Jan pulled the Cadillac under the first towering buildingâthe West Towerâ and inched to a stop in a space adjacent to the elevators. The underground structure was nearly vacant in the after hours.
A tall man dressed in black stood with his hands clasped behind his back near the elevator. Jan sat still for a moment. Maybe going to the police would have been a better idea after all. He climbed out and walked for the stranger.
The man ignored Jan until the doors had slid open and he'd stepped into the car. Then the Mafia type dropped his arms, walked in, turned around, and punched a code into a small panel. The doors slid closed.
Jan searched for the top floor button and was about to push the highest number on the panel when the man held out his hand. Message clear. The man was his escort.
A trail of sweat crept over Jan's temple. Helen hadn't arranged this. He couldn't shake the notion that he'd just stepped off a cliff. The elevator car rose past the last lighted number and jerked to a halt. It opened to a hallway and after hesitating, Jan followed the man down the passage and then to a set of massive copper doors. His host nodded and Jan pushed past them, swallowing at a knot that had risen to his throat.
He stepped into what appeared to be a plush penthouse suite, complete with a bar to his left and a dance floor to his left. But it was the large man standing next to a white pillar at the room's center that arrested his attention.
The doors shut behind him.
He was huge and pale, nearly albino in the dim light. His hair was blond, almost platinum, and his eyes were black. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and booted feet poked out from white cotton slacks. The man's lips twisted into a smile and Jan knew that this freak before him was Glenn Lutz.
“Well, well, well. The lover boy has come to force my hand,” Glenn said. He lowered his head and peered at Jan past his eyebrows. “You do realize that you are trespassing on my ground, don't you? You do realize what that means, don't you?”
Jan quickly scanned the room for Helen. She wasn't here. This was not good. Jan took an involuntary step backward.
Glenn chuckled. “You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you, Preacher? That's why you came. But we can't have that. I have a surprise for you.”
A shadow suddenly shifted to Jan's right. He'd only just begun to turn when the side of his head exploded.
A flashback.
But it wasn't feeling like a flashback. His world swam in darkness. He staggered to his right and instinctively threw out his arms for balance. And then finding it, he grabbed at his head, half expecting to feel a great hole there. His fingers felt a full head of hair, wet above his left ear, but intact.
The pain struck him as he tried to straighten, a deep ache that throbbed over his skull. He'd been hit on the head. Then a blow landed on the other side.
Thirty years of life in Bosnia roared to the surface. He was a writer and lecturer, but he was a survivor first, albeit a survivor who hadn't practiced surviving for a long time. Either way, his mind knew the drill well.
He staggered back two steps, groping for consciousness, blind to the world from that last blow. He nearly fainted then. If he didn't move quickly he might not move again. Jan gathered every last reserve of strength and he rushed straight forward, right past his attackers and out onto the floor. Grunts of objection sounded behind him and he lumbered forward, like a bull struck by a sledge.
He couldn't fightânot in this stateâthat much screamed through his mind. But it was all that screamed through his mind, because the rest of it had shut down, cowering from those two cracks to the head. He could not see; he could only run. The condition proved unfortunate.
Jan had covered less than ten yards when his knees smacked into a piece of furniture. He cried out and pitched headfirst onto a cushioned object. A couch. His head swam and he rolled off, landing on his side with a dull
thump
that took his breath away.
They were on him then, like two hyenas pouncing for the kill. Hands jerked him to his knees and held him still. It was as if they carefully lined up the last blow;
one, two, three . . . Crack!
It landed on the crown of his skull, and he collapsed in a sea of black.
TWILIGHT LAPPED the edges of Jan's mind, tempting him to awaken, but he thought he would sleep a while longer. An annoying bell had crashed through his ears one too many times already, like a huge mallet swung for a gong.
The sound invaded his dead sleep relentlessly and he rolled . . .
But that was where the gong show ended. Because he couldn't roll.
His eye cracked and he saw nothing but black. A monster pounded on his skull, sending shafts of pain right down his spine. He tried to lift his head, but it refused to budge. Slowly his focus returned.
He knew then that he wasn't in his bed. He lay on his side in a corner, with his back to a wall. He was naked except for his underwear. Dark stains ran down his belly and dyed his white briefs red. Blood.
He'd been beaten badly by those two shadows. Jan tried to lift his head again, and this time it came up for a full second before falling back down to the carpet with a dull thump. He paid for the effort with a spike through the brain, and he clenched his eyes against the pain.
He was still in the nightclub, he'd seen that much. Mirrored walls and a dark dance floor. Colored lights cast eerie hues of red and green and yellow across the black carpet.
A voice sounded to his left. “He's waking, sir.”
Hands grabbed his arm and pulled him into a sitting position. He wavered there for a moment and then lifted his head. This time he got it all the way up and rested it on the wall behind him. A figure stood by the bar to his right, replacing a phone in its cradle. The man had a bandage around his shoulder. Jan hadn't done that, had he? Not that he could remember.
The black-suited man seated himself in a folding chair and looked at him without expression. Jan's reflection stared back at him from the mirrored wall. Blood ran in long fingers down his neck and chest from red-matted hair.
What are you doing here, Jan? And where in the devil are you?
He answered his own question.
You are in a place owned by Glenn Lutz because Helen asked you to come.
A door to his left smacked open and he turned only his eyes, favoring his aching head. It was Glenn. The man seemed to glide more than walk. His hands hung huge with thick fingers that curled like stubby roots. Jan looked into his eyes. They were nothing more than black holes, he thought. A chill spiked down his spine. The man was smiling and his crooked teeth looked too large for his mouth.
“Well, well. So the preacher has decided to join us again. You've been here for nearly a day and finally you have the courtesy to show your face.” He stared at Jan, obviously relishing the moment. “I apologize for the blood, but I wasn't sure you'd want to cooperate without the right persuasion. And stripping you . . . I hate to humiliate you but . . .” He paused. “Actually, that's not true. None of that's true. I love the blood. Even if you'd agreed to everything up front I'd have beat you bloody.”
Helen was right. This man was evil. Possessed maybe. Jan uttered a silent prayer.
Heavenly Father, please save me.
“But you know that already, don't you, Preacher?” Glenn tilted his head forward and grinned like a jack-o'-lantern. “You've touched our tender flower, haven't you? Hmm? Felt her bruises?”
“No,” Jan said hoarsely.
Glenn stepped forward and swung his arm in a wide arc. His hand crashed against Jan's head like a club. If he hadn't already been sitting, the blow would have taken him from his feet. As it was, it nearly broke his neck. A white ball of pain swallowed him and sent him over a cliff of blackness.
HE DIDN'T even know he'd passed out until he struggled back into consciousness. It must've been some time, because Glenn was leaning over the bar with a drink in one hand. His belly hung low, bared like an albino watermelon beneath his Hawaiian shirt hitched up by the bar. He looked back, saw that Jan had stirred, pushed himself off and strode across the floor
“Back again? Thoughtful of you.”
Hands jerked Jan to a seated position. He let his head slip and closed his eyes. A finger rested under his nose and pushed it back. “You look at me when I'm talking to you.” Lutz stepped back and Jan steadied his head.
“That's better. Now we're going to do this once, Preacher. Only once. Because you know I don't have all day, right? You do know that I'm Satan, don't you? To you I'm Satan. I would just as soon cut your tongue off as listen to you talk. But you caught me on a good day. I have my precious flower back, and that makes me feel generous, so we're going to do it differently. But we're only going to do it once; I want you to be very clear about that. Are you understanding this?”
Jan's head slowly cleared. He gave the man a shallow nod.
“Speak to me when I ask you a question, Preacher.”
“Yeth,” Jan said around a swollen tongue. That last blow had done some damage to his mouth.
“Okay.” He turned and nodded to the man sitting in the folding chair by the bar. “Bring her.”
The man walked to a door and knocked. Two came from the other room; another thug first, and then a woman.
Helen.
It was an odd moment. Jan wasn't even fully conscious; he was still in a fog; his life hung over a cliff, suspended by a thin thread it seemed. And all of this
because
of Helen.
Yet when his eyes focused and he became certain that it was her, everything else became useless information. Because she was here and he was here, and he was watching her wide blue eyes emerge from the shadows, flowers of delicate beauty. His pulse surged and his knees suddenly felt weak. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness and that terrified him. She should be begging for
his
forgiveness. And how could his knees feel weak at the sight of her? They'd been cut from under him already.
His body was too weak to show any of thisâtoo weak to move. He sat like a side of beef against the wall, unmoving, but his heart began to do backflips when Helen looked at him.
“Thank you, my dear, for joining us,” Glenn said. “Come, stand in front of him.”
She walked to a point five feet from Jan, all the while looking at him with those fawn eyes.
Listen to me, Helen. Listen to me, it's all right. I love you, my dear
.
I love you madly
. His mind spoke it, but he knew she couldn't possibly gather any such thing from his sagging face.
“Stand him up!” Glenn said.
The two men walked over, each took an arm, and they hoisted Jan to his feet. His head throbbed and he could not support his own weight. They held him under the arms.
“Now we have the two lovers together.” Glenn stood to one side, like a minister wedding a bride and groom. “It is a lovely sight, isn't it? What do you make of him, my dear?” This to Helen.
She stood frozen with her mouth slightly agape. Perhaps he'd doped her. Or perhaps she'd doped herself.
“Helen?” Glenn said.
“Yes?” she responded, breathy and quiet.
“I asked you what you thought of him.”
“He looks hurt.”
Glenn chuckled. “Good. That's good. Doesn't it make you want to spit on him?”
She didn't respond.
“Helen, remember our little chat earlier? Hmm? Do you remember that, honey?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, I know that it may not feel natural at first, but it will later. So I want you to do what we talked about. Okay?”
The room seemed vacated of air. Nobody moved. Jan hung limp. Helen looked as if she were in another world altogether. A moment of reckoning. But Jan didn't know what was being reckoned.
Glenn spoke very softly now. “Helen.”
Nothing.
“Helen, if you don't do what we talked about I'll break some of your bones. Do you hear me, princess?”
Helen hesitated and then took a step forward. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. The sound of her shallow breaths worked like billows in the room. But she made no other move.
Glenn's threat came very quietly. “Helen, I swear I will break some bones, dear.”
Her nostrils flared and she pursed her lips. Then she leaned forward and spit into Jan's face.
Jan blinked, shocked, staring at her wounded expression, hardly aware of the spittle on his cheek.
“Good,” Glenn cooed. “Good. Now hit him, Helen. Hit him and tell him that he makes you sick.”
Helen shifted on her feet, and Jan saw the terror in her eyes. She stood still.
Glenn took one long stride toward Jan and swung his fist like a mallet from his hip. “Hit him!” he screamed. The knuckles struck the left side of Jan's chest and a pain stabbed through his heart. The room swam, and for a moment Jan thought he might pass out again.
Glenn stepped back and looked at Helen. Sweat glistened on his face. He smiled. “You hit him or I hit you. That's the game, Helen.”
It struck Jan then that Glenn meant to ruin him. This was all about Helen, not him. He was only the prop. Jan felt the first real shafts of fear run through his mind.
Don't do it, Helen! Don't do it! This is madness!
This couldn't be happening. At any moment the police would crash through the door with drawn weapons. He was a well-known man. He was on the verge of becoming a household name, and here he was in some absurd lovers' quarrel between two twisted souls. He had no business being here!
Karen's face flashed through his mind.
Dear, God! What have I done?
Helen's body began to trembleâJan saw it and he wondered if Glenn saw it. She looked small and puny standing next to him. Ugly. Jan blinked
.
She's my enemy
, he thought. A small wave of revulsion swept through Jan's gut. He felt inhuman in that moment. Like a pile of waste stepped on by a passing parade. Not the celebrity writer at all.