Twisted

  Smart folks knew to stay away from the cemetery at night. Criminals lurked in the shadows. And it wasn’t like a man with robbery on his mind was going to come rushing to her rescue.

  Emma pulled in a long, slow breath. Focus. She just had to think this through. There had to be a way out. Because she wasn’t going to let Ricker win. Dean had escaped from him. She could, too.

  Dean.

  She’d thought of him too much in that darkness. Where was he? Had Kevin told him that she’d escaped? Was Dean looking for her? He wouldn’t just give up on her, would he?

  She knew he was hunting Ricker, so surely—surely he’d be looking for her, too.

  Or had everyone given up? Did they just think that she’d run away, vanished on her own?

  In New Orleans, Ricker had picked prey that other people wouldn’t miss. The invisible people on the outskirts of society. The homeless. Runaways.

  Me.

  She had no family. Her only friend was dead. Who would notice if she never showed up in New Orleans again? Who would grieve?

  No one.

  “Help . . .” Her voice came out too weak.

  She’d saved herself before. When she’d gotten out of the life on the streets. When she’d worked to build a home. “Help.” Her voice was a bit stronger. She couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t give up. Emma craned her body, twisting, until her mouth was right in front of that hole. “Help!” She’d scream until she had no voice left.

  She’d fight until she was broken.

  She would not give up.

  “Help!”

  DEAN PAUSED IN front of the statue. It was a white marble statue, of an angel bent over, with her wings curling near the ground. His light slid over her, then moved to the crypt right beside her. The crypt backed up close to the stone wall that surrounded the cemetery. If you wanted to, you could climb up on the angel, jump on the roof of that crypt, and make it right over the cemetery’s wall.

  If you wanted to . . .

  But he wasn’t looking for an escape path. He was looking for Emma.

  Emma would have been trying to escape. She’d ditched Kevin, and she would have been attempting to get out of the cemetery. Only she wouldn’t have gone back to the main gate. Kevin had been accompanied by two cops, and Dean figured those cops had been given guard duty at the front of the cemetery. So Emma wouldn’t have fled that way. She would have tried to get out in a manner that wouldn’t have caught the attention of the cops.

  “I found something!”

  Dean whirled, and his light hit Wade. Wade was holding up a blue shirt, soft, billowing.

  Dean took two fast steps toward him. “Emma was wearing that shirt.”

  “Yes.” Wade’s voice was grim. “I thought she was. It’s been ripped, torn, and—”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In a crypt not too far from the voodoo queen’s. I noticed the doors were open a bit. I pushed inside and found the shirt.” Victoria stood silently behind him. “But nothing else was in there. Just this.”

  A torn shirt. No Emma.

  His control splintered even more.

  Emma!

  His temples were pounding, the blood rushing too fast and hard through him. He had to find Emma. He needed—

  “Help!”

  Dean’s whole body jerked at that cry, as if he’d been hit by lightning. Then he immediately surged to the left. Not back toward the crypt with the kneeling angel but the crypt beside it. A darkened crypt that appeared newer than the others. The front doors were immense, painted black, and, when he yanked on them, completely sealed shut.

  They were supposed to be looking for crypts that had fallen into disrepair. But . . .

  “Help . . .” That cry came again. Muted, distorted, but giving him so much wild hope.

  He leapt back from the black doors. The others had fanned around the crypt. They’d all obviously heard that cry.

  “The windows aren’t broken. Everything seems sealed,” Sarah said quietly.

  “I think there are some loose bricks over here,” Wade called out. “But I can’t get in this way. There’s not enough room.”

  The loose bricks had let them hear her call.

  His eyes narrowed on the doors. “We’re kicking the fucking doors in.”

  Wade and Gabe rushed back to his side.

  Sarah and Victoria were right behind him.

  They attacked that door. It had been locked, barred to them, but they were getting in.

  The doors seemed to buckle beneath them, but they didn’t open. So they hit it harder.

  The doors flew open as the lock shattered.

  “Help!”

  Their lights swept the area. Dean saw a bench near the wall and a big, stone sarcophagus in the middle of the crypt. When his light fell on the sarcophagus, he saw . . . fingers poking out the side.

  “Get it the fuck off her!” Dean snarled as he lunged forward. He grabbed the top of the sarcophagus and heaved. Wade, Gabe, Sarah, and Victoria all heaved too, and the stone flew up—then it hit the floor and shattered into fat chunks.

  Then Emma was rising up, seeming to fly right out of that prison. The lights hit her, and Dean could see the blood and tear marks on her face. She was frantically trying to scramble out of the sarcophagus, and she was still saying, “Help, help, help . . .” Over and over, in a rasping voice.

  Dean grabbed her. Held her tight. She was shaking in his arms. He was shaking. “It’s okay,” he whispered as he lifted her into his arms. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  “Help . . .”

  She was breaking his heart. Odd, he hadn’t even thought he’d had a heart to break. Not anymore. Not until her.

  “I’ve got you,” he told her again. And I won’t let you go.

  “Bastard locked her in with the dead,” Wade said, voice packed with fury. “Twisted freak.”

  Emma shuddered in Dean’s arms. “I’m getting her out of here,” he said, aware that his voice was shaking. So were the hands that held Emma.

  He looked back, down, and saw that one of the flashlights was aimed into the interior of that sarcophagus. The light glinted off the skeletal remains, stark white in tattered clothing.

  He turned away from those remains. Held Emma as carefully as he could. Then they were out of that crypt. The moon was above them, and Emma had a death grip on his neck.

  “Dean!” She wasn’t crying for help any more. She was back with him.

  He kissed her. Soft. Light. Desperately. She’d just scared the ever-loving hell out of him, and he never wanted to go through that nightmare again.

  “Emma, baby, I’ve got you.” And he needed to get her to a hospital. He’d seen the blood dripping down from her head and sliding over her face. A doctor needed to check her out.

  “I didn’t see him.” Emma’s voice was hushed. “He caught me . . . right before I was going to leave the cemetery.” Her hold tightened on him. “He shoved my head into the side of a crypt.”

  Fucking bastard.

  “I-I woke up in there.” Another long shudder shook her. Dean was already moving. Still holding her tightly and heading back toward the front of the cemetery. She was getting to that hospital, now. Sarah was a silent shadow beside him. The others were still in the crypt. They’d call in the cops, the FBI.

  His priority was Emma.

  That’s my priority from now on.

  Everything had changed for him. Every single thing.

  He rushed past the group still at Marie Laveau’s tomb.

  “S-someone was in there with me,” Emma confessed. “In the stone coffin. He put me in there with someone.”

  One of the college kids at Marie’s tomb screamed.

  Dean ignored them. He and Sarah moved faster.

  “I couldn’t get out.” Emma’s voice was haunted. “No matter how hard I tried.” Her voice was husky, so weak.

  He kicked open the gate at the cemetery’s entrance. Busted the lock. Didn’t let her go.

  Sara
h hurried ahead and opened the passenger-side door of Dean’s vehicle.

  “I-I was going to . . . be like the others. He put me in there, and everyone was just going to f-forget I ever existed. No one was even going to . . . look for me.”

  He sat her down on the seat. The car’s interior lights shone on her, and damn, but she probably had a concussion. The blood had matted in her beautiful hair, and her tear-filled eyes wrecked him. “I was looking. I wasn’t going to stop.” Not ever.

  She wouldn’t have been lost to him. He wouldn’t have been able to handle losing her. As it was, Dean felt as if something had torn inside of him. Ripped open.

  There is no control.

  The darkness he’d always tried to keep in check was loose. Ricker had dared to attack Emma, to hurt the one person that Dean had come to need the most.

  I just found her, and that bastard tried to take her away from me.

  He hooked the seat belt around her. So carefully, not wanting to do anything that might hurt her. Emma wasn’t moving. She was far too malleable, too listless. Not Emma. He caught her right hand. The knuckles were bruised, bleeding. A glance at her left showed they were the same way. She tried to fight her way out of there.

  Dean brought her hand to his lips. He pressed a kiss to that delicate skin. “I would have looked forever.” Because he never could have given up on Emma.

  Her lips tried to lift then, curving the faintest bit. “Starting to . . . care?”

  He wasn’t starting to. He was in over his head. Drowning, and he never wanted to come up for air. He kissed her knuckles again, and said, “He’s a dead man.”

  Dean wasn’t going to let Ricker stay out there, hunting, waiting for another attempt on Emma’s life. Emma wasn’t going to be the next victim.

  You are, Ricker.

  Because Dean was going to hunt him. He wouldn’t stop, not until he’d put the bastard in the ground.

  VICTORIA STARED DOWN at the bones.

  “What a nightmare,” Gabe said from beside her. “You wake up and find yourself alone with . . . that.”

  Trapped in the darkness. For all purposes, buried with the dead. Yes, that was a nightmare. Torture at its core.

  “He must have been planning to come back for her,” Wade said. He was on the other side of the sarcophagus, and when Victoria glanced up, she saw that his gaze was locked on the bones. Her light showed the revulsion on his face. “He stashed her here, with him, and left her because he thought he’d be able to take her without anyone knowing.”

  Maybe . . .

  Gabe backed away. “I can’t get a signal in here,” he said, “I’m going outside so I can call the cops and get Elroy’s task force out here.”

  The task force that hadn’t wanted to search for Emma.

  “Ricker is one sick sonofabitch,” Wade muttered.

  Victoria bent over the remains. She didn’t have her gloves with her, so she couldn’t touch those remains but . . .

  Something about this scene was nagging at her.

  Sarah was the one who figured out the motivations for the killers.

  Victoria—well, her job was the dead.

  Something is off here.

  Her light slid over the skeleton. It had been pushed, shoved to the side. No doubt by Emma during her struggles. “There are no flowers here,” she said as she glanced around. “No flowers. No dust.”

  And there were plenty of tombs that Emma could have been put in but . . . there weren’t plenty that had a stone sarcophagus like that. A perfect one to keep her prisoner.

  The man who’d abducted Emma had specifically chosen this place. He’d specifically planned for her to be placed in that sarcophagus with those remains.

  She leaned forward a bit more. Since the skeleton had been moved, she could see more of the actual bones—the old clothing had shifted a bit. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the right shoulder bones. The markings there . . . on the humerus and the scapula . . . they looked like . . .

  “He was shot.” She’d have to examine more, but that wound appeared to have been close to his heart.

  She let her light slide over more of the remains.

  It looked as if he’d been wearing a green shirt, faded, but definitely a masculine cut. Brown pants. Hiking pants?

  And those were definitely hiking boots at the bottom of that sarcophagus.

  Her heart raced even faster in her chest.

  “We need to get these remains examined.” Her gaze flew to Wade. “Now.” Because her gut was clenching with a new suspicion, one that she wouldn’t be able to confirm until she ran more tests but . . .

  The left pant leg was torn. No, not torn. A hole was there, right at the knee. A very small, very specific sort of hole—the type she usually saw on clothing that had been penetrated by a bullet. The dead man had been shot in the leg.

  “This body was staged.” This wasn’t some guy who’d been in there forever. The crypt itself was too new. And he damn well hadn’t decomposed so fast that only bones were left behind.

  It’s all deliberate. The clothing. The bones. The tomb.

  Emma.

  “He wasn’t coming back for her,” Victoria said, and that part made her even sicker. If they hadn’t found Emma, if someone hadn’t heard her cries, would she have slowly starved to death? “He wanted us to find them, just like this.”

  Because the killer had wanted to send a message to them. No, not to the LOST group. Not to the FBI.

  To Dean.

  Wade came around the sarcophagus. His shoulder brushed against hers. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

  It was too early to say with certainty. She couldn’t give voice to this suspicion until she’d done her tests but . . .

  Victoria didn’t think they needed to hunt for Ricker any longer.

  She thought she was staring at the killer’s remains.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DEAN DIDN’T LEAVE HER SIDE. THE DOCTORS poked her, they probed her, they told Emma that she had to stay the night at the hospital and . . .

  Dean stayed.

  His jaw was clenched too tightly. His gaze looked too wild, and when he held her hand, his grip was too hard.

  She didn’t care. She wanted him there, wildness and all, because it was all Emma could do to hold herself together. Every time her eyes closed for even a moment, she found herself back in that stone coffin. Back with the bones. Screaming helplessly when she thought no one was coming.

  They had to stitch her head. Shave a bit of her hair there and put in four stitches. The doctors kept telling her that the scar wouldn’t be noticeable. She could just part her hair on the other side and blah, blah, blah.

  Emma didn’t care about scars. She cared about being alive.

  And she cared about that bastard Ricker being caught.

  “Okay, honey,” the nurse—a bubbly woman who appeared to be in her late fifties—said as she patted Emma’s shoulder. “You’re all set for the night.” She pointed toward the remote on the nearby tray. “If you need me, you just hit the call button.”

  Emma nodded. She needed to be alone right then. No, not alone, but just with Dean. Because Emma was afraid she was close to shattering, and she didn’t want to do that in front of anyone but him.

  He’ll understand.

  She didn’t even know why the hell she thought that.

  He didn’t give up. He found me.

  The door closed behind the nurse.

  Emma’s lips were trembling, so she clamped them together.

  “Don’t.” His order came out as a low growl. “Don’t try to control anything. You want to yell? You want to cry? Then do it, baby. Do anything you need.” He was right beside her bed. “I’m here, and if you want to pound my face for letting you go, if you want to do anything . . . please, just do it.” He eased out a shuddering breath. “But don’t hurt in silence. I-I can’t handle that.”

  Then he bent, and he pressed his lips to her. No one had ever kissed her quite like that. As if she
were breakable. As if she were infinitely precious.

  “I couldn’t find you fast enough. I’m so sorry.”

  A tear leaked down her cheek. “I didn’t think anyone was going to look for me.”

  He pulled back then. The tenderness on his face seemed at war with the sudden anger in his eyes. “You thought I’d just let you vanish?”

  “You let me go with the FBI.”

  He flinched, and she wanted to pull her words back.

  “I’m a fucking idiot. My priorities are in place now, you can count on that. From here on out . . .” His fingers squeezed hers. “You can count on me.”

  She wanted to smile for him, but she couldn’t. Emma felt exhausted, bone-weary. She just wanted to close her eyes—but she was terrified to do so.

  I don’t want to go back to that place. I don’t want to remember the feel of bone in my hand. Touching teeth in the dark.

  “I was looking for you.” His voice was so deep. “The LOST agents were looking. Jax—he had his people tearing up the town for you, too.”

  He’d pulled in Jax?

  “And I need to call him,” Dean muttered. “And let him know that you’re safe.” He pulled away from her. Reached for his phone.

  He took two steps from the bed, seeming to head for the door.

  “Don’t.” The desperate word slipped from her, and Emma hated that weakness, but it was there nonetheless. Is this what he did to me? “Don’t leave me alone, not just yet.”

  More of that dark anger flared in his eyes. “Baby, I’m not leaving you again. Count on it.” He came back to her. Squeezed her fingers lightly and held the phone to his ear with his left hand. She didn’t even know when he’d gotten Jax’s number. Those two must have sure gotten cozy while she—

  No.

  “She’s at Midway Infirmary,” Dean said. “She’s concussed, but the doctors say she should be fine.” His gaze cut away from hers. “No, we didn’t find Ricker.” A faint pause. “Hell, yes, that sounds good to me.”

  She wondered what sounded good. Jax and Dean working together? That sure shocked her.