CHAPTER 106
“Nicole!” Kent shouted as he ran forward.
The woman he loved sprawled at the bottom of the staircase. He skidded to a halt and knelt beside her.
“Talk to me, babe,” Kent murmured as he kept one eye on the uterus where Rebecca thrashed. “Talk to me.”
He smoothed back the hair around her face and quickly checked her limbs. They seemed intact. Nothing broken. At least not externally.
“Come on, Nic.”
Her eyes fluttered and her voice sounded pretty much like she looked. “Next time, it’s your turn to be the hostage.”
A faint smile flickered across Kent’s lips. She was going to be fine. “I need you to stay here, okay?”
Nicole grabbed his hand. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not. I’m not going far at all.”
The detective’s hand fell to the ground as Kent reached his feet and began firing fiercely into the uterus.
“What are you doing?” Nicole asked. “She’s drowning already.”
Kent kept up his barrage, taking a step closer to the womb. “No. That’s what she wants us to think.”
The thrashing stopped as the uterine walls began to undulate. Kent hated it when he was so fucking right.
“She’s giving birth…” he explained, then realized that wasn’t quite right. “Giving birth to herself.” Okay, that sounded even lamer. Kent shrugged as he looked back at Nicole. “Whatever. You get the point.”
By now the uterus was having violent contractions. Kent emptied the clip, and knelt down beside Nicole to get another one from her belt.
“I thought she wanted to end her life,” the detective said, her voice weaker than before.
Rapidly loading the clip, Kent returned to firing, then answered Nicole. “Female serial killers are neither fame seekers nor suicidal.”
“I don’t understand.” The detective was fading. Kent could hear it, but what could he do?
Rebecca was getting away.
Running forward, the profiler quickly emptied the second clip as the uterus collapsed on itself.
Grabbing the walls of the womb, Kent gained purchase in a bullet hole and ripped the vessel open. He wasn’t surprised by what he found.
A drain.
An empty drain.
Large enough for a woman to squeeze through.
“Damn it!”
He looked over his shoulder to tell Nicole to stay put, but her head was bent back at an odd angle.
“Nicole!” No response.
Rushing to her side, his heart stopped as he waited for a breath. “Don’t you dare do this to me.”
Finally her chest moved up and down. A good deep breath. He checked her pulse. Regular and strong. She was just unconscious.
Sounds from the sub-basement made him look toward the drain. A serial killer was getting away. The love of his life was knocked out, possibly critically injured.
Did he haul Nicole out or go after the nutty one?
Ruben would stay. The cop would never leave Nicole. But Kent wasn’t Ruben. He wasn’t that man.
Quickly removing his coat, he placed it under Nicole’s head. Kissing her forehead, “I’m sorry, babe, but I’ve got to go after her.”
He looked down the dark hallway that had brought them here. “Torres can’t be far behind.”
CHAPTER 107
Ruben was still wrapping things up at the convenience store. It was amazing how many details there were when not only did a profiler get kidnapped, but a city employee was caught with stolen body parts. Ruben wanted to be out in the field. Out of this damn store, but Glick had put him in charge. He couldn’t leave until everything was in order.
Yet another uniformed officer came up. “Have you got the western perimeter set?” Ruben asked.
“Sorry, no.”
Ruben groaned. Did he have to do everything?
“This kid stopped me before I could get it done. Says he has information.”
This was all he needed. Even the ten year olds were weighing in. Ruben walked over to the child and tried to be polite. It was not the kid’s fault it was nearly 4:30 in the morning. “Yes?”
“Look, for all this effort, I’m going to need another twenty bucks.”
The boy had guts, though Ruben wasn’t in the mood. “Sorry, we don’t pay for information.”
The kid cocked his head to the side. “Really? Even about the lady cop?”
Damn. Still, Torres wasn’t going to give in that easily. “I’m going to need a little more information than that before I part with a Jackson.”
“He told me to tell her to go alone.”
Shit. Plain Jane. Ruben’s wallet was out in a flash. He handed the boy a crisp twenty.
“She went down the alley.”
“When?” Torres asked.
“A while ago.”
A while ago? “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“She told me to wait outside. That you would come looking for her.”
Fuck.
“Glick!”
CHAPTER 108
Kent crept down the dark, dirt tunnel. He could hear muffled scrapes up ahead. Rebecca hadn’t gotten far. He must have winged her while she was “giving birth.”
Unfortunately the sub-basement was made up a patchwork of natural catacombs. Noises traveled through a tangled maze down here. Rebecca could be twenty yards away or right beside him.
“Was it worth it?” No verbal response, but the steps quickened. “All those lives for that loser experience?” He cocked an ear. Had she stopped? “You’re so not going to be able to sell tickets to that ride.”
“You would be surprised.”
Before Kent could turn toward the sound, Rebecca lashed out with her scalpel blade, slashing the profiler’s gun hand. The thin slice hurt like a bitch as he spun away, however, he held onto the weapon.
“That’s cheating.”
Rebecca was now the one to taunt him. “That’s why I have the upper hand. I know no rules.”
Kent stopped as he came to a juncture of tunnels. Which way? He needed to keep her talking. “Darlin’, you’ve got a lot to learn about me.”
The glint of the blade caught Kent’s attention. He pivoted out of the way as Rebecca lashed out again.
Continuing the arc, he fired three shots in quick succession. A muffled scream was his reward. With any luck, a body shot. Fuck hitting a leg to slow them down. A bullet in the kidney was much more effective.
The meter maid didn’t sound quite so cocky anymore. Blood loss and pain tended to do that. “You need me alive.”
The tables had turned. Kent could feel it. It was she who was unsteady now. Unnerved.
He planned to keep it that way.
“Don’t you know what I was hospitalized for?”
No answer. Kent spotted a thin blood splatter on the floor. “I was on the trail of another serial killer. A Lecter wannabe or House of the Dead groupie, anyway, he was killing people and eating their brains.”
“So you decided to see how it felt?”
Spinning around, the profiler realigned his shot. The voice had come from behind him. There must be smaller access tunnels. He’d have to be more careful.
“Yeppers. I went into the morgue, found some homeless guy’s body.”
Kent stopped and listened. Rebecca had to support herself along the wall now. Her pace had slowed. “I mean his brain was just sitting there on the scale. I figured, who’s gonna miss a few ounces?”
“But they did,” Rebecca said, but he had a hard time deciding which direction her voice came from. Sound traveled strangely in these convoluted tunnels.
“That time? No, but once I got it home and ate it, I had a revelation.”
He adjusted to the left as Rebecca spoke. “The power of consuming another’s center of reason?”
He had the bead on her. “No… It tasted bad. I mean really bad.” She had stopped again, so he paused his feet as well. “I figured nobody is go
ing to eat three pounds of this crap, at least not like that.”
“So you went back for more?”
Kent was pretty damn sure she was up ahead about ten feet, down to the right. “Oh yeah. I figured the ME was done with it. We might as well progress behavioral science.”
He waited. No footsteps. No hands sliding down the wall. Her shallow breaths echoed in the tight space. “Anyway, I tried everything. Sautéed, basted, even deep-fried the stuff. No better.”
Movement. She was trying to backtrack again. Kent adjusted his course. “Then it came to me. The killer was following ancient traditions. So he was probably following an ancient recipe. So to make an extremely long story a little shorter, I tracked down an importer of exotic ingredients and ‘boom’ I’ve got my man.”
“Captured alive?”
Rebecca couldn’t have been further off. Kent snorted, “No, I shot him twice.”
“Oh, I’m so scared.”
“Once in each eye,” Kent clarified. “Just as he had done to his victims. You can imagine how hard that was to sell as self-defense.”
“That’s when they figured out your brain cravings?”
“No.”
Oh, she was so very close. He could feel it. Another step forward, turn to the right. Striking out, Kent grabbed Rebecca from behind, putting his gun to her temple.
He pulled Plain Jane close to him and whispered in her ear, “It’s when I stole a chunk of the perp’s brain…and was cooking it up at home when they found me.”
Kent tightened his grip on her neck. “So don’t think for a second I won’t shoot you.”
Rebecca lashed out with her knife, flailing, trying to hit anything she could. “And don’t think I won’t kill you.”
Keeping himself behind her and out of reach of the sharp blade, Kent couldn’t help himself. “But you promised you wouldn’t.”
“That’s before I got to know you.”
She struggled fiercely, forcing him to lower his gun. But that was exactly what she was angling for. With an expert lunge, Rebecca knocked the gun from his hand. It skittered away into the darkness. His hand slipped from her neck. The only one armed, it was Rebecca who now had the advantage.
“Guess you got a little rusty,” the meter maid commented as she lashed out again, forcing Kent back.
“Padded walls do tend to make you a little soft.”
Kent blocked her attacks over and over. She was a maniac with the blade. And well-practiced. He couldn’t find an in, but he was not about to admit that to her. “Fighting off the nurses at meds time? Now that was combat training.”
And there it was. His window. Kent realized whenever Rebecca was recovering from a backhanded downward slope, her follow-through was exaggerated. He just had to wait for it to come back around.
Kent hyper-focused not on the meter maid’s knife, but rather on her shoulder. She slashed down, than rapidly reversed direction and came back up. There was that hitch. That momentary shift of weight as she tried to bring the blade back around to bear.
Kent sent an elbow into her side, throwing her off-balance and with her shoulder already back, it opened up her abdomen. He jabbed at the bloodstain. Rebecca cried out. Each time she tried to slash, he blocked early, causing her to abort her swing, the knife now neutralized.
And he would have snatched the damn weapon, if he hadn’t slipped in a pool of blood. His left foot went out from under him at the same moment he had brought his right fist back to prepare for a punch. The combined momentum threw him backward, hard into the wall.
Rebecca didn’t miss her golden opportunity and leapt. Knife against his throat before he could recover.
“I’ll tell Nicole your last thoughts weren’t of her.”
The blade dug in. Kent’s skin screamed as the edge cut the most sensitive outer layer. In a moment he would be bleeding. A few more moments and he’d be dead.
Then Rebecca’s blade hand flew outward, away from him, her arms flailing like a wheelhouse. It was then that he saw the strange ligature around the meter maid’s neck. The “rope” was made of tissue.
Uterine tissue, if he was not mistaken.
CHAPTER 109
Nicole tightened the tissue around Rebecca’s neck. Let her know what it felt like to be strangled. “You know, at one point I actually felt sorry for you, bitch.”
The meter maid didn’t retort. She couldn’t. She was too busy choking, clawing at the ligature. The detective tightened it even more. Not to kill. Oh, Nicole would have loved to kill the psycho, but the cop in her was aiming to knock her unconscious. But the tissue began to fray. Nicole put her full weight into it.
Which meant she wasn’t prepared to defend herself when Rebecca raised her knife to the ceiling, then plunged it deep into Nicole’s leg. Before she could override her reflexes, Nicole dropped the bloody noose and grabbed hold of her injured thigh. Rebecca tried to bolt, but Kent was there, grabbing the meter maid by the hair. “Where ya going?”
Nicole began to slump. Her leg couldn’t support her weight. With his free hand, the profiler grabbed her elbow, propping her up.
The meter maid’s smile became savage. “What are you going to do, Kent? Let me go or prove to Nicole, once again, that’s she’s less important than your work?”
“Neither,” Kent said. A pretty damn confident grin on his face as well. “I’m getting myself a weapon.”
Nicole was surprised when Kent chose to release Rebecca and stay with her, but she should have known it wasn’t for long. Kent used his free hand to grab the handle of the scalpel, then jerked the blade from her leg.
Screaming from astonishment, Nicole fell to the floor.
Kent looked over his shoulder. “I’d put some pressure on that.” And then he was off chasing Rebecca.
Gone into the darkness again.
CHAPTER 110
With a single sweeping backhanded stroke, Kent sliced Rebecca’s throat. Deep, but not too deep. The woman stumbled backward, hands clutching her now crimson, pulsating neck.
“How’s it feel?” Kent asked as he circled his prey. It was one thing to threaten him, but to hurt Nicole? This bitch was going down.
“How does it feel to be losing your life’s blood between your fingers?”
In the distance a voice echoed, “Nicole!” From the frantic tone, it could only be Ruben.
“Help!” Rebecca cried out hoarsely, not seeming to care who it was. Anyone but Kent.
“Keep trying. Maybe he’ll hear you? Rescue you?”
Kent closed in on the meter maid. Rebecca staggered back. One hand still at her throat, the other trying to push the profiler away. Her strength seeping out along with her blood.
“Feeling light-headed?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer. “Room spinning?”
“Don’t,” Rebecca begged hoarsely. “Please, don’t.”
“Is that what they begged?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer.
How many times had this bitch heard that plea? Had it ever stopped her? Had she ever shone a sliver of mercy to any of her victims? Kent knew he could take her alive. He could subdue her right now. But what would that accomplish? She’d be deemed insane. And the mentally ill could not be executed.
Which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. It was the crazies who were the most fucking dangerous. Whack jobs couldn’t be reasoned with. They had spent most of their adult lives stalking people they picked out using their distorted mirror of the world, then torturing and ultimately killing them. No serial killer was sane. And no one was more dangerous than a successful serial killer. Yet they were never executed.
Go figure.
At least not by court order.
Rebecca lurched, nearly falling.
“That would be anoxia. You don’t have enough blood to carry oxygen to your brain.”
Kent closed in, his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t worry. I’ll get to the coup de grâce before you lose consciousness.”
A look of horror crossed Rebecca
’s face. For the first time she realized Kent really and truly was her equal. Letting go of her neck wound, she launched at him.
Kent was quicker. The knife sunk deep into Rebecca’s belly. Blood poured around his hand, yet he didn’t pull the blade out. The meter maid’s eyes jerked open. Her visage twisted in horror.
“There we go,” Kent whispered. “That was the look I was waiting for.”
Behind them a faint voice. “Nicole!”
He’d have to hurry before Ruben spoiled his plan.
“Feel that?” Kent asked as he tugged the knife upward, mimicking the wound she had inflicted on dozens upon dozens of innocent women.
He tugged again as Rebecca gasped in agony.
“That’s karma, babe.”
As if dropping a sack of potatoes, Kent let the woman fall from his grip. She slumped to the floor, motionless. He stared, watching, waiting for a breath. None came. Rebecca would not be gutting anyone else. Would not be stealing anyone else’s uterus.
He was victorious.
Then the rush was over, and his muscles betrayed him. Kent staggered back until he hit the wall. It was the only thing holding him up.
“Damn, but killing takes it out of ya.”
CHAPTER 111
Nicole tried really hard not to panic. Kent had been gone way longer than he should have, and, perhaps more topically, she could not get her leg to stop bleeding.
“Usher!” That baritone had to be Glick.
She shouted, “Here!” as loud as she could.
But it was Kent who rushed into the room. His hands were covered in blood, and his shirt streaked with it. Was it his or Rebecca’s?
As if reading her mind, he shrugged off his blood-soaked shirt. “Profiler, one. Psycho Bitch, zero.”
Relieved, Nicole hauled off and slugged him. “That stunt of yours fucking hurt!”
“Tell me about it,” Kent said as he shook out his wrist. “I think I gave myself carpal tunnel.”
Despite the continued oozing from her wound, Nicole still tried to push him away. For some reason, she didn’t want to seem helpless. She didn’t want him to see her weak.
Kent persisted. “Let me.”
[Harbinger 01.0] Plain Jane Page 21