by Dee Davis
“Wait a minute,” Nash said. “Run it back. About two minutes.”
Harrison hit rewind and then play, and they all leaned forward in anticipation, staring at the shadowy shape of the Jeep.
“There.” Nash pointed to the screen, and Harrison froze the image. “By the bushes. See?”
Sure enough, there was a darker shadow. Taller than the surrounding shrubs by a foot or so. Harrison hit play again, and the shadow detached itself from the bushes.
“That’s got to be Draper,” Tracy said. “Is there any way to make it clearer?”
“I can try.” Harrison nodded, centering on the shadow and hitting keys to try to pull the image into sharper focus.
The computer whirred to life, and the image enlarged, the shadow clearly becoming the figure of a man. He moved forward, then bent and placed something under the back of the Jeep, straightened, and after a quick look at the houses across the way, disappeared into the bushes again.
“Go back to where he looks up,” Tyler said. “The light hits his face for like a second. See if you can freeze it and enlarge.”
Harrison moved to the proper time setting and then ran the footage from there, freezing the frame just as the man looked out toward the street in front of him. The light hit his face, and as Harrison enlarged it, the face took on the shape and features they knew to be Jeremy Draper.
“Looks like we’ve got visual confirmation that he was behind the explosion,” Tracy said, “which, tied with the microscopic evidence we have for the blood from the back kitchen wall, means we’ve got him dead to rights, if we can just find him.”
“So what about the rest of the security cameras? Is there anything in the report to give us an idea how he got on campus in the first place?” Nash asked, leaning back in his chair with a frown.
Harrison flipped through the pages of the report. “There was nothing on the tapes that suggested an unauthorized person trying to get in. In fact, they were able to visually verify everyone in the footage.”
“Wait a minute,” Tyler said, still staring at the enhanced image of Draper by the Jeep. “What’s he wearing?”
“A jumpsuit?” Tracy shook her head, clearly not following Tyler’s train of thought.
But Harrison followed it instantly. “A Sunderland jumpsuit.” He typed in another command, zooming in on the breast pocket. At first the image was blurry, but with a little adjustment, Harrison cleared the focus and the Sunderland crest filled the screen. “He’s been masquerading as one of us.”
“That still doesn’t explain how he got through the checkpoints,” Nash said.
“He probably didn’t,” Tyler shrugged. “There are all kinds of ways to access campus on foot. And if you’re paying attention, it isn’t even that hard to avoid the cameras. But once on campus, especially with the lockdown, it would be harder to avoid detection.”
“Unless he’s hiding in plain sight,” Nash said. “No one would think to question a maintenance man.”
“So then he’d have used the same way to get her out?” Tracy queried. “Surely that would raise more suspicion. I mean people might overlook a guy in Sunderland garb, but if he’s hauling a woman with him, I’d think that’d raise questions. I mean after all, it was broad daylight when this happened.”
“So maybe he never left the campus,” Avery said, striding into the room. “Good to see you guys made it.” He nodded at Tyler and Nash. “I’ve just been having an interesting conversation with one of the cafeteria ladies. She’d forgotten her purse in the haste to evacuate yesterday. So she came back for it this morning, and on her way out of the building, she saw a man with a wheelbarrow walking away from the quad.
“It registered because she thought that the sack in the wheelbarrow was moving. She thought it odd, but wrote it off to her imagination, because when she shifted for a better view, the sack was perfectly still, and the guy was clearly staff. She didn’t think anything else of it until she saw on the news that Hannah was missing. So she called the security office, and they sent her to me.”
“So you’re thinking he’s holding her someplace on campus?”
“What better place than a warren of deserted buildings?” Avery posed. “And right under our noses to boot.”
“So how do we go about searching?” Tracy asked. “If we aren’t careful, he’ll know we’re on to him and kill her before we get the chance to rescue her.”
“Well, I figure we have two things in our favor,” Avery said. “First, he likes to take his time with his victims. If I remember correctly, you said the original murders took place a full twenty-four hours after the women were abducted. He’s bound to know there’s a ticking clock, but even if his MO is evolving, he’s still going to need time to work up to fulfillment of the fantasy.”
“You do realize,” Harrison said, his fingers tightening on the edge of the table, “that the fantasy you’re talking about involves torturing Hannah.”
“I do,” Avery acknowledged. “And I also realize that we can’t separate our personal feelings for her from the situation we’re dealing with. But we have to try. It’s her only chance.”
Harrison nodded, knowing that Avery was right. But it was so goddamned hard.
“You said there were two things,” Tracy prompted, offering Harrison a moment to pull himself together.
“Yes,” Avery said. “The second is that if this guy is truly interested in punishing Harrison, he isn’t going to play this out in a vacuum. He’s going to want to share the play-by-play.”
Hannah came to slowly, the plaster ceiling above her coming into focus only with great effort. She could feel blood dripping into her eye and down the line of her nose. But with her hands bound, there was nothing she could do about it. As the world stabilized, she took the chance and looked toward the end of the bed.
Draper was still there, adjusting the lens of the camera he’d set up on the tripod. His attention for the moment was centered on the photographic equipment, so Hannah took the opportunity to check her bonds. This time there was no give. He’d even tightened the rope holding her feet so that she could no longer raise her body.
Obviously, the man was quick on the uptake. She watched him through half-open eyes, looking for something—anything—she could turn to her favor. He was tall, and as she’d already witnessed, incredibly strong. His hair was cut short, military fashion, and he had a tattoo on his arm. A snake curling through some kind of shield, two M60 machine guns angled on either side.
This guy wasn’t going to be easy to outwit, but she was determined to rise to the challenge. And his need to screw with Harrison might just buy her the time she needed to figure out where she was and, hopefully, convey that fact to Harrison. But to do that she had to survive whatever hellish things Draper had in store for her.
There was no way he was going to provide Harrison with video images unless there was something to show him. On the surface, the idea scared the shit out of her. But deep inside, she knew that, if necessary, she could survive almost anything. She’d done it before. And somehow she’d find the strength to do it now.
According to Madison and Tracy, this guy only got off when his victims showed their terror. And that was something Hannah had learned to compartmentalize a long, long time ago. It was going to take a lot for him to break her. And with any luck, Harrison would find her before that happened.
Draper finished futzing with the camera and walked over to the bed. “Good,” he said, smiling as he bent over her. “I’d hate for you to miss anything.”
She lifted her gaze to his and spat, hitting him on the chin, thankful that she’d had a foster brother who’d thought it a useful skill.
He hit her, backhanding her this time. But she took satisfaction in the fact that she could rile him. He stared down at her a moment, his eyes reflecting anger, not excitement, and despite the pain, she took joy in the fact that she’d managed to score a point. He moved back to the camera, adjusting something and then turning it on.
W
ith a smirk, he picked up a hunting knife, the kind with a serrated edge. And as he walked back over to her, careful to leave the line of sight to the camera unobstructed, she had to fight against rising panic. She wouldn’t give in. She couldn’t.
Steeling herself, she watched as he lifted the knife and, with a self-satisfied smile, made an incision in the lower quadrant of her abdomen. The pain was instant and so intense it robbed her of breath. But she swallowed her scream—staring up at him defiantly.
But his smile only widened as he lifted the knife again, and this time she turned away, staring at the far wall, concentrating on the yellow sign and the letters GHS visible now in the light from the camera.
The cut this time was shallower than before, but the pain was just as intense. She sucked in a breath, still staring at the sign. G_ _H_ S, her mind, desperate for anything to take her away from the pain, suddenly recognizing the spacing and making sense of the letters. Good Things Are Happening At Sunderland. GTAHAS. It was an annual party at Sunderland, dating back to the founding days.
The barrel and the oar were for making hurricane punch.
Her heart started pounding as Draper ran the knife edge along the new incision, but she forced herself to ignore him. To concentrate on the sign.
She was somewhere on campus.
Another image filled her mind. The metal bed—from a dorm. She felt a flood of triumph. But almost as quickly she remembered the earth-filled window. She wasn’t in a dorm. She was underneath it.
The color yellow danced before her eyes like a beacon. Her mind scrambled to make sense of the message, but her head was growing cloudy again, so she closed her eyes and let the pain carry her away.
CHAPTER 29
I’m not sure I can watch this anymore,” Harrison said, gut churning and heart twisting as he watched Draper cutting into the woman he loved. “Goddamn it.” He pushed away from the table in the computer room, shaking off both Tracy and Tyler, who’d been hovering since they’d discovered the mpeg on his computer.
The footage was amateurish and, thankfully, grainy, but he could still see Hannah and feel her pain as that bastard carved into her with a relish that physically made him sick. “Have we heard anything more from the rest of the team?” Harrison asked, forcing himself to concentrate.
“Not in the last two minutes.” Tyler shook her head. “No.” She was poring over blueprints of the college, which had always seemed small to Harrison, but now that they had to search every nook and cranny, seemed unbearably large.
“They’ve finished with the buildings by the quad,” Tracy said. “So at least they’re making progress. They just have to go carefully. You know that.”
“I should be out there.” He walked over to the table, looking up at the screen, the image of Hannah burned into his retina. “I should be looking for her.”
“You need to be here, Harrison. If you can figure out where this came from, or if we can find something in the room that could identify where she is…” Tyler broke off.
“I know.” He sighed, sitting back down in front of the computer. “But he’s rigged the transmission so that it’s an endless loop, it bounces from server to server and then lands smack dab here at my IP address again. If it were live, maybe I could tweak the feed, but this is like a static print. It’s already past tense. So there’s nothing more I can do.”
“So what about the room?” Tracy asked. “Surely you guys can recognize something.”
“I wish I could,” Tyler said, “but there’s nothing to see but a brick wall and a bed.”
And Hannah, Harrison finished silently.
“They could be anywhere on campus. All the buildings are brick. We’re searching blind, which means we’re totally dependent on luck.” Tyler sat back, exchanging a glance with Tracy, their faces grim.
“What?” Harrison asked, trying to interpret the look. “You think it’s hopeless? That we’re already too late?” He looked down at his watch. It had been almost ten hours. “We’ve still got time. He likes to toy with his victims. Hell, he likes to toy with me. We’ve got time.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Tyler said, her voice artificially cheery as she picked up the stills they’d printed from the video.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, panic rising as he turned to Tracy.
She hesitated, her dark eyes full of regret. “The first wound he inflicted. It was deep. Really deep. And in her abdomen.”
The reality of her words hit hard, but Harrison managed to form the sentence. “She’s bleeding out.”
Tracy nodded.
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. It varies depending on the person. The relative health, size, weight. And there’s no way for me to judge the severity of the internal injury.”
“How long,” he pressed.
“Somewhere between three to five hours, if I had to call it,” she said on a sigh. “Maybe a little more if the injury is primarily venous as opposed to arterial.”
Harrison clenched his fists, fighting a wave of hopelessness. Hannah was a fighter. And this was A-Tac, for God’s sake. They’d find her in time. They had to.
Avery walked into the room, shaking his head at Harrison’s unspoken question. “They haven’t found anything. There are just so many different places she could be.”
Harrison nodded, and turned back to the computer.
“Has he sent anything new?” Avery asked, coming to sit at the table.
“Not yet,” Tracy answered. “Although I’m surprised. He needs for Harrison to see this. It’s become part of the fantasy. In his mind, he’s exacting revenge for his wife.”
“But he killed her, not me,” Harrison said, his head spinning.
“In his mind, somehow, he equates his break with you.”
“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” he said, burying his face in his hands. “If she dies—it’s my fault.” He knew that self-pity wasn’t going to do anyone any good, but he felt so damn helpless.
In front of him the computer chimed, a signal for incoming email. Harrison lifted his head, his eyes already scanning for the new missive. There was no title, just an attachment. With shaking hands, he activated the icon.
The screen above them sprang to life. Hannah was still tied to the bed, but she was covered with blood—her blood. Draper was tracing patterns in it with his knife, the angle such that Harrison couldn’t tell if he was actually cutting her, but the image still sending shudders of revulsion and fury washing through him.
His fingers raced over the keyboard as he tried to trace the source of the video. At first the results were similar to the first time. His search bouncing from proxy server to proxy server, but then he noticed something new. A timestamp.
“Guys,” he said, his gaze still on the trace, “this feed is live.” His eyes jerked back to the screen, his heart threatening to break through his chest. He wasn’t just watching this maniac hurt Hannah—he was doing it in real time.
Draper moved to sit on the side of the bed, stroking Hannah’s hair. But she jerked away from him, her eyes flying open. Harrison’s heart rejoiced. She was still alive. Draper bent low, whispering something in her ear. And she turned away. And he stabbed the knife deep into the skin between her shoulder and chest.
Hannah’s eyes closed as she bit off a scream, her body tensing as the pain lanced through her. Harrison slammed his fist into the table, feeling like his nerves were going to jump out of his skin.
Draper’s hand remained on the knife embedded in Hannah’s shoulder, his eyes steely, focused. He was still talking, his voice muffled by the distance. Harrison forced himself to shut out the horror—to concentrate. He adjusted the feed for sound, focusing on the timbre of Draper’s voice. The words became clearer.
“Talk to me, pretty Hannah,” Draper was saying. “Or better yet, talk to your boyfriend.” He nodded toward the camera. “Before it’s time for you to say good-bye.”
Hannah’s eyes flashed open, and e
ven with the distortion of the shadows, he could see her determination. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. He could see her fingers digging into the mattress as she struggled to find strength. He willed her to speak. His entire being focused on the screen above him.
“I… just…” she began, her voice barely a whisper.
He hit the sound button, pushing it all the way to the top, feverishly working to adjust the levels.
“I want to tell him that I’ll…” she sucked in a strangled breath. “… that I’ll always remember the night at GTAHAS… when he told me…” She faded and then roused herself with a small shake of her head. “… when he told me that he loved me…”
Her voice was growing stronger. “… in the gazebo…” she paused, this time seeming to gather her thoughts “with the girls… singing… I was beneath… beneath him… in a yellow… dress…” The words faded on a sigh, and Hannah closed her eyes again, whatever strength she’d summoned clearly deserting her.
Draper stared at the camera for a moment, then reached back to twist the knife. A shudder rippled through Hannah’s body, but she didn’t scream. And Draper turned back to the camera, leering into the screen. “An eye for an eye—” he said.
Then he hit a button on the console in his other hand, and the feed went dead.
For a brief moment, Hannah forgot where she was, her mind filled instead with the smell of bacon and pancakes. Harrison. She smiled at the memory. Their night together had been so wonderful. So magical. She started to stretch, and the pain superseded everything else—searing, unbearable agony. She struggled to hold on to the image of Harrison. Of his strength and his love. But another face filled her brain.
Draper’s.
Her eyes flickered open, and her gaze darted around the room as she searched for him. But her prison was empty. Maybe he’d finished with her—leaving her to die. But even as she had the thought, she knew that it wasn’t true. Madison had told them. Every cut, every slice, was part of a plan. A way to inflict the maximum amount of pain. There was no way he was finished with her.
