Once Hunted

by Blake Pierce

  “Nowhere,” he said. “I’m feeling stranded. Six months of separation, no chance of getting back together, but six months to go before the divorce becomes final. It feels like my life is standing still. At least she’s easing up on custody of the boys. She’s letting them spend time with me.”

  “That’s good,” Riley said.

  She noticed that Bill was now gazing at her wistfully.

  That’s not good, she thought.

  She and Bill had spent years struggling with their mutual attraction, sometimes very clumsily. Riley still winced as she remembered once drunkenly calling him and proposing that they have an affair. Their friendship and professional relationship had barely survived that miserable episode.

  She didn’t want to start down that road again, especially now that things were so confusing with both Ryan and Blaine. She gulped down the rest of her drink.

  “It’s time for me to turn in,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Bill said with a note of reluctance in his voice.

  They paid the bill and left the bar. Bill headed straight toward his hotel room. In all the day’s hectic confusion, Riley hadn’t yet brought in her own travel bag and personal items from the car. She walked down a stairwell and through a door that led directly into the hotel’s basement parking garage.

  A cold blast of air hit her hard when she stepped into the concrete space. No one was in sight.

  She headed straight toward the borrowed FBI SUV on the opposite side of the garage. The moment she got there and reached for the door handle, her peripheral vision caught a flash of movement somewhere to her left.

  She turned her head to look. She saw nothing except parked cars, although she thought her ears detected an echo of movement. She was sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. Someone else was in the garage.

  “Hello,” she called out.

  Her voice resonated loudly through the garage, followed by the moaning sound of cold wind.

  A rush of adrenaline shot through her. She was sure someone was here and avoiding her sight. Who could it possibly be except Shane Hatcher?

  She drew her weapon, wondering whether he had a gun as well. If so, would he use it? No, simply shooting somebody hardly seemed Hatcher’s style. She wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t even armed—but he’d be no less dangerous even so.

  She walked cautiously toward where she thought she’d heard the sound. Now her own footsteps sounded positively deafening as they rang through the garage. Before she’d walked more than a few feet, she heard a noisy crack behind her, followed by a rattling sound.

  She whirled around, her gun raised and ready. But at that very second, she heard a clatter of running footsteps from the opposite direction. She whirled again, but saw and heard nothing.

  She instantly understood what had just happened. He’d thrown something—a pebble, maybe—across the way to distract her. Now he was moving among the parked cars somewhere. But where?

  Turning around and around as she walked, she threaded her way among the parked cars, looking everywhere she possibly could.

  Finally she reached the garage exit. Snow was falling outside. And there he was—unmistakably silhouetted in the open space against the glaring outdoor lights.

  “Hatcher!” Riley yelled, pointing her gun. “Freeze!”

  She heard a familiar, grim chuckle. Then he disappeared into the night.

  Riley broke into a run and rushed through the wide exit. The wind and cold were much sharper outside the garage, and Riley wasn’t warmly dressed. She shivered deeply and almost choked on the cold air. Snowflakes stuck to her face and stung her skin.

  The driveway outside the garage wound a short way to the well-lighted street. Turning and turning, looking everywhere, Riley called out.

  “Hatcher! Show yourself!”

  Now the air was filled with the low rumble of nearby traffic. Looking around at the snow-covered shapes of trees and bushes, Riley found it hard to imagine that he was hidden among them.

  “Hatcher!” she yelled again.

  Finally she reached the street and looked up and down the cleared sidewalks along the street. She saw no sign of anyone.

  He’s gone, she decided.

  Still watching all sides, Riley made her way back to the garage. Just as she stepped into the broad opening, she heard a flutter of movement.

  Before she could react, she was seized violently from behind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The gun flew from Riley’s hand as Hatcher’s arm closed around her neck. She heard her weapon clatter to the concrete floor some distance away.

  Hatcher’s left arm was crooked around her throat, and his right forearm was braced behind her neck. It was a familiar headlock. Riley had escaped from dozens of these over the years. She seized the front arm with both hands to keep it from tightening. She knew she needed to tuck her chin, creating wriggle room for escape. But Hatcher’s grip was like an iron vise, and her head was completely immobile. He was also holding her so that her feet barely touched the icy ground. She couldn’t land a good backward kick.

  She started to grow dizzy. His arm was crooked cannily so that it didn’t completely block her windpipe. Although she was gagging, she could still breathe. But the grip cut into the flow of her carotid arteries. She realized that he was applying a calculated amount of pressure, not enough to render her unconscious but enough to disorient her.

  “I guess you’ve got a few questions for me,” he murmured softly in her ear. “Like maybe, what happened to Smokey Moran. Well, it wasn’t murder. It wasn’t self-defense either. It was a good old-fashioned duel.”

  As if he could feel the waxing and waning of Riley’s consciousness, Hatcher relaxed his grip enough to give her a little more precious blood flow. He obviously wanted her to hear every word that he had to say.

  “I sent him a message when I got out,” Hatcher said. “I put the word out through his minions it was time for us to set our books straight. Told him the time and place and the choice of weapons—tire chains, of course.”

  Hatcher chuckled grimly.

  “Poor bastard,” he murmured. “His conscience has been eating him up for decades about the way he ratted me out like that. You know, I don’t think he wanted to live with it anymore. He showed up, and we fought, and … well, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the rest of it. He didn’t stand a chance and he knew it. The first really honorable thing Moran ever did in his life—and the last.”

  Now things were starting to make sense to Riley. Smokey Moran had, in fact, told his gangbanger guards that he was probably going away to his death. With Hatcher on the loose, he’d also been pretty sure that the authorities would soon show up at his appointment building. So he’d ordered his taciturn but despairing followers to pass along the news.

  She felt the crook of Hatcher’s arm tighten. Had he finished telling her what he had to say? Was he finally going to plunge her into unconsciousness?

  Her whole head buzzed and tingled and the world started to go black. She felt herself falling away from him, suddenly released from his grip. She hit the icy concrete flat on her face.

  As blood started to flow back into her head, she could see where her gun had fallen, some twenty feet away from her inside the garage. She dragged herself to her feet, hoping to run and grab it.

  She heard Hatcher’s voice behind her.

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  She whirled around. He was standing outside in the snow. She was in the entrance, exactly midway between him and the gun.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Hatcher repeated.

  Riley’s head was swimming. She could barely stay on her feet, much less think straight. Somehow, though, she vaguely realized that Hatcher was right. She didn’t want to make a dash for the gun.

  Why? she wondered.

  Perhaps it was because she knew it would be futile. As nimble as he was strong, Hatcher would be gone before she could get her hands on the weapon.

&n
bsp; Or maybe there was another reason—one that she didn’t want to think about.

  Her voice still rasping from Hatcher’s chokehold, Riley said, “You killed Moran. You did what you set out to do. What now? Where do you go? What do you do?”

  Hatcher took a couple of steps back into the snow, silhouetted again.

  “Do you think I escaped on his account?” he said with a low laugh. “Sure, I had some unfinished business with him. But do you really think I went to the trouble of breaking out of Sing Sing because of that? He wasn’t worth it.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  Hatcher stretched out his arms in what almost seemed a generous gesture.

  “Why, I did it for you, Riley,” he said. “I’m here for you. And you need me right now. You need me more than anyone in the world.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you remember Orin Rhodes?”

  Still foggy, Riley reached back into her memory. Yes, the name was familiar. Orin Rhodes had been a killer—one of her first cases. She remembered that it had been in New York state and he’d been sent to Sing Sing for his crimes. But other details wouldn’t come into focus for her. She only knew that the case had left her with some dark and ugly feelings.

  “What about him?” Riley asked.

  “He just got released. Early, for good behavior. A model prisoner, they said. But I know better. He got to know me—because I knew you, he said. He asked me all kinds of questions. I didn’t give him any answers. He told me that he’d have his revenge. He told me it was going to be ugly. He’s spent all his years looking forward to it.”

  Hatcher fell quiet for a moment. The snow swirled around his shadowy form with an eerie whistle.

  “I couldn’t let that happen,” he said. “I had actually planned to take him out right there in Sing Sing. That kind of thing is possible. But then he got released early. That caught me by surprise and I had to change my plans.”

  He shrugged and shuffled a little.

  “Besides, I’d been in there too long,” he said. “Was getting lazy. This will be a lot more interesting. Ever since I met you, I’ve admired your mind. I’ve wanted to work with you. And now you’ve got no choice but to work with me. Believe me, this is a dangerous man, and you’ll need me to stop him. You don’t have a choice.”

  He took one menacing step toward her.

  “Don’t get me wrong, though,” he said. “I don’t care about anything or anybody but you. The whole rest of the goddamn world is expendable as far as I’m concerned. Let them die. Let them all die.”

  Riley saw the lights and heard the sound of an approaching car.

  “But right now you need to look after the one you left at home,” Hatcher said, turning and walking away from her.

  The car pulled right past him into the garage. Riley made a dash for the gun and picked it up just as the car passed by it.

  She heard his voice call from somewhere out in the darkness, “We’re joined at the brain, Riley Paige.”

  She rushed out into the snowy night.

  It was no good. He was gone. She knew that she couldn’t possibly catch him.

  She walked back into the garage, where noisy, happy, laughing people were spilling out of the car, completely unaware of what had just happened here.

  Riley was still dizzy and confused. She couldn’t fully remember Orin Rhodes, except that the thought of his name made her uncomfortable. If he was really out and bent on revenge, where was he right now, and what was he doing?

  She remembered Hatcher’s words.

  “You need to look after the one you left at home.”

  The words triggered a wave of panic.

  April’s in danger, she realized.

  The warm air of the hotel hallway hit Riley hard as she rushed in from the freezing garage. She didn’t stop to think about what to do next. She took out her cell phone and dialed her home phone, desperately hoping to get Gabriela or April on the line.

  Instead, she heard her own voice delivering the outgoing message. At the sound of the beep, she started yelling.

  “April! Gabriela! Where are you? Pick up right now if you’re there!”

  But no one picked up.

  “Please,” Riley whispered. She heard the final beep and realized no one was going to answer.

  Something had to be wrong.

  Riley headed toward the elevator and pushed the button. Luckily, the car was already there and waiting. She got in and pushed the button for the third floor, where Bill was staying. The car seemed to rise more slowly than usual, but at least it made no stops along the way.

  She had to get Bill up. They had to fly back to Quantico right away. Riley wondered whether the snow would be a problem. But they had to go.

  Meanwhile, she had two phone calls to make—one to Blaine to tell him about the possible danger next door and the other to Quantico to get somebody sent there.

  She was terrified that it might already be too late.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Orin Rhodes stopped his car in front of the townhouse. Although the car wasn’t the latest model, he was sure no one would question his right to be here in this nice part of town. He was, after all, light-haired and blue-eyed, and in prison he’d learned social skills. He knew how to mislead ordinary fools about his intentions.

  He kept the engine running as he looked the house over. Lights were on inside, so somebody was up and about. He knew it wasn’t Riley Paige, the agent who had killed Heidi and sent him away to prison sixteen years ago. Media reports had said the FBI was investigating the escape of Shane Hatcher in Syracuse. He was sure that Riley would be there. He was also sure about who was inside the house.

  Her daughter, he thought.

  From years of following Paige’s life and career, he knew that she had a daughter named April. She was fifteen years old, the same age that Heidi had been when Riley Paige murdered her.

  April would suit his purposes perfectly, at least for now. He wasn’t ready to kill Paige yet. That was going to take a lot of preparation, a lot of time spent honing a different set of skills. Meanwhile, he wanted to make her suffer, the same as he had suffered because of her. He’d passed too many years being patient and careful not to make the most of Paige’s misery.

  Killing her will be icing on the cake, he thought with a smile.

  Meanwhile, this first attack seemed almost too easy. Breaking in from the front was out of the question, though. Even this late at night, people might be looking out windows or even coming and going from other houses.

  Maybe he could just walk up to the house and ring the bell, then talk his way inside. Despite the hour, he could probably charm the girl into letting him in. He was good at that kind of thing. For almost half of his life now, he’d been wearing a mask of kindness and goodwill. That was how he’d gotten early release from prison. He’d fooled absolutely everybody—except himself.

  But ringing the bell would be too risky. He didn’t want to take the chance that the girl would call the cops instead of opening the door. No, the best thing was to proceed with the attack as he’d originally planned it.

  He drove the car to the end of the block, turned right, then turned right again into the alley that stretched behind the row of houses. The alleyway was lined with high fences on both sides, making it impossible to see into the yards or the main floors of the houses. But each house number was painted on a back gate. Those gates would be locked, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

  He stopped his car at the gate behind Paige’s house. This time he turned the engine off. He opened the laptop computer he’d bought just yesterday. He congratulated himself on learning all about computers while in prison. Of course, he hadn’t learned the skills he needed right now in one of Sing Sing’s ordinary classes. He’d been privately trained by a hacker doing prison time.

  He fiddled with the computer, using the software-defined radio monitor to check for signals. As he’d expected, the house did have a wireless security system. He cou
ld see its signal on the screen. If that signal wasn’t encrypted, he could send his own commands to the main controls. It would keep the system unaware of opened doors or windows until his computer battery weakened. That would give him all the time he needed.

  When he had everything set to his satisfaction, Orin got out of the car and locked it, leaving the computer inside. He wasn’t worried about being seen. The alley was dimly lit and no one was in sight.

  He froze for a moment at a clattering sound coming from behind one of the fences. He quickly realized that it was just someone emptying garbage into a bin on the other side. The sound stopped. After a few moments, he felt sure that the person had returned to the house.

  He climbed up on top of the car. He didn’t much mind if he scratched or dented the clunker he’d bought as soon as he’d gotten out of prison. From the car roof, he grabbed the top of the fence with both gloved hands, then nimbly vaulted over, dropping into a crouch on the other side.

  Orin took a quick look around. He saw that he had two options. Stairs led from the yard to a deck on the main floor of the house. That was where the lights were on. Beneath the deck he saw an entrance to a basement. He didn’t know whether anyone might be down there, or whether the door leading up into the main house would be locked.

  Then he heard faint music coming from the lighted rooms. He grinned with satisfaction. The kid must be there, where he could get to her easily. There was no reason to make his way up through the basement. He’d go directly to her.

  He worked his way very quietly up the stairs. Step by step he crossed the deck. He saw that the windowed doors leading inside would be easy to open. He just had to break a pane and reach inside to turn the latch. That’s when he would find out whether his interception of signals had worked. If the security alarms went off, he’d escape the way he had come.

  He looked in through the door. He could see through the dining room into the living room. And he could see the girl. She was wearing pajamas and dancing.

  Orin Rhodes laughed softly.