A small white tent was erected in the small front yard. The lawn sloped relatively sharply, and Sebastian's brain latched on to ridiculous details, like how someone had jammed the ends of the tent poles into the ground to help it stand even.
A table was set up in the center of the tent, officers and agents ringed it, even Marina Balero. But a handful of people he didn't know.
Watson walked him into the tent. “This is Sebastian Kane. He's our victim’s boyfriend—” victim, Jesus. But Sebastian forced his focus. He had to keep his head in the game.
She introduced him to several officers, a few other FBI agents who specialized in missing adults, a third department was represented by a man in a forest green uniform.
His eyes were sharp, and he directed attention to a map, having barely looked up at Sebastian. That was good. This man was most focused on finding Maggie, and he could appreciate that. It took a moment for Sebastian to realize the man was a park ranger.
“This,” Marina told him, “is Leo Evans.”
The man shook Sebastian’s hand with enough force to be reassuring in the most shitty time Sebastian had ever encountered. “It’s nice to meet you. But why is there a park ranger here?”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The two voices were still arguing as Maggie struggled with the tape. Geller was trying to convince the other man—William Sanders?—to kill her.
“Just wait until I’m finished with her then dispose of her like one of your victims.” He sounded so reasonable, as if they were discussing how to recycle cardboard. “If we mix up the M.O. it makes it harder for them to find us.”
“I would agree,” the other voice replied, just as chillingly cold in his tone. “But they've already found you.”
The way this was going, the second man was fed up. Despite his reasonable sound, he was done with the conversation and was going to leave any moment now.
She could only hope he left without first killing her.
Maggie had been shaking her knees and rolling her shoulders and breathing as quickly as she could to get her metabolism up. It was exercise, and she didn’t know whether it really did anything, but she did feel better when she flexed her fingers, she could see them respond quickly to each time she tried to move them.
The room had two windows, a closet hiding who knew what, and a small table with a half-full glass of water. And her … there was only what she had on her.
While she was clearly an idiot for not believing Sebastian, and for letting herself get drugged and kidnapped, she wasn't going to be an idiot anymore. Luckily, she hadn’t been much of one in the days before this. She’d been watching forensics shows on TV and online videos about how to get out of being kidnapped. She now kept shoelaces in her pocket. Three of them, in fact. So she could hog tie anyone she could take down or use the laces to break the plastic if she was zip tied.
Unfortunately, she was not bound with zip ties. Fortunately, when they’d searched her, they’d patted her down for phones and keys, but they'd not taken her shoelaces. She also had one shoe left. If she could get to it, the near stiletto shaped heel would be a formidable weapon.
The escape artists online taught her how to get out of duct tape. This wasn’t duct tape—Maggie was confident of that—but she hoped the same breakout technique would work.
Her fear tried to surface again, but she shoved it down deep. It wouldn’t help her now.
Lifting her bound hands high over her head, she prayed. She hadn't told Sebastian, but she tried the technique she’d seen online once at home and it had not felt good, but it worked. If she slammed her hands down over her knees, using her hips and body as a wedge for her elbows, she could put enough force in the right place to tear the tape, and free her hands.
She took a deep breath and brought her arms down. The trick was doing it as quickly as she could. Son of a bitch. It was a good thing she had tape over her mouth, or they would have heard her yelp in pain.
It didn’t work. This wasn't duct tape. It was something stronger, more cloth like and it was wide. A zip tie would have been thin and—she learned recently—could be sawed at with a shoelace. She thought about doing the same thing to the tape, but the tape was so wide that it would be much harder to get the shoelace strung through it.
She still had to do something. Maggie voted to try again.
She lifted her arms higher this time, hanging them hammer-style down behind her. For this to work it needed speed and commitment. She brought them down again. Again, the tape felt like it was trying to crack the bones in her wrists.
Geller had put several layers on to hold her tight. Maggie lifted her hands in front of her face to see if she’d accomplished anything other than hurting herself. She would have gasped if not for the tape over her mouth. She saw a small tear on the underside.
The trick did not work the way it did with duct tape. But she tried again and the tear became microscopically larger. That was enough.
Underneath the tape she muttered to herself, “I can do this all day.”
So she lifted her arms again. And this time, furious, she slammed them down with all her might, and her hands split apart.
Her fists, tightened to help the tape split, fell to either side of her body.
Holy shit. Her hands throbbed. She flexed her fingers, only able to say that they were working and not broken. But her hands were apart, the tape split neatly down the center. She would have celebrated but this was just step one.
Reaching down, she worked at the tape on her ankles, unwrapping the sticky motherfucker was almost as difficult as splitting the one on her hands. She looked to the table and thought of using the glass to cut the tape but, with one shoe on, hopping around the room with her feet bound would be impossible. And it certainly wouldn’t be quiet. Besides, maybe the water was poisoned. Geller had certainly seen fit to drug her once already.
Maybe the plan was to give it to her later.
Or just let her suffer and dehydrate while a glass of water sat waiting six feet away.
Continuing to pick at the tape, she broke one nail, then another. But at last she got her ankles free. It took another moment to wad the tape up to where it didn't want to cling to her fingers. She needed somewhere to put it that Geller and his partner wouldn't automatically see it. So she peeled her remaining shoe and padded softly over to the table, then stuck the wad underneath like a piece of chewed gum.
Now what? she thought.
She started to use her right hand to pick at the tape stuck firmly across her mouth. But her nails were broken, so she tried her left hand, but even that hurt. She was going to have a rectangular rash on her face, letting everyone know that she had been kidnapped.
She should be so lucky.
The real problem would be if no one saw her. If her body wasn't found. And no one ever knew that she’d had tape on her face. So once again, Maggie committed to fast and harsh and ripped the tape off.
Son of a bitch! She gasped as quietly as she could while the pain slowly ebbed.
But she was free.
What next? Go out the window? Look in the closet for weapons?
Her house creaked like nobody's business and this place looked even older. The trees outside the window made her think she was in a cabin. That made sense with what she remembered of the trip here.
No one knew where the Blue River Killer had been taking his victims, only where he’d abducted them from and where he’d been leaving them.
The La Vista Rapist tended to make do at the scene he was already at. That would have been Maggie's home and Sebastian or her clients would have shown up. He’d planned this carefully ahead of time. And that alone made Maggie livid.
She held the shoe clenched tightly in her hand, her one weapon at the ready. But she’d prefer another. Then her eyes fell to the glass of water.
Leaving it here was truly a dumb move. They had to either believe she wouldn't get out of the bindings or it was drugged. She was thirsty, but the men were still arguing i
n the front room, and that spurred her on.
The tone of the conversation made her believe that Merrit Geller had something he was holding over the Blue River Killer. He definitely knew who the man was and Maggie wanted to know, too.
Could she peer through the lock and see his face?
No, she had to save herself first. She had to live to fight another day. If she saw his face and then died, it would all be wasted.
Peeling her jacket, she reached for the glass and carefully poured the water onto the floor, not willing to drink anything that had been left for her. Then she wrapped her jacket around the glass until only the silk lining could be seen. Putting it on the ground, she stepped down until she felt it crunch.
God bless high quality silk. She still cut her foot in the process. The jacket was already done for. Now it would have small pieces of glass clinging to the outside fabric. So be it.
She opened the jacket and carefully shook it out. It had muffled the sound of the glass breaking enough that the conversation in the other room hadn’t lagged. She turned it right side out and carefully slipped back into it. If they came back in, she needed to look as tied up as possible.
Then she picked up four of the largest shards and slipped two into each pocket. Next, she carefully tiptoed to the window. She managed to flip the latch relatively quietly but getting it open would be another story. She probably couldn't break the window quite as softly as she'd broken the water glass.
She'd need to slide it up but, the moment she pushed on the sash, it made a noise. The two voices out front stopped.
Shit, she thought. As quietly and quickly as she could, she headed back to the chair and sat down facing away from the door.
Her jacket sleeves still had the tape on them, so that would look intact at first glance. She hid the shoe between her legs as best she could. She held her feet and hands together just as they had been positioned when she was bound. Lastly, she hung her head, so they wouldn't be able to notice the tape was off her face.
As soon as they got close, she would have to come up swinging.
“This is all new to me!” she heard from the outside.
“Do your own wet work! I didn’t take her. This is on you.”
She would have muttered an expletive but she had to sit still. The front door slammed but footsteps came up to the door behind her.
Once again, she wished she was facing the other way. But she needed to buy those extra seconds. She had to look like she was exactly where she'd been left.
Behind her, the knob turned.
Chapter Sixty
Sebastian looked at the faces around the table.
It was Watson who told him, “We have enough evidence to arrest William Treat Sanders as the Blue River Killer.”
“So, why haven't you arrested him?” Sebastian demanded.
“He’s disappeared,” was Watson’s only answer, said as Decker replied. “He's in the wind.”
That didn't help.
“But we've been tracking his movements.”
Sebastian’s eyes were bouncing back and forth like it was a tennis match.
“This,” Ranger Leo Evans said as he pointed to a spot on the map in front of him. “—is a small section of the Rock Creek park that has cabins. Sanders’ family owns one of them.”
“It’s close to water and we think this is where he takes his victims,” Decker added.
Sebastian realized he was being given information that was still withheld from the public, probably in hopes that he could add something to it. He couldn’t.
“We've been working on this for quite some time,” Watson told him, as if hoping he would understand why it had taken them so long. “Sometimes it takes months to pull this kind of evidence together.”
Sebastian looked back and forth, “But it’s not Sanders who has her. We think it’s Geller, right?”
“Right. But Sanders usually attacks his victims where they are. He's clearly taken her somewhere else.” Watson turned to Evans again, and he picked up the thread.
“The cabins were there before the land became a state park. So the owners are grandfathered in. The units don’t see much use and they don’t really have neighbors because they’re reasonably far apart. The Sanders family has owned one of the cabins for three generations. The owners can come and go as they please, but the park rangers note activity in the area.”
He looked to Decker then, and when he received a subtle nod in response, he plowed ahead. “The FBI contacted us and we pulled our information. We would have handed it off tomorrow or so, but your call bumped up the timeframe. The bottom line is that we can tie activity near this cabin to the time frames of at least six of the Blue River killings.”
“Isn’t that enough?” Sebastian asked frantic. But the Blue River Killer had murdered far more than that. Only six?
Watson looked to Decker, and then they both looked back at him. It was Decker who said, “It has to be enough, because it's all we have. So we're going to go perform a raid on these cabins. We're heading out in the next ten minutes, if you want to come with us.”
“What if she's not there? What if he didn't go to Sanders’ cabin?”
“Then he didn't go to Sanders place and she's not there.” The answer was so simple and so stunningly awful that Sebastian’s brain didn’t want to process it.
“It’s the only path we have,” Watson offered solemnly.
Sebastian didn’t know what to do. If he went, he had the chance of being there when they found her. Or he had the chance that she was somewhere else, and he wasn’t there to help. Sitting here meant doing nothing and waiting. He didn’t have that in him. He was the kind of guy who naturally ran toward disaster—not a hero trait, just a hardwire in his system.
“Go.”
He turned, having recognized the voice behind him. “Rex?”
Sebastian almost tripped over the stroller in front of his fellow firefighter. Rex had his toddler in tow, but he’d come anyway. Then Sebastian looked beyond him. Most of A-shift had shown up.
“We’ve got the house covered,” Kalan told him. “If she shows up, we’ll call you.”
“My dad and Aidan are at dispatch monitoring all the calls.” Though Watson raised an eyebrow at that borderline practice, Ronan Kelly didn’t flinch. “We’ll notify you if anything comes in that might be related.”
“Go with them,” Rex urged him. “Find Maggie and bring her back safe.”
Sebastian nodded, glad that the decision was now made, glad that the guys were watching out for Maggie.
He bolted into the house and pulled his gun from the drawer by Maggie’s bed. For good measure—and not to look like he’d just grabbed a gun—he also pulled his lightweight jacket off the hook. With one last glance at the bed they shared, he headed out the door.
They would head to Sanders’ family cabin. It was a shot in the dark based on scant evidence. But their only options were that they were right or Maggie was dead.
Chapter Sixty-One
The door opened behind her, the soft squeak of the knob an ominous sound.
Maggie knew it was Merrit Geller and she'd read the reports of his victims. She was not going to become the next.
He didn't say anything, just opened the door and presumably stood behind her. The room was too small for him to be more than a few feet away. She waited for his hand to touch her shoulder.
Maggie found it hard to keep her breathing slow and her head low, as though she were still drugged. But she forced herself to stay still.
She was sitting on her shoe and realized only now that was a mistake. She should have kept it in her hand, ready to make a move.
Making a small moan to cover her movement, she slipped her hand between her legs and grasped the shoe firmly.
Three.
Two.
One.
She popped up and turned to face him, screaming for all she was worth. Though whether that was because the noise simply came out of her with her fear or if she remembe
red from watching stupid online videos that noise was startling, she didn’t know.
It was hard to tell if the scream accomplished anything other than him raising his hands in defense. Though he thwarted her blow a little, he didn't raise them up quite fast enough. She swung the heel for all it was worth, the sharp point aimed outward.
Even as she watched it arc through the air toward him, she realized the rubber tip on the end of the heel would reduce its effectiveness as a weapon. She should have pulled it off, made the heel sharper. Her stomach clenched as she both heard and felt the heel sink into the side of his neck.
Just as abruptly as she started screaming, she stopped. What if Sanders was still here? What if he was out front, and she had just alerted him?
Geller stumbled backward, the pale blue shoe sticking out of his neck where the heel was buried an inch, or maybe two, deep. Maggie let go and stepped back.
Once again, she saw her mistake too late. She should have pulled it out, let the blood flow from the wound. Instead, he screamed, “You bitch!”
And she watched his blood trickle down his hands as he reached up and felt the shoe stuck in his neck. Though he was occupied with undoing her damage, he was still watching her and still positioned between her and the door. The window was her only option.
But he wasn't disabled enough.
So she turned around, picked up the chair, and swung it at him from the other side. The old wood cracked against him, splintering into shards as the remains of the chair twisted in her hands.
It took only one step to reach the window, and she thought she might have made it before the chair clattered to the floor. Pushing upward on the window, her heart pounded and her mouth went dry when it didn't give.
But, in her fear and anger, adrenaline made her strong, and with a second massive shove, she managed to move it up far enough to climb out. As she slipped out and thought she was getting away, Maggie felt his hand wrap around her bare ankle.
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