The realization had both comforted and infuriated him. He’d been happy to realize he wouldn’t have to give up his playtime. And furious at the manipulation.
“I’m gonna get you, old man,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel of his truck.
Yes, discovery might come eventually. He’d deal with it at that time. If his secret activities ever did come to light, and he thought the police really knew anything about Satan’s Playground and his alter ego, it wouldn’t matter that they could trace it. Because he would never be taken, never tried.
No one would ever lay physical hands on him again.
That was a long way off, hopefully to be worried about only in the distant future. Now he just had to get through these next few days, as difficult as they were going to be. He had to allow himself to be manipulated one last time.
“And then never again,” he told himself as he trolled the playground. A mundane, boring real one. It was small, with just a few creaky swings and a jungle gym, in a small town between home and Leesburg.
He’d swung past it twice in the past hour. Only twice. He couldn’t afford to be remembered once a kid went missing. This was riskier than anything he’d ever done. He was much too close to home for his liking, but he had no time and no choice.
Funny how fate favored him. Because while he usually never had any peace unless he locked himself away and disappeared into his Playground, the house would be empty for at least the next few days. Meaning he could do what he had to do in private, with no chance of being caught. He’d snatch a boy, drug him, take him home, and spirit him down into the basement. Into his private rooms.
No one around to see. No one around to hear. No one around to stop him.
It was perfect. As if some entity were offering silent approval and support for what he did and wanted him to continue.
He just had to find the kid.
So far he’d seen no prospects. People weren’t very trusting with their children these days. Mothers sat on benches overlooking the park, feeding slobbery babies and calling out, “Be careful,” to their brats. Part of him wanted to move on to the next viable location for finding a vulnerable victim, an arcade or a public swimming pool or a park.
Another part wanted to drive right the fuck over to Warren Lee’s house and put a bullet in the back of his head.
It was a flip of a coin. Whichever came first. Kill a kid. Kill a blackmailer.
No-brainer, really. But he couldn’t risk failing. He had to cover both bases.
He’d swallowed his distaste for the whole thing, knowing it had to be done. That didn’t mean he was going to enjoy it. Or even that he planned to do everything the buyer wanted. He wasn’t raping a little boy. Only a sick weirdo would do something like that.
He’d make it look good for the camera, but he’d show mercy. He’d do something to the kid so he wouldn’t feel too much pain. And he’d kill him quickly.
After all, he wasn’t a monster.
DEAN LIKED STACEY’S FATHER. The older man was only in his mid-sixties, with a youthful face and attitude. But the swelling of his joints and his slow movements told the entire story of his early retirement.
He’d been a lawman for many years, though—a deputy for his own father, then sheriff—and still thought like one. So not only did he immediately offer to watch every inch of footage from the mall surveillance cameras, he also proved able to help in another way.
Like any really good cop, the man had kept journals throughout his years in office. He still had them. “I can’t promise anything,” he told both Dean and Stacey as they set up her laptop on his kitchen table. “But I’ll dig them out and glance through them, see if I noted any cases of animal abuse. Just because I can’t remember it off the top of my head doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” He shook his head sadly and told Dean, “I recently lost my dog, you know. I can’t imagine somebody hurting a defenseless animal on purpose.”
Dean kept his mouth shut, understanding Stacey’s reason for keeping the truth to herself. For her sake, and for Mr. Rhodes’s, he hoped she never had to tell him.
Something else they didn’t tell him: that a child’s life was in danger. Neither of them wanted to add to the pressure. Though Mr. Rhodes was smart and capable, his daughter appeared to want to shield him, as if she’d assumed the role of protective parent because of his physical ailments.
The man’s slight smile, and the occasional roll of his eyes, said he knew it. And that he put up with it. Stacey might think she was fooling everyone with her hard shell and swagger. But there was a nurturing, loving woman inside her. He’d felt it. He’d seen it.
He also knew why she tried to hide it.
It wasn’t just her job, a woman as sheriff. Stacey’s attitude was another means of self-protection, of getting over the emotional meltdown he suspected she’d experienced after Virginia Tech. She hadn’t talked about it; she hadn’t needed to. He’d watched the news coverage, seen the photographs, read the stories. The VSP hadn’t been first responders, but they’d been on campus within hours of the attack.
She’d seen things that would haunt any sane person. Now, thanks to this Reaper case, she’d seen even more.
The campus shooting had almost certainly had something to do with her decision to move back here when her father retired. Her need to keep anyone from getting too close, her lone-wolf lifestyle, her refusal to think about having kids someday, all related to the way she boxed up her emotions and hid them away. That she’d finally begun to let them out with the crying jag in his arms Saturday night hinted she might be ready to deal with them.
He just wondered if she’d let him stick around long enough to be there when she let it all go and decided to move on with her life.
He hoped so. It was crazy to feel this way after only a week. But, God, he hoped so. Because he had the feeling that, with her, he could move on with his own, too.
“You really think I’ll see somebody from Hope Valley on here?” Mr. Rhodes asked. Sitting at the table, he watched Stacey open the video file and cue it forward to the point where they’d left off.
“I don’t know, sir. There’s a chance.”
“This is shopping mall footage,” he said, nodding at the screen. His voice lowering, he asked, “Is this related to that little Maryland girl whose body they found in the woods Monday?”
Stacey had told him the bare bones, but she obviously hadn’t told her father everything. Just as she’d promised.
Dean nodded once.
The older man shook his head in visible disgust. “I’ll prop my eyes open with toothpicks if I have to. I promise I won’t miss a face.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Stacey said, bending to kiss his cheek. “Normally I’d say to take it slow and easy and don’t overdo it. But today …”
He patted her hand. “I’ll overdo it as carefully as I can.”
Thanking him as well, Dean said good-bye to the other man and walked out of the house, standing on the front porch. Stacey came out a moment later.
“So this is where you grew up, huh?” he asked, staring across the rolling green lawn. The huge trees, a pond at the base of a nearby hill, and the old red barn in the distance gave the whole place the feeling of an Americana painting.
Maybe it suited her father. Maybe it had once suited her. But not anymore.
“Yes. My grandparents built it.” She walked down the stairs, tugging her keys out of her pocket. “I couldn’t wait to live anywhere else when I was a kid.”
“It’s rustic,” he said as they got into her squad car.
“That it is.”
“You’re not.”
She had just put the key into the ignition, but paused and glanced over at him. “What?”
“This isn’t you. You might have stepped right back into the lifestyle when you came back here, but here’s not where you belong.”
Her jaw flexed and she jerked her head forward. She pushed the ignition key a little too hard, grinding the engine, then th
rust into reverse and backed up. “What do you know about where I belong?” she asked as she pulled out of the long driveway.
He didn’t answer, instead countering with a question of his own. “Are you telling me that when this is all over you’ll be perfectly happy going back to writing speeding tickets and reassuring old ladies who hear raccoons in their garbage cans at night?”
Her lips quirked the tiniest bit. But she was too stubborn to admit he was right. Not yet, at least. She was intuitive and bright, but never accepted anything at face value. She looked at every side of things before conceding a point. Which was, honestly, an asset in their profession.
He said nothing more. He didn’t need to. She’d look at all sides and concede the point. Sooner or later. Or else kick his ass to the curb for trying to force her to do so before she was ready.
Another voice interrupted the silence in the car. “All units.”
She glanced at him, then grabbed her radio handset, fumbling it a little, as if unused to getting calls. Judging by what he’d seen of the town, he understood why.
“I’m here, Connie; come back.”
“We’ve got reports of shots fired, Sheriff. Repeat, shots fired.”
Any hint of a smile left her mouth, and the color drained out of her face as if someone had pulled a plug on it. Shots fired. Damn. He could only imagine when she had last heard that call.
“The address?” Stacy barked, immediately alert and ready. No more hesitating, no more fumbling; she was all business.
The dispatcher gave her the information. The street name sounded a little familiar, though he couldn’t immediately say why.
Stacey, however, obviously knew it. Her mouth dropped in shock. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Then she floored it.
SINCE THEY’D BEEN at her father’s place, a couple of miles outside of town, they weren’t the first to arrive. Stacey spotted two other squad cars in the driveway, lights still flashing. From up the street came the sound of another siren: the volunteer ambulance crew. Per the last radio call, there was at least one known casualty.
Leaping out of the car immediately after she swung onto the lawn, she didn’t even pause to shut the door. Nor did she wait for Dean, who came on her heels. Her fingers unsnapped her holster as she ran. Her Glock was in her hand by the time she reached the porch, her eyes shifting as she tried to spot her men.
No one was outside. The front door stood open. All was deadly silent, the late afternoon saturated in tension.
Then someone spoke. “Please just put it down. Put the gun down. You know you don’t want to do this.”
Mitch Flanagan. He stood right inside the open door, his own weapon drawn, his bad arm down at his side. He’d come back on duty a day early, and she thanked God for it. Other than herself, she couldn’t imagine anyone better to have arrived first. Especially because right beside him was another deputy, a rookie named Joanie who’d been on the job for less than a year. Joanie’s weapon was also drawn, but she looked a whole lot more nervous.
They both faced someone inside the house. Stacey strongly suspected she knew who that someone was.
Quietly stepping onto the porch, she caught Mitch’s eye. He glanced back and forth between her and the armed perp, murmuring, “The sheriff’s here. Why don’t you let her come in? You can talk to her. See how we can fix this situation.”
He was good. Calm and reasonable, he tried to soothe the shooter, gain his trust. Which immediately tipped her off more to what was going on. Whoever the perpetrator was, his weapon was not aimed at her deputies. Because Mitch wouldn’t be trying to talk to him; he’d already have shot to kill. He was too damn good not to.
Suicide. She knew before she stepped into the door that whoever had fired the shots now had a gun to his own head. She she could imagine why.
Then she stepped inside, saw who it was, and realized she’d been wrong. Totally, completely wrong.
The body lay on the floor a few feet from her deputies, inside the living room of the small, shuttered house. He was sprawled on his back, arms and legs splayed.
There could be no question he was dead. Half his face was gone. Blood and brain matter thickly coated the worn carpeting, splatters of it on the walls and on the small shepherd and shepherdess figurines on the nearby table. Not to mention the woman sitting beside it.
“Winnie?” she said softly, moving inside.
She fought to control her shock and mentally readjust to the situation. After hearing the address, she’d been sure that Stan had finally gone too far and killed his wife.
Not this.
Winnie Freed sat on her dingy sofa, motionless and silent. In one hand, she held the same framed picture of her daughter that Dean had commented on last weekend. In the other, a semiautomatic. It was aimed at her own head.
“Please put the gun down. Let’s talk about it.”
The woman appeared to be in shock. She didn’t look up, simply staring at the image of her lost child. Her bottom lip was swollen and bloodied. One of her eyes had been recently blackened; Stacey had no doubt by whom. Streaks on her face indicated that she’d been crying, but now she was calm. Quiet. Looking at the little girl she’d lost, oblivious to the husband she’d killed.
“Winnie, please. Don’t do this. Lisa wouldn’t want it.”
“He hurt her,” the woman whispered. “He hurt her over and over and over.”
Damn. “You didn’t know.”
The woman’s hand shook, moving closer to her temple. “I didn’t want to know.”
“You tried to protect her. You told me you took her to the doctor all the time.”
“I did.” She laughed bitterly. “And I congratulated myself on having such good instincts, because she was physically healthy. But that was because he wasn’t beating her with a strap, or punching her kidneys so the bruises wouldn’t show.”
She said the words matter-of-factly, as if those occurrences were a regular part of life. For Winnie, they probably had been. At least since she’d married the guy whose head she’d just blown off.
“I went to see him this morning. Doc Taylor.”
“After Stan did that to you?” she asked, easing further into the room.
“Yes.” Winnie looked up, saw her moving closer, and stiffened.
Stacey froze, then spread her fingers wide on the grip of the Glock. She slowly lowered it, sliding it back in its holster, trying to calm the woman down, remain entirely unthreatening. No way was she going to be responsible for a suicide-by-cop. Not in her town. Not with this woman.
“Stacey …” Dean growled in warning.
“It’s okay,” she insisted. She did not, however, move into the line of sight between her two deputies, or Dean, and the armed woman on the couch. She was sympathetic, not stupid. If Winnie lowered the weapon and even came close to pointing it at her, either Dean or Mitch would take the other woman out without hesitation.
“What did the doc say?” she asked, staying a few feet away.
“He said my Lisa had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen. She came to see him.”
Not news to Stacey. But obviously it had been to Lisa’s mother.
“Then he told me Stan had been with her and had offered to pay for an abortion.”
Son of a bitch.
“Doc thought Stan was being a concerned stepfather.” The tears began to roll again. “I knew better right away. He wouldn’t have paid for a gallon of water to douse Lisa if she had been on fire.”
“What did you do?” She edged closer. One single step.
“I came home. Waited.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “He’s been off for a couple of days. People at work thought it was odd that he didn’t seem to want to stay home with me after the news about Lisa got out.”
Another step. Stacey nodded in sympathy, as if the two of them were having a normal conversation. As if Winnie weren’t on the verge of taking her own life and Stacey weren’t desperate to stop her. “What did he say when you confronted hi
m?” she asked.
“He denied it at first. Then claimed she’d been coming on to him and he was just a poor, weak man.”
They had reached critical mass here. Suddenly Stacey realized the implications. If Winnie survived this, anything she said now could prove very important.
“Winnie, I have no doubt Stan beat the daylights out of you and has been for a long time. We’ll take pictures of your face. Doc will testify about the years of abuse I suspect you’ve undergone.”
The woman looked at her like she’d sprouted two heads. “Why should I care?”
Stacey pointed to Lisa’s picture. “Because she would care. She loved you and she wouldn’t want you doing this.” Nor would Lisa want her mother going to prison for the rest of her life for killing the man who’d abused them both for more than a decade. Physically, sexually, emotionally.
Stacey didn’t condone murder. But she could honestly see how someone in Winnie’s position could snap. And she thought a jury would, too.
“She was my beautiful little girl,” the woman whispered, again staring down at the photograph. “I should have been there for her. I didn’t do right by her.”
“Do right by her now. Live to see her killer caught and prosecuted. Stay alive and fight for justice.”
The woman froze.
Sensing she was getting somewhere, Stacey continued. “We’re getting closer to finding him, Winnie. Stan didn’t do it; we ruled him out as a suspect.” That didn’t seem to make much difference to the broken woman, who remained very still, as if she’d already figured that much out. Still, Stacey wasn’t giving up. “I know you want to know who killed her and see him put away to rot in a cell for the rest of his miserable life.”
She doubted the Reaper would rot in jail for long. He’d killed in at least three states with the death penalty.
“There’s a chance we’ll find Lisa’s remains, and I’m sure you’d want to be there to see her properly buried.”
FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series Page 27