by Lisa Childs
“Did you leave him a note?” she asked, her brow knitted with confusion. “How will he know?”
“I don’t have to tell him a thing,” Dietrich assured her. “He’ll know that you’re where you belong. With me.”
And this time, when Eli tried to take her away, he’d be ready for him.
Chapter 19
“How do you know for sure that he has her?” Vonner asked as Trent landed the FBI helicopter on the roof of the fortress, next to his, the one Dietrich had stolen from the airport hangar.
“He has her.”
“But she could be with one of those women,” Vonner said, “like the one who called to tell me that Alaina had been to see her.”
Trent pulled off his headphones and vaulted out of the copter. As the engine he’d just shut off wound down, he shouted above the noise of the weakly whirring blades. “She’s here.”
“But she could be with one of those other women from that website,” Vonner insisted as he followed him to the door to the stairs. “One of the women from that list you got going.”
From the list he’d had Dietrich pull together for him. Guilt sickened him. How had he been such an unsuspecting fool? Again?
“She’s here.” He pointed to the droplets of blood on the wall of the stairwell. He smeared a trembling fingertip in it and streaked a jagged red line across the cement wall.
Vonner grimaced. “It’s wet yet. But there’s not much of it, just a few drops. She’s still alive.”
Rage gripped Trent. His own. “He hurt her….”
Vonner grabbed his arm and squeezed. “We don’t know for sure that it’s Alaina’s. Hell, it could even be his blood. He could have cut himself.”
“She’s here,” Trent insisted, sick of arguing with the dubious agent.
But the house was empty, Vonner’s patience thinning as they searched the rooms. Trent closed his eyes, feeling Alaina’s fear. She was close.
And she was alive. Yet. But not for long. Dietrich had waited another lifetime to end this. His patience wouldn’t last much longer. Just as Trent could feel her fear, he could feel the killer’s rage and madness.
“I don’t get this,” Vonner said. “I don’t understand any of it.” Yet he’d gone to the director for Trent. He’d gotten permission for Trent to use the FBI helicopter.
Maybe he’d known that if he hadn’t, Trent would have found a way to take it, anyhow. He was that desperate. So desperate that he ran through the house, slamming open secret panels, searching every nook and cranny of the house he’d always thought too big.
“Dietrich being a sick, obsessed fan—that I can understand,” Vonner said as he hurried after Trent. “Some people are just nuts.”
“It’s more than that,” Trent insisted. On the way from Detroit to the U.P., he’d told Vonner everything—much to the man’s astonishment and disbelief.
“But how can you and Alaina be so sure that this reincarnation thing is real?” he asked, as if he needed not only to understand but to believe, too.
“C’mon,” Trent snapped, his impatience and frustration overwhelming him. “You read my books. You saw the scars on those women. And even this …” He gestured to how he held his gun. “You noticed this, my cop safety.”
“So you’re saying you were the detective?” Vonner asked as he sucked in an unsteady breath. “And who was Dietrich?”
“The reporter, Benjamin Lee.” He remembered everything now, without even needing to write it down. Fear for Alaina’s safety had brought it all rushing back. “Ben was Eli Kooiyer’s friend from college. His family owned this property.” Until Trent had bought it from a nephew of the reporter’s.
“So you were all just drawn to one another?” he asked, the disbelief back.
“The book drew him to me. He was my biggest fan.” Because Trent had unknowingly glorified what the monster had done, what he’d been.
“And the book drew Alaina, too. I get that,” Vonner said as he followed Trent back to the two-story foyer. “But this place … Why would you be drawn to this place?”
An image flashed behind Trent’s closed eyes. Rafters and blood. So much blood.
“I know.” Because it was where he had died. And where Dietrich no doubt intended to kill him again.
“Yeah, so why?” Vonner asked.
“You can keep searching the house. I’m going to check outside,” he said. If only he’d checked the barn before. He wouldn’t have spent so much of his life wondering what he’d been….
“I saw the barn from the helicopter,” Alaina said.
“You weren’t even looking at the ground,” Dietrich scoffed as he shoved her along the trail. “You were thinking only of him.”
She stumbled, tripping over roots as briars tugged at her pants. Dietrich pushed her again, and she fell, then scrambled back to her feet.
“When Trent flew me down to Detroit the other day, I saw it then,” she explained, fighting back her fear and panic so that she could figure out how to fight him, how to protect herself and Trent from the sadistic games Dietrich had planned for them.
“What did he say about it?” the madman demanded to know.
She shrugged. “Just that it was dilapidated. What makes you think he’ll look for us here?”
His voice firm with conviction, he insisted, “He’ll look.”
“He had no reaction to seeing the barn,” she shared. “It meant nothing to him.”
“This property means something to him.”
“An escape from his empathy,” she agreed, wondering if Trent could feel her emotions now, if he was experiencing her fear and panic.
Was he still too far away? Or had Dietrich been telling the truth, that he’d heard the whirring blades of another helicopter? But how would Trent have procured another one so quickly? Of course, he was a powerful man used to getting what he wanted.
“This is just a place for him to lock himself away from feeling what everyone else feels.”
Dietrich laughed but said nothing more until the barn came into view. The walls, made of fieldstone, looked as if they were about to crumble into dust, and the roof sagged, as if about to collapse or implode. “I wanted to fix up the barn,” he said. “Do you know what he said?”
She shook her head, afraid to give him the wrong answer and get struck again. Her swollen lip throbbed in time with her racing pulse.
“He told me to have it torn down.” His hand tightened around her arm, holding her near him as he jerked open the door. Rusty hinges creaked and groaned in protest but the door opened far enough for him to shove her through the opening. She tried to jerk away from him, but his hand tightened. Then his broad shoulders stuck between the door and jamb.
She tugged free of his painfully tight grasp, dropped to her hands and knees and scrambled away from him.
“There’s no other way out,” he warned her. “No other way but past me.” The crack of wood echoed throughout the cavernous space as Dietrich broke through the door.
Her legs shaky with fear and adrenaline, Alaina regained her feet and ran. But the floor was as crumbling as the rest of the building. Missing boards opened holes to the dirt-filled cellar. She skirted the gaping areas, but boards broke beneath her weight. Her foot slipped through, trapping her.
Dietrich laughed. “I told you. You can’t escape me, Audra.”
She tugged, trying to free herself as he approached, his steps slow and measured as the boards trembled and creaked beneath his weight.
“You and I belong together,” he insisted, his dark eyes gleaming with madness, glittering in the sunlight streaking through the missing boards of the roof. “If only you’d have realized that before. Maybe in our next life, you will …”
Tears burned Alaina’s eyes as she struggled, slivers of wood slicing through the denim of her jeans to bite into her skin. Ignoring the pain, she shook her leg. Then more wood cracked and she fell to the ground below.
Breath left her lungs in an expulsion of air that stirred the dirt and cobwebs. Her
chest burned, aching from the contact with the ground. At least it was only dirt, no rocks. Nothing else but spiders and cobwebs. And the rats of which Trent had spoken scurried around in the shadows cast by the boards that remained of the floor above.
Choking for breath, she turned her head and stared into the empty eye sockets of a skull. A scream burned her throat.
“I see you found Trent.” Dietrich’s deranged laughter echoed throughout the barn. “Actually, his name was Elijah back then. Elijah Kooiyer. I called him Eli.”
Trent had been the detective, her husband. The man she’d betrayed.
“You were his friend,” she said. She rolled onto her back and stared through the fresh hole to where Dietrich stood over her, her gun trained on her.
He gestured with the barrel to the other side of her. “And there I am.”
She turned toward the other skeleton. “Who were you?”
“Benjamin Lee.”
The name rang a bell; maybe she had seen one of the articles he’d written. Or maybe she remembered him from that other life. “The reporter.”
He nodded. “Like you were going to be before you met and married Eli.”
She turned back to the other skeleton. No more than a few feet separated the two of them. “What happened?”
“Aren’t you going to ask about yourself?” he taunted her. “You’re here, too, you know.”
She peered around the shadows and found a hole partially dug into the dirt foundation. A shovel, the wooden handle cracked and the blade rusty, lay on the ground next to it, as if the digger had been interrupted.
“I was going to bury you here, where I’d brought you when we were young, when you were still my girl,” he said possessively. “Before you met Eli.”
He sighed. “But he found us. And he wanted to take you away again. I couldn’t let him do that.”
While he trained the gun on her, he turned his head toward the creak of the door that signaled someone else’s arrival. His voice shaking with fury and madness, Dietrich shouted, “I won’t let you take her again, Eli!”
She rolled, just missing being hit by the bullets that slammed into the ground, kicking up dirt where she’d lain. In the protection of the shadows, she regained her feet and pressed herself against the stone wall. But the shooting stopped.
Despite the faint light, she found the ladder anchored to the fieldstone foundation, leading to the level above. The level where the man she loved and the man she feared would stage a duel over her. Again? Perhaps that was how Elijah and Ben had died just feet from each other.
She knew that Trent would follow through on his promise and that he would do whatever he had to in order to protect her this time. But like last time, she was the one who’d put herself—and him—in danger. She was the one who would get them both killed.
Shots rang out again but this time the bullets weren’t directed into the basement. Dietrich fired her gun at Trent.
Even though she didn’t know what she could do to help since she was unarmed, Alaina climbed the ladder and pushed aside the boards that blocked her from getting through. Splinters stung her fingers, burying deep into her skin.
She ignored that; she ignored everything but the pounding of her heart—and the pain and fear she felt. Trent’s pain and fear. Had he been hit? She didn’t care about herself; she cared only about him.
But then the pain was all hers as strong fingers grasped her hair and the blade of a knife pressed against her chest, over the old scar.
“I’m glad you’re here, Eli. You can watch me this time,” Dietrich taunted him, “as I cut out her heart.”
Chapter 20
Trent’s hand shook as he gripped the gun, his finger on the trigger instead of the barrel. He was ready to shoot. And this time, with Dietrich out from behind the rusted body of an old tractor, he would have had a clear shot. But then Dietrich pressed the knife to Alaina’s chest.
Blood oozed from her lip, streaking the dirt across her face. Even then, bruised and bleeding, she was beautiful. Love and fear for her life struck him as sharp as that knife pressing against her heart.
“You don’t want to do this,” Trent said, keeping the big man in his sight. He still had the shot. But could he take it and drop the man before he plunged that knife into Alaina’s heart?
Dietrich laughed. “I’ve been waiting to do this ever since I read your first book.”
“But you hadn’t killed anyone …”
“Until she found you,” Dietrich admitted with a cough. “I knew who she was when your editor called. I was waiting for her to end this.”
As Dietrich’s voice weakened, Trent realized either he or Vonner had hit the man when they’d first burst into the barn and exchanged gunfire. He couldn’t take his attention off the knife pressed to Alaina’s chest, but he knew Vonner lay behind him, either dead or dying. He’d taken a couple of shots—shots that had been meant for Trent. But the federal agent had jumped in front of the bullets.
“Why did you wait all these years? Why not just kill me?” Trent asked, stalling the man. The more Dietrich bled, the more his grip on that knife weakened. “You’ve worked for me for almost ten years.”
“It was never about you. Not this life. Not our past. It was always about her.” Dietrich pressed his lips to Alaina’s forehead. “Audra …”
She shuddered as the tip of the knife penetrated her flesh. Blood oozed around the blade, staining her shirt.
Trent sucked in a breath, feeling pain. But it must have been his. Because if she felt any, it didn’t show on her face. She didn’t move, not even to wince or grimace.
“You’re just going to watch me?” Dietrich taunted him. “You’re just going to stand there while I cut out the heart of the woman you love?”
Trent had only one shot left; he’d made certain to leave one in the clip as they’d exchanged fire. Dietrich had emptied his and tossed away the gun. If only he hadn’t had that damn knife …
Trent had seen it before, when they’d gone fishing. It was an old hunting knife. Probably an antique. At the least, thirty-some years old.
Dietrich had had the knife the whole time, the weapon with which he’d killed all those women before, the one with which he’d already once killed the woman Trent had loved.
“No,” he finally answered the man. “I’m not just going to stand here.”
“So kill me,” Dietrich urged him. “Kill me, and I’ll just come back again. You won’t know when or as whom. But I’ll be back. We all come back.”
That was what Trent was afraid of.
“Eli had more guts,” Dietrich taunted him. “When he finally figured it out, he ditched his FBI liaison. He came up here alone with one purpose. He wanted to make me suffer like I’d made his wife suffer. He wanted to kill me slowly, painfully, and he knew better than to bring along anyone who’d stop him.”
That was the murderous rage Trent remembered; it had been his but for the man who’d killed the love of his life. Not for the woman who had been the love of his life.
“Do you know who he was?” Dietrich asked, nodding toward where Vonner lay on the floor near the door. The madman laughed again but this time he coughed and choked, as if blood gurgled in his throat and lungs. How badly had he been hit? Bad enough to die? And come back?
“Vonner’s an FBI agent,” Trent said. “He worked with Alaina.”
“On this case. You didn’t figure out why he was so attached to it? So obsessive about finding out what had happened to all the people involved?” Dietrich laughed and coughed and sputtered again. “He’s your son.”
Alaina gasped. And Trent felt her surprise and the flash of betrayal in her eyes. “We had a child …?” she asked, her voice quavering.
“Your lover didn’t tell you that you left a son behind when you left him for me?” Dietrich taunted her now.
“I didn’t leave him,” Alaina insisted. “I wouldn’t leave my husband.” Her breath caught as her gaze moved from Trent to where Agent Vonner la
y on the floor. “I wouldn’t have. That’s why you killed me. Because I wouldn’t.”
“That’s why I have to kill you this time.” Dietrich clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Because you fell for the wrong man again.”
“I didn’t fall,” Alaina said, her gaze intent on Trent’s face. “I have always loved him and I always will.”
Trent felt Dietrich’s rage and madness, but before the man could plunge the knife deep, Alaina slammed her elbow into his stomach, then knocked the knife away from her chest.
She wrestled free of his grasp but fell to her knees in front of him.
And Trent raised his gun.
“Kill me!” Dietrich shouted. “Kill me!” He started forward, reaching for Alaina. But before he could swing the knife toward her, Trent fired.
Curses rent the air, and Dietrich dropped to his knees, clutching his bloody hand that had taken the bullet. “You son of a bitch. You going to torture me again?”
“No, I remember now how that turned out last time,” Trent reminded him. “And I have too much to live for. So do you. Prosecution. You’re going to live a long, long life, my old friend, behind bars.”
Alaina jerked Dietrich’s arms behind him and slapped cuffs around his wrists. The director hadn’t taken those away from her. She didn’t know why she’d clipped them to her belt, except out of habit. As she grasped his bloody hand, the big man screamed out in pain.
“Are you all right?” Trent asked her.
Alaina pressed her free hand to her chest, where blood stained her shirt. But the wound was shallow. Just a scratch. The only pain she felt was Trent’s—and Vonner’s. Her son? “I’m fine.”
She wanted to run to Trent, to throw her arms around him and hold him tight. But other memories tugged at her. Screaming in childbirth, a loving man stroking her hair, holding her hand as she brought their child into the world. Instead of running to Trent, she walked around him to where Vonner lay on the floor by the door.
“He pushed me out of the way,” Trent said. “He took a bullet for me.”
Alaina dropped to her knees next to the fallen agent. “I don’t see any blood.” She reached out, but before her fingers could touch Vonner’s chest, he caught her hand. Shock and relief surged through her. “You’re alive!”