The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller. J.D. Barker

p.m.

      “No! No more!” Lili screamed.

      The man reached for her anyway, his large hands tugging at the quilt wrapped around her. “We must continue,” he said.

      Lili scrambled across the damp floor, sliding, her feet slipping, trying to get a grip on the damp concrete. She found herself in the back corner of the cage, unable to go any farther. “Please stop!” No place else to go.

      The man raised the stun gun and pointed it at her. He pressed the button, and Lili watched lightning jump across the two metal prongs, smelled ozone in the air. “One more hour, then we can do it again, I promise. I promise.” She tried to say this, but she shivered so hard that only a handful of syllables actually came out, fragments of words.

      If they did it again, this would be the fourth — no, fifth time. Wait, maybe the third time. She couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts didn’t want to come together; her string of consciousness had a knot, something that kept her brain from working properly. White flakes whirled across her vision, making it difficult to see what was happening around her, a snowstorm in the basement, that’s what it looked like, a whiteout of haze and gray.

      He reached for her through the snow, the fingers of his left hand outstretched. “Now, while we’re close.”

      His other hand, the one with the stun gun, drew within an inch of her, the gun nearly touching her neck. Lili couldn’t take the pain of another shock. It felt like fire chewing at her bones, gnawing away from her inside out. A pain worse than dying.

      She knew what that felt like now too, to die.

      He thrust the stun gun at her face, pressed the button again near her eye.

      “Okay!” she shouted. At least, she tried to shout. Only the sound of the letter k left her throat from somewhere behind chattering teeth.

      The man pulled back, if only slightly. His free hand scratched at the knit cap, at the festering incision beneath.

      Lili tried to stand, but her feet failed her, her legs folded, made of jelly now.

      He reached in and offered a hand. His nails were bitten to the quick, the tips of his fingers red and puffy

      Lili’s fingers wrapped around his. His palm felt cold, clammy. She didn’t want to touch him, but she knew she couldn’t stand on her own, not now. And she had to stand. She had to do this willingly, or it would only hurt more. He would make it hurt more.

      He led her from the cage, Lili putting most of her weight on him to stay upright.

      When they reached the water tank, she looked up at him. She looked deep into his cloudy, lifeless eyes. “Thirty minutes, please. Just let me rest.”

      “We’re too close.”

      Lili stared at him for a long time, the seconds ticking away like hours. Finally, she nodded. Lili released her hold on the quilt around her neck, and the tattered material fell to the ground, pooling at her feet. She hadn’t gotten dressed again after the last time. Not after he said they would do it again in a few minutes. Instead, she only curled up with the quilt, the soft green quilt, her quilt. She curled up with the quilt in her cage and waited. She saw the clothing he gave her — his daughter’s clothing, he had told her — folded neatly in her cage, just inside the door. He put the clothing away sometime after she dumped the articles on the floor beside the tank.

      Lili had thought they were alone in the house. The last time, an hour or so ago, Lili screamed for his daughter, but there had been no answer. She pictured a girl her age sitting alone in a small bedroom upstairs, her hands over her ears, unwilling to accept what her father was doing down below. How could she? How could anyone? At first Lili refused to believe the girl knew what was happening, but soon she realized she must; the house wasn’t that big. Lili’s own house was much larger, and she was certain she’d hear cries from the basement. This girl, this man’s daughter. She understood all too well, and she did nothing.

      “Get in,” the man said.

      Lili looked down at the water. She knew it was warm, warmer than the basement, soothingly warm, comforting, but she feared it more than anything else in her entire life — more than the anger of her parents or the pain of a horrible injury, more than this man beside her.

      It was death.

      “Get in now,” he said.

      Lili took a deep breath, but it did little to stem the quivers passing through her body, the weakness building deep within and slowly taking hold of her all. She took a deep breath, placed a hand on the edge of the large freezer, and climbed over the side. Then she sank into the water and lay down, the man holding her head above the surface at her shoulders. When her ears dipped below the water line, she lost all the sounds of the basement and heard nothing but her own breathing, the echo of her pounding heart, even the sound of her eyelids snapping shut and open again.

      The man lifted her up just a little, enough to bring her ears back into the air. “Remember this time,” he said. “Remember it all.”

      “I will,” Lili said.

      The man shoved her beneath the surface, pressing her weakened body against the floor of the tank. Lili didn’t try to fight him this time, she didn’t even suck in one last breath. Instead, she inhaled the water. She choked back the pain as fluid filled her lungs, she fought the urge to cough, and breathed in more. She breathed in more until the wavy image of the man hovering above her faded away, until all went black, until it didn’t hurt anymore, telling herself to remember she had to remember.

      Lili would not wake up again.

       23

       Nash

       Day 2 • 12:20 p.m.

      “You can’t possibly expect me to work my magic surrounded by the scent of freshly ground coffee without a venti caramel macchiato in my hand, can you?” Kloz said as he sat behind the manager’s desk in the back office of the Starbucks on Kedzie.

      The room was cluttered, no more than a hundred square feet, with the desk pressed against the back wall and random boxes of supplies littering every inch of open floor space. With Kloz behind the desk and Nash standing to his right, the manager had to stand in the hallway outside the office.

      “What about you? Would you like something?” the manager asked Nash. He had thinning brown hair, glasses, and about thirty pounds more than his frame was built to carry. He shuffled from side to side, his hands in constant movement. Nash couldn’t help but wonder what inhaling coffee fumes for ten hours a day would do to a person. “Can I get a regular large coffee, black?”

      “What kind? We’ve got blond, dark, decaf Pike Place, Caffè Misto, Clover —”

      “Regular large coffee, black,” Nash repeated.

      His shoulders slumped. “I’ll see what I can do.”

      Nash watched him disappear down the hall toward the front of the shop, then turned back to Kloz. “Well?”

      Kloz had three windows open on the monitor. He was studying the text on the third with narrow eyes. “This thing is old, at least five years. The drive is only a half gig, and they’re running an HD camera setup at 1080p.”

      “Don’t make me hurt you. I need it in English.”