The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) (14 page)

She pointed behind the bed. All three men rushed over. Aaron looked back at her and gave a short jerk of his head. She could only imagine what he was thinking with all the red wine and Ansgar’s blood covering her upper body.

Ansgar had disappeared.

She put her back to the wall and scanned the room, before pointing under the bed. Aaron dropped. Alex dropped. The bed sheets were flung aside. Aaron popped back up. He jerked his head.

Movement by the bathroom door caught her eye. A blur of motion filled her vision at the second she went to turn that way.

Ansgar grabbed Sarah around the neck and lifted her up against the wall. Aaron shouted something, but Sarah missed it because of the pressure building in her head and the fire alarm blaring from only a few feet away now.

Ansgar’s eyes widened at the sight of Aaron. Recognition flashed across his face. He understood now. Aaron wasn’t dead.

People ran up the hallway. Ansgar saw Alex and his face changed to one of extreme anger.

Someone stuck their head in the room.

“Is everyone okay?” a woman shouted, loud enough to be heard over the alarm.

Ansgar let Sarah go, spun around the doorframe, and disappeared.

Aaron leapt over the bed and ran for the door. The woman who had stepped inside a moment before jumped sideways to let him pass.

Sarah collapsed to the floor massaging her throat, trying to get breath through the small tube that had been clamped shut a moment before.

Alex and Daniel were doing something with Clara. Sarah got back to her feet, stars blinking in her peripheral vision, and addressed the woman at the door.

Pam Prall.

Shit.

She tried to smile.

“Accident?” Pam asked, loud enough to be heard. She took in the room, the red wine stains all over the bed. Then looked Sarah up and down. “I think you need more than sheets.”

The fire alarm clicked off, leaving them in a deafening silence.

Alex and Daniel helped Clara to her feet, then walked the dazed woman toward the door. Clara seemed half asleep, her eyes opening, then closing.

“Too much to drink last night,” Daniel said quietly to Pam. “We got her.”

“Wait,” Pam said.

They stopped. Pam stepped closer, trying to address Clara.

“What’s her name?”

“Clara Olafson,” Sarah said, happy nothing in her jaw was broken. Saying Clara’s name didn’t hurt, even as her adrenaline waned.

“Clara?” Pam said.

“Yeah,” Clara mumbled.

“You okay?”

Clara nodded.

Pam stepped back and out of the way. “I just didn’t think this was her room.”

“It isn’t,” Sarah said, her voice cracking. “This is Peter Ford’s room. He invited everyone for drinks. Clara had too many.” She offered Pam an embarrassed smile for Clara’s sake. “We’ll help her back to our room for coffee. Send Peter the bill for the red wine stained sheets.”

Sarah started down the hall, Daniel and Alex guiding Clara with them.

They had failed miserably. It had been a dumb idea. They got Clara out safely, but they had planned to rush the door when Ansgar opened it like a home invasion. But he was faster than they had expected. Faster, stronger, and more brutal.

Sarah was lucky to get out of that room without broken bones, broken teeth, or worse.

Benjamin opened their hotel room door as they neared it. He stepped out to help. At the door, Sarah paused to look the length of the hall, but Aaron was nowhere in sight. He had chased Ansgar down the stairs. How far did they get? Were they fighting somewhere in the building? Did Aaron need help?

If Aaron lost Ansgar, where would they pick him up again? They didn’t even get a chance to go through Ansgar’s things in his room. What scared her was that Aaron wasn’t armed and when Ansgar ran from the room, she had seen the bulge of his weapon in the back of his pants.

Everything just got fucked up and Sarah needed a change of clothes, too. Her T-shirt and jeans were stained with blood and red wine.

“This day just keeps getting better,” she muttered under her breath, her throat dry.

Once inside their room, she closed the door. Not half a minute later, someone knocked.

Sarah checked the peephole, saw it was Aaron, and opened the door.

“I lost him,” Aaron said, trying to catch his breath. “Followed the blood trail for a few floors, but lost him. I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

“We fucked up,” Sarah said as she closed the door and dropped into Aaron’s arms.

“Big time,” Aaron added.

“Not totally,” Alex said as he stood over Clara who was sprawled out on the bed.

Alex held up a cell phone.

“Ansgar’s,” he said.

Chapter 16

Anton Olafson hadn’t slept much in the past two days. Wandering the streets of his hometown had proven fruitless. People recognized him, knew where he lived. It was a waste of time trying to find a random girl to kill. His resolve dwindled as he realized he wasn’t sure he could go through with it.

He rubbed his face and sat on the edge of his bed. Today he planned a trip to Aarhus on the train. Performing a random kill in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, which was only a fifteen-minute train ride away, was the best idea he had come up with—if he was still going to do it.

In and out. Hit Aarhus, find a back street by the open water or the canal, use his phone to film the life leaving the woman, then send the video to the man calling himself PAIN and fulfill his pact with the man.

Would he get Clara back? Would he get caught? Did it matter to him one way or the other if he got caught? His life was over without Clara.

His cell phone dinged.

He hadn’t turned his computer on in days, not wanting to see what PAIN would do next. The computer age had created so many criminals because of what anyone could do with a computer. Along with that, though, computers caught criminals. Just like him. He should never have kept those images on his hard drive.

His cell phone dinged again.

Anton moaned and got off the bed. He walked by the phone, turned on the coffee maker, and tapped the button to boot his computer up, then headed to the bathroom. Whatever PAIN wanted, if that was him texting, he would see on the big screen. Today was the third day of the PAIN PACT and Anton planned a long walk through Aarhus with his cell phone. He would do this for Clara. He would do this deed and do everything he could to avoid capture. People died all the time and it wasn’t Clara’s time to go.

Five minutes later, coffee in hand, he was back at his computer. He sat down to a blank screen. When he tapped the keyboard, nothing happened. After checking the cords to make sure it was plugged in, he tried the ON button again. Nothing.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

The cell phone dinged beside him.

He set his coffee down and grabbed the phone. Four messages from PAIN. All the same, coming in every few minutes.

“Lonely, asshole?” Anton whispered. “Need attention?”

Anton opened the message.

Your computer is dead. I’ve killed it. Your PAIN PACT has changed. The girl must look like your daughter. Absolute must. Blond. Tall. Fit. Strong. I’m sure that won’t be hard to find in Scandinavia.

Anton’s hand vibrated the cell phone as he read the message, his thoughts going to what he would do to the man sending the messages if he could get to him. Tracing someone like PAIN was near impossible. There would be rerouters, VPNs, remailers.

Anton once tracked a man who had broken into a set of servers and made a virtual network between the servers. Then he connected them and placed his actual computer behind the server computers, using them as a shield to hide behind.

Another hacker had located a free Wi-Fi access point, modified his Mac address and booted his computer from a “live CD” running only RAM. Had he not changed his Mac address, the access point would have enabled Anton to locate him because access points record the “probe request” when acquiring the Wi-Fi. But Anton and his crew nailed the guy because he was known to the café he’d been using. It would have been smarter for the guy to go to a different café on a daily basis, or at least when he wanted to hack someone.

There was almost no way to completely hide an IP address online since the IP protocol requires it to be online, but guys like PAIN use remailers for their email. They use a VPN and then go into a TOR to avoid IP address tracking. The best hackers never use a Windows based program because of all the holes in Windows, and they’re constantly moving around. They often use Linux.

To catch this guy electronically, he would need more time than Clara had left. The hacker going by the name PAIN would probably see it coming, too.

All Anton could do was decide whether or not he would comply with the PAIN PACT. At this point he was still willing to move forward. Providing he had assurances Clara was okay.

He typed a message back to PAIN asking for something to prove Clara was fine.

After a minute’s wait while he sat and let his coffee cool on the desk beside him, a message came through. A picture of Clara. He opened the photo and used his fingers to zoom in.

She lay on her back on a carpeted floor in what looked like a hotel room. Hands and ankles were bound, a ball gag in her mouth. The look on her face, in her eyes, seemed authentic. She was afraid. Her ashen, pallid looks told him everything. The tendons standing out on her neck, the tight lips, tight shoulders. They were holding her, but they hadn’t hurt her.

Seeing Clara in that state convinced him this wasn’t a set up. Clara didn’t pose for this photo. It was taken by a kidnapper—Anton’s blackmailer.

Anton decided in that moment, when he stared at the picture of his daughter bound and gagged, that he would kill a random girl. One that looked like his daughter. He would do it within a few days to secure Clara’s release and he hoped the hacker wouldn’t reveal Anton’s pictures of his indiscretions, but felt that was unlikely.

Everything Anton had done came with a price. A price he was willing to pay. But Clara was too high a price. He couldn’t allow Clara, his only daughter, to pay the price for him.

He texted PAIN back. He told him that everything was a go and that he expected him to keep his word and release Clara when Anton forwarded the video of the murder.

The response took four minutes.

PAIN maintained that his terms were to be unquestioned and honored. All he wanted was the random murder. Just one girl. One video. Then the nightmare would be over and Clara would return home.

Just one murder
.

Anton shot up from his desk. He grabbed his coffee cup and tried to take a sip, but it spilled down his chin and onto his chest.

With a shout of exasperation, he tossed the full cup across the room where it smashed into pieces against the wall, the coffee making a splatter mark upwards toward the ceiling.

It made him think of the blood.

The blood on his hands.

Chapter 17

It wasn’t just Ansgar’s nose that was broken. His pride was broken. His ego shattered after being bested by a crazy woman. His connection to the client had been severed. He had to obtain a burner phone as soon as possible to reach out, let the client know he was still in the game. Or find a way to get his own phone back.

He had checked his gun, too. When he flew off the bed it had jammed into his back. A cursory glance revealed everything was fine with it.

Before contacting the client, he needed a hospital to set his nose. The pain made his eyes constantly water while he breathed through his mouth. A highly noticeable characteristic, too, which made him less able to stay undetected in public.

He hailed a taxi on Airport Road half a kilometer from the hotel and told the driver to take him to the nearest hospital. When the driver asked him what happened, Ansgar explained it away as an accident.

Aaron Stevens was supposed to be dead. How could that be explained away? Aaron had to know that Ansgar was the bomber. That’s how he figured out where Ansgar was. He’d had that student follow him. Aaron had stood in his dojo and talked to Ansgar like he was any other customer.

Aaron had played Ansgar and then came looking for him. Correction: Aaron came for the girl. And he brought friends. But how could Aaron have known about him? How did he know about Clara?

Ansgar stared out the taxi’s window as the driver raced along the highway toward a hospital in Etobicoke, pondering the various ways that Aaron could know as much as he did and all he could come up with was the client had lied to Ansgar. It was the only plausible solution. The client was playing both of them. Give Ansgar a job, then tell Aaron what was happening. To what end, though? Why would the client do that? Payment had been made to Ansgar, the money transferred on schedule. Everything the client asked of him, he had done without fail, and on time. So why send Aaron?