CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brock followed my line of sight first, and once he realized what he was seeing, he swore and inched in front of me. It didn’t help though. The damage had been done. Even with his broad frame blocking my view, I couldn’t escape the way the flashlight underlit the monstrosity.
The sharp angle of the light cast eerie, elongated shadows that loomed like a grotesque reaper. The proximity of the beam ensured that the jagged teeth of the circular blade glinted dangerously, illuminating every detail, from the grooves and scratches, down to the uncleaned rust color that had long ago dried on the deadly metal.
A table saw on steroids.
The custom contraption was big enough to—
I cut off my train of thought harshly, barely suppressing the urge to heave.
“We’re on our way to you—”
“Callie’s fine. Hold,” Brock ordered, pulling out his own flashlight, since there weren’t any automated weapons of mass destruction. He swept the area, his beam bouncing from one death piece to another—each of them stained with dried blood.
“Is that your light?” Corbin asked. “What’s all that stuff over there? We—yeow! Shiitake mushrooms! You can’t take two steps in here without banging your shins. It’s like my grandma’s attic.”
“Don’t move,” Brock warned, bent over to examine the mechanisms of a puzzle I tried my damnedest not to unravel. He ducked down too close for comfort. “These might be active, and if you’re stumbling around, you’ll meet a sticky end.”
“What?”
I missed the next part of the conversation.
At the mention of stumbling in the dark, a wash of dread settled over my shoulders as I recalled bumping into something wooden when we first entered. Pulling my own flashlight from my vest, I clicked it on, keeping it aimed low at the floor.
Don’t look,my mind repeated on a mantra, but I couldn’t resist the pull that turned me in the direction where we’d hunkered down.
At first, all I saw were walls sanded down and varnished, but as I angled my light up, the pieces slotted into place. The ocean wave wooden piece had a match, lifted high in the air. When that upper arm lowered, it would be perfectly shaped to hold half of a dozen people’s heads in place, like the medieval stocks times six.
The worst part, though, was that Tarasovich had combined the stocks with a guillotine, or rather sequential guillotines. Six heavy blades hung precariously by ropes, able to be controlled from one spot.
It was lucky that our jostling against it hadn’t set it off.
I imagined those deadly blades dropping one by one…
Did Tarasovich go in order, or had his warped mind played a game, a Russian roulette of beheading to further incite the hysteria in his victims?
The granola I’d consumed after being unable to stomach a full dinner returned with a vengeance.
I heaved.
Aleks turned to check on me, wrapping his hands around my shoulders to keep me upright, but his swearing told me he’d noticed the same horror I had.
Brock returned. “I think it’s safe to turn on your lights. At least it’s physically safe.”
CJ, desperate for answers, asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, bro. We’re in the right place,” Jace answered his brother. “We found Tarasovich’s workshop.”
“No,” Aleks corrected, and I’d learned my lesson, keeping my eyes glued to the floor despite feeling curious about the dead tone he spoke with. “This is trophy case.”
Brock grunted on my other side. “Look at that, Alexa. For once, you got it in one.”
“His trophy case?” CJ repeated, obviously dissatisfied with the lack of description.
“They are his old contraptions,” Payton answered. “Every single one of them is stained with blood.”
My mind liked math problems, so it took considerable effort not to eyeball the size of the warehouse and estimate how many “trophies” Tarasovich had crammed in here and compound that figure by the number of lives lost.
After a second, Jace said, “Just ask her, boss man.”
I shifted, and Brock and Aleks both stiffened beside me. There was only one “her” in the vicinity.
“Callie,” Payton began, forgoing his normal endearment, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to make your way to me.”
“Fuck no,” Brock barked. “There’s no one here. We’re taking her out to the van so she’s not subjected to more of this shit. We can sniff around for clues after that.”
Paride and Bryce must have joined Jace and Payton, because I heard them murmuring.
“Is that…”
“I think so,” Payton answered. “But she’d have to confirm.”
“But I read the reports. It—”
“Exactly.”
Paride sighed. “Unfortunately, I have to agree with Emerson. Sorry, Callie. We need you over here.”
Brock glanced down at me, his gray eyes swirling masses of thunderstorms, but at my nod, he relented and took point as Aleks watched our rear.
“Hold the fires! We’re not hanging out by ourselves. This place is abandoned, right?” Corbin asked. “Why should Doc and I wait around in the dark? I mean that literally and figuratively.”
“You can come too,” Payton acquiesced, “but tread with care.”
“Ten-four,” Corbin chirped. “Let’s go, Doc.”
What could possibly be over there that Payton and Paride needed me to see?
I racked my brain but came up short.
It was painstaking, picking through the maze of terrors. Brock and Aleks bore the brunt of surveilling our surroundings, though, while I chickened out and kept my gaze trained on the shoulder of Brock’s vest.
Because of our meticulously careful progress, Corbin and Duane beat us there. I heard their voices, not through the comms, but as an echoing murmur up ahead.
In fact, everyone had fallen radio silent after we began picking our way through. They must have turned off their communications or rerouted ours for privacy.
The stone of dread lodged in my throat expanded.
Since I’d kept my focus narrowed on Brock’s torso, I noted the second his shoulders tensed.
“Mr. E,” Brock started, but Payton, from less than five feet away, cut him off.
“We have to be certain, and she’s the only one who can say—”
“Bullshit! Aren’t there documented photos?”
“Yes,” Payton replied with understanding. “CJ hacked into the CIA’s database since Rollins ensured her agency got control of the scene along with the accolades from bringing down such a dangerous ring of criminals.”
I blinked, stepping around Brock. “What? He hacked the CIA? What was he thinking? He might as well have rolled out the welcome mat for…”
The others, who’d been inspecting the huge box, spun at the sound of my voice, a mixture of emotions dotting their faces. I couldn’t get beyond the contraption they’d been arguing about.
My breath whooshed in a gush as my ears grew deaf to the world around me.
The tank.
“Oh,” I breathed, my voice echoing in the stillness.
Brock stepped away, clasping my hand in his. “Are you okay, du?o?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He seemed shocked by my admittance, but to his credit, he only squeezed a little harder. “We’re here for you.”
My conversation with him had snapped my hearing into focus, so I turned to the remaining people. “Why am I here again?”
Against my will, my eyes kept straying to the box. Compared to the more elaborate and gory apparatuses I’d glimpsed despite my best efforts, this contraption seemed downright tame, inconspicuous even, but I’d nearly died in this steel cube more times than I cared to remember.
Paride, with pity and understanding, explained, “Callie, we need you to determine if this is the same tank or a replica.”
“Why?”
“Because the original was supposed to have been destroyed two weeks after your team took down Ivanov.”
The broken edges of their conversation rearranged themselves to show a bigger picture. If this was the original, and someone had falsified records from the CIA’s log, then that would indicate Tarasovich had been working with a hacker way longer than we’d assumed.
It blew my mind.
What had he been doing all this time? Why would he push aside his massive distrust and proclivity to work alone in favor of becoming more technologically capable?
No answers sprang forth—none that I liked anyway.
“I see.” My weighted response was a wisp of a sound.
“We destroy it,” Aleks promised. “You look, tell us if yes or no. We photo it. Then, its life is forfeit.”
My lips twitched. “You’re getting really fond of that phrase.”
“What? Is good phrase, da? CJ teach it to me.”
That made sense. CJ liked Lord of the Rings, and he’d convinced me to read the books with him one weekend.
I inhaled a deep breath, wanting more than anything to say that, yeah, it was the real deal, but I couldn’t exactly tell them it was because the thing oozed the same aura of evil.
A more important question in my opinion was, why was it here, with all of Tarasovich’s other trophies?
Had Ivanov sought Tarasovich when he commissioned the tank? Had this psycho been on the outskirts my entire life, waiting at the eaves for a chance to swoop in for the kill?
I didn’t bother inspecting the fa?ade. It was a seven-foot cube, made of dark steel that never seemed to rust despite being constantly filled to the top with water. Other than that, the exterior was unremarkable. Besides, the outside wasn’t what I’d remember.
I moved for the metal stairs to the right.
Since no one had restarted the conversation, my nerves prompted me to fill the silence.
“Ivanov threw someone in there with me one time. He shot him in the head on the platform and let his lifeless body fall inside the dark water before slamming the lid down. The added volume raised the level by about an inch. You wouldn’t think an inch would make much difference in any scenario.”
Belatedly, I realized the sexual innuendo that could have been spun on my statement, but none of them spoke.
My foot hit the first step, and I knew, then and there, I knew it to my soul, but I forced myself to continue. It felt like a purging, even if Ivanov materialized atop the landing, soaking in each pain-filled word with an intense hunger. “I nearly drowned because the waves stole my eyesight, and I lost track of the breathing hole in the lid.”
“Callie,” Duane began, “you don’t have to climb up—”
Though his words were true, it still felt as if something was driving me forward—or upward, rather. “Yes, I do. I spent most of my time not looking at the tank, terrified Ivanov would sniff my fear out and exploit that weakness more than he already did.”
“Mm. Yes, that’s exactly what I would have done,” Ivanov purred.
I kept my gaze down, studying each stair as I climbed it. “Once the water calmed, and I found the breathing hole, the mind games started. The tank was designed with total sensory deprivation, meant to break a person mentally and physically. That form of torture was probably a happy accident since I was the only one who ever came out. For everyone else, it wasn’t to condition them, but a means to an end. If someone went in, they would stay there, screaming themselves hoarse until they eventually drowned when they fell asleep or became too weak to tread.”
“Callie?” a voice murmured through my earpiece, and it took my distant thoughts a while to place it, considering he sounded so distressed.
Callum King, my biological father.
Yeah, this probably wasn’t an easy story for him to hear.
Too bad. It wasn’t an easy story to relive.
“Rotten, decaying water clogged your sense of smell. Apart from the two-inch breathing hole you would spend most your time sticking your mouth through, seeking air, total blackness consumed your sight,” I continued, turning at the top, only to have my vision blocked when Ivanov’s form refused to move aside. “And depending on the Russian weather outside the warehouse, the cold temperatures numbed your skin to all sensation within an hour.”
“Go on,” Ivanov urged, his voice a whisper.
I met his gaze head-on. “My mind was fully aware of that, so I knew I wouldn’t feel the corpse floating with me. Lacking its own animation, I would never know he was there. If he drifted close, his body would bump off me without exerting enough pressure for my nerves to register with such deeply numbed limbs.”
Ivanov grinned a grotesque smile, ugly in its satisfaction.
He was dead.
“So even though I knew all that, I still spent those two days imagining that I felt the dead man’s fingers tugging at my ankles, trying to drown me, or his hair brushing my cheek…” An involuntary shiver stole over me as I forcefully stepped through Ivanov’s form to view the contraption, standing at the ledge. “I dreaded and loathed this tank,” I finished on a whisper, feeling like I’d used all my strength in that minor show of defiance.
“This tank?” Jace repeated, having been the nearest.
I hummed noncommittally, staring at the closed lid with the small breathing hole. Raising my voice, I asked, “Were the stairs reportedly destroyed as well?”
That seemed to throw them off, and they glanced at the rusted grated steps they’d obviously dismissed.
“Uh, yeah,” CJ answered through the earpiece. “According to the report, all items were stripped of any evidence that might help them track down Ivanov’s network of associates, and then they torched everything inside the warehouse.”
I nodded, feeling Ivanov’s presence hovering over my shoulder. If the lid wasn’t closed, I’d worry his memory would somehow push me in.
“Callie?” Payton prompted.
“Sorry.” I blinked, unable to change how absent my voice sounded. Forcing myself to turn, I quickly recapped, “I never looked at the outside for fear of revealing too much to Ivanov, but the inside of the tank is just as big of a blank because of the darkness.”
I moved to sit on the edge of the diamond grated platform, gaining some strength over Ivanov’s lingering presence because it was this very platform he’d been killed on. My feet kicked back and forth as I stared down at the guys. It was a unique perspective, being higher than them. “I don’t recall how many times I studied these stairs as they marched me up. I can’t say I noted much of the trip down since I’d be half delirious with sleep deprivation and malnutrition, but the way up…” I shrugged. “It was the only thing I allowed myself to look at.”
Their eyes returned to the rickety steps, none of their expressions very kind.
“Besides,” I added as I climbed to my feet, turning to pin Ivanov in place with my stare, “Ivanov’s blood is still right here, where I shot him.”
“This is for Kaz,” I cried, raising the gun.
Ivanov started for me as I pulled the trigger.
My first bullet hadn’t killed him. Neither had the second. It’d taken the volley of bullets from the surrounding men with one of Petrov’s people, Zakhar, getting off the very impressive kill shot straight through Ivanov’s head mid-fall. I’d have been more impressed that Zakhar had missed me if I didn’t still suspect that he’d weighed his odds in that fraction of time where Ivanov tackled me backwards into the tank, viewing my possible death as acceptable collateral damage.
Despite Leo and Joe, two more of Petrov’s men, reassuring me that I’d proven myself to them and had gained Zakhar’s begrudging respect, I doubted the stubborn Russian had changed his rather stalwart standpoint so quickly.
I’d know. I was dating one similarly stubborn Russian.
When I blinked from my memory, Ivanov had vanished.
“So this is it then?” Paride verified.
I nodded. “Yeah. This is it. The CIA has a security problem.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Callum interrupted, an edge in his voice, “but the CIA’s not the only one with a security problem.”