Discovering Normal (13 page)

“I repeat,
I am Mannish-Mannen.”

Chris lifted his torso as high as he was able. “Kill me, Holden. Kill me now because you’ll never do this. It won’t work. Kill me here and now. I’m too damn tired to fight so just end it.”

There was silence. The pregnant girl stood frozen; the other still moved in her dream state--eyes closed, body weaving.

What little light there had been in the room disappeared and it was as dark as a mo
onless night in Garrity. Chris
tried to focus. A sound of leavers maybe? And then a screen emerged, huge and glowing. Another appeared and then another and another until each side of the room w
as
filled with a screen that covered the marble walls.

While Chris was making sense of the theater, the floor began to move
;
spin like a wheel, but just the small portion where his cot and the two chicks were located. The pregnant girl leaned down and pulled something from beneath the cot. A minute later she was fastening a tight mask made of some sort of rubber over his eyes--but not to keep him from seeing, to
force
him into seeing. His eyes couldn’t close as the gooey material clung to them, holding them open and unable to do so much as blink. The uncomfortable dryness set in immediately, but it wasn’t enough to stop Chris from seeing the images that began to flash across the screens.

The first was of Beth--smiling and pregnant--holding a basket of apples fresh from a tree.

How the hell long had they been watching?

The cot spun to the side. Noah at the beach, beaming at the sandcastle father and son had taken hours to construct, finishing just before the Cape Cod tide rolled in.

The next image was of Audrey--no more than two--sleeping with her head on the reclining Sundance’s back.

What the hell was going on?

“
I am Manish-Mannen
,” came the booming voice into the room. “I must pay.”

Chris attempted to squirm, but the brace on his arm mysteriously tightened. He’d meant what he’d said--it didn’t matter if they killed him, he was already dead. But now they’d upped the ante and made it about more. It was no longer about revenge for Holden’s equally psychopathic father’s death, it was about hurting those Chris would leave behind. Not because they’d miss him, but because that was the thing that would sear him most of all.

The images became hazy as Chris spun. More flashed, the speed of the changing photos increased
;
Beth on skis, at the fair, laughing with her mother. Noah waving from the tractor, kicking a soccer ball, climbing a tree. Audrey pouring imaginary tea for a doll, smiling from the beneath the fluffy fur of a snow jacket hood, dunking an Easter egg with glee.

“Stop,” Chris muttered because some sliver of everyone remained eight-years-old and scared as hell when the danger really came close.

A laugh echoed and then the words returned. “
I am Mannish-Mannen and I will pay…”

The spinning circle that held the cot sped up, but the women with him didn’t seem to notice. They kept staring, chanting, dancing to the rhythm of the music.

Chris felt nausea from the food he shouldn’t have eaten after having eaten next to nothing for so long. As if she realized it, the pregnant chick stroked his chest with tiny circles. She took her time over the quadrants, just silky fingers trailing over his skin. Her hand lowered then and spread the folds of the wrap to expose his stomach. Her fingers trailed to Chris’ naval and whisked around it.

“Chanta-Clara,” the voice from above said and the other girl dropped to her knees. They still spun, the three of them, as if it were some twisted ritual. Four hands now stroked him, getting braver, inching lower until they reached the part that was inherently male. Chris beat back the vomit and tried like hell to close his eyes, though it was as impossible as it’d been before.

The thing he hated most was the hardening in the soft hand of the girl he hoped to hell was at least eighteen. “Stop,” he said again, but she didn’t and they wouldn’t.

The pregnant girl moved toward his face, stroked his hair and whispered. “
You are Manish-Mannen the Repentant.”

Chris twisted his neck, tried to remember his senior year locker combination, tried to remember
anything
that
would take him away from here to someplace normal and clean.

But then it happened.

A warm mouth covered him as the other girl chanted in his ear. “
Manish-Mannen, Manish-Mannen, Manish-Mannen.”

And then the screens came alive again. Horrific images filled them as the cot spun with its fastest speed yet.

Sundance slaughtered in the lawn.

Gruesome images of the kids and Beth--tortured and even worse.

Chris yelled out--loud and true--but the girl continued giving him pleasure within the horror and making him the sick one after all.

This guy was evil and twisted and the lowest of the low.

And for the first time in his life Chris was completely powerless to strike back.

His heart beat as the girl increased her rhythm. He couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t stop from seeing
; c
ouldn’t begin to tell if it was real or a dream.

Evil or erotic.

Heinous or just part of fucking life.

The screens faded to black as
Chris crashed into his release and t
he girl left him cold and wet and hurting more than anything had ever hurt before.

The chick that’d stood beside him during the whole sick ritual covered him with the silky clothing as a sinister laugh filled the room.

Chapter 14

Beth ground her cigarette into a chipped ceramic ashtray and tried not to reveal to her son that she missed him like crazy. “Do you like Miss Hilton?”

“She’s okay. Her boyfriend plays for the New York Jets. He came in yesterday.”

“That’s cool!”

“I like the
Eagles
.”

Beth shook her head and closed her eyes. “I know you do, honey, but still you don’t meet professional football players all that often.”

“When are you coming home?” Noah asked into the receiver.

Beth nibbled at her nails--a habit she’d broken years ago--and tried to sound confident. “As soon as I can, honey.”

“Is Dad with you?”

Here it was. The inevitable. She’d always known that Noah was far too savvy to ever believe for long that Chris was teaching at a farming symposim so far north that he couldn’t be reached. She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes and exhaled.

“Noah, remember Dad and I told you a little bit about our lives before we had you and Audery?”
             
“Yeah.”

Beth glanced behind her. Deej and George were referring to a paper in front of them at the table in the dismal house they’d been waiting in for far too long.

“Well, the people we used to work for need us again. We’re trying to help with something. I’ll explain everything to you when I can.”

“So Dad’s with you?”

“Not exactly, Noah.”

He was silent and Beth could hear her mother telling her son that time was almost up.

“Okay,” he said softly to his grandmother, but Beth knew Greer Williams wouldn’t be appeased until Noah had laid the phone back into its cradle. “Are you spies?” he said then, just as if he were asking if he could have another slice of cake.

“No, Noah, we’re not. Please don’t ask me anything else, honey.”

“Are people listening? Are we being bugged?” And as though he were playing with a walkie-talkie with his friends, he yelled into the receiver. “Is there a bug in here?”

“Noah, I have to go now. You do too. I’m going someplace else tomorrow so I won’t be able to call for a while. Please take care of Audrey--give her a big kiss for me and let her give you one too. I love you and miss you so much. Daddy does too.”

“Goodbye,” Noah said quietly and hung up the phone.

Beth laid the receiver down and swiped her eye with the back of her wrist. In the ten years she’d been a mother, she’d never spent a day without seeing her children until six weeks ago when their world ended in so many ways.

“How are the kids?” Deej asked over her shoulder.

“Miserable.”

“Sounds like my wife.” Deej lowered onto the arm of the couch Beth sat on.

“How is Roxanne?”

“Pissed as hell that I’ve spent our first anniversary across the world from her.”

“Oh, Deej
;
I’m sorry.”

             
He patted her leg and hoisted up. “None of that. She knew going into this that she was marrying a government agent. You ready to talk shop?”

             
Beth followed him to the table. George tried to take her hand, but she moved away and slid onto a dining room chair.

             
Deej tugged at the adjustable ceiling light that Beth hadn’t seen the like
s
of since she was a child in the mid-seventies. He arranged photos in front of her. “We were able to pinpoint the location where Flora-Sky has relocated. Our sources were
right;
it is off the coast of Lithuania--an abandoned old fortress. Where the hell do they find these places?”

             
Deej adjusted the light and sat down. George stared at Beth through the obnoxious glow of the lamp. She felt his gaze, but ignored it as Deej repositioned the pictures. “We were able to infiltrate. We used a young agent--a rookie with no history--and sent him in as if he were a convert. He’s been able to radio out a few times. He thinks Chris is in there, though he hasn’t seen him.”

Deej raised his eyes from the photos to meet Beth’s.
“It doesn’t sound pretty, honey. The guy our leak has heard of has been beaten, tortured, manipulated.”

             
And suddenly it was all so real. This wasn’t a game.

             
“Is he alive?”

             
“We think so. From what we can gather they’re playing with him, and we’re not sure if it’s all just a lure to get you back into the fold. No request for you in exchange for him or anything. A lot of experts from the Bureau agree that Holden’s plan is to kill Chris. He’s just sadistic enough to make him well aware of it first.”

             
“Then we have to move fast.”

             
“We do.” Deej slid a picture toward Beth. “That’s Joanna King. Her father is a professor of law at
Stanford; her mother hosts
a local morning news show. Joanna disappeared ten months ago--by all accounts she followed a young, good looking guy believed to be Holden from her campus at Loma Linda. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since, until this photo was sent to us from the leak.”

             
Beth saw only a pretty blonde girl wrapped in white with a distant stare.

             
“She’s pregnant--probably by Holden.”

             
Beth looked up. “Does her family know?”

             
Deej shook his head. “Not yet. This is still a secret operative, Beth. Until we can nab
Flora-Sky two
for something, we can’t let them know that we know anything.”

             
“And how will we do that?”

             
“The easiest way would be to find the guns that were stolen from the army base and then disappeared.”

             
Beth glanced back down at the other faces. A heavy-set young man with a shaved head and arms crossed over his chest.

            Deej pointed to the shot. “That’s Wade Palmer--a wrestler for
University of Oklahoma
and preparing for the next summer Olympics. He disappeared from a training camp in April. Though his family doesn’t have money, he had a ton of people from his hometown in Kentucky backing him and there are some big bucks in trust for his trai
ning. That was probably what pea
ked Holden’s interest in him--that and his six foot three, three hundred pound frame. My guess is he needed a heavy.”

             
Beth couldn’t even consider what that might mean. “And her?”
she asked pointing to a
young girl star
ing
out into the vastness.

             
“Carrie-Anne Heasley. Her father produces Broadway musicals. Her mother died years ago and she’s her daddy’s pride and joy. She disappeared over Labor Day weekend. Just turned eighteen and about to start college when she vanished. Her friends said she’d talked recently about falling in love. The missing person’s photos match this one. We believe it’s her.”