BYLINE FOR PERIL

By Chet

CHAPTER FIVE

With a deep groan that started deep down in her lungs, and with an effort made more taxing by the rope tied painfully tight about her svelte body, Samantha Grayson heaved herself up into a sitting position. With a growl she vigorously shook her head back and forth, her flowing auburn hair whipping wildly about her face, and the noise caught the attention of Marcus Cowle.

With a smirk on his shallow face he glanced over his shoulder at Samantha. “Well, it seems as if you have something to say about all this, don’t you?”

“Mmmmmpppphhhh!” Samantha nodded her head, squealing again through the wadding that filled her cheeks and the wide cloth band jammed between her lips.

Cowle looked over at Sterner. “Should we pause to listen to what Miss Grayson has to say to the two of us…entrepreneurs?”

Sterner said nothing. Instead he grabbed Lauren by the shoulders and wrenched her ball-tied body up into a sitting position. With a piteous whine Lauren reacted to this rough handling. Then she froze in terror as Sterner circled her throat with his meaty hand. “Don’t try anything stupid, or I’ll snap your friend’s neck like it was kindling.” As if to make his point he applied the slightest bit of pressure against Lauren’s trachea, to which Lauren closed her emerald eyes and gasped through her gag in pain.

Samantha nodded once more, slowly this time, her chocolate brown eyes watering in anguish at the horrible sight of her friend threatened. She fully comprehended the fact that Sterner could snuff out Lauren’s life with a squeeze of his palm.

“No tricks,” Cowle warned her. “No trying to scream for help or your little redheaded friend is finished.” He leaned over and undid the knot of the gag at the back of her head, pulling the strip away from her lips.

Samantha spat the now sodden wadding of cloth that had been wedged between her tongue and the roof of her mouth until early that afternoon. She gulped down a welcome gasp of air, then moved her sore jaw about, flinching at the stabbing pain that raced through the nerves of her face. It was then that Samantha realized how desperately thirsty she was, wishing she had a glass of water to drink.

“Come on,” Cowle demanded, “we don’t have all night. I have to get you to our little…hideaway. And take care of your friends,” he motioned over his shoulder at the haplessly bound Lauren and Amanda Walker.

Samantha swallowed. “You don’t have to…hurt them.” She couldn’t bring herself to use the word kill.

“Really?” Cowle replied, fascinated by Samantha’s pluck in the face of this penultimate peril. Sheik Rahim would like that particular trait in this soon-to-be possession. “They know too much about me and about my operation. I don’t think you truly grasp how our business operates here, I can only assume so much risk. I have to eliminate my liabilities here.”

“They only have to be kept quiet until you’re out of town,” Samantha pointed out. “Once you’ve left Chicago, I’m sure you’ll change your identity and name. Amanda and Lauren won’t know anything of that.”

Cowle scratched his chin. “Amanda and Lauren…” He seemingly drifted from the topic. “I hope you don’t mind my asking right now, but which one is Amanda?”

Samantha’s face flushed with confusion, but she complied with his request for she had no other choice. She nodded her head at the brown-eyed girl-next-door brunette hogtied and gagged on the carpet. “Ah, yes. I thought you looked like an Amanda,” he chuckled callously. Then he smiled at his other captive. “And you do look like a Lauren.”

“There are these abandoned tenements about a mile away from here, over at Grand and Western in the Humboldt Park neighborhood,” Samantha continued to explain, shaking off Cowle’s divergence. “I did a story on them for The Daily Husky.” And how she wished she was at those offices of the student paper right then, far removed and safe from this danger.

Samantha took another deep breath, here was the gamble. “You can leave them in one of the buildings, I’m sure no one will find them for a few days. They’ll be out of the way, you’ll be far away by the time they are discovered.” Cowle tilted his head at the proposition while both Amanda and Lauren whimpered wide-eyed at this possible prospect. But faced with the option of being blown to bloody pieces by a bundle of dynamite, a day or two tied up in an abandoned building seemed like a holiday on a Caribbean cruise.

“Just leave them there,” Cowle said, “in one of these abandoned buildings?” Samantha nodded again, her eyes beginning to gleam with hope that her captor saw the logic in her proposal.

“You don’t have to hurt them,” Samantha repeated again. “You don’t.”

Then Marcus Cowle smiled and a sick sensation bloomed deep in Samantha’s stomach. “Sorry, my dear Samantha,” Cowle said with a sinister lilt, “I do have to hurt them. That’s how it is in this business, loose ends are frowned upon by my financial backers and clientele. However, I do admire your…concern for the well-being of your friends, but I can’t leave any witnesses behind.”

“Besides, I have to destroy all the evidence here.” Samantha slumped down in her bondage, the game was lost and Amanda and Lauren would die. “So why not kill two birds with one stone.” Cowle paused, his eyes taking on a disturbingly diabolical glimmer. “Or is that two coeds with one bomb?”

“No…no, you can’t! You can’t hurt them!” Samantha began to cry, realizing now that Cowle intended to go through with his grim plan.

“I think you’re getting a little hysterical here, Samantha.” Cowle reached over and grabbed a pad of cloth and another long strip of white cotton fabric. “I do believe it is time for you to calm down a little here.” He stepped behind her and clutched her shoulder as she fought against the ropes, his other hand wadding the cloth pad up into a tight ball.

“No…no….nmmmph!” Samantha cried out as Cowle forced open Samantha’s lips and pushed the wad of cloth past her lips and between her teeth. Samantha lowered her head in anguish as he took the strip of cloth, the middle of it pressed against the back of her head, and wound the two ends around her face and between her lips. He double-knotted the ends tightly and Samantha whimpered, she had been silenced once more. She had failed in her gambit to save the lives of her two best friends.

Cowle pushed Samantha down onto the floor and she hit with a thud against the carpet. With deep shame she stared into the eyes of Amanda Walker, then over at Lauren Callahan. I’m sorry…I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.

It’s okay…you tried. Amanda murmured through her gag, attempting to come to grips with the fact her life was now being measured in minutes instead of years.

“Now, we have to make sure you two aren’t able to stop what will eventually happen,” Cowle announced as he grasped Amanda underneath her waist. “Drag her to the other side of the room,” he told Sterner, who still had a firm grip upon the immobile Lauren.

With that Cowle dragged Amanda to one side while Sterner lugged Lauren to the other. The two coeds squealed in protest as they were bodily hauled to opposite sides of the room. Samantha saw the reason. They were kept far apart so they couldn’t free each other or disarm the bomb, if there was any way they could even do that.

Cowle stood up, walked back over to the pile of rope and cloth strips, picked up two lengths of cloth, handing one to Sterner. Cowle stepped over to the bomb, flicked a switch to set the deadly device. “At midnight this will go off.” The time was 10:51. “So you have a little more than an hour left to live.”

“That’s scary, isn’t it? Knowing you only have so much time left to live?” Amanda and Lauren cried at the inevitable, and lethal, deadline as Cowle moved back over to Amanda and Sterner approached the cowering Lauren. “Do you know what is more terrifying than knowing you have about an hour or so to live?”

Samantha gasped in horror as Cowle and Sterner took the thick swaths of white cloth and blindfolded the luckless pair. “It’s not knowing when that time is up.” Her friends-bound, silenced and blinded-squirmed and moaned in vain as their fate was ultimately sealed.

Sterner walked over and lifted the limp, bound form of Samantha off from the floor and tossed her over his broad shoulder. “You know where to take her?” Cowle asked.

“Hanger 18, with the others, she’ll get acquainted with her new friends.” While her old ones were being blown sky-high.

“Good, Sheik Rahim will be there at two, so make sure they’re all ready for transport by then,” Cowle informed him. “I’ll meet you out there.”

“All right, see you there, pardner,” Sterner turned and carried Samantha out the back door of the studio and into the alley. She took one final, hopeless look at her helpless, condemned friends. You’ve killed them, it’s all your fault… Samantha no longer cared if she lived or died now; the guilt of responsibility for her friend’s demise made everything she would suffer from then on inconsequential. Cowle followed Sterner out, securing the door behind them and trapping Amanda and Lauren in their death chamber.

Sterner unceremoniously dumped Samantha into the open trunk of the champagne colored Chrysler 300, slamming the lid shut and sealing her up in a darkness that felt like the stifling confines of a graveyard crypt. The engine roared to life and jerked into motion. Samantha Grayson knew it was taking her to a place she didn’t want to go, but knew she had little choice in the matter…

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“It’s not like Samantha to just not show for a date, Fiji, not even to call and tell me something came up,” Tyler McManaway continued to rationalize as he and Albert “Fiji” Fatuamala walked up the stairs to the third floor of Howell Student Commons and Samantha Grayson’s haunt of the offices of The Daily Husky. “But her and her roommates not showing up at a restaurant where they have reservations, now that has got me a tad bit worried.”

“Maybe she’s working on a hot story and they decided to cancel their reservations,” Fiji suggested, but he too had bad feelings about this.

“She would’ve called me, bucko,” Tyler stated as they entered the office. Tyler knew Samantha Grayson intimately, they had been together since at First Year Orientation, caught in the “love at first sight” spell when they bumped into each other in line at registration. Samantha was conscientious, and she would have let Tyler know if something had come up. By not doing so, it had raised the suspicions in his mind that things were amiss.

The office was a scene of loud, controlled, bustling chaos as students scurried about to put together a twenty-four page newspaper to be dropped off at the dining halls at lunchtime the next day. The sounds of fingers tapping away at computer keyboards, a track from Greenday blasting out from the office boom-box and the customary jibes and banter between colleagues filled the space. One thing Tyler noticed right away, Samantha was nowhere to be seen.

Sports Editor Rick Rennert saw Tyler and Fiji enter. “Hey McManaway, what are you doing here this late? Have some inside scoop on the Michigan State game that you want to pass along for my GameDay column?”

“No, it’s not that.” Tyler waved off his question. “Have you seen Samantha tonight?”

Rennert put his hands on his hips. “You’re not the first ones to come here looking for Lois Lane.” That was the nickname, of Superman’s reporter-girlfriend in distress, the staff had bestowed upon Samantha.

“Come again?” Tyler asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Her roommates, Lauren Callahan and Amanda Walker, were here about four hours ago looking for her,” Rennert replied. “Hey Fiji, when are you going to ask Lauren out on a date?"

“I’m working on it,” Fiji blushed.

“She likes you.”

“I know, I know,” Fiji confessed innocently. He liked Lauren too. Maybe I should after this weekend…have to suck it up and ask her sometime.

“So Amanda and Lauren were here?” Tyler got the conversation back on track with his question.

“Guess they were going out to dinner. Samantha left a note for them on the disaster-area that she calls a desk, I think.” He noted Tyler’s now disturbed, worried expression. “What’s up?”

Tyler strode over to Samantha’s desk, answering as he walked. “Lauren and Amanda never made it to the restaurant where they had reservations. And they’re not at their suite in Lakeside. So no one has heard from Samantha since this afternoon and now Lauren and Amanda have disappeared.”

“What? You mean to say they’re missing?” Rennert asked in disbelief.

“I believe that is what you would call it,” Tyler said as he and Fiji began to dig through the piles of notebooks and files, searching for a clue as to the trio’s whereabouts. “As in vanished off the face of the Earth, something like that.”

“God, she is messy,” Fiji couldn’t help but comment.

“Found it, I think,” Tyler said, lifting the yellow Post-It note and reading it. He frowned, he didn’t like the tone of the note at all. Samantha, have you gotten yourself into some sort of trouble here? “Fiji?”

“Yeah?”

“Mind taking a trip with me into Chicago? Down to Wicker Park?”

“Don’t have anything else planned for the rest of the evening. Where are we going?” Fiji asked, hands placed on his hips.

“Some place called Cowle Photography.” Tyler told him as he spun on his heels and the pair started to jog for the door.

“I’ll call Aaron,” Rennert called after them, picking up a phone to call Aaron Dinehart, news editor of The Daily Husky, on his cell phone to let him know that his star reporter was missing.

Tyler and Fiji picked up the pace as they ran down the stairs and headed for the main entrance of Howell Student Commons. Tyler’s battleship gray Chevrolet Blazer was parked in the B-6 parking lot on the other side of Chamberlain Road. At a run it would take a minute or two to get to his ride. As Tyler pushed the main doors open a petite young coed with short blonde hair was coming through the door just as he was going out and they collided bodily. The impact sent both staggering backwards a step, though the coed took the brunt of the blow.

“Sorry, excuse me,” Tyler said brusquely to the girl, sidestepping to the left to get around her. He had no time to waste.

She shook her head, looked at him. “You’re Tyler McManaway.”

Tyler nodded, forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get somewhere…”

The girl cut him off with a statement that took him and Fiji completely by surprise. “Samantha’s in danger.”

Tyler shook his head, his stomach flipping and flopping as the worst was confirmed. “What? What do you mean by that?”

“My name’s Lisa Mahone, I talked to Samantha this morning about my roommate, Kristen Lawrence,” Lisa began to explain, her eyes of hazel green fraught with distress. “She’s missing, been so since yesterday afternoon,” that fact too shocked the pair, “but I found this card to this photo studio where I think Kristen might have been.”

“Wait a minute, Cowle Photography?” Fiji asked, to which Lisa nodded.

“Yeah, I told Samantha about it since the police weren’t interested,” Lisa continued to explain hurriedly. “She said she would check it out and call me with what she found out.” She swallowed hard then, thinking of the friend and the reporter she may have unwittingly placed in peril searching for her missing friend. “But she never called me and I’m getting worried.”

“So am I because no one has seen her since this afternoon,” Tyler told her and Lisa raised her hand to her mouth. “And now her roommates are missing as well.”

“Oh my God…” Lisa started to say. “This is my fault…”

“No it isn’t.” How could concern for a friend and roommate be frowned upon. “We’re going down to this Cowle Photography and check it out. Try and find Samantha and the others.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lisa said with steadfast intent.

“Um, this could get hairy,” Fiji warned as they started to jog towards the B-6 parking lot.

“My friend is in danger,” Lisa said, “and I want to know what is going on.”

“I couldn’t have said it any better myself,” Tyler replied as the trio ran across the dark and quiet quadrangles of Great Northern University.

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Locked in the trunk of the Chrysler, Samantha Grayson thought she would suffocate on the gasoline fumes that seeped through the gaps in the frame. If she wasn’t first knocked senseless against the metal top of the trunk when he drove over a pothole. With a low moan through her gag Samantha sank against the floor of the trunk, ceasing her struggles against the bondage around her body. Resigned to her ultimate fate, heartbroken at having sealed the final fate of her friends Amanda and Lauren as well.

Samantha froze as the car lurched to a final stop and the engine cut out. The sudden silence was unsettling.

We’re here…

She heard the car door open, then footsteps. Another door opening. Footsteps again, this time approaching the car. The trunk lid was heaved open. The cold October night air filled her lungs and caused her skin to tingle. Samantha lifted her head and stared into the baleful eyes and imposingly cruel visage of Sterner, Marcus Cowle’s hired thug.

“End of the line, sweetheart,” Sterner said, roughly rolling Samantha over onto her stomach. He took a length of rope and jerked her ankles back to her wrists, using the rope to lash her body into a taut hogtie. She shrieked in muffled agony through the gag as blinding pain shot through her already tender muscles. “Time to meet your fellow passengers to the Middle East, baby.” Samantha glared at him and growled angrily through the cloth in her mouth.

“Too bad there won’t be much conversation between you all.” With that he grabbed Samantha by the bindings around her ankles and elbows and hauled her out from the trunk of the sedan. Lugging her through the door to the hanger as if she was duffel bag filled with clothes. With her brown eyes wide, Samantha watched the asphalt pavement, then the concrete floor of the hanger, pass underneath her as she was physically carried through the hanger. She prayed that he didn’t lose her grip on the ropes and drop her to the ground.

Into a dimly lit room from which Samantha could hear the mournful, muffled cries of despair and desperation did Sterner take her. There were two beds in the center of the room and Sterner dumped Samantha face-first onto the closest bed, hearing the bedsprings creak under the weight of her body. He rolled her onto her side, tying a rope from her wrists to one of the bedposts to anchor her down and add to her helplessness.

It took a moment for Samantha’s eyes to adjust to the darkness and realize there was another woman lying on the bed facing her. Samantha blinked, staring into the angelic face she had first seen in a photograph earlier that afternoon in the offices of The Daily Husky. The blue eyes above the strips of silver duct tape plastered over her mouth glimmered in petrified terror. The long flowing brunette locks were disheveled and tangled. Her shimmering blue silk blouse undone, the white bra showing through the folds, the gray skirt pushed up on her thighs. The body was wrapped up like a mummy in the same unyielding bands of silver adhesive that silenced her.

Samantha had found Kristen Lawrence.

Kristen whimpered into her gag. Who are you?

Samantha whined back. Someone who did a terrible job of trying to help you.

Samantha lifted her head and peered about the room, looked over at the other bed beside them. On that bed was a small redhead with brown eyes bound up tightly with rope, a white ballgag strapped cruelly into her mouth. That was Annie Wilson, a junior at Saint Ignatius University, the first to disappear. Alongside her was a taller young woman of slender build with long ash-brown tresses and amethyst eyes. Like Kristen she too was secured and silenced with duct tape. That was Melissa Franchione, a sophomore from Chicago University, the second one to vanish.

The third captive in the room, a blonde with a fairly ample bosom and brown eyes, was tied to a chair with what seemed like miles of rope, her pleas stifled with a thick black cloth gag wedged between her teeth. This was Jessica Wainright, senior at College of Illinois at Chicago. All three, like Samantha and Kristen, were attired in blouses and skirts, heels shod their feet. It was obvious that Cowle preferred his captives to be dressed in a certain way for their predicament.

Sterner reached over and stroked the satin material that cupped Samantha’s breasts, then gave it a hard squeeze that caused her to wail in anguish and desperation, squirming reflexively against the ropes that bound her. “You’ve got a lot of spunk, the Arab’s gonna like that in you. He’s gonna have some real good fun with you.” With that Sterner stalked out of the room and left the five captives to ponder their now quite uncertain destiny.

There was a clock on the wall. Samantha looked at the time and felt her heart sink to the depths of agony, wanted to cry and never stop.

It was 11:55 PM

Back at the darkened studios of Cowle Photography where they lay bound, gagged and blindfolded, Amanda Walker and Lauren Callahan had five minutes left to live.

Chapter Six

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