Leave it to a Boston native. “Good point,” she said. “You go ahead and advise the EOC, I’ll try to get more info from the Public Works guy. He might be more chatty in Spanish.”
Delaney walked away to use his comm without drawing attention. As soon as he moved, Nina saw that the Public Works employee had vanished. She had been so intent on the envelope she hadn’t seen him leave. They would need his information and a formal statement.
Cursing herself for not telling him to stay, she jogged along the sidewalk, scanning the area. She spotted the man’s bright vest two blocks down cleaning trash in an alley and picked up her speed. He must not have understood Delaney about not picking up trash today. Or perhaps he didn’t believe him.
“Disculpe,” she called out to the man.
He appeared not to hear and kept moving, disappearing between two buildings.
She raced after him, rounding the corner where she’d last seen him.
A fist shot out from her left, delivering a stunning blow to the side of her head. She stumbled, trying to regain her footing. She saw the yellow Public Works vest only as a blur before the man circled behind her to wrap his arms around her, covering her mouth with his gloved hand.
When he bent his head to whisper in her ear, his English had no accent. “You won’t get away this time, Nina.”
Even after eleven years, she knew that voice.
Chapter 20
The Cipher drew in a deep breath, inhaling her unique scent. Nina’s fear intoxicated him. Aroused him. Primed him. He tucked her tiny frame against his chest and felt her heart race like the wings of a hummingbird. The solution to his puzzle had been posted online only three hours ago. He had not expected her to arrive in Boston so quickly.
This was not how he had planned their reunion. She was making a habit of displeasing him. He would have to teach her another lesson. See to it that she learned obedience before she died.
He tightened his hand over her lush lips, silencing her and immobilizing her head at the same time. He clamped her upper body with the other arm, crushing her harder against him. She sank her teeth into his index finger. Fortunately, the thermoplastic rubber knuckle guard prevented her bite from penetrating his tactical glove. He felt her jaw working, trying to chew her way through the reinforced fabric. A chuckle escaped his lips. She struggled, exciting him again. His little Warrior Girl wanted to fight. Good.
Her arms slid behind her, inching between their bodies. Before he realized what she was doing, her hand found his crotch. She grabbed his balls through his pants, squeezed with surprising strength, and twisted with a violent jerk of her wrist.
Breath flew from his lungs in a loud blast. He tried to master himself, but his knees buckled. She didn’t let go, twisting sharply in the other direction. Yielding to the pain, he shoved her away, finally breaking her grip. Doubling over, he sucked in air, his hands involuntarily clutching between his legs. She would pay dearly for this.
She spit out a piece of nylon string torn from the glove. “Down on your knees.”
He lifted his head to see the muzzle of her semiautomatic aimed straight at him. The gun didn’t waver.
She narrowed her eyes. “Hands behind your back.”
The bitch had no way of knowing what it was like to have your nuts rearranged and clearly didn’t understand that he couldn’t put his hands behind his back if he wanted to. Which he didn’t. He would not kneel at her command. In the end, she would kneel before him. She would pray to him, but he would not grant her salvation.
He beat back a wave of nausea as the pain threatened to overwhelm him. “Can’t.”
She kept her weapon trained on him with one hand and raised the other to her ear, no doubt preparing to call in the cavalry. He was out of options. She had become yet another adversary in the cage. About to defeat him.
He would not allow it.
Pushing through the agony in his loins, he planted his feet and launched himself at her. Time slowed. The instant he exploded forward, she squeezed the trigger. In a split second he felt the devastating blow of a hollow-point round thudding into the center of his chest.
He collapsed.
She rushed toward him, eyes traveling the length of his body. “Stay down. I’ll get rescue.” She started for her earpiece again.
Whether she contacted them or not, police would locate the source of the gunfire in less than a minute. He had studied the capabilities of the Boston PD before he made his plans. He had one final play. Nina had no way of knowing he wore body armor.
He flung out his foot, executing a perfect leg sweep. Her feet flew up in the air, and she crashed down onto the hard pavement beside him, winded. Her gun slid across the alley to clatter against the brick wall well out of reach.
Before she could recover, he rolled on top of her, his bulk preventing her from getting sufficient air to scream or fight. He brought his face so close to hers their lips nearly touched. “Not yet, little Warrior Girl, but soon. Very soon.”
In that moment, he wanted her more than he had wanted anything else in his life. She was just as he remembered and yet, so much more. He wrapped his hands around her slender throat, the terror reflected in her wide eyes a thing of beauty. “You will be mine again,” he whispered.
The instant his movement allowed her space, her hand shot up to claw at his gloved hands. Her short nails raked his right wrist. Cursing, he squeezed harder. He didn’t want to kill her yet, only to make her pass out. A delicate maneuver.
When her thrashing ceased seconds later, he jumped up and hobbled toward the street through the far side of the alley. Uniformed police were converging from every direction. He waved to get their attention and pointed down the alley where Nina was no doubt sputtering and coughing by now.
“Man with gun,” he said, laying it on thick with the Mexican accent and making sure he sounded hysterical. “He shoot lady.”
The cops thundered past him in the direction he had indicated, guns drawn. They were not looking for a dark-skinned Latino Public Works employee. They were looking for a blue-eyed white man. Nina had seen his eyes and the skin around them all those years ago. She was supposed to take that information to the grave but had no doubt shared it with police, giving them a rough idea of his appearance. Today, he had found a way to turn what had been a setback to his advantage.
Gradually recovering his range of movement, he loped around a corner, prepared to disappear. Once he cleared the immediate area, fresh pain registered. He glanced down at the blood on his wrist. Panic bloomed within him.
Chapter 21
Nina blinked several times in rapid succession, bringing the red-haired giant looming over her into focus.
“She’s coming around,” Delaney said to the others.
Still lying on the pavement, she looked up to see a cadre of plainclothes and uniformed Boston PD officers gazing down at her. The cobwebs cleared. “It was him,” she said, her voice ragged and raw. “In disguise.” She gave a brief description of the unsub in his Public Works garb.
“Pretty damn good cover,” Delaney said. “We’ll put out a BOLO.”
“Another thing,” she said, remembering. “I scratched his wrist.” She sat up. “I got his DNA.”
“You say he looks like a Latino male now?” one of the uniforms asked. “I ran right past that guy. I remember the yellow vest. The sonofabitch pointed me in your direction.” He mashed the transmitter on his radio to broadcast the updated lookout for the suspect she had provided, then signaled to the others, who joined the search.
She patted her waist. “Oh shit, where’s my gun?” The idea that the Cipher had taken her service weapon made her head spin all over again.
Delaney slid her Glock from the back of his waistband and handed it to her, butt first. “Only one round fired.”
Relief flooded through her. “Thanks. I’m sure Ballistics will want to have a look.”
“Did you hit him?”
“I did. Center mass. He went down too.” She sc
rubbed her face with her hand. “Must have been wearing Kevlar, because he got the drop on me as soon as I got close enough to check his vitals.” She turned to the officer with the radio, who had remained with them. “Add that info to the lookout.”
He nodded and picked up the transmitter again.
“Speaking of gunshots, what took you guys so long?” she asked Delaney. “Did ShotSpotter pick it up?”
The briefing at the Emergency Operations Center before they took positions along the Trail had included details about Boston’s gunshot detection system, which sends out an alert in real time and rotates surveillance cameras in the direction of the sound of gunfire within the covered area.
“EOC got the notification about the weapon discharge, but everyone was heading in the opposite direction at the time. Apparently, while you and I were reading the note from the trash can, a girl’s body turned up.”
She scrambled to her feet. “Where? What happened?”
“A seafood restaurant on Salem Street near the Old North Church,” he said. “They found one of those big ice chests by their rear service door earlier this morning. One of the prep cooks assumed someone must have forgotten to take it inside after signing for it. They get deliveries of fresh fish every day, so he didn’t think anything of it.”
Disturbing images formed in her mind, fueling her anger.
“He hauled the chest into the kitchen,” Delaney went on. “They opened it to get out the fish and found a deceased teenage girl inside, tucked in a fetal position.”
Nina wanted to hit something. “Any idea who she is?”
“No ID. Naked like the others. We’re circulating a photo now to see if any of our officers have seen her around. We can’t put the picture out to the media. She looks pretty bad.”
Nina paced, dragging a hand through her short-cropped hair. “What else did I miss?”
Delaney pulled at his beard. “Media’s going nuts. One of the servers at the restaurant tweeted about the body. We’ve got the place cordoned off now, but the whole street is crammed with news crews and lookie-loos.”
The chaos had served its purpose. “I’m sure that’s what he wanted.”
“The paramedics are here,” Delaney said. “They’ll check you out.”
She took a step back. “I don’t want anyone to touch my hand until we get a forensic tech out here to take a scraping from my nails.”
Delaney gave her a curt nod. “Already on the way.”
“That’s a fairly decent contusion,” one of the medics said, eyeing her temple. “Let’s check your pupils.”
She stood still while he held each of her eyelids up in turn, flicking a small flashlight across them. Apparently satisfied, he pressed two fingers along her wrist.
While the EMT went about his business, she continued her conversation with Delaney. “I almost had him.” She tilted her head to each side as instructed. “Dammit, I should have realized something was up when I spoke to him in Spanish and he answered me in English.”
“Go easy on yourself,” Delaney said. “I didn’t think about that either. We were both kind of busy with that envelope.”
The Public Works employee disguise she had just seen looked nothing like the monster who had tormented her years ago. “I was expecting an Anglo. I must have automatically discounted him because I was so damned focused on saving whatever poor girl he might have his sights on.”
“He certainly didn’t match the description we had,” Delaney said. “Guess he put on dark makeup or something.”
She had already moved on to another thought that nagged at her. “After I blacked out, he could have easily snapped my neck. Why didn’t he kill me?”
Delaney shrugged, palms up. “Did he say anything to you?”
She recalled the feeling of his large frame crushing down on her, his lips close to hers. “Not yet, little Warrior Girl, but soon. Very soon.” Her pulse quickened as she remembered his hands tightening around her throat, the feel of his hot breath fanning her face as he whispered his parting words. “You will be mine again.”
He had made her a promise. A threat.
His words would reveal nothing about the investigation, create no new leads, offer no new insight. But they might very well get her thrown off the case if they went public. She would become the object of even more gossip and speculation, hindering her ability to work and the team’s ability to focus on leads. She would confide them to her team once they were alone, but no one else.
“No.” She looked away. “He didn’t say a thing.”
Chapter 22
Nina surveyed the pinched faces in Boston’s Emergency Operations Center. Frustration suffused the room. After being treated at the scene by paramedics while an evidence tech collected nail scrapings, she’d filled out paperwork for discharging her weapon as the search for the Cipher proceeded without her.
Relegated to the sidelines as Boston police, Massachusetts state troopers, and federal agents fanned out in a citywide dragnet, she’d been more than willing to report to the EOC with Delaney after completing a preliminary statement.
The vast space was packed with state-of-the-art technology. Jumbo screens covered an entire wall, split video feeds juxtaposed in a patchwork of camera angles, offering simultaneous views of different parts of the city. Officials and civilians manned a row of terminals, taking in an assortment of information from a variety of sources.
The general buzz in the hive of activity was interrupted by a shrill voice from one of the civilians seated in front of a glowing screen along the side wall.
“I’ve got something.”
Nina swiveled to see a statuesque woman with long brown hair scraped back into a bun.
“We pulled the ShotSpotter video,” she said, fairly bouncing in her chair. She slid the mouse around on a pad beside the keyboard, clicked, then pointed at the enormous wall screen. “Look at this.”
Multiple feeds consolidated into a single view showing the Cipher race into the frame and direct a rushing stampede of police toward the alley where Nina lay semiconscious.
“Watch what he does next.” Excitement tinged the Boston PD video tech’s voice.
The Cipher sprinted down the street and darted around a corner, where another camera picked him up. The tech had spliced the footage together before presenting it, creating a timeline of the unsub’s escape. Nina watched with the others as he dodged traffic crossing the street, then proceeded down the walkway on the other side at a more sedate pace, presumably to avoid drawing attention. He slowed and came to a stop in front of a manhole cover in the middle of the sidewalk. He hiked up the hem of his jacket, exposing his waistband.
Nina squinted to see his hands, which were hastily working something loose. At first, she thought he was fumbling with a bulky belt buckle, then realized that a heavy-duty chain encircled his waist, held together by a large steel hook. A moment later, he unhooked the link and pulled the chain through his belt loops.
“What the hell is he doing?” Kent put the question to the room at large.
The Cipher bent and slipped the hook through a hole near the edge of the manhole cover. He straightened and wrapped the chain around his right hand twice, then used his left to grasp the links in a two-handed grip. In one swift motion, he bent his knees and tugged the cover aside, exposing the dark round opening leading down into the sewer system.
“No way,” a BPD lieutenant said. “Those covers are made of cast iron. They weigh over two hundred pounds.”
Nina wasn’t surprised. She knew this was well within the Cipher’s abilities.
Passersby seemed to pay no attention to a Public Works employee in a yellow vest climbing down into a sewer. Seconds after his head disappeared, the chain snaked down into the hole as he pulled it inside. With a series of jerking movements, the metal cover slid closed, effectively completing the Cipher’s vanishing act. Nina marveled at his ingenuity.
“Clever sonofabitch,” Wade muttered. “That whole maneuver took him maybe twenty
seconds.”
“He came prepared,” the BPD lieutenant said, then turned to his tech. “Let’s see if we can catch him on video scoping out his escape route and that manhole cover ahead of time. I also want to know where he comes out.”
She nodded and sat back down in front of her terminal.
“He’s meticulous and strategic,” Kent said. “I’ll bet he had multiple escape routes planned ahead of time.”
Wade spoke loudly enough for the whole room to hear. “That’s important to keep in mind going forward. If we get close to cornering this guy, we should expect him to have several bolt holes. Some of them might even be booby-trapped.” He directed his gaze at the BPD brass in the room. “In fact, anyone going into that sewer should be careful. The unsub might have set up a nasty surprise to slow down any pursuers.”
Deputy Superintendent Tyson, who had been introduced as the ranking BPD member present in the facility, acknowledged him with a quick nod. “I’ll let my officers and the city workers know.”
“How far can he go in the sewage system?” Buxton asked him.
“The combined water and sewage system has over a thousand manholes and goes all over the city.” Tyson shrugged. “There’s no telling where he popped out, but we’ll start scanning the downtown camera system.”
Buxton continued to address Tyson. “In the meantime, did you get confirmation on the ID of the latest victim?”
Tyson signaled a sergeant, who moved to the video control panel as he responded. “We forwarded a crime scene photo to our Crimes Against Children Unit. One of the CACU detectives recognized the victim. Her name is Denise Glover. Goes by Neecy. Fifteen years old.”
An image popped up on the screen as Tyson finished. The picture, obviously from a high school yearbook, showed a slender girl who looked young for her age. Or perhaps the oversize glasses making her brown eyes look owlish and the pink ribbons in her dark curly hair had that effect.
Buxton turned to Wade. “We’ve got three victims now: first Hispanic, then white, now black. What does that say about the Cipher?”
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