What Comes Next (53 page)

And then, as swiftly as the forest had seemed to entangle him, he felt it thin, as if loosening its grip on him.

Suddenly, the spaces grew wider. The ground beneath his feet firmed up. The thorns seemed to release him. Adrian looked up and saw the way out. He pushed forward, like a drowning man gasping for air as his head breaks the surface of the water.

The tree line ended, giving way to a muddy green field.

Adrian fell to his knees like a supplicant, filled with gratitude. He breathed in and out rapidly, trying to calm himself and figure out where he was.

A small, rolling rise stretched in front of him and he climbed up the side, feeling sunlight on his back. There was a faint smell of damp earth. At the top, he stopped to get his bearings. To his astonishment, below him he could see the barn and a farmhouse. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the sheaves of real estate brochures and frantically contrasted what he saw with what was depicted.

I’m here,
he thought suddenly.

His meandering battle through the forest had pushed him past the house, which lay in a small dip below him. He was facing the side of the house, almost around the back, with the barn closer to him. He was at least fifty yards away from the two buildings.

It was all open space, a muddy field that once had been home to livestock.

He didn’t ask his brother for advice.

Instead, Adrian dropped down to his knees and then lowered himself to the soft ground and started to crawl toward the place where he absolutely knew he would find the missing Jennifer.

43

Jennifer picked up the revolver, surprised at how heavy it was. She had never before held a deadly weapon in her hand and she had the mistaken idea that something murderous should be light and feathery. She knew nothing about how to handle it, how to crack open the cylinder, how to load it or thumb back the hammer. She could not tell if the safety was on or off, or whether there was one cartridge in the chambers or all six. She had seen enough television to know that probably all she had to do was point the gun at her head and keep pulling the trigger until she no longer needed to.

A part of her screamed inwardly,
Get it over with! Do it! End this now!

Her own harsh feelings made her gasp. Her hand shook slightly and she believed she should act fast because there was no telling what the man and woman might do to her if she hesitated. Somehow the equation
kill yourself so they won’t hurt you
made a curious kind of logic.

Contradictorily, she was being extremely deliberate, as if the last minutes should be played out in slow motion and she had to examine each facet of each motion:
Reach out. Grab the gun. Lift it carefully. Stop.

She felt utterly alone, although she knew she wasn’t. She knew they were close by.

A sensation of dizziness made her head reel. She found herself replaying things that had happened to her since she was stolen from the street. It was like being struck again, raped again, mocked again. At the same time, she discovered that she was filling with disjointed images from her past.

Her imagination warred within her. The problem was, every one of these memories, seemed to be retreating steadily down a tunnel so they were getting harder and harder for her to see.

It was as if
Jennifer
was finally leaving the room and Number 4 was the only person left behind.

And Number 4 had only one option remaining.

The key to go home.
That was what the woman called it.

Killing herself made by far the most sense.

She did not see or imagine there were any alternatives.

Still she hesitated. She did not understand where the combination of resiliency and reluctance came from but it remained within her, shouting, fearful, arguing, battling against the urge to end Number 4 right then. She could no longer tell which was the brave thing to do. To shoot herself or not? She hesitated because nothing was clear.

And then Jennifer did a surprising thing, which she could not have explained but which shrieked in her head as necessary and important and to do without delay.

She cautiously placed the gun on her lap and raised her hands up and began to undo the hood covering her head. She did not know it, but this had all the Hollywood romanticism of the brave spy facing the firing squad and refusing the blindfold so that he could stare death in the eye. The hood was fastened tightly, and she painstakingly struggled to untie the knots that held it in place. Some wayward thought about not going directly from one kind of darkness into another ricocheted within her. It was slow work because her hands trembled wildly.

It was Linda who first spotted what Number 4 was doing. The two of them, like virtually all their subscribers, were riveted to their monitors, watching the slow yet delicious pace of Number 4’s end. It was inevitable. It was tantalizing. The chat rooms and instant messages about the last act were filled with subscribers typing furiously about what they were watching. There was a frantic electronic din of responses. Exclamation points and italics were abundant. The words flowed like water bursting through a dam.

“Jesus!” Linda said. “If she takes that off…”

In a world dedicated to fantasy, Number 4 had inadvertently injected a reality they had to deal with. Linda had not anticipated this, and she was suddenly tossed into a sea of fear and waves of concern.

“I shouldn’t have uncuffed her hands,” Linda said angrily. “I should have been more explicit.”

Michael moved to the keyboard and grabbed a joystick. He was about to kill the main face front camera, but then he stopped.

“We can’t cheat the clients,” he said abruptly. “They are going to demand to see her face.”

All he could see was the rage that would follow if Number 4 did as they expected her to but he and Linda concealed the last act with clever camera work and oblique shot angles. “Not good,” Michael muttered. “They will want it to be absolutely clear.”

“Do we…” Linda started, but she stopped. “They got a flash when she thought she was going to escape. There might have been a second or two before the feed got switched to the behind view…”

“Yeah. And the responses were pretty clear. They hated covering up her eyes. They
wanted to see,
” Michael replied.

“But…” Linda paused a second time. She could see all the ramifications in what Michael said.

“This is a big goddamn risk,” she whispered. “If the cops ever saw this—and Michael, you know they goddamn will, sooner or later—they can freeze the image. Do an enhancement on the picture. They’ll know who they’re looking at. And that might, I don’t know how, but it might some way make them think of whom to look for.”

Michael was absolutely aware of the dangers in letting clients see who Number 4 actually was as she died. But the alternative seemed worse. All the other numbers had died more or less anonymously, their true identities concealed right through the end of the show. But both Michael and Linda were thoroughly familiar with the passion and sense of intimacy evoked in clients by Number 4. They
cared
about her. So much was at stake as Number 4 continued to struggle with the binds that held the hood in place.

“She doesn’t realize,” Linda said slowly, “she could probably just rip the thing apart. It would be faster than what she’s doing. That might be good. Visually, I mean.”

“Wait. Keep watching. She might figure it out. Stay ready. We might have to cut that main camera feed fast. I don’t want to, but we might.”

Michael kept his fingers on the right keys. Linda was at his side. He considered taping the final scene at the farmhouse, then broadcasting it later, after they had disposed of Number 4 and covered all their tracks. But he knew this would infuriate the subscribers. Safe in their own homes in front of their computer screens, they desperately wanted
to know.
And that required them
to see.
Michael felt his muscles tighten with tension.
No delays,
he thought.
We’ll just have to deal with things as they happen.
The uncertain turn energized as well as concerned him. He glanced at Linda and imagined that more or less the same thoughts were pummeling her. Then he turned back to watch Number 4 as he and Linda fastened on what they could see and what they were sending out into cyber world.

He took a deep breath.

For the first and only time in
Series #4
Michael and Linda were hesitant. It was as if the uncertainty that had trapped Number 4 throughout the show had finally caught up with the two of them. Their own confidence wavered and, also for the first time, they bent to the screen without any insight as to what was actually going to come next.

Mud caked on his clothes, covered his hands, and made the handle of his 9mm seem slippery. The rich smell of the earth filled Adrians nostrils as he snaked forward, foot by foot, heading patiently toward the farmhouse. The sun beat down above him, and he thought that, if anyone looked out of any window, even his low profile might be spotted. But he crawled forward inexorably, covering the open space as efficiently as he could, his eyes focused on his destination.

He did not stand until he reached the corner of the barn, where he was able to duck behind the wall, concealing himself from the house. He was breathing heavily, not from exertion but from the feeling that he was plunging headlong into an irrevocable fight that pitted his illness against all his failures as a husband, a father, and a brother. He wanted to turn to his ghosts and say he was sorry, but with what little sensibility he had he knew he had to keep going. They would come with him regardless of what silly apologies he made or didn’t make.

Everything within him told him that the lost Jennifer was only yards away. He wondered if any rational person would have reached that same conclusion as he crept to the edge of the barn and peered cautiously around.

He could see the back of the farmhouse. There was a single door that he guessed would lead into a kitchen. In front, at least according to his pictures, there was an old porch that once upon a time had probably seen a swing or a hammock but now was just another roof that leaked.

There was no sound. No movement.

Nothing that indicated anyone was inside.

If it weren’t for the old truck parked in front, he would have thought the place abandoned.

The doors, he knew, would be bolted and locked. He wondered whether he could use the butt of the 9mm to break in. But noise was his enemy and frontal assault… his brother had already explained that was a mistake. The idea that he would get so close only to fail frightened him.

Adrian kept inspecting the house, and then he saw what might be possible access. Off the kitchen was a set of rickety wooden steps with a banister that appeared broken. But just to the side, right above the ground level, there was a small dirt-stained window.

His own house had the same narrow single pane of glass that allowed some light to circulate into the basement.

Adrian made a calculation:
If the man and the woman who stole Jennifer are like most people, they will remember to lock the front door and the rear door and they will throw the sash locks on the living room and dining room and kitchen windows. But they won’t have remembered the basement window, I never did. Cassie never did. I can break in there.

It would take a fast sprint across open yard. As fast as he could muster.

Alarm system?
Not in such an old house,
he lied hopefully to himself.

Run hard,
he warned. Then he would throw himself down by the foundation of the house and try to work the basement window open.

It wasn’t much of a plan. And if that didn’t work he didn’t know what he was going to do as an alternative. But he took some comfort in the idea that he’d spent his academic life not prejudging the results of experiments. He had lectured endlessly to generations of graduate students to
never anticipate the result, because then you won’t see the real meaning in what takes place and you won’t see the excitement in things unexpected.

Once he’d been a psychologist. And when he was young he’d been a runner. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and launched himself forward. Adrian ran, arms pumping wildly, toward the farmhouse and the small ground-level window.

44

They were still moving fast down a two-lane narrow back road when Mark Wolfe spotted Adrian’s car abandoned in the school bus turnout. Terri Collins braked hard when the sex offender burst out “Hey! That’s it!” but still she swept past the old Volvo and had to make a tire-squealing U-turn before pulling in next to the car.

Her legs quivered as she jumped out from behind the wheel. Too much anxiety too much forced speed; she felt a little like someone who had swerved to avoid an accident.

Wolfe lurched from the passenger seat and stood beside her.

There was no sign of Adrian. Terri approached the Volvo carefully inspecting the ground around it in much the same manner she would gingerly examine a crime scene. She peered down through the safety glass. The inside of the vehicle was cluttered with typical debris. An ancient Styrofoam coffee cup. A half-finished bottle of spring water. A newspaper that was months out of date and a
Psychology Today
that was over a year old. There were even a couple of long-neglected parking tickets. The car was unlocked and she pulled the door open and continued to check the inside, hoping an item left behind would tell her something she didn’t already know.

“Looks like he’s been and gone,” Wolfe said slowly, elongating each word. He used a fake southern accent to cut through the tension. The sex offender laughed sharply.

Terri stepped back. She turned and stared down the road. The look in her eyes asked the question
Where?

As if to answer, Wolfe trotted back to the detective’s car and seized maps and the cell phone. He did a quick survey and punched some keys before pointing down the tree-lined roadway. It was like giving directions from shadow to shadow.