Hostage by Kay Hooper

for something else we haven’t yet discovered. He had the cabin rented and waiting, probably the Jeep hidden somewhere waiting for him, maybe the other vehicles as well, and all of them turned out to be untraceable. He had supplies stashed, or got them somewhere along the way where no one recognized him and no security camera we know of recorded it.”
    “And I guess both likely and unlikely stores were checked.”
    “By some very good technical analysts, yes. Between traffic cams and cameras at ATMs and security cams at a lot of businesses, and especially given the relatively small area, there was a good chance of catching him on security footage somewhere. At least, that was the logical thought. But he wasn’t spotted anywhere on camera. No sign of him shopping. Or getting gas, for that matter. No recordings of him at all. Just a witness here or there who’d never have noticed him except that his picture was all over TV and the Internet.” She smiled faintly. “Never mind the BOLO. Today it’s TV and the Internet that brings more witnesses forward. And he hasn’t shown up on any cell-phone-captured videos on YouTube yet. We have people monitoring that too.”
    She drew a breath and let it out slowly, thoughtful. “He was headed this way all along, and both before and during the trip was sharp enough and careful enough to lay false trails miles away from his destination. He had a plan for his escape and it was a good one. He picked a place to hide, and it was a good one—at least on paper. It really wasn’t until he got up here that his behavior became very obviously erratic.”
    “Which makes it at least possible he wasn’t nearly so dangerous until he arrived here and became affected by something in the area. Something in that cabin or in the area around it.” Luther thought about it. “But you said taking away the memories of those agents was a negative thing, something he did before he got here. The first step he took in escaping.”
    “The first step that we know of.”
    * * *
    COLE JACOBY WAS in a very dark place. He felt an enormous pressure, as if something with incredible strength and will had backed him into a corner or put him inside a box or wrapped him tightly in something, and was holding him still.
    He couldn’t see.
    Couldn’t move.
    Couldn’t hear even his own breathing, or feel his heart beating, or sense anything in the darkness except that, except the impenetrable blackness of
nothing
.
    Was he dead?
    No. No, because . . . because he could smell something. Something rusty. Something metallic. Something very, very old that made him afraid in a way he could never remember being afraid. And something that smelled a lot like . . . Well, it had to be sulfur. Had to be. Even rotten eggs didn’t have the bite, the sharp, eye-watering sting, of true sulfur.
    There was nothing else like that. Except . . . maybe . . . brimstone.
    Even as that realization surfaced, he decided to ignore it. He was just . . . sleeping, that was all. Caught in some kind of weird nightmare. That had to be it, because it couldn’t be real.
    Could it?
    No. A nightmare. It explained why he couldn’t move. Why he couldn’t see. Or speak. Or feel anything except blackness and terror.
    And nightmares were unpredictable, he knew that. It explained why he could smell when he couldn’t use any other sense. And then . . . it explained why he could suddenly hear with a painful clarity.
    It just didn’t explain what he heard.
    It didn’t explain the screaming.
    * * *
    LUTHER NODDED. “TRUE, attempting to control the guards may just have been the next step for him. Maybe because he’d already tried whatever his psychic sense is and realized he could only influence one or two minds at most. Or couldn’t control them long enough for his purposes. So he had to figure out a way to get out of prison, even temporarily. His actual first step may have been to offer the feds just enough information, or the