1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,81

It took me another few seconds to refocus.

Eve’s mouth was taped like mine. I could just see the whites of her eyes. I leaned toward her, babbling her name incoherently from behind my gag, but all we could really do was stare at each other. Tears were streaming from my eyes now.

I knew where we were, and I knew what was about to happen.

Images rushed through my mind. Crime scene photos of Gwen Petty, and the victims before her, all asphyxiated in their bedrooms. Family members, too, shot in their beds. Horrible stuff, like I’d never imagined.

Now it was all about to come very much to life, right in front of me.

The back of the van opened, and I got a better look at Eve as more streetlight streamed in. She was pale and drawn, and barely even looked like herself. I could see her trying to make some noise, kicking with her feet, but she was too weak even for that. God only knows what she’d been through since I’d last seen her.

The older of our two captors climbed in and went to Eve first. He bent over her, doing something I couldn’t see. A few seconds later, she went slack, and he dropped the hypodermic he’d been carrying. That was it. She was out again.

Then he turned to me. “Time to go,” he said, and a fresh wave of panic erupted all through me.

No, no, no, no! I tried to scream, uselessly.

He leaned in and used his hunting knife to cut away the straps that held me in place. I rolled away from him instinctively, but I knew there was nowhere to go.

“Hey, get in here,” he whispered to his brother. “We’re going to have to light her up.”

Light me up? What the hell did that mean? I was still using my heels to push myself away, but then my back hit the rear wall of the van, and I was truly cornered.

The Poet climbed in with his briefcase. All I could do was watch as he opened it on the floor and took out the gun I’d seen before, although I could tell now that it wasn’t actually a pistol. It was chunkier than that.

A Taser.

No sooner had I figured it out than I heard a snap and a buzz. My body jerked, then seized, with an electric pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It seemed to reach every extremity, freezing all of my muscles at once, and even erasing the throb I’d been feeling in my leg since the bike accident. Which was basically trading one burden for another. All I could feel now was the paralyzing current and the full-body jolting pain that went with it.

“Let’s go,” the Engineer said. His arm hooked under mine and I unfolded off the floor like a rusty chain as they hauled me out of the van. I got one more look at Eve, out cold, before they closed the door and dragged me away.

They’d backed into my family’s driveway, I saw. That part was no surprise. We passed my father’s old Saab, parked closer to the house. The front-porch light was on, but all the windows were dark.

I had nearly zero strength left. Still, I resisted with everything I had. I writhed out of the Engineer’s grasp and dropped to the ground, but they scooped me right back up.

The Poet took my legs now, and they carried me like an old rolled-up rug around to the back of the house. The parked van gave them all the cover they’d need from the street. Not that anyone was passing by at this hour.

These guys had obviously cased the house, and they knew just what to do. When we came to the kitchen door at the back, they set me down again. I could see the gun in the Engineer’s hand, a knife sheathed at his side, the Taser in the Poet’s hand, and his own knife as well. Only in my worst imaginings could I guess at how they intended to use them.

This was all my doing. I’d promised my mother that everything was going to be okay. I’d told her that there was nothing my family needed to worry about.

And now, I’d brought the monsters right to their door.

CHAPTER 89

“WHERE’S THE HIDE-A-KEY, Angela?” the older one whispered to me. “There’s always a key somewhere. Just nod if I’m getting warmer.”

He used his pointer finger to sweep left and right, watching me the whole time like this was