by Mary Stone
Close enough, he thought to himself.
They were a mess, and he could admit as much. But, like the players in the film, they were good at what they did. As much as it irked him to give the man credit, Aiden’s suggestion—his demand—that they take a couple high-powered rifles had been smart.
The military’s training regimen for Special Forces soldiers, also known as Green Berets, may have changed since the days of Vietnam, but Noah doubted the men of the specialized warfare faction had been any less formidable during the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Plus, when it came to dealing with the unknown, more firepower was always better.
I knew my girlie was close. I could feel it.
It was almost time. Just like God had told me, just like my daddy never could—I was going to make it. Winter would be here soon, and there was no chance I’d be forced to turn my pistol on myself like Daddy had. Once I’d gotten a chance to punish her, my mission would be complete.
As I shifted in my seat, I stole a glance to the little lady I’d picked up outside that bar. What a filthy place for a woman, I thought. Then again, this wasn’t an ordinary woman, was it?
She’d turned her back on her God and embraced the life of a sinner. I mean, a woman married to another woman? What had this world come to?
This wasn’t the country I remembered, but that was fine. I’d make it right. Once my girlie got here, I’d set these sinners straight. I’d punish both of them, first the lesbian, and then my Winter.
She was pretty that one, just like her momma. That long black hair and those crystal blue eyes.
I’d have her watch when I punished the other gal, show her exactly what I did to her momma all those years ago. Every movement, every cut, I’d make sure she saw it all, from start to finish.
I glanced over to where I’d propped that other woman up against the front of the old altar. There was a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, and it felt like any time I looked away, her eyes were back on me.
I’d have to watch out for her. This one was slippery, and she wasn’t about to lay down and accept the punishment for her sins. I’d have to make her, but in the meantime, I’d have to keep a close watch on her.
When she turned to look at me, I didn’t miss the way her blue eyes flashed. I paused, staring. Could it be? Those were Winter’s eyes.
The distant light caught polished metal as I pulled a hunting knife free from its sheath inside my jacket. Was she here? Had my girlie been here the whole time?
As the woman shifted in her seat on the dingy wooden floor, her gaze flicked from mine to the knife and back.
I shook my head. No, her eyes were dark. They weren’t blue. I’d picked this one up because she was one of my girlie’s friends. One of those FBI agents, but more importantly, she was a godless heathen. A woman who’d forsaken men, who’d laid down with other women, who’d fucked other women.
Now, that wouldn’t do.
I’d been seeing my girlie everywhere, and I knew that was a sign too. A sign that we were close to the end. This was a test, wasn’t it? God was using this woman to test me, to see whether or not I could be patient to complete my task. That’s why I kept seeing those damned blue eyes, and that long black hair.
The last mission was never easy, and I reminded myself to be patient.
Winter was close. I could feel it. She’d be here soon, and then I could finally carry out the work I’d waited so long to finish.
36
Winter heard his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken them at her side. Though he was unhinged and dangerous, Douglas Kilroy was predictable. His intent was to use Bree as a lure to pull Winter into what he thought was a trap.
What he did not know was that when he landed that blow on the back of her head on that fateful night, he had sown the seeds to his own undoing. When he swung to kill that teenage girl, he had provided her the means to find him to take him down.
Was that irony, Winter wondered? Karma? Or just random chance?
No matter the reason, Douglas Kilroy didn’t know that she had seen through his eyes. She had seen Bree as she rested her back against the splintered altar, both hands zip-tied in front of her. Bree’s red coat was dusty and stained with dirt from the road, and in the depths of Winter’s unconscious mind, the color looked dull and listless.
Though matted curls stuck to her forehead and her eyeliner had been smeared, Bree’s face was calm, almost unreadable. Winter did not have to venture closer to her to know that she had a plan.
She was reminded of Bree’s age then, and she wondered if the woman had been taken captive at any other point during her FBI career. Maybe for Bree, the position as Douglas Kilroy’s hostage was just another day at the office.
Shadows swept up from the edges of her vision, and darkness engulfed the scene in the dilapidated church. She was not sure how long she floated in that eerie pool of black, but the sensation was not laden with the anxiety she had expected.
The waves of nothing were a comfort. For the time she spent suspended in the warmth of the inky darkness, none of the problems of the waking world rushed up to greet her. She knew they were there, but while she was in this corner of her mind, they seemed less burdensome.
Bree would be okay. Though Winter did not yet know how, she knew she would reach the fellow agent before Kilroy could cut her throat. As long as Winter got there, Bree would be okay.
Kilroy had approached the final hours of his reign of terror. After fifty years of running unchecked from state to state as he murdered men and women alike, Douglas Kilroy was finally about to meet his maker.
Without warning, she was jerked away from the calm nothingness, almost like she had been yanked through the fabric of space and time. As she took in a sharp breath, she snapped open her eyes and sat bolt upright.
When the dim scene before her came into focus, she wondered for a moment if she was still unconscious. Had she left one colorless void only to venture to another? With both hands, she rubbed her eyes before she blinked repeatedly to clear the film from her vision.
She was awake, and she was in a moving vehicle. A white streetlamp rolled over the back seat and briefly illuminated the jacket that covered her lap like a blanket. Bright against the dark fabric, block text on the back of the coat read “FBI.”
“Winter?” The familiar voice cut through the remaining haze like a gust of wind.
“Yeah, Aiden, it’s me,” she replied.
“Holy hell.” This time, the outburst came from the man in the driver’s seat. Noah. “Are you all right?”
“I’m, yeah, I’m fine. I feel fine, almost like I just woke up from a full eight hours.” Rolling her shoulders, she shifted to the side to stretch her legs. The eerie calm of the colorless void still hung in the air, but as she met her friend’s green eyes in the rearview mirror, the lingering serenity started to fade.
Why had she been so damn calm, she wondered? What kind of vision had that even been? Bree was still in danger, and even though Winter’s unconscious brain assured her that they would reach the woman in time, should she really take the prediction to heart? Was she really about to stake Bree’s life on the accuracy of a feeling she’d had in an unconscious haze?
No, she told herself. No, she was not. They were in a moving car, and she didn’t have to ask to know they were headed to the rinky-dink town of McCook, Virginia.
“Did anything happen while I was, you know, out?” She shifted her eyes from the driver to the passenger and then back. Neither man returned her scrutiny, but Noah nodded.
“Yeah, sort of.” From the mirror, she watched Noah offer her a slight shrug. “We’re headed to McCook right now, to that church that you saw before you went under while we were still outside The Lift.”
“Is anyone else on their way there?” When her first inclination was to hope they had undertaken the journey without the aid of a fellow law enforcement department, she winced.
This isn’t about us anymore, she reminded herself. It’ll be
about us once Bree’s safe. But right now, it isn’t. It’s about getting her out of there before that sick bastard can hurt her.
“No,” Aiden answered. “Not for lack of trying, though. The closest SWAT team to that town is an hour out, and right now they’re dealing with an active shooter turned hostage taker. It’s all over the news right now, everywhere from here to California, even all the way over in the European Union. Seven dead so far, and seventeen hostages. Two shooters, both with military backgrounds, both wearing SS armbands. It’s ugly, and it just keeps getting uglier. To say they’ve got their hands full would be an understatement.
“They aren’t about to pry people away from that to send them down after a throwback serial killer. I actually got a text from ADD Ramirez to tell me that they’re sending some of our people from the Richmond office out there to help. She told me that this is all us. We might get some backup, but it won’t be until at least a half-hour after we’ve gotten to that church. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we aren’t about to pull up and wait for backup while that piece of shit has Bree.”
“Agreed,” Noah said with a nod.
Winter bit back a sarcastic comment about their sudden accord and turned her attention to the window. “Bree’s there,” she said instead. “He’s using her to get to me. She hasn’t been hurt yet, but we need to get there before that changes.”
“We will.” The note of determination in Aiden’s voice was unexpected. Of the three of them, she figured he would have been the last to put aside his personal vendetta with the Douglas Kilroy case.
Then again, Noah and Aiden likely thought the same of her.
They had all made a mess of the investigation, but they could still salvage it. Aiden had already gone through the protocol to request backup, but since the life of a federal agent hung in the balance, they were more than justified to go in without a SWAT team at their backs. Kilroy was volatile, and now, if her vision was any indication, the man could hardly distinguish reality from fantasy. She had seen through his eyes, had felt his certainty when he looked over to Bree and saw a flash of blue in her gaze.
The possibility that Kilroy would finally fall off the deep end—that he would see Winter where Bree sat—was a real one. No matter his plan to wait for Winter to arrive, if he was sure Bree was Winter, then Bree would die.
“How much longer do you think we’ve got until we get there?” she asked. It was all she could do to force out the words in anything other than a growl.
“Half-hour,” Noah answered. “At least according to the GPS. Why? Something wrong? I mean, aside from the obvious.”
“He’s losing it. If we don’t get there soon, he’s going to kill Bree.” Her response was quiet, but sure.
“I’m already going fifteen over,” her friend advised.
“Make it twenty.” To her surprise, the suggestion had been uttered by Aiden.
“We ain’t going to do Bree a damn bit of good if we’re all dead by the time we get there. Unless y’all have some sort of regenerative iguana powers that I’m not aware of? Do you?” Noah flashed a quick, irritated glance to Aiden, and then to her. “Not to mention, yeah, sure we’re FBI, but if we get pulled over, how much time do you suppose we’ll lose? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? All the cops might be at that hostage situation, but I’d be willing to bet there’re a few Staties between us and McCook.”
Silence returned to them, and she could see the tendons in Noah’s hand shift as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. She kept her eyes fixed on the eerie blue glow of the dashboard clock as the seconds ticked away.
“You’re right.” After the prolonged bout of quiet, her soft words sounded like the crack of a whip.
Of course, Noah was right. Noah was always right.
Bree had mentally recited the chorus of the old Rick Astley so many times, she was certain she would forever associate the melody “Together Forever” with a concerted effort to alleviate anxiety. From the moment she awoke in the abandoned church, she had repeated the lyrics in her head to drive the heavy air of impending doom from her thoughts.
Now, how long her “forever” was, she did not know. Kilroy had risen from his seat at a splintered pew to pace back and forth. His booted feet had already worn visible tracks through the dirt and dust that coated the tarnished wooden floor, and she wondered how much longer he could walk the same path before he fell through to the subfloor.
Since she regained consciousness at the base of the altar, the man had uttered a grand total of five or six words. The utterances had been made mostly under his breath, and Bree still wasn’t sure what he had said, though she thought she heard the word “winter” muttered at least once.
Kilroy was a man of few words, much to Bree’s relief. She wanted to wait until she had a clear opening, and focusing on the task would be markedly more difficult if he spent the hours blabbing about whatever bullshit rattled around in his head.
Both her wrists were bound one over the other, and the skin beneath the durable zip-ties had been rubbed raw as she adjusted the binds. She had not undertaken the painful task for comfort, she reminded herself. Flexing the fingers of both hands to return a portion of her circulation, she focused her attention on the flicker of movement in her periphery as Kilroy paced.
She had to time her movement right, and she didn’t want to let on to her intent observation of his strides.
He arrived at the end of his trail, spun on one foot to face her direction, and then started toward the other end. One, two, three steps, and then his back was to her. She watched him go through the motions one more time for good measure.
As soon as she saw the back of his olive drab jacket in the corner of her eye, she snapped her hands up to rip out one post earring. She forced an expressionless look to her face just in time for him to turn. His steps were rhythmic and unperturbed, which meant he had not noticed her movement. Good.
She had moved the zip-ties in place so she could press the earring into the clasp to loosen the bind, but she needed a distraction. She could free herself in less than a few seconds, but his pacing didn’t allow enough time for her to both free herself and duck into cover. If she tried, he would notice her well before she had freed herself, and that would be the end.
But she was the only other person here, so how in the hell was she supposed to distract him?
Glancing to the rubble at the base of the altar, she sketched out the beginnings of a plan. As long as he continued the impatient pacing, she would gradually loosen the ties around her wrists, all while she maintained the appearance that the binds were still in place. Then, she would pick up a piece of splintered wood and hurl it off into the distance as far as she could manage. When he went to investigate the sudden disturbance, she could run to cover.
She had no idea where in the hell they were, but she would take her chances alone out in the night.
Once he shrugged into the black FBI jacket, Aiden accepted the rifle from Noah Dalton’s outstretched hand. More than a mile away from their destination, Dalton had killed the headlights and slowed their speed to a veritable crawl. The road had once been covered with gravel, but rain had washed away much of the rocky surface. Now, the path was as much dirt as it was gravel.
In the center of the road, Aiden noticed the faint impressions left from a set of tires that had only recently disturbed the earth. If there had been any doubts flitting through his head, he could officially put them to rest.
From where they had parked on the other side of a slight hill, only the cross at the peak of the church roof was visible. The clouds had parted, and though the moon was a quarter of the way into its waning phase, the meager light was enough to silhouette the cross against the night sky. Considering the demon they were about to face, Aiden thought it would have been fitting if the cross were inverted.
“Really wish I had been awake to get one of those,” Winter muttered. Her blue eyes flicked back and forth between Aiden and Noah’s rifles.
“Two M4s
should be fine,” Aiden replied. With one hand, he eased the trunk closed as he shouldered the carbine with the other.
“All right, we don’t know much about the layout of that building, so what’s the plan?” Noah wondered.
Just as Aiden was about to open his mouth to respond, he felt a faint disturbance as his phone vibrated in his pocket.
Holding up a hand to forestall the discussion, he retrieved the device and unlocked the screen. The text had been sent by ADD Cassidy Ramirez, and the body of the message was followed by a blue hyperlink. Even in a text, Ramirez still cited her sources, he mused.
However, any bemusement at the ADD’s formality and professionalism vanished as soon as he started to read. He could feel the haunted expression on his face, but he made no effort to conceal the look.
“What?” Winter and Noah asked.
“That was ADD Ramirez.” His voice was hushed as he turned the volume off and pocketed the phone. “They killed one shooter and apprehended the other. Right now, they’re estimating that thirteen people are dead, and another ten are injured. They executed six of the hostages before SWAT got to them, and the only reason there weren’t more deaths is because one of the guys they had as a hostage was an off-duty police officer.”
Noah took in a sharp breath, and even in the low light, Aiden could see his knuckles turn white where he gripped the shoulder strap of his rifle.
“Oh my god,” Winter breathed. “That’s terrible.”
“Yeah.” He left off the final part of Ramirez’s message. According to the takedown team, the surviving shooter had cited Douglas Kilroy’s “work” as part of their motivation to undertake the plan. Their goal had been to come as close to Kilroy’s body count as they could, but fortunately, they had been stopped well before they reached the obscene number.
Now was not the time to discuss the motivation of a couple neo-Nazis. There would be plenty of time to parse through the lunatics’ reasoning once they had gotten Bree to safety and stuffed Kilroy in a jail cell.