Dexter in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

again to remind him not to talk out of turn. When we thought he had received the message we loosened it again. “West,” we said. “No more talk. Drive.”
    He put the car in gear and, with a few small tugs on the noose, I steered him west and up onto the Dolphin Expressway. For a while Zander did exactly as we said. He would look at us in the mirror from time to time, but a very slight twitch of the noose kept him extremely cooperative until we took him onto the Palmetto Expressway and north.
    “Listen,” he said suddenly, as we drove past the airport, “I am like really rich. I can give you whatever you want.”
    “Yes, you can,” we said, “and you will,” and he did not understand what we wanted, because he relaxed just a little bit.
    “Okay,” he said, voice still rough from the noose, “so how much do you want?”
    We locked eyes with him in the mirror and slowly, very slowly so he would begin to understand, we tightened the line around his neck. When he could barely breathe, we held it like that for a moment. “Everything,” we said. “We will have everything.” We loosened the noose, just a little. “Drive,” we said.
    Zander drove. He was very quiet the rest of the way, but he did not seem as frightened as he should have been. Of course, he must believe that this was not really happening to him, could not possibly happen, not to him, living forever in his impenetrable cocoon of money. Everything had a price, and he could always afford it. Soon he would negotiate. Then he would buy his way out.
    And he would. Eventually he would buy his way out. But not with money. And never out of this noose.
    It was not a terribly long drive and we were quiet all the way to the Hialeah exit we had chosen. But when Zander slowed for the off-ramp, he glanced at me in the mirror with fear in his eyes, the climbing terror of a monster in a trap, ready to chew off his leg to escape, and the tangible bite of his panic sparked a warm glow in the Dark Passenger and made us very glad and strong. “You don’t—there, there isn’t—where are we going?” he stammered, weak and pitiful and sounding more human all the time, which made us angry and we yanked too hard until he swerved onto the shoulder momentarily and we had to grant him some slack in the noose. Zander steered back onto the road and the bottom of the ramp.
    “Turn right,” we said, and he did, the unlovely breath rasping in and out through his spit-flecked lips. But he did just as we told him to do, all the way down the street and left onto a small, dark lane of old warehouses.
    He parked his car where we told him, by the rusty door of a dark unused building. A partially rotted sign with the end lopped off still said JONE PLASTI . “Park,” we said, and as he fumbled the gear lever into park we were out the door and yanking him after us and onto the ground, pulling tight and watching him thrash for a moment before we jerked him up to his feet. The spit had caked around his mouth, and there was some small bit of belief in his eyes now as he stood there ugly and disgusting in the lovely moonlight, all atremble with some terrible mistake I had made against his money, and the growing notion that perhaps he was no different from the ones he had done exactly this to washed over him and left him weak. We let him stand and breathe for just a moment, then pushed him toward the door. He put one hand out, palm against the concrete-block wall. “Listen,” he said, and there was a quaver of pure human in his voice now. “I can get you a ton of money. Whatever you want.”
    We said nothing. Zander licked his lips. “All right,” he said, and his voice now was dry, shredded, and desperate. “So what do you want from me?”
    “Exactly what you took from the others,” we said with an extra-sharp twitch of the noose. “Except the shoe.”
    He stared and his mouth sagged and he peed in his pants. “I didn’t,” he said. “That’s not—”
    “You did,” we