“But Ned swears he heard her come in on Monday morning.”

“Yeah, Ned. Remember he was in the back microwaving his breakfast?”

“Yeah, that’s why he said he heard her but didn’t see her.”

“But you told me the day porter was on the fourth floor heating up his soup in a microwave. Why not use the one in the room behind the security console? The one Ned said he was using that morning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Because the microwave in the lobby is broken. I bet if we ask the day porter he’ll tell us the same thing. That it’s been broken for a while.”

“So are you saying fat, stupid Ned planned all this and killed Diane?”

“He’s fat, but I’m not sure how stupid he is. And I don’t think he did any of this alone. I think he looked the other way when the Captain sneaked in the building, because he was told to.”

“Mace, we need to go to your sister and tell her all of this. I’ll meet you there.”

“And tell her what? A bunch of speculation? Because that’s all it is. We don’t have solid proof of anything.”

“So what do we do?”

“You prepare for your hearing tomorrow. I’m going to Newark. We say nothing. But we keep an eye on old Ned and he might just lead us to where we need to go.”

“I don’t want you getting your neck crushed by that guy.”

“I’d hear him coming from a mile away just by the fat sloshing.”

“Okay, but will you get back here please? At least then I’ll know you’re safe.”

“Oh, Roy, you really do care,” she said sarcastically.

“If anything happens to you, your sister will blame me. And I’d rather be dead.”

She clicked off and walked quickly over to the exit door. She closed it behind her and was turning to walk down the stairs when something hard slammed into her head.

As she hit the floor already unconscious, Ned stood over her. While he was still heavyset, he didn’t appear to be as fat as before. He was dressed all in black, was wearing gloves, and moved nimbly as he picked the woman up and slung her over his shoulder. He reentered the construction site and punched in a number on his cell phone.

The voice answered.

Ned said, “Got the bird. On the fourth.”

Jarvis Burns sat back in his armchair and put aside the file he was reading.

“Acknowledged,” he said.

“Orders?”

“Unchanged. Proceed. Copycat.”

“Roger that.”

Ned clicked off and carried Mace over to the refrigerator. He searched her and found her phone, which he tossed to the side. He cleared out all the food and shelves, wedged her inside, closed the door, and wrapped the chain around it. Then he inserted a padlock in the chain links and smacked it closed. He tried to pull the door open, but it barely budged a centimeter. A moment later he was hustling down the stairs to the lobby.

In his home on Capitol Hill, Burns picked up the file once more. “I gave you another chance, Mace. Too bad you didn’t take it.”

As he turned the pages he put Mace Perry completely out of his mind.

CHAPTER 99

WHEN MACE came to she felt like she was going to throw up. As she fought the nausea she wondered why she was having trouble breathing. She reached a hand up and touched the large knot on her head. She could feel the clotted blood there. Someone had really whacked her. She started to shiver. It was cold.

Where the hell am I?

She started to get up and then quickly realized she was in a confined space. A very cold confined space.

“Oh shit!”

She felt around in the total darkness, her hands bumping into the smooth frigid surfaces. She scrambled in her pocket, found her penlight, and turned it on. As soon as the illumination confirmed where she was, Mace groaned. She pushed hard against the door with her shoulder. It barely budged. She knew why. The chain. Just like Diane. Only she was already dead.

And I will be very soon unless I get the hell out of here.

She reached down and unbuckled the belt that she’d gotten from Binder’s weapons shop. It had a very special clasp to it. A few seconds later she’d pulled the four-inch knife free from its holder hidden in the elongated metal buckle. She angled her body around and slipped the blade in the slit where the door met the frame of the appliance. There was a molded plastic shelf unit built into the door and the supporting frame for this was right in her way. Yet she managed to work around it and finally reached the flex strip that created a vacuum seal when the door was closed. She inserted the blade in the slit between the two strips and maneuvered it around. If she levered hard enough, she could feel a trace of air. She pushed very hard once and with a sucking sound the vacuum seal broke slightly. Now she could see a sliver of semidarkness, which represented the more illuminated space outside of the death trap she was in.

But a sliver wouldn’t cut it. It didn’t let in nearly enough air. She was already shaking with the effort of maintaining the break in the seal. A second later her strength failed and the opening resealed itself. Okay, if she didn’t suffocate to death the cold would do her in. Would Roy come looking for her when she didn’t show? He knew where she was. But it would take time. Perhaps hours, when she had air maybe for another few minutes. Her chest started heaving as her lungs sought out every precious molecule of oxygen. Her mind started to fog up, signaling the lungs that these molecules were far from enough to keep everything going.

The insulation strip!

Holding the penlight between her teeth, she began hacking at it with her knife. The blade struck through it easily and it came away in long strips. Very soon she could feel the air start to flow in more steadily. And if she wedged her head against the door, she could actually see outside. She poked the blade through this new opening and lifted it up and down. On the downward stroke it hit the chain. There was no way she could saw through the chain with the knife in less than a day if at all. But at least she could breathe. Now the issue was the cold; she was still freezing to death. She looked up and saw it built into the top of the fridge’s interior: the temperature dial. It was set on four. Seven was the coldest, she quickly discovered. She reached up and dialed it back to one, the warmest. She had no idea in refrigerator technology how “warm” the number one setting would be, but she didn’t want to find out it was still in hypothermia range.

Mace started rocking her body front to back. The Amana was a tall appliance, and she was betting there wasn’t much in the lower freezer section to anchor it. As much as the confined space would allow her, she kept rocking. She’d hit one side with her legs and then slam against the other side with her back. Very quickly her entire body felt like she’d been hit by a car, but she kept going. She could feel the Amana start to lean a bit, to the right and then to the left. As it kept going, the appliance started to walk, like a washing machine out of control. Encouraged by this, she started flinging herself back and forth with renewed energy.

One last smash against the molded plastic with her combat boots and the Amana finally toppled over sideways. Mace braced herself for the impact, which was easy enough to do since she was wedged in. Still, when the fridge hit the concrete floor, her head banged against the hard interior wall right where the bump on her noggin was and she felt herself black out for an instant.

But she’d accomplished her goal. She could no longer hear the slight hum of the Amana’s motor. The power cord had come out of the socket. Now she had air. And she would soon have warmth. But she was still trapped. She had hoped that the collision with the floor might have caused the chain to slip off, but no such luck. One push against the door told her that. She looked down at the molded plastic floor. Below that was the freezer compartment. The chain couldn’t be around that door too. She started stomping her feet. The floor was hard, but she could feel it give just a bit.