No one had ever asked.
He could only hope that no one else had made such a thorough study of the estate since then. It was unlikely. Crawling through dank, rat-infested eighteenth-century sewer pipes was the kind of thing only unbalanced teenagers did voluntarily.
And desperate, luckless bastards like himself, of course.
He opened the computer and checked Rachel’s icon. It remained stationary. The satellite photograph on his screen showed a bird’s-eye view of the place, which he remembered well. The icon blinked in what looked like one of the outbuildings, garages that used to be the stables. He slid the computer into his pack and climbed carefully out of the boat.
Keeping his mind focused on the task. Not letting it wander to what they might be doing to her right—
No.
He picked his way over moss-slimed rocks, blanked out his mind with manufactured white noise.
In the flickering twilight dimness beneath the bridge, he shone the flashlight on the rusty iron grate bolted over the sewer hole in the wall. It dated back to the first World War, from the looks of it. He rattled the thing, examined the corroded bolts. He wouldn’t even need the welding equipment. A few wrenches with the crowbar—this one for Rachel,
oof,
this one for Tam—and ah,
fuck
. A fresh, hot wet spot in his shoulder. He’d ripped open the wound again. But the grate was loose.
She could be dead. Or worse.
He stepped savagely on the thought. Look straight ahead. Not productive, to think of it. Not useful to them.
Yes, and neither are you, testa di cazzo.
He’d been buzzing around this problem for almost twenty-four hours like a fly around a turd. Endless precious hours wasted in inefficient, infuriating means of travel. No time to equip, no time to assemble a team or plan something brilliant. András had certainly had the use of a private plane waiting at the Naples airport. He’d probably gotten to Budapest during the night, and to Novak’s estate by the small hours of the morning with his prize. Hours for them to play with her if they’d wanted to. If Novak had been in a hurry.
Whereas Val himself had been forced to drive like a maniac to the Roma airport at Fiumicino and abandon the rental car in the taxi lane, door hanging open, keys in the ignition. He’d sprinted up to the ticketing area, waiting on line after line, trying desperately to find a seat on a commercial flight.
He was spoiled, by all the high budget shortcuts of PSS and the obscenely rich corporations and military operations that they serviced.
Cristo
, how did normal people survive the nightmarish frustration?
Normal people didn’t usually have their lovers chained under a torturer’s knife
.
One last wrench, one last blaze of agony to take his mind off his troubles, and the grate came loose from the mouth of the sewer pipe. Thud, clang, and it rolled into the water with a sullen splash.
He clutched the flashlight in his teeth and scooped out armfuls of trash, twigs, leaves and sludge that had drifted down with the rainwater overflow for decades. It had lodged against the grate into a sludgy wall, making the opening too small for a man to crawl through.
He wished he had a team, but it took time to coordinate a team. The McClouds were fierce and competent and well meaning, but they were hours behind him, having to cross two continents and an ocean. He could not hope for help from them. By the time they followed their beacons to the source, whatever was going to happen would have long since happened. So be it.
He tightened his teeth on the pen flashlight and launched himself headfirst into the dark, wet hole. It was like crawling into his own grave.
Which did not bother him. He was not afraid of death. It was life without her that he could not face. The blankness of it, the dull, flat emptiness that he had mistaken for calm. Detachment.
Cold, slimy mud squelched between his fingers. He should have thought of rubber gloves, but he’d been too frantic to do more than procure the most basic things that occurred to him: backpack, boat, crowbar, welding gear, guns, ammunition. His black clothing was now covered with stinking mud. At least he wasn’t immersed in icy water. But then again, the evening was still young.
A couple hundred meters brought him to the main tunnel, a larger and still older one. Here he no longer had to crawl but only crouch, doubled over. He started to run, splashing through the dripping tunnel, the flashlight bobbing wildly between his teeth.
The tunnel was long, with various forks and twists. Overflow from old rainwater cisterns at several points on the estate all found their way here, and he had to dig into his ironclad long-term memory, concentrate and count to remember which one led where he meant to go. He gave thanks for Imre’s rigorous training.
He crawled, face first, through the last hundred meters of the overflow pipe. He barely fit inside it. His shoulders had not been quite as broad the last time he’d crawled through, years ago.
The space before him suddenly opened up into a black void. He stuck his head carefully out and peered up. The cistern had been out of use for a hundred and fifty years or so, the area above ground having been turned into a conservatory at some point in the middle of the nineteenth century. The greenhouse above remained, but in Val’s time of servitude, it had been abandoned, used largely as a storage room and weapons dump. Gabor Novak was not a man with any interest in nurturing life, be it animal or vegetable.
But the conservatory was inside the security perimeter.
The overflow hole was in the narrow upper shaft of the well. Three meters above his head had been the opening. Val had remembered there being a little light inside the well, shining down from the pattern of holes drilled in the iron plate covering the access.
He could barely make out those little holes. The fading light of evening did not penetrate them. Beneath him, the narrow tube of stonework yawned out wide into the huge antique rainwater cistern. Ten, twelve meters deep. Falling into it would be a very bad, slow, lonely death if one did not have the luck to break one’s neck outright.
He groped on the wall in the darkness for the corroded iron ladder steps bolted to the wall, hoping that whatever lay over the iron plate would not be too heavy for him to lift. Hoping that Tamar was still—
No.
Straight ahead. Move.
He gritted his teeth around the flashlight, wriggled his upper body out even further, and reached for the first rung.
It snapped off the wall. In his wild flailing for purchase, the flashlight slid from his mouth. He clutched the far side of the wall with his shaking, rigid fingers, legs splayed in the overflow tube, the hand with the throbbing shoulder groping desperately for another rung. A part of his brain that was cool and detached counted the many, many seconds that passed. The iron rung,
plop.
The flashlight,
plop
.
So. There was water in the cistern. Who knew how much or from what source. Perhaps it would be drowning for him, rather than a broken neck. No matter. He had no preference.
He reached, clasped the next rung. He would have to pull his entire upper body out of the overflow hole to test this one. There would be no way to keep from falling if this one gave out. He had no reason to think it would be any stronger than the one beneath it.
He had even less reason to turn around and go back.
He realized, bemused, that he was muttering something under his breath. An old prayer he had learned from his grandmother in his early childhood in Romania, before his mother had gotten bored with the man Val had known as his father, and their tiny rural village, and run off with her fancy city boyfriend to Budapest. Taking her luckless little boy with her.
The prayer was in a dialect he barely remembered. Something he’d recited at bedtime, verses to ward off monsters, beasts, vampires.
He gave the rung his weight. It bowed, ever so slightly—and held.
He pulled himself up. Dangled from it with his entire weight, clenched his teeth. Waited stoically to fall and die.
It didn’t happen. Not yet. Not his moment. Maybe later.
He dragged himself upward and began to climb.
“Y
ou’ve removed every last bit of jewelry from her body, András?”
The cool, dragging voice sliced through the hideous dreams and the ever-present consciousness of pain, echoing strangely in her throbbing skull, volume cutting in and out. She ran the words back, trying to dredge some meaning out of them. It sank in slowly.
Hungarian. Not her best language, but she managed in it.
“Of course, Boss. I’m tying her hand and foot. Nothing to worry about. Besides, I inspected every centimeter of her body. Repeatedly. Nothing on it but what God gave her.”
“Do not underestimate this woman.” She tried not to shudder at the sound of that voice, like the cool, dry scales of a venomous snake sliding over her skin. “She is extremely dangerous.”
“I know.” András’s voice was long-suffering. “My balls are still sore. But I promise she won’t give us any trouble. Not when I do
this.
”
A rope jerked tight around her wrists, the right one of which was swollen and hot, and the blur of pain suddenly became horribly specific. She kept her eyes shut, feigning unconsciousness while she tried to remember how her arm had come to be broken.
Then it slammed into her mind, full force. András. Novak.
Rachel.
Her eyes popped open just in time to see András take in the slack of a rope he’d tossed over a huge, menacing iron hook that was set high into the wall.
He looked down, smiled to find her eyes open, and yanked.
She shrieked. The rope wrenched her up until she dangled by her wrists, the tips of her toes barely touching the ground. Agony. Her ankles were tied, making it impossible to widen her stance, keep her balance, and take weight off her broken arm. She keened between gritted teeth, jerking until she managed to grip the rope with her left hand. Her vision was going dark. The maw of unconsciousness yawned, and she was tempted to tip herself into it.
But no way could it be that easy. They would have a way to revive her. András was a professional, after all, and besides—
Rachel.
Where the fuck was Rachel? She had to know.
The two men swam into view. Her eyes streamed. She blinked, sniffed, tasted blood. Her face was swollen from a blow she did not remember receiving. Her heart forced blood through inflamed tissue, slamming painfully with each throb.
There was that prick András, dressed in executioner’s black, holding the rope, his cobra face expressionless, his eyes strangely dead and empty. And Daddy Novak’s hideous, grinning face.
His son Kurt, four years dead, was rotting in his coffin, and his corpse probably looked much like the skeletal man who stood before her now. The zombie king. His pale, bright eyes were identical to those of his dead son. The same strange, poisonous green color.
She glanced around the lavish baroque salon. The windows looked out on a vast, terraced garden, and beyond it, the winding curves of a river, fading into the twilight. Candelabra were lit on several tables, and the opulent gilded molding and trim gleamed in the flickering candlelight. Subtle track lights installed in the vaulted ceilings lit up the frescoes. Chubby, smiling cupids flanked gruesome depictions of martyred saints. There was one being pierced with a multitude of arrows, one being flayed alive, another holding her chopped-off breasts on a plate as if serving them up. One unlucky saint held both of her gouged-out eyes in her hands, mouth wide and screaming, eye sockets bleeding. The eyes in her clutching hands looked bloodshot, shocked and terrified. As if they still could see.
Tam looked away before she had to take in the images on the other panels. Novak followed the direction of her gaze and chuckled.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” he asked, switching to heavily accented English. “I’m so fond of my frescoes. Seventeenth century. The artist was anonymous but very gifted, in my opinion.”
Very fucked up in hers, Tam thought. She noticed two huge flat-screen TVs, set on tables to either side of her. Their blank fifty-inch screens were dark and empty. They were incongruous in the dim room, otherwise full of priceless baroque era art and furniture. Then the air moved on her shivering body, and a huge, gold-framed standing mirror right in front of her brought her attention to another unpleasant fact.
She was naked.
She was not surprised. She had learned young how vulnerable nakedness made a person feel, how easily controlled. It was a quick and dirty instant weapon for sadists and bullies, and she’d met too many of those in her lifetime. But she was tough as an old boot. Nakedness was not a problem. No, that fucking broken arm was the problem.
Novak clapped his clawlike hands together. “I was beginning to wonder if you would ever wake up. I’ve been so impatient to meet you, Tamara Steele. What a pleasure.”
He paused. Did he expect her to say that the pleasure was all hers? But even if she was disposed to play word games with him, she was shaking too hard to breathe enough to speak. All she could manage were shallow, squeaking drags for air.
Novak studied her thoughtfully, eyes hooded. “Let her down, András,” he said. “Onto her feet.”
András scowled and gave the rope an agonizing jerk. “But she—”
“She will faint,” the old man said harshly. “I want her conscious. I want this to last.”
András let up so abruptly she thudded down, legs buckling. She sagged to the side and was brought up short by her tortured wrists.
The two men watched impassively as she struggled to get her feet beneath her body again.
“Is that better, my dear?” The fake solicitude in Novak’s voice oozed over her like slime. Her mouth was so dry, she was choking.
She tried to swallow. Tried to cough. Regretted it. Coughing jarred everything, and everything hurt like pure, flaming hell.
“What do you want from me?” she whispered.
Novak’s smile curled thinly upward. “Something special. Something intimate. Something only you can give me.”
Her body clenched at the implications of those words. “Be more specific,” she croaked.
He leaned forward, close enough so that his fetid breath almost made her gag. “Pain,” he hissed.
Ah, yes. Great. Why was she not surprised. She almost rolled her eyes, but that sort of flip defiance could make her fate worse.
Or rather, Rachel’s. It was all about Rachel now.
“I never used to have such a passion for torture,” Novak confided. “It was just a means to an end. I am not like András, who is a true aficionado. An artist of pain. Then I discovered I had a disease the doctors were pleased to call terminal, and one day, while punishing a man who had wronged me, I noticed something odd. I felt restored by the experience. It literally gave me energy. I tried it a second time. The phenomenon repeated itself. It was therapeutic. Amazing, no?”
She was speechless. Not surprised, though, at the total self-absorption. The mark of a true psychopath.
“Really,” he said earnestly, as if she had argued with him. “I absorb the life force of the person I am punishing. Particularly if they have robbed or insulted me, as you have, my dear. It is so perfect, so appropriate. You were responsible for the death of my son. And now I have your daughter. Symmetrical, no?”
Her heart raced, her stomach rolled. Her ears rang, with some deafening inner noise. Rifle shots crackling from a distance. Screams from the tortured prisoners in the basement cells. Death all around her.
He looked hurt, at her failure to respond. “It’s true,” he protested. “Every time I indulge my test values show a marked improvement. My doctors want to know my secret, but they wouldn’t understand if I told them. I’m intrigued to see what effect playing my games on a three-year-old should have on my health. I suspect it will be a potent tonic.”
He stared into her eyes as he said it, avid for her reaction. She was too raw with pain and fear to hide it. His face creased with delight.
“Ah, yes,” he muttered between wheezing chuckles. “This will be good. This will give me months. A year, maybe. Delicious.”
She vibrated with pure fear. Her fuck-you-in-your-face bravado was torn away completely. He had her, and they both knew it. Even the tongue stud was pointless now. He would never get close enough to her for her to use it, not until after he had finished with Rachel. At which point, whether she lived or died would be no longer relevant.
Perhaps breaking the capsule and dying first would take the fun out of hurting Rachel for them, but then probably not. And she could not abandon her baby here while Rachel was still alive.
He might still come close enough to her before he started in on her baby. Close enough to gloat. She could hope for that.
“Where is she?” Tam forced the question out through shaking lips.
“Near, very near,” Novak assured her. “We’ve been waiting for her to wake up. The idiot who brought her overdid the sedative dosage for the airplane flight. Not used to dealing with small children, evidently. The child was practically comatose when she finally arrived, but my people tell me she’s come around nicely in the past couple of hours. In fact, she never stops screaming. I shall send András to fetch her in a few minutes, and we can begin.”
The pressure increased in Tam’s chest. An iron claw of fear gripped her lungs, her heart. Squeezing, crushing. She had always thought that she had seen the worst, felt the worst there was to feel.
How innocent of her. How naive. How lacking in imagination.
“We kept you under for the duration,” Novak went on. “Mostly because of your reputation for clever escapes and non-linear thinking. You should be flattered.”
He sounded like he was conferring a compliment. The fragment of her mind still capable of rational thought marveled at the kinky weirdness of it. Flattering a woman who was dangling from a hook by her wrists. What, was she supposed to simper? Thank him?
She had to lure him close enough to spit. It would be better to kiss him and get the stuff inside his mouth, but even spraying it onto his face might be enough to carry him off, sick as he was.
Tam dragged in air, gathering her energy. Her lips were trembling. She had to steady them. She had to work up some spit. He had to move closer. Just a little bit.
Please.
“Thank God I don’t have to worry about fucking you, at least,” she taunted him. “Your breath is so foul, it smells like something crawled down your throat and died there. Please don’t breathe on me, for the love of God. Step back. It makes me gag.”
Novak’s eyes were wide, weirdly empty. “Ah, yes,” he whispered. “You are strong. You’ll last a long time. Strong ones are the best. Who knows? Maybe what I do to your daughter will actually revive me to the point of sexual arousal. We shall see, hmm?”
But he did not step closer, no matter how desperately she willed him to. He was too alert to fall for it, even though he considered her defenseless. His resistance to being manipulated was automatic.
And he had no sexual energy at all. She should have made her play on a different level.
Shit.
She’d gone with sex by sheer force of habit, it being what worked for most men, but not him. She’d fucked up, and her sweet baby would pay for her mistake.
He was speaking again.
Pay attention. Stay sharp. For as long as you can. Stay sharp for Rachel.
“…wait for Janos to bring you to me,” Novak was saying. “He was taking too long, so I sent András to speed things up. But I thought you might enjoy this video memento of your mad love affair.”
That confused her for a minute. Was he talking about Val? Yes. Val had been sent to collect her. Imre was the hostage. And Imre was dead, so they had changed tactics. Yes. That tracked.
Memento of her mad love affair? What the hell? Images began to flicker on the TV screens. She could not make them out with the tears and sweat in her eyes. The light in both screens were dim, and it seemed like—those frantic, rhythmic movements—oh, for the love of God, was this possible? Porn, to accompany her torture? The sheer, banal stupidity of it was insulting. Even in the face of this much pain, this much fear.
Fuck it. Her arm hurt too much to bother contemplating the sewer of the man’s mind. She was far too busy calculating the best possible second for a murder-suicide.
Focus.
“…no, look at it!” Novak was insisting. “Don’t you recognize yourself? Pay attention, Tamara.”
Herself? She squeezed the hot, stinging moisture out of her eyes, and looked again.
And looked and looked. It was…oh, hell, no. It was not possible.
It was their room in San Vito. The graceful triple loggia that looked out over the sea, the dim light of dawn, the tender glow of pink.
And on the bed, behind the fronds of some blurry plant in the foreground, herself and Val. Her, mounted and moving over him, head thrown back, making soft moans of pleasure.
How?
How had they been found so soon after they arrived? When could the cameras have been planted? When they were out to dinner?
She looked at the other one, but it took over a half minute of horrified squinting to force that dim, writhing snarl of erotic images to resolve into something comprehensible. Mostly because she didn’t want to take the information in. Her mind resisted it desperately.
Herself, pinned against the door of the tiny staff kitchen of the Huxley. Moaning like a cat in heat as she let herself get good and nailed by Val Janos. The camera looked down at them, godlike from on high, judging her for being so stupid. It focused on her face, flushed with pleasure and excitement. And drugs, she remembered. She’d been as high as a kite, on the mystery drug, plus chianti.
The thought was a nasty icicle stab. She cringed, shuddered, and steeled herself. Forced herself to reason it through. Step by step.
There was no way they could have anticipated Janos and planted a camera to watch him without his knowledge. No way they could have connected her to Nick and Becca’s wedding before she actually went there. The only one who could have planted that camera was Val himself.
He’d chosen the place, prepared it, drugged her into a sexed-up daze, dragged her to it, and fucked her there. To entertain the beast. That was the truth. There was no other explanation.