Survival Instinct

by Doranna Durgin

  It wasn’t a thought he knew what to do with. It made him suddenly hurt for her in a way he hadn’t done before, empathizing with the child she’d been, understanding how her young life had been changed. And yet she was wanted for killing an elderly couple who had recently emptied their savings accounts. Didn’t take a lot of dots to connect that line. If she’d done that…

  It didn’t matter what had been done to her as a child. What she’d lived with. Who had failed her. She was still responsible for crossing that line.

  For killing.

  He headed for his laptop on the dresser. His OneNote files about Longsford were displayed in LCD glory. Dead children in a newly extended list, based on Ellen’s photos. Dated photos. How had Longsford ever let her take them?

  Because he thought he had her under control.

  His cell phone rang, echoing in the silent room. He jumped, snarled at himself for being so reactive and flipped it open to discover an unfamiliar number on the caller ID.

  No. Not unfamiliar. Recently learned. He thumbed the on button, still torn over who she was and what she’d done. And dammit, still eager to hear her voice. “Karin.”

  “Tell me you’re not tracing this,” she said warily.

  He gave a short laugh. “The tracker is my only big toy.”

  This time she was the one to laugh. “It most certainly isn’t.” A palpable flush of emotion filled the silence between them, and her next words came out chagrined. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t… I shouldn’t have…”

  He couldn’t remember hearing her at a loss for words before. “It’s okay,” he said. “And no, you didn’t wake me. What’s up?” Because there was no point pretending this was just a casual call.

  She said, “I think he’s going to go for it. Which is kind of a problem. I really thought I’d have to woo him longer. I think your Kimmer could have been a great con artist—”

  “No,” he said bluntly. “She couldn’t. She’s about helping people.” Not ripping them off. He didn’t have to say it out loud.

  “The point is,” Karin said, her voice gone cool, “that I’ve got some decisions to make, earlier than I thought I’d have to make them. And I need to know—if I drop out of sight, are you going to let me go?”

  He sat heavily on the edge of the rumpled bed. How could she even think—? “Karin,” he asked, “why didn’t you tell me about the warrant?”

  “Oh, crap.” And then she didn’t speak for a moment, long enough that he almost checked to see if she was still on the line. She said, “How long have you—? No, wait. I know. Since that first night at the safe house. When you got strange over pizza.”

  “Since that night,” he agreed.

  “Fine. Now you’ve had it confirmed that I’m a bad egg, which I’d pretty much told you already. That doesn’t answer my question. I’ve gone out on a limb here. I’ve set up this scam and I’m already pulling in information. If I get you enough to come down on Longsford and then quit the area, are you going to come after me?” He didn’t hear any worry in her voice, no implications that he would actually catch her. Just that he could complicate her life.

  The casual nature of her response floored him. “You must be kidding,” he said, and couldn’t keep the dismay from his voice. “Do you really think I’m the kind of person who can ignore a murder warrant?”

  “A murder—!” Her speechless pause didn’t last long. “That giant bag of frog pus! That scum-sucking son of a bitch!” Her voice came from afar, as though she’d moved the phone away from her mouth. Then she said, “No. I don’t think you are.”

  And she hung up.

  Dave stared at the cell-phone display, trying to parse all the things that had just happened in that single short phone call. The reappearance of their unmistakable connection…it was still there. But her casual initial response to the warrant, followed by that outburst and then…

  He could only call it loss of hope.

  He stared at the phone a moment longer, then dialed her number. Whatever she’d been going to tell him, she’d never gotten around to it. Nor, he realized with disgust as the phone flipped over to voice mail, was she likely to do so now. He was still out in the cold…and she was still in the thick of it.

  Wait and see was getting old fast.

  Murder. What the hell had Rumsey thought he could do? Palm that old couple off on Karin to keep his own prospects free and clear? As if!

  Except, Karin realized grimly, he’d obviously gotten away with it. And she knew he’d done it well. No doubt there’d been plenty of evidence planted in her apartment, in the almost-empty bank account she hadn’t tried to access since her “death,” in numerous sly comments and with his fix in the local police department.

  She also knew better than to think the police would listen to her if she told them the truth of it.

  Ah, crap.

  Which was about how she’d slept the night before. Now it was midmorning on North Payne Street and Karin shuffled her sneakered feet, hugging herself within the army surplus field jacket as she cast a wary eye at Longsford’s old factory. The one he was so certain no one knew he owned.

  She’d already walked up along First Street, the road that ran behind the factory. The water tower squatted just beyond its sharp turn, white and huge and looking like a marshmallow on legs even from this ground vantage point. The grass beneath it appeared damaged; around its perimeter, tire tracks skewed off the road and dug ruts into the soft spring ground. Crime scene tape still marked off one corner of the ground beneath the tower. She didn’t have to imagine how the little body had looked. There had been pictures.

  How could Longsford be so dumb? The man who’d been evading the authorities for years, dumping a body near his own building? Near the building Karin suspected served as his own private playground? It just didn’t make sense.

  And that was why she hesitated, hanging at the corner of the Metro maintenance station, fingering the fragile tracker she’d liberated from its hiding place and from her compact. Dave would get the idea if she tagged this building and walked away, but she had no idea if it would be enough. The feebs sure wouldn’t get a warrant on her hunch.

  But it would point them in the right direction. And by the time Longsford had a chance to snatch someone else, maybe Dave would have dug through the layers to understand the connection between Longsford and the building. He’d be in the position to act.

  Or maybe not.

  Crap.

  Karin tugged at the billed cap she wore—one of Ellen’s, with a sheep on the front and the words “Ewe Bet!” captioning it, a faded lilac thing that didn’t go with her olive green jacket but did a decent job of fending off the intermittent drizzle. Strands of bright blond hair had escaped the ponytail she’d gathered out the back of the cap.

  Look, Sommers. Just get yourself to the building and see what you see.

  She really preferred to have a plan. And a fallback plan. All she had now was too many choices.

  She took a single step away from the Metro building, crunching on the gravel footing, and then she eased back again. Not that she wasn’t still visible, but as long as she stayed low and still, maybe the fellow who had just driven up to the building from the North West Street access wouldn’t see her. He didn’t bother to park properly; he just pulled off the road and made his own parking space on the small area of winter-bleached grass. “In a hurry?” Karin murmured. For there was a perfectly good if tiny parking area off First Street.

  Yup, in a hurry. Only moments afterward, he came back out again. Karin squinted and wished for binoculars, but couldn’t recognize the guy as anyone she’d seen around Longsford. “Just go away, then,” she told him. “I’ve got things to do.”

  He obliged, spinning turf into mud as he reversed out of his parking spot and backed onto the street without even checking to see if it was already occupied. Definitely didn’t want to be here.

  Then what had brought him here?

  Hmm.

  Karin put her casual
face on and headed for the building. Its dull red-brick color had intensified in the damp weather and her feet were soaked through. If nothing else it was time to get out of the rain. Too bad the doors to the building were locked down tight. The main door of cardboard-covered glass, the double doors of the loading area, the metal door to the side of the loading area…all of them. She saw enough battered old signage to realize this place had once manufactured dry ice. The area around the base of the building was clean, totally devoid of useful pry bars.

  Doesn’t matter. I never intended to go in. Just to look. She stood on her tiptoes to peek through the glass of the loading area door, shading it with her hand. Couldn’t see a thing.

  Well, then…things weren’t going to be as easy as all that. She’d leave the tracker here to bring Dave this way, and then she’d go back to her scam. She’d invited Longsford to an ice-cream social at Jones Point Park in the late afternoon, an event complete with barbershop singing and a little petting zoo for the kids, and she bet they wouldn’t call it off for a little drizzle like this. No big surprise he’d taken her up on the invitation—petting zoo equals kids. She hoped to finagle an invitation back to his home, drinks and discussion and a chance to look around.

  Karin pondered the door a moment longer, and finally found a spot in the corner of the window where she could gently wedge the tracker into place. It would bring him here eventually. Whenever he bothered to check the tracker.

  Hmm. On second thought, she’d have to call him once she was safely away.

  After last night, she knew he’d never just let her go. Why should he? He thought she was a murderer. The best thing she could do for herself was to stay out of his sight and out of his range, and to beat feet out of this city the moment she was of no more use to him. Because that was all he was doing now…using her, just as Rumsey had done. He’d known about the warrant since before their encounter on the sidewalk, and he could have grabbed her there. But he hadn’t, because he wanted her to bring him Longsford. To do what he hadn’t been able to do.

  She wondered how that fit into his little honor system.

  Time to go. This place was neat, clean and impenetrable. Not a clue to be found.

  From inside the building came a faint cry.

  Karin froze. She tried to convince herself it had been a cat. She tried to convince herself that she hadn’t heard it at all.

  It turned out that this con girl wasn’t so good at lying to herself.

  She stood on her tiptoes and cupped her hands around her mouth to yell through the window. “Hello? Anyone in there?” And she instantly felt foolish, so she added, “Landshark!” just so she could feel like a smart-ass instead.

  She didn’t feel so smart when the cry repeated itself in a string of hysterically shrieked words. High-pitched words. A child’s distant voice.

  What the hell—? If any kids had gone missing, surely Dave would have known it? And how could Longsford have been so bold as to snatch another—to keep another—right here, a mile from the recent dump site?

  Just as quickly as she asked herself, she knew the answer. His last little power-play game, his orchestrated scenario to exert complete control, had gone badly wrong. Now he was desperately trying to make his world right again.

  No wonder he’s been wound so tight.

  She forced herself to step back and breathe deep, taken by surprise at her suddenly racing heart.

  She thought she’d been jaded. She thought she’d faced so many high-risk moments that they could no longer get the best of her.

  She’d been wrong.

  Don’t be an idiot. Don’t try to do this alone.

  She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Dave’s number. She had to do it twice, thanks to her shaking hands and the cast. She didn’t worry about what she might say; the need to help this latest victim superceded whatever stood between them. The words gathered at the tip of her tongue, ready to burst out—I found Longsford’s playground there’s a boy here I need help!

  She couldn’t believe it when the ring rolled over to his voice mail. She pulled the phone away from her ear, glared at it and hung up with an angry stab at the off button.

  Another deep breath. Okay, that was stupid. She’d leave a message. She dialed again and this time the words burst from her mouth as soon as he said, “This is Dave Hunter. Talk now.” She added a hasty warning that she was turning her phone off so it wouldn’t ring at the wrong moment and suggested he follow his tracker if he couldn’t find exactly where she was.

  Then she tucked the phone away and considered the situation, her fists jammed into her jacket pockets and the gun there suddenly feeling a lot more necessary than she’d ever expected. No more scam, no more games, no meeting Longsford in the park. Just an abandoned building and a terrified kid.

  The place was locked up tighter than a fortress and B and E had never been her thing. She gazed at the window. Double-paned glass, but just glass. But she’d barely fit through the thing, supposing she could even climb high enough to do it.

  She closed her eyes, all-too-easily imagining she could still hear the boy’s cries for help. The helplessness of it triggered a swell of resentment…and of rebellion. She would climb high enough. And she would fit through the damn window, too.

  Her hand tightened around Dave’s Ruger, then released. She couldn’t see through the window well enough to risk shooting through it—there was no telling exactly where the kid was located. Not to mention that the noise might get someone’s attention. The wrong someone.

  She remembered the parking lot on the other side of the building, full of chunky-edged asphalt. Keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors—with a kid here, who knew when Longsford or one of his minions might appear—she sprinted around the building to prowl the edges of the lot. She spotted a fist-size chunk of asphalt and pried it loose. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she muttered under her breath as she ran back to the door. With another quick glance to assure herself she was still alone, she smashed the man-made rock against the window, ducking away from the shards that fell outward.

  Yeah, she was gonna be in big trouble if this was a cat after all.

  But with the noise of breaking glass the cries renewed, and there was no mistaking that frantic if muffled howling for anything but a human child. Karin pulled her sleeve over her hand for protection as she scraped the asphalt chunk along the window frame, crushing the glass she couldn’t knock out. If she got the kid loose she’d have to send him right back out through this window, and she didn’t want him sliced and diced on the way.

  Finally, swiping away glass dust with her protected hand and blowing off what she could, she tossed the asphalt inside the building. No telling how many doors she’d have to go through on her way to finding the kid.

  For a moment, then, she stepped back to consider the window. Leap, grab, shove…she’d have to wiggle her way through and hope she had the momentum to do it.

  She pictured it in her head, decided she was crazy, and reminded herself that she’d climbed a wall of kudzu not so long ago. Also not one of those things she had pictured herself able to do.

  A few quick breaths, a glance around to make sure no one would see her ass disappearing through the window, and she went for it. Three steps, a leap, her casted wrist awkward enough to slip and skew her to the side—

  She made it as far as her hips, folding over the window frame with half of herself on either side. But a curse and a wiggle and a shove and suddenly she was falling onto a short set of wooden steps. Karin tucked her shoulder and bumped down to the cement floor. The dingy old foot mat did nothing to soften her landing. She flopped over to her back and stared up through the dim interior to the high ceiling. “Aw, crap.”

  But she had no sense of any real injury, so she checked the door—yup, it needed a key on this side, too—and crawled to her feet to take her first good look around, scooping up her rock along the way. Lots of old pallets and a roller spool conveyer led back to the freezer units.

&nb
sp; Surely not. Surely they wouldn’t put a kid into such a dark, airless place. Not for any length of time.

  But it was the first thing she checked anyway. She found the doors not even latched, the interior emitting permanent mustiness. Strike one, and glad of it.

  She veered to the right and found an office. The customer counter window had been boarded shut, and when she nudged the unlocked door open she found a surprising sight.

  A child’s bedroom. A boy’s bedroom, all bold colors and little-boy images—race-car posters on the wall, a plastic toy box at the end of the bed. Longsford’s little playroom.

  But of course the boy wasn’t here. A child left unsupervised might do something to mar this perfect little cubicle of the way things were. “I’ve got news for you,” she muttered to Longsford, wherever he was. “Not even Beaver’s room was this perfect.”

  She left the room as it was, knowing she had to do this as quickly as possible. “Where are you?” she called, aiming it at the high ceiling for lack of even a best guess.

  The muffled cries of reply were no help. They echoed inside the building, leaving her as disoriented as she’d started. Somewhere back beyond the freezer units. She broke into a run, rounding the end of the giant freezer, and found herself confronted with a lineup of exotic machinery. Rows of it, painted a worn but cheery shade of blue. And beyond that, steel devices with tall aluminum columns, steel boxes with ominous silhouettes…

  With a blink, it all came together. Dry-ice presses for the fifty-pound blocks, pelletizers, CO2 gas recovery and recycling units.

  “¡Ayúdeme! ¡Ayúdeme!” The voice was high and thin and much closer now.

  And speaking Spanish.

  Was that how Longsford had evaded the news of another kidnapping? Chosen a family who didn’t speak English?

  No, that didn’t make sense. The family could have spoken Vulcan and there’d have been a way to handle it.

  Unless…

  “God, you’re evil,” Karin told the absent Longsford. “Not even Saint Fillan would deal with your brand of insanity.”