The sound of a door slamming across the hall jolted Keila awake the next morning. She bolted upright, her hand searching under her pillow for the knife she always kept there, but her fingers touched nothing but sheet. Her heart raced as she flung the bedding aside, searching for her weapon, and it was several minutes later before she noticed that whoever had made the sound had already moved on. She sank back onto the bed, breathing hard as the memories of the day before trickled into her mind. She’d been so exhausted after rescuing Emily that she’d fallen asleep without taking the usual precautions. Shit, had she even locked the door? She remembered hearing the snick of the latch as it closed, but that was it. God, if Zero had tracked her down the night before, she deserved to be dead.
You can’t be that stupid!
Keila rolled over and hugged one of her pillows that was thrown across the bed, her anger at herself growing when she felt wetness across her cheeks. Her dreams were what had fueled her all that time, but they couldn’t be the only thing she lived on. An image of Emily with Reece entered her mind, unbidden. Keila’s stomach knotted with sadness and the salty taste of unshed tears filled her senses. She couldn’t afford to stop, couldn’t afford to let those thoughts creeps in again. But she was just so tired, and stopping the tears that time required more effort than she could muster.
What did it feel like to be loved like that? To know that someone always had your back, that they’d protect you until their dying breath? No one had ever loved her like that. She couldn’t remember her own family, had no idea where she’d come from or why she’d been abandoned. Sure, she’d felt cared for by her foster parents, in the early years at least, but that had quickly changed once it became apparent she was different. Keila snuffled and wrapped her arms around the pillow. She’d never forget the derision from John and Theresa when she’d first told them about her dreams. At first she’d been told to mind her thoughts, and to never speak of them again, but when it became obvious to everyone the dreams weren’t going to stop, well. . . . She’d never forget the feel of his hand around her wrist, or the flash of steel above her head.
A thought flew into Keila’s mind. God, why hadn’t that occurred to her before? She’d been pushed down, censored, and mocked when she told her foster parents what she’d dreamed, but they’d never asked any questions. Never asked for any details, or tried to find out more about what she was dreaming or how she sometimes knew what was going to happen just before it did. God, they hadn’t even seemed surprised when her first small nibbles of intercepted thoughts proved true. Were they simply afraid to ask, convinced she was already evil or possessed, or was it because they had already known?
Since she’d fled the only home she’d known that long-ago morning, Keila had done a lot more than taste an emotion or thought here and there. She’d followed the trail dotted out before her and found several of the girls she saw in her dreams. She’d even managed to convince a few of them to go with her, but they hadn’t been able to run far before Zero had caught up with them. Why the hell had he killed or taken only them, and left her there alive? Each and every time, he seemed to know exactly where she was and who she had. Once, she’d tried to fight back, even to capture one of his men herself. That hadn’t worked out so well, and after she’d spent a few weeks hiding in the dark of her hotel room recovering, Keila vowed she’d never try that again. She wasn’t sure what was scarier, the threat of the man coming back or the stalker losers and pimps that made her pay-by-the-day-or-the-hour crappy hotel. Hell, it wasn’t like she could afford anything more. She could take all the self-defense classes in the world, but she wasn’t going to be able to out-muscle the steroid mountain. No, she had to be smarter instead.
Keila massaged her temples. On top of everything else, she could really do without the headache that was threatening to bloom again. She hadn’t exactly enjoyed her little trip down memory lane the night before, and then memories and dreams had left her wiped. If she was going to put herself up against Zero and his mystery boss, then she had to use her brain. She’d found the first girl by pure chance, her beacon sparking when she stopped in a random small town where the bus had reached its final destination for the night. After spending the first seventeen years of her life in the same town, she’d seen a lot of the country in the years since then. Keila never stayed in the same place for very long, not since she’d figured out that Zero would be one step behind her, or, if she couldn’t convince the girl to leave with her, one step ahead.
She closed her eyes and dropped her head forward at the memory of the first girl she’d found, after she’d been on the run for a few months. She’d slept in bus stop shelters and parks at first, until she’d found one cash-in-hand job, then another. Just enough to let her hop a Grayhound to the furthest town she could afford. Neither of them had had the slightest clue what was going on, just that they felt drawn to each other, and they’d become close friends in one night. She’d stayed in town, found job and an apartment, even made a few friends. Keila thought she might have finally found where she belonged in life, and then Zero had come calling. He’d squeezed the life out of the girl right in front of her—she’d lived in the town her whole life and knew too many people who would miss her, apparently—but she’d been Keila’s only friend. Why Keila was left alive that night, she still didn’t know, but she quickly realized that there was more to her friend, more to herself, than a random attack in the dark. When she felt the tingling travel down her spine at the sight of another girl, she’d be damned if she was going to let Zero take her, too.
But he had.
That time Zero and the girl both disappeared into the night, and Keila had lost. Again, and again. Emily was the first like her that she’d managed to escape with alive. The girls—all of them—tended to be loners, just like she. But Emily had a good-luck charm: Reece. His distraction of Zero had enabled them to escape the night before. Keila could only hope their luck hadn’t run out just yet.
She knew Zero had to be somehow tracking her. She could almost feel his presence, like she could with the other girls. But how had he and whomever he worked for known about Emily? She’d been under Juan’s surveillance before Keila had even known of her. If it hadn’t been for Emily’s dreams pushing into hers. . . . Keila thumped her hands down on the bed. No! She refused to think about that. She couldn’t lose another one to whatever hidden madman was behind Zero’s violence. The man might know how to throw a punch, but he was a big ape. There had to be someone else pulling the strings, and Keila was willing to bet Juan’s obsession with Emily was the key. Zero was cold and calculating; he never lost control. But Juan? He murdered his way across the country in search of Emily. You couldn’t do that without leaving something behind—she hoped, anyway. There had to be something there. All she had to do was find it.
With a quick prayer that Emily and Reece would stay safely hidden, Keila quickly threw on some fresh clothes. She’d made up her mind on the next course of action, and there was no way she was stopping. There was a college nearby, and it was still early. Early enough for her to sneak across town and get to the library before enough people were around who might notice her. After grabbing her go-bag, a bag with all the essentials she’d need to run at a moment’s notice, Keila headed out the door of the hotel and scored a sandwich and a bottle of water from a street vendor she passed on the way. She almost drooled at the smell of frying bacon and eggs as she walked across the campus. She would have loved to stuff her face with a big breakfast, but there was no time. It never was. Living her life had become a cycle of making do with what she had, and what her meager savings could afford, and so for the time being, that was it. Swallowing the last of her sandwich, she tucked the bottle of water into her bag and made her way into the library.
“Okay, you bastards,” she said to herself as the old computer booted up, “show me who you are.”
8
Tapping away at the computer screen, Keila was lost to the world around her. She started with her usual phrases—psy
chic experiments, mind control, Zero the mindless puppet—but tacking on Emily’s name and Chicago. Nothing. In desperation, she typed in evil murdering bastard, but the search just returned a bunch of stuff on old-time serial killers, plus a “how to” on being a complete bastard in a popular first-person shooter game. That had become entertainment? God, the world was completely fucked.
Try running from it for real for a few days, then see how you feel, boys.
Maybe the newspapers would have something. It hadn’t been until Reece had connected a bunch of local crimes that the FBI had linked together Juan’s killing spree. Maybe a local law-enforcement agency somewhere had uncovered her hidden gem and didn’t even know it. Keila grabbed a piece of scrap paper made available to library patrons and quickly sketched a timeline from what she knew of Juan’s travels. New York was first, that the feds knew about, anyway. Keila’s hand stilled as her mind rushed forward. New York! That was where Emily was originally from. Keila turned back to the computer and fired up the search engine again, that time searching for news reports of Juan’s first kill. Clicking madly, she landed on an archived page from the New York Post. There! The body of a young girl, tall and with dark hair, was found lying in an alleyway. Where had Emily lived when she was there? Sure, Juan had eventually found Emily in Chicago, but for his first kill of a woman matching Emily’s physical profile, months before he even went to Chicago, to be where Emily lived and had grown up? That was just too much to be a coincidence. She just had to find out where he’d come from. At the bottom of the article were a few links to related reports, and Keila clicked to open each one in a new tab. While she waited for them to load, she found herself gnawing on a fingernail. God, it was taking so long! Her first break in what seemed like eons, and the library internet was going slower than she could walk.
Finally! The first page loaded and Keila scanned it, her nervous excitement quickly sinking into frustration. Damn it. Anything beyond the major news for the last couple of months was hidden, available to subscribers only. What the hell was she going to do? There was no way she could just let it go. Zero had encountered Emily once and she would be on his radar. It was only a matter of time before he found them both again. Maybe the library would keep hard copies, or even have a subscription.
Keila slowly ambled over to the librarian’s desk, brushing her fingers across the spines of random books along the shelves. If only they would give up their secrets with just a touch. She didn’t like asking for help. In fact, most times, she was hesitant to talk to anyone unfamiliar. Who knew which one would have a connection to the ones trying to kill her? For the most part, they remained in the shadows, but they could be anyone and it was only a matter of time before they got sick of the hide-and-seek games she was playing with Zero, and upped their game.
“May I help you?” the older woman looked over her large glasses at Keila. The librarian was a walking cliché, right down to her cardigan and sensible shoes. At least that one was smiling at her, rather than shushing her to be quiet.
“Is there a way to access old editions of newspapers? I’m trying to access their website, but it’s locked down to paid subscribers.”
“What are you looking for, Dear? The library holds a membership for many publications. I can print out an article for you.”
Yeah, there was no way she was telling the librarian what she was searching for. Even if she did seem too much like a sweet grandmother to be in league with the evil empire, Keila was through taking unnecessary chances.
“I actually need to read through quite a few, and then make notes and further searches. Is there a way I can access it?”
“Do you have a student card?”
Keila paused, unsure how to answer. College was yet another milestone that she’d never experience, but that place was far less risky than the public library in town. “I don’t exactly go to school here, not yet.” That was the truth, mostly.
“I tell you what. Usually you need to be a student or part of the faculty here to use the college license. But you look like a nice girl, and it’s far too early on a Sunday for most of the students to be in here, and so I don’t think we’ll run into any problems if I let you borrow it. How about I log you in over here, and you can just come find me when you’re done?”
Keila let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as her lips turned upward in the first genuine smile in weeks. She sat down at the computer, and after waiting for the librarian to log her in, restarted her search and started sifting through documents. She quickly noticed a pattern. All of Juan’s victims had looked similar: tall, dark hair, and in their twenties. Just like Emily. But had he met Emily first in New York, or had something—or someone—planted the idea of her in his head, and Juan had then killed indiscriminately trying to find his believed soul mate? Keila felt the blood drain from her face at the thought. Had whoever was in charge of the whole disaster simply made a mistake with Juan, or had they deliberately let an unstable mass murderer lose? Part of her couldn’t believe anyone would ever do that, but Zero had been tracking her for years without revealing the full purpose of his pursuit. It wasn’t that much of a stretch that someone might kill others to hide the murder of one girl like her.
Keila clicked through to a report on the medical examiner’s findings of Juan’s early victims. Maybe if she went back to the beginning, she could find an early connection to Emily that the cops had missed. After all, they had no idea how intimately she’d come to be tied to the case. Her eyes quickly skimmed the article and she huffed in frustration when only scant details were revealed. She could order a copy of the real report, if she had anywhere to mail it, or access it with a court order. Yeah, because that was going to happen. For all she knew, there were already flags throughout government systems placed by some mystery mastermind that would pop whenever someone requested information on the girls she’d found. There had to be some way they knew exactly how to make her life hell. Returning to her search page, Keila clicked randomly through the results. Maybe if she bypassed the first couple of pages, she’d find something interesting. She felt her eyes begin to glaze over as she reached page twenty, when she saw it: a paper from a small criminology magazine. An opinion piece, really, the small excerpt in the search engine claimed to fully investigate how a serial killer managed to travel halfway across the country before anyone put the pieces together.
Until Reece, that is. He might actually be handy to keep around.
She clicked on the link, but was then taken to nothing more than a blank page. Scowling, Keila clicked refresh several times before noticing the address of the page. Wonderful. Because of the size and the contents of the report, what little she could read reported that it had been packaged up as a large PDF document. A file that the ancient library computer was taking forever to open. She supposed regular students mostly brought their own laptops in, but she was going to be there for an hour waiting for the thing to finally download. She went back to her notes and tried to further construct Juan’s timeline, keeping her eye on the progress bar. Just as it ticked to eighty percent—fucking finally!—a loud noise echoed through the building. Shit, really? Fire alarms went off throughout the building, and moments later so did the computer, the blank screen almost mocking her. The librarian rushed past, pushing Keila out of her chair and pointing toward the exit as she ran to check for any other students.
“Damn it!” Keila cursed, resisting the urge to kick the computer back into action. If nothing else, it was going to attract attention she did not need.
“Young lady, don’t you hear the fire alarm?” the librarian called out on her next pass. “Move it!”
Keila reluctantly did was she was told, but when she reached the empty stairs back to the building’s lobby, she heard fire crackling and rolling on the floor overhead. The stairs would be too risky to take; she had to find another way out. Keila turned to go back the way she came—maybe there was a back exit—and then froze where she stood. Not a lot stopped her in her tracks, b
ut the sight of Zero standing on the library’s landing would do it. He was wearing an exceptionally wide grin, at her expense, Keila was sure. It was a small community campus, and he knew there weren’t many places she could hide.
Keila coughed, choking on smoke seeping into the room. God, she hoped that the librarian had at least gotten out of there alive. She had no idea how Zero had managed to start the fire upstairs and then get down to find her, but Keila was certain that he was the pyromaniac of the day. She wiped her running eyes and tried to evaluate her chances. There was no way she was going to be able to get past him and back through the door. He was easily twice her size, with hands capable of knocking her unconscious with a single hit. There was only one option.
Keila turned and bolted up the stairs, ignoring the shout of a man behind her as he exited another part of the building on the floor below. He started to try to reach her, but Zero shoved him out of the way and Keila watched as the man fell backward, his head cracking against the concrete steps. Zero’s grin grew wider.
“That’s one down, Pretty Girl. Let’s make it two.”
9
Keila ran, panic kicking in when she made it to the third floor. Thick smoke rolled around her, and her visibility was reduced to almost nothing. She could hear Zero clambering up the steps behind her. She should have known that running into danger wouldn’t stop him. He’d jump from a plane without a parachute if it meant the slightest chance of capturing her. There was something different about Zero, something almost inhuman. He barely reacted to pain. The first time they’d met, she’d nearly taken his head off with a statue she’d grabbed from a nearby table, and he’d risen to his feet mere seconds after falling, and just kept on after her. Keila dropped to her knees, her eyes watering form the smoke, Zero’s footsteps echoing behind her. Why else would a man run into fire? Surely his self-preservation instincts had to kick in at some point. The wail of distant sirens sounded above the chaos, and Keila slipped behind a heavy bookshelf as the thuds of Zero’s boots rounded the corner.
Keila (Dreamcatchers Romantic Suspense Series Book 2) Page 4
