Two Weeks' Notice (26 page)

The video shut off, but that was all Bryn really needed to see. “Fuck you,” Bryn said softly. “Fuck you for using
kids
.”

“Not
just
kids. Oh, don’t look at me like that, sweetie. I’ll use anybody I need to use to finish the mission. Now. We’re going to go into the bathroom, and I’m going to strip you naked and do the kind of search that requires rubber gloves inside of body cavities. Then you’re going to put on the clothes I brought.”

She gritted her teeth until she saw stars. “What happened to these people? The regulars in here?”

“They’re safely sleeping it off in the storage room.” The woman’s eyes weren’t any remarkable color, just a plain dull brown, but the expression in them was extraordinary. “Why, do you really care about them more than this precious little boy? That’s just sad, and if you insist on asking me stupid questions, we’re going to have a problem that gets little Jeffy hurt.”

“No,” Bryn said tightly. “No problem.”

She cast a filthy look at Carl as she got up, and he
flinched. “It’s not my fault,” he blurted. “I didn’t have a choice.”

She did know; it just didn’t make it any better. “You know they’re not going to let either of us go now,” she said. “You know that.”

He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t actually believe it. He thought there would be a chance for escape, or mercy; he thought that he could clever his way out of it.

Bryn already knew. She’d seen it in the other woman’s dark, chilling eyes.

Twenty-four hours until the nanites begin to broadcast our position.

That didn’t matter. She needed to make sure Jeff was released unharmed. That was her primary, her
only
concern right now. Everything else—the pain that was sure to come, the eventual end of her life—all that had to be secondary.

She wouldn’t let this happen.

Bryn glanced into the tote bag of clothes that the woman thrust into her hands. “Not my color,” she said. “But I’ll make do.”

The woman’s smile wasn’t much warmer than her eyes. “Move it.”

The strip search was humiliating and efficient. Bryn’s clothes were bundled into a trash bag, and everything else—earrings, watch, necklace—went as well. The cavity search was unpleasant in every way possible, except that it was fast. It took a total of one minute to reduce Bryn to…nothing. No identity, nothing to call her own. Just a walking corpse.

Well,
she thought,
that’s not new, at least.
Odd how that could be comforting at a time like this.

After that, it was simple. She put on the plain pants and shirt, and her captor walked her out the back door to a brown SUV waiting there—not a flashy bulletproof
model like the one Manny Glickman owned, but the kind thousands of soccer moms drove every day. There was even a baby-friendly sun screen on the rear window with SpongeBob featured on it.

Bryn took a seat on the passenger side, and belted in when ordered. Her captor wasn’t alone; two other fake customers from the coffee shop got in the back. As the SUV pulled away, another took its place in the alley, and Bryn looked back to see Carl being loaded in with his own escorts.

“Eyes front,” said the woman. “Hands on your lap. Don’t bother trying the door; the child lock is enabled, so you can’t open it yourself. Don’t want you throwing yourself out at high speed from the vehicle.”

Too bad. Bryn had been considering the possibilities. “What do I call you? Bitch?”

“Well, it has a ring to it, but you can call me Jane.”

“Jane Doe.”

“Something like that.” That seemed to entertain Jane a little, from the smile on her face. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your questions answered when it’s time.”

Bryn leaned forward, testing the limits of their patience, as the SUV accelerated for the freeway entrance.

Something metallic flashed past her eyes, and as she jerked instinctively back, she felt the cold bite of something snugging tight against the fragile skin of her neck.

Jane sighed. “Oh, Bryn, we discussed this. My friend John Smith in the back has this little thing called a commando saw. Do you know what it is? Diamond-coated wire, can saw through wood, metal, bone, spinal cords…really very easy to use. If you move again, he’s going to start practicing his technique. Maybe he’ll only saw through to your backbone and then let you heal. Or maybe he’ll just take your fucking head off. I really don’t
know. How do you feel, John? Particularly into beheading?”

John didn’t answer. He wasn’t paid to banter, apparently, just to play lumberjack. Bryn stayed very, very still, hyperconscious of the cool, rough texture of the wire around her throat. “Don’t hit too many bumps,” she said. “Or your detailer will be really unhappy.”

“Not my car, not my problem,” Jane said. “Now shut up or I text my friend and little Jeffy gets a few bones broken for your attitude.”

Bitch,
Bryn thought, but she couldn’t do anything, anything at all, except sit quietly, and breathe.

Chapter 13

T
he car had traveled only a few miles down the road before Jane said, “Time for lights out for our guest. Mr. Smith, if you please.”

For a heart-wrenching second, Bryn thought he was going to cut her head off, but instead, the wire noose’s threat kept her pinned in place while he slipped a blinding bag over her head. It was suffocatingly heavy, but by keeping calm she could draw in slow, thickened breaths.

The problem was
keeping calm
. She had this terror ingrained in her cells; she still woke up every night from a cold sweat, feeling that wet plastic bag molded to her skin like a cheap, oily shroud.

It’s not the same; they’re not trying to kill you, just keep you disoriented.
She had to keep repeating that like a mantra and, when it failed, forcing herself to count seconds for each slow breath. The inside of the bag started out dry and dusty but quickly became hot and moist, and that added to the mounting tide of fear inside her.
Please not again, not like this again…not suffocating.

They seemed to drive for hours after that, but Bryn
had lost any sense of time. All she could do was…endure. Try to count her breaths.

Try to survive, one minute to the next.

“Out,” said a muffled voice,
finally
. The SUV had stopped, and her door had come open; she hadn’t even noticed, immersed in fighting off her own demons. She pushed the seat belt release, stepped down out of the vehicle, and stumbled as her captor yanked her arm in a bruising grip. The noose tightened around her neck from behind. “Remember your pretty diamond necklace. Don’t go losing your head.”

Bad enough she was wearing her own personal guillotine, but stumbling along blind wasn’t helping her feel more secure. One misstep, and even if it didn’t actually cut her head off, the wire was thin and sharp enough to slice deep into veins and arteries. She was as careful as she could be, given his impatient shoving hand at her back.

Bryn could tell that they’d entered some kind of building by the blast of cool, dry air that washed over her skin, though her face remained hot and damp under the bag. The place was quiet, but over the harsh rush of her own breath she heard what sounded like someone crying weakly. Then the slow creak of wheels…a distant, sharp, angry cry…an old woman’s voice saying, viciously, “
No
, you can’t have it. It’s
mine
!”

There was carpet under her feet, thin and industrial. She heard a phone ringing shrilly off to her right, but it dopplered away as they moved on. More wheels passing them by—gurneys? Wheelchairs? And then the creak of a door. She and her leash-holder continued into what sounded like a small room, and the door slammed behind them.

The bag on her head suddenly tugged free, and she pulled in a deep, explosive breath, then coughed. Her
tongue and lips tasted like dust and lint, and as she blinked and her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that she was standing in a lifeless little room about twice the size of a prison cell, with a barred window up near the top of the far wall that let in a weak amount of light. The walls were a plain though dingy white, and marked with scuffs and scratches. One heavy gurney-style bed that looked at least two decades out-of-date. A cheap thrift-store dresser with two drawers and a chipped corner. A metal prison-appropriate mirror bolted to the wall, over a stained porcelain sink. There was a toilet cubicle with no door.

Bryn swallowed hard and didn’t move; there wasn’t any point in trying anything, not yet.

Jane walked around from behind her and said, “The door’s locked, and if you don’t do what I say, when I say it, little Jeff’s going to have a very unpleasant assault and battery life experience. Do we understand each other?”

Bryn nodded as much as she could without damaging herself on the wire loop. Jane gave her a cool, evaluating look, then nodded at Mr. Smith behind her. He loosened the wire and slipped it over her head, and Bryn shuddered under the wave of relief that cascaded through her like glacier melt, but didn’t try to run. She didn’t doubt that Jane was capable of
anything
. “What do you want?” she asked. Her voice sounded even and calm, which was something of a triumph.

“For now? Your unquestioning obedience,” Jane said. “Here. Put this on.” She reached into a drawer, pulled out a hospital gown, the kind that tied in back, and tossed it to Bryn. There was nowhere to go for privacy. Bryn turned her back to a wall, draped the gown over her clothes, and undressed beneath it. Even though they hadn’t been her own clothes, and had fitted badly
enough, they’d still been
something
connecting her to normal life. A hospital gown dehumanized her one step further. She tied the straps behind her as best she could, then waited.

“Good girl,” Jane said. “Kick the clothes and shoes over. Then sit on the bed.”

Bryn followed every instruction to the letter.
Feet up. Lie down. Hands at your sides.
She wasn’t surprised when they fastened the restraints on, and had a moment of flashback.…These were the same restraints as Liam had used for Annalie, oddly enough. Ankles, wrists, chest, waist, thighs. She didn’t resist. Houdini himself wouldn’t have been able to wriggle out of this configuration, not without hidden tools and time.

Jane tested the straps, then nodded to Mr. Smith. “Good,” she said. “Go on and make sure that idiot Carl’s squared away. He’s likely to throw some unfortunate fit.” He left. Like Jane, he was nondescript—an average-looking man, a little too heavy in the jaw, a little too small in the eyes to be considered handsome. Strong and well built, like Jane herself.

A cold, absolute professional.

Jane was watching her assess her opposition, with an amused smile lurking around her lips. “You’re not like Carl,” she said. “You pick your shots, don’t you?”

“Are we going to have girl talk now?” Bryn asked. “Because I can’t really braid your hair with my hands tied up like this.”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Well, comparatively speaking, I’m probably the funniest in the room.”

“I think you’ll find I’m a laugh riot when you get to know me. And you will, Bryn. Very well.” Jane met her eyes, and dialed a cell phone without looking at it. A preprogrammed number. “The kid’s served his purpose.
Dump him.” Bryn gasped and lunged against the restraints as Jane hung up and gave her a slow, icy smile. “Oh, relax. He’s being left where he’ll be found. You did a good job, so I don’t feel the need to be…punitive. Unless the mouthy brat wanders out into traffic, he’ll be home inside of an hour with a fun story to tell his friends at school.”

Bryn’s heart was racing madly, her veins singing with the desire to
hurt
this bitch, but she forced a smile that probably held more than a trace of that black fury. “I can’t
wait
for you to meet his daddy, Jane.”

“Oh, I already have,” Jane said. “Tall guy, six feet, bullet head? Wicked fast reflexes and charming as all get-out. He’ll remember me. He’s got the scars.”

“Liar.” But Jane had shaken her confidence, because that
did
sound like Joe Fideli.

“Let’s not start the name-calling. We’ve got loads of time before things get that catty. I’ll tell you how this is going to go. This place”—Jane made a vague gesture at the room, the building in general—“is a black hole. People go in, they don’t come out, and nobody bats an eye. Pretty genius, really. So you can forget about attracting someone’s attention.”

“Not a prison, then,” Bryn said. “A hospital. A mental hospital.”

“Oooh, close, but no. It’s a locked facility. It’s where they dump the severely impaired Alzheimer’s patients, the ones without families, the ones who never get visited. No witnesses. And no one cares who comes in, since nobody ever leaves except in a body bag. Fucking creepy, if you ask me.” Jane sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “My point is this: you can scream and yell and curse as much as you want to. Doesn’t matter. Somebody’s always screaming in this ice-cold corner of hell.
You won’t sound any more delusional than the rest of the loonies.”

Bryn kept her mouth shut, grimly wishing she had a hand free so she could punch the bitch out. Just once.
Less than twenty-four hours,
she told herself.
You only have to make it less than a day. They’ll find you. Find her
,
too. And when they do
…

That was a nice moment of warm, bloody fantasy, the idea of what Joe Fideli would do to the woman who’d kidnapped his son. If Patrick didn’t take her apart first, of course.

“You’re still wondering what I want from you,” Jane said. “I can see it in your eyes, Bryn. The fact is, I’m going to ask you some questions. Now, you’re probably thinking you won’t answer. Word is, you used to be a soldier. Maybe you think that makes you a badass, but baby, recruitment standards are so low they drag the ditches for volunteers these days; hell, half the gang members out there served their four years for free Uncle Sam–sponsored murder training. I wouldn’t count on whatever backbone your cuddly little drill sergeant managed to beat into you lasting more than thirty minutes once we get down to it.”