Steven James - The Rook

A man picked up. “Cassandra? Where are you? You were supposed to meet-”

“It’s not Cassandra.” Creighton didn’t bother masking his voice.

It wouldn’t matter in the end.

“Who the-?”

“Listen to me carefully-”

“Where’s Cassandra? Tell me-”

“Interrupt me again and I guarantee you’ll be sorry.”

“You work for Drake, don’t you? That’s what this is about?”

“We’re getting to that.” Creighton made note of the name-

Drake. Could that be Shade? Maybe. He could look into all that later, but for now, he needed to stick to the script. “Listen to me, Austin. You were supposed to meet Cassandra Lillo for breakfast three hours ago, but she didn’t show up. You waited thirty-five minutes before leaving Cabrillo’s-”

“Where is she? I swear to G-”

“Don’t blaspheme. I get impatient when people blaspheme. And when I get impatient, bad things happen. Check your email. I’m guessing you have your computer with you?”

Creighton waited as Austin Hunter fumbled around with his laptop. He heard the corny little tune as it booted up, and then the chime announcing that the email had arrived. “Play the video, Austin.” Creighton waited. The video was one minute and fifty-two seconds long. He watched the time tick by on his watch. At about forty seconds he heard a gasp. At one minute, Hunter exclaimed, “Oh, my G-”

“I warned you about blasphemy once. I won’t warn you again.”

Creighton waited until he was sure the video was over, especially the last ten seconds. “Now, listen to me very carefully-”

“You’re messing with the wrong man. As soon as I find you-”

“I said listen. All this interrupting is making me impatient.”

Another pause. “Let me talk to her. I want to know she’s alive.”

Creighton had expected that request. He passed through the door, walked to where he was keeping Cassandra, and held the phone up to the glass. “Austin wants to talk to you,” he called.

“Austin?” Her voice was muffled but audible. She was sob-bing.

“Cassandra, where are you?”

“Please.” She struggled to spit out the words. “Please, Austin.

He’s going to kill me-”

“Cassandra!”

Creighton retraced his steps to the manager’s office of the warehouse while Cassandra continued to cry out, then he closed the door and cut her off. “Actually, I said I was going to kill her slowly. She forgot that last part.”

“Where is she? Tell me where she is, you freakin’-” This time Austin cut himself off in mid-curse. He must have realized he was making the man on the other side of the phone upset.

Good. That meant he was finally ready to hear the conditions.

“Austin, do you know the etymology of the word deadline?

It’s very fascinating. Before it came to mean ‘the time before which something must be completed,’ it meant ‘the line over which you must not pass.’” Creighton would never have phrased things like this. He would have been a lot more blunt. But for now he wanted to stay on Shade’s good side and since he figured somehow he’d be listening, Creighton recited Shade’s script word for word. “In a Civil War prison, the ‘dead line’ was a boundary line that you were not allowed to cross, and if you did, you’d be shot on the spot. No one who passed the dead line would survive. Are you following where this is going?”

“What do you want from me? Why are you doing this? Is it because of last night?” The change in tone told Creighton that Mr.

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.

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.