Chapter 41
Ethan
They didn’t drive me very far, or very fast. The car slowed down after only a few minutes, which made me think we were probably at the Braithwaite facility.
I was very close to Kat and Holly right now.
Not that I was of any use to them at all, alone, unarmed, hooded, cuffed.
In this state, I was just a weapon to hurt them with.
Though I was the one, of the three of us, with the goods these assholes wanted. Chances were good that I was the one who would have to watch someone I loved be hurt.
Don’t think about that. No point in it. Moment by moment. Just breathe. Wait. Be alert for openings, opportunity, change. It was all I could do.
They left me in the trunk for what felt like a long time, but my sense of time was skewed.
Right now, time was marked only by panting breaths, frantic heartbeats, terrified imaginings.
I tried to slow those down, insofar as I could, but I clenched up in wild panic when heavy footsteps came near, and the trunk finally popped open.
I saw light, behind the mesh of the black fabric. Air, at least on my skin. My lungs were still crying out for it, inside that smothering bag.
They grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me out of the trunk and onto my feet, more or less. I was yanked along so swiftly I kept stumbling.
From the feel and sound of the place, I got a sense of wide-open space.
Just from the vague outlines I could see through the bag, the way it echoed.
It seemed like the machine room of a factory.
Massive mechanisms, hoses and tubes and pulleys and panels.
My brain kept on in its frantic and probably useless efforts to process information.
As if any detail I could glean at this point could help our cause.
It couldn’t. I had no cards to play. All I could do was hope for rescue. They had Holly. They had Kat. They had me in a fucking vise, ever since that helicopter left my house.
They shoved me through some kind of big portal, like an airport scanner.
I could barely see the outline. Must be the thing that checked for electronic signals.
I passed, evidently. Then rough hands put some kind of heavy metal collar around my neck, like a horseshoe shape, snapping it into place.
It was painfully small, pinching the side of my neck.
When they closed it, I felt a thin wire, cutting across the front of my throat.
Hands groped at the back of my neck. I heard a loud snick as a big lock snapped to, connecting me to a chain.
I could tell from the rattle, and the slither of the heavy metal links on my back.
I let out a gasp as the chain went suddenly taut, jerking me up onto my toes.
The wire cut deep. Fuck, that stung. Maybe it was the same device Shane had worn in that video.
The chain stopped short before my toes left the ground, or my own body weight would have slit my throat then and there.
“Cut off his cuffs. And take off his hood. He’s harmless, now, and he’ll need to use the keyboard for us.” It was a man’s voice, not one I recognized. Smug, preening.
The hood was wrenched off. I sucked in a deep breath of air, blinking in the light, and taking it all in.
Yes, it was a warehouse. Brightly lit. I saw the machine room I had been dragged through beyond a big open door.
The place was huge, with high ceilings, like the warehouse in Tacoma.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust enough to see the two people standing in front of me.
One was Nicole, and the other was a man, slightly taller than her, and about the same age, early to mid-thirties.
He was slim, unremarkable-looking, and wore rimless glasses, and elegant casual clothing.
Both were smiling. Their smiles seemed weirdly similar. Maybe it was the madness in their eyes.
“At last,” the guy said. “I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Vincent Egan. And of course, you’re acquainted with my sister, Nicole Volange.”
I was visibly bewildered. “Sister? Her?”
“Half-sister,” Nicole corrected. “His mother was German, and mine was Japanese. Our father really got around. He begat many children.”
“But why should I introduce you?” Vincent said, his voice taunting.
“I’m sure you remember her. After all, you fucked her, right?
Or don’t you remember?” He studied my bewilderment, and slanted Nicole a mocking look.
“He looks puzzled, Nicole. I would have thought you would be a more interesting lay.”
“Get stuffed, Vin,” she said, expressionless.
I stared at Nicole, trying in vain to remember any sort of sexual encounter with a woman who looked like her, but felt no spark of recognition. Admittedly, there had been a lot of them over the years, but damn. Not so many that I forgot them completely.
Nicole saw me struggle to remember, and snorted. “I worked for MasterTech for a while, five years ago,” she said impatiently. “It was a temporary contract. We hooked up at a tech conference in Vegas. You left my room while I was in the shower.”
“Oh.” Brief erotic adventures with strangers in conference hotels were a common enough occurrence in my former life, but damn. “So, is that why you’re doing this? Because I was a dick the morning after in a Vegas hotel?”
“Not at all,” she said. “The experience was unmemorable for me, too. It was your approach to writing algorithms that really turned me on, during my time at MasterTech. So when I heard about SmokeScreen, I had to have it.”
“We have to have it,” Vincent corrected. “We, Nicole. I’m the head of this team. Remember that.”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Oh, yes! Of course, Vin! We. Never doubt it.”
Vincent held up a small white remote control. “That collar you’re wearing? I designed it. One wrong move, and I push a button that winds you right up to the ceiling, so we can enjoy watching you hang. Or I can push this other button, which tightens the tension of the wire until your throat is cut.”
I felt it with my fingers. It exerted a painful, knife-edged pressure.
“Let me show you how it works,” Vincent went on briskly. “I’m quite proud of it. Grab the chain, though, and hang on to it tightly, or that wire will garotte you! Up, up, up you go!”
I grabbed the chain over my head just in time to take the pressure off my throat as it jerked me up off my feet. I dangled and swayed six feet off the ground, arms shaking with the effort of keeping the wire on the collar from cutting my throat.
“You put Shane in this thing,” I said, my voice breathless and choked. “In that warehouse in Tacoma.”
Vincent looked smugly pleased with himself. “Yes, his device was similar. I have a whole line of different collars, actually. I’m a bit of an engineer myself.”
I had the sense he was waiting for polite acknowledgement of his ingenuity, but I was too busy keeping the pressure of that lethal wire from severing my carotid artery.
After a while, he huffed, petulantly, and pushed the button, reeling me down.
I landed hard, and felt the rush of hot blood down my throat as the wire sliced deeper.
“Vincent gets off on making implements of torture,” Nicole remarked. “I’m more practical about that, myself. I always felt like anything can be an implement of torture, with a little creativity. But what do you expect of a guy who pulled worms and bugs apart as a child?”
“I don’t care what he did as a child,” I said. “Where are Holly, Kat, and Shane?”
Vincent’s mouth tightened. He held up the remote and hit the button, and the wire tightened. Fresh blood welled from the cut.
It loosened, and I could breathe again. But the bleeding was constant now.
“Be polite,” Vincent said coldly. “You don’t ask the questions. You don’t make the demands. You do as you’re told. No more, no less. Say you’re sorry.”
I pressed my hand on the bleeding slice. Unable to swallow. “Sorry,” I croaked.
Vincent smiled. “That’s much better. The chain is just long enough to allow you to sit down in that chair.
” He pointed to a desk, with a computer on it.
“Access SmokeScreen. The real one, not any of that dummy shit like your sister pulled on Nicole the last time. Play any tricks like that, and Holly loses a hand. Are we clear?”
“What do you want me to do with it?” I asked.
“I want you to run a simulation,” Vincent said, with a smile that looked almost lascivious.
“Tell me how the market will react if a massive bomb takes out the CEOs and CFOs of these forty companies, all at once.” He handed me a sheet of paper with a printed list of names.
CEOs and CFOs of the biggest companies in the world.
Corporations worth tens of billions, or hundreds.
“Of course, I’ve spent the past several months running my own simulations, and making my own projections.
That’s my personal specialty. But I would be extremely interested in seeing how SmokeScreen’s projections match up to them.
Nicole’s been talking them up for a long time. ”
Holy shit. He was killing all those people at the summit just to make money? I shook my head, stung by the utter pointlessness of it. “Seriously?” I said. “That’s what this fucking psychodrama is all about? A little bit of money?”
Vincent frowned. “Don’t judge,” he said coldly.
“It’s a fuckton of money. I am logging every keystroke you make.
If you try to pull any dirty tricks, my system will detect it, and Holly will pay.
I know how sneaky you Masters can be. Speaking of Holly, Nicole, bring her in.
Let her witness these historic events with us. ”
“Let her go,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want with SmokeScreen. I can use it to generate trillions of dollars for you. Or to manipulate any situation to your advantage.”
“Of course you’ll do that for us,” Nicola purred. “But letting Holly go? Just give up all our leverage? Ethan. Seriously? That’s an insulting suggestion. Do you think we’re stupid?”
I shook my head diplomatically.
“My favorite idea is to lock Holly up all alone in an empty, windowless room, with a camera watching her at all times,” Nicole said. “Pass food to her through a drawer in the wall. You can watch her fade away like a flower while you work for us.”’
Her words made my stomach drop. Endless, icy depths.
“Sounds boring,” Vincent said. “I would prefer something a little more exciting, dynamic. But there’s no rush. We’ll work out the perfect motivation for you, and keep you eager and obedient for a long, long time. So? Run the scenario. Now.”
The two of them gazed at me, with identical expectant looks on their faces.
What were the odds? Two sadistic psychopaths, same generation, same family? I wondered if they’d been warped into that state on purpose. Chilling thought, but I had no energy to speculate about their family while they were trying to destroy my own.
I put my hands on the keyboard and got to work.