Four

by Jane Blythe

  Was that where she was right now?

  In a motel room?

  It could explain why the bed she was currently lying in didn’t feel like her own.

  But it had to be more than that.

  This couldn’t just be the effects of sleeping in a strange bed.

  Then with a sudden rush of all-encompassing horror it all came back to her.

  She had gone to the motel. And she had gone to sleep in the motel bed. But then something had awakened her.

  A hand.

  On her mouth.

  A gun at her head.

  A voice telling her it would blow her brains out if she didn’t do what it said.

  She had been icy cold with terror.

  Her every instinct had screamed at her to fight. To do whatever it took to get away from this man.

  If it had only been her life at stake, she might have considered risking it. However, he had threatened to go after her family and friends.

  She had had no doubt he would do exactly that.

  The complete and utter calm in his voice when he’d threatened her and told her that he wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet in her head and then doing the same to the people she loved, had conveyed how serious he was.

  And so, she had complied.

  She had laid still as he put plastic ties around her wrists and ankles. Before he had put tape on her mouth, she had risked his wrath to ask if he had been the man terrorizing her building. He had confirmed that he was, but when she had asked him why, he had refused to answer. Instead, he’d just covered her mouth with tape.

  Despite the odds stacked so horrendously against her, Audrey couldn’t just give up. That wasn't who she was.

  So, when he’d briefly moved away from her side, she had made a desperate attempt at escape.

  With her arms secured behind her back and her ankles tied together, moving had been difficult. Still, she had managed to get herself to the floor and start wiggling toward the door.

  Her efforts had not only been fruitless but had also proved to amuse the man.

  He had been chuckling as he picked her up.

  He had stuffed her inside her suitcase and the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia had drowned out everything else, even the pain of being cramped and twisted inside the too small space.

  He put her in a car and they had driven for what seemed like hours.

  He hadn’t spoken to her, but he had paused sporadically to check on her.

  Each time, she had promised herself that she would try to escape. If she could get away, she could get to the police and they could protect her and her family. Only, each time he unzipped the suitcase to look in at her, she had been so frozen with fear that she hadn’t been able to force herself to move.

  One time, he had opened the suitcase a little more and Audrey had convinced herself it was now or never. If he got her to wherever it was he intended to take her, then Audrey knew it was all over for her. But he had stabbed a sharp needle into her arm and the world had dissolved into nothingness.

  Until she had woken up here.

  Ignoring her heavy limbs, Audrey clumsily shoved herself up into a sitting position, her eyes popping open.

  Her head swam, but she paid it no mind. Instead she took in her surroundings. She was in a one-room cabin. A fireplace was on the far wall, a couch set in front of it. A small kitchenette was in one corner, a large wooden table nearby. There was a door close-by to the bed where she was lying, and Audrey assumed it led to a bathroom.

  There was only one other door in the cabin.

  It had to lead to the outside.

  Audrey headed for it.

  For some reason, she wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad thing, he hadn’t left any restraints on her. She was free to move.

  Unfortunately, her legs weren’t as steady as she had hoped and Audrey sank to the floor as soon as she stood. Without a second to spare, she levered herself back up into a standing position with the help of the bed.

  Once she was on her feet, she staggered for the door.

  The hope that had been bubbling inside her went flat as her hands grasped the doorknob and she tugged.

  It didn’t budge.

  It was locked.

  “No.” She collapsed against the door. “No, no, no, no, no,” she screamed.

  It wasn't fair.

  She hadn’t done anything to this man, so why was he doing this to her?

  She tried the door handle again and again, unwilling to believe that she was trapped inside this cabin.

  “Help!” She started to bang on the door. If she couldn’t get out maybe someone could hear her and would come to her rescue. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? I need help. I'm locked in here. Someone kidnapped me. Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

  Audrey didn’t know how long she spent hammering on the door and yelling for help. But eventually, she gave up, sagging in shock-induced exhaustion to lean once more against the door.

  It was hopeless.

  There was no one out there.

  No one to hear her pleas for help.

  That must had been why the man hadn’t bothered to put a gag on her. He knew that there would be no one to answer her calls for help.

  She roused herself. So, the door was locked. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t get out of this cabin. There had to be another way.

  There were two windows. One on either side of the door. As quickly as her rubbery legs would allow, she hurried to one.

  Her heart dropped as she got to it.

  There were metal bars blocking her access to it.

  Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, leaving warm little trails in their wake. If she couldn’t get out the door and she couldn’t get out the windows, then how was she going to get out of here?

  Was she going to get out of here?

  Was she ever going to get home? Was she ever going to see her family and friends again?

  Footsteps sounded outside.

  Instinctively, Audrey knew it was her captor.

  She weighed her options. Should she try and rush him as he came in, try to get past him and escape? Should she try hiding? Should she go back to the bed and pretend that she was still drugged unconscious?

  In the end, she was still standing like a statue by the window when the door swung open.

  The man’s gaze moved immediately from the empty bed to her, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Audrey, you're awake, how pleasant.”

  Audrey knew, knew, that begging with this man would not only be pointless but would also increase his enjoyment. This man got off on inflicting pain and terror. She’d heard the rumors circling her building about the way he had tortured that woman, Jessica Elgar. This man enjoyed making others suffer.

  Despite all of this, she was begging before she even realized it.

  “Please, please don’t hurt me. Please let me go. I won't tell anyone, I promise. If you let me go, I won't go to the police. I won't tell them anything about you. I promise, I won't. I just want to go home. Please, don’t hurt me,” she rambled.

  He chuckled. “She said that, too. But of course, it wasn't true. How could it be? It’s your natural instinct to go running straight to the cops.”

  “Who? Who said that, too?” Audrey asked. Perhaps if she could get him talking, she could find some way to connect with him, convince him not to kill her.

  “Don’t worry, you'll meet her soon enough. She’s the reason I'm doing all of this.” The man locked the door behind him, pocketing the key, then he took a menacing step toward her. “While I really want to be doing this to her, you’ll have to play her stand in.”

  When he wrapped a vice like hand around her arm, Audrey completely lost it.

  She began to scream and thrash. She threw her body from side to side. She swung her free arm at him. She tried to kick him. Remembering her self-defense training, she tried to aim for his groin, eyes, or throat.

  A sudden burst of agony in her face sent her neck snapping back, a
nd her brain felt like it was ricocheting around inside her skull.

  He had backhanded her across the face; the force of the blow would have sent her sprawling to the floor if he weren’t still holding on to her.

  “You can scream all you like; in fact, scream as much as you can, but don’t fight me, I don’t like that,” the man warned.

  Audrey whimpered as the man dragged her to the bed and threw her down. Then she let her shock dissociate her mind from her body.

  * * * * *

  10:00 A.M.

  “I hate these sorts of interviews,” Jack complained as they headed for apartment 8J. “They always go the same way. They don’t know anyone crazy. They’ve never met anyone crazy. They don’t have any enemies. Their families don’t have any enemies. They don’t know anyone who would hold a grudge against them. They don’t know anything … period.”

  “They're regular people, Jack,” Rose reminded him.

  “Yep, I know.” He uttered a weary sigh. He wasn't looking forward to the prospect of spending the day speaking with the residents of the apartment building. He wanted to find this woman. But she was only one person in a building full of hundreds. It felt like a waste of time to interview wrong person after wrong person when they desperately needed to find her. Except this was the only way they were going to find her.

  “Maybe we’ll luck out and she’ll be in this apartment,” Rose consoled.

  “We can only hope,” he agreed halfheartedly as he knocked on the door of apartment 8J. He was so tired of conducting useless interview after useless interview. They needed an interview that yielded some results.

  A moment later, the door was opened by a young man in a wheelchair. “Are you the detectives?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s us,” Jack confirmed, forcing his voice to be calm and his lips to curl into an easy smile. “I'm Detective Xander and this is my partner Detective Lace.”

  “I'm Danny.” The young man maneuvered his wheelchair backward so that he could open the door wider. Danny looked like he was in his early twenties; he had reddish brown hair, freckles, and light brown eyes. “Come in.”

  They followed Danny inside, sidestepping numerous piles of clothes and books and an assortment of other things, and Jack wondered how the man managed to navigate through everything in his wheelchair.

  Danny led them to an equally messy living room and gestured at a sofa that appeared to be the only surface in the room not piled high with junk. “Grab a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Water’s fine,” Rose replied.

  “For me, too,” Jack added.

  “Sure thing.” Danny went to the fridge, retrieved three bottles of water, set them in his lap and wheeled over to the sitting area, handing each of them a bottle. “So, you still don’t know who’s been terrorizing us here?” Danny demanded.

  “We’re working on it,” Jack assured him.

  “Well, working on it isn’t good enough.” Danny shot them a stern glare. “Murders, rapes, abductions—who’s going to be next? He’s been working on the J apartments. Does that mean I'm on his list?”

  “No, sir. We believe that his victims so far have just been to get someone’s attention,” Jack explained for what felt like the hundredth time. “He’s really after a woman who lives in the building.”

  Relief washed across Danny’s face. “So, why are you talking to me? I'm obviously not a woman.”

  “Obviously.” Jack tried not to inject any sarcasm into his voice. “But I'm sure there are women in your life. Girlfriend, fiancée, sister, mother, et cetera.”

  “Mother is deceased, no sisters, only brothers, and no fiancée,” Danny informed them.

  “What about a girlfriend?” Jack repeated, noting that Danny hadn’t covered that one.

  He hesitated. “Nothing serious.”

  “Serious or not, we need to know about it,” Jack told him.

  “We’ve only been dating for a few weeks.” Danny’s cheeks had pinked slightly.

  Jack wondered why he was suddenly being so coy. “That’s long enough for this man to have noticed her. Has she been here? Stayed over some nights?”

  “Yes,” Danny answered slowly.

  Jack was losing his temper. “Look, Danny, we’re not trying to cause you any trouble; we just need to find this man before anyone else gets hurt. We also need to find this woman so we can protect her. So, tell us about your girlfriend.”

  “All right,” Danny gave a defeated sigh. “We haven’t told anyone yet that we’re seeing each other because she used to date one of my brothers. She has stayed here once or twice, but she has her own place. And more often, I go there. If she was his target, I really don’t think he’d try to get to her through this place.”

  That didn’t sound very promising. Danny was right. If his girlfriend had only been here a few times and had her own apartment, and she was the killer’s target, then he would have been playing this game at her building and not this one. “Is there anyone you can think of who would want to hurt you?”

  “No.” Danny shook his head.

  “No one with a grudge against you, or maybe against your family?” Jack pressed.

  “Nope.” Danny gave another headshake.

  “Is there anyone you know who could be doing this?’

  “No, of course not.” Danny looked horrified by the mere possibility. “I don’t know any crazy people.”

  He fought the urge to roll his eyes; this interview was going exactly how he had envisioned. “What about the brother whose ex you’re now dating, could he have found out?”

  “My brother would never do this,” Danny said, outraged. “And no, he doesn’t know. We’ve been careful. We wanted to see where this was headed before we told people. No use upsetting everyone if there’s no future between us.”

  Regardless of Danny’s thoughts on the matter, they would look into it. Having a brother steal his woman could have made him snap, want revenge; it was worth considering.

  As if reading his mind, Danny said, “My brother is engaged now. He’s moved on, he might be hurt but he wouldn’t be angry enough to do something like this.”

  “What about anyone from the building?” Jack moved on. “Anyone here that you know who seems a little unstable?”

  “You think he lives here?” Danny looked positively aghast at the very idea.

  “We think it’s a possibility,” Jack confirmed.

  “I don’t know anyone here who is capable of doing all of this,” Danny replied. “But, of course, I don’t know everyone in the building.”

  “And in the days or weeks leading up to the attacks, had you noticed anything unusual happening around here?” Jack continued, knowing the answer before he even asked the question.

  “Nothing. Everything was just the same and then one morning there were cops everywhere and we all learned someone had been murdered.”

  “Did you know any of the victims?”

  “Never spoken to them; I might have nodded hello if I saw them in the lobby or the lifts, but I couldn’t have picked them out of a crowd,” Danny answered.

  Jack pulled out the sketch of the killer. “Does this man look familiar to you?” he asked Danny, again knowing what the answer would be. The same answer they’d gotten from everyone else they’d shown the picture to.

  He gave the picture a quick once-over. “Sure,” Danny nodded. “He looks like any one of a million people I've seen, spoken to, walked past.”

  Jack was ready to wrap things up and move on to the next apartment. “One last thing, would you be willing to voluntarily submit a sample of your fingerprints and DNA so we can positively exclude you?”

  “What? No.” Danny frowned irritably at them.

  “Do you have something to hide, Danny?” Jack raised a blond brow.

  “No, of course not. I'm innocent. I don’t have a criminal record. I didn’t hurt anyone and I shouldn’t have to prove it to you. Besides,” he glared, “I'm in a wheelchair.”

  “T
hat doesn’t positively exclude you, Danny; you look like a strong guy.” Jack glanced at his partner. “Can you mark down that Danny refused to volunteer his samples?”

  “Are you seriously going to list me as a suspect just because I won't give you my fingerprints? You know by law you can't force me to do it?”

  “We know,” Jack agreed. “But we’re going on the assumption that people with nothing to hide will be happy to volunteer, given that these crimes are happening in your building and any one of you could end up a victim. Surely, you would want us to wrap this case up as quickly as we can so your lives can go back to normal.” Jack didn’t really think Danny was a viable suspect. The fact that he was in a wheelchair would have made committing the crimes difficult, but not impossible. However, it seemed likely that Jessica Elgar would have mentioned if the man who had attacked her had been in a wheelchair.

  Danny exhaled a frustrated breath. “Fine. I’ll give you the samples. Now I need you to leave; I have to study for a test. You can see yourselves out.”

  “Someone from the crime scene unit will be by soon to take a DNA swab and print you,” Jack informed him, standing.

  “Whatever,” Danny snapped sourly.

  “Another waste of time,” Jack said as soon as they were back in the hall. “And I didn’t like him.”

  “I would never have guessed.” Rose smiled.

  “On to the next one I guess.” Jack was starting to doubt they were ever going to locate this woman. “Let’s do the stairs.” He nodded at the door to the stairwell, with all this sitting and interviewing he felt like he needed a little exercise. Rose took the stairs one at a time while he bounded up them with long strides taking them three and four at a time.

  He was already knocking on the door of apartment 9J when Rose reached him. They waited in silence, and after a minute passed and no one answered, he knocked again.

  “Coming,” a timid, shaky voice spoke from inside the apartment.

  When the door finally opened, his mouth fell open in shock. “Laura?”

  * * * * *