Everybody Dies - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  The brightness stabbed her eyes, and she saw a quick image of Hugo filling the doorway before she closed her eyelids. Once she did, her balance got wonky, and she quickly brought her legs together and tucked them under her, waiting for the monster to speak.

  He didn’t.

  Pasha squinted, the light still hurting, and noted that Hugo was empty-handed.

  If he’d brought food and water, it was a good guess he meant to keep her alive. Since he hadn’t, he must have wanted something else.

  Pasha had a hunch what it was.

  “You’re here to kill me,” she stated, surprised by the calmness in her own voice.

  “Does that frighten you?”

  “Does it matter what I’m feeling?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Pasha pushed up to her feet. The yoga had helped center her, helped her get control of her fear. Whatever was coming, she wanted to stand and face it, head-on.

  “Why did you bring me here just to kill me?” she asked.

  “I brought you for a different reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “To lure Phineas here.”

  “So why kill me now?”

  Again, Hugo didn’t answer.

  Panic flared in Pasha, and she refused to let it reach her face. “Is Phin dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So why are you killing me? Why not tell me?” She took a shot. “Are you under orders?”

  “I do what I want. Orders mean nothing.”

  He was talking, which was better than him hurting her. Pasha kept up with the questions. “You said before that six thousand people would die. Is that true?”

  A slight nod.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Today.”

  “And you’re doing it?”

  Another nod.

  “How?”

  No response.

  “Why?”

  Hugo reached down into his boot top, and pulled out his razor.

  Pasha put her hands on her hips. If she’d learned anything about the psychology of the creature standing before her, it was that Hugo had a more favorable response to strength than he did to fear. “Of all the things you could do with me, that’s the best you can come up with?”

  He opened the razor. Pasha didn’t back away. She searched her mind for something to distract him.

  “Remember at my office?” she asked. “I said you were as needy as I was. But I didn’t tell you why.”

  Hugo’s lips curled into the slightest of grins. “I can make you tell me why.”

  He thrusted his pelvis, just a little, and Pasha couldn’t help but notice the telltale, obvious bulge.

  “I’m happy to tell you.” Pasha didn’t retreat. She advanced. Moving slowly. Staying centered. Lithe. Open. Receptive. Drawing out the motion, she gracefully raised her good hand and placed it on his belly.

  “So tell me.”

  Hugo’s abs were so hard she could fit a finger in the striations. Up close, he seemed even more unreal. So huge. So inhuman. She had to crane her neck back to stare up at him.

  “You’re afraid,” Pasha said.

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “I can tell. Right now. You’re afraid of what I’ll do next.”

  “I could rip your head off your body.”

  Pasha moved her hand lower. “So why don’t you?”

  Legs trembling, she pressed her chest against his belly, flattening it against him, at the same time moving her hands to his crotch.

  With her good hand, she reached for his fly.

  “You think you’re the first one to try this? It won’t work.”

  “Is it intimacy you’re afraid of, Hugo? Love? Or the opposite of that?” She moved her other hand down, slipping a thumb and index finger into his loose pocket, pinching the bulge. “Or is it… rejection?”

  Pasha tried to shove him, but he didn’t budge and she only succeeding in pushing herself away.

  “You… amuse me,” Hugo said, smiling his pumpkin smile. “I have to go. The show is almost over. I have six thousand people to kill.”

  Then, miraculously, he turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

  He even left the light on.

  Pasha quickly sat down, her back to the doorway, and stared at the cell phone in her hand. Her cell phone. The telltale, obvious bulge she’d tugged out of his pocket.

  She flipped it open and powered it on—

  —and immediately noticed two things.

  The date and time. She’d been captive for five days, and it was after one in the afternoon.

  And her battery was nearly dead.

  Pasha dialed 911.

  “What’s your emergency?” said the female operator.

  “My name is Bipasha Kapoor. I’ve been kidnapped. I’m chained up in some basement or cellar. A man named Hugo Troutt is planning to kill me.”

  “Where are you, Bipasha?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what state I’m in. Can’t you track my phone?”

  “You’re in Chicago, Illinois. I have your cell phone number, and I’m able to trace it to the nearest cell phone transmitter, on Wells. But we can’t currently pinpoint your location.”

  “Can’t currently? When will you be able to?”

  “In September,” she said. “Is there anything around you that can help you identify where you are?”

  “September?!”

  “Keep calm, Bipasha. Networks aren’t required to comply with Phase 2 of the Enhanced 9-1-1 System until September, and your carrier hasn’t complied yet. Can you tell me what you see?”

  “You said pinpoint. How close can you get?”

  The operator paused and then said, “Three hundred meters.”

  Pasha almost started to laugh. In a city as dense, tall, and busy as Chicago, that would be like trying to find a specific blade of grass on a one acre lawn.

  “Talk to me, Pasha. What do you see?”

  “Shelves. Old stuff. Lights. Nothing that tells me anything. I’ve been here for more than a day and I don’t have any idea where I am. I think I hear something. People. Music. Hugo said something about a show.”

  “What kind of show? A movie? A play?”

  “I’m not sure.” She tried to concentrate on the faint sound. “It sounds live. A play.”

  “That’s good, Bipasha. That’s very good. You’re doing fine.”

  “How many theaters does Chicago have?”

  “Over two hundred. But it’s okay. We can use the cell tower to narrow it down. Can you leave the line open for a few minutes?”

  “My battery is almost dead.”

  “Try to hold out as long as you can.”

  Pasha had a different idea. “I’ll call you back.”

  Then she dialed Phin.

  HUGO

  He checked the time.

  1:23pm.

  Only twenty-five minutes to go. Still no smoke machine.

  The Tyvek suit was, predictably, snug, even though it was an XXL. Hugo wondered if it would tear if he tried to throw a punch, and found he didn’t really give a shit one way or the other.

  He checked the monitor. The cast was prancing around, dressed in ridiculous green costumes, trying to look like monsters.

  They had no idea what real monsters looked like.

  Their plan—Packer, the CN, the imaginary Supreme Caucasian—was going perfectly. No problems. No mistakes.

  No surprises.

  Hugo’s plan, which was different than the Caucasian Nation’s, wasn’t going well at all.

  But that’s what Hugo thrived on. The unknown. The haphazard.

  Chaos.

  They expected him to follow orders. They actually thought he cared about their petty little ideology.

  They had misjudged him.

  If they’d really known Hugo, if they’d been able to peel back his muscles and bones and view his dark, ugly heart, they would have known that he didn’t care about anything.

 
; No past. No future. No present.

  The only thing important was that nothing was important.

  When Whitman brought Hugo into the Caucasian Nation, he thought he’d recruited a fascist.

  But Hugo was an anarchist.

  The Man with Seven Tears touched his face. Even though the plan hadn’t worked, he would still get the eighth tear.

  And when he did, Hugo planned to peel off those tear tattoos and eat them.

  He checked the monitors.

  Still no smoke.

  No Phineas, either.

  Hugo slapped his pockets.

  Then he stood up and went to deal with Pasha.

  PHIN

  McGlade blew through a stop light, narrowly missing a city bus. I had my seatbelt off, seat reclined all the way, and was searching the back seat of the Vette for his Magnum.

  “How could you lose my gun?” he whined.

  “I took it from you last night when you were acting insane.”

  “Where’d you put it?”

  “It’s gotta be in the car somewhere.”

  McGlade had only remembered he was gunless after we’d gotten into the car and called Jack. She promised him she’d send the cavalry.

  “Check the rucksack and the bug-out bag,” he ordered.

  “I don’t think I put it in either. It’s probably under the seat.”

  “Check anyway. Ease my mind.”

  I unzipped the rucksack, didn’t find the .44, then opened the prepper pack and began to hunt through it.

  My cell phone buzzed. I answered, putting it on speaker phone. “It’s Phin.”

  “Phin… I don’t know where I am.”

  Pasha. So many emotions coursed through me at once that I couldn’t process them all.

  “Is Hugo there?”

  “No. I got my phone from him, but the battery is almost dead. I thought maybe Harry could locate it. He’s rich and is always bragging about his technology.”

  Harry grimaced. “Sorry, babe. It’s only 2008. Maybe in a few years. How are you? You sound good.”

  I told McGlade to shut up.

  “We’re coming, Pasha. So are the cops. Just hold on.”

  “Hugo said something about the show almost being over.”

  “We know. We think you’re at the Roscoe Theater. Harry and I are almost there.”

  “I think I’m below street level. I can hear music, and applause, but it seems far away, and I also hear—ohmygod—”

  I held my breath, not daring to speak, fearing the worst.

  PASHA

  As soon as the door began to open, Pasha dropped the cell phone in the bucket.

  “I like games,” Hugo said when he came into the room. He was wearing a white hazmat suit, a gas mask propped on his head. “People are always so serious about things. Careers. Families. Money. Politics. Religion. Health. Death. It’s ridiculous. Everybody dies. It makes no sense to worry about something that is guaranteed to happen.”

  He walked closer. Close enough to see into the bucket. But his eyes remained locked on Pasha.

  She wondered if Phin was still listening. Had he hung up? Was the battery finally dead? What if he, or 9-1-1, tried to call back?

  “So many people, so many lives, so many worries. And what do these fools do, to take their minds off things? They play games. Did Phin ever tell you about the game of war?”

  Pasha shook her head, willing herself not to accidentally glance at the bucket.

  “It’s a card game. You each take a deck of cards, and pull from the top of the deck at the same time. High card takes them both. Phin and I played when we were children. But our family version had a twist. Whenever one of us lost a card, Father would slap us.”

  “That’s horrible,” Pasha said.

  Hugo grinned, baring his infected gums. “It was… beautiful. You never knew what was going to happen. You had to surrender to chance. Give up control. Live in the moment. When we were playing pick-up-sticks, we didn’t care about anything else. We were completely focused on the game.”

  He took a step closer. Pasha knew she had to distract him somehow.

  Try to seduce him again?

  She didn’t think she could bear it.

  Beg?

  Begging excited him.

  Fight back?

  She could try. But it wouldn’t be effective. Or last very long.

  There was a chance Phin and Harry would find her. Or the police would arrive. All she had to do was hold out until then.

  Hold out, and don’t let Hugo know about the cell phone.

  “People play games to distract themselves from real life. But life can be a game. Life is a game. If you want to take it seriously, you lose. But if you give into it…”

  Hugo lifted up his enormous foot—

  Oh, no.

  —and nudged the bucket over.

  The giant smiled. “Then you always win.”

  HUGO

  Early on, Hugo learned the secret to playing war.

  He cheated.

  While Hugo enjoyed the excitement and surprise of randomness, he also enjoyed rigging the outcome. The game of war required no strategy. But there was danger, and skill, in hiding cards from his father and brother, and then magically producing them for a win. Sometimes he’d lose on purpose, to fool them both. Sometimes he’d tempt fate by winning over and over, until Phin’s cheeks were so red and puffy it looked like he had the mumps.

  He’d done so much to rig the current game. He’d played Packer and Whitman and the rest of the CN. He had Phin running around like a headless chicken, probably half out of his mind with fear and worry.

  But his stupid little brother still hadn’t put it all together, and Hugo was almost out of time. Instead of the exciting, dramatic ending he’d hoped for, it wasn’t much fun at all. And shouldn’t killing six thousand people be fun?

  He bent down and picked up the phone.

  “Who is this?” Hugo said, louder. “The cops? Or my little brother?”

  “It’s me.”

  Phin. At least that was a step in the right direction.

  “Have you figured out where we are, yet?”

  After a hesitation, Phin said, “No.”

  “How many more hints do you need? I showed your girlfriend the Playbill in my pocket. Mentioned aliens and eggs. Thousands dying. Told her we were at a show. I’ve been waiting for you since yesterday.”

  “What are you planning, Hugo?”

  “I’m not planning. I’m doing it. Killing thousands of people. I was hoping you’d show up, but it looks like you’re going to miss everything. Where are you?”

  “Chinatown.”

  “Yeah, you’ll miss it. But just in case, I’ll tell you where I am. There’s a service tunnel, in the alley on Columbus, half a black east of The Roscoe Theater. It has a ribbon tied to the handle. Take the stairs down and to the right, go about thirty paces, and there’s a door with gaffer’s tape on it, in an X. You have twenty minutes to get here.”

  “I’m more than twenty minutes away.”

  “Too bad. I’ll be sure to take some pictures of your dead girlfriend.”

  Hugo broke the phone in half.

  “Did you call the pigs?” he asked Pasha.

  She didn’t answer.

  “You stupid bitch, why do you think I let you have the phone? If Phin’s not here, and the cops aren’t coming, this isn’t going to be nearly as exciting.”

  He reached down, grabbed the chain cuffed to the iron pipe, and gave it a fierce yank. It snapped. As Pasha tried to scurry away, Hugo grabbed her neck.

  “Here’s the new game. We’re going to watch all of these people die. Then I’m going to play doctor with you. I’m going to reach up inside you, and pull out a baby. And if there’s no baby up there, I’ll just yank out everything else I can find.”

  PHIN

  McGlade fishtailed into the alley with the sound of screeching rubber and his own high-pitched screams. The ass end of the Corvette hit a parked car, send
ing the contents of his rucksack and bugout bag everywhere, and he recovered from the swerve and hit the gas.

  “Coming up behind the theater. Look for a ribbon on a door handle.”

  “I don’t hear sirens.”

  “Jack said she’d be here. They may be coming quiet, not to alert him. Is that it?”

  Harry stomped the brakes, bouncing me off the dashboard, making the stars come out. When I was able to focus I saw he was staring into the alley, at a cellar door with a red ribbon.

  I got out of the car, drew my gun, and ran to the door and pulled on the handle.

  “Locked.”

  “I’ve got a universal key in my prep bag somewhere,” Harry said. He was kneeling next to the back seat, still looking for his .44 Magnum.

  “So do I.”

  I drew the Dan Wesson 1911 and fired six times at the door lock.

  “You coming?” I said, swinging open the door and staring at a dark staircase.

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Wait! Okay, I got your back.”

  I took the stairs, McGlade three steps behind me.

  HUGO

  He dragged her into the control room.

  1:33. Thirteen minutes until the egg scene.

  Plenty of time to do some hands-on surgery.

  He slapped Pasha across the face, driving her to the floor.

  What was that thing called? Where a woman had all of her lady parts ripped out?

  A hersterectomy?

  Hugo had never done one before. And Pasha was so tiny, he wondered if his hand would even fit.

  Only one way to find out…

  PASHA

  The blow was unbelievable. Pasha had been in a car accident, years ago, bad enough to cause whiplash.

  Hugo’s slap was twice as bad.

  She stared up at him, seeing the sick look of joy on his face, realizing that this was it. No more trying to get him to talk, no more poor attempts at seduction, no more tricks. He was going to kill her, in a horrible way, and she couldn’t think of any way to delay it.

  Pasha pulled on the end of her ankle chain, wondering if it was enough to maybe whip him in the eyes, and when she looked up, she noticed one of the TV monitors on the wall.