The woman in the back of the van was silent now, and still.
Earlier, as Brad had transferred her from the basement to the vehicle, she’d struggled more than he would have liked, but he’d put a stop to it.
Now, compliant once again, she lay next to the wheelchair that he would use to take her to the room where she would die on the eighth floor of the newly renovated Lincoln Towers Hotel, best known as the place where a would-be assassin tried to kill the vice president six years ago.
He and Astrid had taken a room at the hotel last month and, using the television’s volume, had tested how much sound was noticeable in the hallway. They’d found that, while the room wasn’t as soundproof as the one in their basement, with the television turned up to hide the woman’s cries, it would work just fine.
In a sweet curl of irony, the woman would die in a room that the corpse from the primate center was paying for-at a tidy sum of $598 per night. And no one would find that out until it was too late.
He hopped off I-95.
12:41 p.m.
The hotel wasn’t far at all.
Let the games begin.