The Witness

by Nichole Severn

  A prickle of unease crawled up the back of her neck as she propped her bound hands on the floor behind her and shifted to the right. There was a small desk on the other side of the bed. Maybe something inside would be sharp enough to cut through the plastic around her wrists and ankles.

  Another wave rolled beneath the houseboat, and Camille pitched onto her side with a thud. Soft petals brushed against her face. Red rose petals. Like the ones that’d fallen to the floor in her Chicago apartment after Jeff Burnes had attacked her from across the table on the evening of Valentine’s Day. Five seconds passed. Ten. Her breath shuddered out of her in short bursts.

  Then footsteps registered from somewhere outside.

  Panic gut-punched her into action. Wrenching herself off the floor, she ignored the agony of hard wood biting into her knees when the zip ties refused to stretch and scooted toward the desk in the corner. She hauled herself into a seated position, her head level with the first drawer in a stack of three, but she had no way of opening it without her hands free.

  A shadow crossed in front of the main windows, highlighted by veins of moonlight cutting through a bank of cloudy sky. She stilled. Curtains covered the panes, similar to the panels she’d hung along the sliding glass door in her house. Were they thick enough to keep her attacker from seeing her inside? Her heart hammered as the shadow passed to the other side of the structure, but she couldn’t relax yet. Not until she was safely on shore.

  Camille pressed her back into the narrow space between the desk’s edge and the side of the bed and shifted her weight onto her heels. Caked mud on the bottom of her shoes threatened to make her lose traction, and she locked her back teeth in an effort to stay quiet. Muscle by muscle, she hiked her legs and tailbone off the floor until she stood. Tingling numbness spiked through her hands, but she still had enough feeling left to curve one hand around the small wooden knob of the drawer. Carefully, she tugged on the drawer, mindfulness of her abductor’s proximity screaming warning in her head. One wrong move. That was all it would take, and the Carver would get exactly what he’d wanted when he’d attacked her in their shared apartment back in Chicago. Only it was possible Jeff Burnes wouldn’t be the one to claim her in the end. “Come on.”

  Old hardware protested as she slid the drawer outward, and every nerve in her body caught fire at the overly loud sound.

  The door into the house burst open, slamming back into the wall behind it. Rain pounded onto the shoulders of the man who’d taken her as he filled the frame, and panic took control of her. “I was beginning to think I’d hit you too hard. Now the fun can really begin, and not even your US marshal will be able to save you this time.”

  His arm angled down toward his waist, and he withdrew a long, thin blade.

  “What do you want from me?” Thrusting her hands into the drawer, Camille blindly searched for a weapon that could cut through the zip ties, but her fingers only met dried, unfinished wood. Fear clawed behind her sternum, her gut tight. She curled her fingers into fists to tighten the plastic as much as possible. There was only one way out of this nightmare.

  Through the man who’d brought her here in the first place.

  Her shoulder bumped into a framed photo positioned on the wall behind her. The frame hit the hardwood floor at her feet corner first, glass shattering everywhere. This was it. This was how she’d escape. But could she move fast enough before her abductor reached her?

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Camille?” His boots reverberated on the hardwood flooring and up her legs. The way he walked, the way he talked... Nothing about him was familiar. She didn’t know this man. Not as Jeff Burnes. Not as Dr. Henry Gruner. “I want everything.”

  Camille dropped down and scooped a long, jagged piece of glass from the floor. In one swipe, she cut through the zip ties around her ankles. The hulking mountain of muscle charged toward her, and a dark, cold fear unfurled in her chest. She wasn’t going to make it. She tightened her grip around the glass as she managed to cut through the plastic, brought her hands around to her front and braced for the impact.

  The shard pierced through clothing and deep into flesh, forcing her attacker to pull up short. Her hand shook as she peeled her fingers from around the piece of glass. Blood bloomed inside her palm, and she released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d stabbed him.

  He stumbled back a step, but faster than she thought possible, the man behind the mask ripped the makeshift weapon from his gut and stabbed it into her shoulder. Agonizing pain tore a scream from her throat as blackness webbed around her vision, and she fell back against the wall. “I’ve always liked a fighter.”

  Chapter Eight

  Hell, he felt like he was floating through endless space with nothing to anchor him.

  A groan rumbled through his chest as Finn rolled onto his side, aggravating the wound in his gut. Half of his body had been submerged under water, but he’d managed to pull himself to shore. Rain mixed with blood, dripping from his T-shirt and falling into the marshlike shoreline of the river. His veins strained through his forearms as he pushed onto all fours. Rain lashed at his exposed skin and created a million pits and bubbles on the surface of the water. Cold crawled up the back of his neck.

  There was no way to stop the bleeding out here. Not without something to staunch the flow. Under normal circumstances he’d have access to clean water and medical supplies, but the past hour had been anything but normal. He’d seen plenty of cases of penetrating abdominal trauma during his two tours in the Middle East. Mostly from shrapnel, rarely from hand-to-hand combat, but the same principles applied. Apply pressure to stop the bleeding, clean the area and patch. Although, out here, he might have to skip a couple steps. With Camille still missing, possibly in the hands of a killer, he didn’t have much of a choice. It was either risk infection or leave her to fight for herself.

  His mind was already made up.

  His calf muscles strained as he struggled for balance and got to his feet. The incline he’d rolled down during the fight was slick with rainwater and mud, but he didn’t see any other way around it. He’d taken the wrong trail in his desperation to follow her screams, had given her abductor the opportunity to get the drop on him, and now his witness was in danger. Because he’d made a mistake.

  Finn pressed one hand into his gut and locked his back teeth to bite back the scream of pain as he forced one foot in front of the other. Step by agonizing step, he hauled himself up the slick incline, the muscles down the backs of his legs on fire. He couldn’t stop. No matter how much it hurt. He didn’t care if his accelerated heart rate pumped blood out through the wound faster. He wasn’t giving up on Camille.

  He dug his free hand into the mud and clawed the last few feet until the ground under him leveled, then fell onto his back. Lungs fighting for air, he blinked against a bright streak of lightning flashing over him. Trees creaked with steady gusts of wind and rain, as though this entire section of woods understood the war tearing him apart from the inside.

  He couldn’t lose her. He’d spent his entire life training and preparing for this job, had handled over a dozen witness-protection details, but in less than two mind-twisting days this assignment had already ripped the world right out from under him. But if he was being completely honest with himself, it wasn’t the case.

  Camille had defied the assigned role he’d given her and broken through his determination to keep their interactions professional without even trying. Despite the odds stacked against her, he couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that each time she’d been knocked down, she’d gotten right back up, ready for the next threat. She’d survived. He wasn’t sure how. How, even with being betrayed by someone she trusted so intimately—once by Jeff Burnes and then by her therapist, Dr. Gruner—she hadn’t let it break her. She’d lost parts of herself, that much he’d seen for himself, but the woman was still standing. Still fighting.

&
nbsp; And so would he.

  “Okay.” Finn raised the back of his head off the ground and lifted his shirt to get a clear view of the wound. Blood seeped down in long riverlike threads across his abdomen with the help of the unforgiving storm. Setting his head back, he gripped the bottom of his shirt between both hands and ripped the hem from the main body. All he needed was a long strip of fabric and something to pad the wound. He used one foot to toe off his boot, then crunched down to slip his sock from his foot. It was rudimentary, but the sock and makeshift tourniquet would keep the wound dry and infection-free until he could get to a hospital.

  Images of that night a man had followed his mother home and shot her right in front of him demanded priority as he folded the sock in half and set it against the stab wound. He’d been alone then, too. Only now he had someone to fight for. Finn threaded the strip of fabric underneath him and wound the ends together. He took a deep breath, preparing for the oncoming pain, then tightened the knot against the dressing as fast and as hard as he could.

  White streaks spread across his vision before he collapsed back into the mud. Oxygen whooshed from his lungs, but he couldn’t waste any more time. Rolling onto his side, he set his fist in front of his face and pushed upright with everything he had left. Recognition flared as he studied the narrowing wall of trees to his left. The dead end. If he followed the trail back to where he’d taken the wrong turn, he’d be one step closer to finding his witness.

  He closed in on the tree his attacker had pinned him against when he’d lost his weapon, sweeping brush and leaves out of the way until he found his firearm. The steel heavy in his grip, Finn released the magazine out of the gun with bloodied knuckles, counted the rounds and cleared the chamber. He stumbled along the path until he hit the fork in the trail. “I’m coming for you, Red. Just hang on a little bit longer. Hang on for me.”

  There was only one thing that mattered: getting her out of here alive. Not the boundaries he’d set between them. Not his past or his fear of losing the people he cared about. Her. She was all that mattered, and he wasn’t going to stop until he found her. A muscle spasmed in his side, and he fell against the nearest tree. The wind picked up, howling through the branches and fluttering leaves. An ache washed through him, something visceral and gut-wrenching.

  Grief took him by surprise like that sometimes. It tended to blindside him when he least expected it, then took his mind on a joyride through a past he’d rather forget. Lodging in his chest, the darkness took control faster than he expected until he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He hadn’t been able to help his mother all those years ago. He’d only been a kid. He knew that, but it didn’t make the guilt festering under his skin any less real. And if something happened to Camille, he’d never forgive himself.

  He hadn’t been able to help Deputy US Marshal Karen Reed, but he’d sure as hell protect his witness the same as his mother would have. With his life. Finn dug his fingernails into the tree’s bark. The only way he’d be able to pull himself back into the moment, to stay present, was by forcing his brain to think analytically instead of emotionally. Countless hours of trauma therapy as a kid had taught him that. If his grandparents hadn’t demanded he go, he wouldn’t have been able to make it through two tours for the army or apply to the marshals service. He hadn’t appreciated the help at the time, but he’d confronted the fact he hadn’t been the only one to lose his mom that day. His grandparents had lost their daughter, and he owed them enough to try. One breath. Two. Three. He closed his eyes, narrowing his senses into the rise and fall of his chest, the sound of the rain pattering against the leaves surrounding him, the feel of his heart pounding against his rib cage. “Detach, detach, detach.”

  He could do this. He had to do this. For Camille.

  He took a full, deep breath, and the pressure valve behind his sternum released. Opening his eyes, a new sense of awareness and determination replaced the ache that’d ballooned painfully in his chest. He took a strong step forward, calculating where to put his foot next. Then he froze.

  Thin white branches jutted out from the underbrush beside his boot, so light in contrast to the surrounding trees and limbs around him. But the longer Finn studied the curves and smooth texture, the more he realized he wasn’t looking at pieces of wood.

  They were skeletal remains.

  He leaned back to avoid stepping on the bone nearest his boot and swept the bushes covering the remains out of the way. Mud clung to the edges of the skull, the head cocked slightly to one side with a full mouth of teeth seemingly smiling up at him. He wasn’t a combat medic anymore, but his training gave him enough of an insight to notice the victim hadn’t suffered any head trauma. Only the hyoid bone, the horse-shaped bone situated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage, seemed to be broken.

  Which could possibly mean whoever this was had been strangled.

  Dread pooled at the base of his spine. Two bodies discovered within the past couple days, both strangled and left in these woods near Camille’s house. Finn didn’t believe in coincidence, but he didn’t have time to do a more thorough study, either. His witness needed him. Now.

  He pulled out his phone, then swiped water and mud from the screen. The broken glass caught on his thumb. Blood spread to the surface, but he wiped it on his shirt as the screen lit up. Still working. He tapped Jonah Watson’s name in his contact list and brought the phone to his ear, not waiting for a greeting when the line connected. “I found human remains out here about a quarter mile from Camille Goodman’s house, maybe as old as a year, possibly strangled. I’m sending you my location, but I won’t be here by the time you’re on the scene. I’ve got at least one hostile, armed, and my witness is missing. I can’t stay here with the body. I have to find her.”

  “We’re pulling up to the house now.” Jonah’s voice carried over the static breaking through the line. “All you need to worry about is securing your witness. We’ll take care of everything else.”

  “Copy that.” Finn scanned the trees as he sent his team his current location. There were a dozen sites the killer could’ve taken Camille, but he’d need somewhere close, somewhere private to finish the work he’d started. Somewhere he wouldn’t be found or possibly disturbed by tourists who visited this area throughout the year. “One more thing. I need you to tell me if Dr. Henry Gruner has any property in Florence or around Siuslaw River.”

  “Henry Gruner owns a houseboat not far from the coordinates you just me,” the former FBI bomb technician said. “Florence PD passed along the information when he turned up as a connection between your witness and the victim we recovered from the woods. Dr. Gruner was both Camille Goodman’s and Jodie Adler’s psychologist.”

  Finn limped along the trail, heading straight for the darkness. “Send me the coordinates. Now.”

  * * *

  “YOU CERTAINLY ARE a beautiful work of art.” The mask over her abductor’s face shifted with each word, the strong bite of sweat and weak cologne threatening to gag her more than the fabric secured between her lips. He set the cold steel of the blade against the sensitive skin of her cheek and trailed downward, but there was no escaping this time. He’d made sure of that when he’d plunged the shard of glass into her shoulder and forced her into one of the wooden chairs near the window. New zip ties pinned her wrists against splintered wood as he dragged the tip of the knife downward.

  A burning trail of sensation carved over her jaw, under her chin, along the muscles in her throat. Until he reached the collar of her shirt. In one masterful swipe of the blade, he exposed the rain-soaked gauze Finn had taped over the word etched into her skin, and it took everything she had left not to flinch away. To withhold the fear he wanted to see from her. “I can see now why he was so set on claiming you as his own—marking you as off-limits to the rest of us—but I’m a believer in making my own fate. Not waiting for permission. After I show him exactly what I�
��m capable of when I’m finished with you, he’ll have no choice but to see I’m stronger than he’ll ever be.”

  “He?” The word drowned behind the damp fabric he’d tied at the base of her skull. Camille swallowed to keep the shudder out of her voice but only managed to bring her attacker’s focus back to her throat. She didn’t understand. The man standing in front of her wasn’t the killer she was familiar with, wasn’t Dr. Gruner. At least not based on his voice alone. Everything she and Finn had uncovered connecting to this case pointed to her therapist as their main suspect. Jodie Adler’s body being found in the exact location as the photo he’d urged her to take, the information the killer had known about Camille and the attack from that night.

  There was only one problem. She didn’t know this man.

  Curling her fingers around the ends of the chair’s arms, she wrenched her head back to keep from passing out. She’d lost a lot of blood when he’d stabbed her with the piece of glass, but she wasn’t the only one. Wet stains spread across her kidnapper’s dark clothing, and it was only a matter of time before he’d have to do something about it. She just had to buy enough time for Finn to find her. Had to keep him talking.

  “The Carver, silly.” The upbeat tone in her attacker’s voice pooled a fresh dose of dread at the base of her spine. How could a man who satisfied his sick cravings by torturing innocent women sound so...happy about it? The knife gleamed in a sliver of moonlight as he bent down and evened his gaze with hers. Black cutouts in the mask framed generic brown eyes with a hint of blond eyebrows at the corners. Six foot, maybe six-one, and she’d put his weight at around two hundred and twenty pounds. It was a wall of solid muscle she’d become familiar with when he’d ripped her away from her property.