Hunted in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  She was gone. He could see it in the emptiness of her gaze as she stared blankly. Her left hand seemed to have a mind of its own, tapping lightly at her thigh. Other than that she didn’t move an inch.

  Her face hadn’t gone slack but reflected something he might have identified as anger under other circumstances. Not knowing if he could do anything, he simply waited and observed in case she appeared to need help.

  Snowy remained glued to her side, watchful, looking up at her. A minute passed. Then another. Just as he started to worry, she blinked.

  Snowy gave a little huff and went to lie down. Kerri remained standing, but the tapping of her hand had stopped. Her eyes darted around and he got the feeling she was trying to put pieces together. After another minute or so, she sagged a bit and dropped into the chair.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she mumbled. “I did go away, didn’t I?”

  “Not for long,” he reassured her.

  “How long?”

  He decided he had to be truthful. “About two minutes.”

  “Damn. It’s getting worse.” She put her head down in her hand, covering her eyes. “Thanks for everything. You don’t have to hang around.”

  He refused to be dismissed. “I don’t want to be anywhere else. Want something to drink?”

  “Water, please.”

  He rose and started toward the kitchen, but her voice stopped him. “I’m sorry, Stu.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  She stopped hiding behind her hand and gave a little wave. “Just sorry that you had to see that.”

  “Sorry?” he repeated, his chest squeezing with pain for her. “For God’s sake, Kerri. You were an officer, honorably wounded in the line of duty. From where I sit you never have to apologize for your injury or the fallout from it.”

  “But I took up your whole day!”

  “Which I enjoyed, thank you very much.”

  “I’m so freaking useless!” The words burst out of her, and he gathered from an earlier remark that she meant it, however unfairly.

  “Stay there,” he said. Yeah, like she was going to run out of her own home. “When I get the water, we’ll talk a little.”

  She looked like that was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, but she merely nodded.

  He found a glass in a cupboard, filled it halfway with water and carried it out to her. She accepted it and drank most of it.

  “Thanks.”

  She didn’t need to thank him for every little thing, but he wasn’t going to get into that now. He sat across from her, propping his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands loosely.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Overreacting.”

  “Frustrated,” he corrected. “I know a lot of people who went from sixty to zero overnight because of a wound. They defined frustration. Quit apologizing. You haven’t had much time to get used to all these changes, and you strike me as someone who doesn’t like being dependent. Oh, yeah. You had a partner on the job but that’s a different kind of dependence. Now you need a ride to get most places. A service dog. And you’re afraid your seizures are getting worse. Are you sure of that?”

  “I can’t be,” she said quietly. “Usually they’re further apart. I had one after you left last night. Now another one, and both of them, near as I can tell, weren’t brief. Is that scary? Hell, yeah.”

  “Do you think you need a doctor?”

  “Not yet.” Sighing, she leaned back and made eye contact with him for the first time since the onset of her episode. “Two instances don’t make a trend.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Maybe all the running around today made you a little more susceptible.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s possible, I guess. I’ll just have to wait and see. I don’t think there’s much more they can do for me, anyway.”

  He had no doubt that she was going to rebuild her life to fit her new limitations because she’d been a cop. Cops didn’t quit easily. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be difficult and rocky at times.

  “How long have you been dealing with this?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “Then you picked up stakes, left everything familiar behind, to start a new life? Dang, Kerri, that’s brave. Tough, too. It was bad enough when you were trying to fit back into your own skin, but to change your entire life? That takes guts. Most people would be hanging on to everything familiar.”

  She averted her face. “Sometimes I don’t feel very tough.”

  “I’d be surprised if you did.” Time to change the subject, he decided. Give her a break from the turmoil for a bit. But he sure wanted to know more about this woman. “So, did I hear you say something about a washer and dryer when we were at lunch?”

  That got her attention back, and some animation returned to her face. “Carrying bags of dirty clothes to the coin laundry isn’t my favorite thing.”

  “I doubt it’s anybody’s,” he said with a chuckle, hoping to leaven the moment. “Shopped around any? If you don’t mind a few dents or scratches, I know just the place. Brand-new equipment but some folks want the shiny. You skip perfection and you can save a wad.”

  By the time Stu took his departure, Kerri had agreed to join him on an appliance hunt the next day. Before long, a washer and dryer wouldn’t be an option. He suspected she wasn’t the type who’d want to call someone to carry her to the coin laundry and then pick her up after a couple of hours. No, she’d try to tough it out.

  Which brought him back around to all the changes she was facing and dealing with. She might have been better living in a big enough city to have public transportation, but she’d chosen this place. Maybe because of the job. Maybe because it wasn’t as busy and if she stopped dead on a street here she wasn’t likely to come back to an utterly changed world. Or to find herself lying on the ground because some idiot couldn’t wait to get past her.

  Damn, he couldn’t begin to imagine all the things she had to worry about now. Then there was probably a heap of things she was worrying about that she didn’t need to.

  Remembering her heartfelt exclamation that she was useless now, he felt awful for her. He firmly believed that nobody was useless. Nobody. Not even that kid two streets over from his house who had muscular dystrophy so severe that he couldn’t hold his head up and had be spoon-fed. Even had trouble breathing at times. But the people who took a chance on knowing him got a quick lesson in love and indomitability. As his mother said, he was always a bright star on a dark horizon.

  He arrived home and pulled a frozen dinner out of his fridge. A bachelor his age really ought to get into cooking, but he hated it. After that lunch he and Kerri had shared, he wasn’t feeling very hungry, anyway. The only thing he added to the meal was a big serving of broccoli. His nod to health.

  The evening passed with a book and some background music, a great way to unwind. He even dozed off in his favorite chair, letting the world slip away.

  Then, at five in the morning, his work cell rang. Struggling up from a dream that somehow involved Kerri, he reached for it.

  “We need you,” came the voice of the sheriff, Gage Dalton. “We had a brutal rape over on Conyers. All hands on deck.”

  Chapter 5

  Stu arrived at the scene, emotionally loaded for bear. He’d seen too much violence against women, both during his military tour and otherwise. Some of it had been cultural, but that didn’t excuse it and never would. To his way of thinking, the bigger the animal, the more it had a duty to protect the smaller ones. In almost every case, the guy was bigger.

  Cars with flashing lights lined the streets. An ambulance was taking off in the direction of the hospital with lights but no siren. A positive sign, he hoped.

  He made his way to the edge of the cordon that closed the street and surrounded a ramshackle house. When he reached the sheriff, who swam in a sea of deput
ies getting their orders, he asked the inevitable question.

  “How bad?”

  “She’s alive,” Gage answered. “Apparently, she put up a struggle. Medics tell me she was beaten and cut more than once, but nothing life-threatening.”

  “No, just scarring and trauma.”

  Gage looked at him from dark eyes. “Yeah. Maybe worst of all, she’s not conscious.” He turned his head back to the streets. “You have logistical experience from being an MP, right?”

  “In what sense?”

  “I need someone to organize a sweep of this entire town. We can’t risk missing anything, certainly not some guy hiding up a tree or in a bush, or any potential evidence. Details. No bare spots.”

  “I can do that.” He knew he could. He’d had to do it before...in war zones.

  “Then have at it. I’ll tell Jake Madison.” The chief of the city police. “You get full control while we clean this up.”

  Some cops were already out there, many on foot, searching the surrounding area. That would have been the first move. Dalton wanted something bigger and more careful.

  Stu fully agreed. He sped back to the office, using his lights, to get a detailed map of the area. Nothing left to chance. Yeah, he’d had to do that before. And right now there wasn’t a whole lot of time.

  The office was already turning into a command center. The regular dispatcher, a crusty older woman named Velma, was puffing on a cigarette, despite the no-smoking sign above her head, and talking into a microphone. The younger woman next to her was also engaged, speaking through her headset. They were rallying everyone. A couple of deputies squeezed in beside them, adding to the cacophony.

  Stu found the map he wanted and spread it out on a table in the conference room. His orders were going to have to be as clear and concise as possible, because they were going to be passed through the four people at the dispatch desk.

  * * *

  God, that had been harder than he’d expected, Ivan thought as he slipped down alleys as silently as he could and hid in the darkest of shadows until he was far enough away that even the arrival of the swirling lights of cop cars became nearly invisible.

  He hadn’t expected the woman to fight after she’d felt the prick of his knife. It hadn’t happened the last two times. Terror had held his victims as still as mice.

  Not this time.

  He’d tried a few slashes of the knife to convince her he was serious, but that hadn’t worked. The knife cuts, which must have been painful, only seemed to ratchet her up. He’d wound up having to punch her in the gut to shut her up, then hammer her in the head until she was dazed. Only then could he have his fun. To be honest, he’d had a lot of fun when she blacked out. Nothing to stop his wildest dreams.

  Not as much fun as when they didn’t resist, but what the hell. He’d gotten what he wanted and then some. Mostly. He needed to be more careful about his selection next time, but how the hell was he supposed to know when someone would resist?

  Although he hadn’t minded cutting her all that much. Not at all actually. And when that hadn’t shut her down, the punches had satisfied his anger.

  So okay. He could deal with whatever kind of woman he came across.

  He pulled the ski mask from his head and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. With both hands he smoothed down his hair. His knife had already gone into the holster that he wore inside his pants. Now all he had to do was bury his hands in his pockets to conceal any blood until he was safely home.

  He’d done well, he thought. Long sleeves and thin gloves so he’d leave nothing behind, and if she scratched at him there’d be a few fibers but no skin. He didn’t think she’d scratched him, but regardless, both the ski mask and the shirt were going to wind up in his backyard smithy to burn over hot coal. He had plenty of others to replace them and they were all generic, anyway.

  That’s what came from taking that class last year on crime and evidence. He’d learned a lot.

  Aware that if anyone saw him walking around at this hour of the morning he’d be remembered, he was cautious, staying away from any lighted places, hugging the shadows, ducking beneath windows. Amazing how much darkness you could still find in a town. He made it to the outskirts without any trouble.

  When at last he slipped in his own back door surrounded by a privacy fence into a house that was probably within a couple of years of being condemned, he relaxed and smiled.

  He’d had a great night. An absolutely wonderful one. As he threw the knife into a bucket of bleach, he thought about the next knife he might make in his forge. It had been a while since last he’d spent any time out there making anything. The knife that sat in the bleach to cleanse it of any blood or DNA residue had been his last project. He could use it again, of course.

  But maybe it would be fun to make a special knife for his next experience.

  Smiling, he sat at his table and opened a quart of orange juice that was still room temperature. Yeah, he had some good plans.

  * * *

  As the day started to brighten, before the Sunday church crowds really got on the move, Stu had every able-bodied cop not on regular patrol assigned a search area. The town was now blanketed with officers on foot looking for any sign that might be useful, from footprints on dew-damp grass to discarded weapons or clothing. Even for freshly broken twigs in shrubs.

  It was probably too much to hope the guy had left an easy-to-follow trail, but any clues would be useful. A lot of violent criminals, for example, tried to ditch their weapons rather than carry them in case they got stopped.

  Eventually, one by one, the various zones began reporting in. The news was nothing.

  By early afternoon, he’d ordered the search teams to switch to different portions of the grid and sent them all around again. Fresh eyes often caught things that weary eyes had missed.

  By midafternoon, he was certain the perp had left nothing useful behind. With the sheriff’s blessing, he began to wind it down. These people needed sleep, needed time to get ready for their next shifts, time to spend with families. They couldn’t search forever.

  From now on, the hunt for this rapist was going to have to rely on brainpower, instinct and experience. God, he hated it when they didn’t have useful evidence, and he was as conscious as anyone that the first forty-eight hours counted, not just in murders and abductions, but in any crime.

  So far, according to Gage, all they had was a jimmied back door lock.

  “The day of unlocked doors in this town is going by the wayside,” Gage remarked. “When I started working here, almost no one locked up unless they were going to be away for more than a couple of hours. It’s not like we didn’t have the usual kind of crime, burglaries and so on, but not much of it. Now major crimes are becoming more common, although most of them seem to be directed at a single individual, which leaves many folks feeling safe. Apparently not so much anymore.”

  “Rapes happen, unfortunately. I’ve never seen this large a police response to one.”

  Gage winced as he sat across the table from Stu. The car bomb that had killed his first family decades ago had left indelible marks on the man, from his burned cheek to his perennially aching back and a permanent limp. “I doubt you’ve ever worked in such a small town. We had to try. Now we’re going to have to move to a task force. Ever run a task force before?”

  Stu heard it coming. He didn’t want the job but he couldn’t turn it down, either. “Yeah. In the Army. That’s a bit different, I suspect.”

  Gage shook his head a little. “I’ve got lots of vets on this force as you know. What I haven’t got is a former MP officer. I need whatever expertise you’ve got.”

  “Then you have it,” Stu answered. Not that he wanted to provide it. He’d seen lots of crimes, lots of terrorism, lots of victims both military and civilian. He couldn’t have begun to say why rape bothered him so much. Just the mere idea of it
set his hackles up and filled him with a deep disgust. Maybe because it was such an uneven battlefield? Or because it was so personal? He didn’t know.

  “How’s the victim doing?”

  “Still concussed and in and out of consciousness. The doc says she can’t be questioned yet and given the concussion she might not remember much, anyway. We’ll see. I’ve got Connie Parish camped out at the hospital.”

  Good idea to have a woman there to talk to her when she could. Stu nodded approval.

  Gage sighed. “Anyway, we both got dragged out of bed on a few hours of sleep and we’ve been at it ever since. I suggest we both head home for some sleep. We’ll have to wait on the victim and on the doctor’s reports and I’m sure neither of us is going to be sharp for much longer. I’ll put you at the top of the call list with dispatch so neither of us has to worry about missing anything urgent.”

  That was the first time in a long time that Stu looked at the clock. It hit him with a jolt. He’d promised to meet Kerri at her place to go hunting for laundry appliances this afternoon and he was almost three hours late.

  “Damn,” he said.

  Gage cocked a brow at him. “What?”

  “I stood someone up and didn’t even make a phone call.”

  “Then boost your afterburners and get out of here.”

  As he was half out the door, Gage called after him. “Good idea about the car pool.”

  Yeah, and a lot of good it would have done Kerri today.

  * * *

  Kerri had taken Snowy out for a long walk when she realized Stu wasn’t going to show. She had no doubt that work had kept him away. Being a cop had given her a perspective on that. She knew how stuff could come up, even when you were theoretically off duty.

  She had to admit, though, that she’d really been looking forward to seeing him again. Oh, well. There was Snowy to keep her company, and a brilliantly beautiful day with dry crisp air, with surprisingly warm sun to counter the chill in the gentle breeze. Perfection.