Face of Darkness (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 6)

by Blake Pierce

  She sprang out onto the sidewalk as soon as the engine was off and strode past the parked car to the doorway, having to squeeze between the wing mirror and the wall of the neighboring property. She had called for backup on the way over, but it still wasn’t here; most of the patrols were going over the town center, around the historical monuments and the alleys where people were most likely to be walking alone at night. Zoe didn’t have time to wait for them to arrive. She needed to check that Waitstill Williams was really here, and not some friend or relative, and that he was all right.

  She hammered loudly on the door, a rapid four-beat knock with a pause and a repeat. The kind of noise that would first wake up anyone sleeping, then convince them it was their own door that was being knocked on. Something she had perfected over time.

  There was no answer.

  Zoe looked at the car, at the lights she could just make out seeping through the gaps around the doorframe. The light was definitely on. It looked like someone was home. But there was no answer.

  Zoe’s heart began to thud painfully in her chest. What if she was too late? What if the attack had already happened—right here inside the home? She hammered on the door again, yelling out a hello for good measure. She didn’t want to identify herself as an FBI agent—not if the killer really was inside. She didn’t want to make them run before she could at least get a look at them.

  Yet again, there was no answer. But there was a sound. Something inside the hall, something even the numbers could not help her to identify. Whatever it was, it was not footsteps coming to the door, and still no one answered.

  She cast a look in the direction of the road; there was still no backup. But she couldn’t wait. She couldn’t stand by, not when anything could be happening inside there.

  Zoe stepped back and drew her gun. She held it in two hands as she had been trained, steady in front of her, and then she used all of her force to kick out. The numbers told her what to do: the angle of attack, the force to put into her leg, the exact point at which the door was weakest. She kicked it a second time and it fell inward, giving way before her, allowing her to see inside the hall.

  The light was bright, but it was flickering. There was something that kept passing in front of it: a rope, swinging rapidly and jerkily to and fro. Zoe almost dropped her gun at the sight: a young man of about twenty-three, the same age as the suspected victim she was looking for, hanging from an antique iron light fitting.

  Hanging.

  The rope was already around his neck, his eyes closed, his face slowly purpling from the lack of oxygen. But Zoe saw with a wild flare in her chest that sent her heart into overdrive, he was not yet dead—at least not dead for long enough that he couldn’t be saved. His legs were still kicking, uselessly attacking the air, and if she could get him down—

  She surged forward, rushing toward him to catch his legs and hold him up. It left her vulnerable, she knew, but it didn’t matter—there was no other option. He would die if she didn’t hold him, take the pressure off the rope. Above her, as she clung to his warm legs and took his weight against her shoulder, she heard him take a ragged breath. He was still alive.

  Zoe looked around wildly, pointing her gun in all directions with her free arm, spinning Williams around as she went so that she could still hold him up. She couldn’t see anyone around; the rope was secure, not moving or gaining any tension, and the house was quiet. Maybe the killer was gone.

  He was alive, but now what? The house had an old frame, and it was built to dimensions that didn’t resemble the average contemporary home. The ceiling was high, and the rope hauled up almost until his head touched it. She couldn’t reach it to cut it or pull him down, and if she let go for long enough to find something to stand on, he would choke in the meantime.

  Zoe let go of her control, allowing the numbers to spiral through her head. She needed them now, needed them unbridled and as powerful as they could possibly be. She used her eyes to follow the rope, the numbers taking over where her panic at the situation failed her normal rational thinking. From the iron candleholder, now converted to hold bulbs, it stretched just two inches below the ceiling back to a door that hung slightly open down the hall, angled down at a sharp angle over the top of it. There were marks of splinters and chips of paint coming from it, where the tension and weight of the rope had already worn a path. That was where the killer had gained their purchase, set up the rope to carry much of the weight for them and make the hauling easy. Somewhere beyond that door was another pulley, and then the rope was tied off, keeping Williams in the air.

  Somewhere beyond where Zoe could reach.

  She spun in a circle, keeping Williams with her. If she could just get high enough to loosen the rope and get it off over his head—but he was heavy, an adult male of a hundred thirty pounds, and even though he was smaller than the average man, Zoe wasn’t that strong. Her arms were aching already. She couldn’t lift him any higher, couldn’t carry him any distance even if the rope wasn’t looped around and through the light fitting, heavy iron keeping it in place.

  What could she do?

  Zoe spun around one more time, calculating. She needed this to work. She needed to see what the numbers were telling her, really see them. There was a wooden shoe rack to her left. One foot tall. Enough for her to reach his shoulders, if she stood on it. Strong enough to take her weight. She reached out with the toe of her boot, hooking it. Above her, the semi-conscious Williams made a strangled noise at the renewed pressure on his neck, one of his legs almost jerking free of her grasp. Zoe gritted her teeth and dragged the rack over, spilling shoes as it went, until it was below him.

  What else? She needed more height. She didn’t need to waste time climbing up to know that she would still fall short: she’d be able to reach his neck on tiptoes, but not enough to get a good purchase on the rope at the same time as holding him up. She needed more.

  Zoe’s eyes flashed over every object in reachable distance in the hallway, looking at their height and stability, which of them would be able to hold her up along with his weight. One of his hands flashed out and caught her across the top of her head, making Zoe duck instinctively. Williams dropped in her arms and she heard him choke again, felt his legs flailing, managed only just to regain her purchase on him.

  There. There was a picture frame on the wall, thickly constructed to hold an artistic rendering of a seashore complete with real shells. Solid wood with a glass front. It was the first in a triptych, all three of the frames the same width: four inches exactly, giving her a foot of height if she managed to stack up all of them.

  All three wouldn’t be necessary. Zoe made the calculations in an instant; two were all she needed. She would need her hand free; she tucked the gun away, no longer necessary in the present moment, only a burden. She stepped up onto the shoe rack, taking Williams’s weight with her, hearing him gasp as she gave him even more slack on the rope. His hands scrabbled against her shoulders for a moment; he was coming in and out of consciousness, maybe thought she was the one trying to hurt him. But Zoe held on with gritted teeth until he stopped and went limp again, and then shuffled to the very edge of the shoe rack, using the extra height it gave her as length to stretch out toward the first frame.

  She got it, her fingers latching around it just as she teetered and had to fall back into a more stable position. The force of her fall yanked the thin nail that had held the frame out of the wall, and Zoe took a moment to catch her breath before dropping it carefully down at her feet. She tested it gingerly before climbing up, her feet braced on either side of the glass, hoping fervently that it wasn’t going to crack and give way. Not only would she lose her height advantage, but it could cut her ankle to pieces above the boot, and then she’d have to battle bleeding out as well as keeping Williams up.

  Zoe flexed her hands against Williams’s side where she held him, feeling her fingers stiff and slick. She was drenched in sweat already, the effort of holding up his weight while moving combined with the
panic. She fought to keep herself calm, the island in the back of her mind, as if she were both there and here at the same time. She just needed one more frame—

  She swung herself forward, grabbed the corner, and leaned back immediately, the weight of Williams’s body an advantage as it brought her back to the same spot. But the frame she was standing on was small—not even wider than her own hips—and she stumbled back at the last minute, catching her balance on the shoe rack.

  And watching as the frame on the wall tore out of her hands as it fell, crashing down to the floor where it shattered glass in tiny reflective pieces, before sliding down the hall out of her reach.

  Zoe swore desperately, watching her hope of saving Williams dwindling. She couldn’t hold him up much longer like this. Though it felt like it had been an eternity since she entered the house, in reality it had been minutes. Listening out through the still-open front door she could not hear any sound of wheels or engines, knew that backup wasn’t yet here. She needed to do this herself. She needed to save him now.

  “Come on,” Zoe said out loud, as much to encourage herself as anything else, and she stepped up onto the frame again for a second try. There was one frame left on the wall, the only other item she could use. Anything else in reach was unsuitable: coats and shoes, an umbrella. She thought briefly about using it to hook the frame, but it was too short, too risky. If it went wrong and she dropped the frame over near the second one, it would be over.

  There was only one way to do this. Zoe made the calculation, saw the numbers in her head. She would have to use the weight of Williams’s body properly this time, just for a moment. It would put pressure on his neck, but if she got it right, she would soon be able to ease it again and then cut him down.

  It was a risk that she would have to take.

  Zoe held her breath as she righted herself on her precarious pile again, digging in her boots and testing their grip, hoping that she was putting her trust in something that would not give way. She took a deep breath then and, before she could talk herself out of it, swung, leaning forward as far as she could on Williams’s body, using him like a pendulum to propel herself forward far beyond the range of her own balance, until she could fit her fingers just around a single corner of the last frame.

  Williams choked and twitched in her grip and she almost let go, even as she tightened her fingers on the picture, even as she used his weight to swing herself back to her original spot. When she did, she had to scramble to stay upright, hitting Williams’s leg hard with the frame as she threw her second arm back around him. Maybe he would bruise, but it would be worth it—if he didn’t die.

  Zoe steadied herself, her breathing ragged with fear and stress, fighting down bile. Now for the hardest part, if such a thing had not already been reach: getting the two frames balanced perfectly on top of one another. She couldn’t just drop it and hope for the best like she had last time. They needed to be exactly aligned, or she would fall off when she tried to stand on them.

  She climbed down to the shoe rack and adjusted her grip on Williams as she slowly bent, until she could extend one arm and place the frame down where it needed to be. Gasping from the effort, she straightened and took Williams’s weight again. He hadn’t made a move or a sound for a little while. That realization spurred her to step onto the frames confidently, to lift Williams with her, and then to let him slide down in her arms until his neck was in reach.

  It was in reach.

  Almost ready to weep with relief at the fact that it had worked, Zoe reached up and grasped at the rope. She was working half-blind, having to hold Williams tight against her own body with one arm to leave the other free, but she was almost there. She worked at the rope, dragging it forward, and it slid slowly free of the knot without the tension of the body’s weight holding it tight. She worked it until she could get it over his head, then almost fell to the floor herself as she took the whole of his weight and brought him down.

  Zoe gasped for breath, her shoulder feeling like it had been wrenched out of the socket, as she kneeled over him, his body lying still. He was alive, but unconscious, his throat red and raw from the imprint of the rope. She felt heady relief flooding her, making her dizzy—or perhaps that was the impact of the effort she had expended, the adrenaline pumping through her veins at every rapid beat of her heart.

  It all slowed her down just a little too much. It made her react just that split second later than she might have done, made her body hesitate at the twinge of pain from her shoulder as she turned to the source of the noise, as she saw the door opening. Without the rope balanced above it, it slipped open easily, but Zoe only turned in time to see the woman coming out of the darkness and into the light, something raised above her head.

  Zoe tried to turn, to make herself small and dodge whatever blow was coming, but she was too slow. It landed heavily across the back of her head and the shoulder that was already aching, sending her down to sprawl across Williams, the secondary impact of her stomach against his back winding her. With the blow, the pain, the adrenaline, the exhaustion, the panic, the numbers—everything made her foggy and slow, and she looked to the side in a kind of dream to see Shelley rushing in through the doorway.

  Shelley had come to save her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Just as Zoe was about to laugh, to smile, to give way to the darkness encroaching on her vision, a shout came out of Shelley’s mouth that didn’t seem to fit. Zoe blinked her vision clear, the pain flooding fully across her senses as the dizziness faded back, and saw that it was not Shelley Rose standing in front of her but Aiden Flynn, his gun in his hands pointed steadily forward. Zoe was aware of a scrabbling noise somewhere behind the back of her head, though she couldn’t see it.

  “Freeze!” Flynn barked, his aim steady and true. “Move again, and I’ll shoot!”

  Zoe stayed still, knowing that if she was to move or try to sit up now it would be the distraction that could allow the killer to escape. She waited as Flynn moved past her with a pair of handcuffs, his gun still outstretched, knowing that he had come after her.

  He had trusted her. And he had saved her. And between them, they’d saved Williams—and maybe many others besides.

  Zoe let herself lie still and rest, as the open doorway began to fill with police officers wearing Salem’s blue uniform, the air filling with words that she didn’t take the effort to understand. Someone would pick her up and get her out of here. They would treat Williams and put the killer away. For now, she only had to rest.

  ***

  Zoe accepted the coffee cup from Flynn’s hands, letting go of the blanket around her shoulders to bring it to her mouth. The warmth was a pleasant antidote to the cold bench she was sitting on, in a corridor in the police precinct, out of the way of all the normal bustle.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay overnight?” Flynn asked, a worried expression on his face. “I know the doctor said you’re all right to go home if you want to, but he also said you need to take it easy and rest. Being on a flight and dealing with the airport doesn’t sound very restful to me.”

  “You will just have to do all the hard work for me then,” Zoe said with a wan smile. “If it will put your mind at ease, you can push me around in a wheelchair. But I would like to get back to my own bed, even if I’ll only be able to get back into it after the sun comes up. This red-eye is perfect.”

  “Well, at least we don’t have to stay any longer,” Flynn said, sitting down next to her. “I got your stuff out of your motel room. It’s all packed up in the car and ready to go. I just swung by to see Captain Lee—he says Williams is awake and fine. Shouldn’t have any lasting damage. Thanks to you.”

  Zoe nodded acknowledgment. “I just did what anyone would have,” she said. “If I’d known I only needed to wait another minute for you to show up, I might not have gone to so much effort.”

  Flynn chuckled. “What ‘anyone’ would have done. Right.”

  Zoe ignored him. “What about�
��what was her name?”

  “Charity Hegtesse.” Flynn sighed. “Yeah. Lee said she gave a full confession. Once she was caught, she was only too happy to spill.”

  “You should have been in there,” Zoe said.

  “There are more important things than being the first officer to interview a notorious spree killer,” Flynn joked.

  “I cannot think of many.”

  Flynn chuckled. “Yeah, well, making sure your partner isn’t dead is one of them. I wasn’t going to let them take you to the hospital without me.”

  Zoe sighed. She felt heavy and tired, and not just because of the medication she had been given. She had a theory that she was going to sleep through the whole flight. Which, strictly speaking, a concussion victim was not supposed to do; but she would have Flynn watching over her. It would be fine.

  “Well, what did this Hegtesse say?” Zoe asked.

  “A lot.” Flynn scratched the back of his head. “She’s still talking now. Captain Lee went back in there after we spoke. The gist of it is that she actually is descended from one of the witches who was hanged back in the Witch Trials—the woman already had a few children, and they remained in Salem even after she was killed. Fast forward a few generations, and Charity came along. She’s schizophrenic. She was diagnosed about a year ago, but quickly stopped taking her medication. She thought her witch ancestor was talking to her in her dreams and telling her to take revenge on the men who killed her by ending their lines, taking away their male sons.”

  “How did she know their names?” Zoe frowned. “It took us long enough to figure them out, and we had access to the police system.”