He held a climbing rope loosely in his hands, turned to face her. "That was me. It's what I do. Make people vanish. Forever."
She tried to tune him out and use her precious time above ground to analyze her surroundings. The man and dog had come from the opposite direction-their path cut across the far edge of the field from a thick stand of pines and hemlocks.
Strange place to park a vehicle-the trees stretched as far as she could see. Maybe a logging road? Then she spotted the binoculars inside the man's pack. Bastard. He'd watched her escape-probably via a camera concealed inside one of the pipes. Waited for her. Just to set the dog loose and bring her down.
Games. That's what this man lived for. No matter what he told her, she needed to remember that this was all just a game to him. Stimulation, adrenaline, a sense of power, control … that's what fed him. He enjoyed competition-as long as he won.
She hid her smile. She might not know what the man wanted, but she knew what he needed: victory. To be the victor. She would use that.
"You have a decision to make, Lucy," he said. "Think of all the questions your disappearance will leave. No closure, not for your family. How many hours, how many years will they spend searching, wondering? Maybe I could drop a few hints-a secret bank account, evidence of an affair-"
Lucy jerked at that, unable to stop the movement. No way would Nick ever believe she'd been unfaithful. Never. But just raising the question, how painful-and he'd never have an answer. And Megan. What would happen to Megan?
Nick would do a great job raising her alone-he had more maternal instincts than Lucy. Something she always felt guilty about. And they'd have each other.
She blinked, stared into the sun. No. She couldn't give up, couldn't think like that. She was going to get out of this. She wasn't going to let this anonymous SOB take her family from her. No way in hell.
The man uncoiled the length of climbing rope and wrapped it around her chest and beneath her arms. She heard the click of a carabiner, then he leaned into the opening to the pit and worked the rope through the hooks in the ceiling.
It took him awhile to lower her into the tank, but he didn't seem to mind. She thought of the time and effort he was taking. Protecting her leg-the leg that he'd caused to be injured in the first place. Trying to buy her trust? Keeping her emotionally off-balance, more likely.
She sat in the shadows on the concrete floor, unable to see him even when she craned her neck far enough back to view the opening. He hadn't sealed her in again, but he hadn't joined her either. Was he sending the dog down, locking that beast in with her?
The thought brought more fear than she wanted to acknowledge. Not just fear of the animal, fear of her absolute lack of control. Feeling powerless was a mere eyelash away from feeling hopeless, and she couldn't afford to go there. She needed to keep hold of hope, no matter how desperate. Without it, she was doomed-and he was still a threat to her family.
The fact that he hadn't replaced the lid, the sunlight that shone down through the narrow opening, the sound of the birds in the distance-these all kept her hope alive.
Then a shadow blocked the light. He lowered himself into the pit, thudding to a landing behind her. His hands came down on her shoulders. "Shall we get started?"
No, she wanted to scream. But she kept silent and still. Waiting. It was his game, his move.
"Do you have any idea how special you are?" he asked. "You see," he said as if she'd answered him, "I have a friend who discovered a vulnerability in the Department of Justice's security software. Actually, there are quite a number of vulnerabilities, which is why the FBI built an entire center in West Virginia devoted to creating a new and improved system, complete with Nextgen biometric security."
She wished she could see him. Faces told so much more of the story than a voice in the dark.
"So here I am with a back door into the old DOJ network, and there you guys are, ready to move everything into the cyber equivalent of Fort Knox. Which means I need to move fast. Find someone with high enough clearance to access the mainframe so my friend can perform his magic.
"We started with hundreds of potential candidates. Winnowed them out. They had to be from a field office in a city large enough that if they went missing for a few hours no one would notice, yet small enough that we'd be able to breach their security. Had to have administrative privileges on the computer system. They had to be vulnerable. Married. Preferably a woman. With a husband, child, mother to protect. Young enough that they'd be eager to live, experienced enough that they'd know when to cut their losses."
His voice dropped with an edge of excitement, almost sexual. "And then we found you, Lucy. What a treasure trove you turned out to be. All those news stories on you, including photos of your husband and a glimpse of your daughter. Your dear mother living close-by, all alone in the house you grew up in. Not to mention how lucrative the job became once I dangled your name in the right circles.
"Let's see." His voice upticked, and she knew he was counting on his fingers. "My original clients are paying five million to have a back door into the new database. A few mob guys ponied up another two million to gain access to the confidential informant list as well as the undercover database.
"Then came the Zapatas. Do you have any idea how much those people hate you for what you did, destroying their North American operations last month? Not to mention killing their favorite son. Ten million if you die quickly, twenty if I take my time."
He paused, let that sink in. Lucy honed in on his voice, searching for any change in his breathing or pitch that would indicate he was bluffing. She didn't hear any. He was telling the truth.
"Hope you don't think me greedy." He ruffled her hair with his fingers, knelt behind her, and placed his mouth right next to her ear. "But I'm planning to take my time."
Now
6:31 p.m.
"Forty-year-old female, restrained driver, rollover MVA," the medic called out as they wheeled Lucy into the ER's trauma room. He'd added two years to her age, but that didn't even bother her. All she wanted was for everyone to stop talking long enough to hear her and get her a goddamned phone.
Her fear had been replaced by frustration, which had morphed into fury. Bad enough to be hauled from one place to another like a loaf of bread, but to be tied down and ignored?
Another lift and bump as the medic finished his report, and they moved her onto the hospital's stretcher. Men and women appeared and disappeared in her vision as they cut off her clothing, replaced the medics' monitor leads, adjusted her oxygen mask, checked her vitals, started another IV and drew blood, listened to her heart and lungs, ran cold jelly and an ultrasound over her belly, took X-rays of her neck and chest and foot, all the while poking and prodding every inch of her body.
There had to be a clock in the room, but she couldn't see it from her position, restrained to the backboard. What time was it?
The doctors and nurses talked above her and around her, their words sounding like some kind of strange foreign tongue as they circled her captive body like sharks in a feeding frenzy. She thought she had a chance to make herself heard when one of them bent to shine a light in her eyes, but then his partner called to him from the foot of the bed and he was gone.
"Hey, did you see this?" one of the doctors said, his voice tight with excitement. He stood at her foot, and she braced herself against the pain that his touch was about to bring. "Open metatarsal fractures, ankle and calf basically shredded. Thought this was an MVA?"
"There are ligature marks on her wrists and neck," a woman's voice said from beyond Lucy's vision.
"Let's call Three Rivers about that foot-it's going to take a vascular repair. We might have to Life Flight her over there," an older man said as he examined Lucy's foot, releasing a fresh wave of anguish. The machine monitoring her heart rate sang out in a staccato beat. "No. Wait. Are those tooth marks?"
As they talked about her instead of to her, Lucy was busy working one hand free of the Velcro restraints. The nurses had replaced her clothing with a hospital gown and had her warming under heat lamps. As she thawed, she felt more of the aches and pains that barraged her body, but her focus also returned.
Once her hand was free, she watched for the next person to come close. It was a woman in scrubs. As she reached to adjust Lucy's IV, Lucy snaked her fingers around the woman's wrist and squeezed hard.
"Give me a phone," she said, the words scraping raw against her vocal cords.
The woman patted her arm as if Lucy were a child. But she did lean forward to listen. "What happened to you, honey? It's okay. You're safe here."
Before Lucy could answer, the two men abandoned their examination of her foot and approached the head of the bed from the opposite side.
"C-spine clear?" a man asked someone across the room.
"Looks good."
The sound of Velcro ripping filled Lucy's ears as the cervical collar and restraints were removed from her head. The man pushed his fingers against her neck bones. "Anything hurt?"
"No," Lucy said, trying to crane her head free so she could read the clock she'd glimpsed on the wall beyond him. What time was it?
He frowned, but the nurse repeated for her. "She says no."
He released his grip on her head, and finally she could turn far enough to see the clock. 6:47. Still time, but not much. She needed to contact Walden, get him to send local police to protect her family. Now.