The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  She had hope. That she’d be safe. That Smokey was still alive.

  Sheets of rain plastered her dress to her body as she made her way toward the boathouse, her heels sinking into the sodden earth. Technically, she couldn’t see the boathouse through the deluge, only the bug light mounted on its face.

  Was the Butcher waiting inside? Was Smokey Joe?

  She slipped on the slick path and fell to her hands and knees, mud splashing her. She heaved herself back up.

  At that moment, the yellow bug light went out along with every other light along the bay, leaving the night liquid black. The wind must have knocked down a power line. She wanted to laugh. No problem. She was okay in the dark and knew how to use it to her advantage.

  Feeling her way, she found the hedge that separated her grandparents’ property from their neighbors’ and ducked behind it. She looked back over her shoulder, wondering where Hayden was. When she saw nothing, she inched forward. When she got to within five yards of the boathouse, she squinted, searching for a human shape, but she saw no one.

  Then she heard something behind her, coming from the house. Footsteps.

  * * *

  Hayden wanted to slam a fist into Dr. Trowbridge’s mouth. The Hope Academy physician had clammed up, refusing to speak until his attorney arrived.

  “Give me an hour with him,” Finn said. “And I’ll get the story. You want to watch?”

  “No, I need to get back to Kate.” He’d been away less than five minutes, and he told himself she was safe with her grandparents, that the older couple would protect the granddaughter they loved. He ran to the Conlans’ foyer just in time to see Kate’s grandparents rush out the front door. Alone.

  Anger knotted his fists, his gut, but not his tongue. “Where the hell is Kate?”

  Just as Oliver Conlan opened his mouth, two men stumbled around the side of the house, one in handcuffs.

  * * *

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kate asked.

  Robyn Banks was close enough now that Kate could see a full grin spread across her former rival’s face. “Oooo, you were always so good about asking the right questions. A real ace reporter. And a pretty face to go with it. Ever think about getting into broadcast news?”

  “Stop being an idiot, Robyn, this is…” Kate’s words died off as Robyn reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.

  “I am anything but an idiot.”

  Kate took a step back.

  Robyn lifted her arm. “Don’t even think about running, Katrina, not this time.”

  Kate froze. Where was Hayden? Why wasn’t he coming to help? Had her grandfather been unable to find him? Could anyone hear her above the screeching wind?

  Robyn leveled the gun at her chest.

  “I’m not sure what you want or why you’re here, but you’ll solve nothing by shooting me.”

  Robyn’s smile fell away. “I’ll get justice.”

  “Justice?”

  “You ruined my husband’s life. You broke him.” She and the gun drew closer.

  “How did I break Mike Muldoon?”

  “Because of your investigative report he lost everything. His money. His art. His job. His right eye. His freedom.” Robyn stopped five feet in front of her. “And in prison, he lost his spirit. He was repeatedly beaten and sodomized by the criminals in that place. You can’t imagine what that does to a man who wanted only a life of beauty. And you, Katrina Erickson, are responsible for what he became.” Robyn’s hand trembled.

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re a smart newswoman. Look at the facts.”

  Thunder pounded the night. A second later, a brilliant streak of lightning lit up the sky, and she saw Robyn’s face. Clearly. Terror and horror and sadness and shame.

  Kate’s knees buckled. “Your husband is the Butcher?”

  “Give the smart woman a chocolate peppermint.” Robyn’s finger moved toward the trigger. “Mike has been consumed with you from the moment you first broke his story. It was sickening, his obsession with you. I’m sure he planned to kill you. But now I must put an end to the killing before someone finds out Mike is the Butcher. And that means killing you. With you dead, his hunt is over.”

  Something shifted in the shadows. Her heart skipped. Hayden?

  A flash of silver.

  Robyn Banks swayed. The gun fell from her hand. Her body hit the ground at Kate’s feet, a knife sticking out of the back of her neck.

  A man, the waiter with the green dragon mask, stepped out of the shadows. She opened her mouth, but something cold and hard hit her temple, and she saw black.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Friday, June 19, 9:45 p.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  Look who I found skulking in the bushes.” Chief Greenfield dragged a cuffed man with his head hanging low up the steps of the Conlan mansion. The chief yanked back the man’s head.

  Hayden tore his attention from Kate’s grandparents and stared at Mike Muldoon, who looked and smelled like a rat drowned in a barrel of whiskey. Streaks of red shot through the drunk man’s eyes, and he wore the ratty red morning coat with the gold peacocks.

  Chief Greenfield reached into the man’s pockets and took out a handful of pictures, all of Kate. Hayden stopped breathing.

  “I found these on him,” the chief said. “I asked him what he was doing here, and he said he was here to see Katrina, that she’d called him and invited him here for an interview.”

  Muldoon’s face cracked in a boozy grin. “She’s been after me for years.” He executed a clumsy bow. “So I finally decided to give her what she wants—me, in the flesh.”

  “Where is she?” Hayden asked. “What the fuck did you do with her?”

  “Nothing. We haven’t had a chance to swap air kisses yet.”

  Hayden lunged for Muldoon, but Chief Greenfield pulled him back. He spun to Hayden’s grandparents. “Where the hell is Kate?”

  Oliver Conlan put his arm around his wife. “She ran off to the boathouse to meet with the Butcher. He slipped her this note. She took off a few minutes ago but said she needs you.”

  The note was a hot coal in his hand. Meet me at the boathouse in ten minutes. If you’re late, Smokey Joe dies. If you bring G-man or any of his friends, Smokey Joe dies.

  Hayden shrugged off the chief and grabbed Muldoon by his collar. “Where the hell’s Kate?”

  Muldoon sputtered, and his face grew as red as his velvet collar.

  “Hayden, hold on, there’s something you should know,” Chief Greenfield said. “I checked Muldoon and his car and I didn’t find a knife.”

  “No knife?” The Butcher would never approach Kate—or anyone—without a knife. He was a weak son of a bitch who managed to kill his prey only through carefully planned scenarios. He wouldn’t take on Kate without a knife.

  “I think Muldoon is telling the truth,” the chief said. “I think someone pretending to be Kate sent him a message to come here tonight. The only things I found on him were a hair comb and a mirror.”

  The hole where Muldoon’s right eye should’ve been jerked in a grotesque wink. “I wanted to look my best in case Katrina brought her camera crew.”

  Hayden released the vile human being that was Muldoon. Think. Analyze. This drunk couldn’t be the Butcher. But someone called Mike Muldoon to meet with Katrina, just like someone told the Hope Academy boy about the dead body in the barn.

  More chaos. Meant to divert him.

  Hayden elbowed his way through the ballroom and into the storm-torn night. His Italian lace-ups sunk into the mud, and an airborne flood washed down on him, trying to slow him, but failing.

  He hopped over ground lights that weren’t working and crashed through low-lying shrubs as he raced through the darkness. As he neared the boathouse he spotted a mound on the ground near the hedge.

  Noooo, a voice inside cried. Or did the animal-like cry really tear up his throat and into the howling night?

  The closer he got, the
more red he saw. It ran in rivers along the sodden ground, covered the body, and trickled from the body’s neck, where someone had planted a silvery knife.

  He dropped to his knees and took the body in his hands. It was a woman, but it wasn’t Kate. The relief was so great, so overwhelming, it was shameful.

  The others—Hatch, Evie, Finn, Chief Greenfield, Oliver Conlan—reached him. “It’s Robyn Banks. She’s alive, but just barely. Oliver, stay with her and call the medics.”

  Hayden jumped up. “Finn, search the boathouse. Evie take the beach to the right, Hatch you take the left. Chief, take the grounds.”

  “Where are you going?” Oliver Conlan asked.

  To my own private hell. Which was exactly what life would be if the Butcher killed Kate.

  * * *

  Friday, June 19, 10 p.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  Smokey Joe’s fourth—and final—water bottle shovel had busted to hell three hours ago. That’s when he started using his hands. The shaky old things weren’t letting him down.

  The earth was getting softer, sandier. Like a gopher, he’d dug himself a wormhole three feet straight out, and then he’d started clawing up. He got past them planks of wood the Butcher put on top of his underground prison. He could tell by the change in the sound as he dug.

  With raw stubs of fingers, he dug harder, faster. At last his right hand broke through the earth into the cold, rainy air. He raised a fist in triumph.

  Mission accomplished.

  He widened the wormhole and heaved himself out, gulping in fresh air. He called out and heard nothing but wind.

  No problem.

  He crouched low to the ground. He heard rain on the lake. Arms outstretched, he found a tree. Dropping to his knees, he felt around the base. Moss. He’d found north. He put his hands flat on the ground and waited. Within minutes he sensed a rumble. A road to the west. Road meant cars. He had gained consciousness when the Butcher dragged him from a car into a house (he heard the refrigerator humming and smelled lemon furniture polish) and along a back deck of some type. He had a damn good idea where he was.

  His hands groped along the forest floor until he found a tree branch about three feet long, the width of a baseball bat. He’d rather have his Ruger, but the stick would do.

  “I’m coming Katy-lady.”

  * * *

  Friday, June 19, 10:20 p.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  Kate woke to a strange hissing sound, like a snake whispering in her ear. She opened her eyes a slit. Bright light. Her eyelids slammed. Had someone taken a sledgehammer to her skull?

  Was that someone the Butcher?

  She’d gone to the boathouse to meet the Butcher. Robyn Banks had greeted her instead and explained that her husband, Mike Muldoon, was the Butcher and that Kate needed to die to free Muldoon. But someone had stepped out of the shadows—Muldoon?—and sunk a knife into Robyn’s neck, and that same person had slammed something against Kate’s head.

  Kate tried to raise her hand to the back of her head, but a thin, sharp cord dug into her wrists.

  “There’s no blood, if that’s what you’re searching for.”

  The voice was so close, she jumped. Slowly, she forced her eyes open.

  She was on the floor of a kitchen she’d never seen before, her arms bound behind her, her green charmeuse dress tangled about her legs. The electricity was still out, but a half dozen candles flickered at regular intervals throughout the room.

  A man sat in a chair at the kitchen table. He held a knife to a stone slick with oil. The hissing sound wasn’t a snake but the rasp of a knife against a whetstone.

  “I used my favorite knife on Robyn Banks, but there was no time to pull it out,” he said with a casualness that sent her inching back on the cold tile floor. “I think this one, with a little sharpening, will suffice. I’m glad you’re here. This way I can take my time, really enjoy our last moment together.”

  He was the waiter from the fundraiser, dressed in a black tux and still wearing the green dragon mask. This was the Butcher they’d been chasing and who’d been chasing her, the man who’d taken her best friend.

  She pushed back the pain behind her eyes. “Where’s Smokey Joe?” she demanded.

  “Oh, he’s close by. Very close.”

  “I want to see him. Now.”

  “You were always such a sucker for underdogs, weren’t you? But then, you are one yourself. Especially now.”

  He knew her well, which meant he had the upper hand. But not for long. She had to find Smokey Joe or at least stay alive until Hayden found her. She was sure the dogged, passionate FBI agent she’d given her heart to would find her and Smokey.

  “Where are we?” Kate shifted, getting her legs underneath her.

  “My house.”

  “Where’s that?” With her hands tied and her wet gown twisted about her legs, balance would be difficult, but she could do it. For Smokey. For Hayden.

  “We’re across the bay.” His voice was familiar, his tone conversational. “How’s your head, by the way?”

  “How did we get here?”

  “So full of questions. It’s what got you in trouble in the first place.” He held the knife to the candle, and it glinted. He put down the whetstone and capped the tiny bottle of oil that sat on the table. “But to answer your question, I knocked you out and dragged you to a boat, one with an electric motor. Convenient that the wind kicked up and sped us on our way across the bay.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m glad you finally asked.” He took off the mask and she gasped. It wasn’t Robyn Banks’s husband, Mike Muldoon. Staring at her was Dr. Daniel Gray, or at least some distorted version of him. He looked nothing like the kind-eyed man at the medical clinic who’d attended to little Pammy and Sergeant King.

  “Some people call me the Butcher.” The knife still in his hand, he stood and pushed in the kitchen chair. “Some people call me Dr. Gray, but you know who I really am. And that, Katrina Erickson, is going to cost you your life.”

  She had to keep him talking because Hayden was on his way. “I thought Robyn Banks said her husband was the Butcher.”

  “That woman isn’t too smart, is she? Mike Muldoon is a lost cause, although I can see how she might suspect him. He really is obsessed with you, one of the most beautiful creatures ever to walk this earth.” His gaze slid over her, and she shivered. “But I did find Muldoon useful tonight. Right now he’s creating havoc at your grandparents’ house, as is a blood-covered boy from the academy—havoc that has your orderly, methodical Hayden Reed and his team going absolutely, positively ballistic.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “A few phone calls and meticulous timing, and presto, mass chaos, and of course you had to do your part. Being the purveyor of justice that you are, the staunch voice of the underdogs and oppressed of this world, you couldn’t help but come for Smokey Joe. On your own, no less. How convenient.”

  “Where’s Smokey?”

  “Just outside that back door, in a grave, but no worry, lovely Katrina, he’s still alive, because I needed him alive until I got you.”

  “I’m here. Let him go.”

  “You are hardly in a position of power.” He ran the length of the blade along his thumb.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Come now, Katrina, don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten me.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “Does the name Dustin Root ring a bell?”

  She wracked her brain. Nothing.

  “How about Robert McRay?”

  She shook her head. Nothing familiar about that, either, but it was hard to focus on anything but that silvery knife drawing closer and sending her heart racing in a dizzy panic. But she had to stay calm. Like Hayden. Calm, analytical, thorough Hayden. “Refresh my memory, please.”

  “Robert McRay called you three years ago and left a message that he had a lead for one of your ‘Justice for All’ repor
ts. You were in the middle of the Mike Muldoon story, so you called him back and left a message that you’d touch base with him soon.”

  She thought back to that time. She’d been working the Muldoon story for a solid month, and she’d been knee-deep in interviews with defrauded investors and the U.S. Attorney’s office. She’d been hell-bent on getting Muldoon himself in front of the camera. It’s possible she got a tip that she put on the back burner, one that…

  “The pregnant woman,” she said with a rush of recognition.

  “Ahhh, so you do remember.”

  “I remember a man calling and leaving a message that a doctor killed his pregnant wife and unborn child. I don’t remember the details, but he was distraught.”

  “That would be Robert McRay. He was distraught, very distraught and very desperate.” The Butcher stopped two feet in front of her, his knife now within striking distance.

  She swallowed, forcing her heart to slow. “Tell me about the man. I want to hear his story. I want to hear your story.”

  “It’s not a pretty one, not a fairy tale, but your life hasn’t been much of a fairy tale either, has it, Katrina? We’re alike in that respect, aren’t we? Both victims of dragon mothers.”

  She nodded, anything to keep him talking, and that’s when she heard something. The click of a door. The man didn’t appear concerned. Was she imagining the sound? Had Hayden found her?

  “What’s your story?” she asked.

  “Tough childhood. I had a whore for a mother who shared me with her customers, but I survived by pretending I was someone else somewhere else. Eventually I killed her and others like her, all worthless whores.”

  “And no one ever suspected you?”

  He motioned at the mask on the floor. “Let’s say I became very good at becoming other people and wearing disguises. The police never knew quite what they were chasing.”

  “You’re not a real doctor.”

  “No. But Dr. Daniel Gray does exist, or he did. Unfortunate for him that he found me butchering a whore in the alley behind his pissant little clinic in Vegas. But fortuitous for me because I was able to become Dr. Gray, who was just about to move to the quiet little town of Dorado Bay and open a small medical clinic.” He smiled. “You look doubtful. You’ve always been so expressive, Katrina, but yes, I impersonated a doctor, stitching up cuts, setting broken bones. It’s amazing what you can learn from the Internet, but of course I sent all the serious cases to Reno.”