The Unlucky (27 page)

The last door held vibrators, dildos and a variety of devices that were supposed to be entered into the human body but appeared to be made for giants.

“Sarah, look,” Diner said. “This is too large. How can they name it The Great American Challenge? The tip of this thing is the size of a baby’s head. Who in their right mind would put this thing inside them?”

“What about that one?” Sarah nodded toward another item. “The Rambone. There’s no way. Just no way.”

Diner shut the door to the pantry unit. “We both know these aren’t used willingly.”

“I think now is a good time to use your phone. Call this place in. Let’s shut it down.”

Diner pulled out her phone, dialed a number, and held it to her ear.

Vivian whispered in Sarah’s head.

The news was a letdown. A total loss of hope swept over Sarah even as Diner pulled her phone away and tried to dial again.

“It’s no use,” Sarah said.

“But I have to try.”

“Signal jammers.”

“What?”

“I was just informed that your phone won’t work in this building.”

“What? Why not? It has to work. We have to get out of here.”

Sarah moved over to the chair in the corner and sat down, her bladder not happy she was sitting. “Not sure that’s going to happen too soon.”

“But Sarah, you brought us in here. You said bring your phone—”

“I also said I don’t know everything!” she snapped. “Vivian tells me what I need to know when I need to know it.”

“Well, right about now is a good time for her to be telling you something useful, isn’t it?”

Sarah stared at the tables covered in unique tools and wondered why they were inside the warehouse. What was the purpose?

Then Vivian starting whispering. She explained what was important about Medical Room number two and why they were there as the door clicked open and a crew of six men entered the room, Mr. Turner leading the way.

“Detective Marina Diner,” Turner said. “You have disappointed us.”

The guards behind him swung their weapons around and aimed them at her.

Turner smacked the cell phone out of Diner’s hand. When Diner bent to pick it up, he raised his booted foot and came down on the back of her hand.

Diner screamed as bones crunched.

Turner ground his foot as if he was extinguishing a cigarette with his heel as Diner screamed louder.

Sarah’s every urge was to attack Turner, hands cuffed behind her back or not. But she couldn’t as one of the machine guns was jammed in her neck making any movement a gamble.

Finally, mercifully, Diner yanked her mangled hand out from under the boot and crawled away, holding her hand up.

“We know what happened at the funeral home.” Turner spun to face Sarah. He stepped closer to her. “We know what you’ve been up to. And we were more than happy to allow you access to this room. Although I was surprised you chose this room.”

“Why, because it leads to the panic room?” Sarah said.

“You know more than you should, but that’s not the reason.”

“Oh right, because this is the room I kill you in.”

He offered that brief smile again. “Cute. No, I was surprised because this was the room we sectioned off for your torture session once we picked you up off the street. Providing we got to you before the police did.” He turned to face Diner. “But this female pig brought you to our doorstep, so the torture club is in session and yours will begin as soon as Detective Diner has been dealt with.”

The revulsion in her gut made her want to vomit on the man standing in front of her, but she managed to swallow it down.

“Dealt with?” Sarah asked. “Really? Bit weak though, no? Unoriginal? Don’t you mean raped and then killed, or cremated, or tortured?”

“Sarah Roberts, the violence I’ll use to rend your limbs will be much worse than what happens to Marina here. But first you get to watch Diner’s end. Then you will be next.”

Turner set his weapon on the far counter and turned to his men.

“Pick up the detective and get her on the table.” He grabbed a circular saw from a section of drawers that opened to various tools. “Let’s have some fun.”

He turned on the saw.

Chapter 31

The thunder of gunfire erupted from somewhere in the building. It was so loud and long that it could be heard over the racket of the circular saw.

Turner cocked an ear and listened for a moment as three men struggled with Diner to get her on the table.

Sarah didn’t care what was happening outside the room at the moment. She studied the men in the room, looking for weaknesses, someone she could attack, limited as she was with her hands cuffed behind her back.

They got Diner up, her arms splayed, the sound of the plastic crinkling under her body. The man holding her wounded hand squeezed the injury, a look of absolute joy on his face as Diner yelled, her eyes fluttering on the verge of passing out.

“Don’t,” Sarah shouted. “Don’t you dare pass out on me, woman.”

The saw shut down. Turner let it fall to the side of his leg.

“And why not?” he asked. “What does it matter? She has maybe ten minutes to live. Aren’t you merciful?”

“I want her to be awake when you die. I want her to see what’s coming.”

A shadow crossed his eyes, as if doubt had crept up and rooted a new spot in his thoughts. Or maybe it was fear. If she hadn’t been staring straight at him, she would’ve missed it.

Gunfire erupted outside the door in another part of the warehouse again. Something was going on and she could tell Turner was beginning to wonder if it had anything to do with them.

“You two,” he motioned to the men by the door. “Go see what’s going on.”

They did an about-face and were gone, the door closing behind them rapidly.

“Friends of yours out there?” Turner asked. “They won’t make it out of the building.” He turned back to Diner who seemed to have lost her struggle. She lay on the table, panting softly, eyes closed. The men attending to her held on tight, almost in fear that at any moment she would spring up from her position on the table. “Regardless of what is happening out there,” he added, “we continue in here.”

He started up the saw again. Diner renewed her struggle, kicking and screaming.

“Hold her!” he yelled over the noise of the saw.

No one watched Sarah. She wondered if it was because she was cuffed and deemed non-threatening. But what did matter was getting that saw out of his hands and without the use of her own hands, she was severely limited.

Turner brought the saw up and focused on Diner’s lower leg. In seconds he would begin to cut and if the detective survived this ordeal, she would be maimed for the rest of her life.

Sarah jumped up, took two large steps and dove head first at Turner. He had been expecting her. Before she made contact, he swung the saw around toward her approach. When she dove, she came in low. Before making contact with his body, the horrid vibration of the saw and its blade hit her upper back.

A right shoulder might pack some weight on a football field, but down here, hands secured behind her as she body checked his thigh, all that happened was Sarah bounced off his thick body and rolled painfully into the corner.

A sharp agony rose near her shoulder blade as if a colony of a thousand bees stung her in the same spot. Her bladder released mercifully, wetting her pants thoroughly. Through gritted teeth, she screamed while Turner flicked off the saw to laugh.

Sarah cried out as blood slid down her spine and pooled around her buttocks. She wondered how bad the injury was, how deep it went. How much blood could she lose before she passed out?

Diner yelled over Turner’s laughter, but Sarah couldn’t hear it. Something about her being okay.

Then the door burst open. The two men from before ran back in, their guns no longer slung over their shoulders but held firmly in their hands.

Turner set the saw down on the table between Diner’s ankles.

“Sir, we’re under attack,” one of the men reported. “They’ve breached the outer perimeter.”

Turner wiped sweat from around his mouth and asked, “Who?”

“Looks like ETF, sir.”

“Where are the girls?”

“Being rounded up for the cage.”

“How much time?”

“Minutes, sir. Maybe less.”

The look of hatred in his eyes when he turned to Sarah made her stare back at him, trying to evaluate his next move.

“Bring them in,” he said without looking away from Sarah. “Do it now.”

“Yes sir.”

The men disappeared, leaving the door wide open as Turner pulled the saw from the table and set it on the floor. Then he shoved the table across the room with Diner still on it. When it hit the far wall, Diner smacked into it, bounced back and fell off the table, smacking the tiled floor hard.

The pain in Sarah’s shoulder continued to rise like a tsunami of needles poking around her flesh. She squeezed her hands. All fingers responded. She flexed her biceps, then triceps. Everything worked as it should.

Maybe it was just a flesh wound. But it hurt like a bitch.

She looked down by her feet and followed the saw’s cord to the wall where it was plugged in. Turner was working on something in the floor, spinning a dial that was just under the edge of the tile. She knew he was accessing the panic room. She had to stop anyone from going inside or they would never get out. It could only be opened once—the way Turner was opening it. As a safeguard, the code changed each time it was opened and the other two that knew how to work it were dead.

She leaned forward and picked up the circular saw’s cord with her foot as the men who had been holding Diner fled the room. With Diner writhing on the floor, her broken hand held high and Sarah bleeding and handcuffed, they no longer posed any kind of threat.

Sarah managed to get the saw’s cord wrapped around her right ankle three times.

As the noise of machine-gun fire continued outside the open door, she turned to her side and managed to get onto her knees. Without looking back at Turner, she used her good shoulder against the cupboards to push off and get to her feet. The smell in her shirt from the Chinese restaurant had grown fainter, replaced by the smell of her urine with a touch of copper from the blood.

Turner had opened something. He grabbed a large handle and twisted it, then walked five feet to his right and twisted another handle.

A door, like the kind found on old farmhouses, opened up out of the floor.

Guards and girls began to fill the room. As Sarah and Diner watched, Turner ushered them down the stairs into the floor. Naked woman after naked woman took to the stairs. One woman, missing her arm below the elbow, wobbled on her way down. Another woman with no hands walked by. Two men followed and then Sarah’s eyes welled up with tears when she saw a woman with both her eyes removed, being guided by two others girls who didn’t look a day out of high school. What looked like white golf balls had been placed in her empty sockets. A parade of at least a dozen other women in various states of undress entered the gaping hole in the medical room’s floor, helped down by Turner and his cohorts.

Sarah looked at Diner who had quieted in the corner. Their eyes met and Sarah saw the pain and terror at what she was witnessing.

Then Turner moved around the people entering the panic room in the basement and came for Sarah.

She had been waiting for him. She had to forget the pain, ignore it to stay alive. She had done it before and she could do it again. The shoulder wound would heal, but favoring it would kill her.

With the circular saw’s cord wrapped firmly around her ankle, she pivoted in a circle like a shot putter preparing for a throw, her leg spinning out and wide, bringing the saw with her.

Turner saw the device coming and managed to jump over it the first time, but the second time it clunked into the back of his leg, barely nudging his bulk. The saw dropped to the floor, useless.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he shouted at her.

Sarah nodded, then shrugged. “I guess that’s it.”

Without thinking or wondering how effective it would be, fueled by the anger of all the pain and abuse that had taken place in this warehouse, Sarah lunged at him again, diving higher this time. At the moment before contact, she spun in a circle so his grabbing hands would have difficulty finding purchase.

She caught him slightly off balance. When he took a step back to right himself, he tripped over the saw and teetered backwards, his arms pinwheeling for balance.

Sarah dropped to the floor beside the open door to the panic room and spun around as Turner fell backwards into the hole where all the captives had just descended. He landed with a clunk and a short moan of pain at the bottom of the stairs.