“Connor?”
Sarah nodded and answered the call. “Hello Connor,” she said, trying to sound calm.
“If you want to see your husband alive, send me the woman,” Connor said, holding a gun to Conrad's head.
“He has a heat sensor device, Sarah!” Conrad yelled. “He can see through walls. That's how he's finding us.”
“Shut your mouth,” Connor yelled and knocked Conrad unconscious with his gun.
“Conrad!” Sarah yelled.
“I move very fast in the snow,” Connor warned Sarah. “I can find you at any second. All I want is your friend. You have one hour to send her out into the open. If you refuse, your husband dies, along with his pathetic friend.”
Sarah felt panic grip her heart. “Stay calm,” she thought, “stay calm.”
“I want Amanda out in the open,” Connor warned Sarah again. “I won't kill her...yet. But the time has come to make you understand that you are powerless here, so I must increase the pressure.” Connor looked down at Conrad with cold eyes. “I'm in control.”
“I saw you on the roof,” Sarah told Connor. “I emptied a full clip at you. You're not invincible.”
“I am now,” Connor hissed. “The mistake I made on the roof was inexcusable. I admit that. But that will be the last mistake I make.” Connor looked out at the snowy street. “When this storm ends, I will vanish with the snow. I know you're aware of who I am, cop. But when I leave your town, no one will ever know.”
Sarah saw a hideous snowman leer at her. “Even if you kill all of us, you'll never make it back to London,” she said. “You’ll be a wanted man. What's your game?”
Connor kept his eyes on the front street. “A soldier always knows where to hide,” he said in a creepy voice. “One hour, cop, or your husband dies. I'll be at the police station. No games,” Connor said in a voice that struck Sarah as strange.
Sarah put down the phone and looked at Amanda. But instead of bursting out into tears, anger filled her eyes. “This guy isn't going to win,” she whispered and squeezed her hands into two fists as she pictured Connor throwing Conrad onto his shoulder and creeping out into the snow in the form of a deadly snowman chewing a peppermint candy cane.
“Are you sure?” Amanda asked.
Sarah nodded and looked at Mittens. Mittens was sitting up at attention, focused and ready for action. “Connor Barker has a heat-sensing device.”
“Explain that to me,” Amanda said.
“He cut the power out, June Bug, and turned all the buildings freezing cold. The only heat sources remaining are heat from either a human or an animal, and that’s what his device can detect,” Sarah explained. She locked her eyes on Mittens. “I'm going to call the station house and force Connor Barker into a fit of rage.”
“But he might kill Conrad and Andrew.”
“I don't think so,” Sarah disagreed in a careful voice. “If Connor Barker wanted them dead, he would have simply killed them.” Sarah looked out into the kitchen. “I didn't realize it before, June Bug, because my mind was elsewhere...out in the storm...I should have realized it.”
“Realized what?” Amanda asked.
“Pride and arrogance,” Sarah replied. “Every killer has pride, June Bug...and that pride makes them very arrogant. You see, a killer wants to be admired as well as feared. A killer wants the world to know he…or she...is in complete control over the weaklings of the world. Connor is no different. The soldier in him is hard at work but the raw killer in him can't help but to resist a little and show off. Connor Barker wants to show everyone just how clever and deadly he really is...like a kid with a flashy hotrod showing off before winning a drag race.”
“Do all cops think like you?” Amanda asked and shook her head. “I'm sure glad you're at the wheel, love, because I would be scared to death to take the chance you're about to.”
Sarah rubbed her gloved hands together. “What choice do I have, June Bug? I can't send you out into the storm, and I can't let Connor Barker kill us. Pete gave me a weapon and I have to use it.” Sarah stopped rubbing her hands and looked at Amanda. “Connor Barker has been planning his attack for a while. And to be honest, the guy is in complete control. The only chance we have at victory is to manipulate his emotions and force the killer in him to silence the soldier.”
“Then what are we waiting for, love?” Amanda asked and picked up the phone. “Let's take Pete's gun and fire it into the air and see what we hit.”
“Let's get to work,” Sarah said and dialed the police station.
Connor picked up on the third ring. “You have half an hour left,” he told Sarah in a deadly voice. “Don't make me come down the street. I'm not in the mood for coffee. I am in the mood to kill your husband if you don't obey me.”
Sarah braced herself and then ran into the storm swirling in her mind. “Oh, go whine to your mother,” she snapped.
Connor froze. “Excuse me?” he said and looked back toward the cell area where he had Conrad and Andrew handcuffed and gagged. Then he focused back on the icy front room he was standing in and looked at the shattered front door. Snowdrifts had continued to pile in through the broken door and the flimsy decoy was half-covered now.
But Connor had never even seen the trip wire, hidden under the snow. The wire lay untouched, and Connor wasn't aware that it existed. It was mere luck that he had not stepped through it upon entering the building.
“I said, go whine to your mother,” Sarah snapped again. “Oh, wait, you can't…because she's locked away in a mental hospital.” Sarah drew in a deep breath and stared into the face of a grinning snowman. “Your mother belongs in a crazy house because she's a crazy bat.”
“Call her a stuffy muffin,” Amanda whispered.
“Your mother is also a stuffy muffin,” Sarah added in a quick voice.
Connor narrowed his eyes. “Shut your mouth,” he warned Sarah as rage began to seep into his voice.
“Why?” Sarah asked. “You're going to kill all of us anyway, so I might as well speak my mind.” Sarah continued to stare into the face of the grinning snowman. The snowman stopped grinning and hissed at her. “Your mother is a basket of soft fruit who deserved to get canned.”
“You—”
“Oh, shut up,” Sarah snapped. “I don't want to hear your pathetic excuses about how your poor, dumb mother suffered at the hands of other people.”
“My mother did suffer!” Connor yelled and kicked over a desk. “Because of the people who hurt her I was forced to go live with a woman who tormented me. In the end I got my revenge on her…”
“Go cry your lame story to someone who cares,” Sarah rudely interrupted, “because I don't want to hear another word. Why? Because the truth is, you're nothing but a sorry excuse for a man and your mother was a sorry excuse for a nanny. So what if you hit hard times in your life, boy? What, do you think you're special or something? Do you think no one suffers but you?”
“Shut your—”
“The truth is your mother is a mental case who enjoyed harming people,” Sarah plowed forward. “Maybe she practiced on you, did you ever think about that? Maybe she enjoyed harming you, too. I don't know what happened to cause her to finally snap—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I put my mother in the mental hospital to protect her!” Connor yelled. “She never would have laid a finger on me. That was only her sick, twisted twin sister who wanted to harm everyone and everything around her. My mother is mentally sound, cop! She just needed to be under protection in that hospital while I killed her enemies. Everything...every action...has been carefully planned!”
Sarah heard the soldier in Connor begin to break as the raw killer in him burst free. “Protect her?” she said, keeping up her pace. “Protect her from her disgusting, criminally dangerous son? Her psychopath offspring? Mental or not,” she continued, “your mother is soft in the head and I guess the rotten apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.”
“You're dead,” Connor h
issed and kicked over a chair. “I was going to kill you with one shot, but now you've made it personal. You’ll suffer before you die. I'll deal with Amanda later. I'm coming for you!”
“I'm so scared,” Sarah taunted Connor in a voice that was more brave than she felt. “Looks like your dear old mum failed to teach you any self-control. Oh wait, your dear old mum is a looney who couldn’t even teach you how to be normal.” Amanda gave Sarah a strange look. Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “I'm trying my best. I’ve never been good at insults,” she whispered. Amanda grinned and gave her a thumbs up.
“I'm going to make you eat your words!” Connor screamed as his rage finally took full control and forced the soldier inside of his mind to cower down in a dark corner. The vicious killer crawled out of a hidden closet in his mind and took full control. “I'm going to…I’m going to—”
“To kill me, yeah, yeah,” Sarah said. “Save it, crybaby,” she insulted Connor. “I've heard it all before. I can't tell you how many times a deranged idiot like yourself has threatened to kill me. Why don't you go cry to your pathetic, creepy...smelly mother?”
“Smelly?” Amanda asked in a whisper.
Sarah shrugged her shoulders again. “Did you hear me, kid?”
Connor’s eyes began dripping with hot tears that burned him like snake venom. “You're going to die a very slow and painful death, cop.” Connor grabbed his rifle. “Mother asked me to be cruel, but the army taught me to kill with one shot. I believe in mercy killings. I drowned my old man very quickly and shot my aunt dead without causing her any pain...even though she deserved to suffer.” Connor looked at the shattered front door. “Mother made me promise to torture Amanda more than anyone else. Amanda was the one person I couldn't grant mercy. But now, cop,” he hissed, “you're going to take her place. I'm going to teach you what real pain is. And while you suffer, I’ll make you watch as I put a bullet in your friend and end her miserable life.”
“You're really pathetic,” Sarah told him. “You actually think I care about who you killed in the past? I worked as a homicide detective on the streets of Los Angeles for years. I've grown numb to that kind of detail. I couldn’t care less who you kill. All I care about is smearing your face into the snow and embarrassing your mother. No one comes to my town and threatens me.” Sarah felt like a young high school kid telling another kid it was time to punch it out. “Don’t forget, I caught the Back Alley Killer. You're nothing compared to him…and neither is your stupid idiot of a lunatic mother.”
Sarah's words cemented the killer in place. The trained soldier in Connor completely vanished from his insane mind. “I'm coming for you.”
“Come on down,” Sarah taunted Connor. “I'll be waiting for you.”
“Will you?” Connor asked as a vicious grin struck his face. “You aren't trying to play games with me, cop?”
“No games,” Sarah said. “Show me your stuff, punk.”
Connor's grin widened as complete insanity took over his raging heart. “I will,” he promised and slammed down the phone.
Sarah quickly hung up and looked at Amanda. “Okay, June Bug, Connor Barker is on his way. Your job is to get out into the storm and—”
“And go free Conrad and Andrew,” Amanda finished for Sarah. “I assumed that was the plan,” she said. “And I'm to take Mittens with me.”
Sarah nodded. She tried to control the shaking in her hands. “I'm confident Connor is going to scan the coffee shop with his heat device,” she said and pointed at the heater and the solar generator. “Those two items will look like heat sources, which I'm hoping will trick Connor Barker into believing we're inside. In the meantime, I'm going to hide out in the snow...bury myself in a drift, and wait until he enters the coffee shop.” Sarah hurried Amanda and Mittens to the back door. “When Connor finds out he's been tricked, he'll move back outside and—”
“And you'll shoot him,” Amanda said.
“If I can get a clean shot,” Sarah admitted.
Amanda stared at the back door and listened to the storm howl outside. “How do I get to the station, love? I can't very well just walk up the street like I'm off on a picnic.”
“Go to the end of the alley, cut down Snow Owl Lane, make a wide loop, and then circle back around and come up Polar Cane Drive,” Sarah explained.
“That's a really wide circle,” Amanda said. “It'll take me a good half hour to make that kind of distance in this storm, love. The snow is up to our knees and getting deeper by the minute.”
“June Bug,” Sarah said and put her hands on Amanda’s shoulders, “if my plan fails and Connor kills me, he'll start searching for you. He’ll realize you’re not here, almost immediately. If I can’t take him out and he starts to follow your tracks...this will give you a little head start and maybe enough time to reach the station and free Conrad and Andrew.”
“Don't talk like that,” Amanda begged and hugged Sarah. “You're not going to die, do you hear me? We're going to grow old together and become two crabby old ladies fussing about how O'Mally's never gives proper discounts.”
Sarah felt a tear sting her eye. “I pray you're right,” she whispered and looked at Amanda. “You know, Pete keeps hounding me to move back to Los Angeles and pick up my badge again. I left Los Angeles after my husband divorced me in order to get away from everything that destroyed my marriage...but now, here I am, trapped in everything I was running from.” Sarah scanned the cold kitchen and focused back on Amanda. “I've been trying to run from myself, June Bug...from the snowman. But now it's time to fight. Maybe Connor Barker will kill me...maybe he won't. But if I don't fight the snowman...the snowman will continue to haunt me.”
Amanda looked deep into Sarah's eyes and saw a scared woman but a very brave cop. “I know why Pete wants you back, love,” she whispered. “You're really something special.”
“No,” Sarah objected, “I'm nothing special. I'm only a woman who is tired of being scared.”
“That's not true,” Amanda said. “You once told me it was Pete who helped you capture the Back Alley Killer. And maybe Pete did help out some, but it was you, love, who went after that savage animal.”
“And in return,” Sarah confessed, “the snowman came to life. Each case...each murder...represented a snowflake that slowly began to build the snowman.” Sarah put her hand on the doorknob. “We all have our own monsters to face, honey...for better or worse.”
Amanda hugged Sarah. “Because you've never stopped fighting your monster, love, a lot of people are very safe tonight.”
“Tell me that after I threaten your hubby if he tries to take you away from me,” Sarah whispered and opened the back door. “Hurry,” she begged.
Amanda looked out into the storm as the icy winds crawled into the kitchen and began grabbing at her face. “What do I do if I reach the station and manage to free Conrad and Andrew?” she asked in a scared voice.
“It should be all over by then,” Sarah explained. “If it isn't...Connor will try to kill you. All you can do is fight back with everything you’ve got.” Sarah walked Amanda out into the stormy alley and looked up into a low, dark gray sky flooded with powerful snow. “Hurry,” she urged Amanda.
Amanda hesitated, looked up and down the alley, made a pained face, and then ran off with Mittens. Mittens looked back at Sarah and let out a low whine. “Love you too, girl,” Sarah whispered and quickly closed the back door, looked around, spotted a deep snow drift, and began burying her body in the cold snow. Five minutes later, a dark figure appeared in the alley carrying a deadly rifle and a black hand-held device that looked like a scanner. The figure eased up to the back door, aimed the device ahead of him, and stood very still.
“Very good,” Connor grinned, reading the heat sources coming from Sarah's office. If the soldier in him had been in charge, Connor would have realized that one heat source was stronger than the other and that both heat sources were not transmitting human body heat. But because the killer in him was in full control, filled with murd
erous rage and hungry for vengeance, Connor saw the heat signature on the screen and simply allowed his rage to consume him: he needed to reach Sarah and Amanda. “Now it's time to play,” he said, and without any hesitation, he threw down the device in his hand, prepared his rifle, kicked open the back door, and charged into the coffee shop like a wild animal entering a den full of chickens.
Sarah eased her head out of the snowdrift she was buried in, brought out her gun, aimed it at the back door, and waited for Connor to return outside. “Okay, snowman,” she whispered in a trembling voice, “it's time to die.” I'll never die, the snowman hissed at Sarah and began laughing insanely. I'll never die...I'll never die...never die…
8
What had begun as a funny dilemma for Amanda – the return of an old nanny – was now about to end with Sarah fighting a nightmare within her own heart. Instead of battling a mean old British nanny, intent on driving Amanda insane, Sarah was now tucked inside a freezing snow drift waiting to get a clean shot at a vicious killer, hoping to conclude a very serious game without any further deaths. “Come on,” she whispered through chattering teeth, feeling her body turning into an iceberg, “step outside...just one shot...”
Connor Barker didn't hear Sarah. He was standing in Sarah's office looking at a heater and solar generator with fury in his eyes. “No!” he yelled and kicked Sarah's desk so hard the desk toppled over, hit the heater, and unplugged it from the solar generator. “No!” Connor spun around and ran out of the office, searched the kitchen, threw his eyes at the back door, and aimed his body back toward the storm, not knowing that Sarah was outside in the alley, hidden in a snowdrift, with her gun at the ready. “Where are you?” he hissed, stepping out into the storm. As soon as his white boots hit the snowy alley, he saw a man shoving a woman forward in the distance. “Ah,” he grinned. “Right on time.”
Sarah saw Connor step out of the back door of the diner and realized she had a perfect, clear shot at him. She held her breath and began to squeeze the trigger, then saw his eyes dart to the right. She followed his gaze. “No,” she whispered, spotting a cruel man shoving Amanda forward through the snow.
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