Sable Quinn Trilogy Boxed Set

by K. J. Dahlen

  “Was that really necessary?” Nick asked referring to the phone call.

  “I wanted to throw him off track.”

  “What happens if he does kill someone tonight?” Brandi asked.

  Before she could answer the phone rang again. When she picked it up, she could hear him ranting. “You bitch, you hung up on me.”

  “If you don’t stop calling me names, I’ll hang up again."

  “If you hang up again you can look for a body in your own front yard,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll choose one of the two girls whose pictures are in your bedroom. They are very cute, just about my type too. Oh I could have fun with these two.”

  Nick reached for his phone and called in the threat.

  “What do you want Oscar?” Sable asked quietly. Her mind was racing to figure out who he was talking about. The only pictures she had in her bedroom were family members. She grabbed a pen and scrawled out two names on a piece of paper, Elisa Gordan, Michelle Landon. She handed the paper to Nick.

  “Well now that I have your attention, I want you and your coworkers to surface. I want to keep track of everyone in your group.”

  “That won’t happen. Like I said we’re not fools. I thought you said you needed some new excitement in the game. This way not only do we have to find you but you have to figure out where we are as well. That is if one of us is truly your target. ”

  “I’m no fool either. If I tell you my target, you won’t play the game,” Oscar told her. “I hope that siren isn’t coming after me.” Sable could hear the wail of a police siren getting closer. She looked at Nick. Nick was shaking his head.

  “I left something for you. Another piece of the puzzle, if that’s what you want to call it. I have to go for now but I’ll contact you again,” Oscar told her before the line went dead.

  An hour later a police officer delivered an envelope to the offices. The envelope had Sable’s name on it and when she tore it open a stack of pictures fell out. Everyone bent to pick up the photos and they were all surprised at what they found.

  “Son of a bitch,” Max murmured

  The pictures showed each member of the team at different intervals over the past few weeks. Some showed family members and friends. The only picture that was marked in any way was one of Sable. It had a red circle around her face.

  The phone on the table rang again. Sable reached for the receiver. “I called to see if you got my little surprise yet.”

  “We got the packet of pictures if that’s what you wanted to know.”

  “Then you know just how long I’ve been in town and how close I was to you all. I could have reached out and snatched any one of you at any time and no one would have been the wiser.”

  “What the hell do you want?” Sable asked.

  “I want you to play the game fairly,” Oscar told her.

  “Screw the game and screw you. If you want me come and get me. I can’t wait to put a bullet in your miserable hide.” She slammed the phone back into its cradle then picked it up again and calmly laid it on the table. She'd had enough of Oscar calling the shots.

  Chapter Four

  “Are you alright?” Brandi asked.

  Sable wandered to the windows, and looked out. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular; she just needed a moment alone to clear her mind. Every time she talked to Oscar it left a bad taste in her mouth. He may have threatened the whole team but Sable knew she was his intended target and the thought that a serial killer was after her blew her mind.

  “You can’t let him get to you like this, you know.” Quentin told her.

  Sable looked over her shoulder. She saw the concern in his face and she smiled. “I know. In my head I know that but in my heart I can’t figure out why he picked me as his target. What did I ever do to him?”

  Quentin shook his head. “You didn’t do anything to him. It might have been anything about you that caught his attention.”

  Sable glanced back out the window. “No, I don’t have that feeling from this guy. I don’t know why yet but I have a feeling he came looking for me. This wasn’t just a random selection.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Sable shrugged. “Maybe the fact that he knows the name I have tattooed on my shoulder. Every time he makes contact with me he uses my full name and every time he says it the tone of his voice changes. It’s almost like a caress. No, I am not a random choice for him. I just wish I knew why.”

  “Nick wanted me to tell you we got more pages with the pictures.” Quentin wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “As long as we are together, he can’t get to you. He’d have to get through the four of us to get you and we aren’t about to let that happen.”

  Sable leaned into him for a brief moment. “Thanks.” She pulled away and rubbed her eyes. They hurt from unshed tears. “Let’s go see what else this psycho has to say.”

  She walked to the board and read the new pages. Sable frowned as she read Oscar’s thoughts. There was something different about these pages and she couldn’t put her finger on what was different.

  Nick joined her a few minutes later. “Well, what do you think?”

  “There’s something different in these last few pages. Oscar is changing.”

  “Changing? How is he changing? He sounds like the same demented freak he was in the beginning.” Nick snorted.

  Sable shook her head. “No there is something definitely different here. I can’t quite place it yet.”

  “Maybe you’re looking too hard,” Nick suggested quietly.

  Before she could answer him the phone rang again. Sable cringed inside but walked over to the machine and debated whether to answer it or not. Finally on the fifth ring she picked up the receiver.

  “Sabella,” Oscar’s voice whispered.

  “What do you want now?” Sable asked. She was growing more than a little tired of being at his beck and call.

  “I want you to know there will be penalties for not playing the game correctly.”

  “You mean by not playing according to your rules.”

  Oscar chuckled but his laughter held no mirth. “You could say it that way.”

  “Okay, what is the penalty for the first infraction?”

  “Listen,” he instructed. A moment later Sable heard a terrified voice, “Sable, what’s going on? This guy told me you were hurt. Are you alright?”

  Sable’s heart leapt to her throat. It was Elisa’s voice on the phone. Elisa was her best friend from grade school. “Let me talk to him,” she told Elisa.

  “Do I have your attention now?” she heard Oscar say.

  “Let her go,” Sable told him.

  “Not a chance.” Oscar laughed. “She has only twenty four hours to live unless you play the game by my rules.”

  “You’ll kill her anyway so why should I play by your rules?”

  “Yeah, I probably will but if you don’t, I can make the next twenty four hours seem like forever. She will beg me to end her life and so will you. You of all people know what I’m capable of doing.”

  Before she could say anything the line went dead. Sable dropped the receiver and it made a loud noise as it hit the table. Nick reached over and replaced the receiver on the cradle of the phone.

  Sable wanted to scream but no words came out of her mouth. Some past memory niggled at her subconscious but her brain wouldn’t let the thought come forward. She felt weak and as she slid down into a chair, her body felt flushed.

  Nick knelt down beside her and cupping her chin, he gently moved her face around to his. “Look at me.” He told her quietly. When she wouldn’t he shook her a little. “Sable, I need you to look at me.”

  Finally she focused on him. “We’ll find her, I promise.”

  She shook her head. “But you won’t find her in time. He will kill her.”

  “Don’t think like that,” Nick admonished her. “We’ll scour the entire city for her.”

  “She’s already dead and it’s my fault,” Sable told him.


  “What did he mean when he said ‘You of all people know what I’m capable of’? Max asked.

  Sable glanced at him and shrugged. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been profiling his pages. I don’t know.”

  “But how would he know that?” Max frowned. “I mean it’s not like he can see us or he knows what everyone in the team does, does it?”

  “Have you ever dealt with him before?” Nick asked.

  Sable shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean don’t you think I would have remembered him if I had?”

  “Maybe not,” Quentin told them as he handed a batch of papers to Nick. “Nick asked me to find out what I could about the time you were found. There isn’t a whole lot more information than what you told us before Grace and Gene Quinn adopted you. There was some concern about your mental health due to the fact that you wouldn’t speak to anyone for over a year. It was also surmised that you witnessed at least one, probably more, acts of violence that shut down your defenses. According to the records you had nightmares and woke up screaming every night for a long time.”

  Sable tried to comprehend this new information. “I was only four years old at the time.” She shook her head. “Why can’t I remember anything, and why didn’t Grace and Gene ever tell me?”

  “Maybe they didn’t want you to remember the source of your nightmares,” Brandi commented.

  “Did anyone ever look for my birth mother?” Sable asked.

  Quentin shook his head. “Your final records are sealed by the courts, including your adoption records. Grace and Gene informally adopted you at the age of five. They couldn’t legally adopt you without knowing who your real parents were, or what, if anything happened to them.”

  “Let’s see if we can get those records unsealed. We need to know if there could be a link between you and Oscar,” Nick informed them.

  Sable frowned. “What kind of link are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know but there’s something in your past, something you may not even realize that might help us find him and stop him. We have to explore every detail we can.”

  The fax machine began beeping and Quentin turned his attention to the pages coming through. Nick handed the report to Sable, but before she could begin reading it, Quentin came back with bad news.

  He looked at Sable and told her. “The police were just notified of a suspicious fire at the home of Grace and Gene Quinn. When firefighters got the blaze under control, they found two bodies inside the house. Both had their throats cut before the fire.”

  “How do the police know that?” Sable was stunned.

  “Apparently the fire didn’t get the chance to destroy the house. Their bodies weren’t burned by the fire,” Quentin read from the report.

  “When was this?” Nick asked.

  “The fire trucks were dispatched around nine this morning. They also found two suitcases by the door. Apparently Grace and Gene were packed and ready to go.”

  “When Oscar found them, he killed them and then set their house on fire to cover the murders.” Sable finished Quentin’s report. “I’m going to enjoy putting an end to his murderous ways.” She sobbed.

  “We have to catch him first,” Max reminded everyone.

  Sable inhaled a deep breath and picked up the report Nick had handed her and began reading the events of her being found. She knew she couldn’t think about the deaths of Grace and Gene right now or she would never make it through the day. She had to concentrate on finding Oscar. As she read the report, something

  began to click in her mind. She got up, walked to the board, and checked some of the pages Oscar had written. “I think we need to check the birth records in Texas.”

  “Why? I mean why Texas and for what?” Nick asked.

  “I think that’s where I was born. Oscar was going there when the entries end, and that’s where Gene’s family is from. If my mother ran away from home, that’s where she would run from,” Sable concluded.

  “I’ll check and see. I’ll try under the name of Quinn first and if that doesn’t work, I can try under the name Sabella. ” Brandi logged onto her computer and began typing in the information they had. A few minutes later a response popped up. “Bingo. A baby girl was born to a Summer Jade Quinn on July 18th, 1978. Summer wasn’t married and no father is listed on the certificate. Were Summer and Gene related?”

  “I asked about that once but Grace told me there were more than one Quinn family in that part of Texas and they weren’t related.” She turned to Brandi and asked, “Does it say what my name was?”

  “Sabella Noel Quinn,” Brandi informed her.

  “So if Gene’s family was from Texas, how did he get up here five years later to claim you?” Nick asked.

  “Apparently Texas held some bad memories for Gene and when a job opened up in Chicago, they moved up here. Grace always told me that leaving Texas was hard for her but her place was with Gene,” Sable told them. “They never did tell me what happened to cause the family to split up.”

  “Is Summer Quinn still alive?” Nick asked Brandi.

  Brandi began typing again. “There’s no death certificate and there is still an open missing person’s report out on her.”

  “That doesn’t really tell us anything.” Nick shook his head.

  “What are we going to do about finding Elisa?” Sable asked. “If we don’t do something very soon, he’s going to murder her as well.”

  Nick nodded. “Then I guess we play the game by his rules and go back to the office. If he wants us where he can see us then so be it. But that doesn’t mean we’re giving him everything he wants. We’ll keep digging.”

  Chapter Five

  The next several hours dragged as afternoon slipped into evening. Sable got up from her desk more than once to stand at the window and look out into the streets of the city.

  “Hang in there kiddo.” Max stepped up behind her and put his arms around her.

  Sable wanted nothing more than to lean into his arms and let the terrible weight she felt slip off her shoulders, but she knew she couldn’t. She was thinking about what Oscar was doing to her friend Elisa. It had been hours since his last phone call. “I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing to her at this very moment.”

  Max’s arms tightened briefly then slipped to her waist. “Don’t do that to yourself. You didn’t give her to him, he searched her out.”

  “He searched her out because I thought I was smarter than he was,” Sable interjected. “He’s hurting her right now because I thought I could bend him to my will.”

  Max turned her around to face him. “Is that what you think? Please tell me its not? Honey, this is a mad man bent on self destruction. He doesn’t care who he hurts, and if you let him know that he can hurt you, he’ll do it again and again just to get power over you. You have to be strong and not show him how much you’re hurting or he wins.”

  “He wins anyway, because it’s not me he's hurting, it’s my friends and family. He’s already taken my parents away from me and god only knows what he’s doing to someone else I care about.” Sable cried out, “Why can’t he just come after me?”

  “Because he’s nothing more than a sniveling coward,” Max told her. “He hides behind his anonymity to survive otherwise he’d never make it. He can’t make it out in the real world so he hides in the shadows.”

  Sable thought about what Max said for a moment. “You’re probably right, but right here and right now that’s very little comfort.”

  “I was hoping it would be something for you to hang on to until we caught him,” Max nodded.

  “We really need to find him,” Sable told her friend.

  “We will,” Max promised.

  A few hours later the phone on her desk rang. Sable glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was almost midnight. She looked at Nick before she answered the phone. “Hello.”

  “I see you are finally playing the game the way it was intended to be played.” Oscar’s voice was smooth as it came acr
oss the line.

  “You didn’t give us much choice, did you?” Sable’s hand gripped the phone. “We held up our end, now you do the same. Where is Elisa?”

  “Is that what your friends’ name is? That’s a very pretty name,” He told her.

  “Where is she, you bastard?” Sable growled into the phone.

  “My, you do have a temper, don’t you?” Oscar admonished. “I told you before your big mouth was going to cost you, that and the fact you tried to change the rules of the game.”

  “Yes, you did tell me that but it didn’t cost me, did it? It cost someone I care about,” Sable told him.

  “Sometimes life is funny that way. Sometimes the wrong people get punished,” Oscar told her.

  “Where is Elisa?” Sable growled.

  “She wasn’t nearly as much fun as I know you would have been. You really should pick stronger friends.”

  “Where is she, you bastard?” Sable asked again.

  She heard Oscar chuckle before he told her, “Tell your boss he can find her at the address under his blotter.”

  “What do you mean?” Sable snapped her fingers at Nick motioning him over to her.

  “Check under the big man’s blotter. I put the address under there.” Oscar repeated his instructions. “I anticipated you would break the rules at least one time so I was prepared for this event, and I wasn’t disappointed was I?”

  Sable threw the phone down on the desk and all but ripped up the blotter on Nick’s desk. There she found an address scrawled in Oscar’s handwriting. It was a familiar address. “Damn it, check my house. He left Elisa at my house.”

  She walked calmly back to her desk and picked up the phone again. “Is she alive?” she asked him calmly, all the while seething. Inside she wanted to rip him limb from limb, but she knew she couldn’t show it. She didn’t want to feed his emotional psyche.

  “She was when I left her but that was a couple of hours ago,” Oscar told her.

  “Why didn’t you call earlier?” Sable demanded. “Damn your hide.”