by Anne Frasier
Audrey screamed as a foot kicked Sweet in the stomach.
He curled into a ball and shouted, “Run, Audrey!”
Sweet opened his eyes in time to see her black boots turn and leave his field of focus, the sound of her feet pounding over the cracked pavement as she raced toward the abandoned mill. “Hide!” he shouted.
Jay Thomas kicked him again. Sweet gasped in pain as the gun was wrenched from his hand and the sound of sirens increased.
Elise’s cell phone buzzed, indicating a text message. Heart hammering, she checked the screen: Jay Thomas.
Hands on the wheel, David glanced over at her, then back at the road.
“He sent a video,” Elise said.
“Wait! Don’t—”
She understood his command. He was afraid she’d see something no mother should see. She hit the “Play” icon.
A second passed before her brain made sense of the scene: Jackson Sweet on the ground, his face bloody and pale. After a moment, Jay Thomas turned the camera on himself and said, “Call off the cops or I’ll kill your father.”
In the background, she heard a pain-filled laugh. Sweet. “You just made her day.”
Beside her, David put in a call to Avery. “I ordered stealth. Tell everybody to back off. Immediately!”
Elise hit the “Return Call” button, and Jay Thomas answered. “No police,” he said. “Get rid of them right now.”
“Done. It’s done.”
“Good. And Elise? Your dad doesn’t look so hot.”
“Where’s Audrey?”
“No roadblocks, you hear?” Jay Thomas told her. “No helicopters. I’m bringing your father with me. If I see a roadblock or a helicopter, he’s getting shot in the head.”
“Where’s Audrey? Where’s my daughter?”
“It’s your dad you need to worry about.” He hung up.
Jeffrey Nightingale kept the gun trained on Jackson Sweet’s head. “Get up.”
Sweet curled to his knees, then slowly pushed himself upright.
“Walk.”
Sweet began moving, achingly, shakily, his feet shuffling through the dirt. He staggered, and for a moment Nightingale thought he might go down again. “Hurry, old man.”
The words had barely left Nightingale’s mouth when Jackson Sweet pivoted and came flying through the air, tackling Nightingale, both of them hitting the ground with a loud whoomph. Sweet was strong for a sick man, but not strong enough. A minute into the struggle, the gun went off and everything stopped. Nightingale broke away in time to see Sweet’s eyes roll back in his head. The killer stumbled to his feet, and with detachment he observed the man on the ground.
One down, one to go.
CHAPTER 54
David and Elise were first on the scene.
David pulled to a hard stop and slammed the car into park. Dressed in black bulletproof vests, they dove out, weapons drawn.
The cab was gone, but Jay Thomas’s car sat beyond the mangled gate, its doors open.
“Could be a trap,” David said as they approached the vehicle, guns braced.
More cops were coming, following without sirens. Along with reinforcements, unmarked cars were moving to designated areas along the escape routes most likely to be taken by Jay Thomas.
“Blood.” Elise nodded toward a dark stain on the cement. “A lot of it.”
David pointed. “Shell casing.”
A wave of weakness washed over Elise. Jay Thomas had her father with him, and there’d been no mention of Audrey. She lowered her weapon, its weight suddenly too much.
This was it. The thing she most feared, the thing that had snapped at her heels for years. Maybe she did have some kind of power, because she’d felt this day coming for a long, long time.
She tracked the path of blood—one wide strip that led to the trunk of Jay Thomas’s car.
“No . . .” The word was long and quivering. Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, knew it was David. Didn’t matter.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said.
She dragged her gaze from the blood to David. She wanted to grab his words of hope, hug them to her, but she saw his face—saw her own pain and shock there.
His hand dropped away. “I’ll look.”
She might have said something; she wasn’t sure. Breathing, living, were suddenly too much work, but she managed to shove herself to her feet. Upright, she moved stiffly in the direction of the car.
“Locked.” Peering through the windows, David did a visual sweep of the interior, then circled to the back of the vehicle. Positioning himself so the bullet would miss the trunk cavity, he fired at the lock, kicked it hard two times, then raised the lid.
A body, curled among boxes and a flat of cardboard.
Gray hair.
Gray hair.
Elise let out a sob and pressed her hand to her mouth while David pocketed his weapon and leaned into the trunk.
“He’s still alive.”
Elise pulled out her phone and called dispatch. “We’re going to need an ambulance at the paper mill. Gunshot wound. And tell them no sirens.”
After disconnecting, she asked, “Is he conscious?”
“No.”
Which meant he wouldn’t be able to tell them anything about Audrey.
“I’m guessing Jay Thomas never intended to let him live,” David said. “He just wanted us to think your father was with him. He shot him and hid the body.”
“Audrey?” Elise knew the answer. She was a cop. She’d worked homicide for years. Audrey was either with Jay Thomas or she was dead.
“He would have told us he was holding her hostage if she was still alive,” Elise said. “She was a better bargaining tool.” The words they were both thinking. “He would have sent us a video of Audrey, not Jackson Sweet.”
David didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His thoughts were written on his face. Audrey was dead.
For the second time in a matter of minutes, Elise’s world stopped, and the life she’d known that morning no longer existed. There was nothing to feel, nothing to keep her going.
Yes, a killer was on the loose.
And yes, he’d most likely murdered Elise’s daughter.
But in that moment, Elise died inside. She didn’t have enough emotion left in her to want to catch him and bring him to justice. Trying to catch him was why her daughter was gone. Gone, not dead, because she couldn’t say dead, not even in her mind.
“I’ll find him and I’ll kill him,” David said.
“I don’t even care.”
She collapsed and rolled to her back to look up at the sky. “I don’t even care.”
From off in the distance came engine and tire sounds of approaching vehicles. Probably the ambulance. Probably police cars.
She didn’t care.
She rolled to her side, curled into a ball, and began to sob.
“Mom?”
She heard, but the import of that one word didn’t connect with her grief-stricken brain, not until the word was repeated.
Elise turned enough to look beyond an expanse of cement. Black boots. Bare, skinned legs. A floral skirt. Just like the floral skirt Audrey had worn to school that morning.
Elise was unaware of getting to her feet, but suddenly she was flying across the cracked cement to sweep Audrey into her arms, hugging her, pressing her face into her hair, breathing in the scent of her, both of them crying. Finally, Elise leaned back to get a good look at her daughter, smoothing her dark hair over and over, removing the rope from her wrists. “I thought you were dead.”
“Me too. I mean, I thought he was going to kill me.” Her gaze shifted. “How’s Grandpa? Is he . . . ?”
Elise turned to see medics lifting her father onto a stretcher while a third medic prepared an IV.
David joined mother and daughter, embracing Audrey, appearing unable to speak. Over Audrey’s head, he caught Elise’s eye, reached for her, and squeezed her h
and.
CHAPTER 55
Elise pulled a female officer aside. “Please escort my daughter back to town.”
“Of course.”
“No. Mom.”
Elise would have liked nothing better than to return to Savannah with Audrey. Take her home, close and lock the door, and stay there, waiting for a call from David to report that Jay Thomas had been caught. Jay Thomas. Not his real name, she knew that now, but Jay Thomas was the name in her head.
She held Audrey firmly by both hands. “I have to see this through.”
“Elise. Go back with her,” David said. “I’ll take care of it. You’ve been through too much already.”
“I can go through a lot more.”
David watched her, understood, and nodded.
“Take her to the police station,” Elise told the officer. “She can wait in my office.”
“He tricked you both for a long time,” Audrey argued. “He’ll trick you again.”
Elise’s phone rang. It was Avery.
Elise gave her daughter a gentle push. “Go on, honey.”
A final look of pleading, and Audrey turned and walked away with the officer.
On the phone, Avery said, “We’ve got roadblocks set up at Talmadge Bridge and Highway 17. Officers stationed on side roads. We’ve got a helicopter in the air and another coming from Atlanta.”
“Have you contacted the crime-scene team?”
“They should be there in an hour.”
“How about the media?” Elise asked as she and David ran for her car. “I want his face plastered on every television screen, every Facebook page, every Twitter feed.”
“We’re in the process of putting a package together to send to local and national news outlets. Should have it ready in five minutes.”
“Keep me posted.” Elise disconnected and relayed the message to David as a line of police cars exited the plant and dispersed onto the highway. Their own car came to a hard stop at the end of the cracked cement road. “Right or left?” David asked.
“He wouldn’t have headed back to Savannah,” Elise said.
“Unless he thought he might have better luck blending in there. He’s driving a yellow cab, which is going to be hard to miss outside the city. He has a pretty good lead on us. He could have easily gotten into town before the roadblock was set up.”
“We have to decide.” They couldn’t afford a mistake. Yes, a manhunt had been launched, but she was afraid the killer would escape once again. Those chances would be reduced if she and David were in on the capture and takedown.
“I’m trusting you to make the decision,” she said.
“Both choices feel wrong.” Foot on the brake, car idling, time ticking away.
“If both feel wrong, what remains?” Elise asked.
Hands on the steering wheel, David looked at her. Then, without a word, he slammed the gearshift into reverse, executed a three-point turn, and drove back down the broken cement road in the direction of the plant.
“What are you doing? The cab is gone,” Elise said. They’d both seen police cars making a cursory sweep of the grounds before leaving to pursue Jay Thomas. “He’s not here.”
David pulled up behind a crumbling retaining wall that surrounded the plant and cut the engine. “Maybe.” He removed the keys from the ignition and checked his .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. “Maybe not.”
Elise allowed her brain to consider what he was saying. “You’re guessing he never left.”
“He’s not going to have a prayer in a yellow cab.” David opened the car door and slipped out.
Elise followed while at the same time doubting David’s choice. “So he’ll ditch it as soon as he can,” she argued. “He might have ditched it already.”
“A solid possibility.”
“And he’s a chameleon. He’ll charm the county cops working roadblocks. It only takes one error.”
“You told me to decide.”
She was regretting that.
“Take the car.” David tossed her the keys. “I agree that at the very least they’re going to need one of us to make a positive ID.”
The idea that Jay Thomas was still on the grounds had merit, but what David was suggesting wasn’t the typical behavior of a criminal, especially a murderer.
She pocketed the keys and pulled her weapon.
Half crouching, they moved as silently as possible over the broken scrabble that used to be a parking lot. With each step, Elise’s doubt increased. Playing cops. That was what it felt like. While the distance between them and Jay Thomas increased by the second. On top of which, daylight would be gone in a few hours, and once darkness hit, their chances of catching Jay Thomas would greatly decrease.
“David.” She shouldn’t have turned him loose. “This is wrong.”
“Give me fifteen minutes.” He kept his voice low.
In deference to speed, they split up while keeping each other within visual range.
The old paper mill was like a small city, covering acres, with towering stainless steel tanks and miles of piping. Remaining at ground level, they cut through the heart of the structure to access loading docks located on both sides of a wide cement walkway, where flatbeds once delivered timber to be pulped. David took one side, Elise the other.
Elise reached the end of the cavernous room and looked to see David motioning for her, pointing. Ten steps, and she was looking down into the bay . . . at a yellow cab.
From the vulnerability of her location, she gripped her gun tighter, her gaze panning up as she took in the staggered walkways of steel four stories high. She was lifting her arm to motion for David to take cover when a gunshot exploded in the hollow space.
Elise flew backward, hitting the ground while the echo from the blast unrolled in waves. Another of her misconceptions. She wouldn’t have expected Jay Thomas to be such a good shot.
CHAPTER 56
David heard the gunshot, saw his partner go down, and began firing in the direction of the shooter as he ran for Elise. At the same time, she dug in her heels and side-crawled toward the nearest wall, taking cover.
He joined her.
“I’m okay.” She gasped, touched the area on her vest where the bullet had lodged.
Remaining on the ground, Elise pulled out her phone and called Avery. “Jay Thomas Paul is still in the factory. Repeat, Jay Thomas Paul is inside the old paper mill. Shots fired. Requesting backup.” A pause for reply, then Elise went on to describe the layout of the building and where they were located. She listened a moment, responded, and disconnected. “They ran his photo through facial recognition software,” she told David. “His real name is Jeffrey Nightingale.”
Assured that his partner was okay, David reloaded and said, “Stay here. Keep him focused on you, and I’ll try to take him by surprise.” Without waiting for Elise to protest or order him to stand down, he took off, crouch-running for a set of metal stairs in the far corner of the plant.
He took the steps three at a time, hit the second floor, then spotted another set that took him to the third, followed by the fourth level, each walkway narrower than the previous.
Jay Thomas—or rather Jeffrey Nightingale—might have honed his craft when it came to cold-blooded murder, but those were crimes of persuasion, and the victims usually went with him willingly.
The chase was David’s turf.
David spotted Nightingale crouched on the third level behind a metal barrier. From below, Elise shouted, telling Nightingale to give up. She followed with several random shots.
His footfalls covered by the echoes of gunfire, David moved quickly until he was positioned directly above Nightingale.
He made a perfect target, and David couldn’t deny that part of him wanted to pull the trigger. He didn’t. Instead, he pocketed his weapon, climbed on the wide iron railing, and dropped ten feet, propelling Nightingale to the metal floor, knocking the gun from his hand, the killer’s body breaking David’s fall.
The man’s strength t
ook David by surprise. They rolled. Nightingale reached for David’s throat. David grabbed him by both shoulders and smacked his head against the floor. Stunned, Nightingale let go. David scrambled to his feet, pulled his gun, and kicked Nightingale’s out of the way.
Lying on his back, Nightingale looked up at him, a smile blossoming on his face. “David, David.”
It occurred to David that Nightingale was enjoying this—as much as someone like him could enjoy anything.
“You think you know me,” Nightingale said. “But you don’t.”
“Oh, I know you.” David kept his gun trained on the man on the walkway. “I know more about you than you do. There’s the surface, easy stuff. That you’re a sick son of a bitch. And your first kill was probably someone you knew pretty well. A neighbor. A friend. A family member. How’m I doing?”
“Not bad, but you could do better.”
“Sometimes I think you really wanted to be Jay Thomas Paul. Not always, but sometimes I think that person you were pretending to be bled through. Just a little. Is that right too? Because I don’t believe anybody is one hundred percent evil. I’ve never known a killer who didn’t have a line he wouldn’t cross. Sometimes it’s a line that makes no sense to the rest of us, but it’s a line.”
“You’re projecting. A good agent doesn’t project.”
“What do you get out of it?” David asked. “The killing? What does it feel like to be you?”
“You shouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I’m sure you’ve killed people in the line of duty. That’s different. To kill an innocent—that’s where the high comes from.” He gave David a look of consideration. “What about your wife? Did you ever ask your wife how it felt to kill your son? If you’re so curious about it? No? You didn’t? You had a case study right there in your hands, and you didn’t pursue it? I can tell you how it feels. She drowned him, right? I’ll bet she took him into the bathroom and gently helped him take off his clothes while she filled the tub. Maybe she even put some toys in there, like a rubber ducky. And maybe she even talked sweetly to him, all soft and intimate. And maybe he wrapped his little arms around her neck and she buried her face in his hair and inhaled the baby scent of him. And maybe she stroked his head and told him everything was going to be okay. What happened next, David? Want to tell me?”
