Hide and Seek

by Velvet Vaughn

  Taylor stared in dismay at they neared the structure. “The cops aren’t here yet.” A rusted red pickup caught her attention. “But Mitch is…that’s his truck.”

  Sawyer shifted to park and opened his door. Taylor scrambled after him. He turned and held up his hand. She almost plowed right into him. “Stop. We’re not going in there without backup.”

  A bloodcurdling scream rent the air.

  “Gina.” She launched forward but Sawyer grabbed her arm, halting her progress.

  “Dammit, Taylor. You stay right here.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he warned. “I’m a federal agent. This is what I do. I’ll ascertain the situation. You stay here and wait for the cops.” He pinned her with his gaze, forcing her to comply.

  She knew he was right. He was trained for this…she wasn’t. “Fine. But be careful. He’s crazy.”

  Sawyer withdrew his weapon and stealthily approached, his gaze alert, constantly scanning the area. He plastered his back against the house and then chanced a look in a window. Carefully, he eased up the steps. Taylor paced restlessly, and chewed her thumbnail, ready to comfort her friend. Sawyer pounded on the door and then moved to the side with his gun pointed at the floorboards in a two-handed grip. “Ms. Fairbanks? I’m a friend of Taylor’s. Can I speak to you?”

  The door opened and then nothing happened. Suddenly Gina screamed again, loud and long. Sawyer eased around to peer inside. Before Taylor could process what was happening, gunshots rang out and his body jerked violently before he slammed to the porch.

  “No!” Taylor screamed in horror, her hands covering her mouth. She froze in shock, unable to move. Finally adrenalin kicked in and she took off running. She couldn’t let him die. It was her fault he was here in the first place. He wore a vest but there were vulnerable areas left unprotected. She bounded up the steps and skidded to her knees at his side, unconcerned about her own safety. The Kevlar caught several bullets but a pool of blood rapidly expanded beneath his body. Her hand shook as she reached to feel for a pulse.

  “Taylor!”

  She spun around as her friend bounded out of the house. “Thank God you’re here,” Gina cried.

  “Call for an ambulance,” Taylor ordered, as she turned back to Sawyer. His eyes were still closed and he hadn’t moved. “Sawyer, can you hear me?”

  Gina grabbed Taylor’s arm and pulled her up. “You need to come inside with me. Now.”

  She tried to resist. “No, Gina, he’s been shot. We need to help him.”

  Gina ignored her, shoving her through the threshold. If she hadn’t been in shock, she would’ve put up a better fight. The door slammed behind her, followed by a click.

  “Hello Ms. Assistant State Prosecutor. We meet again.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Taylor froze at the voice and slowly rotated to face the monster from her nightmares. Patrick Sweeney leaned against the jamb of the doorway leading to Gina’s kitchen holding a gun, looking calm and relaxed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he hadn’t attempted to murder an FBI agent in cold blood. She prayed it was only attempted murder. He looked older and harder than the last time she saw him. His hair was short and he’d bulked up behind bars. He was still devastatingly handsome.

  She glanced at her friend, but instead of looking distressed, she looked smug. “Gina?” She watched in stunned silence as her best friend sashayed past her and snuggled up against Sweeney’s side.

  “I believe you know my fiancé.”

  Taylor was too dumbfounded to speak. Gina was her best friend. They grew up together sharing everything from clothes to hopes to dreams of the future. She knew all about Sweeney, about the crimes he’d committed. The man stole her child…Gina’s Goddaughter. “Gina, how could you?”

  “How could I what? Marry the man I love? Patrick loves me, too.”

  “When did this…how did you…”

  “Pat contacted me. I’ll admit, I was reluctant at first because of all of your lies.” She patted his chest and gazed at him adoringly. “But he gave me my self-confidence back. He told me how smart and beautiful I am. He can see into my soul.” Sweeney had a self-satisfied look on his face.

  “Gina, the man is a cold-blooded murderer.” She tossed her arm towards the door. “You just saw him in action. He just shot an FBI agent on your front porch.”

  “Self-defense,” she argued.

  Taylor shook her head. “He raped and killed a dozen women.”

  “He didn’t do those awful things you accused him of.”

  Taylor threw her arms open wide. “He confessed! And there’s proof. And I didn’t put him away by myself. I just presented the evidence. A jury of his peers found him guilty.”

  “Lies,” she asserted.

  Gina had lost her mind. There was no other explanation.

  “He stole my child from—”

  Gina stopped her with an accusing finger. “His child. Grace is his daughter. I love her like my own. We will raise her as ours.”

  Taylor laughed in disbelief. “Where is she right now?”

  “Someplace safe,” Sweeney smirked.

  She smirked right back at him in her head. Damn right she was.

  “I’ve put up with your self-righteousness for far too long,” Gina spat. “Pat helped me to see what a raving bitch you are. You’re so bossy and you always think you’re so smart and know what’s best for everyone. Well guess what, Taylor, you don’t know everything. You tried to run my life, but I’m taking it back.”

  Taylor jerked back, stung. “I never tried to run your life. I only want the best for you. I got you away from the man who was abusing you. He would’ve killed you. If anything, I gave you your life back.”

  “It always had to be your way,” Gina sneered. “I told you I didn’t want to leave Mitch, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Gina, he broke fifteen of your bones in one year. You were in the hospital numerous times, once on a ventilator. Did you just want me to stand back and watch him destroy your life, kill you slowly? You’re my best friend. I love you and tried to protect you.”

  “Protect me,” Gina barked out a harsh laugh. “By railroading me into doing things I didn’t want to do?” She shrugged a shoulder. “I guess I do owe you some thanks. If you hadn’t driven Mitch away, I wouldn’t have met Pat. He’s the one who protected me. You only put Mitch behind bars for a few years.” She pointed out the window to the fresh mound of dirt in the yard. “Pat saved me from him.”

  Taylor’s gaze moved from Mitch’s grave back to Gina. “You killed him?”

  “Bastard came by, spouting nonsense about repenting, begging forgiveness for his sins. He expected me to just forget he broke my body and almost killed me? Idiot.”

  Taylor shook her head. That was the same argument she used to try to get Gina away from him.

  “Apparently he did,” she made air quotes, “find Jesus in prison. Pat did him a favor…he sent him to meet his Maker.” She threw back her head and laughed manically. For the first time Taylor realized her best friend was insane.

  “If Mitch is dead, it was you who shot out my window.”

  “Guilty,” Sweeney bragged. “That was just a little reminder that I could get to you any time, any place. I wouldn’t have killed you…that would’ve been too easy. Your death will be a slow, excruciating long, drawn-out process.”

  Taylor faced her friend. “You’re okay with this, Gina? You plan on helping Sweeney torture me for hours and kill me? You hate me that much?” She couldn’t do anything about the tears that gathered.

  Gina’s smile faltered. For the first time, she noticed indecision in her friend’s motives. Maybe she could expose the weakness and remind her of the good memories they shared.

  Sweeney noticed the hesitation, too. “Come here, baby,” he crooned, pulling Gina in for a wet, sloppy, open-mouth kiss.

  Taylor wanted to cover her eyes. Or gouge them out. She couldn’t unsee this. It would be burned in her memory fo
rever. Gina gasped, her eyes widening as they locked onto Sweeney. Slowly she slid down his body. Taylor gaped in horror as she crumpled to the hardwood floor, the black hilt of a knife protruding from her chest.

  “Gina,” Taylor whispered, rushing to her friend’s side. Gina blinked rapidly and blood seeped from the wound to stain her shirt crimson. All the color drained from her face, leaving her pale, ghost-like. She blindly reached for Taylor’s hand, her grip weak. Her fingers were ice cold.

  “S-sorr—” she gurgled. Blood bubbled from the corner of her mouth in a steady stream. She blinked one last time and then her eyes glazed over as her head lolled to the side. Dead. Her best friend was dead. Taylor jerked her gaze to Sweeney to see a smile twisting his lips and a gun pointed directly between her eyes.

  Snippets of her life flashed before her eyes as she stared down the barrel of his pistol: Grace taking her first wobbly steps; her parents celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary, as in love now as the day they were married; Dante’s easy smile after they’d made love the third time. So many wonderful memories. She’d been blessed. Her lids blinked in slow motion as Sweeney’s finger moved to the trigger and then they closed altogether. She shook uncontrollably as a gunshot exploded.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Where are you, Dante, I’ve got major news,” Tyler Redmond crowed. “Beam yourself to my lair, pronto.”

  The lair was Tyler’s high-tech office located in the new mega-media structure at COBRA Securities Headquarters. The man was a magician with computers...in fact, Dante wasn’t positive that he wasn’t part robot himself. He’d never met one he couldn’t hack. Thankfully he channeled his efforts for the good guys…a white hat he called himself. How Luke and Logan managed to snag him, Dante would never know. He could have his pick of jobs anywhere in the world.

  “Can’t. Dorian and I just left the compound.”

  Tyler huffed. “Well, dammit. This is huge, dude.”

  “What’s up?” he asked as he absently scrolled through his messages. Taylor texted him to say she was headed to Gina’s house. Her ex-husband had threatened her. Dante’s back snapped straight. Mitch was currently wanted for questioning for the shooting at Taylor’s house. Dante had spoken to his parole officer who swore that Mitch turned his life around and wasn’t the same man who entered prison, yet he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t get in touch with his client. He was relieved to read that Sawyer was driving Taylor. She had FBI backup.

  “Hold on, Ty,” he said into the phone. He covered the mouthpiece and gave Dorian Gina’s address. Not that he didn’t trust Sawyer, but Mitch was unstable. He wanted to make sure Taylor was safe. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “I was digging deeper, as you suggested,” Tyler continued. “We’re talking all the way to China deep. We know Sweeney was in contact with all of these women while he was in the slammer.”

  “Right.”

  “And we couldn’t locate who smuggled him the phone. I couldn’t find anything in the librarian’s finances to suggest she purchased burner phones. Now, I know she could’ve paid cash but just in case, I checked her family and friends.”

  “You found something?”

  “No. Complete dead end.”

  Dante sighed. Sometimes it took Tyler forever to get to the point. “Is that what you are calling about?”

  “Oh, no, there’s more. I decided to check out the people who had daily contact with him. That was quite a few guards so it took me a while, but I zeroed in on one.”

  “I’m surprised they let a female guard near him.”

  “They didn’t.”

  Dante let that soak into his brain. “A male guard assisted him?”

  “Yep.”

  “Damn, we never thought to check out the men. How did he manipulate a man to do his bidding?”

  “The same way he did women.”

  Dante’s brows lifted in surprise. “The man’s gay?”

  “Rocky Skillman is firmly entrenched in the closet, but totally gay.”

  He didn’t even bother to ask how Tyler dug up that information. The man was downright scary sometimes. “That changes things. We need to contact the prison officials. I bet Skillman was never considered as an accomplice in Sweeney’s escape.”

  “Later…I have more urgent news.”

  “Go on.”

  “There was nothing in Rocky’s finances that raised red flags. Again, he could’ve paid with cash, but on a lark, I decided to run his girlfriend’s finances.”

  “Rocky has a girlfriend?”

  “I told you, he’s poured a foundation and built a house in that closet.”

  He was afraid to ask, but, “Is it even legal to look into her finances?”

  “Don’t ask,” Tyler sighed. “Anyhoo, she had a couple of interesting charges on her credit card.”

  “Can you please get on with it,” Dante grumbled.

  “Fine. Someone using her credit card purchased two disposable cell phones and a calling card. Since you don’t want me to pause for dramatic effect, I’ll just tell you that I was able to trace the calls from the calling card. Definitely Sweeney who used it. There were dozens of calls to Taylor’s sister, Lois Quinlen and all of the women who assisted in his escape plan. There was one number that showed up more than the others.”

  Dante’s heart rate picked up. This could be the woman harboring him right now. “Whose number is it?”

  “Gina Fairbanks.”

  #

  “We’re almost there,” Dante told Tyler as Dorian fishtailed around a corner and then navigated the rutted path to Gina’s house. Dust kicked up from the dirt road in a brown cloud. The SUV skidded to a stop a millimeter from the bumper of Sawyer’s rental car.

  “Oh, hell.”

  Dante followed Dorian’s gaze to see a man down on the porch. “Damn. It’s Oldham.” He relayed the information to Tyler to call for an ambulance. Backup was already en route. “Make sure the cops know not to use sirens,” he instructed Tyler again as he jumped out of the Escalade and disconnected. He followed Dorian to the back of the SUV and grabbed the vest he tossed him. He yanked it over his head and quickly fastened the straps before taking off at a dead run.

  “Wait for…dammit,” Dorian cursed, racing to catch him. He pressed a Glock into his hand. Dante palmed the weapon with a grateful nod. Once they cleared the tree line, they stayed low as they approached.

  “I’ll go in through the back,” he said. “You go through the front and wait for me—”

  A gunshot rang out. “Go!” he commanded.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Taylor’s ears rang from the blast and it took her a minute to realize she hadn’t been hit.

  “Warning shot,” Sweeney remarked before he violently jerked her hair back and jammed the gun to her temple. Then he caressed her cheek with the barrel. “So lovely. We would’ve been good together, you and me.”

  It sounded like he was speaking in a tunnel. Must be her ruptured eardrums. “In your dreams,” she rejoined, glad to hear that her voice was steadier than she felt. “I find you repulsive.”

  She wasn’t prepared for the fist that slammed into her face. The impact snapped her head back and stars swam in front of her eyes. Tears gathered but she refused to let him see her cry.

  “On second thought,” he murmured, “I’d have had to tape that smart mouth shut.”

  She wanted to fire off a sharp retort, but she needed to keep him talking. Dante knew where she was so he might come looking for her. Maybe he’d put down his guard and she could take advantage. “So all of this, everything you’ve done is to get back at me for putting you in prison? Turning my friends and family against me?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Pretty much.”

  “You’ve manipulated this from the beginning. You got Tara pregnant and had her get close to me, name me Grace’s guardian. Then you had her killed. You did all that so you could escape and kidnap Grace to torture me?”

  “Ah, so you figured that out, did you?”
He shrugged. “Tara served her purpose. It’s your fault she’s dead.”

  “How could it possibly be my fault?” It was a guess that he’d had her killed.

  “If you hadn’t put me in prison, I wouldn’t have had to kill her. I would’ve settled down, become a family man.”

  “No you wouldn’t have. You’d still be raping and murdering innocent women.”

  He gave a hearty laugh. “Who am I kidding? I would’ve made her abort the brat. Or maybe I’d have killed her when she was pregnant. That’d have been a rush. Two at once.” He gave a dramatic sigh. “Guess we’ll never know.”

  “You sick bastard.” The thought that Grace’s life could have ended before she even got a chance to live made Taylor furious and so very thankful the jury had enough sense to see past Sweeney’s charm to the beast beneath the surface.

  “Now, now, now, who are you calling a bastard? You’ve read all of my files. You know my no-good daddy married my slut mother. Just because they had a kid together, doesn’t make the parents but it also doesn’t make me a bastard.”

  “My heart bleeds for you.”

  He laughed again. “You are a spitfire.” He let go of her hair and crouched down until he was on her level. The gun was still pointed to her temple but he held out something in front of them…a cell phone.

  “Smile,” Sweeney ordered and snapped a picture. “I missed out on all this selfie stuff while I was in the slammer. I think I’d have been a huge hit on Instagram.” He clicked another shot, looked at the screen and nodded in satisfaction before dropping the phone in his pocket. “I’ll have to upload it to my Facebook Fanpage later. My groupies will love it. Have you seen my following? Thousands.”

  It made Taylor sick that so many people would choose to idolize a serial killer.

  “Your sister tried to be a hero, you know.”

  Taylor sucked in a breath. “Cassie?”

  “Bet she told you she couldn’t get in contact with me, didn’t she?”

  Taylor nodded.