Face of Fury (A Zoe Prime Mystery--Book 5)

by Blake Pierce

  But then a light did flick on, upstairs, in the top right window. A bedroom or bathroom, most likely. Zoe watched, thinking. She had to trust her instincts here. Maybe it was just an innocent visit—but if it wasn’t, someone would die. That was too big of a risk to take.

  She rushed toward the front door, staying low and trying to keep her steps quiet. She tried the door gently but found it locked. He had to have gotten in somehow. If he’d been invited in, then fine, all was as expected. But if he’d broken in, there would be some kind of sign.

  Zoe headed around the side of the building, dashing forward as quickly as she dared to without making a sound that would give her away. The grass rustled faintly underfoot, and even that made her flinch. The clear light of the moon washed everything silver, and as she approached the back door over patio tiles that made her want to take her shoes off for silence, she saw that it was hanging open.

  Only just; the thinnest sliver. But there it was. Zoe drew her gun and pushed it open without a second thought. There was no messing around now. This was a serious situation. The killer was in the house, and if he hadn’t done it already, then he was getting ready to.

  Zoe had to stop him—and avoid becoming the next victim herself.

  Though it might have been nice to ruin his pattern.

  She listened inside the room she had entered, which appeared to be a kitchen. The silver moonlight glinted from taps and plates and gave her dimensions, telling her the size of the room and calculating possible home layout extrapolations. Was that water? Water running, somewhere above? Zoe cocked her head; yes, it was running water, she was sure of it.

  Running water like the kind he used to drown his victims.

  She rushed forward until she found the stairs, and then started going up them two at a time. She was cautious but fast. She hoped that any creaking floorboards would be covered by the sound of the taps—hoped that he was standing right by them, couldn’t hear anything else. About halfway up, one of them creaked loudly, and she winced, dashing up the last few steps just in case he was already coming out to meet her.

  Zoe kept the gun out and steady in front of her as her eyes scanned the dark rooms in all directions, turning swiftly toward the only one that was lit: a bathroom, she saw by the white tile just inside the doorway. She stepped smartly around into position, facing the doorway fully, so that she could see inside.

  There was a woman lying on the floor, her blonde hair fanned out over her face. Shelley’s cold white eyes flashed into Zoe’s head, gripping her with an almost paralyzing fear. Even from here Zoe could see the blood pooling from the woman’s head, making drips on the tiles. Zoe rushed forward again, dashing into the bathroom and checking the bathtub—rapidly filling with water—and spinning to look behind the door. Nothing. He wasn’t there.

  She stepped back toward the doorway again, moving over the woman’s body so that she could squat down beside her. Zoe reached out two fingers and held them against the prone neck, her hands shaking with the need for the woman to be alive, feeling how her skin was chill to the touch—but there was something weakly moving under her fingertips, the heart still beating. Zoe drew in a relieved gasp. She wasn’t too late.

  But if the victim was here, and not yet dead, then the killer clearly meant to drown her in the tub. Which meant that he still had to be somewhere in the house.

  Why had he left his victim behind?

  And where was he now?

  In the split second that she realized it, Zoe stood and spun, coming to her feet facing back into the hallway that she had come from. But it was too late. Because he was already there, standing right behind her, and something dark in his hand was already swinging around toward her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Zoe was unable to react in time before the heavy club swung down against her hand, knocking the gun down without a chance to save it. She had no time to register the pain in her hand, either, only time to step back and let the numbers fly in front of her eyes, telling her how to save herself.

  She dimly registered relief that the gun had not fired on hitting the ground, but it was replaced immediately by the more pressing concern: Ford’s arm flying back again with the club, telling her the angle and trajectory at which it would come down, making her lean back sharply, ducking under its range. She heard the whistle of air moving as it passed over her head, almost hitting her. The killer growled as the club hit the wood of the door instead, splintering it, spraying Zoe with a hail of loose paint chips.

  Zoe saw the window of opportunity open to barrel forward into him, to knock him back, but his arm was going back again, and she saw that her plan would put her right into the line of fire for his next sweep. He was going to hit her.

  She couldn’t go any further back—not with the woman prone on the floor behind her, a ready tripping hazard.

  He was stronger, heavier, and he had the advantage.

  All of this passed through her brain in the briefest of moments, and she knew that she had to act. The window of opportunity would close.

  She launched herself forward bodily through the air, springing at his midsection with her arms stretched out and her head turned to the side. She would use all of her weight to plow into him, pushing him backward as they crashed together, making him fall so that she could get the advantage—

  But he had thirty pounds on her, and even though it was only thirty pounds, evidently some of his weight was muscle. He staggered backward a few steps but did not fall, and the progress of his arm toward her head was not arrested—slowed, maybe—and it still came down across her back, so hard and heavy that she found herself gasping out, dropping down, loosening her hold on him and letting go.

  And he took another step before she could recover, enough to get the distance he needed, and even though Zoe could see the numbers and angles and knew that he was coming for her, she couldn’t do a thing to stop it as the club crashed down across the back of her head. She dropped to the floor, feeling the pain across the base of her skull and her neck.

  He was still off-target. She was stunned, reeling from the pain, but not unconscious, not yet. She was still in this fight. Zoe desperately rolled to the side, feeling the impact through the floorboards under her as the club smashed down beside her, narrowly missing her. But now she was against the wall. She looked up. There was nowhere else to go. Ford’s face was twisted into an angry snarl as he raised the club again, and Zoe brought her arms up in front of her face, knowing it wouldn’t help at all, that he would break them and then keep hitting her until she was gone—

  And there was some kind of angry shout, a word she couldn’t even make out, a voice that hadn’t been there. A voice she recognized. Still reeling and gasping from the pain in the back of her head, Zoe tried to move, looking up to see Flynn. The rookie was grappling with Ford, pulling the man’s arms behind his back, but Ford was struggling, fighting against him, and both of them were making animalistic noises, grunting and groaning with effort. They were well-matched. Too well-matched.

  Zoe could see Flynn’s gun on his belt, uselessly out of the way. For some reason he hadn’t drawn the gun when he entered the house, and now he was wrestling with Ford, unable to spare a hand to go for it. Zoe watched them dully, trying to think. Everything was slow. Why hadn’t he drawn his gun? Now Ford was getting loose, getting his arm free, turning, punching at Flynn’s body with his free hand, the club still caught but getting freer by the moment as Flynn tried to move to defend himself—

  Zoe snapped back to clarity. Flynn was in trouble. He needed help. There was only one thing she could do, one way to save him while Ford’s attention was off her. She wasn’t going to lose another partner.

  She scrambled across the floor toward her gun, lying at the other side of the hall, against the far wall. Grabbing hold of it, she turned, lying back on the floor with her shoulders against the wall so the recoil wouldn’t throw off her aim while she was weaker. She looked up, saw the calculated line running from the barrel of the gun
all the way to Ford. She squinted a little, saw his movements, saw where he would be a fraction of a second from now.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  The bang of the bullet leaving the chamber was loud enough that a sudden silence followed it, right before the sound of Ford dropping to his knees, letting go of Flynn entirely. He turned around to look at her, wide eyes expressing his shock. He’d thought she was done. He’d underestimated her.

  Zoe panted for breath, keeping the gun aimed at him and steady. Flynn, too, seemed to be in shock, watching rather than reacting, waiting to see what would happen. If she needed to shoot again, she would.

  Ford looked down at his shoulder, the blood spilling down over his arm as he raised it slightly, testing it. He dropped it immediately, the club hitting the floor. He couldn’t fight with it any longer. Still staring at the wound, he began to laugh, a ragged sound that at first Zoe could not even interpret.

  “Look,” Ford said, still breathlessly laughing. “It’s a perfect circle.” He raised his other hand and prodded at the hole the bullet had left with one finger. Zoe could only stare, his reaction so incongruous that it froze her.

  Flynn snapped into action, grabbing handcuffs from his belt and stepping forward. Ford did not resist as the rookie pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed him. He didn’t even cry out in pain. He just kept on laughing, laughing, laughing, like he’d told the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Zoe sat on the tailgate of the ambulance, watching the scene. They had insisted on wrapping her in a silver foil blanket, and it rustled every time she moved, so she simply gave up and sat still.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Flynn asked, settling down on the metal beside her.

  Zoe nodded mutely. The EMTs had looked her over, doing an on-the-scene assessment. Tested her for concussion, which she did have, but only mildly. They had given her strict instructions about not doing anything strenuous and staying awake, preferably with someone to watch over her. Zoe had agreed blithely, not bothering to tell them that there was no one waiting at home, and that she would be putting her body through air travel first thing in the morning.

  She knew she would be sporting some pretty impressive bruises for the next few weeks, but there weren’t a lot of people lining up to see those either. At least the club hadn’t broken her skin or any bones. Fighting back and seeing the angles had given her just enough protection to avoid that.

  “Definitely?” Flynn asked.

  Zoe turned to look at him, taking her gaze away from Ford’s would-be victim, who was groggily talking to the EMTs as they loaded her into the back of another ambulance. She was going to be okay. Just like Zoe, she had a concussion—a much nastier case, which was going to require overnight monitoring. But she had no other injuries. They had managed to prevent that by getting there just in time.

  “Yes, definitely,” Zoe said. She found her throat strangely dry at the fact that he cared enough to press the point. And he did care; he wasn’t just asking. She could see an unfamiliar look in his eyes that told her as much. “I just need to rest a few days, and I will be back to fighting fit.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go fighting anyone any time soon, just because you can,” Flynn said, a light smile curving the side of his mouth.

  “You did not want to go with Ford?” Zoe asked, changing the subject. After the sheriff and the ambulances had shown up, Ford had been loaded into one of them and driven away, handcuffed to the stretcher he was lying on.

  Flynn shrugged. “Sheriff Petrovski can handle it. We caught him in the act, so I don’t think the interviews are going to be very difficult. I wanted to stick around and make sure the victim was all right. And you.”

  Zoe nodded slowly. “Thank you,” she said, belatedly realizing after a few seconds that this was probably the appropriate response.

  They watched in silence for a little while longer. An army of deputies and CSIs in white suits were swarming over the house. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, they had turned up in full force, ready to work. Maybe a few of them had dubious hairstyles that were probably much more polished in the light of day, but they were here, all of them on call and ready to spring into action when they were needed. It was one of the things that Zoe liked about law enforcement, she realized. Not having to wait on traditional schedules and working hours. Being able to make something happen when it needed to.

  “You did not pull your gun,” Zoe said, into the companionable silence. Something had shifted between them—some kind of realignment of their working relationship. They’d been through an attack together. Fought to save one another’s lives. That kind of thing made a difference in how you saw someone.

  Flynn sighed. From the corner of her eye, Zoe saw him looking down at his hands, hanging his head. His hair, normally neat, hung down loose over his forehead. “I was afraid of what I might do if I had it in my hands.”

  Zoe digested that for a moment. She had a feeling that she wasn’t supposed to point out that she had ended up shooting Ford anyway. It wasn’t about that, she thought. “Something to do with your trauma,” she said, recalling their earlier conversation. It was something he hadn’t much wanted to talk about, the first time. When he had pulled the gun and almost shot their suspect.

  A good job, in retrospect, that he hadn’t. That suspect was now unequivocally innocent.

  “Yes.” Flynn paused. Zoe could sense a struggle within him, a fight about how much he should reveal to a stranger. She could relate. It was a fight she had been battling most of her life, and silence almost always won. “I lost someone close to me.”

  “Who?” Zoe asked.

  There was a long silence. Flynn didn’t answer. She couldn’t blame him. His secrets were his secrets, and if he wanted to keep them, she wasn’t going to argue. It would have been hypocrisy. If he wasn’t ready to tell her, that was fine. If he was never ready, that was fine too.

  It was at that moment Zoe realized she was thinking about Flynn in the continuous sense: that they would know each other after this, that they would work together again, maybe for the long term. It surprised her. Inevitably, it made her think about Shelley.

  “Did you know that I lost my last partner?” Zoe asked, the words clogging up inside her throat even as she dislodged them.

  Flynn turned to look at her for a second, then looked back out in front, returning the equilibrium. “No. Is that why you were set against having a new partner?”

  “Yes.” Zoe cleared her throat, finding that new words were cloying there now. Somehow, she suddenly had the urge to get them out. “Special Agent Shelley Rose. She was killed during our last case. We put the wrong suspect in custody and while we relaxed, thinking it was done, he came after her.”

  Flynn made a small sound in the back of his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know any of that. I’d heard that something happened to your last partner, but no one told me what. It must have been hard for you, when I kept going after the wrong guys.”

  Zoe shrugged. “You have your way of looking at things. You might have been right. And Pitsis was a very good suspect.”

  “You got there, though,” Flynn said. He paused, shifted his weight. “I don’t know. Maybe the fact that we see things differently makes us a good team. Better than I thought we would be.”

  Zoe blinked, something occurring to her. “How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

  Flynn barked a laugh. “I woke up and realized I had a missed call from you. Then I looked outside and saw the car was gone. I left a bag in the trunk. It’s got one of those fobs attached to it—you know, the ones that connect to an app so you can always see where they are? I grabbed a deputy and we raced over here. I told him to wait in the car and call for backup while I went in.”

  “Just for future reference,” Zoe said drily, “going in alone is never a good idea.”

  “You did it,” Flynn pointed out.

  Zoe gestur
ed to the back of her head without saying anything, making him laugh again.

  They settled into silence again, comfortable now. Without realizing it, Zoe thought, she’d ended up with a new partner. Who ever imagined that that could happen to her again?

  She gathered the foil tighter around her shoulders, watching as the sheriff strode around, giving orders. It was over. And somehow, even though she had imagined this as her swan song, Zoe found that she was already looking forward to the next case.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Zoe stood on the sidewalk opposite Shelley’s home, standing straight and tall this time, no longer needing the use of alcohol to drive her here. She had needed to come. She had known that.

  Instead, a bunch of flowers hung limply in her left hand, for the moment forgotten about. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had planned to say to Harry Rose, Shelley’s husband—now her widower—but all plans had been driven out of her mind when she had arrived.

  One thing had clearly changed since her last visit. Driven into the soft soil of the lawn was a Realtor’s sign, proudly declaring that the home was for sale. In one of the upstairs windows, almost touching the glass, Zoe could make out a stack of boxes.

  Harry and his daughter were moving on.

  She couldn’t blame them; it was hard enough to simply exist, seeing so many signs of the woman they had all lost everywhere she looked. Living in the home that had once been hers would have been too much for everyone. A fresh start would maybe allow Harry and Amelia a chance, however slim, at future happiness.

  Zoe knew now that she couldn’t disturb them, bring it all freshly back to their minds by arriving on their doorstep. She lifted the flowers in her hands and stared at them for a moment. Apologizing to them had never been about making them feel better, she realized. It was about herself. Her own guilt.