Once Hunted

by Blake Pierce

  He tucked the gun under his belt, put on a warm parka, and stepped outside his rented cabin. The winter air out here in the woods was cold and bracing. He felt more energized with every passing second.

  He walked along a trail toward the lake, putting some distance between himself and the cabin. When the lake came into view, he took his smartphone out of his pocket and set its countdown timer for ten minutes.

  He was acting according to a plan he’d dreamed up many years ago in prison. And his plan was basically to have no plan at all.

  Chance was the story of his life, after all—and of Heidi’s short life as well. They hadn’t planned on all that had happened to them. It wasn’t their fault. If Heidi’s brother and father hadn’t tried to force themselves on her, Orin wouldn’t have had to kill them. If the two men at the liquor store hadn’t resisted, he and Heidi wouldn’t have had to kill them either.

  By the time they’d arrived in Jennings, they’d learned their lesson. They understood their purpose in life. And that purpose was simple—to destroy life without purpose at all, purely randomly, with no rhyme or reason.

  They’d killed the man and the girl simply because they were the first people to cross their paths. If Orin and Heidi had escaped that shootout at the motel, they would have kept right on traveling across the state, killing in the most random ways they could think of until they were caught or killed. A flip of a coin might decide whether some unsuspecting person lived or died.

  But they hadn’t escaped. And that FBI bitch had shot Heidi dead.

  He didn’t imagine that Riley Paige had wanted to kill anybody. She’d gotten caught in the web of chance, just like he and Heidi had. Although Paige didn’t know it, she was now hopelessly tangled in the net of his hatred.

  And he hated her with every fiber of his being—hated her for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, hated her for being the agent whose job had been to kill Heidi. After all, that was what life was all about.

  Just one damn thing after another.

  He’d made a terrible mistake by targeting the woman’s daughter. That had been too personal, too premeditated, too planned. It was no wonder he’d failed. He’d forgotten the most important lesson of his life:

  Chance is everything.

  Like himself and Heidi, everybody in the world was a victim of chance. Most people didn’t know that. But a man with a gun and no real purpose at all except to kill could sure teach people in a hurry.

  I’ll sure teach Riley Paige, he thought. She’ll come for me and it won’t matter where or when she does.

  He was almost at the end of the path that led to the lake. He looked at his smartphone. Four minutes had passed. If he saw someone, anyone, in the next six minutes, he’d kill them. If not, he’d simply wait a couple of hours before going through the same procedure all over again. Whoever passed by when the clock wasn’t running would go away unharmed, unaware of how kind chance had been to them.

  Just as he stepped out of the woods onto the enormous rocks along the edge of the lake, he saw a man coming toward him along the shore. From the way he moved, Orin thought that he must be fairly old. He was carrying a lot of fishing tackle.

  The man sat down on a rock by the lake and began to unpack his gear.

  Orin walked toward him, smiled, and called out to him.

  “A little cold for fishing, ain’t it?”

  Surprised, the man turned around and smiled.

  “Perfect time for crappie,” he said.

  He started putting his fishing rod together.

  Orin took his gun out of his belt, raised it, aimed, and fired. The suppressor kept the noise from echoing across the lake. Instead, the gun made a sharp crack like a large dry twig breaking, followed by the whistle of the flying bullet.

  Orin could hear the bullet’s thudding impact as it hit the man’s shoulder. The man hunched over with a loud groan of pain. Then he turned and looked at Orin.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  Orin just stood there smiling, pointing the gun at him. The man scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the woods, hoping to escape. It was exactly what Orin wanted. He fired another shot that hit the man in the thigh. He watched as his prey fell to the ground and started to scramble desperately through the brush.

  Seventeen rounds left, Orin reminded himself, following him.

  It was important to keep count. He was going to keep the man alive and in mounting pain until finishing him off with the very last bullet in his clip.

  Just the way Heidi would have liked it, Orin thought, firing again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Riley’s features were set in determination as she drove into the little town of Jennings.

  “This can’t be a good idea,” Bill said from the seat beside her.

  Riley didn’t know what to say to reassure him. The truth was, she more than half agreed with him. What good was it going to do to revisit the town where she’d killed a fifteen-year-old girl all those years ago? It wasn’t as if she expected Orin Rhodes to turn up here, of all places.

  And of course, she was acting against Walder’s explicit orders.

  “I expect you and Agent Jeffreys to apprehend Hatcher within forty-eight hours if not sooner.”

  Time was running short. While Riley had been visiting Kelsey Sprigge, Bill had gone straight to the Syracuse field office to check on the status of the Hatcher case. He’d also returned to Smokey Moran’s apartment and helped a couple of agents ransack the place in search of any clues. Not surprisingly, they’d turned up nothing. And of course, Moran’s taciturn bodyguards were still nowhere to be found.

  Hatcher’s trail had run cold, and Riley had talked Bill into coming with her to Jennings. No, it probably was a bad idea. And it surely wasn’t fair for her to drag Bill along as she sabotaged her own career. They were risking his career too.

  But here they were. They’d just have to make the best of it.

  Riley parked in front of a pleasant, two-story colonial house with a picket fence, a snow-filled yard, and smoke curling up out of the chimney. It was the home of Ava Strom, whose seventeen-year-old daughter Rusty had been walking to school when Orin Rhodes and Heidi Wright had abducted her. They’d taken her just outside of town and killed her slowly with many rounds of bullets.

  The murderous couple had also killed a local handyman named Myron Wilder in exactly the same manner. But Wilder didn’t have any surviving relatives in Jennings. Rusty did. So Riley had called on the way here to tell Ava Strom that they’d like to talk to her. The woman hadn’t sounded as if she liked the idea, but she hadn’t said no.

  Bill and Riley walked up onto the porch and rang the doorbell. Ava Strom came to the door.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Riley and Bill both produced their badges. Before they could introduce themselves, Ava Strom said, “I know who you are. You told me on the phone. Come on in.”

  Riley and Bill stepped into the front foyer. Ava Strom did not invite them to come on into the living room, much less to sit down. She clearly wanted to keep things short.

  Ava was in her fifties—an ordinary-looking woman with a strangely empty expression.

  “My husband’s at work,” she said, crossing her arms. “He has a real estate business here in Jennings.”

  Ava Strom fell silent. Her silence delivered an unspoken message that her husband was not to be bothered by all this.

  Riley said, “Ms. Strom, I’m sorry to bring back difficult memories. But we’re here to talk to you about your daughter’s murder.”

  “Why?”

  Her glare and her sharp tone of voice brought Riley up short.

  Bill said, “The truth is, Orin Rhodes was released from prison a few days ago.”

  Ava Strom didn’t react at all.

  “I heard he was a model prisoner,” Ava Strom said.

  “That’s what everybody thought,” Riley said. “But he’s turned violent again.”

  Another silence f
ell. Riley got the distinct feeling that Ava Strom simply didn’t care. And maybe she had no reason to care. Riley certainly had no reason to believe that she or her husband might become Orin Rhodes’ targets. Still, her lack of any alarm or even interest was vaguely disconcerting.

  At last Riley said, “Ms. Strom, before it happened, did you have any idea—?”Her

  Before Riley could finish her question, Ava Strom said, “I fixed her breakfast that morning. Bacon and eggs and toast. She sat at the kitchen table and ate and had a book open to study. While she was eating I started right to work in the kitchen getting supper ready. I didn’t pay any attention to her. I don’t remember that either of us said a word to each other. I didn’t even say goodbye when she left, and she didn’t either. That was the last time I saw her.”

  Ava Strom looked off into space.

  “I keep thinking I should have known right then. Maybe I should have done or said something. Just a word or a smile, or maybe a scolding about eating too fast, or about eating and studying at the same time, or a question about what she was going to do that day. I keep thinking something stupid like that might have changed everything. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Riley said.

  She resisted the urge to add, “And you’re not answering the question I’m trying to ask.” By now she knew better than to expect useful answers. The woman had none to give. She was emotionally numb to the world, and had been for many years now.

  Ava Strom shrugged.

  “Well, there you have it,” she said. “The story of our lives, Logan’s and mine, ever since it happened. Nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t suppose anything will really make sense ever again.”

  She walked to the door and opened it, letting in a cold blast of air.

  “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m sure I don’t have anything else to tell you that would do any good,” she said.

  Riley nodded slowly.

  “Thank you for your time, Ms. Strom,” she said. “We’ll leave now.”

  When Bill and Riley got back into the car, Bill said, “That was pointless, Riley. We didn’t learn a thing. What are we doing here, anyway?”

  Riley didn’t reply as she started the car. She couldn’t disagree. Perhaps this whole detour had simply been a bad idea.

  But she knew where she wanted to go next. It was the motel where the shootout had taken place. She thought it might help to relive what happened there—this time trying to imagine things from Orin Rhodes’ point of view. As she often did when visiting crime scenes, maybe she could get inside his skin, finally make some sense of him.

  As she drove through town, she noticed how different everything looked from when she’d been here all those years ago. Once a quaint and simple colonial-era town, it was now gentrified. Even the older houses and buildings had lost their charm through remodeling.

  She found the address she was looking for. For a moment she thought she must have come to the wrong place. There was no motel anymore. Instead, there was a rather tacky pseudo-colonial strip mall.

  She stopped the car in the large parking lot.

  “Give me just a minute,” she said to Bill.

  She got out of the car and walked around alone, trying to get her bearings, trying to imagine the place as it used to be. But it was impossible to do. It was as if the whole incident, including Heidi Wright’s death and Orin Rhodes’ arrest, had been bulldozed clean off the face of the earth.

  A bitter irony was starting to sink in.

  The interview had been meaningless. And now even this place was meaningless too. It was as if she were getting her nosed rubbed in the meaninglessness of it all.

  Maybe that’s the point, she thought.

  Maybe it was time for her to stop expecting anything about this case to make sense. Maybe she couldn’t bring Orin Rhodes back to justice unless she abdicated any hope of making sense of him. That was likely to be hard to do. It went against every instinct she had as an agent.

  Before she could turn to walk back to the car, her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number of the caller. But as she answered, she heard a familiar voice.

  “Bet you were wondering when you’d hear from me again.”

  It was Shane Hatcher. The next thing he said was, “Don’t bother trying to trace. This is a burner phone, and anyhow, I’ll be long gone.”

  “Where are you?” Riley asked. “Are you somewhere nearby?”

  “Not if you’re in Jennings. That’s where I’d expect you to be. Or else you’ve already been there, or you’re planning to go there soon. But I think that’s where you are right now. Am I right?”

  Riley didn’t reply. Hatcher chuckled, obviously taking her silence for a yes.

  “You shouldn’t be so predictable, Riley. Especially when dealing with this guy. Believe me, he’s anything but predictable. No, I’m a long way from Jennings, and so is he.”

  Riley’s mind raced as she tried to process the hints that Hatcher was giving her.

  “You’ve been tracking him, haven’t you?” Riley asked. “Are you in Fredericksburg? Are you anywhere near April? Is he anywhere near her?”

  Riley heard a snort of laughter.

  “What do you think?”

  She made no reply.

  “What do you think?” he asked again, more insistently. “Is he going after April again right now?”

  “No,” Riley said, starting to understand his meaning.

  “Why not?”

  “It makes too much sense.”

  Hatcher let out a chuckle of hearty approval.

  “Has he killed anybody else?” Riley asked.

  She heard a sigh of impatience.

  “Riley, Riley, Riley. What did I say to you back in that garage? I don’t care who he kills. I only care about you. And you’re falling way behind.”

  Without another word, Hatcher ended the call.

  Standing there dumbly in the cold, Riley suddenly knew:

  He’s killed already. And I have no idea where, how, or who.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Riley could see that Brent Meredith was in a bad mood. She and Bill had just flown back to Quantico from Syracuse and sat down for a meeting in the team chief’s office. She noticed Meredith checking his watch, but she waited for him to begin the conversation.

  “Agents Paige and Jeffreys,” Meredith said, “Walder gave you a forty-eight-hour deadline to catch Hatcher. Your time runs out in eighteen hours. What are your chances?”

  “Not good, sir,” Bill said. “Hatcher’s not in Syracuse. That much we’re sure of.”

  “And you didn’t pick up a single new clue?” Meredith asked.

  Riley glanced at Bill. He nodded, indicating that she’d better tell Meredith the truth.

  “Not exactly a clue, sir,” she said. “But he called me.”

  Meredith’s eyes widened. Riley was really glad that Walder wasn’t here. Fortunately, coming in this late wasn’t his style. This was going to be hard enough to explain to Meredith.

  “Called you?” Meredith said. “And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”

  “He called on a burner phone, impossible to trace,” Riley said. “There was no point in reporting it at the time.”

  Meredith put his feet up on his desk in a mock-casual manner.

  “Well, Agent Paige—is there anything you’d like to share with me about your little chat? Or was your conversation of a purely personal nature?”

  Riley felt stung. She mentally weighed what to say. She figured it was probably just as well not to mention that she and Bill had taken a little detour to Jennings. If Bill chose to say something about it, he could do so. But given Meredith’s sour disposition, it seemed best to stick to just part of the facts for now.

  “He seems to be tracking Orin Rhodes,” Riley said. “He gave me the distinct impression that Rhodes has killed someone. Who, why, or where, I’ve got no idea.”

  Meredith looked puzzled and far from pleased
.

  “Do you believe him?” he said.

  “I do, sir,” Riley said.

  “Why?”

  The question brought Riley up short. She didn’t say anything.

  Meredith said, “Agent Paige, this is the second time you’ve been contacted by the man you’re supposed to bring to justice. And you’re nowhere near apprehending him. Just what the hell is going on? Why is he staying in touch with you?”

  Riley felt more and more fortunate that Walder wasn’t here to throw a fit about things. Meredith was being tough enough.

  And it wasn’t an easy question to answer. So far she’d only told Kelsey Sprigge the real reason for Hatcher’s escape. He’d done it for Riley, because he admired her and wanted to help her—or so he said, and Riley had no reason not to believe him. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that even to Bill, let alone to Meredith. She wasn’t sure why, except that her whole connection with Hatcher terrified her somehow.

  “He knows me, sir,” Riley said.

  Meredith sat quietly thinking for a moment.

  “I’m going to have to sort all this out with Walder tomorrow morning,” he said. “Agent Jeffreys, I’ll want you to be at our meeting. Agent Paige, I think maybe you should stay clear of the BAU at least until tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a feeling you’d better not cross Walder’s path right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Riley said.

  “That’s all for now,” Meredith said. “Both of you go home and get some sleep.”

  *

  When Riley parked at her home in Fredericksburg, she was struck by how quiet and still her neighborhood was. Just the night before last, the whole area had been flooded with cops and agents and medics. Now it looked quite peaceful, with discreet decorations adorning most of the front doors and artificial candles in some windows.

  Riley wondered what the neighbors thought about the chaos and danger she had brought among them. Three people had been taken away in ambulances. The neighbors had ample cause for alarm.

  Riley unlocked the front door and let herself into her townhouse. She more than half expected to hear someone call her name. She had seldom been in this house without the presence of April or Gabriela or both. Now her home was strangely devoid of life.