“The whole world knows what you’ve done, Frey, you lunatic,” Kennedy said. “Fashion designer, my ass. How long do you think you’ll stay out of jail?”
“American self-importance,” Frey snapped. “And idiocy makes you believe you can speak out loud, hmm? The superior mind always triumphs. Do you really think your friends made it out? We set traps in there, stupid bitch. They won’t make it past Poseidon.”
Kennedy opened her mouth to protest, but noticed Ben’s brief head-shake and snapped her mouth shut. Leave it. Survive first, fight later. She silently quoted Vanna Bonta — I would rather have an inferiority complex and be pleasantly surprised, than have a superiority complex and be rudely awakened.
Frey couldn’t possibly know their chopper had remained hidden at a higher altitude. And pride reassured him that his intellect trumped theirs.
Let him think that way. The surprise would be all the sweeter.
The chopper landed with a jolt. Frey marched forward and jumped off first, shouting orders to men on the ground. Alicia rose to her feet and made a motion with her forefinger. “You three first. Heads down. Keep moving until I say otherwise.”
Kennedy jumped off the chopper behind Ben, feeling the ache of exhaustion in every muscle. When she looked around, the surprising sight made her forget her tiredness for a minute, in fact it took her breath away.
One look and she knew this was Frey’s Chateau in Germany; the designer’s den of iniquity, where the entertainment never stopped. Their landing pad faced the main entrance — double oak doors inlaid with gold studs, framed by Italian marble pillars that led into the grand entrance hall. As Kennedy watched, two expensive cars rolled up, a Lamborghini and a Maserati, from which four ecstatic twenty-somethings rolled out and tottered up the steps into the Chateau. The heavy beats of dance music drifted through the door.
Scaling up above the doors was a stone-clad facade topped by a row of triangular turrets, and two taller towers to either end, giving the vast structure the whole Gothic Revival appearance. Imposing, Kennedy thought, and a little stunning. She fancied being invited to a party at this place would be an upcoming model’s dream.
And so Abel Frey had preyed on their dreams.
She was shoved towards the doors, Alicia watching them carefully as they bypassed the purring supercars and walked up the marble steps. Through the doors and into an echoing entry hall. To the left, an open, leather-bound gate led into a nightclub complete with upbeat music, multi-coloured lights, and cubicles that swayed above the crowd where one could prove how well they could dance. Kennedy stopped immediately and screamed.
“Help!” She cried, staring straight at the patrons. “Help us!”
Several people took a moment to lower their half-full glasses and stare. After a second they began to laugh. A classic Swedish blonde raised her bottle in the universal cheers sign, a dark-skinned Italian male started giving her the eye. The rest went back to their disco inferno.
Kennedy groaned as Alicia grabbed her hair and dragged her across the marble floor. Ben cried out in protest, but a slap to the face almost felled him. More laughter rang out from the party guests amidst several bawdy comments. Alicia flung Kennedy against the great staircase so she banged her ribs, hard.
“Stupid female,” she hissed. “Can you not see they are enamoured of their host? They will never think badly of him. Now… walk.”
She gestured upwards with the small gun that appeared in her hand. Kennedy considered resisting but judging from what had just happened she decided to just roll with it. Up the stairs and to the left they were marched, towards another wing of the Chateau. Once they left the staircase and stepped into a long, unfurnished corridor — a bridge between wings — the dance music died and they could have been the only people alive at that moment in time.
Beyond the corridor, they were marched into what might once have been a spacious ball-room. But now the area had been divided up into half a dozen separate rooms — rooms with bars on the outside instead of walls.
Cells.
Kennedy, along with Ben and Parnevik was hustled into the nearest cell. A loud clang signified the closing of the door. Alicia waved. “You are being watched. Enjoy.”
In the resounding silence that followed, Kennedy ran her fingers through her long, black hair, smoothed out her pant-suit as best she could and took a deep breath.
“Well-” she started to say.
“Hey bitches!” Abel Frey appeared at the front of their cell, grinning like the God of Hellfire. “Welcome to my party chateau. I somehow doubt you’ll enjoy the experience as much as my, umm, more affluent guests.”
He waved the suggestion away before they answered. “No matter. You don’t have to speak. Your words have little interest to me. So,” he made a pretend pondering gesture, “who do we have… well, yes of course, it’s Ben Blake. The pleasure’s all yours, I’m sure.”
Ben ran to the bars and wrenched at them as hard as he could. “Where’s my sister, you bastard?”
“Hmm? You mean the feisty blonde with the-” he kicked out a leg wildly. “Enter the Dragon fighting style? You want details? Well — okay, since it’s you, Ben. First night I sent my best man in there to take her shoes, you know, to soften her up a bit. She marked him, bruised a few ribs, but he got what I wanted.”
Frey took a moment to fish a remote control out of the pocket of the odd silk dressing gown he wore. He flicked it at a portable TV Kennedy hadn’t even noticed. The picture came on — SKY News — babbling about the U.K.’s widening national debt.
“Second night?” Frey paused. “Does her brother really want to know?”
Ben yelled, a guttural sound deep from his belly. “Is she okay? Is she okay?”
Frey flicked the remote again. The screen switched to another, grainier image. Kennedy realised she was looking at a tiny room with a girl tied to the bed.
“What do you think?” Frey goaded. “She’s alive, at least. For now.”
“Karin!” Ben ran towards the TV, but then stopped, suddenly overcome. Sobs wracked his entire body.
Frey laughed. “What more do you want?” He made another show of thinking, and then switched the channel again, this time to CNN. Immediately a news report of the New York City serial killer — Thomas Kaleb — came on.
“Recorded this for you earlier,” the madman said to Kennedy with glee. “Thought you’d like to watch.”
She listened despite herself. Heard the dreaded news that Kaleb continued to stalk the New York streets, emancipated, a ghost.
“I believe you liberated him,” Frey said pointedly at Kennedy’s back. “Nice going. The predator back where he belongs, no longer a caged animal in a city zoo.”
The report flicked back over archive footage of the case — standard stuff — her face, the dirty cop’s face, the victims’ faces. Always the victims’ faces.
The same ones that haunted her nightmares every day.
“Bet you know all their names don’t you?” Frey taunted. “Their families’ addresses. The way… they died.”
“Shut up!” Kennedy held her head in her hands. Shut it out! Please!
“And you,” she heard Frey whisper. “Professor Parnevik,” he spat out the words as if they were bad meat caught in his mouth. “You should have stayed working for me.”