“Hold still. The plastic ties are digging in.” Keys jingled as he pulled them from his pocket and sawed at the zip ties. A few minutes later, her hands and feet were free. Conor gently peeled the tape from her mouth. She gulped air.
“Can you sit up?” he asked in a whisper, his hands running over her arms and legs. She winced at every movement of his fingers. Every inch of her body felt bruised from head to toe. “Do you think anything is broken?”
She tried to answer, but all she could do was cough. Her voice was an unintelligible rasp.
“I’m going to get you out of here.” He lifted her upper body until she was sitting up.
Her head protested the change of position. Her stomach heaved. She twisted sideways and vomited on the cement. Conor’s strong arm supported her until she was finished. His fingers went to her head, sweeping gently through her hair. When he touched a spot on the back of her scalp, her vision turned red. She nearly blacked out.
“I’m going to pick you up.” He scooped her under the knees and back. Muscles strained as he stood.
Conor froze as footsteps thudded on wood.
32
A bright flashlight beam blinded Conor. He set Louisa down on the cement and stepped in front of her. One flashlight. Did that mean one person? Was he armed?
“Drop the phone.”
The familiar voice stunned Conor. He released his grip on his cell. It clattered to the cement.
“Now step on it. Hard.”
Conor stomped a heel on the screen. The display went dark.
The flashlight beam dropped, playing over Louisa’s still form. Then the light moved toward the wall. With the click of a switch, the soft light of a camp lantern illuminated the basement.
Six feet in front of him, Zoe stomped her foot. An oversize sweatshirt concealed her slight frame. A gun shook in one hand. A large duffel bag dangled from the other. “You can’t have found me. It’s impossible.”
Conor didn’t point out the obvious.
Zoe shook the flashlight. She was wearing the same miniskirt she’d been wearing the night of her disappearance. It was wrinkled and grimy. From the smell wafting across the space, Zoe hadn’t showered that week. Her dark hair hung in a greasy ponytail. “I only needed twenty more minutes. That’s it. Then everything would have been in place.” She gestured toward Louisa. “She would be dead. The scene would be staged. You would walk right into my trap.” She dropped the bag on the concrete. Metal clanged. She pulled what looked like a disposable camera from her pocket. Two wires protruded from one end. A homemade Taser. “A quick zap with this would render you immobile enough for me to get you into position to shoot yourself in the head.”
He shifted his weight, judging the distance between them. Could he tackle her before she shot him?
Probably not. If Louisa were able to run, he’d try it. But the crack on the back of the head had rendered Louisa helpless. If Zoe killed him, Louisa would be next.
“Zoe, put the gun down,” he said with authority. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“No way. And don’t even try to tell me everything will be OK,” Zoe spat. “Because it won’t. You two screwed everything up. I was supposed to escape this week. I would be the sole survivor of your killing spree.”
“So Isa is dead?” Conor asked, sadness rolling through the turmoil in his gut.
“Yes. Now there’s no one in my way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Pendleworth grant,” Louisa breathed.
No way. “You killed three women and planned to frame me for murder and suicide over a grant?”
Louisa had mentioned academic competition, but she’d had the players backward. Of course, the major assumption of her theory had been that Zoe was a victim.
Zoe rolled her eyes. The whites gleamed in the dim. “Of course. It was no accident I went to your apartment and the police found the evidence I left. It would have worked perfectly if the cops hadn’t been completely incompetent. They should have arrested you that first night.”
The police hadn’t been totally incompetent, thought Conor. They hadn’t charged him without physical evidence to corroborate the circumstantial. In the end they’d figured out the killer wasn’t Conor. Not that he was going to point that out right now. Maybe she didn’t even know. “Too bad you couldn’t predict that.”
“I gave them way too much credit.” Her eyes went crazy wide. Her face twisted into an angry, animal-like snarl. The girl was freaking out, the gun in her hand trembling out of anger, not fear. “I’d thought they would follow the clues to the logical conclusion. You and Dr. Hancock were involved with that ritual killing in Maine together. You were the last person to see me. I left some strands of hair in your apartment and your car. It should have been airtight.”
“It’s been a rough day.”
She waved the gun. “Oh well. I’ll have to improvise. At the end of the night, it’ll still look like you killed Louisa, then turned the gun on yourself.”
Yeah, dying or letting Zoe kill Louisa were not items on his to-do list for the night.
Just behind Conor’s boots, Louisa stirred. Without moving his head, he dropped his gaze. He could just see her in his peripheral vision. She was struggling to sit up. Even if she got to her feet, she couldn’t run. Not with the concussion he suspected she’d suffered. Rage competed with panic in Conor’s chest. Zoe had done that—and much, much worse. All because she wasn’t the star of the university? No, there had to be more.
Conor needed to keep Zoe talking. The police had the address. It was only a matter of time until they showed up. “Isa was older than you and a year ahead in school. Why would Professor English give you the grant instead of her? She’d been working with him for a year already. Dr. Hancock told me you’d probably get the grant next year. Why not just wait?”
Zoe’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Age has never been a factor for me. I’ve gotten everything I’ve set out to achieve, except the grant that bitch stole from me. Working with Dr. English? Is that how you think she got the grant? She was fucking him. She thought she was so smart, but he was fucking other girls too. Professor English isn’t very discriminating.”
“What about Riki and the other girl? Who is she? Why did you kill them?”
Zoe glared at Conor as if he was an idiot. “I killed the other two girls to cover my tracks. I threw Dr. Hancock in to cement your guilt, to make my plan a complete circle, and because she wrote me up for being late a few times. Tardiness. What the fuck does tardiness have to do with brilliance?”
Conor let the truth wash over him. Zoe had killed a fellow student over a grant. But not in a fit of jealousy. This had been cold, calculated, premeditated murder. Zoe had planned every detail. She’d taken opportunities to improve her scheme along the way, like adding additional killings and framing Conor for the deaths.
She’d done a bang-up job of it too. She might have gotten away with it if she hadn’t gotten cocky and kidnapped Louisa. Actually, Conor thought, staring at the gun, she might still get away with it.
The threads of her twisted logic were unknotting in Conor’s mind. “How are you going to win the grant if you’re presumed dead?”
“I’ll be found at another location, dehydrated but alive.” She lifted her hands toward him. Plastic ties encircled each wrist. The too-tight binds had left bloody rings in her skin. “See? I have ligature marks on my wrists. They’re on my ankles too.” Pride beamed from her smile. “I won’t know why you didn’t kill me. Maybe you were driven to suicide when you killed Dr. Hancock. I won’t dwell on that. I’ll consider myself lucky and not look back. I’ll be the brave survivor of a crazed serial killer.”
“What was my motivation for killing the girls and Dr. Hancock?”
Zoe lifted a hand in a that’s an easy one gesture. “Before you blow your brains out, you’ll write a note of apo
logy to your siblings. You’ve always had a violent side. You’ve managed to keep it in check, but the killing in Maine whetted your appetite. And since Dr. Hancock was the only one who figured out the truth about what you were doing to her interns, she had to be killed too. But you also loved her and couldn’t live without her.”
“No one who knows me will believe that.” As he argued, terror swept cold over Conor. She’d studied him.
“The opinions of your friends and family don’t really matter. The police will buy it. You were a boxer. That implies a certain comfort level with violence. You’ve been in two physical altercations in the past two weeks. The media has blown them both out of proportion. Heath will attest to your bloodlust. If that gangbanger dies, I’m sure the police will try to hang his death on you too.” She smiled as if she knew a secret. “I’ve been watching the news at night on my laptop. You’ve been on the top of the suspect list the whole time. Convincing them won’t be hard.”
No, it wouldn’t. Jackson and Ianelli had wanted Conor so badly for these crimes. They’d jump on Zoe’s explanation. Conor already thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked anyway. Anything to spin out some more time. “Did you stab Hector Torres?”
“Is that his name?” She lifted a barely interested shoulder. “I went to the alley behind your bar this morning. I tossed Isa’s bloody clothes in the Dumpster. He was hiding and saw me. I couldn’t risk any more variables.”
Conor’s stomach turned. “The cops didn’t find Isa’s clothes.”
“I can’t say how disappointed I am with the police.”
“You really think you’ll be able to pull off pretending to be a victim?” She wasn’t just crazy. Zoe was evil. Her eyes glittered when she talked about her plan. She hadn’t killed those girls just to get ahead. She’d enjoyed being smarter than everyone else, jerking the cops around—and Conor suspected she’d also enjoyed the killing.
“Yes. It’s the perfect alibi.” Her knowing smile faded. “Now, enough talking. It’s time for you to die. Dr. Hancock will have to be next.”
He had to admit, Zoe’s plan was brilliant and devious. He’d never suspected she was the killer.
Suddenly a look of curiosity crossed her already crazed features. “How did you find me here?”
“Louisa found the map you hid in the museum.”
“Those were supposed to go into the incinerator. But I’d planned out the buildings I was going to use in advance. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. Then Cusack changed the cleaning crew and beefed up security. He screwed up my plan to return to the museum to destroy everything.”
Thank you, Dr. Cusack.
“Enough questions.” Zoe pointed the gun at Conor’s chest. Her finger moved. He lunged sideways. At the same moment, Louisa launched her body at him from the ground. The gunshot reverberated on concrete. Louisa’s body jerked. She hit the cement slab and didn’t move. Conor rolled and kicked the camp lantern. The light shifted in crazy arcs.
The gun went off again. The shot went wild, pinging off the concrete and thudding into the wooden stairs. Conor rushed Zoe. His shoulder collided with her ribs. He felt the air whoosh from her body as they hit the ground. The gun skittered across the floor. She reached for it.
“Oh no you don’t.” He landed on top, sitting up and pinning her to the floor just as sirens sounded outside.
Footsteps thudded above. “Police.”
“Down here,” Conor yelled. “Call an ambulance.”
“Hands up.” Four uniformed cops came down the steps, guns and powerful flashlights sweeping the basement. The guns pointed at Conor. “Get off the girl.”
Conor put his hands in the air.
Below him, Zoe sobbed. “He tried to kill me.”
A cop tackled Conor and flipped him on his stomach. He knelt on his spine and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. Another uniform helped Zoe to her feet. “Are you all right, miss?”
“Don’t take your eye off of her. She’s a murderer.” Conor’s blood ran cold. Once again, the cops thought he was the killer. As long as they took care of Louisa, he’d deal with whatever happened later. “And get an ambulance!”
33
Louisa’s body bloomed with pain. Her lungs refused to inflate. She inhaled. Instead of air, her breath gurgled with liquid. It felt like a car was parked on her chest. A choking sensation filled her throat.
She opened her eyes. Bright lights and men in uniforms swept the basement. Someone came down the stairs with a handheld floodlight. A policeman wrapped a blanket around Zoe’s shoulders. Conor was on the floor, facedown and handcuffed, with two cops on top of him.
A policeman knelt at her side. “Hold on, ma’am. Help is just a few minutes away.”
Louisa summoned all her strength. Her hand fisted in his pant leg. “Not him. Not Conor. She shot me.”
The cop leaned closer to her mouth. “What?”
“She said the girl is the murderer.” Detective Ianelli’s voice boomed over the commotion.
Louisa used her last store of energy and oxygen to nod. “She shot me.”
Silence fell over the basement. The last thing Louisa focused on before darkness descended over her vision was the sight of Detective Jackson taking the handcuffs off Conor’s wrists. She let herself go into oblivion.
Conor skidded to his knees next to Louisa. Breath rattled in and out of her mouth with a wet sound. “Honey, stay with me.”
“Ambulance is just around the corner.” Jackson lowered himself to one knee. “Shit. Ianelli, get over here. She can’t breathe.”
“Move over.” Ianelli dropped to the concrete. The Camden cops moved out of the way as the detective ripped Louisa’s blouse open. The bullet wound was low on her left rib cage. “Her lung is punctured. Air is getting in. I need plastic.”
Jackson searched his pockets and came up with a brand-new pack of gum. He tore the cellophane wrapper off and handed it to his partner, who used it to seal the bullet wound.
Louisa’s breathing eased a little. A few dozen raspy breaths later, a new siren approached.
“Ambulance is here,” a uniformed cop called from the stairwell.
Ianelli got up. The paramedics took over.
Jackson slapped his partner on the shoulder. “Ianelli was an army medic.”
Conor rocked back on his heels, watching the paramedics work in silence. One punched a huge needle between Louisa’s ribs. Conor flinched.
Ianelli’s hand landed on Conor’s shoulder. “He’s just evening out the pressure.” The cop helped him to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get over to the hospital.”
An IV line was started. Louisa was put on a backboard and transferred to a gurney.
Conor followed the gurney up the steps and into the cool night air. Jackson and Ianelli were right behind him.
“Don’t you have to stay at the scene?”
Jackson popped a piece of gum into his mouth. “Nope. Not our jurisdiction.”
Zoe was frog-marched to a patrol car and put in the back. As the cop pushed her head down, she turned and glared at Conor.
He shivered. Her eyes were pure evil.
34
Conor paced the surgical waiting room. Three hours before, Louisa had been rushed through the ER into an operating room. Dropping into a chair, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Louisa’s pearls, given to him to hold by one of the ER nurses. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he stretched the strands between his hands. The beads were smooth under his fingers, but spots of Louisa’s blood had dried to a rusty brown on the lustrous finish, the stains an insult to the necklace’s perfection. His mind replayed images of Louisa’s pale skin coated in red, the bullet wound in her side, her blood-soaked silk blouse. Her beauty and elegance magnified the violence and horror in the Camden basement.
She’d lost a lot of blood. She’d nearly
drowned in it. Her lung had collapsed. She could die.
Fear and reality crowded his mind and his heart.
This morning, she’d said she loved him, and he’d withdrawn. Pat was right. He was a coward.
Had he lost his chance? Would she die never knowing she’d claimed his heart?
Pat and Jayne walked in. Jayne handed Conor a cardboard cup of coffee. “Sit down for a minute.” She tugged him to a chair and pushed him into it. Sitting next to him, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “She’s going to be all right.”
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Damian said from another plastic chair.
Conor put the coffee on the laminate table untouched. He couldn’t respond. The bullet had entered through Louisa’s ribs and lodged in her lung. They’d intubated her in the ambulance. She wasn’t even breathing on her own. How could she be all right?
Detectives Jackson and Ianelli had hung around. They sat across the room, occasionally ducking into the hallway to take a call.
Everyone stood when a grim, green-scrubbed surgeon walked into the room. A mask hung loose around his neck. “Who’s here for Louisa Hancock?”
Conor stepped forward, his heart slamming into his rib cage until it felt bruised.
The doctor swept the cloth hat from his head. Sweat beaded his forehead. “She came through the surgery fine.”
Conor didn’t hear the details. The surgeon’s voice was drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. Pat’s giant hand slapped him on the back. Conor stiffened his buckled knees. “No permanent damage?”
“Risk of infection aside, she should make a full recovery. We’ll keep her in ICU for the next twenty-four hours as a precaution. You can see her as soon as she comes out of recovery.” The doctor left the room.
Conor backed up to a chair and let his legs collapse. For the next hour, he was busy being grateful and counting his blessings. Jayne brought him fresh coffee and a candy bar from the vending machine. When the nurse escorted him to Louisa’s bedside, he almost felt human.
Midnight Betrayal Page 27
