Hunter was becoming a much better listener.
“If you do what I ask of you by eight o’clock this evening, you’ll see Cassandra again. Now, take a good look at that video. If you go to the cops, the FBI, anyone, you can guess what’s going to happen to her. So, eight o’clock is your deadline as well as Cassandra’s. And do you understand how, in our case, we’ll be drawing from both the original and the contemporary meanings of the word?”
Silence.
“We’ll be watching you. We’ll know if you try anything. Got it?”
“Yes.” No fear in his voice. Just resolve. “What do you want me to do?”
And then, Creighton told him everything Shade had written down. Since the directions were specific and included rendezvous times and locations, it took a few minutes. Hunter listened quietly the whole time and finally, when Creighton was finished, Hunter said, “OK, I’ll do it. But it can’t be done by eight o’clock. Not enough time. I need to do recon, surveillance, I may need explosives… That’s on a secure military-”
“It’s enough time. You’ll find a way.”
“I’m telling you-”
“OK, then,” Creighton said sternly, “she dies right now.” He threw the door open. “I’ll hold the phone up nice and close so you can hear her screams.” “No!” cried Cassandra.
Creighton approached her. “And I’ll make it last a long time-”
“No, please!” she yelled.
“OK-” said Austin.
“And I’ll send you the video when it’s over-”
“OK! OK. Listen. I’ll do it, all right? Just leave her alone. Promise me you’ll leave her alone.”
“Here’s my promise-you do what you’re told by eight o’clock tonight or I kill Cassandra Lillo and record every second of her suffering and then post it on the Internet for the whole world to see.” Then Creighton slapped the phone shut and returned to the warehouse manager’s office.
He would still make the video of her death either way, of course, but Hunter didn’t need to know that.
Yes. Things were going to work out.
He set down the phone and stared at the door. Cassandra was just on the other side. He couldn’t think of any good reason to leave her in there all alone.
No good reason at all.
And so Creighton Melice went to spend some quality time with Austin Hunter’s girlfriend while the countdown to her death officially began.
24
Tessa rolled over in the hotel’s supposedly comfortable bed.
Yeah, right.
She’d hardly slept at all since Agent Jiang left last night. And that was a whole-nother-story-the whole deal with Patrick and Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang. Tessa didn’t know exactly what was going on between them, but she was pretty sure she didn’t like it.
Sunlight blazed through the slit between the curtains. Tessa groaned and wrapped a pillow around her face, rolled over, tried to go back to sleep.
Failed.
She tried for a few more minutes, but it was no use.
Finally, she sighed, flopped out of bed, rubbed a hand across her face, and shuffled to the bathroom. A complete zombie.
Open the shower curtain.
Water on.
Crank the dial.
Tessa liked her showers hot. Very hot. Ever since she was a kid and she and her mom lived in Minnesota for two years. Maybe that’s what did it-the cold winters and the frozen lakes that her mom was always warning her against walking across. That, or the long, bitterly cold nights when the wind sliced through the cracks beneath her bedroom window. Who knows.
While Tessa waited for the water to warm up, she took off the necklace Patrick had given her for her birthday and shed her clothes.
As she did, it struck her once again that nearly every one of her friends had at least one tattoo, but that she didn’t have any. It was kind of weird, really, that she hadn’t gotten inked yet. Maybe on this trip. It might be kind of cool to return to Denver with a tattoo from Southern California.
She splashed her hand under the faucet. Ouch.
OK, not that hot.
Tessa dimmed the scalding water back a few degrees and stepped into the shower. For a few minutes she just stood there without moving, letting the water wake her up gently. It felt really good.
She took a few deep breaths, relaxed, and smoothed some shower gel across her shoulders and then down her arm and over the series of straight ridges on the inside of her right forearm.
She’d given these scars to herself with an X-acto knife and a razor blade during the last year, trying to find a way to let out some of the pain and sadness after her mom died. The blood always grossed her out, but the cutting seemed to help. At least a little.
But ever since October when this psycho serial killer guy who called himself the Illusionist had tried to kill her, all the other stuff in her life hadn’t seemed quite as bad. So, lately, over the last couple of months, she’d stopped cutting-mostly. She guessed that Patrick knew she still self-inflicted sometimes, but he didn’t make a huge deal out of it-which was cool because if he had, she probably would have done it more.
And of course, on the inside of her other arm, she had the scar the Illusionist gave her. That scar bothered her because it brought back memories of that day.
She’d rubbed tons of lotion on it every day, just like the physical therapist had told her to. It was supposed to help the scar go away, but it didn’t work. The scar was still there, and so were the memories.
Warm water poured over Tessa’s head. She lathered shampoo through her hair and let the water rinse out, leaving her hair dripping in straight, black tendrils along the back of her neck.
Memories. Memories.
Of the killer pressing the cloth against her mouth before she could even scream… Of lying tied up as he drove her toward whatever kind of twisted psycho lair he’d built in the mountains…
She ran her fingers through her hair. Time for the conditioner.
Memories.
It all came back to her, then, in a rush. The quiver of hope when she was finally able to cut herself free, and then the satisfaction of jabbing the scissors into the guy’s thigh, and then the confusion as the world outside the windshield started spinning, skidding, and everything was turning at the wrong speed in a smooth wide circle as he lost control and they headed for the cliff.
Snow.
It was snowing that day.
Death and ice and space reaching for her.
Now she was in the shower, a spray of hot water cascading over her head.
Now she was spinning toward the edge of the world, a twirl of snow falling all around her.
In the bathroom.
The front seat.
Standing. Falling. Waking. Dreaming.
Back in the shower, a blanket of steam enfolding her.
Back at the cliff, feeling the impact as they punched through the guardrail. And then she was dropping, plunging into the bottomless day, the snow swallowing everything in the world.
Falling.
And then.
An abrupt smack. Slamming into that tree halfway down the gorge. A strange moment when time stopped to catch its breath, to feel out what it would be like to inch forward again.
Groans next to her. The Illusionist smiling a dark smile, yanking the scissors out of his leg. And then.
Then.
Patrick’s voice floating down to her. That’s when the killer cut her, sliced her arm. And she was bleeding. Bleeding. Fading, watching the melting snow slide down the cracked windshield. The day was crying for her. And she was wrapped in a nightmare, slipping away. Falling again, but in a different way. Falling toward forever.
But Patrick came for her.
He came for her and he saved her. Like a father would, like a hero would, he risked his life to rescue her. Rappelling down, reaching out, catching her just in time.
She’d never thought of him in those terms before that day. As a father. As a hero. But it was true. He cared about her and she cared about him and they were a family. Kind of weird. Kind of screwed up, but still a family.