“Neat and tidy,” she said, not pointing out the many flaws with his plan. Not least of which was the fact that Rowan would never believe it.
“Yep. Gets all those cases off the books and takes care of my problems.”
“All those cases. Twelve, right? Did I get them all?”
His eyes narrowed. He obviously wasn’t happy that she’d figured him out and connected so many of his crimes when nobody else ever had. “Not quite.”
“How many did I miss?”
“You got ’em all in this area,” he admitted. “But you didn’t really look out of state much, did you? Guy’s gotta go on vacation once in a while.”
Obviously, Phil Smith’s vacations included killing innocent women. That could be why he was able to spread his local crimes far enough apart so they wouldn’t draw a lot of attention. He could go more than a year between kills here in Southern California if he was committing murders elsewhere in between. That would be the only way a sadist like him would be able to keep himself from killing more frequently right in the city where he lived.
“So how many?” she asked, not certain she wanted to know but still anxious to burn up every possible moment. With any luck, Rowan would have gotten her last message right away and come straight over when she didn’t answer his calls. That meant he could be here at any time. She just had to hold on a little longer.
Smith tapped the tip of his finger on his chin and looked up, his brow furrowed in concentration. He seemed like someone trying to solve a tricky math puzzle. Knowing he was tallying up the number of women he’d murdered over the years gave the performance a depraved quality.
“Twenty-seven,” he finally said.
She swallowed a gasp. “Being a police officer must have made things easier for you.”
“It sure didn’t hurt.”
“You knew to choose victims in different jurisdictions and to vary means of death.”
“Stop actin’ like you know anything about me. Just because you write about crazy fucks who kill ’cause they’re psychos doesn’t mean you can get into my head and figure me out.”
Oh, he was beyond easy to figure out. Almost laughably, textbook easy when you ran down the checklist of what serial killers had in common, starting with the Madonna/whore attitude toward women. Not that she was about to say that out loud.
“Did anyone ever suspect you?”
He glared at her, again making it clear he did not like that she had actually done so. “No.”
“What about your partner?”
“Slaughter? He only cared about getting promoted. He saw what I wanted him to see.”
The arrogance was another sign of an organized killer.
“There’s something I’ve been curious about.”
Crossing his thick arms over a broad, not-at-all-sunken-in chest, he said, “I know you’re trying to buy yourself a few extra minutes to live, but sure, I’ll play. What?”
Not letting him see he’d scored, she calmly replied, “I’ve been wondering how you got the women to let you into their homes. Of course, now that I know who you are, I suspect you used your badge.”
He shrugged. “Yep. Show ’em a badge and say there’s a sick sex pervert in the neighborhood and sluts always open up and welcome you right in.”
Of course they did. He had played on a single woman’s cautious nature, not to mention their trust in the police. It was a very cruel ploy, an utter betrayal.
“And you chose them in advance. You must have, since you came prepared with their birth flowers.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t imagine they opened the door to you if you had flowers in your hand.”
“Nah, they stayed in the car until…after.”
After.
“Well, it’s been fun chatting, but I think we need to move on now.”
She couldn’t prevent a shiver from rolling up her body.
He noticed and grinned. “Ahh, you know what? I just thought of something that might be fun. Never had a chance like this before, so let’s change things up a bit.”
Having no illusions that the “change” would make things in any way better for her, she remained silent.
“I have to go get something.” He headed for the door. “Be back in a few. Don’t go anywhere, now.”
As soon as he walked out of the bedroom, turning left out the door and heading into the main part of the house, she began pulling to test the strength of the bindings holding her in place. Her feet were bound at the ankles, the rope connecting to the metal bedframe. She could barely lift them off the mattress, he had her down so tight.
Her hands were also constrained, tied together above her head. The end of that rope was looped through the slats of the wooden headboard. She twisted and flexed, feeling only a small amount of give in the rope itself. But the bed wasn’t exactly a high-quality, solid-wood piece. As she strained and pulled, she heard a cracking sound from one of the slats.
She froze, praying he hadn’t heard the noise. Listening closely, she heard him moving around in the living room, on that squeaky wood floor. He was whistling, sounding almost cheerful. The monster who lived in his skin was being given free rein and he obviously intended to enjoy himself.
She bit her lip, not letting herself think that way. Whatever he was up to would not take long. He was already worrying about the time difference between Franklin Lee’s death and her own. She had no time to waste.
Stretching her hands as far as she could above and behind her, she clasped the slat and wrapped her fingers tightly around it. Using every muscle she had in her arms and shoulders, she pulled again. The cracking sound was a little louder. Her heart beat out a rapid rhythm, half because of her hope that she might get out of this and half out of terror that he’d hear her.
He didn’t come charging in. She could actually hear him still whistling from out in the living room. She forced herself to relax. You can do this.
Once more. One more pull to give herself a fighting chance against someone who was going to kill her, but only after he made her suffer first.
Taking a deep breath and then pushing it out, she tightened her fingers, arched her back, and pulled. Her arms screamed, her shoulders felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets, and tears came to her eyes as she strained every muscle in her upper body.
The slat cracked again, and this time actually moved in her hands! Hope exploded inside her, but she forced it aside. This was merely the first in a long line of steps that, combined with more luck than she’d ever dare to dream of, might let her live through the night.
But it was something.
Unable to contort herself into a position that would allow her to see what headway she was making, Evie ran her fingers down to the bottom of the slat to determine just how far the break extended. She wiggled the inch-wide piece of wood and felt a jagged edge of it poke into the tip of her index finger.
It was definitely broken, probably at least halfway through. One more solid yank, or even a hard push to wear it down in the other direction, might very well finish the job.
But if it wasn’t done in utter silence, it also might finish her.
“Not up to anything bad in there, are you, girlie?” called the monster in her house.
She froze, moving her hands off the slat, back into a prone position above her. Shifting the pillow with her head, she pressed it against the headboard, hoping it would disguise the break. Wanting to keep him off guard, she cried out, “Please, please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’m begging you.”
It was, she knew, exactly what he wanted to hear, and his loud chuckle told her he believed it. Her terror sweetened his experience.
She had no idea what he was doing out in her living room, but when something thumped and he grunted, she took a chance of making one more noise of her own.
She wriggled as far up as she could, grasped the slat again, and counted to three.
“Please let me go!” she yelled at the exact moment wh
en she pushed and twisted with all her might.
He wouldn’t have heard anything but her terror. She heard—and felt—the snap as the piece of wood broke away from the headboard.
Tears came to her eyes as she gripped the roughly eighteen-inch-long wooden spike. Her situation was still dire, but at least she had something to fight with. God, she would love to plunge it into that man’s heart and destroy him like the monster he was.
Be smart, think, think!
She had to hold the stake right where it was, not tipping him off that she had it. Nudging the pillow with her head, she pushed it against her hands to try to disguise the way she gripped the makeshift weapon.
It was something…but it wasn’t enough. Her wrists might no longer be hooked to the bedframe, but they were tied to each other. And her feet…well, she couldn’t move them at all.
They wouldn’t stay that way for long, though.
She knew from all the reading and studying she’d done of the flower killer that he would untie her legs. Maybe not right away, maybe not until after he’d done other things. But at some point, he would want her legs apart.
Vomit rose in her throat. Gulping, she forced herself to swallow it back down, not wanting to draw him back in immediately, or choke to death right here in her bed.
“Ready for your surprise?” he called, laughter in his voice.
She was running out of time, her panic building, the fear she’d held at bay roaring like a volcano inside her.
And then a voice whispered in her mind.
It sounded like Rowan’s.
If you can help it, don’t do a thing until he unties your legs. When he’s bent down on the floor beside the bed to unfasten the rope, use the stake. Don’t go for his heart; the wood won’t go through the breastbone. Go for his eyes.
Another voice whispered. Softer, feminine.
You can do this, Evie.
Blair.
Hurt him bad, kiddo.
Candace.
She didn’t believe in ghosts, and she knew the inner voices were whispers from her own subconscious. But right now, at this moment in time, she almost believed she was not alone in this fight. She had been given strength by people who cared about her.
There was another thump and a muttered curse. The floorboards groaned even louder than before, and his footsteps were very heavy and slow. Like he was hauling something.
Or someone.
Suddenly suspecting what he’d been doing, and what he would be carrying when he came back into the room, she steeled herself for the horrors she might see. And a few seconds later, when he walked in holding the naked body of her dead friend, she was filled with a kind of rage that she hadn’t even known herself capable of.
“You sick fucking son of a bitch,” she snarled. “I’m gonna kill you, do you hear me?”
He was still whistling as he stared down at her, Candace hanging limply in his arms.
“She didn’t look very comfortable out there on the floor. I thought it would be better to have her in here with us.” He kissed Candace’s pale cheek. “What do you know? My first three-way.”
This time, Evie was unable to swallow the vomit that rushed up her throat. She turned her head away from him and threw up on her pillow, shaking with horror and grief and fury.
“Now look what a mess you’ve made,” he said with a tsk. “You can’t expect her to lie in that.” He stepped over to a lounge chair by the window and lowered Candace onto it, gently and carefully, like a father putting a child to bed.
Walking around the bed, to the side on which she lay, he looked down at her. Evie tried to meet his stare defiantly, but she was so close to the edge, so close to panicking and begging—for real—that she closed her eyes.
“Better clean you up, huh?”
When she felt him pushing her hair out of the way and then lifting her head, her eyes flew back open. “What—”
“Can’t let you lie here in this mess, now, can we?” He smiled that evil smile that went well with those black, inhuman eyes and began to move the pillow.
Her whole body stiffened as she realized what was about to happen. He would take the pillow, and then he would see the way her hands were gripping the wood stake behind it. The broken one.
She knew waiting until her legs were free was the best way to go. But it looked like she might not have the chance.
“I wish I had time to wash your pretty blond hair,” he murmured as he leaned closer. “I like women’s hair. You didn’t even notice that when you were snooping into my past, did you? I always took a few strands with me.”
The “gift” he’d left on her pillow the other day now made even more sickening sense.
“Yours isn’t as long as I like, and I do prefer redheads. But it’s still nice and soft.”
She felt the heat of his stale breath on her forehead, and her skin crawled like it was being walked on by spiders.
No time, no time. Do it, just do it!
Now or never.
For you. For Candace.
For all of them.
She did it.
Yanking the wood completely out of the headboard frame, she swung it up, and plunged it into the murdering psychopath’s face.
“You bitch! You miserable fucking bitch!” he bellowed as he staggered back, his hands clutching his face, blood already drenching his fingers. He tripped over what she assumed was his hit man’s body and fell back, still screaming in pain and fury.
Evie immediately sat up, shimmying toward the end of the bed. Her wrists were still bound, but without the slat between them, she had a bit more freedom. She tried to unknot the thick rope securing her ankles. It was so tight. If she had ten minutes, maybe she could do it.
She didn’t have ten seconds.
“I’m gonna make it worse than you ever dreamed about,” Phil Smith promised as he staggered to his feet and came toward the bed.
She’d missed. She’d hurt him, yes. But it had been no incapacitating blow.
All she had done was enrage the bull.
The long shaft of wood was embedded in his cheek, just below his eye. Blood gushed from the wound, and he was almost foaming at the mouth as he reached up, grabbed it tight, and pulled it out. In his incoherent anger, he threw it at her, striking her on the head.
Like a desperate animal, Evie scurried back out of his reach, bumping into poor Candace’s body. When he walked around the bed, following her like a shark circling a raft, she grabbed the splintered piece of wood and jabbed it at him.
He sneered; there was little damage she could do with the thing now that he was watching for it. She had taken her one chance and had blown it.
“I’m gonna enjoy this.” He tried to stretch his hands, those swollen, mangled hands, and absently rubbed one with the other. The grip he’d taken on the stake when he’d pulled it out had apparently hurt him. A lot. “Oh, how I wish I could choke the breath right out of you. But I guess the blades will have to do.”
Evie wasn’t listening. She was focused only on his hands, the way he moved them so gingerly, the massively swollen knuckles and permanently bent fingers.
Those hands had brutalized dozens of women. Whatever pain he suffered from them now wasn’t nearly enough. Not nearly.
She wanted to add to it. If it was the last thing she did on this earth, and it probably would be, she wanted to punish him for what he’d done to Felicity Long, and Amy Nolan, and Candace, and all the others.
He reached for her. She gripped the stake. This time, though, instead of jabbing it at him, she slammed it down, with all her might, directly onto the fingers of his right hand.
He screamed, a high-pitched howl that nearly deafened her.
“Oh holy Jesus, oh God, you bitch, you evil whore!”
The screams were accompanied by sobs. From the sound of it, the pain she’d just inflicted on him was worse than when she’d stabbed him in the face.
Good. It was a small satisfaction in this, the last minute of her life.
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“Bitch, I’m gonna shove that thing right up your—”
“Get your hands up, you son of a bitch, or I’ll put a matching hole in the other side of your face,” a cold, hard voice snarled.
Phil Smith froze, completely shocked, but no more than Evie.
“Rowan!” she cried, seeing him standing in the doorway, gun in hand, aimed directly at the man who’d been within seconds of killing her.
He didn’t take his eyes off Smith, not even to assure her that everything was gonna be okay. Which was just fine with her.
It was going to be okay. He’d come, just as she’d prayed he would.
Just as she’d known he would.
Smith didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to make up a fast story or ask for mercy, and he certainly didn’t put his hands up. They were still clutched at his chest, curled protectively together, as tears of pain ran down his face.
“Hit me, she hit me,” he mumbled to himself. “Hit me, Mama, she hit me.”
It sounded as though the man was dissolving into his own little world, his mind splintering. Evie had done something no woman had ever done before: she’d hurt him. Badly. First by discovering his secret, and then physically.
Which shouldn’t have made him cry, no matter how much pain he was in.
Given his hatred of women, she would not expect him to be feeling sorry for himself. He should be filled with volcanic anger. He should want revenge. The voices in his mind weren’t consoling him; they were screaming at him to lash out and hurt the person who’d actually damaged him.
“Rowan, watch—”
She didn’t even get the last word out before the killer lunged at her. His hands were a witch’s claws, grabbing her throat and digging in.
It hurt for less than a second. Because before he’d even managed to cut off her last breath, Phil Smith flew off his feet and landed on the floor. Her ears were ringing as the sound of a gunshot echoed in the room.
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