by Gayle Wilson
“Did he tell you where she was?”
“Not in so many words.”
“What does that mean?” Sean demanded. “‘Not in so many words.’”
The expressive eyes cut to his face. “It means I made an assumption based on what he’d said.”
“Which was?”
Beth glanced at her boss, but in spite of the tightness in Carlisle’s face, she told him. “I took what Paul said to mean Jenna was out at her parents’ place.”
“Why would you have thought that?”
“Because they were so proud of their damned security system. We went there for the retreat last year. The practice has one every year. Always informal. This one was a cookout around their pool. They’d just had the new system installed, and Jenna’s father was extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen. Explaining all its bells and whistles.”
“Like what?”
She looked surprised at Sean’s question. “I don’t know. I didn’t listen. I wasn’t interested. I remember Jenna rolling her eyes at the rigmarole her dad was going through. Some of the men seemed impressed.”
“Was Dr. Evers there?”
“Gary? Yeah. I remember because he was overdressed, but then he’s always been wound a little tight.”
“You know him well?”
Despite his determination to maintain control, Sean could feel the sense of excitement he’d tried to tamp down before growing again. Now they knew that Evers had been to the Kincaid house. He’d seen the security system. Even Beth Goldberg’s comment that he was “wound a little tight” seemed to play into his growing conviction that, against all odds, they just might be on to something.
“Only as a colleague,” Beth said. “He…Frankly, I’ve found him difficult to get to know.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know. Distant. Preoccupied, maybe. He seems an excellent therapist. Everyone says so. But…he isn’t the kind of person you’d go out with after work for a drink.”
“He ever talk about where he’d worked?”
“Where he’d worked?”
“Before he came here. Other cities.”
“That should be in his résumé,” Carlisle broke in, inclining his head toward the folders on the edge of the desk.
“He ever mention Detroit?” Sean went on, ignoring the psychiatrist’s comments.
“Not that I remember,” Carlisle said.
“He has relatives there.” Beth Goldberg’s statement was flat. And very confident.
“Relatives?”
“Cousins, maybe. I don’t remember the details. It was…I don’t know. Sometime last year. I was going to a training seminar there, and I asked a group of staffers about the location of the hotel they’d booked me into. How safe the area was. He seemed to know the city. I remember he explained it by saying he had family there.”
“And Atlanta?” He didn’t look at Bingham. He didn’t want to see the same hope in the cop’s face that crowded his chest.
“I don’t remember him mentioning Atlanta,” she said. “Paul?”
“Not to me. Not that I remember.”
“Either of you know what kind of car Dr. Evers drives?”
“His car?” Beth Goldberg looked puzzled for a moment. And then, as she obviously remembered the repeated broadcasts of the witness’s description of the car used in Carol Cummings’s abduction. “You think Gary…” She shook her head, thoughts moving behind those dark eyes. “A Lexus, I think. Something big.”
“Color?”
“White,” Carlisle said softly. “That pearlized kind of finish.”
A big sedan with the kind of paint job that might, in a twilight rain, gleam like silver.
Too many coincidences to ignore. The car. Evers’s familiarity with the cities in which the Inquisitor had hunted.
And as for motive?
Maybe he’d been attracted to Jenna long before the interview. Maybe he’d even started planning how he was going to take her. And when Sean had shown up, it had sealed the deal, just as if he’d painted a target on Jenna’s back.
“It’s him,” he said to Bingham, no longer concerned with hiding his excitement or protecting anyone’s reputation. “Too much of this fits. It’s got to be Evers.”
Twenty-Eight
Jenna slowly opened her eyes and then shut them against the influx of light. It seemed to slice into her brain, pinpointing the pain that began in the center of her skull and radiated outward. Even with her eyelids closed, the throbbing behind them didn’t lessen.
The ache in her right arm was almost as bad as the one in her head. She tried to raise her left in an attempt to reach across her body to discover what was wrong with it.
For some reason, she couldn’t. For several seconds she puzzled over that inability before the events in the kitchen flooded back. All the things she didn’t want to remember.
Searching for Sean. The blow that had knocked the gun from her hands. The man in the mask, who’d materialized out of the darkness. The cruelty of his grip on her injured arm as he’d jammed a needle into it.
The images appeared faster and faster, forcing their way into her fogged brain. At some point the realization of what they all meant was there as well.
Who had attacked her. The reason neither Sean nor Officer Daniels had come to her aid during his assault. The fact that she couldn’t move her arms.
She tried to lift her head to verify if she were right about the reason for that, only to discover that it, too, had been secured to whatever surface she was lying on.
She cut her eyes as far to the right as she could. She could see the edge of the strip of silver tape that had been used to immobilize her head, a couple of strings still hanging from when it had been ripped from the roll.
Panic bubbled inside her chest, tightening her throat so that she couldn’t breathe. Frantic now, beyond reasoned thought, she fought to move her legs. And then, in desperation, her arms again, despite the shards of agony her efforts sent through the right one.
Only her hands had any range of motion and that was severely limited. She twisted and turned them, trying to pull free. The only result was that the duct tape chafed her wrists raw and the ache in her forearm became unbearable.
After endless minutes of that useless struggle, she allowed her head to fall back against the mattress the meager half inch she’d managed to raise it. She waited for the pain in her arm to subside, wondering for the first time if it might be broken. And then wondering what it would matter if it were.
He’d done this more than a dozen times. He had it down to a science. Even the police had admitted there were no flaws in his methodology.
And each of those victims must have struggled exactly like this. As desperate to escape as she was.
Not one of them had ever made it. He was far too careful to allow that to happen. Too good at what he did.
Screw that, she thought, furious at her own surrender. And screw you, too, you bastard. If you think I’m going to lie here and let you make mincemeat out of me—
Rage as well as fear fueled her renewed struggle. This time she didn’t attempt to move the right arm, concentrating on freeing her left instead.
Her wrists had always been slender. If she could stretch the tape enough to slip her hand through…
Fiercely determined, she twisted and turned her wrist, putting as much pressure as she was capable of with her limited movement against the bindings. Sometime in the midst of her exertion, she realized that she’d been gasping aloud, almost panting, with the intensity of her efforts. If he heard her—
She froze, holding her breath as she strained to hear whether he was coming. At first she heard nothing. And then, almost in wonder, she realized there was some background noise that had been there since she’d awakened.
From somewhere nearby came the sound of water. It was distant, enough so that she believed what she was hearing came from outside rather than inside the structure. A creek or a stream, rather than a fauc
et? And God knew there were hundreds of those in the area.
Relegating her discovery to sensory background, she listened again, trying to identify any other sounds in her environment. There was nothing.
Other than the faint noise of the water, the place was as silent as a tomb. She closed her eyes, squeezing the lids tightly shut to stop the rush of tears the cliché had produced.
She didn’t want to die. Most of all she didn’t want to die like this. Strapped down like some terrified animal on a vivisection table. Aware of every slice. Every cut. Each precise mutilation—
She broke the chain of thought, refusing to give him that power. Not yet. Not until she was faced with the reality of what he would do and not simply with her terror of it.
The reality she had to face right now was that she had no idea where he was or when he would return. All she knew for sure was that however long that might be, the time was finite.
He would come. And he would do to her what he had done to all the others.
She was under no delusion. There were no brilliant arguments to prevent what was going to happen. No psychological tricks. No plea that would deter him.
He had perfected what he did so that it was ritual. Unthinking. And unchanging.
And no one was going to stop him doing it. Not the police, who had been ineffective in stopping him for almost a decade now. It was even possible they didn’t even know she was missing. Maybe if Sean or Daniels had still been alive—
She caught back her sobs. If the Inquisitor was here, she didn’t want him to know she was awake. If he wasn’t, then her only chance was to free herself before he came back. And she had no idea how long she had before that would happen.
“As far as Carlisle knows, he’s coming in today,” Bingham said, keeping pace with Sean’s near run. “He hasn’t called to cancel his patients. We wait for him here, with everything in place so that when he arrives—”
“You have any idea what he’s doing right now?”
He glanced at the detective’s face in time to watch the impact of his question. Although he’d visibly flinched, Bingham recovered quickly. He put out his hand, grabbing Sean’s wrist hard enough to halt his progress and at the same time turn him around so they were almost face-to-face.
“You don’t know that. Chances are he doesn’t take them home.”
“Chances are? That’s the best you got? What kind of chance do you think those women had once they were in his hands?”
As Jenna was now. He jerked his arm out of the lieutenant’s grasp, heading determinedly down the hall again.
“I can stop you, you know.”
“You’ll have to.”
This time Sean didn’t even look back. He hit the front door full force, pushing it open so that despite its weight, it slammed back against the side of the building. It was only then that he realized his SUV was back at the Kincaids’. He’d been in no condition to drive when they’d left the house.
And apparently in no condition to think, either.
He turned as Bingham came through the door that had not yet had time to close. “I need a car.”
“You need to calm down and think this through. We don’t want to scare him off. We do that and we lose him. Then he really can do anything he wants to her.”
The first part of that argument didn’t move him. The last, however— “He’s not coming back here, Ray. This is over and done. He has to know that.”
It was so clear to him Sean didn’t understand why the detective didn’t get it. Gary Evers wasn’t going to come in to the office today and see patients. He wasn’t stupid. He had to know that somebody was going to put Jenna’s disappearance together with Carlisle’s knowledge of where she’d been hiding with the description of the car that had picked up Carol Cummings, which was now public.
“You don’t know that,” Bingham said. “You go off half cocked and we lose any chance we have.”
“Jenna to Carlisle and back to Evers. It’s all there. He isn’t stupid,” Sean said again. “He has to know that once the threads start to unravel, everything is going to be discovered. The connection to the places he’s lived. The car he drives. He isn’t going to get in that car and show up for work today like nothing’s happened.”
“As far as he knows, nothing has,” Bingham argued. “There’s been no media release about Jenna. He’s got no reason to think we’ve made those connections.”
“He wouldn’t have taken the chances he took last night if he didn’t know it was over.”
“That makes no sense, Sean. You’re the one who’s been saying he was after Jenna all along.”
“The risks he took—”
“Maybe he likes risks. Maybe what he got out of last night was worth taking risks for. And I’m not talking about Jenna.”
“You think he cares that much about getting to me?”
“I think you’re his antithesis. And he knows it.”
“And I think we’re wasting time. Who gives a fuck what he thinks? He’s an animal. A mad dog. The only way to stop him is to kill him.”
“I’m not arguing that. I just want to be sure that’s what we do—stop him, I mean. This is the closest we’ve come—”
“Then get your head out of your ass and come with me. Let’s take him down, once and for all.”
Before he does to Jenna what he’s done to the others. What he did to Makaela.
He could see indecision on the lieutenant’s face. Bingham wanted this bastard, too. He just wasn’t convinced this was the way. Sean was. But if they waited much longer—
“So what if he took her wherever he takes them and didn’t go back to his house?” Bingham asked.
“He hasn’t had time. I’m betting he’s got her there with him now. And if he doesn’t, what have we got to lose by checking it out?”
“He sees us and runs.”
“He’s not going to see us.”
“You aren’t thinking about—The two of us? Alone? Man, you’re full of shit.”
“You’re the one who’s afraid we’ll scare him away. You go in there with a SWAT team, and you just might be right.”
Bingham started shaking his head before Sean finished the sentence. “You had your chance last night. I’m not gonna let him walk away this time.”
Sean could sense precious minutes ticking off as they argued. No one had ever been able to determine the sequence in which the bastard worked. No one knew where he began. The only thing that was certain was how it ended.
It had been nearly four hours since he’d taken Jenna. What he could do in that timeframe to the delicate skin of the woman Sean had made love to last night…
“You call in anybody you want,” he capitulated. “I don’t care. As long as I’m there, too.”
Bingham’s eyes fell to the bulge caused by the Glock Sean had recovered from the kitchen floor and shoved into the pocket of his jacket. When the detective looked up again, the brown eyes were hard.
“This isn’t your mission, Sergeant Murphy. It’s mine. I’m in charge here. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we bring this guy in alive. There are families out there who need information that’ll give them closure—”
“Trust me. What those families want is him dead,” Sean said, his voice equally cold. “Don’t try to dress up what you want in any kind of reason supposedly coming from them. You want the credit for bringing him in, that’s one thing, but don’t you lecture me about what the families want.”
He held Bingham’s eyes as he made the ultimatum. The lieutenant was the first to look away.
“I’ll get somebody out here.”
“And the house?”
“We’ll check it out. You, me and a SWAT team.”
“And if he runs?”
“Then we’ll catch him.”
Twenty-Nine
Like the Kincaids’ estate, Evers’s house sat in the middle of several acres in a relatively rural area. Although not as large as that of Jenna’s parents, it was im
pressive by any standard. And a setting that was perfect for the Inquisitor’s purposes, Sean had thought as they’d driven up the curving drive.
At Bingham’s insistence the SWAT team had made the initial approach. No one had answered the door, which they were then given permission to batter down while a couple of police helicopters hovered over the grounds.
The house had been empty. And according to the reports coming over Bingham’s two-way, there were no signs that any violence, either past or present, had taken place there. They would do the standard tests for the presence of blood on every inch of the property, of course, hoping that the results might provide evidence when Evers was brought to trial.
If he was brought to trial, Sean thought bitterly. Somehow the bastard had managed to do what he’d always done before. He had eluded those who were searching for him.
“The Lexus is in the basement garage,” Bingham said. “They’re going over it now.”
“He has another car. Something he uses to transport the victims.”
“We can check with motor vehicle—”
“It won’t be registered in his name. He may even have brought it with him.” The same car he’d used in other places? If so, he wouldn’t keep it here. Sean’s surety about the odds against him doing that produced his next suggestion. “And check and see what other property Evers owns.”
Mouth open as if he were about to complete the sentence Sean had interrupted, Bingham stared at him for a few seconds before he punched the button on his radio to do the things he’d been told.
“That may not be in his name, either,” Sean warned.
“Then how the hell are they supposed to look for it?”
“He would have used a Realtor to find this place.” The psychologist wouldn’t have known about the house otherwise. It would have been listed only with someone who specialized in properties in this price range. “Find out who handled the transaction and then see if Evers mentioned he was looking for anything else. Something smaller. Secluded. Something for a relative or a friend, maybe.”
It was a long shot. A chance Evers should never have taken. It was, however, a possibility. Working his hunches had gotten them this far. And those were still all he had.