78
TWILL
The bullet seemed to leave the gun in slow motion.
There was a loud crack, a puff of smoke, then a small hole appeared in Langdon’s temple, closest to the short man.
A fraction of a second later, a much larger hole appeared in the opposite side of Langdon’s head, sending a mist of red flecked with brain matter through the air and against the wall at Langdon’s side.
Langdon’s face locked in an expression of confusion, then he fell to the floor in a lifeless heap at the man’s feet.
The little man looked down at the body, then at the gun in his hand.
When he spotted flecks of red on the chrome barrel, he produced a handkerchief from the pocket of his khaki pants and wiped it away.
“I apologize for such a distasteful resolution, the messiness of it all, but I’m afraid dear Langdon wasn’t much of a sport.
He certainly doesn’t hold a candle to you, Ms. Poppy.
I’m sorry, Twill. You do prefer Twill, don’t you? ”
Twill couldn’t nod if, well, her life depended on it, and in that particular moment, it just might, but she couldn’t move.
The little man nudged Langdon’s shoulder with the tip of his shoe.
“This man has nearly double your weight. He spends five days each week in the gym with a personal trainer, honing every muscle and pushing the limits of physical endurance. By all accounts, he is a superior specimen to you. Yet, you bested him at every encounter. Cunning trumped brute strength. Ingenuity over crass power.” He gestured around the room.
“All these obstacles thrown at you, yet you continue. Even now, I suspect you have a weapon in hand from that sink and are prepared to attack. Even now, with the threat defused.” A grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Remarkable. Truly remarkable.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“You may call me Doctor,” he said with a slight bow. A fucking bow. Then he glanced at her hand in the sink. “I have no desire to kill you, but I will if you attempt to injure me. I think we’ll both come out of this for the better if you remove your hand from that sink.”
When Twill didn’t move, he offered a noncommittal shrug.
With the gun leveled on her, he crossed the mock operating room to the refrigerator and tugged open the door.
He studied the contents for a moment, then retrieved one of the glass jars from the bottom shelf before turning on the heel of his perfectly buffed shoe and heading back the way he’d come.
As almost an afterthought, he told her, “It’s best if you follow me.
No good will come of you staying in this room.
In fact, I strongly advise against it. Oh, and if you remove anything from that sink—a scalpel, perhaps?
—I’ll know. I strongly urge you not to do that.
Last warning.” His gaze fell to a glass bowl on the floor.
Twill hadn’t seen it until now. It looked like a fish bowl, but it was upside down.
Trapped inside was a tiny grayish-black snake, no more than a foot long.
Its slender body twisted and bent as it tried to climb the glass, clearly searching for a way out.
The doctor nudged the bowl with the toe of his shoe.
“That’s a baby mamba. The deadliest snake in the world.
With proper nourishment, it will grow to over six feet in length.
Twenty minutes after its bite, the average adult loses the ability to speak.
After one hour, they become comatose. Death occurs in under six hours. ”
He made no further comment. With the carefree steps of a stroll through the park, he stepped around the bowl with the snake and over Langdon’s body before vanishing around the corner.
Next to the bowl with the snake was the body of a dead rabbit with a swollen red bite mark in a tuft on its neck. Like the sink, the flies had found that too. They crawled over the matted fur, hungrily eating the exposed flesh.
Twill turned away and stood there; she tried not to look, unsure of what to do.
The doctor sounded like the man who had been on the phone, and again over the loudspeaker, but she couldn’t be sure.
And did that even matter? He was one of them, whoever they were. Certainly not someone she could trust.
But he was someone who knew where they were.
He was someone who knew the way out.
He was someone who understood what was between her and that way out.
Twill released the saw and took her hand from the sink. She wiped away the flies.
On wobbly legs, she went after him.
Back in the room with the hospital bed, Twill discovered another door had appeared.
This one had been concealed behind the curtains and fake windows.
The wall itself had been hinged, and now a gap had opened in the corner, just wide enough to slip through.
Although she didn’t see the little man, she knew he’d gone that way, and when she stepped through the opening, she found herself in what looked like a small office.
Not the kind you’d find in some downtown building, but the kind you’d find in the basement of someone’s home.
Again, there were windows, but they were high up on the walls.
No doubt fake like the others. What looked like framed university degrees dotted the far wall, but the lighting was too dim to make them out.
At the center of the space sat two chairs: a wooden one and a cushioned leather chair upon which the little man who called himself a doctor now sat.
He gestured toward the other with an open palm. “Get comfortable, Ms. Pop—Twill.”
The gun sat on a table at his side, along with the glass jar he’d retrieved from the refrigerator. The label was facing the opposite direction; she couldn’t make it out.
“Please,” he said. “I promise, I won’t bite.”
Twill smoothed the lines of her ruined dress and settled in the chair opposite him.
Mounted to a pole over her left shoulder was a blood pressure and heart rate monitor.
The doctor nodded at the machine. “Would you be kind enough to indulge me? Slip the cuff around your forearm and the plastic reader over your left index finger. The machine is automated; it will take care of the rest.”
“Why?”
His brow furrowed, as if this were the oddest question she could possibly ask. “Aren’t you curious? After the ordeal you just endured? The sooner we get on with things, the sooner you can be on your way.”
Twill did as he asked. Not because she trusted him—she didn’t trust this guy at all—but because humoring him might take his guard down, give her time to think. Give her an opportunity to come up with a plan.
She slipped the cuff around her arm and it immediately began to fill with air, cinching tighter.
When she placed the small plastic reader on her index finger, the machine behind her head began to beep, slow and steady.
The cuff around her arm grew a little tighter, held, then deflated.
The machine beeped twice with the results.
The doctor’s mouth opened slightly and he leaned forward. “That is truly remarkable.”
“What?”
He met her eyes for a moment, then retrieved a notepad from the table at his side.
“Your blood pressure is ninety-seven over seventy-six, and your heart rate is only sixty-eight beats per minute.” He quickly scribbled on the page.
“Considering how you spent your last few hours, I would have expected much higher numbers. It’s as if you just rose from a nap rather than experienced a stress-inducing encounter.
Absolutely remarkable. You are quite the specimen. ”
A stress-inducing encounter?
Who the fuck was he kidding?
Specimen?
He reached into his pants pocket and retrieved what looked like the key fob to a car, studied the buttons, then pressed the black one.
Twill felt a sharp prick on the tip of her index finger, and when she went to remove the heart rate monitor, he quickly waved his finger.
“A needle containing cyanide just punctured the epidermal layer of your digit. Should you attempt to remove it, the device will inject you with the poison. You will be dead in less than ten seconds.” He twisted the key fob in his hand.
“The same will occur if I press this red button.” He studied the device for a moment longer, then returned it to the table.
“I see no reason to do that, not as long as you cooperate. You will cooperate, won’t you, Twill? ”
Behind her, the monitor beeped with her heartbeat. There was a slight rise as he told her all this, then it fell back into a steady rhythm. “Cooperate with what?”
At that, he only smiled. He picked up the jar from the table and removed the cap. He sniffed the yellowish-white liquid inside before raising the jar to his thin lips and taking a drink. Several swallows. He then set the jar back on the table and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.
This time, the label was facing Twill.
“Cerveau - Cormack, Emily.”
He tapped his pen against the edge of his notepad as the monitor beeped behind her head. “Shall we begin?”