by Tara Meyers
There were probably others.
A predator likes to stalk its prey. If Chris could connect enough of the dots, just enough, she could finally be awarded a search warrant for the home, phone, and computer of Martin Eastabrooke. He might be smart and cunning, but everyone eventually made a mistake.
Encouraged by the thought, Chris finally smiled, and stopped her manic motion in the family room. Looking at the clock on the wall, she was surprised to discover that it was nearly six. Why hadn’t Andrew called back yet? Of all the times for him to not pounce on an opportunity to hit on her!
Sighing, she turned to head for her bedroom and a much-needed shower, but a slow prickle of apprehension along the base of her spine made her stop. Cocking her head, she tried to interpret the goosebumps breaking out on the flesh of her arms and legs. Deciding that the cooled sweat from her run was simply making her cold, she stepped into the shadows of her bedroom and reached for the light switch at the same time.
“I didn’t think you were ever going to join me.”
Jumping in shock at the smooth voice that greeted her, Chris turned to discover Martin Eastabrooke sitting in the middle of her room.
***
Her first instinct was to run. But then Chris saw that in addition to the knife in his left hand, he was also holding a gun in the other. Cringing, she recognized the weapon, and glancing at the empty shoulder harness hanging on her bedpost, confirmed that it was her own service firearm.
“Yeah,” Martin said coyly, following where she looked. “Sorry to add insult to, well … insult, but it was handy.”
“How did you get in here?” Chris demanded, ignoring the bait.
“Does that really matter?” Leaning forward, the overhead light cast his jaw into sharper angles, and his grey eyes glinted like steel. “We have much more important things to talk about, don’t you think?”
When Chris crossed her arms and stared back unflinchingly, the murderer sighed and slouched a bit in the chair, apparently disappointed with her reaction.
“The window,” Martin explained, pointing towards it with the knife. “Given your history Chris, I would think you’d invest in an alarm system.”
Paling, Chris chastised herself for showing any outward sign of emotion. It was what he wanted. He was toying with her.
“So you can use the name search feature on Google. Congratulations,” Chris replied, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. “But I don’t think your concern for my past is why you’re here.”
Shaking his head, Martin crossed one leg over the other, in much the same gesture as Andrew had earlier that day. The relaxed pose was his attempt to make her fear feel insignificant and his power over her complete.
“You’re so quick to judge me, Chris. What happened to you when you were sixteen was extraordinary! That man was responsible for the death of how many girls?” When Chris remained silent, he continued without pause. “But you managed to escape. Tell me, why didn’t you change your name? The killer is still out there.”
Clenching her teeth together, Chris drew upon the hate she kept neatly coiled deep inside on a daily basis. “I chose not to live in fear. To do so would have given him that victory, and I’ve got a strong dedication to disappointing serial killers.” Her voice didn’t break, and she never looked away from his cold stare.
“Do you know what the greatest mistake is, between the prey and its hunter?”
An icy fist was firmly grasping Chris’s chest, and she struggled to take a breath around it. Martin Eastabrooke was a genius, and when you combined that sort of intelligence with a sociopath, the result was very dangerous. She already knew the answer, but let him tell her nonetheless.
“Underestimating them. You underestimated me, Chris, and I’m afraid that it’s going to cost you your life.”
“You know that’s not true,” she snapped, her voice rising slightly. “You’re my only suspect in the murder of three women. You’d be the first one they arrested. You’d never get away with it and you’re smarter than that.”
Chuckling, he uncrossed his leg and stood slowly to his full height of six-foot-two. With his muscular build, he knew he was intimidating, and the move was effective, compelling Chris to take a step back involuntarily. She saw the pleasure at her fear cross his face, and a wave of nausea washed through her. He had a plan. Of course, he had a solid plan.
“I’ve been watching you for the past three years.”
This admission caused such a vile rage to engulf Chris that she nearly gasped. The thought of this monster watching … studying her was unbearable. She felt violated. Her home, where she thought she was safe, was only a façade. Tears threatened to form and Chris drew upon the raw emotions to instead focus on the man in front of her. The only way out of this was to out maneuver him.
“You’re a loner, Chris,” he continued. “No close friends, no family nearby, and although you’re one hell of a looker, no boyfriend. Now tell me, is that because of a deep-rooted fear created by your past, or just that you think you’re too good for anyone?”
While he was talking, Chris consciously made the switch from defensive to offensive. In order to get out of this alive, she was going to have to fight. There was another gun under the seat cushion of the sofa. If she could draw him out into the other room, she might be able to reach it.
“I haven’t met anyone interesting lately,” she answered casually. Gotta keep him talking.
A low buzzing sound from the other room began, making Chris jump. It had to be Andrew trying to call her back.
“Expecting a call?” Martin asked, motioning towards the kitchen with the gun.
“Work. They like to keep close tabs on me.” The buzzing stopped, and the silence it left behind felt final.
“I can understand that. I’ll bet they didn’t even know you stopped at my house this afternoon.” Titling his head a little, the crooked grin indicated that he already knew the answer. “That was a rookie move. I was a little disappointed in you. But I suspect you were getting a little desperate, and I did slip up, didn’t I?”
Chris’s face burned red from humiliation at how clearly this man had been ahead of her every step of the way. Never again would she make such obvious mistakes. He was right; she did underestimate him.
“None of that really matters though,” he stated, waving the gun at her. “Because you see, this has all gotten to be too much for you. This investigation has stirred up emotions you’re unable to deal with. You’re alone, depressed, overworked and unable to sleep. It will be perfectly understandable when your suicide is discovered.”
Chris winced when she thought back to the text she sent Andrew. It would play right into his scenario.
“My only dilemma,” he continued, taking a step towards her, “is how you would do it. Women don’t usually shoot themselves. However, you are a cop, which puts you in a different class of women, so I think it’ll work.
The casual manner with which he discussed her murder was unnerving. Chris had interviewed sociopaths before, but this went beyond anything he’d ever experienced. She was struggling to come up with something to say to him. Playing to his ego wouldn’t work, since he didn’t care what other people thought. He had no empathy, no sense of guilt or remorse. The only thing she’d been able to determine was that her fear gave him some sort of pleasure. Swallowing all of her pride, Chris did the only thing she could think of to stall him.
“Please,” she begged, cowering slightly and retreating several steps beyond the entrance to the bedroom. “I don’t want to die.”
His handsome features transformed into something reminiscent of a hungry wolf as he advanced on her, and Chris almost wished that she could take the comment back. But it was working.
Throwing the knife behind him, Martin reached out and grabbed her right wrist, yanking her towards him. With her face turned upwards mere inches from his, the madness was clearly visible, as if the mask he normally wore had been torn off.
“We all have to d
ie,” he snarled, his breath hot on her mouth.
As he shoved her to the floor, next to the couch, there was a sudden knocking at the front door.
Five
It was horrible timing.
Chris was just reaching for the Kimber 45 that was stashed under the couch cushion, hiding the motion by using the couch to try to pull herself back up. But the insistent pounding on the door compelled Martin to silence her before she could call out.
A crushing weight drove her back to the floor, as the killer launched himself at her, wrapping his free hand around her mouth from behind. The cold barrel of the Glock was pressed to her temple, prompting her to stop the natural urge to resist.
“Shooting you now means I’ll have to make you disappear, instead of staging a suicide,” he whispered, his face nestled intimately with her own. “It would mean a little more work for me, but that’s okay. I’m flexible. However,” he continued, pulling back harder on her mouth and forcing her into an obscene, backward embrace, “I would rather not bury two bodies. If you value whoever is at that door, you won’t do anything that would cause them to come inside. Comprendre?”
Nodding vigorously, Chris tried to think clearly. Who could it be? She rarely had guests, and they were almost never uninvited.
“Chris! Chris, I know you’re in there. Answer the door!”
Tensing, Chris was both relieved and concerned to hear Andrew. He probably thought her text meant she’d changed her mind about his offer to come over and help. He must have already been on his way to her house when he returned her call. Would he try the door? She didn’t think she’d locked it when she came in from her run, because she’d been in such a hurry to find out if her hunch was right.
“Who is it?” Martin demanded of her. The sites on the pistol cut into her skin painfully.
Did he know who Andrew was? Searching her memory, Chris didn’t think that he’d been around the two times she interviewed Eastabrooke. His claim to have been stalking her may or may not be true. Even if it were, she and Andrew had rarely spent any time together outside of the office or crime scenes. Odds were that he wouldn’t have a clue that Andrew was a CSI.
“My neighbor!” Chris spat, hoping she sounded convincing. “He’s been hitting on me since I moved in here three years ago.”
Just go away, Andrew! Chris thought. She’d rather take her chances with Martin Eastabrooke on her own, without dragging her partner into it.
But as Martin hauled her to her feet and turned her to face the door, the doorknob rattled. The question as to whether it was locked was soon answered as the door flung inward. Standing in the entrance was Andrew, a bottle of expensive red wine in one hand. Well, at least her fantasy earlier had been correct; there would have been wine involved.
“What the hell!” he shouted, taking in the scene the way only a trained cop can. His reaction was instant. Dropping the bottle as he simultaneously reached behind him with the other hand, he had his weapon drawn about the same time he completed the exclamation.
While Andrew was quick to take up a defensive position, he wasn’t quick to shoot, since Chris was in the way. Martin, however, had no such constraints. Before Chris even realized what was happening, the gun was removed from her head and firing.
The discharge at such a close range instantly ruptured her right eardrum, but she hardly felt it. The shot finally triggered her fight or flight instinct, and the sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream caused several, cascading physical reactions.
Her vision narrowed, blackening at the edges, and through the distant ringing in her ears, she could also hear the pounding of her own heart due to her hearing receding. Her muscles tensed as her pupils dilated, and the surge of energy was almost overwhelming, causing her breaths to come in quick, ragged gasps. Drawing upon her defensive tactics training, Chris sprang like a wild animal at the site of her friend and partner falling backward from the impact of the bullet.
Biting savagely at the hand placed conveniently in her mouth, Chris snarled around Martin’s fingers and reached for the outstretched arm of his gun-hand. Surprise was her only advantage, and she squeezed the pressure points while pulling his arm down into her rising knee.
The solid impact, howl of pain, and falling gun were all satisfying, but short-lived. Chris shoved back against Martin’s chest to put space between them while she twisted around, but he was already recovering from the initial countermoves.
There were no rules in a battle for life or death, and his bleeding fist found purchase in her long, thick hair. Her forward motion was painfully stopped, and Chris felt roots rip loose when she continued to twist in spite of the hold. Her success in facing him was met with a punch to the left side of her head, but she must have caused some damage while disarming him, because the blow wasn’t hard enough to hurt. Either that or she was so pumped up on adrenaline that she couldn’t feel the full effect.
Before he could land another blow, Chris put her runner’s legs to good use and gave a solid kick to his crotch. As his knees buckled involuntarily, she grabbed at her hair with both hands, close to her scalp, and pushed off his chest with her right foot. She lost some more hair, but managed to tear free.
Stumbling away from him, she looked around frantically for the dropped gun. Chest heaving, she absently ran a hand across her face, smearing both blood and spit back with her tousled hair. Finally spotting the weapon under the coffee table, where it had spun away on the hardwood floor, Chris lunged for it at the same time as Martin.
The wooden piece of small furniture shattered under the assault, when both of them crashed into it from opposite directions. Although dazed by the impact, Chris batted the wood aside and ignored the large splinters of wood that pierced her leg.
Her hand landed on the Glock first and she gripped the familiar stock in her palm, but Martin scrambled on top of her before she could bring it around. Wrapping her up, she still managed to struggle to her feet with him on her back, but they ended up in a stance as if they were on the range, and he was trying to teach her how to shoot. Except this was a deadly dance, and Chris was at an obvious disadvantage.
She couldn’t let go of the gun.
Grunting in either pain or rage, or maybe both, Martin attempted to pull her arms inward, so that her elbows would end up splayed outward. Chris knew that he would then twist her hands upward, while holding the gun, ending with it pointing up and under her chin.
Time seemed to slow down, while she watched her own hands drawn in closer to her face. Then, in slow motion, she noticed Andrew at the fringe of her narrowed vision, struggling to sit up. The sight of him caused the strangest of thoughts to cross her mind. While he was six feet, she still considered him on the margin of being tall enough to date. At five-foot-ten, Chris had high standards, and if it weren’t for the fact that Martin was a serial killer, he would have been the perfect height, due to where his head fell in comparison with --”
Time abruptly rushed back to normal as Chris explosively threw her head back, shattering Martin’s nose. Blood erupted down her back before she even had a chance to stumble forward, released from his death grip.
Swinging the gun around, she continued to back away, toward the open door and Andrew. Confronting him, a sense of both elation and cold terror coalesced within her. Although blood poured down his face and had already saturated the front of his shirt, his teeth flashed white behind the macabre mask.
The sickening, coppery smell of blood mingled with the sweet aroma of the wine when Chris stepped in the puddle on her kitchen floor. Andrew had managed to roll onto his side, and clutched at the wound in his chest. It was hard to tell where his blood ended, and the wine began.
“Touché,” Martin purred, clapping his hands together slowly twice, then three times. “And the hunter becomes the prey. Tell me,” he continued, spitting blood onto her floor. “Did you figure it out yet? Do you know where I meet my girls?”
Shuddering slightly, Chris refused to allow herself to b
e manipulated by him. “Get on your knees!”
Instead of complying, he took one slow, small step towards her, his grin spreading and turning into more of a sneer. “All I want to do is talk.”
All her senses prickling, Chris brought the gun up a few more inches, and took her own, menacing step forward. “I said, on your knees!”
Pausing, trying to gauge her, the sociopathic killer deliberately raised his hands, perhaps having recognized something in her eyes. “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, detective,” he cautioned.
Tilting her head slightly, Chris was vaguely aware of Andrew calling her name. Ignoring him, she took another step, out of the wine and onto several splatters of both hers and Martin’s blood. “You think much too highly of me,” she whispered.
The sound of the gunshot filled the room, and as Chris watched his body collapse, she knew she’d never be the same.
THE END
Want to read the first full-length novel? It’s free with the Kindle Unlimited program! Echo Of Fear
(Keep going for the 1st chapter)
Echo Of Fear:
Chris Echo thought a private island in the South Pacific would be the perfect escape from the terrors of her life as a CSI profiler. But shortly after retreating to the tropical setting, she finds herself trapped in the middle of something far more dangerous.
Kyle Stone is battling his own demons. And it isn’t anything a remote luxury island can fix. After a long undercover mission, he and the guerrilla band he’s infiltrated are traveling to an exchange when a storm washes them ashore. The resort’s guests are taken hostage, and he can either keep his cover intact or save their lives. To complicate matters even further, there’s a beautiful captive who may just be his salvation.
