65
He let himself in quietly. Closed the back door and waited, listened for a sign that she’d heard him. Nothing but silence. He looked around the tidy kitchen, found the cake dome in the corner. Pleased to see it, he lifted the lid and cut himself a slice. He ate it standing up, poured himself a glass of lemonade to go with it.
He thought about Melissa. He’d known she’d follow him home—do as she was told. In their time together, she’d come to understand that he was master. He called the shots, held the power of life and death. She’d learned her lesson … the way he taught, it was not something she’d easily forget.
He rinsed his plate and put it away, carried his glass with him through the silent house, from room to tidy room.
The woman who lived here was his plan B. A placeholder of sorts—always had been. To be honest, there was nothing special or remarkable about her beyond the purpose she served. It was easy, in the soft glow of her bedroom lamp, to look at her and let go. To convince himself that she was his Melissa. That was why he kept her.
He made his way to the bedroom. Found her asleep on her stomach, her face obscured by the long fall of rich auburn hair he loved so much. He felt himself grow hard at the sight of her supple form beneath the thin white sheet. Pulling it down, he revealed her long, lean back, her firm, round ass. They were nice, but not what aroused him.
It was the scars he’d left on her over the years that made him hard. Countless thin, white scars looped and swirled across the skin of her back, intersecting and receding in a pattern that proved her absolute devotion. Lifting his hand, running it over the first cuts he’d ever made on her, she transformed before his eyes. She was young and vibrant. Bright and innocent.
She was his Melissa.
He set the glass on the nightstand and undressed in the dark. Pulled his knife from his pocket, flicked it open. The quiet snick it made was enough to wake her.
“You’re home.” She smiled, but it faltered a little when her gaze settled on the blade. “I missed you.”
“Of course you did.” He began to stroke himself with his free hand, liked the way she watched him. Liked the fear he saw on her face. It was the only thing making it possible for him to hold on to the illusion that she was who he really wanted. Her blue eyes drifted down, first to the hand that worked between his legs, then to the knife in the other. Her breathing became heavy, coming in short, excited pants. She sounded like a dog, eager for a game of catch. “Are you going to hurt me?”
He smiled at her in the dark. “Yes.”
66
Sabrina was woken up by the sound of her ringing cell. She looked at the display. Local number—not one she recognized.
“Hello,” she said. She’d been up all night, pouring over victim files. An early morning call was the last thing she expected.
“Inspector Vaughn, this is Chief Carson. Did I wake you?”
She looked at the clock. It was after eight in the morning. Shit.
She sat up, pushed her hair out of her face. “No. I’m awake.”
“Good. Our coroner just called. Lucy Walker’s autopsy is today if you’re interested in coming along.” He said it like he was hoping she’d say no.
“Today? It’s Sunday.”
“That don’t matter much around here. Meet me at the station in an hour,” he said before hanging up.
She made it with fifteen minutes to spare, pulling into the station lot just as Wade pushed his way through the door.
“Mornin’, Inspector.” He tipped his hat.
“Good morning.” She looked around. “Early call?”
“Yeah. Someone reported a possible trespassing about thirty miles out. Supposed to be my day off, but I got called in on account of where you and the chief are headed.” He stopped, shifted from one foot to the other, looking anxious.
She decided to make it easy for him. “You have something to say?”
He nodded. “What you asked me last night got me to thinking about who else could’ve hurt Melissa.” He dug a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and shook it out at her. She took it, smoothed it open and read it. Read it again.
Her eyes shot to his face. “What is this?”
“A speeding ticket I wrote Pete Conners not more than six months ago. He was Kelly Walker’s boyfriend for a time, took an unhealthy interest in Melissa. You wanted to know who else could’ve killed her. There’s your answer.”
It was a lie. Something Wade concocted to keep his friend out of trouble. Maybe even something Jed had put him up to.
“Okay. I’ll call my partner, have him look into it,” she said, expecting him to backpedal, to ask for the ticket back. He did neither. Instead he nodded and looked relieved.
“You do that, and you’ll see it’s true. Pete Conners tried to rape her. My father told me that himself, not more than a few days before she took off.”
She watched him leave, climb into a JPD Blazer, and drive away before she pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed the number.
It rang twice before he answered. “Strickland.” “Hey.”
“Hey, how’s it going?” “Did you talk to Val?”
He was quiet for a second. “Yeah.” “Still want to help me?”
“More than ever.”
She looked down at the ticket in her hand. “Great. I need you to find me a car.”
The JPD lobby was small, separated from the officers’ area by a high countertop. Zeke was on the other side of it, waiting for her.
“I’m here to see Chief Carson,” she said.
“Chief, that lady cop from California’s here to see you,” he said loudly over his shoulder. Turning back, he nodded toward the row of chairs behind her. “If you’d like to find a seat, he’ll be right out.” Zeke had been her father’s number one for years and always seemed to find time for a friendly smile or kind word. She’d seen him come in and out of Kelly’s bedroom once or twice, but he’d always been respectful to her—something most of her mother’s customers never felt was necessary.
Before she could sit, Carson made his appearance. “Wade leave on that trespassing call?” he said as he set his hat on his head, tugging the brim down low.
Zeke nodded from his desk. “Yup, cruiser’s got a flat so he took your Blazer,” he said without looking up. “Hank said he’d be by to fix it after lunch. If there’s a call, I’ll take my truck.”
Carson grinned for a moment and gave her a shrug. “Guess that means I’m hitching a ride with you, darlin’,” he said as he fastened his gun belt in place and head for the door.
67
Trapped in a car with the man she suspected of raping and torturing her was not a place Sabrina wanted to be. She looked at him—let her eyes travel to his gun. The safety strap that held it snug inside its holster was snapped shut. No easy draw from him. She figured she could handle the rest.
He’d been quiet nearly the entire time, poring over the printout of the Sawyer file she’d brought along.
She thought about Pete Conners, about the ticket Wade claimed to have given him, and she wished Strickland would hurry the hell up.
Carson closed the file folder and turned to look at her. “This happened Wednesday last?” he said, and she nodded.
“You see the similarities between your case and mine? Same type of knife was used. Both victims had words stabbed into their abdomens. Both had their eyes taken. It’s the same guy.”
Now it was his turn to nod. “I see a lot of same—but I see a lot of different, too.” He held up the file folder. “Red ribbon? Gift tag around the vic’s wrist? That’s pretty specific, and none of that was found at the O’Shea or Walker crime scenes.” He dropped the file into his lap. “But let’s say you’re right. Let’s say that this girl and Frankie were killed by the same guy. What does that have to do with Melissa?”
“Kaitlyn Sawyer was abducted in El Paso on October first. She was found on the third with a gift tag tied around her wrist that said, Happy birthday—sorry I mis
sed it.” Frustration weighed heavy in her voice. He was either fucking with her or too stubborn to see what was right in front of him. She shot him a look. “She was number fifteen. I have a stack of files, each one on a young, blue-eyed waitress who disappeared on October first.” She glared at him for a second before turning back toward the windshield. “We both know what October first is, so let’s cut the bullshit.”
“Melissa’s birthday.” He looked out his window, waited a few beats before doing a slow nod. “Sorry I missed it … why would he write something like that on a gift tag and tie it to a dead girl’s wrist?” he asked, but before she could answer, he turned toward her and answered his own question. “The only way it makes any sense is if the guy who killed Melissa thinks she’s still alive.”
He looked at his watch again. He’d been gone nearly eleven hours. Michael turned in his seat and stared out the window of the private Lear. No commercial flights for Ben Shaw. There were some advantages to traveling with the boss’s son.
It’d been another bullshit mission. Down to Mexico. Pull the trigger. Back on the plane. He had no idea where they were going now, but they were headed north. Texas and Sabrina were due east.
He looked at his watch again—eleven hours now. He’d been gone eleven hours.
“Mind if I sit?”
“Yes,” he said, but Ben took a seat anyway.
“Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that was a rhetorical question.” He settled back into one of the plush leather seats that dotted the interior of the plane. “That was an impressive shot you took today,” Ben said, not wasting time.
He was talking about the job, and he was right. It had been an impressive shot: 2,293 yards. Only a handful of people in the world who could’ve made it. He was one of them. “What can I say? I’m an impressive guy,” he said, still staring out the window.
“I suppose the whole ‘You’ve stopped a very bad man from doing very bad things’ speech wouldn’t matter much to you, huh?” Ben said. He just shrugged. “Lark explained the situation. Is she in immediate danger?”
Yeah, Lark had been doing a lot of that lately—explaining where he shouldn’t. He looked away from the window. “She is none of your fucking business,” he said.
Ben leaned forward with a smile, his eyes as clear and calm as lake water. “Curiouser and curiouser.” He sat back in his chair. “You’d kill me in an instant if you thought I posed a threat to her.”
He just gave Ben another shrug. “I’d kill you for a handful of magic beans and a talking donkey. I’m a killer—that’s what I do.”
Ben laughed. “We have more in common than you think, O’Shea,” Ben said before looking out the window. “You believe I’m gonna tell my father about her, and he’ll use her to keep you in line,” Ben said, reading him perfectly. “Do you love her?”
He looked at Ben. “Capsule or not, if anything happens to her, you’ll be the first person I kill.”
“I guess that answers my question.” Ben pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
Michael waited for the capsule in his back to detonate. For some kind of neurotoxin to drop him to the floor and take him out.
Ben spoke a few words and clipped his phone closed. Within seconds, the Lear banked gently to the right. Michael looked out the window. They were now heading east. “I can buy you a couple of hours. That’s the best I can do,” Ben said.
“What’s it gonna cost me?”
Ben smiled. “Does it really matter?”
He looked away, out the window at the world below. Sabrina was down there, and he’d do whatever it took to get back to her—nothing else mattered. He stared out the window and shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”
68
The revelation hung between them. Sabrina looked at Carson and waited for him to put the rest of it together. That not only was Melissa Walker alive, that she was sitting next to him. If he did put it together, he didn’t tell her. If he already knew, he hid it well.
“Charlie’s is up here on the right.” He pointed to a white stucco building with Dubois & Son Funeral Home stenciled on the side.
They entered through the back of the building, stepping into an office that make Richards’s look like corner digs on Wall Street. Charlie Dubois looked up from the open file on his desk, looked at his watch. “Chief Carson, I was just about to call you.” He stood up from his desk, extending his hand across its surface in Sabrina’s direction. “Nice to meet you, ma’am, I’m Charlie Dubois.” He pulled his hand back before continuing. “Are we ready to get started?”
She started to nod but the phone on her hip let out a chirp. “Excuse me,” she said, taking a glance at the display. It was Strickland. “I have to take this, I’ll be right back.” She left through the door they’d just come through and stepped into the parking lot.
“Tell me you found it.” “I found it.”
Relief, followed by a strong shot of adrenaline, hit her system. “Where?”
“You aren’t gonna believe it—I sure in the hell didn’t. I checked long-term parking at the airport, like you suggested. Guy I talked to said he called us about a car matching the description I gave him yesterday. Said he remembered because the car had both its plate and VIN pulled. Said we sent a uniform out and had it towed to the city impound lot.”
“If the plate and VIN are gone, how do you know it’s a match?” “I don’t. Not for sure, anyway. Both are dark blue, 1999 Chevy Cavaliers, but …”
“But what?”
“But I checked the plate and VIN you gave me. Both are registered to a Pete Conners.”
Pete was alive.
Strickland was still talking and she tried to focus on what he was saying, but all she could think was that somehow, the man she thought she’d killed had survived.
“… the address on the registration matches to a storage yard for long-haul truckers in Idabel, Oklahoma, so there’s no way to prove it’s a match to the car I found.”
In other words, they had nothing.
But Strickland wasn’t finished. “What I do know for sure is that the tire treads on the car I found in the impound lot match the cast we took of the tire tracks left at the Mount Davidson crime scene. The car I found was the one used to dump Kaitlyn Sawyer’s body.” She dug the ticket out of her pocket and read it carefully. The address printed at the top of the ticket didn’t match the one on the registration records that Strickland pulled: it was for a residence in Idabel. Which was less than a hundred miles away.
She headed for the car. “Okay. Thanks.”
“I have to turn my findings over to Robbins and Carr.” He made it sound like an apology.
“I know. Give me two hours, okay? I might be able to make a positive ID on the suspect,” she said, digging her keys from her pocket.
“How stupid are you about to get?” he said, a panicked edge to his voice.
“I’ll call you in a couple hours.” She hung up the phone. The door to the funeral home banged open. She looked over her shoulder to see Carson coming at her. He had something in his hand, and he looked angry. She opened the car door and started the engine, pulled out of the lot without looking back. How stupid was she about to get?
Very.
69
Sabrina parked across the street and watched the house for a few minutes. She’d made the trip on impulse, hadn’t really thought about what she’d do once she got here. She needed proof that the car Strickland found belonged to Pete, and she needed to find a way to link it all together. Beyond that, she had no idea how she was doing.
With her badge clipped to her waist and her hand resting firmly on the butt of the .38 that rode her hip, she walked with false confidence up the length of the driveway. Bypassing the front door, she headed for the back, toward the detached garage. If the car was there, she was back to square one. If not, she’d check the truck yard listed on the ticket. It was a long shot but she was running out of options and time. Strickland would have to hand what they’d found over to the
officers in charge of the case and when he did, it would only be a matter of time before Mathews found out she was here. She walked around the side of the garage, into the yard next to it. There was a side door next to a couple of windows. She used her sleeve to wipe off some of the dirt that obscured her view and looked inside.
There was a car inside, covered from front to back with a canvas tarp. She looked at the floor, saw that it was dirt. Its oil-soaked surface was crisscrossed with dozens of tire tracks. She’d bet anything that one of those tire tracks was a match to the ones they found in Mount Davidson. She needed to get in. Get a look under the tarp to make sure the car underneath it wasn’t the one she was looking for. Snap a few pictures of the tracks pressed into the dirt and send them to Strickland for a comparison, just to be sure. She looked at the door. It was secured shut with a tough-looking padlock.
No way in.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” someone said behind her, and she stiffened. The tone and cadence was one she remembered well. She turned toward the voice, a remote, professional smile plastered on her face.
Standing not more than five yards away was her mother.
After Ben worked his magic, he left him alone. Michael imagined he was off polishing his knife or hatching plans for world domination—he didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was that the kid was going to help him. It would cost, but he didn’t care about that either. The only thing that mattered was getting back to Sabrina.
He looked across the plane at Lark, tapping away on his computer, and tried to get a grip on what he’d come to believe. He’d turned it inside out, pulled it apart, and put it back together—all to the same conclusion: Lark had betrayed him.
He moved across the aisle and sat across from his friend, watched him for a few seconds, trying to keep himself together.
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 1 Page 25
