Tanya knew Karen well enough to know that those tears weren’t fake. Whatever it was that was happening, she now knew it was no prank.

‘Though I’d love to chat some more,’ the fiendish voice continued. ‘Time is of the essence here, Tanya. At least for your friend, Karen. So let me tell you how this is going to work.’

Tanya tensed.

‘I have placed a bet.’

Tanya wasn’t sure if she’d heard right. ‘What? A bet?’

‘That’s right,’ the demon confirmed. ‘I placed a bet with Karen here. If I lose, she will be set free and neither of you will ever hear from me again. I promise you that.’

There was a deliberate long pause.

‘But if I win . . .’ The person at the other end of the line allowed those words to simply hang in the air ominously.

Tanya shook her head as she exhaled. ‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a very simple game, Tanya. I call it, surprisingly enough, two questions.’

‘Huh?’

‘All you have to do is correctly answer two questions for me,’ the inhuman voice explained. ‘I’ll ask them one at a time. You can give me as many answers as you like per question, but we can only move to the next question, or if we’re talking about the second question, end the game, once you are able to give me a correct answer. If you take longer than five seconds to answer a question, it counts as a wrong answer. For your friend, Karen, to be set free, all I need is two correct answers.’ There was a millisecond of a pause. ‘I know, I know. It doesn’t really sound like an exciting game, does it? But . . . I guess we shall see.’

‘Questions? What kind of questions?’

‘Oh, don’t worry. They’re all directly related to you. You’ll see.’

Tanya had to draw in a deep breath before she was able to speak again. ‘And what happens every time I give you a wrong answer?’

Tanya’s question caused Karen to shake her head ever so slightly. Her eyes widened, this time full of fear and terror.

‘That’s a very good question, Tanya,’ the voice replied. ‘I get the feeling that you’re a smart woman. That’s a good sign.’

There was silence for a moment, as if the line had gone dead. This was a product of the pitch shifter and time delay being used by the caller.

‘What I can tell you is that, for Karen’s sake, let’s hope you don’t.’

All of a sudden, Tanya’s breathing became labored. She didn’t want to play this game. And she didn’t have to. All she had to do was hang up.

‘If you hang up the phone,’ the person at the other end of the line said, as if able to read Tanya’s thoughts, ‘Karen dies and I’ll come after you next. If you disappear from the screen and I can’t see you through your phone’s camera anymore, Karen dies and I’ll come after you next. If you try to call the police, Karen dies and I’ll come after you next. But let me assure you that that would be a futile exercise, Tanya. It would take them nearly ten minutes to get here. It would take me only one to rip your friend’s heart out of her chest and leave it on the table for them to find it. The blood inside her veins would still be warm by the time they got here.’

Those words sent bolts of fear down Karen and Tanya’s spines. Karen immediately began screaming behind her leather gag and hysterically wiggling her body from side to side, trying to fight her restraints, but to no avail.

‘Who are you?’ Tanya asked, her voice beginning to falter. ‘Why are you doing this to Karen?’

‘I suggest that you concentrate on the problem at hand, Tanya. Think of Karen.’

It was then that Tanya saw new movement on the screen. Someone dressed all in black had positioned him or herself just behind the chair her best friend had been tied to, but Tanya couldn’t really see past the person’s torso.

‘Jesus, what kind of sick prank is this?’ she yelled at her phone, now fighting tears herself.

‘No, Tanya,’ the demon replied. ‘This is no prank. This is as real as it gets. Shall we start?’

‘No, wait . . .’ Tanya pleaded, her heart now beating twice as fast as a few minutes ago.

But the person with the demonic voice wasn’t listening anymore. ‘Question one, Tanya: How many Facebook friends do you have?’

‘What?’ Confusion masked Tanya’s face.

‘How many Facebook friends do you have?’ the voice repeated, this time a fraction slower than before.

OK, now this has to be a joke, Tanya thought. What kind of silly question is that? Is this shit for real?

‘Five seconds, Tanya.’

Tanya’s puzzled stare searched Karen’s face. There was nothing there but fear.

The evil voice began counting down. ‘Four . . . three . . . two . . .’

Tanya barely had to think about it. She had checked her profile just before jumping in the shower. ‘One thousand, one hundred and thirty-three,’ she finally replied.

Silence.

The air inside Tanya’s bedroom seemed to thicken like heavy smoke.

Finally, the person standing behind Karen’s chair began applauding.

‘That is one hundred percent correct, Tanya. You’ve got a good memory. And that answer just got your friend one step closer to freedom. All you need to do now is answer one more question correctly and this will all be over.’

Another deliberate long pause.

Without realizing it, Tanya held her breath.

‘Since Karen is your best friend, this next question should be a walk in the park for you.’

Tanya waited.

‘What’s Karen’s cellphone number?’

Tanya’s brow creased with doubt. ‘Her number?’

This time the demon didn’t repeat the question. It simply started the countdown. ‘Five . . . four . . . three . . .’

‘But . . . I don’t know it by heart.’

‘Two . . .’

A choking knot came to Tanya’s throat.

‘One . . .’

‘This is stupid,’ Tanya said with a jittery giggle. ‘Give me a second and I’ll get it for you.’

‘I gave you five, and those five seconds are up. You haven’t answered me.’

This time, there was a new tone underlying the demon’s voice. A tone Tanya couldn’t properly identify but, whatever it was, it filled her heart with terrorizing fear.

‘You wanted to know what happens when you give me a wrong answer . . . watch this.’

Two

Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD Robbery Homicide Division noticed the redhead woman as soon as he entered the 24-hour reading room on the first floor of the historic Powell Library Building, which was part of the UCLA campus in Westwood. She was partially hidden behind a pile of leather-bound books, a coffee mug on the table in front of her. She was sitting alone, busy typing something on her laptop computer. As Hunter walked past her table on his way towards the one at the far corner of the large room, she met his gaze. There was nothing in it. No intrigue, no invitation, no flirt. Just a casual unconcerned look. A second later, her stare returned to her computer screen and the moment was over.

This was the third time Hunter had seen her in the library, always sitting behind a pile of books, always with a coffee mug in front of her, always by herself.

Hunter loved reading and consequently he loved the 24-hour reading room at the Powell Library, especially in the early hours of the morning on the nights his insomnia got the better of him.

In the USA, one in five people suffer from chronic insomnia, mostly brought on by a combination of work, financial and family-related stress. But in Hunter’s case, the condition had grabbed hold of him way before he had to deal with the pressures of having a stressful job.

It all started just after his mother lost her battle with cancer. Hunter was only seven years old at the time. Back then, he would sit alone in his room at night, missing her, too sad to fall asleep, too scared to close his eyes, too proud to cry. The nightmares that followed his mother’s death were so devastating to the young Robert Hunter that as a self-defense mechanism, his brain did all it could to keep him awake at night. Sleep became a luxury and a torment in equal measures and to keep his brain occupied during those endless sleepless hours, Hunter read ferociously, devouring books as if they empowered him. They became his sanctuary. His fortress. A safe place where the ghastly nightmares couldn’t reach him.