carving of Qetesh that shows her standing on the back of a lion. She’s holding snakes in one hand and a lotus flower in the other. According to what I’m reading here, these are symbols of creation. John, what is he planning?”
I heard the slight tremor in Ruby’s voice. Her alert eyes were wary.
What do you want from us? I texted to Uretsky.
The bastard typed a three-word reply: Check your in-box.
CHAPTER 30
I’d been through this before, so I expected everything that happened next, or I should say that I wasn’t surprised. I followed the instructions and looked at the admin e-mail account for my One World game. Right at the top of the queue was an e-mail from Elliot Uretsky. The time stamp on the e-mail read one minute in the past, and the message contained only a link, which I clicked without hesitation.
An on-screen prompt appeared, asking me if I wanted to allow a two-way video chat. No, of course I didn’t want to, but I did it, anyway. I had to. I also knew that the Web page that loaded ran through the same anonymous proxy server Uretsky had used before, to broadcast poor Dr. Adams’s misery.
The black rectangular shape centered on the Web page gave way to a depressingly familiar image, one that filled me with horror and rage all over again. I gazed upon the concrete windowless room, nondescript in every way except for a single lightbulb that dangled above a sturdy oak desk chair. I couldn’t feel the dampness of the room, but I could hear the echoes of dripping water from a corroded copper pipe—but only when the woman beneath that pipe wasn’t making muted cries for help.
I couldn’t see the gag silencing those cries, because a bag made from a velvety silk cloth, one that shone like a panther’s fur in the dim room, had been placed over her head. Her hands, white skin tanned to a shade of brown, were bound to the arms of the chair, and I assumed her feet were secured as well. I also assumed the chair was bolted to the floor; otherwise, her thrashing would have toppled it over.
Uretsky’s face filled the screen—not his face, really, but the mask of Mario from the Super Mario Bros. video game. Uretsky had used the same character as his Facebook avatar. The red hat, bulbous nose, and trademark mustache of Mario were all there, but Uretsky had cut out eyeholes where the mask’s eyes should have been, and he cut a hole for his mouth as well.
“John, how nice to see you again,” Uretsky said. That voice, soulless as the dead, chilled my skin. “You’re looking unwell, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“What . . . ,” I said, trying to catch my breath, finding it hard to speak. “What are you doing?”
Ruby got her face in front of the laptop’s camera and shouted, “Stop it! Stop it now! You let her go!”
Uretsky screamed loudly in response, with a high-pitched shriek, not unlike the noise of a boiling teakettle, a yell so piercing that we were both silenced.
“I can’t think when you two are shouting at me,” Uretsky said.
“Well, we can’t talk to you with that mask on. Take it off, you coward.”
“Can’t do that, John,” Uretsky replied. “You might take a picture.”
“You’re not a felon. I checked.”
I regretted the words the moment they slipped out of my mouth. “You checked up on me?” Uretsky said, his voice rising with surprise.
“On the Internet.” I spoke quickly, crafting a suitable lie without much fumbling. “I used a Web search to look you up. Not the police. I didn’t violate the rules.”
Uretsky stepped back from the camera, pondering. He nodded, slowly and several times, and I thought I could see the faint outline of a smile inside that grotesque mask. “Oh, very well. You didn’t cheat. So, what did you find?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “But I do know about Carl Swain.”
I fixed my gaze upon Uretsky’s eyes when I said Swain’s name, searching every pixel of the grainy video feed for a slight glimmer of recognition, a hint that I’d struck a nerve. Did he know Swain? Was there some connection? Behind the ovals he had cut out for eyeholes, I saw nothing but the black infinity of death. If Uretsky wondered about my non sequitur, he didn’t say.
“I’ve made sure to keep my face off the Internet. You don’t know what I look like, and that’s part of the