakfast.”

“Right,” Jack said. “You know exactly what’s going on, all right. I suppose you’ve figured out the access codes to the Stalking Ground all by yourself, too?”

The Gourmet sighed. “Sadly, no. But we have almost six hours until I have to pick up the Closer’s head—I think I’ll have the codes by then, don’t you?”

The light shut off. Overhead fluorescents hummed to life. Blinking back spots, Jack took in his surroundings.

He was in a kitchen. Spotless white tile walls, racks of gleaming stainless steel pots and utensils. Twotiered oven, large double sink, metal door to what had to be a walk-in freezer. And sitting on a counter a few feet away, an industrial meat-slicer, circular blade still flecked with blood.

“Interrogation isn’t really my specialty,” the Gourmet said. Jack saw what he held and realized what had made that sound he heard earlier: a pair of butcher’s shears, the kind used to cut through bone.

“But I’m a fast learner….”

Seven
A.M.

Jack still hadn’t returned. Nikki didn’t know what she should do.

The delivery was scheduled for nine, on the nose. The handoff would take place in an elevator, just like Jack had suggested. The Gourmet would be alert for anyone following him, but he shouldn’t find the GPS unit until he actually cut into the head itself. He’d wait until he was someplace secure before doing that—more than likely, the same place he usually cut up brains.

But there was no telling how soon he’d do that. They had to track and corner him as soon as possible, which meant her and Jack in a vehicle a block away from the drop site no later than 8:45. So where the hell was he?

She pulled out the GPS tracker and checked it. Looked like the package was at the airport; it’d be moving downtown soon enough. She poured herself another cup from the motel coffeemaker and peered out between the drapes again. She hadn’t slept all night—she kept thinking Jack would walk through the door any minute.

But he hadn’t.

She tried his cell phone again. She’d been getting a no-carrier signal for the last two hours—he’d either turned it off, his batteries were dead, or he was out of range.

Something was wrong, she was sure of it. No matter what he was going through, Jack wouldn’t just walk away. Maybe he was in jail, or the hospital. Maybe he’d been mugged—Reno wasn’t quite as family-friendly as Vegas yet.

Which was why Nikki had gotten two guns, not one.

She hadn’t told Jack because he wouldn’t have approved. They avoided guns whenever possible; killing the target would defeat the purpose of capture. Tasers, Mace, pepper spray, anything nonlethal was how Jack preferred to work. The fact that he’d asked Nikki to procure firearms at all showed how off his game he was…so the second gun was Nikki’s insurance.

And it looked like she was going to need it.

“Fuck it,” she said. She could do the tail without Jack. Once she had the Gourmet’s location nailed down, she’d play it by ear.

She put the gun in her jacket, grabbed the GPS tracker and left.

One hour in.

“Give me the access codes,” the Gourmet said.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jack hissed through clenched teeth.

He was terrified his cell phone would ring. It was the disposable kind you bought in airports, with a preset number of usable minutes. It only worked in the area you bought it in, was made out of cheap materials and wouldn’t operate at all under some conditions—even the charge from the stun gun’s capacitor might have disabled it.

None of that mattered, though—because if Nikki called, the Gourmet would know Jack had a partner. If he’d been watching the motel he might already know; the only thing that gave Jack any hope at all was the fact that the Gourmet hadn’t brought it up yet. If Jack had been doing the interrogation, he would have crushed that hope right off.

But then, Jack was much more experienced.

“You
will
tell me,” the Gourmet said. He’d used the butcher’s shears to cut the clothes off Jack’s body, though he’d left his underwear on. When he was done, he’d put down the shears and picked up a wooden mallet, the kind used to tenderize meat.

He’d started on Jack’s arms.

Jack couldn’t move either of them now, but he was pretty sure no bones had broken. Jack thought the Gourmet was holding back, but that might have been because Jack was seeing everything through a haze of endorphins.

“Fucking
pussy,”
Jack said hoarsely. His voice was nearly gone; he’d yelled his lungs out while the Gourmet worked him over. Jack had noticed that the screamers seem to last longer, as if they were somehow riding the pain instead of fighting it. “That the best you can do? You don’t
deserve
to lead The Pack.”

“If you tell me now, I’ll let you go,” the Gourmet said. “Just like one wolf exposing his throat to another, submitting to his authority. I’ll let you slink away into the night.”

Jack grinned through bloody lips. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding. You don’t know the first thing about torture, do you?”

“Oh, I’m just getting started.”

“You’ve
already
fucked
that
up, Magoo. The beginning is
important;
it establishes the entire fucking
relationship.”

“Oh? How so?”

“You know the expression, to ‘give someone the third degree’? Know what it’s from?”

“Third-degree burns, I assume. Which reminds me…” The Gourmet walked past the head of the table, moved to where Jack couldn’t see him.

“No, asshole. That’s what everyone thinks, but they’re wrong. It’s from the Inquisition. There were three degrees of torture—the first one was just showing the subject the instruments. Letting their imagination do the work, you know? But you rushed it.”

“And the second?”

“Asking the questions. Giving the subject a chance to confess. You couldn’t wait, though—just jumped right to number three. Hey, I don’t much give a fuck about tradition, but only an
amateur
shows that kind of impatience.”

“Maybe. But I do learn from my mistakes.”

“Well, at the rate you’re making them, you should be a genius pretty fucking soon. Oh, no, wait—you have to chow down on somebody
else’s
brainpan for that, right?”

“At least I adhere to my principles. That prostitute I saw going into your room—she wasn’t exactly a baby boomer, was she?”

Jack snorted. “Fuck you. I’m in a different town, I set up another sheep for the next initiate. See, it looks like The Pack is going to need some
fresh blood
pretty soon.”

“Your bravado is transparent. There’s no point in stalling.”

“Right. Because as soon as I give up those codes, you’re
not
going to turn my frontal lobes into a casserole.”

“I was thinking more of barbecue….”

Jack could suddenly smell hot metal. The Gourmet returned to Jack’s line of sight. The tool he held was a simple loop of metal attached to a black handle with a cord trailing from it. Thin wisps of gray smoke were beginning to rise from the metal.

“This is used to light charcoal,” the Gourmet said. “Not as common as they once were, with so many people using gas grills.”

The metal was beginning to glow red hot. “Still,” the Gourmet said, “it’s a useful instrument. As I’m sure you’ll agree…”

Three hours in.

“You know why this is happening to you?” the Gourmet asked.

“Because I deserve it,” Jack mumbled.

“No,” the Gourmet said patiently. “Because I want it to. My will is supreme. Your will is nothing.”

“I
am
nothing,” Jack managed. “Djinn-X …is nothing. Heh.”

“That’s right. Djinn-X is nothing.”

“Just a shell,” Jack whispered. “Can’t hide behind it anymore.”

“No. You can’t.”

“Good,” Jack rasped. “I’m the one who should suffer. Me.
Me.”

The Gourmet frowned. “Explain.”

Jack raised his eyes. There was no defiance in them.

“Make me,” he said.

Five hours in.

“I may have made a mistake,” the Gourmet said. “Your endurance is impressive, but it shows little intelligence. Eating you would be a step down.”

Jack didn’t answer. He had passed out.

“Ah well,” the Gourmet said. “I suppose we can continue this later. It’s almost time to get ready for the delivery, anyway.” He turned out the lights and locked the door behind him.

Jack came back to consciousness in the dark, burns on his torso screaming at him to wake up. His head swam and his body ached, but he knew where he was.

“Nikki,” he whispered. The Gourmet still didn’t know about her; she was his last hope. His last chance.

All he could do was make sure he was ready.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Nikki said. She wasn’t sure if she was talking about the Gourmet or Jack.

She was driving down a two-lane highway through the desert, through a landscape dotted with low, yellow-brown hills and dusty clumps of scrub. The smell of sage underlined the car’s air-conditioning. She hadn’t been there for the actual hand-off—Jack was supposed to have done that—but if everything had gone as planned, the Gourmet was no more than a mile ahead of her. The GPS signal was supposedly good for up to forty, so unless he jumped in an airplane she should be all right.

Except she didn’t know what had happened to Jack.

What if the Patron had somehow gotten him? She didn’t know how that was possible, but her gut kept telling her it was. But then, her gut told her a lot of things about the Patron—and for once in her life, she was trying not to listen.

The Patron terrified her.

Out of all the monsters they’d hunted, she knew he was the worst. Any of the postings Jack had shown her had sent gooseflesh rippling down her back. Nikki had faced evil in more than one guise, from explosive craziness to cold, methodical sadism… but the Patron was something else entirely. She had no doubt he was both highly intelligent and clinically insane, but what bothered her the most was his
imagination.
His ability to take something sweet and pervert it, twist it through horror and so far beyond it took on a kind of striking surreality all its own—one that was somehow more sickening than the act itself. Like two mirrors facing each other, one beauty and one horror, with his victims throwing endless reflections back and forth between them…

He wasn’t just a monster. He was
alien,
something as far beyond murder as a computer was beyond an abacus; she was afraid of him in the same way some people were afraid of spiders. She would die rather than fall into his hands.

Unless, of course, someone else killed her first.

She had to consider the possibility she was heading into a trap. Jack gone, the Patron claiming he knew Djinn-X was dead—things were spinning out of control. Maybe it was time to just leave, stay on this highway and keep driving. Hit Vegas, or maybe California. She still had a few good years left in her….

Sure. Wind up just another old hooker, turning cracked and brown under the West Coast sun. Live in a run-down motel and crack a beer first thing in the morning to make the day go by faster. The days, the weeks, the empty months and years.

The GPS showed a change in direction: her target had turned onto a side road. She spotted it a minute later by the dusty cloud still hanging in the air, kicked up by the Gourmet’s tires.