Read Online Deadeye by William C. Dietz - Free Book Online

Or maybe you were drugged. It wouldn’t make any difference. You’d be helpless either way.”
    Lee fought to control a rising sense of panic. She’d been stupid. Very, very stupid. No one knew where she was—or what she was doing. She couldn’t access her weapons, and it was quite possible that the Bonebreaker was standing in front of her. And that made sense. Seton had been
inside
the system, where he could monitor the efforts to find him and laugh at how stupid the police were.
She
was. Yes . . . They would find the car. But it was more than a block away. Would they make the connection? The odds were against it.
    â€œNow here’s where it gets interesting,” Seton continued. “Notice where the clamps are. At your wrists and ankles. That’s important because much of what you’ve heard is wrong. The first thing the Bonebreaker wants to do is destroy a victim’s joints. You remember the knee splitter? Same idea.”
    Lee was breathing faster, there were tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead, and her eyes were darting back and forth. “Take your knees for example,” Seton said. “Imagine the pain associated with having your anterior cruciate ligament, the posterior cruciate ligament,
and
the medial collateral ligament all ripped apart at the same time!
    â€œIt would be excruciating, not to mention debilitating, making it impossible for you to flee even if the Bonebreaker left the front door open. As for
two
knees . . . Well, you would be reduced to little more than an animal begging for mercy.”
    Talk to him,
Lee thought to herself.
Stall. Try to reason with him.
“But why?” Lee inquired. “Why would someone do that?”
    Seton frowned. “To punish them, of course. Now pay attention because this is important. The easiest way to break a joint is through the use of lateral force. See the way your joints are exposed? If I were to swing this hammer, and hit any one of them from the side, that would do the job.”
    Lee hadn’t seen Seton go for the hand sledge, so it must have been nearby. She saw him grasp the wooden handle with both hands, pull it back much as a batter would, and prepare to swing at her left knee. That was when she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
    But the blow never came. Lee heard a rapid clacking sound, felt the viselike jaws release their grip on her limbs, and opened her eyes. “So,” Seton said. “The rest is easy. Having immobilized his victim, the Bonebreaker can proceed in any way that he wants to. Since you read the reports, you know that tourniquets were used on some of the victims to keep them from bleeding to death while their arms and legs were being sawed off. Then the Bonebreaker would release all of the tourniquets at once. You can imagine the spectacle! Blood would spurt in every direction, and if my guess is correct, the Bonebreaker takes a great deal of pleasure in that.
    â€œThe flensing and boiling would be carried out later. And it wouldn’t be until all of the flesh had been removed from the bones that the killer would ritualistically break them.”
    Lee did her best to respond. But she was so shaken, so nauseated, that it was all she could do to maintain her composure long enough to thank Seton and leave. The experience had not only been extremely frightening—it had shaken Lee’s belief in her own competency.
    Looking back, it was easy to see where she’d gone wrong. Just because Seton had once been in a position of authority, she’d been stupid enough to trust him. It was a mistake she would avoid in the future.
    So was he the one? Had she been face-to-face with the Bonebreaker and managed to slip through his fingers? No. He had allowed her to leave . . . And the Bonebreaker wouldn’t have done that.
    The trip home was spent thinking about Seton’s cage and wondering if her father had been tortured in one like