This was a complete surprise to Rainey. It appeared Katie thought there were some things Rainey did not need to know. At the moment, that was the least of Rainey’s worries.
“I have to call her. She’s at the hospital,” Rainey said, frantic to hang up.
“Hang on,” Brooks said. “Katie is in protective custody and being escorted home, where she and your children will be under armed guard for the duration of the investigation.”
Rainey sighed with relief. “Okay, I’m good with that.”
Brooks explained further, “That information you requested set off alarm bells out here. Danny asked that Vance Wayne be located and brought in for questioning. We tied the car in the lake to his father. He had a mechanic’s lean put on it back in the eighties—”
Danny’s frantic voice interrupted, “Get out of there, Rainey. He’s not at the hospital or his home. Units have been called to his ex-wife’s address. A child in distress on the 911 call says his dad killed his mom. Seems she called the tip line earlier, saying she thought her ex-husband was involved with the bodies we were finding. No one had a chance to talk to her yet, and she must have said something to him. He’s devolving at a rapid pace.”
Rainey saw the flash of headlights come through the bay door window and reflect off the back wall of the garage.
“It’s too late, Danny. He’s already here.”
“We’re on the way to you. Ten minutes out, tops. Stay on the phone,” Danny said, excitement elevating the pitch of his normal baritone.
Rainey watched a black Charger pull up behind the colonel’s car and stop, a single occupant behind the wheel. She started describing what she was seeing to Danny.
“He’s driving a Charger, typical law enforcement emulation. He’s stopped outside, just sitting in the car. When he comes in, I’m going to put the phone in my breast pocket. I might need both hands.”
She took another quick look around the garage, while the colonel watched Vance Wayne watch them.
“We’re in a mechanic’s garage. Bladen is not in sight, but something isn’t right. It’s cold in here, but there is a new heating unit running full blast out back. The truck is parked over a pit, like you find in oil changing setups.” She paused and flashed the light around the oil soaked walls of the pit. “There’s nothing in it but old oil.”
She focused on the electrical wiring, following the wires across the exposed beams to a box on the wall. She crossed to it quickly, trying to absorb as much information as she could before Vance Wayne made his entrance. Rainey opened the door on the fuse box.
“I’m at the electric service. It’s new, like the heater, and heavy duty, enough power for two buildings this size.”
The power outlets in the garage were connected to the cables coming from the top of the box. Heavy cables descended from the box down the wall behind a workbench. Rainey started pulling old oily car parts out of the way.
“There are power cables running into the floor, and there is a digital cable run as well.” Rainey placed her palm on the floor. “The floor is warm. There is a room under this building. She’s here, Danny. She’s under us.”
A car door slammed outside. “He’s coming,” the colonel said softly.
“Okay, Danny. You better get your ass here fast. I’m about to meet our boy face to face.”
Just as she pulled the phone away to drop it in her pocket, she heard Danny say, “Try not to kill him, Rainey.”
Vance Wayne stopped just outside the door and shouted into the building. “I got a shotgun on you. You might as well come on out. If I come through that door, I’m blowing everything in there to bits.”
Still down on the floor, Rainey held up her hand, signaling the colonel to let her speak. “Don’t shoot. I’m a fugitive recovery agent in search of a skipper. That’s his car out there. We tracked him back here and he took off through the woods. He’s the one that kicked the door in.”
She turned off her flashlight and leaned back into the shadows under the bench, keeping aim on the dark figure outside the door. The colonel’s silhouette was now crouched near the rear bumper of the truck and the steps leading down into the pit.
“Where’s your vehicle?” Vance asked.
She knew he was playing along. He knew exactly who she was and why she was there. Rainey was buying time for Danny and her rescuers, who were at this moment barreling toward her location.
“My partner took it. He’s circling around to see if the fugitive comes out on the other side of these woods. I stayed here, in case he came back for his car.”
When she heard his laughter, she knew the game was up. “That’s good, Agent Sexy. Thinking on your feet, but your partner is in the hospital surrounded by the rest of your staff. You’re alone in there with Patrick Asher. A rogue ex-federal agent and a distraught father, kicking in doors, breaking laws, anything to find a missing daughter.”
Rainey spoke softly into her jacket pocket, hoping Danny could hear her. “He’s dropped all pretense. This is the end game. Move your ass.”
The particular model of M-9 she held was a double-action weapon, requiring hammer cocking for the first round. Rainey slipped her thumb to the hammer and slowly lowered it until the lock clicked home, sounding like thunder in the silence of her hiding place. If she was going to shoot him, she needed a good reason, so she prodded him for one.
“So, what’s going to happen? Are you going to stand out there and wait for the cops to get here, or run for your life? DeBardeleben ran, you know. So did Ted, who actually turned out to be very afraid of dying. Schaefer turned himself in after two of his victims escaped. He thought he’d go free after a few years, but I think the guy who stabbed him to death in prison will be out sooner. BTK and Ridgway couldn’t wait to confess every detail. Or are you like Kemper? He called in crying, because no one even considered him for his crimes. Which one of your heroes do you choose to go out as?”
Vance took a step closer to the door. “The original Nightstalker was never caught.”
“Well, you’re not him, Vance. You shopped in one market, so to speak. The original Nightstalker moved around quite a bit. He also liked to make the husbands suffer the degradation of listening to him rape their wives. No, you’re no Nightstalker, Vance. You didn’t have the guts to enter a home occupied by a man.” Rainey laughed, adding, “Hell, you don’t even have a nickname. Maybe they’ll give you one for your trial. How about ‘The Impersonator,’ seeing as how you simply copied other people’s crimes.”
Vance did not grow angry. Instead, he remained calm and controlled, which was not a good sign. “There will be no trial, and they can call me what they want. I’ll be long gone before your friends get here, and so will you. You have exactly three minutes to make your peace with God.”
Above her head, on the underside of the workbench, a small green indicator light flashed on. Rainey clicked on her flashlight and saw the source of Vance Wayne’s confident claim.
She called out to the colonel. “He just started a timer on this bomb above my head. Get out, Colonel.”
“Lay down cover fire for me,” the colonel said. “Get him away from the door.”
Vance apparently heard the colonel’s directions and stepped to his left, taking him out of Rainey’s line of sight. She fired three shots out the door to make sure Vance could not focus on the colonel, who was running toward her. He slid on his knees, coming to rest beside her under the workbench.
“Rainey, find Bladen. I’ll deal with the explosives.”
#
Those were gunshots, Bladen was sure. She thought she heard muffled shouts, too. Someone was here, someone other than her captor. The thought crossed her mind that he may have just shot someone, but she had to take the chance that her rescuers were up there. Bladen put the bleach container on the floor, flipped on the lights, and found the thick piece of lumber she had ripped from the top of the pillory.
“I’m down here,” she screamed, as she began to pound the door with the large pie
ce of wood. “I’m here! Down here…”
#
Rainey heard muffled thuds that appeared to be coming from under the truck. She fired two more shots at the doorway and sprinted for the steps leading down into the pit. Her shots were answered by a shotgun blast. She felt the sting of shrapnel hit her thigh and heard it pelt her jacket, but she did not stop. She slid under the rear of the truck and scrambled down the steps of the pit.
Flipping on her flashlight, she searched the oil stained walls for an access point. She could hear the faint sounds of a woman’s screams and the steady thump-thump of something crashing into the wall in front of her. The stains on a portion of the wall looked newer and intentionally applied. Rainey started knocking on the wall with the butt of her flashlight, listening for a sound difference. That’s when she saw the seam in the concrete and heard the hollow return of her tapping. She clawed at the seam to no avail. There had to be a release mechanism somewhere.
She jumped at the sound of the colonel coming down the steps. He joined her in trying to pry the seam open. “There’s more than one device. We don’t have time to defuse them all,” he said. “Get out, Rainey, while you still can.”
“We’re all going out together,” she said. “There has to be a way to open it.”
Rainey stopped scratching at the seam and moved the flashlight beam around the pit. Old oil rags were piled in the corner. She kicked them out of the way, revealing a small metal door about the size of a light switch cover with a hasp and lock. Shooting at the lock could disable the mechanism, or ricochet a fragment back at her. Rainey de-cocked the weapon and crashed the butt of it into the lock until it fell open. She flipped open the cover to find a hydraulic control box, with a red and green button.
“Green means go,” she said and pushed the appropriate control.
The colonel jumped back as the seam separated, revealing a thick concrete door panel slowly creeping open. Rainey ran back to join him as he pulled on the door, encouraging the hydraulics to work faster. As soon as the opening was large enough for Rainey to pass through, she slipped behind the still moving panel into a small empty room. She found a light switch on the wall and flipped it on.
This was his staging area. A black mask lay on a small table in the corner, with a bottle of contact solution and a contact case. Hospital scrubs and other clothes hung from a hook on the wall. Opposite the panel the colonel was now squeezing through, Rainey saw a heavy metal door and heard the screaming and pounding from the other side.
The colonel began to shout. “Hang on, Bladen. I’m coming.” He frantically pawed at the two deadbolts that required a key.
Rainey’s mental clock was counting down the seconds they had left before the garage exploded. She realized their time had grown too short for escape. Seeing an identical hydraulic control box on the wall by the now opened concrete panel, she hit the red button. The panel began to close again. She watched the painfully slow process and hoped the bunker she was sealing them into would hold against the blast.
Before the door could close all the way, she shoved the pistol into her jacket pocket, yelling out to anyone that could still hear her on the phone. “Stay back! There’s no time left.” She hoped they heard her next words. “Remind Katie, I loved her.”
The door closed with a final hiss of releasing air. Then everything went black.
Chapter Twelve
The concussion from the explosion sent Rainey crashing to the floor. She was disoriented by the cloud of dust from the crumbling concrete and the ringing in her ears. Blinking, she shook her head, attempting to clear the concussion fog from her brain. A slab of the ceiling had fallen in on them. She was tucked next to the wall in a tent shaped space created by falling debris. All around her, she could hear parts of the garage returning to earth after the force of the blast sent it skyward.
Rainey called out, “Colonel, are you all right?”
The returning moan indicated that he was not.
“Hang on. Help is coming.”
Rainey could move, but she was constricted to the small space. Debris would have to be removed to open an escape route from her little concrete tent. Shining out from under the edge of a huge slab of ceiling, she could see the beam of her flashlight illuminating the dust particles dancing in the air. The beam also revealed the butt of the pistol pinned under a ton of concrete. It must have jettisoned from her pocket when she hit the ground. The sound of movement drew her attention. A beam of light began to search the debris.
She was about to call out, when she heard Vance Wayne’s voice. “I heard you talking, so I know you’re still alive, Agent Sexy.”
Rainey clawed at the butt of the pistol. She could hear him coming closer, picking his way through the rubble. A beam of light hit her face, blinding her.
“There you are,” he said, squatting down outside Rainey’s tomb.
That was the perfect name for it, because Rainey Bell was about to take her last breath. He lowered the flashlight from her eyes, and when they adjusted, Rainey could see the barrel of a shotgun pointed squarely at her face. The beam of his flashlight bounced back from Rainey’s little tent-shaped prison, illuminating Vance Wayne’s face.
“You!” Rainey said, staring into the eyes of the nurse from Mackie’s trauma room, the one that warned her of Cookie’s presence.
“We only have a moment. They’ll be coming soon, but I couldn’t leave without knowing for sure that I had defeated the great Rainey Bell. I knew you would come. I knew your arrogance would lead you right into my trap. I’ll be going to get your little Katie Meyers next. So don’t worry, she’ll be joining you soon.”
Rainey closed her eyes. Katie’s face came into view, surrounded by laughing babies. She heard the hammer being pulled back on the shotgun. She whispered, “I’m sorry, honey,” and prepared to die.
The instant Rainey believed would be her last on earth, a high-pitched screech, she could only describe as a banshee shriek, pierced the air around her. Her eyes flew open in time to catch a flash of blue behind Vance Wayne. His attention diverted to the noise, Rainey grabbed the barrel of the gun, pinned it against the wall, and ducked out of the way of the blast she expected to follow. It did not come. Instead, she felt the shotgun fall away from his hands.
Rainey looked back at Vance. He wore a surprised expression, just before he toppled over with a small crazed woman on his back. A soul-shattering scream from the depths of Bladen Asher’s misery reverberated off the walls of Rainey’s tight quarters. She watched as the young woman raised both hands in the air and plunged a bloodied wooden stake it into Vance Wayne’s body again. Beyond the point of hearing Rainey call out to her, “Stop, he’s dead,” Bladen Asher repeatedly plunged the homemade weapon into her tormenter’s back, her anguished cries punctuating each strike.
Rainey laid the shotgun down on the floor, careful to release the hammer, and then crawled as far forward as she could. She reached through the opening, where Vance’s head had fallen, and grabbed Bladen’s wrists on her next downward arc. She gripped the young woman’s arms tightly, trying to get her attention.
“Bladen, Bladen, it’s okay. He’s gone.”
Lost in her murderous frenzy, Bladen tried to wrestle her hands loose.
“Bladen, he’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Bladen Asher looked like a child reared by wolves. Her hair hung down over her blood-spattered face, partially obscuring eyes wild with rage. The crimson drops falling from her chin added to the animalistic illusion. She stared at Rainey, appearing to grasp at reality, attempting to regain her humanity. Rainey saw that Bladen was dressed only in a scrub top, with scissors and handcuffs dangling from some kind of makeshift rope belt around her waist. The colonel’s little soldier had survived on her wits.
“Your father needs help, Bladen.”
Bladen blinked, let the bloody stake fall from her hands, and began to weep.
“Where’s my dad?”
#
After Rainey an
d the colonel were extricated from the rubble, the three injured victims were taken to the hospital. Vance Wayne’s blood soaked corpse was taken to the morgue.
Danny stood by Rainey’s emergency room bed now, a familiar scene for both of them. He was explaining that a Cookie Kutter live broadcast from Vance Wayne’s body farm had triggered a cascading set of events.
“Somehow, Cookie found out about the red truck we were looking for and blabbed. Maureen Elliot—she dropped her married name in a further attempt to distance herself from the years she spent as Vance Wayne’s battered wife—was watching that broadcast. When she saw the bodies being recovered and heard about the red truck, she knew her ex-husband was the one we were looking for.”
“She called it in, right?” Rainey asked, adjusting the sheet over her exposed thigh.
Once again, she was stuck in a hospital gown. Her pants and shirt were taken, because she was pulled out of the rubble through a puddle of Vance Wayne’s blood. The leather jacket had been spared because her rescuers made her take it off, before trying to squeeze her out of the would-be tomb. Rainey had a slight concussion, hence the ringing still in her ears, and a white-gauze bandage on her thigh where a piece of shrapnel was removed. It only required a few stitches. The rest of her wounds were covered in brightly colored children’s adhesive bandages. She told the nurse the triplets would enjoy them more than the plain tan ones. All in all, Rainey felt pretty good about having survived a building exploding above her.
Danny pointed at Rainey. “You know, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously with a Winnie the Pooh bandage over your eye.”
Rainey reached up and pulled the bandage off. “Now, finish your story.”
“You were a petulant child, weren’t you?” Danny said with a chuckle. “Anyway, Maureen did call the hotline. The message had just passed to the appropriate personnel, when the 911 call came in from her seven-year-old child. When Vance placed his one allowed phone call per week to his son this evening, Maureen would not let him speak to the boy. Instead, she told him she had called the police.”
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