Serial Escape

by Melinda Di Lorenzo

  Not a good sign.

  “Sally?” she called. “I’m just going to need to—”

  Her words cut off as her gaze dragged up the wall, and her throat went dry. A large piece of black paper—the kind children used for crafts—had been taped there, and across it, in streaky white lettering was Hanes’s message.

  CHILDHOOD IS SWEET, it read. ALL FUN AND GAMES. AN EYE FOR AN EYE.

  The words gave Raven a chill, but she shook it off as she remembered that it wasn’t the clue that mattered—it was the substance used to write it. Momentarily forgetting her concerns over the instability of the floor and ceiling, she moved closer. Ten steps in, and she caught a whiff of something. And the smell made her understand the odd appearance of the letters.

  Chlorine bleach.

  The words had been painted on with the stuff, and it reminded Raven of something. And not in a household-cleaner kind of way. She stared a little longer, trying to figure out what it was. While she couldn’t quite put a finger on it, she was filled with a sudden need to go to Lucien’s apartment. She had no idea where the urge came from, but it very nearly spurred her to turn and run for the SUV. The only thing that stopped her was Sally. Raven couldn’t leave her. She wouldn’t. Because she knew exactly how the other woman must feel, and being alone was the last thing she needed.

  Quickly, she pulled out Lucien’s cell phone and snapped a picture of the message, then refocused her attention on finding a way up to wherever Sally had been trapped. But as she scanned the area in search of a viable option, sirens filled the air, and Raven realized that she wasn’t the person most equipped to handle the situation.

  As if you couldn’t figure that out before you came?

  She ignored her conscience’s sarcasm and called out, “Do you hear that, Sally? Help is on the way.”

  The response was faint, but still audibly relieved. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Raven muttered under her breath.

  The sirens grew louder, and she eyed the door. She had to make a decision, and she had to make it fast. If Sergeant Gray got there, he’d undoubtedly try to stop her from leaving. And she wouldn’t blame him for trying. But she wouldn’t let him do it, either. She waited until the sirens reached a crescendo, sent up a silent apology to Sally for not sticking around, then slipped back out to the SUV and headed toward Lucien’s apartment, determined to follow her gut.

  * * *

  The water was up to Lucien’s hips. A little bit past them, if he was being honest. His body was heavy with a combination of sopping clothes and exhaustion, and he hadn’t yet managed to lift himself to a standing position. He hadn’t made much progress in determining Hanes’s purpose, either. The sheet of paper that the other man had dropped down had floated to one corner of the concrete space, propelled by the influx of liquid, and there it stayed.

  Some clue that turned out to be.

  Lucien knew the thought was bitter, and he knew he couldn’t afford to give in to the dragging hopelessness that threatened to go along with it. He’d called out to Hanes a few times, hoping that the other man would be disappointed that his hint had failed. So far, he’d received no response. It made him assume Hanes had actually left the premises, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. Lucien’s concept of time was still skewed, but if he had to think about it, he might guess that it was about time for the killer to be checking on Sally Rickson’s status.

  They’ll have her, he assured himself.

  Maybe it wasn’t a completely realistic thought, but anything that buoyed his confidence was a positive. He didn’t have a whole hell of a lot more going for him at the moment.

  Stifling a curse, Lucien leaned his head against the pipe and closed his eyes for a second. He took a deep breath and dug into his own mind in search of something to grasp at.

  You need to get that paper.

  “No kidding,” he muttered.

  It was true that after his first couple of attempts to swish the so-called hint in his direction, he’d given up and gone back to simply trying to free himself. But those efforts seemed to be growing more futile by the minute. So maybe it was time to try something new. He opened his eyes and turned his attention to the corner where the single sheet sat. It was bobbing up and down a little with the continued flow of water.

  Five feet out of reach.

  That was Lucien’s estimate. If he’d had a single arm free, he probably could’ve stretched out and grabbed it.

  “But you don’t have a free arm, do you?” he muttered. “All you have is a free leg, and it’s not exactly helpful in this situation.”

  But then his gaze dropped to his foot, and he wondered if it could be helpful. Could he reposition himself and stretch it out far enough? It was at least worth a shot, wasn’t it?

  With a grunt, he pressed his heel to the ground and pushed to the right. The water slurped a protest. His pants stuck to the pebbled surface underneath him. But he’d moved. At least three inches. It was enough to spur him on. He repeated the same steps again.

  Grunt-dig-twist.

  He could already feel the sweat forming over his face.

  Grunt-dig-twist.

  His beat-up muscles were deepening their resentment.

  Grunt.

  Dig.

  Twist.

  His rear end felt like it was scraping against sandpaper, and he was 99 percent sure that a hole was wearing through the fabric of his pants.

  Grunt, diiiiiiig. Twist.

  He collapsed against the pipe and eyed his target again. He was angled directly toward it now, but as he stretched out his leg—even pointing his toe—he realized his efforts had been in vain. The paper was still about a foot farther away than he could reach.

  I’d have to be lying down to get it. As soon as the thought popped into his head, it stuck.

  If he could lie down, he truly might be able to reach. And as many times as he’d tried to push himself up and out of reach of the rising water, he hadn’t once attempted to sink into it.

  Yeah, he thought sardonically. That might be because drowning isn’t on the agenda.

  Which might very well happen if he got down there and couldn’t get back up. As his stare hung on Hanes’s “hint,” though, he realized doing the opposite of what he wanted to do might be the best option. Thinking he was probably going to regret it, he dug his heel into the ground again. Only this time, instead of twisting, he pulled forward. Almost immediately, his bound hands hit the ground. He was so surprised by the quick success that he cracked his head on the pipe, which wobbled awkwardly sideways.

  “Easy, Match,” he said as he steadied himself. “Let’s try to avoid any actual drowning, okay?”

  He eased down a bit more, his eyes on the paper. It was only an inch or two away now. Lucien took a moment. He pinpointed the location. Lined up his toe and dipped it down under the water. He leaned his head back and prepared to scoop up the clue. Then stopped. Because it was then that realization hit him. The ceiling that he’d vaguely recognized before—crisscrossed and gray and way higher than it ought to be—abruptly found a place in his mind. He wasn’t sitting in the middle of some strange room. He wasn’t in a room at all. He was at the bottom of a swimming pool.

  Chapter 20

  Sergeant Gray was furious. Raven knew, because his name had appeared on Lucien’s cell phone five times over the course of her drive from the burned-out warehouse to the apartment building. Three calls, two texts to be exact. The former went unanswered, the latter went unread.

  He’s not my boss.

  The thought was as true as it was petulant. The only hold the older man had over her was the fact that he was in charge of Lucien’s career. And even then, she was pretty sure he couldn’t fire a detective based on the behavior of an autonomous individual. She hoped, anyway.

  As Raven used the key
card Lucien kept in his sunshade to open the gated, underground lot, then guided the SUV into its designated spot, the phone rang one more time. She grabbed it from the console and prepared to hit the Ignore key. But it wasn’t the sergeant’s name scrawling instantly over the screen; it was the hospital.

  Raven’s heart did a nervous skip, and she swiped to answer it, her voice tentative as she issued a greeting. “Hello?”

  The woman on the other end sounded puzzled. “Is this Detective Match?”

  “No, this is—” She cut herself off.

  What was she? Not his witness. Not the woman he was protecting. She was definitely more than those things. But girlfriend didn’t seem to fit. Not without a discussion. If Lucien even wanted to take things there. Did he want to? A wave of doubt swept through her. What had their time in bed meant to him?

  And why am I only really thinking about it now?

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end jerked her attention away from her ill-timed tumble of thoughts.

  “I’m here,” she said quickly.

  “But you’re not Detective Match?”

  “No. This is his number, though. I’m his...partner?” She knew it sounded more like a question than a statement, but it felt almost right, so she just left it.

  And the woman on the home phone seemed to accept it, too. “Oh. Good. I was pretty sure that Mrs. Rickson had called Detective Match he a couple of times, so it just threw me a little when you answered.”

  Raven’s heart thumped again. “Mrs. Rickson? She’s awake?”

  “Awake and lively.” A light laugh carried through. “Unfortunately, she’s still in the intensive-care wing, and the doctors discourage phones from being allowed in.”

  Phones.

  A little belatedly, Raven remembered that unexpected calls hadn’t worked out in their favor recently.

  “I’m sorry,” she said curtly. “Did you say who this was?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Pardon me?”

  “How did Mrs. Rickson know to call Detective Match? And how did you get this number?”

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “Has there?” Raven kept her tone cool.

  “I think so,” replied the other woman. “My name is Rita Marshall. I’m a nurse at Vancouver Hospital. Mrs. Rickson—Juanita—is a patient here, and I’m trying to get a hold of Detective Match.”

  In her head, Raven wavered, but out loud, she held her ground. “So if I hang up the phone, then call back and ask for Rita Marshall, they’ll put me through?”

  “They’re more likely to put you through if you ask for the intensive care unit, but yes.”

  Raven hesitated. Her paranoia didn’t quite abate. And she didn’t think it should. Quickly—before the so-called nurse could say anything that was even more convincing—she tapped the phone off and dropped it in her lap. She stared down at it for a second, half expecting it to ring again right away. When it didn’t, she picked it up again and started to hit the callback button before realizing that it might just lead back to the same faked number. She needed a different line.

  “If I’m ever in the mood to change jobs again, it won’t be for police work,” she muttered.

  Sure that Lucien was the kind of man who wouldn’t rely solely on a cell phone, she swung the door open, then made her way up to his apartment. Thankfully, the garage had an elevator that led directly to his floor. Even more thankfully, the short journey wasn’t interrupted by other residents or guests.

  When Raven turned the key and took the first step into Lucien’s private space, though, she wished—a little strangely—that there had been an interruption of some kind. In the months that she’d lived with him in the safe house, they’d talked about his living arrangements, just like they’d talked about everything else. But aside from sitting outside like a stalker, she’d never been inside. It felt a little wrong to be there.

  But as she flicked on the light and took a small spin around, she could see that it didn’t contain anything particularly personal. The condo was supposed to be a temporary fix until he settled on a neighborhood where he wanted to buy a place. He’d been there about six months when she first met him, and he’d told her he’d left many of his things in storage. Except now it’d been three and a half years, and there was still almost no evidence of the man Raven knew so well. Spartan decor. Furniture that screamed showroom. A treadmill and a TV.

  Even when she moved from the open living area to the single bedroom, she didn’t find anything. Not a framed photo or a book or a notepad with something scrawled on it.

  How am I going to find something that supports Hanes’s clue in here? Raven wondered a little hopelessly.

  She let her eyes rove over the room once more, thinking that she probably would’ve had a better chance of finding a bigger glimpse into Lucien’s life by going back to the safe house. Which might have sent a warm shot to her heart if not for the fact that it was currently making the situation that much harder. She nearly sank down onto the bed in despair before she remembered that she had another objective to follow up on—the call to the hospital.

  Hoping that would give her something to go on, or that it would at least boost her hope, Raven exited the bedroom in search of the phone. She found an older-model portable tucked in a corner in the kitchen, conveniently sitting on top of an old phone book. A quick flick through the emergency pages got her the general number for the hospital. She dialed, listened through the automated prompts, hit 9 to talk an operator then asked for the ICU.

  Five seconds later and two rings later, a crisp voice came on the line. “This is intensive-care desk.”

  Raven did her best to sound authoritative. “Hi there. My name is Raven Elliot, and I’m working with the Vancouver PD on the Rickson case. I received a call from a nurse named Rita Marshall. Is she available?”

  Does she even exist? she wanted to add.

  But the woman on the phone was quick to assuage her unasked question.

  “Rita?” she replied. “Yeah, you bet. Hang on one second and I’ll track her down.”

  Raven exhaled as cheesy hold music filled her ear. Knowing that the nurse wasn’t one of Hanes’s tricks lifted about a million pounds of tension from her shoulders. Feeling like she could relax for just a moment, she pulled out one of the tall stools from the breakfast bar and moved to lift herself into it. But as she shifted her body, she also shifted her view. And something unexpected drew her eye. Her breath caught.

  Tacked to the side of the fridge with a plain black magnet was a photograph. A little grainy. An odd shape and size for a picture—square, and probably two inches by two inches. But that wasn’t what made Raven do the double take. It was the subject matter. Because it was a photo of her. Her eyes were on the camera, her mouth open in a laugh, one hand lifted in a protest. And she remembered exactly when it was taken.

  It was about three weeks in to their stay. Raven had had a particularly rough time that day because it would have been her brother’s birthday. Lucien had let her cry. Multiple times. He hadn’t complained when she got up in the middle of a card game and simply walked away. And when she’d come back, maybe an hour later, and said how sorry she was, he’d pulled her in and held her close and told her she had nothing to apologize for. It was the first time he’d wrapped his arms around her since carrying her out of the hole where Hanes had left her. And Raven had sensed it was a turning point of some kind. For her, anyway. She’d wanted to stay there forever. Safe with Lucien. And she’d known that no matter what happened next—with the case, with her life, with the killer himself—she would never feel something platonic for Lucien again. If she’d ever felt it at all.

  Then he’d made a joke. Something silly that she couldn’t remember the specifics of at the moment. But it’d made her laugh. And Lucien had grabbed his phone and snapped the shot and told her that even in
the darkest moments, there could still be light.

  And here it is.

  Unconsciously, she stepped to the fridge and ran a finger over the photo. He’d held on to it. Gone out of his way to print it. And kept it in view for three entire years.

  A thick lump formed in Raven’s throat. She had to find him. She had to get him back.

  Fighting tears, she closed her eyes. She was thankful that a second later, a slightly breathless greeting interrupted the increasingly desperate turn of her thoughts.

  “This is Rita Marshall speaking.”

  Raven forced herself to turn away from the photo and brought her attention back to the phone. “Hi, Rita. This is Detective Lucien’s partner. Raven Elliot. I just want to start by saying sorry for hanging up before.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m sure you have to be—” the nurse stopped. “Wait. Did you say Raven?”

  Raven’s pulse bumped up. “Yes. Why?”

  “Ohhhh.” The other woman dragged the word out. “Mrs. Rickson was talking about you. She called Detective Match yours. I thought that meant...whoops! This makes much more sense.”

  Raven’s face burned. She knew she’d mentioned Lucien to Juanita over the years, but she’d thought she’d kept it casual.

  She cleared her throat and steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. “About Mrs. Rickson, Rita... Is there a way we can bend the no-phone rule so that I can talk to her?”

  “They’re keeping her under pretty tight watch. That’s why I agreed to call for her, actually. She was a little distraught after speaking with her husband, and she said she had something to tell Detective Match. But only Detective Match. So I was hoping to get him to come in.” The other woman’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “But Detective Elliot...”

  Raven winced, but didn’t correct the nurse. “Yes?”

  “Are we in danger at the hospital? Right after you hung up, one of the other nurses overheard the policewoman at Juanita’s door say this has something to do with the Kitsilano Killer.”