Taken (15 page)

A
pproaching the exit for Fairfax, Cutter considers checking out Mom again. The delectable Mrs. Bickford. He knows where she’s holed up—the seedy motel on the circle, room 227, round the back—but decides there’s nothing to be gained by another drive-by, not at this time. Not with her uncanny ability to recognize him from a distance. Maybe later, if he needs to give her a tweak, or access the danger from the tall, bearded man who escorted her to Queens. Law enforcement of some sort. According to Vargas, a private investigator—the feds still assuming the position, thumbs up their butts. Which won’t last forever, they’ll eventually start putting things together. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut, given time. He knows this, and it doesn’t worry him. By the time the feds piece it all together, if ever they do, the deed will be done. Mission accomplished.

Cutter keeps the big SUV in the travel lane, with cruise control set just below the speed limit. Mr. Careful. Joe Commuter. Left arm cocked out the side, right hand firmly on the wheel, the very picture of a relaxed motorist. If travel isn’t too clotted in New Haven, he’ll be at his destination in less than an hour. Have to ditch the stolen wheels soon, tonight perhaps. Let Hinks take care of it, while Cutter concentrates on the next move.

Lyla floats into his thoughts, with her sad, mournful, beautiful eyes and her endless pleading. Where’s Jesse? She knows the answer to that one. The facts are buried deep in her addled mind, but she can’t accept it, so she invents her own reality. Maybe the increased dose of medication will help, maybe not. Nothing Cutter can do about it at the moment.

What have you done to our son?

The only tune she knows, poor thing. Cutter’s in charge of her world, has been for years, so anything bad that happens must be his fault. That’s her fractured logic. So if something happens to Jesse, it must be his fault, as if he’s responsible for every bad thing in the world. Nevertheless, if he can get their son back home, safe and healthy, maybe her condition will improve. It’s happened before, cycling in and out of sanity, but she’s never had to deal with a trauma like this before. The giant black hole of
Jesse gone,
sucking her sanity away.

He can fix it, though. He can make it happen.

My husband is a liar. He lies and lies and lies.

Unfortunately true. But only when necessary. Only when deception is part of the plan, the method.

A jackknifed truck on I-95 slows him down to a crawl for three long miles, makes him almost an hour late, and by the time he gets to the boat shed the shit has hit the fan.

Wald is out in the yard, dressed in his white painter’s overalls, sucking on a cigarette and looking extremely agitated. Swings around as the Explorer enters, quick marches to where Cutter parks, his bland features contorted with anger.

“Fucking brat!” he barks, flinging the cigarette to the ground.

Right away Cutter notices the spot of blood on the sleeve of Wald’s overalls. Makes him want to grab the man and slam him up against the Explorer, but Cutter forces calm upon himself. No sudden moves. The normally obedient Wald, whose intelligence is barely dull normal, is unpredictable and prone to irrational violence when angry.

“What happened?” Cutter asks as they make for the shed.

“Fucking kid broke Hinks’s nose,” Wald explains.

Rather than quiz him on the details, Cutter waits until they’re inside the shed, out of sight.

The shed. To all appearances a modest boat-repair facility, complete with a crappy, keel-rotten old Chris Craft that came with the lease. Their excuse for renting the shed, to restore the ratty boat to its classic condition. Six-month restoration, supposedly. Shed owner happy to have the lease paid in advance, doubtful that the project could be finished in a mere six months.
Guys spend years on boats like this,
he’d warned Cutter.
Every time you take something off to fix, you find another thing needs fixing.

However long it takes,
Cutter had said.
This little sweetheart means everything to me,
he’d said, gazing with love-struck reverence at the sagging plywood hull.
She’s all I think about,
he had added.
What she’ll look like when we’re done. I even dream about her, isn’t that weird?

Shed owner didn’t think it was weird, a man dreaming about a boat.

As per Cutter’s instructions, the air compressor is on. The idea being that it will mask any sounds that came from the soundproof enclosure. High-pitched screams and whatnot.

Hinks crouches by the watercooler, a wet rag pressed to his face.

“—ucking kih oke my node,” Hinks manages, scowling behind the rag. Blood spatter on the front of his overalls, on the rag, everywhere.

“Where is he?”

Hinks nods at the padlocked door of the enclosure.

“Is he okay?” Cutter asks.

“Ooh the uck airs!” Hinks says through the rag. “Ill the ittle ucker, all I care.”

“Wald?”

Wald shrugs, his eyes shifting away. “He’ll survive.”

“He’ll survive?” Cutter says. Feeling his blood pressure spike. Wanting to coldcock both the morons, but keeping the impulse in check. “What happened, exactly?”

Hinks grimaces, spits a wad of clotted blood on the floor. “Hit me wid a roar,” he says.

“Kid hit him with a drawer,” Wald explains. “That dresser? He dragged it to the door, stood up on it and whacked Hinks with the empty drawer when he came through the door.”

“The inner door?”

“Of course the inside door. Hinks locked the outer door like you said. Otherwise the brat would have escaped and I’d have had to shoot him or something.”

Cutter stares at him. Under no circumstances is the boy to be harmed. Standing orders. Injured or dead, he’s worthless to the enterprise.

“Just an expression,” Wald says, picking at his teeth. A nervous habit indicating deception on his part.

“So you didn’t shoot him.”

“Nope. He’s unshot.”

Unshot. An expression Wald used in the field, usually when he’d beaten a civilian nearly to death.
Don’t look at me, the fucking rag head is unshot! Sir!

“You beat him?” Cutter asks, very calm.

“No way.”

“So he’s untouched? I go in there, I’ll find him untouched?”

Wald stares right back, eyes cold. He shrugs. “Pretty much,” he says. “Little smack on the nose. Like you’d smack a puppy. For what he did to Hinks.”

“Hinks? Is that what happened?”

Hinks has his eyes closed. He seems to be inhaling the bloody rag. “’Eed a ’octor. My node.”

“I’ll fix your nose, Hinks. After I check on the boy.” He turns to Wald. “Keys.”

“What?”

“Give me the keys, Wald.”

“Cap, are you pissed or something?”

“I’m handling the situation. Give me the keys.”

“’Cause it was like a reaction thing,” Wald says in his not-my-fault, never-did-a-thing voice. “I see Hinks all bleeding and everything, I see the kid trying to sneak by him, make a run for it. Which if the outer door hadn’t been padlocked—following your orders to a t, sir—like I say, if it hadn’t been locked, the kid was out of here.”

Wald in his excuse-generating mode, spewing effluent like a broken sewer pipe.

“Keys,” Cutter demands, holding out his hand.

“So, Cap, it was like a reaction thing, okay? I see the kid, I see Hinks all bloody, I give the kid a little smack. So he can’t escape or nothing. That’s all. We had to keep him in control, right? I grab him by the arm or something, it might have been worse. Could have dislocated his shoulder. Which I did not do. Never grabbed his arm or nothing. Always thinking, Cap. Even when it’s a light-speed deal. Smack on the nose, it hurts. Like it hurts a puppy. But no lasting damage.”

Reluctantly, Wald slips a hand in his overalls pocket, produces the key ring. Two keys for two padlocks. Hands it to Cutter.

“Captain? Just to be totally honest? Before you go in there? Maybe I yelled a little. To make him, you know, docile.”

“I’ll check him out,” Cutter says, starting for the padlocked outer door.

Wald puts his hand on Cutter’s right forearm. Cutter looks down at the offending hand. Wald hastily removes it.

“Thing is,” Wald says, “I told him we were coming back to kill him.”

“You said that?”

“I told him to say his prayers.”

“You told him to say his prayers.”

“Right. So what I’m saying, you go in there, he might think you’re going to kill him. Just so you know.”

“Just so I know.”

“It was a reaction thing, Captain. Are we clear? I did no permanent damage. One little smack.”

“Fine,” says Cutter.

“’Octor,” Hinks mumbles. Staggers to his feet with raccoon eyes. “Node,” he says into the rag.

“Be right back,” says Cutter.

He unlocks the padlock, slips it free of the hasp and opens the door to the small passageway. A passageway constructed to both hide the enclosure and provide a backup door should the first one be breached.

Cutter listens, ears attuned for sounds of life. Hears nothing. The passageway is illuminated by a single fluorescent tube. Blood trails are pretty obvious. Spatter from Hinks’s leaky nose heading for the outer door. Spatter from the boy leading to the inner door. The boy’s blood trail looks wrong. Wobbly somehow. He’s not walking, he’s being carried. By Wald presumably.

Palm-smear on the inner door, has to be Wald.

Blood on the padlock, too.

Blood everywhere in the passageway. More blood than can possibly come from one adult nose.

Little smack,
Wald said,
like you’d give a puppy.

We’ll see, Cutter is thinking. His icy composure and self-control a bulwark against the dark possibilities. It had been a simple assignment. Two grown men to watch over one eleven-year-old boy. Trained soldiers, special forces no less, with beaucoup experience in dicey, difficult operations. And they had fucked up at the very first opportunity.

Cutter decides he’ll deal with disciplining the troops after he’s dealt with whatever awaits him in the enclosure. First things first.

A fuckup. A bloody damn fuckup.

Deal,
he urges himself. His fingers tremble slightly as he inserts the key in the second padlock. With an effort of will, he calms the trembling. Takes a breath, waits three heartbeats, and then slips the lock off the hasp and pushes on the door.

Jams before it swings wide. Something on the floor, in the way of the door. Cutter forces the door open.

Just beyond the door, blocking it, lie the remains of the splintered dresser. Cheap particleboard and Formica. Evidently stomped by Wald in his fury. Using the edge of his foot, Cutter clears the debris away, then locks the door behind him. As much to prevent Wald and Hinks from entering as to prevent a possible escape from the enclosure.

Cutter sniffs. Strong odor of urine and feces.

The enclosure is quite small, ten feet by ten feet. Enough room for a mattress, a potty-chair, a small, two-drawer dresser with a TV on top. The dresser smashed to bits, of course, and shards of glass underfoot means the TV has been similarly destroyed. Sizable dent on the wall where Wald hurled the television. Must have been in full rampage, young Wald. Savoring that sweet adrenaline surge. Stomps the offending dresser, trashes the TV, tips over the potty-chair—and that explains the stink of piss and shit. Although not the odor of fear, very distinct to Cutter, who has smelled it many times, under various circumstances. Sometimes his own fear, more often someone else’s fear. Distinctive odor that makes the air feel sharp, crystalline, dangerous.

Smacked him like a puppy
.

“Tomas?” Cutter says gently.

He’s aware of the lump under the mattress. As if Wald tried to cover his mess. Out of sight, out of mind. Cutter takes a deep breath, reaches down, flips over the mattress.

The boy, hiding his bloody face, trying to scuttle back under the mattress. Nowhere else to hide. Moving and therefore alive. Cutter sighs, plops himself down on the mattress, hugging his knees. No ski mask today. Mask time is over.

“Tomas? My name is Steve, Steve Cutter. Come here, I want to see how badly they hurt you.”

The boy has made it to a corner of the room, arms covering his head. Not sobbing or crying. Not saying a word. Waiting.

“Tomas, I know that one of the men threatened to kill you. He won’t. I won’t let him hurt you again.”

The boy is frozen against the wall, head and face averted. Cutter notes the white patches on the boy’s bloody knuckles. Tension. Fear.

“I’m sorry this happened, Tomas. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But you’re safe now. Let me see what he did to you. Assess the damage.”

Cutter gets up from the mattress, edges slowly to the corner. No movement from the boy. Waiting.

Cutter crouches next to him. Smells the fear exuding from his young skin. Reaches out, strokes the boy’s matted hair.

A small fist smacks him in the jaw. Not enough to loosen his teeth, but a pretty strong punch.

“Got me good,” says Cutter, touching his lip. “Go on, take another punch. I won’t hit you. Free punch, kid, now’s your chance.”

The small fist connects again, not as hard this time, and Cutter grunts. “Ow,” he says. “Let’s stop hitting, shall we? Let me see your face.”

Small brown eye peeking through fingers. The boy would kill him if he knew how, that’s what his eyes reveal. Cutter closes his hands over the boy’s fists, pulls them away from the hidden face.

“Took a pretty good shot to the nose,” Cutter says. “Might be broken. I can fix that, once the bleeding stops.”

The boy jerks his head away, turns it to the wall, defiant.

“I’m going away for a while. Ten, fifteen minutes. Then I’ll be back with warm water and soap. Clean you up. Check you out. Fix what needs fixing.”

“Fuck you,” says the boy, speaking to the wall.

“That guy you hit with the drawer? You fucked him up good. He deserved it. You know why he deserved it? Because he’s a dumb asshole.”

“You’re an asshole,” the boy says. Turns to look at him, meeting his eyes. Showing his courage, his strength, his defiance.