The Taken

He was shaking his head, nervous. “I don’t know, Hazel. I don’t like you alone in there.”

“I don’t think he’s here, James. I think she’s alone. He’s come up empty…”

“Is that necessarily a good sign?”

“I don’t know.” She checked her gun. It had a full clip in it. “I’m going to go. Keep an eye out.”

He didn’t protest, but she could tell he wasn’t happy. “Shoot first,” he said.

“Stay on channel six.”

She stepped out into the downpour and hunched her shoulders up. The wind drove the rain sideways and upwards into her face. She looked up and down the street for any sign of Goodman’s van, but the street was empty. Only she and Wingate had lacked the sense to stay indoors today. She crouch-ran across the street to the even-numbered side and sheltered under a silver maple. She could see a side-window now from her vantage, also lit, but there was no movement she could make out from within, not even shadows.

She crept along the east side, throwing looks back up the street and toward the unmarked. Wingate’s voice came in low from her belt. “Anything?”

“Another light, but I don’t see anyone inside. The street is clear. I’m going.”

Twenty-four, twenty-six… she was at the property line. There was a repetitive sound coming from the back of twenty-eight, like something being hammered, and her pulse rose. She could see the back corner of the house now, and she moved slowly along the wall of the neighbouring house to reveal the back of twenty-eight. There was a garden back there. No van, though. The hammering sound was louder. It was an irregular clacking noise. Wingate asked what it was and she told him it sounded like a shutter being swung back and forth in the wind.

She still wasn’t sure if the missing van was a good sign or not. She had to presume that Cameron and Goodman were in constant touch if they weren’t together: she’d have little time to roust Cameron before she made contact with her partner, and even less time if they were, in fact, together in there.

She knew the risk she was walking into a trap was high. She’d chosen not to share this with Wingate: she had to get into that house and see what was there for her own sake. She’d been led by the nose for this whole case, but this one time she felt fairly certain she’d caught the two of them out in a loose end. But not totally certain: Goodman had proven clairvoyant in these matters. The possibility that she’d go into that house and not come out alive had already occurred to her. He’d had one chance to kill her and she doubted he’d pass up a second. She crossed to the back of the neighbouring house and got a perspective on the rear of twenty-eight. As she’d thought, there was an entrance in back of the house, and a loose screen door was making the whacking noise. From this vantage, she also inspected the side of twenty-eight, but there didn’t seem to be any live surveillance: no cameras, no electronic equipment at all. She began to feel a tiny wave of hope. “Okay,” she murmured into the radio. “I’m going over.”

“I’m calling for backup.”

“Don’t,” she radioed back. “If Goodman’s on his way here from somewhere, I don’t want him encountering cruisers on his street. He’s likely to see it as a not-very-good sign. We’ll lose him.”

She ran low to the cover of the corner of twenty-eight and flattened herself against the back of the house. Now she wouldn’t be able to see the front or the street and Wingate would have to be her eyes. She knew he wouldn’t let her down. She dialled the radio volume to one and pushed herself toward the door. The screen door might act as sound cover, she realized, glad to catch even a small break, although the closer she got to the door, the more it also felt like such a loud noise could blow her cover if anyone inside got sick of listening to it. Or if it suddenly stopped.

The wind was holding the door open and then crashing it shut. She waited until it was open and tried the handle on the inner door. It was locked. She got her truncheon out of her belt and held the thick side at the ready. The screen door slammed twice and then blew open again and she got in and put the base of the club where the knob was attached to the door and delivered a single blow to the top of it with the side of her gun. She twisted out of the way to let the door slam shut and then inserted herself again and pounded the knob. The screen door smashed her in the back, and she took one more swing with the flat of the gun and the cheap knob broke off, revealing the inner workings of the lock.

She stepped back again to catch her breath and stand at attention in case anyone was able to tell the two noises apart. The explosive clapping of the screen door was like thunder in her ears, competing with the sound of her blood roaring in her head. It felt like the rain was falling through her: she was drenched. She could hear Wingate’s questioning voice trying to raise her, but she ignored him and held the screen door open with one leg as she worked an index finger into the hollow space behind the missing knob. She was able to move a metal bar within the workings of the lock and open the door. It swung in and she stepped into the dark at the top of a set of stairs. She quietly closed the door behind her and pushed the catch back into place with her finger. Dialling the walkie down to zero, she stood in the dark, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There was a faint line of light at the bottom of the stairs in front of her.

Hazel unbuttoned her jacket and took it off, leaving it on the landing as she began to descend. She leaned over and used the tail of her shirt to wipe her face, but the rainwater in her hair was sluicing down her face, carrying some residue of hairspray into her eyes. She blinked away the stinging and stood silently on the stairs, trying to hear past the door below. Someone was moving around in there, slowly shuffling. She heard a voice – Cameron’s, she thought – but couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was getting hard to breathe normally now, she was too worked up; it felt like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. Foolishly, she’d failed to check the gun when she had some light: it occurred to her now that hammering the truncheon with it might have damaged it. If the Glock didn’t work, she’d have no protection at all, and no matter how fast Wingate could run, her nagging anxiety about her life ending in this basement might come true after all. She had a flash of herself lying on the concrete and Goodman advancing on her with his whetted knife and she considered remounting the stairs and checking the mechanism. But she’d come this far, and now she could hear faint sobbing, and she decided she could do nothing but trust the gun.

She was at the door. It was heavy-duty, something put there for a reason. She doubted they could have heard the screen door slamming or the sound of her breaking the lock. When, at the station house, they’d tried to listen past the sounds of the room on the webcam, they’d heard nothing telltale: no voices from elsewhere, no sounds from outside, and this was why. She presumed this door was locked as well and thought through her options. The only thing that made sense was to kick it in and rush the room with the gun out.

She steeled herself, pushing away the haze of anxiety, and retreated two steps to put her on level with the centre of the door’s edge. She reared back, turning sideways, and as she lunged forward to kick, someone within opened the door and Hazel crashed forward, driving whoever was behind backwards and plunging into the open space. She twisted toward the wall and hit the door jamb with her face before she collapsed to the floor on her side. Joanne Cameron was screaming, Don’t! Don’t! from somewhere behind her and Hazel leapt to standing, the gun still miraculously in her hand, and lunged toward the sound of the woman’s voice, only to find Cameron cowering against the wall in a crouch, her arms folded over the top of her head. Hazel swept the gun toward her and turned, keeping the weapon in front, rotating the muzzle in a semi-circle through the room behind her, stepping to Cameron’s side to keep her in her peripheral vision. This was it, ground zero. She’d been watching this dark, evil space for ten days, wondering where on earth it could be, and now she was in it, as if she’d stepped through her computer. It felt eerie and wrong, like she was Nick Wise trapped in his box. Her back was to the bloody message, in dried, fifteen-inch letters, and the table Cameron had sat at was still in the middle of the room. The tripod with the camera was in its place, and Hazel noted the red light on the camera was blinking. It had been turned back on. A wire from the side of the camera ran down to the floor and to a hard drive in the corner.

Colin Eldwin was gone. As was Goodman.

Hazel turned to face Joanne Cameron, who had lowered her arms and was sitting, drained and docile, at the base of the wall. A fresh cut on her mouth where the door had hit her competed with a mass of welts, bruises, and gashes. Hazel looked at her sadly and brought the walkie to her mouth. “James?”

“Christ, why did you go silent?”

“I’m here. It’s only Cameron. He’s beaten the shit out of her.”

Wingate appeared in a matter of moments with the first-aid kit, and they sat Joanne Cameron in the chair and attended to her. She hadn’t said a word. Goodman had beaten her with his fists, and her mouth and cheeks were swollen. Her whole face was the colour of raw steak and a clear fluid leaked from her right temple.

Hazel looked toward the camera. “Can he see us?”