Now that Chops had seen the layout of the motel, the position of the rooms next to each other, and where they were located in relation to the stairwells, he was ready to go back and kill Betsy as quickly as he could—she’d seen his face, after all—but only after she had given him duplicate keys to their rooms, or a passkey, or whatever they used here. After she was dead, he would march upstairs and let himself into the dark room first. Hopefully, he’d catch someone asleep, making the kill easier and a lot quieter. Either way, he’d move fast. Before they even knew he was there, he’d kill both men.
But not the girl. No, he wanted her alive.
“How’s Bix?” Josh asked.
Caitlin doubted that he truly cared, but she said, “He’s okay. Thanks for understanding why I needed to say good night to him.”
“Good night or good-bye?” Josh asked.
“Good-bye.”
Caitlin stepped out of her shoes, then unsnapped her jeans. She felt a little self-conscious as she slipped out of them in the brightly lit room, leaving her wearing nothing but her shirt and a tiny little thong, because even though Caitlin had always worn underwear that was conservative yet stylish, apparently she went in for skimpy skivvies when she was Katie Southard. It was all Caitlin had found in the dresser at Bix’s place. As she folded her jeans and laid them on a chair in the corner, she could feel Josh’s eyes on her. Nothing creepy, nothing he hadn’t done literally a thousand times during their life together, but tonight it felt different . . . and not because Josh was doing anything wrong, but because . . . well, she wasn’t sure, but it felt like it might have had something to do with Bix being in the next room.
“You okay?” Josh asked.
She shrugged. “Not really. That was hard to watch a little while ago.” She was deflecting, she knew.
“I’m sorry, honey. I can’t imagine.”
He crossed the small room and took her in his arms. Even though he was her husband, it felt strangely intimate . . . her standing there in nothing but a shirt and a thong. To Caitlin, this would have felt as natural as breathing not long ago. And she had shared the same bed with Josh just last night. But so much had changed since then. Still, Josh was her husband and she loved him, and the weirdness of this kind of contact would fade, she knew. She relaxed into the hug and Josh dropped his arms to her waist. Then his hands slid and came to rest on her nearly naked hips. He pulled back a little but kept his hands where they were. He leaned to the side and looked down.
“You know,” he said, “even though that damn guy next door has a Wild Thing tattoo like you do, and I’ll probably have a hard time for a while looking at yours without thinking of him . . . I have to admit, this is kind of sexy.”
He traced the outlines of her Wild Thing with one finger. Caitlin didn’t truly think he was trying to start something intimate with her—after all that she had been through the last few days, on the night before she’d be confessing to killing someone—but still, it felt wrong. She pulled away.
“Josh, I’m not . . . I mean, I hope you don’t think I could—”
He took a step back, looking both surprised and hurt. “Oh my God, Caitlin. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to . . . I would never . . .” He shook his head. “After everything you’ve been through lately . . . you think I’m a monster?” He looked wounded, then shook it off and smiled.
The temperature in the room dropped forty degrees. Caitlin couldn’t speak. She took a step away from her husband, then another.
Dark, wide-set eyes in a fish-pale face. Long fingers reaching for her. You think I’m a monster?
A wineglass in shards on the floor, dark red wine pooled around it like blood. Caitlin rushing past Josh, his hands reaching toward her. You think I’m a monster?
White fingers digging into her arms, pulling her down . . .
Josh’s hands holding her upper arms, trying to pull her down, to make her sit beside him, trying to calm her. You think I’m a monster?
Caitlin breaking free, rushing from the house, driving away, driving without thinking, wanting not to think at all.
Mike Bookerman—not the Bogeyman from Caitlin’s nightmares and not Darryl Bookerman the pedophile who had abducted her twenty-two years ago, but Mike Bookerman, his son—walking up to her car in a dark parking lot, grabbing her, choking her . . . then Caitlin waking up in the passenger seat of a car that wasn’t her own as it rumbled along . . . and hearing a clink of something metal, something heavy, and it bumping against her foot and her reaching down and closing her fingers around the cool, smooth metal . . . and when he pulled the car over, her swinging the tire iron with all her strength, aiming for his head . . . and there was blood and . . . that’s it.
Caitlin remembered nothing after that. But she now remembered everything before it. Everything. She remembered the argument with Josh the night she disappeared, the one that had made her storm out of their house, where Mike Bookerman must have been waiting nearby, waiting and watching. He must have been so pleasantly surprised when she left her house alone, got into her car alone, and drove off down the street alone.
Caitlin took another step back, then another, until she bumped into the wall behind her. She remembered so much . . . too much.
“Caitlin?” Josh asked, clearly alarmed.
A ringing phone, an unexpected voice on the line. Accusations. Denials. Words of anger. Words of protestation and of love.
“Caitlin, what’s going on? You’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t okay. Not at all.
Because she remembered. Not what happened the other night at the warehouse. Nothing that happened during the seven lost months in Smithfield. But Caitlin remembered everything that happened before she lost her memory, her identity. She remembered Mike Bookerman’s botched abduction attempt and, before that, the fight she had with Josh, the one that occurred after Caitlin answered the phone and was told by Gretchen Sorrento, the personal assistant to Josh’s boss’s boss, that she and Josh had been having an affair and Gretchen was tired of sneaking around. At first he denied it.
“I love you, Caitlin,” he had said. “I couldn’t do that to you. God, you think I’m a monster?”
But she hadn’t believed him, and she’d pressed him and he’d finally admitted the truth. He claimed it was a onetime thing, that Gretchen was lying about it being an ongoing affair; it was just the one time and she was calling now to hurt Josh because he had told her that it could never happen again. Then he told Caitlin that he had wanted to die he was so sad about what he had done, that he loved her too much to hurt her. Caitlin had told him how miserably he had failed in that regard, and after more words, and more tears, and pain that felt like a poison in her stomach, she’d pushed past Josh, grabbed her keys from a hook by the door, and left the house. She had driven and driven, circling the town, until she’d needed to pull over and just cry for a while, so she’d parked in the empty lot of a strip mall and begun to let it out . . . and then her door had been pulled open and she’d been yanked from the car and—
“The night I went missing, we didn’t just fight about some small thing,” Caitlin said. “You lied to me.”
Josh’s mouth slipped open, just a little, but he said nothing.
“You were having an affair with Gretchen,” she said.
Josh suddenly looked tired and sad. He sighed.
“That’s right,” Caitlin said. “I remember now. We were drinking wine and the phone rang. It was Gretchen. She said she was sorry to call so late but she didn’t sound it. I asked if she wanted to speak with you but she said no, she was calling me. Right then I wondered. I remember in that moment being surprised that I wondered. Didn’t I trust you more than that? But the second she said she was calling for me, I had a feeling. And I was right.”
Josh was looking at the carpet. “Caitlin . . .”
“Yes, Josh? What are you going to say? What can you say? That it was a mistake? That you still love me? That you never meant to
hurt me?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said softly.
“Here’s a tip, Josh. You don’t want to hurt someone, then don’t marry her, swearing before God and everyone you know that you’ll love her forever and be faithful to her forever, and then cheat on her.”
Her voice had risen. She felt like a complete fool. She was afraid Bix could hear them next door, though she wasn’t sure why that should matter to her.
Bix had given up staring at the ceiling several minutes ago and rolled onto his side so he could stare at the wall for a while. He had also given up any hope of sleep coming tonight. His thoughts swam lazy circles in his head, each drifting slowly by, teasing him as it passed, tormenting him, telling him that Caitlin was as good as gone and Bix would never see her again, never find a woman like her again. And Caitlin, the woman he loved, was probably going to jail. He knew she felt remorse for what she had done—though Bix thought she deserved a medal—and because she was in pain, and must have been scared about what lay ahead of her, Bix was in pain, too. He hurt for her. He hurt for himself. He wished he could sleep right now, but it was tough when he could still hear Caitlin and Josh talking next door in loud voices.
Loud voices?
Were they arguing?
Chops wiped the blood from the blade of his knife on Betsy’s shirt, then stuffed her body beneath the desk in the office behind the registration counter. He closed the door and handwrote a sign reading: Back in 15 minutes, which he taped to the door.
Outside, he started for the stairs to the second level.
There was nothing Josh could say as Caitlin brushed past him. It had been a mistake. He was sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He wanted to tell her all those things and more, but she didn’t want to listen. He couldn’t blame her. He could only blame himself. How could he have done what he did? He should never have told Gretchen that she had a nice smile. He should have stopped her flirting as soon as it started. He never should have flirted back. And as much as he would have liked to deny it, he must have known deep down that their first lunch together was something more than two colleagues having a casual midday meal. And then . . . he never should have stopped at that motel after lunch.
Caitlin was his world. How could he have forgotten that? How could he have been so stupid and thoughtless and shortsighted and cruel? How could he do what so many others had done, people whom Josh used to look upon with nothing but scorn?
And how could he say anything now that wouldn’t sound like the same thing everyone else says when they get caught cheating? How could he say anything to make this situation even remotely better?
He couldn’t. So he watched Caitlin step into her jeans, then into her shoes, then out the door.
She’s going next door to Bix, he thought. And he couldn’t blame her.
Their voices had quieted. Bix heard nothing for a moment, then the door to room 206 opened and closed a moment later . . . closed rather hard, he thought. He wondered if they had indeed had a fight. He wondered if she would knock on his door again.
He sat up.
He waited.
Seconds passed.
She should have knocked by now if she were going to.
He rolled onto his side again and stared at the wall.
Caitlin felt a powerful, painful sense of déjà vu. She now clearly recalled fighting with Josh about his infidelity seven months ago and walking out on him to get some distance to begin to process what she had learned. And here she was now, doing the same thing. That last time, she had run into Mike Bookerman, who had almost certainly been waiting for her. This time . . .
And then, impossibly, there he was again at the top of the stairs.
A sense of vertigo nearly toppled Caitlin.
Mike Bookerman, back from the dead, was walking toward her.
But no . . . it wasn’t Mike Bookerman. It nearly was. It looked almost exactly like him. Same thin build and bald head, same sickly white pallor and dark little eyes. This new Bookerman, though, was quite a bit taller than Mike, she now saw, but the family resemblance was astonishing. But for his greater height, he could have easily passed for Mike, who was obviously his brother. And both of them were dead ringers for their father. Darryl’s DNA code might as well have been tattooed on his sons’ skin.
Whichever Bookerman this was smiled as he strode toward Caitlin. She had been too shocked at first to scream, and now, far too late, she tried but managed little more than a grunt as Bookerman threw a punch that caught her on the cheek. Her vision sloshed to the side and the vertigo returned as she fell but didn’t lose consciousness. Bookerman bent down, threw a hand over her mouth, and whispered in her ear, “Make another sound and I snap your neck.”
With his hand still over her mouth, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and hoisted her seemingly without effort and carried her under one arm back toward the stairs and down. He leaned a little to the side as he walked to counterbalance her weight, but he seemed otherwise hardly inconvenienced by the load he carried. Caitlin was groggy but had enough sense to wonder at so much strength in a man who looked so thin.
Chops had been ready and, he had to admit, almost eager to kill the men who had been with Caitlin Sommers. He had run it through in his head a few times before climbing the stairs, and he’d been curious to see whether it played out in real life as it had in his mind. But when he’d topped the stairs and found the woman right there in front of him, alone, he’d seized the moment and grabbed her. And it was a good thing he’d acted so quickly because it was obvious she had been about to scream. He wasn’t worried that he couldn’t have handled the men, but he certainly wouldn’t have wanted curious faces to appear in nearby windows and see what was going on out here. So luck had been on his side tonight, and taking the woman could not have been easier.
Halfway down the stairs, she began to come to her senses. She grunted into his hand and started to struggle. Chops paused and said quietly, “Make another move, another sound, and I’ll break you in half, then go upstairs and cut your boys into tiny pieces.” Chops felt the woman’s body go slack. Then it twitched in a rhythmic pattern that he realized meant she was crying.
He carried her across the parking lot to where his rented sedan waited in the shadows. When they reached the car, he set her on her feet and hugged her tightly against him, her back to him, his hand clamped over her mouth. He fished his car keys from his pocket and handed them to the woman.
“Hold these for a sec, will you?”
She took the keys. Chops raised his knee and slipped a knife out of his boot. He put the knife into the hand that had been over her mouth, then held the knife tight against the soft skin of her throat. He leaned down and whispered in her ear from behind, “Remember what happens if you make a sound?”
She nodded.
“Good girl,” he said.
With his free hand, he took the car keys from her and used the remote to open the trunk. He pushed the blade harder against her throat, hard enough to draw blood.
“Okay, in you go.”
She shook her head but didn’t make a sound.
“Last chance before I get mad,” Chops said.
She hesitated, then nodded and let him guide her into the dark, open trunk, no doubt afraid that Chops would kill her boyfriends or whoever they were if she didn’t—and she was right about that; he would have. She stared up at him from the dark trunk with the wild white eyes of a panicked mare, but she still didn’t make a sound.
“Very good girl,” he said.
She watched him, tears in her eyes. As he started to close the lid, he said, “My father’s gonna be so glad to see you again. He’s been thinking about it for the last twenty years.”
Caitlin’s scream was cut off by the thunk of the trunk lid.
Josh sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
He’d ruined everything. He had deeply hurt the kindest woman he’d ever known, the only woman he’d ever—
He lifted his head.
What was that sound?
It hadn’t been loud and it hadn’t been clear, but there was something about it . . .
He walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot below. Nothing but cars and . . . there, in the far corner of the lot . . . a tall, thin man at the trunk of a car. As he walked around toward the driver’s door he looked up . . . and straight at Josh’s window . . . no, straight at Josh.
Josh’s heart shot into his throat.
The thin build, pale skin, bald head . . . It could only be a Bookerman. But Mike was dead. Could there be another? There had to be. The resemblance was too strong.
Where was Caitlin?
And then he knew . . .
The trunk.
The driver’s door closed, the sedan’s engine turned over, and the car screeched across the lot and out of sight around the corner of the building toward Rossdale Boulevard.
Josh threw open the door and screamed for Bix, but Bix had already burst from his room and was heading for the stairs, five steps ahead of Josh. He called over his shoulder, “I know, I heard her, too. I saw him. Come on.”
Josh followed Bix down the stairs, which they took two at a time. They flew to the Explorer and leaped inside. Bix gunned the engine and they roared across the lot and around the corner of the motel. At the street, Josh swept his eyes back and forth, looking desperately for Bookerman’s dark sedan. The street was straight and flat and the car was nowhere in sight. Bookerman had plainly done the smartest thing he could do, which was to turn off the main drag at his first opportunity. That left Josh and Bix without the slightest clue which way he’d gone. They had no choice but to pick a direction at random and hope for a miracle.
Chops had lost them before the chase had even begun. He was sure of it. He’d taken his first right turn off of Rossdale, and the men who were certainly in pursuit were stuck having to guess where he’d gone, and they’d plainly guessed incorrectly. There would be no catching him now.
The Prettiest One: A Thriller Page 31