The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(37)

“You’ll know when we get there,” the one called McBride said, not even glancing back. “Now do us all a favor and shut the fuck up. Our job is to drive you, not to make small talk.”

They hit a pothole and the handcuffs bit into Schrader’s wrists. “I want to talk to my lawyer,” he said, trying to control his growing unease. “Sharon Hamilton. You can call her for me. I’ll give you her number, she’s right here in Seattle. Could you do that? Please.”

McBride turned back and looked at him. “Tell you what, buddy. If one more word comes out of your mouth, we’re going to pull over and I’m going to gag you.”

“But it’s not fair! I don’t know where you’re taking me and I want to talk to my lawyer!”

Without a word, Robinson pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. McBride got out. He was holding some kind of long white cloth—a bathrobe belt? Schrader was suddenly terrified.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I won’t say anything else! I’ll stop!”

McBride said nothing. He opened the rear passenger-side door, leaned in, and pulled the cloth across Schrader’s mouth. Schrader wanted to twist away, but he was afraid of what they might do if he tried to resist. “Wait, wait, wuhwuhwuh . . . ,” he said as McBride secured the belt behind his head. He tried to ask them why they were doing this, why they wouldn’t just call Sharon, but all that came out was the wuhwuhwuh sound. The cloth was rough against his tongue and the only way he could avoid gagging was to bite down to keep it from invading deeper into his mouth.

McBride took him by the chin and looked in his eyes. “No more noise from you,” he said, his tone weirdly gentle. “Do you understand? Unless you want to get hooded, too. Do you want that?”

Something in the kindness of the tone undid Schrader. He shook his head and started to cry.

McBride patted his leg. “That’s good. We’ll be there soon. You’re going to be fine.”

They started up again. Other than the thump thump, thump thump, the car was silent now. The handcuffs hurt and the cloth belt was worse. Schrader had to concentrate to keep from gagging. He felt something running down his chin and realized it was drool.

Robinson turned on the radio, some country-and-western station. McBride said, “I hate this shit. I choose on the way back.” Robinson laughed.

The farther they drove, the more Schrader knew something was badly wrong. The areas they passed through were increasingly remote. There were barely any houses, let alone FBI field offices. He realized he had to pee, and he couldn’t even ask. Not that they would have listened. He breathed through his nose and tried not to gag.

The pine trees grew taller and thicker. They passed a big body of water. Schrader thought it might be Lake Tapps, but he’d lost track of where they were heading.

They turned onto a twisting gravel road and stopped at a gate. McBride got out and unlocked and opened it. Robinson drove through, then waited while McBride relocked the gate and got back in the car.

Robinson turned off the music. Schrader hadn’t liked it, but the silence that replaced it was much worse. Thump thump, thump thump.

They came to a two-story green house. It had a pair of white garage doors in front. One of the doors opened. But no one in the car had pressed a button. Someone inside must have been waiting. Watching.

They pulled inside. The wipers stopped. The garage door closed behind them with a loud mechanical rumble and a thud. For a moment, they sat there in the dark and the quiet. Schrader didn’t know where they were. Or what was happening. All he knew was that it was very bad. He tried to hold in his pee, and all at once he couldn’t.

A man came out. He flipped on a light. He was wearing jeans and a fleece jacket. He didn’t look like an FBI agent.

The man opened the rear passenger-side door and pulled Schrader out. “Jesus,” he said, looking at Schrader’s wet prison jumpsuit. “You guys couldn’t pull over and let him take a leak?”

McBride came out and looked. “Oh, come on.” He looked at Robinson. “I am not cleaning that up.”

Robinson came around and looked, too. “Oh, hell. Whatever. We’ll throw some towels over it. Keep the smell down.”

Schrader stood there, ashamed and humiliated. He realized he was still peeing. There was nothing he could do. He started crying again.

“Why’d you gag him?” the new man said. “He could have choked.” It didn’t sound like he cared about Schrader. It sounded like he cared about . . . something else.

“Hey,” McBride said. “You want to take the gag off, go for it. Good luck finding another way to shut him up.”

The new man chuckled and patted Schrader on the back. “Well, we don’t want to shut him up, do we?” He looked Schrader up and down, as though measuring him for something. “We want to hear everything he has to say.”





chapter

twenty-nine





KANEZAKI


When Kanezaki’s admin told him the DCI wanted to see him immediately, he wondered if it was connected to DNI Pierce Devereaux’s presence in the building. The word was, Devereaux had come to see Rispel, and her admin had heard shouting from behind Rispel’s closed office door. When it came to gossip, at least, in an intelligence agency there were no secrets.