The Silent Corner: A Novel of Suspense by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0345545990
Amazon: 0345545990
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2017-06-20T05:00:00+00:00

18

* * *

STERLING DREAMS OF DROWNING, and at first he is relieved to wake up.

Salsa enlivens the moment, though he never goes to bed with such festive music playing. His vision is blurred, and a chemical taste makes him grimace, and for a moment he can’t determine whether he is standing or sitting, or lying down.

He blinks, blinks, and as his vision clears, some of the mist lifts from his mind as well, but only some of it. He is lying on his back on the bathroom floor, of all places, alongside his prized Deco-period antique bathtub.

When he attempts to move, he realizes that he is restrained. His wrists are bound one to the other with a heavy-duty plastic cable tie. A second tie loops from the first to a third, and the third is secured to one foot of the tub, which stands on balls gripped in the wicked claws of stylized lion paws.

His ankles are likewise shackled to each other and then, with more looped cable ties, to the stainless-steel drainpipe of the bathroom sink.

The basin of the sink is carved from exotic amber quartz and appears to be floating, although it is actually supported by inch-thick, cunningly hidden steel rods that fasten it to a red-steel beam inside the wall. The drainpipe and two stainless-steel water lines exquisitely describe parallel arcs from the bottom of the quartz bowl and disappear into the granite-clad wall. He has long been proud of the sink’s elegant, unconventional design.

As his mind clears a little further, he discovers that he is lying on his clothes but is not wearing them. His Gucci polo shirt has been cut off him. Likewise, his wonderfully comfortable Officine Générale pants have been scissored up each leg and through the waistband, the material splayed to each side of him; and the crotch panel has been cut away entirely.

That is twelve hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of top-of-the-line wardrobe. He would be incensed, except that in his current semidreamy state of mind, he takes satisfaction in knowing that he looks good in his Dolce & Gabbana gray briefs with black waistband, his package nicely displayed in the snug pouch.

Someone switches off the salsa music.

Sterling begins to come further to his senses when the girl enters from the bedroom. Her face is as lacking in expression as it is beautiful. She towers over him like some goddess. She drops to her knees at his side and places her left hand, in a kinky black glove, on his muscular chest. Slowly she slides her hand down to his abdomen. In spite of his restraints, he doesn’t feel imperiled. But then she displays the scissors in her left hand, works the blades—open, closed—still as blank-faced as a mannequin, her eyes such a bright blue, they seem illuminated from within. In a voice as flat as her expression, she says, “What else might be fun to cut off?”

Sterling is now wide awake.

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