As the sedative came down, Tobias’s predatory instincts returned. It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for fifteen years, but it was like they never left. He rose from the cusp of death, grabbing the woman’s hand and jumping from his stretcher bed in the same movement. The woman didn’t have time to move or think. Tobias used her needle as his weapon, driving it into the neck of the uninterested guard on one side of the elevator. Tobias pushed the syringe down himself, emptying the extreme sedative into the man’s bloodstream. With the other hand, he picked out the guard’s electric taser.
“Fuck!” the other guard screamed, reaching for his pistol. Tobias moved like a predator, crossing the elevator in the blink of an eye. Before the guard even had his pistol pointed at him, Tobias had the taser buried into the guard’s stomach, launching him into rapid shock. The nurse cowered into the corner, hand over her mouth. She frantically pushed buttons on the elevator control panel.
“Stop the elevator and I’ll let you live,” Tobias said calmly. He walked towards her, taser aimed at her stomach. “Three, two…”
The nurse pushed the HOLD button and the elevator stayed in place.
The gullibility of man, he thought. “Make a sound and I’ll kill you,” Tobias said. “Get over there, in the corner.”
The nurse obliged, cowering in fear. Covering her head, like it would somehow keep the man at bay.
Tobias went back to the first guard, limp on the ground, but still breathing. Tobias locked his arm around his neck, twisted, and snapped the bones like frail twigs.
He’d already predicted the nurse’s reaction at the sight of murder. “Shhh,” he said before her screams emerged. “Behave and you’ll get out of here alive.”
The second guard sat crumpled in the corner, powerless and vulnerable. Tobias approached him and assumed the same position.
“Toby, please don’t. I’ll…” the guard breathed.
Snap. Neck bones shattered in two. It had been a long time since Tobias took a life, least of all two in one sitting, and he’d all but forgotten just how good it was. That feeling of playing God, the lord of life and death.
“And then there were two,” he said to the nurse.
“You’re… not ill?” she cried. “But how did you…”
He slowly approached the cowering woman and cornered her. Killing someone was one thing but instilling a sense of oncoming death in someone was unlike anything else in the world. In that moment, you were bigger than God. You controlled destiny.
Tobias buzzed the taser.
“Please. You said you’d let me live.”
“I say a lot of things.” He dug the taser into the nurse’s neck and relished the physical breakdown that followed. She went into a fit of seizures and crumpled on the ground. With no one around, he took his time.
Tobias savored the aroma of death. It was like an old friend had finally come to visit again. He pushed the button for the top floor of the hospital. The hard part was over. The fact that no alarms were sounding meant his people had done their jobs correctly. This was the culmination of a long, complex plan.
At his destination, he walked out, leaving behind an elevator mass grave in his wake. The fire exit door was already lodged open for him. A few seconds later, he was out in the cool night air, with nothing but a staircase between him and freedom. He felt no need to rush. This moment had been a long time coming. The slower he walked, the bigger the insult to the prisons, the politicians, and the FBI directors who thought they could keep him locked in a cage for the rest of his life.
The world was his again. Alive and undead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After a delayed flight, Ella Dark finally got back to D.C. in the early evening. She picked up her car at the airport and, instead of heading back home, detoured to the FBI offices. Before she’d left for Delaware, she’d run her dad’s mysterious receipt through the graphology software at the HQ, and by now she should have had the results back.
There was also the matter of her relationship that she didn’t want to address yet. She had enough trauma to worry about, and she still felt woozy from her arm wound. She wasn’t in the right headspace to break up with an abuser just yet. As far as Mark knew, she was still in Delaware. It would stay that way until tomorrow.
Ella made her way to her desk in the Intelligence Division. A couple of late-night workers were still around, a few of which seemed happy to see Ella back in her old haunt. She set up her laptop and opened the graphology program she had installed.
TIME ELAPSED: 51 HOURS
DOCUMENTS CHECKED: 3,215,497,411
RESULTS: 17
95% MATCH: 4
“Wow,” she said. She never expected to get a match, let alone four of them. Ninety-five percent match results were considered to be so accurately matched that they could be entered as evidence in a court of law.
She checked the four documents. The first was a form for planning permission written in 1998. Back when forms were done by hand, Ella thought. The permission had been requested by a man named Owen William Angels for his new business.
“Oh my God,” she said. She remembered the initials on her father’s receipt. OWA.
This must be the man.
She looked at the rest of the forms. The next was a tax relief bill from 2001 in the same handwriting. Next was a letter of appeals to the local government.
The last one was where her dread peaked.
According to the document on her screen, this Owen William Angels man had been arrested on suspicion of murder in 2003. He’d signed the document by hand with the same OWA Ella saw on her dad’s receipt.
Who was this man, and why was her father acquainted with him?
She dug a little deeper and searched the FBI database for the name. His information popped up immediately.
Name: Owen William Angels.
Born: 05-31-1970
Occupation: Unknown
Address: Unknown
Prior Offences: 13
She went back to the documents and found that the tax relief bill was for Angels’s company: Red Diamond.
“Oh Christ,” she said. Red Diamond was a very well-known, very underground operation that operated in Virginia when she was a kid. Everyone in her old town had a story about the group, some people even claimed to have a brush with the members themselves. Whenever someone passed away in Staunton, Virginia, someone would start a rumor that the Diamonds were involved. Back when her dad was alive, the group would have only just been starting. Now, everyone knew their names.
Had they started out as loan sharks? It wouldn’t surprise her. Every operation had to start somewhere. Was her dad one of their first customers perhaps?
She had to find someone from this seedy organization; the only problem was they kept themselves underground. Back in her youth, the rumors were that group members sewed blades into their boots, and that every member was branded with a diamond scar somewhere on their body. But that might have just been high school talk.
She needed to dig deeper and find them. Starting tomorrow, she was going to find this Owen Angels for herself.
Her cell phone began buzzing on her desk. She checked the screen.
INCOMING CALL: WILLIAM EDIS.
The director, probably wanting a review of the case. She sometimes wished he’d give her more time to prepare them, but she understood the urgency. The media would want the lowdown by the morning.