Cross your heart and hope to die (Emma Frost #4)

  But Victor continued like he hadn't heard me. "A secret's a secret my word is forever. I will tell no one about your cruel endeavor."

  "Victor. What are you talking about?" I asked while feeling a chill. I turned and looked at the hotel in the distance. Behind it a huge mountain of pitch-black clouds had assembled. Probably the storm they had all been talking so much about. It was about time to get back. Victor's words suddenly felt sinister.

  "I gotta go, buddy," I said. "Take care of granddad and Maya tonight when the storm hits, will you? And be careful."

  "Okay," he said. Then he hung up. I looked at the display. I wanted to call Morten as well, but it had to wait till I was back inside. I started walking back towards the hotel when a bone-piercing scream startled me.

  26

  December 2013

  PREBEN WAS SCREAMING. SCREAMING AT the top of his lungs in excruciating pain. In front of him stood a person wearing what looked like a wooden mask, like the ones he had seen in almost every souvenir-shop when he visited Kenya many years ago on one of his rare vacations with Lisbeth.

  "What the HELL?" he exclaimed in anger while holding a hand to his eye where the needle had pierced through when the masked person attacked him. It had punctured the eye; there was no doubt about it.

  He wondered how this person had even gotten into his room where he had been preparing himself for his attack on Soren Hedelund. He had found his gloves and was planning to simply go to his room and strangle him. But as he had picked up the gloves from his suitcase and grabbed Emma's old scarf to smell it once again and turned to go, he had looked straight into the mask. The masked person had then lifted an arm and planted a needle in his eye. The pain had made him scream and fall backwards onto the bed and suitcase. Now he was fumbling, trying to get back up and fight, but the pain held him down. Never had he experienced anything this painful in his entire life. Blood was gushing from his eye down his cheek and some ran into his mouth. The masked person wasn't moving. Preben groaned and moaned and finally got up, then stormed towards the masked person with his hands stretched out in front of him, with the intention of grabbing the person around the neck.

  But as he came closer, the masked person simply moved and the result was that Preben fell to the floor with a thud. Preben whimpered in pain and got back up on his feet, but as he turned his head to look with the one eye he had left, the masked person was gone.

  "Where did you go you fucking bastard?" he yelled at the top of his lungs. But the person had completely vanished. Preben turned his head frantically first one way then the other, to make sure the masked person didn't suddenly attack him from behind, but he couldn't see anyone. The door to the hallway was open and he guessed that was how the person had disappeared.

  A face popped up in the doorway. It was Line. She looked terrified.

  "Preben?"

  "My eye!" he screamed. "My eye! It hurts!"

  Line kneeled next to him and he could tell it was bad by the look on her face. A second later, Emma came running.

  "What's going on here?" she asked. She shrieked when she saw the blood and held a hand to her mouth when she saw the eye.

  "Oh my God, Preben. What happened?" she cried. "I'll call for an ambulance right away."

  Emma grabbed her phone and started dialing. Preben whimpered as more people came to the door. Soren Hedelund staggered inside the room and looked at Preben while holding a bottle of gin in his hand.

  "Oh my, that looks really bad," he said, emotionless.

  Soon the clerk from downstairs came running and brought with him a bunch of other people in hotel uniforms. They all had the same expression of utter terror on their faces when they saw him. Preben heard Emma speak on the phone.

  "Yes, yes of course, no, keep ice on it, okay. Good." She hung up and knelt next to Preben.

  "They're on their way," she said. "They told us to leave the needle in there, it is very important. Be careful not to move it or push it around. Until they get here, we can soothe the pain slightly by putting ice on it, but without adding pressure to the needle."

  "I'm on it right away," the clerk said and ran downstairs.

  Preben felt dizzy from the pain. "It hurts Emma. It hurts so badly," he cried like a little child.

  "I know, Preben. I know," she said and stroked his hair. "How did it happen?"

  "There was someone in here," he moaned as another wave of devastating pain rolled over him.

  "You mean to say it wasn't an accident? Someone did this to you?" Emma asked, startled.

  "How could this be an ACCIDENT?" Preben yelled. "Are you INSANE? Do you think I came up here to sew with my own little needle that I brought with me and then OOOPS the needle FELL into my eye, huh? Is that what you thought? That's STUPID! YOU IDIOT!"

  Emma drew backwards like she was afraid of him. Preben regretted his outburst; he didn't mean to scare her, he was just so … so incredibly MAD.

  27

  December 2013

  LINE WAS TERRIFIED. SHE WAS staring at Preben Krogh lying on the floor with a needle stuck into his eye. Blood was gushing down his face and onto his white shirt, coloring the top of it red. Line had never been good around blood and now it made her extremely dizzy.

  "Well don't just stand there and STARE," Preben yelled at them.

  They all drew further backwards every time he yelled.

  "Help me get up for CRYING OUT LOUD!"

  Emma grabbed one arm and pulled, but couldn't get him up. She looked at Soren Hedelund who looked at Line who looked at some of the hotel personnel. Preben was a big guy and heavy too. Line shrugged.

  "I can't … I'm not allowed to lift anything heavy," she said and touched her stomach.

  Soren was swaying from side to side. He lifted the bottle and drank. One of the guys in a hotel uniform took a step forward and grabbed the other arm. Line watched as they helped Preben get back to his feet, while he was groaning in pain. Line shivered every time she looked at the eye. Her stomach turned again and she felt like throwing up. There was just so much blood. Line stepped backwards while Emma and the man in uniform helped Preben get back on his feet again. He was crying in pain and whimpering and yelling at everybody.

  Soren staggered towards him. He reached out the bottle of gin towards Preben. "Here. Not that you deserve it but it'll numb the pain."

  Preben looked at Soren, then snorted and grabbed the bottle. He drank greedily, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "Shit. Fucking SHIT!" he yelled, then lifted the bottle again and drank from it like it was a soda.

  "Keep it," Soren said. "I'll get another one."

  "I intend to," Preben said hissing.

  Emma cleared her throat. "So Preben, do you have any idea who might have done this to you?" she asked cautiously.

  Preben drank and looked at her with furor. "Well, what do you think?" he asked.

  "I don't know. That's why I'm asking you," Emma answered.

  She seemed to know how to tackle Preben's behavior well, Line thought to herself. Probably learned it by raising those kids of hers.

  "Did you see this person?" Emma asked.

  Preben clenched his fist. "Don't you think I would have told you by now if I knew who it was? Don't you freaking THINK I would have told you?"

  Emma exhaled. "There is no need to raise your voice at me. I’m just trying to help you here, Preben. That's all."

  "Don't …" Preben hissed, then drank again. "Don't freaking patronize me, Emma. I'm in pain. Can't you see I'm in pain here?"

  "I do see that, but I feel like it is important that we realize that there might be someone dangerous still in this hotel right now."

  "You think whoever did it is still here?" Line asked with fear in her voice.

  Emma shrugged. "It's a possibility, isn't it? I mean there is a storm closing in on us. It's dangerous to be on the roads right now. Who in their right mind would go out in this weather? Plus we haven't seen a car come and go have we?"

  The three me
n in uniform shook their heads.

  "My guess is this person is still inside the hotel," Emma said.

  Line gasped and looked around her. Soren Hedelund looked at her with a grin.

  "Boo!" he said.

  Line jumped. Soren laughed maniacally. Line grimaced.

  "Idiot," she said and held a hand on her stomach while hoping the baby didn't get too agitated by all this commotion. Can't be good for it, she thought. She wondered again if there was any way she could get out of this place tonight. She really didn't feel like spending the night in a hotel with a madman on the loose who stuck needles in people's eyes just for fun.

  Preben moaned in pain. Outside the windows the wind had picked up strongly now and the old wooden building creaked eerily. Line shivered. A tree outside the window touched the side of the house and scraped its branches across the wood. The clerk came back with icepacks.

  "I brought some painkillers as well," he said.

  "The ambulance is coming all the way from Hjorring," Emma said while Preben swallowed the pills and flushed them down with gin.

  "Hjorring?" Preben said. "Are you kidding me? That's like an hour away!"

  "Fifty minutes, they told me. It's the nearest hospital," Emma said.

  Preben whimpered loudly. "Am I supposed to sit here in pain like this for FIFTY minutes?"

  No one said anything. Emma nodded. "Hopefully the painkillers will help," Emma said.

  "Help? Help? They don't help SHIT that's what they do. NOTHING. Look at me for Pete's sake. I'm in pain, Emma. It HURTS!"

  Line looked at Preben and felt sick to her stomach again. She looked at the others present in the room.

  "Where is Jacob?" She suddenly asked.

  Emma looked at her. "Yes, where is Jacob Lomholdt? Has anyone seen him?"

  28

  December 2013

  THEY CARRIED PREBEN DOWN THE stairs to the lobby where they put a mattress on the floor for him to lie on while waiting for the ambulance. Soren watched them as they went out of their way to make it as pleasant as possible for the old bastard. Meanwhile the hotel personnel searched the hotel to find the perpetrator.

  Soren went to his room and got a new bottle from the minibar for himself before he walked downstairs to watch the spectacle. Preben was still screaming in pain, but his screams had become more of a whimper, making him sound like a small child.

  Soren couldn't help but find this entire situation slightly amusing … seeing the big guy who was always bullying others now crying like a baby. Besides, he deserved it. Preben had deserved every little bit of this. Soren didn't pity him. As a matter of fact, he kind of enjoyed it.

  Finally the bastard got to taste some of his own medicine.

  Soren looked at him with a grin while the clerk brought a pillow and water for him to drink. Yes, Soren enjoyed watching him suffer and couldn't have thought of a better way to do it himself. He had wanted him to feel pain for a long time. Ever since that day in 1999 when Preben, Erik and Jacob had decided to scare Soren into remaining silent with what he knew. It wasn't like he was about to tell anyway, but for some reason they found it imperative to make sure he knew what would happen if he spoke up.

  Soren had been madly in love for the first time in his life with a girl named Ida. He knew her from the bar where he worked at night. She was one of the waitresses and he had been flirting with her every day for a couple of months. Finally she had agreed to go out with him but on the night he came for her, her mother told him Ida had already left … with some other guys who had claimed to be Soren's friends and who had told her Soren was running late and they would bring her to him.

  Devastated, Soren had driven around in the small town of Ringsted where he lived back then and looked for her, but found her nowhere. Then he had gone home and found a message on his answering machine. The voice was Ida's. She was afraid; he could hear it in her voice. Soren had cried and listened to the strange message where he could hear her moan and cry, then tell them no, no, please don't. Then the message stopped.

  "No!" Soren cried and pressed rewind to hear the message again and again. But nothing in it told him where she was or who she was with.

  But he knew perfectly well who they were.

  Soren drove to their houses, but found them empty. Finally, after hours of searching for them, he had gone back home to the small house he rented outside of town, thrown himself on the couch, and simply cried.

  The next day he had received a phone call telling him to kill their old biology teacher Hans Frandsen.

  "If you ever want to see Ida again, you'll do as you're told," the strange voice said.

  Soren hadn't known what to do with himself, but knew there was no way out of this. If he went to the police, he would have to tell them everything and he really didn't want to, since he was afraid they'd find out his role in the whole thing.

  So Soren had done as they told him to. He bought the ticket to Spain that was going to be his alibi, then called a friend he knew in Malaga and called in a favor. He told him to tell the police Soren was at his house on a certain day, then took his car out of the garage, drove into town where he found the biology teacher walking out of his house. It had been as easy as anything. He simply accelerated the car, hit Hans Frandsen and drove off. Then he went back home and waited for them to call.

  But they never did.

  Days went by and Soren didn't hear anything. He didn't eat, he didn't sleep. All he could think of was Ida and what those bastards were doing to her. He tried to call them; he tried to go to their homes and offices, only to find out that they had left the country.

  "Mallorca," Erik's secretary and Preben's assistant both said. "They'll be back by the end of the month."

  It wasn't until two weeks later that he realized the horror of where Ida really was. He was lying in bed late at night when he smelled it for the first time. Thinking it was nothing, maybe just that the house that needed to be cleaned better, he rolled onto his side and tried to fall asleep. But the next morning when he opened all the windows to get the smell out, he realized it didn't help at all. That was when the evil forebodings began. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Soren walked down to the basement and that was where he found her. Sitting on a chair was Ida, gagged and strapped down. Her eyes were staring emptily into the air, her skin white with spots on it. Her wrists and ankles had deep marks in the flesh from trying to get loose. In her lap was a note.

  IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE, KEEP QUIET ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW.

  It was at that moment, standing with the dead Ida in his arms, that Soren swore that one day he would get his revenge on Erik, Preben and Jacob.

  Now he was looking at one of them who was whimpering helplessly on an old mattress making Soren sick with disgust. Soren leaned over him and whispered in his ear.

  "You were coming for me, weren't you? Those plastic gloves. You had just put them on, hadn't you? So you wouldn't leave any fingerprints on my neck when you strangled me. Don't think I'm that drunk. But don't you worry. Whoever did this to you didn't finish the job. I'll make sure to do that later on."

  29

  December 2013

  JACOB GOT OUT OF THE BATHTUB and was now getting dressed in a hurry. The screams had stopped for a second and that was when he thought it was all finished, but then they had started again and continued for a little too long now.

  Jacob grunted and put on his pants. He never should have left it to Preben to finish the job. It was like he always said:

  If you want something done properly, then do it yourself.

  Jacob was getting really upset with Preben and considered killing both him and Soren now that he had the chance. Maybe get rid of Line and Emma as well, then burn the entire place down afterwards to cover any evidence. Blame it on the storm. It was as easy as could be.

  Jacob snorted and combed his wet hair back with his hand while listening to the screams coming from down the hall. He had no idea what was going on, and it pissed him off that he had to le
ave his warm bath to go and check it out. Preben was going to regret this, he thought to himself while making sure his hair looked good in the mirror.

  Jacob walked towards the door angrily when suddenly there was a knock on it.

  "Jacob?" a voice said. It was Emma's.

  Jacob snorted. He would recognize that voice anywhere. He clenched his fists before he opened the door.

  "What?"

  Emma looked startled. "Sorry. Just checking in to see if you were alright."

  Jacob exhaled, annoyed. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "Well the rest of us were all gathered in Preben's room and you weren't there … so I figured that maybe …"

  "In Preben's room? What were you all doing in Preben's room?"

  She looked puzzled. "Haven't you heard him screaming?"

  Jacob paused. He felt confused. "You're saying that was Preben's screaming?"

  Emma nodded. "Yes. Someone attacked him in his room."

  "Someone? Who?"

  Emma shrugged. "We don't know. He told us the person was wearing some kind of African wooden mask or something. That's all we know. He didn't see the face."

  "A mask?" Jacob's voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "I don't think I quite understand what is going on here."

  "Well, none of us do. But what we know is that Preben is being carried downstairs now where he will be waiting for the ambulance. He is in horrible pain. That's why he’s screaming."

  Jacob walked into the hallway and closed his door behind him. His anger had suddenly been replaced by a strange feeling. An eerie feeling that he didn't quite recognize, that he didn't know he was capable of feeling. Was it fear? Anxiety?

  "But … but what happened to him?" he asked as they started to walk down the hallway towards the stairs. The trees scratched their branches on the wood outside causing Jacob to shiver slightly.

  "He … well it's really ugly," Emma said. "But apparently someone stuck a … uh … a needle in his eye."