It’s not easy with his ankles shackled, but he’s an aging athlete and manages to bend and twist and stand without falling back down. Covered in dust, he looks like a cinnamon cruller.
“I’m going to pull the van up and you’re going to crawl in through the side door.”
But as soon as I start to drive toward him he tries to hop away. This is so ridiculous. I climb out, walk over, and grab him. “Who do you think you are? The Easter Bunny? Get in the van.”
He sits and rolls into the open back area. I climb in beside him and close the door. I wrap duct tape around his mouth, as I did to Emma. I leave his eyes alone, wanting him to see everything, though without windows that includes nothing of our route.
I drive back onto the road and on our way to my home pass an Audi R8 and a Porsche. Both have stunning women at the wheel. They sure love their German cars and trophy wives up here.
In less than five minutes I pull into my garage and close the door. He looks scared. I kneel beside him with his pocketknife open. The blade is little more than an inch long. “I have Emma Elkins down in my basement. She’s in a cage. You’re going to march down there and join her. If you so much as touch her,” I unzip his pants and pull out his unimpressive penis, “I will cut this nubbin off and choke you with it.”
I press the sharp little blade against the base of his manhood hard enough to leave an ample line of blood. The duct tape muffles his moan. My threats and punishments will escalate, so I can’t afford anything less than sincerity. I leave it hanging out of his pants. “Let’s keep it handy.”
After I open the side door, I swing his legs around and cut off the cuffs. “You’re going through that door and down the stairs.”
When we arrive, Emma tries to cover up with her hands.
“He’s a rapist, Emma.” The reason I made her take off her clothes is now clear to her: she’s recoiling at my news. “If you help him at all, you do it at your own peril.”
He certainly looks the part with his bloody penis hanging out of his pants.
I leave his mouth taped, his hands cuffed behind him, and push him into the cage.
Then I go back over to the cabinet and pull out a second set of steel stakes with cuffs for wrists and ankles. I set them into four more pre-set holes in the concrete.
Two down, one to go.
Chapter 31
Lana listens intensely to the phone and follows the directions scrupulously. She has little doubt that Emma is nearby. Hayden Lake makes so much sense. Although the original, infamous group of neo-Nazis was bankrupted and forced to sell its compound, the region’s reputation had been well established and continued to attract like-minded zealots.
The phone’s voice draws her closer and closer to the town. Cairo, in the passenger seat next to her, senses her tension. The Malinois watches everything, even looking behind them. He’s shifting his weight, as if he’s getting ready to spring out of the old Toyota 4x4 van. He’s got the heart, but the legs? At his age?
The phone never leads her into the town proper. Instead, it directs her to country roads, flanked by trees that crowd the land all the way to the lakeshore. Lana notices a compass hanging from the dash like a pocket watch. She’s heading northeast, passing large properties hidden by stone walls, steel gates, and nature’s beauty, though pine beetles have been sowing the death of the forest that veils them from public view.
The phone tells her to turn “at your next right,” but doesn’t offer a street name. The voice sounds different. Lana can’t put her finger on why. Not a change in tone. Maybe cadence.
She drives onto a single-lane road. But it’s not leading her to a house, not immediately in any case. It’s taking her deeper into thick woods with dark shadows. The branches look stark, skeletal, and scratch against the van, making harsh sounds, as if they’re reaching out to grab her.
Don’t be ridiculous.
But the enveloping trees do look eerie, like woodcuts from a macabre fairy tale.
And now she sees why she was given this ragged old beast of a van: the paved road vanishes. There’s nothing ahead or to the sides but trees and bushes and rough, uneven terrain.
“Keep driving east,” the voice says.
She must be able to see me, or she’s got a locator or tracker. On the phone or van.
Lana moves on, as commanded. She hears forest debris crushed by the tires. The visibility is horrible. She can’t see five feet ahead. She slows to a crawl, but still drops the front of the van into a gully.
She tries to drive forward. Can’t. Backward. Can’t.
“Get out and walk east.”
She manages to open the door just enough to squeeze out. Cairo follows her, landing gingerly, but upright.
Lana carries the compass in one hand, the Glock in the other. She feels observed, though she doesn’t know how. Maybe from the racket she makes as she forces herself forward.
She smells the freshwater pungency of the lake, the dead fish that wash ashore, but can’t see water through all the foliage.
Cairo has his nose in the air. “Good boy,” she says softly.
They keep trudging east. The phone has fallen silent. Lana’s more scared than she’s ever been. Scared for Emma, scared for herself. For having to go it alone — or forgo the life of the one person she’d defy anybody to save.
The quiet around them is unnerving. She wonders what Cairo can hear with ears more sensitive than a human’s. The forest darkens, making her feel as if a giant cloak is settling over them. She feels vulnerable to Steel Fist and wants to kill the son-of-a-bitch as soon as she lays eyes on him.
“Freeze!”
She hears feedback on the phone and a different voice, realizing that it comes from both the device and a real person. Someone who must be nearby. And a woman, which surprises Lana most of all.
She looks around, trying not to appear panicky. Then she lifts her gaze and spots a camouflaged deer blind about fifteen feet up in a thickly limbed oak tree. The muzzle of a rifle is trained on her from the elevated platform.
“Kneel on the ground,” the unseen woman yells.
“Where’s Steel Fist?” Lana asks as she lowers herself. Cairo stands beside her. “Down,” she says softly to the dog; she doesn’t want him shot. He settles by her side, still staring up at the blind.
“What makes you think I’m not Steel Fist?”
“I profile online subjects. That’s what I do. He’s a man.”
“Good answer, Elkins. I’m not Steel Fist yet. But I will be.”
What the hell does that mean?
“Toss your gun and the phone onto that pile of leaves.” They’re bunched against the base of a tree. “Nowhere else.”
They land softly. No accidental discharge. She’s thought of everything. Lana looks again at the tree. Maybe not. She has to get down from there.
But the woman’s planned for that, too. A plastic handcuff flies out of the blind and falls in front of Lana.
“Put that around your ankles. Do it tightly. If you don’t, I’ll shoot out your legs. One way or the other, you’re not going to be running away. You choose. I’m watching you through a scope.”
Lana pauses, wishing she had a derringer to whip out the moment the woman starts down.
She picks up the cuff, feeling meek. She hates herself for that. She sees the muzzle follow her every moment, a murderous shadow.
She doesn’t want to kill you… yet.
Trying to find hope when her mind keeps racing away to the worst that can happen.
“Stand and roll up your pants. I want to see that plastic squeezing your skin.”
Lana cinches herself.