He saw nothing.

He waited a few more seconds, then peered around again. This time, not so fast.

The Yukon was parked about eleven yards from the building’s entrance – a heavy-looking wooden door. That was it. There was nothing else there.

Great, Hunter thought. Now what, Robert? No way that that door will be unlocked. This is a prison, not a house. Whatever security has been put in place here, it hasn’t been used to keep anyone from getting in. It’s to stop people from getting out.

There was nothing else Hunter could do but get closer and have a better look. And that was exactly what he did. Still with his gun in hand and his back flat against the wall, he rounded the corner and slowly slid his way toward the heavy door. As he got to it, he felt his guts beginning to churn inside him.

There was something definitely evil about this place. Even the air immediately around it felt denser, harder to breathe.

Hunter studied the lock on the door. It looked old, but solid. He took another deep breath and looked around him again.

Nothing but darkness and silence.

He stretched out his left arm, placed his fingers on the door handle, twisted it downwards and gave the door a slow but firm push.

He was wrong.

To his bewildered surprise, the door moved inwards. It was unlocked.

‘What the hell?’ he whispered under his breath.

Hunter held the door in that position for a long moment, his brain quickly trying to figure out what to do next.

He’d come too far to turn back now.

As cautiously as he could, he pushed the door just another inch. Then another. Then another. Then another. Until the gap was wide enough for him to peek inside.

He saw nothing. Whatever this first room was, it seemed to be completely empty.

Hunter held his breath, pushed the door just a couple more inches and furtively slid into the building, slowly closing the door behind him.

The air inside was warm and dusty, heavy with the smell of bleach and disinfectant, very similar to the odor that he and Garcia had picked up inside Mat Hade’s apartment in East Los Angeles.

Hunter stood still for a moment, his back now flat against the inside of the door. His eyes were already used to the moonless night outside so it took them no time at all to acclimatize to the darkness inside, which suited him perfectly. He wanted to avoid using his flashlight as much as possible.

Hunter found himself standing at the entrance to a wide corridor, which had been stripped of all furniture and decorations. The walls were gray and made of cinder blocks, the floor and the ceiling of solid concrete. The entire hallway looked like a square, concrete tunnel – claustrophobic and airless.

It extended about seven yards in front of Hunter, leading to a second door, which lay ajar. A faint light came from somewhere behind it.

With watchful, soundless steps, Hunter quickly moved to it, pausing by the wall to the right of the door. He stood there motionless, waiting, listening.

One minute.

Two minutes.

The silence was deafening.

He finally twisted his body, craned his neck and very carefully peeked through the gap. The light source, which Hunter was unable to identify, was extremely weak, keeping most of the room in shadow. From where he stood, he could only partially see one half of the room without exposing himself, and it looked almost as sterile as the corridor he was in. Toward the back of it, a dark fabric armchair faced a blank wall. To its left, Hunter saw a small, wooden coffee table. On the floor, just in front of the armchair, a rectangular, black and white rug bridged the gap between the armchair and the wall. That was it. Hunter could see nothing else other than dark corners.

With his back still against the wall to the right of the door, he waited another two full minutes.

No sound or movement from inside.

Time to move on.

Hunter took a deep breath and, in a noiseless and well-rehearsed movement, rotated his body into the room, his arms extended in front of him, his gun searching for a target everywhere . . . anywhere.

He found none.

The second half of the room was even emptier than the first.

Hunter’s eyes were still frantically searching the barren space for some sort of target, but he was looking the wrong way. The movement came from the shadow directly behind him.

Fast.

Precise.

Unstoppable.

As Hunter began turning back toward the door he had come in by, he received a blow to the back of the head that was so powerful it propelled him forward and against the wall.

A millisecond later, all thought was swallowed by total darkness.

Eighty-Five

Hunter’s consciousness returned to him slowly and painfully. With every heartbeat, his head throbbed with an intense pain, like a spiked ball was pulsating at the center of his brain. He blinked a couple of times, but his eyelids felt too heavy for him to be able to fully open them, so for now he kept his eyes closed. He took a deep breath and as the warm air inflated his lungs, it seemed to also inflate that damn spike ball in his brain. Agonizing pain exploded inside his head like a furious thunderstorm and brought with it a second, searing and debilitating pain. This one ran the length of his arms, stretching and pulling at both ends as if his arms were about to be violently ripped from their sockets.

Hunter blinked again, but this time he finally found the strength to force open his eyes. Through the pain and the confusion, it took him a moment to understand what he was looking at – his bare feet resting on the floor, limp as if they belonged to a dead man. That was when he realized that he had been tied up in the exact same position they had found Alison Atkins inside that barn-like building. His arms were stretched high above his head. His wrists had been shackled together by a shiny steel chain and then looped around a metal pipe that ran across the ceiling. Two different padlocks kept it all in place. The chain was supporting the whole of his weight and it was biting deeply into his wrists. Thin lines of blood had run down his bare arms and over his shoulders.

Fighting the sickening pain in his head and arms, Hunter lifted his head and looked up. There was no way he was getting out of those shackles by himself.

‘I must admit that you’ve surprised me, Robert.’

The voice came from somewhere in the shadows in front of him. Hunter looked in that direction but saw no one.

‘I never thought you’d get here. I never thought you’d figure it out.’

Despite the voice sounding somewhat different from the one in the two 911 recordings he’d heard, Hunter was still able to recognize it. He’d heard it enough times.

That was why he showed no surprise when the man walked out of the darkness and stopped directly in front of him.

‘Hello, Robert.’

Eighty-Six

Squirm hadn’t slept at all. How could he? Every time he closed his eyes he saw her. Naked. Arms stretched out above her head. Her body dangling from that wooden beam while suspended by the chain shackled to her wrists. He would never forget the way in which she had looked at him.