by India Kells
“Why did that thing beeped?”
“I set an alert when Bear’s autopsy report would be made available to the main investigator.”
“Bear is dead? Why? And why would you need more information?”
“At first no reason. It was more on a personal level. Part of me feels responsible for him.”
Owen came closer and Dylan tensed. But he only bent down to look at her screen, clearly ignoring her. “What does it say.”
She tried to relax with him so close. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the heat of his skin. Strangely, what calmed her down was the scent emanating from him—some mix of coffee, leather, and musk she had never smelled before. Strong and soothing at the same time. She inhaled deeply, indulging in him one more time before returning her attention to her screen, trying hard to ignore her discomfort mixing with her attraction.
“Toxicology is surprisingly normal for a homeless man. No general health problem. Bruises all over his body … along with many cuts and blood.”
Owen shook his head. “But that wouldn’t have killed him. He would have been in pain, but … look at the cause of death.”
Her eyes scanned the page until she reached that section and she blinked. “Electrical current stopped the heart.”
Dylan understood the words, but couldn’t believe them. Her nightmare was rearing its ugly head once more. Her fingers hovered on her mouse as she was about to open the pictures attached to the report.
Nausea rose while she tried to fight past images and sensations crowding her brain. Violently, Dylan pushed herself away from her computer, trying to put distance between the images on the screen and those in her head. When she felt a hand on her shoulder she snapped. “Don’t touch me!”
At the annoyance in her voice, Owen stepped back immediately, hands raised. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Dylan started pacing her small living room like a caged animal. It couldn’t be. After all these years, how could it be possible? A copycat? That could only mean some sick mind was trying to replicate what a monster had done to so many people years ago? Done to her? And as she was the only living victim left …
“Dylan, tell me what’s going on.”
Owen’s low voice slowly made its way to her conscious self.
“You’re right. I need to call Beatrice right away. And you need to leave. Now.”
For a long moment, Owen looked at her. “I’m not going anywhere. At least not until we speak to Beatrice.”
“This is not a game, Sorenson.”
“Don’t I fucking know that? Now, make that call.” His voice was placating, forcing her to deal with him for the time being.
Dylan reached for her phone, her mind already planning her disappearance. A permanent one from Purgatory this time.
“Put it on speaker phone.”
She knew it couldn’t be helped. With everything that had happened, there was some explaining to do, and at that moment, there was no way this stubborn man with a protective streak would go away. He was a Sorenson after all, and from what she knew of his two older brothers, he wouldn’t be deterred so easily. The only thing she could do was bide her time, wait for the right moment. After dialing Beatrice’s number, she placed the phone on her desk. Owen wisely stayed on the other side, facing her.
“Dylan?” The voice of Beatrice was groggy and low; she had probably woken her up.
“Yeah, it’s me. You’re on the speaker phone. Owen Sorenson is with me.”
“What’s going on?” Dylan heard her move about, and the low voice of James sounded in the background.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“You don’t sound fine, and you wouldn’t have called me at three in the morning your time if everything was hunky-dory.”
“I think we have a problem.”
“Speak.”
“Knudson is back.”
The suspended silence on the other end of the line was telling. Dylan fixed the phone, waiting for an answer, careful not to glance at the man in front of her.
“Dylan, he’s dead. I shot him dead in the head. I saw him lying on the slab at the morgue. He’s dead.”
She sighed. “I know. But …”
“But what? Talk to me.”
Dylan started to describe what happened to Bear and the possibility that Dee had been abducted by the same person with all the clues she had found along the way. Without lifting her head, she could feel Owen tensing up. He didn’t know a thing of what happened to her all those years ago. It seemed that Beatrice had kept that little story to herself when she hired the Navy SEAL to protect her.
After she had completed her report, it took a moment for Beatrice to say anything. Dylan risked a peek, and as expected, Owen’s dark-blue eyes were focused on her.
“Dylan, it can’t be a coincidence. Between what you just told me and the pictures I received from the recent attack to our servers—”
“What pictures?” It seemed that Owen was done being quiet.
Beatrice sighed. “Dylan?”
Her friend was requesting her assent to tell a particularly difficult story, one that not many people knew. Even if her throat felt raw at that prospect and her heart beat erratically in her chest, Dylan swallowed, forcing herself to let the words out.
“In my previous life, I was a cop. I was part of a police task force dedicated to finding a serial killer who targeted young women. All the victims had particular markings on their body and all of them died from a strong electrical current that stopped their hearts. I had just been promoted to detective back then. The total body count at that time was sixteen, and he didn’t seem nearly ready to stop. The bodies were popping up all around the city, no discernible pattern, no clue, no way of knowing who he would target next. Desperate times called for desperate measures. At that time, I was going out with a guy who worked part-time for an organization called Purgatory. He reached to his boss on my behalf and she agreed to help me find that monster. She knew how good I was with computers and her only condition was that I helped them from time to time on special projects after that precise case was put to rest. It was no big deal; I would have worked for the devil himself to stop that serial killer.”
Beatrice snorted on the line but didn’t add to what she said.
“So, after I passed on everything that I got to her, she put her whole team on finding him. We had found a partial fingerprint on one of the victims, but we were unable to track its owner. Beatrice sent it to one of her contacts, another strange government agency, who was able to electronically extrapolate the fingerprint. That led us to a man called William Knudson, a professor at the community college. I relayed the information to my captain, but as the information had been given to me through an obscure agency, he couldn’t use it to obtain a warrant. He agreed to set up surveillance, but I feared that if we were spotted, Knudson would go underground, change location. In the meantime, he already had his next victim, I was sure of it. I was desperate, and ready to do anything …”
Owen nodded. “You went after him, alone.”
Dylan pinched her lips. “Yeah. I had already dug up every bit information I could find on him, and discovered one house that was the perfect spot for him. He wouldn’t have been stupid enough to bring his victims to a place of his own, and as the property was under his father’s mother’s maiden name. It was the obvious choice. Maybe too obvious.”
Dylan walked to the window, peering down at the dark, empty street. “I stalked him there, to that house, as expected. He was returning from the grocery store. He looked like he belonged in this quiet neighborhood. Who would suspect that this smart-looking, friendly professor was a serial killer?”
“What happened next?” Owen’s voice was so low, a rumble in the room.
“Everything was going according to plan, until I entered the house. I was ready for everything, except being an expected target. He was waiting for me. Not only was I too late for saving his current victim, I was now his next one.”
Dylan took a shaky breath, forcing the next words out. “I entered the house, after picking the lock on the back door. It was dark when I entered the mud room, and as I crossed the threshold, I remembered a cold sensation on my neck before everything went black. When I woke up, I was in a room with barricaded windows, naked and tied to a surgical table.”
Dylan swallowed hard, trying to wet her parched throat before speaking again.
“I don’t know how long I’d been down there. Beatrice told me seven days. Every single minute from the moment I woke up, I thought I was going to die. And at some point, I wished I had. It was Beatrice who rescued me, half-dead, half-insane, as she killed Knudson, a bullet to the brain.”
“Wait, go back … what did he do to you?”
Dylan closed her eyes, letting her forehead touch on the cold window pane. It was Beatrice who answered his question.
“Knudson, for all his victims, had a single mode of operation. We don’t have all the reasons why he acted like that, but from what we know, he kidnapped women who fit his current fantasy, young, headstrong, career women for the most part, and brought them back to his lair, usually using a strong sedative. Some of them were picked up at bars, others, simply by walking down the street. I guess it was one of the reasons why we couldn’t find him by any particular pattern.”
Beatrice hesitated on the other end of the line, and Dylan knew why. She wouldn’t only imagine how she looked when Beatrice came barging in that glaring white basement, looking at her, in the state she was in. After all, it was her cross to bear, not her friend’s, so she took over, willing her voice to stay strong, devoid of any possible emotion. Her cop voice, the one that could state facts, even when the horror made it almost impossible.
“Knudson brought his victims to the basement he specially arranged for his sadistic purposes. First, just before they woke up, he tied them to a surgery table. That’s when his fun began. Knudson took particular pleasure at toying with his victim’s mind, playing the savior, the torturer, the compassionate man, one after the other. He used drugs, to make them more compliant. A strong hallucinogenic spray of his composition. This is a game he could do for days, before he grew tired of it, and started with a new victim.”
Dylan swallowed the bile rising, pushing panic down. “His true passion was to scar his victims. In fact, it was the only way we could link all those girls together. He carved very distinctive patterns on the skin. The only part of the body he always left unmarked was the face.”
Unable to help herself, she turned at Owen, standing still, silent in the middle of her living room. His face was devoid of expression, only looking at her. His body so still, she wondered if he was breathing.
“Some victims were raped, others tortured forcefully. But bottom line, it was clear that he wanted to leave a mark. His own mark on his victims, hence the scaring, and the fact that he murdered them all when he was done playing with them. All the same MO, deadly electric current to the heart.”
“But you did survive.” His words were barely audible, wheezing in a breath.
“Let’s say, I thought I was his only work of art still breathing. Until now.”
“Did he …”
Her eyes softened as she understood his question. “No, he didn’t rape me. He broke bones, beat me up, carved into me, but I believe it wasn’t his true objective for me. I believe he only wanted to prove to me that I was as weak as all the others.”
Beatrice’s voice was low on the line.
“When I found Dylan, Knudson had made some … headway into his cutting. She had a broken arm, and a broken foot. Fractured cheekbone. I only reacted, and put a bullet in his head when he turned to me as I was coming at him.”
Dylan nodded. “And somehow, a wacko is using the same pattern as Knudson, to get back at me. And to Purgatory, probably.”
Beatrice sighed. “It doesn’t make sense. Purgatory’s involvement hadn’t been released to the press, and Dylan’s been a moving ghost for years. Why would someone go to all this trouble to reopen old wounds from the past?”
Owen came closer to the phone. “Dylan, have you been here longer than usual?”
“Yes, but I’ve kept my pattern random, and I don’t have anybody who really knows me here.”
“I disagree.” Owen turned to her. “Not that you have become complacent, but you grew attachments while you were here. Bear and Dee are both that proof. This means that someone found you and is watching you, knows who you are.”
“Okay, maybe, but who can be watching me? Who would know anything about my past, of what happened to me?”
He raked his fingers through his dark blond hair. “I don’t know. Not yet.”
A realization popped in her mind. “Wait, if someone is tailing me, it means he knows where I live. He knows you’re here with me. Sorenson, you need to get away from me, fast.”
The man shook his head, and as he crossed his arms, she knew he wouldn’t agree with it.
“Dylan, I’m on Owen’s side on this. I think you’re right about being observed, but it would be safer to have him nearby.”
“Beatrice …”
“I know, but your discomfort weighs little compared to your safety. I almost lost you once, I’m not going to risk it again.”
Dylan gritted her teeth. “That’s a low blow, Bea.”
“I know, my friend. And I’m ready to do even worse if it means you continue to breathe and curse at me at the end of the day.”
“Another option would be to flee tonight.”
Dylan shook her head at Owen’s suggestion. “I’m not leaving until we find Dee. And we have a better chance of discovering who is being the copycat by remaining here.”
“I will agree with your request, but you have to agree with mine.” Dylan recognized unyielding steel in her friend’s voice.
Dylan grounded her teeth. “Which is to keep Owen close by. I know.”
“And not to disappear. You want to move, fine, we will take dispositions. But no going under the radar alone, under any circumstances.”
Dylan didn’t want to answer that and tell a lie. But if it was what it took …
“Fine, when I want to go underground, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good. Now, I will relay your information to our team, start our search by digging in Knudson’s old files. We never know, something may guide us to that copycat.”
“I’ll do the same. Keep me posted.”
“Be safe, my friend.”
Dylan’s voice softened when she answered back. “You too, Bea.”
When she hung up, her body felt like lead. Dylan was so high-strung, she feared that a single movement would tear her down to pieces. Both her hands flat on the desk, she took deep breaths, forcing herself back into control. Owen moved, took a step in her direction, but she blocked him out.
“Don’t. Don’t come near, don’t touch me, not now.”
He didn’t speak, but stopped his advance. After a moment, she heard him walk away to the kitchen. The familiar noises calmed her down, as well as the distance. Feeling more like herself, she straightened as she saw him come out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs.
She forced herself to smile and took the mug, relieved that her hands had stopped shaking.
He had made tea. No surprise, it was the only hot beverage she drank in her apartment and the coffee he had brought would be cold by now. The liquid burned on the way down her throat, but she relished in the pain, as it grounded her even more, clearing her mind.
Owen stayed there, his mug in hand, patiently waiting for her cue.
“Sorenson, do not feel obligated to be here. This simple protection duty is turning into bad shit, so if you want out, I won’t hold it against you.”
Slowly, the man took a sip from his mug before answering. He looked eerily calm, but Dylan wasn’t fooled. This was a warrior who now had a mission, making him the most dangerous of all.
“I’m not going anywhere, so there’s no response r
equired. Now, there are two more things we need to deal with. First, you need to tell me how you want me to behave around you so you’re comfortable. Second, how do we take down that son of a bitch, or whoever is playing his part, once and for all?”
Chapter 7
Dylan wanted to crawl under the covers, fall asleep, and wake up in the next century. Too bad it wasn’t remotely possible. Her monster, in some form or another, had been raised from the dead, Bear was dead, Dee had been kidnapped—probably dead, too, by now—and a man who had taken the role of her protector was nowhere near leaving her apartment. It was difficult to fight tiredness, frustration, anger, and anxiety all at the same time.
The main thought emerging from her troubled mind was that Beatrice was the only person she had trusted since her trauma. And that intelligent woman personally picked the man currently waiting patiently for an answer. What did she want most? Being comfortably alone or capturing whoever toyed with her mind?
