Pestilence

19

Ian glanced at her as she drove. She had calmed down a little, and he didn’t get the impression she was constantly searching for an escape, although that should have been her only thought. She had seen his face. She couldn’t expect to survive. Then again, for some reason, he kind of liked her.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“My name?”

“Yeah. You asked me my name. What’s your name?”

“Ian.”

“If I looked at your driver license, is that the name I’d see?” she said.

He grinned. “No. It’s not. But it might as well be.”

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“You drive me around, and you drive me around some more. Then I let you go.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He looked out the window at the commercial area they were in. Some of the office buildings bordered on being qualified as skyscrapers. “You see that building there? The tall one with the blue lighting?”

“Yeah.”

“Stop there.”

As the car pulled to a stop in front, he got out first and then waited for her by the hood of the car. She paused a moment in front of the open door. This is it, he thought. She was going to make a run for it. He slipped his hand into his suit coat. Her eyes went wide, then she shut the door and came to him.

He took her arm and led her into the building. The glass building was fifteen stories and had a nice atrium with a security guard. Gardenias and petunias in fanciful vases sat on glass and wood tables. He smiled at the security guard and squeezed Katherine’s arm, prompting her to smile and say hello. Smart girl, he thought.

He pushed the button on the elevator, and the security guard rose from his table and started over.

“Oh,” she said, “My uncle’s working late. We’re trying to convince him to come eat with us.”

“Who’s your uncle?” the guard said.

“Robert with Gem Mortgage. They’re on the seventh floor.”

The guard studied them. He rolled his eyes and returned to his desk, to whatever website he’d been looking at. When the elevator opened, they stepped in and didn’t speak until it closed again.

“How did you know that man worked here?” Ian said.

“I looked at the directory when we walked past it.”

“Hmm,” he said, impressed. “You saved that security guard’s life.”

“Rather than take five seconds and spare his life, you just wanted to kill him? Why would you do that? Don’t you care if he has a family? What if he has kids?”

“They might be better off growing up without a father.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“No.” He checked the magazine in his firearm before holstering it again. “My father was a raging alcoholic that lived to a ripe old age. Until I was sixteen years old, he would beat me and my mother a few times a week so badly we’d have to go to the emergency room. We couldn’t keep going to the same one because the cops would get involved, so eventually, we were driving two and a half hours to go to a hospital or clinic that hadn’t seen us before.” He glanced at her. “So like I said, they might be better off.”

She stared at him, holding his gaze. “You’re lying.”

He chuckled. “My parents live in Iowa and couldn’t be a nicer couple.”

“Do they know what…”

“What I do for a living? They think I’m some mid-level bureaucrat.”

She kept her eyes forward, on the doors, as the numbers on the dial above them slowly increased. She didn’t say anything until the elevator had stopped and the doors opened. When they stepped off, she said, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“Only if you don’t do as I say.”

“No, you’re going to kill me anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t have a soul.”

He stopped and looked at her. Taking up her arm again, he marched her forward.

The law firm’s name was emblazoned across double doors with frosted glass. The secretary had already gone home for the night, but a few people still remained, grinding away the nighttime hours. He opened the door and pulled Katherine through with him.

They walked past two people talking near the front desk. Ian tried checking the names on the doors but found there weren’t any, which was symptomatic of somewhere with high turnover. One man was sitting at his desk, drafting a document.

“Excuse me,” Ian said. “Where’s Mandy Hatcher’s office?”

“Um, three doors to the left, down the hall.”

“Thanks.”

“Who are you guys again?”

Ian ignored him and walked to the office. He opened the door and pulled out his pistol. The office was empty. He went back to the lawyer he’d spoken to before.

“She’s not in. Do you know where she is, by chance? I’m her brother-in-law.”

“Oh, you’re Tommy. Nice to finally meet you.”

“You too. Mandy talks about me, huh?”

“She told us about Ice Cybernetics and how you started it with Kickstarter money and all that. Very cool. Hey, I need some advice on something. If Kickstarter offers me money and then I change my mind, and I-”

“No offense, but do you have any idea where Mandy is? Sorry, it’s just I want to grab something to eat with her and catch up before I have to leave in the morning. She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Oh. Well, whenever we have to work late, her and some of the girls go down to Ah Shucks. It’s a bar and grill next door.”

“Right, I saw it coming in. Thanks for your help.”

“Hold on,” he said, standing and minimizing the browsers on his desktop. “I’ll come with. I could use a drink.”

“Sure,” Ian said.

“No,” Katherine blurted out. “No, I don’t really… I don’t know. I just want to have a quiet dinner with Mandy.”

“Um, okay.”

“Okay,” she said.

Ian walked her out and back to the elevator. “If you ever speak up again without my permission-”

“I saved you the hassle of having to kill someone in a public place. So you’re welcome.”

Ian glanced at her and then stared forward again, until they were off the elevators. They went outside, where he spotted the bar’s white canopy over a green-striped door.

Ian stepped out front as two women were walking out. He recognized one of them and quickly spun Katherine around and put his arms over her waist, pretending to be whispering to her. He slowly took out his phone and checked Mandy’s photo. The picture was perhaps a few months old, but that was the same woman.

As the women were walking down the sidewalk, two men ran up from behind. One of them smashed what looked like a small bat into the head of the other woman and then into Mandy’s jaw. They picked up Mandy and dragged her to a van parked at the curb.

Ian laughed.

“Wow, today is not her day.”

Katherine wasn’t even smiling.

“Looks like someone else had the same idea,” he said.

Ian casually strode up to the two men. One had opened the back doors to the van, and the other was holding Mandy, who was unconscious. On the inside of the van were shackles and chains.

Ian grabbed the man’s wrist and jerked it away from his body before spinning it toward him and then snapping it in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go. The man screamed, and Ian thrust the tips of his fingers into the man’s eye, popping it out of the socket. He bashed his fist into the man’s sternum which knocked him back.

The other one swung at him with the bat. Ian grabbed it with both hands on the downward motion and slammed it back into his face. He kicked down into the man’s shin and then his knee before twisting behind him and smashing his face through the van door’s window. He opened the door all the way, almost gingerly placed the man’s head inside the van, and then slammed the door, again and again and again, until blood had spattered inside the van and his brains were laying there like jelly.

“Hmm,” Ian said. He pulled out the pistol and fired into the exposed brain. “Never done that before.”

Mandy was groaning on the warm cement. Ian pointed his pistol.

“No!” Katherine shouted. “Please don’t!”

“As you wish.” He tucked away the pistol, and relief washed over her face. In one violent motion, he knelt and spun Mandy’s head almost all the way around and then twisted it backward, separating the spine from the body at C2, the spine’s weakest point. Katherine was screaming as he ran to her, grabbed her, and pulled her back to the car.