01 Only Fear

  “Because it is just like that one. President Bellingham ordered a couple dozen for the university and I made and delivered them. That’s how I got the keys to these tunnels.” He chuckled again, obviously pleased with his cleverness. “I doubt Bellingham even realized they were on his key ring when he lent them to me. Nobody pays close attention to blue-collar workers, after all. It was a piece of cake to have a few copies made.”

  He sneered. “People can be so trusting. Those other girls, years ago…they were trusting too. All I had to do was deliver some furniture. Get the layout of the house. Give them a smile or two, and maybe say something flattering.” His eyes darkened. “They thought they knew everything and flaunted it at students they deemed inferior. I had to show them they were wrong to underestimate me.”

  He seemed to shake off his musings. “Now where did we leave off?” He moved behind the podium. “Only fear makes the world go ’round.”

  Maggie felt her heart pounding. He’d killed so many innocent people, and he waved it away as if it were nothing or as if they deserved it for thinking so little of him. She pressed her lips together. She glanced at Julia and gave a small, hopefully reassuring smile before stepping away from her sister. She wanted the monster’s attention on her and only her.

  He wanted an active participant? Then, okay, she could play along. “Only fear?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as if in thought. “I’m still not convinced. True, fear makes your heart pump and motivates some actions, but what about love?”

  His face grew taut. “Love is only the fear of being alone. It’s something people make up to soothe themselves when they don’t think they can make it through life by themselves. Like a lullaby. I don’t need it to survive.”

  “That’s not true.” Maggie knew what love could do. Her family had shown her. And Ethan had shown her. “Love is the most potent emotion on earth.”

  “Except for hope,” Julia said, her voice scratchy and dry behind Maggie. They were the first words Maggie had heard since their exchange at dinner, forty-eight hours ago, and they were like beautiful music. Over her shoulder, she exchanged a soft look with Julia, who nodded. Neither of them was going to give up hope.

  “No. No. No.” Fearmonger stalked forward the few feet that separated him from Julia, spittle flying as he got in her face. She cringed but didn’t back away. “Hope is the thing that makes fear all that more powerful. A catalyst, if you will. If one hopes, then one has more to lose, and that feeds fear. But it all still comes down to fear.”

  “Bullshit,” Maggie said, hoping to draw Fearmonger’s attention again. It worked.

  He swung to her, a feral grin lighting his face. “Really? Right now you’re hoping someone will come to your rescue. And he will, Maggie. I’m counting on it. Because, you see, I’ve done my homework. I know how much you and a certain SSAM agent have grown to love each other. And I know what it would do to you to watch him die. Right after you watch your sister die.” Fearmonger’s grin grew wider. “Then, we’ll see who’s right.”

  A breath of relief whooshed out of Ethan as he noted who aimed the gun at his head. “Stand down, Becca.”

  She lowered her weapon, then pressed a hand to her chest. “You startled me.”

  He didn’t point out that she was the one with the deadly weapon pointed at his head. “Sorry. Didn’t want to yell ahead in case Fearmonger was around,” he said in a low voice that nevertheless reverberated throughout the basement. He gave a wry grin. “At least you were ready for me.” He frowned at the bandage at her temple, noting the red stain. “You’ve started bleeding again.”

  She shrugged. “A bit. I’ll live.” She didn’t have to add that Maggie and Julia might not. They were both well aware of the stakes.

  As they walked beyond the empty concrete chamber where the tunnel ended, they entered another room that was clearly still in use, though apparently had not been occupied for some time. It held old aluminum chairs and beat-up desks. A row of battered filing cabinets, standard 1950s office equipment, lined one long wall.

  “No sign of Maggie or Fearmonger, then?” he asked, the feeling of urgency still pressing on his chest. He wondered if this was what Maggie’s panic attacks felt like. Becca followed on his heels as he made his way up the stairs and out of the basement.

  “Nothing.” The disappointment rang clear in her voice. “Lorena is hanging out near Maggie’s classroom. You know, in case Fearmonger takes them back to the scene of the original crime.”

  Indeed, they came upon the SSAM mindhunter roaming the hallway outside the classroom as Becca spoke. “Though some serial killers go back to the scenes of their crimes, I don’t think he’s going to show up here.” Her dark eyes were troubled as she frowned.

  “Then we need to think of other options, fast. Talk to me, Lorena. This is your specialty. Help me think this through.” Ethan fought to bring organization to his jumbled thoughts. “All along, Fearmonger has been talking about fear, and how important it is. He wants to prove it to Maggie. And it looks like he brought her to the university to do that.”

  Lorena nodded. “Most people go where they’re comfortable, and he’s killed here before. He seems to know the tunnel system. It makes sense he would come here again. Besides, he has fantasies of being a professor, of being in charge, of proving he’s worthy to others.”

  “But what if it’s more than that? What if it’s about the fear?”

  “About Maggie’s fear, you mean. What does she fear most?”

  “Losing her loved ones.”

  “But he already has them. So we assume he’ll make her watch as he kills her sister.”

  Ethan felt sick to his stomach. But the adrenaline rush pushed it to the fringe. They were closer to catching this guy than ever before. He could feel it. “This is his last stand. What would he do to make the event even more profound?”

  “The first victim, years ago,” Lorena said, “was found in her apartment. She’d been strapped to the bed and covered in spiders before he’d sliced her up. The second victim had been burned, but only from her waist down. So that he could keep her alive and conscious longer, I suppose. The third was drowned. She still had cuts all over her body, but the ultimate cause of death was drowning. Spiders, death by fire and drowning must have been their greatest fears.”

  Lorena continued to play out the theory, pacing now in the hallway. “So with the twin sisters, he strapped them to the walls opposite each other, made them face each other, and made them watch each other die. Slowly.”

  “And in the apartment where they lived together,” Becca added, having remained silent until now, content to watch them work out their thoughts.

  “Of course,” Lorena said, her words picking up in tempo. “The location is just as important to him as anything else. With the twins, he’d evolved. Their greatest fear could have been being separated, and living without each other. But performing his act in a place that was so personally important to them would heighten the emotion.”

  “That sounds plausible.” Ethan was pacing the corridor now. “So what place on campus, other than her classroom, would Maggie feel personally connected to?”

  “She didn’t go to school here, right? So what other areas has she worked in?” Lorena asked.

  Ethan’s heart pounded in his throat. “The shooting. It was in her office in the medical school building.” She’d told him herself how her brother had been standing in the doorway when Deborah had seen them give each other an affectionate goodbye. Her office, which she would once have seen as a safe haven for herself and the clients she treated, would have become a symbol of fear after what Deborah did. Fearmonger, having done his research, would surely know that.

  “That’s where he must have taken her,” Becca said.

  “Lorena, call Damian and find out where, exactly, in the medical school building Maggie’s office was.” Ethan began down the hallway at a trot, Becca following on his heels. “I’m heading over there.”

  “Be on your guar
d,” Lorena called after them. “Fearmonger might have discovered a thing or two about your past that he can use. Fear is his weapon, and he’s learned to wield it well.”

  Picking up speed, Ethan ran outside into the warm summer night air. There was little breeze to cool the sweat on his brow. Becca was right behind him, following as he veered to the right where a large brick building loomed. He recognized the bench where he’d found Maggie and Damian sitting on the morning they’d discovered Sharon’s gruesome murder. She’d never said anything then about the significance of the other campus building. But then, she hadn’t shared the details of that particular personal tragedy with him yet.

  He only hoped he’d have many more chances to talk with her, share with her, after tonight.

  The knife hovered at Julia’s throat, but Maggie kept her focus on Fearmonger. If she looked at her sister, she’d lose her battle with anxiety. And she knew her sister was fighting her own inner battle. She had to help Julia.

  I am in control. Her mantra helped her remember to breathe in and out.

  “Come on, Maggie,” he urged. “Give in to the fear. I know you want to. I can see the panic glazing your eyes.”

  His teeth glinted in the low light of the camping lantern as he smiled. She tried not to think about what he intended to do with them in this small, dark room he’d led them to. A room just off the tunnel by which they’d left the medical building.

  “That’s not panic,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s determination.”

  Fearmonger laughed. “Even as you pretend to hold strong, Julia here is quivering in my arms. You see, like every noteworthy scholar, I’m a very thorough researcher, and I found out Julia’s greatest fear. Small, dark, enclosed spaces. Isn’t that right?”

  Julia whimpered.

  “And what are you afraid of, Owen?” Maggie prayed she could distract him from torturing Julia further. “Being a nobody? Being stupid?”

  His smile slipped, and Julia hissed out a breath as Fearmonger jerked her head to the side, exposing her tender throat to the tip of the knife. It pressed precariously close to a vein pulsing at her neck. With her arms still tied behind her and Fearmonger holding her off balance, Julia could do nothing to fight back.

  “Call me Fearmonger,” he told Maggie in a hard voice. “I’m not Owen or J. P. or Christopher Armstrong.”

  “I think you just answered my question. You’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Someone smarter than you are.”

  “No!” he roared, his face reddening in the dim light, making him look like the devil he was. “I’m not afraid of who I am, or my bastard of a father. He was weak. He exploited his physical prowess. He wouldn’t know what someone with a functioning brain looked like.”

  Maggie scoffed, adopting on a blasé attitude she didn’t feel. Not with that knife still aimed at Julia’s throat. “Like you do?”

  He waved the knife at her and Maggie sucked in a breath. For the moment, her sister wasn’t the target. “Yes. Like I do. I use my intelligence. I got you two here, didn’t I? I got to those other women and taught them their lessons, didn’t I?”

  “And the way you overpowered and killed them didn’t require your physical strength? You’re such a hypocrite.”

  “Don’t mock me!” His voice was as loud and sharp as a slap. Maggie prayed someone outside could hear them. But who would be in the dark tunnels underneath a university on a hot summer night? Fearmonger seemed to think Ethan would come for her—indeed, he seemed to relish the thought of killing him in front of her—and she knew Ethan wouldn’t hesitate to come if he knew where to find them. If someone tracked the van, or thought about Fearmonger’s old hideouts, maybe they’d be on campus. And maybe they’d guess he’d taken them to the tunnels. But it would take them forever to search all the dark passages.

  “I’m not mocking. I’m just telling the truth.”

  Suddenly, Fearmonger smiled, an unholy light in his eye. “Well played, Maggie. You almost had me losing control. But you’re the one who’ll be losing the control you prize so highly. And it won’t take much. You’re already feeling the fear, aren’t you? Pressing on your chest, making it difficult to breathe?”

  Maggie struggled to ignore the squeezing in her chest that his words created. She focused on her breathing. In. Out.

  Fearmonger was smiling again. “It’s only fear, Maggie. Isn’t that your attitude? That you can conquer it? We’ll see. You’ve been to the place where your brother breathed his last. Where your hope for mankind led to your downfall. I’d hoped to finish things for you there, after you watch your sister’s greatest fears come true.”

  He shook his head as if disappointed. “But that’s the first place they’ll look for you, if they have any brains.” He shrugged. “Intelligent people adapt. As you listen to your sister’s dying breaths, I’ll be hunting down another present for you. You’ve fallen for Agent Townsend. I could see it today.” His sneer turned feral. “And he’ll die for that.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Julia. Ethan. They were going to die if she didn’t stop him. And her parents might never recover from such a loss.

  As her breathing continued to hitch and her vision swam in the dim light, Fearmonger continued speaking in a singsong voice. “I’ll bring him to you and we’ll have a little reunion.” He jerked Julia up and back, choking off her air. “In the meantime, you get started on the party without me. Welcome to your own private hell.”

  Before Maggie could understand his intent, he shifted the knife in one fluid motion from Julia’s neck and stabbed her forcefully in her side. Julia’s mouth rounded in a soundless O as Fearmonger released her and she slipped to the floor.

  His laughter echoed off the walls as Maggie’s knees gave out and she sank down beside her sister. “No!”

  “Excellent, Maggie,” he said, raising his lantern to look in her eyes like a doctor would. “You’re getting there.”

  Taking the light with him, Fearmonger rushed from the room, his shadow cast over Julia’s body. The shadow grew and turned to complete blackness as the door slammed shut. She heard the grate of metal on metal as the monster locked them away. Gritting her teeth, she squeezed her eyes shut against the overbearing darkness, pretending it was dark because her eyes were closed.

  Maggie fumbled on the floor in the pitch black, crawling forward and reaching for where her sister had fallen before the lights went out for good. She felt something warm and wet. Blood. Julia’s blood. Trying to control her racing pulse, she forced herself forward until her fingers brushed sticky, wet fabric at her sister’s waistline.

  “Julia?”

  No response. She refused to think that her sister was dead. People survived knife wounds all the time, didn’t they?

  One hand felt for a pulse at Julia’s neck, but in the blackness, found her sister’s chilled lips instead. But—thank you, God—there was an exhale of breath coming through them. She felt a little further down, following her neck until she felt the thready pulse there.

  Alive. Definitely in trouble, but not hopeless yet.

  She gently probed for the edge of the warm wetness on her sister’s shirt and found where blood seemed to be issuing forth. She pressed her hands there as she said a prayer.

  The monster had locked them away in a tomb. Away from help for Julia. Away from Ethan.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What was that?” Ethan whispered into his cell phone.

  On the other end of the line, Noah, who was down in the tunnels while Becca and Ethan scouted out the medical building, wouldn’t have reception much longer. Ethan knew from his previous experience in the tunnels that once he moved more than fifty yards into the ground, all connection to the outside was lost.

  They were in Fearmonger territory.

  “Sounded like metal creaking and banging,” Noah said in a hushed voice. “But it’s hard to tell down here how far away it was. Maria and I are heading in. We’re about to lose contact with you.”

  “Got it. I thi
nk we’re closing in. I feel it in my gut.” And his heart told him he was close to Maggie. God, he hoped she was okay. But if the maniac was on the move, and there was no other sound than the opening and closing of doors, his brain told him maybe it was too late.

  “Mine, too. Be careful, man.”

  And then the phone was dead.

  “This is the number Damian gave us, 303.” Becca’s voice was barely audible as she approached the room that had once been Maggie’s office. The threshold where Brad had lost his life. And an office Christopher Armstrong probably associated with failure. While crossing the campus, Becca had received a text from Catherine that explained Fearmonger’s connection to Maggie. A Christopher Armstrong had indeed attended various colleges in the vicinities of the previous murders—and had flunked out of all but one. The period when he hadn’t been torturing and killing innocent girls was the timeframe when he’d earned his Bachelor’s degree. Apparently buoyed by that success, a Christopher Armstrong had applied to medical school at Chicago Great Lakes University a year ago and been denied. And Maggie’s name had been on the committee that had denied him.

  As a team, Ethan and Becca moved quietly, but no sound came from within the office. There was no reason for stealth. The room was empty, the door standing wide open.

  “What’s this doing here?” Becca asked circling a wooden podium that stood in the middle. “Odd place for a class, don’t you think.”

  “But not for a lesson,” Ethan added grimly, crouching down beside it. He found the logo he was looking for. Custom For You Furniture.

  “They were here.”

  “And we’re still playing catch-up.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “There’s got to be a tunnel leading into this building. We didn’t see them leaving as we arrived.”

  She nodded in agreement. “Must be in the basement, like the ones that lead to the other buildings on campus.” They took off at a run down the stairs.

  “Julia?” Maggie’s voice was hoarse with unshed tears. She was beginning to shake, but not with fear or anxiety. With fatigue. The muscles in her arms had been pressing firmly on Julia’s side for what seemed like a long time now. It had probably only been a few minutes, but in this unending darkness, who knew? It messed with your mind.