But Morgan didn’t think it was likely.
Nick Hansen had made his demands more than clear: he was to enter the church alone, sacrificing himself in exchange for Rachel’s safety. Morgan knew the deal and was willing to go with it, but it would be better if they both walked out of there alive.
It was the only reason he’d let him tag along.
“When you get out of the car,” Morgan said, ducking his head to study the church windows where he could’ve sworn he’d seen movement, “be sure to leave the door ajar. A second slam will give you away, and I don’t want Rachel to suffer the consequences.”
Gary nodded and reached for his cell phone. “What will you do?”
“Me? I’m going in there.”
“That’s rough.” Gary blew out a long breath, like a balloon emptying the air from its rubbery insides. “All right, I’ll make the call. You just try to keep him busy for as long as you can. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to take my gun?”
Morgan thought about it for only a second. The idea of having that safety was comforting, but the truth was he was terrified of guns. Even if he wasn’t, and supposing he could land a direct hit on the killer, there was no guarantee he could do it before Nick hurt Rachel. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. “Just stay low and do what you need to do. Remember, if this goes well you’ll have your vengeance, and Carrie Whittle can rest in peace.”
There was a moment of silence while Gary lowered his chin to his chest. It was as if he were praying, the memory of Carrie haunting him further. They’d come so far since Gary had asked a simple favor of Morgan, and now here they were: at the end of the road with everything on the line. It was a job well done, just with disastrous results.
“Be careful,” Gary said, opening the door and finally sliding out of the car.
Morgan hurried through the mud to reach the church door, the bitter wind brushing his cheeks. Twisting the door’s giant ring, he shoved it open with his shoulder to reveal a large, dark room where rubble littered the floor. There were toppled candlesticks, torn cloths strewn across the expanse of the interior. There was even a wrecked confession box. Morgan suspected this place had either housed squatters or fallen victim to teenage boredom. Whichever it was, they’d done a great job at disrespecting the place. It was almost completely destroyed.
Morgan stepped farther in, pushing the door shut behind him. He stopped before it clicked, leaving a thin, vertical line where the air squeezed through with a quiet whisper. If anyone was coming for him, he wanted them to be able to get inside quick enough, and that extra inch might be all they needed to save a life.
Now inside, his legs violently shaking with both harsh cold and raw fear, Morgan took careful steps over the rubble and rounded the corner of the small greeting area. One row of scattered pews came into view, their surfaces glowing purple and yellow under the gleam of moonlight bleeding through the stained-glass windows. Morgan inched toward them, petrified of what he might see as he went farther in.
His life was about to end, and he could only hope Rachel’s hadn’t.
“I’m here,” he called, his deep voice booming across the church like a thunderclap.
There was no reply.
Morgan swallowed a hard, dry lump. “I did what you wanted—I got here on time.”
Had he? Now was the only time he could check his watch. He pressed the button, the face lighting up with a dim glow to present the current time. He’d just made it, with only thirty seconds to spare. But he had made it.
When Nick Hansen failed to reveal himself, Morgan was overcome with panic. It occurred to him that he might’ve arrived at the wrong church, or that the killer had lured him here for a different reason altogether. New, terrifying scenarios played out in front of him, and he realized now just how little control he had over the situation. He felt like a little boy playing a big man’s game. It was something he could never win.
“You came alone?”
Morgan spun around, the voice shooting down his spine like a cold sweat. In the doorway on the far side, a figure loomed in the darkness. The man was a shadow, not too tall but undeniably threatening. The outline of a gun extended the black silhouette of his hand, targeting Morgan in such a casual way that it was horrifying.
“Yes,” Morgan told him, glancing around. The fact he couldn’t see Rachel made his insides hurt. He wanted to ask, but Hansen’s answer was the thing he feared most. Had he made the biggest mistake of his life by coming here? There was only one way to find out, but he could only do so with the dry croak of a whisper as the words slipped from his cotton-like mouth. “Where is she?”
The shadow took a slow step forward, his footstep echoing through the church. It came clear of the doorway, stepping into the moonlight and revealing the face of the disturbing killer Morgan had seen only a few nights ago. Only this time Hansen didn’t have the twisted expression of confusion or the white sheet of panic on his cheeks.
This time, he wore the sly grin of a fox who’d infiltrated the coop.
Morgan panicked, his heart drumming against his chest. The skin grew hot under his collar, the worst of nightmares flashing before his eyes. He balled his hands into fists, squeezing until his fingernails dug into his sweaty palms. He was beyond tiptoeing around it—the urgency filled his lungs in a throaty yell. “Where’s Rachel?”
But Nick only laughed, raising the gun higher to target Morgan’s face as his smile widened into something more sinister. It raised a thousand questions, each one tearing at Morgan’s heart like a chisel chipping at stone. It was the face of a man who held a great number of secrets, but among them all was one clear fact.
He was here to kill again.
Chapter Forty-Four
Morgan watched through narrowed eyes as Nick’s finger tightened around the trigger. His instincts took over then, as if a new pilot had entered his mind. Before he could even think about what he was doing, he launched himself across the ground, landing behind the safety of a pew just as the gunshot sounded.
Adrenaline took it from there.
Morgan kicked the pew as hard as he could, his heel smashing against the wood. The pew slid across the ground, and he heard a grunt. Rolling over, he scrambled to his feet and took cover behind the next pew.
That was when he felt it.
A sharp pang shot through his arm. Morgan reached out and touched it, the sting intensifying. He winced and pulled his arm away, checking his palm.
There was blood. Lots of it.
He’d taken a bullet without realizing it. Morgan thanked God for the adrenaline dealing with the pain while he was left to combat the bigger problem: Nick Hansen’s footsteps were drawing nearer, his panting thick and furious.
“You had this coming,” he said, his spiteful voice too close now.
Morgan slid his body across the ground, fighting against an urge to scream. He reached for the next pew, pulling his feet underneath to remain hidden. If only Gary would hurry up and get in here. Maybe then he would be safe. Maybe then they would find Rachel.
“I was just trying to do my work,” Nick went on, wood whining against stone as he kicked a pew to one side. “Those women, they had it coming. After everything they did to me, they finally got what they deserved. And you—you think you have a right to stand in my way? I gave you a chance, Mr. Young. I never tried to hurt you. Not until now.”
The words fell off Morgan like water off a duck’s back. Crazy was crazy no matter what angle you heard it from. All he could do was keep sliding under the pews, desperately trying to get away while Nick was close behind him. He knew there was no escape from here.
So why fight?
Human instinct, he supposed, reaching for something to grab hold of so he could haul himself farther along the floor, still concealed by the help of the pews and a little darkness. He was driven by that primal urge to survive. If not for him, then for Rachel. He pictured her in the back room of the church, cowering until all this was over. It was better that than
her body sprawled across the floor, oozing with blood.
Morgan shuddered at the thought.
“You’re only postponing the inevitable,” Nick said, frustration lacing his voice and echoing off the walls of the church. “This is the only way it can be. You don’t have to do anything but accept it for what it is.”
A toppled stage set sat propped up against the wall, probably remains from a long-ago festive performance. Morgan felt a wave of relief when he saw it, using the opportunity to say what he needed to say, giving up his position before he slid into his new hiding place between the backdrop and the wall. “What did they do to you, Nick?”
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s everything to me,” Morgan said. “You might not know it yet, but Carrie was a friend of a friend. Tracking down the guy who killed her was my duty.”
“Ah, so you’re a Boy Scout.”
Morgan squeezed his way behind the backdrop. Just as his feet entered the dark recess, a deafening clatter roared through the church. He immediately knew what it was: the final pew being torn from its place, hurled aside by the man with a loaded weapon and very little patience. Knowing he was hidden, Morgan craned his neck to stare along the wall where the backdrop stretched across. Shuffling as quietly as he could, he used his uninjured arm to drag himself to the far end where he waited for the sound of the killer’s voice. Only then would he know if it was safe to make a move into the next room—he could see the open door, and he prayed Rachel was safe and sound beyond it. If he could only get there…
“Why don’t you just step out and face me like a real man?”
There.
Morgan heard the voice from far away. He seized his opportunity.
Sliding out of cover, he clambered to his feet and ran for the door. A gunshot exploded behind him, obliterating the doorframe he sprinted toward. He reached the safety of the wall between the two rooms and pressed his back against it, hiding from the gunfire and looking around. There was another door ahead of him; Rachel was probably in there, but there was no way in without crossing the doorway, and to do so would only make him vulnerable.
It was hopeless.
“You speak about being a real man,” Morgan said, drops of sweat leaking from his temple, “but you’re coming at an unarmed man with a gun. Where’s the great, grand gesture of your manhood in that?”
“You’ve got height and weight, I’ve got a gun. We use what God gave us.”
Morgan gave a condescending tut, wishing Gary would hurry up. He tried to postpone this further, using lies and words to slow Nick down. “Listen, I found a crowbar in here, and if you round this corner I will use it. So why don’t you just put down the gun and talk to me?”
Nick laughed. It was an eerie, haunting sound. “No chance.”
“Then keep the gun. Just talk to me.”
During the silence, Morgan had awful visions of being crept up on, found, and shot through the heart. He glanced down, saw an old pipe protruding from a large rock of rubble, and reached for it. Firmly in his hand, he scraped it across the floor, replicating the sharp scratch of a crowbar against stone. This was a weapon: not a very good one, but a weapon all the same.
Nick finally sighed. “I guess there’s no reason you shouldn’t know what those bitches did. What you’re going to die for. I was just… I was only a kid, really…”
Chapter Forty-Five
“School wasn’t easy for me. I didn’t fit in. The movies show the weedy guys walking through the corridors and getting shoved into lockers. That was a real thing that did actually happen to people like me, but nobody ever took notice. At the end of the day, it’s all a bit of fun, right? Nobody ever stopped to ask if I was okay, so I just carried on with my day, dreading that final bell. That bell told me to go home—it told me to go be with him.”
Nick stepped closer, scanning the dark room.
“That’s right. As if school wasn’t hard enough, I had to walk the four miles home alone, even in the middle of winter. You think my mom bought me a coat? Think again. I remember this one time, after Billy Shuitz—one of my many asshole bullies—drenched me in water for what could only be described as a hilarious prank. So, there I was, walking home during a frost and minding my own business. All I could think about was getting home and begging my stepfather to let me have a hot bath.
“But I never got that far. Billy had other plans for me.”
Nick lowered his head and closed his eyes for a moment. It was like the backs of his eyes were a blank canvas for a film reel to show the sorrows of his life. As he delved into that memory, plucking away at the finer details of it, he knew it would only make him sad—angry, even. But it was irresistible to him. He had to tell all.
“I’d made it a mile up the street before I realized he was following me. He had his friends on either side of him—too many to count. I kept walking, but they caught up with me eventually because they were on their bikes. In time, I heard the wheels spinning and the sound of metal clattering to the ground. The next thing I know, I’m on the ground beside the bikes, black school shoes rising and falling as they stomped on my face. Everything was a blur, but there are three things I remember; I remember thinking that it should have hurt more. I later realized it was because my face had gone numb, and I just couldn’t feel what they were doing to me anymore. The next thing, and I just can’t seem to erase this from my memory, was Billy’s face. He was laughing at me as he stomped, each blow to the face sending him further into hysterical laughter. The other thing, though…”
Nick stomped forward to rush Morgan, but nostalgia snapped him back. He’d waited his entire life to tell somebody his story, and who better to confess to than somebody who was about to die?
“The other thing was her.
“Carrie Whittle was my savior. I heard her voice long before they stopped kicking, but eventually they all got up and left. Carrie helped me to my feet and walked me home. I didn’t have anything to say to her. She was the first girl who’d ever said anything nice to me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Remember, I was only fourteen. Anyway, when we got home she didn’t come in. But she did kiss me on the cheek. It hurt a lot, but I didn’t mind. Carrie became my first love after that. We made friends and those feelings quickly developed into something more.
“The next summer rolled by, and we started fighting a lot. The bullying didn’t ease up, and I think she found it difficult to deal with my bad moods. But that doesn’t excuse what she did to me next, does it? Nobody deserves to be cheated on, especially when they then leave you for that person. When I found out, I was so angry. I tried talking to Carrie about it, but she just yelled at me and then we broke up. The next day she was in a new relationship with that guy. So, do you see? She was using me, keeping me for comfort while she tested the waters with the new guy. When she figured he was a sure thing, she cut the strings with me.”
Pain engrossed him.
“It wasn’t the last time, either.
“Next there was Danielle Phillips. She seemed to do the same thing, only in reverse. She had a boyfriend, and as much as she said she was going to leave him, she just never did. That didn’t stop her from having sex with me though, did it? When her boyfriend found out, she told him I was following her and making her uncomfortable. Hell, one time she even told her family I was outside her house, which I sure was not. I mean, it’s hard enough to survive through high school without the physical advantages of jocks or the intellectual superiority of the real nerds. I was somewhere in the middle, lacking on either side.
“And it showed.”
Anger tore through him at the memory, but he refrained from letting it out. For too long he’d been a vessel of rage, and although he was determined to do what he needed to do—hurt and then kill all involved—he wanted this guy to understand.
“I forgot about Danielle in time, and before I knew it a romance was brewing between Emma Cole and myself. She was sweet to me, right up until she followed in Danielle’s footsteps
; she cheated on her boyfriend, pinned it on me, and then I was left to deal with even more bullying. It was an endless line of insults and physical abuse from school to home, from home to college, and every day after that just became another gray page in a very dull book. Life was just no fun, but I got on with it.
“And then social media came about.
“Those long, lonely nights made it too easy to look them up on the internet. Seeing they’d grown up to marry those guys made me so angry. I… I saw red. I started thinking about what would happen if I finally got my revenge. All those years of torture had led me to wonder, what would their faces look like when they realized I’d won after all? How would those girls feel when they knew I’d come out on top—me, the pathetic little loser they’d beat up in high school?
“There was only one way to find out.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“By cutting up their faces?” Morgan shook his head. There was something in the killer’s story that reached out to him, like a hand offering a palmful of sympathy. But he declined—sympathy had left the building long before people had been murdered in it.
Nick made a noise that sounded like the cocking of a gun, but Morgan didn’t know how those things worked. “After everything I just told you, you still think it was as simple as tearing a bit of skin? Come on, Detective. You’re smarter than that.”
“So, what, it’s—”
Something kept Morgan from finishing that sentence. At first it was a soft tickle in the back of his mind, but then it grew into something larger and more hopeful. It was like an alarm, but its ring was strong and positive rather than deafening and… well, alarming. He cocked his head to one side, the cool moisture of sweat dampening his collar, listening.
It wasn’t an alarm, he realized.
Mason & Morgan- The Serial Killer Collection Page 61
