“Because they were whores. All whores. Whores like that strumpet from Babylon. Whores are supposed to be stoned, eliminated. Killed. You should know that, being a whore,” Alice spit in her face.
Charley’s mind raced. God, but she wished she’d called Nick and told him. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid for herself as she was afraid that Alice would somehow manage to continue with her spree and go unpunished. Unstopped.
Alice sneered. “What, you don’t think I know about you and Nick Brannigan? Don’t know about how you tempted him, lay with him and made him forget about all his responsibilities?”
Charley had no idea what she was babbling about. The only thing she knew was that Alice had slipped up. “You made a mistake, Alice. Nick Brannigan is not a married man.”
“Yes, he is!” Alice screamed the words into her face. “You don’t have to take formal vows to be married. You just need to make a commitment.” She brought her face down close to Charley’s. “And by planting his seed in that woman, he made a commitment. He was her husband and you came between them.”
“The woman is dead,” Charley pointed out.
“She has an eternal soul. Souls don’t die,” Alice insisted.
“How do you even know about all this?” Charley demanded. As far as she knew, Nick hadn’t told anyone else about the woman who had killed herself. She’d barely gotten it out of him herself.
Alice’s smile was pure malice, and triumph shone in her eyes. “Everything goes through me, one way or another. I’ve gotten very good at the computer. Agent Brannigan’s wife’s brother gave a statement to the police on his arrest,” she informed her. And then impatience creased her brow. “But all that’s beside the point. The point is, you’re not fit to live. You break up homes, lead good men astray—”
“Who, Alice, who was led astray?” Charley asked. Keep her talking. Make her confess everything. The longer she talks, the better the chance that you can figure out a way to get free. “What set you off on this crusade of yours?”
The triumphant look on Alice’s pale face intensified. “Sorry, you’re going to go to your grave wondering about that.” And then she sneered. “I’m not in the mood to make a clean breast of it to a whore.”
After pushing Charley down onto a chair, Alice grabbed a fistful of her hair to hold her in place. Charley saw the knife in Alice’s other hand and struggled not to cringe.
“I think I’ll carve your cross while you’re still alive. The others were dead when I did it. I have to keep you alive until Sunday, but there’s no reason I can’t make you repent. You disappointed me most of all, Charlotte.” Alice began to breathe heavily. “We could have been friends, but you had to ruin everything. Everything!” Alice screamed.
She was looking up into the eyes of a person who was possessed, Charley thought, trying to curb the panic that began to tighten around her heart. She tried to pull back.
Pain flashed through the top of her head as Alice yanked harder.
“Alice, you’re going to regret this.”
The grin on the gaunt face was nothing short of macabre. “Not nearly as much as you are, Charlotte.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHARLEY PULLED against her ropes, but they were too tight. No way was she going to get free. All she could do was stall and hope that she could somehow talk the deranged woman out of torturing her.
She banked down her fear. “Alice, you don’t want to do this.”
The secretary’s eyes seemed to glow with pleasure. Her breathing had grown shallow and quick, as if this torture gave her sexual gratification.
“Yes, I do. Don’t you understand? This is the only way you’ll be saved? I have to do this. Your soul will go to hell if I don’t.” She surprised Charley by releasing her hair. Alice was focusing on her forehead. It took everything Charley had not to shiver. “Now hold still. If you move, the lines will be wavy.” She angled her head, like an artist, searching for just the right light. “You can’t get to heaven if the lines are wavy.”
Intent on what she was about to do, confident that there would be no further resistance, Alice leaned forward. The second she did, so did Charley. Straining, Charley managed to push herself up on the balls of her feet just enough to bridge the small distance that existed between them. With a bloodcurdling cry, Charley head-butted her would-be emancipator as hard as she could.
Caught off guard, Alice cried out in surprise as pain seared through her. She stumbled backward, almost losing her balance.
“Bitch! Whore!” Alice screamed at her, enraged. “I’m trying to save you!”
“Your saving days are over.”
An almost feral, guttural sound escaped her lips as Alice swung around. In an instant, she had a new target. Clutching her knife, she raised it, ready to strike, to slash away at the man who had somehow materialized out of nowhere to challenge her authority.
“Nick!” Charley stared, afraid that terror had somehow made her hallucinate. But Alice was reacting as well. He had to be real. He had to be here.
Her head was spinning, aching from the head butt she’d used to ward off Alice.
Nick had arrived moments ago. Seeing Charley’s car parked at the curb, his instincts warned him that if he knocked on the door, it would be too late. So he’d quickly circled the house and found a window in the back that he could jimmy open.
The second he did, he heard Alice cursing and Charley trying to talk to her. His heart froze in his chest. He didn’t remember drawing the gun he now had in his hand. The gun he aimed at the willowy figure in the yellow dressing gown.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded. He spared a single, quick glance in Charley’s direction. If he hadn’t come when he did… Nick couldn’t control the flash of temper that surfaced. “Don’t you know any better than to go after a suspect by yourself?”
Keeping himself as far away from Alice as he could, Nick took a step toward Charley.
“Don’t,” Alice warned angrily. She pointed her knife at him, ready to run him through at the slightest movement on his part. Her eyes looked red rimmed and maniacal.
And then an expression came over her face that stunned Nick. It appeared almost pathetic.
“Don’t touch her, Dad,” Alice pleaded. “She’s evil. Can’t you see Alice is evil? Look what she’s made you do already. She’s made you commit adultery, sinning in the very church where people come to hear you preach to them every Sunday. To hear you tell them how to be good.” A sob tore from her throat. “Why, Dad? Why did you let Alice lead you astray like that? I know what Mom’s like, but why wasn’t I enough for you? I would have done anything, anything for you.”
The killer’s face turned dark, her eyes malevolent. “But all you wanted was her.” She squared her thin shoulders, as if preparing herself for an unseen battle. “And now I have to kill you both. Kill you so that you can be washed clean again. Become pure again.” The reedy voice became almost singsong. “God doesn’t want you if you’re not pure. That’s what you said. Over and over again, that’s what you told me.”
Breathing harder now, Alice pressed her lips together. Her eyes gleamed as a savage cry tore from her throat. Fury radiated from every inch of her body as she raised the knife high and charged at Nick.
It happened so fast, it didn’t even seem real. All Charley knew was that she had to deflect Alice’s knife before it reached Nick. Using the chair for leverage, Charley threw herself in Alice’s direction with all her might. Falling, she managed to just catch the woman’s legs, tripping her. Alice, Charley and the chair went down with a hard clatter.
Crashing to the floor, Alice hit her head against the corner of the white stone fireplace. Her wig slid off as she screamed. And then her expression went blank.
Nick, his weapon trained on the fallen figure, quickly circled around to get to Charley. His heart felt permanently lodged in his throat. Was she crazy? He could have shot Alice if it came down to that. There was no need for Charley to take that kind
of a risk.
He squatted beside her, his gun trained on the unconscious serial killer. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better,” Charley ground out. She hurt in more places than she could count, starting with the roots of her hair. But hurting was good. Hurting meant she was still breathing. “But I’m alive and that’ll do for now.”
Still holding his gun on Alice, Nick hooked his arm around Charley’s waist and brought her and the chair into an upright position. His eyes never leaving the inert form beside the hearth, he undid the ropes around Charley’s chest and legs. Unable to do it with one hand the way he would have preferred, he lay the gun at his feet and used both hands.
The room pulsed with tension.
“Any more tricks up your sleeve?” he asked.
“Fresh out.”
Alice, the killer, had referred to her father’s lover as Alice. Had her personality split, or had she taken on the identity of her first victim?
Her first victim.
Charley’s eyes grew wide. “Cris wasn’t the first one she killed.”
“Apparently not,” Nick agreed. The ties gave him trouble. “Where the hell did she learn to make knots like this?” He cursed roundly. “Finally!” he declared, throwing the rope on the floor.
Charley bounced to her feet, nearly tripping over the rope. She wanted to be as far away from the chair as possible. But she was still cuffed.
“The keys to my handcuffs are in my pocket.” Holding her hands to the side, Charley presented her left hip to him.
The gun back in his hand, Nick shifted it to his left hand, then slipped his right into Charley’s pocket. The fit was tight and he had to wiggle his fingers to get to the bottom and the keys.
“In some areas, this would be considered foreplay,” he commented.
“That’s what got us in trouble in the first place,” she reminded him. “Or at least me.”
She felt Nick’s fingers along her thigh as he located the keys and drew them out. Charley eagerly held up her iron-clad wrists. They were chafed from where she’d attempted to struggle against the steel bracelets.
“Why the sudden change in M.O.?” Nick wondered out loud as he unlocked her handcuffs.
Charley shook her head. “No change.” She saw the protest rise to his lips. She rubbed first one wrist, then the other, relieved to be free again. “Alice, or whoever that is, somehow felt that you were eternally bound to the woman who killed herself. In Alice’s mind, you were married. That made me the whore of Babylon.” Nick raised his eyebrows at the label. “Her words.”
Cautiously Charley crouched down beside the serial killer. She pulled the wig completely aside and found herself staring down at the face of the man in the sketch. “Who the hell is this, anyway?”
Nick came to stand next to her. “Some deranged person whose father was a minister.”
Charley rose, backing away. “Dead minister from the sound of it.”
Nick nodded. Using the handcuffs he’d just removed from Charley, he crouched down and snapped them on the killer’s wrists after positioning them behind the man’s back.
The sound of a gun being cocked brought him quickly around.
Charley was standing only a foot away, her own weapon drawn and aimed at the unconscious killer.
“Charley, what are you doing?” Nick asked, his voice low, calm, as he slowly rose to his feet.
“Getting even.” Her hands shook slightly as she held the gun in them. It was aimed dead center at the serial killer’s head. “He killed Cris, Nick. I found her necklace in the drawer. He took it as a souvenir. He killed my sister and wanted to relive the experience every time he looked at her cross.” She blinked away the tears beginning to form. “Damn it, Nick, you can’t talk me out of this. I need to kill him.”
He never took his eyes off her. As carefully as possible, he approached her, cutting the distance down one inch at a time.
“Charley, we’ve got him. Dead to rights, we’ve got him. Don’t do this,” he begged. “Don’t throw away your career and your life just for a momentary lapse.”
“It’s not a lapse,” she insisted, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. “He made my family’s life a living hell. My mother’s in an institution because of him, my sister’s in a grave. My father’s done nothing but live and breathe his capture for the last six years. Whoever the hell he is, he has to pay for that.”
“He will, Charley, he will.” Nick took another step forward. “He’s never going to hurt anyone again. And your mother and sister would never have wanted you to do this. This isn’t you, Charley,” he told her softly. “This cretin takes revenge, you don’t. You don’t,” he repeated. As he did, he slowly removed the weapon from her hand. Once he had it, he put the safety on and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans.
Something broke inside of her. Charley crumpled into his arms and began to cry.
“It’s over, honey, it’s over,” he told her softly again and again as he stroked her hair.
And then he just held her until she had no more tears left. He held her for a long time.
CHAPTER FORTY
“OKAY, I’LL BITE. Just how did you manage to suddenly appear like some knight in shining armor riding to my rescue?”
More than an hour had passed since Nick had handcuffed “Alice Sullivan” and called in the task force. In that entire time, Charley’s head had been spinning, processing very little of what happened around her.
She found it hard to believe that the nightmare was finally over. Harder still to believe the killer had been among them almost from the first.
It wasn’t until she was in the car with Nick, on their way to rouse a judge in order to get a search warrant, that Charley remembered to ask the question that had first occurred to her when he had appeared in “Alice’s” living room.
Nick glanced in Charley’s direction. They’d left twenty people behind them, give or take a few, combing the immediate crime scene. “Alice” had finally come around after the paramedics had used common smelling salts to make him regain consciousness. Rather than say anything, the serial killer cried.
Charley had sat beside Nick in silence since she’d buckled up. He’d let her alone, content with the fact that she was alive, and that he’d prevented her from being charged with the serial killer’s murder. If Charley wanted her space, to pull herself together or whatever, he was okay with that.
But hearing her voice was a relief to him. He wasn’t used to her being so quiet. He’d grown accustomed to the sound of her endless chatter.
“I called you when I got home and you didn’t answer. Not your home phone, not your cell. I can’t explain it, but I got this uneasy feeling, like maybe something was off, something was wrong.” He realized he was pressing down too hard on the accelerator and forced himself to ease back. “I swung by your apartment, but you weren’t there, so I went to the office. I figured if you were still working, I was going to drag you home.”
He took a deep breath, reliving the feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw what she’d done to the sketch they’d released.
“That’s when I saw the alterations you made to the sketch.” They came to a stop at a red light. Nick slanted a glance at her. The main thing that had kept going through his head was why hadn’t she called him about this? Why had she gone off on her own? “I believe when I first came to the Santa Ana field office, someone said something to me about always ‘sharing with the class’ and not riding off like the Lone Ranger.” His eyes went soft. “Why didn’t you share with the class, Charley? Why didn’t you at least call me?”
“Light’s green,” she pointed out. She heard Nick mutter under his breath and then shift from the brake to the gas. “And say what?” she asked as they began to travel again. “That I thought the A.D.’s secretary, a woman who looked like the personification of a large bird, was really our serial killer? That I thought maybe ‘Alice’ might actually be a transvestite, or a man in drag committing the murders?
If I had said that, you would have had me locked up.”
There was no arguing that he would have thought she was hallucinating, but that didn’t change what happened. “Instead, you were almost killed, would have been killed if I hadn’t come in just in time.”
“Alice was going to wait for Sunday to kill me.” Charley did her best to make light of it and take away the dark edge. “You’re going to hold that over me, aren’t you?”
He knew better than to push. Very little was gained that way. So he laughed and said, “I figure I can get a little mileage out of that, yes.” But then something inside him refused to make a joke out of it. “Oh damn, Charley, that nutcase could have killed you.” And if that had happened, he would have never forgiven himself for not second-guessing her. For not being there to save her.
His head reeled from the consequences.
“I know, you already said that.” She looked at him. Nick was pulling the car over to the side of the road. Before she could ask him why he’d done that, he’d turned off the engine. And then he unbuckled his seat belt. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he reached over and hit the release button for her seat belt, then pulled her into his arms as best he could from that position. Her eyes widened in surprise a beat before his mouth went down over hers.
Nick kissed her with all the feeling, all the emotion that ran rampant through him. And all the while, one thought kept repeating itself in his head.
He could have lost her.
And until this very moment, he hadn’t realized just how badly that would have hurt. How devastated he would have been. Not just for an hour or a week, but quite possibly, for the rest of his life.
When he let her go some three minutes later, shaken and not a little dazed, Nick gave her a warning. “Don’t ever, ever do that to me again, Charley. Do you understand?”
She understood, or thought she did. And what she understood sent tidal waves through her world.
But even so, she clung to humor as if it was a life preserver. Clung to it until she could examine her own feelings.
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