He was on his knees, in a room where furniture stood covered in old sheets. There was something around his neck, something that felt like thick metal cable, tough and unyielding. The room was mostly dark, with the moonlight coming in through the window providing the only illumination.

  Dave’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light around him and he realized he was not alone. Across the room, sitting in a chair, was a figure wearing a mask. Dave’s heart rate spiked at the sight of him. His situation had been terrifying before, but somehow, the presence of someone else made it feel more real.

  “Who are you?” Dave asked, his voice hoarse.

  The figure in the mask didn’t respond at first, instead just sitting there silently. Dave tried to move, but found his hands were tied behind his back. Panic set in as he realized he was completely helpless. He was at the mercy of this person, whoever they were.

  “What do you want?” Dave asked, desperation creeping into his voice.

  He tried to stand up and managed it, barely, but his ankles were bound together, making it difficult. He couldn’t run, couldn’t fight. And there was a cable around his neck. One that seemed to lead up to a winch set above him. That cable tightened slightly, even as he looked at it, making it clear what was going to happen next.

  “This is your chance to confess what you did,” the man in the mask said, speaking at last. “They want you to confess to what you did, before you die.”

  Dave’s mind raced. Confess to what? He couldn’t think of anything he’d done that would warrant this kind of punishment. Anything anyone could do that would make it just to treat them so cruelly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he yelled.

  The masked figure didn’t react, just sat there, silent and still once again. Dave felt a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. He couldn’t keep quiet anymore, he had to try and reason with the person.

  “Please, I swear I haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve got the wrong man. If you let me go, we can forget all about this. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Haven’t done anything wrong?” the figure in the mask said. Dave could hear the anger there in his voice. There was something twisted, something insane, about that voice, so it almost didn’t sound human at all. “You worked on the WM 120. You helped to design its brakes. You knew that they weren’t safe.”

  “I thought that everything was within acceptable tolerances!” Dave said. It was what the lawyers had coached him to say. He’d said it again and again, so many times that he almost believed it.

  “You said that at one of the hearings, didn’t you?” the masked figure said. “It was what they paid you to say. It meant that people never got real justice for what happened. It means that I have to continue listening to their voices, every second of every day!”

  “Is that what this is about?” Dave asked. “Did you lose someone? I thought the brakes were safe! I swear!”

  “No you didn’t,” the figure said. “Do you think they haven’t screamed at me for your part in this?”

  “I only worked on the brakes briefly. I was just an assistant.”

  “You still deserve to die for it.” There was no give there, no hope of mercy.

  “And you’re going to kill me? You’re nothing but a murderer!”

  “An executioner,” the figure corrected him. “One who will never hurt as many people as you have. I’m not even the one who kills, not really. Unlike your victims, you get a chance. The device above you is linked to a website, where even now, the police are trying to guess your location. Maybe they’ll find you in time, and if they do, they’ll know what you did. Or maybe they’ll kill you by guessing wrong too many times while they try to find you.”

  Dave’s heart sank as the masked figure spoke, the little hope he’d had left leaching out of him. He was going to be killed, and all because of something he had no control over. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, hoping that maybe this was all just a nightmare, the result of his own troubled feelings about the court case.

  But when he opened them, the figure was still there, looming over him.

  Desperately, Dave looked at the winch and the cable, assessing them with an engineer’s mind, trying to find a way out of this. Maybe there was a way he could loosen them, so he could break free. He struggled against the bonds that held him, but they had no give in them at all.

  “They all try to escape their fate,” the man in the mask said. “They all try to dodge responsibility for what they did. It only shows their guilt.”

  Dave tried pulling against the winch, but he stopped instantly. He could feel how solid it was. A winch like that could lift a car. He wasn’t going to be able to break free that way.

  “Please,” he said, desperation creeping into his voice. “Is there anything I can do to make this right?”

  The figure shook his head. “It’s too late for that. You had your chance to do the right thing, and you didn’t take it. Now, you have to pay the price. They demand it. Can’t you hear them?”

  “Please,” Dave begged, his voice cracking. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

  “You should have thought of that before,” the figure said coldly. He turned then and left the room, slipping out of there as if Dave simply didn’t matter anymore. Or maybe he just wanted to leave Dave alone, knowing what was going to happen.

  Little by little, the cable around his neck tightened.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Amber wasn’t sure how many more guesses she dared to make.

  She’d been working on the puzzle for a while now, trying desperately to find the location where the next victim was being held, pausing between each guess, wanting to get as much information as she could from it before she typed the next letter.

  so-- -is- -ear zoo -e-i-- -earies

  Amber’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to guess another letter. How many wrong guesses had there been now? She could feel a bead of sweat on her face, knowing that even a correct guess could result in the death of the victim at this point. She took a deep breath, ready to type the next letter.

  Suddenly, Amber pushed away from the desk.

  “What are you doing?” Francesca demanded, in a harsh tone.

  “I can’t risk it. We have a lot already. We’ve guessed a lot already,” Amber said. “I can’t risk killing the victim by making another guess.”

  “We have to keep going,” Simon said. “Or we won’t get the location in time and the victim dies anyway. You know that, Amber.”

  Amber did know, but that didn’t make it any easier to do this. She was the one who had to make the guesses. She was the one with a life in her hands. She was the one who had to live with the guilt if they were wrong about all this. The pressure of that was intense, almost too much to bear.

  “I know, but we need to approach this differently,” Amber said, trying to keep her voice level. “We can’t just guess and guess.”

  “There isn’t any time for a different approach,” Francesca insisted.

  Amber was determined, though. She couldn’t risk more letters, not now, not when she’d guessed so many already. The killer wouldn’t let them simply guess every letter, wouldn’t let them take forever, solving this by brute force. They had to see what was missing. They had to work with the shape of what was there.

  Amber needed to look at it with fresh eyes.

  “I just need a minute,” she said, standing up from her chair. “I need to clear my head.”

  “Amber—” Simon began. Amber held up a hand to forestall him.

  “I’m not giving up, but I need to think. I don’t need to guess more letters; everything we need should be there already. I need to work out what all of this means, and for that, I need to clear my head. I can’t do this otherwise.”

  Amber didn’t wait for an answer before she stepped outside. She took a deep breath of fresh air, feeling the cool night breeze wash over her. She closed her eyes, trying to center herself, to push the fear and doubt out of her mind.

  But the image of the victim, alone and frightened, kept coming back to her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were running out of time, that every moment that passed without finding the location was another moment closer to the victim’s death. She knew that she was wasting time now, doing this, wasting precious seconds of their life. But without this, she wouldn’t be able to help at all.

  She opened her eyes, feeling a sense of clarity wash over her. Her mind started to race, visualizing the words that were on the screen, mentally adding in different combinations of letters to try to find ones that made some kind of sense. There was enough there to guess from; Amber was certain of it.

  “Near” was obvious. So something near a zoo. The first word could be “Some” or perhaps “Sold”. Not “Soft” since there were no “T”s in the message. The second to last word had the most missing letters, but in the context of a location, didn’t it make sense that it might be “Behind”? The second word could be any number of things. “Wish” or “Wisp” or “Fish”…

  “Sold wisp near zoo behind something” didn’t make any sense to Amber, but other possibilities made a lot more sense. One, in particular, seemed to stand out.

  She hurried back inside.

  “I need a map,” she said. “Something I can use as a reference point.”

  Simon pulled one up on the nearest free computer screen.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked, obviously trying to understand why Amber was suddenly doing this.

  “Place names. Business names. Francesca, where is the zoo on this?”

  Francesca went over, zooming in to give Amber a view of the area around the local zoo. Amber started to look for business names nearby, street names, anything that contained the letters “earies.”

  She realized that the detective was potentially at least as good a source of that information as the map.

  “Francesca, are there any businesses or places with the letters ‘earies’ in them?” Amber asked, hoping that the detective would know something that wasn’t there on the screen. “Maybe something old that isn’t there anymore?”

  “There was a bar called ‘Learies,’” Francesca supplied. “But it closed.”

  “Where?”

  The detective pointed to a spot on the map.

  “We need to look at the buildings behind that,” Amber said. She started to search on the computer, trying to look at what businesses had been there. “We need somewhere that sold fish, I think…”

  “There was a small seafood restaurant back there,” Francesca said, sounding excited now. “The same people ran it. I think it failed sometime after… after their son was involved in a car accident.”

  A car accident? Was it possible that even the location was connected to Westford-Myer and the recall of their ill-fated WM 120 car?

  Amber didn’t know. She did know that they needed to get down to the former restaurant right away. Someone was in there somewhere, slowly being strangled. They had to get to them before it was too late.

  Simon and Francesca seemed to think the same, because they were already running for the door as fast as they could.

  Amber followed close behind, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she tried to keep up with the others. She’d worked out a potential answer, but that wouldn’t stop the winch. They had to get there and save the victim. As they rushed out of the building, Amber’s mind raced with the possibilities. Was the victim someone the killer knew? Were they indeed connected to this recall mess in some way? And most importantly, could they save them before it was too late?

  They piled into Francesca’s car and she hit the gas, speeding through the streets of the city, weaving around cars, barely slowing down as she skidded around corners. Amber could see the look of determination on her face as she drove, obviously wanting to make sure that she got there in time.

  As they drove, Amber’s mind raced through more dangerous possibilities. What if they were too late? What if the victim was already dead? What if the killer was still there? No, Amber wasn’t going to think like that. She’d solved the puzzle. She’d gotten an answer. They just had to be in time now to save the victim.

  Francesca was still driving quickly, even wildly, overtaking other cars, weaving in and out of traffic so fast that other headlights were just a blur coming toward them. Amber saw a sign for the zoo and she knew then that they were getting closer to the location. Even so, every second felt like an eternity.

  They turned a corner, and Amber saw an old building that looked as though it might once have been a bar. The boarded-up windows and the peeling paint made it clear that it had been abandoned for a long time. A sign proclaiming it to be Learies hung over the entrance.

  They skidded to a halt in front of it in a screech of brakes. As they pulled up, Simon pulled out his gun, and Francesca grabbed her own. They dove out of the car without waiting for Amber. She followed in their wake, her hand on her Glock, determined to back them up in this. She might have been the one to solve the puzzle, but she was an agent, and she would play her part in this too.

  Francesca and Simon led the way behind the bar, working in concert as they swept the alley ahead to make sure that there wasn’t a bad guy waiting to ambush them. Amber could only envy the way the two worked so smoothly together to cover the angles, following them and making sure that she kept her own lines of fire clear. They could have been working together for years, rather than for just a few hours.

  The restaurant lay ahead. It was a small, run-down place with peeling paint and a faded sign that read “Ocean’s Catch.” The windows were grimy and dark, but Amber knew that this had to be the place.

  She signaled to Francesca and Simon, and the three of them spread out, approaching the front of the building, trying to cover every angle in case the killer was still there somewhere, watching and ready for them.

  They tried the door, but it was locked. Francesca motioned for Simon to cover her as she kicked it in. The door flew open with a crash as her booted foot struck it, splintering the wood around the lock easily. There was no time for anything more subtle.

  Francesca led the way, her gun at the ready, while Simon went in behind her. Amber followed the two, her own weapon raised and ready to fire as they headed through the darkened entrance. As the three of them stepped inside, Amber’s heart began to race, the sound of their footsteps echoing through the otherwise silent interior of the building.

  It was pitch-black inside, and for a moment Amber could see nothing. Then the three of them flicked on flashlights, lighting the way in tight beams.

  They started to move through the building. Ordinarily, it would have been Amber and Simon working to clear the rooms, making sure that there were no threats. Now, it was Francesca and Simon who did most of the work, clearing the way for Amber as she followed behind. She found herself hurrying to try to keep up.

  As they made their way through the restaurant, Amber couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread creeping over her. They cleared the ground floor and found a set of stairs leading up.

  There was a series of rooms there, the door to one of them hanging open. The three of them approached it and Amber could feel her adrenaline rising as they rushed through the door, flashlights and guns trained on the interior, ready for any danger that might await them there.

  That feeling instantly gave way to despair as she saw a form hanging in the darkness, held in place by a length of cable attached to a winch mechanism. The body was still, the sight of it ghastly in its lack of movement.

  Amber felt sick then, and guilty. She’d failed. She’d tried to save the man hanging there, and she’d failed.

  “Come on,” Simon said, “we have to get him down.”

  He was already over there, wrestling with the winch mechanism, trying to get it to let its victim go. Francesca stepped forward to help him, while Amber watched from a distance.

  The victim tumbled to the ground and Amber rushed forward then, some part of her still hoping that she might be able to help, to give this man CPR until an ambulance got there.

  The moment she touched him, she knew it was too late. They were too late. They weren’t trying to save a still living victim; this was a corpse.

  A still warm corpse. That was crueler than any of it. They were only minutes too late. The realization hit her like a ton of bricks, and Amber’s stomach churned with anger and disgust. Somewhere in trying to solve the puzzle, she’d taken too long, made one too many guesses, and now… now another victim was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Amber was still trying to make sense of what had happened.

  She blinked the tiredness from her eyes as the first rays of morning sunlight crept through the precinct’s windows. Sleep had eluded her. Had she really been awake all night there?

  She had, as had Simon and Francesca, trying to make some kind of sense out of what had happened last night. Even now, Amber could barely believe it. She’d solved the puzzle. She’d done exactly what the killer required. That should have been enough. It should have allowed them to save Dave Muldeer’s life.

  Dave Muldeer—they knew that was the victim’s name now. They knew all about him at this point. Amber wasn’t sure if knowing that made things better or worse for her.

  She sat back in her chair, feeling the weight of exhaustion and failure bearing down upon her. They had found nothing at the scene of the crime—no clues, no evidence, nothing that could lead them to the killer. Amber had a sinking feeling that they were up against someone who knew how to cover their tracks.

  She ran her hands over her face and tried to shake off the sense of defeat that was creeping up on her. She couldn’t afford to give in to despair now, even though it threatened to overwhelm her, not when there was still a killer out there.

  “We’ll catch him,” Simon said, bringing over coffee and setting it down on the desk Amber was working at. “We have to.”

 

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