Double Cross

Chapter 116

I PULLED DOWN a narrow single lane to a small parking area in back, with room for maybe three vehicles. When we got out, I saw the black Highlander blocking the alley entrance-or exit, depending on how you looked at it.

The driver watched us from behind the wheel, looking both mysterious and threatening. I was almost certain it was a woman, but so far not everything had been as it seemed.

Bree and I moved toward the building. We found a battered green steel door, propped open with half of a brick. Inside, there was an enclosed cement stairwell. It felt a little like a Saw movie set.

“Go down the stairs,” said Tyler Bell. “Go ahead. Bite the bullet.”

An oddly brilliant strip of light showed under another door at the bottom of the stairs.

“ Bell, what’s down there?” I asked him. “Where are we going?”

He answered, “Close the door behind you when you come in. And do come in. Or else there will be a terrible accident momentarily-involving your friend.”

Bree and I looked at each other. This was the time to turn around, if any. And that wasn’t going to happen, at least not for me.

“We don’t have any choice,” Bree said. “Let’s go. We get any chance, we take it.”

I went down first.

The walls were rough cinder block, with no rail. There was a vague sulfuric smell that I could taste on the tip of my tongue. When we got to the door at the bottom of the stairs, I grabbed a rusted knob that wouldn’t turn. So I pushed instead-and it swung open.

And then -

A spotlight hit my eyes! I focused as best I could and saw it was one of several on tripod stands, illuminating every corner of an otherwise dank basement.

“There’s your boy!” said Bell.

Sampson sat tied to a chair with his hands behind his back. A band of silver tape was stretched over his eyes. When he turned toward the sound of the door, I saw the terrible gash on his face, still wet. What was worse, his blood had been used to smear the letters DCAK on the wall behind him. Lots of blood.

Two empty chairs stood to Sampson’s right, each with a coil of rope on the floor next to it.

Somebody, presumably Tyler Bell, stood off to one side. He had a video camera in one hand and a gun in the other, both pointed our way. His face was still in shadows, always the mystery man to this point. But that was going to end now, wasn’t it?

A cable snaked out of the camera, over to a sawhorse and a plank table full of equipment. I spotted a laptop, open to Bell ’s familiar home page, but with a difference. Where he’d once had an image of a static-filled television, now there was a live shot of Bree and me standing there, looking at ourselves.

Bell ’s head slowly moved from the camera viewfinder up to our faces. When he saw me watching him, he said, “Welcome to my studio.”