by Docter, K. L
When Jane couldn’t continue with site work after she took on Suze full time, he’d hired Skip as his personal assistant. Even with limited construction knowledge, his trusty notebook in hand to combat the memory losses he occasionally experienced since his return from Afghanistan, Skip had become Patrick’s invaluable set of extra hands. “Did you—”
“Heard you comin’ in. Already in my notebook.” He waved it in the air. “And before you waste time on the phone, the sink fixtures will be here tomorrow. All two hundred sixty of ’em. The new supplier I found is so happy to get in bed with Thorne Enterprises he shaved off an extra fifteen percent. So, I went ahead and ordered the fittings you wanted for the Caston job. All the supplier needs is your authorization on the invoices, and we’re good to go.” He barely paused. “I also called the plumbing sub-contractor to tell him we’re back on schedule. He’ll be at the Mortenson site with his crew day after tomorrow.”
The day was definitely looking up. Patrick smiled. “I’m going to have to give you another raise, aren’t I?”
Skip grinned at John. “You’re my witness!” Then, he sobered when he turned back to Patrick. “With the stuff going on lately I’m just grateful to have a job. Which reminds me, Morgan radioed from the trailer. Jack is waiting to talk to you.”
Patrick nodded. “I’ll head that way soon as we’re done here.”
After a few last instructions for John and Skip, Patrick put away his tools, took a final draught on his bottle of water, and poured what was left into a rag to clean construction dust off his face and hands. Then he left the building and walked across the site toward the trailer. Jack told him last night he’d check in as soon as he had an update on the arrest of Rachel’s ex-husband. With any luck, he’d also learned who was out to destroy everything Patrick had worked so hard to build.
With the number of challenges his crews had experienced these past ten months, they all deserved raises. Yet it was all he could do to make their current paychecks. Each attack on one of his jobs poked another hole in his bottom line and he was sinking. Fast.
He had to keep his priorities straight.
That meant no more rescuing doe-eyed blonds with felonious exes on their heels. As Jack pointed out at the hospital last night that became his job the moment authorities in California put out an APB on “Preppy” for grand theft, arson, and attempted murder. If Rachel’s doctor friend didn’t come out of his coma and died, Greg Bishop would be facing murder charges.
Patrick handled the situation all wrong with Bishop yesterday. If he hadn’t let the man get to him, the police would have arrived and Rachel’s ex-husband would be in custody today. Rachel and Amanda would be back on their side of the hedge, and he on his side. He’d screwed up, so now he was stuck babysitting the pair of them until Jack could arrange for official protection. Who knew how long that would take? The department’s manpower was already overextended with their search for the missing coed.
Patrick was shaken from his reverie when he walked into the air-conditioned trailer and collided with his brother pacing in front of the door. “Whoa! Sorry you had to wait, Jack. I was finishing up—”
A cold knot of uneasiness developed in his gut when he saw his brother’s severe expression. “What’s wrong?”
Jack’s scowl deepened. “They’ve identified some of the clothing your saboteur left behind,” he said without preliminary.
“And…?”
“It’s bad, Patrick. There are traces of semen and blood on everything. Sondra Manning’s blood type.”
The feeling of imminent danger he’d felt as a Ranger about to enter a hot zone stirred in his chest. “The councilman’s daughter that went missing last week?”
His brother nodded.
Patrick quickly worked through the implications staring him in the face. “You think there’s a connection between my saboteur and the Angel Killer.”
“Yes. Your saboteur just hit the top of our ‘To Do’ list.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. “Let’s go. We’ll take my car.”
Chapter Eight
Three Weeks….
Three Days….
Two Hours….
…’Til death.
Sondra Lynn Manning yanked hysterically on the thick chain that led from a centralized eight-by-eight inch pillar to her cuffed ankle. Then she sagged to the floor of her prison and sobbed in defeat. A line of blood that was sure to upset her captor trickled from a new tear on her ankle down her foot to seep into the rug beneath her, but she didn’t care. She suddenly understood why a fox would chew off its own foot to escape a trap.
Her trap had been well laid. The pillar, chain and cuff that confined her were made of strong steel. The bed and lone chair were bolted to the concrete floor in the middle of a windowless room large enough she could use the furniture, but couldn’t reach any of the padded walls or ceiling that blocked the sound of her screams. The only thing not bolted down was the camp toilet, and the floor lamp that glared twenty-four, seven in the corner well beyond her reach.
Her days had run together. At least she thought it had been days since she returned home from work and fell into her kidnapper’s hands. His visits were irregular. She’d been drugged at least twice, and she had no natural light to give her body a sense of daily rhythm.
At twenty-one years old, she’d never once given a thought to her death. Until Death gained a name and a face, and locked her in this godforsaken place. Now she had time to think of nothing else.
With a gasp, she shifted position to ease the pain of the tattoo her captor had burned into her left butt cheek when she regained consciousness the first time. She looked away from the stain darkening the concrete two feet away—not quite covered by the rug she sat on—unwilling to acknowledge she wasn’t the first to be kept in this prison.
She regretted the day she’d moved out from under her father’s protective roof. Regretted they’d argued and both been too stubborn to resolve their differences in the three months since. Now, when she was certain it was her fate to die here, she wished she hadn’t declared her independence from their gated community and security systems quite so completely.
Did her father know she was missing? She hadn’t talked to him in weeks thanks to her moratorium on his nightly phone calls to check on her. And her jailer told her there was no ransom note.
Until he’d told her she wasn’t kidnapped for the ransom her lawyer father could pay for her release, Sondra had held out hope. Ransomed, she at least stood a chance of surviving this…whatever this was. But, though she knew deep down who her kidnapper was, she didn’t understand what he wanted from her.
He ranted. He raved. He talked about people she’d never met and, every time she tried to tell him he’d mistaken her for someone else, he became enraged and threatened to kill her. To kill everyone she loved.
When he wasn’t acting crazy, he brought her presents. A book. Perfume. Clothing. She hated the last, not because the girlish blouses and skirts were awful or didn’t fit, but because he insisted she strip in front of him and give him everything. The first time, she’d refused. Dragging her by her chain to the bed, he’d cut everything off her. And he’d not been gentle. She still had several cuts from the knife he’d used. Since then, she’d swallowed her humiliation and done as he asked.
Thank God, he’d taken each change of clothing and his disgusting hard-on with him when he left her alone again. But she was terrified of the day when he didn’t. “Daddy, please,” she sobbed, praying into her knees. “Bug me. Smother me. Make me move back home. Just come get me before it’s too late!”
Her tears stopped abruptly when she heard the only sound that ever reached into her prison from the outside world, the scrape of a key on the door lock. Scrambling across the floor to the armchair, she settled into it and hid her bleeding ankle by tucking her foot under her bottom. She arranged her skirt hem over her bare legs just in time.
The door opened and her captor walked in.
F
ear gripped her senses. She frantically searched his expression as a barometer of his state of mind. Last time he’d left her, he’d been infuriated by her refusal to open the present he’d brought her. She’d forced herself to open the package. But it was too little, too late. With a growl that sounded more animal than human, he’d leveled her with a vicious backhand that threw her several feet onto the bed and stalked from the room. Her head ringing from where it struck the brass bed frame, she’d almost pitied the poor sap that crossed his path before he cooled down. She hated even more thinking about him coming back and turning that monstrous rage on her.
“Ah, Angel,” he frowned, “you’ve been crying again.” He emptied his jeans pockets, setting coins, candy wrappers and what looked like a walkie-talkie or radio alongside his keys on a shelf next to the door just like he was returning home after a long day at work. “I think I’ve got something here that will cheer you up.”
All he had to do was approach her with something with which she could hit him. That would cheer her up! Not that it would do her any good with the key to her ankle cuff dangling from his key fob three feet beyond the length of her chain.
Reaching around the doorjamb, he picked up something. When he turned around, he had a deli sack and a small box she recognized from her favorite cheesecake store. Hope surged. She’d wondered how far her kidnapper had taken her. She was still in or near Denver!
If she could just escape this room—
The air froze in her lungs when he crossed the invisible line delineating the real world and the end of her chain. “Your favorites, Angel,” he said, approaching her chair. “Ham, turkey and pastrami sub with brown mustard, low-salt chips, whole milk and a double slice of chocolate mousse cheesecake.”
She hated that he knew such intimate details about her. He must have been watching her for some time to have learned so many of her preferences. She knew he’d been in her apartment because the pillow on the bed was hers and he’d given her books to read off the shelves in her living room. With the exception of the schoolgirl clothes he’d forced her to wear since she’d awakened the first time and the name he called her, she could almost believe he knew who she was.
The distinctive aroma of spicy pastrami and mustard permeated the air and her mouth watered with anticipation. The box of dry, honeyed oat cereal he’d left her was long gone and she was hungry enough to wonder how many meals she’d missed since his last visit. But she couldn’t eat it. The last time he’d brought her something she couldn’t resist, it was laced with drugs. She’d passed out on the bed with him holding her close enough for her to feel his erection beneath her bare bottom, brushing her hair like some sick pervert.
Never again! If the asshole intended to rape her she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“N-no,” she said, turning up her nose. “I’m not hungry.”
He scowled. “Angel, you must eat.”
“My name’s not Angel.”
“Of course, it isn’t.” He smiled. “But it was always my special name for you. Just as you’ve always called me Robby. You know that.”
Her sense of defeat raced through her and loosened her tongue. “How am I supposed to know that? I’m. Not. Angel!” she shouted for the hundredth time. “I keep telling you I don’t know who you are, or why you kidnapped me, or what you want.”
She moderated her voice when his expression darkened. “Please,” she begged, “let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home!”
Without warning, he threw his food offerings on the floor beside her chair and wrapped his hands around her bare arms. “Your home is with me,” he said, punctuating each word with a shake. “Say it! Your heart is with me! You love me! Me!”
Terrified of the rage she’d provoked, she swallowed against the pain of his fingers digging furrows into her arms. “M-my heart,” she stammered, “is with you. I-I l-love you, R-Robby.”
His brown eyes searched her face. She stared back for five seconds, ten, trying to decide if he believed her or not, before her gaze dropped to the tick in his jaw.
“Liar.” His accusation came out flat, with no inflection whatsoever. “You still want Thorne.”
She cried out when he unexpectedly lifted her from the chair so that her ankles and chain dangled in the air. “No, please! I don’t want anyone. I mean, I don’t want him!” Heaven help her, she didn’t know anyone named Patrick Thorne!
Robby tossed her on the bed. He stared at the blood drying on her ankle and his expression closed down altogether, which she found more disturbing than his fury. It was like he was staring at her from a distant room, leaving her alone with a soulless husk of a man. “But you’ll hurt yourself trying to get back to him, won’t you?”
“Robby. Please. Tell me what you want me to say. I’ll say it. I’ll give you whatever you want. Please!”
Something changed in his expression. A new light entered his soulless eyes. An evil, monstrous light that scared her to death. He leaned over her and smiled. “You should have given him what he wanted,” he said, his voice changed, “because now you’re mine.”
“I-I-Robby, please!” she stammered.
“Robby has left the building,” he said, with an awful chuckle that curdled her blood.
If she ever had a doubt that she was in the hands of the Angel Killer, she had no doubt now. Hysteria beat at her senses. She could barely breathe.
Then she couldn’t. Her killer wrapped his cruel hand around her throat and squeezed until she saw bright flashes of light behind her darkening eyes. When he eased up, she gasped. And then her real terror began.
Hot pain tore into her belly. Her breasts. Between her legs. Over and over. Every part of her ripped and torn until she screamed for death. And through it all, she heard nothing but the gleeful laughter of a vicious monster.
Until she heard no more.
Chapter Nine
Patrick was exhausted and frustrated when he let himself into his parents’ front door after six o’clock that night. Five hours at the police station being grilled by the Angel Killer task force, to no avail. They were no closer to figuring out the connection between him and the serial killer than when he walked into the station with Jack this afternoon.
All he wanted to do was pop the top on an ice cold beer and kick up his feet. But that wasn’t an option tonight. He had to relieve his office manager, Jane, who’d been babysitting Rachel and Amanda since picking up Rachel from the hospital before lunch.
Who was he kidding? He was looking forward to taking over babysitting duty. Just thinking about seeing Rachel released the taut line between his shoulder blades.
The aromatic smell of marinara sauce drifted through the house and teased his nose. His last meal had come from the food truck that morning and he was suddenly starved. He followed the smell to the kitchen where he caught sight of his office manager hanging up the phone on the wall. She stared at the receiver, unmoving for a moment, her shoulders bowed, then with a deep sigh, she reached for a pile of chopped onions on the cutting board and scraped them into a large, steaming pot.
After this screwy day it was so good to see Jane, more friend, than employee, doing something as normal as cooking. He heard her sniff back a tear as she picked up a large, stainless spoon and stirred the pot. He grinned. “Mom always did say you can tell how good a sauce is by how many tears are on a cook’s face.”
Jane whirled from her task so fast the stirring spoon splattered bright red sauce across the blue-and-white kitchen tiles. “Patrick!”
“Oops! Sorry!” He raised his hands in self-defense and flashed an apologetic smile at her. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I guess you didn’t hear the beep after I disengaged the security system when I came in the front door.”
“I-I—” Jane’s hand hovered over her heart.
Patrick’s smile disappeared when he saw her face blanch. Dammit! He’d scared the woman into an angina attack. He rushed across the room to her side and helped her to a stool a
t the central island. Taking the dripping spoon from her tight fisted hand, he tossed it onto the countertop. “Where are your pills, Jane?” he asked quietly, his gaze fixed on her face.
“I already took one,” she said, bursting into tears.
Stunned—he’d never seen Jane cry except for the day she buried her daughter, Suze’s mother—all he could do was fuss over her until he found out what was wrong. There was more going on here than his unexpected arrival. She was antsy as a sparrow perched on an exposed electrical wire.
He patted her shoulder. The tissue box on the counter was empty, so he snagged a paper towel from the marble spindle on the island and tucked it into her restless hand. “Tell me what I can do, Jane,” he said helplessly. “Did you get bad news on the phone?”
“Phone?” She stared at the wall, and then glanced quickly away. She waved a hand at him. “No. It was a…wrong number.”
Somehow he didn’t believe her, but unless she was willing to talk to him, he was at a loss what to do for her. He watched her sniffle into the paper towel. Then she blew her nose indelicately. When she looked him in the eye, her expression disintegrated and she started to cry again. “Sorry,” she choked out around the tears. “I haven’t been home,” hiccup, “in two days and, and, I-I-I’m just tired!”
He felt like a heel. He’d put too much on her shoulders, not thinking about what the extra work might do to her health. She’d been dry for nine years since coming out of rehab and going to work for him, but she’d been so liquored up for most of her adult life, her body had never fully recovered. This he could fix. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said, pouring her favorite orange soda over ice and snatching up the stirring spoon. “You just sit there and I’ll finish dinner.”
Walking over to the stove, he gave the pot a stir before he grabbed more paper towels and cleaned up the sauce splattered on the floor and lower cupboards. When he finished, he looked at Jane. “Where is everyone? John told me you picked up Rachel from the hospital.”
