Yeah, but this one is personal, Sam started to remind him, but before he could get the words out, his cell phone rang.
His heart jumped. Adrenaline shot through his blood like an injection of speed. Fumbling to get the phone out of his pocket, he suddenly wasn’t tired anymore.
Error, the ID window on his phone read. He stiffened even as he flipped the thing open.
“McCabe,” he growled.
“Close but no cigar.” It was him: the sick fuck who had just whacked Wendell and Tammy Sue, who had killed at least three times previously that Sam knew for sure about, who was leading him and his team on a murderous wild-goose chase that had started with the killing of a retired federal judge in Richmond three weeks before and was proceeding south and westward, around the skirt of the country. The voice was distorted, digitally masked as usual, but by now Sam knew it better than his own.
“Where are you, you bastard?” Sam’s fingers tightened on the phone as if they were gripping the caller’s neck. He scanned his surroundings—the artfully placed groves of trees, the nearby houses, the shining black lake—without success. “Where are you?”
A chuckle was his only answer. “Ready for your next clue?”
“Just help me understand,” Sam said, desperate to keep him talking. “Why? What do you want? What’s the point of ...?”
“Here goes,” the voice said. “Where in the world is—Madeline?”
“Look—” Sam began, but it was no use: The phone went dead. Whatever else he was, the guy wasn’t stupid; he would know they were trying to trace his calls, just like he would know they were recording them. Cursing under his breath, Sam pressed a button.
“You called, master?” Gardner answered. The technical expert of Sam’s team, she was back at the Comfort Inn just off I-264 that was serving as their temporary local headquarters.
“You get that?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything?”
“Working on it. But I doubt it. He’s probably using a prepaid phone card just like before.”
“Sick bastard beat us again. We got two more dead.” Sam’s voice was glum. He could hear the flat tone of it himself. “Call the locals, would you, see if they can set up a roadblock around the perimeter, say, five miles out, check IDs, look out for suspicious characters, that type of thing. I’d handle it, but the guy in charge here doesn’t seem to like me too much.”
Gardner chuckled. “Big surprise.”
“Love you, too,” Sam said sourly, and hung up. Wynne was looking at him, tense, frowning, his eyes narrowed.
“Madeline.” Sam was suddenly bone-tired again. “This time he’s going after some woman named Madeline.”
Wynne expelled his breath in a whistling sigh. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
They headed for the car and got in without another word. After all, what was there to say? They were back on the clock again and they both knew it. If the pattern held, they had exactly seven days to find out who this Madeline was and get to her before the killer did.
If they lost this race like they’d lost the last three, Madeline, whoever the hell she was, was dead.
TWO
Thursday, August 14
Okay, so she was afraid of the dark.
It was stupid, Maddie Fitzgerald knew, but she just couldn’t help it: Lying there in her hotel room bed, staring up into nothingness, her hand still in the process of withdrawing from the lamp she had just turned off, she felt as shivery as if she’d just plunged headfirst into a pool of icy water.
“Pretty pathetic,” she said aloud, hoping that hearing her own voice might provide an antidote to the cold sweat she could feel popping out along her hairline. It didn’t. Instead of being reassuring, the sound made her cringe as she immediately wondered who or what might be lurking there in the darkness with her to hear—and pounce.
“You’re on the twentieth floor, for God’s sake. Nobody’s coming in through the window. The door is locked. You’re safer here than you are at home,” she told herself firmly.
That didn’t help, either. Bravado was useless; logic clearly was, too. She was simply going to have to sweat it out. This time she was not going to give in. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. The relentless drone of the air-conditioning unit under the window suddenly seemed as loud as an 18-wheeler barreling along beside her bed. The bed itself—a king-size—was huge. Huddled on the side nearest the unreachable-from-the-outside window, she felt increasingly small and vulnerable. Which was ridiculous. She was five feet, seven inches tall; one hundred twenty-five well-toned pounds; a smart, competent, twenty-nine-year-old, soon-to-be-wildly-successful businesswoman, for God’s sake—and yet here she was, heart boogeying like a whole dance floor full of hyperactive teenagers because she’d just turned off the bedside lamp. Maddie silently acknowledged that humiliating fact even as she fought the urge to grab for the switch, click the lamp back on, and put herself out of her misery.
If she turned on the light, she’d be able to sleep.
Her eyes popped open before she managed to put a brake on runaway temptation.
No.
Turning over so that she was facing the door, Maddie gritted her teeth and mentally groped for pleasant thoughts. She lay on her side, knees tucked almost under her chin, head propped on a pair of too-soft pillows, clutching the blankets tightly around her shoulders as she stared sightlessly into stygian darkness—darkness into which she had deliberately plunged herself. Closing her eyes a second time required real physical effort. Squinching up her face, she squeezed them shut. Moments later, when none materialized, she gave up on pleasant thoughts and instead began counting toward a hundred in her head. At the same time, she worked to control the physical symptoms brought on by the absence of light: ragged breathing, racing pulse, pounding heart, cold sweat.
By the time she reached fifty, her heart was thundering like an elephant stampede and she was breathing so fast she was practically panting. Even as she kept her eyes clenched tightly, despair filled her. Would she never be free of the specter that had haunted her for the last seven years? Every single time she tried to go to sleep alone in the dark, was she going to suffer a replay of that night? Would her dreams always be haunted by the sound of ...?
Shrill as a siren, a shriek split the darkness close beside her head.
Several seconds passed before Maddie realized that what she was hearing was the phone ringing. Peeling herself off the ceiling, taking a deep, steadying breath, she reached for the lamp, fumbled with the switch—oh light, blessed light!—and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” If she’d just suffered a complete and utter nervous breakdown, her voice at least gave no hint of it. Never let them see you sweat: The mantra had been drummed into her at a hard school. Nice to know that it was still automatically operational.
“Did I wake you?”
Jon. He’d nearly sent her into cardiac arrest.
“Actually, I wasn’t asleep.” Maddie hitched herself up against the pillows. As she did so, she wiped her sweaty palms one at a time on the tastefully earth-toned comforter in which she was swaddled.
“Me neither. Hey, maybe we could keep each other company.”
Maddie could almost see his smile through the phone. Jon Carter was a good-looking guy, blond, blue-eyed, tall and trim, oozing charm through his pores. It was one of the reasons she continued to employ him.
“Not a chance.” Her voice was tart. Of course, the fact that he was still regularly hitting on her despite the change in circumstances that had turned her into his employer could not be considered a point in his favor.
He sighed. “You’re a hard woman, Maddie Fitzgerald, you know that?”
“Believe me, the knowledge keeps me awake nights.” Her heart rate was almost back to normal. “You want something?”
“I just had a thought—maybe we should try to work Mrs. Brehmer into the spot. You know, have her be the face of Brehmer’s Pet Chow, or something.”
&nb
sp; “She’s ninety years old and she looks like she died about ten years back.”
Again, she could hear his smile. “So what’s your point?”
Mrs. Brehmer was also worth about ninety billion, and her account, currently held by J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency so huge that it was tantamount to sacrilege to mention Maddie’s own fledgling agency in the same breath with it, was worth upward of ten million a year. The thought practically made Maddie salivate. She’d sunk her life savings into buying Creative Partners when the firm for which she and Jon were working had gone belly-up eighteen months before. Unfortunately, so far the company’s finances hadn’t exactly turned around on her watch. If something good didn’t happen soon, this time when Creative Partners went down the tubes she was going down with it. Not a happy thought.
“I suppose we could coat the lens with Vaseline,” Maddie said with a sigh. “Or put pantyhose over it. Something to soften the visual.”
Jon chuckled. “See, I have good ideas.”
“Sometimes.” Maddie was thinking. “Maybe we could put her in a rocking chair in a long black dress, get her to look sort of like Whistler’s mother. Just get a long shot of her. She wouldn’t have to actually say anything. She could be like the company logo.”
“There you go. Put a whole bunch of animals around her. Cats draped across the back of the chair, dogs at her feet. That kind of thing.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to pitch it.” Cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear, Maddie reached for the hotel-issue notepad and pencil by the phone. With a few economical strokes, she made a quick sketch of Mrs. Brehmer as logo, complete with slight smile, shoulder-perching cat, and oval frame, then examined it critically.
“Could work,” she admitted.
“Want me to come up so we can put something together?”
“No.” Maddie glanced at the bedside clock. It was not quite midnight. “Our appointment’s not until ten. How about if we meet for breakfast at seven-thirty? That should give us plenty of time to go over everything. Remember, right now we’re just floating this logo idea as sort of a trial balloon. If she likes it, we can go from there.”
“Whatever you say, Boss.”
“Get some sleep.” Because being called Boss was still fresh enough to give her a thrilled little tingle, Maddie’s voice was gruff. Then she bethought herself of something and pulled the receiver back. “Jon—good thinking, by the way.”
“I try. Hey, if you change your mind, I’m only two floors down.”
“Good-night, Jon.” Maddie hung up. For a moment, she simply stared at the sketch she had made as various ways to work Joan Brehmer into the ad campaign they were proposing revolved through her head. The elderly widow was still sufficiently involved in the company her husband had founded in St. Louis fifty years before that Creative Partners had had to fly to New Orleans, where Mrs. Brehmer now spent most of the year, to pitch their ideas to her personally. Given that the old lady felt that strongly about the company, maybe including her in the spot was the way to go. Maybe it would even be the deciding factor.
Okay, so Jon’s perpetual come-ons were annoying. The man still had some decent ideas. If Creative Partners landed this account ...
The phone rang again. This time Maddie didn’t jump. With the light on, she was as cool as a cucumber.
“What?” she said into the receiver.
“If this works, I want a Christmas bonus.” Jon again, as she’d known it would be.
“We’ll talk.”
“Damn right we’ll talk. I ...”
“Good-night, Jon.” But Maddie was smiling as she hung up. The idea of being in a position to give Christmas bonuses to her five employees was irresistible. If they got this account...
But getting the account would require a dazzling presentation, and a dazzling presentation would be greatly facilitated by a decent amount of sleep. Which at the moment she wasn’t even close to getting. If she got up an hour earlier than she’d planned, there’d be plenty of time to work on the Mrs.-Brehmer-as-logo idea before she met Jon for breakfast. Right now, she needed rest.
Maddie returned the pad and pencil to the bedside table, then frowned at the lamp. It bathed all four corners of the standard-issue room in a warm glow. She could see her reflection, tinted gold and only faintly distorted, in its shiny brass base. Chin-length coffee-brown hair tousled from the amount of tossing and turning she had already done. Slender shoulders, bare except for the spaghetti straps of the silky pink shorty nightgown she was wearing, tan against white sheets. High-cheekboned, square-jawed face, complete with wide mouth, delicate nose, and dark-lashed hazel eyes, staring back at her.
She looked worried. And tired.
Maddie almost snorted. Big surprise. By now, worried and tired were practically her middle names.
But if Creative Partners managed to wow Mrs. Brehmer ...
Phobia-busting was going to have to wait. The reality was that, for her, sleep required light. But the bedside lamp was almost too bright. Feeling a little like Goldilocks—this porridge is too cold; this porridge is too hot—she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the bathroom. Flipping the bathroom light on, she closed the door until it was just barely ajar. Then, shivering as she inadvertently stepped right into the arctic slipstream that blasted from the air conditioner, she succumbed to the final temptation and stopped at the closet to pull Fudgie, the ancient, floppy-eared stuffed dog that was the sole surviving reminder of her misspent youth, from the suitcase on the floor. Clutching him, she bounded back into bed, pulled the covers up around her neck, and, with Fudgie tucked beneath her chin, turned off the lamp.
Ahh. The sheets were still faintly warm, warm enough to soothe the shivers away. Fudgie’s familiar aroma and well-worn softness provided the illusion that she was no longer alone. The slice of light provided just enough illumination to induce sleep. A glance around verified that everything from the armoire at the foot of the bed to the small armchair in the corner was dimly visible, despite the fact that the room was now shrouded in a kind of grayish twilight. Not too much, not too little, just right.
’Night, Goldilocks, she told herself, and snuggled her head deep into the pillows. Her lids drooped. The bed was suddenly surprisingly comfortable. Even the growl of the air conditioner seemed companionable rather than obnoxious now. Fear shuffled off deep into the furthest reaches of her subconscious as images of Mrs. Brehmer in various increasingly ridiculous poses flitted through her head: the old lady standing with a pitchfork and a Great Dane in a takeoff of American Gothic; in close-up (with the help of much lens-softening Vaseline), sporting an eyepatch and a Mona Lisa smile while a parrot perched pirate-style on her shoulder; sitting with a black cat on her lap and a yellow canary in a cage by her side, rocking away like Granny in a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon ...
The pounding of her own heart woke her. At least, that’s what Maddie thought at first as she surfaced what could have been minutes or hours later. Even as she blinked groggily, trying to get her bearings, she could feel the gun-shy organ knocking against her rib cage, feel the racing of her pulse, the dryness of her mouth, the knot in the pit of her stomach that told her she’d had a bad dream.
Another bad dream.
The good news, she thought as she wet her dry lips, was that she hadn’t had one for a long time now. More than a year. Actually, not since she’d taken over Creative Partners and given herself a whole rash of new worries to keep her awake at night. Which, believe it or not, was actually a positive development in her life. Better to worry about being jobless, homeless, and broke than being dead.
The room was pitch-dark. The bathroom light was off.
Realization hit Maddie like a jolt from a cattle prod.
The bathroom light is off. Unless there was a power outage—no, that was out, the air conditioner was still doing its window-rattling roar—someone had turned off the light.
Someone had turned off the light.
Wait, her rational side cautioned,
even as panic seized her by the throat. Stiff as a concrete slab now, she strained futilely to hear or see as she deliberately ticked off various unterrifying possibilities: The bulb could have burned out; there could have been a short in a wire; it ...
There was someone in her room. He was stepping out of the narrow corridor between the bathroom on the left and the rows of closets on the right and moving toward the bed. Maddie didn’t see him; the room was pitch-black. She didn’t hear him—the air conditioner was making too much noise to allow her to hear anything so stealthy as a creeping footfall on carpet.
But she sensed him. Felt him. Knew with unshakable certainty that he was there.
Her heart leaped. Goose bumps raced along her skin like a rush of falling dominoes. The hair at the back of her neck shot straight up.
A scream ripped into her throat; instinct made her swallow it just in time.
If she screamed he would be on her like a duck on a june bug. If she screamed, who, in this cheap, impersonal hotel with its noisy, sound-blocking air conditioners, would be likely to hear—except him?
Making a split-second decision, she moved, sliding as quietly as possible off the side of the bed, suddenly grateful for the air conditioner’s racket to cover her movements. Flat on her stomach on the musty-smelling carpet, she discovered that there was nowhere to go: The window wall was maybe a foot away on her left, and, to her right, a quick, questing hand encountered the carpeted platform that supported the bed.
A couple of heartbeats passed before the true horror of her situation sank in: She was trapped. Her throat closed up and her stomach knotted as she faced the fact that she had nowhere to go. The only way out was the door—and the intruder was doing whatever he was doing between her and it.
Maybe he was nothing more than a garden-variety burglar. She’d left her purse on the floor beside the armoire. Maybe he would just take it and melt away into the darkness from which he’d sprung.
Bait Page 2