“Just be careful out there. Listen to Kiya. Don’t take any chances. Promise me.”
“Yes, I promise I’ll be extra careful. Now go and try to have fun. The cab’s already waiting for you downstairs. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“And I will miss you,” Skye said as they hopped on the elevator. “A lot. Who’s gonna nag at me about stuff?”
“There is that. Stay here at the loft while I’m out of town. Security’s better here.”
“I already told you I would,” Skye agreed as she rolled her eyes.
“This guy will be gunning for you, Skye. He’s that crazy.”
“You and I both know if he wants to find me, he will. I’m not that difficult to track down.”
“That’s it,” Josh said as he punched the stop button for the elevator. “I’m not going. I’m cancelling the trip.”
“Josh Ander, you have no confidence in me, do you?”
“I have every confidence in you. It’s the sexual deviants who keep me from getting a solid eight hours sleep anymore.”
Skye reached around him, pressed the button to get the elevator moving again. “Then know this. I am perfectly capable of handling this guy if he decides to come around and hasn’t already left Seattle for greener pastures.”
Their back-and-forth banter continued until Josh crawled into the taxi and it sped away.
As Skye stood watching the car disappear around the corner and Josh with it, she had to wonder if he had a point.
She’d gone up against sexual predators who preyed on little girls before. Even though they were violent in nature, this might be the first time she’d have to go head-to-head with a guy bent on brutalizing his victims just for the fun of it. Which made her wonder exactly when the guy’s serial killer instincts had kicked in? How many years had he been at this?
She refused to admit to Josh or anyone else for that matter, that the guy they were after unnerved her. Considerably. But then she wouldn’t be human if a monster like that didn’t get to her. Even after Josh left, she wasn’t surprised he called twice from the cab. In fact, she bided her time. When he phoned again from the airport, their conversation took on a gentler tone and lasted forty-five minutes before he had to board the plane.
But there was unease on both sides.
Skye wondered if he suspected she’d held back. If what she was sensing was a premonition, then she’d keep it to herself. There was no need for Josh to miss out on his convention. That’s why she hadn’t mentioned anything to the stressed-out man for that very reason. Telling him would only make him worry more and she didn’t think that was possible. Besides, she needed to do this herself. They weren’t joined at the hip. So she had kept her mouth shut and had blocked her thoughts, making sure he couldn’t pick up on anything.
For the remainder of that morning, she logged onto her computer, determined to search for sex offenders using the program Josh had built for her. The application allowed her to access several different databases that would spit out a commonality list. Things like the sex offender registry could cross-check with state employment records, the motor vehicle department, and tax record databases across the Seattle area.
After several hours, she hit compile and watched as the program narrowed down a list of sex offenders. She hit print and watched as it spit out enough names and addresses to use as a starting point.
Crazy as it sounded, she would check them out on her rounds. If she ran across any of the houses that matched the one she’d seen in her dream, the one painted gray with red trim, then she’d have a starting place. At the very least, she’d have a neighborhood in which to look.
When she’d exhausted her resources and felt confident with the results, she donned her leather and black and sailed out the door with Kiya at her side to find a predator, the one who had been haunting her dreams for the past couple of nights.
She could only hope it wasn’t too late to save the latest girl the man had been abusing over the last forty-eight hours. At least she thought it might be that recent. While her vision last night had been weak in its overall punch—certainly not like the ones she’d experienced so vividly for years—it had given her enough strong impressions of the house that she felt confident she could recognize it. But first, she had to put in some legwork. From there, she’d have to rely on Kiya, which of course, she would do.
Two hours and several blocks later, Kiya’s instincts paid off. Skye and her wolf stood outside a wood and stone cottage that looked as ordinary as any grandmother’s on the block. All it needed was the gingerbread trim and it could’ve jumped off the pages of a fairy tale.
But Skye was pretty sure there was nothing magical taking place under that roof. No, what was inside those four walls crossed into horrific. It didn’t matter that the unusual color scheme made the place stand out from all the other houses on the street. That alone would cause anyone to take note.
Even in broad daylight, the slate-gray house with the red door and shutters and peeling paint job gave her the creeps. It could have been nothing more than the spit of rain that hit her face or the fact that the heavens overhead were turning darker and more threatening by the minute. The clouds indicated a storm churned and brewed out over Puget Sound. But that was nothing compared to the roiling in Skye’s stomach.
She took out her iPhone along with the file she’d printed out. Once again, she logged into Josh’s program to access it so she could get the ownership of the residence. The search results came back with the name, Perry York. She scanned the data. To her disappointment, York did not match any of the names on her registered sex offender list. She rechecked everything a second time and then a third. Still no Perry York came up anywhere. Damn. Maybe this guy had flown under the radar.
According to the public tax records database she’d accessed, Perry York was forty-five years old and worked second shift as a stocker at a big-box retail chain. He’d owned the house since his mother died six years earlier and left the property to him. At some point he’d taken out a second mortgage to pay for a new roof.
Skye studied the digital screen and then looked back up across the street to survey the layout of the small bungalow. Rocking back on her heels, she could tell the place had a basement by the windows at ground level. Every last fiber in her said this was the house from her dream. But she’d have to do her own reconnaissance to be certain of that. To get in there, she’d have to be patient and wait for the guy to leave. If the database was correct and he still had the job stocking shelves, he’d be leaving for work soon.
In the meantime, she logged out of one application and into vital statistics, checking to see if Mr. York had ever been married. When that didn’t yield what she wanted, she tried Facebook. Sure enough his relationship status showed him as single.
Two hours ticked along and by the time the bright red front door flew open, her watch showed three o’clock. Skye eyed the man, around five-feet-eight, walk out and head to his dark green Dodge Ram pickup parked in the driveway.
During the time Skye had waited, she’d gotten fully drenched. Now, feeling like a drowned rat, she watched the truck disappear around the corner at the end of the block. Water dripped from her purple watch cap as she made her move around to the back of the house.
When she reached the back door, she took out the lock pick from the inside of her jacket. She squatted down, toyed with the tumblers. One at a time, each clicked into place until she could turn the handle.
Good thing there was no deadbolt, she thought, as the door creaked open. She stepped inside an older, dated kitchen. The room was neat as a pin, not a dirty dish sitting in the sink, or a mess left out on the counter.
But the late fall afternoon coupled with the cloudy skies had her straining her eyes just to see. Squinting into the area beyond the kitchen, she reached into the inside flap of her coat and removed her penlight so she wouldn’t have to turn on the lights. The room was fairly dark anyway due to the old brown ca
binets that needed refinishing and the ugly tan paint someone had slapped on the walls. The color combo didn’t do anything to lighten the place up.
Skye moved farther into the interior of the small house. It didn’t take her long to do a quick walk-through of the place to ensure she was alone. With each step, she shone the beam searching for the door leading down to the basement. Once she backtracked into the kitchen, she spotted what she’d missed earlier. A door at the end of the open space where the washer and dryer stood had to be the one that led down to the basement.
Hairs stood up on the back of her neck as she muttered to Kiya’s form, “Unlike the back door this one’s got a deadbolt lock installed on the outside. Not a good sign. Whatever or whoever is down there is locked in.”
She flipped the lock back and sucked in a breath as she turned the knob. The smell of urine and feces hit her nose first with full force. She knew then for certain what she’d find at the end of those stairs. She hoped she wasn’t too late.
But the odor had a memory popping into her head—that of another day last spring when she’d walked into a warehouse near the docks and found several young girls in holding cells waiting to be shipped out to South America. Their cells had reeked of the same foul mess.
Skye forced that image aside. With her penlight as a guide, she grabbed the old wooden railing and took each step in measured precision, stopping to listen for any sound as she went. Once she reached the last step, she took a chance and looked around for the light switch.
All of her instincts told her what she’d see, but she wasn’t prepared for the reality of it. As tidy as the upstairs first floor had been, below ground level was chaos. A layer of filth and dank air had chills tingling up her spine. Skye stepped off the stairs into a river of sticky wetness. The bottom of her boots slipped on the cement floor.
Because of that she took careful steps to inch her way further into the abyss. That is, until she made the mistake of glancing up.
Revulsion hit her.
Perry York might’ve left to go to his shitty job but he’d left a naked girl chained to his basement wall. The teenager looked to be about fifteen. Her feet dangled about six inches from the floor. Her wrists were shackled with huge metal cuffs. The girl’s body either twitched with involuntary spasms from the abuse she’d taken or shivered from the cold.
Fresh, deep purple bruises adorned her torso, her arms and legs. A rope burn around her neck told Skye all she needed to know about Perry York. In addition to everything else, the girl looked drugged and beaten down.
While Skye assessed just how long it would take to pick the lock on those manacles binding the girl’s wrists, to her surprise, the girl opened her eyes and blinked in astonishment. The teenager immediately started whimpering.
Skye tried to settle her down. “My name’s Skye. Don’t worry. I’m getting you out of this hellhole. What’s your name?”
“Kelly,” the teen croaked out. “Donahue. There’s security all over this place. He’ll come back and when he does—”
“Should’ve known,” Skye uttered. She moved to the girl. Knowing they might not have much time, Skye started working on getting Kelly’s hands free. She dug out her lock kit again. Inserting the little metal rod into the hole, Skye waited for the tumblers to give. When they did, she reached around Kelly to hold her up while she slipped the girl’s hands out of the restraints.
But at that moment, Kiya growled at the sound of the back door opening upstairs. Skye heard it too about the time she caught the footsteps overhead. “So he’s come back,” Skye acknowledged. “I knew it couldn’t be this easy.”
“He told me there was a silent alarm on all the doors and windows,” Kelly whispered by way of explanation.
“Damn. Okay, stay here. This won’t take long.”
“No. Don’t…don’t leave me down here. You’re my only hope,” Kelly rasped out.
“Just for a minute. Don’t worry, Kelly.”
“No, he’ll hurt you. He’ll kill you,” Kelly cried out.
Skye shook her head, lifted her finger up to her lips in a signal for Kelly to be quiet.
With that, Skye made her way back up the stairs. She didn’t care if he heard the creaks on the wood or not. If he did hear them, he’d more than likely think that somehow Kelly had gotten loose. That Kelly had been the one to open the back door and set off the alarm. With any luck, the asshole would be expecting a weak, fragile teenager not a grown woman used to combat.
So as soon as Skye reached the space at the top of the landing, she listened for the jerk to move in front of the door, right where she wanted him. When she was certain she’d given him enough time to get in place on the other side, Skye threw all her weight into it as she burst through the doorway. The force knocked him against the wall.
Skye took that opportunity to advance, elbowing him in the gut. She pivoted, sent a series of karate kicks, first to his groin, and then took him the rest of the way down with one boot aimed at his head. The blow broke his nose.
As if dazed, Perry teetered then keeled over. He hit the floor with a thud. Skye took advantage of his condition to pat his clothes to make sure he carried no weapons. When she found him “clean,” she reached inside her jacket, brought out her nightstick just in case.
About that time Skye realized Kelly had come up behind her. The teen stood clutching what looked like a two-by-four she’d picked up from somewhere in the cellar. Skye gaped as the girl brought back the lumber. With every ounce of strength remaining in her body, the teen started bashing Perry over the head with it.
If Skye hadn’t rendered him unconscious using martial arts, the wood had done so now. The timber scored several gashes along his face and head, bringing with it a fair amount of blood. Skye could see stitches in Perry’s immediate future.
For a minute, Skye simply stood by while Kelly exacted a measure of her own justice, hitting him again and again, one blow after another, anywhere on his body she could make contact.
But after several blows, Skye stepped in, stilled Kelly’s arm in mid-strike. “Kelly, listen to me now. I know this piece of shit deserves it. But he’s had enough. And even though I’d like nothing more than to let you finish him off, I gave my word to a friend that from now on I’d do my best to bring these bastards in alive. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Kelly turned to look at Skye as if seeing her for the first time and nodded. With all her energy zapped, the fifteen-year-old collapsed in Skye’s arms.
In his Denver hotel suite, Josh had just dug into his club sandwich and fries he’d ordered from room service when he hit the remote control to get the TV to come on. He had yet to completely unpack his clothes. But that hadn’t stopped him from ordering supper. He munched on a crunchy pickle before taking a seat beside the window at the little table to eat.
Absently he picked up the remote control for the TV, started to arrow through channels to locate ESPN. One national news station caught his attention. At first he passed it by, until he caught something about Seattle. He hit the back button.
The words “developing news story” ran across the bottom of the screen. A familiar feeling tugged at his brain. Gut instinct, which had nothing to do with Kiya, had his jaw locking into place. Then he saw the name. The minute Skye Cree’s image appeared, he felt his throat tighten.
Riveted now, he listened as the television anchor reminded the viewing audience how many teen girls the Seattle woman had saved over the years. From there, the on-air talent threw the story out to his reporter in the field, which happened to be the Seattle police station on Cherry Street.
The wind sailed out of Josh about the same time he recognized his own home turf.
He watched as the blonde journalist reminded everyone this was live feed—before she rehashed Skye Cree’s entire history in case anyone in the viewing audience might’ve forgotten—or simply didn’t know Skye’s reputation for taking down sexual predators. The correspondent went back years to when Skye had been kidnap
ped at the age of twelve by a pedophile, reciting Skye’s detailed survivor past.
Josh listened to the voice but all he could hear was the roaring in his ears as the woman went over the details of another escape Skye had miraculously pulled off. This time she’d rescued a girl by the name of Kelly Donahue from some sexual sadist’s basement. A fight had ensued with the offender who had eventually been taken by ambulance to the hospital.
From fifteen hundred miles away all Josh wanted to know at that very moment was that Skye was okay. About that same time, in the background, he caught sight of her on camera as she tried to dodge the press outside the police station. Josh let out a gasp of air he didn’t even know he’d been holding. So she was all right. That was the important thing. Wasn’t it?
Because if she was fine, if she’d gotten out of that goddamned cellar unscathed, unhurt, right at that moment, he wanted to be the one to wring her stubborn neck himself. Fury took over aimed at Skye as he stared at the screen. She seemed to be walking without impairment in a hurried pace to get away from the reporters and the cameras.
“Damn it! I knew you were holding something back. I knew it,” Josh yelled at the television. “We’re a team now, when are you going to realize that?” he grumbled at about the same time his cell phone went off. The digital readout told him it was Travis.
“Where the hell are you? Why did you let her go into that house alone? I thought you cared about her,” Travis barked into Josh’s ear. “What were you thinking?”
“If you’ll stop yelling at me long enough, I’ll tell you,” Josh snapped. “I’m in Denver attending some stupid gaming conference. She wasn’t honest with me, Travis. She never told me what she planned to do. If she had, do you think I would’ve let her go in there without backup? Now it all makes perfect sense. She let me get on that damned plane and afterward went straight out hunting this guy down before I’d even had time to get here.”
Skye Cree Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 Page 41