Page 6 of Absent Feeling

“Thevan is sinking!” Colm called out. “Help us! We’ll drown if you don’t help us!”

Itwas strange to Colm how easy to manipulate some people were, with their sensesof decency and empathy. Never having been burdened by either, Colm couldn’timagine falling for something as obvious as this, but the guard did. He openedthe metal grill door between the front and back of the van, moving forward withhis keys already in his hands.

Colmleapt up, free from his shackles. He slammed into the guard, hitting him withan elbow, then with a headbutt. Both of those were distractions, though, onlydesigned to buy Colm the time he needed to get a hand to the guard’s gun.

Colmdrew it in one smooth movement, kicking Officer Trent away so that he couldn’tfight for it. The man stood there with his hands up, as if this were some kindof robbery. Colm shot him twice, the sound of it almost deafening in theenclosed space of the van.

“Whatis this?” Vincent demanded. “Some kind of—”

Colmshot him too. He doubted that the big man would have anything to say that wouldbe worth listening to in any case. That left only Gunter the fraudster.

“Please,”he begged. “Please don’t shoot me.”

Colmsmiled then. “Oh, I’m not going to shoot you, Gunter. That wasn’t thearrangement I made with the people you took money from. You know, the ones who gotthat money from their drug business. They want you to drown.”

“No!No, you can’t leave me!”

Colmfrowned at that. “Of course, I can. Goodbye, Gunter.”

Hesnatched up Officer Trent’s keys, not only to stop the other man from usingthem, but also because he thought that he would still need them. Colm halfclambered, half swam into the front of the vehicle, then took a moment tounlock the electronic ankle bracelet from around his ankle.

Afterthat, he shot the windscreen, emptying the clip into it to weaken the bulletresistant glass to the point where he could kick it out. Water only rushed infaster then, and Colm took a breath, plunging into the cold of the river.

Fora moment, being in the water was utterly disorienting. It took several secondsfor Colm to spot the sunlight above and to start to swim for it. It was hardwork; he was in shape, but it wasn’t as if the prison had a pool to let himpractice this part of things. Colm’s lungs started to burn with the effort ofholding his breath, but he kept heading upwards.

Ashe swam up, Colm started to think about the reason that he’d finally decided tobreak out of the prison. The young puzzle editor who had been so helpful to theFBI, the one who seemed to be able to solve the hardest puzzles.Shewasa challenge worth escaping for, someone who might finally be able to makeColm’s life interesting again, free from the kind of drudgery that was almostas bad as being in prison.

Finally,he rose above the surface, gulping in air greedily. If the men he’d made a dealwith had kept their part of the bargain, there would be a bag with freshclothes and a small bundle of cash waiting on the far bank. Of course, therewas a good chance that someone would try to kill him there, to tie up any looseends, which was why Colm was going to ignore it and go to one of hisownstashes.He’d just needed them to believe that they were getting the better of him, evenas he used them for his own ends.

Colmset out with powerful strokes now, trying to get to shore. He had no doubt thatthe police would be here soon. Colm intended to be long gone by the time theyshowed up. He would steal a car, get to one of his stashes, and disappear for aday or two.

Thenhe would start to put his plans into action in the game he was going to playwith Amber Young.

CHAPTER FIVE

Amberwas working on a puzzle box, trying to decide if she should be an agent. Forher, now, puzzle boxes would always be associated with the killer who hadbaited the FBI with just such a puzzle box.

Yetfrom the moment she’d done it, she’d had offers coming through to design thepuzzles for that kind of box. She was currently working on one for a builderfrom out of state. Her name had just become associated with them, so that now asmall number of people wanted a puzzle sphere or cube or whatever designed bysomeone who had beaten what the killer claimed was the hardest one out there.

Amberwasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that. After all, people had been killedby the man who had designed the puzzle box she beat. If people only wanted herto work on an object like that because of the case, wasn’t there something …macabre about that? At the same time, though, no one was being killed as a partofthesepuzzles, and it meant that Amber got to spend time doing somethingthat she loved.

Shewas sitting at the heart of her apartment as she worked. Amber had tidied someof the worst of the clutter away, but she was still surrounded by puzzles, withbooks on obscure subjects in stacks in case Amber needed one to research afact. A couple of chessboards and a shogi set were set up with problems thatAmber was in the process of solving whenever she got a spare moment. Shethought there was a way to trap the queen on one, but she still wasn’t sure ofthe exact move order to make it work.

Another,more pressing, problem ticked over in the back of Amber’s mind as she worked onthe puzzle box design: should she accept Agent Palliser’s offer? Amber foundherself going around and around on that question, building mental tables of thepros and cons.

Amberswitched to the more physical kind, grabbing a pen and paper that she mightotherwise have used to draw concept diagrams for how a secret door with apuzzle based on the phases of the moon might work.

Inthe pro column, Amber wrote down the fact that it was a regular job, ratherthan the kind of freelance work she’d been doing to support herself while she’dbeen at Quantico. She added in the fact that she had already been through thetraining, had already committed herself to becoming an agent. There was theopportunity for excitement at the FBI that there simply hadn’t been back at thenewspaper, and crucially, there would be a feeling that she was making a realdifference. Amber would be helping to take killers off the street, stoppingthem from hurting anyone else.

Inthe cons column, she put the fact that it would mean she couldn’t work onpuzzles professionally anymore, because the FBI would demand her time andattention. There was the potential danger, too, because on her last case, Amberhad almost become the victim of the killer she’d been trying to catch. That hadbeen terrifying.

Yetit hadn’t stopped her, and as for not working on puzzles, she could still makethem for fun, still solve other people’s puzzles. Unless Amber was reallyplanning to go all in on being a freelance puzzle designer, shouldn’t it beobvious that she should accept Palliser’s offer?

Whichsuggested that the question was less whether it was the right thing to do andmore what was stopping her. Amber had been through the entire training coursespecifically because she wanted to join the FBI. She’d gone into it motivated,and she’d pushed hard to overcome her weaknesses so that she would be able topass the course. Why was she getting cold feet now?

Amberknew at least part of the answer to that was, as she found herself sketchingout a few more parts for the puzzle box, that it would mean changing everythingabout her life, everything that she’d defined herself as up to this point.Amber had loved puzzles for as long as she could remember. She’d been nerdy atschool, finding solace from the fact that no one seemed to want to be herfriend by going deeper into solving problems and playing games. She’d gone to collegebut had spent as much time on its chess and quiz teams as she had in theclassroom. Amber had aced the course because of how easily she retainedinformation, but the whole path of her life had seemed set.

Now,she was going to change it completely. Amber wouldn’t be a puzzler anymore. Shewould be an FBI agent who maybe solved a few puzzles or played a little chess onthe weekend. It was such a fundamental shift to who she was that even now,Amber wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted it. Wouldn’t it be better and saferto plunge back into the world of puzzles, to be the puzzler who helped the FBIsolve a couple of murders and give herself over to designing new ones full-time?

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