“Until there is the first.”
“But she was only eight when it began,” Nicole argued. “You said yourself the crime was too sophisticated for even Harold. How could an eight-year-old do it?”
Furious, Kent jerked from her grip. “I’ve been wrong before.”
Nicole knew the guilt he felt. As much as the profiler liked to buy his own press that he was perfect, he was far from it. They had both seen the devastation when his intuition had led him wrong. The last time that happened, he’d ended up chained in a basement, and she … well, she had nearly died.
They were in the car and on the road in an instant as her phone rang again. Nicole hit speaker. “I’ve tried all the Suttons’ numbers,” Jimmi said, nearly out of breath. “There’s no answer.”
“Keep trying,” Nicole said as she hung up.
Kent put his hand out. “Let me.”
Nicole handed the phone over and watched Kent type in two words. “I know.”
Why would he send those two words? Especially to Ruben’s, her partner’s, phone?
Then it hit her.
“You traded Ruben’s phone for the iPod.”
Kent shrugged. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
But anger welled up in Nicole. “You just tipped off a suspect with another officer’s phone. Kent, this could come back to burn Ruben.” Typical Kent. He thought only of himself. “And why tell Lyla? Why?”
“The cage needed to be rattled.”
Nicole gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe you’ve rattled it too much.”
Siren wailing, it took them less than three minutes to cross the bridge and make it to the Suttons’ neighborhood. Another minute, and she pulled the car to a screeching halt outside their door. They were out of the car and bounding up the steps two at a time until they noticed the door was ajar.
The quadruple-locked security door with titanium bars was ajar.
With one hand she dialed Jimmi and with the other pulled her weapon.
“Jimmi, we are going to need backup.” As they stepped over the threshold, they found blood. Lots of blood. “And an ambulance.”
She hung up before hearing his answer.
“Help!” a woman’s voice cried from the living room.
Kent rushed forward heedless of the danger as she checked her corners. They found Mr. Sutton on the floor. It looked like he’d taken multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck. Mrs. Sutton was sobbing so hard that it was hard to understand her.
“I tried to stop her!” she cried.
Nicole sank to her knees. In the woman’s hysteria, she wasn’t holding off the gushing wound to the jugular. “Let me.”
But the woman’s hands slick with blood stayed hovering over the wound. “I was just trying to protect her.”
Well, her husband was about to die if that bleeding didn’t get stanched. “Move!” Nicole urged, and elbowed the woman out of the way. As she put pressure across the neck, she could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse push back against her fingers. Almost as if the heart were trying to drain the body. She couldn’t let it.
“Where did Lyla go?” Kent asked.
“Downstairs,” the woman choked out, wiping her hair out of her face, but only smearing it with more of her husband’s blood. “This house used to be a speakeasy. I think that is how she was getting in and out.”
Kent charged down the hallway.
“No!” Nicole yelled. “Wait for backup.” Or a damned ambulance, but it was no use. The profiler was off, and nothing could stop him.
“Mrs. Sutton,” Nicole said trying to get the woman’s attention. She seemed transfixed by the retreating profiler. “Carla!”
Startled, the woman jumped, her whole body shaking.
“Carla, I need you to put pressure on that chest wound. Can you do that?”
Instead of helping, though, the woman shook her head. “I’ve got to find Lyla.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Nicole pleaded, but Mrs. Sutton took off down the hallway that Kent had disappeared down.
Grabbing a blanket off the couch, Nicole used it to put pressure on the chest wound while she gripped his neck wound. Alone and soaked in blood, Nicole cursed Kent’s name. Why was she always the one left to stanch the bleeding?
* * *
Kent breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The tight, narrow, humid tunnels were a bit too much like a basement complex he frequented not too long ago. His tiny flashlight was not helping much. And the fact that he didn’t bother to grab Nicole’s gun.
Minor details. He’d caught killers with less. Not many of course, but he had caught them.
Sweeping his light, he noticed a glint down one of the passages. He backtracked and shone the light. In the thick shadows stood Lyla, a large knife in her hand, streaked with blood.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, sounding in shock.
He didn’t blame her. He was a bit surprised by it as well. Perhaps Nicole was right. Maybe he had rattled the cage too hard. He’d known something was wrong earlier. He should have ditched getting actual proof and simply acted on it earlier. All of this could have been avoided.
“It’s okay, Lyla,” Kent said as he inched forward. He did not want to antagonize the girl in any way. After all, she was the one with the weapon. “You can drop the knife.”
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t want to.”
“I know, Lyla. I know.” He took another step toward her. The girl’s bright pink dress was smeared with her father’s blood. Even if she survived this night, it would haunt her forever.
Mrs. Sutton burst in from another tunnel, brandishing a butcher knife. “Lyla!”
The girl raised the knife again. “Stay back.”
“Oh my little girl …” Mrs. Sutton sobbed.
Crap. This was not how he planned it. Not that anything in the last hour had gone how he planned it. But this definitely was not on the schedule.
“Ma’am, I need you to go back upstairs,” Kent encouraged. “Let me get Lyla into custody.”
But the woman ignored him. “Lyla, honey, I can’t protect you anymore.”
“I know, Momma,” Lyla sobbed. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be, baby.”
“Get her to lower the weapon,” Kent whispered, but again Mrs. Sutton acted as if he hadn’t spoken.
“We talked about this. Someday it was going to have to end, remember?” the woman asked her daughter. Lyla nodded vigorously, wiping tears from her cheek. “The only thing is, Lyla, if the profiler is left alive, they will put me in jail for protecting you, Lyla.”
Kent’s head jerked around. Bitch.
“But if they find you both dead,” Carla continued, “then I can have this baby I am carrying and do better by her than I did you.”
“Really?” Kent commented. “Your kid is accused of being a serial killer and you somehow make it all about you?”
Neither seemed to notice his outburst as Lyla turned toward him with the knife.
“That’s right, baby. Just one last one, and then it will be over.”
As the blood-soaked girl took a step toward him, his flashlight shook. Probably because his hand shook. Could he pull this off?
“Lyla, do you remember what you asked me in your room? Why I didn’t want to know why you tried to kill yourself?”
The girl’s feet stalled. “Yes.”
“You weren’t asking me. You were asking yourself. Do you remember why you wanted to kill yourself?”
Confusion passed over Lyla’s face.
“You don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember taking your mom’s Valium or even getting into the tub, do you?”
“But I did.”
“No, someone gave you Valium. Someone slit your wrists.”
Mrs. Sutton’s eyes blazed with fury.
Oh yeah, bitch, two could play at this game.
“Mom?” Lyla asked.
“Honey, he is just trying to confuse you. You know how tricky these police can be.
He doesn’t understand how sick you are.”
Lyla still didn’t move forward. “Did you do that, Mom? Did you try to kill me?”
Mrs. Sutton wrung her hands, tears streaming down her face. “Only because you wanted it to stop. You begged me to. Remember, when you are in a psychotic break, you can’t remember what happens.”
“It’s got to end,” Lyla sobbed.
“Yes, baby. Yes, it does.”
Kent held his ground as the girl turned to him. “You sent that message from the school. You tried to warn us.”
Lyla lifted the knife higher, its tip pointed at Kent. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“You don’t remember any of it, though, do you?” Kent asked. “None if it. Not your first kill. Not your last.”
Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “It’s my fault. It’s me.” She took a step closer. “Tara was making fun of my boots. She said they looked like a possum had farted on them.”
“But that’s the last thing you remember, Lyla, isn’t it?” Kent probed. “You both walked home by different routes.”
“I remember seeing red. And wanting her dead. I wanted her dead,” Lyla sobbed.
“Of course you did,” Kent stated. “That was way rude.”
“Yes.” Lyla sniffed, menacing the knife toward him. “Yes, it was.”
* * *
Nicole heard sirens approach. Finally.
She could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse weaken under her fingers. The cut had gone deep, slicing his jugular. Whatever had created these wounds had been large and sharp. And Kent was down there unarmed.
For being so damned smart he was an idiot at times.
The EMTs rushed into the house, trying to jockey her out of the way.
Nicole held on, though. Mr. Sutton couldn’t lose another drop of blood.
“No, there’s a gusher under my hand,” she said.
This time the EMT more cautiously took over the pressure as she backed away.
That was one hell of a wound on his neck.
And wasn’t Mr. Sutton like six feet tall?
Oh, crap.
As the EMTs called after her, she took off at a run down the hallway. Kent had no idea the trouble he was in.
* * *
Lyla took another step toward Kent. He swallowed hard. This was the moment of truth. Although sometimes the truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes … well, sometimes it got you killed.
His eyes flickered from the bloody tip of the knife that Lyla was holding to the rather large butcher knife the mother hefted with both hands. These were not the odds he was hoping for.
“You don’t have to do this,” Kent said to Lyla. “You have a choice.”
“No, I don’t,” she said as tears coated her eyelashes, making them glisten in the low light.
“You know what I am going to have to do?” Kent asked.
Lyla just nodded, biting her lip as she stepped forward and …
Handed him the knife.
“Lyla!” Carla shouted. “What are you doing?”
The knife handle was slick in Kent’s hand as Lyla glared at her mother.
“What I should have done four years ago,” she said, stepping beside Kent.
“How dare you!” Carla hissed.
“Okay,” Kent said before she could build up a head of steam. “I have dealt with some major whack jobs, but you, Carla? You take the cake.”
Carla stepped to her left, blocking the exit. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”
Kent positioned Lyla behind him, stepping to his right, keeping out of range, waiting for his moment. Like he said, he should have screwed getting evidence and just gotten Lyla out of this house while the getting was good. But now, now he needed to keep Carla distracted and that butcher knife away from the two of them.
“How could you hate your daughter so much that you not only killed her proxies but make Lyla believe she had done it?”
Carla sneered as she stepped to the left. “You try carrying a parasite in your body for nine months.”
Stepping to the right, Kent met her sneer and raised her. “But you had to carry the baby in order to land the Sutton heir, didn’t you?”
“Had I known it would ruin my racing career,” The woman’s face contorted with the memory. Her eyes shone brighter than the knife’s blade. The crazy eyes always did. “I never would have poked those holes in the condom.”
She looked at Lyla, not as her daughter, but as a source of contempt. Kent tried to shield the girl, but her mother’s words were sharp enough to probably slice through the walls.
“Then to have everyone ooh and aah over how beautiful she was, and how fast she could run?” Carla’s eyes narrowed, “She stole them. She stole every good part of me.”
“Good thing,” Kent said. “ ’Cause you certainly weren’t putting them to much use.”
Okay, that might have been rattling the cage again a bit too far, as Carla’s cheeks flushed and her knuckles went white against her knife’s handle.
Kent had to do something, and do it quickly. He only needed to move a few more feet over and he could get Lyla out of the tunnel. The desire wasn’t exactly altruistic. He really could use Nicole and her gun right about now. Where was the detective? You would have thought after their last little adventure that Nicole would have taken “Navigating Convoluted Tunnels 101.”
But Carla and that knife were his primary concerns right now.
“So that was when you decided to kill Lyla? Once she started sprinting?”
“No,” Carla chuckled. That laugh that serial killers get when you don’t have any idea of how deeply their psychosis goes. “It was an accident, really …”
Her eyes lost focus as they flicked up and to the left. Kent let her access her memories. The chemical shift within the brain slowed reflex time and he could use that window.
One more step to the right. One step closer to freedom.
“I was driving home and saw that blonde hair, swishing back and forth as she walked …” Carla said, her voice trailing off. Then her features sharpened. “How many times had I told her not to walk home alone?” She shouted at Lyla. “How many times?”
Kent could feel the girl cringe behind him. He gave her hand a squeeze. They would get through this. Preferably with all of their body parts intact. Although that was not a given.
Carla moved another step. “But would Daddy’s little girl get in trouble? Would she miss even a single dessert for disobeying me? So I got out of the car and followed her. I only meant to startle her, scare her, so that she knew why I had the rule.”
The woman stopped and reversed course. No, no, no.
“Then what happened?” Kent asked, trying to get her feet to stop moving in the wrong direction.
A smile, cold and soulless, formed on her lips. She bit down playfully. “I guess I was a little angrier than I thought, and hit her a little harder than I thought.”
“You mean you thought it was me?” Lyla stepped out from behind Kent. “You thought you hit me?”
But instead of any sympathy or kindness, Carla’s eyes crackled with a mischief unchecked by sanity. “And it felt good. So good.”
Kent willed her with his mind to step to the left. Just keep going to the left.
When her feet moved again, it was to the right. Kent had no choice but to move to the left, away from the exit.
“But it wasn’t Lyla you killed. It was Tara,” Kent said trying to string her along. Maybe she would work her way around to the other side if he just kept her talking.
Where in the hell was Nicole, anyway? Seriously?
“Yes, it was. I got rid of the body down in the basement,” Carla said, flipping the butcher knife around in her hands. “I thought, this is it. I might as well kill Lyla, too, so I put a Valium in her juice box and waited.”
Another step to the right. Keep going, bitch, just keep going.
“But once she was unconscious …”
“You loved me too much to kill me?”
Lyla asked, hope so clear in her voice. Kent’s heart went out to the girl. Even now, she tried to believe the best of her mother. That somewhere inside that armored chest of hers beat a heart.
Kent knew better.
Carla’s snorting was her answer.
“No, your mom realized that if she killed you, it would be over.” He looked at Carla. “And you didn’t want it to be over, did you? You liked how it felt for all that red to cover up all that blonde.”
A savage smile upon her lips, Carla answered, “To just pound and pound and pound until I couldn’t pound anymore. It felt like I did on the track. So free.”
And so psychotic, but Kent didn’t add that. He’d learned his lesson.
But Lyla’s lip trembled and tears streaked her face. “Free? You’ve been killing and killing and keeping me a prisoner with this guilt.”
“I know,” Carla answered ever so matter-of-factly. “That was just an added bonus.”
Kent felt Lyla’s intent before her movement. He tried to reach out and grab her, but the girl screamed, running straight at her mother. While he couldn’t blame her, he did need to stop her.
Carla raised the butcher knife, preparing to end what she had started so long ago, but Kent flipped his knife, caught it by the point, and then flung it at Carla. The blade sailed over Lyla and struck her mother in the shoulder, just hard enough to spin the butcher knife away from her daughter.
Kent surged forward, grabbing Lyla around the waist, and then hurling her toward the tunnel.
“Run!” he yelled. Kent didn’t have time to see if she obeyed as he turned back to Carla, whose look of surprise gave way to fury.
She pulled his knife from her shoulder and came at him with both blades. Kent whipped off his coat and wrapped it around his hand. What protection it would give against German-hardened knives, he wasn’t sure, but it was all he had.
Hiding in that closet for four hours, Kent developed the sense that the perpetrator lived within that house. It had to be. The stalking was too intimate. The picking off friends one by one too specific. But was it the father? Or the driver? Or the mother? Kent couldn’t be sure. Next time he was taking the kid and just running. Let somebody else figure out which one.
Carla came at him with every bit of energy that her Olympics-trained legs could give her, the stainless steel glittering in the flickering light. His flashlight. It was tiny, but size didn’t always matter, right?
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