by Debra Webb
Lincoln again.
Billy tapped the screen. “Did I forget something or did you?”
“We have a situation.”
Unease slid through Billy. “I’m listening.”
“Patrol just found Woody Holder’s car.”
Knots of worry tightened in Billy’s gut. “Where?”
“At the lake, near the scene where Alisha Addington’s remains were found.”
The worry swelled into fear. “I’m on my way there now. I want as much backup as you can send my way.”
Billy ended the call and gunned the engine.
Twenty-Three
Rowan had been wrong about Woody.
He had shown up. In fact, he’d been waiting for her at the funeral home when she stopped to get her weapon before going to meet Julian. To her surprise he had at first claimed he wanted to discuss her offer to rehire him, but then he had jabbed a gun at her and ushered her out the back door and to his car. He’d parked in the alley behind the funeral home.
Ironically, he’d brought her to the lake. To the place where her sister’s body had been found...where she had discovered Alisha Addington’s remains. Yellow crime scene tape still fluttered from the bushes around the area. Those bones had set all this craziness in motion.
She couldn’t resist surveying the woods around them, her gaze seeking any sign of Julian. If he was here somewhere—as she suspected—she wasn’t sure how Woody’s presence would complicate things.
Would Julian spot him and take off?
What she needed was to get rid of Woody Holder.
“You know they’ll be looking for me by now.” Rowan recognized that she should be afraid but she wasn’t really, not yet. For the most part, she was mad as hell. She had survived a close encounter with the world’s most prolific serial killer. She wasn’t actually afraid of Woody Holder. She just wanted to kick his ass as best she could and then turn him over to Billy to finish the job.
But first she wanted him out of the way before Julian backed out on their meeting. And she was certain Julian was the one who sent the text.
Woody laughed and nudged her onward. “I’ll be long gone before they think to look here and you...well, you’ll be dead.” He poked her in the back with the gun. “Those are my orders. You have to die.”
She bit her lips together to prevent saying, Far more ruthless killers than you have tried, but she decided to keep that cold hard fact to herself. Perhaps it would give her an edge before this was done.
The underbrush tugged at her jeans, slashed across her hand, drawing blood. They were headed to the deep water’s edge...closer than she had ever gone before. To the place where Raven’s body had been tangled up in the limbs of a fallen tree. Her throat constricted ever so slightly but she refused to show her fear. He wanted her afraid. He wanted her to allow him complete control.
Woody Holder had likely never been in complete control in his entire life.
But today he had a gun and that made him feel brave and all-powerful. Strange how he was so easy to read now that that he’d shown a glimpse of his true colors.
“You really didn’t have to kill Mrs. Phillips.” Rowan shook her head. “You should have allowed her to talk to me. I could have cleared everything up.”
“Oh yeah. I’m sure you would’ve been happy to explain how her husband’s feet went missing.” He pushed her forward.
She jerked back as her own feet sank into the muck at the water’s edge. Her heart pitched and galloped. She thought of poor Mr. Phillips and what the idiot had done to him.
She faced him, barely restrained the urge to punch him, gun or no. “What the hell did you do?”
“I did what I had to do,” he snarled. “Those who have everything always like to believe they’re above doing anything wrong because they’ve never been pushed into a corner and left with no choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Woody. You didn’t have to kill Mrs. Phillips any more than you had to steal her dead husband’s feet.” A person who would cannibalize the dead for their own selfish gain was the lowest of the low.
“Mr. Phillips didn’t need his feet. I did.” Woody stabbed himself in the chest with his thumb. “I considered picking up a few body parts now and then a fringe benefit of the crappy job.”
Dear God, how long had he been doing this? Were his criminal activities restricted to his work at DuPont? Or had he been doing it at Gardner’s, too? Where else had he worked? His psychopathy could go all the way back to his childhood.
“But then he found out what I’d been doing and everything changed.”
Rowan stilled, grabbed at a sapling to steady herself. “Who is he?”
Woody laughed. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. He’s too perfect and too smart. No one would ever suspect him. No way. It’s the have-nots like me that everyone suspects. No one would ever suspect him in a million years. Especially not you.”
“Dr. Knowles?” Rowan suggested. “Is he the one who put you up to this? Is he the one who changed everything?”
More of that obscene laughter burst out of the piece of crap with the gun. “You are too funny, Ro. You don’t know shit.” He leveled the muzzle at her. “You should never have come back. Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t come back. You complicated everything.”
Rowan mentally scrambled for something to say. “You should have been more careful, Woody. When you steal from the dead, Karma is a bitch. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that? What about your partner? Surely he has warned you not to be so careless.”
“First, we’re not talking about my partner. We’re talking about you. Second, if you want to talk about Karma, how about the fact that you should have died when your friend the serial killer decided to come out of the shadows, but instead your dad bought the farm. How screwed up is that?”
Fury ignited so fiery hot in Rowan that she could barely restrain the urge to tear into him. “Why?” she demanded. “Why would you take advantage of people at their most vulnerable time? Wait.” She threw up her hands as if an epiphany had struck. “Because you’re a coward. A coward sneaks around behind closed doors to take advantage of others. That’s what you are, Woody. You’re a coward.”
The muzzle bored into her chest now. “No, Rowan, I’m just a man who found an easy way to make a few bucks and got caught by the wrong asshole who wanted it all for himself. Besides, no one got hurt, they were already dead! If that crazy old bitch hadn’t nosed around where she had no business she would never have known. I caught her in the refrigeration unit. I should have killed her then and stuffed her in the casket on top of her old man. No one would have been the wiser.”
Rowan laughed despite the pain of the weapon boring into her sternum and the depravity of his words. “Who hired you to harvest body parts, Woody? We both know you aren’t smart enough to put together a scheme like this on your own.”
He sneered. “Maybe I’m not the smartest one in this partnership, but he couldn’t do it without me. So he’s stuck with me just like I’m stuck with him. It’s you we have to get rid of!”
“You won’t get away with it,” she argued. “You won’t. Billy will make sure.”
“Even if you somehow walk out of here,” he snarled, “no one will ever believe you. Because you’re the undertaker’s daughter. The only one who survived. Everyone knows how you used to talk to your dead sister and how you found your mother after she hanged herself. Then you got your father murdered. Anyone could have seen it coming if they bothered to look. No one will be surprised to find you floating facedown in the lake. Especially with you imagining all those things happening in your house.”
The noose...the missing and moved items.
“It was you.” Shock radiated through her. She had been convinced it was Julian.
He grinned. “Made you wonder if you were losing it, didn’t we? Your dad
dy always talked about how bad what happened all those years ago hurt you. He worried about you. With him murdered and it being your fault and this new investigation into your mother and your sister, it’s no wonder you threw yourself into the lake. We had it all planned.”
“No one will believe I did this,” Rowan warned. “Billy will never allow that to happen.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. At this point, I don’t really care. I’ll be long gone. ’Cause what he doesn’t know is that I’m not hanging around to see how this plays out. I am so out of here.” He squared his shoulders. “Now let’s finish this.” He motioned toward the water with his gun. “Jump!”
“Just one question,” Rowan countered. “Why did you wait so long to move Mrs. Phillips? That was your one mistake, you know.”
He rolled his eyes. “I went over there to shut her up but when things got out of control and she ended up dead I got sick. I had to go across the street and puke so I wouldn’t leave any evidence. I’ve watched every episode of CSI. I know my shit. The problem was, I never killed anyone before. When a neighbor came home, I panicked and left. Later that afternoon I realized I had to make it look like an accident. I wasn’t worried about Burt figuring it out. He was never going to notice, and even if he had, I could have handled him.” Woody’s face twisted with anger. “But you had to get involved. Now, stop asking questions. I want to finish this.”
Rowan shook her head. “You want to kill me? Then shoot me. I’m not jumping.”
The muzzle gored into her chest. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Do it or go,” she suggested. “Run while you have the chance.”
He shook his head from side to side. “No way. You know too much. Now jump or I will kill you where you stand. You see, that’s another thing your daddy worried about—you can’t swim.”
Rowan stared straight into his eyes. “I’m not jumping.”
“Stupid bitch.” He jammed the weapon harder into her chest.
Hands suddenly grasped Woody’s head and twisted violently. The snap of his neck echoed in the silence. Surprise captured his face, the gun slipped from his hand and then Woody Holder crumpled to the forest floor amid the decaying leaves and thick brush like a broken doll.
Julian stared at Rowan across the body of his newest victim. The air, the very movement of the earth seemed to stop. No matter that she had been expecting him, seeing him shook her. The gun Woody had dropped lay at her feet. She considered the chance of her being able to snatch it before Julian reached across the two or two-and-a-half feet between them and grabbed her.
Run, her mind screamed.
She couldn’t.
Grab the gun.
She couldn’t.
“It’s good to see you, Rowan.”
The sound of his voice seemed to send the world spiraling again and made her want to vomit. “I can’t say the same about you, Julian.”
He sighed. “However have we come to this place in our relationship, my dear Rowan?”
The peculiar combination of rage and regret and curiosity that roared inside her held her mute.
He nodded once as if he understood exactly what she felt. “You have questions about what happened.”
He knew her far too well. “I do.”
“My daughter was a brilliant young girl but, sadly, riddled with mental instability. Counseling, drugs, nothing seemed to help her. Then she heard about you and Raven, and Norah, of course. She was devastated and curious. She wanted to see what all the trouble between her mother and me amounted to. Even a rebellious teenager doesn’t want her parents to split up. The need for unity is instinctive.”
“So it’s true, you and Norah were having an affair.” It wasn’t a question. She understood this now with complete certainty.
Julian smiled. “Are you certain you’re prepared to hear the answer to that one?”
“Were you having an affair when you were her therapist?”
“Your mother needed many things. The comfort of physical pleasure was one of them.”
“Was she really ill or did you make that part up to cover for your affair?”
“One day, perhaps you will know and understand. But not today, Rowan.”
“Are you the reason she’s dead?” Hatred and pain and a dozen other emotions whirled inside her like a hurricane.
“I suppose I am.”
Another deep stab of anger burrowed into her. “Why did you kill my father? He had no idea who you were. He knew nothing about what you are. He was innocent in all this.”
Julian continued to stare at her, said nothing.
Not taking her eyes from his, she lowered into a crouch and picked up the gun. To her surprise, he let her.
When she stood once more, he angled his head and searched her eyes. “Do you plan to kill me, Rowan?”
Was that what he wanted? Her to kill him? So she would carry that burden around with her for the rest of her life?
“Don’t overanalyze the question, simply answer it,” he said, irritation in his tone.
“I asked you why you killed my father.” She wasn’t going to do anything he told her to do. She wasn’t that woman anymore. He had changed her life forever. Despite her best efforts, she trembled. Her fingers wrapped more tightly around the butt of the weapon.
Just kill him.
No. There was something she needed first. “I want to know the truth, Julian. Why my father? And what happened to my sister...to your daughter?”
For a moment he merely continued staring at her, then he finally spoke. “I’ve always tried to protect you, Rowan. First from my daughter. She was determined to destroy your mother, you and Raven. I followed her here, but by the time I arrived I was too late. She had drowned Raven right there.” He pointed to the water. “And she was dead. There was nothing I could do for either of them, so I left. But that day—” he drew in a deep breath “—that very day I made a vow to always look after you, Rowan, and your mother. And I have. Always.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her words were a feral growl. She wanted to watch him die more than she wanted to take her next breath. “What did you do to my mother? You obviously weren’t looking after her or you would have known she was contemplating suicide.”
“I tried. Sadly, I was unable to help her. But I have tried to protect you, Rowan. I prompted that bitch Juanita into telling me what Woody was doing. She was helping him in his efforts to unsettle you. It’s a shame I had to torture her unsuspecting brother to make her talk.”
Sheer hatred boiled up inside Rowan. “If you were trying to protect me, why did you kill Officer Miller? He was there to protect me!”
Julian laughed. “He was asleep on the job. He wasn’t protecting you!”
She shook her head, steadied her aim at him. “What about my father? You had no reason to murder my father or the man who was protecting him. They were both innocent in all this. Innocent,” she repeated.
When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “I already know the answer. You killed him because I loved him more than you.” Her own words assaulted her, tore open all her most tender places. “How could you not have known that? He was my father.” A single tear slipped past her valiant attempts to keep them in check. “Of course I loved him more than anyone else in the world.”
She wanted to tear off his head. She wanted to gut him like a hog at the spring kill.
“Are you going to kill me now, Rowan?”
Her fingers tightened on the weapon. “There’s a very good chance I will.”
“Then I suppose you should know the truth.” His own fury glinted in his eyes.
She waited, her entire being urging her to pull the damned trigger.
“In the event we run out of time, you should be aware that I left you a gift for the second time,” he said, the anger suddenly gone from his eyes and his tone. �
�Perhaps one day you’ll appreciate my kindness.”
“Why did you kill my father?” she demanded, out of patience.
“Because he killed my daughter.”
His words were like a sudden, swift blow. She shook with the impact, couldn’t breathe for several seconds. “That’s impossible.”
“He had warned Alisha to stay away from his daughters, but she, of course, did not. When Raven called him from the party and told him all the things Alisha was saying and how devastated she was, Edward rushed to her. But Alisha stepped out of the woods before he reached the party. He stopped the car and demanded to know where Raven was and Alisha gladly showed him. My daughter had drowned his. It wasn’t bad enough that I had taken his wife’s love from him. Edward lost control—those are his words—he strangled Alisha and then he hid her body. For a time, he sat in the water holding his dead daughter. Finally, because he knew you still needed him, he went home as if nothing had happened.”
Rowan shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you wish. When your book was released I suppose it was my turn to lose control. I demanded a meeting with Edward. He confessed what he had done and dared to suggest that we were even. He wanted me to stay away from you, but that was never going to happen.”
She’d heard enough. She refused to listen to any more of his lies.
“Put your hands up and get down on your knees.” Killing him was too easy. He would pay for what he had done.
“Goodbye for now, Rowan.”
When he turned his back, she aimed the weapon. “Julian! Stop or I will shoot!”
He kept walking.
“Julian!”
She squeezed the trigger. She saw his body jerk with the impact of the bullet. Then he disappeared into the trees.
The sound of backup tearing through the woods erupted seemingly all around her. The air sawing in and out of her lungs, Rowan scanned the woods. Where was Julian? She’d hit him.
