by Hill, Casey
Reilly was two units away from 314 when she realized that she hadn’t brought a weapon. She paused, weighing her options. She could return to the main office and call the FBI or the detectives again, hoping they picked up. She could go sit in the van and keep calling from her cell until they finally answered, all the while hoping Fisher didn’t either show up or, if he was already there, leave.
Or, she could just keep going and, if necessary, use the bolt cutters she’d borrowed.
Bolt cutters versus a serial killer. Yeah, that would end well.
‘Don’t be such a wuss,’ Reilly muttered to herself. She raised the bolt cutters and tightened her grip. ‘You chose to come out here alone. Pull it together and do something.’
Jaw set, she started to walk again, taking more care with each step that took her closer to her goal. When she reached the door, she crouched and slipped on a pair of gloves before sliding the cutters into place. The snap was louder than she’d anticipated and she froze, straining for any sound of discovery. After several seconds had passed, she grabbed the handle and lifted the door.
Heart pounding, she took a step inside. The stink rolled over her, making her gag even as her eyes adjusted to the change in light.
‘Hello?’ A tentative croak from the depths of the dark made Reilly jump.
Silently berating herself for her nerves, she paused, waiting for the call to come again.
‘Hello? Is someone there?’
Definitely male. Sounded like someone who’d spent the last few days screaming loud enough to harm his vocal cords.
Probably not the killer then. Otherwise they were dealing with someone even crazier than they’d thought.
‘CSI.’ Reilly surprised herself with a steady voice. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘I’m Drew Sheldon.’ The relief in the man’s voice was nearly palpable.
‘Are you alone, Mr Sheldon?’ Reilly held back the excitement that surged forward. She was right! She dampened down her rising adrenaline, aware that she still had to be smart about this.
‘Yes, yes, they’re gone.’
As she made her way further into the unit, the vague shapes at the back began to take on more solid shapes, including the figure of a man who stood next to a cot stained with things that Reilly didn’t want to think about. Despite his matted hair and filthy attire, she recognized the picture that had been flashed everywhere around the city since he’d been reported missing.
‘Mr Sheldon.’ Reilly hurried over to the screenwriter’s side, ignoring the smell that grew stronger the closer she got. She tried not to gag with each breath and it slowly became easier.
‘Wesley Fisher . . .’ he gasped, struggling to talk.
‘Kidnapped you, I know.’ Reilly looked down at the chain connecting the man to the cot. She raised her bolt cutters, looking at them dubiously. She wasn’t entirely sure they’d get the job done. That was a huge chain. The padlock on the door was tiny by comparison.
‘No. I think he’s in danger.’
‘What?’ Reilly stared at Sheldon, baffled.
‘That psycho who took me . . . he’s Paul Lennox. Wesley Fisher’s number two.’ The writer could barely get the words out.
‘Number two . . . I don’t—’
‘Co-producer. They collaborated on a couple of movies but the relationship recently went sour. Wesley’s next on his list, possibly his main target. Lennox blames him for their box office failures. Decided to go solo . . .’
Reilly’s eyes darted back to the man’s face, her voice terse. ‘You mean it’s not Wesley Fisher who’s been killing all these innocent people?’ Her mind raced. Co-producer . . . Which meant that Lennox would have had access to props from Fisher’s movies, like the Queen Mary costume. Or access to this lockup. He may even have rented it himself but under the guise of being Fisher so as to head off any suspicion . . .
‘No.’ Sheldon shook his head. ‘It’s Lennox. He’s after Fisher. And now he’s taken someone else.’
‘Someone else?’ Her stomach sank. There was no one else in the unit. If the Maestro – Lennox – had another victim, it wasn’t here.
Not good.
‘Brought him in this morning,’ Sheldon continued. ‘Good-looking guy, dark hair, a bit on the sarcastic side.’ Sheldon paused and gave Reilly an appraising look. ‘You’re a pretty blond.’
‘Um, thank you?’ Reilly wasn’t entirely sure how to take the compliment or where it had come from. Jeez, was the whole of Hollywood the same about women? Then she considered that it might be that Sheldon’s mental status may have been compromised by his incarceration.
‘No,’ the screenwriter protested quickly. ‘I mean Lennox said something to the other guy about his pretty blond sidekick coming to rescue him.’
Reilly felt the color drain out of her face.
Suddenly she knew.
CHAPTER 39
The Maestro sat at the rickety kitchen table, his laptop open as he waited for Sheldon to deliver the final scene. His fingers tapped against the tabletop, his foot against the floor. He liked to think of himself as a patient man, but the anticipation was nearly unbearable.
Maybe he should write his final letter now rather than waiting until after filming was wrapped. It would allow him to send it out on a delay so the news would get it around the same time the finale was being reported. The Feds and the cops would both think that he was still hanging around when he’d already tied up all of his loose ends and was on his merry way.
Sheldon would die, of course, but if the final scene pleased enough, he would make it quick and painless. Even if the writer was found fairly quickly, it would be too late.
But the Maestro doubted the body would be discovered until his lease on the unit ran out and the company went down to clean it out.
He didn’t envy whoever opened that door.
He checked his laptop again but there was nothing new yet. That was all right, he supposed. He didn’t want a rush job. There was a deadline – no pun intended – but that didn’t mean he had to settle for poor quality.
‘Now, my final letter to the people,’ the Maestro muttered. ‘I need to include how pleased I’ve been with their reactions and what a great place it’s been. Mention that I’m moving on but without enough detail to reveal my next location. Don’t want to give the people of Cleveland a chance to prepare.’
After a moment, he began to type, reading out loud as he worked. ‘The time has come to say our final farewell. I have grown quite fond of the Tampa Bay area and am grateful to have had such a receptive place for my debut. I can only hope to receive a welcome just as warm from my next location. As true art always shifts and changes, I look forward to evolving as an artist while maintaining the integrity of my work. I hope that you have enjoyed our time together as much as I have and I ask you to keep your eyes open because I’m not done yet.’
Todd had no idea how much time had passed while he’d been unconscious again.
He was thirsty and his tongue felt like cotton in his dry mouth. That could’ve meant anything from a couple of minutes to a few hours. He did, however, feel the overwhelming need to pee, which probably meant his time under was actually a few hours.
He blinked a few times, his eyes adjusting to the dim light and his head throbbing as he took stock of his situation.
If his years playing football in high school was any indication, he had a concussion from his fall, compounded by the jolts of electricity to which he’d been subjected. His wrists were sore, chafed nearly raw, but the handcuffs were gone.
He moved his feet. They too were unencumbered. He was lying on a cot bed similar to the one he’d seen Drew Sheldon on earlier, though this one appeared to be much cleaner. He sat up, groaning as the pain in his head spiked. Yup, definitely a concussion.
Todd swung his feet over the side of the cot, took a deep breath and stood. His stomach roiled but didn’t completely rebel, so he considered it a win.
A string brushed against his head and he instin
ctively grabbed at it and pulled. A click later and a pale light flooded the room. And it was an actual room, Todd saw, not some sort of warehouse.
. Judging by the rough bedrock walls and bare plank ceiling, he was in a basement.
The cot sat against one wall, a chair against the other. In the far corner was a bucket that Todd was fairly sure was supposed to be his toilet. A set of stairs led up to a wooden door. No windows, no other ways in or out.
He needed to check the door, find out if he could hear anything, determine just how thick the door was. He needed to know if Fisher was gone, if there was a way out or a way to alert someone to his presence. But first, there was something else he needed to do.
Todd crossed to the bucket in the corner.
‘I’ll get you out of here and then I’ll wait to catch Lennox when he comes back for the script.’ Reilly tried a different link in the chain. She knew she should call the FBI or cops, but she also knew they’d be pissed enough that they’d either detain her here when they arrived or send her away altogether.
If she just delivered Sheldon to the hospital, she could get back before anyone else knew about her involvement. She didn’t care about the rules or protocol anymore; she wanted to find Todd and she wasn’t going to let the people who’d brushed her off before now swoop in and take her off the case.
‘He’s not coming back for it.’ Sheldon’s statement drew Reilly’s attention.
‘What do you mean, he’s not coming back?’ Reilly tried to quell the fear that rose inside her. Lennox had to come back. She needed him to so she could catch him and make him tell her where he’d taken Todd.
Daniel was not going to go through what her own father had when he’d lost Jess. And she was not going to lose anyone else she cared about. Even if her feelings for Todd were a bit perplexing at the moment.
‘He set up this shared document account.’ Sheldon gestured to a laptop. ‘I just type and he can see it.’
Reilly stood. ‘So he doesn’t need to come here until he’s done with you, which means his next movie scene will be completed and Todd will be dead.’
Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a plan that didn’t involve her friend’s death. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, turning toward Sheldon. ‘Since Lennox set up each of the scenes himself and has been acting in some of them as the killer, once you write the finale, we’ll know where he’s going to be.’
‘One little flaw in that plan.’ Sheldon rattled his chain as he absent-mindedly scratched his ankle. ‘For that to work, I have to write the finale. Which I can’t very well be doing while being questioned by the police or examined at the hospital.’
‘Right.’ Reilly scrambled for another idea, grateful that the writer seemed to be working with her on this. ‘We’ll get you set up in a nice safe house and . . .’
Sheldon was already shaking his head. ‘Lennox set up the account to only be accessed from this computer and the laptop he has with him. And before you suggest that we just take it with us, that won’t work either. He set up location services so every time I log in, the document’s tagged with the IP location. He was worried I’d try to escape, since I knew he’d kill me when the script was done.’
‘Damn it,’ Reilly said.
‘But couldn’t the Feds or somebody . . . I don’t know, hack the system or something? Make the GPS report that the laptop’s here when it’s really someplace else?’ Sheldon suggested.
Reilly hesitated. The writer had a point. The Feds most likely had a tech who could do it. Hell, Peni probably could hack the system. But since she hadn’t put Peni’s phone number into her cellphone and her only copy of the cyber specialist’s number was back at the lab, it would mean involving people who would potentially take her off this.
Now, with Todd missing, it was more important than ever that she stay. Reilly understood the way Lennox thought, his motivation and desires.
‘But there’s something about that scenario that doesn’t quite sit well with you, isn’t there?’
She looked up in surprise. For someone who’d spent so much time locked in a storage unit, Sheldon was surprisingly observant and level-headed.
He gave Reilly an appraising look. ‘You’re here by yourself and haven’t called for backup yet. You’re not actually supposed to be here, are you?’
‘Not exactly.’ She sat on the edge of the chair facing Sheldon. She was out of options and running out of time. The screenwriter had told her that he only had twenty hours left to complete his script. If she didn’t find Todd before then, he was a dead man. ‘I’m not a cop. I’m a forensic investigator. Short version, Lennox killed the senior investigator on the CSI team, but the FBI agreed to let them stay on the case if I took over because I don’t have a personal stake in this.’
‘You mean you didn’t have one.’ Sheldon gave her a knowing look.
‘Right,’ Reilly admitted. She didn’t add that she wasn’t entirely sure what that personal stake meant, but this wasn’t the time or place for introspection. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d figured out that Fisher was the killer, and that he’d also kidnapped you. I asked the FBI to check out the hotel where Fisher was staying before I found out that he’d rented this storage unit.’ She guessed they’d been unreachable because they were in the process of questioning Wesley Fisher, so at least the director was safe. Reilly wondered if Fisher’s former partner knew this, which was likely, and if so was Lennox planning to switch out his final intended victim?
‘You’ve lived away from the States for a while too, haven’t you?’ Sheldon ventured.
Reilly blinked. Not the question she’d been expecting. ‘Yes, almost three years. How’d you know?’
‘I’m in the movie business.’ Sheldon gave her a self-satisfied smirk. ‘A lot of Americans who live abroad pick up little bits of accent, faint enough that most people wouldn’t notice. The reason I asked is, that means you’re not technically part of the Tampa law enforcement, doesn’t it?’
Reilly nodded. ‘I have credentials, but if my superiors find out that I came in here alone, they’ll pull me off the case.’ She took a deep breath and laid the last of her cards on the table. ‘If they do that, and by the time I’ve finished explaining everything to them, I don’t think anyone will get to Todd in time.’
Sheldon’s eyes narrowed as he studied her and she found herself wanting to squirm. It was one of those looks like Daniel got when he was sizing up someone to decide whether or not he believed them.
‘I have an idea,’ the writer said then. ‘It’s a little crazy, but it just might work.’
CHAPTER 40
Paul Lennox pulled his car up to the curb several yards from the hotel.
He’d just dropped off his letter at the news station, deciding that his final act in Florida deserved a personal touch. He’d intended to return to the hotel and seek out Fisher, but quickly recognized that he had company.
The FBI people in their ever-conspicuous suits were lingering outside; the younger ones were throwing longing looks toward the air-conditioned lobby. It appeared that they’d figured something out after all. Or it might have been the blond. There was no way either the Feds or the locals had figured everything out on their own. Either way, Wesley was out of his reach. For the moment at least.
Which meant a casting change was necessary.
Lennox opened up his laptop and checked the GPS of Sheldon’s PC.
Good. The screenwriter mustn’t have been discovered yet, otherwise the location would’ve moved. No agent would leave something so potentially incriminating just sitting around. That supported the Maestro’s theory that they didn’t know as much about him as he’d originally feared.
Also, it meant he was still on track to finish his project. But he’d have to do it soon. He’d come so far with Sheldon that it would have been a huge waste of time and energy to have to find another writer, go through all the hassle of explaining his mission, all while trying to stay under the radar long enough to finish the film. Not to me
ntion the headache of the continuity issues that arose when changing screenwriters mid-movie.
At least he had all of his important things with him. Laptop, camera equipment, cattle prod and chloroform. And his leading man of course. He smiled. All the basic essentials required when filming a blockbuster.
He just needed to head back to the safe house where he’d stashed his understudy, and wait for Sheldon to finish the finale. Part of him was tempted to go back to the storage unit and tell the writer to hurry the hell along, but he’d worked with enough creative types over the years to know that rushing was never a good idea.
That’s how mistakes were made. He could afford to wait.
He would need to get rid of his rental car though. Wouldn’t do for the Feds to put out an APB on the plates, and then have someone spot it at the safe house. That would ruin everything.
No, better safe than sorry.
He needed to park the rental somewhere obscure and commandeer another vehicle. Unfortunately, it looked like he’d need to either buy a piece of junk with the little cash he had on him or steal one. While the latter would certainly be cheaper, he was loath to do anything to draw possible attention to himself. Oh well, a man was more than the car he drove. Besides, when this movie hit the box office, he could buy himself a whole fleet of fancy cars.
He had every confidence in the world that even without Wesley Fisher as its star, his big finale was going to be the biggest thing anyone in Hollywood had seen. Since the Ben-Hur chariot race, even. And, despite the urban legends surrounding the classic movie, his would certainly be more deadly.
The Maestro felt like a child waiting for Christmas morning.
Reilly stared at the bedraggled writer, a mixture of admiration and disbelief on her face. There was no way he could be serious, was there? ‘You’re joking.’
