Page 63 of Intangible
There was, however, a blood trail surrounded by several shoe prints left behind in the dust. They ended by a roll-up door at the far end of the old empty building.
Jerking the roll-up door open, Knox followed a set of tire treads out into the street where the rain had washed them away in the direction they took.
Looking first one way, then the other, he realized with growing dread that they could be anywhere by now. The only hope he felt was the knowledge that he hadn’t found either one of their bodies lying dead inside, though the amount of blood indicated someone had received more than just a scratch.
Running his hand through his hair, Knox knew he had no more idea where they could have gone than who had taken them. How could he have been so stupid as not to have checked the building earlier? He had found it locked every other day. Why was the one day he let his guard down the day it was left unlocked? Anyone could have hidden in here knowing they would walk past it on the way to the parking lot, just waiting for an opportunity.
Now he hadn’t just lost Thayer, he had lost Memphis too. He stood in the rain with rivulets of water running down his neck, trying to decide what to do next.
“Sir, it looks like there were more than just three based on the footprints.” Knox spun around, returning inside the building. Fisher had been looking for anything that would help track them.
“I would speculate that this is Mr. Prescott’s blood. It seems to reason that they would have to have incapacitated him first to control them. It doesn’t look like there was much of a struggle either.” Knox walked over to where Fisher was kneeling in the dust. “Mr. Prescott, if uninjured, would have put up more of a fight.”
“Do you think he can survive long based on the blood loss here? How much do you think there is?” Knox wanted to scream. Whomever this was had simply been playing with them all along. How had they still managed to remain one step ahead?
“If it is Mr. Prescott, and he can get it stopped, he should survive. If I’m wrong though and it belongs to Miss Kent, I just don’t know.” They stood staring at the blood trail for a few minutes as Knox worked at putting some kind of plan together in his head.
“The car tread doesn’t look like anything special, so that’s no help.” Knox looked around the building before adding, “They had to have been watching for a while to know Memphis and Thayer would use this route back to the car. You didn’t see anything?” Fisher shook his head.
“Then I guess we should call everyone to the loft. Maybe they will have some idea of where we go from here. I’ll see what my guy with the FBI can find out.”
* * *
Memphis woke up tied to the corner of an old room in an abandoned house in a bad state of disrepair. It only took him a second to realize why the room looked vaguely familiar.
It hadn’t been his. That one was down the hall on the right, but it had belonged to another child sent to live in this house.
For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he would be tied up here until he saw Thayer sitting in a chair across the room from him. She had been tied up and gagged. Memphis couldn’t just see the fear in her eyes when she looked at him, he could feel it pouring off of her in waves.
He knew his first instinct at being trapped here again should be panic. He should be frozen from the trauma, but instead of fear, it just made him angry. He had fought his way out of this hell once, he could do it again if he could just not bleed out first.
He was dizzy and nauseous, but that could be attributed to the crack on the head he had received after trying to prevent himself and Thayer from being dragged into a car inside the building.
Assessing his injuries, he was positive that except for the cuts and a goose egg forming on his head, he was okay for now.
They had just popped under the construction awning to get out of the rain as they headed to the parking lot when some man had jumped out from behind a door, slicing Memphis across the chest with a knife. It had been so fast he had barely had time to react.
Thayer had fought when they grabbed her, so he laced another cut down Memphis’ upper arm, making her freeze. After that, he simply had to hold the knife at her neck to make both of them comply.
“You’re not dead yet, I see,” a man said to Memphis as he walked back into the room. “That’s good. I’m not sure dying from a crack on the skull could be explained as easily.”
He walked over to Thayer, grabbing a fistful of her hair when she tried to squirm away from him. Pulling her head back, he looked down at her.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon. I have an island waiting for me.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Memphis asked in a shaky voice. He really was going to have to do something sooner rather than later while he still had some strength left. Maybe he had lost more blood than he thought. “What do you want with her?”
The man turned loose of her hair to stare at Memphis for a minute before laughing. Twirling a wicked-looking knife, the man slowly walked over to Memphis, squatting down in front of him.
“Who am I? I’m the man hired to make sure her father doesn’t block the signing of a very lucrative contract. I had it all planned out. The kidnapping of his only child, only to be found right before the contract appeared before the committee, making him miss the vote as he rushed to her side.
“If I just killed him, it would have brought too much attention down on us. But a quiet kidnapping would have destroyed him without too much of a fuss. If that didn’t work, I would have had enough to create a sensation in the press to prevent him from continuing to block it moving forward.”
“All of this was over a fucking government contract? You have hillbillies right out ofDeliverancekidnap her, send thugs to my house at night to kill us in our sleep, and now this? How much did they promise you if it passes?” Memphis looked at the man in disbelief.
“Enough to set me up for a while,” the man said with a smile that sent shivers down Memphis’ back. “But it’s even more than the money. It’s the prestige of doing a job no one else could pull off.” Chancing a glance at Thayer, Memphis saw a look of recognition dawn on her face. She must have heard of whatever contract he was referring to.
Turning his gaze back to the man, Memphis watched as he took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “I thought this location seemed almost poetic for what I have planned.” Slicing another bloody groove down Memphis’ thigh, he stood with a laugh.
