Closer Than You Think

  He rolled off Dilman’s body and looked up at the sky. It was getting dark. He’d been out for a couple of hours at least. Plenty long enough for Arianna to get away, goddammit.

  She’d escaped in the power company’s truck. But how had she escaped the basement? She never could have untied her ropes. And yet she was free.

  He thought of Roza, bending over Arianna, talking to her, and his fists clenched. The ungrateful little bitch. She cut Arianna loose. I’ll beat her half to death, and if she sasses me, I’ll beat her the rest of the way. At least Roza hadn’t freed Corinne Longstreet. He had the only key to the shackles. Arianna was the real threat. She could be in the next town by now. Getting help.

  Wait. The tranq-induced fog in his mind was beginning to clear. What had the old man said? I saw your truck crashed up the road. Dilman had thought he worked for the power company, that he’d wrecked the truck.

  At least Arianna hadn’t gotten far. Pushing to his feet, he staggered for a few steps, finally getting his balance. Damn, he had a mess on his hands. Dilman was lying in a pool of his own blood, and Ken’s hand was visible at the back corner of the house. It was good that Dilman hadn’t seen the hand and investigated. He would have known the real meter reader was dead.

  But now I have two bodies to hide. Sonofabitch.

  He made his way behind the house to the old carriage house where he hid his van. He backed it out, keeping to the gravel road. Gravel was a wonderful material. It showed little evidence that it had been driven over and could be raked so that it looked perfectly undisturbed. None of the caretakers who’d come to cut the grass had ever suspected he’d been there.

  Parked in front of the house was the old man’s car. On the door was a magnetic sign. Dilman’s Lock and Key. The guy was a locksmith.

  He ground his teeth in rage. Faith had been a busy girl today. First calling the power company, and then a locksmith. That bitch would have locked him out. Kept him from what he’d claimed as his own. What he’d created. What he’d collected.

  He drew a breath, calming himself. First order of business was to retrieve Arianna. Then he’d dispose of the two bodies. Then he’d find Faith and finish what he’d started. And when he was all done? He’d punish Roza severely and pick up where he’d left off with Arianna.

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 5.05 P.M.

  Faith lifted her head when the Jeep stopped moving.

  Tim McGraw was singing the closing strains of his song, the sound surreal in the absolute quiet. She touched her brow bone, her fingers coming away sticky. I’m bleeding.

  And something smelled bad. The airbag, she realized. The passenger-side bag had deployed. She’d managed to turn the steering wheel as she’d gone down the embankment so that she’d hit the first line of trees broadside rather than head on. The Jeep must have bounced and slid the rest of the way a lot more gently, because she now rested hood-first against a tree and the driver’s airbag was still intact.

  She turned off the ignition and sat motionless for a moment, just breathing. Her memory re-engaged with a jolt.

  Oh my God. The girl. There’d been a girl. She’d been . . . naked. Naked? How could she have been naked? Did I hit her? Oh God, please let her be okay. Please.

  Panicked, Faith groped at the Jeep’s door, needing a minute to remember how it opened. You’re in shock. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding the girl. What if I killed her?

  The door made a horrible sound as she shoved at it with her shoulder, but it finally opened and Faith stumbled out, falling to her knees. 911. Call them. She needed her phone. Where is it? She had one. She’d just been on it, talking to her father. But with the hands-free. She tapped her ear. The earpiece was still there. Good.

  She’d put the phone in her coat pocket when she’d left the office. She patted her pockets, finding her gun in the left and her phone in the right. Hands shaking, she tried to dial but smeared blood all over the phone’s screen. She wiped her hand on her skirt and tried again, finally dialing the three numbers.

  ‘This is 911. What is your emergency?’

  Faith tried to stand, but fell back to her knees. Stifling what would have been a shrill scream of pain, she dropped her phone back into her pocket and started to crawl. ‘There was a girl in the road. I swerved. Hit a tree.’

  ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She blinked when her eyes burned, then realized it was blood in her eyes. She swiped at her forehead with her sleeve. ‘Cut my head.’

  ‘I need you to stay still, ma’am. You could have other injuries. What is your name?’

  ‘Faith. Faith F—’ Frye, she’d almost said. But that wasn’t true anymore, was it? She blinked hard, making herself think. ‘Faith Corcoran.’ She started crawling again, up the steep embankment, whimpering when she slid back a few feet. If she wasn’t careful, she could tumble all the way down. She wasn’t going to look. She already knew it was steep.

  ‘Stay put, Faith. I’ve sent help. They’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  ‘I can’t. There was a girl. In the road.’ She dug her fingers into the dirt and kept climbing. ‘She was hurt. I didn’t hit her. I swear I didn’t.’ Her fingers touched asphalt and she dragged herself up the final foot of embankment and on to the road. There she was. The girl. ‘I see her.’

  ‘The girl?’ the operator asked carefully, as if Faith were delusional.

  ‘No,’ Faith snarled. ‘Frosty the damn snowman. Of course the girl. But . . . she’s not moving.’

  She dragged herself to where the girl lay. She’d been right. The girl had no clothes. Which allowed Faith to see every oozing wound on her body. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  ‘Dear God. Who did this to you, honey?’ she whispered.

  ‘Faith?’ the operator asked. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here. With the girl. She’s all bloody. Her face is bruised. And cut. She’s . . . naked. Someone’s cut her, all over.’ Wiping her bloody hand on her skirt, Faith pressed her fingers to the girl’s neck, relieved when she felt a pulse, though it was faint. ‘She’s alive, but barely. I can hardly get a pulse. She’s non-responsive.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘Young. High school maybe. Long dark hair, past her shoulders. She appears Hispanic. Tall. Five-nine or so.’ The setting sun had cast the road in shadow, but the gash in the girl’s thigh was big and bad enough to be easily visible. ‘She may have been shot in the leg. Maybe in the arm, too, but there’s too much blood to tell.’ Faith struggled out of her coat and spread it over the girl, her own body sagging from the exertion.

  Pushing the edge of her coat to the middle of the girl’s leg, she exposed the wound, then leaned closer, frowning. ‘Looks like somebody did a patch job on the bullet hole, but it busted open.’ She took off her scarf, balled it up, and pressed it to the wound. ‘I’m putting pressure on the leg. She’s lost a lot of blood. Tell whoever’s coming to hurry.’

  ‘They’ll be there in a few minutes. What about you? How’s your head?’

  ‘It hurts,’ she said tersely. ‘And I’m tired.’

  ‘Don’t sleep yet. Stay on the phone with me.’

  ‘I’ve had a concussion before. I know the drill.’ Squinting into the growing darkness, Faith searched for any sign of whoever might have dumped the girl there, but she saw nothing but trees. Whoever had left her was gone. Or hiding.

  That they might come back to finish what they’d started was not impossible. ‘They won’t get at you again,’ she whispered to the girl, who made no sign that she was aware of anything that was happening. Her loss of consciousness might be a mercy in this situation. ‘They’ll have to go through me first.’

  Taking her gun from the pocket of her coat, Faith staggered to her feet. Standing in place, she turned a slow circle, watching for any threat. All while she prayed that the Mount Carmel cops responded faster than the Miami cops she’d known.

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 5.20 P.M.

 
Arianna couldn’t have gotten far. It was getting dark, so he switched on the van’s high beams, driving slowly, scanning the trees along the roadway. Within minutes the wrecked power company truck came into view. Arianna had crashed into a tree. The hood was a crushed mess.

  Even better. If she was hurt, she might still be in the truck. Leaving the van on the road, he jogged to the wreck. She’s there. She’s got to be there.

  But she wasn’t. The truck’s cab was empty. He clenched his teeth so hard that a sharp pain streaked up his neck into his skull. She’d escaped. Again.

  Relax. There’s blood all over the seat. This isn’t so bad. Bleeding like she was, she had to be around here somewhere. He looked around the truck, careful not to touch it. His fingerprints weren’t in anyone’s system and he planned to keep it that way.

  He walked slowly through the trees, following the trail she’d left in the dirt as she’d dragged herself forward. He had to give her some credit. She had guts and spirit.

  He so looked forward to breaking her.

  He’d rounded a curve in the road when he heard sirens and his heart simply stopped.

  No. No, no, no. He crept closer and silently cursed when he saw the flashing blue lights up ahead. It was a squad car. A fucking squad car.

  There was a body in the road, covered by a black wool coat. The body had long black hair. Arianna Escobar. Maybe she was dead. Please let her be dead.

  The siren belonged to an ambulance, which came to a screeching halt next to the cruiser. A paramedic raced to her side and was waving his partner to hurry with a stretcher. When they rolled her away, her face was uncovered, an oxygen mask pressed to it.

  Dammit. She’s alive.

  A second ambulance drove up as the first was driving away. Why two ambulances?

  This paramedic went to the squad car, leaned into the open rear passenger door and helped someone out. Someone with dark red hair wearing a green suit.

  His eyes narrowed. Faith. She’d called the power company. She’d called a locksmith. She’d been on her way to his house. She’d found Arianna.

  Panic tried to choke him, but ruthlessly he pushed it back. He couldn’t panic now. He needed to get back to the house. Get rid of the evidence.

  He backed away, careful not to disturb a single leaf, and when he was out of sight, he ran to his van. He barely pressed his foot to the accelerator, wanting to draw no attention to himself.

  That the cops would connect the girl to the power company’s truck and the truck to the O’Bannion house was a given. There were no other houses around. How much time did he have to get away? Unknown.

  He had to hurry and hope they’d knock, find no one home and go away.

  But he knew that wouldn’t be the case. Not with Faith there. Fury simmered in his gut. He was going to lose everything. Because she had come back. I should have killed her when I had the chance. And he’d tried, but the bitch simply wouldn’t die.

  Arianna was a setback, but not a complete disaster. Even if she lived, she couldn’t identify him. She’d been blindfolded the entire time, except for when she was running to the meter reader’s truck. There were a few seconds when he’d begun to chase her. If she’d looked in the rear-view mirror . . .

  Unlikely, he told himself harshly. It was only a few seconds and she’d been distraught.

  He turned in to the gravel drive and pulled the van around to the back. He had two dead bodies outside and two live ones inside. The two live ones would be dead soon enough. Corinne Longstreet was now excess baggage. A liability. Once Arianna was identified, people would start looking for Corinne. He needed to get her out of here and dead and buried ASAP.

  And the child? She’d better be very, very contrite. Showing even an iota of spirit meant that she was too dangerous to be retrained. Which meant he’d have to kill her too.

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 5.30 P.M.

  You will not throw up. Sitting in the back of the ambulance with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Faith had been repeating the same phrase for twenty minutes. She didn’t know if it was helping, but at least it wasn’t hurting. She hadn’t been sick all over the crime scene. Yet.

  She’d held it together until the cops had arrived, but the moment they’d taken over, her adrenaline crashed. Nausea and uncontrollable shaking had commenced, accompanied by the playback loop in her mind.

  Gunshots, screams. Blood on her hands. Gordon’s sightless eyes staring up at her. She kept telling herself that this was different. That the girl she’d found would live.

  The first ambulance had rushed the teenager to one of the hospitals downtown. Faith would soon follow, but at a much more sedate pace. The EMT had advised her to have her head checked out by the ER, but Faith wasn’t sure she could ride in a moving vehicle just yet.

  Besides, the detectives investigating the girl’s assault would be arriving soon. She knew they’d want a full report. The thought of which made her want to turn tail and run.

  They’ll ask questions about you too. They’ll find out who you really are. Or were.

  If they asked, she’d answer honestly. Although she might get lucky. The detectives might keep their questions focused on the girl she’d found in the road and leave her alone.

  And if they do find out who you were? Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She knew that not all cops were like Charlie and his friends. Some were like Catalina Vega, who’d believed her when she’d reported being stalked and terrorized by Peter Combs. Unfortunately, Vega was in the minority. Most of the cops who’d taken her reports had treated her like she’d deserved what she’d gotten from Combs. When he’d escalated from stalking to attempted murder, they’d thought she was making it up, that she was that desperate for attention. Unstable, even. The latter had likely been encouraged by her ex-husband’s trash talk, though she’d never been able to prove it. Even if that had been true, they still should’ve done their jobs, but they hadn’t. And so here I am. Forced to flee and start all over again.

  So while not all cops were like Charlie and his friends, she really wasn’t in the mood to take the chance. She didn’t need their help and didn’t trust their motives.

  The EMT came around the back of the ambulance to check on her. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Okay.’ Her head still throbbed, but the nausea was abating. ‘How’s my Jeep?’

  ‘I’m no mechanic, but it doesn’t look good, ma’am. I’m sure the detectives can give you a better idea. This is probably them now.’

  Faith peered around the ambulance’s open door to see a black SUV rolling to a stop. The driver’s-side door opened and—

  Holy hell. Faith’s eyes widened, her headache momentarily forgotten. It was a man. A really big man. Over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, he seemed to dwarf his vehicle. But it wasn’t his size that had her staring.

  He was . . . different. She blinked hard, thinking she must have hit her head harder than she’d thought. But when she opened her eyes, he was still there, standing next to his SUV, doing a visual scan of the scene from behind the darkest wraparound sunglasses she’d ever seen.

  His hair appeared to be white. Not the white blond that came from the sun, but the snow white that came with age, even though he looked no older than she was. It was cut short, the ends kicking up haphazardly all over his head, like a churned-up frozen sea. In stark contrast, his face was a warm bronze, broken only by the white goatee that framed an unsmiling mouth.

  And the pièce de résistance . . . the unbuttoned black leather trench coat that hugged his shoulders like a glove, the tails whipping in the wind. He looked like he’d stepped out of an action movie.

  If she hadn’t been in pain, she might have thought she was dreaming. Of course, she had hit her head, so hallucinations were still a possibility.

  ‘I think I might get that CAT scan after all,’ she murmured.

  The EMT huffed a strained chuckle. ‘Maybe I’ll join you.’

  ‘He’s . . . real, then?’


  ‘Yes, ma’am. He is most definitely real.’

  Chapter Four

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 5.32 P.M.

  Special Agent Deacon Novak got out of his SUV, blinking rapidly against the sudden blast of cold air. They’d have a hard frost tonight. The victim had been discovered just in time.

  A few more hours and she would have succumbed to exposure – if she hadn’t bled to death first. The young woman had been beaten, stabbed, shot, and then dumped in the middle of nowhere on the side of a road that did not appear to have been used in years.

  Deacon had almost forgotten that places this isolated still existed so close to the city. The crowded Cincinnati suburb where he’d grown up was less than fifteen miles from here, but it felt more like a hundred. Here, the houses were few and far between, where those in his neighborhood were so close together that he’d only needed to open a window to talk to the cousin who’d lived right next door.

  Here, there was no one to witness a young girl being dumped like garbage. In his neighborhood, there’d always been self-appointed sentries watching from lace-curtained windows, making sure that all the kids’ mothers knew every move they made.

  They still did, in fact. The sentries had grown old, but they still watched the neighborhood with an eagle eye, still reporting misbehaviors. Deacon knew this because he and his sister, Dani, were now on the receiving end of their reports.

  Their younger brother had fallen in with a very bad crowd, and Aunt Tammy, who’d raised Greg from an infant after their mother died, was at the end of her rope. Which was why Deacon had come home, not just for a vacation or holiday, but permanently. There were details to work out, but it was nothing he and Dani hadn’t been able to handle.

  Until this afternoon. God. Greg had gotten into trouble at school again, and what had started as a conversation nearly escalated into a brawl. The angry, ugly words that Deacon and his brother had shouted at each other still echoed in his mind. Deacon didn’t often lose his temper, but somehow Greg managed to push every single one of his buttons with a simple smirk.