Stirred by Blake Crouch, J.A. Konrath Read Free Book Online

Publishing been in business?” he asked.
    “About two years. Mind if I borrow your cell phone?”
    Little weird, but whatever. “Um, sure.”
    Marquette dug his HTC Thunderbolt out of his pocket, handed it over.
    “Thinking about getting one?” he asked.
    “No, I don’t like the Droid operating system. More of an iPhone guy myself.”
    Siders’s window hummed down halfway, Marquette watching in astonishment as he tossed the phone outside and then held the button to scroll the window back up into the door.
    “Why the hell did you do that?” Marquette said.
    Siders’s black eyes remained hidden behind a pair of shades.
    He stared straight ahead through the glass and drove on without speaking.
    “Stop the car. I want out.”
    Marquette reached down to unbuckle his seatbelt and found no button. Just a smooth, square face of metal, inset with what appeared to be a hole for a small-gauge Allen wrench. And the belt remained tight when he tugged on it, no play at all.
    He glanced at the door—no handle, no mechanism for lowering the window.
    The blast of fear hit him like a freight train.
    He turned and looked at Siders.
    “What do you want with me?”
    “Let’s just say, I love your name.”
    The man shot him a quick, smirking glance, and Marquette noticed for the first time the black curtain that separated the two front seats from the rear of the van.
    “Curious to know what’s back there?” Siders asked. “Go ahead. Have a look.”
    Marquette swept the curtain back as Siders flicked a button in the ceiling.
    A dome light illuminated the back of the van under a hard, clinical glare.
    Dark windows.
    No carpeting.
    The ceiling and the sidewalls had been reinforced with black soundproofing foam.
    In the center of the white metal floor, he spotted a drain capped with a large, rubber plug.
    Along the driver’s-side wall, a tool cabinet had been bolted into the floor, holding shelves of surgical tools—forceps, saws, scalpels, steel retractors, clamps.
    He looked back at Siders.
    “You’re him, aren’t you? The man who hung that woman off the railroad bridge.”
    Siders smiled. “You saw that, huh?”
    “That was you?”
    “That was all me.”
    Marquette squirmed in his seat, attempting to slide out of the lap belt.
    “Don’t do that,” Siders warned.
    Marquette cocked his left arm back and punched the passenger’s-side window, crying out as his hand bounced off, leaving a blood smear across the glass.
    Siders began to laugh.
    Through the fear, Marquette managed to blurt, “I can take you to an ATM right now.”
    “Yeah? What’s your daily limit?”
    “Two thousand. And I won’t tell a soul, I swear to God.”
    Marquette knew his knuckles were broken, but he scarcely felt the pain. The overriding sensation was a tightness like a dumbbell sitting on his sternum, turning each breath into a quick, shallow gasp that was making him dizzier and more lightheaded by the moment.
    “I have a family. A wife…” Tears beginning to sheet over his eyes. “A daughter.”
    “Good for you. Will they miss you?”
    “Very much.”
    Siders gave him a sideways glance. “It’s a good thing to be missed, don’t you think?”
    “Please.”
    “Don’t you beg me. That’s the only warning you’ll get. And don’t try to hit me.” Siders showed him the pistol in his left hand.
    Marquette looked out his window, saw that they were heading south on Lakeshore Drive. A few strands of sunlight had finally broken through the cloud deck, slanting down into the surface of the lake. Subjected to the onslaught of the sun, it didn’t even resemble water. More like a field of shimmering jewels.
    They skirted Solider Field.
    Traffic was light.
    Marquette considered his life. He had family, friends. His feelings for them were pure, but nothing extraordinary. Nothing about his life was extraordinary. He’d spent endless hours at a liberal arts college, teaching uncaring teenagers who needed the credit to graduate, and in his