She felt sick. Emotions raced through her despite the desperation of the situation.
“You’ve been killing people...since that trial?” she asked.
“Only a few at first. And of course, I wasn’t in on it at first. Billie came to me, and then to our other accomplices!” He smiled cruelly. “Let’s see how noble you really are. Your life...or her life? Detective Jean Channing—well, she’s had a good run of it!”
Stacey had played for time.
And time was up.
“Shoot him!” Jean insisted. Then she screamed, “Watch out!”
There was someone behind Stacey.
And now, it was all or nothing. She fired a shot and spun around, just as something cracked down hard on her head.
* * *
Keenan fired several shots, breaking the storm windows at Anita Kendrick’s house.
He’d seen the woman hurrying to help Colin Smith, and he’d known then that, while he couldn’t see Stacey or Jean, he had to get to them.
He leaped through the window and rushed to the next room.
Jean lay on the floor.
He swore, leaning down to her. She opened her eyes. “Out the back. Go!”
“Jean—”
“She wouldn’t let the bastard kill me. There’s a van out back. Go.”
“Help is on the way.”
“Go!”
He raced on through the house, reaching the back door just in time to see a van driving away. It was an off-white color, dirty, but with designs beneath the dirt with splashy colors and a lot of green.
The license plate was covered by vines that escaped from the back door. He couldn’t see the numbers, but the vines suggested a florist’s or gardener’s van.
He pulled out his phone and called Jackson. He was already running, back to the front of the house and the street, desperate to reach his own car to follow the van. As he slid into the driver’s seat, he was asking Jackson to get an APB out on the van. In seconds, he was speeding in the direction the van had gone. He could still see it down the long, straight street. He had to get to it.
Before it reached its destination. A room somewhere with a hearth. A burning fire.
And a killer.
* * *
She woke slowly, feeling a stabbing pain in her head.
She’d been clocked hard from the rear, but she had gotten her shot off. She knew that she hadn’t hit Jean. She just hoped that she had caused Colin Smith to drop the detective.
They may have taken her, but there was a prayer that they’d left her.
She struggled to a sitting position.
She was on a table. A stainless-steel operating table. The room was dark; heavy shades covered the two windows. Through the gloom, she saw the room contained medical equipment. Another table held scalpels and saws. A fridge hummed in the corner. The killer was there. She felt him. Knew that he was coming for her.
“Ready?” Colin Smith asked.
He was standing across the room. His scalpel in his hand, and that hand raised so that the dim light caught the edge of the scalpel.
“Colin, stop messing around!” a woman hissed.
“Leave me alone,” Smith muttered. “Bitch. You’re all bitches.”
“Get on with it!” the woman’s voice said, cutting harshly through the misty smoke that filled the room.
“Just shut the hell up!” Colin Smith said. “This...this...this! Shut up! I have been waiting for this. Hey, it could have been you!” he reminded the woman who stood in the shadows. “Leave me alone. Let me do this.”
He smiled, and he took a step toward Stacey. She tried to leap from the table.
She could not.
She hadn’t realized that her hands and feet were tied, with nylon stockings, she saw.
It was a given that her gun was gone.
She could fight, but tied to the bed?
He came toward her then, smiling—knowing that she was fully aware of her position.
“Special, Special Agent! Here I come!” he told her.
* * *
Keenan had lost sight of the van somewhere around Lafayette Square. He should have been able to see it once he got to the corner, but it was as though it had disappeared. Police cars were already swarming the area, but no one had called in that they’d seen the van.
Desperate, Keenan abandoned his car and was running, seeking anywhere a van might have slipped into a parking garage. It must have got off the streets.
He saw a garage in a derelict old building—one not old enough to be historic, but old enough to be extensively restored, or bulldozed to the ground.
He headed toward the building at a run. He looked up bleakly at the many stories in the building. He had to be fast.
He realized that someone was running next to him.
His great-grandfather, along with Philip Barton Key II.
They flanked him, and he glanced from one to another.
“Fifth floor!” Bram told him.
“We think,” Philip Barton Key II said. “We noticed things like cartons containing heavy curtains, and then there was a work vehicle that arrived with soundproofing materials.”
“And there was a box labeled 507,” Bram told him.
“Thank you!”
He kept moving as fast as he could.
He had to be on time.
Her dreams were warnings, right? They were dreams that warned of what had to be stopped, and he had to stop this, now.
* * *
Stacey lashed out at Smith as he came toward her, landing a hard blow to his jaw that sent him staggering backwards.
And rebounding with a fury, wrenching at the stockings that held her.
Nylon was strong. It jerked her back to the bed.
She saw his face, saw his intention.
And saw the knife.
Then, there was a shuddering sound, a massive explosion, it seemed to Stacey.
The door burst open.
Colin Smith looked in that direction.
Keenan had arrived. Miraculously, he had arrived.
The woman jumped out of the shadows at last. She had a gun; it was aimed at Keenan.
The woman was Cindy Hardy.
She rushed at him. Keenan fired.
Cindy Hardy went down, falling onto Keenan, causing him to stagger back.
Colin Smith let out a roar of fury. He raised the scalpel high, ready to thrust it deep into Stacey’s chest.
She was desperate. She surged up the best she could, headbutting the man with all her strength.
He screamed, thrown backward, just an inch...
But it was enough.
Another shot thundered.
And Smith went down, the scalpel still in his hands, crashing into the bed, barely an inch from Stacey’s side.
She looked at Keenan. He rushed to her, ripping at the ties that bound her.
She saw his eyes, and she smiled.
“Dreams are good!” she told him.
“Dreams are good,” he agreed.
Keenan helped Stacey up. She was shaking. And it was all right, she told herself.
She’d been strong, tough, all the right things when she’d needed to be.
And now it was okay to shake.
“Jean?” she whispered.
“At the hospital. But she’s going to make it,” he told her. “Thanks to you. Stacey, are you all right? Did he cut you?”
“I haven’t a scratch on me,” she said, and smiled. “I’ve got the best partner ever.”
“No,” he told her softly. “I have the best partner ever.”
EPILOGUE
“It’s terrifying to even try to comprehend just how long the killing was going on,” Jackson said, leaning back in his office chair. Keenan had to agree. T
he entire plot had been insidious, horrific, and devised by people who should have been the pillars of the community.
Three days had passed since Stacey had escaped being Colin Smith’s final event.
Colin Smith and Cindy Hardy were dead.
Dr. Henry Lawrence, hearing that news, and aware that he wasn’t getting out and there would be no congressman there to fight for him and see to any kind of a release, began to talk.
It had all begun years before.
Not immediately after McCarron’s trial: it had taken a few years to set up and get going.
Lawrence still claimed that he’d never killed anyone. Billie and he had first gotten into it, then Billie had noted that Congressman Colin Smith had certain sadistic tendencies. He’d been brought in—along with his long-suffering wife. Sandra refused to get her hands dirty with the killings, but she helped recruit clients, such as when she’d approached Mrs. Kendrick.
Then, when Cindy Hardy had started such a ruckus over her husband, Billie had found a way to lure her into the business side of things. Billie’s charm worked for many things, it seemed. And Cindy had obviously felt the money made up for what had happened previously with her husband.
Between Congressman Smith and Dr. Lawrence, the group had enough wealthy contacts to have a stream of clients. Billie would often find the female victims, recruiting them as potential escorts. Cindy Hardy had used herself as bait to trap victims, too, chatting up business travelers to see if anyone would miss them after they were attacked outside the bar or hotel.
“And, by the way,” Keenan said, turning to Stacey, “your upstairs neighbor, Marty, wasn’t being paranoid. Lawrence hired a few thugs to keep an eye on your apartment. Lawrence and Smith had decided you were a threat. It just took them a while to decide when to strike.”
She looked at Jackson and grimaced. “Keenan saved my life.”
“She saved her own life,” Keenan said. “Don’t cross her. The woman has a hell of a headbutt.”
“We all save each other. That’s what we do here,” Jackson said.
He went on to try to explain more details, though many were still to be figured out.
Sandra Smith was the one who filled in much of what they were missing. She knew she was going to jail, though she claimed she never killed anyone, either.
She had been the one to approach Anita Kendrick. She had watched the woman and knew that she was ridiculously—in her mind—ethical. They hoped she would call the police about the offer they’d made her. Colin would get his chance to kill Stacey. However, it was Henry Lawrence who had wanted her dead.
He was uneasy about her. He knew how close Stacey’s father had come to discovering the truth about Dr. Vargas’s death all those years ago.
He had relished the idea of sending her a piece of kidney.
The Yankee Ripper plot had been Sandra’s invention. She had convinced Colin that Billie was getting out of control. She would be part of it all. She’d been told that there were officers getting a little too close on a few of their missing persons, and they had to throw the law off somehow. Billie had been willing: she had killed the woman in her basement.
She’d had no clue that when she met with Smith, she would be the next victim.
The details in the case, and the follow-up, would be endless.
But, Jackson told them that morning, it was over for the two of them.
“You’re on vacation. Go somewhere. Get far away from here. You two were key in solving more murders than we may ever really know. Hopefully all the victims can find some peace now. Go! Get out of here.”
Keenan looked at Stacey.
“I...I just started. Are you sure?” she asked the assistant director.
“Get out of here,” he told her, smiling.
Keenan stood and took her hand, and they left the office.
“So, where are we going?” she asked.
“Hawaii? Um, Europe? What’s your pleasure?”
“A stop-off, first,” she said.
“Just tell me where.”
In Lafayette Square, they found Philip Barton Key II and Bram Wallace by the fountain. A mime was entertaining a group of schoolchildren, and the two were watching both the mime and the delight of the children with smiles on their faces.
“We came to thank you,” Stacey said. “Without you—”
She broke off, noticing that the two weren’t alone.
Tim Dougherty, one of the ghosts from Dr. Lawrence’s woods, had managed to get himself to Lafayette Square.
“Hello!” he said, peeking around Bram’s ghostly form.
“Hey!” Stacey said.
He looked at Keenan. “Hitchhiked,” he told him. “Your boss is a great guy. Came up with him, his wife, Raina—the dog lady—and the dogs! It was a bit crowded, but...”
“Good. Glad you’re here. Happier?” Keenan asked.
He nodded.
“And your friends?” Stacey asked.
“They went on,” Tim said. “It was...well, I think it was beautiful. There was a light...and they went on. I guess I want to stay a bit. I found these guys. I have purpose. We’re, uh, going to fight for justice.”
“A rookie,” Bram muttered, “but what can you do.”
Keenan laughed. “Rookies can be the best!” he said.
They stayed a while longer, chatting, the ghosts wanting to make sure that Stacey was okay, and both Stacey and Keenan wanting to make sure they knew how grateful they were.
“We played such a small part,” Philip said.
“A small part that saved time and probably my life,” Stacey told him.
“See! I want to be part of that,” Tim said.
When they left Lafayette Square, they headed for Stacey’s apartment.
Keenan was mulling the question, but decided to ask Stacey again. “Where to? The beautiful beaches of Hawaii? The majesty of the mountains? Europe? Italy, Germany? Ah, Iceland is supposed to be amazing.”
She didn’t answer.
A quick look showed she was relaxed in her seat, eyes closed. He thought that she was sleeping. He prayed that her dreams were over.
She made a little moaning sound.
“Stacey, Stacey! Wake up, I’m here.”
Her eyes opened. She stared at him. He pulled over to the side of the road, wanting to touch her, hold her, and give her his full attention.
“You were dreaming,” he said.
She smiled. “I was.”
“And?”
“We were in a room. It had a gorgeous balcony. We watched the sun from the balcony, streaming down. Then you walked over to me, and we closed the curtains...”
“And then?”
“Oh, well, then we stripped one another naked, kissed and touched and did amazing things, and had the most incredible sex ever.”
He laughed softly and begin to drive.
“So, where do you think we should go?” she asked.
“Don’t care, as long as it has a room with a gorgeous balcony, sun streaming in, curtains to draw and that delicious bed where we can be together. Hey—I may know the place. Jon and Kylie are in Scotland. He sent me a text this morning, said we were welcome to join them there. Did your room with the balcony resemble a castle in any way?”
“A castle?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, definitely. It could have been a castle. Scotland sounds great.”
He drove in silence, smiling.
Suddenly Stacey said, “I think I love you.”
He glanced her way, his smile broadening.
“I know I love you,” he told her. “Best rookie ever.”
She took his hand.
“Best partner—ever!”
* * *
Don’t miss out on New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham’s lat
est books in her chilling paranormal series Krewe of Hunters.
Seeing Darkness
Deadly Touch
Dreaming Death
Available from MIRA. Order your copies today!
ISBN-13: 9781488056512
Dreaming Death
Copyright © 2020 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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