by Jenna Kernan
“We’ve spoken before. Haven’t we… Lionel?”
He beamed. “You remember. I’m flattered. That’s so nice.”
He set the water on the table and assisted her to a sitting position. She pulled the sleeping bag up to cover herself.
“I need a shirt,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m freezing,” she said.
He ignored her, retrieving the water and holding it to her lips. She glared at him as she drank, draining the contents.
“Where are we?”
“This is a hunting cabin used by some locals. I’ve leased it for the season.”
“Everglades?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Where?”
“Nadine, you can’t leave. You can’t signal for help. So why do you need to know?”
“If all that is true, why not tell me?” She waited, worried to push further by asking if he was afraid to tell her. Best not to poke too hard.
He smiled. “We’re north of Tampa. It’s a spot you’ve never heard of. A place that everyone hurries by to get to their destination because it’s no place at all.”
“Why me?”
“Don’t you know? I’d be surprised if you didn’t work it out.”
“It was never a game of wits,” she said, tossing out one of her assumptions.
He stroked her cheek. “Though I do admire your wits.”
It was so hard not to make demands. Not to scream and beg and threaten. She gritted her teeth and tried to think.
“You promised to release Jack.”
His expression hardened and he rolled his eyes. “Yes. And you promised to come willingly.”
They faced off. Nadine’s eyes narrowed. Despite being half-dead, she still had something he wanted—her compliance.
“I can still offer you that deal,” she said.
“I have you already.”
“You don’t. What you have is a captive. But you want more than that.”
Now his eyes narrowed. “I do want more.”
“Well then?”
His eyes now glimmered with clear anticipation. “What are you offering?”
“I’ll go with you, willingly, if you release Jack to a location where he will survive and receive proper medical care—”
“Done.”
“I’m not.”
He glared and she met the beady frigidity of his eyes.
“And you prove that he survived to receive care and you promise not to return at a later time to kill him.”
“Like little Linda.” He smiled at the fond memory of the death of Linda Tolan.
The hairs on her neck lifted. Here was the face of the killer, unmasked. Her skin prickled, but she held her expression blank.
“You love him,” he said.
She said nothing to this, uncertain if revealing the ploy would further jeopardize Jack. If she told him, would he leave Skogen or kill him?
Nadine needed to decide how to play this and she needed to do that quickly. She narrowed her eyes on him, showing her displeasure without challenging his fantasies.
“Answer me!” he growled.
“He was the best I could do, until now.”
He gaped and then laughed. “‘Until now.’”
She didn’t respond.
“If that’s true, why do you care what happens to him?”
“Because he’s part of my team and that makes him my responsibility.”
He stared at her with those bottle-green eyes as she struggled with her rising heart rate, feeling blood pound in the vessels at her neck.
She waited through his deliberation, stone-faced, while her stomach twisted and her heart thrashed against her sternum.
At last he said, “I make no guarantee against sepsis or other infections that might kill him after delivery.”
“Understood.” How badly was Jack injured?
“A deal then. Your compliance for his release in a location where he will be discovered alive and no return to kill him at a later date.”
“I need to see him.”
Jack had been left outside in the boat. Who knew how dehydrated or fevered he was by now?
“Soon. First, we need to chat.”
She paused, desperate to get to Jack and check his condition, but recognizing the opportunity presented by the unsub’s willingness to talk. The more she knew of him, the better equipped she’d be to survive.
“You work for the Kilpatrick family. Tour guide.”
“Naturalist. Birds are my specialty. You can learn a great deal from birds.”
“Like how to use a bird-watching app to lure women to you?”
“Yes. I used that method. Rare-bird sightings. I prefer trapping to hunting. It requires patience, but that patience is rewarding. I killed several that way recently in Miami. Only there I used a dating app.”
“And in the Barataria Preserve outside New Orleans?”
He grinned. “Louisiana girls are sweet. Love the accent.”
“Unlike yours,” she said.
“None of them were my equal. But then I read about you.” He squatted before her, stroking her cheek.
She tried not to flinch but didn’t succeed. She closed her eyes as his fingers danced down her neck and clasped her throat.
“Open your eyes.”
She didn’t and he squeezed.
Nadine met his gaze.
“That’s better.” His hand remained at her throat as he spoke. “The great-granddaughter of a killer, granddaughter of a killer and daughter of the most successful female serial killer ever captured. You are the ghost orchid, Nadine. The grasshopper sparrow among finches. After I found you, I moved, set up business in your mother’s territory but with a difference. I let the world see them, my kills.”
Like a cat depositing a dead bird on an owner’s doormat, Nadine thought.
“I knew the deaths of these women would draw you to me. It’s important to use the right bait. And for you, that’s the irresistible sight of brutal, untimely death.”
She pressed her lips tight, scowling, because he’d been correct.
“My wish was to entice the rarest of all females, the profiler with a serial-killer mother.”
“You changed tactics once I got here.”
“Yes. I had your attention and like any eligible male, I switched to my courtship dance. Driving rival females from our territory.”
“Killing them.”
He shrugged as if the distinction was inconsequential.
Nadine was certain that she didn’t want confirmation on her next question. But she asked anyway.
“Why?”
“Because you are the perfect woman, unique in all the world. Worthy to be my mate and bear my children. They’ll be like us, Nadine. Perfect hunters.”
Nadine sucked in a breath as her body went cold. The very possibility that she found most repellant was the reason he had taken her.
It was her fear of being the mother to a psychopathic killer that had kept her from accepting Demko’s ring. Deep rooted in her mind was the terror that whatever had gone wrong in her grandparents, mother and brother threaded through her DNA like a defective gene.
“If I refuse?” she asked.
“Then the deal is off, and I finish Jack. I’ll still keep you. But you won’t be my wife.”
The tone of his voice was so clinical and matter-of-fact, it froze her heart, sending ice crystals piercing muscle.
“Be my bride, Nadine.” He was on one knee before her, asking her to commit, after nearly drowning her and while her hands and feet were still bound.
She tucked her thumb over her engagement ring, praying he would not take her hand.
“I’m not agreeing to anything until you prove you’re capable of caring for me.” She lifted her chin, looking down her nose at him. “Your handling of me last night leaves me with serious doubts.”
“I’ll see to your needs.”
“Really? Because I�
�m hungry and tired and cold.”
He stood and returned with a flannel shirt. He cut the binding securing her wrists. It took him a little time to drag her up before him and slip her arms into the garment. Then he taped her hands before her again and buttoned the shirt.
“I need to see Jack.”
He crouched before her. “Good. I’m anxious for you to see him. It’s some of my best work.”
What had this monster done?
Twenty-Eight
Three hours after the discovery of Nadine’s abduction, Clint Demko left his vehicle in the lot. The FBI had begun their manhunt and he knew there was no organization better for that task. He also knew they did not need or want his help.
But they were searching thoroughfares. And he knew that whoever had taken Nadine would be off the road, hunkered down and waiting for the search to slow. It would be a waiting game. Could they find Nadine before time and resources ran out and the search halted?
He knew something else from what Nadine had told him. Chances were high that they’d already met this killer. If so, then their unsub would be absent from work today. That meant he needed to recanvass every single business and speak to each person he had interviewed until he discovered who among the hundreds of contacts had disappeared.
Tina had told him that the Bureau’s attempts to track Nadine’s new phone had failed. Presumably it was off or had no charge. Either way, finding her would not be that easy.
If the Huntsman decided to stash Nadine close to where she was taken, he might be back at work. In that case, Demko needed to figure out which one had been up all night and check if any employees were missing. Tina made calls while he headed out because he couldn’t ignore the possibility that someone might lie to cover for the Huntsman.
His first stop was the gun shop on the north side of the park.
Throughout the day he worked from one establishment to the next. By late afternoon, he reached Big Water Marina in Kerr City. The first person he located was Kelly Dietz, the woman who worked only mornings. It was late in the day for her to still be here.
She was hosing down the kayaks with freshwater, washing away the mud and grass.
“Detective, how are you?”
“I thought you worked mornings.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Good memory. But we’re short-staffed today.”
The skin on his neck prickled. “Is that so?”
“Lionel was a no-show for his afternoon tour.”
“Decristofaro?”
“Yes.”
“He do that often?”
“No. Never.”
Clint narrowed his eyes. “Anybody check on him?”
She puffed out her cheeks and then blew away her frustration. “No idea.”
“You know where he lives?”
“Nope. But Jessie might. And Lou Anne, of course.”
“Anyone else missing?”
“Missing? He’s just out sick.”
“I see.” He turned and headed toward the office. Until he had eyes on Lionel Decristofaro, the man was missing and had just moved to the top of his list.
He tried to remember anything he could about the man and had to check his notes to jog his memory. Then he remembered what Nadine had told him the day she’d raced off to confront the Copycat Killer to save a young woman.
High-functioning sociopaths and psychopaths are hard to catch because they are intelligent and fully capable of operating without drawing notice. They have the ability to “fake good,” appearing to possess the complete range of human emotions. But it was an act. They met only their own needs and easily disregarded the needs of others to meet theirs.
Demko reached the office where he found the owner, Lou Anne Kilpatrick, studying her computer monitor.
“Be right with you,” she said, without looking up.
“How long has Decristofaro worked here?”
“Only a few months. Been in the US awhile, I guess, but he just became a US citizen.”
“From where?”
The Huntsman cut the bonds from Nadine’s feet first and then her hands. She rubbed her wrists, still sticky from the tape adhesive. She held her thumbnail against her engagement ring, hiding it as best she could. When he put his knife away, she switched the ring to her opposite hand.
“I know you agreed to be cooperative. But in case you have other ideas, you have no shoes and no bug protection and are on an island. This time of year, without bug suits or spray the insects will torment you until you reach the water where the riptide will sweep you out to sea.”
She coughed against the smoke filling the cabin. For an outdoorsman, he certainly didn’t understand how a flue worked.
“And the bugs are worse at night. Much worse.”
“They aren’t biting me now?”
“I put sage on the fire. Smoke and scent keeps them off. I got us a mosquito net, too. No fire during the day. Too much chance of being spotted.”
Nadine immediately set her mind to work on how to set a daytime blaze.
“Where’s Jack?”
“I’ll get him.”
His smile gave her chills, but she kept her chin up until he stepped out of the cabin. The instant he left the shack, she hobbled to the cupboards. She found a rusted cast-iron skillet and a dented aluminum pot filled with mouse droppings, several tobacco tins and a rodent nest.
She turned to the stove, searching for a fire poker, but found nothing but stacked wood. Nadine wondered if a chunk of cypress would make a serviceable club.
One thing she knew for certain. She was not running blindly into a tangle of mangrove roots or trying to swim out of here. She was a weak swimmer, at best.
That left her one option. Stay alive until she had more options.
The banging of his feet on the rickety dock signaled his return. She hobbled back to the cot and sat. The door swung open and he stepped in, Jack thrown over his shoulder like a large bag of dog food.
He squatted before the stove and rolled Jack to his back before the fire. Nadine got her first good look at the agent and did not recognize him.
Involuntarily, she sucked in air.
“Not so pretty now. Is he?”
Jack’s purple face was dotted with welts from insect bites. His cracked lips, puffy swollen eyes and the dried blood turned his face into a ghastly mask of infection and pain.
She rose, resisting the urge to rush to his side weeping. That route would serve nothing. This was a hunter. He did not value weakness, and emotional attachment to Jack would only provoke her captor.
“Do you think the nails will grow back?” he asked, his tone conversational.
Nadine directed her attention to the hand that the Huntsman now held for her perusal. The tips of his bloody fingers were raw pulp.
She narrowed her eyes in banked fury. “How do I know that’s Jack?”
Now he was the one gaping. “That’s Agent Jack Skogen.”
Nadine shrugged. “Prove it.”
He tried and failed to rouse the agent. Finally he growled and turned to one of his packs, withdrawing a medical kit and a syringe. An injection later and Jack roused, roaring as he sat up, frantically blinking his eyes and turning his head.
“What’s your name?” asked the Huntsman.
“Jack Skogen.”
“Where do you work, Jack?”
“Federal agent. FBI. You need to call the police, right now.”
He couldn’t see. That much was clear. Had he been blinded?
“Satisfied?” asked Lionel.
“No.”
Jack turned his head in her direction, swaying. “Nadine?”
“Yes, Jack. It’s me.”
“He has you, too?” His voice had changed, turning flat with defeat.
She met Lionel’s intent green eyes. “Not yet, he doesn’t.”
Lionel kicked Jack, who sprawled onto the floor. He crossed the distance between them in two strides.
He wasn’t a big man, but he was bigger and strong
er than she was. He grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her, thudding her against the wall so hard it shook dust from the rafters.
“You do as I say.”
“Do I? That’s not how this works.”
He dropped her and caught her before she fell, pinning her to the wall with one hand, now clasped around her throat.
“I could kill you right now.”
She lifted her chin, playing the card that had worked with her mother. Self-interest. That was what moved such monsters to action or restraint.
“You won’t.”
“Why is that?” he growled.
“I can’t bear your children if I’m dead.”
He leaned forward, his mouth beside her ear. “True. And I want you willing.”
“You can’t have either if he dies.”
His grip tightened and she gasped, the air just barely enough.
“You do love him.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. Strong fingers eased back. She gasped, grabbing greedy breaths of air.
Two things were clear. Decristofaro didn’t believe her prior declaration that Jack was the best that she could do. That meant Jack’s life was still in peril.
“I saw you together.” His voice low with fury.
She needed to convince him that Jack was not, and had never been, a love interest. The simplest way was the truth. She debated the wisdom of making that revelation until he released her and fixed on the real target of his rage.
Nadine raised her voice, redirecting him away from Jack. “Because that’s what I wanted.”
He turned back.
She pointed at Skogen. “It was my idea to introduce a love interest. His to play that part. I told him it was a horrible idea. But he wouldn’t listen.”
Lionel released her and she rocked, keeping herself upright only because of the wall behind her.
“It was a horrible idea.” He turned to look at Skogen. “An act?” Then he glared at her. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Prove it,” he said, repeating her earlier challenge.
She assumed an affectation of disdain as she counted off the reasons on her left hand, keeping the right hidden.
“He’s ex-military. I hate that. He’s a bully. He won’t take my advice or listen to my suggestions. He excludes me from important briefings. And most important of all, he allowed himself to be captured.”
