“What is it? I’ll get the FBI on it.”
“The FBI? You think they can find it faster than I can?”
“No, but at this point we need to try everything. I have a bad feeling. From the witness ID, it appeared that Lucy was drunk. I think he drugged her. She wouldn’t have gone willingly. She would have fought back.”
“We’ll find her,” Duke emphasized.
Sean didn’t doubt that. But in what condition? Injured? Dead?
“Call me as soon as you know anything.”
Sean dialed Kate. “I’m sending you information that Duke just found out.”
“I’ll get on it. Noah is on his way to your place, I’m meeting him there.”
“If I find a lead, I’m jumping on it.”
“You’d better. Just keep me in the loop. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Sean dropped his phone on his desk, his hands fisting in his hair as an agonized groan escaped from deep in his chest. The anger—at Mallory, at the FBI, but mostly at himself for not protecting Lucy—battled with his deep fear for her life.
He took several deep breaths to swallow the rising panic. His brothers had told him over and over that there was no room for personal emotion when faced with a threat. But Sean had never been in the military. He’d never been trained to kill or to fight or to treat an assignment as a tactical situation with targets and civilians. And while he had the skills, he hadn’t developed the mental discipline that his older brothers shared.
And he couldn’t think of Lucy as a victim. He couldn’t think of her as anyone but who she was—the woman who had taken his heart. He just wanted her back, safe, with him.
“Okay,” he said out loud. “Think, Sean. You’re not helpless. If Miller wanted to kill Lucy, he would have done it at the church, right?”
This was where having the profiler around would be helpful.
Was Cody Lorenzo killed for revenge, or because he’d found out something about Miller? Or, was his murder Miller’s sadistic way of tormenting Lucy? How long had Miller been watching her? Did he know about her past relationship with Lorenzo? He knew about Sean—the guy had watched them at the ice rink. Miller had been circling around Lucy, making her nervous. All the times she felt as if someone was watching her, she had blamed her past. Sean had told her to trust her instincts, and when they thought Lorenzo was stalking her, he’d accepted that Lucy’s feelings were because of him.
They’d made a logical and reasoned conclusion based on the evidence, but it had been wrong. And now Lucy’s life was at risk.
The doorbell rang, followed by knocking. Sean glanced at his security screen and saw Kate and Dillon at the door. He rushed downstairs and by the time he let them in, Noah and Hans were walking up the front walkway.
“Any news?” Sean asked.
“No,” Kate said at the same time Noah said, “Yes.”
Sean closed the door. “What?”
“The Delaware Field Office said the Wilmington house is vacant, but Miller has been paying the mortgage on it. We’re getting a search warrant—he may have records in the basement or attic. According to the neighbors, he’s been by the house a few times since his release from prison. But the place had been vandalized, and he’d become persona non grata after his trial.”
“If he’s been paying the mortgage, that means he has a bank account somewhere.”
“Bingo. We’ll have all his banking records first thing in the morning.”
“Morning? That may be too late!” Sean couldn’t wait until the banks opened to trace Miller. But to hack into a major financial institution couldn’t be done quickly, and it definitely wouldn’t be legal. He had no doubt he could get in, but without actual routing numbers and account numbers tied to Miller, he wouldn’t know where to go in the system.
Noah said, “I got the information about his parents and we’re tracking down the mother now. She took her maiden name after the divorce, according to the University of Richmond office.”
“You talked to his college?”
“We have emergency contacts with all the major institutions, and as soon as you forwarded the data, we called. Records are all computerized, and the dean was able to pull up Miller’s file. His father was living in Wilmington, his mother was listed as Christina Lyons. No address, no contact.”
Dillon spoke up. “Were there any disciplinary records on Miller?”
“No. He was a top student. He was married his senior year. He changed his emergency forms to next-of-kin contact Rosemarie Miller. Her maiden name is Nylander. Abigail is trying to find her now.”
“Are they still married?” Kate asked.
“Rosemarie filed for divorce in 1998. They’d been married for six years. Miller refused to sign the papers, and the court intervened and severed the marriage.”
“That could have set him off,” Hans said. “Model student, no criminal record, his mother leaves, his wife leaves. He targets high school girls who are easy to control. He’s in a position of authority over them.”
“Did you read his file?” Noah asked Hans.
“I’m in the dark here,” Sean said. “He was in prison for statutory rape, that’s all I know.”
“He was convicted of statutory rape of two students,” Noah explained. “But there were others who recanted their statements.”
Hans said, “He convinced the girls that they were worthless, that the only value they had was what he gave them. They didn’t want to turn on him, a version of the Stockholm syndrome. Unfortunately, all the names of his victims are redacted. Without an extremely compelling argument and court order, we can’t talk to them.”
“Would talking to them help?” Sean asked. “All this was a decade ago, right?”
“It might help,” Hans said. “But no guarantees, and the privacy of rape victims—especially minors—will win out ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“So what now?” Sean said, exasperated. “We sit around and wait? I need to do something.”
“Good.” Noah shoved a disk at him. “You’re supposed to be a computer genius. That’s all the property records in the tri-state area. Let’s see what you can find. I’m going to track down the mother. She might know where he is.”
Sean took the disk to his office. Dillon followed him upstairs, his face pale but his expression determined. “I’m sorry, Dillon,” Sean said, shoving the disk into his computer. “I should never have left her at the church.”
“We all thought Mallory was behind the roses and Cody’s murder,” Dillon said. “We’re going to find her. Kate and I found her once; we’ll find her again.”
Sean held onto that hope as he wrote a program to parse the data Noah had given him.
The female sleeps.
I injected her with an antidote to counteract the more serious effects of the sedative. The female had experienced shortness of breath during the final minutes of the drive, and that worried me. Now she seems to be resting normally, perhaps sleeping deeper than she should because of the sedative.
The broken one watches from her corner with wide eyes as I cut the duct tape from the female’s ankles and wrists. I handcuff one wrist to a bar of the cage. It is best, I have learned over the years, to restrain them at the beginning. It contributes to the system of rewards and punishment.
Females are weak and malleable. It doesn’t take long for them to break and become compliant. Keeping their food to a minimum and restricting movement helps. But sometimes, on the first night, the combination of drugs and injuries results in death. I wonder if this female will survive until morning?
I hope so. I will not be pleased if she dies before I have a chance to teach her. And everything I’ve done up until this moment will have been a waste of time.
She sleeps. The broken one still watches. I say to her, “Do not speak to her.”
I leave them, confident that my orders will be obeyed, and walk upstairs to prepare a late meal.
I frown and consider the time. It is well past my di
nner hour, another example of how Lucy Kincaid interfered in my life. My schedule, crucial to keeping focus and executing my plans, is once again destroyed because of that woman. I will eat ninety minutes after I prefer, which means I will go to bed later than I like.
That female does not care that my time is valuable! From the beginning, when I realized she was not who she said she was, when I learned that she planned to put me back in prison, I committed untold hours to learning who she was, where she lived, and planning the best way to take her.
I watched her for weeks. Followed her. She did not recognize me. I sat across from her on the Metro train only two days ago, and she did not recognize me. I watched her argue with the cop I killed, and she did not know me. I changed my appearance enough to blend into my surroundings, like a chameleon, but still I thought she might have recognized me.
I will miss our games: following her, and she looking around, worried, looking right at me but not knowing me. The times I came close enough to stab her in the back, but resisted. The time I almost pushed her in front of the Metro train.
But instant death would not have been gratifying. I now have the time to teach her properly, to break her completely. I have looked forward to these days.
Though Hell on earth, prison had its silver lining: I learned patience.
I am still looking for the wench who spoke against me, lied against me—her teacher!—in court. I should have killed more than her dog. I wish I had killed her.
And I will kill her. I have a plan to find and kill everyone who spoke against me, starting with Lucy Kincaid.
The first step was finding the perfect woman to break. My newly broken female is the one. I will rebuild her, and she will kill the woman who set me up.
Then, I will be ready to discipline the others who betrayed me. One by one.
THIRTY-NINE
Far away, water dripped in a slow, steady beat. The cold had seeped through to Lucy’s bones, numbing her. The ground was hard, but not wood or cement. The rotten, graveyard stench of dirt, dank and moldy, filled her nose and her throat. Other than the water, which was closer than she first thought, she heard nothing. No traffic, no voices, nothing.
Lucy didn’t harbor any illusions that she was home or safe.
For a panic-filled moment, she feared she was dead or worse—buried alive. She breathed through her mouth, tasted dirt, and her body involuntarily jerked. But the space felt too airy, too open to be buried; and she was in too much pain to be dead.
She opened her eyes, but saw nothing in the deep blackness that filled the space. She didn’t know how big the area, no idea of the time, whether it was day or night, or how long she’d been unconscious.
As her eyes focused, she realized it wasn’t completely dark. Several feet away, out of her reach, was a small space heater emitting a faint glow. It did little to heat the room, but the glow gave off enough light to see the outlines of her confinement, darker and sharper than the shadows that surrounded her. What she could see, coupled with the damp stench, told her she was in a basement or root cellar.
Lucy had no idea where she was; she only remembered how sick she’d been at the church. April was taking her to the bathroom. She’d wanted to throw up … and she remembered nothing more.
Her head pounded, and her tongue was so parched that the dripping water made her more thirsty. Her body was sore, as if she’d been lying in the same position for hours. She tried to sit up, to at least crawl to the tiny heater, but her left hand was pinched on something. She pulled, heard metal clink against metal.
She felt her wrist with her free hand and realized she was handcuffed. She reached out and touched bars. She tried to shake them, but they were sturdy. Her stomach dry heaved as the truth hit her—she was in a cage.
She focused on what happened at the church, but it was as if her memory had been gutted.
Her head felt like a lead ball and her muscles were heavy. With great effort, she scooted into a sitting position and leaned against the bars, then sat abruptly forward, feeling a sharp sting against her back. She now felt the tenderness and bruising all over her body. Gently, she leaned back again and put her head on her knees, hoping the nausea would pass. The feelings she remembered having were akin to what she knew of the effects of many date-rape drugs: the disconnect, the lack of muscle control, the memory loss, and the headache. She touched her body, relieved when she realized she was still in the same clothes she’d had on when she walked into the church. She had no physical sensation that she’d been sexually assaulted. Though she was still terrified, her racing heart slowed, the pounding between her ears subsiding.
When the nausea passed, she focused on her situation. She’d been kidnapped and put into a cage. Where? By whom?
Panic exploded, flooding her bloodstream with adrenaline, her physical restraint swiftly stealing her breath as memories flooded her mind. All the memories she’d hidden, the memories she’d buried so deep she thought they were gone, returned as if Adam Scott had just kidnapped her, and today was her last day. The day he planned to kill her.
“No,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. She would not be a victim again. She would not allow anyone to hurt her, to abuse her, to take anything from her. She was not a victim, she was Lucy Kincaid, and she would fight back with everything she had or die. “Think, Lucy. Think.” She pulled at the handcuff. It was tight; she couldn’t slip it off. She tried to wiggle the bars. Secure. They didn’t even budge a fraction of an inch.
If her kidnapper wanted her dead, he would have killed her already. That meant he had something else in mind.
Her stomach plunged. She couldn’t go through it again, any of it.
Yes you can. You can and will do anything to survive.
But survival meant life-and-death decisions. It meant mental and physical control. It meant being willing to do anything, focusing only on now, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday, but only this moment in time. Being smart, seizing opportunities, constant planning, and if necessary, killing her kidnapper.
The idea that she might need to kill him to escape didn’t scare her half as much as it should have. Who had she become? She wasn’t the woman she thought she’d be one day.
That’s the past, Luce. Focus on the present. Worry about your mental health tomorrow.
She focused first on her breathing, on beating back the panic attack. She couldn’t make smart choices if she was panicking.
Lucy focused on figuring how to get out. She didn’t know where she was, but she preferred to take her chances on the street than with the man who’d locked her in a cage like an animal.
The panic rose again from the pit of her stomach and spread through her body like a wildfire. She’d just beat it back, but the reprieve was a lie. She was lying to herself. She’d never get out of here! She was trapped, just like she had been on the island. She was at the mercy of a sadistic bastard, and she hadn’t even seen his face.
She could scarcely breathe, and though she willed herself to get a grip, she couldn’t. She wanted to die, right then and there, because some fates were worse than death. Some things should never have to be lived through twice. Some things should never be suffered even once.
A moan escaped her chest, a physical stabbing pain that nearly tore her in two. It was her heart breaking, her strength becoming nothing but hot air. She was nothing, only a hard shell. Her shell was cracked by the man who took her, and she wouldn’t be able to put herself back together again.
She dry heaved, but nothing came out. Why, God? Dammit, why? Why me, again?!?
She would die fighting him if she had to. She would not let herself be a victim, not like that. But her hands were trembling. How could she fight when she had only fear inside?
“You’re the bravest person I know.”
Sean’s voice was so loud he might have been sitting right next to her.
Sean.
She would never be able to find out where this relationship was heading because
she was going to die.
Her family might never find her. Dillon, Patrick, and Jack would all be looking for her for years, and she’d be dead and buried in an unmarked grave. She’d seen how Justin’s death had torn apart her family eighteen years ago, and now her death would tear them apart again.
Lucy squeezed back tears.
She saw Sean, searching for her, giving up his life to find out what happened to her. Bitter. Lonely. Violent.
She couldn’t let the people she loved suffer. She had to find a way out.
She focused on breathing evenly. Slowing her racing pulse. One. Two. Three. Even. Clear. She didn’t know how big this cage was, but it was longer than her reach.
Be smart, Lucy. Look for the opportunity.
The dripping water. Soap—abrasive soap. Laundry detergent? An underlying scent of coal. There was no furnace down here, she didn’t hear it, but there had been at one time. She was in the basement of an old house.
Though she couldn’t see more than shades of black and dark gray, she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds above. The hum of a heater as it warmed the house above her, but did nothing for the frigid cold of the basement.
A rooster crowed. She smiled. Dawn. That gave her some perspective. She didn’t feel particularly hungry, just thirsty, so likely only the night had passed. She’d been at the church just after five-thirty, a couple of minutes late …
A flash of a memory returned. She’d been walking into the church when a man opened the door for her. A chunk of snow fell from the building and hit her on the back of the neck.
But thinking about that now, she had already been under the short overhang of the roof. Wasn’t she? She focused on picturing the man who opened the door, but couldn’t—she’d been lost in her grief.
But … he’d seemed familiar. What had she thought? That maybe he was a cop she’d seen once before? She couldn’t remember.
Maybe it hadn’t been snow on her neck. She didn’t have much knowledge about poisons, but she wondered if there was something that could be absorbed through the skin. How long had it taken? About thirty minutes.
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