The Unseen (26 page)

He turned and let Clarice bind his hands. Then, hands tied, he worked his way toward the door in front of her. At the doorway, he stumbled, acting as if he'd tripped over the mat placed there; he fell against the doorjamb and pressed the geopatch against it, then righted himself and went out the door. Outside, against the wall, was a chair. About ten feet away from the chair stood a camera on a tripod; beside the camera, two round lights spilled their beams on the chair, illuminating a small spot in the darkness of the night.

Lucas looked at Clarice, who motioned toward the chair with the gun. So now, after all this, they were going to shoot him anyway.

“Sit down,” Clarice said.

“Just wait a . . .” he started to stammer.

Her answer was a crack on the head with the butt of the gun, which staggered him and sent fresh jolts of pain through his brain. Two hits to the head in the span of an hour. He wasn't having a good evening.

Clarice, surprisingly strong, half dragged him to the chair and put him in it. She picked up some cord that was coiled by the chair and wrapped it around him, tying him in tight. She checked her knots and stood back.

He looked up at her. “Aren't you gonna put the hood on me?” he asked. “For the execution.”

She pointed at the camera. “Don't think the audience would like that. They'll want to see your face, you know.” She took a few steps back, raised the revolver.

“Wait,” he said. “You don't have to do this. We can—”

“Sorry, Charlie,” she answered. “But we do have to do this.” She pulled the trigger, fired six rounds, emptying all the chambers in the revolver.

Lucas, in a mad panic, felt his chair tipping over; he hit the ground hard and gasped for breath.

A few moments later, Clarice was crouched on the ground beside him, untying him. He looked at his chest, expecting to see a mass of hamburger, but saw nothing. He looked back at her in wonder.

She held up the revolver, tripped the hammer again. “Blanks,” she said. “But they make a nice sound, don't they?”

“But—”

“Hondo and the others wanted to see you shot on camera.” She nodded at the tripod. “We just gave them what they wanted.” Next, she held up the hood. “Now you can have your executioner's hood.”

THEY DROPPED HIM OFF AT UNION STATION, AND LUCAS WALKED AROUND the station for a few minutes to clear his mind, decided to stop for a coffee.

It was late now, near midnight, so he had to settle for a cup of off-color coffee from the vending machine. He waited for the cup to fill, pulled it out of the slot, sniffed at it, and tasted it.

It was cold, but it didn't taste as bad as he'd thought it would. Still, he added a couple packets of sugar to make it go down easier.

Sleep was what he really needed, but this would do for now. He sat near one of the legionnaire statues, sipping his coffee, trying to wrap his mind around the last several hours. The last several days.

The Creep Club had obviously been a large miscalculation. And he had to admit, now that he'd had a chance to chew on it for several hours, he knew exactly why he'd made that miscalculation.

Pride.

He'd seen himself above all the members of the Creep Club. They loved to creep into private homes; he sniffed at such things (even though the Dark Vibration inside yearned for it, oh yes), as they were beneath him. He had self-control; they had none. He had standards; they had nothing but their insatiable hunger. He was able to control his impulses; they were not.

Therefore he was smarter, faster, better than they were.

Hondo had crushed that pride easily. He wouldn't make the same mistake again. Now he understood that although he wasn't truly one of them, he was a kindred spirit. The same desires that burned inside them also illuminated his path, like it or not.

And he didn't like it.

The thought sickened him, saddened him, more than ever. Here were people who were so much like him, people who should understand him more than anyone else on earth.

And maybe, scarily enough, they did understand him. Maybe the problem, unfortunately, was that he had failed to understand them.

Which meant, in some ways, he'd failed to understand himself.

He shuddered, gulped down the rest of the coffee, and decided to make his way down to the loading platform. He had no pass, of course, nothing to be tracked, but he knew a back way about half a block over.

He pushed his way out the doors to the station and felt something hard poking him in the back of the head.

A voice spoke, dark and harsh, the breath scented with garlic.

“How about we take a quick detour?” it said.

Lucas closed his eyes. This stuff was getting old. “A detour to where?”

“Little place called Split Jacks. You've heard of it.”

Lucas opened his eyes. Split Jacks. The bar where he'd met Viktor Abkin, the owner of ATM2GO. He had a sinking feeling he was about to meet Viktor again.

And he knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant meeting.

THIS TIME LUCAS DIDN'T ENTER SPLLIT JACKS THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR; Garlic Breath escorted him through a back door, led him through a dark, echo-filled room where he tripped over something unseen, and pushed him into a small corner with a folding card table and a dim lamp.

At first Lucas thought they were the only people in the room. But then he heard a scraping sound, and Viktor's face moved into the weak light of the lamp. Viktor moved the folding chair, adjusting it on the bare concrete floor, and motioned to an empty chair across the table from him.

Garlic Breath let go of Lucas's arm, so he moved to the table and sat. Viktor stared for a few moments, then his face tipped back and out of the direct light again.

Lucas briefly thought the man was tipping over, until he realized Viktor was filled with nervous energy; he kept rocking back on his folding chair's two back legs, dropping the chair to the floor with a scrape, then rocking back again.

Viktor's face came forward again, an illuminated leer in the incandescent glow. “Well now, my good Samaritan,” he said. He put his front teeth over his lip and sucked in, as if he were about to say something he found very difficult. “It would seem you've been avoiding me. And here I thought we'd hit it off so well.”

Lucas said nothing, deciding it would be best to go with the silent treatment. But that didn't last long. “How'd you find me?” he said.

Viktor's voice floated across the table toward him. “Ah, well, one of the benefits of owning an ATM company. They all have cameras inside them, you see. And we have several hundred ATMs across the DC Metro area. One near a place called Dandy Don's Donuts—where some of my associates wished to speak to you, until you slipped out the back—and one at Union Station. Where you just had a cup of coffee. It also helps that we have some rather wonderful facial recognition technology to go with our cameras—you can shave your head, you can hide your eyes, but you can't change your face.”

Viktor tipped back in the chair again, forcing Lucas to listen to his disembodied voice. “You've been a real thorn in my side, I must say.

I've not been able to figure out what to do with you.”

Now Lucas spoke. “Why do you say that?”

Bam.
The chair's legs came to the floor again, perhaps a bit more forcefully. Viktor seemed to be leaning forward. “Why? Well, I'd say because you don't seem to be afraid of me. Someone who isn't afraid is . . . well, a thorn in my side.”

Lucas said nothing, but Viktor Abkin was wrong. He was afraid.

Very afraid.

Viktor put his elbows on the table and propped his head on his hands. The careful, attentive listener. “Now then, what do you suggest I do?”

“I suppose ‘go our separate ways' isn't one of the options?”

“Afraid not.”

“But think about it. Those tapes I showed you aren't good for anything now. I saw the story in the paper: both Anita and Ted are missing.”

“Don't believe everything you read in the papers,” Viktor said.

“They've been found. An unfortunate car accident, you see. They were hit by a drunk driver—guy came all the way across two lanes of traffic and—
bam
!” Viktor slammed his hand on the table, shaking it and startling Lucas.

Now Viktor decided to lean back in his chair again. “Near as we can figure, they were holed up in some little country cottage down in Virginia. Coming back after a few days off. I, not hearing anything from them for a few days, went to the authorities. But then, this. The two of them, carrying on, having an affair. How positively tragic for me, to lose my wife and my business partner . . . and to discover they were also lovers.”

His face was back in the light now, smiling.

“You don't seem too upset.”

“Well, there is the little matter of the insurance money. A few ends to wrap up, of course, but the money should be on its way soon. Help to salve my wounds.” He paused. “Not the way Ted and I had planned it, of course. Lots of time wasted, with him wining and dining my lovely wife.”

Lucas looked at him, stunned. “You were going to kill your wife.”

Viktor's smile burned brighter than ever. “Ted was going to do the dirty work, but yes. Until you decided to be a hero. Not that I'm complaining. Double the money.”

Lucas sighed. “So you're coming out ahead. You don't need me for anything.”

“Oh yes, I'm coming out ahead.” Now he put his top teeth on his bottom lip again, made that same sucking sound.

It reminded Lucas of a snake flicking out its tongue to taste the air around him. A fitting image.

“But you're wrong on the second part. I do need you for something.”

A door opened behind Viktor, letting in a shaft of light. For a moment, a dark figure stood in the doorway, holding something; the figure turned to close the door, and Lucas felt the new person approaching.

At his ear, he heard Garlic Breath once again raise the pistol; its barrel settled against the back of his head, a little more forcefully than necessary.

The new guy was a small, dark man who refused to meet Lucas's stare. He stopped at the table and bowed; immediately, Lucas felt him strapping something around his leg. Great, they were tying him up again; hadn't been that long since he went through all this.

But a few seconds later, after a tugging sensation, Lucas heard a few quick beeps and saw lights begin to glow in the darkness.

“You might be wondering what's on your ankle right now,”

Viktor said.

He was half in/half out of the lamplight, frozen in midtilt; Lucas could see his mouth and jaw, but his eyes stayed in darkness. Viktor waited for Lucas to respond, but continued when Lucas didn't.

“It's a bomb.” He waited for the information to sink in before continuing. “Thank you, Terry.”

The small man rose to his feet again and retreated from the room while Lucas sat and stared.

“So you blow me up,” he finally said. “It doesn't get you anything.”

Viktor clapped his hands, let his chair legs drop to the floor again. “It doesn't! It doesn't! That's exactly right. Which is why I don't want to blow you up. Not at all. You see, I'd rather we work out a partnership. You run some errands for me, and I agree not to blow off your leg.”

He made a swirling motion with his hands, smiled. “Not much of a bomb, I'll admit,” he said. “Very little explosive charge, really. Just enough to blow off your leg. But you have some very large arteries in your legs. Did you know that? Blow off a leg, you could bleed to death in just a few minutes.”

Lucas felt panic rising in his throat, but he forced it down. “Sounds like you're getting the better part of the deal.”

“I think I've made it very clear, I don't want to blow off your leg. It is my wish that we continue to work together, that you perhaps do some collections for me. As a way of repaying my favor. Each time you complete a job for me, I reset the timer on your ankle.” He paused. “The upside is, you get to live. You, of course, can choose to do none of this, decide to go throw yourself under a train. But I do not think you will do this. You are a hero, after all, the man who thought he was going to save me. So we will keep working together, and you will keep convincing yourself you'll figure out a way to beat this arrangement.”

“And I'm guessing you have a first errand in mind.”

“I do. I do, indeed. Your first assignment is: you will set up a meeting.”

“A meeting with . . .”

“With whomever you're working with. Or for. You really expect me to think you're doing all this by yourself? You've got someone behind you. Someone interested in making a move on my operations, I'm guessing.”

“Your guess is way off the mark.”

“Well, there's one way for you to prove that.”

“I could set you up.”

“You could. But I'll have others following you. Your bomb has a built-in tracking chip. Plus, you're a hero. You'll do as I ask, try to figure out how to get yourself out of this mess. And I'll make it easy on you: I'm clearing my schedule for the next two days. You might say this is my top priority, so feel free to call me on my cell phone.”

Lucas pictured the cell phone number, instantly pulling it from his mind. He nodded. “You said two days.”

“Well, more like a day and a half—the timer's set at thirty-six hours before . . . well, let's not talk too much about what happens when the timer runs down. I don't want you to be discouraged, first day on the job and all.”

Viktor stood, leaned over the table, put his face close to Lucas, and whispered, “So what do you think, my friend? Are you afraid of me now?”

Viktor straightened back up and disappeared in the darkness. Lucas listened to his footsteps on the cold concrete until the door at the back of the room opened again, spilling a shaft of light.

Just before Viktor disappeared through the door and into the light, Lucas shouted to him. “I'll beat this!” he said.