Rage had gone from shaking him to ice-cold, and that was always a bad sign. He moved to the next room and found the walls similarly covered, this time with a woman with an abundance of dark hair and light eyes. Floor to ceiling, in every room of the cottage, the walls held pictures of the same seven na**d women. He recognized one as Violet, the senator’s wife. Ken had never felt so dirty or sick.
He found the doctor in his bedroom, lying on his bed naked, staring up at the ceiling and the collage of all seven women. The music was loud and the man hummed as he writhed on the bed. He never saw Ken at all, only felt the sting of the knife cutting into his flesh.
“I’d be very still if I were you,” Ken hissed.
The doctor froze, lying rigid in his bed with the razor-sharp edge of the knife pressed against his throat. “What do you want?”
“You’re a sick son of a bitch,” Ken said. “Does Whitney know what a sick f**k you really are?”
“He said it was all right, that I could have my girls with me all the time.” The man’s voice was high-pitched and whiny. “He knows. Ask him. He’ll tell you. He comes in sometimes to see what I’ve done with them.”
“Where are the original pictures kept?”
“Whitney has them all. He has places we can’t go and keeps the pictures and files with him.” The voice turned sly. “He only shares with me.”
“Where does Whitney stay?”
“If I tell you, he’ll kill me.”
“I’m going to kill you right now if you don’t tell me.”
“He has rooms that no one can get into on the fourth level, down near the tunnels.” He looked up at the staring faces of the women. “Aren’t they beautiful? They like me to touch them and take their pictures.”
Ken’s stomach lurched, threatening to spill the contents. He slid the knife away and caught the man’s head in both hands, wrenching hard, hearing the satisfying crack. Whatever legitimacy Whitney had once had, this house and this man were a testament to his growing lunacy.
I’m going to torch the house.
Damn it, Ken, don’t do anything crazy.
It’s got to come down. I’ll make certain it looks like the doc had a little accident with the gas, but this house has to burn. Because no one else was ever going to see what this perverted excuse for a man had done to those women. He was going to blow the son of a bitch into the sky, and when they investigated, they would find the doctor with his candles and matches and a loose gas hose.
He couldn’t look at the walls as he worked, feeling slimy surrounded by the images of the women Whitney had experimented on and allowed a very sick man to abuse. Who had stood up for Mari as a child? As a teenager? Jack and he had been in and out of a lot of foster homes and their father had been a rotten, jealous drunk who thrived on beating them, but they’d had their mother and then each other and finally a kind woman who had stood up for them when no one else would. His heart ached for Mari. He was going to be sick if he didn’t get the hell out of there, his stomach churning and knotting in revulsion as he set the scene, careful to leave nothing that would indicate anything but an accident.
A slow leak no one caught, the house filled with gas, and the doctor, cavorting with his music and candles, na**d in front of his obscene shrines, blown to pieces along with his house, quite tragically.
Get the hell under cover, Jack. They’re going to comb the countryside when this thing goes off.
I’ll cover you.
I’m going in. I need to get to her.
Damn it, no. Jack snarled it. I mean it, Ken. Get your ass back here. You’re not that dumb.
I’m exactly that dumb. The thought of Mari locked down on that examining table, pinned like an insect while a sick pervert photographed her and touched her was more than he could bear. He had to get to her and hold her in his arms. It might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made, but he was going to her. She wouldn’t be alone tonight.
Jack swore, a blistering round of curses that Ken ignored. He went out of the house and reset the alarms, leaving everything exactly the way he’d found it. Instead of making his way back up to the top of the bluff to join his brother, he began to crawl through the grass to reach the largest building. There was a way in, a duct, a conduit, a tunnel—anything left behind in the cement he could use. There was always a way.
He used sound, a lesser talent he had and one he wasn’t the best at using, but he could bounce it off the cement walls searching for a hollow spot. The cement was thin on top of a spot near the south-facing wall. There were boxes and wooden pallets and crates of all sizes piled around. Obviously the supplies were dropped off nearby and unloaded. He restacked the larger crates and boxes loosely around him to help provide a small shelter while he worked.
It took a half hour to break through the thin layer, and another few minutes to dump the concrete into the hollow space he found inside. He knew there were often wide areas reinforced with rebar that were left open in between the walls of larger, mainly military compounds, and once inside, no one would hear or detect him as he moved around, hopefully making his way to the lower levels.
I’m in. He found a crate and slid it over the opening to hide the hole. It would have to do and probably wouldn’t be noticeable with so many crates piled around the area. Just as he slipped inside, pulling the crate over him, the doctor’s house blew, exploding outward, sending debris raining down and red orange flames billowing with black smoke high into the air.
Men burst out of the guardhouse and began racing in all directions, silhouetted by the raging fire. An alarm began to sound, breaking the silence of the night along with the roaring of the inferno. Ken paused to watch the house burn. Glass showered down and black spots appeared on the walls, then were consumed by the hungry flames. There was intense satisfaction in knowing no one could get near the place, even as they began to try to tame it with water. It was too late. He’d opened every door to ensure the gas had filled the house and it would look like Dr. Pervert had tried to light one of his many candles, accidentally setting off a bomb and blowing himself across the room, where he struck just right to break his neck.
Dogs burst out of cages somewhere, from a hidden tunnel to his left. They had known there were dogs, but they hadn’t known the animals were kept inside. From his vantage point he could see the door swinging open to allow the dogs to escape into the space between the double fences. Whitney was taking no chances that his women might take advantage of the chaos and try to escape.
If they have one tunnel, they’ll have more, Jack observed.