The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) (25 page)

He collected everything and started for the guest room with plans to do it right there on the floor. The body would be easy to hide for the first few days. Before it began to smell too much, he would discard it in the lake in the middle of the night, weighing it down with the bags of gravel he had in the garage.

If he could ask for one small reprieve, it would be that the girl—Sarah Roberts—still be passed out when he started.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

When he stepped into the guest room, her eyes followed him. He didn’t look at her. He shut the door to block any kind of noise and set the small mirror on the bedside table.

The girl was tied up so tight, there was no amount of struggle that would release her wrists or her ankles. Immediately after the man left his front door, he had jammed a large white sock into Sarah’s mouth to stop her from screaming if she woke up while he wasn’t in the room. He didn’t fear her throwing up and dying on him. That would actually be a blessing as it would avoid an up-close-and-personal murder.

She was his completely. Lucky for her he was not too attracted to full developed women in their twenties or he would have had a small adventure on her before she retired from this life. He liked flat-chested, small, skinny males and this woman was the complete opposite. Tall, standard attractive, blonde with an average-sized chest was too common for Anton.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was how he was going to end her life. He needed it done quickly so as to get the body into hiding before that man returned with the authorities.

Sarah moaned behind the sock, her eyes pleading. He cared little for what she had to say. In fact, communicating with her would only make what he had to do over the next few minutes that much harder.

He had debated with himself how he was going to do it. Whether or not he would blindfold her or use his hands to cover her mouth and nose or stab her to death. In the end he chose to use a pillow. Since she was bound so securely, a pillow over the face for at least two minutes would be all he needed. No bruising, no blood, no pleading eyes watching him.

He placed the cell phone on the floor up against the wall and pushed record. Once he saw the timer counting, he made sure the girl’s face was visible in the screen.

Her eyes were on him the entire time. He felt them stabbing into his back and was sure those intense eyes would haunt him for years to come. He had even come to terms with spending the rest of his life in prison for what he was about to do. Prison was his final destination after what he had been doing to underage boys for years. But with this one act, he would do that knowing Clara was free. Did he trust the hacker? Not really, but he had no other choice. The hacker had Clara and this was what he asked of him. So he would do it.

He stepped over the girl.

“Sarah Roberts,” he said for the sake of the camera. “This is my one act that I beg your forgiveness in the face of what I must do for my daughter.”

Sarah moaned again, as if she was attempting to communicate something.

He pulled the pillow off the bed and grasped it on either side.

Her eyes widened. She stared at the camera, then up at him.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Before she could squirm sideways or flip over entirely, Anton dropped down on her and secured her bound body under his weight. He felt like he was fighting an epileptic experiencing a seizure.

He lowered the pillow onto her face and pressed the edges down around her ears, holding the pillow and her body as secure as he could.

Sarah fought him like a wild boar, bucking and kicking. Riding a bull in a rodeo while attempting to stay upright flashed through his mind. This girl was strong. He hadn’t anticipated the violence in her subdued figure.

It couldn’t last, though. Not without a supply of oxygen. As long as he maintained the pillow over her nose and mouth, the fight would wane quickly.

Anton redoubled his efforts after thirty seconds, panting and sweating into his eyes. He blinked the sweat away and let his own grunts of exertion seep out of his mouth.

Somewhere in the house there was a loud banging. Someone shouted.

That fucking man was back. He came back too fast. If only he’d waited another couple of minutes.

Anton leaned in over the pillow and forced its edges to touch the hardwood floor on either side of Sarah’s face, completely wrapping her face in it. Already, the fight in her had diminished to less than twenty percent of what it was.

The banging again. Anton would not open the door until they had a search warrant. He would refuse entry until he could deal with the body. Even though he resigned himself to the rest of his life in prison, he still wanted to do what he could to avoid it if possible.

The banging on the front door stopped.

The girl’s body slowed. It twitched once. Then stopped, her bound hands easing off his stomach where they had been pushing upward uselessly.

Anton held the pillow firm, his body sprawled across the girl’s body. He waited for more knocking from the man, for more fight from the girl, but neither came.

The camera was still recording. In the small window of the phone he didn’t recognize the man he had become. Political meetings in Copenhagen, joining the NC3, taking Clara to dinner to celebrate. None of that was Anton Olafson anymore. He was a murderer now. A cold-blooded killer.

He eased off the girl slowly, ready at any moment to leap back on her if her calm was nothing but a ruse.

When he lifted the pillow from her face, he saw something he had never seen before.

The open stare of the dead.

“Sarah Roberts,” he whispered. “I now declare you,” he paused to make sure the camera picked up the word, “dead.”

He snatched the phone up off the floor and grabbed the small mirror from the bedside table. With the mirror close to the woman’s nose, he filmed it directly under her nostrils.

No breath.

No smudges on the mirror.

“Dead,” he declared again.

He stopped the filming and left the room. After another minute, he uploaded the file for the hacker to access when he came online.

His job was over. He had done what the hacker had asked of him.

He had killed a random girl. One that resembled Clara.

He had done it.

But somehow it didn’t feel very good. He hadn’t thought that saving his daughter’s life would feel so absolutely horrible.

He dropped to the floor of his living room and curled up in a ball. There was work to do. He needed to deal with the body. But first, he needed to deal with the overwhelming emotions of what he had just done as sobs wracked his body.

Anton was still crying on the floor like a smitten child when glass broke in the house somewhere.

A man shouted.

That fucking man was back and now he was breaking into his house.

Anton shouted out a growl and scrambled to his feet, fists clenched.

He’d done it once, he’d do it again. That man needed to die.

He ran for the kitchen and the knives in the block on the counter.

Chapter 36

The bottom of the iron was mottled with bits of flesh and burnt hair. Ansgar placed it on the counter beside the ironing board. Aaron had squirmed so much under the iron that he hadn’t received much of a serious burn, but his arms were raw and a deep hue of red. The pain taught a man to answer questions. Any interrogator knew that. The KGB were experts in that field and Ansgar had learned from a few of their retired agents in Afghanistan.

Over a dozen police cars had converged on the front of the hotel. They would investigate the airport van incident. Aaron was the suspect they were searching for, as well as his friends who left in the airport van. No one would be looking for Peter Ford.

In one minute, he would leave. The stairs would offer ample egress and unless the area was roped off, Ansgar would walk away to find another hotel room where he would check in under another alias and get back to work.

He collected his gear and walked over to the closet where the hotel safe held the two small bombs left over from the job on Aaron’s dojo. He punched in the code, opened the door, and placed the devices in a small bag.

It was risky leaving the hotel armed with a Glock and two explosive devices but he had no choice. Leaving the gun behind was out of the question as it matched the bullets on the airport van, and he needed the explosive devices. If he encountered trouble, he would deal with it. He was not above killing a cop.

Back in front of Aaron, he slapped him awake. The pussy of a man had passed out when the iron’s burn proved too much for him.

Ansgar yanked the sock out of Aaron’s mouth and tossed it aside.

“You have less than a minute to live. Tell me what I need to know and it’ll be a bullet in the forehead. Refuse me and it’ll be a couple bullets in the crotch. If by some crazy odds you manage to survive that, you’ll be less a man than ever before. I believe they call that a eunuch.”

Aaron rolled his head toward Ansgar’s voice and glared up at him with bloodshot eyes.

“Are you going to talk?” Ansgar asked.

Aaron seemed to roll his tongue around in his mouth, as if he was chewing a candy. His lips separated, then a gob of saliva shot up and onto Ansgar’s shoulder. He barely jerked when Aaron spit on him.

“You chose your future, Aaron,” he said. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

Ansgar raised the Glock and leveled it on Aaron’s crotch.

“Any last words?” Ansgar asked.

He paused at hurried footsteps outside the door. They drew closer. Someone knocked on the door.

“Open up. Police.”

The sound suppressor on the Glock was good, but he couldn’t risk shooting Aaron with a cop six feet away. The only way out of the room was through the door the cop stood at. A moment of indecision hit him.

The knock came again.

“Coming,” Ansgar yelled. “Just a minute.”

He slipped the Glock in his waistband and retrieved the sock from earlier. With one hand on Aaron’s hair, he forced the sock back into Aaron’s mouth, then leaned down close to Aaron’s ear to whisper.

“Just one noise. If you do anything to signal the cop, I will have to kill the cop as well. You die anyway. Understood?”

Aaron nodded. Ansgar believed Aaron was resigned to his fate.

Ansgar got to his feet. The line of sight from the door wouldn’t reach to Aaron. He could get rid of the cop and get out of here seconds later. Everything was about timing. He knew that better than anyone.

At the door, he looked out into the hallway using the peephole.

Just one uniformed cop standing there. No one else. No tough blonde girl and none of Aaron’s friends.

Ansgar flicked the lock off and opened the door a crack.

“I’m sorry to wake you, sir, but we have an emergency—”

An arm shot out as someone touched the cop near the trapezoid area of the neck. Then the cop crumpled to the hallway floor.

Ansgar reacted by trying to slam the door shut, but something blocked him. He pushed, then peeked around the edge and saw the man who had jumped off his tenth floor balcony.

“Alex?” he grunted.

In his surprise, he paused when he saw him, completely unscathed from the hundred-foot drop. How could he have done that?

Alex had redoubled his efforts and the door shot inward, knocking Ansgar slightly off balance.

Like a charging orangutan, the young man launched onto Ansgar and jammed his hands into his flesh. He flailed his arms and shouted for the man to get off him, but then a pain bolted across his chest. That area went numb along with his arms. Breathing became a chore.

Ansgar stumbled backward as strength fled his body. He fell backwards and hit the carpet hard, breathing almost nonexistent now.

Alex yanked Ansgar’s feet back and straightened his body. His shoulder and arm burned like acid had been splashed across him.

What the fuck did that little shit do to me?

He lay there as Aaron’s friend dragged the cop’s body inside the room and closed the door.

Ansgar understood that the tables had turned.

He felt the first tinge of fear as the small man removed the ropes from Aaron’s wrists and ankles.

Maybe he wouldn’t survive this ordeal after all.

Chapter 37

Anton held the butcher knife close to his chest, both hands wrapped around the handle. He had turned off the kitchen lights. The house was wrapped in darkness. Minor amounts of light came in through the windows. Without knowing the house like he did, a stranger would have trouble navigating his way around.

The sound of glass breaking had come from the back somewhere. In the kitchen, he stood so his field of vision ran the length of the hall and ended at the front door. He waited until whoever had broken the glass entered the corridor in search of him. He knew his rights. Someone broke into his home. He felt threatened. Using the knife to hurt the man would be acceptable. Killing him not so much.