“Since this is all a game to him, then it’s easy for him to think of himself as a big game hunter.” Griff’s voice had lowered to a husky growl. “He’s hunting these women as if they were animals. He’s the predator and they’re his prey.”
Nic sensed some odd vibes coming from Griff and wasn’t sure what was wrong. Why had she picked up on something so subtle? A slight change in his voice. A faraway look in his eyes. Tension in his big body. And an underlying anger that he was barely controlling.
She looked at Betty, who seemed completely oblivious. Apparently she hadn’t picked up on anything.
“There didn’t seem to be much, if any, environmental clues found on the victims,” Betty said. “The consensus is that he wipes them down and cleans their nails before transporting them back to the area where he kidnapped them. However, minute particles were removed from under the fingernails and toenails of each victim.”
“I want those samples sent to our lab,” Nic said. “On the off chance the microscopists can ID the dirt, or pollen, or whatever was under their nails, it could help us figure out the area where he’s taking them. We’d know if it’s desert or woods or swamps.”
“All the women were dehydrated and malnourished,” Griff said. “He’s withholding food and water. Maybe not in the beginning, but for most of the time. He could use that as a means to control them. If they’re good, if they play along, he rewards them. If not …”
There it was again, Nic thought. That peculiar feeling about Griff.
“He loves playing God,” Griff said. “The whole thing is one giant power trip for him. He’s probably impotent under normal circumstances, probably can’t have normal sex with a woman. But I’ll bet you he gets off tormenting these poor women and he doesn’t even have to touch them.”
A shiver of unease quivered through Nic. Strange how Griff was so certain about his facts and stranger still was how she instinctively believed he was right. It was as if he had tapped into some kind of inner knowledge about the Scalper, in a way that only someone intimately acquainted with him would be able to do.
Nic shook off the sense of foreboding as well as her implausible musings about Griff’s thoughts. She didn’t know what he was thinking, and reading something deep and meaningful into his comments bordered on irrational. She’d definitely been spending far too much time with him. But that was about to change. And the sooner the better. The very last thing she needed—now or ever—was to fall under the spell of the infamous Griff Powell charm.
When Dru came to, she couldn’t remember where she was or what had happened. Sleepy. She was so sleepy. Was it the middle of the night? Was she at home in bed? Or was she actually asleep and having some kind of weird dream?
Try to wake up, she told herself.
She reached out, searching for Brian, trying to grab hold of his arm and shake him. Help me, Brian. I’m having a horrible nightmare and I can’t wake up.
She jerked her hand back, away from the damp, slimy surface she had touched. Her eyelids flew open, but her vision was blurred.
Where am I?
When she tried to cry for help, it took several attempts before she could utter a sound, then she simply squeaked softly.
What’s wrong with me?
The musty scent of damp earth and the gloomy semi-darkness suggested that she was possibly either in a cave or somewhere underground.
Don’t panic. Stay calm.
Within minutes, her vision gradually cleared and she was able to take a good look at her surroundings.
She was in a basement or some type of old cellar. One lone light prevented her from being in total darkness.
Stand up and walk around, try to figure a way out of here.
She managed to get to her feet but suddenly realized that her ankles were bound with heavy metal manacles.
Oh, God. Oh, God!
Tears filled her eyes as she tried to remember.
When she lifted her hands to brush the tears from her face, she felt the handcuffs. She held her wrists in front of her and screamed.
That crazy man who had been outside the back door of Great Bods had stuck a needle into her arm. He had drugged her.
“Where are you?” she yelled. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The only response was an eerie silence.
Griff took a taxi from the field office in the Wachovia building on South Tryon Street and arrived at the airport shortly before seven. He had made Nic a promise that he fully intended to keep. That didn’t mean Powell’s wouldn’t continue with their own independent investigation, but for the time being he would stay away from Nic and her official fact-finding mission. They could work independently and still share information. Besides, he was better off putting some distance between them. For some unfathomable reason, he’d begun to like Nic.
He had discovered that she wasn’t quite as hard-edged as he’d thought. Tough as nails, yes. But he suspected she had a soft side, one she kept well hidden. Maybe her husband’s suicide had forced her to put up a defensive wall. If Griff understood anything, he understood self-protection. Maybe something in her childhood had convinced her that she had to fight for the right to be any man’s equal. Who knew? He certainly didn’t, and if he ever asked her, he felt certain she’d tell him that it was none of his damn business.
He couldn’t fault her for keeping her secrets, for being a private person. There were ten years of his life that were a mystery to everyone who knew him. Everyone except Sanders and their friend Yvette.
Those years had changed him irrevocably, making him the man he was today. He seldom allowed himself the indulgence of thinking about what his life might have been like if he’d been able to turn pro after college and continue playing the sport he had loved. He’d probably have remained a cocky, brash young man for quite a few years, loving life and living it to the fullest. But eventually, he’d have matured, probably retired with a hefty bank account and a scrapbook filled with good memories. He figured he’d have been married by now, have a couple of kids, be living the good life. And maybe his mother would still be alive. More than anything, he regretted that he’d never been able to take care of her, to give her all the things she had deserved. He’d wanted to buy her a car, build her a house, hire her a maid.
A flash of memory angered Griff. He had worked diligently putting those ten years behind him, trying to bury the tormenting memories so deep that they could never rise to the surface and torture him again.
He would never forget, of course, but through years of working with Yvette, through meditation, and through sheer willpower, he had managed to control his thoughts. Most of the time.
So, why now, tonight, had his face appeared, even momentarily, in Griff’s mind?
You know why.
Acknowledging the similarities between the evil from the past and the evil from the present had allowed old ghosts to resurface.
He had loved playing God, just as the Scalper did. The games he had played had been a giant power trip for him. Tormenting others, bending them to his will, and hearing them beg had become his only reasons for living.
Just as Griff boarded the private Powell jet, his cell phone rang. Although he sort of hoped it was Nic, he knew it wasn’t.
“Powell here,” he said, having a good idea who the caller was.
“You and Nicole aren’t team players. It seems you can’t follow even the simplest rules.”
“Following your rules was getting us nowhere fast,” Griff told him.
“Is it my fault that you and Nicole, the Powell Agency, and the FBI can’t put all the pieces together quickly enough to save even one woman?”
Griff emitted a derisive chuckle. “Enjoy your game while you can, you sick son of a bitch. We’ll find you and when we do, nothing would give me more pleasure than to strip you naked, turn you loose in the jungle, and hunt you down like the rabid animal you are.”
Silence. Then in a nauseatingly soft and sweet voice, he said, “How interesting that you a
nd I think so much alike.”
Griff didn’t wait for him to hang up. He severed the connection and turned off his cell phone, then boarded the plane for home.
Nic checked into the motel at seven fifteen, laid her briefcase on the desk, put on a pot of half-decaf/half-regular coffee, and kicked off her shoes. Tomorrow, she would set the task force into motion. The first thing she needed to do was make sure everyone on her squad was up to speed on the case. Each department needed to share all their information with all the members. Everyone needed to be on the same page from the get-go.
Her head ached, her neck ached, and she needed eight good hours of sleep. A couple of aspirin might help her head and she could get by on six hours’ sleep, but what she really needed was for Griff to give her another neck massage.
Damn! Where had that thought come from?
Don’t think about Griffin Powell.
He’s gone.
You sent him away.
You do not need him within a thousand miles of you.
Knoxville certainly wasn’t a thousand miles from Charlotte, but even a few hundred miles would do.
Just as Nic started to pour herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee, her cell phone rang. Crap.
What if it’s Griff?
She checked the caller ID.
It wasn’t Griff.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Nicole. You disappointed me terribly today. I watched your press conference. You didn’t follow my directions.”
“If you don’t give me what I want, I will not give you what you want,” she told him.
“Are you already tired of playing my game?”
“Your clues are practically worthless.”
“Then I won’t give you any more.”
“Fine with me.”
“Dru is going to play the game,” he said. “I’ll start teaching her the rules tomorrow. We’re going to have so much fun. Don’t be jealous. You may not want to play with me, but you will. Just wait and see.”
Pure fear jolted through Nic. When she broke free from that momentary alarm, she started to reply but realized he had hung up.
Her first instinct was to call Griff immediately.
There’s no reason to call him. You don’t have any information to share.
Throwing common sense out the window, she hit the programmed number. Instead of getting Griff, her call went directly to voice mail.
She tossed the phone across the room and onto one of the two double beds, then she poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the desk, and opened her briefcase. She had a lot to do before morning. But one thing she wouldn’t be doing was calling Griff again.
Chapter 13
Griff had spent the past two weeks at home, but he had sent agents to all the various locations where the Scalper had abducted the six women. He was staying out of Nic’s way and had requested that his agents at the scenes keep low profiles and not lock horns with Nic or anyone from the bureau’s field offices in the six states. He had stepped back and would gladly stay in the background. She needed her space and it seemed that he was the one person who had a knack for invading that invisible perimeter surrounding her. He knew all about erecting boundaries and safeguarding them. Compared to him, Nic was an amateur. His whole persona had been created on illusion. Over the years, as he had become more and more comfortable with the public’s image of who Griffin Powell was, the real Griff had gone underground into a secure place where nothing and no one could ever touch him.
“Excuse me,” Sanders said. “I knocked several times, but you didn’t respond.”
Griff glanced up from where he sat behind the desk in his private study, his favorite room in the house. “Sorry, I suppose I was deep in thought.”
“Barbara Jean suggested that, with the weather being so nice today, we should have lunch on the patio.”
Griff glanced out the window. Sunny. Blue sky. A gentle breeze blowing. “Hmm … yes. Good idea.”
“Yvette arrived almost an hour ago,” Sanders said. “I gave her her usual room.”
“It will be good to see her. It’s been too long.”
“Yes, it has.”
Griff didn’t need to tell Sanders to make sure Yvette had everything she needed. And it went without saying that they would provide her with anything she wanted. She was as dear to them as a beloved sister. She was a sibling reborn with the two of them in a cleansing fire that had destroyed the past and on which they each had built a future.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Sanders asked.
Griff’s gaze connected with his old friend’s. “You know why I sent for Yvette?”
“Yes.”
“I hate that after all these years, he still has the power to affect me so strongly.” Griff rolled his leather chair away from the desk and stood. “You think the past is dead and buried. You want it to be. You need it to be. But something happens, something triggers the memories and there you are—back in hell.”
“This killer—the Scalper—is not invincible, no more than York was.”
York. The name alone still had power over Griff, a power as dark and dangerous as the man himself had been.
Griff narrowed his gaze to a hard glare. “I thought we agreed to never speak his name.”
“Perhaps it is time.” Sanders’s gaze never wavered.
Griff could not bring himself to verbally agree. He nodded curtly.
“Lunch will be ready shortly.” Sanders turned to leave, then paused and added, “Rick Carson arrived this morning around ten and Holt Keinan will be leaving shortly. Do you wish to speak to him before he goes?”
“You gave him his assignment?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t need to speak to him.”
“Very well.” Sanders closed the door quietly behind him when he left.
Griff rotated Powell agents at Griffin’s Rest on a regular basis, keeping one here at all times to oversee the estate security. He had handpicked each agent, and many had been with him for five or more years. A scant handful of agents were more than acquaintances, but none were friends, not in the truest sense of the word. Former agent Lindsay McAllister, now Lindsay Walker, had been and still was a friend.
Under different circumstances, he would be looking forward to seeing Yvette. But the reason she was here was because he had called and asked her to visit. Not simply as a friend but as a fellow survivor. And in a professional capacity as a psychiatrist.
Nic had slept for ten hours straight last night. God, it was good to be home, in her own bed, with her own pillows. Motel/hotel living was okay for a few days, but she’d been on the road for the past two weeks, visiting each of the six states where the Scalper had abducted a victim. Although she didn’t want to alienate the SAC or agents at the various field offices by flexing her muscles, she thought they needed to meet her in person, to know that she intended to be a hands-on leader. She had sat in on several of the reinterviews of possible witnesses, none of which garnered them new information. She had personally spoken to family members and visited each of the sites where the killer had hung his victim upside down from a tree limb.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor, various reports, photos, and file folders circling her, Nic held her mug in both hands as she sipped the strong coffee. This was the last cup of an eight-cup pot, actually her sixth cup, since she’d used a fairly large mug.
She had taken the day off—her first in fourteen days—to get some rest. She had even foregone her morning walk, something she seldom skipped, even when she was out of town. But try as she might to relax and put the case out of her mind, she couldn’t. All she’d been able to think about was Dru Tanner. Wife, mother, daughter. A woman who was loved and needed.
If they couldn’t come up with something that would lead them to Dru, her abductor would kill her in seven days.
I’m so sorry, Dru. So sorry this happened to you. Sorry we haven’t rescued you. Sorry about whatever hell he’s
putting you through.
When Nic’s house phone rang, she ignored it. Her mother had called twice this morning already. She knew what Mom wanted. She wanted Charles David to come home for a visit, and she thought Nic could persuade him. It was her own damn fault that she hadn’t seen her only son in nearly three years. If in the past she had cared a little more about her son’s feelings and a little less about pleasing her overbearing, dominating new husband, she wouldn’t be estranged from her son now.
I love you, Mom, but I just can’t deal with you and your problems right now.
Nic got up, stepped over the paper ring of data spread out on the floor, and took her cup to the kitchen. While rinsing the pot and filter holder, she scolded herself for wishing that her cell phone would ring instead of her house phone. Griff always called her on her cell phone and the infuriating man hadn’t called her since they’d parted company in Charlotte two weeks ago.
Fine with her. She didn’t want him to call. Didn’t need to hear his voice. Had nothing to say to him.
Liar.
She had gotten used to sharing ideas with him, to bouncing her thoughts off him, using him for a sounding board. As absurd as it sounded, they had actually fallen into a routine of thinking out loud with each other. She had never had that with anyone else, except maybe Charles David when they were kids.
So he hasn’t called. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it—for him to go away and stay away from you and from this investigation? He’d been true to his word. He hadn’t interfered, hadn’t put in a surprise appearance, hadn’t even telephoned.
Sure, you’re not upset that he hasn’t called.
Admit it, Nic, you miss the man.
She would not admit something that wasn’t true. She did not miss him. If she did miss him, it was the way you’d miss a healed cold sore.
Whatever it took, she had to get Griffin Powell off her mind. And she needed a breather from work. What she should do was shower, get dressed, go the mall, do some window shopping, and call a friend for a dinner date.
Beverly Barton 3 Book Bundle Page 91