Grace’s whimper crescendoed.
Val let go.
“Step away.”
God help her, she did.
Where in the hell was that cop?
When Lund had first heard Hess’s voice drifting through the intercom system, he’d thought it had to be a recording, a joke, something.
It didn’t take long to figure out it was real.
He tried the door out of the interrogation room again, even though he knew it wouldn’t budge. Damn, damn, damn. He was trapped. Utterly helpless. And just feet away Hess was going to kill Val, he was going to kill Grace. And Lund could do nothing but listen to them die.
How long could it take to salt a sidewalk?
“Oh, don’t be upset about him.” The voice again, over the intercom. “He had it coming. You know he did.”
He heard a soft mewing, probably Grace.
That poor, poor girl.
He jerked the door latch again and again, but nothing he did mattered.
“Check him,” Hess ordered.
Time ticked by, finally Lund picked up Val’s faint voice. “He’s dead.”
“Too bad. Look at him, hanging there. Pitiful.” Hess sounded happy, almost giddy. “He was the one who started this. Kelly never would have left if it wasn’t for him. She was mine.”
Lund’s throat tightened. Years ago, he’d come to terms with the fact that Kelly didn’t love him. He’d been her savior, and he’d told himself that was good enough for him. But he didn’t believe for one second that she belonged to Hess.
He never would.
“He took her away from me.”
“You didn’t love Kelly.” Val’s voice sounded strong. Unbowed.
“I didn’t say I loved her. I said she was mine. The baby was mine. Schneider and you and the lawyers, none of you had the right to take them from me.”
Lund’s mind stuttered. He couldn’t have heard right.
What baby?
A metallic clink sounded. At first Lund thought it was the cop walking back into the building. Then he realized it came over the speaker.
“Put them on. Hands in front.”
Handcuffs.
“Do it.”
“I … can’t. I have a problem with my hand.”
“Do it or Grace gets cut.”
“Please. I’ll let you put them on, but I can’t fasten the other side myself.”
The braced open outer door rattled.
Lund sprang for it, pulling it open. “It’s Hess—”
Words jamming in his throat, he stared into the barrel of a gun for the second time that day.
“Back off. Hands up,” the rookie said.
Oh, hell. He did as she ordered. “Hess is in the station. He has Val and her niece, and Schneider and Oneida, too. I think Schneider is dead.”
“Turn around. Hands against the wall.”
“You have to call for help. You have to stop him.” He didn’t want to have to take the gun from her, but he would try. Even if it likely meant getting shot in the process. “Listen. The intercom is on. You can hear him.”
She paused.
Silence from the speaker.
“Against the wall.”
“You can’t think I’m making this up.”
“Do it. If what you say is true, I’ll release you.”
He blew a breath through tight lips. “All right.” He assumed the position. She clapped the handcuffs on one wrist then the other.
“Now go call for back up.”
“Not until I know you’re telling the truth. Come on.”
She marched him out into the hall.
He waited to hear Hess’s voice, to prove to the rookie that what he said was true.
She stepped up to the door leading into the station just as Hess’s voice reached them. “What do you say I start by carving my initials in her cheek?”
Lund twisted around, trying to meet Schoenborn’s eyes. “Is that enough proof for you?”
Too late.
She’d already hit the button signaling someone in the dispatch center to buzz her in.
Val was still struggling to close the handcuff around her left wrist when the buzzer sounded.
She froze. Her heart beat hard enough to break a rib. The reality of the situation cut into her like the cold edge of Hess’s blade.
Any surprise entrance Becca and Lund might have made was gone. All the killer had to do was look into the dispatch center monitors and he’d know they weren’t alone.
She could only pray Becca had called for help. That a tactical team was waiting to charge in, somehow out of sight. But even as she concocted the scenario in her mind, she knew it was impossible.
Gripping Grace by the hair, Hess dragged her into the dispatch center and looked up at the monitors, then down at the paperweight depressing the intercom’s talk button. “Think you’re smart, huh?”
Then before Val could make sense of it, he hit the button and the door buzzed open.
Lund stepped through first, his hands behind his back.
Becca followed, pushing Lund in front of her with one hand, she held her gun in the other.
Val opened her mouth to warn them about Hess, but stopped before uttering a sound.
Because Becca didn’t need a warning. She had to have heard Hess’s voice over the intercom. She had to know he was here.
Becca shoved Lund a few steps in front of her gun, then turned a smile on Hess. “Hi, Daddy. I’m home.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
“Daddy?” Val echoed. She glanced from Becca to Dixon Hess and felt something inside her snap.
All along the question had been not who wanted Kelly dead, but who wanted her found. And the only answer was Dixon Hess.
And the daughter nobody knew about.
The rookie had been the one to discover Kelly’s body, not Lund. She’d found her while on routine patrol. She’d also been the one to pick up garbage from the shore, including the tissue with Lund’s DNA.
Val hadn’t noticed before, but every bit of evidence pointing to Lund as Kelly’s murderer had come from Becca. She’d had her hand in it all. It was as clear to her as a signed confession. “You killed Kelly. Didn’t you, Becca? You found her. And somehow forced her to walk out on that ice.”
“I had to. He was innocent.” She stared at Val, looking the same as she always did, young, pretty, a good cop in the making.
How could this be happening?
“Put him over there.” One hand gripping Grace’s hair and the other holding the knife, Hess nodded to a chair one of the sergeants had left in the doorway of his cubicle. “And throw some leg shackles on him.”
Becca marched Lund dutifully to the cubicle wall, shoved him into the chair and brought out the chains.
All the instances when Hess knew things he shouldn’t have ricocheted through Val’s mind. Tamara Wade’s well-timed habeas corpus motion. Grace’s schedule at school. The hotel where Monica and Derrick were staying.
Becca knew or could have easily learned all of those things, then conveyed them to Hess.
There was only one thing she couldn’t account for. “How did you let him know about Schneider? Since you found out, you’ve been with me.”
Becca peered up from her task and shot her a look of disdain a high school mean girl would envy. “You think I didn’t know until tonight? You were the one who sent me to Harlan.”
Harlan. She should have figured that. Harlan would tell an attractive woman like Becca everything she wanted to know. And a few more things she didn’t.
“You really were indispensable, Valerie.” Hess chuckled. “Guess you were telling the truth. You do believe in justice.”
Val leaned back against the wall outside her office door and tried to stay upright.
Grace.
Lund.
If not for her, neither one would be here. If not for her, Hess never would have hurt Oneida. He never would have learned Jeff Schneider set him up.
It really was all her fault.
The overhead lights flickered. Once. Twice. Ice weighing down the power lines outside.
“So now you’re going to kill us?” Lund asked.
“Not all. Not right away.” Hess pulled Grace’s hair, forcing her head back, her body tight against his chest.
A low sound came from her throat, a shuddering moan, as if she was too afraid to form words. Blood trailed down her cheek and neck.
Her beautiful niece. Her brilliant niece. The girl whose greatest joy was helping someone else.
“Grace is going to die first.”
“No.” Val lurched forward before she was aware she was moving.
Hess brought the blade to her niece’s throat. “Stop.”
Somehow Val found the strength to halt.
“Back up. Against the wall. Or it’s over right now.”
Her breath rasped in her ears, mixing with the mewing again coming from Grace.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
What was she thinking rushing him like that? Hess wasn’t a man she could intimidate with a rush of action. She needed to stall, buy time. She needed to keep him talking, find a way out of this.
She returned to the wall and eyed the front door.
She was close, only a few feet. Not that she would ever run out and leave them in the first place, and she supposed Hess knew that. But as bad as the weather was, no emergency calls had come in since she arrived. Without car wrecks to keep them busy, officers would eventually return to the station, especially those called in to deal with the ice storm.
“You’re thinking someone is going to come back and save you, aren’t you Valerie?”
Bringing her focus back to Hess, she kept quiet. She’d telegraphed her thoughts by looking at the door, and she wasn’t about to open her mouth and give him more insight.
“No one’s coming.”
“They’re all very busy,” Becca said. “It only sounds quiet because the county has taken over dispatch. We have a weather emergency out there. The interstate has gotten worse. It’s totally blocked.”
She sounded happy, like a little kid talking about a snow day.
Val wanted to jam those shackles down her throat.
“What I was saying was that Grace dies first. Don’t worry, Valerie, I’ll make it painful and slow.” He traced the blade up Grace’s neck and over her lips, then nodded toward Lund. “And fireman here will sit and watch, unable to do anything to stop me. Helpless. Worthless. Impotent.”
Lund sat expressionless except for a muscle working along his jaw.
Becca yanked the chain tight around his boots and turnout pants, then trussed his legs together.
“And Valerie?” Hess said.
She turned her attention back to him.
“Do you know what you’ll be doing?”
“Planning how I’m going to take that knife and gut you?”
He smiled, showing teeth so straight and white that even with her vision problems she had little trouble seeing them. “Maybe, maybe. But you’re also going to stand there and know that this never would have happened to our little Grace if it weren’t for you.”
He pressed the blade into the skin of her cheek.
Grace screamed and struggled to jolt away, but his grip prevented it.
A sob stuck in Val’s throat. The pair of cuffs still dangling around her left wrist rattled and hit the wall, but she didn’t move. Not this time.
“That’s better.”
“Then what will you do next?” Lund’s voice sounded even, strong.
Val forced herself to breathe, to think. Yes. Keep him talking. Look for an out. Lund was obviously thinking along the same lines she was, at least as she had been before fear for Grace had wiped her mind utterly clean.
“After our pretty little Grace is dead, then it’s your turn, hero.”
“Lund never did anything to you,” Val said, somehow finding a remnant of strength in her voice. “The only thing he testified to was your affair with Kelly.”
“True. And I’ve caused him a good deal of pain. But his death is really about you, Valerie. All this has really been about you. And from what Rebecca has told me, you have a little crush on the firefighter here. So you get to see him die, too.”
His words didn’t shock her anymore. Nor did the depth of Becca’s betrayal. Now she could feel all of it gather into a toxic ball and harden in the pit of her stomach.
“And then you kill me,” she said.
“You don’t get off that easy.”
“You don’t kill her?” Becca’s voice squeaked. Finished with Lund, she straightened and rested her hand on her holster.
“He wants me to live on, to know what I’ve lost, to know he’s taken everything I loved.”
“You were listening.”
“I was.”
“Then let’s get started, shall we?”
Val lurched away from the wall. She needed something more to stall him. Anything. But her mind was nothing but a scream.
She would do anything to save Grace. Anything. She would willingly lay down her life, not even hesitate.
That was it.
She turned her head to look at Becca.
That was how Becca killed Kelly. How she convinced her to walk out on thin ice. “You threatened her baby.”
“For God’s sake, what baby?” Lund said.
She should have told him. Fuck her job, her duty, her case, and her damn insecurities. She should have told him everything and let the rest fall as it may. “Kelly’s baby.”
“My baby,” Hess said. “My son.”
She turned to Hess, talking to him now. “Did you ever ask her how she convinced Kelly to go with her? How she forced her to step out onto the ice?”
He lowered the knife from Grace’s throat and stared at Becca. “Where is he?”
She shook her head. Glancing from Val to Hess, she took a step backward. “I don’t know. I never knew.”
“Then why did she willingly go with you?” Val asked.
“I had a gun on her. I was going to kill her if she didn’t. Drowning or shooting, it didn’t matter how she died, just that she did. Just that someone found her.”
Val didn’t believe her. It mattered. A lot. Becca had gone to great lengths to stage Kelly’s drowning death, to make it public, to make sure she was found, to make sure Lund took the fall.
“The DNA test. You took that tissue from Lund’s house, didn’t you? You broke in when he was at the fire station.”
“So?”
“No, shooting her wouldn’t fit. You made sure Lund would be the one who pulled her out of the water, that his DNA would be discovered on that tissue, that I would arrest him for murder. The ice storm made all of this work out differently, but that was the original justice he was supposed to face.”
It was half a guess, but it must have been a good one, because Becca said nothing.
Val turned on Hess. “What would make Kelly walk out on the ice? She’s lived in Lake Loyal all her life. She knew it wouldn’t hold her weight. She knew if she stepped out there, she was marching to her death. Why would she be willing to die without fighting back?”
“Where is he?” he repeated, louder this time.
The tension he’d been keeping on Grace’s hair slackened, all his focus now drilling into his daughter.
“I was the one who got you out.” Becca’s voice was soft, pleading.
The lights flickered again, then went out. A second passed before the generator kicked in, bringing back the emergency lights and instruments in dispatch.
Becca took a step toward her father. “I killed her for you. I did everything for you.”
Behind the rookie cop, Val noticed Lund moving his hands behind his back.
She returned her focus to Hess, but neither he nor Becca seemed aware of Lund at all, every ounce of their energy focused on the other.
“What did you do with my son?” Hess took a step forward, dragging Grace along.
&n
bsp; She tripped on Oneida, bobbled and fell to her knees.
Val was off the wall, moving forward when Hess released her hair, letting her tumble on top of the injured dispatcher.
He raised the knife and stared at Val. “Don’t move.”
She took two steps back and raised her hands, palms out. She couldn’t let him focus on Grace or pay too close attention to Oneida. “Ask her if the baby’s still alive.”
He looked back to Becca, again focused on what he wanted, what was his, what his own daughter had kept from him.
“I’m the one who loves you,” she said, her voice high-pitched like a little girl’s. “I would do anything for you. I have done everything. Where the baby is doesn’t matter.”
“My son is all that matters.”
“I matter.”
“What did you do with him?”
Becca rolled her lips toward her teeth. Even in the dim light, Val could see the sheen of tears in her eyes.
Val risked a glance in Lund’s direction. Smoke curled from behind his chair, just a wisp.
The lighter he’d had in her office, the one he’d used to demonstrate flame and smolder. He was setting fire to one of the old, fabric cubicle walls.
Even with the power out, the alarms would go off. Help would come.
“She killed him,” Val blurted out.” She killed your baby.”
Hess stared at her, those cold eyes burning. He started toward Becca. “You killed him?”
“I did not.”
“After we noticed Kelly’s caesarean scar, I had divers search the lake. We found his body.”
“You didn’t!”
Val didn’t want to think too hard about what she was doing. She needed to distract Hess, she needed to give Lund a chance. “You’re a rookie, Becca, and a part-timer. There are a lot of things that go on around here that you don’t know.”
“You took my son? You?” Hess stepped toward her.
Becca raised her weapon, first pointing at Val then at Hess. Her hands shook, tears now streaming down her cheeks.
Smoke built and spilled into the room. Becca had to have smelled it. From where he was standing, Hess could see it.
The alarm shattered the air. Water showered down from ceiling sprinklers.
Val dashed for Grace.
Pushed Too Far Page 19
