Companions in Ruin Read online

  You are a bad girl; you need to be punished. And you will be.

  If you wish to die quickly, turn to any other page in this book. If you wish to die painfully, close this book.

  Mattie tossed the book onto the bed in front of her, still opened to the first page. The words stared back at her, unyielding and unforgiving. Her fate was sealed, that much seemed certain, the choice given to her regarding how she met her end reading like a bad joke.

  Moving gingerly, she picked up the book, making sure to keep it open to page 1, and carried it to the small desk in the corner. She took a doll and a can of Play-Dough out of one of the packed boxes, placing one item on each end of the book to ensure it didn’t close or flutter to another page. Maybe if she kept the book open to this spot and didn’t make a choice she would be okay.

  But could she keep the book open to page 1 forever?

  And a more important question, did she want to?

  DEBT

  She drummed her acrylic nails on the desktop while she waited, the phone pressed tightly to her right ear. The other line rang and rang and rang, her impatience growing with each unanswered ring. She was just about to give up and slam the phone down when she was finally rewarded with a groggy, “Hello.”

  “Mr. Douglas?”

  “Uhm, yes.”

  “This is Nikki with Urgent Care. On August 14th you came to the Emergency Room complaining of severe lower back pain and vomiting. You were given morphine, X-rays, and it was determined that you had two small kidney stones. Dr. Hartford advised you to flush your system with water, avoid dairy and caffeine, and wrote you a prescription for pain medication.”

  There was a pause on the line then, “Is this a true or false test? If so, the answer is ‘true.’”

  “Mr. Douglas, it has been several months since that visit, and there has been no attempt on your part to make restitution for what you owe. It is my understanding that you do not have health insurance.”

  “Again, true.”

  “Regardless of that fact, Mr. Douglas, your bill still must be paid.”

  Laughter from the other end. “I was in the emergency room for a few hours and that bill you sent me is upwards of 3000 bucks. We’re not talking surgery or a protracted illness here, just a few hours, most of which I spent waiting for someone to see me, and you have the audacity to charge 3000 dollars. I don’t know how you people sleep at night.”

  Unperturbed by the tirade, Nikki said, “If you cannot pay the bill in full at this time, we do offer a variety of options for payment plans.”

  “Try to follow me on this. I’m not paying shit. You people are supposed to be there to help folks in need, but really you’re just looking for ways to scam sick people out of as much cash as you can. I mean, when a person gets sick, he pretty much has to seek medical care, doesn’t have much choice in the matter, and you all know that and therefore charge these insane amounts of money because pretty much the only other option available to people is death. You really ought to be ashamed.”

  “I appreciate your feelings, Mr. Douglas—”

  “Do you?”

  “—but you were treated here and did accrue a bill that must be paid.”

  “I hate having to repeat myself, but I’ll do it for you just this once free of charge. I’m not paying shit.”

  “You have to.”

  “What are you going to do? Give me my kidney stones back? Screw you and the whole medical field.”

  Before Nikki could respond, there was a click and the other line went dead. She snorted and hung up the phone, her nails beating an angry staccato on the desktop. Opening one of her drawers, she pulled out a crude humanoid figurine made out of red clay, placing it on the desk in front of her. She rummaged through the drawer again and brought out a vial of blood. A small label on the side of the vial contained the name, “Douglas, Carl.”

  Removing a set of long, thin needles, Nikki dipped the tips of three needles in the blood and then plunged them deep into the back of the clay figurine. She started to replace the items in the drawer, but then she paused, reconsidered, dipped a fourth needle in the blood and pierced the figurine’s back once more.

  With a smile, she cleaned off her desktop, closed the drawer, and picked up the phone to call the next delinquent account.

  MIDNIGHT SHIFT

  0000

  Rocky pulled up in front of the guardhouse right at midnight. He was supposed to be on site fifteen minutes before the start of his shift, but he’d overslept this evening. He’d only been working the midnight shift for two weeks, and his biological clock was still all out of whack. He just couldn’t seem to convince his body that it was okay to sleep while the sun was out.

  “Sorry, Mr. Crocker,” Rocky said as he stepped into the guardhouse.

  “Not a problem,” the other guard said. Mr. Crocker was sixty-eight years old, and he moved with an exaggerated slowness that was almost comical. What was also comical was the idea of Mr. Crocker as a security guard. If any shit did go down, Rocky couldn’t imagine Mr. Crocker would be much help.

  Not that Rocky was the ideal security guard himself. At two hundred and seventy pounds, Rocky tended to get winded if he had to walk more than a few feet. His rounds through the plant left him huffing and puffing as if he’d just run a marathon. Luckily there wasn’t much trouble brewing on the midnight shift at the plastics factory. Mostly all Rocky did was sign trucks in and issue badges to visitors and temps.

  Rocky scanned the parking lot inside the gate, an empty field of asphalt this evening, and said, “Kind of creepy seeing it all deserted like this.”

  Mr. Crocker gave a wheezy laugh. “This’ll be the first time you’ve worked a shutdown, huh?”

  Rocky nodded. “Guess I’ll have the place all to myself.”

  “Yes, nothing but peace and quiet from now ‘til eight a.m. Make sure you do a walk-through of the plant once an hour, and on your first round check all the doors to make sure they’re locked up tight.”

  “Sounds simple enough. The hardest part will probably be trying to stay awake.”

  Mr. Crocker gathered up his things—a book of crossword puzzles, a travel mug, a tattered paperback copy of a James Patterson novel—and said, “Well, you have a good night. Sydney will be here to relieve you in the morning.”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Crocker.”

  After the other guard had driven off in his Honda, Rocky plopped his considerable backside into the swivel chair and pulled his cell phone from his front shirt pocket. Scrolling to the “Tools” menu, he set the phone’s alarm for one a.m. then laid his head down on the desk. If the plant was deserted, there was no reason why he shouldn’t get some extra z’s.

  0100

  The frantic beeping of the cell phone drilled into Rocky’s brain like needles. He sat up, wiped drool from his chin, yawned expressively, and stretched ‘til his spine popped. Grabbing the master key, he leveraged himself out of the seat to start his first walk-through of the night.

  Making his way across the empty parking lot, Rocky was surprised by how loud his footsteps sounded on the pavement. He walked through the swinging doors of the plant into an area of administrative offices. Rocky checked them, found them all locked, and moved into the actual production area of the plant. Long aisles between rows of machinery. Rocky had never seen the place deserted with all the machines off, and the silence was a bit overwhelming. Usually the plant was so noisy he had to wear earplugs, but now it was a tomb, everything still and quiet. It was rather spooky.

  Rocky made his way up and down the aisles, making sure no machines had been left running, nothing was leaking. On his way back to the front, he stopped by the canteen and bought a bag of chips and a can of Sprite from the vending machines. As he exited the plant and started back across the lot to the guardhouse, Rocky suddenly stopped, sloshing soda onto his uniform shirt.

  The gate was open.

  Not the large truck gate, but the small pedestrian gate beside it. The pedestrian gate locked au
tomatically when it was closed and could only be opened by pressing a switch under the desk in the guardhouse. What was it doing open now?

  Rocky hurried to the gate and pulled it closed, hearing the satisfying click as the lock engaged. He tried to remember if he’d heard that click when Mr. Crocker had left earlier. He couldn’t seem to recall, which meant the old man must have forgot to close the gate when he’d left. The gate had been open for an hour and Rocky hadn’t even noticed.

  Not very observant for a security guard. If Captain Mercer ever got wind of the fact that he’d left his post with the gate unsecured, he’d be out of a job. Luckily, there was no one on site to have noticed and rat him out.

  Rocky took up his position in the swivel chair and started scarfing down his chips.

  0200

  During his next walk-through, Rocky stopped at the restroom to relieve himself of the Sprite he’d drank earlier. As he pushed into the restroom, he heard a gushing and discovered the faucet at one of the sinks had been left running. Hot water poured into the basin and gurgled down the drain.

  Twisting the handle until the flow of water stopped, Rocky worried about Mr. Crocker’s mental state. The old man had forgotten to close the gate behind him, and he’d apparently also forgotten to turn off the water the last time he’d used the restroom before the end of his shift. Rocky hoped his mind never started to go like that.

  After relieving himself and washing up—remembering to turn off the water, of course—Rocky hurried back out to the parking lot. The phone was ringing in the guardhouse, and he jogged across the pavement and snatched up the receiver on the fifth ring.

  “Integrated Plastics,” he said, nearly out of breath.

  “You didn’t find me,” said a deep male voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You didn’t find me. I wasn’t even really hiding.”

  “I’m sorry, I think you must have the wrong number.”

  There was a pause in which Rocky could hear the caller breathing, then a click followed by the dial tone. Rocky shrugged and hung up the phone.

  0530

  Rocky came awake gradually. His head was on the desk, resting on a People magazine opened to an article on Angelina Jolie. He wiped the crusty residue from the corners of his eyes—dream dust, his mother had called it when he was a kid—and glanced at the clock.

  With a start, all sluggishness dissipating in an instant, he bolted from the chair, sending it rolling across the floor. He had fallen asleep reading the magazine and hadn’t set his phone alarm to wake him. He’d been out for two and a half hours.

  It could have been worse, of course. He could have slept the night through and been discovered in the morning by Captain Mercer. That would certainly have meant a one-way ticket to the unemployment line.

  Grabbing the logbook, Rocky made entries for 0300, 0400, and 0500 hours, complete with notations that he’d successfully completed his rounds for each hour. Of course, if anyone bothered to look at the video cameras in the plant, they’d see that he didn’t actually make those rounds, but he doubted anyone viewed those tapes unless there was a suspected problem.

  Rocky was getting ready to make a quick pass through the plant when the phone rang.

  “Integrated Plastics.”

  “Did you ever play hide-and-go-seek as a child?” It was the same male voice as before.

  “Who is this?” Rocky asked with a sharp edge to his voice. He wasn’t in the mood for a prank caller.

  “You count to ten then come find me,” the caller said then hung up.

  Rocky slammed the phone down into the cradle with more force than was necessary. Grabbing the master key, he left the guardhouse and started the familiar trek across the parking lot.

  His mind was on other things when he entered the plant, but he still detected something amiss almost the instant he walked through the doors. When he realized what it was, his breath caught in his throat like a piece of dry bread.

  The doors to all the administrative offices were standing wide open.

  Rocky knew he had checked these doors during his first walk-through, and they had all been locked. Which could mean only one thing.

  Rocky was not alone in the plant.

  He slowly backed out the doors then ran faster than he thought his bulky body capable to the guardhouse. He hovered over the phone, wondering what to do. Should he call the police and report an intruder? He was the guard and it was his job to ensure the security of the property, but he was unarmed and not sure how to handle a situation such as this.

  Deciding to contact the on-call plant manager, Rocky reached for the phone and squealed when it rang under his hand. Snatching up the receiver, he said, “Hello.”

  “You didn’t even look for me. Don’t you know how to play this game?”

  “Who is this?” Rocky barked, intending to sound authoritative but sounding to his ears only scared. “Where are you?”

  “That’s the whole point of the game. If I told you where I was, the fun would be over. You have to come find me.”

  “If this is some kind of joke, I suggest you end it right now. No one is supposed to be in the plant, and you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. If you don’t come out right now, I’m going to be forced to call the police.”

  “Oh, no, that would be cheating,” the caller said then the line went dead.

  Not disconnected, dead. No dial tone. Rocky punched the disconnect button several times, rather frantically in fact, trying to get an open line, but the phone was dead. He reached for his cell phone where he’d left it on the desk, but it was gone. He searched around the desk but found nothing. He checked his shirt pocket in case he’d returned the phone to it but came up empty.

  When was the last time he’d seen his cell phone? The last time he really remembered seeing it was when he turned off the alarm at one o’clock. Had whoever was in the plant come and taken it while he was making one of his rounds? It was certainly possible.

  Rocky stared back toward the plant, trying to force himself to come to a decision. Part of him felt he should search the plant, find the trespasser, and escort him—forcibly, if need be—off the property. Yet another part of him wondered what kind of nutjob would be hiding out in a shutdown plastics factory, making taunting, vaguely threatening calls to the guard on duty.

  To hell with it, Rocky thought. No job was worth this. He’d get in his truck, drive down to the nearest convenience store, and call the police from the payphone. He reached under the desk and hit the switch to unlock the pedestrian gate. He expected to hear the click but it didn’t come. He hit the switch again, and again there was no click. He walked out to the gate to check, and the gate was indeed still locked. He shook it back and forth, but it wouldn’t budge. Stepping back into the guardhouse, he hit the button that would send the truck gate rattling open on its automatic track, but nothing happened. He punched the button a few more times for good measure but with the same result, nothing.

  Panic welling up in his chest like a mushroom cloud, Rocky hurried out to the truck gate and began pulling on it, as if he could physically tug it open, but it was much too heavy for him. The gate was eight feet high, and he reached up and grabbed the top. He would climb over the damn thing if that was what it took to get out of here. He tried to haul himself up the gate, trying to get the toes of his boots into the diamond shapes made by the wire mesh, but he was too overweight and out of shape. He couldn’t pull himself up; he didn’t have the upper body strength.

  Panting, sweat coating his forehead with an oily sheen, he rushed back to the guardhouse and came out with the swivel chair. He climbed up on it, then tried to pull himself up and over the gate. The chair rolled out from under him and he went tumbling to the pavement. He landed on his rear end, and despite the extra cushioning back there, pain flared up his back like fire.

  He heard the phone begin to ring in the guardhouse and he moaned, still lying on the ground. How had the intruder managed to disconnect the phone line then rec
onnect it like that?

  Rocky struggled to his feet, looking through the fence out at the road. The plant sat several yards back from the road, and the area was so rural that few cars passed by at this hour of the night. If someone did pass by, would they be able to hear him if he screamed for help?

  The phone in the guardhouse continued to ring. Shuffling his feet like the undead in a zombie movie, Rocky went back inside the guardhouse. To his ears, the ringing of the phone sounded like an air raid siren or something equally as ominous. With a numb hand, he reached down and picked up the receiver.

  Before Rocky could say anything, the voice said, “You’re not playing the game correctly. How will you ever find me if you don’t even look? I guess it’s time we changed up the rules a bit.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rocky said in a husky croak; his tongue was dry and felt like a brick in his mouth.

  “Well, if you won’t come find me, I guess I’ll just have to come find you.”

  The phone went dead again in Rocky’s hand, and he let the receiver fall to the desktop. He turned to the guardhouse door and twisted the lock, sealing himself inside. The guardhouse was glassed-in on all sides, but it was bulletproof glass. It should be able to withstand most anything without shattering.

  Rocky lowered himself to the floor in the corner, wedging himself between the desk and the filing cabinet, his knees drawn up to his chest. He stared through the glass at the plant’s entrance, waiting to see if anyone came out.

  He noticed a high-pitched drone, and after a few seconds realized it was his own desperate, fearful moaning.

  0745

  When Sydney Mercer pulled into the Integrated Plastics drive, she was surprised to find the pedestrian and truck gates standing open. The plant was shut down for the weekend; there was no reason Rocky should have the gates opened at all.