by Lisa Jackson
If he was into this depraved videotaping, could it be even worse? Could he have films of the girls’ abductions? Their abuse? Even their murders?
Dear God, she hoped not. Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel as she attempted to rein in her imagination. “Don’t borrow trouble,” she warned herself.
And besides, she had no basis for these runaway thoughts. If the missing girls had shown up on the Internet, wouldn’t someone at the college have seen them by now? Recognized them? Surely the police and campus security had searched the World Wide Web.
Taillights flashed ahead.
Jay’s truck stopped at the light.
Lost in her reverie, Kristi had to slam on her brakes. Her Honda skidded, tires squealing. Antilock brakes grabbed, released, grabbed again. She braced herself, ready for the impact and shriek of twisting metal.
Her hatchback’s nose stopped less than an inch from the Toyota’s bumper.
“Oh, God.” She let out her breath, then gasped at the screech of tires behind her. Glancing fearfully in the rearview mirror, she helplessly watched a big van shimmy and slide, narrowly avoiding smashing into her.
Kristi exhaled slowly, her heart pounding. Jay, his silhouette visible to her, looked up. She lifted her hands, palms upward, to acknowledge that she’d been an idiot. She hoped the guy in the van who had barely missed hitting her witnessed her silent apology as well.
“Concentrate,” she told herself as rain pummeled the windshield and the wipers struggled to keep up. She had to pay better attention. The roads were slick with rain, the clouds dark and close, the day gloomy and winter-dark.
The stoplight switched to green. Jay eased into the intersection and Kristi followed carefully. She tried her best to keep her mind on the surrounding traffic and road ahead, but the truth of the matter was that her thoughts were elsewhere. Someone had broken into and wired her apartment. Watched her. Videotaped her. Her skin crawled as she imagined him getting off on watching her undress, or sleep or shower or make love to Jay.
“Bastard,” she muttered as she drove through the city, her wipers struggling with the rain. “You’ll get yours,” she added, following Jay onto a side street. The car behind her, only visible as headlights through the rain, made the turn as well.
It was the same dark van that had nearly slammed into her.
Right?
Another turn.
The vehicle lagged behind.
But eventually the headlights swung in behind her.
As if he were tailing her.
Which was ludicrous. Her imagination really was running wild.
Nonetheless, Kristi’s heart clutched. Every nerve in her body tightened. She told herself to let it go, but she couldn’t drag her gaze from the rearview mirror.
Was the guy in the van—if it was still the van, she wasn’t completely sure—was he the same person who had run the surveillance operation on her apartment?
Jay turned onto a final lane, a cul-de-sac, the street sign nearly shouting out the address that he’d written on the back of his business card, the one lying on the passenger seat.
She shot by. Barely braking.
The vehicle behind her stayed with her, didn’t peel off to follow Jay. “Who the hell are you?” she thought, and made certain all her doors were locked. She angled through the side streets of the neighborhood until she recognized one as being a major arterial. Turning left onto the two-way street, she checked her rearview mirror.
Sure enough, the big rig followed.
But it was more cautious now, blending into the increasing traffic. Her phone began to ring, but she ignored it. She had to concentrate. A half mile later, making certain the dark van was boxed between a Taurus and a Jeep, Kristi saw the light ahead turn amber.
Perfect.
Heart thudding, fingers clenched around the steering wheel in a death grip, she trod on the accelerator, reaching the intersection just as the light changed. It turned a blazing red just as she sped through.
The rest of the traffic stopped.
“You son of a bitch! Just keep coming!” she yelled jubilantly. Her cell phone started ringing again but she couldn’t get it. She had to concentrate, keep moving.
She blew past the first side street, and turned a quick corner at the second one, just as she noticed the stoplight, where the van was held up, changing again.
Damn!
He might try to cut her off. She took another right, spied a church parking lot and slid inside, killing her running lights and cutting a three-sixty in the empty lot, so that she was faced out, her foot off the brake, the car idling and partially blocked from view by an overgrown laurel hedge.
Sure enough, the van sped past, the driver, a dark blur.
Turning on her lights, she edged into the street. She saw the van turn the corner she’d taken less than three minutes earlier. “Bastard.” If she could get close enough to spy the numbers on his license plate, then she could have her father or Jay check with the DMV and nail the jerk.
For the first time since she’d started this investigation she felt as if she might be getting somewhere. She reached the corner and turned the wheel sharply, throwing up a sheet of water as her tires hit a puddle. The van was two blocks up and moving slowly, brake lights intermittently glowing red as he searched for her.
She stepped on the gas, her heartbeat thudding. What if he stopped? He would recognize her car. “Too bad.” She speed-dialed Jay as she closed the distance.
“What happened to you?” he demanded.
“Someone was following us…or me.”
“Jesus, Kris, where the hell are you? Are you okay?” She heard an edge of panic in his voice. “I’m coming—”
“No, I gave him the slip and now I’m following him.”
“I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Just hang on the line.”
“I’m on my way. Where the hell are you?”
“Don’t know…somewhere off the ten…not far from University Lake.”
“That far south? Holy shit!” She heard keys rattling and he was breathless as if he were running. Then a door slammed. “Tell me the next cross street.”
“Hang on! Oh, no…He’s heading for the freeway.”
“Let it go.”
“Can’t do it.” She tossed the phone onto the seat and hit the accelerator as a sports car, roaring around a corner, cut in front of her. “Idiot!” she screamed, hitting the brakes and feeling the car shimmy beneath her. “You son of a bitch!”
The driver, oblivious, cut around another car and Kristi gunned her Honda onto the ramp for the freeway, but she knew before she merged that the chase was over.
The bastard had disappeared.
She picked up the phone. “You still there?” she asked, already searching for the next exit.
“What the hell happened?”
“Nothing, he lost me. I’m on my way back.”
“For the love of God, Kris. Don’t—”
“I said I’m on my way back. I’ll be at your aunt’s house in twenty minutes.”
“You scared the bloody hell out of me,” he admitted, and she heard it in his voice, how worried he’d been. Which made her feel warm inside. She knew she was falling in love with him. Oh, hell, maybe a tiny part of her had never stopped loving him, but she hadn’t been convinced that the feeling was mutual. Until now. “You know, Kris, this is starting to get dangerous. Maybe we should rethink going to the police.”
She imagined her father’s reaction, the fight that would ensue. She eased onto the exit ramp. “How about we wait until we see who thinks he’s the next Spielberg,” she said. “Once we catch him on tape, we’ll have something more concrete.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll discuss it. Come on, Jay,” she cajoled, as she headed north on River Road, past the old state Capitol building, a Gothic castle-shaped edifice that loomed on a bluff above the slowly moving Mississippi River. “You promised me a week.”
“My mistake.”
“The first of many,” she teased, feeling better. “I’ll see ya in a few.” She hung up before he could argue, or before she let it slip that she was going to set her own little trap. Tonight.
At Father Mathias’s morality play.
She only hoped her plan would work.
“So far, we’ve got ourselves a big potful o’ nothing!” Ray Crawley snorted in disgust and cast an “I-told-you-so” look at Portia Laurent.
A detective for the Baton Rouge Police Department, Crawley was a big, bulky bear of a man who stood six-four and fought the beginnings of a beer gut. He had huge hands and a nasty disposition when he was angry, and now, standing in the rain, he was well past angry and doing sixty toward infuriated. Shoulders hunched, he smoked a cigarette and stared at the swamp where boats with divers and bright lights were searching the water through a relentless downpour.
It was getting dark, the gloom of the day seeping into Portia’s skin, the shadows in the boggy wetlands growing longer as she stood clustered with Del Vernon and Crawley, who called himself “Sonny,” and a hunter by the name of Boomer Moss.
Wearing the raincoat and boots she always kept in her car, Portia huddled under an umbrella. Her boots sinking in the mud, she thought she would just about kill for a cigarette, but decided against bumming one from Crawley, who was just looking for an excuse to round on someone.
“You sure this is where you caught the gator?” Sonny asked with obvious skepticism, rain sliding off the bill of his police department cap. The area had been searched by boat, on foot, and when possible, by divers. With no luck.
But Moss, the poacher, was adamant this was the area in which he’d bagged the bull alligator. That prime gator that the cops had confiscated and trucked off to their crime lab.
“Right through them there trees,” Boomer Moss insisted, pointing toward a stand of ghostly white cypress, their roots twisting and visible above ground and the black water.
“We looked there.” Crawley drew hard on his cigarette.
“I’m tellin’ ya, that’s where I got him.” Moss’s voice elevated an octave in agitation. Dressed head-to-toe in camouflage, he jabbed a finger at the nearest cypress. Even in the gathering darkness, with the cold winter air sitting heavy in the swamp, Portia saw that Boomer was sweating, drips drizzling from beneath his hunting cap and down a cheek stretched over a wad of tobacco. Obviously, he didn’t like dealing with the police.
But then, nobody did.
Portia watched a boat slide noiselessly over the water as a diver, shaking his head, surfaced. It had been that way for hours.
“I just hope to hell you’re not bullshitting me,” Crawley said as he stubbed out his cigarette and it hissed against the wet weeds.
“Why would I even bother to come in?” Moss asked.
“You knew you’d be in trouble. So maybe you were just showing off. Proud of the arm…maybe you’re involved.”
“Well, if I was, I’d have to be a real dumb-ass, now wouldn’t I? I came to you guys cuz I thought it was the right thing to do. My civic duty, or whatever ya want to call it. The arm was in that gator’s gut, and I figured you all would want it. But I don’t know where it came from before it ended up in that gator’s stomach.”
He was mad now and he spat a stream of tobacco juice to the ground. “I done what I had to. Can I go now?”
“Not just yet,” Crawley said, obviously enjoying the poacher’s discomfiture. That was the trouble with Sonny Crawley, Portia thought, he had a mean streak. But it looked like the hunt would be fruitless, at least for today.
Whatever secrets were hidden deep in this swamp would remain submerged, concealed beneath the murky water for at least another night.
CHAPTER 22
Hours later, Kristi drove back to campus.
She didn’t like lying.
As a teenager lies had slipped over her tongue easily, but now, ten years later, she had more trouble hiding the truth.
She’d had to lie to Jay.
She’d gotten to his house and explained about the van and he’d wrapped his arms around her and held her as if he never wanted to let her go. “You stupid, stupid girl,” he said into her hair.
“I’m not taking that as a compliment,” she responded.
“It wasn’t meant to be one. Who knows who that guy was? What he’s capable of? Oh, for the love of God….” He’d kissed her hard then, his lips hungry, eager, his hair wet from the rain. She’d wound her arms around his neck and returned the ardor of his kiss. “Jesus, you scared me,” he said. “I was afraid—”
“Shh.” She hadn’t wanted to hear his fears. Had only wanted to be reassured by his strength.
He hadn’t disappointed. With his hands firmly splayed over her back, his legs had pressed against hers, and silently, still kissing her, he began walking forward, strong thighs pushing against hers and forcing her backward. They’d tugged at each other’s clothes, yanking them off, breathing hard, as he guided her through an open doorway and into a bedroom painted a hideous color of blue. Her calves encountered something hard and Jay pulled her down so that they tumbled together onto a small cot with a sleeping bag and single pillow.
She hadn’t cared.
She’d only wanted to lose herself in him.
Their lovemaking had been fast and anxious, lips touching and tasting hungrily, fingers skimming hot, fevered skin, desire fueled by anxiety.
Release had come quickly.
They’d collapsed together, spent, sweating, their heartbeats pounding in tandem on the skinny little cot.
Kristi had hated that she needed to lie. Had put it off and put it off, not wanting the afternoon with Jay to end.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face and staring into his slumberous amber eyes.
He laughed. “And I was going to say it was magical…wondrous…incredible…and—”
“And you’re full of it, McKnight.” Then she kissed him and rolled off the cot to pull on her clothes.
He’d been pretty damned adamant about going to the police again, and she’d had to talk fast and hard to convince him to wait. She hadn’t been completely truthful, at least as far as her plans were concerned. She hadn’t been able to be.
She’d waited until he was distracted with grading papers and watching the computer screens that showed the porch and interior of her apartment, compliments of his surveillance cameras. She pretended to be absorbed as well, double-checking the chat rooms, though it was far too early for any of her newfound Internet “friends” to appear. Then while Jay was in his study, she retrieved the chain with the vial of what she presumed was Tara Atwater’s blood. Tonight, at the play, she planned to wear the weird necklace. See what kind of reactions she got.
Jay had already tried to lift a latent fingerprint from the tiny vial, but the glass had been clean, so Kristi wasn’t disturbing any evidence—as long as the vial filled with the dark red liquid was intact.
It was slightly horrific, but so what?
So was the camera in her apartment.
So was being followed by a dark van.
If she wanted to break into the inner circle of this cult, she’d better work fast.
The vial of blood had been a godsend.
Or the work of the devil.
So she’d escaped without Jay noticing she’d taken the vial and here she was, driving toward campus, checking her rearview mirror for looming dark vans. Had it been navy blue? Black? Charcoal gray? She didn’t know. She hadn’t gotten a clear view of the plates, but had thought they weren’t from out of state. The windows had seemed tinted but she didn’t know the make. Maybe a Ford. Or a Chevy. Something domestic.
So much for her incredible powers of observation.
The defroster in her Honda had decided to malfunction and was giving her fits. She had to keep the window down in order to see through her windshield to the wet, shiny streets. It was already dark with clouds completely blocking the rapid
ly setting sun, rain drizzling from the sky, and night coming fast.
Thankfully, traffic was thin and sparse on a Sunday evening and there was a chill in the air that reminded her that it was the dead of winter.
Jay had left for his meeting as Kristi headed to Father Mathias’s morality play, yet another rendition of Everyman, though Jay had made a last protest.
“I don’t like you going to the play alone,” he’d said seriously as she was getting ready to leave. “I can cancel with Hollister. She just wants to discuss how the class is coming along, I think. Compare it to how Dr. Monroe handled it. But it’s not a big deal, I can reschedule.”
“I don’t think it would be good if we’re seen together.”
“Someone already has,” he remarked. “And took a video.”
“Don’t remind me.” She’d grimaced. “Besides, Hollister is head of your department.”
“I don’t have to see her today. Besides, I’ve talked with Dr. Monroe a couple of times since I took over and I’ve got her notes to work with. I’m pretty much sticking to her curriculum. If she comes back next term, she’ll be good to go.”
“Is she returning?” Kristi asked.
“Don’t know. Depends on the relocation of her mother. She’s having trouble finding the right place for her.”
“So you don’t have any idea if you’re going to be teaching next term?”
“Not yet. Though maybe you could convince me to take the job if it’s offered.”
He waggled his brows lasciviously and she laughed as she headed out.
It was dark now, her headlights catching all the raindrops falling in silver streaks to the pavement. She was halfway to All Saints when her cell phone rang. She expected it to be Jay, once again warning her to be careful.
“Hello?” she said, turning into the parking lot of her apartment building.
“Kristi Bentz?” a deep voice asked as she pulled into a spot a few over from hers because some jerk had taken hers with his jacked-up pickup and oversized tires. Before she could respond, he said, “This is Dr. Grotto. First, I want to apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I did get your message.” His voice was so smooth, the same tenor as when he taught, and in her mind’s eye she saw him, the tall man with black hair and dark eyes, his strong jaw dark with beard shadow. She forgot being angry that she had to park a few steps further from the stairs. “You mentioned you’d like a meeting and now my schedule has cleared a bit. So how about tomorrow afternoon? Say…four? I have some time then.”