Now silent, p.13
Now Silent, page 13
Tony looked around, temporarily distracted, and the door opened to reveal the waitress who’d served them drinks earlier.
Now, she was bringing a tray of coffee. Looking at the steaming liquid, Brynn thought that it might just be a lifesaver.
“Good evening again,” she said. “Compliments of management.”
She turned and left, and Brynn realized to her relief that the interruption had put Tony off his stride. His wrathful demeanor had dissolved, and he was now looking more thoughtful.
Brynn stirred her coffee, adding a spoon of sugar, watching to her amusement as Derek ladled three sugars into his own cup.
“So, Tony,” she said again. “I can see that you’re very focused and passionate about your job, and I’m sure you want to get back to it. Quickest and easiest way to do that is to tell us your movements last night, and particularly if you can account for your time at any point between ten p.m. and around midnight. That’s all we need to know. Once we have that information, you’re welcome to go. However, we do need some proof of where you were and what you were doing during that timeframe.”
Brynn took a sip of her coffee. Bitter. Just the same way she felt right now. She added another half teaspoon of sugar to it, because she was exhausted and needed the caffeine and the sugar, and she knew that she’d need all the energy she could summon up to get past the defenses of these staff members and dig deep to the truth of their whereabouts.
“I was breaking up a fight at about eleven,” he said reluctantly. Brynn guessed that would be a different fight than the one that Seb had mentioned. Maybe that was why they had two bouncers, because despite what Marion had said, this establishment had regular conflict.
“Can you prove it?”
“How the hell do I prove something like that?” he glowered at her.
“Maybe you called a cab? Made a call on your phone? Took a screenshot of the conflict?”
He pressed his lips together as if she’d caught him out.
“Okay. I did take a screenshot of one of the abrasions that one of the customers incurred. We usually do that so that we can record the damage for our insurance.”
“Can you show me that shot?”
He hesitated but then dug into his suit pocket and got out his phone. Stepping over to them, he scrolled through the rather battered looking item, which had a shattered piece of glass on the top right hand side.
“See here.”
Brynn looked down at the screenshot, taking particular note of the time stamp. The fight had occurred at the time he’d stated, according to the shots he’d taken. She saw that he’d then messaged them through to his boss, and those time stamps also matched up.
Given the timing of that fight and the fact he’d clearly been at work when it had happened, she was going to rule out that it had been possible for him to trap the victims, take them out to the industrial zone, and arrange their bodies.
He hadn’t done that. He’d been at work.
“What do you think of your colleagues?” she asked him, wondering what response she would get from him. “Do you have any opinions on the people you work with?”
“Of course I do.” He gazed at her narrow-eyed. “You think I don’t? I’ve got issues with a couple of the people I work with, but I say nothing, because a job is a job, and a paycheck is a paycheck, and I don’t snitch.”
She wondered what he meant by that. He clearly wasn’t going to say anything more, though. He fastened his giant hands behind his back and stared at the wall between the two of them, his thousand-yard stare a message that he was done with talking.
"Thanks," Brynn said. "Please, can you call the barman? We'd like to speak to Andy next."
Without another word, Tony turned and walked out, leaving Brynn feeling certain that he knew something about one of his colleagues, but he wasn’t saying.
They had two possibilities left. Glen, the stage artist, and Andy, the barman.
Were one of the two of them the killer? Or did they know anything?
She took a big gulp of her coffee, feeling thirsty, exhausted, and stressed. They were battling to make headway with the staff, and Brynn was feeling more and more worried that they weren’t going to get the information they needed – at any rate, not in time to prevent the next crime.
“Do you think the staff are colluding?” she asked Derek.
He yawned hugely, covering his mouth apologetically.
“Long day,” he said. Brynn sympathized. She also felt as if tiredness was weighing down her mind. She took another gulp of coffee as Derek drained his cup.
“I think it’s possible they are protecting each other,” he said, “but there might also be other reasons for that. The owners have claimed that this place is good clean fun for consenting adults, but the fact that they’ve changed venue regularly and now operate as a pop up might mean that they have had bigger problems in the past.”
“Vann didn’t mention anything,” Brynn said, wishing she could think more clearly on that topic.
Derek shrugged. "Vann hasn't been overly cooperative. It could even be that one of his cops or even Vann himself is getting paid off to turn a blind eye. You know how these things work. That business is a cash cow. And they've made it very clear that they don't like attention from the police."
That was a possibility. Brynn blinked, the lights in the room suddenly feeling out of focus. This wasn’t the time to let tiredness take hold. It might have been a long day, but she needed to drill down into the motives of the staff. Someone was hiding something. Someone would have a gap in their activities at around the time of the crime.
Maybe there were other staff members behind the scenes who could have done this. Cleaners, janitors, even someone related to the business, like a supplier who’d organized to be there at the right time. If these interviews didn’t get them anywhere, then she’d need to go back to Paul and Marion and ask about that.
But why couldn’t she get the door into focus? Why were her hands and arms so heavy?
A prickle of sheer terror managed to slice through the rush of foggy numbness that was invading her mind. She turned to Derek, wanting to share with him that something felt very wrong with her, but she saw to her consternation that Derek was slumped face-first on the desk, his head rolled sideways, his arms limp.
“Derek!” She tried to speak his name but heard her own voice slurring.
The room wasn’t just out of focus now, it was wavering completely, the walls seeming to buckle, the ceiling bearing down on her so that the next thing she knew, her head had also slammed down onto the desk.
The coffee, she thought, with the last of her mind to have any coherent thought left.
The coffee.
It had tasted bitter. Someone had spiked it.
They had blundered straight into a trap.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Bang! Bang! It felt as if someone was driving a spike straight into Brynn’s head. The headache was vile, and the pain was the first thing she recognized as she surfaced from the deep blackness in which she’d been immersed.
For a while, she floated in confusion, trying to work out what had happened and piece together the last memories she had.
It was the bitter taste in her throat and the sour aroma of coffee in her nose that updated her.
They’d been trapped. Their drink had been spiked.
Adrenaline jolted through Brynn, lifting the heavy mists and erasing some of the fogginess in her thoughts. She'd been at Swingers' Paradise, interviewing the staff, and the next thing she knew, she'd slumped down on the desk.
She’d been grateful for the coffee. But it had been the candy trail that had led them into a very carefully planned trap.
At first, it was difficult to think over the pounding headache that Brynn was experiencing, but now that her mind was active again, it was plowing through the pain and the slowness, speeding up again with every moment that passed.
First, assess her surroundings. She did that before even opening her eyes. Although she’d been stuck behind a desk for much of her career, she had done a few training courses on combat, hostage situations, and what to do in case of being kidnapped or abducted.
Knowing the environment was important, and this could be done before you even opened your eyes. In fact, it should be done. She remembered the words of her course instructor. Having knowledge of where you are before you let anyone know it can allow you to prepare.
She had no idea if anyone was watching her or where she was. Using all her senses except for her eyes, Brynn did the assessment, glad that the project was allowing her to keep control of her rapidly thudding heart and the sense of fear that was inevitably flooding in.
She was lying on a hard surface. It was cold, and she guessed that it was either a big piece of wood or else even a metal surface. And her wrists and ankles were tied. She could feel something around them, tight and smooth. As for her face, something was pressing down onto it, and although she could breathe through it, the sensation was strangely suffocating. Brynn took a few more moments, and some tiny movements of her face and head, to establish that most likely, the item pushing down on her face was a coarse nylon net, probably of the same type that she’d seen around the earlier victims.
That knowledge brought a flash of fear with it, which Brynn suppressed, because fear wouldn’t help her now. As her instructor had taught her, it would be much more productive if that emotion was simply channeled into more adrenaline, powering her mind and her muscles instead of paralyzing them.
What else could she learn before opening her eyes?
She realized that the place she was in was utterly silent. There weren’t any ambient sounds nearby. No throbbing music of the type she’d heard at the club. Not even the swishing noise of traffic. That must mean it was later, perhaps even in the small hours, or else they were somewhere very remote.
However, she could hear faint breathing next to her. From the regular sound of it, Brynn was going to guess that Derek was by her side, trapped just the same way she was. Both of them had been brought here by the killer. This was a similar setup to the last one, she guessed, although she had no idea what the trap would be, if there even was one.
The smell of fresh wood and an undertone of oil filled the air.
Deciding that she needed to open her eyes, Brynn did so, very slowly. The first thing she realized was that there was light in this place. It wasn’t dark. There were a couple of overhead lights nearby, though not directly above her. So, at least she’d be able to see where she was.
She opened her eyes and immediately saw the dark, constricting lattice of the net above her. It gave her a weirdly claustrophobic feeling, and it was difficult to look beyond it. She had to move her head slightly so that she could access the gaps in the thick, knotted nylon.
Derek was beside her. He was also lying face up, and as she craned her neck to see him, she thought that he looked unharmed. They'd been tied up on a large piece of wood that might perhaps have been used as a working surface or a table. The thick black cable ties around his wrists and ankles were obviously the same as what she had around her own.
They were lying in a factory. That was what this was. She could see the steel walls, and those lights were the big, industrial strip lights that might be found in a warehouse or a production center.
But what was that above her? She found it more difficult to make that out.
Brynn took a sideways look at it, then narrowed her eyes and tried from another angle.
It didn’t look familiar to her, but as she examined it in more detail, she realized what it was.
It was a huge circular saw, and it was suspended above them on a lever.
Brynn's stomach twisted in dread because she guessed that this trap was on a timer, just the same as the one at the crime scene that they'd attended. The saw would start up, and then the lever would lower, only instead of slicing through a thick piece of wood, it would end up slicing through their bodies.
Now that she was listening more closely, she could hear something else – the muffled tick of a clock.
Brynn wasn’t sure how this had been rigged, but she was sure it had been. Their would-be killer had broken into this factory or workshop, just the same as he had done with the last one. Most likely, these people had also had a camera failure for a few days beforehand.
Craning her head all the way to the right, she saw that there was a faint flashing from the power switch. That flashing hadn’t been there before. It was new. She hadn’t seen it in her vision earlier.
That must mean that the power tool setup was waking up, and it was preparing to start.
“No,” Brynn hissed. She’d always had nightmares about being trapped. She thought they went all the way back to when Maya was missing and they had found her murdered. Brynn had imagined that her sister had been grabbed and held by the killer, physically overpowered before he’d taken her life, and she’d woken up screaming in fear night after night.
Now, an even worse scenario was playing out in real life. She was trapped, and this was lethal.
The ticking stopped, and she heard a click, and then, she heard an inexorable metallic shifting of gears that told her this machinery was starting to swing into action.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“Derek!” Brynn spoke the word loudly, hearing the tension that was tautening her voice. “Derek, wake up!”
He was waking. The sedative was wearing off. Maybe he was just more susceptible to it, or else he'd drunk all his coffee. Finding it too bitter for her liking, Brynn hadn't drained the dregs, and maybe that meant she'd missed out on some of the dose.
Derek was blinking, moving his head, trying to move his legs. Through her own pounding headache, she could imagine what he was feeling.
“Brynn?” When he finally spoke, his voice was sharper than she’d expected. Either he’d gotten over the sedative far quicker than she had, or else, he’d been doing the same as she had done, assessing his situation before giving away that he’d woken. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Sore head. But we’re trapped, Derek. Look at that saw.”
Brynn jumped as another metallic click sounded, this time from right beside her. A lever was slowly starting to inch upward. She saw the gleam of light as it moved. Now that her eyes had adapted to the light, she was able to see that giant, serrated blade in even more detail. When it started spinning and it lowered, it was going to slice them in half at around the level of their midriffs.
Brynn’s stomach muscles tensed at the thought, and her muscles constricted. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead as the physical and mental tension ramped up. How on earth were they going to avoid this? How could they get out of cable ties? She drummed her feet on the table as best she could, seeing the cable ties had only a half-inch of give in them.
The table they were on was solid. A big, thick chunk of wood.
"I see the saw." Derek's voice was surprisingly calm, and hearing that lack of panic in her partner's tones allowed Brynn to pull herself back from the edge. "It's a clever trap, and we don't have much wiggle room here."
Much? They didn’t have any. The lever was inching upward, with a hydraulic hiss, and when it reached the height it needed to, Brynn guessed the next part of the mechanism would activate and power into action.
That might be the saw itself.
“I don’t know how we can get out. These cable ties are solid. The table’s solid. We need a seriously lucky break here, Derek. Do you think we should shout for help?”
“Shouting can’t hurt. Let’s both yell. Maybe someone is passing by and hears us, although it’s quiet out.”
Brynn didn’t think the killer would be around. There was no evidence that he’d stuck around at the other scene. He’d set the trap to close around the victims, and he’d left.
The previous victims had been sedated and wouldn't have been conscious when the killer had slammed that metal spike into their hearts. At any rate, there had been no sign of a struggle, and Brynn hoped they had been spared the fear. But then, Brynn realized, their captor had only intended the fear for one set of victims – herself and Derek.
This was more than just the Hephaestus murders. This was a vicious, deliberate form of revenge on Brynn and Derek for having hunted down Hades and gotten him into prison.
“Derek, if we can’t get out –” Brynn began.
She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to say. She guessed that she wanted to blurt out her feelings for him at this highly inopportune time, to confirm that if they didn’t make it out alive, she’d at least spoken the words that she’d been wanting to say for a while.
But Derek, calmly, said, “Hush, Brynn. Whatever it is, you’re going to tell me once we’re out. And I’ll hold you to that. Now, we need to figure out which way to go here. We’ve got a solid piece of wood. We’ve got cable ties. But they’re not attached to the wood. Can you see what they’re fastened to?”
Craning her neck so hard that it sent a spasm of pain through her, Brynn did her best to turn and look at how Derek was fastened, knowing that her own fastenings would be the same.
“They’re attached to a wooden frame. Not to the table itself. I guess there aren’t any gaps to run the ties through,” she gasped.
“Good,” Derek said, still in that calm voice. “I reckon that’s the weakest point. We need to focus on it, Brynn. We only need to loosen one. Either the bar holding our arms or our legs. We need to try both.”
They needed to act fast because now, the lever was making a different, harsher noise, and it was starting to move over them at an angle.
She didn't know how much time they had, but she suspected it might be no more than a couple of minutes.
“Are we ready?” Brynn gasped. “Arms first?”
“Ready,” Derek replied.
Brynn counted down. “Three, two, one, and go.”
She jerked up as hard as she could, feeling the cable ties bite wickedly into her wrists. This wasn’t an easy way to get leverage. Worse still, the wooden bar didn’t seem to be moving.
