The Last Victim (A Ryker Townsend Story)

by Jordan Dane

  Justine had been gone a long time. If she’d gotten into trouble with Matson, I wouldn’t know it unless I heard gunfire. Noise made me jumpy, but waiting without knowing anything had been far worse.

  Enough. I gotta get fresh air.

  I reached for the crutch Justine had made me from a sturdy tree limb. She’d put padding in a crook of the branch using a couple of Nate’s shirts that she’d tied together. With the cushion of the fabric, I could put my weight on it, without the rough bark hurting me. After great effort I stood and wedged the crutch under my arm as I held the shotgun. I shuffled for the front door with my wounded ankle raised. Every step hurt like hell and I felt dizzy and hot.

  When a shadow eclipsed the light coming from a window, I jerked my head up and stopped dead still.

  “You. How did you…?”

  I raised my shotgun and nearly fell when my crutch dropped from under my arm.

  “I’m FBI. SSA Townsend.” I panted. “Don’t come any closer.”

  A tall scruffy man with long hair and a beard stood in front of me, dressed in a red plaid shirt. Grady Lee Matson. How had he gotten into the cabin without me knowing it? When the man didn’t say anything, I blinked to get a better look with my eyes watering. Daylight coming from the window turned Matson into a blur.

  “What did you do with Trooper Peterson?”

  The man’s eyes flared in anger. His matted dark hair and beard had dirt and leaves encrusted into the tangles and his clothes were disheveled as if he’d been in a fight. I braced for the man to charge me, but when Matson’s face distorted, his eyes and mouth drooped like water colors bleeding in the rain.

  “What the hell?”

  The face of the man in red plaid faded and morphed into a more familiar one. I recognized the white filmy eyes, gray mottled skin, and the gaping mouth of Nathan Applewhite. Grady Lee Matson was gone. A dead man stood naked before me, with his skin carved bloodied and raw. The stench of death filled the cabin.

  “Oh, God.”

  My heart pounded and I couldn’t stop staring at the horror. Dead eyes fixed on me as they had at the crime scene in the Cascades. When I stumbled back, the corpse of Nathan Applewhite turned its head and its haunted gaze followed me.

  There’s no light without the dark. My mother’s words came to me. I wielded them like a protective mantra to rationalize what I saw. Even inside the cabin, flies hovered over the grotesque body and a cloud of gnats swarmed its eyes. The dead man didn’t blink. Not once. Even Nate’s hair drifted as if every strand were stirred by a preternatural wind.

  I sensed the strong presence of evil. Nate had brought it with him. A criminal malevolence shadowed his spirit. Palpable and strong.

  “You can’t be real. Why are you doing this to me?” I limped back and raised my shotgun. Every move hurt.

  Nate dropped his jaw open as if to answer me and his trembling lips mouthed a message, but no sound came out.

  “This can’t be happening. I’m not sleeping. I’m not.”

  There’s no light without the dark.

  Panic gripped me hard. I felt wide awake. If I wasn’t asleep, I had to be hallucinating, yet I sensed the same link to Nate that I had in my nightmares. I couldn’t catch my breath and the ache in my head throbbed hard like an adrenaline fueled artery.

  “Stop talking to the dead guy, Townsend. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  When Applewhite drifted toward me—without the corpse’s feet touching the floor—that’s when I lost it. I couldn’t take another second of a vision that had crossed over from my tortured sleep into my waking consciousness. The room spun with Nate Applewhite coming closer.

  “No. Stay there. Don’t!”

  I smelled death. The air was thick with the stench. Sweat trickled down my brow. I couldn’t fill my lungs as I backed away and raised a hand to the nightmare standing in front of me.

  “Don’t come any closer…or I’ll shoot.”

  I don’t know why I said it. Threatening to shoot a dead guy?

  “There’s no light without the dark.”

  I said my mother’s words aloud as if they’d ward off whatever was happening to me. I wanted to picture her face and feel her arms around me, but I couldn’t.

  None of this made sense. Every instinct in my gut screamed that the dead body had brought evil to my door. First Matson. Now Applewhite. I had to stop it. I raised the twelve-gauge and took aim. I had to shoot. It was all I had left. Without hesitating I pulled the trigger. The blast made me cringe and everything in my head went numb.

  Applewhite broke apart in front of my eyes. Every fragment coiled into a thick cloud of flies. I couldn’t hear the buzz of their wings. The shotgun blast had destroyed my hearing, but I watched the swarm of insects slip under the threshold and I followed them.

  I flung open the door and aimed the shotgun.

  “Stop! Don’t shoot! It’s me.” Someone stood in the clearing outside the log cabin and aimed a weapon at my chest and yelled, “What’s wrong with you?”

  It took too long for me to recognize Justine’s face. She stared at me, wide-eyed, and held her handgun on me. Oh, God. No. I lowered the shotgun and collapsed against the doorframe, panting and shaking.

  How could I tell her what I’d seen? How could I tell anyone?

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head and winced. “I really…don’t know.”

  I lowered my head to my chest and shut my eyes. I could have shot Justine. I’m losing it. What the hell’s wrong with me?

  Seeing Nathan Applewhite in my dreams—and calling it a vision—was one thing. But when a dead man haunted my waking mind with delusions that invaded my reality, I had to wonder about my sanity. This was new. It scared me beyond my worst nightmares. It felt like the walls I’d carefully erected in my mind had burst open and bled a lifetime of horrors over me. After I’d seen Matson, I knew I couldn’t blame all my hallucinations on my delirium from a fever or a head injury from a fall.

  I had one unrelenting fear that had been plaguing me ever since my visions had gotten worse. Being a profiler demanded I become a voyeur into the dark minds of prolific killers. Lately I questioned the way I separated my work from my personal life.

  I compartmentalized the horrors I saw on the job by erecting barriers around them in my mind, but what if those walls I’d built to protect myself were fragile? If my dreams brought those walls crashing down, I could easily imagine my nightmarish visions seeping into my waking reality.

  If that happened, how would I hold on to who I was? How would I know the difference between insanity and what it meant to be me?

  As I stared at a stunned Justine, I saw fear in her eyes—and I couldn’t blame her. I was scared, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

  Ryker Townsend

  “You could’ve shot me. What happened? Was it Matson? Was he here?”

  Justine confronted me in wide-eyed outrage. She expected an answer, but I didn’t know what to say. I stood on the threshold of the cabin, barely able to stand. My mind reeled with what might’ve happened.

  I could’ve killed her.

  “I…don’t know, exactly.”

  “How could you not know?”

  Justine took a deep breath and inched closer, looking unsure of me. Hell, I was uncertain too. I must’ve looked like a crazy man. What had happened? Eventually she reached out a hand and touched my cheek with trembling fingers. Her sudden change of heart surprised me.

  I hadn’t realized how much I needed her touch. Her acceptance.

  “Something is happening to you, isn’t it? Something you’re not saying. What is it?”

  She leaned into my body and pressed into me. Her lips, her eyes, the smell of her skin hit my senses and I lowered my chin and shut down, giving in to her comfort. Her touch and the feel of her body reminded me I wasn’t alone.

  We were strangers, but that was changing fast. I needed my connection to her. I wanted her understanding. The w
eight of being alone—of shouldering the accountability for a gift I wasn’t sure I could carry on my own anymore—had left me tired.

  “Trust me, Ryker. Please.”

  She kissed my cheek and a part of my steely stoic manhood melted on the edges. Her lips felt good on my skin and I let it happen.

  “I’m risking my neck here,” she said. “We’re in this together. Talk to me.”

  I shut my eyes tight and breathed her in. I’d kept my secret for so long, but the burden had caught up to me. On the island I was wounded and exhausted and the hunt for the Totem Killer had drained me, especially since my worsening visions had kept me from sleeping.

  Justine was right. I had to trust her. After I’d almost shot her, I owed her an explanation. I stared into her eyes and raised a hand to brush my fingers through her hair.

  “You’re right. Something is happening to me, but I’m not sure I understand it.”

  “Let me help you inside,” she said. “You can tell me everything.”

  Justine hugged my chest and nuzzled her shoulder under mine. She touched my belly and held me in ways that were meant more as affection, rather than her being my crutch. I liked it. I endured the pain as I hobbled across the cabin to the bed. After Justine helped prop my leg up on pillows, she sat on the edge of the mattress and held the canteen to my lips for me to drink.

  “Thanks. I—”

  Before I thanked her, Justine lowered her lips to mine and kissed me. I braced my body and resisted at first, but I eventually gave in. I pulled her into my arms, caressed her face, and returned her kiss—long, slow, and deep.

  When it was over, I was confused. I’d been attracted to Justine and had connected to her strong sensual nature from the first night I’d met her, but I was sick. I wouldn’t have kissed her if she hadn’t made the first move. I needed her in a different way, at least for now. I was hurting. Romance shouldn’t have been on my radar, yet my lips and my tongue had gone rogue.

  “That was…nice.” I touched her cheek and smiled. “Unexpected, but nice.”

  “I did it again, didn’t I?”

  For the first time since I’d met her, Justine looked shy and she blushed. Her fragile smile gave me a glimpse of the little girl she used to be.

  “I pushed you to kiss me,” she said. “You remind me so much of Nate. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  Nate again. I reminded Justine of her dead lover. Whatever she felt toward me, it was for someone else. Not me. Her displays of affection were ways she had for grieving over Nate. I had to remember our predicament, and Nate’s death, had instigated a rush of emotion for both of us. I wasn’t sure how much I should believe, from either of us.

  Perhaps I was nothing more than a pound pup in need of a home and a good chew toy.

  “It’s okay. Really. I kissed you back because I wanted to,” I said. “But there’s something I have to tell you. I do have a connection to Nate. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.”

  “What are you talking about?” She pulled from my arms with a worried look on her face. “You’re scaring me.”

  Yeah. Get in line.

  Lately I’d been living in fear. With each case, my abilities had grown stronger. A good profiler had to rely on a certain amount of intuition when it came to drawing insight into the psyche of mass murderers. Excelling at understanding the deviant mind carried a risk that I’d lose sight of normal. But after years on the job, I’d honed my gut instinct and had learned to trust it, until I realized what I’d tapped into was more than my gut.

  The more I used my natural ability, the more I’d come to think of it as a gift I couldn’t explain. My dreams often linked to the cases I investigated—symbolic glimpses my mind had to interpret. I didn’t examine a crime scene and make deductions solely by observation. It was more than that. Intuition and my experiences within my dreams played a part. I had second sight and my penchant for oddly connected insights had become keener and undeniably valuable.

  When I realized my mind craved the high of solving the puzzle, my freak side made me an addict in want of a fix. My hunt for the Totem Killer had stirred darker visions that had led me to Nathan Applewhite—and now Grady Lee Matson. I didn’t know where to begin to explain all this to Justine, but things had gotten out of hand and I had to tell her everything.

  She had a right to know.

  “Even before I got the call about Nate’s body being found outside Seattle, I had a dream about him. I’ve since come to believe it was more of a vision.”

  “A vision? About Nate?”

  “It’s not the first time it’s happened to me. I dream and the things I see, sometimes they happen. But this time I think Nate reached out to me. At the crime scene, his eyes, they…”

  God, this sounded crazy, even to me. I stopped. I couldn’t look at her. Was this it…my psychotic break? With every word out of my mouth, I saw doubt building in Justine.

  I couldn’t blame her for not believing me—for fearing me.

  “What about his eyes? Tell me.” She clutched a hand tight to my shirt and held on. Tears welled in her eyes.

  I didn’t know how much of her pain came from her grief over losing Nate or her being afraid of me. The cost of my need to open up to someone was in Justine’s eyes. She hadn’t deserved any of this.

  “His eyes followed me, as if he watched me, like he tried to tell me something. I was awake, but it happened.” I shook my head. “I know how this must sound. I’ve never told anyone about this, not even the members of my team, but after I almost shot you, I figured you had a right to know.”

  “Are you psychic?” she asked. “Wait. You’re a profiler with the FBI. How is this possible? If they knew, you’d be under psych eval. People might think the stress of the job is getting to you, wouldn’t they?”

  I grabbed for the canteen and took another long pull of water to stall my answer. The room closed in on me and I felt lightheaded again. I was about to cross a line that would change things forever. To let someone in on my very private life—and trust a virtual stranger with my darkest secret—it could cost me my job and my future and everything I was or could become.

  “I’ve never told anyone this before. That’s why I don’t talk about it. You’re right. I’m not sure the FBI would understand what’s happening to me. They could sideline me.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there? Come on. You can trust me, Ryker. Talk to me.”

  I tensed my jaw and heaved a deep sigh.

  “I have the gift of second sight. I’ve used it to solve cases before and I’ve never told anyone on my team because…they wouldn’t understand, but ever since the Cascade Mountains and the way Nate…looked at me, my visions have been different.”

  “Different? In what way?”

  “I think Nate is showing me the last thing he saw…when he died. Some people believe those who die at the hands of violence, their retinas get imprinted with the last thing they see.”

  Justine pushed off the bed and glared at me. She didn’t say a word. I’d lost her. She shook her head and paced the room, stealing glances at me as I tried to explain.

  “I know it sounds crazy. That’s why I haven’t told anyone, but that’s what happened today. My visions have turned into hallucinations. I saw Matson—here in the cabin—but he…turned into Nate. Nate’s dead body was here. I saw it. I smelled the stench. His eyes followed me like they had in the Cascades. I tell you, he was here.”

  I was nearly through the worst of it. There was no going back anyway. I had to make her see.

  “Did he talk to you? Say anything? Maybe he knew his killer.” Justine ran a hand through her hair and choked down a laugh. “I can’t believe this. You’re seeing a ghost and I’m asking if it talked to you. Unreal.”

  It was more than seeing a ghost or having visions. I had to tell her everything. She needed to know—or maybe I needed the freedom of breaking through my own barrier.

  “No. He didn’t say anything, but there’s more,” I said.
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  “Oh, this I gotta hear.” She crossed her arms.

  “My hallucinations have been worse since I linked to Nate and came to this island. I’m seeing things whether I’m sleeping or not.”

  “Wait a minute. Do you know how insane that sounds?”

  “Yeah, believe me, I do.”

  I took another gulp of water from the canteen and heaved a hefty breath. I only saw Justine. Everything else in the room closed tight around me in a vague haze. My tunnel vision had become worse.

  “It’s my greatest fear,” I said. “I think these hallucinations aren’t coming from my psychic abilities.”

  “What are you saying?” She stepped closer and sat next to me, touching my arm. “What’s happening to you?”

  “I nearly shot you because I couldn’t tell what was real. Who I am is slowly slipping away and I can’t stop it. I’m unstable. My visions only compound the depravity I see. I never get a break from them. I’m losing control and it feels as if my own mind is attacking me. Even in my sleep I’m forced to sit on the bench and watch the carnage over and over, like it’s a punishment.”

  “Punishment? For what?”

  “For being powerless. For not stopping it. I wake up in cold sweats, paralyzed with fear. Bodies are falling because I can’t figure out a vision fast enough and someone innocent pays the price.” I shook my aching head. “I’m not sure I can do this job anymore, and I certainly can’t be trusted to have your back the way I am.”

  Justine touched a hand to my chin and trailed a thumb across my lower lip.

  “You lost someone close to you, like I did. Didn’t you? Someone you loved. Someone you connected to with your ability,” she said. “Please…tell me what happened. Maybe talking about it will help.”

  I’d never told anyone about what happened the day my parents died. Even Sarah was in denial and dealt with that day in the only way she knew how. Because she didn’t believe me when I told her what I saw, she let it play out and neither of us will ever know if we could’ve saved them. Now my sister had written me off because I scared her, like I was an immoral oddity she had to protect her family from.