The distant sound of an engine’s purr floated over the rushing water. Sean trained his beam on the bank. A furrow in the mud showed where a boat had been pulled onto the riverbank.
“Son of a bitch. He’s been coming in by boat.” Sean pointed his light at the water, but the boat was long gone.
Nausea rose fresh in Mike’s gut. Rachel’s stalker had won.
Rachel opened her eyes to a dark and blurry sight. She blinked hard to clear her vision. The cold metal under her head rocked and pitched. Pain ricocheted through her skull as it bounced. Water sloshed over her, the icy cold a cruel slap that sent a shiver coursing through her torso. She tried to raise a hand to her face, but couldn’t. Her hands were tied together with rope. Nylon bit into the bare skin of her wrists. Her ankles were similarly bound.
The floor beneath her pitched sharply again. A boat. She was curled in the bottom of a flat-bottomed aluminum boat, wedged between the seats. Whoever was manning the outboard motor at the rear of the boat wasn’t in her line of sight.
She debated moving so she could reach her bound ankles. Would he notice in the dark? She was partially concealed between the bench seats. Was he preoccupied handling the boat on the rough water?
The bow lifted and slapped down violently on the water. Rachel’s head bounced, and her vision blurred for a few seconds. She closed her eyes against rising nausea. Terror and soot clogged her throat. Slowly, she curled tighter, drawing her knees up until they were close to her chest. Her hands sought the rope binding her ankles. Moving as little as possible, she picked at the wet strands of nylon. Agony shot up her hands. Her burned fingers fumbled. She inched her hand toward her front pocket, where her knife pressed against her hip.
The flat-bottomed hull of the fishing boat was meant for calm lake waters, not the rough chop of the swollen river. The boat rose and slapped on the water rhythmically as the hull hit a series of waves. Rachel’s body jarred on the bottom of each trough. Water poured over the side and soaked her jeans.
But she slid the knife between her palms and went to work on the ropes.
The boat turned sharply and then picked up speed. Then the ride abruptly smoothed out.
“We’re almost home.”
Rachel turned toward the familiar voice. Concealing the knife between her hands, she lifted her head to see over a cushion. He sat at the rear of the boat. One hand steered the outboard motor. The other held a spotlight. He set the light on the seat next to him and flipped a toggle. The light switched from spot to lantern, illuminating a circle around them. He adjusted something on the motor. A gust of wind blew his hood back and revealed his face.
Mike listened to the engine sound fade. “Who? Who is it?”
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“It’s someone who knows her very well. Someone who knows she’s claustrophobic and faints at the sight of blood and is allergic to bees. Who would know all that and be comfortable taking out a small boat on a flooded river?”
“Will Martin? Troy? They both hunt and fish.”
“Maybe.” But it didn’t feel right. Bandit squirmed in Mike’s arms. The dog stared into the underbrush. A growl rose out of the small muzzle.
Someone groaned.
Gun in hand, Sean crept toward the sound. “Oh, shit.” He holstered his weapon and pushed through the brush. A few seconds later, he dragged a limp body into the clear.
Will Martin’s face was gray as river water. Blood soaked his T-shirt over his belly. Sean pressed two fingers to Will’s throat. “He’s still alive, but just barely.”
Sean ripped the bloody cloth, revealing a gaping knife wound. He tore off a strip of Will’s shirt, balled it up, and pressed down hard.
“He can’t last long the way he’s bleeding.” Mike whipped out his cell to call for an ambulance. The 911 operator confirmed what he already suspected. “An ambulance was already dispatched to the fire. They should be at the house. I’ll send them back.” Mike was already moving back toward the house.
“Don’t you go after her without me.”
“Gotta go.” Mike jogged off. He called over his shoulder, “I’ll let you know where I am. You can catch up.” He left Sean cursing.
Dialing Nancy’s home number, Mike took off through the woods.
Well, that ruled out Will. And Troy. He was a lowlife, but he wouldn’t kill his best buddy.
Nancy picked up on the second ring. “What happened?”
Mike summed up the events of the evening. “I need you to access some tax records.”
Mike ended the call just as he burst from the trees. An ambulance was parked behind the fire crew. Firefighters trained hoses on the burning pile that had once been Rachel’s barn. They were also spraying down the back and roof of the house. The wind had shifted, blowing embers toward the old stone structure. Mike snagged the arm of the first paramedic and gave him quick directions to the spot where Sean tended Will.
Mike looked for Sarah and the girls and found them huddled on the front lawn. He handed Sarah the dog.
Damn. He couldn’t just leave them here.
A Ford Explorer bounced up the driveway, drove across the grass to avoid the chaos of emergency vehicles, and parked near the house. Jack slid out, grabbing his cane and limping up the back lawn. “Look, I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but Sean called me for help. Where is he?” Jack’s gaze scanned the chaos in the yard.
Mike told him. “Look, I don’t want to get into…everything right now. Can you take Sarah and the girls back to your place?”
Disappointment crossed Jack’s face, but he covered it quickly. He’d been a good cop, but his leg injury kept him out of the action. “No problem. But where are you going?”
Being sidelined sucked, but Mike couldn’t risk Jack slowing him down. “Rachel’s father knows more than he’s saying, and I have someone pulling tax records to see who owns waterfront property.”
“Wait for Sean.”
Mike shook his head. “It’ll take the paramedics too long to get to him. Waiting is too risky. I’m going after her.”
“Good luck.” Jack nodded, understanding in his eyes. He knew what it was like to have the woman he loved in danger.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Light played across David’s face. Shock immobilized Rachel for a few seconds. “Oh my God.” Everything blurred around her as her lungs locked down.
“Surprised?” His smile was cold and feral in the lamplight.
Icy fear restarted Rachel’s heartbeat. She sucked in a breath. Then another, until her vision cleared.
The boat bumped into a dock. David shut off the engine and climbed. He gathered the bow line and pulled the boat alongside the dock.
While he was occupied securing the lines, Rachel sawed at the rope around her ankles. David turned to check on her. She froze, though her hands continued to shake. “Why?”
“You look so much like her.” David leaned over the boat. Still trussed like a turkey, Rachel cringed at the intensity in his stare. His eyes were too bright, nearly feverish in the yellow light of the lantern. “Do you know what life was like for me? Changing my dad’s diapers when everyone else was out having fun? Your mother was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I couldn’t leave my dad alone; watching her was all I had. She got me through those terrible years. She understood what I was going through. She knew what it was like to be unhappy. Because she was miserable too.”
“Did you kill Harry Boyle?”
David grabbed the light and scooped her effortlessly off the bottom of the boat as if she were a child. Her skin crawled where he touched her. He’d been tormenting her for months. Now she was helpless. He could do whatever he wanted.
“Harry had to die for using her like that. She was fragile. He was trying to talk her into leaving me, running away with him. She was going to do it. Betray me because of his manipulation. So I took him out of the picture. And she stayed.”
He carried her up the dock.
“Why did y
ou bury him in my basement?”
“It was the only place where the ground wasn’t frozen solid. I’d been helping take care of the place while your grandfather was in the hospital. I had a key, and I’d found that room while I was putting some stuff into storage down there.” David sighed. “I was just a kid. I panicked. Over the years I thought about moving him but decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Even if he was found, no one would tie me to his death. Except you. You were the problem. You saw me that night. Looked right at me. You are the only one who can link me to anything.”
“What do I know?”
“You saw me that night. Only you can link me to Harry’s murder.”
A shiver, part cold, part terror, shook Rachel’s bones and lodged in the pit of her stomach. David wasn’t thinking straight. He’d just left a murder victim behind. Now he was going to kill her because she could link him to a twenty-five-year-old case? She would never have put her nightmares together with Harry’s murder if David hadn’t started all this.
“Too bad they found you in that storage bin. If you’d just died then, I wouldn’t be in this situation now.” David looked down at her, his eyes bright with maniacal intensity. “Too bad another opportunity like that one never popped up over the years.”
“Why didn’t you kill me years ago? You had plenty of chances.”
“As long as the body remained hidden, I figured I was safe. Now that Harry’s been found, everything’s different. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. I tried to make you leave, but you wouldn’t go. Now that there’s a body and a new investigation, I have to kill you.” But the odd light shining in his eyes told Rachel he had other things planned. Whether he was going to rape her and kill her or just kill her didn’t matter at the moment. She had to get away. Mike would never find her in time. She was on her own. Thoughts of him sent a pang through her heart. She’d finally found someone who truly understood her—and wanted her anyway. She wasn’t going to let David take that away from her. Dammit.
Beyond a sloping and weedy rear lawn, the cabin at the top of the hill was small and dark and isolated. Rachel did not want to be alone in it with David.
She stabbed him in the shoulder.
“You bitch!” He dropped her and the lantern.
The soft, wet earth cushioned her fall. She still clenched the knife. One more flick of the blade freed her feet. Clutching his wounded shoulder, David lifted a boot and tried to stomp on her. She rolled out of the way. When his foot hit the dirt, she slashed at his hamstring. The pocketknife was small, but she kept it sharp. He fell to his knees and grabbed the back of his thigh.
Rachel ran for the darkness of the woods on rubbery legs, her hands still bound.
Cursing and irregular footsteps echoed in the moist air. Even injured, David was right behind her. She plunged into the trees. Her lungs burned as she ran into a pine branch. Needles stung her skin. She was seized by a bout of coughing as she stumbled on a dead bough in the dark. She couldn’t run like this for long, not with lungs still filled with smoke and soot. All he had to do was follow the sound of her hacking her lungs up.
David’s footfalls drew closer.
Mike banged on Neil Parker’s door. There was no sound or movement in the house. He ran around to the back of the house, where the den was located. Covering his eyes with one hand, Mike peered in the window. Parker was sprawled in his recliner, an empty glass by his elbow. From the looks of him, he’d been there awhile.
He definitely wasn’t currently piloting a boat on the river.
But did he know anything? Mike went to the back door and raised a foot to kick it open. His phone buzzed. Nancy.
“I’m here at the tax office now. Edna is at the computer. No waterfront property for Cristan Rojas, Blake Webb, Neil Parker, or David Gunner.”
Damn. Mike’s eyes drifted to the house next door. We had a place at Lost Lake when I was a kid, David Gunner had said. Harry Boyle had owned a Jeep like the one pulled out of Lost Lake. Rachel’s voice played in his head. David’s bedroom was across the yard from mine. My friends and I used to try to catch a glimpse of him through the window.
Mike walked to the side yard. The windows of the houses looked out on each other. Had Rachel seen David covered in blood after he’d killed Harry?
“Mike? Are you there?” Nancy shouted over the line.
“It’s Gunner.” Mike sprinted for the truck. “What’s his address?”
He heard Nancy relaying the information and keys clicking in the background. Nancy read off an address in town.
“Is there a property out by Lost Lake registered to him?”
More keys clicked. “Not that we can find.”
“Keep looking.” Mike ended the call, pulled away from the curb, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
David Gunner owned a small saltbox-style house on a quiet street at the edge of the town proper. The wooden clapboards were white and freshly painted, as was the black trim and shutters. Mike looped the house, peering in all the windows on the floor. As expected, no one was home. This residential street would be a tough place to stash a kidnapping victim. A rural cabin, however, would be just the spot.
If she were still alive. Mike pushed back the panic.
David should have records somewhere in his house. Mike, grateful for the moment that he wasn’t acting as the police chief, climbed the front steps and smashed the sidelight with the butt of his flashlight. With gloved hands, he reached in and flipped the lock.
The inside of the house was just as neat as the outside. His boots clumped on the hardwood as he checked each room downstairs and climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. Bingo. First room was a home office. He booted the computer and searched the desk while it warmed up. A locked drawer on the bottom yielded to a solid kick.
Instead of tax or utility bills, Mike found a stash of photo albums. He lifted them out. No dust, although one was yellowed around the edges. He opened the book. Pictures of Rachel’s mother filled every page. They weren’t posed shots either, but the kind of photos taken without the subject’s knowledge. Many were amateurish, some were shot through a bedroom window.
Other albums contained pictures of women Mike didn’t recognize. David’s subjects over the years? Mike set them aside. The top drawer held a pile of loose photos. A rubber band held a stack of pictures of Rachel. Rachel working. Rachel looking out her kitchen window. A blurry shot of Rachel passing her bedroom window in a towel. Another group of photos were of Tanya Mitchell, all equally personal and private and sick.
Mike suppressed his rage and disgust as he moved to the computer. Getting through the password protection would take too much time.
Mike kept moving through the office until he found a stack of current bills tucked in a ledger for Parker Construction. There it was. A utility bill for a property at Lost Lake. The house was owned by David’s mother and listed under her maiden name. He dialed Sean’s number. “Where are you?”
“Just getting in my truck. What did you find?”
“It’s David Gunner. He has a cabin out at Lost Lake.” Mike read off the address. “I’ll meet you there.” Sean was on the opposite side of the township. Mike would get there first.
He dialed Nancy while he sped out to Lost Lake.
Rachel stopped beneath a huge pine to breathe. She leaned a hand on the rough bark, turned her mouth into her shoulder, and muffled a cough. Her damaged lungs constricted. The path ran parallel to the water. Below, the lake shifted in the dark. She turned her knife backward and sawed awkwardly at the rope binding her wrists. The clouds parted and the moon glimmered on the water. The rope dropped away from her hands. She picked it up and shoved it into her pocket. He might find her, but she wasn’t going to make it easy.
She continued her climb, aiming for an outcropping that rose from the slope above. A twig snapped behind her, and she quickened her strides. The trail flattened out into a small clearing. A narrow crevice separated two enormous boulders. She stuck her head insid
e; the crevice continued, but it was too dark to see how far. If she couldn’t see the end, then David couldn’t either. Sweat broke out on her freezing skin at the thought of wiggling into that small space. The fit would be tight for her. David would never be able to squeeze through.
She glanced behind her again. What choice did she have? Even injured, David was closing in on her. She couldn’t outrun him. She wasn’t exactly in prime condition.
Something rustled.
Options? Chicken out because of an irrational fear or die.
She turned sideways and eased into the crevice. The rock walls scraped her back through her the soft cotton of her shirt. The space tightened. She pushed forward. She was going to get stuck. She’d be trapped. He’d find her and kill her while she was helpless and unable to defend herself.
Her heart beat loudly enough that David would surely hear it if he passed. She exhaled and sidled a few more inches into the crevice. Almost there.
Underbrush rustled. Closer.
Tucked three feet into the fissure, Rachel peered out into the darkness. She heard him before she saw him, the snap of pine needles that could’ve been an animal but wasn’t. David limped into the clearing, his bulk casting a long shadow across the ground. He passed her hiding spot and kept going, moving out of her narrow field of vision.
She breathed shallowly through her mouth, her fear of the tight space momentarily overridden by the terror of discovery.
Light illuminated the crevice.
“There you are.” An arm reached for her.
Rachel’s heart went ballistic as she pulled backward as far as possible. She was trapped. Her hiding place had just become her grave.
Headlights off, Mike eased to the side of the road. David’s cabin was ahead. A small timber structure with a wooden front porch. The forest closed in so tightly around the building that the canopy met over its steeply pitched roof. Sunlight wouldn’t touch its cedar shakes, not even at high noon. Even with the moonlight that had broken through the clouds, David’s place was dark as sin.
She Can Tell Page 26