Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

He never got a chance to hear.

The heavy blow from behind knocked Stone unconscious.

Annabelle let out a scream an instant before a wet cloth held by a very strong hand covered her mouth and nose. As she breathed in the chemical fumes and started to collapse, her gaze fell on a mirror hanging on a wall across the room. In the reflection she could see two men wearing black masks. One had her, and the other was standing over Stone. And behind them she saw a third man. It was the man in the picture, Albert Trent. He smiled, not realizing she had seen his reflection. Within a few moments her eyelids started fluttering, then closed, and she became limp.

In accordance with Roger Seagraves’ instructions, one of the men removed the watch from Annabelle’s wrist. Seagraves already had a shirt of Stone’s. Although he was not killing them himself, Seagraves was orchestrating their deaths, which satisfied his collection criteria. He would especially covet the addition of a Triple Six, a first for his collection. Seagraves intended on giving it a particularly special place of honor.

Annabelle regained consciousness first. As her eyes came into focus, she saw the two men working away. One stood on a ladder while the other one was handing him things. She was lying bound hand and foot on a cold concrete floor. Directly across and facing her was Stone, his eyes closed. As she watched, his eyelids fluttered several times and then remained open. When he saw her, her gaze directed him to the two men. Their mouths weren’t bound, but neither wanted to alert their captors that they were awake.

As Stone took in the room, his belly tensed. They were being held in the storage room at Fire Control, Inc. He squinted to see the label on the cylinder the men were preparing overhead. It was suspended from the ceiling by chains, which was why they were using a ladder to reach it.

“Carbon dioxide, five thousand ppm,” he mouthed as Annabelle tried to understand him.

The men were going to kill them the same way Jonathan DeHaven had died.

Stone looked frantically around for something, anything, he could use to cut through his bindings. They probably wouldn’t have much time after the men had left the room before the gas would shoot out of the cylinder and devour the oxygen in the air, leaving them to suffocate. He spotted it about the time the men finished their work.

“That should do it,” one of them said, climbing down.

As the man stepped into the wash of the overhead light, Stone recognized him. It was the foreman from the team that had removed the cylinders from the library.

When the men glanced over, Stone instantly closed his eyes. Acting on his cue, Annabelle did likewise.

“Okay,” the foreman said, “let’s not waste time. The gas release triggers in three minutes. We’ll let it clear out and then get them out of here.”

“Where are we dumping them?” the other man said.

“A real out-of-the-way place. But it won’t matter if they’re found. The cops won’t be able to tell how they died. That’s what’s so sweet about this setup.”

They grabbed the ladder and left. The instant the two men shut and locked the door behind them, Stone sat up and slid on his butt over to the worktable. He levered himself up, snatched a box cutter off the table, sat back down and propelled back over to Annabelle.

He whispered, “Quick, take this knife and cut through my ropes. Hurry! We’ve got less than three minutes.”

As they lay back-to-back, Annabelle moved the blade up and down as quickly as she could from such an awkward position. Once, she hit flesh and heard Stone grunt in pain, but he said, “Keep going, don’t worry about that. Hurry! Hurry!” His eyes were on the suspended cylinder. Facing the way he was, he could see what Annabelle couldn’t. There was a timer on the cylinder, and it was counting down fast.

Annabelle cut as quickly as she could until she felt her arms would drop from her shoulders. Sweat was leaching into her eyes from the effort.

Finally, Stone felt the rope start to give way. They had one minute left. He pulled his hands apart, giving her more room to work. She cut more and the ropes fell completely away. Stone sat up, undid the bindings on his feet and jumped up. He made no attempt to reach the cylinder. It was too high up, and even if he could get to it and figure out how to stop the countdown, the men would know something was wrong when they didn’t hear the gas release. He grabbed the oxygen tank and face mask that he’d seen on his previous visit and raced to Annabelle’s side. They had thirty seconds.

He grabbed her bound hands and slid Annabelle to a far corner behind a pile of equipment. He threw a tarp over them, placed his head next to Annabelle’s, strapped the large oxygen shield over both their faces and turned on the feed line. A low hiss and the feeling of a light breeze in their faces showed that the line was working.

A moment later they heard a sound like a small explosion followed by the roar of a waterfall up close. For ten long seconds it continued, the CO 2coming out so fast and furiously that it covered the entire room almost instantly. As the “snow effect” took place, the temperature dropped dramatically, and Stone and Annabelle began to shake uncontrollably. They sucked deeply on the life-giving oxygen. Yet on the fringes of the air pocket provided by the O 2Stone could feel the draining clutches of an atmosphere that was far closer to the moon’s than Earth’s. It tore at them, trying to rip the molecules of oxygen away, but Stone kept the mask crushed to their faces even as Annabelle gripped him with the strength of extreme panic.

Despite the supply of oxygen, Stone’s thoughts still became muddled. He felt as though he were in a fighter jet soaring ever higher, the g-forces pulling his face back and up, threatening to rip his head off. Stone could only imagine the horror that Jonathan DeHaven, who’d had no oxygen to draw on, had endured in his final moments of life.

Finally, the roar stopped just as instantly as it had started. Annabelle moved to push the mask away, but Stone stopped her. Whispering, he said, “The oxygen levels are still depleted. We have to wait.”

Then he heard what sounded like a ventilator fan come on. Time passed, and with each tick Stone kept his eye on the door. Finally, he moved the mask from his face but kept it on Annabelle’s. He drew a careful breath and then another. He tossed off the blanket, lifted her up and over his shoulder and carried Annabelle to the exact spot where she’d been. Moving as quietly as possible, Stone grabbed up the nearly empty oxygen tank and stood behind the door to the room.

He didn’t have long to wait. A minute later the door opened and the first man came through. Stone waited. When the second man appeared, Stone swung the cylinder and caught him dead on the skull, crushing it. He dropped as though poleaxed.

The other man turned in alarm, ripping at the gun on his belt. The tank hit him flush in the face, driving him back against the worktable and into the hard metal of the vise attached there. He screamed in pain and clutched wildly at his injured back as the blood slicked his face. Stone slung the tank once more, catching the guy square on the temple. As the man fell to the floor, Stone dropped the tank, raced to Annabelle and untied her. She rose on shaky legs and looked down at the two battered men.

“Remind me never to piss you off,” she said, her face very pale.

“Let’s go before somebody else shows up.”

They raced out the door, scaled the fence and ran down the street. Three minutes later they had to pull up, breathing hard, sweat running down the dirty creases of their skin. They sucked in delicious air and then jogged another quarter mile until their legs were dead. They slumped down against the brick wall of what looked to be a warehouse.