by Andrew Mayne
Footsteps echo from the hallway, and Dunn emerges. “Water?” I offer him a bottle.
He takes it from me and unscrews the cap. “We need to check the outside unit.”
We return to the AC unit. Dunn stands there for a moment, staring at it. “I think you’re going to need an electrician,” he tells me.
“Isn’t that what you do?”
“I can do it. But I’m not licensed for that.”
I gesture toward Hughes’s pool pump. “What about that?”
“It’s different. I’m just replacing a unit, not working on the electric. This is more complicated.”
“Oh,” I reply. Inwardly it feels like a weird form of rejection.
“However, I can get the parts for you. Your boyfriend might be able to put it together. Or I can recommend an electrician. It’ll be expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“Those licensed guys tend to overcharge. That’s why people ask guys like me to fix it. Like I said, I can get you the parts. I don’t need a license for that. If you catch my drift.”
“Ah, so if I buy the parts from you, do you think you could help me put it together?” I ask.
“If your boyfriend doesn’t want to. It would have to be in cash,” he adds.
He knows the boyfriend is bullshit, but I don’t get the sense that he’s hitting on me. If George hadn’t told me the guy didn’t give off a vibe, I’d think he’s testing to see how vulnerable I am.
“Okay,” I reply. “How much?”
“Normally it’s about a nine-hundred-dollar job. Probably cost two hundred for me to do it. If it’s more, I’ll let you know. And I won’t take any money from you up front. In case you’re worried that I’m gonna try to scam you.”
“Sounds good.”
He holds out a calloused hand. “What’s your name?”
“Pauline,” I say, pulling that name from memory. “Pauline Cameron.”
“Okay, Pauline. Let me fix Scott’s pool pump, then I’ll go get some parts and fix your AC unit later this afternoon. And just as a favor, don’t tell him I’m doing this for you. It would be better for the both of us.”
I go back to the pool and sit in the sun until Dunn finishes the pool pump. He walks over to the screen door and tells me he’s going to get parts. I thank him, then go inside the house.
After a few minutes, George emerges from his hiding place. “Hughes is going to follow him.”
“Is it worth it?” I reply. “You said you didn’t get the vibe.”
“Oh, I got the vibe. I was trying to help you relax. I didn’t want to make you any more tense than you already were.”
“Wait, you think it’s him?”
George nods. “I watched him on the bathroom cameras. He went through your entire toiletry kit, the cabinets, and even the trash can.”
I can feel every square inch of my exposed skin turn to goose bumps. “Do you think he’s onto us?”
“No, McPherson. He’s onto you. Like, fixated.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
BAIT
I’m sitting at the kitchen counter with my iPad, my back facing the living room, when I catch the reflection of the silhouette of someone standing in the sliding glass doorway.
I’m being watched.
I watch the watcher reflected in the glass of my tablet’s screen. I’m pretending to be absorbed by the clickbait article I’m reading. George is in the panic room, radio silent. I have to trust that he has my back and is paying attention.
He already lied to me once. It was an understandable lie, but I still feel manipulated. I also get the feeling that there’s more to what he’s not telling me.
I can feel Dunn’s eyes roam over my body. What’s he thinking right now? What if he just decides to go for the kill?
Our plan was to find out who he is, not necessarily lure him into a trap where I’m the bait waiting for him to kill me. But to that end, although I don’t have a gun on me—it would obviously show—I’ve hidden one just over the counter and another under a couch cushion. I’ve also made a mental note of every object in the house I can throw at him. Every table I can overturn. I can go from docile to full rage machine in a second if I have to. At least I keep telling myself that.
I lean back and make a yawning-sigh sound, a vulnerable noise. It says I’m tired and not paying attention.
“Excuse me, Pauline?” says Dunn’s deep voice from the doorway.
“Oh?” I turn around, pretending to be startled. “You’re back?”
“Yes. Actually, I’ve been working on your AC unit.” He looks at the threshold. “May I come in?”
Vampires ask to come inside. “Yes. Of course.”
“I got it apart and realized I’m going to need a different part.”
“Ah, I see.” I narrow my eyes. “Will this end up costing more?”
“No. No. Actually, it’ll be cheaper. It just means I have to come back tomorrow and do the rest. I hope that’s okay.”
“That’s fine, Stephen,” I reply, suddenly panicking: Did he ever tell me his name?
“Thank you for being so understanding.”
If he didn’t tell me, he’s excellent at not showing it.
Dunn turns around and walks back to the sliding glass door, then stops. “Quick question: Do you have any kind of laundry detergent I could use to clean one of the parts?”
“Liquid?” I ask.
“Yeah, that would work.”
“One second.” I go to the laundry room in the garage and look, finding an almost-empty jug on top of a shelf. When I return, he’s still standing by the doorway.
“Thanks,” he says, taking it from me.
“You can keep it,” I reply with a smile.
Half an hour later, George and I are sitting in the living room while he watches a small monitor showing the street in front of the house. Hughes is on the road, following Dunn. We have him on speaker.
“He’s heading to North Broward,” says Hughes as he tails Dunn.
“Where did he go when he went to get parts?” asks George.
“That’s the weirdest part. He actually just drove his truck down the street and sat there for twenty minutes. I couldn’t get a clear look, but it didn’t seem like he was on the phone.”
“Just sitting there?” I ask.
“Yeah. My guess is that he was looking you up. Or rather, Pauline Cameron.”
We used a service for law enforcement departments that helps you create fake social media profiles. They take an existing account they control and substitute photos for your undercover operative. Pauline Cameron’s Instagram is full of nature shots and a handful of me at the beach, looking like a wannabe Instagram model. The account’s thinner than I would have preferred, but hopefully it makes me a real-enough person.
“After that, he drove to an industrial park and went to a medical supply company.”
“Drugs?” asks George.
“No. Equipment. Parts maybe? It might be another service call.”
“Okay,” says George. “Keep shadowing him until you find out where he lives. After that, head home for a few hours, check in with the family.”
“I sent Cathy to her friend’s house. She knows I’m on a detail. I’ll come back to you guys.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I reply.
“Are you kidding? This is a six-man job, at least. Unless we can get backup, I’ll be there.”
“Probably a good idea,” says George. “While McPherson was getting soap for Dunn, he was inspecting the lock on the sliding glass door.”
“Interesting. We should check the old cases. I wonder if he just pops the lock out and replaces it with another one,” says Hughes.
“Could be. But you can pick one in a second with a skeleton key. That’s why people use stoppers to keep them from being opened.”
I walk over to the sliding glass door and look at the frame. “We don’t have one.”
“Nope,” says George. “There was a wooden cl
oset rod that sat in the track, but I pulled it out.”
“To make me more vulnerable,” I reply.
“I’ll be here too.”
“In your panic room,” adds Hughes. “I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
“Hey, you’ll be here too,” I explain.
“Well, keep in mind it didn’t turn out too well for the guys either.” Hughes is only pretending to be afraid, but it does worry me.
“We still don’t know how he approached his victims,” I point out.
“Probably differently based on each case,” says George. “If he was going to come here, he’d wait until late and come through the back. Either way, if he comes by, it’ll probably be just to check on the house at night and make sure everything is as it seems. Hughes and I will be in the panic room, ready to come out.”
“Okay, I feel more relaxed now,” I reply.
“I didn’t say you should be relaxed. This man’s a killer. I just want you to know the facts.”
“Great. All I have to do now is wait for a serial killer to stalk me. Wonderful.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
BREATHING ROOM
I pretend to go about my nightly routine as if I were a childless woman living alone in her mother’s house and not a cop who happens to be in a complicated relationship. We don’t know if Dunn is watching me. The sliding glass door that opens to the patio faces a canal and the tree-lined shore on the other side. He could be watching me from there with night-vision goggles or an off-the-shelf thermal imager. Maybe that’s extreme, but we don’t know how he’s gone so long without being caught . . . assuming that he is Sleazy Steve.
I’m convinced, and so are the others. The challenge is catching him doing something that we can arrest him for, then using that opportunity to investigate him more closely.
The apartment Hughes followed him back to is paid for with cash. Same for the storage unit where he keeps his tools. Cash everywhere. Even the phone he uses is prepaid and refilled with credits paid for in cash.
Stephen Dunn doesn’t exist. Yet as far as we can tell, he’s never left South Florida. He’s been around for decades, lurking in the shadows. If he has any roots, they’re not attached to that name. If he has another life, it’s clearly separate from this one.
Is there a Mrs. Dunn somewhere? Are there little Dunns? We don’t know, because there is no Stephen Dunn, only a figure that we conjured up with a phone call. Until that moment, he was hidden from the rest of the world.
Like the rhythmic sound of a fish in distress or an infant whale’s cry, my seeming vulnerability has drawn him in. Now as I glance at my reflection in the sliding glass door and into the night beyond, I sense that he’s circling. Waiting.
I go to the master bathroom, the one without the cameras, and take a shower while George and Hughes sit in the panic room, watching the video feeds, waiting to see if Dunn does a drive-by or peeks inside.
So far, it’s been a no-show out front. But that doesn’t mean his presence isn’t felt.
I sit in the living room and read my iPad, then watch a documentary for an hour.
Visible to anyone looking through the windows.
I pour myself glasses of colored water from a bottle of wine on the coffee table. I need to look vulnerable while not being vulnerable.
It’s almost midnight. I yawn, get up and walk to the guest room, change into shorts and a T-shirt, then climb into bed with my gun.
“How you doing, McPherson?” asks George through the speaker under my pillow.
“Fine. How are you guys doing? Anyone need a bathroom break?”
“No, but I’d recommend you not drink from the Gatorade bottles in here.”
“Gross.”
“How do you do it on the boat?” he asks.
“In the ocean, like all the other dirty mammals. See anything?”
They have their eyes on the monitors, watching for Dunn’s truck. I trust them, but it only makes me feel slightly less terrified.
“Don’t worry, kiddo, we’ll let you know when he’s coming,” says Hughes.
“Did you just call me ‘kiddo’?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“We’re the same age,” I reply, “son.”
I stare at the ceiling and wait, making occasional conversation with Hughes and George, but not too loudly in case Dunn has managed to sneak past our cameras and lurks below my window.
Sometime after midnight, the AC kicks on, and the breeze, even though it’s warm, cools me. It’s probably in the mideighties in here. I can’t imagine how George and Hughes are standing it in the sweatbox.
I yawn and wipe my eyes. Maybe I am getting tired. I hear a yawn from Hughes too.
“We should have done a coffee run,” I say.
My body wants to sleep, my battery plummeting toward red. I try to resist, but it doesn’t work. Even with Hughes and George watching, I have to be on my guard. Dunn could try anything. We don’t know a thing about his tactics. In none of the murders did we see much sign of a struggle. This is the part that confuses me the most. Did he charm his way in late at night? That seems unlikely.
I stifle another yawn. The urge to sleep is overwhelming. Am I coming down from an adrenaline high?
“I think I need coffee,” I say quietly. No response.
“Guys?”
Nothing.
I lift my head up from my pillow. It feels like it weighs a million pounds. All I want to do is go to sleep.
I feel funny . . .
I’ve felt this way before.
It happens when testing deep-sea-diving air mixes and getting the ratio wrong.
I struggle to sit upright.
I know how Dunn does it.
“Guys?” I whisper and hear my own slurred speech.
Dunn put something in the air-conditioning unit. It’s why he went to the medical supply store.
He’s using some kind of sleeping agent . . .
If I’m barely conscious, George and Hughes are definitely passed out in the panic room. The AC vent is their main air supply.
I try to get to my feet. And fall to the floor.
There’s a sound . . .
The sound of a sliding glass door being slid open.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
GASP
I’m on the floor. I hear footsteps. Careful, slow footsteps. The corner of my vision is growing darker. Everything is slowing down.
I want to gasp for air, but I don’t. My body is already metabolizing the gas I’ve inhaled. Taking a deep breath could render me unconscious.
More footsteps.
I try to crawl toward the door, to at least try to block it. My muscles refuse to cooperate.
I’m slipping into a dream.
Don’t slip away, Sloan! Don’t let go.
The door handle is turning. Stop!
The door is opening.
Leave me alone.
And then suddenly I don’t care.
I don’t care about anything. Everything’s okay.
That’s the gas talking, Sloan. You’re not okay!
I’ll be fine.
The face looking down at me is wearing a ninja mask and night-vision goggles.
And booties on his shoes.
Booties.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I mumble.
He squats down and flips up his goggles. A gloved hand gently grabs the back of my head.
“Just take a breath. You’ll be okay. I’m a cop. I’m here to help.” I see the badge on what looks like some kind of uniform.
“Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
I relax. I prepare my lungs to take a breath.
A tiny voice . . . Jackie’s? . . . calls to me. She’s telling me something. What is it, baby? I’ll be home soon.
I see her face. I want to let her know it’s okay. I’m safe now. The police are here. I fall back, my head too heavy to support any longer. He gently cradles it. Something my dad told me when I
worked on dive mixes comes to mind.
Stop breathing.
Stop moving for a moment. Think about the problem.
If you have a spare tank, get to that.
If you don’t . . . plan out your next action and don’t think. Reach for the valve. Let your muscle memory guide you. Just let your body solve the problem—not the panicked part, but the part that you’ve practiced with a thousand times. Let the muscles do the work.
Why, Dad? I’m safe now. The police are here.
The man’s other hand brushes away my hair. The glove then slides down to my neck. “Just breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe deep.”
His voice is muffled. That’s odd . . . Is there a tube under his mask?
I hear a metallic sound as a cylinder by his side bumps the door frame.
To me, the clank of an air tank is like the sound of a dog bowl hitting the floor. My hand reaches up. I touch his face and feel something hard. A breathing mask.
“Just relax,” he says, grabbing my wrist and pulling it away.
My other hand finds the air hose. It jerks it away from his body. The hissing sound startles him. He jumps back and hits the wall, and his oxygen cylinder clatters to the ground.
I grab the twisting tube, shove the end to my lips, and breathe deep. It’s pure oxygen.
He’s moving back at me.
I breathe again.
My brain is on fire. It’s a good fire.
I suck another deep breath, roll to my feet, and shove him back into the wall.
I don’t have all my energy yet, but between the pure oxygen and the adrenaline, I might have enough.
Seizing his loose tank, I swing it up and strike him in the jaw. He goes sideways, lands on the floor, and springs back to his feet.
He has a knife.
“Fucking bitch,” he growls as he lunges and misses.
As I slip past him out of the bedroom, I throw the tank at his head and make for the living room couch. I reach it, roll over the top, and land next to the coffee table.
The couch is pulled away as he slides it aside to get at me. I sit there, cowering, as he readies to stab me.
I’m fading again because I haven’t taken a breath since I let go of his hose. As he moves forward with his knife in front of him, he stumbles. Clearly, he’s not used to breathing the sleeping gas. Granted, there’s less of it in the air now after dispersing, but it’s still there. He lurches forward.
