by Gina LaManna
Russo was headed back to his hotel for a shower and change of clothes, and probably a few quick calls with his superiors. I’d monopolized his time this morning between pancakes and babysitting duty. I could give him an hour before diving back into the case—especially since I had no clue where Wilkes might be.
The best lead I had was a letter with a smudge of sawdust on it. But the bigger question was whether the letter had actually come from Wilkes or if it was Jennifer who’d delivered it to my door?
I stood, the coffee working its way through my system. I was wired and ready to go, overdue to put Wilkes back behind bars where he belonged. But I was like a puppy chomping at the bit—overexcited with nowhere to go. Nothing to gnaw on.
I moved toward the front window of my house and pulled back the blinds. The feds were still there, eyes locked on my house. It was driving me nuts wondering about Wilkes, so for a change of pace, I switched to revisiting the details of the Brine case instead.
As I scanned the street, I let my mind ponder the mysterious woman B. If a woman had been in Harry’s house, why hadn’t she come forward? Emma Tolbert’s story lined up with Brandy Lee’s—both women thought Brine was seeing someone. But who? And had she been involved in her lover’s death, or was she merely keeping a low profile to avoid media attention?
I wondered where Lassie was on her research, both with the Brine case and with Gem’s personal life. A wave of heat slid up the back of my neck as I realized I probably should have called her off after Gem had confided in me. It was a little late now. And anyway, I hadn’t made any progress on Gem’s stalker. Maybe Lassie would turn up something that would help.
I flicked my phone open to text Lassie for an update when I spotted a gaping black hole across the street that didn’t belong there. The Robertson’s garage door was wide open. I knew, as I’d already told Jane, that their family was out of town. Either they’d come back early, or one of the construction workers had left the door open. Regardless, I had to do something about it.
Unfortunately, I’d agreed to keep an eye on their place. That was the cost of being a police officer. Neighbors came to me with all their problems. The Robertsons had given me their phone number in case of emergency, and I searched for it—dialing quickly while I watched their house.
“This is Kate Rosetti, your neighbor from across the street,” I said when Mr. Robertson picked up. “I was just calling to see if you’d come home early. Your garage door is up, and I wondered if some of the construction folks had left it open. I don’t see anyone around.”
“The construction crews should’ve finished about two days ago. They aren’t coming back until we get back to check their progress. I can’t think of why the door would be up.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling like it was a dumb question. “I thought—”
“Is something the matter?”
“I haven’t been home much,” I said. “So, I haven’t seen anything going on actually. I’m sure everything’s fine—just heard some of the neighbors getting work done and thought it was at your place since you’ve had some done too. Should I head over and close your door?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“No problem,” I said. “Enjoy the rest of your trip.”
I shuffled around the house for an extra minute, pulling on a jacket and sloshing some coffee into a travel mug. I tugged my front door open and gave a little wave to the feds before slipping my feet into a pair of Ugg boots my sister had left behind. They were fuzzy and warmer than anything of my own.
I made it down two steps when I stopped cold, spun those Uggs around, and stomped right back inside. I slammed the door shut and leaned my back against it. I wondered if the agents were calling Russo already to report my movements as I took deep, steadying breaths and pulled out my own phone with shaking hands.
I found Russo’s number under my last calls. I hesitated with a finger over it. I made my way to the living room then turned, watching the Robertson’s open garage door.
Can it be? I wondered. Had Wilkes been hiding in plain sight?
The logistics made sense. If Wilkes had known the Robertson family would be out of town, he could’ve set up shop there quite easily—he could’ve left during the day when the construction crews were active and returned at nightfall. Now that the construction crews were gone, he’d have the place to himself.
As an added bonus, he’d have been able to watch over me without leaving his hidey-hole. He also would have made great time back from the crime scene at the Parcel house—evading the police even though we’d discovered the body hours ahead of when he’d thought. Not to mention, the sawdust smudge, which could easily have come from the construction zone inside the house.
I’d have to ask Jane, but the last time she’d complained of noise had been at least two days before which lined up with Mr. Robertson’s story. Jane had left yesterday. Which meant that maybe the construction crews really hadn’t been around, and any additional activity in the house had been by Wilkes—and his potential partner.
Russo’s number was dialed even before I realized I’d hit the button. He sounded worried through the phone.
“Kate?” he asked urgently for a second time. “Are you there? Is everything okay?”
My throat went dry. As I stared out the window, the garage door at the Robertson residence began to close. There were no construction vans out front, no unfamiliar cars. If I’d had any doubt about the inhabitants of the empty house, they vanished.
“I think I know where he is,” I finally whispered. “He’s here.”
“In your house?”
“No, across the street. The family’s been out of town for awhile.” I explained about my phone call to Mr. Robinson. “The garage door just closed on its own. Someone’s in there.”
Russo sucked in a breath. “Do you think Sarah’s in there?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t wait—he’ll know I’m onto him. He won’t want to kill Sarah quickly, but he’ll do it if he has to. Where are you?”
“On my way.” The clink of keys and sounds of a busy street in the background echoed over the phone. “Don’t go in there until I arrive.”
“But—”
“I’m going to get the agents outside to surround the house. Wilkes must have a car somewhere, and we can’t chance him slipping through our grasp.”
A beat of silence followed.
“Kate?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I swallowed hard, glanced at the house. A mixture of fury and anxiety swirled in my blood. “You’d better hurry, Russo.”
“Eight minutes,” he promised. “I’m hanging up so I can step on it. Do not go in that house, Rosetti. Under any circumstances.”
I made another grudging promise to Russo before hanging up. Then I quickly called Jimmy and explained the lowdown on our findings. He was on his way before we disconnected. The next call was to the chief who promised to secure some backup to the scene.
A part of me cringed, wondering if this was all a false alarm. What if there was some other explanation? A sensor on the Robertson’s garage door that had malfunctioned and caused a false alarm?
I expelled a breath while my brain worked on overdrive, paranoid I’d made this whole thing up in my mind. I sat on the couch, fingers pressed to my temples. That was the problem with Wilkes, once his inky fingers had gotten ahold of a person. The blackness seeped into my mind, my very spirit, like a poison. I could no longer tell what was real, what was imagined.
I didn’t even recognize the voice behind me until it was too late.
“Very good, Kate.”
Before I could move, I felt the hand on my shoulder, the familiar—but foreign—grip of a man’s fingers. A steel blade pressed to my neck.
“It’s good to see you,” Wilkes said, pressing the knife deeper against my skin. “But I’m afraid we can’t linger, not yet. That will come in due time. For now, we’ve got to get moving, my pretty.”
Chapter 22
I raised my hands above my head. I hadn’t gotten around to fastening my gun to my hip yet, so I was weaponless. Not that it mattered because even if I had my gun on me, I wouldn’t have had time to pull it on Wilkes. He was too close, his approach too silent. Or maybe he hadn’t been quiet at all, and I’d been so obsessed by the thoughts in my head that I hadn’t paid attention to reality around me.
“It’s been quite a ride this time around,” Wilkes said. “Stand up, drop your gun.”
“I don’t have my gun.”
“You can still stand.”
I did as he said, moving slowly so as not to startle him. The blade was too close to my windpipe for mistakes. Once I was upright, however, he nicked my skin as if reading my mind. The metallic smell of blood emerged as I felt a droplet slide down my neck.
“Don’t you dare move,” he said. “You do, and Sarah’s dead.”
“How can you guarantee that?” I asked. “If you’re here, then who’s with Sarah? Are you working with a partner?”
Wilkes didn’t respond. His eyes were focused as he made his way around the couch and came to my side. He kept the blade, long and shiny, ready to plunge into my gut at a moment’s notice. The pat down took only seconds until he was satisfied that I was free of my usual arsenal of weapons.
“I am disappointed in you,” he said. “You’ve been a little off your game lately.”
“And you’ve been switching things up. Working with a partner isn’t really your style. You don’t like to share the glory.”
Wilkes ground his teeth in annoyance, then pulled himself into the stoic figure I’d seen at trial. A passive face. Zero excitement for the devastation he’d caused... and zero regret. Just nothing.
Wilkes was average looking, borderline handsome. Dark hair, a face without much in the way of unique features. He was in good shape, though not particularly muscular, and had the sort of looks that could be tipped more toward beautiful or ugly based on one’s personality.
When he’d turned on his charm the last time he’d been on the streets, women had reported him to be “very attractive” and “stunningly handsome”. That was before they’d found out he was a murderer. After, during the trial, newspapers called him a monster. Ugly and deranged.
Standing before me today, he looked quite plain. A shell of a man, a robotic exterior that housed a firestorm of horror inside. It was his hollow eyes that terrified me more than anything. The sheer emptiness there, not a lick of fear reflected in them.
“Even so, you did well enough, I suppose,” Wilkes finally admitted. “Though you look quite ragged, and I’m disappointed you didn’t catch up to me before I had to call the game quits. It’s over, Kate. Though I appreciate you doing the last bit for me.”
“What are you talking about? We did find you. The feds are surrounding the Robertson house now. If Sarah’s there, they’ll find her.”
I was trying to poke at him, to see if he’d let me in on something, anything. A crumb. Whether he had Sarah—alive or dead. Whether he’d cooperated with Jennifer or whether he was annoyed by her affections. Yet he gave me nothing.
“We’re going out back,” he said. “One wrong move, and not only are you dead, but Sarah is too.”
“Where is she?”
“I’ll tell you when we arrive. If you cooperate with me, then there’s no need for you both to die. I’ll let her live.”
In a strange way, I believed him. He’d get far more pleasure out of killing me than Sarah. And even if I didn’t believe him, I had to go with him. Not only did he have a knife, but a gun glinted at his waist. He’d come prepared, and I had no doubt that he’d rather kill me with a bullet than let me get away alive this time.
“You’re right,” Wilkes said, watching my eyes. “You don’t have a choice. And yes, I’d prefer to take my time with you, but if you make that impossible with a struggle, I won’t hesitate to shoot you. And then I’ll take my time with Sarah. And then your friend Russo. I don’t think you’d like that much. Neither would I, frankly, but I’ve waited long enough for this moment, and you will not ruin it.”
I followed Wilkes toward the back of the house. Chances were, he’d moved Sarah from the Robertson house. If that were true, I needed to go with him, or else we might never find her—not alive, at least. It was my only hope. Along the way, I could come up with a different plan to get myself out safely.
“Drop the phone,” Wilkes instructed at the back door.
I did as he said. He watched it fall, raised a foot as if to stomp on it. But on second thought, he let it sit, alone and untouched.
“I’ll let them worry,” he said. “When you don’t answer, Russo will assume you’ve gone into the house by yourself. He’ll swarm over there with his goons. Which leaves us with a clear pass out of here. Once again, I appreciate your help, detective.”
I gritted my teeth. “The garage door—you did that on purpose. You knew I’d figured it out. Even that was a decoy.”
Wilkes waited until I’d walked outside, then shut the door behind me. The area of town where I lived was made up of old houses clumped closely together. Privacy was mostly an illusion provided by whimsical fences and the occasional hedge of lilacs. Alleys ran rampant between the streets.
With a sinking heart, I saw my rear gate propped open. It led straight to an alley where, I could see from my rear steps, Wilkes had a car waiting. I had only myself to blame for sending Russo and his federal buddies on a wild goose chase to the house across the street and providing a wide-open path to let Wilkes into my house.
Wilkes smiled for the first time since I’d seen him. My expression must have given more away than I’d intended, so I steeled myself and jerked my head toward the car.
“You gave me your word you’d let Sarah go,” I said. “So, where is she? I’ve cooperated.”
“Keep cooperating, my dear,” Wilkes said. “And I’ll show you the way.”
WILKES DIRECTED ME to the driver’s seat, his gun trained on me the entire time. Once I got situated, he reached over and snapped one handcuff on my wrist, the other to the steering wheel, just in case I had any ideas about taking a dive out of a moving car.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I won’t risk Sarah’s life.”
“I know. Your nobleness is your downfall.”
Wilkes started the car and directed me out of the alley. I turned my head ever so slightly to try for a glimpse in the mirror of the Robertson house. It was impossible to tell from this angle if Russo had arrived yet, and it would be even more impossible to get a signal to him when he expected me to be waiting safely at home. By the time Russo thought to call my phone, or better yet, found it sitting alone in the back hallway, we’d be long gone.
As if Wilkes could read my mind, his smile grew brighter. “Don’t worry; we don’t have far to go. I like to stay close to the action.”
“Obviously. The Robertson house was creative, I’ll give you that. Why Parcel? Was it random?”
Wilkes looked annoyed at my statement. Which threw me for a loop, considering it was the closest thing to a truce or a compliment I’d thrown him so far.
“That was your idea, wasn’t it?” I pressed. “You were staying there?”
“Turn left here, down the back alley,” he snapped.
Wilkes wasn’t giving me much to go on. I imagined he’d want to talk at some point—he always did. I knew that from experience. But it was smarter for him to keep me in the dark until he had me safely chained up in his hideaway, a place where I had no hope of escape. Then, it wouldn’t matter if he bared his soul to me because I wouldn’t be alive to repeat any of it.
I gritted my teeth, followed Wilkes’s directions. Soon enough, we’d pulled onto a property with a For Sale sign out front. Wilkes jumped out of the car, his gun trained on me, and punched in a code that raised the garage door. He gestured for me to drive inside.
Once I did, I shut the car off and waited. Wilkes closed the garage door and came around to the passenger
’s side, stuck his head in the window.
“Well?” I gestured toward my wrist. “Are we going to talk here? Because I’m a bit stuck.”
“A bit stuck,” Wilkes repeated. “Don’t you think that’s optimistic, seeing as this is more like a dead end than an obstacle—pardon the pun?”
“I’m a glass half full sorta gal.”
Wilkes gave a low chuckle as he unlocked the handcuff. “I always did appreciate your sense of humor. And the fact that you never seemed frightened of me. Though I admit, it is a little disappointing to see you now. There’s fear this time, Kate. Fear that wasn’t there before.”
I yanked my hand out of the cuff and rubbed my wrist. Half my mind told me to take a swing at him then and there and make a mad dash for it. The other half of my mind told me that even if I did get away, Sarah would be dead before I could call for help. And that’s if Wilkes didn’t shoot me in the back in the middle of the street.
“Wasn’t that your goal?” I muttered, slamming the car door shut. “You love fear, Wilkes. Don’t lie.”
“Fear is cheap. Easy to come by for a man like me,” he said, nodding toward the side door out of the garage. “It’s people like you—those who refuse to crumble—that intrigue me. Challenge me. Fear, like anything else, is sweeter when it’s earned.”
“You’re sick.”
“You say that as if it offends me. I’m neither sick nor deranged, I just have a specific taste. To each their own.”
“Not when your own involves killing innocent people. What did William Parcel do to you? Even if you wanted a challenge with a man who could fight back, why kidnap the girl? What does Sarah have to do with any of this? You’ve changed, Wilkes.”
Again, the flash of annoyance appeared on Wilkes’s face, and I began wondering if there was more to the story. If I could just keep digging, find some answers, get him angry enough to spill his secrets...