Chase held her breath and listened.
Nothing.
She was about to take another breath, maybe even sigh, when she heard the sound again.
It could be footsteps, but glancing around at the thin forest, it could also be a squirrel, a branch, or just the wind.
There was no way to tell.
Chase looked at the gun in her lap, and was about to open the chamber when she heard the sound for a third time.
She wasn’t taking any chances. Stifling a groan, Chase pushed herself to her feet and started to run again.
Her first few steps were ungainly, her muscles stiff from the cold, her previous sprints down the embankment, and from sitting for as long as she had… however long that had been.
But she didn’t look back.
Fueled by fear, she ran fast and hard, heading toward a dim yellow light tucked deep into the woods. It was too far and too dark to tell what the light was illuminating, but it could be a house.
It could be Stitts’s house, for all she knew.
For all she hoped.
My ex-partner, Stitts, Martinez had said.
Chase couldn’t believe it. No wonder he knew so much about her; Stitts must have told the man.
And yet, Stitts hadn’t said a word about Martinez. When she had invited him to come and lend a hand in the Download Murder case, he had been flying solo.
She also remembered the way he questioned her, not in a condescending way, but gentle prodding, as if he was interviewing her not only to become an FBI Agent, but also to be his partner.
And yet for her first job, she had been paired up with the closest psychopath Chris Martinez.
If the light was marking a house in the woods, and if by some stroke of sheer luck it was Stitts’s place, then he might have known exactly where she was headed all along.
Chase could make out a faint outline of a log cabin beneath the light.
Martinez might know where she was headed now, but how could he have known where she would go immediately after leaving the hotel?
Unless…
Lost your luggage, did they? Happens. I’ve got an extra jacket you can use. A gun, too.
Chase swore under her breath, and she started to frantically pat her coat. The pockets were empty, as expected, but this didn’t satisfy her. Still moving toward the log cabin, she felt around the seams, the zipper.
Her fingers pressed against something hard in the lining of the hood and she resisted the urge to curse out loud. Despite the cold, Chase peeled off the coat and tucked the pistol into the holster again.
Then she tore at the hood, peeling the red fabric apart at the seams. She yanked out a handful of down feathers and reached deep inside.
Her fingers found the hard object and she removed it.
It was a simple device, about the size of a half-dollar, with a small, jutting protrusion on one side.
Chase had seen similar electronics before. It was a tracking device, commonly used in computer bags and such. They usually worked on Bluetooth meshes, communicating with other objects that they passed in order to geolocate. In this case, though, Chase expected that this device was a little more sophisticated, probably working on a dedicated GPS link.
That fucking bastard…
Martinez had been tracking her ever since she got off the plane in Anchorage.
She thought back to when Floyd had driven her to the scene of Yolanda and Francine’s murders.
Martinez had taken one look at her, and hadn’t hesitated: he had reached into his car and given her a jacket that he had at the ready.
Which meant that he must have known that Chase wouldn’t have a coat.
Lost your luggage, did they?
“I bet he paid off the douchebag at the airport, too,” Chase whispered.
Oh, Martinez had planned this alright.
Chase was about to throw the tracking device, but at the last moment thought better of it.
It might come in handy.
Besides, at this point Martinez had to know that she was heading toward the house.
There was just nowhere else to go.
She just hoped that the man hadn’t beaten her to it.
CHAPTER 46
Chase pressed her back against the wall beside the door, breathed deeply, and squeezed the gun in both hands.
The pain in her side had mostly subsided, but she knew that there would be more to come this day. With a deep breath, she reached over and tried the door.
It swung open without even needing to turn the handle.
Brow furrowed, Chase stepped inside, aiming the pistol first to her right, then to the left.
The interior of the cabin was much the way Chase expected based on the exterior: a plain, wooden rectangle. To her right was a modest kitchen, complete with an old-fashioned fridge and stove. To the left was a fireplace, the final remnants of logs reduced to embers. On the back wall was another door, leading to what she suspected was a rear porch.
Beyond the fireplace were two rooms, the doors of which were closed.
There was no sign of Martinez or any other occupants.
Chase, eyes still narrowed, slid deeper into the cabin, keeping the gun pointed out in front of her.
She moved quickly, noting a spot of blood on the floor near the fireplace. Instinctively scanning the fireplace tools, she noted that while the shovel was there, as was the broom, the slot she suspected that had once held the poker, was now empty.
Chase pressed up against the wall next to the first door. Then she reached over, turned the door handle and threw it wide.
After waiting for a three count, she crouched low and spun in front of the opening.
It was a bathroom, and it was empty.
Chase turned to the other door next, and repeated the same process to clear this room.
Only this one took longer on account of it not being empty.
“Stitts!” Chase couldn’t help but cry.
The man was sitting on the floor, his back pressed up against one of the large posts of a regal, and very much out of place, bed frame.
His head drooped low, a dirty rag wrapped around his mouth and head. His hair, usually perfectly cropped and styled, was damp and hung over his forehead in clumps.
He was shirtless, and his chest was marked with blood from numerous slashes.
Chase rushed to him, forgetting about Martinez altogether, and crouched on his level, fearing the worst. She set the pistol down, and then pulled the rag from Jeremy Stitts’s mouth. He didn’t gasp and sputter as she’d hoped.
“Stitts!” she repeated, pressing her fingers against the man’s throat.
Relief washed over her; there was a pulse, but it was faint.
Only then did Chase realize that the man’s arms were bound behind his back and around the wooden bedpost.
Working quickly, she tried to untie the ropes, but they were too complex too loosen by hand.
Especially given that she had no time.
Other than the wounds on his chest, which appeared at least on the surface to be superficial rather than intended to kill, there appeared to be nothing else wrong with him.
Chase rose to her feet. As she did, a chime—a miniature bell, maybe—sounded behind her, and she immediately bent back down and reached for the gun. With the familiar heft in her hand, she spun on her back while turning.
Pain engulfed her left hip, and she felt something deep inside the bullet hole, which had almost completely stopped bleeding, tear.
“No!” a voice cried, and Chase’s finger relaxed on the trigger.
It was a dog, an aging Beagle that sauntered through the open door. It stopped, inspected her for a moment with rueful eyes, and then plunked itself down on the floor at Chase’s side.
She took a deep breath, then turned to Stitts. He was awake now, his blue eyes, dull and bloodshot, boring into her.
“You’re alive,” she gasped.
Somehow, the man managed a grin.
“And you almost shot my dog
,” he said.
Chase sighed so completely that her entire body shuddered. For the past two weeks, she had had nobody she could speak to, nobody she could trust.
But now she had Stitts.
The tears came unexpectedly.
“Chase, you alright?” Stitts asked.
The question made Chase chuckle; despite everything that had happened, she actually chuckled.
Was she alright, asks the shirtless, bleeding man bound to a post.
Chase wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand.
No, I’m not alright, she wanted to say. Instead, she went with, “I’ll live, but we need to get out of here. He’s coming.”
Stitts’s eyes went wide.
“Martinez? He’s here?”
Chase shook her head.
“No, not yet. But he’s coming. Followed me through the woods.”
Confusion washed over Stitts’s face.
“He… what? He followed you? How did he—”
Chase straightened.
“He’s my partner.”
If Stitts had looked confused before, now his face collapsed into sheer wonderment.
“W—what? What the hell are you talking about?”
Chase, regaining her senses, started to look about the room for something to cut Stitts’s bindings. There was no time to get into everything that had happened since Martinez’s phone call, but Chase needed answers, too.
“Did he do this to you?” she asked.
“He came about a week ago, surprised me, tied me up. But… but how do you know him?”
Chase made her way slowly toward the bedroom door, her eyes on the kitchen.
“He’s my partner,” she repeated. The words sounded strange coming out of her, given everything that had happened. Eventually she spied a butcher block beside the stove. It was empty, but she made her way toward it anyway.
“But—but Chase, Martinez was booted from the Agency six months ago,” Stitts’s voice followed after her and Chase froze mid-step. “He failed his psych exam for the third time, and they had no choice but to put him on permanent leave.”
CHAPTER 47
“He what?”
“He was let go, Chase. I have no idea how or why he came to you, or how he managed to—”
“He called me, told me that I was on a case, that I was to be his partner,” Chase replied quietly. “Two girls murdered in Alaska.”
“Alaska? Jesus, tell me… tell me, were the girls college aged?” Stitts asked desperately.
Chase nodded, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that Martinez was no longer with the FBI.
It would, in the very least, explain him not telling her about the higher ups or protocol. Martinez wanted to keep everything in house, with him, including working with Jasper and Downs—men that he knew well, men who wouldn’t question his affiliation with the FBI as they had worked together previously.
Chase shook her head and closed her eyes.
“Chase? Were the girls—”
“Yes,” she said softly. “They were in college.”
Visions from Yolanda’s perspective, of being in the van, of being terrified, flooded Chase’s mind.
Terrified of Martinez—Francine and Yolanda had been terrified of him.
He sawed off their goddamn feet and then kept them alive so that they would freeze to death.
“His sister’s friends,” Stitts whispered.
Chase, still frozen partway to the kitchen, turned and looked at him. His face had regained some color, but it was clear that he hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for some time, which explained his weak pulse.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “His sister—”
The beagle, who up until this point had been lying on its haunches, its dopey eyes staring up at Chase, suddenly raised its head. Chase stopped speaking and listened. Stitts did the same.
Although she heard nothing, something had peaked the dog’s interest.
Martinez was close.
Chase hurried to the kitchen and threw the drawers open. Inside the first one, she found forks and spoons as well as several steak knives.
She grabbed one of the knives and hurried back to Stitts. Without saying a word, she bent and started to saw at the ropes. It took several tries, but eventually she managed to cut through.
Stitts groaned as he brought his arms to in front of him and started to rub his wrists.
Chase had been leaning over the man as she sawed at the rope, and when she pulled away, she realized that Stitts’s left shoulder was covered in blood.
Stitts’s must have noticed, too, as before he stood, he looked her over.
“Jesus Christ, you’ve been shot,” he gasped.
Chase looked down at herself as if this was some sort of new revelation.
Her entire side was wet with fresh blood. Whether her reaction was psychosomatic or real, it was one thing: visceral.
Chase swooned and fell to one knee. At the same time, Stitts rose on wobbly legs and helped her back to her feet. They braced each other.
The beagle also rose to its feet, but Chase couldn’t tell if it was because it had heard something or was only responding to them.
“We have to get you to a hospital,” Stitts said.
Chase shook her head.
“Martinez is coming.”
“Which means we have to hurry,” Stitts barked as he tried to guide her toward the door.
Chase took a deep breath and grounded herself. Then she leveled her eyes at Stitts.
Yolanda Strand and Francine Butler didn’t get a chance to go to the hospital. They had had their feet lopped off and then were stripped naked and left to freeze to death. Oren and Julie had their hands removed before being thrown into the water.
They didn’t get a chance to go to the hospital.
“No,” Chase said. “This ends here.”
CHAPTER 48
“I’ve got five rounds left,” Chase told Stitts.
Stitts looked at the gun in her hand.
“That your pistol?”
Chase shook her head.
“No, mine was lost at the airport.”
Even as the words left her mouth, she knew what was coming next.
“Where’d you get this one from?”
“Martinez gave it to me,” Chase replied hesitantly.
Stitts swore and reached for it. Chase handed it over and he immediately popped the round from the chamber.
Stitts held it in his palm for a moment before showing it to Chase.
“No, you don’t have five rounds left,” he said.
Chase scrunched her brow, trying to understand what he was telling her. Then she noticed the crimped bullet top.
“Fucking blanks,” she spat.
And that’s why I missed Martinez when I fired three shots center mass.
“Shit.”
Stitts closed his palm around the shell and chewed his lower lip.
“It’ll still make a bang, though,” he said, apparently to himself. He ejected the clip, removed three of the four other blanks and walked over to the microwave. He put them on the tray, then set the dial on high for five minutes.
Chase simply stared.
The beagle sauntered over to her and rubbed up against her leg. Chase pulled away with a gasp, which caused fresh pain to shoot up her side.
First the jacket, now the gun. First the—
An idea suddenly came to her. She started to take her jacket off, but when it came to her left side, she was unable to shake it free.
Stitts lent her a hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Put it on,” Chase instructed.
Stitts looked at her, but didn’t resist; he was, after all, shirtless and fire in the hearth was nearly out.
“What are you thinking?”
Now it was Chase’s turn to pause.
“You and I know that the gun is filled with blanks, but Martinez doesn’t know that we know.”
Stitts stared at her. And then he grinned again.
“Let’s get this bastard.”
~
Alone in the dark, Chase was drawn back to a different time.
She was undercover as a narcotics officer, attempting to infiltrate a dingy crack house that also whored out underage girls.
Only it was Chase who was infiltrated. Memories of her sister kept haunting her, images of that fateful day when Georgina was taken, and when it came time to ‘pretend’ to take her first hit, Chase just couldn’t resist.
“You see?” Tyler said, “It doesn’t matter what your problems are, a little brown sugar always makes things right.”
An incredible warmth washed over her then, not hot and uncomfortable, just perfect warmth. Once, Chase had spent a half hour in a flotation tank, in which the water and the air were the exact same temperature as her skin. It felt like that, except she didn’t have any of the anxiety associated with being trapped in a bubble. And then there were the fingers… it felt as if every inch of her body was being massaged by millions of tiny fingers.
Tyler was right.
As much as Chase hated to admit it, for the first time in nearly three decades, she didn’t think about her sister, about the way the tears spilled from her eyes as the man in the van wrapped his heavy forearm over her chest and shoulders.
And it was this feeling, or lack thereof, that kept her coming back for more.
Part of her, a dark part that Chase had buried long ago, wanted some brown sugar now. Part of her, she knew, would always want some.
The sound of a door opening drew her back to the present.
“Chase! Chaaaaaa-aaase! Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
CHAPTER 49
Chase’s breath was coming in shallow bursts as the footsteps approached.
She heard Martinez try the light switch, but the cabin remained dark. Chase had unscrewed the light bulbs in the main room, and the only illumination was the nearly burnt out fire.
“Clever girl,” Martinez said under her breath. The footsteps were lighter now, less pronounced, as he became more cautious. “Why don’t you just come out and we can talk this through?”
Chase remained seated, her arms behind her back, her head low.
“I never expected for things to make it back here, to Jeremy’s of all places, but it’s only fitting, given that you two started all this.”
Frozen Stiff Page 16
