Page 67 of Calling Chaos


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He didn’t try now. If someone had left him tied to a chair like this without a gag, that meant there was no one to hear him scream, was there?

At least, no one who would help him.

Instead he called out softly, “Hello?”

There was no answer, but one of the blinking red lights in front of him flashed to green. Was there someone watching him? Recording him? Who the hell had Cooper pissed off enough to be in this situation?

He looked around the room again, this time ignoring the tech. There were no windows, no natural light. Just an orange-yellow overhead that buzzed and flickered in a way that indicated it was on its last legs.

It wasn’t the same office he’d been knocked out in, then. It was somewhere new. Somewhere unknown.

The light that had turned green before flashed suddenly to red, and then Cooper heard the sound of a door opening behind him. The panic returned, tightening his chest and closing his throat. He didn’t breathe—couldn’t—and he was too frightened to look over his shoulder and find out what he was dealing with.

But he didn’t need to. His captor came around to the front of his chair.

The man was lanky, practically rail thin, with a receding hairline that had been buzzed to the scalp. He was wearing glasses—small, wire-rimmed rectangles. No mask or hat or any attempt to hide his identity.

Cooper didn’t recognize him, anyway. He’d never seen him before in his life.

“You’re awake,” the stranger said, his voice reedy in a way that matched his stature.

“Who are you?” Cooper asked.

He jerked back in his seat—as much as he was able, with the ropes tied around his chest—when a penlight was suddenly shined into his eyes.

“Your pupils are even, equal, and reactive. That’s good. Although, those eyes of yours are a bit unsettling.” The man lowered the penlight, rising from the crouch he’d dropped into for his inspection. “I didn’t mean for you to hit your head,” he explained, although he didn’t sound apologetic. “You went down faster than I expected.”

“Who are you?” Cooper asked again. Then, in case he’d have better luck with it, “Where are we?”

“I’m a friend,” the man told him, answering the first question and ignoring the second.

A sharp little burst of indignation cut through Cooper’s panic. This guy wasn’t a friend. Cooper had exactly one of those these days—a perfect, wild, menacing demon—and this stranger wasn’t it.

The indignation made him stupid. “Friends don’t tie their friends to chairs,” he said, shaking his restrained arms as best he could in some sort of demonstration. “Or kidnap them.”

“When you run in the circles we do, little wasp, friends do all kinds of things, don’t they?”

Cooper froze. At0micW4sp. It was the screen name he used in hacker forums. A silly thing he’d come up with as a teen. A protected identity.

And this man claimed he was a friend.

Cooper hazarded a guess. “RedRabbit?”

“You can call me Red.” There was a small smile on the man’s thin lips, one that didn’t show his teeth, but his eyes were strangely flat, void of all emotion. “You did very well on your task, Cooper.”

“And this—this is my reward?” When RedRabbit—Red—didn’t answer, Cooper tried a different tack. “What happened to Smith?”

“Oh, he’s just fine.” Red pulled a chair away from the desk, some cheap folding one, and set it in front of Cooper before sitting down across from him. “He was instructed on what to do, and he followed his instructions. There was no need to harm him.”

Smith had given Cooper up, then. Cooper couldn’t muster up any anger over it. Smith had either been threatened or tricked, and they weren’t close enough for Cooper to expect him to make some sacrifice of himself on principle alone.

Or maybe the anger would come later, when Cooper had room for something other than confusion and fear.

None of that gave Cooper any better idea of what was happening right now. “Why didn’t you message me yourself?” he asked. “You know how to contact me.”

Those flat eyes studied him. “You likely would have refused. Other hackers have tried to meet you in person. You’re notoriously shy.”

“I don’t think I’m notoriously anything.”