“And before you think to call the police or tell one of your colleagues what’s going on, know that the man standing by the water cooler is one of us. If he sees you do anything you shouldn’t, he’ll let me know, and Mr. Danielson… Well, you don’t wanna know what’ll happen to him.”
Samantha jerked her eyes over to the man in the brown coveralls beside the cooler. To the casual observer, he didn’t look out of place. The uniform, the mop bucket, the lazy way he cleaned the floor, said he was just one of the many maintenance people who kept the building spick-and-span. But upon closer inspection, she could see his baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes. And since his red, bushy beard covered the lower half of his face, his identity was completely obscured.
“How do I know you won’t hurt Donny even if I do come down?” Her chest hurt. Why did her chest hurt? Oh yeah. Because her heart was banging against her ribs like a steel fist.
“Guess you’ll just hafta take my word for it,” Snake Voice said. “After all, what other choice do you have?”
He had her there. She had no other choice. She felt like a colony of spiders crawled over the back of her neck.
“Leave your phone,” the man instructed. “Leave your purse. Ninety seconds and counting.” Click. The line went dead.
Samantha used three of her remaining ninety seconds racking her brain for a way to let someone know what was happening. A quick note? An SOS tapped out on her desk with a pen? Did any of her colleagues know Morse code? Of course, all of this was fantasy, since the janitor who wasn’t really a janitor was watching her every move.
Swallowing the bile that climbed up the back of her throat, she pushed to a stand and shakily made her way to the elevator. Janitor/Not Janitor followed her inside, careful to keep his hat pulled low, mindful of the elevator’s security camera. When she opened her mouth to say…she wasn’t sure what, he gave her a terse shake of his head. She clamped her jaws so hard that the sound of her teeth clacking together echoed around the small space.
As the car descended, dinging the passing of the floors, Samantha prayed that Ozzie had forgotten something—his wallet or his sunglasses or anything—and that he’d be waiting to ride the elevator back up when the doors opened.
Once again, no such luck. The silver doors slid open to reveal no Ozzie, just the normal hustle and bustle of people rushing through the lobby as they went about their day. Janitor/Not Janitor spoke for the first time. “Thirty seconds, Miss Tate.”
Goose bumps peppered her skin at the sound of his voice. It was that of an executioner. Unfeeling. Inflectionless. When she stepped from the elevator car, she realized that she’d lied to Ozzie for the first time. Not a lie by omission, like her love for him. But a flat-out, black-and-white lie.
She had promised she wouldn’t get up from her seat under any circumstances. And here she was walking across the lobby…
Chapter 19
Venom had little patience for weakness. And even less patience for sniveling, pansy-ass men wearing ridiculously large glasses and bright-red skinny jeans.
“Shut the fuck up!” He kicked the seat in front of him where Donny Danielson was hog-tied and gagged.
The stolen SUV was perfect for a kidnapping. Its third-row seats allowed Venom to keep his pistol trained on the back of Donny’s head, and the deeply tinted windows assured him no one on the outside could see what he was doing.
Even so, he felt twitchy. He didn’t like idling by the curb, waiting on Samantha to come down. Michigan Avenue was busy, humming with tourists and locals out for a day of shopping. And where there were tourists and commerce, there were cops. It wouldn’t be long before one of the doughnut eaters on patrol saw the SUV’s blinking hazard lights and came to investigate.
Venom flexed his shoulders. Blew out a hard breath. But nothing seemed to calm his nerves. Donny’s sniffling was making matters worse.
“Can you believe we went to war for assholes like this?” he asked Crutch. His VP was in the driver’s seat, impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Mmph,” Crutch grunted. He hadn’t had a cigarette since they snatched Donny from outside his apartment building. Lack of nicotine always made Crutch uncommunicative.
And speaking of snatching Donny, it had been ridiculously easy. The reporter had been fumbling with his keys, distracted by the glowing screen of his iPhone and trying to juggle a steaming cup of coffee, when Venom and Crutch pulled up beside his prissy Prius to drag the squawking little runt inside their SUV.
“I said,” Venom snapped, shoving the barrel of his pistol so tightly against Donny’s head that the reporter winced and choked behind his gag, “shut the fuck up!”
“Easy,” Crutch cautioned.
“Seriously, though,” Venom snarled. “I did not sweat my ass off in that damned Iraqi desert for the likes of him, tadpoles who would rather suck a dick than grow a pair of balls.”
Venom was going to love watching the lights go out in Donny’s eyes when he eventually strangled him. A bullet was too good for Donny Danielson. Real men died by lead. Snot-nosed lady-boys died by having the life strangled out of them while they looked into the eyes of a real man.
But he couldn’t kill Donny yet. He might need to use the sack of shit to make Samantha talk. Nothing loosened a person’s tongue quicker than watching someone they cared about suffer. He’d learned that lesson in Albu Bali.
“Look.” Crutch pointed out the window. “She’s coming.”
Venom turned in the direction of Crutch’s finger. Sure enough. Samantha and Termite hustled through the building’s front door, Termite steering her toward the waiting SUV with a hand at her elbow.
Venom’s heart began to pound. His breath caught at the back of his throat. Even though her eyes were wide and unblinking, her cheeks pale with fear, she was still prettier in person than in any of the pictures he’d seen online or in the paper.
Anticipation swirled low in his belly, making his cock twitch. “This is gonna be fun,” he said to no one in particular.
*
Samantha knew the taste of fear when she slid into the second-row seat of the black SUV. It was sour, like a pickle. It thickened her spit, making it impossible to swallow.
“You okay?” she asked Donny, taking in his red eyes and disheveled hair. His ankles were duct-taped together, as were his wrists. A length of the stuff was slapped over his mouth.
He gave her a jerky nod, and relief rushed through her so quickly that she felt dizzy. Or maybe that was terror making her head spin?
“I’m so sorry I got you into this,” she told him.
“How touching,” came the voice from the phone.
She turned to find a mountain of a man dressed head to toe in black. He wore a ski mask. It covered everything but his mouth and eyes. When he flashed her a smile, she was surprised to see his teeth were straight and white. In contrast, his eyes were as black as night. Looking into them, she felt like she was falling into a soulless abyss.