Such a Pretty Girl

by Tess Diamond

  Right in front of the gate, two figures were sitting on a bench, locked in serious conversation. The man got up, gesturing toward the gate. The girl with him—her face was turned away from Gavin—looked toward the gate, then back toward Carthage.

  “Dorothy!” he yelled, increasing his speed, running full out, pulling his gun. “Get away from him! Run!”

  Carthage grabbed her, lightning fast, before she could even react. Gavin’s gun was up and on him in a second as he finally closed the space between them.

  “Not another move,” Carthage said, looking meaningfully at the knife held to Dorothy’s throat.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Dorothy,” Gavin told her as Carthage began to retreat toward the gate, dragging the girl with him. Gavin touched his radio in his ear. “I need backup on the north entrance,” he said. “You’ve got nowhere to go, Carthage,” he warned.

  “One of Grace’s lapdogs, I see,” Carthage sneered, his knife pressing hard against Dorothy’s throat. She whimpered, her kohl-lined eyes widening in horror. “I don’t recognize you from before. You must be new.”

  Gavin’s mouth flattened. Of course he’d been stalking Grace’s team too. God, how long had he been planning this?

  “Let the girl go,” Gavin ordered. They were out of the park now, close to the curb, where a van was parked.

  “I’ll slit her throat if you come any closer,” Carthage threatened, a manic gleam shining in his eyes.

  “Please,” Dorothy begged. “My little brother needs me.”

  “It’s okay,” Gavin told her again, even though it was anything but. What could he do? Let Carthage take her, hoping he’d keep her alive long enough so he could use her to hurt Grace? He couldn’t be sure Carthage wouldn’t just murder her as soon as he could.

  Gavin’s hands tightened on his Glock, his mind racing as Carthage reached for the van door.

  Gavin leapt, his body reacting before his mind could process anything. It was all protective instinct, a feral urge that roared through him as he launched himself at Carthage. The man cried out, pushing Dorothy into the van and whipping around to Gavin, slashing at his face.

  The knife sliced through his skin, and he felt his forehead split as Carthage dragged the blade down across his eyebrow, toward his eye. Gavin jerked back, blood slicking down his face in sheets. Shit. The bastard had got him good.

  Carthage vaulted into the van and shut the door. Gavin lunged forward, scrambling for the door handle, the blood in his eyes making it impossible to find. “Dorothy!” he shouted, his fingers clasping the handle just as Carthage hit the gas. Gavin held on, his feet dragging against the pavement as Carthage sped away. He could smell burned rubber and blood. Carthage wove the van back and forth, trying to shake him off like a dog with a flea, but Gavin hung on.

  Then Carthage hit the brakes, and Gavin was propelled forward by the abrupt stop. He managed to hit the ground rolling, his hands protecting his head as his right side scraped against the asphalt. He forced himself to his feet, chasing after the van, but it sped away, making a right and disappearing.

  Gavin hit his radio. “Harrison,” he panted. “Suspect is in a white van. Headed north on State Street. He got the girl.”

  Blood was still pouring down his face. He tried to wipe it away with his sleeve, but his cuff links scraped against the open wound, making him flinch. As the adrenaline was absorbed by his body, he became aware of just how hard he’d hit the asphalt. His entire side was raw, his button-up shredded from the impact. It ached dully, but he knew it’d hurt like hell soon.

  “Gavin! Oh, my God.”

  He turned, and the horror on Grace’s face was something he never wanted to see again.

  “I’m okay—” he started to say but she didn’t let him finish. She closed the space between them in two steps, her hands hovering for a second over his face before her lips pressed urgently against his. He knew he had to taste like hell—like blood and fear and anger—but she was like a cool drink of water after a week in the desert.

  “What did he do?” she asked when they pulled apart. Behind her, he could see agents pulling up, Harrison jogging forward. Grace pulled off her sweater, pressing what was probably five hundred dollars’ worth of cashmere against his wound like it was nothing. “We need a medic!” she called over her shoulder.

  “He got Dorothy, Grace,” Gavin said miserably. He stumbled a little. The leg he’d fallen on was shaking. “I tried to hold on to the van, but I couldn’t get the door open. He braked and I went flying.”

  “He could’ve killed you,” she said. “You are not allowed to do that!”

  “What, die?” he asked. He would’ve raised an eyebrow, but that was a little hard right now.

  “Yes!” she snapped, heedless of the irrationality of her statement. “You aren’t a spy anymore,” she said, lowering her voice. “You have a team now. You have me . . .” She stopped herself before she could say more. “No more pulling a James Bond,” she ordered.

  Normally, he’d make a quip about martinis or Aston Martins, but instead he met her worried eyes. He smiled at her, trying to be reassuring, because he could tell she was genuinely shaken. And because it warmed him more than it should, her worry over his well-being. “Promise,” he said, and watched as the tension eased from her body.

  She was learning he kept his promises, and he was glad, because he wanted to make all sorts of promises to her.

  “Shit, Walker,” Harrison said, finally catching up to them. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  Gavin shook his head. No way was he wasting that much time. “I just need someone to stitch me up,” he said. “This isn’t over. We’ve got to get Dorothy back.”

  Grace pressed her sweater harder against his forehead. It smelled like her, and it was the one good thing in his life right that second, so he breathed it in.

  “We’re going to get her back,” he told Grace, because she looked like she desperately needed to hear it.

  It was a vow.

  And he intended to keep it.

  Chapter 27

  “Walk me through it again,” Maggie said.

  Grace looked up at her friend, her eyes burning with exhaustion. It had been twelve hours since Carthage had taken Dorothy, and there’d been no call, no contact of any kind. Now that this was a kidnapping case, Paul had brought Maggie in to advise. They’d set up in the north conference room, but so far, they were dead in the water.

  “He’s obsessive. Meticulous. But this is out of character for him.”

  “He kills people—he doesn’t take them,” Maggie summed up.

  “We’ve got thirty-six hours, tops, to get her back,” Gavin said from his spot in the back of the room. The massive cut on his forehead had been seen to, twenty stitches arching through his eyebrow. The road rash from his fall from the van was bad—she still couldn’t believe he had hung on to a moving vehicle for that long. The forensic techs who had examined the scene had said he must’ve held on for at least a hundred feet, going at least sixty miles per hour. He could’ve been killed. It was amazing he didn’t have a concussion or broken arms or ribs or a fractured skull. When she told him as much, he’d shrugged and said, “You have enough older brothers, you learn how to fall.”

  He’d been unable to meet her eyes since she’d come in with Maggie, and she knew why: He was blaming himself for not getting to Dorothy fast enough.

  God, Carthage could’ve taken his eye. Any other person would’ve flinched—the instinct was rooted deep in the human psyche to protect your sight. But Gavin had forged ahead, ignoring the danger and pain and blood, desperate to get to her.

  He’d done all he could. She knew that.

  There was a dark part of her that was grateful that Dorothy got to see someone fight for her before . . .

  Don’t go there, Grace, she ordered herself. Dorothy’s alive, and you’re going to get her back.

  “The call that comes next is important,” Maggie told Grace. “Kidnapping isn’t Carthage’s modu
s operandi. He’s not a professional, and he’s not after money.”

  “He’s after me,” Grace said.

  “He’s not going to get you,” Gavin growled.

  Maggie raised a delicate eyebrow at the possessive rumble in his voice. Grace shook her head slightly when her friend shot her a questioning look.

  “He’s more liable to mess up here than anywhere else,” Maggie said. “He’s going to be spooked but trying hard not to show it. Taking a live victim, keeping her quiet and restrained—that’s a huge stressor. He’s going to need you to guide him to the right conclusion.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” Grace asked. She valued Maggie’s insight more than anyone, but she wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

  “Your suffering is his version of ransom,” Maggie explained. “He took Dorothy for one reason: to hurt you.”

  She was right. Grace wrapped her arms around herself, feeling very cold all of a sudden.

  “The killing’s not enough anymore,” Gavin said grimly. “It’s over too quickly for him.”

  Grace frowned. There was a bleakness to his face that she’d never seen. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “He took her to torture her, Grace,” he finally said. “And because he’s not experienced, he’s going to end up killing her, even if he doesn’t want to right away.”

  Grace swallowed, a horrible lump rising in her throat at his words. There was something in his face that told her he understood torture. She thought about the thin, obviously old scars on his feet—the ones she’d noticed their first night together. They’d used rubber tubing to beat him, leaving those marks. They’d caused microfractures in the bones of the feet that hurt more than anything, but they wouldn’t leave much of a mark on the surface unless the torturer got sloppy.

  “I need to find him,” she said.

  “He will call,” Maggie reassured her. “There is no way he’ll be able to resist. He needs to experience your suffering.”

  There was a knock on the conference room door and Paul looked in. “Grace, I need to talk to you,” he said.

  Grace took one look at him and knew what was coming before she even got to her feet and followed him to his office. It was in his face, in the tense line of his shoulders, in the way he refused to meet her eyes.

  She didn’t even bother to sit down before saying, “You want to take me off the case.”

  Paul sighed, sitting down behind his desk. Grace took a seat across from it, folding her arms in front of her stubbornly.

  “The press is going crazy, Grace,” he said. “They love this story. And it puts a magnifying glass on this case. If there are any screwups . . .”

  Irritation prickled across her skin. “Have I screwed up?” Grace demanded. “Because as I remember it, I’m the one who realized the murders were serial, I figured out how they were connected, and I handed you your killer.”

  “Because you used to date him!” Paul said. “I’ve talked to Special Agent Cortes. He’s willing to step in.”

  “Cortes?” Grace said incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Cortes is a fine agent,” Paul said. “And an excellent profiler.”

  “Cortes is very good,” Grace admitted. “If this was a human trafficking case, he’d be your guy. But his specialty is sex crimes. He’s never worked a serial case, has he?”

  Paul’s silence said it all.

  “I’ve handled over a dozen serial cases since I joined the Bureau,” Grace said. “On more than half, I was lead profiler. And all but one ended up with the perp in prison. And you’re telling me you’re going to bring in a less specialized profiler and it’s going to be fine?”

  Paul’s lips flattened in a hard line, disapproval radiating from him. “You have a personal connection to this case. I should pull you off just for that.”

  “That’s the exact reason why you shouldn’t pull me off,” Grace explained. “Carthage’s obsession is with me. You heard him on the phone. He loves me.”

  “You mean he thinks he loves you,” Paul said.

  Grace shook her head. “It would be stupid of me to dismiss his feelings,” she said. She wasn’t going to be stupid when it came to this. Not after he took Dorothy. She had to consider every angle, every word Carthage said to her, every action he’d taken so far. Everything had meaning, and something was going to lead her to him. Some small detail that seemed insignificant—until it didn’t.

  Paul blinked, baffled. “He’s a serial killer; how can he even love?”

  “It’s not our version of love, clearly,” Grace said, getting up from the chair. She needed to move around. The crawling feeling, like phantom bugs walking across her skin, was back. It was easier to ignore when she was moving. “But to him? It’s real. For him, love is ownership. He sees himself as Pygmalion. In his mind, I’m his creation who’s gone rogue. If you take me out of the equation now, he’ll stop engaging with law enforcement. We’ll have no hope to get Dorothy back safe. He’ll kill her and dump her body.”

  She placed her hands on Paul’s desk and leaned over, meeting his eyes dead on. “He would disappear, Paul. You could spend years chasing your tail, trying to find him, while he’s off killing whoever suits his sick fantasies. Think about that before you pull me off this case. Think about the kind of damage he could cause for years before he’s caught.”

  She couldn’t let that happen. Deep down, it terrified her, the idea that Paul would pull her off. Because deep down, she knew if that happened, they wouldn’t lose just Dorothy.

  They’d lose any chance to get Carthage.

  And she would have to make a choice.

  She knew herself. She could deny many things, but the part of her that understood the darkness in people, that saw the most violent and vile parts of human beings, knew there really was no choice.

  She would have to go rogue and hunt him down on her own. And if she did that, she wouldn’t be bringing him back in cuffs.

  He’d be in a body bag.

  “Please, Paul,” she said, softening. She knew the exhaustion was showing on her face, in her messy braid and tired eyes. “We’ve worked together for years. I’ve been right so far. Have some faith in me.”

  He sighed, rubbing at his mouth, avoiding her gaze for a moment. “I don’t want you getting hurt,” he admitted quietly.

  Her heart squeezed. “This is reminding you of the Thebes case,” she said. How could she have missed it? She’d been so wrapped up in her own chaos, she’d completely forgotten to factor in Paul’s issues.

  “Two of my team got overpowered on my watch,” Paul said. “I got tied to a chair with enough C4 to blow me to kingdom come strapped to my chest. That I could deal with. But that little girl was right there next to me, dying, all because that bastard wouldn’t give her insulin. And even that I could deal with. At least when it happened, it’d be quick. She wouldn’t hurt. But then . . .” His voice faded. He knotted his hands together in front of him, his head hanging.

  “Then Maggie walked into that cabin,” Grace finished for him. “And she made him put her in the vest.”

  “My goddamn life flashed before my eyes, Grace,” Paul said, his face haunted. “I’d made my peace with it—how she and I ended—but how could I accept being the cause of her death?”

  “She didn’t die,” Grace reminded him gently. “And I’m not going to either.”

  “You said it yourself, Grace: He thinks he owns you,” Paul insisted. “And if growing up with four sisters taught me anything, it’s that when a typical man thinks that way, it’s dangerous. Hell, it can be deadly. When a serial killer thinks it? It’s both.”

  Grace was about to argue when there was a knock on Paul’s office door. Gavin was waiting on the other side when she opened it. “He’s on the phone.”

  “Grace—” Paul started, but she ignored him, racing down the hall and back to the conference room, the two men following behind her. Zooey had arrived, already trying to trace
the call as Maggie hurried over to her.

  “Grace, I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Paul said. “Maybe Maggie should—”

  “Maybe Maggie shouldn’t,” Maggie said, shooting Paul a quelling look. “She’s the only one he’s going to engage with, Paul. She’s the anchor here.”

  Paul folded his arms across his chest, looking torn. “Fine. Let’s see if we can get an actual trace this time, Zooey?”

  “It’s hard, with the signal bouncing all over, boss,” Zooey explained as Maggie pulled Grace aside.

  “Okay, remember what I said,” Maggie directed. “He’s out of his depth here. He needs to be dealt with delicately. Don’t show your anger.”

  Grace nodded, her heart hammering in her chest. Dorothy’s life was on the line. She couldn’t screw this up.

  “You can do this,” Gavin said behind her.

  She took a deep, steadying breath and hit the speaker button on the phone.

  “Carthage,” she said.

  “Once again, someone’s got hurt because you’re too caught up in your world to notice anything or anyone else,” he spat, his anger dripping off his voice like bitter molasses.

  “Have you hurt Dorothy?” Grace asked, trying as hard as she could to keep the rage out of her words.

  “I was talking about that agent of yours,” Carthage sneered. “Walker, was it?” He tutted. “He got in my way. He was quite determined. Very noble. I hope I didn’t mess up his face too much. But maybe he’ll get a pity fuck out of you, if he’s a good boy.”

  Grace bit the inside of her lip, refusing to glance over at Gavin, even though she wanted to.

  “Is Dorothy okay?” she asked.

  “She’s a screamer,” Carthage said, and there was a delighted, sickening double entendre to his words.

  Grace’s stomach clenched, her fingers curling into fists. “If you’ve raped her—” she started, only to be cut off with his cruel laughter. The sound curled around Grace like a tentacle. She could barely stand it, the feeling of being trapped, of the world tightening around her, no room to breathe or run.