The blond woman tried to move faster, but her body was starting to betray her now. He had seen it before. His job was to keep them alive. That was all. Don’t let them die until Titus said, “It’s time.” At that stage, Reynaldo walked them out into the field. Sometimes, he made them dig their own graves. Most times not. He walked them out and then he put the muzzle of the gun against their heads and pulled the trigger. Sometimes, he experimented with the kill shot. He would press the muzzle against the neck and fire up or he’d press it against the crown of the skull and fire down. Sometimes, he put the muzzle against the temple, like you always see suicide victims do in the movies. Sometimes, the kill was quick. Sometimes, they lived until the second bullet. Once, when he had shot too low by the base of the spine, the victim, a man from Wilmington, Delaware, had survived but had been paralyzed.
Reynaldo buried him alive.
Number Six was a mess, defeated, broken. He had seen it often enough.
“Over there,” he said to her.
She managed to utter one word: “Water.”
“Over there. Change first.”
She tried to move fast, but her gait was more like the shuffle Reynaldo had seen on that zombie television show. That, he thought, was appropriate. Number Six was not dead yet, but she wasn’t really alive either.
Without prompting, the woman stripped out of her jumpsuit and stood before him naked. A few days ago, when she had first tearfully and reluctantly taken off that yellow sundress, asking him to turn away, trying to duck behind a tree or cover herself with her hands, she had been much more attractive. Today she didn’t worry about modesty or vanity. She stood before him like the primitive being she had become, her eyes pleading for water.
Reynaldo picked up the hose with the spray nozzle with the pistol grip. The water pressure was strong. The woman tried to bend down, tried to catch some of the flow in her mouth. He stopped the hose. She stood back up and let him water her down, her skin turning red from the harshness of the jet stream.
When he was finished, he tossed her another jumpsuit. She slipped into it. He gave her water in a plastic cup. She downed it greedily and handed it back to him, indicating that she would do pretty much anything for more. He worried that she would be too weak to make the trip up the path to the farmhouse, so he filled the cup again. She drank this one too fast, almost choking on it. He handed her a breakfast bar he had bought at a Giant food store. She almost ate the wrapper in her haste.
“The path,” he said.
The woman started up it, again walking with the shuffle. Reynaldo followed. He wondered how much more money there was to bleed from Number Six. He suspected she was wealthier than most. Surprisingly, Titus preferred male targets to females at a ratio of about three to one. The women were usually higher-profit prey. This one, when she arrived, had expensive jewelry and the certain swagger of the upper class.
Both were gone now.
She walked tentatively, glancing behind her every few steps. She was, he supposed, surprised that Reynaldo was coming with her. Reynaldo was a little surprised too. He was rarely told to escort the targets. Titus somehow liked the idea of making them walk to the farmhouse on their own.
He wondered, since this was her second visit of the day, if this was now her endgame—if Titus would tell him, “It’s time.”
When they reached the farmhouse, Titus was in his big chair. Dmitry sat by his computer. Reynaldo waited by the door. Number Six—again without prompting—took the hard wooden chair in front of Titus.
“We have a problem, Dana.”
Dana, Reynaldo thought. So that was her name.
Dana’s eyes fluttered. “Problem?”
“I had hoped to release you today,” Titus continued. His voice was always smooth, as if he was always trying to hypnotize you, but today Reynaldo thought he heard a little tension beneath the even tones. “But now it appears that there is a police officer who is investigating your disappearance.”
Dana looked dumbfounded.
“A New York City police detective named Katarina Donovan. Do you know her?”
“No.”
“She goes by Kat. She works in Manhattan.”
Dana stared off, seemingly unable to focus.
“Do you know her?” Titus asked again, a sharp edge in his voice.
“No.”
Titus studied her face another moment.
“No,” she said again.
Yep, half dead, Reynaldo thought.
Titus glanced at Dmitry. He nodded. Dmitry tugged on his knit cap and then spun the computer monitor so that it faced Dana. There was a picture of a woman on the screen.
“How do you know her, Dana?” Titus asked.
Dana just shook her head.
“How do you know her?”
“I don’t.”
“Before you left for your trip, did she call you?”
“No.”
“You never spoke to her?”
“No, never.”
“How do you know her?”
“I don’t.”
“Have you ever seen this woman before? Think hard.”
“I don’t know her.” Dana broke down and started sobbing. “I’ve never seen her.”
Titus sat back. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Dana. The answer will either get you home with your son or back in the box alone. How do you know Kat Donovan?”
Chapter 33
Kat had asked the men several times where they were taking her.
The thin man sitting next to her just smiled and pointed the gun at her. The guy driving kept his eyes on the road. From the back, all she could see was a perfectly shaved head and shoulders the size of bowling balls. Kat kept prattling on—where were they going, how long would it take to get there, who were they?
The thin man sitting next to her kept smiling.
The ride ended up being short. They had just gone through the center of Water Mill when the silver Mercedes veered to the left onto Davids Lane, heading toward the ocean. They turned off onto Halsey Lane. Ritzy neighborhood.
Kat now had a pretty good idea where they were heading.
The car slowed past an enormous estate blocked off by a solid wall of high shrubs. The hedge wall stretched for several hundred yards before being interrupted by a drive protected by a completely opaque gate. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses, with an earpiece, talked into a sleeve microphone.
The gate opened, and the silver Mercedes pulled up the drive toward a sprawling Gatsby-esque stone mansion with a red tile roof. White Greco-Roman statues and cypress trees lined the drive. The courtyard featured a round pool with a high-spouting fountain.