She’d worn boots tonight, luckily, but they weren’t exactly Timberlands, and she could already feel cold water seeping between her toes as she walked around to the tailgate and gathered up her CDs.
“Need a hand?”
She jumped and whirled around. A man in a baseball cap stepped out from between two cars and smiled at her.
“I’m fine, actually.” She hitched her purse up on her shoulder and tried to balance the umbrella over her head as she pulled the box of CDs from the cargo space.
“That everything?” He put his hand on the door and nodded inside.
“Oh, uh—” She looked nervously around the parking lot. It was early, so the place was still fairly empty. “I think so.”
He closed the door, then smiled again as he carefully took the box of CDs from her arms. Her instinct was to cling to it, but she didn’t want to seem rude, and she also wasn’t eager to drop the umbrella shielding her hair from ruin.
Raindrops dampened the shoulders of his tweed sport coat. He smiled again, and her wariness melted. He had a clean-cut look about him and an expensive watch.
“Thanks,” she said. “We can go inside through the back here. I’m performing tonight, so I’ve kind of got VIP access.” She led him past a loading dock that smelled like vomit, which underscored what “VIP” meant there at Gil’s Garage. The place was a dive.
“Is this all your music?”
“Yep.” She smiled again as they neared the door. “I go on at nine. Hope you’ll stay for the show.” And buy a few CDs.
He veered left, toward the corner of the building.
“Oh, it’s okay. We can go in back here. It’s actually unlocked, so—” She stopped as he kept going toward a row of cars.
“Just need to get something out of my car.”
She watched him uneasily. Surely he wasn’t going to take off with all of her CDs? She started after him. “You know, I can take it from here. It’s really no problem.”
The taillights blinked on a black car, and the trunk popped open. He dropped the box inside. She opened her mouth to protest, and her gaze landed on the bumper sticker.
Understanding dawned. She took a step back, and he lunged toward her.
• • •
Ric pulled right up to the sidewalk and sprinted up the steps to the lab entrance with his gun drawn. The door was locked, as expected, and Ric practically vibrated with impatience as he waited for the guard from the gatehouse to pull his cruiser up and join him at the door.
“Tried Ralph on the radio just now,” the man said, lumbering up the stairs. “He didn’t answer.”
“Is that unusual?”
The guard looked grim. “Ralph always answers.” He finally reached the door and swiped his ID card to open it. “I notified my supervisor, and he’s on his way over. You’re to wait in the lobby until he gets here, and he’ll accompany you to locate Dr. Voss.”
“Not happening.” Ric plucked the ID card from the guard’s hand and took off for the elevator.
“Hey! You can’t roam around without an escort!”
“Guess you’ll have to shoot me,” Ric tossed back as he got into the elevator. He swiped the card against the security panel and jabbed the button for the ballistics floor, which—to his relief—lit up green. As the doors slid shut, he heard the guard yelling at someone over the phone.
The doors opened, and Ric ran down the hallway, but he didn’t see Mia. The ballistics lab was shut down. He used the guard’s ID card to open the door.
“Mia?”
Silence answered him, and his heart rate took another leap. Where had she gone? And why wasn’t she answering her phone? He called her for the third time in five minutes as he sprinted back down the hallway. The other side of the floor contained the database room, according to the sign posted near the elevator. Ric checked inside but, again, nothing.
Panic tightened his chest as he rode the elevator back up to the lobby. Was she hiding somewhere? Maybe she’d turned her phone off so no one would hear her. She had to be hiding. The alternative terrified him.
The doors parted, and he rushed back to the lobby. He needed that control room. Checking the security cams would be faster than combing each floor. But where the hell was it? He searched Sophie’s desk, hoping maybe she had a map or something to guide visitors.
Ric heard a commotion down the hallway and ran toward it. Light spilled out from an open door, and he recognized the security guard’s agitated voice.
Inside the room, a desk faced a giant video screen that had been divided into squares. The control room.
“We need an ambulance!” the guard barked into his phone as he kneeled beside Ralph. The big man was bound and gagged with duct tape and sported a baseball-size bump on the back of his head. Ric dropped to his knees and ripped the tape off his mouth as the other guard worked on the bindings with a pair of scissors.
“Where’s Mia Voss?”
Ralph wheezed and coughed and shook his head. Ric pounded him on the back, and his attention went to the video screen. It was a five-by-five matrix of ever-changing camera images, displaying feed from all over the compound. The words “Perimeter Breach” blinked under one of the squares. The view above showed the razor-wire-topped fence that surrounded the compound.
An alarm sounded. More words flashed on the other side of the matrix: “Unauthorized Exit Southwest Door.” Ric watched the screen as a shadow disappeared through a doorway.
Mia.
He turned to the guards. “Southwest door! Where is that?”
“Just past”—Ralph coughed again—“the evidence room.”
Ric jumped to his feet and looked one last time at the grainy video image.
A man in a ski mask stepped into view. Ric’s world tilted as the man yanked open the door and darted out after Mia.
CHAPTER 28
Jonah kept a heavy foot on the pedal as Ric’s brother talked with the task force from the passenger seat.
He cursed under his breath, and Jonah shot him a look.
“What? What is it?”
“Nightclub manager,” Rey said. “Delmonico talked to him. There’s a black Tahoe in the parking lot, but Sophie Barrett hasn’t shown up yet.”
The slimy ball in the pit of Jonah’s stomach expanded. “Any black Audis seen entering or leaving the area?”
Rey relayed the question, then glanced over. “No. We’ve got an APB out, though.”
Jonah tried to stay focused, but his imagination kept getting away from him. The moment he’d seen Sophie’s picture, he’d known she was in serious trouble, and learning that their prime murder suspect drove a black Audi only confirmed it. That car had been at El Patio the other night when Jonah had walked Sophie to her SUV. And judging by the look on her face, it was a car she’d seen before, one that made her nervous. Damn it, why hadn’t he pressed her about it then? He hadn’t wanted to come off as pushy and overbearing, and now look what had happened.
“I don’t like this game plan,” he told Rey when he got off the phone. “What are we going to find at this club? He took her someplace else. Our focus should be on figuring out where that is.”
“Maybe we can drum up a witness who saw something.”
“Like what? A woman being forced into a car?” He pounded the steering wheel with his fist. “That doesn’t tell us shit about where she is now! This is a waste of time!”
Rey looked at him. “You involved with this girl?”
Jonah took a deep breath. “No.” Fuck. “Try Singh again. See if they’ve spotted him out near the lake house. He’s got to be taking her there. That’s his MO.”
“Yeah, well, his little hideaway’s not going to work tonight.”
Rey got on the phone again and learned that Lane’s vehicle had not been spotted in the vicinity of the lake house, despite the lookout they’d posted at both ends of the road.
Not that that meant anything.
“Who’s posted on the eastern side?” Jonah asked. If he was tak
ing her from the nightclub to his lake house, he’d be coming from that direction.
Rey asked the question, then gave Jonah a name.
“That guy? Shit, isn’t he the one who missed Ric sneaking into Mia’s earlier this week? Our best chance to intercept this guy is probably blown to hell!”
Rey disconnected again, and the car went silent except for the swish of the wiper blades. Sweat beaded on Jonah’s brow. His hands felt clammy. He envisioned Ashley Meyer’s autopsy photos and felt sick.
“It’s good, you know, that we’ve disrupted his plan,” Rey said. “If Ric hadn’t found his cave, she’d probably already be back there with him.”
Jonah shot him a look.
Rey checked his watch, his face grave. “And it’s only been an hour. She might still be okay.”
Jonah trained his gaze on the road as he sped toward the last place Sophie was known to have been. Rey was trying to be hopeful, and Jonah wanted more than anything to believe him. But the cop part of his brain kept getting in the way.
“Any minute,” Jonah said tightly, “Lane’s going to realize his game is up, if he hasn’t already. Then he’ll turn tail and run, like the dog that he is.” He glanced at Rey. “The last thing he’s going to want at that point is a woman slowing him down.”
Mia tripped through the brush, desperately trying to figure out where she was. She’d exited on the south side of the building—she knew that much. But a mental picture of the grounds wouldn’t form, because she’d always made an effort not to think about what surrounded the laboratory. Maggot-infested corpses. Decaying animals. Pits filled with half-buried skeletons. Mia’s fear mounted with every step, and the only thing propelling her forward was the certainty that she couldn’t go back. She was being followed.
She squinted at the darkness, trying to make out the varying degrees of black. Sensing an obstacle ahead— maybe a tree?—she veered left and kept her hands in front of her as she continued into the blackness. Where was Ric? How would he find her? And if he didn’t find her, how was she going to evade the ski-mask guy, who was armed to the teeth? Mia had watched him, quaking with fear, from the window of the stairwell nearest the ballistics lab. He had some sort of rifle strapped to his back and a pistol gripped in his hand, and he might as well have carried a scythe, too, because to her he was the Angel of Death. Soul-freezing terror had sent her scuttling up the stairwell and racing for the nearest fire exit.
Which had sounded an alarm, no doubt pointing him right to her.
Mia paused to listen now. The alarm had ceased. Rain pitter-pattered around her, and wind rustled through nearby branches. The noise covered her movements, but it was impossible to see. What if she crashed right into him? The thought petrified her. But the alternative— standing there and waiting for him to find her—was even more frightening.
She forced her feet forward. The cell phone tucked deep within her pocket had vibrated three times now. Ric was looking for her. Could she risk the noise and light that using her phone would create? Maybe she could huddle at the base of a tree and text him something. SOS! But he knew that already. And how could he come to her rescue if she didn’t even know where she was?
Mia pressed forward and willed her brain to work. She had to think her way out of this. She struggled for calm as she catalogued her assets. She had no gun. She had a phone but couldn’t risk using it until she found some sort of cover. She had a tube of Mace clutched in her hand, which was better than nothing but no match for a bullet. Her greatest asset was that she was familiar with the landscape, and her assailant probably wasn’t. On the verge of hysteria now, Mia tried to conjure a map of what lay south of the building. There was a winding path leading past cordoned-off burial sites. She pictured Kelsey and her teams of students filing out there to document their experiments.
The teaching pavilion. She suddenly remembered the open-air classroom where students would sit at picnic tables, sheltered from the blazing summer sun as they discussed cases. It was an outdoor facility, but there were restrooms there and a drinking fountain. If she could lock herself inside one of those bathrooms and make a call to Ric—
Her toe caught on something hard. She flung her hands out and fell head-first into a void.
Ric raced through the blackness, tracking the man who was tracking Mia. He was going by sound mostly, with an occasional flash from his penlight to keep him on course.
Hang on, Mia, I’m coming.
He pictured her running for her life out there in the freezing dark. The thought that someone might get to her before he did and snuff the life from her eyes chilled Ric straight to his bones. He couldn’t let it happen. He wouldn’t let it happen. He’d do anything to get her out of harm’s way.
Get low, Mia. Get still somewhere and hide.
She had to be terrified by now, reduced to raw animal instincts. But instincts were good, especially given her lack of training. Instincts might be her best chance for survival.
Ric said a prayer to himself—something from his childhood, something he hadn’t said in ages and hardly remembered—as he plunged through the dark.
If she’d only stop moving, her pursuer would have to stop to get his bearings. He might even break out a flashlight, and Ric would be on him in a heartbeat.
Ric halted in his tracks. The rustling continued, but the noise was no longer man-made, just a light wind through the trees. He eased forward, waiting for the slightest mechanical sound that would give away the gunman.
Mia sprawled on her stomach, struggling to get her breath back. Blood filled her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. She sucked in air, and along with it came a sickly odor. She pushed up on her palms and registered the lumps beneath her frozen fingers.
It couldn’t be. She hadn’t … ?
Dear God, she had. Revulsion flooded through her as every one of her senses confirmed that she’d fallen into a grave. She scrambled to her knees and clawed out of the pit, only to realize that she was hyperventilating. She clamped her mouth shut, but the silence came too late. She heard him now, advanced toward her through the brush, and the confidence in his footsteps told her that he understood their roles. He was the hunter. She was the prey. And he intended to finish her off as he would a wounded doe. She scrounged frantically for her Mace, but it was lost amid the dampened leaves and rotting limbs.
A flashlight beam pierced the darkness. It swung left, then right, searching for her. She scampered backward out of the pit and away from the hunter. The light swept over her face.
Mia screamed to wake the dead.
Everything came at once: a flash of light, a panicked scream, a slight shift in the shadows. Ric raised his gun and fired, purely on instinct. Something howled in agony, and the flashlight hit the ground.
“Mia, get down!”
To his side, movement. Ric dropped to a knee, pivoted, and raised his gun again. He got a shot off just as a bullet zinged so close it made his ears ring. Her attacker was wounded, not dead. Ric lunged sideways, crashing into something hard. A tree. He yelled out, trying to draw attention away from Mia. Another shot rang out, this one hitting the tree trunk just inches from his head.
Mia snatched up the flashlight and pointed it toward the noise. The beam landed on a patch of mud where the rifle had fallen.
The rifle!
She realized she’d betrayed her location the same instant another shot sounded. Swaying with fear, she switched off the flashlight. This was crazy! Everyone shooting in the dark! Mia dropped to her knees and groped around until her hands found the rifle butt. She picked it up and looked around in a panic. Now what? She couldn’t see to aim it.
A sudden oomph, followed by a thud. Then grunts and snarls, like a pair of wolves wrestling on the ground. Mia tucked the rifle under her arm and fumbled for the flashlight. She aimed it at the noise, illuminating the man in black—Burleson—fighting viciously for control of a gun. Ric was beneath him, a knee pinned to his chest, his own pistol out of reach at his feet. The gun pointed up, towar
d the sky, but Burleson was locked in a mortal struggle to point it down toward Ric’s head. The ski mask was gone now. Mia shone the light straight in the man’s eyes, hoping to break his concentration, but he didn’t blink.
“Mia … gun,” Ric ground out.
She lifted the rifle, and the flashlight beam wobbled.
“Stop right there, or I’ll shoot!” The threat sounded pitifully weak, which it was, because the thought of firing a bullet so close to Ric’s head made her dizzy. Instead, she set the flashlight on the ground so she could see by the glow, then rushed to Burleson’s side and, with all her might, jabbed the rifle butt at his head. Pain reverberated up her arms. He slumped sideways, and Ric leaped on top of him. In an instant, Ric had him flipped onto his stomach, with a knee in his back and a pistol jammed into his neck.
Blood oozed from the man’s temple. He’d gone limp.
“Oh my God,” she croaked. “Did I kill him?”
“No.” Ric held the gun at his neck, chest heaving, and in the glow of the flashlight, she saw the battle raging in his eyes.
“Ric, don’t do it.”
But he wasn’t listening.
With shaking hands, she lowered the rifle to the ground and stepped toward him. “It’s over, Ric. You can’t just execute him.”
He groaned painfully, still at war with himself. She watched his chest heave, his jaw clench, the beads of sweat slide down his temples. And in a flash, she saw all of her dreams for a future together being destroyed by a single unchecked impulse.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Ric,” she whispered. “I’m okay. It’s over.”
Something flickered in his eyes. He reached a hand around and dug a pair of cuffs from his back pocket. He wrenched the two arms backward, eliciting a moan from the man beneath him as he slapped on the cuffs.
Ric got to his feet and stared down at him. If she’d ever wondered what pure hatred looked like, it was right there in front of her, etched on Ric’s face. He still held the gun in his hand, and Mia took his sleeve and tugged him away as the sound of sirens drifted toward them over the treetops. The sound grew louder and louder as she stood there watching him.
A Tracers Trilogy Page 90