Chapter 4
PROCTOR WOKE IN DARKNESS.
For several minutes, he remained motionless as he tried to piece together what had happened.
It came back to him in reverse order. He’d been injected with something that had rendered him unconscious.
Before that, he’d been felled by a cattle prod, his wrists bound behind his back, and a mask slipped over his head.
All this had been the work of the utility man he’d first noticed a few houses down.
Incredibly, the man had gotten the drop on him.
He took stock of his physical constraints.
He was sitting with his back against a padded wall, his hands now bound in front instead of behind.
Unusual: his captor cared enough for his welfare not to impede his circulation—in fact, the cuffs were relatively loose and forgiving.
He moved around, testing his bindings, and realized his wrists were held by a double set of zip ties, the right slightly looser than the left, but not enough to make a difference.
It was a secure and sophisticated binding system, designed to be comfortable—under the circumstances.
Interesting.
His ankles were bound as well, in a way that made it impossible to stand. As he moved his legs, he realized that his ankles were also chained to the wall. Other than his head, which throbbed where it had hit the tool cabinet, he seemed to have suffered no additional injury.
As he went systematically down a mental checklist, he noticed that the space he was in was not just dark but completely black.
This was also unusual: in most cells or holding areas, especially improvised ones, there was a little light—from under a door, a crack in the ceiling, a ventilation shaft.
Here there was none. It was silent, too—utterly so.
As he continued the inventory, he noted his clothing had been exchanged for sweatpants and a light, loose, sleeveless top that felt like a hospital gown. His shoulder holster was, of course, gone.
He tried to assess how much time had passed.
He felt no strong desire to urinate; then again, it was possible he’d pissed himself and his captor had rinsed him off before dressing him again.
But he felt roughly the amount of hunger he normally would when returning home from a job, which reinforced a growing conviction he’d been out only a few hours.
Returning home from a job. Was this fallout, or collateral damage, from Foreman’s warning?
It seemed likely—Proctor did not believe in coincidence.
Should he, then, have been more on the alert during the moment he stepped back into his garage?
Where, exactly, was his point of failure?
He’d been preoccupied with securing his holster and adjusting his jacket, but those were feeble excuses.
One thing was obvious: the sleepy suburban neighborhood had taken the edge off his alertness.
He reminded himself bitterly that he should never have overlooked his sidearm.
More important, he should never have allowed his mind to slip into a state of preoccupation.
The things he’d done in his past life meant that now he could never fully drop his guard—and yet here he’d done just that.
The attack and abduction was meant to remove him from what was going to happen during the transport. Nothing else made sense.
As his mind cleared further, he thought about how, specifically, he’d been taken down.
He recalled nothing in the attacker’s eyes, expression, or posture that would set off his instinctive alarms. The only notable thing about the man was his size—six foot four—and his high fitness level.
The man had a cut-down cattle prod clearly capable of delivering over a million volts.
During training, Proctor had had the unpleasant experience of feeling the bite of a similar prod, and he knew one this powerful couldn’t be purchased in a local farm supply store.
The man’s uniform had looked authentic, and he’d known enough not to park too near Proctor’s driveway.
He’d calmly waited for his chance, slipped into the garage, taken Proctor by surprise, neutralized him, then no doubt backed his van up to the garage door and placed Proctor in the back.
The shotgun and payload master—Foreman referred to his men by their assignments rather than names—wouldn’t have needed to don an elaborate disguise: he knew them already, there’d be no need for deception.
As he considered the elements at length—Foreman, the job, the woman in the box—he realized the pieces might not be falling into place as neatly as he’d just assumed.
Proctor moved his head this way and that, ignoring the pain in the upper right quadrant of his skull. If it had to do with the job, that would be over with by now, one way or another. In any case, there was nothing he could do but wait—and Proctor was good at that.
In the blackness, he gently leaned his head against the wall, took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, then exhaled slowly. Within five minutes he was asleep.