Split Second

by Alex Kava

  She needed to relax or it would only hurt more. She needed to stop feeling his thrusts, stop thinking about his hands fondling her breasts, stop hearing his groans. She could survive this.

  “Open your goddamn eyes,” he grunted between clenched teeth. “I want you to watch.”

  She refused. He hit her across the mouth, whipping her head so violently to the side that she heard her neck crack. Immediately, she tasted blood. She kept her eyes closed. “Goddamn you, bitch. Open your fucking eyes.” He was gasping, rocking back and forth with such force she thought he’d crack her insides open as well. She felt his hot breath on her neck and suddenly his teeth sank into her skin. His hands clamped down on her breasts, and he was riding her, every part of him scraping, rubbing and thrusting, devouring her like a rabid dog.

  She bit down on her lower lip. She forced her eyes to remain shut. Not much longer. He would come, and then it would be over. She twisted her head as far away as possible and kept her eyelids closed tight.

  Finally, his body jerked, his teeth let go, his hands gave a final squeeze and he relaxed. He crawled off her, jamming his knee into her stomach and slamming his elbow against her head. Finally, it was over. She lay still, swallowing blood and pretending not to feel the sticky mess between her legs. Instead, she reminded herself that she had survived.

  He was so quiet, she wondered if he had gone. She opened her eyes to find him standing over her. The yellow glow of the lantern created a halo behind him. When she met his eyes, he twisted his lips into a smile. He looked as calm and composed as he had when he entered the shack. She had hoped that he would be exhausted, spent and ready to leave. But he showed no signs of fatigue.

  “This part you will watch,” he promised. “Even if I need to cut your fucking eyelids off.” He held up a shiny scalpel for her to see.

  Her weak, muffled scream made it past the raw pain in her throat.

  “Scream all you want.” He laughed. “No one can hear you. And, quite frankly, I like it.”

  The terror rushed through her veins and exploded in her head. She pulled and shoved against the restraints. Then suddenly she noticed him backing away, his head cocked to the side, as though he was listening to something outside the shack.

  Tess strained to hear over the pounding in her head and chest. She lay still, watching him, and then she heard it. Unless she had gone mad, it sounded like voices.

  67

  MAGGIE wondered if they were too late. Had Stucky and Harding escaped? She watched as Agent Alvando and his men combed the area. As much as she wanted to be out there with them, she knew Alvando was right. She and Tully weren’t equipped or trained to participate in a SWAT-team sweep of the woods.

  “Could we have been wrong about this place?” Agent Tully asked from the other side of the room. He had pulled out some of the cartons from under the desks, and with latex gloves on he sifted through ledgers, mail orders and other documents.

  “All of this could simply be preparation for him losing his sight entirely. I’m not sure what to think.” She couldn’t shake the feeling of dread and restlessness. “Maybe we should see if they got that room opened in the basement.”

  “Alvando told us to stay put.”

  “It could be a torture chamber, not some bunker.”

  “I’m only guessing it’s a bunker. We won’t know for sure until Alvando’s men can open it.”

  She glanced around the room. It looked like a typical home office except for the talking computers. What a letdown. She had psyched herself up for a showdown with Stucky, and he was nowhere to be found.

  “O’Dell?” Tully was hunched over another of the cartons he had unearthed. “Take a look at this.”

  She looked over his shoulder expecting to see more X-rated software. Instead, she found herself staring at newspaper clippings about her father’s death.

  “Where the hell do you suppose he got this?” Tully asked.

  She was wondering the same thing until she saw her appointment book and childhood photo album. It was her missing carton from the move. She had completely forgotten about it. So Greg had been telling the truth. The carton hadn’t been left at the condo. Somehow Stucky had been watching and had managed to take it from the movers. A shiver slid down her back as she thought about him handling her personal possessions.

  “Maggie?” Tully stared up at her, concern in his eyes. “Do you think he broke into your house without you knowing?”

  “No, I’ve been missing it since the day I moved in. He must have stolen the box before it made it into the house.”

  “That means Stucky has been here,” Tully said, digging through the other cartons.

  The lightning struck closer, igniting the sky and making the trees look like skeleton soldiers standing at attention. Suddenly she saw a reflection of someone in the hall walking past the door. She spun around, her revolver outstretched. Tully jumped to his feet and had his gun out in seconds.

  “What is it, O’Dell?” He kept his eyes ahead watching the doorway. She moved slowly across the room, gun aimed, hammer cocked.

  “I saw someone walk by,” she finally explained.

  “Do you smell something?” Tully was sniffing the air.

  She smelled it, too, and the terror that had begun to crawl up from her stomach started to explode.

  “It smells like gasoline,” Tully said.

  All Maggie could think was that it smelled like gasoline and smoke. It smelled like fire. The thought grabbed hold of her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t walk the rest of the distance to the door—her knees had locked. Her throat plugged up, threatening to strangle her.

  Tully ran to the door and carefully peeked out, his gun ready.

  “Holy crap,” he yelled. “We’ve got flames on both sides. There’s no way we’re getting out the way we came in.”

  He hurried to the windows, trying to open one while Maggie stood paralyzed. She stared at her hands as though they belonged to someone else. She worried she might start to hyperventilate.

  The smell alone sparked images from her childhood nightmares: flames engulfing her father and scorching her fingers every time she reached for him. She could never save him, because her fear immobilized her.

  “Damn it!” She heard Tully struggling behind her.

  She turned toward him, but her feet wouldn’t move. The room began to tilt. She could feel the motion, though she knew it couldn’t possibly be real. Then she saw him again, a reflection. She twisted around, but felt as if she were moving in slow motion. Albert Stucky stood tall and dark in the doorway, dressed in a leather jacket and pointing a gun directly at her.

  She tried to raise her own gun, but it was too heavy. The room had tilted to the other side, and she felt herself slipping. He was smiling at her and seemed oblivious to the flames. Was he real? Had her terror brought on hallucinations?

  “This damn thing is stuck,” she heard Tully yell somewhere in the distance.

  She opened her mouth to warn Tully, but nothing came out. She expected the bullet to hit her squarely in the heart. That was where he was aiming. Everything in slow motion. He was pulling back the hammer. She could hear wood creaking, giving way in crashes outside the room. She saw Stucky begin to squeeze the trigger.

  “Tully,” she managed to yell, and just then Stucky slid his aim to the right of her and pulled the trigger. The explosion jolted her like an electrical shock. But she wasn’t hit. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere. It was an effort to move her arm, but she raised it, ready to fire at the now-empty doorway. Stucky was gone. Had it all been her imagination? There was a groan behind her, and she remembered Tully.

  He gripped his bloody thigh with both hands and stared at it as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The smoke had entered the room and burned their eyes. She ripped off her windbreaker and ran to the door, forcing herself not to think of the heat and the flames. She slammed the door shut, wadded up her jacket and shoved it into the crack under the door.


  She came back to Tully and kneeled next to him. His eyes were wide and beginning to glaze over.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Tully. Breathe but not too deeply.” Already the smoke was seeping in between the cracks.

  She pulled at his necktie, undoing the knot. Gently she moved his hands away from the wound. She tied the necktie around his thigh, just above the bullet hole, tightening it and wincing when he shouted out in pain.

  Smoke was filling the room. The crashing of beams sounded closer. Maggie crawled to her feet, trying to focus on getting them out of the house. She would not think of the flames on the other side of the door. She would not imagine the hellish heat licking at the floorboards.

  She grabbed one of the monitors, yanking the cables until they became unplugged.

  “Tully, cover your face.”

  He only stared at her.

  “Goddamn it, Tully, cover your face and head. Now!”

  He pulled up his windbreaker and turned to face the wall. Maggie felt her arms weakening under the monitor’s weight. Her eyes burned, and her lungs screamed. She hurled the monitor through the window, and then quickly kicked out the chunks of glass. She grabbed Tully under the arms.

  “Come on, Tully. You’re going to have to help me.”

  Somehow she managed to drag him out the window and onto the roof of the porch. Alvando and two other men were down below. It wasn’t a great distance to the ground, but, with a bullet in his thigh, she couldn’t expect Tully to jump. She held on to his arms as he lowered his body over the edge and waited for the men below to grab him. The entire time, his eyes held hers. But there wasn’t shock now. There wasn’t fear. Instead, what she saw in Agent Tully’s eyes surprised her even more. The only thing she saw was trust.

  68

  TULLY’S leg hurt like hell. Most of the flames were out. He sat a safe distance away, but the heat actually felt good. Someone had thrown a blanket around his shoulders. He didn’t remember it happening. He also didn’t remember that it was raining until he discovered his hair plastered to his forehead. Somehow Alvando had managed to get the ambulance past the electronic gate and all the way to the burning house.

  “Your ride is here.” O’Dell appeared from behind him.

  “Let them take the McGowan woman first. I can wait.”

  “Are you sure? They might be able to fit both of you.”

  He looked past O’Dell to examine Tess McGowan himself. She was sitting in one of the SWAT team’s trucks. From what he could see of her, she looked to be in bad shape. Her hair was tangled and wild. Her body, now wrapped in a blanket, had been covered with bloody cuts and bruises. She could barely stand. Alvando’s men had found her locked in a shack not far from the house. She had been shackled to a cot, gagged and naked. She had told them that the madman had left only seconds before they found her.

  “I’m not bleeding anymore,” Tully said. “Get her out of here and into a nice warm bed. Besides,” he added, “I want to be here when they bring them out.”

  The men had found a fire hydrant, probably a leftover from when the property had been occupied by the government. They were dousing the house with thick streams of water. Firefighters had stomped their way to the scene about an hour ago, but only after their truck had gotten stuck in the mud about a mile from the entrance. Now they ventured into the burned-out hull of the house as though on a mission. They had discovered two dead and burned bodies in the basement.

  Tully rubbed the soot from his face and eyes. O’Dell sat down on the ground next to him. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs.

  “We don’t know for sure that it’s them,” she said without looking at him.

  “No, but who else would it be?”

  “Stucky doesn’t seem like the suicidal type.”

  “He may have thought the bunker was fireproof.”

  “I never thought of that.” She looked almost convinced. Almost.

  The firefighters came out of the wreckage, hauling a body on a gurney. It was draped with a black canvas. Two more followed with another. O’Dell sat up straight. Tully thought she was holding her breath as she watched. The second gurney approached the FBI’s truck, when suddenly the dead man’s arm slipped out, clothed in what looked like a leather jacket. He felt O’Dell stiffen. Then finally, he heard her breathe a deep sigh of relief.

  69

  IF IT hadn’t been so late, Maggie would have offered to take Gwen out for dinner. However, she had spent too much time at the hospital making sure Tess was comfortable and that Tully had no permanent damage to his leg.

  Though she should have been completely exhausted, she felt like celebrating. She discovered a Chinese place that was still open on the north side of Newburgh Heights. She could finally stop by a restaurant again without worrying the waitress would end up in a Dumpster.

  Maggie arrived home to find Gwen and Harvey curled up in the recliner watching the TV. The cartons reminded her once again of the carton Stucky had stolen, now gone forever, literally up in flames. The photo album had contained the only pictures she had possessed of her father. She didn’t want to think about it right now.

  “How are you?” asked Gwen. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly? I’m fine.”

  Gwen frowned at her as though that was too easy an answer.

  “I came close to getting Tully and myself killed,” she said, now serious. “I panicked with the fire. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. But you know what?” She smiled. “I survived. And I got us out of there.”

  “Very good. Sounds like you passed some major personal test.”

  Harvey shoved his nose under Maggie’s arm, insisting on another egg roll. She gave him a half-eaten roll and patted his back.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to feed dogs egg rolls, Maggie.”

  “And how would I know that? Is there a book with all these rules?”

  “I’m sure there are several. I’ll pick one up for you.”

  “Might not be a bad idea since it looks like Harvey and I are going to be permanent roommates.”

  “Does that mean you were right about his owner?”

  “Tess told us there was another woman. A woman named Rachel who’s dead in a pit somewhere on the property. Of course we don’t know yet, but I feel certain it’s Rachel Endicott.” She noticed Gwen’s grimace. “They’ll continue to search for her tomorrow. Tess said there were other bodies, bones, skulls. Stucky and Harding may have been using this property for years.”

  “What do you suppose Harding had planned for me?”

  “Don’t, Gwen,” Maggie snapped at her. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to think about it, okay?”

  “I suppose it makes sense that the two of them would have eventually moved on to women you knew more intimately. Friends, relatives…oh—” she smiled “—that reminds me. You had a phone call earlier. That hunky ex-quarterback from Nebraska.”

  “Nick?”

  “What, you know more than one hunky ex-quarterback?”

  “Did he want me to call him back?”

  “Actually, he said he was headed for the airport. I took a message.” Gwen pulled herself up off the floor and found the note she had left on the desk. She squinted at it as though someone else had written it. “He said his dad had a heart attack.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Now Maggie wished she had talked to him. “Is he going to be okay? He’s not dead, is he?”

  “No, but I think Nick said they were talking about surgery as soon as possible.” Gwen scrunched up her face as she continued to decipher her notes.

  “This is something that I didn’t understand. He said his dad had received a letter, and that’s what they think may have caused the heart attack. But unless I’m mistaken, I could swear Nick said the letter was from South America.”

  Maggie felt sick to her stomach. Had Father Michael Keller sent Antonio Morrelli some sort of confession? Maggie seemed to be the only one who believed the charismatic young priest was
the one who had killed four boys in Platte City, Nebraska. But he had left the country before she had been able to prove it. The last she knew, he was still in South America.

  “That’s it,” Gwen said. “Does any of that makes sense to you?”

  The phone startled both of them.

  “Maybe this is Nick.” Maggie untangled herself out of her cross-legged position and grabbed the phone. “Maggie O’Dell.”

  “Agent O’Dell. It’s Assistant Director Cunningham.”

  She checked her watch. It was late, and she had just seen him at the hospital a couple of hours ago.

  “Is Tully okay?” It was the first thing that came to mind.

  “He’s fine. I’m with Dr. Holmes. He was good enough to do the autopsies tonight. There’s a problem.” Cunningham didn’t waste any time.

  “What kind of problem?” Maggie prepared herself, leaning against the desk and gripping the phone.

  “Walker Harding died of a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Not only that, but his organs are in an extremely advanced state of decomposition. Dr. Holmes is guessing he’s been dead for several weeks.”

  “Several weeks? That’s impossible. We found his fingerprints at three of the crime scenes.”

  “I think we might have an explanation for that. Several of his fingers are missing, cut off. I’m guessing Stucky did it. Preserved them and used them at the crime scenes to throw us off.”

  “But Gwen has had two sessions with Harding.” She glanced at Gwen and her friend’s face showed concern and alarm.

  “Dr. Patterson has never seen Albert Stucky,” Cunningham said, keeping his cool, professional tone. “If we ask her to describe the man she had the sessions with, I’m guessing she’ll describe Stucky. There was an uncanny resemblance between the two men. Stucky must have been using Harding’s identity for some time now. That probably explains the airline ticket in Harding’s name.”