by Gayle Wilson
Sitting in the middle of its dark expanse was a small white box, identical to the one she’d found in her refrigerator, even down to the narrow red ribbon neatly tied into a bow.
Sixteen
Jenna stopped so abruptly that Sean walked into her. Dislodged by the contact, the heavy duffel slipped off his shoulder, slamming her in the back.
“What the hell?” Before the words were out of his mouth, he saw what had stopped her in her tracks.
He still had the key card in his hand, retrieved from the top of the dresser where he’d laid it when he’d come into the room. He grabbed Jenna’s arm, pulling her back toward the door.
As he did, he dropped the bag, hurrying to reinsert the card in the lock. The sudden flood of adrenaline made his hands tremble as he tried to fit it into the narrow slot.
Using every ounce of willpower acquired during years under fire, he controlled the vibration, finally managing to slide the key in. As soon as the light blinked, he turned the handle, literally shoving Jenna into the room.
Then he bent to grab the strap of the duffel. He threw it in, too, before he dived inside. Once there, he turned the dead bolt and slammed the safety hook down over its knob.
Only then did he take time to breathe. And to consider all the implications of what had just happened.
The bastard was out there in the darkness. Taunting him.
He’d recognized that back at Jenna’s apartment. The box she’d found had been a message to him. Obviously, so was the one outside.
Because of the contents of the other, the killer had believed he would be compelled to take the couple of steps necessary to reach out and snatch it off the SUV. In those seconds, he would have been vulnerable. A visible target.
And so would Jenna.
It was that realization that had driven him back into the room. Now that he knew she was safe…
He bent, unzipping his bag. Because he was hurrying, it took a few seconds to locate the Glock he’d stowed inside. He took the weapon out, pulling back the slide to chamber a round.
“What are you doing?”
“Stay here,” he ordered as he headed toward the door.
Before he could get it unbolted, Jenna was at his side. She wrapped both hands around his wrist, pulling his hand away from the lock.
“Stop it. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t you understand?” He took time to glance down at her, reading confusion in her eyes. “He’s out there. Maybe if I’m lucky—”
“You’re going after him with a gun?”
He ripped his arm from her hold and threw the hook off the knob. He reached down to unfasten the dead bolt, but she grabbed his wrist again.
“Call the police, Sean.”
“He won’t be here when they arrive.”
“You can’t do this—”
He wrenched his arm away, managing this time to get the door unlocked. Jenna made another attempt to stop him, but furious with the delay she was causing, he pushed her away with his forearm.
Although he hadn’t meant for it to happen, he had shoved her hard enough that she stumbled back against the foot of bed. Although she didn’t fall, he could see shock in her eyes that he had treated her so roughly.
He didn’t have time for apologies. Only instructions. The kind that would save her life.
“Don’t come outside. Lock the door as soon as I’m out. All the locks. And no matter what happens, no matter what you hear, don’t open it. Not until I tell you to.”
She didn’t respond, neither to agree to his instructions nor to rail again against what he was doing. Instead, her eyes, full of hurt, held his.
You would have been hurt a lot worse if I wasn’t doing this.
The attempt to justify what he’d done didn’t work. Ignoring the flood of regret he couldn’t do anything about, he eased open the door.
The security lights made the parking lot almost as bright as day. Which was their purpose. For his, darkness would have been preferable.
Of course, he’d made this kind of hunt in the daylight as well as at night. This was his territory. His field of expertise.
Let’s see how you like being hunted, you bastard. And by someone who’s got the ability to fight back.
He slipped through the door, pulling it shut behind him. Despite what had just happened between them, he knew Jenna would do exactly as he’d told her. She was too smart to do anything else.
The box with its red ribbon was still on his hood, illuminated by the halogen light above it. It was possible the killer had left as soon as he’d placed it there, but Sean didn’t believe that.
The bastard would be all too eager to watch the outcome of his latest stunt. That meant he’d be hiding someplace where he’d have a clear view of the SUV and the entrance to the room.
His back to the door, weapon held out in front of him, Sean surveyed the parking lot before his gaze moved to the field that lay between the motel and the interstate. Although the security lights didn’t illuminate every part of it, the grass had been closely mown before the winter had killed it.
The only way someone could be watching from out there—without taking a chance on being seen—would be if they were lying down. The man he sought wouldn’t do that. He was too much an egotist. Too convinced of his own power.
And he was definitely here.
As he had that day outside Jenna’s office, Sean could feel him. He could feel the son of a bitch’s eyes focused on him as he waited, gun extended, trying to figure out where he could be hiding.
Somewhere with an unobstructed view of this area. Somewhere he could observe without being seen.
One of the parked cars?
His gaze swept along those on his right and then to his left. There was no one in any of the nearby vehicles. Anyone seated in those farther down the walkway wouldn’t be able to see enough to satisfy what he believed to be the intent of this exercise.
Suddenly, as his visual survey reached the end of the walkway on his left, he saw what he’d missed before. The back and the front sections of the complex extended beyond the sides. In the front, that extra space was occupied by a restaurant. In the back, a block of four rooms, two stories of them, jutted into the parking lot, perpendicular to the wing his room was in. The view from the lower story of that extension would be blocked by parked cars, but from the rooms on that second floor—
He examined their windows. The first was brightly lit, its drapes pulled back to reveal the interior. A child sat on one of the double beds watching television. Sean could see light flickering from its screen.
The next two were also occupied, as evidenced by the lights on inside. The black-out curtains had been drawn across their windows. It was impossible to tell if someone was holding the edge of the drapes away from the glass to see out, but the interior lights argued against it. They would make it much more difficult to see outside.
As he rejected those rooms, too, his gaze moved on to the last. The one on the end of the extension. No cars were parked in the spaces below it. And no light edged around the plastic-backed drapes. All that was visible was the exterior door preceded by an expanse of black glass.
His eyes flicked back to the room beside it. Despite the fact that the lights were on behind it, there was something about the quality of the glass itself that was different from that of the last room. When he examined it again, he knew why.
The drapes had not been drawn over the last window. There was nothing between its glass and the darkened interior of the room.
Was the killer sitting in that darkness? Was he watching as Sean stood here, weapon drawn? Could he feel his eyes probing his hiding place?
The possibility that he might be was enough to set him off. Instead of cutting across the parking lot, Sean ran along the sidewalk, hugging the building.
He was aware of the doors and windows he passed, mostly because of the alternating pattern of light and noise, but he was unconcerned about them. If any of the occupant
s heard the sound of running footsteps and glanced out to see a man with a gun, it couldn’t matter. Not at this point.
Instead of worrying about someone calling the cops, he was trying to figure out how was he going to get to the man in that last room. As he’d just ordered Jenna to do, the killer would have every lock secured. And the doors here were solid enough that Sean wouldn’t be able to physically break it down. Not even to get to the man who’d murdered Makaela.
His mind offered a dozen solutions as he ran, each considered and then rejected as unworkable. He could try firing into the mechanism or shooting off the knob. Although that would quickly bring the cops, the chance of it actually working on a door like these was slim. They were designed to prevent that kind of attack. As was the bulletproof glass in the windows.
As soon as the thought formed, he questioned it. A precaution that would make sense, but was it true? Was that part of the building code in Alabama? Somehow he doubted it. Especially not for a place like this.
By now he’d reached the stairs to the second level of that back wing. The sound of his feet pounding up their concrete risers echoed in the enclosed stairwell, loud enough that he wondered if the bastard could hear them.
Rounding the top of the stairs, he approached the room where the child had been watching television. This close to his goal, Sean automatically slowed, trying to think through what had pretty much been, up to this point, gut reaction.
As he passed by the window of the first room, the boy looked up. His eyes widened as he took in the gun. Before Sean had cleared the length of its glass, the kid had begun to yell, his words indistinguishable.
Ignoring him, Sean kept moving, but more cautiously now. Even if the boy’s parents called the cops, this would be over before they arrived. He would already have accomplished the mission that had brought him here.
And if you’re wrong? If someone perfectly innocent is sleeping inside that room? Another child. A woman like Makaela. Or Jenna.
Again he slowed, passing the next-to-last window, one of the two with the drapes drawn. He stopped when he reached the span of wall between it and the room that was his destination.
He leaned back against the bricks, allowing his breathing to ease. Trying to decide how best to deal with the window just ahead.
If he intended to knock, rather than simply start shooting, he would have to cross in front of it in order to reach the door. If his prey was inside, and if he’d been watching to gauge Sean’s reaction to his “gift,” he would also have watched his progress to this point. He would already know Sean was out here. And he would know he had a gun.
Was the killer similarly armed? Knives had always been his weapon of choice, but maybe that only applied when his victim was tied down and helpless. What was going on now was so far outside the killer’s pattern that all bets were off.
From out on the interstate came the wail of a siren, drawing Sean’s gaze across the expanse of winter-dead grass beside the right-of-way. After his sprint along the walkway, gun clearly visible to any guest looking out the window of his room, he expected to see a couple of patrol cars heading for the exit to the motel.
Instead, he saw an ambulance, lights flashing, traveling in the opposite direction. Its siren quickly faded in the distance, leaving him once more to consider the best way to proceed.
While his mind raced through the alternatives, his eyes once more swept across the patch of open ground that sloped downward from the highway. The action was unconscious. So much so that his attention had already refocused on the room at the end of the second-story walkway when something snapped it back to the right-of-way.
He scanned the area again, trying to find whatever it was that had triggered the sense there was something out of place. Something he should have noted. Something—
The anomaly was obvious, now that he was looking for it. In the center of the pale grass of that open field, just before it began its climb to the roadbed, was a patch of darkness.
Not shadow. It was too intense for that. And besides, there was no object out there to cast it.
A rock the road-construction crew hadn’t bothered to move? When they had moved all the others, leaving perfectly level ground for the state’s mowing machines?
Maybe a puddle left from the recent rains. That was the most convincing theory, especially since the light from the highway above created a sheen on the black surface. Almost as if it were—
Plastic. Black plastic bag. Garbage bag.
As soon as the words formed in his brain, he knew that was what he was seeing. Despite the distance, he could tell it was the right size and shape.
The fact that it had shape, something that made it distinct from the flat, featureless grass that surrounded it, made him know the bag wasn’t empty.
Trash, he told himself, fighting the rush of bile into the back of his throat. Someone had thrown garbage off the interstate. Maybe they’d stopped up there in the middle of the night and tossed the bag over the rail.
He pulled his eyes away from the black plastic to focus on the end of the walkway in front of him. Two steps and he would stand before the plateglass window of the last room. Another and he would be at its door.
He had no choice but to look into the window before he did that. If he saw anything that made him doubt his theory about the occupant of that room—
Putting his head against the wall behind him, Sean took a couple of deep breaths, blowing them out silently between pursed lips. He took one more, holding it. Filling his lungs in preparation for his assault.
Then he lowered his head, looking out once more at the grassy knoll. The bag was still there, gleaming in the light of the halogen lamps as cars continued to whip by above it.
The only way he would ever have seen it was if he came up here. Stood in this exact spot. Waited outside this room.
To prove that theory, he took a couple of steps back, moving in front of the window with the drawn drapes. The end of the walkway and its metal railing now blocked his view of the area where the bag lay.
This time he put his head back against the glass and closed his eyes. He was completely unaware at that moment that the room behind him was occupied.
One after another, he allowed the series of painful realizations into his brain. This had been part of the killer’s plan. He’d intended for Sean to come here.
Not because there was anyone in that last room. That had been a lure. Something to make him react in a certain way, just like the box on the hood of his car.
And he had done exactly what the killer had expected him to. He knew now that he’d been led up here because he was supposed to see what lay in that empty field beyond the parking lot.
To see it and to know what it was. And finally, to understand why it had been left there.
The ultimate taunt. The thing that would bring back the most painful of all the memories associated with Makaela’s death.
In that black bag, identical to the one into which the Inquisitor had stuffed his sister, was another body.
That of the girl whose screams he had listened to? If so, Carol Cummings was finally at peace. Something he knew that the family who had loved her would never know again.
Seventeen
“You were right,” Bingham said. “It’s the Cummings girl. How the hell he managed to get the body down here without somebody seeing him…”
“Middle of the night.” Sean forced the words past the constriction in his throat as he watched the technicians work over the body. “Maybe he approached the spot from the motel rather than the interstate. Less likely to be seen doing it that way.”
Unwilling to wait until morning to examine the area around the girl’s corpse, the cops had set up floodlights, along with the customary yellow tape. In the damp cold the three of them were standing just beyond its perimeter on the edge of the motel parking lot.
Jenna had said almost nothing since the detective’s arrival. She stood beside Sean now, her right arm wrapped across her chest
, left hand holding the collar of her jacket against her neck. Occasionally a tremor ran through her frame. A couple had been strong enough that, although their bodies weren’t touching, Sean had become aware of them.
He wondered if she was conscious that that was the same position she’d assumed during the television interview. He had classified it then as defensive. It still was.
And why not? He’d been telling her for three days that she would be next. Now Carol Cummings was dead, and his warning must weigh even more heavily on her.
Especially since she’s watching the forensic examination of the last victim’s body.
As soon as he’d given in to his conviction about what the bag in the right-of-way contained, he’d gone back to his room to notify the police, a decision that had not been prompted solely by concern for Jenna. After all, as he had believed she would all along, she’d stayed inside, every lock on the door secure. He had listened to her unfasten them after he’d identified himself. As unfamiliar as the feeling had been, he’d admitted while he waited that he’d come back rather than using his cell because he wanted to be with someone while he made that call.
He didn’t know what his face had revealed when Jenna opened the door. Whatever it was made her step forward as soon as he was inside and put her arms around his body.
There had been nothing sexual about the embrace. It offered comfort. Acknowledgment, perhaps, that he wasn’t in this alone. Remarkably, he’d welcomed both.
His left arm, the one not occupied with holding the Glock, had automatically closed around her, cradling her warmth against the black, aching coldness in the center of his chest. He had released her as soon as she’d moved, leaning back to look up at him.
It had been a close-run thing. He had wanted to bury his head against her shoulder instead. To take solace in the fact that she was warm. And alive.
“What happened?” Her eyes searched his face.
“I need to call the cops.” A brief reprieve before the inevitable moment when she would have to know.
“Did you kill him?”