“Jackson? He took a personal. Wasn’t feeling well.”
That wasn’t the answer Had was hoping for. “Do you have a phone number for him?”
“Sure,” Mason answered, then hesitated. “Look, you probably won’t get through to him. He… well… he doesn’t usually answer his phone when he’s not feeling well.” The detective scribbled down a number on a Post-It. “But here it is, anyway.”
Had dialed the number, and sure enough, it went straight to voicemail. There hadn’t even been one ring. Jackson had probably turned it off.
“What do we do now?” Reggie asked.
That was a good question. Joshua looked like he was about to keel over. Bella was vibrating at his feet, clearly upset. Had was sure the dog was picking up on the levels of stress, but knowing Bella, it could be a lot more than that.
“We have an address for Jackson,” Joshua said. “That’s our best bet. But we have to hurry.”
Putting words to action, Joshua moved off toward the parking garage. Something was nagging at Had, however. It seemed like there was some vital piece of information he was forgetting.
And then it came to him. “Hold on!” he called out to his teammates.
They stopped in their tracks. Reggie lifted an eyebrow, her expression asking the question. Now probably didn’t seem like the best moment to be taking their time.
Had agreed. Pulling out his phone, he opened up the locator app that he had installed on everyone’s cell. Well, everyone but Joshua, who had gotten a phone back during their first case and then ditched it afterward. Said he didn’t like to be on call. Whatever that meant.
“There!” he said, holding out the phone for the others to see. There was a map with an unmoving red marker. It looked like it was located in the warehouse district.
“Great,” Joshua drawled. “You have a map application. Just like every other idiot with a cellphone.”
“No, this dot is where Coop is,” he explained. “I put it on our phones so that Coop could know where we were. But it works the other way, too.”
“And you wonder why I don’t want a cell,” Joshua muttered.
“What about backup?” Had asked.
Reggie shook her head. “We have no idea who we can trust here. It’s best if we do this on our own.”
But she said it as they were moving out toward the car. They knew where they were going now.
It was time to go save Coop.
* * *
Sariah woke to a blazing headache, surrounded by darkness.
For a long moment, she had no idea where she was. But then memories began to filter back. A phone conversation with Reggie. The parking garage. A blow to the back of the head.
Well, she still didn’t know where she was, but at least she now had a better sense of the what. Why was a question that she didn’t even want to start on at the moment.
Stirring, Sariah found that her hands and feet were bound to the chair in which she was seated. And they were zip ties. Not much of a chance of getting out of those.
That was a law enforcement trick, for the times you didn’t have enough cuff, or you suspected that the unsub might know how to pick them. Strange that an FBI agent would get the same treatment she often gave to criminals.
But the movement seemed to have attracted attention. A form moved against the backdrop of darkness, coalescing into a person who stood before her. A ski mask covered the individual’s face, and the clothes were baggy, not giving any sort of identifiable shape to the body.
Smart.
A voice came out of the blackness. It was warped and altered, changed by a voice distorter. Another intelligent move on her captor’s part.
“You’re awake,” the voice said. “Good. Time to have some fun.”
Pulling out a satchel, the form reached inside and came out with a rope and a scalpel. Her captor noticed her attention.
“Just some things to help the process. You’ve been working the case. You know my MO.”
MO. Modus operandi. More police-speak. This person was involved in law enforcement on some level. Must be.
And Sariah was pretty sure she knew who it was.
“Jackson, you don’t have to do this.”
The figure’s head jerked up at the name, then seemed to slowly relax. A fractured laugh sounded in the room.
“Very good guess, Agent Cooper. You’ve got me pegged, don’t you?”
Sariah’s heart raced. There had to be something she could do in order to keep Jackson from hurting her. From gouging out her eyes, cutting off her ears, strangling her with the cord that was lying on the table in front of her.
“Was our investigation getting too close?” she challenged him, hoping to keep the man distracted until she could figure something out. “Decided you had to get rid of us before you got caught?”
The laugh deepened, even through the voice distortion. “Oh, Agent Cooper. So very, very mistaken.” The figure moved in close and bent over her. “It was never about that. This is something much more sacred.”
“What is it, then?” she taunted him. “Don’t like women being in charge over you?”
The form stiffened. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is about purity, plain and simple.”
“Purity?” she asked, a cold wash running down her spine.
“You’re a mixed blood,” the voice answered, the tone straightforward through the distortion effect. “That’s so much worse than most of the Blacks running around.”
The figure reached back into the bag, pulling out something that Sariah couldn’t identify. A pen, perhaps?
Standing right in front of her, Jackson leaned in, writing something on her forehead with the pen, using some sort of ink that felt wet and cold on her skin. Translating the phrase from the feel as he wrote on her, Sariah realized what it said.
Moe.
What the hell?
“I’m sick of the way things are headed in this country,” the voice said. “And it can all be traced back to your people, Agent Cooper.” There was a chuckle. “It’s like breaking up with someone, except in reverse. It’s not us, in this case. It’s you. All you.”
The strange reverberations of the voice distorter echoed through the space in which Sariah was being held. Bouncing sound waves reached her ears at different times, stretching the speech into bizarre contortions, as twisted as the sentiments it expressed.
But still, she had to keep him talking. And to do that, she might have to risk pissing him off a lot more.
Of course, doing that might hasten her demise. That wasn’t such a great idea. But at the very least, she might be able to forego the torture and skip right to the death part.
“Hey, Jackson, the Civil War is calling,” she taunted him, pleased to note that her voice only trembled a tiny bit. “They want their rhetoric back.”
The figure backhanded her with a casual violence that was even more shocking than the pain that spread through Sariah’s face. What was even more disturbing than the slap was the laughter that attended it, warped almost beyond recognition.
“Oh, Agent Cooper,” the voice whispered, amusement somehow still discernible through the voice changer. “It’s almost cute how you’re trying to manipulate me.”
Every response from the killer added to Sariah’s fear. She could find no purchase in Jackson’s psyche, was unable to rattle the man. It was like she was missing some fundamental piece of the puzzle that was keeping her intellectually as well as physically in the dark.
The form moved in closer to her. “I’m going to leave you to think for a while. But don’t worry. We’re going to have some fun together before you die.”
Sariah fell silent, all her desperate plans frozen in the wake of the icy steel she could hear buried in that distorted whisper. This person was clearly insane.
And before he was done with her, Sariah feared she would join him.
CHAPTER 6
“Warehouses. Why does it always have to be warehouses?”
<
br /> Joshua moved through the darkened space, his whisper to Bella bouncing back at him from the walls. He’d just entered a huge, open space that was even louder than the hallway he’d been in a moment ago. Stupid of him to make noise, but he was tired of jonesing for alcohol and wanted nothing more than to find Coop and be done with this case.
The team had split up to be able to search faster. Bella and Joshua in one pairing, Had and Reggie in the other. And now he and his dog were wandering around the labyrinthine workings of this structure, hoping to find Agent Cooper.
Why the hell had Coop gone and gotten herself captured? One thing was sure. If he ended up saving her, he expected something good out of it. Like his very own bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label.
Bella’s growl was all that alerted him. Before he knew what had happened, a metal pipe was making contact with his left side. It wasn’t more than a week ago that he’d been shot there by his daughter, and now Joshua could feel the tissue re-tearing as well as one or two of his ribs cracking.
He went down on his knees, trying to scuttle to the side. A dark figure stepped in, but was stopped by an attacking Bella, all fur standing on end and snapping teeth.
But their assailant was prepared. From out of a pocket came a Taser, and within seconds Bella was writhing in agony on the floor. Joshua tried to cry out in rage, to get their attacker’s attention, to do anything to keep his furry companion from suffering more pain, but all that came out was a retching sound as the pain in his side blossomed.
Stepping over Bella’s twitching form, the figure kicked out at Joshua’s side, catching him in the same spot as before. Agony spread through his body like a fast moving virus, set to consume its host.
The figure leaned down and grabbed Joshua by the hair, pulling his head back. A distorted voice issued forth from near its mouth.
“You are pure. That means you get to live.”
And then Joshua’s head was slammed into the concrete floor, and his vision swam. He reached out his hands to grab for his attacker, but what he found was not what he expected. A flash of insight burst into his mind, just as his head was pounded into the ground once more.
Blackness swallowed him whole, taking his discovery with him.
* * *
“Did you hear that?” Had whispered.
“Yeah,” Reggie answered. “Sounded like a struggle.”
“Joshua?”
“Maybe.”
Turning around, Had and Reggie worked their way toward the noise they had heard. They moved as quietly as they could, but with each step forward, Had cringed from the echoes their passage was stirring up.
No matter how careful he was, the gritty floor underneath him seemed to catch and amplify each step, ricocheting it off the walls around him. They sounded like two elephants tromping through the warehouse.
The more he tried to lessen the noise he was making, the slower he got. Reggie was starting to outpace him. He thought of calling up to her, but that would just increase the issue of sound.
As Reggie rounded the corner ahead of them, Had thought he heard something off to the side, through a closed door there. It might have been his imagination, but it was worth checking out. Again he considered trying to get Reggie’s attention, but the amount of sound he would have to make would make everyone who might be in the building… namely Jackson… aware of his presence.
Slipping through the door, Had was shocked to find Agent Cooper there, zip-tied to a chair, her mouth bound with a cloth. He rushed over to her side, ripping off her gag.
“Are you okay?” he gasped.
“Fine. How did you find me?”
“Cell phone app,” Had answered with a grin.
Coop returned the smile, but grimaced. “Quick, get me out of here. Had, it’s Jackson.”
“We figured.”
“What? How did you…?” Agent Cooper began, but then her eyes widened in fear. “No! Behind you!”
Had whipped around just in time to see a metal pipe rushing toward his face.
* * *
It took Reggie a few moments to realize that she was alone. One second Had was right behind her, the next she was adrift on her own, left without backup.
Damn but that boy was slow.
She now had two choices. Go back and find Had, or keep moving in the direction of the sound they had both heard. She chose the latter.
As she moved into a large, open space, she was inching her way forward when a streak of brown rushed toward her. Reggie raised her gun, ready to fire, when she realized that what she was seeing was a huge dog.
Bella had found her.
The Boxador pranced around Reggie’s feet, whining and wagging her tail. She nudged at Reggie, pushing her farther into the room. For a moment, Reggie wondered why, until she saw the sprawled form of Joshua there on the ground.
Kneeling at his side, she checked to make sure he was still breathing. Joshua stirred and groaned, clutching at his side.
“Reggie?”
“Yeah, Joshua. I’m here.”
“Where’s Had?” he asked, his face twisted in pain. He tried to sit up, but Reggie placed a hand on his chest, holding him down.
She gestured behind her. “Somewhere back there.”
“Go back and find him. Now.”
Rocking back on her heels, Reggie gave him a penetrating look. “What about you? You’re pretty messed up. Let me help you out.”
“No, you don’t get it.” Once more the former agent attempted to move, and Reggie was forced to hold him down.
“I understand you’re hurt and that you need to stay down,” she retorted.
From back where Reggie had left Had, there was a sudden shout of No! The voice was one that was immediately familiar to her. Reggie sprang to her feet.
“That’s Coop. She’s in trouble.”
“Wait. Reggie, there’s something I need to tell you,” he protested, then coughed. The spasm seemed to shake his whole body, and he grimaced in pain, retching.
Reggie was torn. She didn’t want to leave him there, but Coop sounded like she was in immediate danger. Patting Joshua’s head, she whispered at him.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
And then she was gone.
* * *
Sariah watched as the figure moved toward her, a scalpel in hand. The random thought flowed through her mind that at least now she would know the order of the mutilations. Apparently the ears were first.
“Don’t worry,” the distorted voice crooned. “No, actually, do. This is going to hurt. A lot.”
Taking a deep breath, Sariah said one word. She hoped it would be enough to at least make him curious enough to answer.
“Why?” she asked.
The figure stopped. There was something odd, something overly precise about the way he moved through space. But he was no longer progressing toward her. That was a good thing.
“Why Black people, you mean?” The voice rasped out at Sariah, violating her with its distortion. “Well, there’s almost too much to tell, darlin’.”
An unformed image swam in the back of Sariah’s mind. A tickling finger of recognition that she couldn’t quite identify.
“Try,” Sariah urged. Keep him talking. That was all. She had to keep him talking as long as she could.
“Part of it is the welfare. Part of it is the drugs. Part of it is the culture of glorified violence.” The sneer was evident, even through the voice changer. “But most of it is about a boy, Agent Cooper.”
The figure began moving once more, coming behind Sariah, the hand trailing over her shoulder, gliding up her neck. It was a lover’s caress, but warped with the hatred behind the words spoken.
“My boy.”
Agent Cooper felt her body stiffen with surprise. But before she could identify what had caused the reaction in her, she saw a shadow moving off to the side. A face appeared in the gloom, over the killer’s shoulder.
It was Reggie.
* * *
Had
was out cold on the floor. Coop was tied to a chair. And there, partially blocking Reggie’s view, was the killer.
There was no way Reggie could take a shot without possibly hitting Coop. Reggie was helpless unless she could get the figure out and away from Agent Cooper.
The way the dark form in front of Coop flowed in the shadows was silky, almost sensual. If it weren’t for the scalpel that glittered in the low light that had filtered through a crack in one of the painted windows, Reggie might have thought the scene some sort of an S&M seduction.
She heard the voice, distorted by one of those changing machines, continue whispering to Coop of the pain of losing a child at the hands of a Black drug dealer. The reason for the racial killings.
As far as Reggie was concerned, the killer could talk all day. It was keeping him from harming Coop. But then the sense of what was being said drew Reggie in.
Boy. A boy.
A boy lost to the streets, and according to the murderer, taken because of his involvement with the Blacks. It all fit with what they had discovered so far. Except for one thing.
Reggie was pretty sure that Jackson didn’t have a child.
But she knew someone else who had. With the memory came the remembered scent of cinnamon rolls, brought in by a friendly receptionist.
Pam.
Reggie stepped out into the main area of the room, unheeding of the noise she was making. The figure behind Reggie spun around.
And Reggie raised the gun to point it at her. Still not a shot she could take, but no one needed to know that right at the moment. The woman scooted around behind Coop, still wielding the scalpel. She placed the blade against Agent Cooper’s jugular.
“Don’t come any closer,” she said. “Drop the gun.”
“Pam, I know it’s you,” Reggie called out to the woman.
There was a long pause, and then the figure pulled off the ski mask, pulling off the vocal distorter as well. Pam gave Reggie a sad smile.
“It’s about time someone figured it out. I was beginning to think you were all just stupid.” She gestured toward Reggie’s gun. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still holding a scalpel to Agent Cooper’s neck.”
“Pam, please. Stop,” Reggie urged her.
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