The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) Read online

  Aaron made another feeble attempt to get to his feet. He lunged for Ansgar to stop the madness, but was batted away by the man’s forearm as he moved left and looked out at the balcony.

  Ansgar raised his gun and aimed it at Alex.

  In the time it took to blink, Alex flipped upside down and disappeared over the railing of the balcony.

  Ansgar stomped onto the balcony and looked down. He returned a moment later.

  “Looks like your friend didn’t have wings after all.” Ansgar shrugged. “Oops. So much for your guardian angel.”

  Chapter 33

  Anton Olafson made it to the small window by the door and stopped when he saw who had knocked.

  It wasn’t the police. It was a man and he was alone.

  “Yes?” Anton moaned through the locked door. “What cause would you have to knock on my door and wake me at this horrid hour?”

  The man jolted at the sound, then leaned down to the window and tried to peer inside but the clouded glass around the front door made that impossible. Anton was shrouded in darkness on the inside yet there was enough light for him to see the man on the stoop.

  “Open up,” the man said. “Police.”

  “Bullshit,” Anton shouted. “A Danish cop with an American accent. Fuck off. Go bug one of my neighbors.”

  Anton slipped back behind the front wall so his silhouette wouldn’t show through the clouded glass. He waited for some indication that the man would leave, but heard nothing.

  “I know it was you,” the man said. “Open the door. Talk to me or talk to the police.”

  Anton didn’t respond. Maybe the man would think he had gone back to bed.

  “You walked past me before you sprayed those two girls with pepper spray. Your name is Anton Olafson.”

  He gasped and covered his mouth with a hand. Who was this man and how did he know so much? Anton almost said something, but decided not to. He chanced a look at the guest room door to make sure the girl hadn’t untied herself.

  “Anton, open the door. Your daughter is safe. But she won’t be for long.”

  My daughter?

  How did this man know about Clara?

  He chanced a peek around the corner of the wall. The man stood outside the door, unmoving.

  Did the hacker send him? Had he been following him? To what end? Anton had the girl in the other room. He was prepared to murder her tonight for Clara’s freedom. Did he have to perform this horrendous deed or was it over?

  “Why won’t my daughter be safe for long?” Anton asked before he could stop himself.

  “If you hurt a single hair on the girl you have in your house, Clara will never make it home. I personally guarantee that. Now open the door so we can discuss this.”

  His stomach dropped. Sweat slipped down his spine. The hacker gave him instructions to protect Clara. He was following those instructions. Now a strange man was at his door telling him the opposite. Was he the correct one? Should the girl in the other room be let go? If so, what was Anton basing that on? The hacker saw the photos in his computer. The hacker knew about Damien’s arrest and Anton’s indiscretions in Aarhus. The hacker lured Clara from Denmark without his knowledge. As far as Anton was concerned, he would stick to the plan that he and the hacker had worked out. Whoever this man was and what he knew meant little to Anton. Let him spew his bullshit. When he stepped away from the stoop, Anton would carry on with what he set out to do.

  He wiped his hand on his pants, then ran one through his thinning hair. He stopped his hand near the back of his head and scrunched up a batch of hair, pulling until the pain soothed him. His eyes glazed over.

  What had he gotten himself into? There was no escaping this. A part of him knew that from the beginning. He had gone forward anyway. For Clara. Everything was for Clara.

  Save Clara.

  “Open the door, Anton,” the man said as he knocked again. “I know you have Sarah. Is she unconscious? Is she still alive?”

  Anton slipped down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He would listen until the man left. Once he departed, Anton would film the murder of the girl with or without the hacker on a live feed. If he didn’t do it soon, he would lose the nerve.

  “I know she’s not conscious,” the stranger said. “If she was, you wouldn’t’ve answered the door. She would have.”

  He drew his legs up and rested his head on his forearms. The man was silent for a few moments. Anton waited for more.

  He knocked again, this time lighter.

  “I will return with the police. I hope you’re hearing me, Anton. I know you have Sarah in there and she would never go quietly. For your sake, I hope she’s just sleeping.” The sound of boots on the front steps resonated through the door. “I’ll be back with the authorities.”

  Sarah Roberts?

  Had he heard that name before? Did he know the girl?

  What did it matter who she was? Her life was over. A trade. Sarah’s life for Clara’s life.

  Anton rose from the floor, slapped his hands together to brush them off, and shrugged.

  “Sarah Roberts, whoever you are, will be dead in under five minutes.” The thought of saving his daughter with this one act made him feel heroic. “I thank you for your service to my family.”

  Anton Olafson went to get his cell phone to record the murder and a small mirror. He was going to give the hacker all the proof he needed.

  The consequences would come later.

  He would deal with them then.

  Save Clara.

  Chapter 34

  Ansgar Holm slipped his Glock into the back of his pants and strode over to Aaron. These stupid kids thought they would get the jump on him, a man with a long service record. A body-building, hand-to-hand combat veteran that now hired out his services as a private military contractor.

  The pathetic face of their leader, Aaron, looked up at him with something akin to poison in his eyes.

  Ansgar pulled his foot back and kicked Aaron in the side of the face, knocking the kid’s head into the bed post. Aaron’s head bounced once off the carpet and his eyes fluttered, then shut. He moaned something, then tried to open his eyes again. A faint trickle of blood oozed from his mouth.

  Ansgar was sick of playing these schoolyard games. He needed answers before he left the hotel for good. With the gunfire earlier and the dead kid on the ground who had just jumped from the tenth floor balcony, the authorities would be roaming the area soon because the clerk downstairs had called them about the airport van.

  In the corner by the bathroom door, Ansgar grabbed the clothes iron and added water to it. He plugged it in and waited, watching Aaron as he tried to get up off the floor.

  The man was missing a finger. The loss looked recent the way the ragged stump appeared.

  “How’d you lose the finger?” Ansgar asked.

  “A dead man thought he could use it to buy something.” Aaron rolled onto his back and sat up, using the bed to rest his back against.

  “A dead man did that?”

  “No, stupid. He died because he did it.”

  “Is that a warning? Are you telling me that I’ll be dead for what I’m doing to you?” Ansgar glanced at the iron. “Or what I’m going to do to you?”

  Aaron moaned when he touched the cheek that had swollen. He wiped the blood from his chin.

  “I’m not part of the equation,” Aaron said. “You’re dead regardless of what has happened or will happen. It has nothing to do with me.”

  Ansgar barked out a laugh. “You’re quite the asshole. Threatening me when I hold the cards.” He clucked his tongue. “This’ll all be over soon and I will go on to another job. When I do, I will think back to you and smile. At least you had balls. Can’t say that for many of the people I kill.”

  He unplugged the iron, pulled out the Glock and walked over to stand in front of Aaron. With his foot, he drew the side chair closer and sat. The Glock never wavering, he set the iron on the carpet and kicked his shoes off. Then he re
moved one of his black dress socks and balled it up.

  “Where’s the girl I had in my possession?” Ansgar asked, balled sock in one hand, Glock in the other.

  Aaron shrugged.

  “Where’s my cell phone?” Ansgar asked.

  Aaron tilted his head toward the balcony. “He had it last.”

  Ansgar didn’t like Aaron’s smart attitude. When he finished him off, he would burn the attitude out of him.

  He glanced at the iron, then back to Aaron.

  “How did you find me here in this hotel?”

  Aaron met his gaze. In his eyes, Ansgar saw defiance mixed with a tinge of hatred.

  “How did you know I was going to kill you at the dojo? Since you knew, why didn’t you try to stop me?”

  “Fuck your mother,” Aaron said. “I fucked her and wouldn’t do it again. She’s an ugly, dirty skank.”

  Ansgar jammed the balled sock into Aaron’s mouth, forcing it in as Aaron squirmed under the pressure by placing the Glock at Aaron’s neck.

  “I will shoot you in the throat,” Ansgar whispered.

  Then the sock popped into Aaron’s mouth, forcing his jaw to its limits.

  With his free hand, he grabbed the iron and raised it over Aaron’s right forearm. It had cooled some since it was plugged in, but was definitely hot enough to burn flesh.

  Their eyes locked. Ansgar was reminded of a Taliban sympathizer he’d tortured in an underground hideout using a metal rod heated in a fire. That man’s eyes looked like Aaron’s. He knew the pain was coming and he knew it would be a lot of pain. What was most important was he knew that he was powerless to stop it.

  Ansgar pressed the iron onto Aaron’s flesh and leaned into as Aaron screeched with pain behind the balled-up sock.

  The acrid smell of hair and burning flesh stunk up the hotel room. He pulled the iron off and Aaron slumped onto the carpet, writhing with the pain.

  Outside, the sound of police sirens wailed in the distance.

  Aaron had to be convinced to give him the answers he needed faster. Once Aaron was dead, he would hunt Aaron’s teachers from the dojo. They had seen his face. They knew who he was. He would retrieve that Danish girl and kill them all. He was on a mission. The amount of fuck ups were too high. It was time to clean up the mess and move on.

  He lowered the iron and seared the flesh of Aaron’s other arm to the wonderful sound of Aaron’s muffled screams.

  The man would talk. Ansgar would burn the answers out of him.

  Or he would die a silent idiot.

  Either way, it mattered little to Ansgar. The torture was the reward. He loved someone else’s pain. There was great enjoyment wading through the levels of pain in others.

  Combat taught him that.

  Chapter 35

  Anton Olafson was ready. The hacker had not responded to his text, so the live feed wouldn’t happen. He would record the event and send the hacker the video.

  His cell phone battery was at fifty-three percent. Plenty of juice to film the few minutes he would need to kill the girl. He had a couple of small mirrors, but chose to go with the circular pocket mirror he had found in Clara’s bedroom.

  He collected everything and started for the guest room with plans to do it right there on the floor. The body would be easy to hide for the first few days. Before it began to smell too much, he would discard it in the lake in the middle of the night, weighing it down with the bags of gravel he had in the garage.

  If he could ask for one small reprieve, it would be that the girl—Sarah Roberts—still be passed out when he started.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  When he stepped into the guest room, her eyes followed him. He didn’t look at her. He shut the door to block any kind of noise and set the small mirror on the bedside table.

  The girl was tied up so tight, there was no amount of struggle that would release her wrists or her ankles. Immediately after the man left his front door, he had jammed a large white sock into Sarah’s mouth to stop her from screaming if she woke up while he wasn’t in the room. He didn’t fear her throwing up and dying on him. That would actually be a blessing as it would avoid an up-close-and-personal murder.

  She was his completely. Lucky for her he was not too attracted to full developed women in their twenties or he would have had a small adventure on her before she retired from this life. He liked flat-chested, small, skinny males and this woman was the complete opposite. Tall, standard attractive, blonde with an average-sized chest was too common for Anton.

  But none of that mattered. What mattered was how he was going to end her life. He needed it done quickly so as to get the body into hiding before that man returned with the authorities.

  Sarah moaned behind the sock, her eyes pleading. He cared little for what she had to say. In fact, communicating with her would only make what he had to do over the next few minutes that much harder.

  He had debated with himself how he was going to do it. Whether or not he would blindfold her or use his hands to cover her mouth and nose or stab her to death. In the end he chose to use a pillow. Since she was bound so securely, a pillow over the face for at least two minutes would be all he needed. No bruising, no blood, no pleading eyes watching him.

  He placed the cell phone on the floor up against the wall and pushed record. Once he saw the timer counting, he made sure the girl’s face was visible in the screen.

  Her eyes were on him the entire time. He felt them stabbing into his back and was sure those intense eyes would haunt him for years to come. He had even come to terms with spending the rest of his life in prison for what he was about to do. Prison was his final destination after what he had been doing to underage boys for years. But with this one act, he would do that knowing Clara was free. Did he trust the hacker? Not really, but he had no other choice. The hacker had Clara and this was what he asked of him. So he would do it.

  He stepped over the girl.

  “Sarah Roberts,” he said for the sake of the camera. “This is my one act that I beg your forgiveness in the face of what I must do for my daughter.”

  Sarah moaned again, as if she was attempting to communicate something.

  He pulled the pillow off the bed and grasped it on either side.

  Her eyes widened. She stared at the camera, then up at him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  Before she could squirm sideways or flip over entirely, Anton dropped down on her and secured her bound body under his weight. He felt like he was fighting an epileptic experiencing a seizure.

  He lowered the pillow onto her face and pressed the edges down around her ears, holding the pillow and her body as secure as he could.

  Sarah fought him like a wild boar, bucking and kicking. Riding a bull in a rodeo while attempting to stay upright flashed through his mind. This girl was strong. He hadn’t anticipated the violence in her subdued figure.

  It couldn’t last, though. Not without a supply of oxygen. As long as he maintained the pillow over her nose and mouth, the fight would wane quickly.

  Anton redoubled his efforts after thirty seconds, panting and sweating into his eyes. He blinked the sweat away and let his own grunts of exertion seep out of his mouth.

  Somewhere in the house there was a loud banging. Someone shouted.

  That fucking man was back. He came back too fast. If only he’d waited another couple of minutes.

  Anton leaned in over the pillow and forced its edges to touch the hardwood floor on either side of Sarah’s face, completely wrapping her face in it. Already, the fight in her had diminished to less than twenty percent of what it was.

  The banging again. Anton would not open the door until they had a search warrant. He would refuse entry until he could deal with the body. Even though he resigned himself to the rest of his life in prison, he still wanted to do what he could to avoid it if possible.

  The banging on the front door stopped.

  The girl’s body slowed. It twitched once. Then s
topped, her bound hands easing off his stomach where they had been pushing upward uselessly.

  Anton held the pillow firm, his body sprawled across the girl’s body. He waited for more knocking from the man, for more fight from the girl, but neither came.

  The camera was still recording. In the small window of the phone he didn’t recognize the man he had become. Political meetings in Copenhagen, joining the NC3, taking Clara to dinner to celebrate. None of that was Anton Olafson anymore. He was a murderer now. A cold-blooded killer.