The Stranger (26 page)

W
hy did you kill Ingrid?”

When Adam tried to sit up, tried even to peel his face off the concrete—where was he anyway, that log cabin?—his head screamed in protest. He tried to bring his hands to his skull, but they wouldn't move. Confused, Adam tried again and heard the rattling.

His wrists were tied.

He looked behind him. A bike chain had been wrapped around his wrists and threaded behind a pipe running from the floor to the ceiling. He tried to take stock of the situation. He was in a basement. Directly in front of him, still wearing the same baseball cap, was the stranger. Gabrielle stood on the stranger's right. A young guy, not much older than Thomas probably, was on the
left. The kid had a shaved head and tattoos and too many piercings.

He was holding a gun.

Behind the three of them was another man, maybe thirty-ish, with long hair and the start of a beard.

“Who are you?” Adam asked.

The stranger took that one. “I told you before, didn't I?”

Adam tried again to sit up. The bolts of pain nearly paralyzed him, but he dodged past them. There was no way he could stand. Between the pain in his head and the chains on his wrists, there was nowhere to go anyway. He sat now and leaned against the pipe.

“You're the stranger,” Adam said.

“Yes.”

“What do you want with me?”

The kid with the gun stepped forward and aimed the weapon at Adam. He turned the gun sideways, like something he'd seen in a bad gangsta film, and said, “You don't start talking, I'm going to blow your head off.”

The stranger said, “Merton.”

“Nah, man. We don't have time for this. He needs to start talking.”

Adam looked up at the gun. He looked into Merton's eyes. He'd do it, Adam thought. He'd fire and not think twice.

It was Gabrielle who spoke next. “Put that gun away.”

Merton ignored her. He stared down at Adam. “She was my friend.”

He pointed the gun at Adam's face.

“Why did you kill Ingrid?”

“I didn't kill anyone.”

“Bullshit!”

Merton's hand started shaking.

Gabrielle: “Merton, don't.”

With the gun still pointed at Adam's face, Merton reeled back and kicked him like he was attempting a field goal from long range. He wore steel-toed boots and the blow landed right on the delicate spot on the bottom of Adam's rib cage. He let out an oomph sound and slumped over.

“Stop that,” the stranger snapped.

“He's gotta tell us what he knows!”

“He will.”

“What are we going to do?” Gabrielle asked, her voice in full panic. “This was supposed to be easy money.”

“It is. We're fine. Just calm down.”

The guy with the long hair said, “I don't like this. I don't like any of it.”

Gabrielle: “I didn't sign up for kidnapping.”

“Will you all just stay calm?” But even the stranger now sounded on edge. “We need to find out what happened to Ingrid.”

Adam winced and said, “I don't know what happened to Ingrid.”

They all turned toward him.

“You're a liar,” Merton said.

“You need to listen to—”

Merton cut him off with another kick to the ribs. Adam's face landed back on the hard concrete. He tried to crawl into a protective ball, tried again to free his hands so that they could cradle his aching head.

“Stop it, Merton!”

“I didn't kill anyone,” Adam managed.

“Right, sure.” It was Merton. Adam tried to tighten up his protective ball in case another kick was coming. “And I suppose you didn't ask Gabrielle about Chris either, right?”

Chris. He knew the man's first name.

“Back up,” Chris—the stranger—said. He moved closer to Adam and said, “You started searching for Ingrid and me, right?”

Adam nodded.

“And you found Ingrid first.”

“Just her name.”

“What?”

“I found her name.”

“How?”

“Where's my wife?”

Chris frowned. “Excuse me?”

“I said—”

“No, I heard you.” He looked back toward Gabrielle. “Why would we know where your wife is?”

“You started this,” Adam said. He struggled up into a sitting position. He knew that he was in deep trouble here, that his life was in danger, but he also knew that these people were amateurs. The stench of their fear was everywhere. The bike chain was loosening. He was starting to work his wrists free. That might help, if he could get Merton and his gun close. “You came at me first.”

“So, what, you wanted revenge? Is that what this is about?”

“No,” Adam said. “But I know what you do now.”

“Oh?”

“You learn something compromising about a person. Then you blackmail them.”

“You're wrong,” Chris said.

“You blackmailed Suzanne Hope about her faking a pregnancy. When she didn't pay up, you told her husband, just like you told me.”

“How did you know about Suzanne Hope?”

Merton, who was the most frightened and thus the most dangerous of all of them, shouted, “He's been spying on all of us!”

“She was friends with my wife,” Adam said.

“Ah, I should have seen that,” Chris said with a nod. “So Suzanne Hope was the one who referred Corinne to the site?”

“Yes.”

“What Suzanne did—what your wife did—it's a horrible thing, don't you think? You see, the Internet makes it easy to be deceptive. The Internet makes it easy to be anonymous and to lie and to keep terrible, destructive secrets from your loved ones. We”—he opened his hand, indicated his group—“are just evening the playing field a little bit.”

Adam almost smiled. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

“It's the truth. Take your wife, for example. The Fake-A-Pregnancy site, like all those sites, promises to be discreet, and she thought because it's online and makes that silly promise that no one would ever know. But do you really believe anything is truly anonymous? And I'm not talking about some kind of spooky governmental NSA thing. I'm talking about human beings. Do you really think that everything is that automated, that there aren't employees who can access your credit card information or your browsing history?” He smiled at Adam. “Do you really think anything is truly a secret?”

“Chris? That's your name, right?”

“Right.”

“I don't care about any of that,” Adam said. “I care about my wife.”

“And I told you the truth about her. I opened your eyes. You should be grateful to me. Instead, you hunted us down. And when you found Ingrid—”

“I told you. I didn't find her. I searched for you, that's all.”

“Why? Did you check the link that I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“And then you checked your Visa bill. You knew that what I told you was the truth, right?”

“Right.”

“So—”

“She's missing.”

“Who?” Chris frowned. “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, when you say she's missing, did you confront her with what I told you?”

Adam said nothing.

“And then, what, she ran off or something?”

“Corinne didn't just run off.”

Merton said, “We're wasting time. He's stalling.”

Chris looked at him. “You moved his car out of sight, right?”

Merton nodded.

“And we took the battery out of his phone. Relax. There's time.” He turned back toward Adam. “Don't you see, Adam? Your wife had deceived you. You had a right to know.”

“Maybe,” Adam said. “But not from you.” He felt his right wrist start slipping through the chain. “Your friend Ingrid is dead because of you.”

“You did that,” Merton shouted.

“No. Someone killed her. And not just her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The same person who killed your friend also murdered Heidi Dann.”

That made them all stop. Gabrielle said, “Oh my God.”

Chris's eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“You didn't know about that, did you? Ingrid isn't the only murder victim. Heidi Dann was shot and killed too.”

Gabrielle said, “Chris?”

“Let me think.”

“Heidi was murdered first,” Adam continued. “Then Ingrid. And on top of that, my wife is missing. That's what your revealing of secrets got you.”

“Just shut up,” Chris said. “We need to figure this out.”

“I think he's telling the truth,” the long-haired guy added.

“He's not,” Merton shouted, hoisting the gun up and pointing it back at Adam. “But even if he is, he's a threat to us. We have no choice here. He's been asking questions and searching for us.”

Adam kept his voice as steady as he could. “I've been searching for my wife.”

“We don't know where she is,” Gabrielle said.

“So what happened, then?”

Chris stood there, still stunned. “Heidi Dann is dead?”

“Yes. And maybe my wife is next. You need to tell me what you did to her.”

“We didn't do anything,” Chris said.

The wrist was almost free. “Like you said before, start at the beginning,” Adam said. “When you blackmailed my wife, how did she react? Did she refuse to pay?”

Chris turned and looked at the long-haired man behind him.
Then he turned back to Adam and knelt down next to him. Adam was still working his wrist free. He was close. Of course, what would he do then? Merton had taken a step back. If he grabbed Chris, Merton would have plenty of time to aim the gun.

“Adam?”

“What?”

“We never blackmailed your wife. We never even spoke to her.”

Adam didn't understand. “You blackmailed Suzanne.”

“Yes.”

“And Heidi.”

“Yes. But your case was different.”

“Different how?”

“We were hired to do it.”

For a moment, the pain in his head was gone, pushed out by pure confusion. “Someone hired you to tell me that?”

“They hired us to find lies and secrets about your wife and then reveal them.”

“Who hired you?”

“I don't know the name of the client,” Chris said, “but we were hired by an investigation firm named CBW.”

Adam felt something inside of him plummet.

“What is it?” Chris asked.

“Untie me.”

Merton stepped forward. “No way. You ain't going—”

Then a gunfire blast shattered the room. And Merton's head exploded in blood.

K
untz had gotten the address
of Eduardo's garage from Ingrid.

He sat on it and waited. It didn't take long. Eduardo had driven up through the mountains and over Dingman's Ferry Bridge. Kuntz followed him. When Eduardo arrived, the skinhead wannabe was already there. That would be Merton Sules. Then the woman showed. That would be the one named Gabrielle Dunbar.

One more to go.

Kuntz stayed hidden. As he did, he spotted another man creeping through the woods. He had no idea who the man was. Had Ingrid forgotten to mention him? Not likely. By the end, Ingrid had told him everything. She had told him everything and begged for death.

So who was this guy?

Kuntz stayed still and watched the setup. He saw Merton hide behind a tree with a baseball bat. He saw Gabrielle stand in the clearing and draw the man out. He almost called out a warning when he saw Merton sneak up behind the man, the baseball bat raised. But he didn't. He needed to wait. He needed to make sure they were all here.

So he watched Merton swing the bat and connect with the back of the man's head. The man staggered and fell. Merton, probably unnecessarily, hit him again. For a moment, Kuntz thought that Merton's intent was murder. That would be strange and interesting. The group, according to Ingrid, was completely nonviolent.

This man must have been seen as a threat.

Or . . . or did they think the man was Kuntz himself?

He thought about that. Was there any chance that the group knew they were under threat? By now, they almost certainly knew Ingrid had been murdered. He had counted on that to draw them together. It'd worked. He had also counted on the fact that they were rank amateurs, all high on trying to help the world by revealing secrets or some such nonsense.

But of course, with Ingrid dead, they would know they were in danger.

Was that what this assault was about?

Didn't matter. Kuntz still had the upper hand. He would just have to be patient, that was all. So he waited. He saw them drag the man inside the house. Kuntz waited. Five minutes later, another car pulled up.

It was Chris Taylor. The leader.

They were finally all here. Kuntz considered taking Chris Taylor out then, but that would alarm the others. He needed to be patient.
He needed to see if anyone else would show up. He needed to figure out why they had assaulted this other man and what they planned to do with him.

Kuntz quietly circled the house, peering in windows. Nothing. That was odd. There were at least five people inside. Had they gone upstairs or had they . . . ?

He checked a basement window in the back.

Bingo.

The assaulted man was still unconscious. He lay on the floor. Someone had wrapped a bike chain around one of his wrists, looped it around a pipe, and then wrapped the chain around the other wrist. The others—Eduardo, Gabrielle, Merton, and now Chris—paced liked caged animals waiting for slaughter, which, in a sense, they were.

An hour passed. Then two.

The guy never moved. Kuntz wondered if good ol' Merton had killed the poor guy, but eventually the man stirred. Kuntz checked his Sig Sauer P239. He was using 9mm ammunition, so the gun held eight rounds. Should be enough. He had more 9mms in his pocket, just in case.

With the weapon in hand, Kuntz crept toward the front of the cabin. He put his hand on the doorknob and tested it. Unlocked. Perfect. He pushed his way inside and tiptoed toward the basement.

He stopped at the top of the stairs and listened.

What he heard was mostly good news. In short, Chris Taylor and his colleagues had no idea who had murdered their friend Ingrid. The one negative, though it couldn't be helped, was that the assaulted man knew there was a connection between Ingrid's and
Heidi's deaths. Not a big deal, though. Kuntz had figured that eventually someone might put it together, but the fact that they had learned it so quickly troubled him a bit.

It didn't matter. He would have to take them all out, including the assaulted guy. He steeled himself by thinking again of Robby in that hospital bed. That was really what it came down to for him. Did he let these people continue to break the law and blackmail people? Or did he do what a father had to in order to ease his family's suffering?

Not much of a choice, was there?

Kuntz was still crouching near the top of the steps, lost for a moment in his thoughts about Barb and Robby, when Eduardo turned and spotted him.

Kuntz didn't hesitate.

Since Merton had the gun, Kuntz took him out first with a bullet to the head. Then he swung his aim back toward Eduardo. Eduardo raised his hand, as though it could somehow stop a bullet.

It didn't.

Gabrielle was screaming. Kuntz turned the gun on her and fired a third time.

The screaming stopped.

Three down, two to go.

Kuntz hurried down the stairs to finish the job.

•   •   •

Using the
locator app, Thomas had figured out that his dad had been on Lake Charmaine in Dingman, Pennsylvania, when his phone died. Johanna then insisted that Thomas go back to class
and not worry, a position backed up by the principal, who wouldn't let her take him anyway.

After making a few calls, Johanna reached the dispatcher at Shohola Township Police Department. Dingman was in their jurisdiction. She sent him the coordinates from the GPS locator app and tried to explain the situation. The dispatcher didn't really get it or understand the urgency.

“What's the big deal?”

“Just send someone out.”

“Okay, Sheriff Lowell said he'd drive by.”

Johanna jumped into her car and hit the accelerator. If a cop tried to pull her over, she had her badge at the ready. She'd signal for them to pull up alongside her and flash it. A half hour later, she got a call back from the same dispatcher. Adam's car wasn't in sight. The locator wasn't precise enough to pinpoint an exact house—they had several on the lake—and what exactly did she expect them to do about it?

“Start going door-to-door.”

“I'm sorry. Under whose authority is this coming from?”

“Mine. Yours. Anyone's. Two women have already been killed. This man's wife is missing. He's trying to find her.”

“We'll do our best.”