The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(82)

With a final massive contraction of his muscles, Mark landed on his feet beside the bed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Heather.”

Mark grabbed for his sweats and running shoes, throwing them on his body as he moved through the door into the hallway. As he stepped out, he saw Jennifer’s terrified face looking at him.

She clutched at his arm. “Something terrible is happening to Heather.”

“I know. I can feel her in my head.”

“We have to help her.”

“You stay here. I’m going to go get her.”

“But how will you find her?”

“I don’t know how exactly, but I can feel her out there. It’s like she’s pulling me. I’ll find her.”

As Mark finished sliding on his second shoe and released his hold on the banister, Jennifer noticed he had crushed the wood railing beneath his fingers. Then he was down the stairs and out of the house.

Mark’s feet moved with a speed he had never imagined humanly possible, propelling him down the dark street and into the woods as if he were slung from a catapult. All conscious thought stopped as his mind focused on the directional pull tugging him. It was getting weaker now as Heather’s strength ebbed, or perhaps it was her life force that ebbed. A shudder passed through Mark’s body as he pressed himself to the limit.

He no longer followed the trail, moving directly toward the spot from which he felt her call emanate, leaping boulders and deadfalls, crashing directly through the smaller bushes, as tree branches and thorn bushes clutched and tore at him in vain attempts to impede his progress.

As he reached a steep slope and scrambled down, Heather’s call faded entirely. Mark stopped, casting his gaze around in a desperate attempt to identify landmarks in the direction he had last felt it. Suddenly, he became aware of a pale flickering light about a hundred feet down the slope and to the right of where he stood.

Mark resumed his movement, although now he went quietly forward. As he came within view of the spot, he saw the entrance to an unknown cave, the flickering light spilling out of the opening. As Mark prepared to rush across the remaining distance and into the opening, a voice rang out in the darkness.

“Freeze!”





Chapter 61





Jack Gregory stepped out of the darkness and into the lighted cave entrance, his weapon locked on a spot in the middle of the Rag Man’s head.

“Freeze!” His command rang through the still night air like the tolling of a church bell.

The Rag Man froze, then turned away from Heather’s limp body, which hung like a rag doll, suspended by her cuffed wrists, chained to the wall in a way that reminded Jack of cramped Al-Qaeda torture cells in the Middle East. Hanging on a meat hook beside her was Harry’s broken body.

“Slowly, now, step away from the girl and drop the knife.”

As the Rag Man completed his slow turn, Jack could see that the tip of the knife rested against the jugular vein on the left side of Heather’s neck. Insanity shone brightly in the depths of the recessed eyes of the Rag Man, his grin revealing teeth so rotten that Jack expected to see flies swarm from the man’s open mouth.

The Rag Man nodded toward Harold’s corpse. “So you must be the one that guy called ‘Ripper.’ You know, I worked long and hard to make that Satan spawn tell me your real name so I could track you down, but he went back to the dark lord’s arms with the secret still clenched in his teeth. But the true Lord’s power is not to be denied. He has seen fit to deliver you to me anyway.”

“Drop the knife.”

“Well, no. I don’t think I will. You see, even if you manage to shoot me, I will cut this young sinner’s throat before your bullet reaches me.”

Jack calculated quickly. “Yes, but if you’re right and God has seen fit to bring me to you, then you will have failed to do what he desires. You will be dead, and I’ll still be alive. Perhaps we can work out a deal.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll toss away my gun if you agree to deal with me first, then the girl.”

The Rag Man’s grin widened. “I agree. Toss the gun.”

“Do you swear on the Lord Almighty that you will not hurt that girl again until after you deal with me?”

“I swear it, in the name of the Almighty Father.” The Rag Man’s carnivorous grin widened.

Jack tossed the gun out of the cave.





Chapter 62





Mark froze. A man clad all in black had run into the mouth of the cave, pulled a gun, and given the command in a voice that cracked like a whip.

Mark moved to his left a few yards, so he could see inside the cave from the bushes where he crouched. As he looked inside, he barely managed to stifle a horrified cry. Heather hung from chains on the far wall, unconscious or dead. The man they called the Rag Man leaned against her body, having just finished sniffing or licking her neck.

Beside Heather, a dead man’s body hung from a meat hook, his limbs twisted like taffy on a stretcher. The corpse’s face was a horror. The skin had been sliced open in great slits like bloody gills. The nose had been cut off, and the eyeballs had been carefully pulled from their sockets so they dangled down the cheeks by the optic nerve.

“Slowly, now, step away from the girl and drop the knife.”