The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller. J.D. Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ cover up the moisture, even level the floors, drywall, and paint, but the spiders always came back. The spiders wouldn’t give up their space.

      This basement had spiders.

      Although she couldn’t see them from where she sat, she knew they were right above her, creeping in and out of the exposed floor joists. They watched her with a thousand eyes as they spun their webs.

      He gave her clothes, but they were not her clothes.

      When she woke on the floor, wrapped in the green quilt, she quickly realized she had been stripped nude and left here, in this cage, a stranger’s clothes folded neatly and left near her head. They didn’t fit. They were at least a few sizes too big, but she put them on because she had nothing else, because they were better than the green quilt. Then she wrapped herself in the green quilt anyway.

      She was in a dimly lit, damp basement. More precisely, she was in a chainlink enclosure set up in a dimly lit, damp basement.

      The enclosure went from floor to ceiling, and the pieces were welded together. It was meant to be a dog kennel. She knew this because Gabby’s family owned a dog, a husky named Dakota, and they had a very similar, if not the same, kennel in their backyard. They bought it at Home Depot, and she and Gabby had watched her father put it together over the summer. It didn’t take him long, maybe an hour, but he hadn’t welded it.

      When Lili stood up, wrapped in her green quilt, and ran her fingers over the various pipes and thick metal wire that made up her cage, she sought out joints, remembering how Gabby’s father assembled his, then her heart sank as she found the bumpy welds. The gate at the front was locked tight with not one padlock but two — one near the top and the other near the bottom. She rattled the gate, but it barely moved. The entire structure had been bolted down into the concrete floor. It was secure, and she was trapped inside.

      “You should drink something, you need to be strong for what is to come,” the man said, his voice catching for a second on the s in something.

      Lili said nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. To talk to him would give him power, and she wasn’t ready to do that. He didn’t deserve anything from her.

      The only light came from what was probably an open door at the top of the stairs. He stood perfectly still at the base.

      Lili’s eyes fought with the darkness, slowly adjusting.

      He remained out of focus though, a darker shadow among other shadows, an outline against the wall.

      “Turn around. Face the back wall, and don’t turn back again until I say it’s okay,” he instructed.

      Lili didn’t move, her posture firming.

      “Please turn around.” Softer, pleading.

      She gripped the quilt and pulled it tighter around her small frame.

      “Turn the fuck around!” he shouted, his voice booming through the basement, echoing off the walls.

      Lili gasped and took a step backward, nearly tripping.

      Then all went quiet again.

      “Please don’t make me shout. I prefer not to shout.”

      Lili felt her heart pounding in her chest, a heavy thump, thump, thump.

      She took a step back, then another, and another after that. When she reached the wall, the back of her cage, she willed her feet to turn around and faced the corner.

      Lili heard him as he walked closer, the living shadow. Something about his gait was off. Rather than steady steps, she heard one foot land, then the other slid for a second on the concrete floor before it too fell into place, repeating again with the next step. A shuffle or limp, a slight drag of the foot, she couldn’t be sure.

      Lili forced her eyes to close. She didn’t want to close them, but she did anyway. She forced her eyes to close so she could concentrate on the sounds, picture the sounds behind her.

      She heard the jingle of keys before the telltale click of a padlock — it sounded like the top lock — then the other a moment later. She heard him slip both locks from the gate, then lift the handle and open the door.

      Lili cringed in anticipation of what would come next.

      She expected his hand on her, a touch somewhere or a grab from behind. That touch never came. Instead, she heard him close the gate and replace the locks, both clicking securely back into place.

      His uneven shuffle away from her cage.

      “You can turn back around now.”

      Lili did as he asked.

      He returned to the stairs, lost to the dark again.

      A glass of milk sat on the floor just inside the cage, a thin bead of water dripping down the side.

      “It’s not drugged,” he said. “I need you awake.”

       8

       Porter

       Day 2 • 7:56 a.m.

      “I’ll see you in there. I need to hit the head,” Nash said as they stepped off the elevator at the basement level of Chicago Metro headquarters on Michigan Avenue. Nash took a right down the hallway and disappeared behind the bathroom door. Porter went left.

      After Bishop escaped, the feds had stepped in and taken over the 4MK manhunt. Porter had been on medical leave at that point, but from what Nash told him, they initially tried to take over the war room. Nash used his incredible charm, and threats of violence, on the interlopers and banished them to the room across the hall known primarily for the odd odor that permeated it, which seemed to come from the far left corner. Since that point, they coexisted with the civility of North and South Korea.

      The lights in the FBI room were off.

      Porter waited for the sound of Nash locking the restroom door, then tried the door to the feds’ room.

      Open.

      With a quick glance back down the hall, Porter slipped inside. He left the lights off.

      Six eyeballs.

      Seven victims. Eight, if he counted Emory.

      His subconscious was trying to tell him something.

      He crossed the room to the two whiteboards at the front and studied the victims’ photographs. The familiar faces looked back, their unknowing smiles captured forever in a moment of happiness. In those final moments on the eleventh floor of 314 West Belmont, Bishop pled his case, he laid his cards bare, so proud in the twisted logic of his plan. “These people deserved to be punished,” he told Porter. And it was true. Each of his victims did something horribly wrong, something worthy of punishment. But he didn’t go after them. Instead, he took their children. He made СКАЧАТЬ