James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“Hard to imagine someone wanting to watch a woman rip out a man’s pubic hair,” said Shada.

“Are you kidding me?” said Chuck. “Do you remember the photos of that female soldier sitting on a pile of naked men at Abu Ghraib? That left a lot of men clamoring for more explicit abuse. For some guys, this stuff is very sexual, very much a turn-on.”

“Obviously someone saw this black site as a P2P trading gold mine,” said Jack.

“And that someone was Habib,” said Chuck. “He had a steady supply of videos that showed leather-clad women torturing men. Not simulated stuff. Real blood, real violence. He could trade that for whatever turned him on. Torture of women. Child pornography. Snuff. You name it.”

Shada closed her eyes, absorbing the blow, as if the pain of her terrible miscalculation kept digging deeper.

Jack heard a phone ringing over the speaker. Someone was calling Chuck.

“It’s from London,” said Chuck. “Let me plug you guys in so you can hear. Don’t say a word.”

Jack moved closer to the computer, and Chuck answered. The voice on the line matched the one in the recording Chuck had shared earlier-but this was live.

“I want two hundred fifty thousand pounds, cash,” the Dark said. “Small bills. Or I kill Paulo.”

“When?” asked Chuck.

“Tomorrow morning. Early.”

“That’s very short notice.”

“You’re a rich man. Make it happen.”

Jack wanted to speak, but he held his tongue and, instead, fired off an e-mail to Chuck.

“How do we make the exchange?” asked Chuck.

“I’ll call you tomorrow at half past five with instructions.”

“Five thirty A.M. London time?”

“Yes.”

“You must be joking.”

“I’m joking only if your idea of a punch line is a bullet in your friend Paulo’s head.”

Chuck paused, and Jack hoped he was reading his e-mail. “One thing,” said Chuck. “I want to talk to Vince. I need to know he’s alive.”

Jack could breathe again; his e-mail had gone through.

“Blow me,” said the Dark. “Get the money and you get to talk to Paulo. And by the way: Shada, if you’re listening, I know you copied some files from my computer.”

Shada stiffened, and Jack squeezed her hand for reassurance-and to make sure she said nothing.

“That makes me very angry,” the Dark said, “but I’m a reasonable man. I want you, personally, to deliver the money tomorrow. If you do, we’ll call it even. If you don’t…”

The line went silent. The Dark was gone.

Jack tried to get Shada to look at him, but she was staring at the floor, numb. “Listen to me,” said Jack. “If that’s the game he wants to play-insisting that Shada deliver the ransom-we need to revisit the idea of just calling the police.”

“No,” said Shada. “He’ll kill Vince.”

“It’s not an option,” said Chuck. “I could run this guy through every conceivable database, and I guarantee you he’d show up on every terrorist watch list in the world. You know what that means for hostage negotiation.”

Shada looked even more worried. “What does it mean?”

Until now, Jack hadn’t thought it all the way through, but he quickly caught Chuck’s drift.

“The United States has repeatedly stated that as a matter of official government policy it does not negotiate with terrorists,” said Jack. “Even though we’re not on U.S. soil, Vince is an American law enforcement officer. Scotland Yard will likely respect U.S. policy.”

Shada’s eyes widened. “If we don’t negotiate, Vince is a dead man.”

Chuck said, “Do you disagree with that analysis, Jack?”

Jack processed it. “I can’t disagree.”

“So what’s it going to be, Shada? Can you deliver?”

She was staring at the computer screen even though it was blank.

“Shada,” Chuck repeated, “what’s it gonna be?”

Vince was alone in the hotel room. His ribs ached. The side of his face felt swollen. The Dark certainly knew how to deliver a punch. But Vince was proud of himself.

If the Dark knew Jack Swyteck was in London, he hadn’t heard it from Vince.

Vince had spent his time alone counting steps, trying to diagram the floor plan in his head. More precisely, he was counting the sound of the Dark’s footsteps each time he crossed the room. Eight steps, twelve o’clock, from the door to the chair Vince was tied to. Six steps, one o’clock, from Vince to a table or a counter where the Dark had popped open a beer or a soda after beating the daylights out of him.

Three steps, nine o’clock, from Vince to the chair on which the Dark had tossed the Brainport after Vince had told him to stick it up his ass.

You weren’t the only one injured in that explosion.

Those words kept swirling around in his head, and he wondered what the Dark had meant by that. Vince’s memory of the explosion in the Mays garage was fuzzy-pushing through the door, the gunshot, the deafening percussion, the flash of light… and then nothing until he awoke in the hospital. Rescuers were already in the driveway and acted fast enough to save his life, but not his sight. Firefighters arrived too late to keep the house from burning to the ground. He was lucky to be alive, was the way he tried to look at it-which meant that the Dark, too, was lucky.

You weren’t the only one…

Vince could only speculate, and his thoughts ran the gamut on the possible injury to the Dark. Third-degree burns to his skin? Ringing in his ears? Vince wanted the satisfaction of knowing that the Dark had gotten the worst of it, that the man who had murdered McKenna had paid a price. Short of death, what could be worse than blindness? Millions of things, Vince told himself.

But at that moment, he couldn’t think of one.

The door opened, and Vince heard someone enter. It closed quickly, and the chain lock rattled. Then Vince heard footsteps… one, two, three… and the sound of a heavy sack or backpack dropping onto the luggage rack. A zipper opening-too long for a backpack, maybe a suitcase. Finally, there was the unmistakable sound of a magazine loading into a firearm. The Dark had been out gathering supplies.

“Amazing how much crap you can accumulate in self-storage,” the Dark said smugly.

It was a safe bet that there was more than one handgun in that suitcase. It had sounded like an arsenal, the thud with which it had landed on the luggage rack.

“I have to use the bathroom,” said Vince.

“Go in your pants.”

“You won’t like the smell in the room.”

The argument was a convincing one, even if Vince didn’t really have to go.

“Fine,” said the Dark, starting toward him.

Vince was immediately counting footsteps again. One, two, three…

The Dark put a gun to Vince’s head before untying him. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

Six steps, at eleven o’clock, from Vince to the suitcase filled with weapons.

“No problem,” said Vince, the floor plan etched in his brain. “Nothing stupid.”

Andie was still in the main lobby and waiting for an elevator, surrounded by polished granite, glass, and chrome. Her cell chimed. The number was familiar, but it was a dummy-merely a trigger for her to call in to her supervisory agent. Less than five minutes had passed since her last conversation with Harley. The quick callback was cause for concern.

She glanced across the lobby, and on the other side of the plate-glass window the snow was falling even harder. She would never have called her contact from the Black Ice offices on the twelfth floor, but the building lobby was essentially public space. She dialed, gave her contact name, and listened.

“Bad news from Scotland Yard,” said Harley. “They lost track of Hassan.”