Free Mind Scrambler by Chris Grabenstein Page B

headed up the hall.
    Â 
    Â 
    The corridor on the other side of the door was drab compared to the rest of the Xanadu. Back here, instead of Chinese red and gold wallpaper, the walls were cinder blocks painted a wet gray. The floor was scuffed linoleum illuminated by sporadic can lights up in the dropped-tile ceiling. I noticed one of Parker’s TPZ cameras on a naked metal arm. In the bowels of the building, they don’t hide the spy cam under a smoky gray dome to keep it discreet.
    I passed a door that looked like it opened into a janitor closet or one of those rooms with nothing in it but a billion jumbled telephone wires, all different colors, screwed to metal posts on aswitching plate. I heard humming and thrumming—like a gigantic refrigerator gurgling through a cycle.
    I saw another guard stationed near another dull door just like the dull door I had already passed. He looked Samoan. Some kind of Polynesian. As big as a refrigerator crate with a Fu Manchu mustache and curly hair pulled back tight into a ponytail. EVENT STAFF was printed on the breast of his windbreaker.
    â€œYo, bro—can I help you?” the guy asked.
    â€œI’m here to see Katie Landry. Room AA-four.”
    He nodded and tilted his head to the left to indicate that I should head up this corridor to where it dead-ended into another hallway. “Take the right, bro. AA-four’s the second suite down.”
    â€œCool,” I said. “Thanks.”
    â€œMahalo.”
    I think that’s Hawaiian for “later, dude.”
    I headed up the hallway and wondered if Jake, Mr. Chippendales Dancer, would lose his job since it was pretty clear he had bailed on tonight’s performance. I figured he might be forced to find gainful employment some place where shirts were required. Then Katie would leave him like she left me.
    Okay. Katie never really left me. She left Sea Haven. I just happened to be living there at the time and had no desire to move out to California with her. I’m allergic to avocados.
    I hit the
T
where the two hallways intersected, took a right, and kept thinking about Katie and me. How we used to lie on our backs in the sand on Oak Beach late at night every August so we could stare up at the sky and watch the meteor showers. How we used to save each other seats on the school bus because we liked sitting next to each other and shooting the bull. How we used to race each other on our bikes to Skipper Dipper, our favorite ice cream place.
    When we were kids, Katie and I lived that whole Jersey Shore life Springsteen sings about: screen doors slamming, breezesblowing up the beach, rubber balls smacking off walls, baseball cards stuck in bicycle spokes, the girls in their summer clothes.
    I reached room AA-4.
    The door was ajar.
    â€œKatie?” I called out.
    No answer.
    I pushed the door open. Stepped into the room. It was pitch dark.
    I stepped on something hard and plastic. Probably a toy.
    The kids. Were they going to be here, listening to everything Katie and I said?
    â€œKatie?”
    Nothing.
    â€œRichie? Britney?”
    Still nothing.
    Only the distant sound of a woman moaning.
    I made out the silhouette of a lamp on an end table next to a couch. I crunched across something that crumbled, maybe a cookie. I made it to the lamp. Flipped it on.
    I wished I hadn’t.
    Katie was naked except for a black garter belt made out of studded leather. She’d been trussed up to a wooden chair, hands tied behind her back. Silky white rope coiled around her body, pinching into the flesh above and below her freckled breasts.
    I felt cold. Felt like I might collapse.
    The woman in the other room kept moaning.
    I wanted to see Katie’s face, her emerald eyes. I couldn’t. She was wearing a blindfold and some sort of muzzle that forced a red ball gag into her mouth.
    Around her neck, she wore a silver-tipped bolo tie.
    The lanyard had been pulled up tight.
    Too tight.
    Tight enough to kill