Viktor lowers the phone. He looks at me.
"Service corridor camera on twenty-three shows Stokes entering via the east stairwell at eight oh six with two unidentified men. He had a keycard. The suite door opens at eight oh nine." Viktor's voice is flat. Operational. The voice he uses when things have gone wrong and emotion is a luxury neither of us can afford. "They left with Theo via the service elevator."
Eight twelve. Thirty minutes ago.
"The service elevator goes to the loading dock," I say. We’re going the wrong way. I press the button to stop the elevator. "Is anyone on the loading dock?"
"Ramos was covering it. He hasn't checked in."
Viktor calls. The phone rings. And rings. And rings.
My phone buzzes in my hand. The screen lights up.
MONITOR ALERT: HOLLAND, T. — PERIMETER BREACH. SIGNAL ACTIVE. LOCATION: GROUND LEVEL, EAST SERVICE EXIT.
The elevator doors open. I run.
17. Theo
The blindfold is tight across my eyes, knotted at the back of my skull where something hard hit me and the pain is still radiating outward in slow, nauseating waves.
My hands are behind my back, zip-tied at the wrists, the plastic digging into the bones. My ankles are bound the same way. I'm on my side on a metal floor that vibrates with the engine underneath it and every bump in the road sends a jolt through my hip and shoulder.
I'm in the back of a van. The air is stale and cold and smells like diesel. There's no murmur of voices. No radio. Just the engine and the tires on asphalt and the occasional creak of the suspension when we hit a pothole.
My left ankle is bare. I felt them cut the monitor off. That's the detail that keeps replaying: the knock on the suite door, the two men I didn't recognize and one I did. Stokes’ hand over my mouth and the needle in my neck and then the floor coming up to meet me. And somewhere in the black space between consciousness and whatever this is, the cold press of a blade against my ankle and the snap of the strap releasing.
They cut it off because a tracker is a problem. That means they know what it is and they know who put it on me.
The van turns. I slide across the metal floor and my shoulder hits the wheel arch and the pain blooms bright and sick down my arm. I breathe through it.
The nausea is everywhere, in my throat, behind my eyes, low in my belly where the baby is. The baby that is five weeks old and the size of a sesame seed and doesn't know that its father is zip-tied in the back of a van going somewhere that no one will find us.
Don't think about the baby. Think about the van.
We've been moving for a long time. I was conscious for the transfer from the suite to wherever they put me in the vehicle. I think.
The drug made everything liquid and dark but I remember cold air on my face, the sound of a loading dock, the grunt of a man lifting my weight. The drive since then has been steady. Highway speed, mostly. Sixty, maybe sixty-five. Few stops. We slowed twice, possibly tolls or intersections, but the van didn't stop fully either time.
I've been counting since I became fully alert and my best estimate is fifty minutes. At highway speed, that puts us thirty to forty miles from the casino. The turns have been infrequent. We're not in a city anymore.
The van slows. The road surface changes underneath us, smooth asphalt to something rougher. Gravel, maybe, or an unpaved track. The van rocks and I slide again, bracing with my knees. The engine note drops. We're crawling now, ten miles an hour, and I can hear stones pinging off the undercarriage.
We stop.
The engine cuts out. The silence is sudden and enormous. I can hear my own breathing, my own heartbeat, the creak of the van's body settling on its suspension. Outside, there’s nothing. No traffic. No sirens. No voices.
The back doors swing open. Cold air hits me, damp, with the smell of wet earth and trees.
Wherever we are, it's rural. Two sets of rough hands grab me, hauling me out by my arms and my bare feet hit gravel and Istumble because my ankles are tied and I can't see and one of them catches me by the collar of my shirt and yanks me upright.
Nobody speaks. They half-carry, half-drag me across the gravel. Then a door. Not a house door. Something heavier, metal, the sound it makes when it opens is the low groan of a hinge that needs oil. The air changes and becomes warmer,
They push me forward. I trip on a threshold and go down hard on my knees on a concrete floor. The impact sends a shockwave through my legs into my hips. I bite down on the inside of my cheek and taste blood.
The men are behind me. I hear one of them pull something from a pocket. A knife. The plastic on my ankles gives with a snap and my feet come free. Then my wrists. The blood rushes back into my hands and the pain is white-hot, my fingers swollen and numb.
Seconds later the door slams shut. I listen but there’s nothing. I’m alone.
