Pugh examined the lock. “Four-ton dead bolts. Hardened steel cylinders. Drill plates, probably. Ball bearings…”
“Alarmed?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Do it.”
Pugh unfolded a packet of picks and bypass circuits, then put pressure on the door handle, just in case. The handle turned, and Byrd shook his head, disbelieving.
Easiest half million ever …
* * *
Reece gave them five seconds to clear the door, then triggered a circuit to close and seal it.
No handle on the inside.
No access to the hinges.
Reece waited for that to sink in, then triggered the second door.
* * *
“Byrd, what the hell just happened?”
Byrd waved Pugh to silence, drawing a pistol as he did so. The floor was mortared flagstone, the walls concrete. Thirty feet down, a second door had just slammed shut, and it looked every bit as solid as the first.
“I don’t see any nice furniture.”
“Can it, Wilkinson.” Byrd pointed at the second door. “Pugh, check it out.”
The second door was solid steel, exactly like the first, nine feet tall, and faceless. “We’re not getting through this,” Pugh said.
“Talk to me.”
“Hardened steel in a recessed frame. I’d need an oxyacetylene torch and at least thirty minutes.”
“Jesus. You want a sandwich with that?”
“You see the cameras?”
Byrd did: one mounted high at each end of the hall.
Wilkinson said, “What do we do about this, boss man?”
Byrd studied the trap they’d sprung: thirty feet of concrete, stone, and steel. “I’ll figure something out.”
“I would love to believe that.”
“I’ve been in worse places,” Byrd said.
But he was wrong about that, too.
* * *
As soon as Reece got bored, he gassed them. The process wasn’t pretty. Pumped into a confined space, most incapacitating aerosols caused vomiting, seizures, or death, sometimes all three. Reece used a mix of methyl propyl ether and bovine anesthesia, a concoction perfected by a Mennonite serial rapist who liked to creep about in the dark and spray it into open windows. Reece found it acceptable, but only if the odd death was not a problem. He’d never use it on Sara, for instance.
But for these guys …
When all three were down, Reece pumped out the gas, rolled in a pallet dolly, and wheeled them outside to a concrete ramp, then down to a basement room equipped with surgical lighting, trench drains, and hydraulic tables. Metal shelving held the preferred tools of his trade, not just the scalpels, scissors, and saws, but forceps and towel clamps and organ holders, bone mallets and chisels, curettes and skin hooks and rib spreaders. Reece had trephines and Stryker saws, all kinds of retractors and hemostats. Ironically, he’d never used the room. Like the space upstairs, it was intended for special occasions and special people.
But these men had come, intending harm.
That made them special enough.
* * *
When the screaming started, Sara was curled in a corner beside the bed. She thought maybe it was a nightmare, but the sound went on and on, and sounded like a soul being torn apart. She covered her ears, but nothing helped. And when the first scream stopped, another one began.
A different scream, she could tell.
A different scream and a different soul.
* * *
For Reece, the first two were mostly mechanical. He took some time, but not as much as he normally might.
The first one, he skinned alive.
The second took four tourniquets and a bone saw.
“Can I assume you’ll answer my questions?”
Reece peered down at the last man living, naked as a newborn, and sheeting sweat as he bucked against the restraints, frantically trying to force words past the ball gag in his mouth.
“I beg your pardon.” Reece leaned close, amused.
But the clock really was ticking.
He removed the gag, and the words poured out. “Anything! I’ll tell you anything you want! But please, please don’t, not like them, dear God, Jesus Christ, not like them…”
Reece waited for the tears and silence. Both came quickly. “I have questions,” he said. “If you answer them for me, you won’t die like, you know…” Reece tipped his head at the dead men on the other tables.
“Anything! Please!”
But Reece shushed him like a child. He already knew the answers. This was more about confirmation. “You came here to kill me?” The man dipped his chin, still sobbing. “X hired you?” Another nod. “Any special instructions?”
“F-fifty thousand. Fifty extra if we … if we…”
“It’s okay,” Reece said. “I asked the question. There is no wrong answer.”
“Oh, Jesus…” Sweat sheeted the man’s face, dripped into his eyes. “Fifty thousand if we made you beg.”
“For my life?”
“For the pain to stop.”
“Ah. I see.” Reece pointed his chin at the dead men on the other tables. “Something like that?”
“He wanted it on film.”
“That explains this.” Reece picked up a video camera he’d found in one of the dead men’s satchels. “How much was the contract?”
“Half a million.”
“Plus the fifty?” Reece frowned deeply. It was insulting. Fiddling with the camera, he wedged it onto a shelf, making small adjustments.
From the table, the bound man said, “Nothing personal, right? You know X. You understand how he is. It’s just business.”
“I do know X, that’s true.” Reece spoke distractedly. Video cameras like this were new to the market. He had little experience with them.
“So we’re good, yeah? Just business.”
“Well, I don’t know that we’re good…” Still distracted. Reece checked the lighting, tweaked the angle of the camera. Satisfied, he rolled out a fresh tray of surgical gear.
“Whoa! Hey, man! Come on, now! We had a deal! You said you’d let me go!”
“Actually”—Reece pointed with a skin hook retractor—“I said I wouldn’t kill you like them.”
34
It took hours for Reece to dismember and bag the bodies, then bleach-clean the tables, floor, and instruments. It was grim work, but he needed that time to think about X. A voice inside argued that time alone would solve the problem, that X would, in fact, be executed very soon. As resolutions went, it was simplistic. X was the most vindictive man Reece had ever known, the proof of which now filled two chest freezers in the corner, each bit of body neatly bagged and taped and stacked. Of course, those three men were only the beginning. Reece had seven places he considered safe, and X could not have known he’d choose this one for the girl. He had to assume, then, that X had dispatched as many as seven teams. The specifics didn’t matter. The implications did. X wanted Reece found, tortured, and killed; and cost was not an issue. That risk wouldn’t simply disappear once X was executed. He had money, lawyers, access to dangerous men. He’d put a contract on Reece’s life just to make a point.