by Paula Graves
But her attention froze on the large black gun Marlon held leveled squarely at her center mass.
Chapter Sixteen
Alicia’s expression was delicious. Fear, yes, but also shock. And hurt. She looked hurt by his sudden betrayal. As if he owed her some sort of loyalty.
Stupid, stupid girl.
“This is a sound suppressor.” He thrust the Glock toward her. “It’ll make noise if I shoot it, but not much. Nobody will think anything of the sound until it’s too late. So it’s important that you do exactly as I tell you.”
“Or what? I won’t get hurt?” Fear filled Alicia’s eyes, but also defiance. “You’re the beta. Aren’t you?”
He bristled at her words. “That’s such an ignorant term, Ali. So limited in the scope of your thinking.”
“So, you don’t see yourself as subordinate to him.”
“I’m subordinate to no one.”
Her chin came up. “I have seniority here at the lab.”
God, he hated her. It would be good, once he got her subdued, to show her just how small and contemptible she really was, running around with her little notes and her psycho-babbling theories about alphas and betas.
He gave the Glock a threatening twitch. “Lot of good that does you now, Ali.”
“Where are we going?”
“A place I’ve prepared,” he answered, not wanting to show his hand too soon. He’d gone to some trouble to manipulate her into being stranded here, with no car to help her escape and no one around to hear her if she screamed.
“You’ll never be able to take me out of here without someone seeing or hearing.” She tried to keep her gaze level with his, but her eyes kept flickering down to the Glock.
He chuckled. “Who said I’m taking you out of here?”
Her gaze snapped up to his again.
“There’s no one else in the building,” he said, still laughing softly. “And there won’t be. I locked the doors with keys I took from the cleaning crew manager right after I had him call his crew and tell them there was a suspected gas leak in the building and they shouldn’t plan to work here today.”
He could see the struggle in her face, her need to stay strong and in control battling with her growing realization that she was powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted.
“If Gabe doesn’t hear back from me, he’ll come here. Locked doors won’t stop him. And he knows you’re with me. You can’t get out of this one. You think those gloves are going to save you?” Alicia waved a contemptuous hand at the latex gloves he’d donned to keep his prints off the Glock. “Gabe’s smart. He’ll figure it out. He won’t stop until he takes you down.”
He arched an eyebrow at the certainty in her voice. How could she be so sure of the loyalty of Gabe Cooper when she’d known him for only a few days? Had their relationship progressed further than he realized?
No matter. He had a gun and the advantage of being the one calling the shots. Let Cooper come. “I’ll kill him if he tries to interfere. Now or later.”
The sudden horror that darkened Alicia’s eyes convinced him he had, in fact, underestimated how close she and Cooper had become.
Bloody fantastic.
He was tired of the Cooper family’s interference. Last month, Jake Cooper and his trashy little redneck wife had put Karl and Alex in a precarious situation, forcing them to take time out of their current activities to mop up Victor Logan’s mess in Mississippi. And now Gabe Cooper posed a complication that could taint his plan to force Alex to see him as an equal rather than a mere aide.
“Is Marlon your real name?”
“Yes,” he snapped, burning. It was his name, an old-fashioned name, given to him by his old-fashioned mother whose idea of a stable life was bringing home any man who’d buy the beer and put a little food in the fridge now and then.
She’d named him after the actor because he played tough guys who didn’t take crap off anyone. She wanted Marlon to grow up tough, too.
Ironic, really.
He’d grown up tough, all right, and his name had at least something to do with it, since every bully on the block had found his name worthy of vicious taunts.
That’s why he thought of himself as Karl these days. Not because Alex gave him the name but because he hated his real one.
“Do you know his real name?”
Karl looked at her, a ripple of alarm snaking through him. What sort of question was that? Why would she think to ask it?
Because you don’t know his real name.
He circled her, his steps not nearly as smooth and controlled as he would have wished. He twitched his gun hand sharply. “Out the door.”
“He didn’t even tell you his name?” She feigned surprise, but Karl could tell she was just trying to get under his skin. “Does he know yours?”
“Out the door,” he repeated, his voice slower and more forceful.
“Of course he does,” she said with a hateful smile. “I bet he knows everything about you—”
“Out!” Rage built in his gut and burned in the center of his chest. He forced it down when it started to slither up his gullet. “Now.”
She sprang out the door at a run, catching him off guard. He raced after her, catching up about halfway down the corridor. Grabbing her by the hair, he jerked her around to face him. She cried out in pain, the sound rippling through him like a shot of good whiskey, setting his blood on fire.
She grabbed his gun hand, her grip surprisingly strong. He saw her knee coming up just in time to twist his body, protecting his groin. He jerked her to the side, slamming her into the wall. He heard the shattering of glass and her gasp of pain. He realized Alicia’s left hand had slammed into the fire alarm box that hung on the wall just outside the lab.
She grabbed her hand, blood sliding between her fingers and dripping onto the floor. She stared up at him, in shock and pain, and another whiskey shot coursed through his veins, leaving him buzzed and disoriented for a second.
The blood. He had to stop the bleeding or she’d leave a trail for Cooper to follow.
He shrugged off the cotton shirt he wore open over his T-shirt, racing forward to catch Alicia as she took advantage of his distraction to make another run for it. He pinned her to the wall, the gun at her throat, growling a profanity at her as he warned her not to move another inch.
He thrust the shirt into her trembling hands. “Wipe up the blood and then wrap it around your cut. I don’t want you bleeding all over the floor.”
Nostrils flaring, Alicia did as he asked. When the wound was wrapped, he tucked his hand under her elbow and pushed her toward the stairs at the end of the hall. When they reached the stairs, he saw her glance upward.
He smiled. Wrong again, sweetheart.
She uttered a small gasp when he jerked her toward a narrow door set into the wall. She probably thought the unmarked entry led to a maintenance closet. Most people probably did. Karl suspected the architects who planned the building had made the door as nondescript and uninviting as possible, given that half the people who’d walk through the doors of this school would be teenagers, and some of them would be up to no good.
He’d unlocked the door earlier in anticipation of this moment. In fact, he’d arrived earlier than Alicia would ever have suspected, early enough to intercept the head of the cleaning crew in time to keep the rest of the crew from coming in to hamper his plans.
The door opened to a narrow stairwell down to the basement, where the building’s inner workings lay hidden from view.
Alicia resisted as he tugged her down the stairs with him. Maybe she could smell the metallic bite of blood below. He jammed the sound suppressor into her ribs. “Go!”
He pushed her forward into the bowels of the basement. She stumbled through the winding labyrinth, more than once falling to her knees on the hard floor. The third time she fell, he grabbed her up by her injured hand, making her cry out. But the cry cut off suddenly and her body went rigid.
She’d see
n the maintenance man’s body.
Alicia broke free of his grasp, her eyes blazing with fury. “You crazy son of a bitch! This is between you and me. That poor man didn’t have anything to do with this!”
He shot her a look of pure contempt. What did she think, she could appeal to his sense of fairness by pretending the dead man meant anything to her? She didn’t know him. She’d probably never given him a second look when she passed him in the hall on the days when the cleaning crew was working there.
He meant no more to her than he meant to Karl.
“Shut up, Alicia. You don’t call the shots here.”
Her gaze shifted back to the Glock aimed at her chest. “Your boss doesn’t use a gun.”
She was trying to goad him, he knew, referring to Alex as his boss. He was on to her tricks. He tamped down his anger and kept his voice even. “I don’t plan to shoot you.”
She didn’t flinch, exactly, but he saw the flicker of fear in her eyes. Adrenaline coursed through him, tightening his muscles and clearing confusion from his brain.
Everything came into sharp focus, from the feral wariness in her eyes to the lingering odor of gas from the trick he’d used to lure the cleaning crew leader down to the basement.
He wished Alex were here right now to see him.
DAMN IT, WHY AREN’T YOU answering the phone?
Gabe shoved the uncooperative cell phone into his pocket and parked carelessly in front of Atchison Hall, not caring if campus security wrote him a ticket.
He’d called Tony on the way but got his voice mail. He was probably on the phone with his office, calling in favors to get the alibi checks on Landon set into motion. Gabe had left a terse message and tried Alicia’s phone again, with no luck.
He expected the doors to be unlocked. But they didn’t budge. The doors hadn’t been locked that morning when Alicia entered. Why were they locked now?
He scanned the campus, looking for any signs of security. Surely they’d have keys to get into the building. He didn’t spot any rent-a-cops, but at the next building over, a young, well-built man in a white jumpsuit was picking up trash from the sidewalk with a claw grabber and putting it into a large trash bag. Gabe hurried over, flagging him down.
“Do you have keys for Atchison Hall?” He pointed to the building he’d just left.
The young man looked startled. “No, I don’t—my crew chief has them, but I’m not sure where he is. But you can’t go in there—there’s a gas leak.”
“A gas leak?” Gabe asked, confused.
“That’s what Hector said—Hector’s the chief. He radioed in around ten, said someone had discovered a gas leak and he was going down to take a look, but we weren’t supposed to go over there until they got it taken care of.” The man looked over Gabe’s shoulder at Atchison Hall. “Come to think of it, I don’t believe I’ve heard anything from him since.”
He had to get into that building, Gabe thought, his tension level multiplying. He didn’t believe for a second there was a gas leak. Alicia would have called to tell him so.
Instead, she’d called to say she was going to lunch with Marlon. Marlon, who’d told a punk like Tyler Landon that Alicia might respond to his come-ons because she liked younger men. Whose only alibi for Victor Logan’s murder were photographs that Alicia had probably given little more than a few cursory glances. And who, now that Gabe thought about it, fit the general description of the man Jake and Mariah had seen in Mississippi as well as the man Gabe had seen lurking outside Alicia’s apartment.
Bloody hell.
“I’m going to find a way into that building,” Gabe said over his shoulder as he started toward Atchison Hall. “I have reason to believe people are inside and may be in danger. I need you to go find security and get them here as soon as you can.”
He pulled out his phone and called Tony, who answered on the second ring. “Get backup here,” Gabe barked as he searched the facade of the building for his best point of entry. There were large windows on the ground floor, but they were several feet off the ground with no easy way to reach them.
“Where’s Alicia?” Tony asked, fear in his voice.
“I don’t know.” Gabe circled to the side of Atchison Hall, spotting what he hoped to see—a large air conditioning unit under one of the tall windows. He caught Tony up as he jogged down to the air conditioning unit. “I’m going in.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes.”
“Be careful. I’m about eight minutes away and I’ll call in backup.” Tony hung up.
Gabe searched the ground for a large rock or something he could use to break the window if necessary. He found a stack of bricks around the back of the building where someone had been doing repairs on the masonry. Grabbing a brick, he ran back to the air conditioner and pulled himself up.
The center of the unit felt a little wobbly, but he stayed on the outer edge and it held his weight without problem. He made his way to the window and stretched out, pushing upward in the vain hope that the window might be unlocked. It didn’t budge. Nothing to do but break it.
He hurled the brick at the window. It smashed through, leaving a gaping hole.
He shrugged off his shirt and used it to wrap around his arm, protecting his flesh from the sharp glass. Clearing the lower pane, he hauled himself into the classroom.
He’d been in Atchison Hall only once before, when he’d followed Tony Evans here when he still considered Tony a suspect. That moment seemed a lifetime ago. He wished he’d paid more attention to his surroundings then.
He had landed in an empty classroom that offered no clues to Alicia’s whereabouts. Drawing his Colt 9mm from the holster at his waist, he headed into the hall to search for her lab, hoping like hell that all his suspicions and fears were just the fruits of his imagination.
He didn’t make it ten feet down the hall before his hopes were dashed. The glass in the emergency fire alarm box lay shattered on the floor of the hall. Gabe drew closer and spotted blood on the jagged pieces still remaining in the box.
His heart dipped precipitously before hurtling wildly, like a thoroughbred out of the gate. He scanned the hall, looking for signs of more blood. He found more blood drops amid the shards of glass, and a spot that looked as if someone had tried to wipe up a larger amount of blood.
He tried to clear his rattled brain, forcing himself to remember his last time here. The lab had been straight down the hall from the entrance, which lay ahead. He headed in that direction and found a room that looked familiar. He spotted Alicia’s purse on the desk nearest the wall and found her cell phone still inside.
Come on, Cooper, think.
If it was Marlon who had Alicia—or even if it wasn’t—he’d want to get her somewhere less out in the open than the main hall. He couldn’t be sure his ploy—calling in the fake gas scare—would be enough to keep people away from Atchison Hall for long. He’d want to secure Alicia somewhere else. Probably still in the building—he could hardly drag her out of here kicking and screaming. An upper floor?
He went back out to the hall and looked for the stairwell. He spotted it at the end of the hall. Racing down the corridor, he yanked open the door and was already halfway up to the next landing when he realized he’d seen something odd on the floor below. Reversing course, he returned to the main level. It took a second to spot what he’d seen again. It was a dark red blotch on the floor in front of a closet door.
Gabe crouched and touched his finger to the spot. It was wet. He lifted his finger to his nose, smelling the unmistakable odor of fresh blood.
His pulse pounding like thunder in his head, he opened the closet door and discovered it wasn’t a closet, at all.
It was the opening to a hidden set of stairs.
ALICIA AVERTED HER EYES FROM the body on the floor. If she kept looking at Hector Alvarado’s lifeless body, she’d be paralyzed by the memories of his constant smile and his proud stories of his daughter and son, who were both on track to win academic schol
arships to college. Her mind would fill with the sight of his wallet full of photos of his beloved Ana, who’d fallen in love at first sight when she met him on a trip to Mexico when they were both just seventeen.
She couldn’t afford the luxury of grief. Not while Marlon Dyson held a gun aimed at her heart.
She cleared her throat, trying to figure out what would keep him talking rather than moving forward with whatever plans he had for her. “Can you at least tell me this—were there really twenty-one murders?”
“Soon to be twenty-two,” Marlon said with a dark smile. “And guess what, Ali? All your little note cards and your files didn’t stop a single one of them.”
She fought to contain the shudder rippling through her body, focusing on the ache in her left hand, where blood still oozed from her cut. It hurt, though not badly, and the bleeding had slowed considerably, meaning the glass hadn’t hit any vital veins or arteries. Probably. She wouldn’t bleed out.
At least, not from the cut on her hand.
“Your partner committed them all?” She noticed the twitch of his lips when she said “partner.” She’d chosen the word deliberately, offering a small concession to his ego to put his mood on a more even keel. She had to keep him talking, run out the clock until Gabe or Tony figured out that something had gone wrong. Gabe was probably suspicious already, since he’d called to tell her not to go anywhere.
Had he learned something about Marlon that made him suddenly suspicious?
“Yes,” Marlon answered her earlier question.
“He’s older than you.”
“Of course.” Marlon sounded impatient, but he didn’t make a move to end the conversation. She wondered why. The body on the floor provided irrefutable evidence that he didn’t have a problem killing another human being. So why did he suddenly seem hesitant about killing her?
“He worked with Victor Logan for a while, right? Victor found the victims for him. What did he do, work from a list of specifications?”
“Something like that. My associate has specific tastes.”