The woman in the basement screamed and Colin felt his heart flutter in his chest. He turned back to the kitchen, his eyes falling on the drawer that he knew contained a flashlight.
“I’m coming,” he said, whispering for some reason. “I’m getting a flashlight and I’ll be right back.”
The only response was a whimper.
Colin ran toward the drawer, pulling it open so quickly that all of the cutlery smashed against the front and several forks flew over the side.
Ignoring the mess, Colin grabbed the flashlight. As he turned back toward the stairs to the cellar, he instinctively checked his phone even though he knew that there was no signal.
“Shit,” he swore.
Nothing that had happened made any sense; not the fact that he had struck Ryanne, that she had slept with that fat bastard Glenn, least of all that there was a woman trapped in the basement of his cottage.
But, for the time being, none of that mattered.
The only thing that held any consequence was the woman freezing in his basement, and that he had to save her.
Colin switched on the flashlight and aimed it into the dank cold cellar opening. His breath was coming in frosty puffs and he shivered.
If the woman had been down there for more than a day, two at most, then he was surprised she hadn’t frozen already.
It must be close to ten degrees in the cellar.
“I’m coming. Just wait, I’m—”
Headlights suddenly filled the cottage, and Colin instinctively ducked. The throaty roar of an engine followed next, then, in an instant, both the lights and the sound were gone.
Colin’s heart thudded in his chest. He crouched on his haunches, cowering away from the cottage door.
“Hello? Is anyone—”
“Shh! Shhhh!” Colin hissed frantically down the stairs.
But the woman didn’t hush. Instead, her words grew even more frantic.
“Please, you need to help me!” she screamed. “Help! Help! Heeeeeeeeeeelp!”
Colin ground his teeth and shook his head.
“Shhhh!” he pleaded, tears streaking his cheeks now.
It was no use; the woman’s words had degenerated into unintelligible screams.
Colin was torn; he didn’t know if he should go to the woman as he had initially planned, or hide.
The truth was, he had never been in a situation this fucked up before.
In the end, he elected for the latter. Closing the door to the cellar partway, he moved deeper into the cottage, staying low.
He saw a figure approach the door and then pause.
He’s seen my footsteps. He knows I’m inside.
When the shadow grabbed for the door handle, Colin lay flat on the floor, using the worn, tartan couch as cover.
Like a child hearing strange sounds from the closet, he clenched his eyes closed and listened.
The footsteps moved into the cottage, and then seemed to hesitate.
The book! Did I move the notepad? Did I touch it?
Colin didn’t think that he had grabbed the book, only noticed it, but couldn’t be certain.
Fuck! Fuck!
The footsteps started again, and Colin felt his grip on the thick handle of the flashlight tighten.
Go away! Just go away! Please go away!
But the person didn’t go away.
Instead, he heard the footsteps approach the stairs.
“Hello? Is that you again? Are you back?” the woman chattered from the cellar. “I’m… I’m freezing…”
The footfalls suddenly quickened and then the door that Colin had left partially open creaked as it was swung wide.
“I’m going to slit your fucking throat, bitch,” a strangled voice rasped. “I’m going to slit your throat.”
The woman in the basement started screaming again.
“Help! Help! Help!”
More tears squeezed out from between Colin’s clenched eyelids.
Just stay down, he told himself. Stay down and when the person—whoever the fuck it is—goes into the basement, make a run for it. Just get into your car, and get the hell out of here. Make it to the main road, then call the police.
Colin felt himself nodding, his chin scraping uncomfortably against the carpet beneath him.
Yeah, that’s it, just run. Run like you’ve always done. Run like the spineless bastard that you are.
It wasn’t his own voice in his head this time, but Ryanne’s.
Or maybe it was Glenn’s.
Before he knew what was happening, Colin rose to his feet. He wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand and started to move silently toward the figure at the top of the stairs.
You ain’t worth shit. You’re nothing but a loser, a fucking child who wants to write books—shitty books that no one wants to read. You have a family to look after, and you can’t even pay the bills. I have to whore myself because you can’t—
“I’m going to slit your fucking throat, just like all the others,” the figure—it was a woman, Colin realized—spat down the stairs.
—pay the bills. And the best part? I like it. I like fucking Glenn. I like the way his—
The floor beneath Colin’s foot suddenly creaked and the figure at the top of the stairs spun around.
Colin didn’t hesitate. He sprinted toward her, bringing the end of the heavy flashlight down in a sweeping arc.
The bulb blinked out when it smashed against the top of the woman’s head, but it stayed lit just long enough for Colin to see her face—before she flew backward down the stairs.
He gasped.
“Ryanne?”
Chapter 64
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Chase demanded, her brow furrowing. Agent Stitts moved toward her, a concerned expression on his face, but she stopped him by holding up a finger. “Detective Simmons, for the love of Christ, tell me you didn’t let her leave.”
Chase couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Sergeant Adams, I don’t know what happened. She was cleared by the doctors, then she just snuck out.”
Chase fought back a curse.
“How long ago was this? How did she leave?”
There was a pause.
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe less. I have no idea how she left or where she went.”
This time Chase swore.
Loudly.
“Find her, Simmons. For Christ’s sake, find her, and arrest her.”
“A-arrest her? You mean—”
“Just do it!” she yelled into the phone before hanging up.
Dunbar and Stitts stared at her and she bit her lip, trying to figure out what to do next.
“The kids,” she said at last. “Where are the kids?”
“They’re with Social,” Dunbar replied.
Chase breathed a sigh of relief.
“Give Social Services a call, let them know not to let them leave with either parent.”
“They can’t leave, they—”
Chase threw up her hands in frustration.
“I know they can’t leave, Dunbar! Just like Ryanne Elliot wasn’t supposed to leave! Just fucking do it!”
Then to Detective Yasiv, she said, “Call dispatch, tell them to be on the look out for Ryanne as well as Colin.”
A muffled shout from behind the glass drew her attention.
Glenn was looking at them, eyes searching for something he couldn’t see, face pale, lips twisted in a frown.
“You promised you’d let me go! Lady! Lady!”
Chase’s eyes narrowed.
“Find out what car Glenn drives and put out an APB on that, too.”
Detective Yasiv nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket as he fled the room, leaving Chase alone with Agent Stitts.
An uncomfortable silence came over them.
“Profiles are never exact, Chase. And I knew that this one—I told you that this one, given the strange nature of the deaths, the books, wasn’t going to be perfect,” A
gent Stitts started. The man’s words were unapologetic, explanatory, not defensive, which unnerved Chase. “But here’s the thing, you knew it was wrong, you knew it from the beginning.”
The words offered Chase little comfort; the murderer was still at large, as was…
“Drake!” she exclaimed, fumbling for her phone.
“What?”
“Drake’s out there… he’s on his way to Colin’s cabin,” Chase said as she started to dial.
Chapter 65
Drake shivered himself awake.
It was cold and dark, and there was no telling how long he was out. Somewhere close to him he heard the sound of a car running, but when he tried to sit up, a flash of pain filled his head.
With a grunt, he managed to roll onto his stomach.
Aside from the pain, Drake realized that he couldn’t feel anything. Not his fingers, his toes, or his face. He moved his hands to his left to catch some of the ambient light coming from the still open car door.
His fingers were a stark white.
I’ve got to get out of the cold, he thought. Again, he tried to rise, but his head felt as if it would split in two, and instead of on his feet, he found himself on all fours, breathing heavily, spit dripping from his mouth.
How could I be so stupid? So careless?
Instead of trying to stand a third time, he felt around his body with numb fingers, confirming that his cell phone was still in his pocket. It took four tries for him to get it out, and twice that number to actually turn it on.
He squinted as he held it in front of his face, grimacing when he saw that it had no service. As he angled it to try and catch a signal, he felt something hard press into his back just above his hip.
My gun!
With his free hand, Drake reached behind his back and let out a sigh when he felt the familiar shape jammed into his belt.
It was still there.
Glancing around, he noticed that while his assailant hadn’t taken his pistol, she—a woman, it was a woman’s face tucked into that hood—had stolen something from him.
There were no longer two cars on the road, but one.
This time Drake fought the dizziness and pain and managed to stand.
“Shit.”
His Crown Vic was gone.
Through still squinted eyes, he stared up, then down the road.
All he saw was snow in either direction.
Wincing at the pain in his head that bloomed with each step, Drake slowly moved toward the woman’s car and slid inside.
The warm air pumping from the vents was almost orgasmic. Drake held his hands in front of the vent and a shudder ran through his body. A minute later, his fingers started to tingle as feeling returned.
He looked up in the rearview and then cringed at the sight of his appearance. It wasn’t the blood that stained his brown hair or even the burn on his cheek from the fire at Dr. Moorefield’s house that gave him pause.
It was his sunken eyes, the dullness of the irises buried deep within.
“I’ll live,” he said to himself. After allowing just a couple more blissful seconds with his hands in front of the vent, he turned his attention back to his cell phone.
There was still no signal, but the GPS coordinates to the Elliot cottage were still on the screen.
“Seven minutes,” he muttered, staring at the directions.
He turned his eyes to the falling snow, grimacing at the way it continued to pile up in the absence of cars on the road.
A light suddenly lit up on the dashboard.
The car was almost out of gas.
It’s now or never.
With a grunt, Drake pulled himself from the vehicle and started to trudge through the snow. It was slow going, and before long, numbness started to embrace his extremities again.
“Seven minutes my ass.”
Chapter 66
Real detective work wasn’t the way it was portrayed in the movies. Most detectives don’t spend their time knocking down doors, aggressively confronting suspects. Almost everything happened behind the scenes; there was a whole lot of talk, of profiles, of ideas, of hopes, of relatively useless information, and occasionally a crime scene to analyze. But for long stretches of time, to the outside world, nothing seemed to happen.
Progress was slow, calculated.
The situation that Sergeant Chase Adams currently found herself in, however, was exactly the opposite.
She was in a frantic race against time.
Chase sprinted from the observation room with FBI Agent Stitts in tow.
“Do you think that she would go there? To the Elliot cottage?” Agent Stitts asked, breathing heavily as he struggled to keep up.
Chase, the phone still pressed to her ear as she listened to it ring in perpetuity, fished the keys from her purse and unlocked her BMW.
“I don’t know… maybe. With Tanya and Melissa, we know that they were held for some time. Neither Dunbar nor CSU were able to narrow it down to anywhere specific, but the NYPD has already cleared their apartment. None of the victims were ever there. Aerial photographs of the cottage show that it’s secluded, tucked away between trees. I know if I was to hold someone against their will, that’s the type of place I’d choose.” She shook the strange thought from her head. “But it doesn’t matter. Drake’s out there somewhere and in this storm…”
Chase let her sentence trail off, trying to ignore the flashes of images of Drake sitting in his rusted Crown Vic, huddled over the dash, trying to keep warm.
Trying not to freeze to death.
Agent Stitts nodded and he tapped the dashboard.
“Then let’s go,” he said.
Chase didn’t need any encouragement.
***
It took forty minutes to get out of the city, and that was with the cherry flashing on the BMW dashboard.
The entire time, Chase continued to try to reach Drake to no avail.
Outside the city, things didn’t get much better: even though traffic was minimal—non-existent in some cases—the roads hadn’t been cleared yet. Even with four-wheel drive, it was slow going.
“What’s that up ahead?” Agent Stitts asked, peering through the snow.
Chase squinted. She could see what looked like a car parked in the center of the road.
She slowed as she neared, hoping that it wasn’t Drake’s Crown Vic.
It wasn’t.
But this fact did little to appease her concerns. There were thick tire marks in the snow, indicating that another car, a much heavier car, had swerved and nearly gone off the road.
Chase slammed her BMW into park and hopped out.
She went first to the abandoned car first and checked the tag number against the ones that Dunbar had forwarded to her phone before it lost service.
“It’s Glenn’s car,” she shouted into the wind.
“What?” Agent Stitts hollered back. He was only a few feet from her, but the storm sucked the words up and spat them somewhere far away.
“I said, it’s Glenn’s car!”
Agent Stitts frowned and then started to investigate the interior of the vehicle.
Chase, on the other hand, crouched down low, inspecting the tire tracks made by the other vehicle that had since vanished into the white.
It was halfway between where Glenn’s car was parked and the deepest grooves of what she was now convinced were made by Drake’s Crown Vic that she noticed the indentations.
They had no color—other than white—but she had been to enough crime scenes to know what the speckles were.
Blood… this is where blood had melted the snow.
“He was here,” she said, this time to herself. “Drake was here.”
Chase took a deep, hitching breath, and turned her gaze to the road ahead. She tried to put herself in Drake’s shoes, to figure out what he would do without cell service and the only car at his disposal one that was useless in the thick snow.
She knew what he would do.
D
rake would keep going. Drake would keep on trudging until he caught the killer.
That was just the type of man he was.
Chase turned to Agent Stitts, who had just poked his head out of Glenn’s car, a frown etched on his pale face.
“No one’s here,” he said.
Chase shook her head.
“Forget about it! Let’s go!” she yelled. “Let’s keep going!”
Chapter 67
Every breath Drake took singed his nostrils. Even with the directions on his phone, it had been a struggle finding the Elliot cottage.
Eventually, by traipsing through thick snow, he found a small passage through the woods that led him there.
It took several tries just to shut off his phone, with his hands frozen as they were, and he decided that trying to operate his pistol would be akin to an ant trying to wield a flamethrower, and decided against it.
Stealth was the name of the game now.
He still wasn’t sure who had brained him, aside from being a woman, but as he came around a large shrub and he spotted his Crown Vic, he knew that it was someone involved with Colin, with this case.
Which means that there are two of them, and one of me. A frozen me.
Drake hunkered low as he made his way across the snow-covered lawn.
There was a single light on inside the cottage, casting a bleary, diffuse glow over the interior.
Drake perked his ears and held his breath, trying to pick up any sound from the inside, but the wind was just too damn loud.
With frozen limbs, he managed to manipulate his way up the steps to the porch, and then he sidled up next to the door.
It was ajar, which he thought strange given the weather.
Drake darted his head into the opening for a split second before pulling back.
His breathing became more labored.
No, not two of them. Three of them, and one of me.
There were three figures inside the cottage, all of whom appeared to be either lying or sitting on the floor.
He brought his hands to his mouth and breathed on them, trying to bring life back into the digits.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 72