This is for the brave men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. Politics aside, if you’re wearing the uniform in these troubled times, know that there are a lot of people who appreciate and respect what you do. Come home safe.
And, as always, for Sara Jo.
Prologue
Harley Street, London
Seven Weeks Ago
“Unless you do exactly what you’re told,” whispered a voice, “we’ll kill your wife and daughter.”
The words dug into Trevor Plympton’s brain like railroad spikes. He sat on the chair, wrists bound to the armrests with plastic pipe ties, ankles tied to the wheeled feet of the chair. A hood over his head let in no light. He was lost in a world of darkness and fear. And those words.
He could barely remember what had happened. He’d taken the elevator to the basement parking garage, clicked open the locks on his Vauxhall Astra, felt a sharp burn against the back of his neck and then nothing. When he finally woke up he was already lashed to the chair. He’d cried out in alarm, tried yelling for help.
A heavy hand belted him across the face. A savage blow, made worse by the absolute surprise of it. He couldn’t see it coming, could not even brace against it or turn away.
Then the whispering voice.
“W-what … ?” It was the best response he could muster. Nothing made sense; the world was a confusion of disorientation, fear, and pain.
“Did you understand what I said?” asked the voice. A male voice. Was there an accent? It was hard to tell with the whisper.
“Yes,” Plympton gasped.
“Tell me what I said.”
“T-that you’d k-kill my family—”
A hand clamped onto Plympton’s crotch and squeezed with sudden and terrible strength. The pain was white-hot and immense. The grip was there and gone, as abrupt as the snap of a steel trap.
“That’s incorrect,” said the voice. “Try again.”
Plympton whimpered and then suddenly flinched, imagining another grab or blow. But there was nothing. After a handful of seconds Plympton relaxed a little.
Which was when the hand grabbed him again. Harder this time.
Plympton screamed.
“Shhhh,” cautioned the whisperer. “Or next time I’ll use pliers.”
The scream died in Plympton’s throat.
“Now,” said the whisperer, “tell me what I said.”
“You … said that …” Plympton wracked his brain for the exact words. “Unless … I did exactly what you said, you’d … kill my wife … and daughter.” The words were a tangle of fishing hooks in his throat. Ugly words, it was impossible that he was saying them.
When the hand touched him again it was a gentle pat on the cheek. Even so, Plympton yelped and jumped.
“Better.” The man smoothed the hood over Plympton’s cheek.
“W-what do you want me to do?”
“We’ll get to that. What concerns us in this minute is whether you will agree to do whatever I ask. It will be easy for you. It will be just another day at work.”
“At work?”
A million dreadful possibilities flooded Plympton’s mind.
The whisperer said, “I’m going to remove the hood because I want to show you something. If you turn your head, your family will die. If you yell or try to escape, your family will die. Do you understand me?”
“God,” Plympton said. Then, before the whisperer could punish him again, he said, “Yes.”
“There won’t be a second warning.”
“I swear.”
The whisperer placed his hand on Plympton’s head, fingers splayed like a skullcap, and then slowly curled them into a fist around a fold of the hood. He whipped it off so violently that it tore a handful of hairs from Plympton’s scalp.
Plympton almost screamed with the pain, but the warning was too present.
“Open your eyes,”
Plympton obeyed, blinking against the light. As his eyes adjusted he stared in shock and confusion.
He was in his own apartment, tied to the chair in his own office. The desk before him was neat and tidy, as he’d left it, but the computer monitor had been turned away.
Plympton could not see the man, but he could feel him. And smell him. An odd combination of scents— expensive cologne, cooked meat, gasoline, and testosterone. The overall effect was of something large and powerful and wrong behind him, and with a jolt Plympton realized that he’d started to think of his captor as a thing rather than a person. A force.
“I want you to look at some pretty pictures,” the stranger whispered.
The man’s hand came into Plympton’s peripheral vision. Thick forearm, thick wrist, black leather glove. The man laid a photograph down on the desk. The hand vanished and returned with a second picture, and a third, and more until there were six four-by-six-inch photos on the green desk blotter. What Plympton saw in those pictures instantly separated him from the pain that still hummed in his nerve endings.
Each picture was of a different woman or teenage girl. Three women, three girls. All nude. All dead. The unrelenting clarity of the photos revealed everything that had been done to them. Plympton’s mind rebelled against even naming the separate atrocities. To inventory such deliberate savagery was to admit that he could embrace the knowledge, that his mind could understand them, and that would be like admitting kinship to the devil himself. It would break Plympton and he knew it, so he forced his eyes not to see, his mind not to record. He prayed with every fiber of his being that these things had been done to these women after they were dead.
Though … he knew that wasn’t true.
The arm reappeared and tapped each photo until it was square with the others in a neat line.
“Do you see?” the whisperer asked. “Aren’t they beautiful? My angels.”
“God … .” It was all Plympton could force past the bile in his throat.
“See this one?” The whisperer placed a finger on the corner of the third photo. One of the teenagers. “She was the same age as your daughter.”
“Please!” Plympton cried. “Please don’t hurt my daughter! For the love of God, please don’t hurt my little girl … .”
Pain exploded in Plympton’s shoulder. It was only after several gasping, inarticulate moments that he was able to understand what had just happened. The whisperer had struck Plympton on a cluster of nerves in the valley between the left trapezius and the side of his neck. It had been fast and horribly precise. The whole left side of his body seemed to catch fire and go numb at the same time.
