Lucy did as instructed. While adjusting the driver’s seat in the Jeep, she reached behind her to the small of her back and pushed the GPS tracking button on the device Ethan had given her.
“Leave this line open,” the voice ordered as soon as she answered the second cell. “Follow my directions, and I don’t want to hear you talking to anyone else or repeating my instructions.”
“I’m not wearing a wire. You have my brother.”
“Better safe than sorry. If you need me to repeat a command, just say so. Don’t ask if you have it right.”
“That’s fine, but I want to talk to Tim again before I go anywhere.”
“You don’t get to set conditions.”
“Then I’m staying right here.” Was he watching? Lucy opened the door of the Jeep. “Stop that! You don’t leave the vehicle, or I’ll hurt him. Tell her I mean it, boy.”
Tim came on the line. “Luce, don’t be stupid. He won’t let either of us go.”
“Just hang on, Timmy. I’m coming.”
“You spoke to him. Now close the door and head down the Post Road to where it turns onto the Lake Trail.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when you get close.”
Turn by turn, that creepy, digitally altered voice guided her deeper into the woods around the lake as if he were a personal GPS. He’d meant it when he said he was watching. He might just have a tracker on the Jeep, but he might also have video inside. With every turn, she found a way—by stretching, adjusting her seat belt, pretending to scratch—to surreptitiously press the button that would send Ethan her location.
“Now, you walk,” the voice said when she reached the end of any drivable road and the trees became too dense for the Jeep to negotiate. She put her hands on her back and stretched her spine, triggering the tracking device once again, then set out as directed.
• • •
“WHERE THE HELL is she going?” Ethan and TJ sat in his truck a block from Lucy’s old house. Without any idea what kind of surveillance might have been set up, they couldn’t get closer. At least the tracker was working, though Ethan’s map of the county showed precisely nothing in the area where she was.
“Can I see that for a minute?” TJ traced the spot on the map where Lucy’s last signal had originated. “We’re well out of the city limits now. Technically, we should be calling in the sheriff.”
“Not a chance.”
“Yeah. Okay.” She examined the map again. “Shit. If you go another mile or so through the woods, you’ll find a hunting cabin. No car can get through there, though. It’s pretty rough hiking. Al Pike and the mayor used to go there. They took Drew and Billy, and a couple times I went, too, though I wasn’t invited.”
“That’s where they’ll be. Let’s go.” He gunned the engine on the truck, and they took off at full speed.
• • •
LUCY STOOD IN the shade of the trees, sweat trickling down her temples, searching for any clue as to the whereabouts of the man watching her. He might have had GPS on the Jeep, but now that she was on foot, he’d have to have her in sight.
“Take off your shirt,” said the voice on the phone.
“No.” The hell was she doing a striptease for this guy.
“No? Your sister says she won’t help you out.” An explosion, then a shriek of pain. “Shut up, boy, you don’t need that hand. Or do you? I forgot to ask whether you were left-handed or not. Oh, well.”
“Stop it! Just stop!” Lucy pulled off her shirt. “See? No recording! I told you I wasn’t wearing a wire!” Even as she struggled out of the top, she pushed the SOS button on the GPS tracker hard. She’d heard both the shot and the scream live as well as over the phone. They’d come from over to her left, so she turned in that direction and began walking.
“Stop.” Said the voice. “Leave the pants and boots, along with whatever weapons may be in them.”
She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but the sound of Tim’s shriek still echoed in her ears and she shivered despite the humid heat collecting on her skin. She sat on the damp earth and pulled off her boots and socks. As her enemy had surmised, she’d tucked her Glock into one of her boots. Nothing for it now but to leave it behind. As she shimmied the jeans down her legs, she let the GPS device slip down inside one leg, pressing the SOS button one last time. With luck, the man wouldn’t check the clothes.
In only her bra and panties, she felt extremely vulnerable. Probably his intention. How the hell was she supposed to rescue Tim? Please, God, let Ethan be close.
“Move forward until I tell you to stop.”
Lucy took small, careful steps, watching where she put her feet. The earth seemed to seethe with insects, and shudders ran up and down her spine with each touch of her toes to the dirt. The ground here, beneath the canopy of the old oaks, lay in constant shadow and decay. The rain had brought all the grubs to the surface, and God alone knew what else lived beneath.
Moving slowly also gave Ethan more time to find her. Now, in so far over her head, she wondered why it had been so hard to admit she needed his help, so hard to trust him. She should have gone to him straightaway—should, at least, have told him before she left that she trusted him.
“Turn left,” the voice ordered. Lucy did, and saw the outline of a structure through the trees. “Head for the hunting shack and let yourself inside.”
Slowing her steps even further, Lucy made her way through the trees to the shack. The door was closed and swollen, so she had to yank it hard to get it open. The sudden release almost sent her sprawling backward. She clung to the splintery wood, however, and remained upright.
Until her legs almost failed her at the sight of what lay inside the cabin.
The mayor had been tied to a chair, a piece of duct tape strapped across his mouth. On the floor next to him, Tim cradled one bloody hand, bandaged with what looked like a kitchen towel. His feet were bound with rope, but he was not gagged. The entire place reeked of gasoline, and two gallon-sized cans stood next to the chair.
Across the room, Billy Pike held a pistol pointed directly at Tim’s head. At her entrance, he tossed away the cell phone he’d been holding in his other hand. His eyes swept derisively over her body.
“Good to see you know how to follow directions. But then, you always were easy to lead into a trap. Pathetic, really. Get over there with the rest of your family.”
She stared at him.
“I said get! Or didn’t you know that the esteemed mayor was also your dear daddy? Your momma let it slip one night and my father passed it on to me. So, what we’re going to have here is a tragic family accident. Murder-suicide.”
Lucy didn’t move. She shoved his allegations about her own parentage to the back of her mind and focused on the one wedge she might be able to use
“Tim’s not Mayor Dobbs’s son, Billy. DNA will prove it when they run the tests to ID the bodies. It’s not my family or the Dobbs family that will come under scrutiny, it’s yours. Tim’s your brother.”
Fury flared in his cold eyes. “Shut up, bitch. Your lies won’t help you now.”
“No lie. You had other siblings, but they didn’t live. They died because they had a genetic abnormality called spinal muscular atrophy, though at the time their deaths were probably put down to crib death or the like. Tim has it, too, though his is very mild.” She hoped she was doing the right thing. Having to face his genetic heritage this way would devastate Tim, but she couldn’t see anything else that might force Billy to stop.
“Bullshit,” said Billy. “You’d say anything to save your precious brother. Just like he’d do anything to save you. It’s so sweet. That’s how I knew he’d be coming back to town sooner or later. That’s why I had my good buddy Drew drive up to Dallas and take his picture for me to use, and put a tracker on his car so we’d know when he w
as coming home. Of course, poor old Drew didn’t live to put that information to good use. But since you’d never told Tiny Tim about the fun times we shared in high school, he was only too happy to pull over for an officer of the law.”
Shit. Oh, shit. She’d been so busy protecting herself from the shame of her experiences, she’d never given a thought to the fact that she could be putting Tim in danger. Begging forgiveness, she glanced at him and found no condemnation in his eyes, only support.
“You’ll be found out. There’s no reason for Mayor Dobbs to hurt Tim. And once the DNA comes back—”
“There won’t be DNA. This is my county, my jurisdiction. I’ll close the case personally. Even if they do find out Tim’s not a Dobbs, Pike DNA isn’t on file anywhere. They can’t trace it to me. Case closed.”
“That won’t satisfy Jake. Or did you forget the FBI is involved?”
“As I said, this is my jurisdiction. In order for them to get involved, I have to invite them. I haven’t. And your drug addict boyfriend won’t be able to help, either. There’s a county-wide spot check for drugs set for tomorrow. He’s going to fail. It will be my sad duty to take his badge and report him to the state police.”
Oh, Ethan. “Ethan’s never missed a call. Never shown up under the influence. People in town will know he’s no user.”
“Knowing and proving are totally different things. Or hasn’t your illustrious career in true crime taught you that? Right now, what matters are the numerous times the mayor here mentioned wishing you were dead. The members of this town won’t find it hard to believe his grief over Drew’s murder pushed him over the edge.”
Dobbs shouted behind his gag, and Billy sauntered up to him, keeping the gun leveled on Lucy, and pulled the tape from his mouth.
“Something to say, old man?”
“I never said I wanted her dead. I wanted her gone. Out of town so she wouldn’t ruin my reputation or Drew’s chances at a senate seat. You fucking idiot, you’re just like your father, taking everything one step too far.” The mayor started to laugh, choking on his words. “She’s my damn daughter. Once the will is read, people will know I didn’t kill her.”
The statement shocked Lucy possibly more than the original sight of Billy Pike with his gun. She’d suspected Billy right from the beginning, had recognized the evil that lived within him. That Andrew Dobbs should provide for her in his will, on the other hand, was beyond the scope of even her imagination.
Billy seemed as shocked as she was. He stood for a moment, his attention fixed on Mayor Dobbs, and the gun wavered. Only slightly, but Tim took the opportunity to push off the floor and tackle him.
Lucy leaped to join him, and for a moment the tide seemed to be turning in their direction, but then Tim let out a howl and fell away as Pike ground his boot heel into the bloody pulp of his wounded hand.
Lucy tried to hang on, but despite her martial arts training Pike escaped her grip and backhanded her across the face. She fell away, then pushed herself back to her feet, determined to get to him while he remained off-balance from the fight.
But Pike was too fast. Before she could reach him again, he had the pistol up against Tim’s head.
“That’s enough of that.” Pike’s eyes swept over Lucy, focusing on the scar above her breast. “You know, you and I have unfinished business. Seems a shame to waste such a perfect opportunity. And I so rarely get an audience for my work. At least, while I’m creating.”
Lucy took a step backward. “You’re not going to touch me, Billy.”
He smiled then, and she felt her stomach heave. “Oh, yes. I am. You were my first. No matter how many times I’ve tried, none of the others have even come close. I never could figure out why. I got to watch them for a lot longer than I watched you afterward. Of course, maybe it was that they didn’t know, when they ran into me in the street or came into my office to see how their cases were progressing, that I was the one who’d forced them to submit.”
“Raped them, you mean.”
He inclined his head. “It was better when Drew helped. More fun. More like it had been with you.”
“You didn’t rape me.”
“No. Not then.” That smile again. And his eyes were completely dead. At some point, Billy Pike had slipped over the edge into complete insanity. “But we were so young, weren’t we? We only wanted to mark you for what you were. Or at least, I did. Drew just wanted to do anything I asked of him.”
“Drew?” Dobbs sputtered. “My son was in on this with you? He helped you?”
“Hell, yes. He loved me. Got down on his knees and sucked me off whenever I told him to. Raped women. Killed them. Whatever I wanted.
“But, damn, he was a fucking pain in my ass. Always whining, requiring me to discipline him over and over. Guess you didn’t do a good job with that, Mayor. And he was too unreliable, too weak. That’s why I had to kill him. He completely panicked over Lucy’s reappearance, saw it as a threat, not an opportunity to finish what we started.
“In a couple of weeks, after the furor over your murder-suicide dies down, I’ll solve his murder. It will turn out that Lucy here killed him. Everyone knows she hated him. You found out, killed her and her brother, then yourself.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lucy asked, still trying to reason with him, despite the fact that he’d obviously moved out of the realm of logic. “You were at the station. You know Ethan caught Jed Martin. Why not let that investigation run its course? Your secrets could remain hidden.”
“Not likely. No, this is your fault. You brought in the FBI. Sooner or later, one of your boyfriends would look more closely into the murders and rapes in the area. Drew was in on enough of them to provide a perfect fall guy. I’ll connect him conclusively to three or four, and everyone will buy that he committed the others, too. He has alibis for a couple I did on my own, but not enough to convince people to look further.”
“No one will believe you. Think this through. Ethan and Jake and TJ—they all know I didn’t kill Drew.”
“Ah, but you told me yourself you were alone that night. None of your friends can alibi you. They might not believe you killed Drew, but they won’t be able to prove it. Now”—he traced the gun barrel over her scar—“if you’re finished being nosy and wasting my time, we can get down to business.”
On the final word, Lucy lunged forward, pressing her shoulder into the gun. If he shot her, so be it—with luck, the bullet wouldn’t damage anything important—but she couldn’t sit still and let him kill them all.
The blast shook the small cabin, and the smell of gunpowder and burned flesh filled the air. She thought she’d prepared for the pain. She hadn’t. She staggered backward, her shoulder burning. But over the pain, she remembered one of her self-defense instructor’s admonishments: When you’re fighting for your life, you have two choices: ignore the pain and keep fighting, or give in to it and start dying. She plowed headfirst into Pike’s stomach, knocking him off balance. The gun went flying, and she heard Tim scrabbling across the floor in search of it.
“Bitch!” Pike grabbed her by her shoulders and smashed her into the wall three times. Her head slammed back each time although she tried to tuck it toward her chest. Dizziness and nausea assaulted her, but she aimed a knee at Pike’s groin nonetheless. He stepped back, then grabbed her arm and swung her around so she landed on top of Tim, who was still searching the floor for the gun.
At first, Lucy was too relieved that Pike had stopped beating her to realize his intention. When she looked up, he stood near the door, fiddling with something in his pocket He pulled out an emergency flare and a lighter. She tried to hit him again, but she couldn’t move fast enough. He lit the flare and opened the cabin door.
“You should have let me shoot you. It would have been a less painful way to go.” Pike tossed the flare into the corner, and the walls went up with a whoosh as he stepped outside, pulling t
he door shut behind him. Lucy raced for the door, but he’d either locked it or wedged something against it outside, because it wouldn’t open. The metal knob burned her hand, but the pain was only a dim addition to the fear for her own life and her brother’s.
• • •
RED FLICKERING LIGHT burst through the shadowy darkness of the woods, and Ethan’s heart clutched. He’d been running, following TJ’s directions to the hunting shack, but with the fire in sight, he didn’t need assistance, and he left her behind as he sped up beyond what even he would have believed possible.
The entire cabin was in flames. Ripping off his T-shirt, Ethan wrapped it around one hand and grabbed the door handle. It wouldn’t budge. From the side of the structure, he heard glass breaking, and he followed the sound. In the uncertain light, he could make out Lucy standing by the window, trying to help Tim climb out. But the window was too small and too high off the ground—no way would they make it. And the fire was rising.
Ethan ran back around the front and began kicking the door. The first time, he felt almost no give, and a shock ran all the way up his leg, through his bad knee and into his back. Damn. Who the hell built a shack with a door like that? He went after it again, with much the same result. On the third try, both the door and his knee began to fail. Then TJ was next to him, and on the fourth try, with both of them slamming the wood at the same time, the door gave way.
Where were Lucy and Tim? Was he too late? Surely they’d heard him and TJ. The smoke and fire were blinding, and the smell of gasoline overpowering. He pressed the T-shirt to his nose and mouth and waded into the cabin.
Whoever had set the place on fire had evidently doused all the walls, but left the center part clean. Lucy and Tim huddled there, alone with a bulky figure Ethan could almost swear was the mayor, if he hadn’t been certain Dobbs was behind the whole thing.
“Dirt!” Ethan hollered out to TJ. “Pack it in the doorway, keep the floor clear of fire!” She nodded to show she’d heard him and began grabbing armloads of the thick, clay soil still heavy with water from the storm and tossing it on the flames in the doorway and on the floor nearby.
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