Before leaving Black Creek, Mick had done a fast drive down the main drag, hoping…praying to see Lambert in his patrol car, but the sheriff had been nowhere on the streets. In fact, Mick hadn’t seen a patrol car at all.
He hoped he was wrong. He prayed he was wrong. It was always particularly ugly when a member of law enforcement crossed over to the other side. Nobody ever suspected their lawmen to be killers.
None of the people working the case from the sheriff’s office had been questioned, had raised a flag or had even been considered for a single second as a potential suspect.
He wanted to be wrong. He wanted to get to that motel room and find Cassie napping on the bed, her cell phone in her hand as she waited for a call from him to tell her it was finished. Maybe she was sleeping so soundly she hadn’t heard the call he’d made to her minutes before.
Maybe she’d been in the shower…in the bathroom and hadn’t heard her phone. That’s why it had gone straight to voice mail. He desperately wanted that to be the explanation, but knew if that was the case she’d already have called him back.
Too late.
He was so afraid that he was already too late, that he’d walk into that motel room and find her bound on the bed, a knife wound to her heart.
God, he couldn’t think about that. He’d rather tell her goodbye looking into her eyes than say farewell by placing flowers on a grave. With this thought in mind he increased his speed once again.
The minutes ticked by in excruciating increments, the miles passing far too slowly despite the speed he tried to maintain. Twice he was passed by cars going the other direction. Neither of them were patrol cars from Black Creek.
Too late. His brain screamed the two words, forcing a headache of stress to stretch across his forehead. Too late. He’d waited too long to realize what might be happening. It had been hours ago that he’d last talked to her. It had been hours ago that he’d last seen Ed Lambert.
Fifteen minutes out from Cobb’s Corners and it felt as if he couldn’t get there fast enough, like the remaining distance was traveling to the moon.
Please make her be okay. He’d been wrong before and he desperately wanted to be wrong this time. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t love him the way he wanted her to. All that mattered was that she was alive and well and would go on to live a happy life under her own terms.
Any other alternative was simply unacceptable. Please, let her be okay. Please, let me be wrong, he prayed as he sped toward the small motel in the small town of Cobb’s Corners.
* * *
“DEPUTY PERRY…ALEX, you don’t want to do this,” Cassie exclaimed as he taped her ankles together with duct tape. He’d already warned her that if she screamed he’d shoot her and there was a wild darkness in his eyes that made her believe him.
He could shoot her dead and nobody would hear the sound. She was vaguely surprised that everyone in the entire state of Arkansas couldn’t hear the frantic beating of her heart.
Her hands had already been bound in front of her with the duct tape. “I can help you,” she said softly. “We can get you help for killing those other people, but if you kill an FBI agent there will be no going back. They will come at you with everything they have.”
He smiled at her as he finished wrapping her ankles. “They have to find me before they can do anything to me.” He leaned close to her, his eyes glittering with a hint of pride. “I’m not on their radar. In a million years nobody is going to suspect me. And I’ve been smart, Agent Miller. I haven’t made any mistakes.”
“This is a mistake.” Cassie fought to keep the sob that threatened to rise up the back of her throat from releasing. She had to stay calm and she somehow had to gain control of the situation.
There was no way to get to her gun, no way to move from the bed unless she simply rolled to the floor. She had only her wits to work with, and hoped to try to break through to him, to get him to surrender.
He leaned back from her, his gaze turning contemplative. “You look just like her,” he said softly.
“Like who? Who do I look like, Deputy Perry?” She used his title on purpose, hoping to reach the man inside him who had taken a vow to uphold the law.
Besides, every minute she could keep him talking was a minute he wasn’t stabbing her to death, was time she could use to try to figure out a way out of this disaster. Her phone had rung half a dozen times and she could only hope that it was Mick and he would grow concerned when she didn’t answer. But he was thirty miles away and at least for now she was in this all alone.
“Tiffany,” Alex said in answer to her question, stress thick in his voice.
“And who was Tiffany?” Cassie asked softly. If nothing else she would die with the answers they’d all been seeking…why had four people been killed?
“Tiffany Maxwell. She was my fiancée.” He hovered over Cassie, the gun still held in his hand. “We were supposed to get married. It was all set, the plans all made, and we were going to honeymoon right here in Honeymoon Haven. It was our special little joke, that we didn’t have to leave home to get the total honeymoon experience.”
His voice rose and his handsome features tightened into a mask of rage. “We were supposed to be one of the happy couples walking the streets, laughing with each other and staying in one of the fancy suites.” A sob caught in his throat but his eyes once again narrowed. “And before all that could happen she changed her mind about me…about us. She destroyed my dreams. She killed me.”
“But you have to know that murdering those women, killing me, doesn’t punish Tiffany, it doesn’t change anything,” Cassie said.
Once again he leaned down, his face close enough to hers that she could spit at him, and she fought the desire to do so, to somehow vent her disgust, her terror, in any fashion.
“Oh, but it does change things.” His breath was hot on her face. “It makes me feel better. And now I’m tired of talking.”
As she realized what he was about to do, she opened her mouth to scream, but before the scream could release from her he slapped a piece of duct tape across her mouth and smiled. “And it appears you’re done talking.”
He straightened and shoved his gun in his waistband and then withdrew a wicked-looking knife. The sharp edge gleamed in the lamp from the nightstand and the sight of it caused a frantic panic to swell up inside of Cassie.
She wasn’t tied to the bed and in a desperate attempt to escape she rolled in an effort to move herself off the bed, do anything that would make things more difficult for him.
But before she could make it to the other side of the bed, he rolled her over and straddled her, making it impossible for her to do anything but stare up into his face…her killer’s face.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time Mick reached Cobb’s Corners he was wild with panic. He’d tried to call Cassie half a dozen times and each call had gone directly to her voice mail.
As he approached the motel, he saw a patrol car parked in the back lot of the fast-food restaurant. Lambert. The name screamed in his head. The restaurant was dark, everyone having gone home long ago. It was a perfect place to park and walk to the motel. He could kill Cassie and then calmly leave the motel and get back into his car with nobody to witness the fact that he’d been there.
The fact that the car was still parked there gave him a little bit of hope. If he’d already killed Cassie he would be on his way back to Black Creek, not lingering here at a crime scene.
Cassie wouldn’t have hesitated to open her motel room door knowing that it was the sheriff on the other side of the door. She would have had no reason to suspect him.
Mick didn’t have a problem with anyone seeing his presence here. Still, he turned out his lights and drove slowly around the corner to the back of the motel where Cassie’s room was located.
He parked several rooms away and got out of the car, closing the door with a faint click. He didn’t want Lambert to know he was here. He needed to approach the room with caution
. He had no idea what might be happening behind the closed curtains and didn’t want to force anything that might result in Cassie’s instantaneous death.
Where was Bob Hastings? Why hadn’t he seen that something was going down in the room? He’d been assigned to keep an eye on things here. Mick’s stomach tightened as he wondered if the FBI agent was dead. Death was the only thing that would keep him from doing his job.
With his gun drawn, Mick approached the window, hoping that there was a slit in the curtains, a spot through which he could see into the room.
He tried to control the tremble of his body as he made it to the glass window by the door. What he wanted to do was storm the barracks, beat down any obstacle that stood between him and Cassie. Control, he thought. This was the time when a man needed control.
Frustration clutched his throat as he realized there was no way to see into the window, the curtains were all closed tight, not even allowing in a tiny peek.
This close to the door he could hear the sound of a man talking. He leaned his ear against the door, praying that he’d hear Cassie’s response.
There was no woman’s voice, rather the male voice seemed to be delivering a diatribe of emotion. He frowned. That voice, it didn’t belong to Lambert.
“All the blondes, just like her, enjoying the honeymoons that I was supposed to have,” the voice said. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they got to have what they wanted and I didn’t.”
Perry. Mick was shocked to realize the voice belonged to Alex Perry. He suddenly remembered the brief conversation he’d had with the man in the coffee shop. Perry had told him he’d come close to getting married but it hadn’t happened. And it was easy to guess that it had been a petite blonde who had screwed up Perry’s wedding plans.
“You have to pay. You all have to pay for her sins.” Alex’s voice held a kind of stress, a kind of rage that signaled to Mick he was about to snap.
Mick placed his hand on the doorknob and prayed that in all the events that had transpired nobody had relocked the door once Perry had been admitted into the room.
Drawing a deep breath, his gun firm in hand, as a calm resolution swept through him he twisted the knob. He had a single moment to be grateful that it was unlocked before he shoved it open and momentarily froze at the sight of Alex Perry straddling Cassie on the bed.
Perry whirled around and off the bed and with the skill of a ninja kicked out and dislodged the gun from Mick’s hand. The gun went flying to the end of the bed as Mick flew toward Perry, undeterred by the lack of a weapon.
Perry had a gun shoved into his waistband, but it was the knife he had in his hand that distracted Mick as he roared like a bull and hit Perry midsection.
The knife slashed, slicing Mick on his arm as the two men tumbled to the carpeting at the foot of the bed. The white-hot pain of the wound didn’t stop Mick. He managed to grasp the wrist of the hand that held the knife and at the same time realized the gun had fallen out of Perry’s waistband. There was no way he could grab it and still maintain control of Perry’s knife hand, so he kicked it to the side where it couldn’t be used against him.
Perry punched him in the jaw, the unexpected uppercut momentarily shooting stars in Mick’s vision, but he didn’t release his hold of Perry’s wrist. He returned Perry’s punch, his splitting Perry’s mouth as blood slung from the open wound.
He slammed Perry’s wrist against the ground in an effort to get him to release the knife. They wrestled and punched as Mick continued to slam his wrist to dislodge his grip on the weapon.
Mick knew this was the most important fight he’d ever have in his life and he fought with every ounce of strength he possessed, but Alex was a worthy adversary.
As Alex delivered another punch to the side of Mick’s head and then to his eye, for the first time since the fight had begun Mick feared he wasn’t strong enough, he wasn’t capable enough to save himself. But worse than that was the fear that he wouldn’t be able to save Cassie.
* * *
CASSIE WAS INSANE WITH TERROR, not for herself but for Mick. She could only hear the deadly fight taking place at the end of the bed. She couldn’t see what was happening. She was afraid to move, knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do to help if she did move. With her hands and ankles bound she was helpless to aid her partner, helpless to assist the man she loved as he fought for their very lives.
She had no idea what had made Mick show up when he had, she couldn’t begin to guess what had made him think she needed him. But she prayed he hadn’t rushed to her rescue only to lose his own life.
The only sounds audible in the room were the pounding of Cassie’s heart and the grunts and smack of fists hitting skin. Who was hitting who? Who was winning the battle?
Sobs choked from her, sobs of terror that she couldn’t control no matter how hard she tried. With the duct tape across her mouth the sobs were muffled moans. She cried for him and for herself. This wasn’t the way they were meant to die…in a cheap motel room in a little town. They weren’t supposed to die because an insane deputy had decided to punish blonde newlyweds.
She frantically tugged at the tape that bound her wrists. If her mouth was free she would have chewed through the tape, but she was stuck with twisting her wrists any way she could in an effort to loosen it.
Somehow she had to do something. Her partner needed her and there was nobody to help him. She worked more frantically in an effort to escape the duct tape.
The sound of a gunshot deafened her. In horror she froze, her heart feeling as if it was about to explode out of her chest. Somebody had been shot. She could smell the scent of blood in the room.
Somebody had just died.
She could smell the scent of death in the room.
It had been Mick’s gun that had fired, but had he been in control of it or had Alex managed to get it?
She stared at the foot of the bed, afraid of who might rise up from the floor. Would it be Mick? Or would it be Alex, ready to finish what he had begun?
Her hearing slowly returned and all she could hear was the sound of deep, heavy breathing. Whose breathing? Finally a hand appeared on the foot of the bed and then a second hand and finally Mick rose to his feet.
His jaw was already turning dark and one eye was slightly puffy. Still, he gave her a slightly crooked grin. “And you accuse me of being a mess,” he said, his voice cracking on the last couple of words.
He rushed to her side and gently removed the tape from her mouth. Laughter and sobs mingled together as he worked to remove the tape from her wrists.
Once it was free she threw her arms around his neck. “Mick…oh, Mick, I was so scared for you.” She gently touched the side of his jaw. “You’re hurt.”
“A little,” he agreed. “But the good news is that the bad guy is dead.”
At that moment red spinning lights radiated through the curtains at the window. “Somebody must have heard the shot and called the locals.” He went to the door, opened it and immediately put his hands over his head in a gesture of surrender.
As three of Cobb’s Corners’ finest entered the room, bedlam reigned. One of the officers cut off the tape from Cassie’s ankles and helped her to a sitting position on the bed. A female officer went with her into the bathroom so she could freshen up. When she left the bathroom Mick was outside the motel room door being interrogated by a number of men. Apparently Mick made a couple of calls and before too long the room swarmed with FBI agents and Ed Lambert from Black Creek.
Special Agent Bob Hastings had been found under a tree nearby, trussed up like a turkey and unconscious from a blow to the back of his head. He’d been loaded into an ambulance and was being taken to the nearest hospital.
There was chaos everywhere as Cassie found herself telling her story over and over again to various law enforcement officials. She’d been talking for what seemed like forever when she realized Mick was gone.
Sheriff Lambert approached her, his features holding sad regr
et. “I’m so sorry, Cassie, about what you’ve been through. I had no idea. I’ve racked my brain over the last hour trying to figure out if there was a sign I missed, a warning I should have heeded where Alex was concerned, but honestly I can’t think of anything.”
She touched his hand lightly and smiled. “Don’t beat yourself up too much. None of us saw this coming.”
“Agent Tyler is waiting to take you back to Kansas City. Mick has agreed to return to Black Creek and tie up all the loose ends.”
She nodded, a hollowness filling up the space where her heart should be. It was over, finished. And there would be no official goodbyes between her and Mick.
Just as well, she told herself a few minutes later as she sat in the passenger seat with Agent Tyler at the wheel. A goodbye between them had been inevitable. It was certainly less painful this way, without having to see his banged-up handsome face, without feeling the desire to fall into the softness of his eyes.
The assignment was over and it was time for her to put it and Mick away and get on with her life. There would be other assignments, although she knew there would never again be a man like Mick. She would never again allow any man as close to her as she’d allowed him.
She slept for most of the ride back to the city and by eleven o’clock the next morning they’d reached their destination and she was taken to meet with Director Forbes.
“Congratulations on a job well done,” her boss said as he ushered her into his office.
“Thank you, but most of the congratulations should go to Agent McCane. If he hadn’t figured things out when he had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. I’d be dead.”
For the next half an hour they discussed the crimes and he probed her thoughts and emotions to make sure she was psychologically okay. She knew she was fine, other than the ache of her breaking heart.
“Take a week off,” he instructed as the brief meeting wound down. “Get your nails done or take a little trip, do whatever you need to do to clear your head of all this. I’ll expect to see you back here a week from today.”
Scene of the Crime: Black Creek Page 16