Touching Evil

by Kylie Brant

  They walked across the deck. Down the steps. With each stride she wondered about the man she was leaving behind. How much blood had he lost? After that first horror-filled moment she hadn’t dared chance a look to see. Lucy had an inner strength that had helped her overcome life-altering events. But she knew her strength was no match for that image.

  They stopped at Gavin’s car. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but I have to do this.” He pulled out a pair of zip ties from the back pocket of his jeans. Held them out before her.

  A cold knot of dread settled in the pit of her belly. Lucy searched her captor’s face, striving for an earnest expression. “That’s not the way to build trust.”

  “Trust will come later. First I have to get you out of the state.” He brought up the gun in one fluid move, made a little motion with it. “Put these on and you’ll be showing me I can trust you. If I can’t…”

  The threat in the unspoken words was implicit. Wordlessly she thrust her wrists through the loop, gritting her teeth as he leaned forward and pulled the cord tight with his teeth. The nylon bit into her wrists. Then he fumbled with the key fob until he found the button that opened the trunk.

  Lucy looked at the rising lid with horror. Even with her hands tied she could defeat a seatbelt and car lock. But this…she looked at the dark confined place. Looked back at her captor. “I’ll be good, I promise.” The lies tumbled from her lips. “But don’t make me go in there. I’m claustrophobic. I can’t do it. Please, please don’t make me.”

  His shove was ungentle. “Get in.”

  With a sense of impending doom she did as she was told. Maybe she could get her wrists loose on the road. Then when he opened the trunk she could launch a blitz attack.

  That small hope died when he pulled another zip tie from his pocket and expertly bound her feet. When he was done, he gave her a small smile. “There you go. You’ll be fine, my love, I promise. Soon we’ll be able to start our new life together.”

  As the trunk lid lowered, she felt a flare of panic. She wasn’t really claustrophobic of course, but she’d never been locked in a trunk before. Bound. Headed out of state with a known killer.

  She’d never left the only man she’d ever cared about to die on her kitchen floor.

  The engine started. The vehicle began to move. Lucy’s religious beliefs were unorthodox, to say the least. A mixture of the traditional Navajo teachings of her grandmother and smatterings picked up through life experiences. But right now she was praying to any god that would listen that Gavin was conscious. That somehow, someone would come to help him.

  Gravel crunched as they headed down her driveway. Lucy was a realist. She knew exactly how grim the outlook was. She realized that the chance of help arriving in time was a slender one.

  It was equally possible that she’d left Gavin to bleed out on her kitchen floor. That her act meant to save him had only sentenced him to die alone.

  That possibility was far more torturous than being imprisoned by a madman.

  * * * *

  He wasn’t dead. Gavin was almost certain of it. He had only the haziest of notions about what the afterlife might entail, but he was fairly certain it didn’t include cool tile beneath his cheek that still held the faintest aroma of lemon-scented cleanser.

  He’d heard Lucy talking the killer into leaving the house. Heard the car leave. Conscious thought was getting fuzzy. But panic filled him at the thought of her on the road with the zombie lover.

  She didn’t have a landline, but his cell was in his pocket. All he had to do was get up. Take it out. Dial 9-1-1.

  Gavin willed his body to move. Nothing happened. Not a twitch of muscle obeyed him. He could feel the fire in his arm and side. Feel the warm sensation of blood leaving his body. He tried again, commanding his legs to move. Again they failed him.

  He was lying on his injured arm. Bleeding from the opposite side. He sent a mental command to his body again. Felt his fingers on his good arm curl in response. Then lift a fraction of an inch from the floor before going lax again.

  Shifting tactics he summoned a mental image of Lucy walking out that door with a man who had murdered and buried at least four women. Maybe more. And this time he was able to bend his arm toward his hip.

  Slowly, excruciatingly, he inched his fingers toward the cell tucked in his back jeans pocket. When he managed to free it, only to have it clatter to the floor beside him, Gavin went weak with exhaustion. There was a reason. An urgent one, to make a call. But the logic was slippery and unconsciousness was becoming increasingly difficult to battle.

  It was Lucy. Something about Lucy.

  Clenching his jaw, he struggled against the fog crowding his mind and demanded his fingers to work. Moved the phone inch by inch. Stopped, battling to remember how to use it.

  The command for speed dial was all he could manage before sliding it closer to his mouth. A cloud of mental fog enveloped him, threatened to suck him in. Suck him under.

  A vaguely familiar voice answered. “Prescott.”

  Gavin’s remaining strength had been sapped. His eyes slid closed. And no amount of commands could make them open again.

  “Connerly? Is that you?”

  “Lucy,” Gavin mumbled. “My car. He…took…her. West. Need ambulance. At Luc…” That was odd. The thoughts were there. Ready to speak. But his tongue was too thick to talk. The words he wanted to force out remained unuttered.

  He had a single thought of startling clarity that this must be what dying felt like. Then the dike of his resistance crumbled and unconsciousness rushed in, dragging him to blackness.

  * * * *

  “Connerly? Connerly?”

  Groggily, Sophia sat up in bed. Blinking at the bare-chested man beside her, she struggled for lucidity. Of course. Cam always had his phone on the bedside table. She did the same.

  A moment later understanding replaced the fog of sleep. Trepidation filled her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Not sure.” His voice was terse. He was already swinging his legs out of the bed. “Where’s your phone?”

  The urgency in his manner had her grabbing her cell from the opposite bedside table to hand to him wordlessly. “Something’s wrong. It was Connerly’s number that called, but he isn’t talking anymore. I don’t want to disconnect.” She bounded out of the bed after him, hesitating for a moment when she realized she was naked. Snatching up his crumpled shirt from the floor, she drew it on and half ran after him to the office.

  “Here.” He thrust the phone at her. “I can’t get at my contacts list without hanging up. Keep the line open. Try to get him talking again.”

  Sophia followed Cam to his office. “Where’s Benally live?”

  “Uh…” It took a moment to remember. “Bondurant. Not in the town. She bought something rural. She likes her privacy. Did something happen to Lucy? Or Gavin?” There was no sound from the cell she held to her ear.

  Cam sat down at the computer and swiftly brought up a list of contacts. “Not really sure. But Connerly didn’t sound great. I think he was trying to say the offender has Lucy. And that they’re heading west.”

  Her stomach plummeted at the thought of brave, solitary Lucy at the hands of the perverted UNSUB she’d profiled. Lucy, who used an abrasive manner for the same reason others erected privacy fences. Lucy, the woman of contradictions who had left behind her ancestral Navajo aversion to dead bodies and dedicated her life to working with the same.

  Cam dialed a number on her phone. She listened with one ear as she tried to summon the man on the other end of the phone she still held. “Gavin, are you there? It’s Sophia. Are you hurt? Is Lucy?” Cam was biting out commands about sending an ambulance to the residence of Lucy Benally in rural Bonderant, Iowa. And he wasn’t being pleasant about it.

  “How the hell would I know the address? You have a listing of your residents, don’t you? Find it. Fast.” Disconnecting, he consulted his computer screen again and punched in another number.

  “Gavin, if you’re there
, talk to me.” Sophia’s voice was low and soothing. She strained to hear a sound from the cell, but there was none. Not even breathing, which had her heart clutching. “Are you hurt? Is Lucy?” She kept up a running one-sided conversation in the hopes that if the man was there, if he was conscious he’d hear a familiar voice, at least.

  But a cold fear was taking hold that he was unconscious. Or worse.

  “Sorry about the hour, Dusten but I’ve got an ambulance dispatched to Lucy Benally’s place in Bondurant. Not sure of the address so the service might need some help. We have reason to believe the UNSUB we’re after might have been there. Sonny Baxter. And he may have taken Lucy when he left.” Cam fell silent as the other man talked. “Yeah, whichever deputy you’ve got located closest would be fine. Give him this number.” He reeled off Sophia’s cell number from memory. “No, I’m staying here. Calling to mobilize my team. I need an update as soon as one’s available. Thanks.”

  He spared a glance in Sophia’s direction before turning to consult the computer screen again. “Anything from Connerly?”

  She shook her head, her throat full, then belatedly became aware that he couldn’t see the gesture. “No. I can’t hear the sound of his breathing either. But the line is still open.”

  Waiting for the phone to connect, his gaze met hers again. “Keep talking. If he’s there it might help to hear a voice.”

  If he’s there. The words ricocheted in her head, even as she continued her monologue on the cell phone. She couldn’t summon a reasonable explanation for the silence on the phone. Unless he was hurt. Unable to talk.

  Or if he was… Her mind skittered away from the other idea that occurred. The one she didn’t want to consider. “Everything’s going to be all right, Gavin. Help is coming. Help will be there soon.” More silence. Sophia wondered exactly what the medics would see when they entered Lucy’s house.

  The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness. Cam called Franks and updated him, tasking the man with calling the rest of the team to tell them to stand by. He was currently on the phone with SAC Gonzalez. Sophia headed for the kitchen for a bottle of water. Her voice was growing hoarse with the endless talking.

  “Gavin, tell me about Lucy. Did he take her? Where are they going?” She reached in the fridge for the water, but her hand froze in the act of retrieving one.

  “Luce…” The word was so faint that at first Sophia thought she’d imagined it. “That’s right, Gavin. Lucy. Where’s Lucy?”

  “Rez…” His voice was stronger now, but slurred. “West. Luce. Give ‘em…hell.”

  Sophia covered the phone with one hand as she raced back to Cam’s office. “He’s still alive! He’s talking.”

  “Just a minute.” Abruptly he cut off the person on the other phone to look at her. “Ask him if it was Sonny Baxter. If Lucy is still…” He seemed to amend his words. “If she’s okay.”

  Sophia did as directed but was met by silence again. “I think he’s in and out of consciousness.” She snuck a look at the clock on Cam’s computer screen. Eleven minutes since Cam had called for an ambulance. “But he did say Rez. And west.” The words were puzzling. “Lucy grew up on the Navajo reservation. Utah, I think she might have said. Why would he take her there?”

  A feral smile crossed Cam’s lips even as he spoke into the phone he was holding. “Yeah, I’m still here.” To Sophia he said, “It’s like you’ve said before. Everyone has an anchor. Maybe that’s Lucy’s. Could be she figures to get him away from Connerly to a place where she has the advantage.” He returned to his conversation on the cell. “I’m on it. I’ll keep you updated.”

  Disconnecting, he rubbed his jaw. He’d shaved after showering, but already his face was stubbled. Just noticing it summoned a brief memory of the feel of its former smoothness against her naked thighs.

  With a jerk, Sophia slammed the mental door on that memory and focused on what Cam was saying. “If he’s heading to the reservation it can only be because Lucy convinced him. That takes him away from the familiar, away from his anchor. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “Unless he no longer has an anchor here.” Sophia thought for a moment, flipping through mental files. “He has to know his house isn’t safe anymore. He could have learned from the news that you discovered Martha Moxley’s body. Vance’s home is under surveillance, but Klaussen said she was never aware of anyone else visiting the house while she was imprisoned there. And none of the neighbors ID’d him from the sketches your agent showed them.” She fell silent, her mind racing.

  Cam surged to his feet. Glared at her silent cell while he paced the room.

  “We know he’s smart enough to stay off well-traveled roads,” she mused. The offender had avoided traffic cameras by doing just that after he’d kidnapped Van Wheton. “So if he does head west, that’s likely what he’ll do. And he may travel close to a cemetery where the first six victims were buried.”

  He jerked around. Shot her a surprised look. “How do you know?”

  She gave a slight shrug. “Those areas are familiar to him. You might want to check with Fedorowicz, see if Baxter ever mentioned traveling out of the Des Moines area. If Baxter doesn’t think Moxley’s vehicle is safe, he could have taken Lucy’s or Gavin’s.” She broke off suddenly, listening hard at the cell she still had to her ear.

  A powerful wave of relief surged through her. “It sounds like the medics are there.”

  As if summoned by her words, the cell Cam was holding sounded. Sophia listened, barely daring to breathe as he spoke tersely to whoever was on line. She trailed behind him as he strode out of the room toward his bedroom, trying to glean a sense of what was happening at Lucy’s house. Cam pulled a pair of pants out of his closet, sat on the edge of the bed and drew them on with one hand. Then he strode to the dresser and pulled a pair of socks from his drawer. “Thanks for the update. Keep me posted if there are any other developments.”

  He tossed the cell on the bed when he sat down again to drag on socks. “It’s okay to disconnect. We’ll trade.”

  With an odd sense of reluctance Sophia hung up and crossed to hand the phone to Cam, picking up her own. “Well?”

  “Connerly’s in rough shape.” He stood, went back to the closet to choose a shirt. “At least two GSW’s. Lost a lot of blood, but breathing. Only vehicle in the vicinity is Benally’s from the description.”

  “So Baxter has Gavin’s or Moxley’s,” Sophia surmised.

  “Moxley’s car was over twenty years old. If he’s smart he ditched it close to Lucy’s. He’ll have taken Gavin’s.” Cam buttoned up a wine-colored shirt and jammed the tails into his gray pants before fastening them and going back to the closet for a suit coat.

  “That makes sense. He’d suspect we’d know about Moxley. He’d realize it wasn’t safe to keep it on the road too long. Unless…” When her voice tapered off, his gaze sharpened.

  “Unless?”

  “Unless he’s suffered a complete mental break.” Which, of course made him even more unpredictable.

  Cam shrugged into a suit coat and shoved his feet into a pair of black dress shoes. Going to the dresser, he picked up his credentials and then snagged the phone off the bed, placing a hand on her back as he went toward the door, guiding her out of it. “While you get dressed I’m putting out BOLOs on Moxley’s and Connerly’s cars and having road blocks set up on westbound roads in a four county area. It’s a lot of miles to cover and he’s got a head start.”

  “So you’ll alert state police in Nebraska. Possibly South Dakota.”

  His hand left her back and swept under the shirt to give her butt a pat. “I’ll make

  a cop out of you yet. We’re leaving in five.”

  That put a hurry in her step. His sense of urgency was contagious. The thought of Lucy trapped with a known murderer had the blood congealing in her veins. “You barely got dressed in that amount of time,” she called over her shoulder, but the protest was automatic.

  Lucy was in danger. Ga
vin was critically injured. The real concern wasn’t how long it took her to get dressed.

  It was whether it was already too late.

  Chapter 14

  The trunk of a car was no place for self-recriminations. But they were uppermost in Lucy’s mind while she twisted and squirmed, trying to free herself.

  If it hadn’t been for her, Gavin would never have been at her place. Would never have encountered the deranged killer that seemed to think he and Lucy were soul mates. The truth of the observation seared through her. If she’d had the courage to have that talk he’d wanted at the office, it would have been over. He’d have gone back to his hotel room, perhaps with a bruised ego, but alone. Safe.

  Something inside her mentally jeered at the thought. Connerly was about as easy to get rid of as a burr on a shaggy mutt. And spending last night with the man had only made him more determined. The only way to have avoided him following her home was if she’d stayed all night at his hotel instead.

  And that thought was as agonizing as the memory of leaving him bleeding in her kitchen.

  Lucy didn’t put much faith in hope. Hope was believing her mother’s empty promises that things were going to change. That the newest job was going to bring them riches. That the latest boyfriend was going to be their ticket off the reservation, which her mother had despised.

  Her little brother and sister had clung to false hope long past the age Lucy had stopped believing. But they could do that. Lucy had gone to work by that time to bring in enough money to put food on the table. She’d made sure there was a Christmas tree each year with a small present for each. Hope was useless. Determination was always the solution.

  Until now. Because she had no logical reason to believe Gavin was alive. She’d gone to medical school. She knew what that amount of blood loss meant. But she stubbornly clung to the hope that she was wrong.

  Because believing otherwise made it almost impossible to gather the courage to plot her escape.

  The zip ties seemed to grow tighter the more she struggled against them. Lucy had seen a YouTube video once showing how to break loose from the bonds. After several minutes in which she only managed to cut off her circulation even more, she was ready to track down the person in that video and beat an apology from him.