Page 49 of The Accomplice
Having made some notes with her favorite Muji pens, Kate brushed her teeth, changed into her cotton nightdress and climbed into bed. Sleep took her quickly.
She woke suddenly, in the dark, a few hours later. Alexa was playing a song. At first, coming bang out of a deep sleep, she wasn’t sure what was going on. She sat straight up in bed, unsure and startled as the world of sleep and consciousness seemed to collide.
The song was old. At first it sounded like a Disney track. Orchestral instruments recreating, in musical form, the sound of a cascading, magical waterfall.
And then she heard the percussion. It was like bells, or maybe a xylophone, and then the male harmony group.
‘Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream …’
She froze as a chill swept her entire body like an arctic blast.
And then something dark, a shadow, grabbed her and held her down, one hand covering her mouth. A weight sat on top of her, and hot breath warmed her neck before she felt the needle prick her skin. The smell of leather gloves filled her nose as she struggled to breathe.
She tried to turn, to push him off of her, to fight back. But her limbs felt strange. Like they weighed two hundred pounds. She could barely lift them. Her eyelids were heavy too, and then the room started to move. It felt like she was falling into the bed, and she would never be able to climb out of it.
He was talking to her. It sounded as if he was very far away.
‘You have beautiful eyes. I think I’ll keep them.’
She felt herself being lifted, and then placed down. She was lying on something black. The smell of rubber. A noise threatened to engulf her in panic, and yet she was so sleepy she couldn’t move. It was the sound of a large, thick metallic zipper.
She realized, in horror, as the zipper closed over her, that she had been placed in a body bag.
It was then that her eyes closed into a darkness deeper than the blackest night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EDDIE
Eight-thirty in the morning is not a usual time for me to be up and in the office, and I hadn’t slept well the night before. Too much on my mind. Every time I closed my eyes I could see Delaney in the back of that pick-up, I could feel the warm slick of her blood on my hands, and terrible dark pink pools of bloody sand in her eye sockets.
My office door opened, and Denise came in carrying a brown paper sack. She emptied the bag on my desk. They were cheap, burner cell phones still in their hard, transparent plastic clamshell packages. Five of them.
I picked up one and pulled at the plastic. No dice. I picked up a heavy pair of scissors and promptly broke them in two while trying to cut through the hard, packed edge of the packaging.
‘Can you get me a pick ax, or a blow torch so I can open these ?’ I said.
After a heavy sigh and a roll of her eyes, Denise disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a can opener. She clamped the device on the side of the packaging and started to turn it. The can opener sliced through the tough plastic seal, and she opened up the clamshell, in seconds, and gave me the phone.
‘Have I given you a raise yet today ?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, with a smile.
‘Pick a phone.’
‘In a minute, I need to check our email first.’
‘Is there any coffee left in the pot ?’ I asked, but she was already out of my office, on her way to her desk.
‘Get your own damn coffee,’ she said.
‘I always do. I only wanted to know if there’s some left.’
It took me a lot longer than Denise to open the packaging for the phones, but by the time I prized the last one free, Harry and Bloch stepped into my office.
‘Let’s swap numbers for these burners. With the DA tapping Peltier’s phone, I wouldn’t put it past him to put a trace on ours. The authorities want the Sandman so bad Drew White could get a warrant for my high school records if he really wanted to. Don’t use your own phone, or the work phones. These are the new work phones. Wait, where’s Kate ?’
No matter what time I got to the office, which was, in fairness, normally after nine, Kate would already be there.
