by Alex Kava
And suddenly it occurred to her and she stopped dead in her tracks.
Would Jack have a dog to help track her and Tully? Had the dog already found Tully?
No, the barking came from the opposite direction.
She started walking again, only this time she took careful steps, watching ahead for movement and frustrated because she still didn’t see any. The ground sloped enough that she needed to climb. She kept a steady pace and glanced over her shoulder. Streaks of daylight created shadows as well as blind spots.
Maggie slowed her pace as she got closer to the barking dog. Just over this next slope she knew she’d be able to see the commotion. She slammed her back against a tree, then dropped into a crouch. Urgency fought a battle with caution. The trees came right up to the edge of the river. Keeping low to the ground, she hid behind the shrubs and fallen branches. Now she could hear the dog’s sharp bark and growls within a hundred feet. But she also heard rushing water. She eased herself up to take a look over the edge of the riverbank.
Down below she could see an inflatable blue-and-white boat pulled up on a sandbar. Two men wrestled and rolled in the sand while a huge dog barked and snarled from its perch inside the boat. The dog had on a bright yellow vest and harness. And then Maggie realized one of the men was Creed. The other was Jack. Her eyes caught a glint of sunlight off the knife blade in Jack’s hand.
She stumbled to her feet and searched for a way to get down the bank. She’d have to cross the river to reach them. A tangle of debris—branches and stumps and roots, three and four feet thick—prevented her from charging down. When she looked up again, the dog had given up barking from the boat and now danced and snapped around the men, but they were locked and rolling in such a tight clench that even the dog couldn’t get a bite of its owner’s attacker.
Maggie started to yell. Jack wanted her, not Creed.
The gushing water filled her ears and drowned out her voice.
The debris was all along her side of the bank. She couldn’t get to the water without plunging down and hoping not to get tangled in it. She sat on the slick clay bank and slid her legs over the edge. She tested her feet, then her weight on some of the thicker branches in the snarl of debris.
Just as she was getting ready to push herself from the bank she saw Otis. He was coming out of the trees from behind Jack and Creed.
The dog whimpered. Maggie saw a spray of blood as the dog jumped back.
“Damn it, Jack. Stop!” she yelled, pushing off and stepping onto the debris.
Immediately wood snapped and cracked, sending her right leg down into the mess of twisted roots, fallen branches, and a snare of twigs and vines. Something stabbed into her calf and she could feel the rush of cold water. She pulled her leg up and tried again. Instead of walking over the tangle, she crawled. Almost to the water, the debris swallowed her again as wood snapped.
The men had not stopped. The dog had joined the fight, again. There was more blood on the sugar-white sand.
She shoved and yanked, back and forth, ripping and pulling at the sticks and branches and vines that trapped her. Her feet kicked and splashed at the water underneath. Over the pounding of her heartbeat and the rush of water she thought she heard the helicopter again.
She was almost free of the tangled mess when she saw Otis jump down off the bank and onto the sandbar. He didn’t call to Jack. He didn’t seem to notice her, didn’t even look in her direction. He walked straight for the men with purpose, but not at all in a hurry. There was an unnatural calm about him.
He came within a foot of the twisted knot of men and dog. Otis was so close he could easily reach out with those huge hands of his and simply pluck the men apart. But instead he stopped and stood over them.
Then he raised the revolver in his hand and fired.
CHAPTER 73
The blast echoed through the trees and everything stopped.
No birds, no breeze, no rushing water. Maggie’s ears filled with the beat of her heart and the sound of her breathing.
“Otis, stop,” she yelled.
One shot. Only one. Why was he waiting?
Only one because he didn’t need to fire again. He had hit his target. Maggie’s stomach sank to her knees.
She shoved herself out of the debris, finally free, and staggered in the knee-deep water. The sandy river bottom sucked at her boots. The cold river numbed her senses. It was taking a lifetime for her to cross the forty feet of river. She didn’t look down. Didn’t check for logs jutting up out of the water. She didn’t take her eyes off the scene on the sandbar. Otis stood stockstill over the pile of limbs that hadn’t moved. Only the dog had backed away and now stood pointing, alert and waiting, not knowing what to do without its master’s instruction.
Otis’s hand with the gun fell to his side as he looked toward Maggie. She still wasn’t sure if he saw her, though she was thrashing through the water now. Adrenaline and dread kicking her heartbeat back up a notch. Then Otis slowly sank down onto his knees, letting the gun drag in the sand.
“Not right,” he mumbled. “Just not right.”
Maggie got to the sandbar as one of the men began to stir. The sand beneath them was red with blood. Maggie kept moving. She heard a moan and there was more movement. The dog raced toward the men, sniffing and poking. That’s when she saw that it was Creed pushing his way out from under Jack’s dead body. The dog had Jack’s shirttail in his teeth and was helping to pull the obstacle off his master.
Somewhere in the distance Maggie heard the helicopter.
Relief swept too quickly. She wanted to help Creed but she needed to focus on Otis. He hadn’t moved from where he had gone down in the sand. Now sitting, legs tucked under him, the man looked spent. But the revolver was still too close.
“I just wanna go home,” Otis said, glancing toward Jack. Almost as if he were telling the dead man.
Creed rolled onto his side, pushing the rest of Jack’s body off him.
“Bolo, stay.”
The dog immediately let go of the mouthful of Jack’s shirt. Bolo sat facing his master, anxiously waiting for his next command. Creed sat back in the sand and tapped his right palm against his heart. The dog bounded to his master, tail wagging. Immediately Creed’s hands were examining where blood streaked the side of the dog’s tan coat.
Maggie stepped around Jack’s body. She could see the back of his head had been blasted away. She kept moving, slowly, not wanting to set off Otis. As she eased her way toward Otis, she came around Creed. She was close enough to touch him, and she dragged her fingertips gently across his back. He looked up and she caught his eyes. They were a blue so deep she couldn’t imagine them lifeless. She pointed at Otis, giving Creed a warning look. And she continued her slow movement toward the sitting giant.
“I just wanna go home,” Otis was saying, the lopsided grin almost a grimace. “Three meals a day, TV …”
She stood off to his side, her shadow casting over him, and he looked up at her.
“Miss Helen’s was a real nice place, you know.” His tongue darted out to lick his lips and he squinted his eyes. His head tilted like he was thinking about it. “I was calm there. She was good to me and Jack. She was real good to me. Just like Miss Gwen.”
“Miss Helen sounds like a very special lady,” Maggie said.
Then the smile lifted one side of his mouth as if he had tasted something bad. “She wouldn’t like what Jack was doing.”
Maggie was sure he had forgotten about the gun, discarded in the sand right next to him. If she picked it up right now, would he even notice? But just as she reached down for it, Otis’s hand snatched it up.
And Maggie’s heart stopped.
His eyes met hers again, forehead furrowed, anxious but still grinning.
“I just wanna go home,” he told her. Then he held out the gun to her, grip first.
“We’ll do that, Otis. We’ll all go home,” she said.
CHAPTER 74
SACRED HEART HOSPITAL
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
Maggie didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until she felt the tap on her shoulder. She was startled to find Gwen in front of her and for a moment she couldn’t remember where she was.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you.”
Not only had Maggie fallen asleep, but she had managed to curl up into the waiting room’s double-set chairs outside of the trauma center.
“When did you get here?”
“Just a few minutes ago. Thunderstorms delayed the flight in.”
And now Maggie could see the flashes of lightning out the windows down the hall. Without warning, she smelled firewood and the musty cabin. She rubbed her eyes, pretending to wipe at the exhaustion when she really wanted to erase the image of Jack’s smile and his wolflike black eyes. One look at the concern and fatigue on Gwen’s face and Maggie shoved aside Jack and Otis.
“They said he’s still in surgery.”
“Yes,” Maggie said, and she patted the seat beside her for Gwen to sit. “But the bullet went clean through.”
She saw her friend wince.
“ ‘Bullet’ and ‘clean’ in the same sentence sounds like an oxymoron. How are you?” Gwen asked as she reached up and touched Maggie’s face.
A nurse in the ER had cleaned her scrapes and cuts, but Maggie knew she probably looked like hell.
“I’m okay.”
“I have to warn you. AD Kunze is here, too.”
“In Pensacola?”
“He’s with the Florida Highway Patrol and Otis.” Gwen noticed the look on Maggie’s face and added, “He was worried.”
“Now I know I’m dreaming.”
Gwen smiled but it didn’t last.
“I should have seen it,” she told Maggie, and suddenly her eyes had strayed to the far windows and the flickers of light. “I should have known Otis was lying.”
“Don’t be silly. How were you supposed to know?”
“I’m a psychologist, for God’s sake. I should be able to tell when someone’s lying.”
“Jack would have found another way,” Maggie said. “Even without Otis. He’s been stalking me for over a month. Ever since we found Gloria Dobson’s body outside that burning warehouse in the District. He brought me all the way to the Iowa farm just so he could watch me dig up his handiwork. Did you know he was there? At the farm with us?”
Gwen nodded.
“He actually helped us unearth the garbage bag. He watched the CSU tech pull out the receipt he’d left. The one for the orange socks.” Now that she thought about it, Maggie laughed, but there was no humor in it. “The bastard went out with us for drinks afterward. And I didn’t know. I have a master’s in behavioral science and ten years of profiling and I didn’t know that a serial killer was sitting across the table from me. And you think you should have known that Otis was lying to you?”
They both went silent. The doors to the trauma center opened and a yellow-gowned surgical staff member came out and then disappeared down the hall.
Gwen laid her hand on top of Maggie’s and she said, “Thank you for taking care of R.J.”
“Otis saved us. And a great deal of it was because of you.”
“Me?”
“You were kind to him. You reminded him of the only person who had loved him unconditionally.”
“I guess we all should be grateful to Miss Helen.” Then almost as an afterthought, Gwen asked, “Do you think Otis was lying when he said Jack had more dump sites?”
Maggie shrugged. She didn’t want to think about that. Right now she needed to concentrate on the survivors, and not just Tully.
Gwen’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID and Maggie saw something pass over her face—dread, anxiety, fear—she couldn’t tell for sure, and Gwen, aware that Maggie was watching her, quickly gave her a tight smile.
“I have to take this.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I’m sure it is. I just didn’t expect this call on a Sunday night. Excuse me.”
Gwen hurried away too quickly, as if she were running to answer a landline phone at the other end of the waiting room rather than the cell phone in her hand. It occurred to Maggie that Gwen simply wanted privacy. She shouldn’t worry, except that initial pained look on Gwen’s face left Maggie concerned.
She watched Gwen disappear down the hallway and then she saw Ryder Creed walk into the room. They noticed each other at the same time. The short distance between the door and her chair seemed to take Maggie’s breath away, and she wasn’t the one walking.
He had changed clothes, showered, and washed away all the blood and dirt. He smelled like fresh cotton pulled right out of the dryer. His hair was still damp and tousled, and without warning all the intensity she had felt in that Manhattan, Kansas, hotel room came swirling back as he sat down next to her. He looked straight ahead and when she glanced over at him, she realized he felt it, too.
“How’s Tully?” he asked, avoiding her eyes.
“Still in surgery.” She hated how good it felt to see him, to have him here. And suddenly she found herself telling him, “Thanks for being here.”
“I’m not here for you. I’m here for Tully.”
She could see him smile and remembered she had used that exact line on him while they waited during Grace’s surgery.
“How’s Bolo?”
“He’s actually doing good. Surface wound.”
Creed looked tired. The cuts and bruises on his face looked raw.
“Maybe you can come see him before you leave town. Grace, too.” Finally he looked at her and this time held her eyes.
Before she could respond, Gwen was back. Her face was pale, her eyes dazed. She sat down on the other side of Maggie without a word. She didn’t even seem to notice Creed. She had the phone still gripped in her hand.
Maggie put a hand on Gwen’s arm.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
“No, I guess I’m not,” Gwen said. “I have breast cancer.”
TUESDAY, MARCH 26
CHAPTER 75
MANHATTAN, KANSAS
This time Maggie had called Noah Waters from the airport. His father had almost hung up on her but stopped when she said, “The man who attacked Noah is dead.” But before she drove to her meeting with Noah, she called Sheriff Uniss in Sioux City, Iowa.
He answered with a lecture, telling her that he had been leaving messages for her for two days. Maggie’s and Tully’s cell phones still hadn’t been recovered after Jack tossed them into the forest. The sheriff wanted her to know they had found “Lily the lot lizard”—that’s exactly how he referred to her now. He told Maggie that somehow Lily had made it back to the farmhouse but she was still in serious condition now at the regional medical center. When she told him about Howard Elliott, the sheriff was stunned.
“Howard Elliott’s been a fine businessman in these parts for over ten years. He’s an independent contractor. Has his own truck. Folks say he took real good care of Helen Paxton after her husband disappeared.”
Disappeared?
Something about that reminded Maggie of Jack’s claim that he had killed his own father when he was a boy. Was it possible he had done the same to his foster father years later?
As soon as Maggie ended her call with Sheriff Uniss, she texted Agent Alonzo:
Skull found at Iowa farm—
check to see if it’s William Paxton.
Noah insisted on another walk. Maggie understood he wanted to get out of the house and somewhere that his parents couldn’t listen. It had been a week since the attack. He walked more confidently and wore regular shoes. His feet were healing. The cuts on his face were no longer red and swollen. And that wild-eyed panic that Maggie had seen in his eyes was finally gone. But Maggie knew—and she knew this all too well from experience—the real scars would never disappear.
“How do you know for sure it was him?”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the laminated card the Florida cri
me scene technicians had found in the back of John Howard Elliott’s panel truck. He had built the truck into a custom workshop for his business. As a skilled craftsman, Elliott worked on construction projects across the country. But his vehicle also included the tricks of his hobby.
There were magnetic signs for the outside of the truck that provided significant disguise. Signs that read: ST. VINCENT’S FOR THE HOMELESS, COMMUNITY RESCUE UNIT, and even FEMA. The disguises also included a variety of items Maggie realized would help him look vulnerable and add to his claim of being a nice guy who was “stranded.” There was an arm sling, crutches, a neck brace, and even a dog collar and leash.
And then there was the box of “souvenirs,” an old fish and tackle case. This one didn’t surprise Maggie, though it was the most difficult to go through. None of the items were particularly shocking, but they were deeply personal. Among the dozens of items they found inside were a Harley-Davidson belt buckle, a gold tooth, a shamrock pin, a book of poetry, a Saint Christopher’s medal, a lock of hair, and the card Maggie now handed Noah.
“My driver’s license,” he whispered.
Still not convinced, he asked, “How do you know he’s dead?”
“Because I was there, Noah. He gave me a chance to run just like he did with you.”
They’d stopped in the shade of a huge tree. Its roots had broken into the sidewalk. Noah was quiet. His head stayed down as he stared at the card that he held pinched tightly between thumb and index finger as if he still couldn’t believe it.
“It’s over, Noah,” Maggie said, her tone gentle. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”
“But I left Ethan behind.”
And now she could hear him trying to choke back a sob.
Maggie didn’t have an answer for him. She knew human instinct, had studied it, saw it at its worst, and took faith when she saw glimmers of it at its best. She’d never be able to explain to Noah why he had run and she didn’t. Why he had left Ethan and she couldn’t leave Tully. Why she wouldn’t let John Howard Elliott win. She had many more years and more experience fighting evil than Noah. Maybe that was the only difference.