The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  She wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Consider me a consulting expert. Which, since you’re here asking me questions and preparing to review my files on Mr. Garland, is what I technically already am.”

  “The court order in my briefcase doesn’t say anything about me having to give you something in return for what you’re legally required to turn over to me.”

  They looked at each other measuringly. Going through all the material she was giving him on Michael was going to take days, maybe weeks, and he had to know that. To get what she wanted, which was a chance to review his file, she was prepared to sweeten the pot.

  “I’m familiar with the details of the Southern Slasher murders. I can look at the murder your client is accused of committing and tell you the similarities and differences much faster than you can wade through all that. In fact, I can give you an accurate assessment of the likelihood of the perpetrators being the same by Monday. If you give me the file.”

  Hughes frowned.

  “I don’t—” he began, but before he could get any further the sudden loud shriek of an institution-wide alarm going off made Charlie jump.

  “What the hell?” Hughes said, as Charlie realized what the alarm had to be.

  “Fire alarm,” she informed Hughes, who was grimacing at the earsplitting whoops. Grabbing her purse, she headed for the door, passing him on the way. She had to raise her voice to be heard. “They’re anal about clearing everybody out, so we have to go. Come on.”

  She knew the procedure: everyone in the administrative wing proceeded down the stairs to the west parking lot. As this was the least restricted part of the prison except for the visitors’ area, they weren’t herded into the exercise pens or the rec yard or other confined outdoor spaces. Instead, civilians such as herself simply milled around on the asphalt until the all-clear sounded. Once they were out of the building, prisoners were segregated from the others and guarded in a designated area until they could be returned to their cell blocks.

  “This happen a lot?” Hughes stood up and grabbed his briefcase.

  Before she could reply, there was a single loud knock and then her door was thrust open. Johnson stood there, his hand on the knob. His eyes immediately shot past her to Hughes, and he blinked nervously a couple of times. Then he looked at her.

  “Got to head outside, Dr. Stone.” Johnson had to yell to be heard over the commotion. In the hall beyond him, Charlie saw a river of guards, prisoners, visitors, and staff already filing toward the stairs. With the door open, the alarm was deafening. Add in clanging doors, raised voices, tramping feet, and the other noises associated with mass exodus and the racket was mind-boggling.

  “We’re coming,” Charlie answered, moving toward him, and Johnson turned away in an obvious hurry. With Hughes following, Charlie joined the crowd in the hall. Johnson charged off ahead of them, forging through the surge of bodies, presumably to see to the evacuation of the other offices on that floor and also, she thought, to get away from Hughes. She found herself being jostled on all sides. To her consternation, as she neared the propped-open stairwell door, Charlie thought she detected a whiff of smoke. Prisons, being built largely of concrete and steel, were not particularly flammable, so an actual fire that amounted to more than a grease flare-up in the kitchen or a trash can alight would be surprising.

  “This is a drill, right?” Hughes asked in her ear. He was right behind her, so close that his briefcase kept poking her in the thigh. A glance at his face told Charlie that he was worried: she guessed he smelled the same thing she did.

  Behind them, a man yelled, “Fire’s in the library,” and someone else yelled, “Get the hell out of the way.”

  A jolt of alarm widened her eyes. She glanced around to see the prison fire detail in their bright yellow vests shoving their way toward the library against the tide of evacuees. As Charlie registered that apparently there really was a fire, she cast a worried look back at her office. All of her research and the material in her files existed in triplicate and were backed up online as well, but still there were some things she would hate to lose. Like, for example, the half-empty coffee cup with Hughes’s DNA on it.

  Nothing to do about it now.

  The ramped-up rush for the exit bore Charlie along with it like flotsam on a wave. Grabbing on to the sturdy iron handrail as she started down the stairs, she found herself packed in so tightly by the larger male bodies around her that she had to hold on for dear life to keep from being knocked off her feet. Hughes was right behind her. He, too, grabbed the handrail. Out of the corner of her eye she watched his hand that looked so much like Michael’s sliding along behind hers and felt her shoulder blades tighten. She suddenly felt seriously at risk. Her skin prickled.

  Was it because of who was behind her?

  “Keep moving,” someone yelled, and they did, lurching downward in an uncoordinated mass.

  The staircase was packed, nothing but shoulder-to-shoulder people, ninety-nine percent of whom were men. The noise level was unbelievable. The alarm’s continuous shrieking peals echoed off the walls. The smell of stale sweat made Charlie wrinkle her nose. Right in front of her, the Scared Straight kids were descending in a tight little group with their chaperone and a pair of guards. In front of them were Dr. Creason and his staff with the infirmary patients, who were being carried on gurneys to safety. The prisoners in their orange uniforms were easy to pick out of the crowd, and as she made her way down to the next landing she spotted Gary Fleenor’s tall, rangy body and narrow, sharp-featured face above her in a small group of prisoners emerging into the stairwell from the floor she had just left. His group was flanked by four guards, and Charlie concluded that they must be the prisoners who had been selected to talk to the kids.

  Stepping off the last step into the short hallway that led out the door into the parking lot, Charlie saw smoke for the first time. A thin gray plume snaked over her head, probably drawn by the cool draft created by the open door in front of her. Beyond that door, rain fell in a silvery mist. The burning smell in the hallway intensified: it was now impossible to miss. Behind her, the surge toward the door increased along with the noise as those in the stairwell became aware of the smoke and pushed and shoved in an effort to get away from it. Outside, a pair of fire trucks with their strobe lights gyrating madly flashed into view. She watched them race toward the building, then split up to head in different directions, which was the first inkling she got that the administration building might not be the only one involved in the fire. Their wailing sirens added to the general confusion.

  As she was propelled forward by the momentum of the crowd, someone—Charlie thought it was Hughes—grabbed her arm from behind. Then they were expelled forcefully through the door. Her toe caught on the threshold, and she stumbled out into the parking lot. The light rain that was falling spilled down on top of her.

  Narrowing her eyes against the rain, Charlie tried unsuccessfully to pull her arm free—she hated having Hughes holding her arm—as she looked across the rows of parked vehicles toward where she had left her car. Since, once again, concrete and steel buildings were pretty much fireproof, she was counting on the damage in the administrative building being largely confined to the library. Her office, and the coffee cup with Hughes’s DNA on it, should be safe enough until she could get back to them, which she hoped to be able to do before too long. In the meantime, she would wait in her car.

  “I’m afraid our meeting is—” Over was what she had been going to say to Hughes, but as she turned her head to dismiss him she broke off when her gaze collided with Gary Fleenor’s feral eyes.

  They were approximately where she was expecting Hughes’s to be. In other words, right behind her.

  It took no more than a single shocked instant for her to figure out that, instead of Hughes, it was Fleenor who had been following her so closely through the press of people leaving the building that she could feel him brushing against her back, Fleenor who had been gripping her arm. Which was impossible. Or w
hich would have been impossible if he was properly guarded and shackled.

  Why isn’t he guarded and shackled?

  Fleenor leaned close to murmur in her ear, “Keep moving, Dr. Stone.” Charlie would have done no such thing, would have pulled away and screamed bloody murder and called on the combined power of every guard in the vicinity to make sure this most vicious of serial killers was secured, except that Fleenor lifted the hand that wasn’t holding on to her arm long enough to let her see that he held a gun.

  Then he jammed that gun hard into her side.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The beginning of panic quickened Charlie’s breathing and her pulse.

  Okay, a ruthless murderer was holding a gun on her, but he was a known commodity: she had dealt with Fleenor before. Plus, he was still in a relatively controlled environment, which should make persuading him to let her go and give up doable. Glancing around through the veil of rain with mounting desperation, she searched for possible help. Her gaze skimmed dozens of people—guards and prisoners and staff and visitors who were streaming into the parking lot and then rushing off to do whatever it was they needed to do, get out of the rain, go wherever—and connected with no one. No one was paying attention. All were oblivious to her plight. So it looked like there wasn’t going to be any immediate help.

  Her breathing picked up. You’re on your own.

  More panic threatened to disrupt her nervous system. She fought to get a handle on her emotions and the situation.

  Her training had taught her that eye contact was important, as was giving him respect and personalizing their interaction. Turning her head so that she could see him, she said, “Mr. Fleenor, you don’t want to—”

  “Shut up and keep walking or I’ll shoot you right here and now.” Jamming the gun harder into her side, Fleenor shoved her onward as he growled the threat. Charlie’s lips clamped together even as her feet continued to move. She had no doubt that if she gave him cause he would do exactly what he said. He could kill her, kill as many people as he had bullets in the gun, and nothing would change for him.

  As Michael had once told her, a man on death row has nothing to lose.

  Fear dried her mouth.

  Fleenor’s grip on her arm felt unbreakable. His fingers dug painfully into her flesh. He ground the gun harder into her side, and that hurt, too.

  How could this have happened? How did he get loose?

  Another quick look around confirmed that she’d been horseshoed in by a tight group of four orange-uniformed prisoners flanked by four blue-uniformed guards, all of whom were moving across the parking lot—moving her across the parking lot—at a brisk pace. The guards apparently hadn’t noticed that Fleenor had grabbed her and was forcing her at gunpoint to go with them.

  How can they not see this? That was the astonished thought that ran through her mind as the guards continued to hustle them along through the rain like she was supposed to be right in there with the prisoners. She tried, futilely, to signal one of them with her eyes. That’s when she got a good look at the man’s face and realized that the guard she was trying to signal wasn’t a guard at all: she was looking at Wayne Sayers, convicted serial killer. Six feet tall, pudgy, bald, with squashed-looking features and protuberant brown eyes. Known as the Eyeball Killer because he liked to gouge his victims’ eyes out before killing them, he was a death row resident and her research subject. Sayers wore a guard’s uniform, complete with badge and, yes, gun.

  The hair stood up on the back of her neck.

  Her eyes met his. Sayers smiled at her, his tobacco-stained teeth as repulsive as the rest of him, and her stomach did a death drop toward the ground.

  “Hello, blue eyes,” he said, mouthing the words at her. Her insides twisted. Charlie jerked her gaze away.

  Oh, my God, it’s a prison break. That’s what’s happening here. The realization hit her with a thrill of horror even as a fast, comprehensive look around at the rest of the group identified the other uniformed “guards” escorting them: Terence Ware, Alberto Torres, and Paul Abell. They were all serial killers, death row residents, and her research subjects.

  They all had guns.

  She was suddenly freezing cold, the kind of cold that had nothing to do with the temperature or the rain. The kind of cold when your blood turns to ice in your veins.

  The uniforms—to get them, they almost certainly had to have jumped the guards who’d been wearing them. But where did they get the guns? Prison guards don’t carry guns, precisely to prevent something like this from happening.

  Speculating was useless. How it was happening she had no idea, but it was happening. It was fact. Her heart started pounding like she’d just run a marathon as she faced it.

  At that point Charlie would have screamed, would have tried to run, would have taken her chances on breaking away from the gun and Fleenor’s hand on her arm and the group hemming her in, but given all the chaos with the fire trucks and the sirens and the evacuation and the rain, there was already so much activity, so much noise, that she feared not being seen, not being heard. She would get only one chance to scream and make a run for it, she knew.

  If Fleenor shot me, right here, right now, would anybody even notice?

  Because of the rain, people were scattering, darting in different directions, seeking cover. The rain blunted sound, concealed telltale details, obscured faces and body language.

  Somebody will surely hear a gun being fired—but by then I’ll be dead.

  “You don’t want to do anything stupid,” Fleenor warned. “We both know I won’t have any problem with killing you.”

  She knew he was telling the absolute truth. Actually, the act of killing was more pleasurable to him than sex. And of course he’d been able to tell what she was thinking, she realized with chagrin. She’d been looking around everywhere. Her muscles had tightened in the first stages of fight-or-flight response. She had totally telegraphed her fears.

  Stay calm.

  Charlie swallowed hard as an even more horrifying thought occurred: all the convicts hurrying her away with them had guns. The carnage that might result if the situation went south was too terrible to think about. Dozens could die.

  Keep it together. Wait for your chance.

  Easy to say. Hard to do when her heart was racing and her thoughts were careening from possibility to possibility like they were bouncing around inside a pinball machine.

  “Almost there. Keep going,” Paul Abell said. The approximate size of a grizzly bear, strapped with muscle, dark hair shaved so close to his scalp that it was scarcely more than a shadow, with heavy features and waxy pale skin, Abell was known as the Midnight Rambler because he liked to break into homes in the middle of the night and kill—not all, but one or two of—the people inside. Silently. While the other residents of the house slept. He’d been convicted of twenty-two murders, and had a special preference for teenage girls. A number of his victims had been sisters. As he spoke, low-voiced, to the group, a few of the others nodded. The increasing tension among them was as tangible as the rain.

  Almost where? Charlie had no clue. She only knew that wherever it was, they were taking her with them and she absolutely, positively did not want to go.

  Pushing away the fear, Charlie forced herself to focus and think. The rain had worsened. It splashed down on the asphalt underfoot with a continuous low murmur, creating an obscuring curtain between her and the activity all around. The screaming fire trucks, parked now as their crews disappeared into the building she’d just left, the evacuees still spilling out into the parking lot, and the prison officials barking orders and trying to establish some kind of control were all noisy distractions that might keep onlookers from realizing what was going on with her. And like what was going on with her, all those noisy distractions were blurred and muffled by the rain.

  If I fall, they might drag me with them. They won’t just leave me. They can’t: I’ll sound the alarm, and they know that. If they don’t drag me, they’ll kill me.r />
  Accepting the horrible truth of that, she tried to formulate another, better plan. The other buildings were being evacuated, too: she could see the prisoners streaming out of them. A lot of people were in the west parking lot along with her; a lot of them were heading for their cars. If she could get their attention, she could—what? Get them shot along with herself?

  Excruciatingly aware of Fleenor’s hand locked around her arm, of him so close behind her that she could feel the brush of his body with every step, of the gun grinding into her side, she tried to discreetly locate Hughes or anyone else who might be expected to notice that something was seriously wrong with her and the situation she was in. Two more guards strode along not too far in front of her, their uniforms striking her as blue beacons of hope until it occurred to her that they, too, might be prisoners in disguise.

  From the back she couldn’t tell.

  Her heart pounded so hard now that she could feel it slamming against her breastbone.

  The guards in front of her were escorting the Scared Straight group toward a yellow school bus that was parked in a designated visitor spot.

  Even as Charlie saw the bus, the driver must have spotted his passengers approaching, because the doors opened to allow them to board.

  Of course, like everyone else, the Scared Straight kids were hurrying to get out of the rain.

  “Dr. Stone!” Hughes’s voice came from behind her, loud enough to cut through the din, causing her head to whip around as she sought him. Serial killer or no serial killer, at the moment he was far preferable to the group she was with. Even as her gaze locked on Hughes’s, Fleenor’s hand tightened so viciously on her arm that it felt as if his fingers would sink clear through to the bone. Charlie couldn’t help it: she cried out. Fleenor’s sharp-featured face contorted with a vicious expression that made her heart lurch.

  “I’ll put a bullet in you right now, bitch,” Fleenor warned, and she had no doubt he would. Focusing forward, she didn’t dare look back at Hughes or do anything except stride along with the group.