HARDCORE: Storm MC(45)

Stumped for the moment, I tried to think my way through what I knew about Fielding, about this place, and about where Sienna might be. Little Joey Ronn had kept referring to this house as the house of mirrors. I wasn’t sure what was behind the phrase. I mean, yeah, there were lots of mirrors in the house: in the foyer, in the hallways, in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I just figured Fielding was a narcissist. It was not a great leap of the imagination.



Looking around the library, I noticed yet another framed mirror tucked into one of the gaps on a bookshelf. It was leaning against the wall, not attached to it. I picked it up and found a fucking light switch behind it, in the middle of the wall, not near the door. I flipped the switch, and one of the bookcase sections immediately opened hydraulically, pulling back to a large recessed alcove. This guy was a piece of work. So was his house, apparently.



Lifting my handgun from its holster, I stepped into the unlit cavern, and my eyes were drawn to the only point of light: the LED of an elevator call button. An elevator. In a hidden alcove. Behind a trick bookcase. It figured. What next with this fucking guy?



Not sure whether this was a smart move that might lead to helping me find Sienna, or if it would lead me in an opposite—but surely not an uninteresting—direction, I did the only thing a red-blooded American would do. I hit the call button, ready to investigate the dark side in this house of mirrors. That seemed to be what the moment called for.



By the time the elevator doors slid open, my eyes had adjusted to the darkened cavern, and I had thought enough to move one of the leather armchairs from in front of the desk to block the closing of the bookcase, just in case I had any trouble getting back out from the dark. If Fielding or someone came in in the meantime and removed the chair, I might be locked in and fucked, but I’d worry about that when I got there.



Once in the elevator, I had the option to go up or down. I chose up at random. When the doors opened on the second floor, I was a little surprised to find myself in a man’s closet, a huge walk-in with a shitload of suits and shirts, ties, and mirrors all over the place. But still, a closet just the same. A hidden elevator into a closet. That’s some weird shit.



Looking at the plethora of expensive men’s attire, I figured this had to be Fielding’s personal space. I peeked into the adjacent bedroom to see the huge master space, also devoid of other humanity for the time being, no different than the first floor.



After a fairly quick walk-through to make sure Sienna wasn’t tied up somewhere in here or in the en suite bathroom, I made my way to the hallway and scanned every room on the floor as fast as I could. I was being less careful about making noise now—I really didn’t sense anyone else in the house, I hadn’t seen any cars outside in the drive, and I figured this was not going to be the most revealing of searches, in these rooms. Nevertheless, I had to be thorough, or I might end up wanting to kick my own ass if I passed over the opportunity and there was something important to be found up here. So I made like a professional, and I looked.



Every door opened into crystal-clean space—I figured he’d had some maid service come through it in the morning hours, cleaning up after last night’s debauchery. Bedrooms, bathrooms, a couple of closets. There were a lot of mirrors.



But there was nothing showing me where Sienna might be and nothing cluing me in as far as Fielding’s other holdings.



Done with this floor, I sped back to the master bedroom and its fancy closet to recall the elevator. It was time to explore the basement in this house of fucking mirrors.





Chapter Thirteen



Sienna



“Agh!…Ugh!…Ehn!…Ogh!…Nuh!…Ehn!…Ahn!—” So went the keening.



“—Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…” And his guttural ejections.



… And on and on and on…



They painted a clear enough picture, even for my loose hold on consciousness. Maybe they were what were tying me to this world, keeping me from a peaceful blackness. They were my latest torture.



I thought—hoped—I was losing my hold on reality. The eerie, tortured pitches of that voice I knew to be so beautiful but that now sounded so awful, so ugly, so inescapable and incessant, and the rhythmic counterpart of his vicious grunts—both together were blocking my thoughts from forming coherently and blocking my mind from releasing into a void.



I was so very, very cold. My wet hair continued to drip down my neck in a painful release of internal heat that I could feel seeping out of me, moment after moment. My body was uncontrollably shivering with each breath.