Profiling a Killer

by Nichole Severn

  Nicholas lunged for his firearm.

  Faster than he thought possible, the man in the mask shot a heel out and slammed it into the back of Nicholas’s knee. He hit the pier as the tendons along his leg screamed. An arm snaked around his throat, pulled him into a wall of solid muscle and squeezed. The killer lowered his mouth to Nicholas’s ear. “Dr. Flood is one of the best, too, isn’t she?”

  His attacker strengthened his grip around Nicholas’s throat and dragged him from the outdoor seating area of the restaurant. His boots caught on the old wood as he fought for dominance, but the killer had the upper hand. Pressure built in his chest as he clawed for escape. “Without her, you and your team never would’ve been able to identify Cole Presley as the X Marks the Spot Killer. Would you like to know how I’m going to honor her?”

  No. Not Aubrey. Nicholas locked his back teeth as dizziness swirled through his head. He clutched the suspect’s forearms, fighting for release.

  “You see, I’ve been studying all kinds of MOs for a few months now, trying to get a feel for which one fits me best.” The killer hauled Nicholas to the edge of the pier, the wide expanse of the bay glittering back at him. “I’ve got to say, I think I’ve found exactly how to introduce myself to the world, and Dr. Flood is going to be my masterpiece.”

  Darkness closed in around the edges of Nicholas’s vision, just as his attacker threw him over the railing and into Puget Sound.

  * * *

  NOBODY CARED ABOUT a victim when they were alive, but people sure took notice once they were dead. The bruising along the victim’s mandible and maxilla, combined with the cuts and scrapes along the backs of Paige Cress’s metacarpals, told a clear story of an attempt at survival.

  Aubrey had been instructed to stay with the body until the BAU backup arrived, but every moment the internal heat of the maintenance shed baked the remains could lead to another piece of evidence lost. Evidence that might identify the victim’s killer. The medicolegal investigators would normally examine and document everything on the body before getting it ready for transportation to her office, but time was of the essence here. She holstered the weapon Nicholas had given her for protection. Wood planks bit into her knees as she dragged the death investigation kit she usually kept in the trunk of her car closer. Popping the lid, she pulled the sterile cuticle sticks from the depths along with two evidence bags and a pair of latex gloves.

  She’d trained to study the causes and effects of human disease and injury in order to investigate sudden, unexpected or violent deaths. Sometimes that involved visiting crime scenes, reviewing medical records and performing autopsies, but she considered collecting evidence to be used in court possibly the most important part of her job. Especially in a homicide. Aubrey removed one of the cuticle sticks from its container, a seven-inch piece of wood with angled tips at both ends, and curved it beneath the victim’s right thumbnail. If Paige Cress had struggled with her attacker, as the bruises and contusions suggested, there was a chance she’d scratched the killer and collected his DNA under her nails.

  After swiping the cuticle stick under each fingernail, one for each hand, she bagged and labeled the evidence with the black Sharpie from her kit. She secured both bags in the extra compartment at the bottom of her kit. She needed the victim’s body temperature despite the fluctuations in conditions where the killer had dumped Paige Cress to be found.

  Inserting the digital thermometer from her kit, she brushed the sweat dripping from her hairline away with the back of her hand. She noted the victim’s temperature and the time taken. “It’s hotter than a hippo dipped in hot sauce in here.”

  The victim’s skin was already slipping out of place due to rising temperatures. She had to hurry. Swabbing the injuries on the back of the metacarpals, Aubrey bagged and tagged the evidence before moving on to collecting particulates from Paige Cress’s clothing. Tweezers in one hand and a magnifier in the other, she leaned over the remains, and a hint of gasoline coming from the victim’s clothing burned down her throat. Nicholas had said the Gingerbread Woman had attacked her victims in the parking garage of her law firm in order to take out the competition for promotion to partner. If the copycat who’d lured them to the waterfront had followed the serial’s MO exactly, it stood to reason he’d attacked Paige Cress in a garage, too.

  A guttural scream punctured through her focus, and Aubrey straightened. Her heart threatened to beat straight out of her chest as she stared across the pier for a sign of the BAU team. Instinct kicked in, and her adrenal glands triggered the release of adrenaline, honing her senses. She’d recognized that scream. “Nicholas.”

  He’d told her to stay with the body, to not let anyone come close to it, but the agent was obviously in pain. He might need medical attention. She replaced the tweezers and magnifier back into her kit and unholstered the weapon he’d loaned her. Waiting. Nervous energy licked up her spine, but she couldn’t hear anything else. She glanced back toward the body, torn between following his order and the inner need to help. She’d collected evidence from under the victim’s fingernails, noted body temperature, swabbed for injuries and gathered a few particulates from the remains. Paige Cress was already dead. There wasn’t anything Aubrey could do for the victim, but she could save Nicholas. “Okay.”

  She pushed her kit into the cement shed with the remains and secured the door. Turning back to face the water, she sprinted across the pier toward the last location she’d seen him. Agents Striker and West would’ve heard the scream. They would know where to find him. The pounding of her feet against the pier reverberated up through her frame and intensified the sweat building at the back of her neck. She turned the corner leading into the walkway between Miner’s Landing and the Seattle Great Wheel, pulling the weapon shoulder-level out in front of her.

  Nobody was there.

  Confusion rolled through her as she battled to catch her breath. That didn’t make sense. She could’ve sworn this was where Nicholas had headed. Taking a single step along the walkway, she listened for something—anything—that would give her an idea of where he’d gone. Every second she wasted trying to find him was another second he might be bleeding out. She tightened her grip around the weapon he’d handed her. “Nicholas?”

  No answer.

  Warning knotted low in her belly as the sound of ocean waves lapping against the pier fought to override her pulse in her ears. Another step, then another. She followed the slight curve of the Plexiglas divider cutting the Ferris wheel entrance off from the restaurant’s outdoor dining. He had to be here. Glass crunched under her shoes. Her insides clenched. Frozen, she retraced the trail of shattered glass until she located the source. A broken table on the other side of the Plexiglas divider. She studied the red stains ground into the debris. Blood. Nicholas’s? One of his teammates’? From the amount of blood left behind, the wound had to be nonfatal, but that didn’t settle her nerves in the slightest. The stains had created a trail of their own, and she tracked them over the divider toward the edge of the pier. The scream. Nicholas’s scream. The hairs rose on the back of her neck, but she forced one foot in front of the other to follow the blood.

  One hand on the railing, the other wrapped around the gun, she leaned over. And saw him. “Nicholas!”

  Facedown, he swayed with the rocking of the waves and slammed into one of the pier’s supports. Unresponsive. Aubrey discarded the weapon and toed her shoes off one by one. Panic clawed up her throat as she tried to calculate how long it’d been since she’d heard his scream. Two minutes, maybe three. Climbing to the top of the railing, she jumped out as far as she could in order to avoid landing directly on him. Air rushed up a split second before the water engulfed her.

  Cold water shocked her nerve endings into overdrive. The waves rocked against her and tossed her to the right. Bubbles filtered up through her slacks and shirt, tickling her skin, as she struggled to right herself. Distorted sunlight beat down, lighting t
he first ten or fifteen feet below the surface, but she couldn’t see him. She kicked upward and broke through the surface, an automatic gasp seizing her lungs. Swiping her hair out of her face, she spotted him only a few feet from where she’d last seen him and kicked her legs as fast as she could to get to him.

  “Nicholas.” She grabbed his Kevlar vest and flipped him onto his back. Water drained from his mouth, his eyes closed. No. No, no, no, no. He wasn’t dead. She still had time. “I’m going to get you out of here. Okay? Stay with me. I’ll get you out of here.”

  She kicked to keep her head above water and dragged him to the next support. Another wave roared before it crashed onto them and pushed her under the water. She held on to Nicholas’s vest for dear life, churning in the water until the beat of the ocean let up.

  They were going to make it. She had to believe that.

  Breaking through to the surface, she searched for a low section of pier she could reach to pull them to safety. In vain. The tide hadn’t come in. None of the piers would be reachable for a few more hours, and the storm had churned Puget Sound into violence. Desperation coiled behind her sternum as her legs burned with exertion. The long stretch of Pier 57 seemed like miles, but she wasn’t going to give up. She couldn’t. She hadn’t been able to save Kara from a killer. She wasn’t going to let Nicholas die at the hands of the same man.

  Her shoulder screamed in protest as she swam for the southwest corner of the pier. Miner’s Landing had to be able to receive their shipments of seafood from the boats. There was a dock on the other side, but cutting under the pier instead of going around was too much of a risk. She couldn’t take the chance of a larger wave tossing them into the bottom of the pier. Waves battered and beat at her one after the other as she struggled to stay above water. “We’re going to make it. I promise we’ll make it.”

  She spit salt water and automatically tipped her chin back to keep her head from going under the surface. Pain lightninged down her legs the harder she kicked around the corner support. There. The docks were straight ahead. She pushed everything she had left into keeping Nicholas’s head back as she swam. Thirty feet. Twenty. Tears burned in her eyes. “Almost there. Just hang on.”

  Her fingers clutched onto the worn, cold steel of the ladder, and she pulled Nicholas close. Wrapping her arm around the front of his chest, she heaved him into her as she backed up the ladder rung by rung. At the top, she fell, taking his weight fully, but she couldn’t stop. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been facedown in the water. She maneuvered out from under him as an imaginary metronome ticked off in her head. She ripped both sides of his vest free and hauled it over his head. Centering the base of her palms over his breastbone, she interlaced her fingers and administered compressions. “One, two, three, four...”

  She pinched his nose and pressed her mouth to his. Salt exploded across her taste buds. No response. Counting off again, she repeated the compressions and filled his lungs. “Come on, Nicholas. Breathe!”

  His chest jerked under her hands, and water spewed from his mouth as she rolled him onto his side. Nicholas’s groan filled her ears, and relief washed through her. He was alive. He was going to make it.

  Aubrey ran her fingers through his hair. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m going to get help, okay? Just stay with me, Nicholas. Stay with me.”

  “Hello, Dr. Flood,” an unfamiliar voice said from behind.

  Agony ripped across her parietal, the momentum slamming her into the dock. She stared up into the storm. Nicholas’s hand pressed against hers, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

  The dark outline of her attacker blurred as he positioned himself over her. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Stay with me. Just stay with me.

  Aubrey’s voice echoed in his head. He blinked against the onslaught of rain. The soft lapping of waves reached his ears, gulls calling to each other overhead. Old, splintered wood caught against his skin as he raised his head. He was soaking wet. “Aubrey?”

  The right side of his face and the back of his head stung as he pushed to sit up. He was on the docks, but the last thing he remembered... The killer had started dragging him toward the edge of the pier. How the hell had he gotten down here? Nicholas pushed to his feet, every nerve ending in his body on fire. He gripped the hand railing to haul himself up the stairs. He could’ve sworn that’d been Aubrey’s voice in his head, but he’d given her strict instructions not to leave the victim alone.

  Wood protested under his weight as he limped across the dock toward the stairs leading back to Pier 57. His head pounded in rhythm to the waves growing choppier with the increasing winds. Rain mixed with the blood coming from the lacerations on the back of his hand and tendriled in dendritic patterns along his forearm. He bit back the groan working up his throat and retraced his steps toward the outdoor seating area of the restaurant. Shattered glass, blood evidence—the memories of the struggle between him and his attacker revived the headache at the base of his skull.

  Striker and West were still missing. The bastard had gotten to them first, but they hadn’t been the killer’s initial target. He’d just wanted Nicholas out of commission.

  Dark shapes materialized in his peripheral vision, and Nicholas bit through the pain running down the right side of his body to get a closer look. The pair of dark women’s flats hadn’t been there during the struggle. He would’ve noticed them. A second shape took form through his distorted vision and cloud cover above. A gun. The gun he’d loaned her. Nicholas twisted his gaze over his shoulder, toward the maintenance shed where he and Aubrey had recovered the remains. “Aubrey.”

  Holstering the gun, he pushed himself through the pain. He sprinted across the walkway between Miner’s Landing and the Great Wheel and backtracked around the corner where he’d first noticed the killer. Lightning flashed overhead, lighting his way, before thunder punched through him. The storm had arrived, brutal and demanding. Wet, uneven planks threatened to trip him up as he raced to the maintenance shed. The doors were closed, and he slammed into them palms first. Ripping open the heavy steel, Nicholas ignored the crash of the handle against cement, his heart in his throat.

  The victim was still here. The ocean churned in agitation beneath the body, sea levels rising with the battering storm. In a few minutes, salt water would break through the planks and compromise any forensic evidence that might lead to their killer. A black tool kit sat a few inches from the victim. A forensic kit. Aubrey must’ve started collecting samples from Paige Cress, then locked the body and the evidence inside the shed to keep them secure. Why? Why would she leave the remains?

  Realization hit.

  Because he’d screamed. Aubrey had been with him. She’d come to his aid, armed with his backup weapon, in order to help, and must’ve spotted him in the water. She’d jumped the pier’s railing and gotten him to safety at the risk of both of their lives. She’d saved him. She’d pulled him onto the docks. He rubbed his chest for the source of the ache under his sternum. Chest compressions?

  Stay with me, Nicholas.

  Then the killer had come for her. Nicholas searched the pier, thick sheets of water blacking out sound beyond a hundred feet. Streetlamps flickered but wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. She was out there—alone, afraid—and he hadn’t seen the threat coming soon enough to stop it.

  He didn’t have time to secure the victim or the forensic evidence Aubrey had collected. His team needed him. Aubrey needed him. Sealing the maintenance shed, Nicholas ensured the gun he’d loaned to the medical examiner was still loaded. The rising water levels guaranteed the loss of the evidence the killer might have left on the body once the shed flooded, but when it came to saving an investigation or saving his team, it wasn’t a choice. He loaded a round into the barrel and headed toward Madeline Striker’s last known position.

  The Seattle Aquarium stretched the length of Pier 59, with
the outdoor exhibits bleeding over onto Pier 60. Over twenty different areas and over a mile of waterfront to search. Nicholas didn’t have time to waste. He tested the front door of the aquarium, surprised the double glass doors swung open. The area had been evacuated due to the incoming storm. No one should’ve been able to get inside the building. He stepped inside, instantly encased in glowing, blue light from the wall of glass and water to his right. Countless species of fish, coral and plant life swayed with the rocking motion of the water within the tank. The killer had lured them into his trap with the promise of another victim. He’d planned to take them out one by one to isolate his real target: Aubrey.

  Nicholas crossed in front of the massive tank and around the corner into a narrower section lit with golden light from above. The items in the gift shop, locked behind thin walls of glass, cast shadows across the floor. His clothing stuck to his skin, weighing him down as he entered the crashing wave exhibit. Roaring water splashed against the clear tunnel constructed to give visitors the perfect experience of being caught under a wave without any of the danger, and his lungs ached in response. An exit to his right revealed the intensity of the storm outside, and the lights overhead flickered. He pinched the push-to-talk button on the radio still strapped to his chest, but the device didn’t respond. Fried from his time in the water. He checked his pockets. No cell phone. “Damn it.”

  A quick search of the rest of the main building revealed neither Striker nor West, but the son of a bitch who’d taken them out couldn’t have gotten far. Not when he’d had a much better target in mind. Rain battered against the door leading to the other half of the aquarium. The outline of the massive underwater dome on the other side of the pier materialized through the watery streaks against the glass, and Nicholas’s instincts prickled. The killer was about proving he was better than his predecessors. Deadlier. More intelligent. Dangerous. He wanted the attention he believed he deserved. What better location to expose two BAU agents than the most popular enclosure on the pier?