The Scalper.
Griff had come up with that malevolent title. Unfortunately, it seemed to fit the killer and his crime.
Four days ago, Amber Kirby had disappeared while out for her morning run. There had been no signs of a struggle anywhere along the trail she normally used, but the police had found evidence that someone had been dragged at least ten feet off the path and into the wooded area. Signs had led them to believe the killer had then hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her to his vehicle. Bloodhounds had led them from the woods to a secluded dirt road where the killer could have parked. From that point, the trail had gone cold.
“We figure he either came up behind her and knocked her over the head or he somehow drugged her,” the Knoxville detective had told Nic when she’d spoken to him late Wednesday.
“Until she comes up dead, with a bullet in her head and scalped, we have no proof that Amber Kirby’s disappearance is connected to the other five murders,” Wayne Hester, the Knoxville field office SAC, had explained. “As for your mystery caller who’s been giving you clues—he could be some nut job who has nothing to do with any of the murders.”
“What about the fact that the clues led us to these women?”
“Look, Baxter, I don’t doubt that you and Griffin Powell believe that you deciphered this guy’s clues and it led to a specific conclusion, but the fact is the whole thing could be nothing more than coincidence. I’m not getting involved in something until I have some concrete proof.”
How many women had to die before she could persuade her colleagues that they had a nomadic serial killer on the loose? At Doug’s suggestion, she hadn’t mentioned her theory that the Scalper was also the second BQ Killer, the one who had shot Cary Maygarden as a final triumphant act in their vicious game. Besides, Griff and she had agreed that there was no point in reopening old wounds for Lindsay and Judd Walker. Or for the families of any of the other BQK victims. Until this killer is apprehended and punished for his crimes, why put them through more misery? They had already suffered far too much.
Realizing that she wasn’t likely to go back to sleep, Nic yanked the pillow off her head, tossed it away from her, flung back the covers, and got up. Her bedroom was chilly. She liked sleeping in a cold room, so during the summer, she turned the central air down to sixty-five at night.
She grabbed her robe off her maternal grandmother’s cedar chest that she kept at the foot of the spindle bed, which had belonged to her paternal grandmother. It wasn’t so much that Nic liked antiques as it was that she liked the idea of passing things down in families, one generation after another. She supposed her most prized possession was her great-grandmother’s rocking chair, which was in the guest bedroom. When she and Greg first married, she had daydreamed about someday sitting in that rocking chair, holding their baby in her arms. That dream, along with so many others, had died the day Greg died.
Nic slipped on her robe over her comfy cotton pajamas, then headed for the bathroom. After hurrying through a quick wake-up routine—using the toilet, washing her hands and face, and running a comb through her tousled hair—she barely made it to the kitchen before a loud boom of thunder rocked the house. The rattling windows and flickering lights startled her.
Damn!
She offered up a prayer to the Almighty. Please, don’t let the electricity go off until I’ve had my first cup of morning coffee.
For the past four days, she had resisted the urge to go to Knoxville and speak to Wayne Hester in person, as well as to the local police officers first called to the scene. But what good would it actually do? She’d been given all the facts. And as Griff had pointed out, they had no way of knowing where he had taken Amber.
If only he would call with another clue.
But he hadn’t called either her or Griff.
Why not? What was he waiting for?
“He’s letting us stew,” Griff had told her when she’d spoken to him on Friday. “This is his game, his rules, and he wants to make certain that we know it.”
She had wanted to ask Griff if he and his team of detectives had come up with anything that the local law hadn’t. But she figured he would’ve told her if he had.
If she’d accepted his offer, she could be doing something constructive now, instead of waiting for her superiors to take action. When he’d asked her to come to Griffin’s Rest for the few days she’d had left on her vacation, why had she turned him down instantly? Why hadn’t she at least given it some thought?
“You could meet some of my team, work with us, and we’d be together when the Scalper calls again,” Griff had said.
Gut instinct told her to join forces with Griffin Powell. Common sense told her otherwise. A battle between emotions and logic warred within her. As much as she disapproved of him and to some extent distrusted him, she could see why most women found him appealing. Not that she did!
Yes, he was good-looking, in a big, rugged, blond, Nordic sort of way. In a long-ago era, Griff would have been a marauding Viking, plundering and pillaging, taking what he wanted.
Her father had been one of those big, rough-and-rugged kind of guys. He had steamrolled right over her sweet, flighty mother and her equally sweet and gentle brother, Charles David. And he had tried to dominate her, treating her like he did her mother, as if she were some china doll with straw for brains. If only he had looked closer, he would have seen not a carbon copy of her mother but a strong resemblance to himself.
How different their lives might have been if their father could have allowed Charles David to be the sensitive, emotional child and she the strong, independent one. But no, his son had to be a man. A real man. No tears. No whining. And his daughter had to be fluttery and feminine and silly. In Charles Bellamy’s world there had been no room for uniqueness, no quarter given to a son who constantly disappointed him and a daughter who would not bend to his will.
Nic eyed the coffeemaker. Thank goodness she had set it last night and already the pot was half-full of the dark, gourmet brew. She poured herself a cup and took a sip.
Ah …
A good cup of coffee was one of Nic’s few pleasures.
How many Sunday mornings had she and Greg sat in this kitchen, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, discussing everything under the sun? Greg had been a wonderful conversationalist. Unlike so many men, Greg hadn’t had a problem communicating. At least that’s what she’d thought, up to the very end. She supposed that was one of the many reasons his death had come as such a shock to her. Why hadn’t she realized that something was wrong? Why hadn’t she sensed that something was troubling her husband?
If only she could go back in time.
Oh, Greg … I’m so sorry. If only I had known. If only you had told me.
Even now, after seven years, it hurt to think about her husband’s death, to remember the way he had died. But she didn’t cry anymore. She had shed all her tears of mourning long ago. All the tears in the world wouldn’t bring Greg back, wouldn’t change the way he died, wouldn’t absolve her of her guilt.
Griff woke at ten thirty. He slept late only when he’d had a late night. He had stayed with Lisa Kay until two this morning, then had driven home. She had wanted him to stay over and share Sunday as a couple’s day. He liked Lisa Kay, found her amusing both in and out of bed, but he had spent two nights at her place recently and didn’t want her to get any wrong ideas. If he was looking for a permanent relationship, which he wasn’t, his standards would be pretty damn high. Probably too high. Beauty mattered, but he had learned over the years that beauty truly was in the eye of the beholder. He’d had his share of gorgeous women, had been with younger women, older women, smart women, and dumb women. He adored women in general, appreciated each for what made her unique, but he’d never found a woman that tempted him to end his bachelor days.
Rolling over and out of bed, Griff stood and stretched. He slept nude. He liked the feel of his body against the satiny cotton sheets beneath and over him. Shards of morning sunligh
t crept through the dark wooden shades covering a wall of windows and French doors that overlooked the lake. When he had commissioned the architect to build his home, he had specified several must-have items. First and foremost had been that his second-story bedroom would face the lake and would have doors that opened up onto a balcony.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, Griff put on his silk robe, opened the French doors, and walked out onto the balcony. August had faded hurriedly into September, the end of summer as hot and humid as the beginning. The shimmering sunlight poured over him as it dappled through the nearby trees. The moist wind hinted of rain.
This was Labor Day weekend and all of his employees who were not on specific assignments had the three days off. Lindsay had called and invited him to spend the long weekend with her and Judd and little Emily, but he had declined. He appreciated that they considered him family, that they had honored him with godfather status for their daughter, but right now, he needed to keep his distance from them. Knowing what he knew—that the second BQ Killer could just as easily have been Jennifer Walker’s murderer as Cary Maygarden could have been, and that this man had now begun a second killing spree—put Griff in an awkward position with his friends. They had been to hell and back in order to reach the point where they were now. He couldn’t bear the thought that anything might disrupt their hard-won happiness.
There had been a time when Griff had thought Judd would never find happiness again, that he was doomed to loneliness and misery. For years, Griff had watched Lindsay stand by Judd, take whatever abuse he dished out, and never stop loving him. When she had come to work for Griff at the Powell Agency, her single reason for existing had been to find the man who had killed Judd’s wife. That type of single-minded devotion was rare. Few men were lucky enough to have a woman love them the way Lindsay loved Judd.
Is that what you want? Griff asked himself.
Did he want to be loved?
Yeah, sure. What human being didn’t want to be loved?
Griff laughed at his sentimental thoughts.
He had a life most people would envy. A life he enjoyed. Not only did his great wealth afford him every luxury he could ever want, but it allowed him to make a difference in the world, to help people who might otherwise get lost in the system. His charity extended worldwide, but his own personal involvement centered on the Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency. Sanders had been the one who had come up with the idea when Griff had been searching for something to fill his days. He didn’t have to work. He could easily live the life of a worthless playboy cavorting from one social hot spot to another, but that sort of life would have made him miserable.
“Think of all the people who never receive any type of justice for themselves or their families,” Sanders had said. “Think of all the criminals who are never caught, who literally get away with murder.”
The idea of bringing criminals to justice, criminals the law couldn’t find or couldn’t touch, appealed to Griff in a personal way that little else did. Sanders had realized that fact because he knew Griff as no other man knew him. They were brothers of the soul as only those who had stood together against great evil and triumphed over it could ever be.
Griff’s gaze scanned the yard, all the way to the lake, and his mind wandered back to another lake, a lagoon really, on a South Seas island. On the surface, it had been a Pacific paradise, but in reality it had been an inescapable prison.
Damn! Don’t go there. Do not think about that place or what happened to you there. You put it all behind you years ago.
Griff went back inside his bedroom, slipped into a pair of leather house shoes, and went downstairs. He needed coffee and a decent breakfast before shutting himself off in his den to go over all the information he had on the Scalper’s victims. Not that there was anything new, but every time he read over the reports, he gained a little more knowledge. He doubted that he’d find anything in those reports that would save Amber Kirby’s life, but he had do something that made him feel as if he were at least trying.
There has to be a way out!
Not once in the three days he had let her run free had she seen any sign of a fence. But that didn’t mean if she ever made it to the outside world, there wouldn’t be some type of barrier to prevent her escape.
That first morning, at the crack of dawn, he had taken her from the damp, dank basement, marched her into an upstairs bathroom, and shoved her, fully clothed, under a warm shower. Leaving her in her wet, soiled clothes, he had then taken her to the kitchen and fed her a meal as if she were a helpless infant. She had spit the food in his face. He had merely cleaned his face, frowned at her, and called her a naughty girl.
“When you get hungry enough, you’ll eat,” he had told her.
He’d been right. This morning, when he’d set a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of her, she had eaten every bite.
Like a general issuing orders to his soldiers, her captor had recited the rules of his game. And that’s what he’d called it—a game!
“I am the Hunter,” he had told her. “And you are the Prey.”
If his words had not convinced her he was mad, his actions would have.
What frightened her more than anything else was the way he looked at her, an insatiable hunger in his eyes that was both sexual and predatory. And yet, he hadn’t raped her or removed her clothes or even touched her intimately.
How long will he leave me outside today?
That first day, he had taken her, hands and feet manacled, deep into the woods; and then he had removed the cuffs from her ankles and left her. It had taken her at least thirty minutes to realize she was alone, free to run away. And she had run as fast and as far as she could, falling a couple of times and quickly learning how to hoist herself back up, even with cuffs on her wrists.
Then suddenly, just as she was beginning to hope that she could get away, she had heard the roar of a dirt bike’s motor. He had reappeared, chased her down, and aimed a rifle directly at her. He had forced her to walk back to the creepy antebellum house where he lived.
On each of the three days since she’d been here, he had taken her out into the woods and left her for an hour or two. She had tried to find a means of escape but had finally realized that there was no escape. Apparently, he had installed a tracking device in her handcuffs, which he never removed. Every moment she was out of his sight, he knew precisely where she was.
Amber heard his footsteps on the wooden stairs as he came down into the basement. Mixed emotions raced through her. Fear. Uncertainty. Excitement. Anticipation. She had no idea what he would do to her, but if he released her into the woods again today, that meant he was giving her another chance to get away.
Nic had spent most of her day scouring over copies of the reports she had accumulated this past week, hoping beyond hope that something—anything—would trigger a spark of brilliance. They had seventeen days to find Amber Kirby. But they had absolutely no idea where the UT basketball player was. He could have her hidden away in Knoxville somewhere. Or he could have taken her to a neighboring state or halfway across the country. If he was as wealthy as Cary Maygarden had been, he might own his own plane or at least could afford to hire a private plane to take him anywhere in the world.
Half-reclining on the sofa, a couple of decorative pillows at her back and her bare feet crossed at the ankles, Nic reached out and picked up a glass of iced tea from the coaster on the coffee table. Scattered file folders and sheets of paper littered the entire table as well as the floor area around it.
She had turned down invitations from her mother and her brother, who had each asked her to spend the holiday weekend at their homes. She loved her mother dearly, but she wasn’t overly fond of her mother’s husband, an air force colonel who reminded her of her father. When her dad had died, Nic had thought her mother would enjoy her independence from a domineering man who had ruled her completely. But what had her mom done? Within two years, she had remarried, choosing a man who was
as much of a control freak as her father had been.
Nic adored her brother, Charles David, and had since the moment her parents had brought him home from the hospital when she was four. As a toddler, he’d been far too pretty to be a boy. With his large, luminous brown eyes and mop of curly dark hair, everyone had mistaken him for a girl, which had outraged their father. But Charles Bellamy had done what had to be done—he’d taken his tearful two-year-old to the barber shop and, to his weeping wife’s dismay, had his son’s pretty curls buzzed off.
Whenever she and her brother got away together, she loved every minute with him. And although she didn’t fit in with his artistic friends—who wrote plays and poetry and music, who painted and sculpted, and lived in a world of transcendental, mystic ideas—she found that, from time to time, soaking in all that artistic genius was refreshing. Her life, her world, consisted of harsh reality, often the ugly side of reality. If not for the occasional trip to the West Coast to visit her brother, she might easily forget that there was still beauty and hope and peace out there in the world.
Nic had read and reread the reports on the five murder victims—Angela Byers, Dana Patterson, Candice Bates, Gala Ramirez, and Kendall Moore—until her vision was blurred and she had a slight headache.
She downed the last drops of iced tea, then set the glass on the coaster and lifted her arms over her head to stretch. The morning rain had continued all day, turning into a real soaker. She’d missed her morning walk and had been tempted to don her hooded raincoat and venture outdoors this afternoon. But she had become so absorbed in the various reports that she’d lost track of time and now it was nearly seven. Her rumbling stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since one, and then only a sandwich and chips.
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