Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (36 page)

I do, but he doesn’t have to be alive for them to work. I spare him that detail. “Put them on tight.”

His dog sniffs me, then never takes his eyes off me. “Tell him to go away.”

He gives it a hand signal. It backs up. Clearly, the dog senses something wrong, but he’s a herding dog. What’s he going to do? Nip at my heels? Round me up?

Vinko finally takes off his boots and puts the cuffs on, cinching himself.

“Now put your hands behind your back.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not doing—”

I shove the muzzle into the soft flesh under his chin. “I will shoot your face off and leave you sucking dust through your snot holes if you even try to say no one more time.” Then I whisper, as though I’m sharing a secret: “I’ve done it before.”

The great Steel Fist puts his hands behind his back.

I’m nimble enough to hold my gun against his spine and slip the male end of the cuff into the female. We women really can multi-task. I yank hard.

“Tell your dog to herd the goats into the barn.”

“Biko, barn.”

His voice remains impressively strong.

“Lie down.”

He obeys.

I search him thoroughly. Nothing but a little pocketknife on his key fob, but used dexterously, he could have freed himself.

The dog, to my amazement, closes the barn door after herding the goats inside. “Tell him to stay over there. He’s got creepy eyes.”

Vinko orders his dog to sit.

“Get up, Stinko.”

It’s not easy with his ankles shackled, but he’s an aging athlete and manages to bend and twist and stand without falling back down. Covered in dust, he looks like a cinnamon cruller.

“I’m going to pull the van up and you’re going to crawl in through the side door.”

But as soon as I start to drive toward him he tries to hop away. This is so ridiculous. I climb out, walk over, and grab him. “Who do you think you are? The Easter Bunny?
Get in the van
.”

He sits and rolls into the open back area. I climb in beside him and close the door. I wrap duct tape around his mouth, as I did to Emma. I leave his eyes alone, wanting him to see everything, though without windows that includes nothing of our route.

I drive back onto the road and on our way to my home pass an Audi R8 and a Porsche. Both have stunning women at the wheel. They sure love their German cars and trophy wives up here.

In less than five minutes I pull into my garage and close the door. He looks scared. I kneel beside him with his pocketknife open. The blade is little more than an inch long. “I have Emma Elkins down in my basement. She’s in a cage. You’re going to march down there and join her. If you so much as touch her,” I unzip his pants and pull out his unimpressive penis, “I will cut this nubbin off and choke you with it.”

I press the sharp little blade against the base of his manhood hard enough to leave an ample line of blood. The duct tape muffles his moan. My threats and punishments will escalate, so I can’t afford anything less than sincerity. I leave it hanging out of his pants. “Let’s keep it handy.”

After I open the side door, I swing his legs around and cut off the cuffs. “You’re going through that door and down the stairs.”

When we arrive, Emma tries to cover up with her hands.

“He’s a rapist, Emma.” The reason I made her take off her clothes is now clear to her: she’s recoiling at my news. “If you help him at all, you do it at your own peril.”

He certainly looks the part with his bloody penis hanging out of his pants.

I leave his mouth taped, his hands cuffed behind him, and push him into the cage.

Then I go back over to the cabinet and pull out a second set of steel stakes with cuffs for wrists and ankles. I set them into four more pre-set holes in the concrete.

Two down, one to go.

LANA LISTENS INTENSELY TO
the phone and follows the directions scrupulously. She has little doubt that Emma is nearby. Hayden Lake makes so much sense. Although the original, infamous group of neo-Nazis was bankrupted and forced to sell its compound, the region’s reputation had been well established and continued to attract like-minded zealots.

The phone’s voice draws her closer and closer to the town. Cairo, in the passenger seat next to her, senses her tension. The Malinois watches everything, even looking behind them. He’s shifting his weight, as if he’s getting ready to spring out of the old Toyota 4x4 van. He’s got the heart, but the legs? At his age?

The phone never leads her into the town proper. Instead, it directs her to country roads, flanked by trees that crowd the land all the way to the lakeshore. Lana notices a compass hanging from the dash like a pocket watch. She’s heading northeast, passing large properties hidden by stone walls, steel gates, and nature’s beauty, though pine beetles have been sowing the death of the forest that veils them from public view.

The phone tells her to turn “at your next right,” but doesn’t offer a street name. The voice sounds different. Lana can’t put her finger on why. Not a change in tone. Maybe cadence.

She drives onto a single-lane road. But it’s not leading her to a house, not immediately in any case. It’s taking her deeper into thick woods with dark shadows. The branches look stark, skeletal, and scratch against the van, making harsh sounds, as if they’re reaching out to grab her.

Don’t be ridiculous.

But the enveloping trees do look eerie, like woodcuts from a macabre fairy tale.

And now she sees why she was given this ragged old beast of a van: the paved road vanishes. There’s nothing ahead or to the sides but trees and bushes and rough, uneven terrain.

“Keep driving east,” the voice says.

She must be able to see me, or she’s got a locator or tracker. On the
phone or van
.

Lana moves on, as commanded. She hears forest debris crushed by the tires. The visibility is horrible. She can’t see five feet ahead. She slows to a crawl, but still drops the front of the van into a gully.

She tries to drive forward. Can’t. Backward. Can’t.

“Get out and walk east.”

She manages to open the door just enough to squeeze out. Cairo follows her, landing gingerly, but upright.

Lana carries the compass in one hand, the Glock in the other. She feels observed, though she doesn’t know how. Maybe from the racket she makes as she forces herself forward.

She smells the freshwater pungency of the lake, the dead fish that wash ashore, but can’t see water through all the foliage.

Cairo has his nose in the air. “Good boy,” she says softly.

They keep trudging east. The phone has fallen silent. Lana’s more scared than she’s ever been. Scared for Emma, scared for herself. For having to go it alone—or forgo the life of the one person she’d defy anybody to save.

The quiet around them is unnerving. She wonders what Cairo can hear with ears more sensitive than a human’s. The forest darkens, making her feel as if a giant cloak is settling over them. She feels vulnerable to Steel Fist and wants to kill the son-of-a-bitch as soon as she lays eyes on him.

“Freeze!”

She hears feedback on the phone and a different voice, realizing that it comes from both the device and a real person. Someone who must be nearby. And a woman, which surprises Lana most of all.

She looks around, trying not to appear panicky. Then she lifts her gaze and spots a camouflaged deer blind about fifteen feet up in a thickly limbed oak tree. The muzzle of a rifle is trained on her from the elevated platform.

“Kneel on the ground,” the unseen woman yells.

“Where’s Steel Fist?” Lana asks as she lowers herself. Cairo stands beside her. “Down,” she says softly to the dog; she doesn’t want him shot. He settles by her side, still staring up at the blind.

“What makes you think I’m not Steel Fist?”

“I profile online subjects. That’s what I do. He’s a man.”

“Good answer, Elkins. I’m not Steel Fist yet. But I will be.”

What the hell does that mean?

“Toss your gun and the phone onto that pile of leaves.” They’re bunched against the base of a tree. “Nowhere else.”

They land softly. No accidental discharge.
She’s thought of everything
. Lana looks again at the tree.
Maybe not
.
She has to get down from there
.

But the woman’s planned for that, too. A plastic handcuff flies out of the blind and falls in front of Lana.

“Put that around your ankles. Do it tightly. If you don’t, I’ll shoot out your legs. One way or the other, you’re not going to be running away. You choose. I’m watching you through a scope.”

Lana pauses, wishing she had a derringer to whip out the moment the woman starts down.

She picks up the cuff, feeling meek. She hates herself for that. She sees the muzzle follow her every moment, a murderous shadow.

She doesn’t want to kill you … yet.

Trying to find hope when her mind keeps racing away to the worst that can happen.

“Stand and roll up your pants. I want to see that plastic squeezing your skin.”

Lana cinches herself.

“Tighter. Don’t mess with me.”

She hears a metallic click. She pulls the cuff hard enough to hurt.

“That dog’s trained, right? I saw him obey you.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I don’t want to kill him. I’d much rather kill you, but if you can’t back him way off and have him lie down again and stay, I’ll shoot him.”

Lana hand signals Cairo into the forest. He backs away, as though grudgingly, keeping his eyes on her. “Down,” she says.

He drops to the position.

“I want you to kneel again. Hands in the air. Let them drop and I’ll belly shoot you.”

Lana goes back on her knees and raises her arms, the look of a worshipper.

Here she comes.

The woman lowers herself in a climbing harness, now wielding a handgun with her rifle strapped across her back. Her descent is as smooth as a paratrooper’s, the pistol never shifting from her target. She’s pretty, too. Her appearance doesn’t add up. Has Vinko found a woman to do his dirty work?

She sheds the harness and advances past Lana, pressing a semi-automatic to the back of her head. Lana’s skin tingles, her stomach clenching. She’s been a total fool. She’s on her knees all ready for an execution-style murder. 

But before she can beg for her life—and Emma’s—the woman tells her to put her hands behind her back.

Lana’s relieved, for surely she wouldn’t bother to cuff her if she were about to bury a bullet in her brain.

The cuffs tighten on her wrists, then the woman comes around to help her stand. She has flawless skin. Youthful. She looks familiar. “I know you,” Lana says. “Where do I know you from?”

“It’ll come to you,” she replies. “Don’t move.”

She gets behind Lana and cuts off the ankle cuffs. “Walk in front of me. Don’t do anything stupid. And if that dog breaks your command, he’s dead.”

Lana walks through the forest, trying to see everything around her, to remember trees that have fallen or tilt precariously so she can find her way back to the van, if she can escape with Emma. She searches so intently she spots tiny cameras mounted in the trees. A dozen of them at least.

“Are you going live with this?”

“Not yet. But I’m documenting everything so the world will see exactly what happens here.”

“Isn’t that stupid? Documenting your own crimes?” Wanting to get a rise out of her, some hint of who she is.

“Not in the world I come from.”

The world I come from?
Lana’s heard those very words before.
Who
is she?
What world would celebrate this?

Islamist radicals, yes. Russian oligarchs, indeed. North Koreans, them, too. Lana could go on with her list of people who want her dead. The successes she’s known, both in cyberspace and in ferocious combat, have created enemies around the world. And to think some stupid neo-Nazi and his gal Friday, or whoever she is, have caught up with her.

They find your weak spot, the way you love your kid, and they control you.

The woman nudges her with the gun, accelerating their pace. Within minutes they come to a bungalow. Lana still can’t see the lake. The woman opens the back door and tells her to go down to the basement. It’s lit, and the moment she descends Emma yells, “Mom!”

Her daughter stands clinging to the bars of a cage, naked. A man whose hands are cuffed behind his back and whose mouth is duct taped looks over, too.

Oh
,
God
. His bloodied penis hangs from his fly.

Lana has never seen this much fear on her child’s face. Her mother has come not in rescue but as a prisoner, too. The woman opens the cage, telling Emma to stay back. The man simply stares. If possible, he’s even more frightened than Em.

Lana notices metal posts sunk into the floor with snap clamps attacked to each one. The next second brings an even more wrenching sight: chainsaw.

Pushed from behind, Lana stumbles into the cage. Emma, who remains unbound, catches her. She holds her mother, hugging her fiercely, crying loudly.

“That’s the great Steel Fist,” the woman says over Emma’s sobs. “His name is Vinko Horvat. Okay, Stinko, you’re coming out.”