Mason stayed low and against the wall. He knew he was getting close when he smelled fresh construction: sawdust, cement, and oil. The light started as a pinprick and grew progressively larger as he approached. He heard voices, but not clearly enough to make out the words. They sounded hollow thanks to the strange and distorted acoustics from the four-story courtyard beyond the dark tram, which sealed off the majority of the opening to the building, leaving little more than a horseshoe of light around it.
He had to believe the men inside the building thought he was either dead or miles away, but he couldn’t afford to take anything for granted. They’d walked blindly into the trap at Steerman’s and barely made it out alive. There was no way of knowing what horrors awaited him ahead.
The shadows faded by degree. It wasn’t long before he could clearly see his own outline, not much longer still until he would become fully exposed. He ducked to his left and used the tram to conceal his final approach.
Mason paused and listened to the voices. They’d grown more distant even as he drew nearer. He made a break for the gap between the third and fourth cars. He could see just a hint of the open courtyard through the windows of the cars ahead of him.
No sign of movement.
He heard the footsteps. Farther away now. The voices were abruptly cut off by the sound of a closing door.
The lights snapped off with a resounding thud.
The resulting darkness was suffocating.
Mason waited several minutes, peeling apart the layers of silence, listening for anything to betray the presence of sentries inside the complex. He stayed low and sprinted toward the front of the train. Crouched beside the lead car. Listened to the echo of his footsteps fade into oblivion.
He mentally re-created the floor plan. Stairs diagonally across the courtyard to his right, leading up to the ground floor. To the left from there was a side entrance, alarmed from the outside. The main entrance was somewhere to the right of the landing, near where he’d last heard the voices.
The tram couldn’t have arrived more than ten minutes before he had, but that was more than enough time to get Gunnar out of the building and into a car bound for any where in the world.
If they hadn’t already killed him.
Mason sprinted out into the courtyard and veered toward the stairs.
The lights came on with an echoing boom, blinding him.
He shielded his eyes.
A slow clapping sound.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
“Bravo, Special Agent Mason.” It was the voice that haunted his dreams. “Or should I say former Special Agent Mason.”
A clattering sound. Metallic.
Mason turned toward the source of the voice and aimed his pistol at the silhouette emerging from behind a bank of spotlights, their blinding beams directed at the center of the circular courtyard. Right at him. There were three other sets. One to his left, another to his right, and a fourth at his back. He couldn’t tell if anyone lurked in the shadows behind them.
A droplet of fluid struck the ground beside him with a wet slap.
“I was beginning to wonder if you weren’t who we hoped you would be after all.” His voice sounded mechanical due to the respirator he still wore over his mouth and nose. “I’m delighted to be proved right. Now put that gun away before someone gets hurt.”
“I don’t think so. That’s kind of the whole reason I brought it.”
Another droplet streaked across his peripheral vision.
“I wasn’t referring to either of us.”
There was a rattling, clanking sound as the Hoyl finally stepped out into the light. In his right hand, he held a long length of chain, which stretched up into the rafters. He wore a broad-brimmed bowler hat and a long-tailed black suit jacket over a silk vest and a black tie. Mason locked eyes with his adversary. Those blue eyes. They were the same ones he’d seen through the smoke and the flies in the quarry at the moment of his partner’s death and in the reflection on his wife’s sunglasses mere minutes before hers.
He sighted his Sigma right between them and tightened his finger on the trigger.
A droplet spattered the shoulder of his jacket with a soft plat.
“You really don’t want to do that,” the Hoyl said.
“I’m pretty sure I do. In fact, I’ve been looking forward to doing this for a long time.”
The Hoyl shook the chain and droplets rained down all around them a heartbeat later.
“The problem would be that if you did, I’d let go of this chain,” he said. “And while I’m confident in your abilities as a marksman, I question how well you can … catch.”
He drew out the last word for effect.
Mason looked down at the ground, at the crimson droplets spattered on the concrete.
And then it hit him.
The Hoyl had beaten him again.
“That’s right.” The monster’s eyes narrowed as he read Mason’s expression. “Go ahead. Look up. I’ll give you one glimpse for free.”
Mason leaned back and looked way up toward the ceiling. The chain led at an angle from the Hoyl’s hand to a pulley on the second level, and then to another one all the way up in the darkness, where even the blinding lights couldn’t reach. And from it hung an inverted body, strung up by its heels.
Gunnar.
His arms dangled toward the ground. He slowly twirled one way, then back in the other. A droplet of blood materialized about halfway between them and seemed to take forever to hit the ground at Mason’s feet.
When he looked up from the spatter of his old friend’s blood, it was with sheer and unadulterated hatred in his eyes.
The Hoyl gave the chain a shake just to remind him of the consequences of doing what he was thinking.
“You’re not going to be needing that gun.” He nodded and Mason heard footsteps from his right. A small hand in a leather glove closed around the barrel. A woman’s hand. She held on to it until he finally let go.
The Hoyl stepped forward, trailing the end of the chain behind him on the ground like a snake. He gave a slight bow and his hat rolled down his arm into his hand. His blond hair grew in tufts from his scarred scalp. He reseated his hat and accepted the pistol from the woman Mason recognized from his meeting with Paul. Ava Dietrich. The woman with the platinum hair and taut calves. Her face was devoid of expression.
“You can all come out,” the Hoyl said. “He can’t hurt you now.”
Mason kept his eyes on the Hoyl as the others emerged from where they’d been hiding behind the trailers upon which the light assemblies had been mounted. A single set of footsteps behind him. Another set to his left. A third to his right, from the shadows where the woman had originally been. The men to either side still wore their security uniforms. He recognized them from the guard shack at the front gate of the AgrAmerica complex, just like the man he’d killed at Fairacre.
Dietrich retreated back into the shadows as two more figures emerged from behind the Hoyl and stepped into the light. Two men Mason would have recognized anywhere.
Victor strode forward with his head held high and a smirk on his face. It was the expression of a man who’d known from the start of the game that the outcome had never been in doubt.
Paul stayed a step behind his son. His expression was one of a sleepwalker awakening and finding himself in unfamiliar surroundings.
Mason looked from Paul to Victor, and finally directly at the Hoyl when he spoke.
“Make no mistake. I’m going to kill you. Each and every one of you.”
“Perhaps one day,” the Hoyl said, “but today is not that day.”