Keeping Watch

by Jan Hambright

  She hadn’t spoken in at least half an hour, and he reached for her, sliding his hand up her forearm. “Tired?”

  “Uh-huh, but I’ll take the chair tonight when we get back to the safe house.”

  A jolt of desire zapped through him, raising his awareness level to the roof. “No way, I’m all over it.”

  She snickered, raised her head up suddenly and pointed toward the park. “Look.”

  Royce refocused on his patch of observation, seeing movement in the brush along the north end of the perimeter. He leaned down and picked up the radio mic. “All units, I’ve got someone entering the north side of the park.”

  “Copy that, Beckett.”

  He watched the single dark patch split and become two people, their movements erratic in the sporadic patches of light. He couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to be arguing. He reached up and switched the dome light from auto to off.

  “All units, this is Hicks. Move in slowly.”

  Royce picked up the trail of their movement, his heartbeat escalating with each passing second as adrenaline surged in his veins. “This is it, Adelaide, it stops here…tonight.”

  “I hope so,” she whispered in the darkness.

  He watched one of the two people fold to the ground and the other one go to a kneeling position. “All units, one of them is down on the ground. Move in.”

  “Come on. Stay close.” He unholstered his weapon, pulled back the slide and opened the car door, waving her out on his side. He let the door close silently, but not latch.

  They crossed the street and entered the park.

  Tension roared in his head and tempered his muscles like iron. He reached back and took Adelaide’s hand in his free one, feeling a wave of caution wash over him. There were more than one of these creeps. And he still had a job to do where she was concerned. He couldn’t let his guard down, not even for a second.

  “Move in!” Hicks’s attack command sliced through the thick night air.

  They rushed forward. Royce let go of Adelaide’s hand, brought his up under the butt of his pistol and took aim.

  Ten flashlight beams all came on at once as men, guns and light encircled the two people on the ground in the middle of the park. “Police.”

  The couple untangled from their lip-lock, fooled with the buttons on their clothes and slowly sat up.

  “We didn’t do anything, Officer,” the kid said in a hoarse voice just above a whisper. “We were just kissing.”

  “Stand down, everyone,” Hicks ordered.

  “Did my daddy send you?” The young woman’s cheeks burned red-hot in the officers’ flashlight beams.

  “No, miss, he didn’t,” Royce said, trying to sound official. “This park’s off-limits. It’s after curfew, so if you’re not home in ten minutes, we’ll be forced to arrest you both.”

  They jumped to their feet and took off in the direction they’d come.

  “Dammit,” Hicks said, trying not to chuckle. “I thought we had them for sure.”

  Royce holstered his Glock and glanced around, seeing Detective Lawton running across the park toward them, waving a handheld radio.

  “Hicks,” he yelled. “You’ve got to hear this 911 call, it sounds like our missing woman out off River Road.”

  Royce’s hearing went on hyperalert as they gathered around to listen to the radio call. “That’s the GPS location on the west.”

  Hicks looked up at him. “You’re right. It’s a bait and switch. We’ve been duped.”

  “Caller, please repeat your location for me.”

  “I’m just off River Road. Something’s going on out here on the Mississippi side. I’m raccoon hunting, and I saw a couple of guys dragging a woman toward the river. I think she might be dead because she wasn’t moving. I’m hunkered down in the brush so they don’t see me.”

  “Stay on the line with me, sir. I’ll dispatch the police and an ambulance.”

  “Okay, but you better hurry.”

  “I’ll remind EMS about the Rapid Sequence Intubation protocol for succinylcholine,” Royce said, turning for his car, with Adelaide right next to him.

  Detectives scattered like storm clouds and evaporated into the darkness.

  Royce and Adelaide broke into a dead run across the park, and made the car. Royce pulled open the driver’s-side door and watched Adelaide slide across the seat first.

  His heart hammered in his eardrums as he climbed in and fired the engine, praying they got there in time to save Beth Wendell, but another worry ground across his nerves at the same time, putting him on the defensive. The killers were one victim away from Adelaide. His Adelaide. And he was no closer to finding them now than he’d been the first night he rescued her. He swallowed hard, hit the gas pedal and roared away from the curb.

  RIVER ROAD WAS TEEMING WITH officers and a single emergency vehicle by the time Royce and Adelaide made the twenty-five-minute drive from Algiers, with the grill lights flashing and siren blaring.

  They rolled up on the scene and climbed out of the car, spotting Chief Danbury standing next to the ambulance.

  “Chief, what’s the word?”

  “We missed the unsubs by ten minutes. I’ve got patrol units combing the area. Beth Wendell is alive at the moment. EMS intubated her according to the RSI protocols, but they’re not sure if it was soon enough. They’re rolling her to Tulane Medical Center. I want Adelaide at the hospital right behind the ambulance, with her sketch pad getting an image from that poor woman. God help us if she dies without waking up.”

  Adelaide nodded, feeling her mouth go dry. So many lives depended on identifying the suspects. Hers included.

  “We’re on it.” Royce took her elbow and guided her back to the car. They hopped in and flipped a U-turn, falling in behind the emergency vehicle.

  “Someone’s leaking our information, Adelaide. It’s got to be the only way these guys know where we are every step.” Royce shook his head in disgust. “They’ve got someone in the department.”

  “A dirty cop?”

  “Could be. It would explain a lot. Like how the media had the detail about the bodies being posed, and possible voodoo involvement in the ritualistic elements at the scenes. That information wasn’t released to the press, or put out on the police radio in case they happened to be listening.”

  He made the sweeping turn on River Road that moved in close to the Mississippi on the left. “And our stake-out tonight in Algiers, catching a couple of lovesick teens making out in the grass, instead of the killers dumping Beth Wendell. That was no coincidence.”

  He braked behind the ambulance and followed it in a left-hand turn onto 90. “They simply changed it up and went with the west location knowing we’d be sitting half an hour away waiting for them to show.”

  He slammed his hand against the steering wheel.

  Adelaide started and reached out to stroke his upper arm with her hand, feeling the tension in his biceps. “It makes sense. It explains why we can’t get in front of this.”

  Reaching out, Royce put his hand over hers where it lay on his right arm. The worst of his thoughts he kept to himself, but she had to be thinking it, too.

  If the killers stayed true to their established pattern, they were only one victim away from their ultimate goal.

  To kill a Beholder.

  ADELAIDE STOOD NEXT TO BETH Wendell’s hospital bed in the ICU, listening to the respirator work, pumping oxygen into her lungs.

  Beth was most likely going to survive. But it had been touch and go from the moment the ambulance had arrived three hours ago until now.

  Royce stood at the foot of the bed, looking more agitated than she’d ever seen him before.

  “Miss Wendell had a rough go of it. She’s lucky to be alive,” a nurse said, as she adjusted the IV pump and stepped back. “Ten minutes max.”

  “Thank you.” Adelaide flipped open her sketch pad and gripped her pencil as she listened to the sound of the nurse’s rubber shoes on the tile floor. She didn’t lo
ok up until she heard the door close. Having to explain her abilities tonight was the last thing she needed right now. She just wanted to do her job and go home.

  “Beth, I know you can hear my voice. I need your help to catch the people who did this to you.” She glanced at Royce, drawing strength from his tired smile and his nod of encouragement.

  “I want you to imagine their faces for me. See them in your mind’s eye.” Her pencil started to move. “Good, Beth.”

  The images flooded Adelaide’s head faster than she could draw them, but there was nothing new in the images that materialized at the point of her pencil. The Songe with the high crest, the man with the scar at the right corner of his mouth. Another man, possibly the one Royce had chased after during the press conference.

  “That’s very good, Beth. You’ve done a great job. Rest now.” She shook her head, handed the sketch pad to Royce and slipped the pencil in above her ear.

  Tears stung her eyes as he took her hand and led her out of the room, through the door and into the corridor, where he pulled her into his arms.

  She had nothing left to give. If defeat was a prescription, she’d taken an overdose. She let the tears come. She let them purge the helplessness inside her, while she felt the strength of Royce’s arms holding her back from total collapse.

  “Better?” he asked as he pulled back, produced a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Yes. It just seems so hopeless when all I can get are the same images time and time again. It’s almost like it’s being done intentionally, so the victims and I can’t see who’s behind the mask. They can’t be exposed if I can’t see them.”

  “He’s a true believer, Adelaide. He has taken the legend of the Beholders seriously, and is trying to destroy all of them.”

  A shiver skittered over her body, and she rubbed her hands across her arms. “Can we go? I’m exhausted. If I don’t get some rest I’m going to fall over.”

  “Yeah. That chair is gonna feel like a million bucks tonight.”

  She nudged him with her elbow as they headed for the elevators.

  “I want you to know, Adelaide, I’m a true believer.”

  The air between them was charged.

  “At the beginning of this thing, I couldn’t get my head around it. My brain just wouldn’t go there. But now—”

  “Stop! It’s happening again.” She grabbed the sketch pad from Royce’s hand and pulled the pencil from above her ear. Crumpling to her knees, she put the pad on the floor and started to draw, watching victim number four’s familiar face materialize on the page at Royce’s feet.

  “Oh dear God, it’s Gina.”

  Royce pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and dialed Chief Danbury.

  “Chief Danbury here. Tell me Adelaide got us something to go on from Beth Wendell.”

  “Is Gina on scene?” Royce’s muscles cranked tight between his shoulder blades, and a sick sensation moved around in his gut.

  “We called her in over three hours ago, but she never showed up. I had to bring in a lead CSI from another parish to process this scene.”

  “That’s because she’s victim number four, Chief. Adelaide just sketched her picture.”

  The line went silent for an instant. “I’ll get a team over to Gina’s place right now to check it out.”

  “Hicks should take a team to the park out in Algiers. These nut jobs will follow through with the ritual before they try to get to Adelaide. They’ll try to dump her at the GPS coordinates if they can.”

  “Take her back to the safe house, and lock it down tight. I’ll put an extra unit on you both.”

  “Will do.”

  The chief hung up.

  Royce reached down and helped Adelaide to her feet. “I never saw this coming.”

  “Gina is a nonconforming victim. Her hair isn’t dark, and it’s short. Don’t you see, you’ve already disrupted their pattern somehow, and they’re scrambling to put it back on track.”

  He hit the down button on the elevator. “I think it’s because she has the snippet of your mother’s hair, and somebody wants it back. She’s a victim of opportunity that negated their task of finding and kidnapping another woman. They’re killing the proverbial two birds with one stone.”

  Adelaide’s blood chilled in her veins as she followed Royce into the elevator. Had giving the lock of hair to Gina forced the killer’s reaction?

  “What if it’s part of the ritual? The destruction of the Beholder?”

  “Makes sense. The FBI said the final victim up in Baton Rouge was missing a patch of hair.”

  Guilt attached to her nerves, and she prayed Royce was wrong. She just couldn’t stand the thought of having someone’s death on her hands, simply because they’d handled an item the killers believed held some sort of voodoo magic.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Royce was beat; so was Adelaide, judging by her slow, methodical progression up the stairs leading to the safe house.

  He was almost too tired to notice the tantalizing sway of her hips inside her jeans and the shape of her sweet bottom two feet from his face. Almost.

  He stared up at her as he took the last two steps onto the landing where he stopped.

  She turned to face him. A seductive smile spread on her lips as their gazes met. He was hooked. He wanted her. Here, now. Tomorrow. Forever.

  “Adelaide,” he whispered, reaching for her.

  She moved into his arms and raised her face to his.

  He kissed her, savoring the feel of her mouth. Easing her lips apart with his tongue, he tasted her, until the fire in his blood blazed white-hot and annihilated his control.

  Picking her up with his hands locked on her butt, he pressed her against him. She responded by wrapping her legs around his hips, a move that sent his libido into overdrive.

  His breathing escalated exponentially, coming hot and heavy in his eardrums. He pinned her against the railing and burned kisses across the bare skin just above her breasts, pulling her sweet scent into his lungs like a starving man.

  “What’ll the neighbors think?” she whispered against his hair, stroking her fingers through it with ever-increasing pressure.

  “To hell with the neighbors.” He pulled back, dug into his pocket and produced the safe house key.

  Angling sideways, he unlocked the door, turned the knob and kicked it open with his foot. Stepping over the threshold into the dark room, he reached out and slammed the door shut.

  Turning, he aimed for where he knew the bed was and stepped forward. Whack!

  Stunned confusion rocked his brain. Bone-jarring pain vibrated his body and exploded at the back of his skull.

  He was falling.

  Falling forward, still clutching Adelaide to the front of his chest. At the last second, he cupped the back of her head.

  They hit the ground.

  A scream ripped from her throat on a whoosh of air right next to his ear as he body slammed her in the dark.

  Behind him he heard the faint click of the light switch.

  In one horrific second things crystalized in his brain.

  They’d walked straight into an ambush.

  Vincent Getty stood behind the closed door holding a baseball bat. “What took you two so long?”

  The bathroom door flew open and Royce recognized Vincent’s cohort from the foot chase, but there was more. He’d seen the thug somewhere else.

  “Get his gun.”

  He brushed back Royce’s jacket and snagged his Glock from its holster, then slammed his foot into Royce’s ribs.

  Royce flinched and gritted his teeth. He’d shield Adelaide for as long as he could.

  “Get off. I want to see her.”

  Royce glanced down at Adelaide. Her eyes were wide with surprise, and he listened to her try to suck in a normal breath.

  Gently he put his hands down on either side of her head and pushed back up onto his knees.

  “She doesn’t look so scary.” The man who’d
taken his gun waved it around and slowly brought the barrel down, pointing it straight at her.

  Caution roared through Royce as he prepared to throw himself over her and take the nut job’s bullet.

  It was at the hospital where he’d seen the other guy, dressed in a maintenance uniform and coming out of Officer Tansy’s room just before he coded.

  “Let’s kill her now.”

  “Not in the plan, buddy. Not in the plan.” Vincent stepped closer.

  The hair on the back of Royce’s neck bristled as he watched Getty’s movements, looking for a chance to turn the twisted events his way. Getty wanted Adelaide, just like he’d wanted his sister twenty-nine years ago. He couldn’t help his sister as a kid, but he wasn’t a kid anymore, and he wasn’t going to let them have Adelaide, not without a fight.

  A tinny ring of footsteps on the metal stairs outside pulled Vincent’s attention away for an instant.

  Royce popped to his feet and dove for the man holding his gun, pushing him back into the kitchen. He heard the pistol clatter to the floor in the scuffle and skid across the tile, but he couldn’t see it.

  Once, twice, three times he slammed his fist into the thug’s face. Footsteps behind him warned that the gig was almost up. He pulled the man into a choke hold and whipped around, using him as a shield, and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

  Lifting his gaze past the deadly weapon aimed at his forehead, he stared into the dark eyes of Officer Brooks.

  He might never get another chance. He put his hand back, fingering the panic button under the lip of the counter, and pressed it.

  “You treasonous bastard,” he ground out, and inched forward.

  A smug smile broke out on Brooks’s lips. “Let him go, and get on the ground, Beckett, before I put a bullet in your fat head and take your job.”

  Royce slowly released the man, who stepped away and went to his knees, then hit the tile hard as Vincent charged over and stomped his foot in the middle of his back, forcing him onto his belly.