Chapter 29: Taken
The catwalk was a cage of steel and panic. Luke’s advance was a slow, relentless press of space. Scott backed away until the cold railing dug into the small of his back. End of the line. The phone was still pressed to his ear, Michelle’s frantic breaths a tiny, ghostly connection to a world that was receding fast.
He looked past Luke, to the warehouse floor twenty feet below. The jump would break his legs, maybe his spine. But it was a better exit than the one Luke offered.
“Scott, no!” Michelle’s voice screamed from the phone.
He jammed the phone into his pocket, the line still open. He hoisted himself onto the top rail, balancing for one vertiginous second.
Luke paused, a flicker of irritation crossing his face. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ll just make it harder for yourself.”
Scott pushed off.
He didn’t aim for clear floor. He angled his body toward a sloping mountain of loose cardboard boxes stacked beside a conveyor belt. He hit the pile with a sound like a giant fist punching wet newspaper. The air exploded from his lungs. He tumbled, the world a chaotic spin of brown and pain, finally sliding to a stop on the greasy concrete.
Every part of him shrieked in protest. He gasped, sucking in air that tasted of dust and mold. Miraculously, nothing seemed snapped. He scrambled to his feet, a stumbling run already propelling him forward. He looked back. Luke was simply vaulting over the catwalk railing, dropping with a solid, absorbed thud that spoke of terrifying physical control. He landed in a crouch, rose smoothly, and resumed the chase.
Scott fled into a maze of old storage rooms and partitioned offices. He found a door with a frosted glass pane, the word ‘FOREMAN’ stenciled in faded black. He slipped inside, locking a heavy, old-fashioned bolt. The room was small, about ten feet square, empty save for a rusted filing cabinet and a smell of mildew. A large, rectangular window took up most of the far wall, its glass opaque with decades of grime, but it looked out onto the deeper blackness of the warehouse proper. It was a viewing window, allowing a foreman to observe the floor.
He crouched behind the filing cabinet, pulling the phone out. The screen was cracked, but the call was still connected.
“I’m in a room,” he whispered, his voice raw. “I locked the door.”
“We’re ten minutes away, Scott,” James said, his voice tight with the strain of driving fast. “Just stay quiet. Stay down.”
“I can hear him,” Liv hissed through the speaker. “He’s walking around out there.”
They could hear it too. The slow, methodical crunch of Luke’s boots on the gravel-strewn concrete. He wasn’t running. He was patrolling. A predator corralling its prey.
“Scott…” Luke’s voice echoed, bouncing off distant walls, impossible to pinpoint. It was conversational, almost tender. “Come on out, baby. This is getting tedious.”
Scott squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his back against the cold metal of the cabinet. The handcuffs bit into his wrists.
“I know you’re scared. I get it.” Luke’s voice was closer now, somewhere just beyond the wall. “It’s that old feeling, isn’t it? That deep, fucking scream in your gut that says you’re about to die. You felt it in the halfway house. You feel it now.”
The footsteps stopped right outside the foreman’s office door. Scott held his breath. He could see the shadow of feet beneath the gap in the door.
But Luke didn’t try the handle. His shadow moved away.
“You always craved protection,” Luke called out, his voice moving along the corridor outside. “From the first night I found you, shivering, covered in other people’s blood. You looked up at me like I was the sun. You needed a daddy. A strong hand to make the bad things go away.”
Scott’s breath hitched. A hot tear of shame cut through the grime on his cheek. It was true. Every word was a poisoned dart hitting a bullseye he’d spent six years trying to cover.
“That’s why you called me that in bed, isn’t it?” Luke continued, his tone softening with a horrific intimacy. “‘Please, Daddy.’ ‘Harder, Daddy.’ You didn’t even know you were begging for the truth. The power to save and the power to destroy… it’s the same fucking hand, Scott. It’s all protection. I protected you from that spree killer. I protected you from your own pathetic life. And now… I will protect you from the crushing, meaningless terror of being weak. I will show you how salvation can bloom from darkness. It’s the last lesson. The only one that matters.”
The logic was insane, a serpentine twist that made Scott’s stomach roil. He clenched his jaw, stifling a sob.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the phone, his voice breaking. The four faces on the cracked screen listened, their expressions carved from worry and fury. “I’m so sorry to all of you. For bringing him into our circle. For not seeing it. I was so… I just wanted to feel safe. And he was the only thing that ever made the nightmares stop. I should have known. Nothing that makes it stop that easy is real.”
“It’s not your fault,” Michelle whispered, her own voice thick with tears. “We all trusted her. Nancy… his mother. She orchestrated every bit of our trust.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Scott breathed. “He’s going to kill me. And then he’s coming for one of you.”
The silence from the other end was heavy, acknowledging the grim arithmetic of Nancy’s ritual.
The footsteps had faded. For a full minute, there was nothing but the drip of water and the frantic thud of Scott’s own heart. Had he moved on? Was he searching another section?
“I think he’s gone,” Scott whispered, a fragile, dangerous hope rising in his chest. He needed to move. The locked door was a trap, not a refuge. He had to find another way out before Luke doubled back.
Slowly, wincing at the protest in his bruised body, he got to his feet. He kept his back to the grimy window, facing the door. He took a step toward it, ready to listen, to slide the bolt and run.
On the phone screen, James’s face contorted in sudden, horrified comprehension. “SCOTT, NO! BEHIND YOU!”
Veronica screamed, “THE WINDOW!”
Liv’s sharp intake of breath was a dagger of sound.
Scott froze. The blood in his veins turned to ice. He saw their eyes, all four of them, locked not on him, but on something over his shoulder, reflected in their own screens. He started to turn.
It was too late.
A dark shape filled the filthy window, a monstrous blur silhouetted against the lesser darkness of the warehouse. Luke’s face was pressed against the glass, his eyes wide and eerily calm, his mouth set in a grim line of purpose.
Then he pulled back and drove his elbow forward.
The window exploded inward.
It wasn’t a delicate shatter. It was a violent eruption. A thousand shards of old, tempered glass burst into the small room like a deadly rain. Scott was thrown forward by the concussive force, the sound a deafening crash that swallowed his cry. He landed on his hands and knees, glass crunching and slicing beneath him.
Before the glittering storm had even settled, a hand like an iron shackle closed around the back of his neck. Fingers dug into the tendons, paralyzing him with a sharp, scientific pain. He was wrenched upright off the floor.
He caught a fractured glimpse of the phone, skittering across the concrete, the screen still illuminated, showing four screaming, helpless portraits. Then Luke’s other arm snaked around his chest, pinning Scott’s cuffed hands between them, lifting him clean off his feet.
“Time to go home,” Luke growled into his ear, the warmth of his breath a vile parody of affection.
Scott kicked, thrashed, but he was a doll in the man’s grip. Luke turned and carried him, stumbling slightly on the debris, back through the jagged maw of the window frame into the consuming blackness of the warehouse.
The last thing Scott saw was the phone, lying screen-up amidst the glittering ruin. Four tiny, horrified faces watched as he was swallowed by the dark. Then a heavy boot came down, and the screen went black, severing the final thread of light.