He was right before. He was stronger, faster, better at this than Jeff Burnes, but where she’d hesitated in sinking that blade into her former fiancé, there was nothing that would stop her from protecting herself against this man before he killed her. He straightened. “If it hadn’t been for that marshal glued to your side, I would’ve been able to prove my superiority sooner. Thankfully, he won’t be a problem anymore.”
What did that mean? She felt the blood drain from her face then tugged at the zip ties as hard as she could. Her shoulder screamed for relief. The plastic wouldn’t budge. Her words died behind the gag. “What ?”
“It’s kind of ironic.” The man with the knife pressed his hand against his wound and rubbed fresh blood between his fingers. “I think this is the same exact spot I stabbed him before I left him to die.”
“No.” That wasn’t possible. She shook her head, fighting to keep the gruesome images at bay, but as a photographer, all her thoughts and inspirations were made possible by visualizing everything in her head. Finn wasn’t dead. Her attacker wanted to see her fear, wanted her to scream, sob, deny any of this was happening. That was how sociopaths worked. They couldn’t feel emotion themselves. They had to study it from the people around them, from their victims, when hands-off experiments didn’t work, and she wasn’t going to let him see her break. She’d been manipulated before, and in the end, sharing the same bed with a killer had given her the mental strength to see through the lie. “Don’t...believe...you.”
Because if Finn was dead, she’d have no one left. No one to appreciate her terrible inside jokes, no one who made her feel safe, no one to connect with. No one to appreciate her as the woman she was now. Not the woman she’d been. She’d been left in the middle of nowhere after the most traumatic event of her life, and he’d been the only one who’d shown her there was a way out.
“That’s okay. I don’t need you to believe me.” Her abductor twirled the tip of his blade into his index finger. Back and forth, back and forth. He stepped into her, his leg brushing the inside of her knee, then pried the gag from her mouth. “What I need is for you to tell me everything you know about Jeff Burnes. I’ve studied under him a long time since he found me trying to replicate his MO back in Chicago two years ago, but if I’m going to show him how far I’ve come, that I’m better at this than he is, I need to know where to deliver your body. You’re the only one who can help me with that, Camille.”
That was what this was about?
“You have no idea who you’re trying to prove yourself to.” She looked straight into those cold brown eyes for something to focus on other than the pain in her shoulder. “I don’t know where he is since he escaped prison. I’m the last person who would know, but I’ll tell you one thing—it will be the best day for humanity when you two die trying to kill each other.”
A low, terrifying laugh punctured through the hard beat of her pulse, right before pain streaked across her temple and echoed off the inside of her ears. He pulled his gloved fist back for another strike, but the houseboat blurred as the momentum from his punch pushed her and the chair over until she hit the floor. Without her hands to brace for the fall, her head bounced off the hardwood. His footsteps vibrated through the floor and down her back as he moved away from her toward the desk to her left. “You really don’t know, do you, Camille?”
A sob escaped her control. Forgetting her wrists were bound by zip ties secured to the chair, she tried to bring her hand to her head. The left chair arm shifted. Raising her gaze to the masked attacker to see if he’d noticed, she shut down the urge to scream and pulled the entire chair arm free from the rest of the frame. Then did the same with the right side. Victory bulldozed the knot of internal fear into submission, but she couldn’t celebrate yet. She had to get out of here, had to find Finn.
“I’m the one who broke into your house. I’m the one who finished the work the Carver wasn’t strong enough to do.” His voice made the hairs on the back of her neck rise as memories of fear—of the pain—infiltrated the thin barrier she’d constructed to forget. The change in the Carver’s MO. It wasn’t because Jeff Burnes had been trying to throw the police off his trail. It’d been an entirely different killer wielding the knife that’d cut into her. “But I didn’t kill that woman by your house. He’s been watching you, Camille. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to finish what he started. It was only a matter of time before he made himself known.” The man in the mask raised a syringe and tapped the casing to bring the bubbles in the clear liquid to the needle head. “But now it’s my turn.”
Slipping from the debris as quietly as she could, she discarded the zip ties but held on to one chair arm with as tight a grip as a drowning victim might hold on to a life preserver. One step. Two. “You’ll have to get in line.”
Her nerves spiked as he turned to face her, and Camille swung the piece of wood as hard as she could across his face. His pain-filled groan filled the small space as he went down, but she didn’t wait to find out how much damage she’d caused. Pumping her legs as hard as she could, she ripped the front door nearly off the frame and dashed into the night. With a fleeting glimpse behind her, she ran out into the rain, then pitched forward as something caught her ankles. She slammed onto an old dock, the air knocked from her lungs. A wave of dizziness pitched her sideways as she struggled to get to her feet.
A trip wire.
He’d set a trip wire in case she tried to escape.
Throwing her hands out for balance, she stepped forward, but gut-wrenching pain flared across her scalp as her attacker wrenched her back by her hair. Camille twisted as hard as she could and rocketed her fist into his face. He stumbled back with her still in his grip, but with a final blow to her jaw, she hit the dock.
“I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together, Camille,” he said.
Pain pelted her face and eyes, the looming dark figure above going in and out of focus. He hauled one of her legs up by her ankle and pulled her back toward the houseboat. Her arms dragged out and up near her head. No. No. She couldn’t go back. Camille fought to grab on to something—anything—to keep him from taking her back inside.
Just as three gunshots exploded above.
Chapter Nine
His suspect dropped to the dock.
Finn lowered the gun, but even without the threat of the killer standing over her, Camille wasn’t moving.
Blood drained from his head, and the sound of rain hitting the surface of the river turned into nothing more than a buzz in his ears. Then he was running. Knee-high grass whipped at his legs as he closed in on her prone outline. Panic boiled up inside him in a horrible, hot, toxic cocktail and cut off his ability to take a full breath. Old wood swayed under his feet as he hit the dock. “Camille!”
He kicked what looked like a syringe full of some kind of clear drug out of her attacker’s hand and tested the SOB’s pulse at the base of his neck. Dead. “Stay down this time, you bastard.”
Finn turned his attention on Camille. He fell to his knees beside her, threading his hand beneath her soaked hair. Blood spread from a wound in her shoulder, the same side she’d been branded by her attacker, and his gut clenched. A stab wound? He holstered his weapon to keep himself from adding another three rounds into the body of the man who’d nearly taken his witness from him. “Camille?”
The aquamarine eyes that he hadn’t gone a single moment without visualizing during his search shot open a split second before her fist connected with his nose. Lightning struck behind his eyes. Her back arched off the dock as she battled tooth and nail to get free, her screams penetrating the wall of buzzing in his head and stabbing straight into his heart. “No! No!”
“Camille! Camille, it’s me. It’s Finn. I’m not here to hurt you.” Tense muscles down her back fought against his touch, but he wasn’t going to add to her pain by trying to control her. She was alive. That was all that mattered, and Finn co
uld only wrap his arms around her so she didn’t aggravate whatever wound had punctured her shoulder. “I’ve got you. You’re safe with me, Red.”
“Finn.” The fight drained out of her in an instant, replaced by teeth-shattering tremors. Curling in on herself, she leaned into him as sobs wracked through her. She held one hand closed over her mouth, as though she intended to stop the cries from rushing past her lips, and fisted his shirt with the other.
“It’s okay.” He pulled her into him, pressing her head against his chest, and rocked her back and forth. Ducking his mouth to her ear, Finn kept his voice low as he cradled her as close as he could possibly get. Eyeing the body a few feet from them, he shifted his hold on her so she wouldn’t have to see her abductor or the houseboat he’d obviously held her in these past couple of hours. “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.”
She deserved better. Better protection than he’d been able to give, better understanding of what she’d been through. Better than him. He should’ve stayed with her and not let her out of his sight. Now the woman who’d shattered through the professional barriers he’d built between them would have to live with his mistake. He’d tried to keep his distance, tried to hide behind his fear in an effort to protect himself, but in the end, he’d left his witness to fight this battle alone. Emotionally. Physically. What kind of marshal did that make him? What kind of man? “I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m going to be right here with you. I promise. No one is going to take you from me again.”
Looking back, he realized all she’d been trying to do is connect with someone—anyone—who might want to understand what it’d been like to survive the most distressing experience of her life, and he’d pushed her away. Cut himself off from having to feel more than he should for the woman in his arms. He’d put his own selfish needs ahead of hers, and a killer had nearly claimed her all over again. He couldn’t imagine the pain and loneliness she’d had to live with this past year, but as long as she was assigned to his protection detail, he’d make damn sure she never had to feel that emptiness again. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay? I need you to hang on to me and don’t let go.”
Rain pounded against his face as he slid an arm under the backs of her knees. Soreness tore through his side with her added weight, but that wouldn’t stop him from walking her out of this damn forest alive and getting her the help she needed. He lifted her off the dock and headed for the trail that curved back down toward her house.
Each step gained toward the trailhead taught him a new meaning for the word agony as he struggled to keep her off her feet, but with her arms tight around his neck, he counted every second she let him hold her worth the lesson. Twenty-four hours ago, she hadn’t let him come near her other than to patch the wounds on her chest. Now it seemed the mere thought of releasing him brought more anxiety than before, and he couldn’t help but let that fact wash over him.
She was just supposed to be another witness-protection assignment, but Finn had never felt so useless and so capable at the same time as he had with her. The past day had been an internal war tearing him apart from the inside. On one side was his determination to keep social attachments at a minimum, something left over from the same grief that’d paralyzed him during his search for his witness. And on the other side was Camille.
Creative, reserved, sensitive Camille. The woman he hadn’t seen coming before she knocked him on his ass, but she was more than the victim she’d been labeled as by all the officers assigned to her case.
He’d never frozen while on assignment, least of all during a protection detail. Not like that. He could only think of one reason why this investigation might bring up those desperate, isolated memories of losing his mother that he’d spent the last twenty-five years burying at the back of his mind. Because this wasn’t just an assignment anymore, and she wasn’t just a witness.
Rivulets of water trailed down her neck and across her cheeks. It would’ve been easy for him to bleed out in those weeds after he’d been stabbed, but it’d been her example—her fight—that’d given him the strength to pull himself back from the edge. He might’ve been tasked to stand between her past and death, but she was the only one strong enough to willingly stand between him and the lingering fear he carried of getting close to the people around him, and damn, he respected the hell out of that. Respected her. He’d spent most of his life keeping people at a distance, but she’d shown him how vital those connections really were, and he’d taken them for granted.
Shouts echoed through the trees, and his pulse hurtled into his throat. Flashlights pierced through the night and swept along the ground about twenty feet ahead of them along the trail. Shadows shifted, closing in, and Finn picked up the pace. “Over here!”
Jonah Watson burst through the tree line with Chief Deputy Remi Barton directly behind him, their weapons raised. Watson took the lead, thick muscle threatening to break through the sleeves of his dark T-shirt. Blond hair cut through the intense blue gaze of the former FBI hazardous materials tech as he holstered his weapon and called over his shoulder, “Get an EMT!” His teammate closed the distance between them, arms out. “I can take her.”
“She doesn’t like to be touched.” Finn shook him off, the tendons in his neck and shoulders straining, but he wouldn’t go back on his word. Brushing past his team, he kept his hold tight around Camille as they parted to give him room. He wasn’t leaving her. Not even at the expense of causing more damage to the wound in his side. He’d told her he’d get her out of there, and that was exactly what he intended to do. He’d already broken one promise to her. He wasn’t about to break another.
“There’s a body back there on the dock with three bullets in his chest.” Mud suctioned at his heels, slowing him down, but the slight vibrations still rocking through his witness kept him moving. “Tell the EMTs she’s losing blood from a wound in her shoulder. The suspect had a syringe full of clear liquid in his hand. I’m not sure if he injected her with anything. It still looked full when I kicked it out of his hand, but they need to know to run a tox screen when we get to the hospital.”
“Reed, you need to put her down. You’re losing blood faster than she is, and the more you push yourself, the more damage you could be causing.” The slight rasp in Remi Barton’s voice registered over the constant wall of rain in his ears. Her strong grip locked into his shoulder. “Finn, we can help—”
“I’m the reason he got to her in the first place. I promised her I’d protect her, and I didn’t.” One knee buckled out from under him, and he dropped. Small rocks and twigs bit into his kneecap. He’d already lost too much blood. He knew what his boss said was true, that Remi was trying to help, but that part of him that couldn’t take anything less than hatred for not being there when Camille had been taken wouldn’t let him release her. Tightening his hold on her, he bit back the scream trying to escape from his throat and put all of his weight into the leg that hadn’t failed him.
But the strain was too much.
He didn’t have anything else to give, and the hollowness he’d feared took control. The rain began to fall harder, as though it’d seen straight inside the darkest part of his mind and reflected the hopelessness coursing through him. He hadn’t been strong enough to protect his mother that night. He wasn’t strong enough to protect Camille now.
Two sets of hands threaded through the space between his arms and either side of his rib cage, Watson on one side and his chief deputy on the other. With his weight in their hands, Finn pushed to his feet and forced one foot in front of the other until he caught sight of the EMTs rushing to save his witness.
* * *
HER HEART WAS beating so fast, she thought it might burst through her chest. Sickness washed into her stomach, and she turned in the overheated bed as bile rose up her throat. Some kind of beeping ticked off to one side, in time with her pulse. She felt as though she was on the edge of a blade. Or had been stabbed with one.
Terror burned hot in her throat and eyes. She’d been abducted, tied to a chair, stabbed with the same piece of glass she’d tried to defend herself with. All because one killer wanted to use her as a prop in his sick mind game to outwit another. A bright blue bag appeared over her mouth a split second before the nausea took control.
“You’re safe, Red. You’re in Peace Harbor Medical Center,” a familiar voice said. Warmth trickled down her spine at the sound of that voice. Steady. Real. Reliable. “You were under sedation so the doctor could take a look at the stab wound in your shoulder.”
She clung to the rough, dirt-caked hand holding the bag over her mouth and nose, then brought her gaze up to the man positioned at the side of her bed. Finn. Blue eyes she’d come to rely on doubled in her vision before merging back into the handsome face of the marshal who’d saved her life. Again. A pitcher of water on the small table beside her bed claimed her attention. A hospital. She pointed to the cup weakly before attempting to roll into the center of her bed, but a sling around her left arm complicated what was supposed to be a seamless movement.
He poured her a cup of water and handed it to her, never taking his eyes from her.
Guarded emotion she couldn’t read etched raw in his expression as cool water rushed down the back of her throat and cleared the bitter remnants of her stomach contents. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”
“Did you think I was going to let you get away when you owe me an entire stash of mattress chocolate?” His smile shattered through the thin needle of fear spiking her blood pressure higher. He leaned back in his chair, grimacing as she had when the sling brushed against the wound in her shoulder, and she recognized the outline of padded dressing through the faded material of a superhero shirt she hadn’t seen before. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
The Witness Page 10