Death of Secrets (10 page)

He started to struggle, but before he could even throw a punch
the man was back off him and running away. Mike rose to his feet and sprinted
after him, but he’d hardly taken two steps when his quarry jumped into the van
and it sped off. Mike shouted wordlessly, watching the vehicle race away until
it turned a corner.

Then he heard the honks of irate drivers who’d been held up
when the van stopped. "So much for concerned citizens," he muttered,
and expelled a gargantuan sigh.

The frustration almost immediately gave way to fear. An icy
fist gripped Mike’s heart as he realized he had no idea where to even look for
Kathy. He didn’t know who their pursuers were or where to find them. The moment
he’d been dreading was now upon him: risk her life by doing nothing, or risk
his career by involving the police.

It didn’t even take him a second. Mike reached into his pocket
for the replacement phone he'd gotten from Nathan. He was about to turn it on
when a finger tapped his shoulder.

Still on edge, he spun around violently, surprising the short blonde
girl standing behind him.

Mike blinked. "Oh, um… Sorry, was expecting someone else.
Um… can I help you with something?"

"Aren’t you Michael Vincent?"

He bit his lip in surprise. Michael was accustomed to being
recognized back in his home town, but not in Washington. He was only a
freshman, after all, and not all that well known except in insider circles.

"Um… yeah, I am. You must be seriously into politics.
Listen, give me just a second to make a call here and I’ll be happy to
talk."

"No, I don’t follow politics, but Kathy told me you were a
well-built blond guy. She said the two of you would be meeting me here."

"Oh! Colleen Christina?" When she nodded, Mike
continued, "OK, yeah, we were supposed to meet you. But Kathy’s been
kidnapped, I have to call the police."

He turned away toward the phone again, but Colleen's shout of
"What?" drew him back again. Over her shoulder, Mike could see other
patrons of the coffee shop staring at them.

"I’ve got to call the cops, she’s been caught by the
people trying to get that flash drive back!"

He tried again to make the call, but Colleen grabbed his
shoulder. "She’s my roommate! Tell me what’s going on!"

Hastily, Mike rushed through a summary of the previous night.
He finished with, "And I have no idea who they are or where they took her
or anything but I’ve got to get her back!"

***

In her first few minutes in the van, Kathy screamed, kicked,
swung her fists and even bit. But before long tight cords bound her arms and
legs, and a piece of tape on her mouth kept her screams under control. Even her
eyes were covered with a paper bag, denying her the ability to see where they
went.

The drive went on a
long
time.

As they drove, Kathy longed for at least a conversation to
overhear. But her captors spoke rarely, and when they did it was in whispers.
Frustration washed over her, and she resigned herself to her own thoughts.

Or her own fears. Kathy’s mind stuck on her last encounter with
Rat-Face at Mike's house, when he kept hitting her. She knew she'd be facing
him again.

She had never feared more for her physical safety. Kathy set
her jaw under the paper bag, and mentally prepared herself to fight. She was
being brought to the bearded man again, of that she had no doubt. Whatever he
might want to do to her, it would not be without a fight.

A voice brought Kathy back to dark, chilly reality. "OK,
guys, the coast is clear. Let’s carry her inside."

She felt her legs lifted up then felt herself being dragged off
the seat. Her butt thumped painfully to the floor and she scraped her back on
the edge of the seat.

"I said to carry her other end! She’s hot, man, you should
be jumping at the chance."

"Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t ready. I got her now."

With her hands and feet bound, Kathy decided not to put up a
struggle as they carried her. She had no desire to be dropped again. By the
sound she could tell when she was brought through a door, and then loaded onto
an elevator. After a long ride she knew they left the elevator, and then heard
herself being brought through another door. She also felt it when they scraped
her side on the way through.

"She doesn’t have the flash drive on her. We frisked her
pretty thoroughly." Kathy couldn’t identify which voice was speaking.
"But on the other hand she’s not armed either."

A new voice, and one she didn’t recognize: "Put her on the
couch and go ahead and untie her. Please cooperate, Kathy, and don’t fight. All
I want to do is talk to you."

"Yeah," added a voice next to her ear. "If you
kick me again, I’m going to do something about it."

The cords around her ankles and wrists were cut, and the bag
taken off her head. Again, Kathy decided not to resist. The sharp pain when the
tape came off her lips made her reconsider, but by then there wasn’t any point.

Three men stood in the room with her. The two men who had
carried her up stood one behind her and one to her right. But the man to her
left caught her attention right away.

He was dressed in black slacks and a turtleneck of the same
shade. His square-rimmed glasses had photograde lenses that had gone dark when
the lights were turned on. He stood erect, with his hands clasped behind his
back. The lenses hid his eyes, but somehow Kathy could feel them studying her,
searching for something. His gaunt frame stretched between a face with hard
edges and feet two sizes too big for his body. He did not have a beard.

None of them spoke, so Kathy finally asked, "Who are
you?"

"You don’t need to know." The speaker was the man
with the photograde lenses.

"How did you find me? I thought we did a pretty good job
of hiding."

"You did, but while we couldn’t find you we did find your
roommate. She told a friend of hers on line that she was staying with her
boyfriend, and we followed her from there, figuring she’d meet up with you
eventually. We were right.

"But none of that matters. All you need to know is that
the flash drive you took is private property. Keeping it would be theft.
Theft…" he paused, took his glasses off, and produced a handkerchief to
wipe the lenses before putting them back on, "…has consequences."

His expression changed to a smile. "Returning it to us
would have consequences too. Such as enriching you substantially. Since you
have no use for the drive at all, and no way of even reading the contents, it’s
hard to understand why you still have it."

Kathy felt a bit of confusion. The bearded man had offered her
a hundred thousand bucks, then withdrew the offer when she told him about
Colleen trying to read the drive. Now, they were offering her money again?
Something
,
she thought wryly,
doesn’t compute
.

She made an effort to absorb every detail of the room. She was
seated in a chair that reminded her of those in the waiting room of a
not-very-prosperous business. At her left hand was an end table, and another
chair beside it made something of a conversation square. Those were the only
furnishings in the room. White walls bare of decorations had three plain doors,
one of them obviously the one she’d come in through. There was also one window.

"Maybe because I don’t have it."

"I happen to know that’s not true."

"And maybe
that’s
why I haven’t given it to you.
Whoever you are, you’ve got
no
right to come barging into my life the
way you have!"

The man with the glasses stood up and turned away. "I’m
sure we can put a price on the discomfort."

"You can’t put a price on what I went through last
night!"

Glasses turned around and gave her a stare. He even blinked.
"What happened to you last night?"

"Don’t try to fool me! I know who you work for, and you
can tell him he’s never going to lay a hand on me again! Never!"

The man in the glasses peered at her. "I assure you, I
work for no one but myself. And if you’ll simply give us the flash drive, then
no one need ever lay a hand on you again. We’d be happy to pay you for
it."

Still thinking of Carlos the bearded man, Kathy replied only
with a silent stare.

Glasses shrugged and crossed his arms. "It’s called
comparison shopping," he said. "Simply buying the drive from you has
a price. What that price is, I don’t know yet, but obviously I don’t want to pay
more than I have to. On the other hand, getting the drive from you … without
your cooperation … also has a price. I’m pretty sure I know how much it will
cost me to do that, even allowing for things like the increased attention that
a murder investigation will bring. So which one’s the bargain? When you might
be selling your life, you don’t want to be undersold."

He gestured to the two men, and walked toward the door.
"Set your price, Kathy. I’ll be back."

All three of them left through a cheap metal door, and Kathy
was alone. Immediately she ran to check the door, and found it solidly locked.
She crossed the room and tried the other two with similar results. That left
the window, but it was locked too.

She ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, and paced
across the room. Her mind was on her last encounter with the bearded man, and
not having to go through it again
.

The window was the only thing even close to an option. Locked
it might be, but it was also glass, and Kathy knew she could break glass.
Unfortunately, a glance outside revealed a drop of more stories than she could
count. The people below didn’t quite look like ants, but they didn’t look much
larger than action figures, either.

She paced some more. The complete lack of any decor at all bothered
her. There was no artwork, no furnishings, not even a light in the room except
the ceiling fixture that was installed in the place. Even college boys didn’t
live this sparsely.

She walked over to the door her captors had left through, and
pressed her ear up against it. She could just hear a whispered conversation in
the hall, but none of the words came through. So, she was guarded.

She walked back to the window. Peering out, she saw a ledge
that was wide enough to stand on – barely. There was drain pipe against the
wall outside the window.

Kathy sat staring at it for a long time. It was a long way if
she fell. A
long
way.

She caught her breath, and took a long moment to think. Whoever
these men were, they were obviously holding her for the bearded man. And Kathy
couldn’t bear the thought of confronting him again. Not when she was all alone.
She couldn’t bring herself to think it.

But the alternative was hardly reassuring. She was afraid to
look down from the window again – her first glimpse had been enough. But she
couldn’t resist for long, and eyeballed the drain pipe. She stared long and
hard. If she slipped, she would plummet a good ten stories and die quite
messily on the sidewalk below.

Kathy prayed. "OK, I’ve never put my life in your hands
quite this literally before. I’m scared to stay, but I’m scared to try to get
away. Please help."

She stared at the window at the drain pipe, and slowly the
confidence grew in her. She was in good shape. She could do it.

You can do it.

Having decided that it could be done, that left only getting
through the window. And since the furniture wasn’t bolted down, that wouldn’t
be difficult. Kathy turned to examine the chairs. She picked one up. Not very
heavy, but definitely heavy enough to do the glass in. Carrying the chair, she
stepped a small distance away from the rest of the furniture. As a test, she
swung it once in a broad arc around her body. Again, she could do it.

She carried the chair over to the window.

"Last chance to back out, Kathy," she muttered,
feeling her heart go into overdrive in her chest. She took several long, deep
breaths. She hefted the chair, and stood there holding it for a moment.

A last minute fear seized her, and she set the chair down. She
walked to the window, and looked out again. No obstacles between her and the
drain pipe. She’d wondered at the last moment if she’d missed something like a
clothes line, but there was nothing. Sucking in her breath, she picked up the
chair again.

After another deep breath, she gave herself a count. "One…
Two… Three!"

She swung the chair.

The sound of the breaking shocked her with how loud it was.
Glass shattered and flew. Most of the debris went outward, and Kathy thought
belatedly of the risk to passersby on the street. A few shards dropped into the
room, and tinkled to the ground.

She heard a curse and then the sound of a key being inserted
into the lock of the room’s door.

Immediately her memory flooded with the fact that there was a
guard right outside her door. While entertaining thoughts like, "I knew I
forgot something," Kathy took several quick swipes of the leg of the chair
to clear as much of the rest of the broken glass out of the frame as she could,
and then she worked her way up onto the sill.

She perched like a gargoyle there, toes curled over the ledge
and hands gripping the window sill. Behind her, the door slammed open and she
heard a shout, but didn’t pay attention to the words. With one last whisper of
"help me Lord," Kathy grabbed the drain pipe and began to clamber
down.

The process was halfway between climbing and falling. She
wasn't quite strong enough, and the pipe was too smooth, for her to hold
herself still just by grabbing it. But just when she'd slip and start to fall,
she'd hit the next floor, where there was a ledge on which she could get a
toehold. She'd stop, catch her breath, and then slip down another ten feet or
so.

The process repeated again and again, until she reached the
second story, where the pipe ended. Kathy let herself slide as far down as she
could, until she ran out of pipe, and her hands clasped around empty air, and
she dropped.