by Jami Alden
He started to pull a U-turn, then stopped himself. It was better to go look for Talia by himself. Who knew what he would find, who he would encounter? He’d feel better knowing Megan was safe while he was out chasing down the bad guys.
He tried calling Talia and Jack again, with no luck. In a last-ditch effort, he called Jack’s friend who ran the security firm in California. As planned, Danny Taggart and his brother had picked up Rosario last night at the airport, but Danny hadn’t heard from Jack since then.
Where the hell were they? He could see Talia getting cold feet and running, but he’d trusted Jack to keep her on a short leash. It didn’t seem likely Talia could get the drop on him, not without help anyway.
Then again, she and Brooks could have hightailed it out of here as soon as they got Talia’s sister on the plane last night.
He pulled up to Talia’s house and gave her front door a cursory knock before slipping around the house and gaining entrance through an unlocked window. Something wasn’t right; he could feel it the second his feet touched the floor.
His suspicions were confirmed with a quick inspection of the empty house. Talia’s purse, containing her cell phone and her wallet, were on the dresser in her bedroom. In the living room, the coffee table had been kicked over, and the couch looked like it had been through a tornado.
Cole checked the garage. Talia’s car was still there. Jack’s was nowhere in sight. He pulled out his phone and dialed Petersen.
“Cole, you need to get your ass in here,” Petersen said. “Chin is on the warpath—”
“I’m not coming in. I need you to put out an APB on a vehicle for me.” He quickly rattled off Jack’s information.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t have time to go into detail, but I believe Talia Vega and Jack Brooks may have been kidnapped, and they could have been taken in Jack’s car—”
“Cole, we have other priorities right now. The Slasher is in custody, and you need to get down here—”
Cole was outside, sprinting to his car. “That’s the thing—I don’t think Jimmy Caparulo is your guy.”
He climbed in the Jeep and took off for Talia’s house. By the time he arrived, the storm was overwhelming the drains, and Talia’s street was beginning to flood. He carefully guided his Jeep through the rising waters.” “What time did you arrest him yesterday?”
“Around ten-thirty. What you mean you don’t think he’s our guy? You haven’t seen the evidence.”
“What was he doing before ten-thirty?” If Jimmy really was the Slasher, he may have had time to take out Talia and Jack. It wasn’t likely, but Jimmy was tough, former Special Forces. It was possible he could have gotten the jump on Jack and snatched Talia.
“Come down here and ask him yourself,” Petersen snapped. “I’m serious, Cole. I will kick your ass if I have to find another partner.”
Cole hung up. Petersen was right—if he really wanted to figure out Jimmy Caparulo, he needed to talk to the man himself. But if he went to the station, he’d never get out of there. Talking to Jimmy wasn’t an option.
He swore. He didn’t like this feeling of flailing around in the dark. All his cases were puzzles, but this one felt like it was missing too many pieces to ever come together. He drove, listening to the rhythmic thwap of the windshield wipers.
He called up Jimmy’s address on his phone. It was a long shot, but under the circumstances, it was the only move he could come up with.
Megan came to as strong arms lifted her from the back of a vehicle and hoisted her over a broad shoulder. A quick twitch of her arms and legs told her that her hands and feet were bound tight.
“Why are you doing this?” she croaked, wincing as even the short question seared her throat. When he didn’t answer, she tried yelling for help, but nothing emerged but a pitiful rasp.
“You know why.” A car she didn’t recognize was parked in a garage behind a small house, away from the road. Rain pelted her as he carried her several feet before setting her next to a door on the side of the house that led to a cellar. “I thought you were different. I thought you were like Sarah.”
“I don’t know who Sarah is, Nate, but I promise you I am different. I’m your friend. I care about you. If you just untie me, we can talk about it—” She gasped, the breath knocked out of her as he slammed her head against the wall.
“You’re a fucking whore, soiling your body to get what you want. I thought you were good, like her.”
“I am good, Nate,” she sobbed hysterically, wondering how someone so perfect-looking could hide such evil. Now with his face contorted in rage and the manic light in his eyes, it seemed impossible that she had ever thought him handsome, that she had turned to him for help, trusted him as a friend.
As she struggled through her panic to find the words that might convince him to let her go, she wanted to vomit at the memory of him touching her.
“I saw you with him!” Nate screamed, saliva flying from his mouth as his hand cracked hard against her cheek. “After the way he treated you, you let that cop put his hands on you, let him fuck you.” He shook his head and stepped back, and Megan slumped to the floor, her vision swimming.
“I told myself you were good, that you’d learned, that you’d never let him touch you again, but you goddamn cunt, you let him use you all over again. You’re nothing but a whore, just like her.”
He moved then, and that was when she saw the figure slumped on a leather couch. Talia.
She didn’t stir. Megan’s gaze darted frantically around the sparsely furnished room, taking in the barren walls covered, oddly, in some kind of thick fabric. The small speakers mounted he ceiling. The enormous plasma-screen television mounted on the wall across from the couch.
“Where’s Devany?” she asked, frantic. “What did you do to her?”
“The girl will be taken care of.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you—”
His hand cracked across her face again. “I have the knife. That means I make the threats, not you.”
She barely breathed as Nate pulled something from his pocket and ducked through an opening in the wall near the TV. “Talia! Talia, wake up,” she whispered as she tried to roll toward the other woman. Maybe if she could get close, they could untie each other.
“She can’t help you.” Nate’s laugh froze her blood in her veins.
She watched in horror as he drew a knife from his waistband, its lethally sharp blade catching the light as he hefted it in his left hand. Custom made, favored by troops who served in the Special Forces. Nearly identical to Sean’s, which had been used to kill Evangeline.
He knelt over Talia and the knife slashed forward.
“No!” Megan screamed, but Nate was cutting the flex ties around Talia’s wrists and ankles. Next went the clothes, the sound of the fabric splitting under the knife sending a ripple of fear through her.
He shoved something under Talia’s nose and her head snapped back, the whites of her eyes showing as she struggled to open them.
“Wake up, bitch,” Nate snapped, waving the packet under her nose again. “I want you awake for this.”
The scratchy sound of tiny feet sent a wave of nausea through Dev’s body. She heard muffled voices outside, then silence. Something skittered over her feet.
Oh God, she was alone in a pitch-black pantry full of mice, and Nate was taking Megan somewhere else in the house. To kill her. She didn’t try to kid herself that there would be any other outcome. Dev started to cry again, thinking of her mom. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking when Nate had taken her from the trailer.
Blood, so much blood. The slice across her throat gaping, just like Bianca. Nate was going to do that to Megan, maybe worse, if she didn’t do something. And she was next.
She drew her hands up and tugged at her gag. When she got it free, she screamed and yelled as loud as she could. But the house was far from the road, isolated in the woods. Her throat was raw, and still no one
came.
“You motherfucker!” she yelled into the darkness. “You son-of-a-bitch cocksucker! I’m not gonna let you kill me! I’m not gonna let you kill me!”
Her bound feet flailed, kicking at the walls like she would break them down. Boxes fell from the shelves, and a can of omething thudded painfully on her chest, but she didn’t stop. A jar smashed near her head and she froze.
She turned to her side, glass slicing her fingers as she grasped in the dark. Her cupped hands closed over a big shard.
She pushed herself to a seated position and wedged the glass between her clenched knees. It took a few tries and several more painful slices to her hand, but she managed to find the right angle. Her panting echoed in the dark as she frantically sawed the plastic tie against the sharp edge of the glass.
The tie split with a faint pop. Her hands were slick with blood, and she fumbled with the glass, but she managed to saw through the ties around her ankles. She shoved to her feet and flailed her hands until she found the doorknob. She turned and pushed, but the dirtbag had locked her in.
Frustration roared through her and she threw herself against the door, sobbing as she bounced back into the darkness. Her foot lashed out, hitting the door with enough impact to rattle it on its hinges. Again, again, again, but she was too small, too weak….
Crack! Dev’s sneakered foot went through the bottom of the door. She fell on her ass with a yell of surprise. She yanked her foot free and kicked again, over and over until the hole was big enough for her to slide through.
She squirmed through like an eel, barely feeling the scrape of splintered wood along her stomach. Her bloody hands left prints on the linoleum as she pulled herself out. She was sprinting for the door before her feet were even under her.
Chapter 21
Jimmy Caparulo lived with his aunt in a tidy moss-green house in the Crown Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
“Just a moment,” a voice called when he knocked.
It seemed to take forever for the slow footsteps to reach the door.
Deep lines carved Angela Giovanni’s wan face, and Cole immediately saw why it had taken her so long to reach the door. Her clothes hung off her frail frame, and small plastic tubes emerged from her nostrils. The tubes led to a small oxygen canister that she cradled in her left arm.
Her eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles as she looked up at him. “Can I help you?”
He quickly introduced himself. “Can I ask you a few questions about Jimmy?” Cole asked, pitching his voice to be heard over the pounding rain.
She gave him a wary look and started to close the door. “Anything you want to know, you ask his lawyer.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“Are you the cops?”
Cole pondered his answer. “Not at the moment. I’m trying to help out a friend of Jimmy’s—Megan Flynn. You know her, right?”
Angela eyed him for a few more seconds and shrugged. “Might as well come in from the rain.”
Cole went inside and waved off her offer of coffee. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m a little short on time. The police arrested Jimmy here last night. Is that correct?”
“Yes. They came right before ten. Jimmy was in his room, and I had just sat down to watch the news.” She pressed her lips tight. “Jimmy’s had a hard time, but I know him, and I know he didn’t do what they’re accusing him of. He’s taken care of me—his sick aunt!—for over three years, ever since he got out of the army. You think a young man who is so loyal would hurt women the way they said he did?”
Cole shook his head. “I couldn’t say, ma’am.”
Her mouth pulled tight. “The police said they found a knife and all kinds of camera equipment in there, but I never saw anything like that.”
“What was Jimmy doing last night before he was arrested? Did he go out at all?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, he’d barely been out for almost a week. Comes right home after work and gets on his computer.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I was here all day. He came home at six, had supper, made sure I was settled in front of the TV, and then he excused himself.”
Cole’s doubts about Jimmy’s innocence faded another degree. No way he could have taken Talia and Jack without a hovering mama like Angela noticing. “Do you have any idea who he might have been talking to? Anyone who would have a reason to blame him for this?”
She shook her head and blinked back tears. “He hasn’t talked much. He’s been upset with me.”
“You had a fight?”
“It was the stupidest thing,” Angela replied, shrugging her thin shoulders in bewilderment. “A friend from his army days came by to see him. Jimmy wasn’t home, so I offered him a cup of coffee. But when Jimmy came home, he was furious, ranting and raving. He’s never talked to me that way! But he kept going on about how I never should have let this man into the house. Oh, and when he found out he was a computer guy and that I asked him to fix the computer cable in Jimmy’s room, you would have thought—”
The skin prickled on the back of Cole’s neck. “What’s the friend’s name?”
“Nate, Nate Brewster. Nicest young man, and so handsome. He and Jimmy got to be friends in the army. I never knew they had a falling-out….”
Cole didn’t hear her over the alarms shrieking in his head. Nate, who had taken off after Sean’s arrest and come back to Seattle about a year ago, right when the murders started.
Nate, the computer consultant, who could have easily built and managed an exclusive escort site and had access to Club One’s networks and security cameras.
A friend of both Sean and Jimmy, with access and opportunity to frame both men.
But why?
Cole shook his head. The why didn’t matter right now. He had to find Talia and warn Megan.
He cut off Angela with a terse “thanks” and headed for the door.
“Wait,” she called to him as he sprinted to his car. “What about Jimmy?”
“I know he didn’t do it,” Cole called over his shoulder. “I promise the truth will come out soon enough.”
He drove as fast as the weather would allow back to Dev’s trailer, his knees buckling at what he discovered. A woman dead, her throat cut on the floor.
Megan and Devany nowhere to be found.
Devany ran back in what she thought was the way Nate had come, but it was hard to tell since she’d been on the floor of the car during the trip. She ran for what felt like forever before she hit another house. She banged on the front door, sobbing with frustration when no one answered. There was no one at the next house either, or the next, and she was starting to wonder if the whole fucking neighborhood was deserted when she caught a flash of headlights through the sheets of rain.
She ran into the road, waving her hands until the minivan screeched to a stop. The window rolled down and a woman leaned out to yell, “Are you crazy? I could have killed you—”
Dev ran around to the woman, whose expression softened a little when she got a closer look at Dev.
“What are you doing out in this, dressed like that? You’ll catch your death if a tree doesn’t come crashing down on you first.”
“I need to borrow your phone. It’s an emergency!” Dev’s hands came up to grip the door. The woman gasped when she saw the deep cuts welling with blood.
“There’s a guy, he has my friend, and I really need to call the cops.”
“I don’t get cell coverage up here.”
“Then dammit, give me a ride to a real fucking phone!”
The woman’s face paled and she glanced behind her. Dev followed her gaze and saw two boys strapped to car seats in the back. “Mommy, she said fuck,” said the older one.
“I know, Wyatt,” the woman said through clenched teeth.
“Please, lady,” Dev said, her teeth chattering as the cold finally caught up with her. “Just take me to a gas station or something.” She pitched her voice lower so
the little kids wouldn’t hear her. “He’s going to hurt my friend. Please help me.”
The woman closed her eyes and gave a qu nod. Dev dashed around to the passenger side and climbed in. They drove down the road another mile or so before the minivan had to stop for a fallen tree.
“Can’t you go around it?”
“There’s a market just up ahead, at the junction of this road and Forest Drive.” The woman leaned over Dev and opened her door. Dev took the hint and hopped out with a muttered “thanks.” She picked her way over the tree, cursing when she slipped on the wet bark and skinned her knee.
The little market was right where the woman said, and the guy working the register took pity on her and pointed her to the phone in the back. She dialed 911 with shaking hands.
“Thank you for calling the King County central dispatch. To reach the fire department, press one. To reach the sheriff, press two.”
A fucking voice mail menu?! Dev punched two. “Emergency services are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please hold…”
“I don’t have time to fucking hold!” Dev slammed the phone down and swallowed back angry tears. What the hell was she supposed to do?
Duh. She dialed, picturing the card Cole Williams had given her the night of Bianca’s murder, thanking whatever powers had blessed her with a freakishly good memory for numbers. She bounced on her toes as the phone rang, praying he could get here before it was too late.
Megan watched as Talia blinked foggily for a few seconds; then, as she became aware of her surroundings and her nudity, she let out a high, frantic scream. Megan joined in, Talia’s hysteria feeding her own, until it seemed impossible that someone wouldn’t hear them.
Nate laughed as Talia launched herself clumsily off the couch, her legs buckling as the effect of whatever he’d drugged her with maintained its hold.
“Scream as loud as you want. No one can hear you except for me.” He dragged Talia to the middle of the floor, positioning her on a beige rug that Megan just now realized was covered with heavy plastic.