Once Hunted

by Blake Pierce

  She couldn’t exactly blame Pyle for feeling this way. But his words cut closer to home than he could possibly realize. She couldn’t exactly claim that she hadn’t been in touch with Hatcher. He had forcefully communicated with her in Syracuse, but she couldn’t begin to explain that to the captain. And she didn’t want to mention that Hatcher had phoned her and then sent her materials that directed her here.

  Riley said, “Actually, today I’m more interested in Orin Rhodes.”

  Pyle’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “The guy who was released about a week ago?” he said. “I can’t imagine why. He was squeaky clean, a real goody two-shoes. The last I heard, he was headed back to his home town.”

  Riley was glad that the guard hadn’t heard about the Rhodes case yet. It was bad enough that Hatcher was getting so much publicity.

  “He didn’t show up there,” Bill said. “He just murdered a man down in South Carolina. Killed him slowly, filled him with nineteen bullets.”

  “Previous to that, he attacked my daughter in our own home,” Riley added. “And he’s not going to stop now. He’s still at large.”

  Pyle looked truly taken aback.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “I hadn’t heard about all that. I’d never have thought it.”

  “I’d like a look at his cell,” Riley said.

  Pyle shrugged.

  “What would be the point?” he said. “He took all his belongings when he left. If he missed anything, the staff got rid of it by now. There’s another prisoner there now.”

  Riley made no reply, and he finally said, “But if that’s what you want, fine. Just don’t expect a pleasant welcome.”

  Riley and Bill followed Pyle through a maze of gates and hallways. At last they came to the cellblock. It was lined on one side with high windows. On the other side was a staggering sight that took Riley’s breath away—an entire cliff of cells, one row upon another rising up from the ground floor.

  As they walked by them, Riley saw that the cells were tiny, with room for one prisoner each. Each cell had a bed, toilet, sink, and cabinet. Some had lots of belongings in them, while others were almost bare. Some prisoners had hung towels on the bars to give themselves a bit of privacy. Riley thought that the cells seemed like cages for animals.

  As if to keep Riley from feeling any undue sympathy, the men in those cells were certainly acting like animals right then. At the sight of a woman, they unleashed a torrent of obscenities and catcalls, and groping arms reached out through the bars.

  “Are you OK?” Bill asked with concern as Riley steered clear of the arms.

  “Fine,” Riley said.

  “These guys are lucky not to have been here back when this place opened in 1828,” Pyle said over the racket. “Total silence was imposed. If you made a peep, you could get a good beating with a cat o’ nine tails.”

  The image jolted Riley with a disturbing memory. Just last year she’d hunted down a psychopath who had tormented women captives with a cat o’ nine tails. She remembered her final confrontation with him in total darkness, and how he’d lashed her in the face with the whip. She still had a slight trace of a scar.

  Snap out of it, she told herself. You’re here to do a job.

  A young guard came toward Riley, Bill, and Pyle.

  “Well, here’s a familiar face,” he said, looking at Riley with an odd sort of smile.

  “What are you talking about, Finney?” Pyle asked.

  “Ask her,” the guard said.

  Riley had no idea what the guard meant.

  The guard looked at her closely and said, “Weren’t you Orin Rhodes’ girlfriend or something?”

  Riley was startled.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, Rhodes had plenty of pictures of you on the wall of his cell,” the guard said. “Like an altar, almost. Right there among the Bibles and religious books and pictures of Jesus and such.”

  Now Riley felt slightly sickened. She knew that Rhodes’ “altar” had been one of hatred and revenge. Was this why Hatcher had led her here—to find out just how deeply obsessed Rhodes had been with her? No, there had to be more to it than that.

  Pyle told the guard, “This is FBI Agent Riley Paige.”

  The guard’s expression suddenly seemed more respectful.

  “Oh, Shane the Chain’s pal. That’s a whole different thing.” Then he added with a grin, “Well, if you’re here for a visit, I’m afraid you missed him. Didn’t say when he might be coming back. Or maybe you happen to know.”

  A strange glint in the guard’s eye disturbed Riley. Had this guard had something to do with Hatcher’s escape? Surely he couldn’t have managed it without help from inside. And judging from how richly the book truck driver had been rewarded, Hatcher clearly had a lot to offer a lowly prison guard.

  And now what kind of connection did the guard imagine Riley had with Hatcher? A sour taste was rising in her mouth.

  Pyle told the guard, “Paige is here to take a look at Rhodes’ cell.”

  “It’s just over here,” the guard said.

  He led Riley, Bill, and Pyle to a cell where a bearded giant of a prisoner lay on his bed. He had no belongings to speak of.

  The guard said to the prisoner, “We’ve got a celebrity visitor, Hanford. This is none other than Agent Riley Paige of the FBI.”

  The prisoner sat up and looked at Riley with an expression of marked interest.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the prisoner said. “Shane the Chain said nothing but good things about you.”

  Ignoring the remark, Riley peered inside the cell.

  The prisoner said, “Come on in for a look.”

  Riley glanced at Pyle, who looked back at her warily. She knew what he was thinking. Letting a reasonably attractive woman in one of these cells might be asking for trouble. Bill also looked distinctly uneasy.

  But Riley wasn’t frightened. And she figured she’d better make the most of the situation.

  “Let me in,” she told Pyle.

  Pyle shrugged, then opened the barred door. He stepped back, fingering his baton and pepper spray canister.

  The prisoner stood against the wall at the foot of the bed, leaving Riley free to look around. Riley kept her face angled toward him as she stooped down to look under the bed. He made no threatening moves.

  Riley made a quick visual sweep of the room. There wasn’t much to see. The cell had no nooks or crannies where anything might have been hidden away. Any evidence that Orin Rhodes might have kept here was surely long since gone.

  She was learning something even so. The enormous prisoner was standing almost at attention, eyeing her with what seemed to be awed respect. Her connection to Hatcher carried tremendous importance here. Strange as it seemed, she was probably as safe in this cell with this convicted criminal as she was in her own home.

  Probably safer, she thought, reminding herself of Rhodes’ attack.

  Again she remembered the song lyric Hatcher quoted in his message.

  “You can’t make old friends.”

  She shuddered to imagine what kinds of things Hatcher might have told the guard and the prisoner about their “friendship.”

  She stepped out of the cell, and Pyle shut the barred door behind her.

  “Maybe you’d like a look at Hatcher’s old cell while you’re here,” Pyle said.

  Riley wondered whether it might be a good idea. She thought back to Hatcher’s message.

  Look inside the Cell.

  He hadn’t specifically said whose cell he meant. Was she looking in the wrong cell? In any case, what good would it do to check Hatcher’s cell? By now, it would have been stripped of any possible evidence. Surely there was nothing left to see.

  Then she remembered the other part of his message.

  Something is hidden in the room that never sees the sun.

  And at that moment, she felt the sun on her back. She turned around and stared at the high windows that faced
the cliff of prison cells. She was a little angry with herself. She should have realized right away that Hatcher’s description simply didn’t fit this place. She had to come up with a new theory on the spot.

  An idea started to occur to her.

  She turned toward Finney, the guard.

  “What do you remember about Rhodes’ cell?” she asked. “You said he had pictures of me, Bibles, religious books, pictures of Jesus. What else did he have?”

  “Nothing interesting,” Finney said. “He studied a lot, so he always had quite a few books in there.”

  Riley’s idea was coming into clearer focus. She said to Pyle, “I want to visit your library.”

  Pyle led them away from the cellblock through more gates and hallways until they got to the prison library. It was a large, single room with rows of bookshelves. Riley could immediately see that it had no windows at all.

  “I think we’re in the right place,” she murmured to Bill.

  But the right place for what? What was she supposed to look for here?

  Then she remembered something else about Hatcher’s note. What he’d written exactly was, “Look inside the Cell.”

  The word “cell” was capitalized and underlined. Now Riley understood that Hatcher didn’t mean any prison cell, and he didn’t even mean the library. He meant something else.

  “Give me a minute,” Riley said to Bill.

  She walked along the shelves looking at the subject descriptions. Soon she came to the section marked “SCIENCE.”

  She walked over to the section and browsed through the books. She quickly found a hefty textbook entitled Cell Biology.

  Her breath quickened as she sensed that she was on the right track. She took the book off the shelf and thumbed through its pages. In the middle of the book she found a small clipping from a newspaper:

  Furnished room.

  Rent includes some furniture, electric, gas and water.

  Cable/Telephone is extra.

  The ad also included a phone number.

  She hurried over to Bill with the piece of paper.

  “I’ve got it, Bill,” she said. “I know how to find him. We’ve just got to call this number.”

  Then Riley noticed that the librarian was staring at her. His face was lean and sinister, like a buzzard. And he was smiling at her. With a chill, Riley sensed that he knew exactly what she had found. He had known that the ad was there in the book. He had expected her to come looking for it.

  How does he fit in? Riley wondered.

  Her brain raced to put together a plausible scenario. Perhaps the librarian had noticed the ad when Orin Rhodes had returned the book. Then maybe he’d left the note in the book and notified Shane Hatcher about it, knowing that he’d be interested.

  Riley strode up to the desk and glared at the librarian.

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  Still smiling, the librarian lightly shrugged.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “About this,” Riley said, waving the scrap of paper in front of him.

  The librarian seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “Never seen it before in my life,” he said.

  Riley held his gaze. He didn’t even blink and kept right on smiling. She knew there was no point in asking him further questions. He was doubtless part of Hatcher’s network of “old friends.” And how large and extensive was that network?

  The driver had been part of it. Riley also suspected the guard named Finney, and the prisoner who now occupied Rhodes’ cell. But she was sure that Hatcher had many more allies than that.

  What chilled her to the bone was the thought that maybe she was becoming one of them herself. And maybe the librarian’s smile was one of complicity.

  Again she remembered what Hatcher had written:

  And always ask yourself …

  “Am I already? Or am I becoming?”

  Those questions were disturbing her more and more.

  “Come on,” she said to Bill. “Let’s check this out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Orin Rhodes was having a good time just sitting in a booth, eating a burger, swigging a beer, and wondering whether any of the people here would be his next victim. He enjoyed this noisy sports bar, with its loud music and various TVs blaring away. It was wonderfully different from the place where he’d been caged for so many years.

  Tonight was New Year’s Eve, and the customers looked like they were building up to a real party. He chuckled. He was likely to spoil the festivities for them.

  Might his next victim be one of the guys playing pool? The garrulous bartender? The young woman at the jukebox? The depressed-looking man sitting at the bar getting drunk in the middle of the day? One of the two middle-aged women chattering at a nearby table?

  Of course, he had no idea. And the fact that he had no idea made him smile. He’d kill, and he’d probably kill soon, but just who he was going to kill was out of his hands entirely. He was leaving it to chance.

  He remembered his motto:

  Chance is everything.

  After all, he had chosen the fisherman in South Carolina by chance. And what a wonderful feeling it had been to kill him so slowly, knowing that the man himself had no idea why! It had been delicious—almost as delicious as the enormous hamburger he was eating right now.

  Had he ever tasted a hamburger this good? If he had, it had been more than sixteen years ago, and he doubted that he’d had one this good even then. He wished Heidi could be here to taste a burger like this. Of course, everything he was doing was all for her. Even a tasty hamburger was somehow part of his revenge on her behalf. Freedom was sweeter than he’d imagined. But revenge was sweeter still.

  Still, he knew he was going to have to curb his appetites. Since he’d been out, some skills from his youth had come back to him easily. He was still good at purse-snatching, picking pockets, and breaking into cars, and he had just stolen a sizeable tip that a party of six had left on a nearby table. He stole enough to get by, but he mustn’t overspend. He’d put down a lot of money back in Virginia, paying a low-class private eye to follow a certain person. He hadn’t quite built his stash back up where he liked to have it.

  He finished the burger, left enough money to pay for it plus a tip, then went to the restroom. There he paused to look at his face in the mirror. Was it recognizable? The question mattered a lot right now. Since the South Carolina killing, his face had been in the news. But those pictures had been prison photos, and even though they’d been recent, he’d looked dour and unhappy in them.

  Now he looked like a new man. After a week of freedom, his expression was relaxed and even happy. The cut on his left temple was healing well, and he was able to comb some hair over it. He’d also darkened his hair and let some stubble show on his chin.

  He knew that he was really quite ordinary looking, except when he turned on his considerable charm. His looks served him well. He could blend in just about anywhere. Besides, he had put a lot of distance between himself and that lake in South Carolina. Nobody here was likely to suspect that he was in their midst, just waiting for blind chance to bring him new prey.

  His face darkened a little when he thought about Riley Paige. How was she dealing with his escape? What was she doing right at that moment? Was she feeling appropriately pressured and guilty that he was killing innocent people because of her? Was she having any success at all at tracking him?

  He’d left a few crumbs of information—or misinformation—here and there. He remembered the message he had left hooked to the fisherman’s vest by the fishing fly.

  Dedicated to Riley Paige … I’m just getting started.

  Had the message properly caught her attention? Now he worried a little. For all he really knew, the note hadn’t gotten back to her at all. Was it possible that the redneck local cops had been too stupid to figure out who Riley Paige was?

  And if the message had gotten to her, might she not have known who it was from? Might she have thought
it was from a different murderer altogether? Maybe he should have signed his name to it. Or would that somehow have spoiled the effect?

  Now was the time to decide. And it seemed wrong to sign the next message. He’d do just what he’d done before. He took out a pad of paper and jotted the message down, just to have it ready. This time he planned to attach it to the victim with a safety pin.

  He left the restroom and went straight outside. The air was pleasantly warm, a refreshing change from the bitter cold farther north. And yet he paused just outside the door. There it was again—a strange feeling that he was being watched and followed. He’d been feeling it off and on for several days now.

  Riley Paige, maybe? he wondered.

  Surely she hadn’t caught up with him, at least not yet. If she had, she’d have made her presence known by now. No, it wasn’t her. Whenever she did find him, he’d know it, and he’d be ready for her.

  He decided that the feeling was only his imagination. He put it out of his mind so that he could focus on whatever chance might bring next.

  He walked out into the parking lot, admiring his own choice of the setting. He’d picked this place because it was isolated along a road near a small town. There were trees on both sides, and the road wasn’t heavily traveled. Not a lot of people were here at midday, but he could still hear the noise of the televisions and music trailing behind him as he walked.

  The sound faded as he walked across the parking lot toward his car. It was a large lot, with just a few cars clustered near the building. He had parked out on the far edge of the lot. A couple of other cars were over there too, probably belonging to employees.

  Now that he was a safe distance away from the place, he took out his smartphone and set the countdown for ten minutes. The same as before, he would simply kill whoever happened along before ten minutes passed—if anybody did. He opened the door of his used car, took his pistol out of the glove compartment, and attached the suppressor to it. Then he put the weapon in his deep pocket and stood by his car and waited.

  Before a whole minute had passed, the door to the bar opened and a woman came out. She was a short brunette, wearing a black skirt, a white shirt, and a black necktie—the uniform worn by the bar’s employees. As she came nearer, he recognized her. She was the waitress who had served him his hamburger, and her nametag had said that her name was Amber. Apparently she had just gotten off work. And she was walking straight toward him.