by Jami Alden
“Get who in trouble? Kate?” CJ asked as he ducked under the deck.
“The lady, from the TV. I didn’t want her to see the treasures. And he, he got so mad.”
Tommy’s stomach churned with fear. “What did he do? What did he do to the lady from the TV?”
“T-took her. Like he t-took the others,” Christian choked out.
“Where?” Tommy fought the urge to grab the kid by the shoulders and shake it out of him.
“What’s going on? What you are doing?” A thickly accented female voice rang through the air. Magda ran over and shoved Tommy out of the way to kneel next to her son. She cupped his face in her hands and crooned to him in an Eastern European language he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Ask him what happened to Kate,” Tommy said through clenched teeth, feeling like his chest was about to explode.
“He took her on a boat,” Magda said. “He had a gun and he took her on the boat.”
“Do you know where?” Tommy asked, fear turning his blood to ice.
“No,” Magda said softly. “Christian doesn’t know where he took her. He never takes them to the same place twice.”
The realization that Magda must have known about John’s activities before now sent a ripple of shock through him.
“You’re the one who gave Kate the newspaper clipping,” CJ said. Tommy surged to his feet and walked out from under the deck.
“I thought I could help,” Magda said softly as she walked out after him, clinging to Christian’s arm. “I give a clue, point in the right direction—”
“It would have helped if you’d gone to the police years ago and stopped him!” Tommy wheeled around on her.
Magda began to cry softly. “He would send me back to Hungary without Christian, told me he would hurt him.”
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you or Christian,” CJ said quietly, “as long as you tell us everything you know.”
Tommy wanted to punch a wall, he was so infuriated. Magda might have finally had a crisis of conscience and given them a crucial clue, but there was nothing she could do to help them find Kate.
He listened impatiently as CJ scrambled a helicopter and several search and rescue boats. Within ten minutes, a boat from Bonner County Marine Patrol pulled up to the dock to pick up Tommy, CJ, and Deputy Roberts. In the meantime, another deputy had arrived to take a statement from Magda and Christian.
“I have no idea what his end game is or how he thinks he’s going to get away from us,” CJ said as the boat rumbled out into the water
Tommy’s jaw clenched. “There’s over a hundred miles of coastline and lots of places to hide for someone who knows the lake well.”
“Every boater and Jet Skier on the lake will be looking for him. We’ll find her, Tommy.”
Chapter 31
Kate didn’t think she was out for long, but it was long enough for John to bind her hands and feet tightly with zip ties and shove her to the deck of the boat. He hadn’t gagged her, but the rumble of the boat’s engine was loud enough to drown her out if she tried to scream.
CJ knows you were with John. Tommy does too. As long as you’re still alive, you can be found.
But how long would it take before they even thought to look for her? The only person who knew she was in trouble was Christian, and he’d bolted in a panic when John arrived. Would he think to tell anyone what he saw?
She’d stayed quiet, keeping a wary eye on John as he sped over the water, his head darting anxiously around, keeping his distance as much as possible from the other boats. After a while he slowed the boat down and finally parked it along the shore in a U-shaped cove that backed into a densely wooded area that looked completely deserted.
“I’d hoped to have more time to prepare for our trip,” John said tightly as he jumped down onto the beach to drive the anchor into the sand. “But your little discovery pushed up my schedule a bit.” He hopped back on the boat and stood over her, shaking his head like she was a disobedient child. “There you go again, Kate, ruining my plans. I was already going to punish you for Tricia. Now I’m afraid it’s going to be much, much worse.”
He moved so quickly she didn’t even have a chance to brace herself before his foot connected with her stomach. She gasped in pain, barely able to breathe as he drove all the breath from her lungs.
She curled into a ball, bracing herself for a blow that didn’t come. Instead he was digging through the storage bins under the padded benches that lined the sides, clearly agitated when he didn’t find what he was looking for.
Kate tracked him as he paced, tapping his foot, checking his watch and the sky.
She didn’t know what he was waiting for, but if she had to guess, she’d say he was waiting until dark to start moving again.
Eventually he sat down in the captain’s chair, and though Kate tried to ignore it, she could feel his stare burning a hole through the top of her bent head.
“It could have been so different, you know,” he finally said. “If you had only understood how much I loved you.”
Her head snapped up. “You loved me? Is that why you planned to kidnap, rape, and kill me like you did to those other girls?”
“I never wanted to hurt you. I thought if I could get you alone for a while you would understand how much I cared for you—”
Her mind reeling, Kate said, “Is that why you kidnapped and beat Tricia? Because you cared for her? You think Ellie Cantrell and Stephanie Adler felt cared for when you were beating them to death? You’re a monster. I don’t know how I never saw it.”
“I’m not a monster!” John roared.
Fear pulsed through her as he surged to his feet and loomed over her, his face a furious mask, a thick vein throbbing in his forehead.
“I loved them! I loved them all! All I wanted was to love them and to care for them, but they were all a bunch of ungrateful bitches who weren’t capable of understanding how I honored them.”
His hands reached for her and Kate scrambled away until her back hit one of the bench seats.
Then with a shake of his head he seemed to catch himself, the fury dimming. “I never wanted to hurt any of them,” John said, sounding almost grief stricken. “But they would be so mean to me, so disrespectful, and I would get so angry…” His voice trailed off. “It always started out as a punishment.”
Kate swallowed back a surge of nausea, remembering his promise to punish her.
“It all worked out for the best, though,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact, stripped of any trace of grief. “If they couldn’t accept my love, I could hardly let them go.”
“So you had to kill them,” Kate said.
“I can’t let betrayal go unpunished,” he replied. For a brief second, a softer, wistful expression came over his face. It quickly disappeared, his expression once again stone cold. “But then she tried to leave me too. For eight years I gave her everything she could have ever wanted, and she showed me her gratitude by trying to sneak off in the middle of the night.”
“Jennifer didn’t commit suicide then,” Kate said.
“No one ever gets to leave me,” John said coldly.
Kate felt a surge of pity for the woman.
Something of it must have shown on her face, because he sneered, “Don’t feel sorry for her. She was living in a trailer park with her meth-head mother who made her do disgusting things in front of a web camera to pay for her drugs when I rescued her. And when you think about it, you can blame her for what happened to Tricia.”
“How so?” Kate could barely choke the words out, disgust made her throat so tight.
“If she hadn’t tried to leave, I wouldn’t have needed to find someone new to love,” he said as though the answer were obvious.
“And now you’re back to me, full circle. You think you’re somehow going to convince me to love you?”
His mouth pulled into a smile that sent a chill straight to the bottom of her soul. “You think I want to be loved by Tommy Ibarra�
��s whore?” He squatted down until he was on her eye level. “You lost your chance a long time ago. But I realized the other day, when I had my hand around your neck, your body against mine, you could serve another purpose.”
Kate swallowed back a surge of bile as he reached out with one hand and ran his hand over her shoulder, down her chest until it covered her breast. His fingers closed over the curve, squeezing until tears gathered, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out in pain.
“While I want my lovers to give themselves to me freely, I find that being around them inspires certain urges—” He gave her breast a meaningful squeeze to make his point. “After everything you’ve put me through, I think it’s a fitting punishment for you to be the one to satisfy them.”
As he bent closer, her gaze zeroed in on the gun held loosely in his other hand. If she could just get her hands on it…
She flung her head forward as hard as she could, satisfaction surging through her as she heard the crunch of bone as her head made contact with his nose. He staggered back, and she hurled herself at his gun hand, her bound feet making her clumsy.
She scrambled with her bound wrists and managed to knock the gun out of his hand. She threw herself on the deck, grunting as his knee landed in her back. He flipped her over and she struggled to secure her hold on the handle as her thumb fumbled with the hammer. A metallic click, her index finger closed over the trigger—
In that split second John grabbed her wrists and twisted. There was a sharp pop, and pain exploded in Kate’s chest.
The gun clattered to the deck as Kate fell back against the bench. She was vaguely aware of him picking up the gun and shoving it in his waistband, screaming something about her not getting off this easy.
She wanted to tell him the pain wracking her was anything but easy, but she couldn’t get the words past her lips.
She chalked up the dimming of his voice and the retreating of his footsteps to her battle to stay conscious, and it took her a couple moments to realize he’d left the boat. Was he coming back? Had he left her there to die?
Either way she had to do something or she was going to die, either tonight from the gunshot or later when he was finished with her. Adrenaline rushed through her as her body gave a last gasp to save itself. She pushed to her elbows and knees, forcing past the pain as she inchwormed herself over to the captain’s chair.
It took several minutes, but she managed to struggle to her feet. Though she knew it was a long shot, disappointment wracked her when she saw the empty ignition.
She was about to sink back to the floor when her gaze snagged on a panel built into the dashboard. Her heart kicked into a flutter as she read the dark, glossy lettering of the built-in GPS system. Tommy had used the GPS on her phone to track her that day in the woods.
Kate hoped this worked the same way, because her strength was fleeing as adrenaline faded.
She fumbled her bound hands toward the on button, keeping a wary eye out for Burkhart all the while.
She pressed the button, uttering a prayer of thanks as the display lit up. It’s working.
Tommy spent the next few hours in an agony of helpless frustration as he fruitlessly scanned the lake for any sign of Burkhart’s boat from the deck of the sheriff’s rescue cruiser. Dozens of volunteers were searching the lake and the beaches by water and air and had thus far come up cold.
With a little digging into the purchase history of Burkhart’s boat, Tommy was able to get a line into the onboard GPS system.
Which would give them the ability to pinpoint Burkhart’s exact location. That is, if it had been turned on.
Psychotic or not, Burkhart was clever enough not to risk it, just as he hadn’t risked taking his or Kate’s cell phone with him on the boat.
Which left Tommy’s electronic tracking skills essentially worthless. If they wanted to find Kate, they would have to rely on good old-fashioned eyes in the sky and feet on the street. Or on the lake, as it were. Unfortunately, Burkhart’s boat, similar to so many others, had been spotted going in every direction imaginable, which narrowed the search area to roughly one hundred fifty square miles of water.
And that was assuming he hadn’t ditched the boat already and found another mode of transportation.
While Tommy fruitlessly scanned the lake, he thought about what he’d learned from Burkhart’s banking records.
Judging from the sizable transfers Burkhart made overseas within the past thirty-six hours, he’d been preparing to run. Tommy felt his stomach clench at the amounts in question. With that amount of wealth and the relative ease with which he could access it, if Burkhart managed to get over the border, he’d have unlimited resources for a life on the run.
You can run, but you can’t hide, motherfucker. I will not lose her again, not to you, not to anybody.
As though the universe heard him, there was a shrill beep and vibration from the phone in his pocket. He jumped, startled, as he dug it out. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline at what he saw on the display.
“What?” CJ asked.
“I think we might have found her,” Tommy said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.
Though he didn’t want to get his hopes up—it was possible Burkhart had ditched the boat at the location displayed on the GPS tracking app Tommy had set up and someone else had turned the system on—he couldn’t stop the rush of anticipation.
After a hoot of excitement, CJ took down the coordinates. “He’s up toward Oden Bay. I’ll get everyone out in that direction ASAP.”
Tommy frowned. “If we go that way, he’ll see you coming three hundred yards out. You spook him, he could hurt Kate.” Assuming he hadn’t… he didn’t even want to go there.
“There’s no other way to access the shore there,” CJ said impatiently.
“That’s not true. If you go up Sunnyside there’s a trail that goes down to the beach. It’s only about two miles through the forest.”
“I’ve never heard of any trails up there.”
“It’s not on a map—it’s just an old game trail we used for hunting.”
“So where exactly is it, and how is that better than approaching from the water?” CJ asked, still sounding skeptical.
Tommy tried to explain. “You got about four miles up Sunnyside from where it splits off Railroad. Trust me, it’s the best way.”
CJ studied him for a moment, then: “Deputy, take us back to Burkhart’s. We’ll take Tommy’s truck up to the trailhead.”
Even though Tommy was sure this was their best chance at getting the drop on Burkhart, his gut was twisted with doubt. If he was wrong, if he fucked up, if Kate got hurt…
“I hope I’m not making a huge fucking mistake trusting you,” CJ muttered as they motored up to the dock in front of Burkhart’s house.
“That makes two of us,” Tommy said grimly.
Hang on, Kate. Hang on and I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Chapter 32
Tommy broke several traffic laws as he sped his truck to the trailhead, CJ and Deputy Roberts following in the cruiser. Even though the app would sound an alarm if Burkhart’s boat moved from the current location, Tommy checked the screen compulsively. He pulled to a stop just past the split tree and loaded his Beretta while CJ pulled the cruiser up behind him. He pulled his M1A hunting rifle from behind his front seat, along with a pair of binoculars that could switch to night vision mode once the sun went down, and strapped his KA-BAR Tanto to his calf for good measure.
“You’re certainly prepared,” CJ remarked as he loaded up his own M1A. “How accurate are you with that thing?” he asked, eyebrow cocked as he looked pointedly at the rifle slung over Tommy’s shoulder.
“A thousand yards, iron sights. I was first in my class in sniper training, and I’ve made sure to keep up my skills. You?” He nodded at CJ’s gun.
“Last fall I caught a bull elk in the eye at six hundred yards. Foggy day too.”
Tommy gave a grunt of approval, check
ed the magazine on his Beretta, and tucked it into his waistband. “Hopefully we won’t have to find out who’s the better shot.” He slipped on an earpiece and a mike and headed into the trees.
I should just leave the bitch to die, John thought viciously as he paced up and down the beach. He’d had to get away from her, afraid he would pull out the gun and finish the job, once and for all.
No. That would be too easy. After the way she treated him, turned her nose up at him, ruined everything for him, she deserved far worse than to die of a simple gunshot wound.
But as he climbed back on the boat and saw Kate slumped on the deck, he was afraid matters were out of his hands. Cursing viciously, he bent and slid his hand to her throat. Her pulse fluttered weakly against his fingers, but if she didn’t get medical attention soon…
His plan was to wait until dark to slip into a marina, boost a car, and from there head to the Canadian border. As he looked at Kate, her naturally pale complexion gone nearly gray, her lips bleached of all color and her chest moving in short, shallow breaths, he knew she wouldn’t make it that long.
He flung himself in the captain’s chair. The sun was heading behind the mountains, but full dark wouldn’t come for another hour and a half. Dammit. He would just have to go now and take the chance of someone seeing him.
So what if someone does? he reassured himself. There’s no reason for anyone to think Kate is in trouble or that you’re even involved. By the time anyone figures it out, you’ll both be long gone.
He grasped onto that, pushing the doubts aside. He’d had close calls before, and still no one ever had a clue. This wouldn’t be any different.
As he went to insert his key into the ignition, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. His stomach pitched to the floor when he registered what it was.
The green light, indicating that the GPS navigation system had been turned on.
Locating them would be child’s play for a technical expert like Tommy.
