The Hunted (17 page)

She had just zipped her flight bag when she heard the knock on her back door. “Just a minute, Nick,” she called out. She bounded into the kitchen and grabbed the handles on her bag.

“All you got to do is call, and I’ll be there, oh yes I will,” Lauren sang as she made her way to the door. But her throat tightened the second she opened it and saw a man with panty hose stretched across his face. The scream was there, but it was caught somewhere in her constricted throat and never made it out of her mouth. She reached for the gold-plated key around her neck and backed away, wishing her gun were within reach.
Daddy. Intruders.
She was frozen, consumed by the memory, as the man grabbed her by the arms.

“I hope you liked the flowered sheets,” he said in a deep, cold voice.

Lauren bolted upright. She was still dream-drunk, her heart pounding from the horrible nightmare. The noise she had heard was a thump, nothing loud, more like a muted thud, as if someone had dropped a sack of potatoes on the carpet. She sighed relief that it was only a dream, thankful something had awoken her. The LED clock on Michael’s night table across the bed glowed 2:47 A. M.

Lauren reached for the small switch on the lamp and gave the dial a flick with her finger. But the room remained dark.

A foul-smelling cloth was suddenly shoved up against her nose and mouth. Lauren wind milled her arms, grabbing on to something or someone—an arm or a leg. She felt a painful pinprick in her thigh, then her strength began melting away.

“Nick,” she struggled to shout. But as she lost consciousness, she wasn’t sure if she had actually yelled it aloud, or if it had been a benign utterance in her mind.

Everything was black.

Now, as she was slowly gaining some form of groggy consciousness, she tried to gain her bearings. A minute passed before she became somewhat aware of her surroundings. She appeared to be lying in a car, blindfolded, her shoes removed. Hands and ankles bound. Goose bumps had risen all over her body and she was shaking. It was freezing, and she had a pounding headache.

As Lauren lay there, the blackness of her world descended on her. Amid a stale humidity inside the vehicle, a clamping pressure tightened her chest. Her throat was closing down on her and her heart rate was increasing.

Lauren forced herself to relax. She knew she mustn’t succumb to the fear, to the negative thinking that could plunge her into a panic attack so severe that it would render her completely helpless.

She felt the vehicle rocking from side to side due to rough terrain, movement she recognized from the time she and Michael had taken their neighbor’s four-by-four to the back roads in Tahoe. It was part of her therapy at the time, an attempt to take her out of her “safe places”—home and work—and help her confront her fears: unknown, open spaces. She remembered that weekend well; it was the first time she had been out of Placerville since she had stopped her antidepressants.

As the car jolted hard to one side, she used the momentum to help push herself up with her elbow into an erect posture. It didn’t help much other than to give her some sense of control over her body. But sitting there, she became aware of the feel of the seat, the way her knees were bent and the bounce of the ride. It felt as if she was inside some kind of pickup or sport utility vehicle.

Suddenly, the truck lurched to a stop. The gearshift slid into PARK and the engine cut off. The front door slammed, and the rear door to her left—no, the right—opened as she felt a rush of cold air snake around her bare feet.

“Let’s go.” The voice was male, deep and matter-of-fact.

“Who are you?” Lauren’s speech was still somewhat slurred from the drugs she had been injected with. “What do you want from me?”

Her abductor did not answer. Instead, he yanked her out of the rear seat with rough, calloused hands. She fell from the vehicle, a distance that confirmed her impression that it was an SUV of some kind. But the fresh air felt good. No walls, no confining spaces.

The man pulled her up and fastened what felt like a collar around her neck. He pulled her along, leading her like a dog, across freezing, crunching ground cover.
Snow.

The duct tape binding her ankles made it impossible for her to walk. She had to hop awkwardly, her bare feet slipping on the sharp, icy snow. Several times she went down—and each time she fell, he yanked on the collar until she righted herself, only to stumble and fall again.

“It’s hard to breathe,” she gasped, her voice as raspy as sandpaper. “You’re choking me.”

After traversing what seemed like thirty or forty feet, she was pushed up onto what felt like steps and into a cold, damp enclosure. When her feet thumped against the dry wooden flooring of the interior, she realized how wet and numb they were.

Lauren heard the strike of a match and smelled the sulfur as it wafted past her nose.

“Down!” he said, sticking his foot in front of her ankles and throwing her to the ground. She went down hard, unable to break her fall because of her bound arms. Her face slammed against the floor.

“Please, don’t—”

Her captor shoved his knee into the small of her back, then grabbed the leg of her flannel pajamas. She heard a metallic ping behind her.

“Since you can’t see, let me narrate for you. I’ve got a knife in my hand. A big, sharp knife.” He pulled up on her pant leg and in a swift, almost practiced fashion, cut away the lower portion of the material, about midcalf. First the left, then the right.

He pressed the knife up against the back of her neck. With a quick slice, he cut away the nylon collar, then removed his knee from her back and stood, grabbing her by the arm and lifting up her entire body in one motion, like a rag doll.

He threw her down onto a hard, wooden chair. He grabbed an end of the duct tape encircling her legs and gave a quick, hard yank, unwinding the bindings with one hand while keeping a firm grip on her ankle with the other. “Move, and I’ll hurt you. Very badly.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked. “Please tell me—”

Her captor grabbed her wrists, ripped off the tape, then stretched her hands back behind the seat. As he held her forearms behind her, he wound coarse, thick rope around her wrists. He circled each set of limbs several times, buttressing and knotting the bindings in an unusual manner. Her throat tightened again and she whimpered.

The man now turned his attention to her ankles. She heard the sound of the switchblade being unfurled again. He pressed the cold metal knife blade against her skin. “A reminder. If you don’t move, I won’t cut you.”

Lauren kept her body still—not that she could move anything other than her legs. A swift kick, she thought, and she might be able to disable him long enough to escape. But with the blindfold on, she could miss him entirely, in which case he could become enraged. With a knife in his hands, she didn’t want to take the risk. But what was the alternative? This might be her only chance. Before she finished thinking it out, her abductor began winding the coarse rope around her ankles, fastening each one to a leg of the chair. He pulled and tightened the binding in the same manner in which he had tied her wrists together. Just then, he paused—and she felt a quick, sharp slice across her right ankle. She screamed, and her captor laughed.

“I didn’t move, I didn’t move!” she cried.

“No. No, you didn’t.”

“You said you wouldn’t cut me if I didn’t move.”

Another laugh. “Guess you can’t trust me after all.” After a pause, he added, “Remember that.”

Lauren felt the warm blood trickle down the chilled skin of her foot. She bit her lip and tried to remain in control. But her mind was racing. Was he some deranged rapist? A serial killer? Was he the one who had been stalking her?

He tightened the ropes around her ankles and strapped a similar binding around her chest and arms, both above and below her breasts. Lastly, he fastened a ligature around her neck, but this binding he left loose. That he had put it there disturbed her; everything he did seemed to have a purpose.

“What’s this?” he asked, grabbing her gold necklace.

“It’s something my father gave me when I was a child.” Her voice was tight and uneven.

He yanked hard and the chain popped off her neck.

“Please, don’t take it. Please...”

He did not answer her. Again, she attempted to block thoughts of panic, instead trying to find something to focus on. His breathing grabbed her attention: a steady, though rapid and shallow wheezing—it reminded her of a patient she had once treated.

“There,” he finally said. “A masterpiece. I take a great deal of pride in my work, you know.” His voice had a deep resonant quality to it, with a slight hoarseness. The more he talked to her, the better. She realized that the only weapon she had was her mind... her expertise in dealing with all sorts of psychopathologies. She was a therapist, and in front of her was a person in need of help.
A patient.
She told herself that this was the only way out, the only way she could simultaneously keep herself from losing control—and perhaps defeat her captor. Her only means of escape.

He stood behind her now, his breathing still rapid and shallow. He pulled down on something behind her head—the blindfold—and removed it.

The room was dimly lit. A broad, stout candle perhaps six inches in height sat on a small metal stand in the far corner of the room, flickering wildly from the draft that wormed its way through the slats of what appeared to be a large shed or cabin of some sort. It was no more than twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet wide, and cobwebs clung everywhere.

Lauren tried to focus her eyes, but because she’d been blindfolded for so long, her vision was blurred. Where was he? Still behind her? What was he doing? Get him to talk.

“Thank you for taking that off. Lovely place you have here.” She decided to try humor, to gauge the man’s response.

“Isn’t it? A friend of mine... found it. He said the owner didn’t want to stick around for the winter.” He laughed, a haunting, malignant outburst.

A shiver jolted her body.

“The ropes hurt. Would you mind loosening them, please?” Again, an attempt to communicate. The more he spoke to her, the greater the likelihood of developing some type of psychological profile of him; it wasn’t a gun or a knife, but it might give her a weapon of a different sort.

The man stepped around the chair and stood in front of her. With the dim lighting and the candle behind him, she was unable to see his face. From what she could tell, he had a fairly long beard and a knit cap on. “You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

Lauren looked at the man, her heart beginning to pound against her chest.

Her vision began to sharpen; his vacant eyes were now barely visible to her. From what she could see, they were large, as if on fire. He moved slowly to his right, to the left of the chair. Lauren’s gaze followed him as the flickering candlelight began to ease across his face.

“You were at the Neighborhood Watch meeting, you were staring at me in the back. You—you were the one in my house, weren’t you?”

“The light begins to shine, I see. But not brightly enough. Here, let me give you a little more help. Let’s see if the sun will rise. If not, I’ll be terribly, terribly disappointed.”

He reached up and grabbed the long hair of his beard and pulled it away from his skin. He removed the knit cap and slipped on a pair of large, rectangular-rimmed, rose-tinted glasses.

“Just how much does the rope hurt,
Gina?
” he whispered.

Lauren’s voice was a mere squeak as tears poured from her eyes. “Oh, my God.”

“I see you recognize me, Dr. Chambers. Very good. Very good. I have to say that your hypnosis skills are exceptional.” He tilted his head slightly, as if he were studying her. “I recorded the whole session. And, just for the record, my torture fantasies are real, Doctor.” He paused. “Of course, my name isn’t Steven. But you know that by now, don’t you?”

He smiled, then jumped forward and shoved his grimy face into hers. “You,” he whispered in her ear. “You are my fantasy tonight, Dr. Chambers.”

The wall of ventilation fans roared loudly as Jonathan Waller pressed a button to the left of shooting booth number 13 at the FBI Academy’s indoor range. Harper Payne—now operating under the cover of Special Agent Richard Thompson until the start of the Scarponi trial—pressed the magazine release button on his Glock, then watched as the cardboard bottle target rolled toward them.

“Nice shooting,” Waller said as he unhooked the target. “Nearly every round in the kill zone. Only two strays outside the bottle.”

“I thought I nailed every shot.”

“You shot fifty rounds and missed two, Harp. That’s a ninety-six. You only need eighty to qualify. Combined with what you did this morning on the pistol qualification course, you’re shooting for top-of-the-class honors.”

“Mind if I shoot another few magazines?”

Waller smiled. “Get this through your thick head: you did great. A whole lot better than I expected. It’s not like riding a bicycle. I mean, you never forget the skills, but unless you shoot regularly, you get rusty, lose your edge. But you’re as sharp as you were six years ago. It doesn’t look like you missed a beat.”

They proceeded into the firearms cleaning room, which was lined with wall posters displaying exploded schematics of guns in the FBI arsenal. Squeeze bottles with solvents and lightweight lubricating oil sat on metal tables beside stacks of gauze pads, wire brushes, and cotton swabs. After the instructor reviewed the Glock’s cleaning protocol with them, Payne checked his weapon in the gun vault across the hall.

“What’s on the agenda now, coach?”

“Now,” Waller said, “we take a stroll into town.”

“Town?”

They walked outside and followed Hogan’s Alley Street, a paved walkway that cut through the densely wooded Academy grounds. Up a hill was a blue phosphorescent posting that read

HOGAN’S ALLEY
RESTRICTED AREA

They continued walking and passed another series of signs that were nailed into one of the trees on the left side of the path. They read: