If he stayed in this room much longer, he would start bouncing off the walls. His blood sugar was dipping, his mind racing. No one knew he was here in this anonymous area — just another business traveler, right? No harm in going out for a late steak and a drink.
It’ll be fine, he told himself. No worries.
Rising, he smoothed his pants and if wrinkles could laugh, they would have. He snugged the tie a little, but not completely, the hangman image lingering. Looking like a businessman who’d had a hell of a day was in character, wasn’t it? Would help him blend in, explain the red eyes, sweat-stained collar, and five o’clock shadow that had long since lapped itself. The last he’d shaved had been yesterday morning, thinking it was just another Monday.
Now it was Tuesday evening, a day later... or was that a week, or a month? Two days had blended into a waking nightmare with some intermittent sleep last night but nothing more than a catnap since. He dare not risk more than that, at least not until he’d convinced Reeder to step up.
He went into the bathroom, ran some cold water, rinsed his face, then dried it. The face in the mirror was his, but he had never seen it look so... so stricken before. So old, so desperate, so frazzled. Didn’t look forty-something now; more like sixty. He had to do something about that.
He considered his options — color his hair? Different color contacts? These days you could get contacts at a strip-mall optician’s in under an hour. Blue-collar apparel maybe? That was easy enough. He tried smiling at himself but the bastard in the mirror wouldn’t have any.
The bastard in the mirror knew that none of that cosmetic crap mattered, that those coming after him would have access to facial recognition software and to the CCTV cameras that were fucking everywhere. With his security training, Bryson felt fairly confident that he’d done a decent enough job of avoiding them so far; but the odds — and time — were against him.
Though he knew his way around hotels, airports, and banks, and was careful at unfamiliar corners, constantly assessing his surroundings, sooner or later a camera would catch him, if it hadn’t already. He was old enough to remember when London-style CCTV surveillance wasn’t the norm in this country; that now seemed the distant past, and an all too real present carried an inevitability he could only put off for so long.
He pulled his suit coat off the chair, shrugged into it, patted the phone in his pocket, accepting the idea that Reeder wasn’t going to be calling back immediately. He’d risk that steak and that drink — just one drink, though. Couldn’t stand to lose whatever edge he had left after these endless two days.
At the door, he stopped, listened hard, heard nothing, then opened it as slowly as if it were the lid on a box of snakes. He looked both ways, stepped out into the corridor. Turned toward the elevator, then heard the door across the hall open.
He spun, but it was too late.
Two men were coming toward him; his hand swept toward the shoulder-holstered Glock. But behind him, on his side of the hall, another door opened, only with those two men bearing down, he’d have to take his chances that this was some other guest who’d happened to open that door just then, about to blunder innocently into something bad going down, stalling Bryson’s attackers just long enough... and Bryson’s hand was on the gun butt when he felt a bee sting his neck.
He reached up, as if to swat that bee, and his fingers felt the dart there, and plucked it out.
Already his legs were rubber and the floor came up and took him. He fumbled with his pistol, but his hand was weighed down with leaden fingers, his arm even heavier, yet somehow it merely drifted to his side.
He could not move. He waited to black out but that kept not happening. Sprawled on the cheap carpeting, his breathing shallow, his eyes wide open, he could manage only to stare up at the four men looming, huddling, over him. They all wore small smiles that had some sneer; none had bothered wearing a mask.
His body was paralyzed, but his brain wasn’t. It kept computing. The lack of masks meant two things: this quartet wasn’t worried about the security camera at the other end of the hall, and didn’t care if he saw their faces because they felt sure he would never describe them to anybody. Though they were dressed business casual, fitting in well at the Skyway Farer, they had the hard hooded-eyed look of the mercenary.
Just above him, a muscular blond man, with flecks of scars scattered around his handsome face like ugly confetti, said, “Get his key card — haul his ass back into his room before someone sees.”
Bryson tried to yell, but his vocal cords were nonfunctional. Within seconds, they had dragged him back into his room, locking the door behind them. Helpless down on a carpet smelling of stale food and dust, he found he couldn’t even work up a sneeze.
The trip out of and then back into his room had taken less than a minute. He doubted anyone had heard anything, let alone seen anything, and the camera was surely broken or blocked.
Why hadn’t they just killed him in the corridor?
That would have been easy enough, had that been their aim. Instead, they had taken him down with a dart, like a beast in the jungle. Was it possible that they didn’t intend to kill him? How could that be, since he could identify them all? Or did they mean to... to torture him?
The blond leaned down. “Succinylcholine, sux. You know what that is, right? What it does?”
Bryson did know the drug — a neuromuscular paralytic used in presurgery anesthesia to relax the trachea, making it easier to intubate a patient. Also a part of the chemical mixture used in lethal injection, which explained why he was having so much trouble breathing. Wouldn’t be long now, he knew, before his breathing stopped altogether. Without benefit of the sedative combined during both of the drug’s normal uses, dying would be unbearably painful, too. The logical part of his brain reported these facts as the emotional layer screamed.
Silently screamed.
The blond grinned at the fear he saw in Bryson’s eyes. “Don’t worry, Mr. Bryson, we didn’t administer enough to kill you — just to make you compliant.” The grin became a wide smile, scar flecks on both upper and lower lips. “We’re not here to murder you.”
No use fighting it. He still could not move, and wondered if he’d ever move again. Maybe if he cooperated. Maybe he could save himself. But at what cost?
Businesslike, the blond asked, “Can you blink?”
Not trying to, he blinked.
“Good. One blink for yes, two blinks for no. Now. Did you tell anyone what you found?”
He didn’t blink at all, thinking, How many blinks for fuck you, asshole!
The blond smiled pleasantly, or as close to pleasantly as he was capable. “Maybe you told that pretty wife of yours. How about it?”
He blinked twice. He saw himself overcoming the drug, reaching up and strangling the son of a bitch. In reality, he remained motionless, the ability to blink the only thing left to him. But that meant the sux was starting to wear off. He needed this bastard to keep talking just a little longer and maybe he would have a chance.
The blond knew about Bryson, anyway enough so to ask him if he’d entrusted anything to half a dozen friends, from business associates to a pal down the block. Each time Bryson blinked three or four or five times — never giving the blond the satisfaction of a single or double blink — and felt himself start the hint of a smile. He’d figured out how to blink, “Fuck you,” after all!
Finally, the blond sighed and said, “I said we weren’t here to murder you. What’s the point in killing a man who’s about to commit suicide?”