An Evil Mind (41 page)

With the room now under its own light, Hunter and Taylor could finally see the entire picture.

Madeleine was indeed naked, her hands were surely tied to each other behind the chair’s backrest. Her feet were tied to the chair’s legs.

As her eyes at last registered people at the other end of the corridor, she started shaking. Her breathing came in little gasps, as if there weren’t enough oxygen in the room.

‘Madeleine,’ Hunter said, reading the first signs of acute panic on her. He knew she’d been conditioned. She’d been tortured and scared for so long that her immediate psychological response to seeing anyone down in that hellhole was to flood her body with terrifying fear. Right now, to her, everyone was a threat, because everyone she’d ever met down there had tortured her.

‘Listen to me, honey.’ Hunter’s voice was as calm and as warm as he could make it sound. ‘My name is Robert Hunter, and I’m with the FBI. We’re here to help you. Stay calm and we’ll get you out of here, OK?’

Hunter felt so useless saying those words. He wanted to go to Madeleine, free her hands and feet, get her out of that fallout shelter, and reassure her that she was safe, that the nightmare was now over, that no one would hurt her anymore. But he couldn’t do any of that. All he could do was throw empty words traveling down that corridor, and hope that was enough to keep Madeleine from losing control.

Madeleine’s lips moved again; again, the sound of her words weren’t strong enough to reach anyone’s ears in the control room. But Hunter had no problem reading her lips.

‘
Please help me . . .
’

Hunter quickly peeked at Ghost. He was standing by the control console, his weapon firmly in his grip, his stare burning a hole in the back of Taylor’s head. Lucien was standing just a step to his left, but his attention seemed to be everywhere – nothing would escape him. If Hunter tried anything, he’d be dead.

Lucien nodded at Ghost, who flicked a different switch on the control console. The door to the room Madeleine was in slammed shut, no doubt sending even more fear snowballing into every molecule in her body.

Reflexively, Taylor turned to face Lucien and Ghost. ‘No. Please, no.’

The suddenness of her movement caught Ghost by surprise, almost tipping him over the edge, his arm tensing even further and his finger half-squeezing the trigger on his gun.

‘You better stay where you are, bitch.’

‘Please,’ Taylor said, her hands up in a surrender gesture. ‘Shutting the door on her will make her panic even more.’

Lucien nodded in a carefree way. ‘Yes, I know.’

Anger radiated from Taylor. ‘You sonofabitch.’

‘Let her go, Lucien,’ Hunter said. ‘Let Madeleine go. You don’t need her anymore. You don’t need to take her life. She means nothing to you. Take me and let her go. Let Courtney take Madeleine out of here, and take me.’

‘You dumb fuck,’ Ghost said. His gun was still aimed at Taylor. ‘Reality check, big guy – we already have you, and the whore inside the room, and the pretty FBI bitch with the pretty toes here.’ He blew Taylor a kiss while rubbing his groin. ‘Soon you’ll be all mine, bitch. And I’ll make you scream. You can bet on that.’

Taylor’s self-control completely escaped her.

‘Fuck you, you tiny pencil-dick ugly fuck.’

Maybe it was Taylor’s words, or maybe Ghost had just had enough of this game, but the overload switch in his head flicked.

‘No,’ he said, with so much anger it almost drooled out of his mouth. ‘Fuck you, you stupid whore.’ He squeezed the trigger on his gun.

Ninety-Eight

FBI Academy – Quantico, Virginia.

Forty-five minutes earlier.

It didn’t take the FBI long to get in contact with Joshua Foster, the air traffic controller at Berlin’s municipal airport. The call was immediately transferred to Director Kennedy in the Operations Room.

‘Mr Foster,’ Kennedy said, switching the call to speakerphone. ‘My name is Adrian Kennedy. I’m the director of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I believe that you were in contact with one of our agents. His name is Robert Hunter. You handed him the keys to your Jeep.’

‘Ummm, that’s correct.’ Understandably, there was a nervous edge to Joshua Foster’s voice.

‘OK, Mr Foster, please listen carefully,’ Kennedy said. ‘This is very important. I understand your car was brand new.’

‘Yeah, well, I got it about two months ago.’

‘That’s great. Now did the car come equipped with a location transponder, a GPS locator, in case of theft?’

‘Actually, yes, it did.’

Kennedy’s face lit up.

‘But I don’t have the transponder tracking code with me,’ Foster said, anticipating Kennedy’s next question. ‘It’s back at my house.’

‘We don’t need it.’ The agent at the radar station took over. ‘All we need is the car’s license plate and I can find the transponder tracking code from here.’

‘Oh, OK.’ Foster gave them his Jeep’s license plate number.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Foster,’ Kennedy said. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

‘Could I ask . . . ?’ Foster tried saying, but Kennedy had already disconnected the call.

‘How long will it take you to find this tracking code,’ he asked.

‘Not long at all,’ the agent replied, already typing something into his computer.

As Kennedy waited, his cellphone rang inside his jacket pocket again. It was Special Agent Moyer, the agent in charge of the expedition sent to Lake Saltonstall in New Haven. They were looking for Karen Simpson’s remains, together with those of four other victims.

‘Director,’ the agent said, his voice firm but a little subdued, as if to show respect. ‘Sir, the information is one hundred percent legit. So far, we’ve dug out the remains of exactly five bodies.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Would you like us to carry on digging? The area here is pretty vast, and if this was the perpetrator’s preferred burial ground, who knows how many more we might find.’

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Kennedy replied. ‘You won’t find any more bodies.’ He had no doubt Lucien had told the truth. ‘Just prep the ones you found for transportation. We’ll need them here in Quantico ASAP.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘Good work, Agent Moyer,’ Kennedy said before hanging up.

‘Got the transponder tracking code,’ the agent at the radar station announced, as he entered a few more commands into his computer.

Everyone’s eyes were glued to his screen.

‘Tracking now.’

The seconds felt like minutes. Finally, the map on the agent’s screen repositioned itself to show the location of a bright, pulsating dot.

‘We’ve got the Jeep’s location,’ the agent said excitedly. A short pause. ‘And it doesn’t look like they’re moving anymore.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ Kennedy said, frowning at the screen. ‘But where the hell are they exactly?’

‘Right in the middle of absolutely nowhere, by the looks of it,’ Doctor Lambert commented.

According to the map, the Jeep was parked at the end of a nameless dirt path deep inside a dense forestland several miles from Berlin’s municipal airport.

‘We need a satellite image of the area instead of a map,’ Kennedy said.

‘Give me a second,’ the agent replied and immediately started typing again.

Two seconds later, the map on his screen was swapped for a satellite image of the area.

Everyone frowned at the screen for a moment.

‘What is this?’ Kennedy asked, pointing at what looked like a construction site not that far away from where the Jeep was parked.

The agent zoomed in on it and readjusted the resolution. ‘It looks like an old abandoned house, or building of some sort,’ he answered. ‘Or at least what’s left of it.’

‘That’s it,’ Kennedy said, ‘that’s where they are. That’s where Lucien was keeping his victim.’ He reached for his cellphone and called agent Brody inside Bird Two. They needed to land and get to that house – NOW.

Ninety-Nine

Hunter saw it before it actually happened.

He saw something explode inside Ghost’s cold eyes, as if he’d been injected with an overdose of pure anger and evil, and right then he knew Ghost had passed the point of no return. But even though he saw it, this time Hunter wasn’t able to move fast enough. He wasn’t able to get between Taylor and Ghost. Ghost’s trigger-squeezing reaction took only a split second.

As the hammer hit the firing pin in Ghost’s gun, it was like it’d activated a real-life slow-motion switch for Hunter. He practically saw the bullet leave the gun barrel, travel through the air and whizz past the right side of his face, missing it by just a fraction. In a reflex reaction, he began turning toward Taylor, but he didn’t have to. From that distance, even a novice wouldn’t have missed, and he could see in Ghost’s eyes that he was no first timer. A millisecond after the shot, he felt the warmth of splattered blood and brain matter hit the back of his neck and side of his face, as Taylor’s head exploded with the impact of the fragmenting bullet.

The air inside the room was immediately filled with the smell of cordite.

Hunter still managed to turn fast enough to see Taylor’s body be propelled backward and slam against the dappled gunmetal door, before falling to the ground. The wall behind her was immediately colored in crimson red with speckles of flesh, gray matter and blonde hair. The bullet had hit her almost perfectly right between the eyes. Due to Ghost’s diminutive height and his position in relation to Taylor, the bullet traveled in a slight upward and left-to-right angle. The damage was mind-boggling. Most of the right upper part of her head and cranium was missing, blown off by the devastating effect of the Civil Defense bullet – a special type of round designed to mushroom (like turning inside-out) and fragment on impact, sending tiny pieces in all directions.

Taylor never had a chance.

Hunter quickly turned back to face Ghost, whose aim had now moved to Hunter’s face.

‘Make a move, tough guy, c’mon, make a move, and I’ll blow your brains all over her rotting corpse.’

Hunter felt every fiber in his body go rigid with anger, and he had to use all his willpower not to lunge at Ghost. Instead he just stood there, his breathing labored, his hands shaking, but not from fear.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Ghost said. ‘Not so tough after all, are you?’

‘WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?’ Lucien shouted. He looked even more surprised than Hunter was. ‘Why the fuck did you shoot her, Ghost?’

Ghost kept his weapon trailed on Hunter. ‘Because the bitch was getting on my nerves,’ he replied in a serious but unconcerned voice. ‘You know I hate when anyone talks about me that way.’

Lucien took a step back, running a hand across his forehead.

‘The foulmouthed bitch got what she deserved.’ Ghost shrugged, as if all he’d done was throw a dart at a dartboard. ‘What does it matter anyway? They were both going to die, weren’t they? They’ve seen our faces, Lucien. You and I know that they would never walk out of here alive. And all this chit-chat bullshit was pissing me off, so I just sped things up for her.’ He nodded at Hunter. ‘And you know what? I’m just gonna do the same for him.’

Ghost’s face burned with sadistic desire, and Hunter saw the same determination of moments ago flood Ghost’s eyes.

There was no time for a reaction.

Another squeeze of the trigger.

Just like before, the bullet found its target with amazing accuracy.

One Hundred

Sky above the city of Milan, New Hampshire.

Forty minutes earlier.

Inside Bird Two, Agent Brody and his team were starting to lose hope.

Their plane had been circling the outer perimeter of Berlin’s municipal airport for several minutes now. The pilot had already told Brody that he’d need a plan of action soon. The plane had enough fuel for another thirty to thirty-five minutes of flight time, but if they weren’t landing in Berlin, they would need to land somewhere else and refuel before flying back to Quantico. That meant turning the plane around and flying to a different airport.

The nearest airport to Berlin was Gorham municipal airport – about five to ten minutes due south depending on the wind. As a precaution measure, the pilot always allowed an extra ten minutes of flight time in case of landing traffic or some other unforeseen circumstance. That left them with a maximum of another ten, maybe fifteen minutes’ circling time. After that, the pilot was turning the plane around and heading toward Gorham.

Brody had his cellphone on the table in front of him. He was staring at its dark screen as if hypnotized. When he finally checked his watch, another seven minutes had passed. Three more minutes and this operation was over. He had to call Kennedy.

As he reached for his phone, it rang.

One Hundred and One

This wasn’t the first time Hunter had stared down the barrel of a gun. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a life or death situation either, but Ghost was too far away for Hunter to be able to get to him in time, and he was too close for Hunter to be able to dive away from the bullet.

This time there was no way out.

In that split second before Ghost squeezed the trigger, all Hunter could think of was how sorry he was for not being able to protect Taylor, and for not fulfilling the promise he’d made Jessica all those years ago while he held his fiancée’s mutilated body in his arms.

Despite what he was facing, Hunter didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t even blink. He would not give Ghost the satisfaction. His gaze stayed on Ghost’s face. And that was how he was able to see his head explode.

It was a perfect shot. The bullet hit Ghost on his left temple. Its hollow-point cavity was immediately filled with fluids and tissue, forcing it to mushroom as it began traveling past the cranium wall and across Ghost’s brain, savagely ripping apart everything in its path.

The mushroom effect of a hollow-point reduces the bullet’s velocity considerably, and in most cases there will be no exit wound. The bullet will generally lodge itself within its target. But again, at such close range, the power of a .45-caliber round was more than enough to propel the bullet all the way across Ghost’s shaved head.