by Kara Lennox
* * *
HOW FAR COULD she have gone? The man cursed his damnable luck. He had assaulted and murdered nine women without a hitch, but a six-year-old brat had gotten the best of him. It didn’t seem possible.
He should have just gotten rid of her as soon as he got to the house. But he’d delayed executing her in case Riggs required proof she was alive before following the man’s orders. But now that decision had come back to bite him in the butt.
She couldn’t have gotten far. Granted, she was a strong, robust little girl, as she’d proved when he’d first grabbed her. He would have the bruises to prove it for days. But she was still only three feet tall. His legs were a lot longer than hers. Maybe he couldn’t negotiate the thick brush as he once could, but it blew his mind he couldn’t find— Wait a minute. What was that?
The dog! She’d taken that damn puppy with her. It couldn’t have gotten out on its own; he’d thrown it onto the back patio, which was fenced all the way around. He should have left it by the side of the road, except he was afraid it could be traced back to him. He’d taken it from a kid in front of the grocery store who was giving away a whole litter of mongrels. The kid might just remember the face of the man he’d given the white puppy to.
Besides, he wasn’t heartless. He would take no pleasure in killing a little girl or a puppy. He had nothing against them. It was the grown women who deserved to die. The high-and-mighty Bree, who thought she was so far above him, just because he didn’t have sculpted pecs and a six-pack of abs.
He whistled as he got closer to the dog. It looked up, then galloped to him with ears flapping and tongue lolling, too stupid to know he wasn’t the puppy’s friend. Christ, he hadn’t even fed it. Dogs were just like that—everybody’s best friend.
If the dog was here, the brat had to be close by, as well. He petted the puppy, then scooped it up. “MacKenzie? Look who I’ve got. It’s your puppy! Tell you what, I’ll give you this puppy to keep for your very own if you’ll just come back to the house and wait there for your daddy. I talked to him—he’s worried about you.”
Nothing.
He scanned the woods. A little kid like that could hide herself just about anywhere and he wouldn’t see her. She could stand behind a tree trunk or squat behind some brush or a stump.
Suddenly he got a better idea for how to get her to come out. He held the puppy in one hand and took his hunting knife from its holster. He held the tip of the knife to the dog’s neck. The dog wiggled helplessly and whined.
“See, you stupid mutt?” he said softly. “Not everyone is your friend.” Then more loudly he called, “MacKenzie? You come out from wherever you’re hiding right now or I will slit this dog’s throat. Do you know what that means? I’ll stick a knife in it, and it’ll die. I’ll cut off its head.”
He heard it then, the little gasp she couldn’t muffle. She was close—very close. He swiveled his head slowly back and forth, listening for her breath or the rustle of leaves. Then, slowly, he looked up.
Bingo.
He dropped the dog and it ran away from him, pausing when it got twenty or so feet away to turn and look at him worriedly. But he didn’t care about the dog anymore. He had the little girl treed.
“MacKenzie, honey, you come out of that tree right now.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Yes, you can. You just come down the same way you went up. If you come down right now, I won’t punish you, and I won’t hurt the puppy, okay? I want us to get along.”
“I can’t climb down. I’m stuck. I’m afraid I’ll fall.”
“I’ll catch you if you fall. But I’m sure you won’t.” Christ, he didn’t have time for this. Riggs and the bitch doctor were probably wondering what happened to him. While he didn’t think they would do anything rash right away, if he left them to their own devices for long, no telling who they might contact.
“I can’t move.”
She was way the hell up there. How had such a little girl climbed so high?
“MacKenzie, if you don’t come down right now, I’ll leave you up there. You’ll be there all night. It’s gonna get cold. And you’ll get pretty hungry.”
She said nothing, but she whimpered.
Damn it. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have such an aversion to guns. It would be easy to pick her off, watch her fall, the little troublemaker. Maybe he would enjoy snuffing her. But it was too damn hard to get your hands on a gun that couldn’t be traced to you. Knives were so much simpler.
He could throw a rock, but she was too far up, and he’d never been good at throwing. Besides, he didn’t see any rocks lying around. Just sticks and leaves.
There really was no choice. He was going to have to climb up and drag her down. Then he would strangle her and be done with it.
He wasn’t much good at climbing. When other boys had been playing ball and running and climbing trees and throwing rocks outside, his asthma had confined him indoors. He’d eventually outgrown the asthma, but his athletic abilities had never caught up. Now even a casual game of softball was beyond him.
Climbing a tree, though—that he could manage. He just had to be careful. And this looked like an easy tree to climb, with plenty of hand-and footholds. With a resigned sigh, he started up. “I’m coming to get you, MacKenzie.” He schooled the anger out of his voice. “I’ll get you down safe and sound.” She would be an idiot to trust him at this point, but kids were stupid. Anyway, she had no one else. He would be her hero.
Climbing was harder than he’d thought it would be. His muscles, unused to the strain, protested. Each time he hauled himself up a little higher, the pain increased and it was more of a struggle. He wouldn’t be able to climb down holding the girl, that was for sure. But he didn’t need to. He would knock her off that branch. If the fall didn’t kill her, it surely would incapacitate her long enough that he could climb back down and finish the job.
Almost there now.
The branch she sat on was rotted out. The man didn’t want to add his weight to it. But he felt around for another handhold and came up empty. Moving his foot up to a slightly higher position, he inched up so that his head was almost even with MacKenzie’s knee.
“Can you climb onto my shoulders?”
“I can’t let go,” she said again. But even as she spoke, she climbed to her feet and seemed ready to ascend even higher. The brat was putting him on! She wasn’t afraid to climb down. She had manipulated him into climbing up here after her.
Just as she would have gone higher, he grabbed on to her ankle. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
She shrieked and shook her leg, trying to dislodge him. “Let me go!” She kicked out and landed a glancing blow to his forehead. He nearly lost his balance. He let go of the girl’s ankle and grabbed blindly for anything to keep him from falling. His fingers curled around the rotten branch. It cracked under the added weight. His feet slid off the slick branch he’d found to stand on. He was still holding on to another branch with his left hand, but his own weight was too much for his diminished grip and the branch ripped out of his hand. He, the branch and MacKenzie all plunged toward the ground in a dizzying free fall.
They both screamed.
He bounced off one branch, then another, like a pinball. Pain screamed through his body until he slammed into the leaf-strewn ground.
Then, nothing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“THERE’S A SMALL lake just on the other side of these woods,” Jillian said urgently. She navigated from the passenger seat while Kinkaid sped down country roads that weren’t designed for triple-digit speeds. Eric and Bree leaned forward from the backseat, trying to get a better look at the satellite map on Jillian’s tablet computer. Eric was going to have a concussion given the number of times he’d bashed his head as the car hit one bump after another.
Bree ga
sped. “Willowbrook Reservoir. Isn’t that where Ted Gentry said they were fishing?”
“That’s right.” Eric pondered the implications.
“I see some houses around the lake,” Jillian said into the phone. She was talking to Mitch back in Houston. “See what you can find out about who owns them. Our guy isn’t going to just walk out in the middle of the woods. He would have a place to stash his hostage well out of sight.”
A tense silence descended on the car as they waited for Mitch to scour online tax records. Eric found himself again holding hands with Bree. She shouldn’t be here. He would feel better if she were safely tucked away in some hotel until this was all over. At the same time, he didn’t know how he would get through this without her.
“Bingo,” Mitch said, his voice on speaker. “We’ve got a winner. One of those homes is owned by Sheriff Bobby DeVille.”
Eric let that sink in for all of half a second before his logical mind kicked in. “But the sheriff—I thought we ruled him out. His DNA doesn’t match the Hollings County evidence.”
“It’s possible we were wrong to include that murder with the others,” Kinkaid reasoned.
“Do we know where DeVille is right now?” Bree asked.
“I’m checking. Give me a minute.”
The minute dragged by. Kinkaid swerved to avoid a mourning dove pecking at gravel in the middle of the road. “Damn stupid critter,” he muttered.
“I’m back,” Mitch said. “Conveniently, it’s the sheriff’s day off. The dispatcher says he’s unreachable—imagine that.”
“I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch,” Eric said, grateful now that no one had provided him with a gun. He would have been all too tempted to use it.
The name of the housing development where Sheriff DeVille owned a weekend home was Lost Harbor—aptly named. The entrance was hard to find, the sign classy but inconspicuous. Kinkaid pulled his vehicle behind other cars that already lined the roadway near the entrance. Several men and women were strapping on bulletproof vests and helmets and checking weapons. They looked like a SWAT team, minus the official designation.
“Dear God,” Bree said, staring at a wiry gray-haired woman in hot pink leggings and army boots. “Is that Celeste?”
“That’s her, all right,” Eric said. “Don’t let appearances fool you. Apparently she’s well trained and has the heart of a grizzly bear.”
“She’s certainly not going to sneak up on anyone.”
Eric got out of the car and, without saying a word, headed toward the lake.
Joe stopped him before he’d gone very far. “I’m gonna want you and Bree to stay back until we check things out.”
Eric started to object, but Bree, who had hurried to join the men, placed a hand on his arm. “Eric, we need to let them do what they do best. I’m sure it won’t take long. Either the sheriff is there, in which case they’ll take him by surprise and shut him down, or he’s not there, and this has been a huge red herring.”
“He has to be there. MacKenzie has to be there.”
Bree took his hand and squeezed it. “We’ll find her.”
Kinkaid gave Eric a walkie-talkie so he and Bree could at least hear what was going on. As the team made their stealthy way into the housing development, they engaged in minimal chatter. They seemed calm, as though they did this every day. Eric had to hope they knew what they were doing.
Doubts assailed him. What if he’d made a terrible mistake in trusting Project Justice rather than the police? No, he had to trust them; most of them were ex-cops, ex-military. They’d all been trained well, probably better than anyone the local sheriff could scare up in such a short time. That was the main advantage of trusting his coworkers to handle this—they mobilized faster than a greased pig. Every minute that ticked away was another minute MacKenzie spent scared and alone. Another minute that depraved animal could find her, catch her, hurt her.
His own phones, both of them, had remained ominously silent.
“On my signal,” someone said on the walkie. “Three, two, one, go!”
Eric strained his ears as he heard a lot of commotion—doors being broken in, glass shattering, orders being shouted. But no high-pitched screams and nothing like a confrontation. Next he was hearing, “Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
Then, “Eric? You there?”
Eric pressed the talk button. “I’m here.”
“We didn’t find anyone. You can come on down the road now. Just drive my car. I left the keys in the ignition.”
“Damn it. On our way.” He climbed behind the steering wheel, and Bree joined him.
The sheriff’s house—probably a weekend retreat—was easy to find, one of the first houses they saw along the bumpy little road that ran alongside a small man-made lake.
“Isn’t that the sheriff’s Range Rover?” Eric asked, alarmed. It was parked in the driveway.
“Sure looks like it. He’s here somewhere.”
“Maybe in one of these other houses.” Just as he finished the sentence, Celeste opened his door and dragged him out of the car.
“Down, get down, both of you. We think he might be in the house next door. Jillian noticed a broken windowpane. We can see lights and a car in the garage.” Celeste got them both out of the car and sitting on the pavement behind it. “You’ll be safe enough right here in case bullets start to fly. Just a precaution. That probably won’t happen.”
Eric had left his walkie-talkie on the car’s passenger seat, but the window was cracked and he could still hear the static and the quick bursts of urgently whispered conversation.
“Number Two in position.”
“Number Three at the patio door.”
“On my signal...”
The drill was repeated. Eric found himself squeezing Bree’s hand, his heart in his throat for the second time in five minutes. But again, no shots fired, nothing to indicate the sheriff or MacKenzie had been found. Like before, the all-clear signal was given. Eric got to his feet and helped Bree up.
Kinkaid joined them. “They’re not here, but they’ve definitely been here. We found where MacKenzie was tied up. Either he released her or she escaped and ran.”
“Go with the second theory,” Eric said immediately. “She told me she’d escaped.” He looked around. “She must have run into those woods right there. Probably thought it would be easier to hide there.” They were close—he could feel it.
Kinkaid turned. “Listen up, everyone. We need to get organized and search these woods.”
“There’s not enough of us,” Bree said.
“Ian is on his way here with Violet. She’ll make quick work of finding anyone who set off on foot from this house, I guarantee it.”
“When will Ian get here?”
Kinkaid checked his watch. “An hour. Come on. We can cover a lot of ground in an hour. We might find her before then.”
Eric nodded and moved to join his coworkers where they gathered in the driveway, awaiting orders. They all looked at him. Some squeezed his shoulder or offered a sympathetic smile. Some spoke to him, a few brief words of comfort and encouragement.
He hadn’t known these people for long, but he couldn’t think of any group he would rather have on his side. They weren’t just good at their jobs—they cared. They were personally invested in bringing MacKenzie home safely.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to stay here while we search,” Kinkaid said.
“She’s my daughter.”
“The problem is, there’s also a dangerous man out there.”
“I know.”
Kinkaid nodded. “This goes against everything I’ve ever been taught, but here.” He handed Eric a pistol butt-first. “I refuse to send you out there with no defense at all. For emergencies only. Th
at means defending yourself against a lethal threat. If you shoot someone who’s unarmed or someone running away from you, you could find yourself back in prison.”
“Understood.”
Kinkaid gave him a fifteen-second lesson on how to use the weapon. It was pretty straightforward. Take off the safety, point and pull the trigger. He stuck the gun in his jacket pocket, intending to forget it was there. But the extra weight would be a constant reminder.
“Are you sure about that?” Bree nodded toward Eric’s pocket.
“You don’t have to worry. Much as I’d like to, I’m not gonna go sideways and shoot this guy.” Despite what he’d been thinking only a few minutes ago. “Not unless he tries to shoot me first.” Or if lethal force was needed to stop him from hurting MacKenzie. But that was what Kinkaid had meant.
By silent mutual agreement, Bree stuck close to Eric. Whether it was because she was afraid of confronting the killer by herself or because she wanted to make sure he kept the gun in his pocket, he didn’t know, but he was glad of her company.
The patch of woods they were searching was triangular in shape. They started at one point, then fanned out in a line, getting farther and farther apart until gradually they couldn’t see each other. They called MacKenzie’s name over and over but heard nothing in response. The silence settled heavily around Eric’s heart. He’d never been a religious person, but he prayed now.
Another few minutes passed with no one talking on the radio. No sign of MacKenzie or the kidnapper.
Suddenly Bree stopped and grabbed Eric’s arm. “Look, what’s that?”
Eric squinted in the direction she pointed. He saw something moving, something white. “MacKenzie!” Please, let that be her.
The thing moved closer and Eric’s heart sank as he realized it wasn’t MacKenzie at all, just a dog. The animal came right up to them, tail wagging, obviously wanting to make friends.
He’d heard a dog barking when MacKenzie had called; maybe it was this dog.