“I was starting to think you’d OD before we could have any fun.”
Ronnie’s temples were throbbing. Her heart was racing.
The dark blur moved around her, skirting the metal table. “Sorry for the bruises. I’m afraid I had to drag your body inside. I wasn’t exactly gentle on the stairs.”
Her right wrist was throbbing. She suspected it was broken.
“But I’m sure, Dr. Thomas, you can understand that, sometimes, a little pain is necessary.”
Ronnie squinted, trying to see more, but the light was too bright and the attacker was too far back.
Then she felt a light stroke on her arm. Just two inches below her elbow.
“Pain is necessary. In order to get things just as they should be.”
She screamed behind the tape but the sound was muffled.
The knife sliced into her. Cut number one.
“Try not to struggle too much. It’s very important that I get this part just right.”
She wasn’t just going to lie there and let her body be filleted. But when she tried to twist, she found that her muscles weren’t cooperating. It wasn’t just the ropes holding her down. The fentanyl hadn’t fully worn off.
Another slice. This one deeper. Longer.
“That was a good one…”
A scream echoed in Ronnie’s mind.
And the knife came down again.
The cops weren’t used to turning their own turf into a crime scene. But this time, it was exactly what they had to do. Behind the death rooms, the parking lot was swarming with police. Dane saw Mac crouching near Ronnie’s Jeep, and the guy’s face…
His partner had to be close to breaking on the inside.
Hell.
Mac glanced up and saw Dane and Katherine. He headed toward them.
“Katherine, did you get a phone call?” Mac demanded. “He called you when he took Savannah Slater and Amy Evans—did the bastard call when he took my Ronnie?”
Katherine shook her head.
Dane didn’t point out that Valentine hadn’t called when Trent Lancaster had been killed. He knew that Mac was using the phone call as a sign of hope. If they got the call, it meant Ronnie was still alive.
If they didn’t…
Mac swallowed. “We found Ronnie’s glasses. Smashed. Right over there.” He pointed toward the metal door that led into the building. “I’m thinking she saw her Jeep, saw the tire, and tried to get back in the building.”
Dane moved toward that door. With his gloves on, he pulled on the handle.
The door wouldn’t open.
“The stupid sonofabitch is stuck again.” Mac’s voice vibrated with fury. “I told maintenance again and again that the lock kept catching when the door was shut. If she’d just been able to get through that damn door…”
“I’m sorry,” Katherine whispered.
Mac flinched.
The way those two were acting, they were already burying Ronnie. “She’s not dead,” Dane snarled, needing to chase away the fear and defeat from his friend’s eyes. Mac had to be stronger than this.
Mac’s head jerked up. His eyes narrowed on Dane. “I checked the logs. Before I called you, she’d been missing for over an hour.” He yanked a hand over his face. “We were supposed to meet up, but with the case, I wasn’t gonna be able to make it. I-I tried to get her on the phone. When I couldn’t, I got worried—so fucking worried…” His words trailed away.
If she’d been missing for an hour before then…shit. Valentine would’ve had plenty of time to patch himself up from the wound he’d gotten—especially if it had just been a flesh wound—and get to Ronnie. The bastard was playing them.
“Just how long,” Mac demanded, “do you think it’s gonna take him to put his knife in her heart?”
“Usually at least four hours,” was Katherine’s quiet response. “That’s what it took him before, in Boston.”
Dane grabbed his arm. “She’s alive. We just have to find her.”
The lines on Mac’s face were deeper. His eyes wild. “How?” Fear cracked the word. “The crime techs have been crawling all over this lot. They aren’t finding anything.”
“Video surveillance,” Dane said, thinking fast.
“That camera has been out of commission for three weeks,” Mac said, his shoulders slumping. “Ronnie left after the shift change. No one was out here. Captain had ordered all hands out to the Oakland scene. No one saw a damn thing.”
Dane’s phone rang. He yanked it out, not bothering to look at the caller ID. “Black.”
A woman’s scream echoed on the line.
His blood turned to ice. Then he flipped his phone around and stared at the ID—the call was coming from Ronnie’s phone.
The bastard wasn’t making his before-death call to Katherine this time.
“Let her go,” Dane roared.
Mac’s eyes widened. “Ronnie!”
The scream on the line choked away.
Her phone. Dane mouthed the words. Mac’s head jerked and he hurried away, immediately yelling for the tech team to put a track on Ronnie’s phone. They hadn’t been able to track it while it was turned off, but now they could hit the cell towers and try to get a lock on the signal.
“Don’t kill her,” Dane said, lowering his voice and talking quickly now. “Let Dr. Thomas go. Just leave her and walk away…”
Laughter. The sound was grating. He was clearly using a voice distorter. Then he spoke. “She’s not my usual type.” The voice was as distorted as the laughter. “But I was feeling pretty pissed at you fucking police, so I decided to get some payback.”
Mac huddled with the techs. They’d triangulate that signal. They’d find her.
“Why else would you call me if you didn’t want me to find you? You want us to stop you.”
Silence. No denial.
“So just save us all some time and tell us where you are.”
“It’s not your turn yet. Don’t worry, you’ll be dying soon.”
The line cut away.
“Dane?” Katherine touched his arm.
He stared at Katherine. “He’s hurting her,” he said in a whisper. He didn’t want Mac to hear.
“We’ve got Ronnie!” Mac was too busy yelling to hear anything that Dane said. Dane spun and saw Mac rushing toward him.
“The techs tracked her! The signal came from around Fifty-Fourth and Millway!”
He knew Millway was filled with run-down and vacant houses. The perfect place to dump a body.
“We’re searching every house there!” Dane shouted to the men who were jumping to obey him. “Every single one!” The DA was there, standing in the background. He could work out any warrant issue. “Dr. Thomas is one of our own, and we’re bringing her in alive!” Dane still didn’t mention her screams. He just turned with the crowd and hurried toward his car. Katherine was with him every step of the way.
Every man and woman there knew Ronnie’s life was on the line. They had to find her.
Before her screams were forever silenced.
“They’re coming.”
The smell of blood clogged Ronnie’s nostrils. Her blood.
The phone was on the table beside her.
“I have to move quickly. There’s no time to waste.”
The knife lifted.
“I’ll be long gone when they find your body.”
She wasn’t ready to die. She and Mac…they had plans. They’d talked about getting a house together, and one day maybe even having a kid.
I don’t want Mac to find my body.
Ronnie tried to talk behind the duct tape but could still only manage weak grunts. The long, terror-filled scream that had ripped through the room moments before—
It hadn’t been hers.
It had come from the crazy bitch with the knife.
Because the voice distorter was gone now. And even though she couldn’t clearly see the killer, Ronnie could hear the woman perfectly.
Not Valentine.
> “As if I’d let the victims actually talk.” A low laugh came from the killer. “They might give the game away that a woman was holding them, not Valentine.”
Now she understood why fentanyl had been in the victims’ blood. Because a woman had been taking them, and the killer had needed to disable her victims.
She couldn’t charm and seduce the way Valentine had in Boston.
Not fucking Valentine.
But she was about to die, and no one else would learn the truth.
The knife had just started to descend toward Ronnie’s heart when she heard it. The faintest creak of a door opening. The bitch froze.
“They can’t be here,” the killer whispered. “Not yet…”
Someone was there. Hope exploded inside Ronnie, making her light-headed.
Or maybe the feeling was just due to the blood loss.
She didn’t care. She just needed help. She tried screaming, but her mutters barely broke through the tape.
The bitch had spun around. She had her knife in her hand, and she was heading toward the stairs. As she stalked away, Ronnie started struggling with the ropes once more. The drug had worn off more, but because of her injuries, her arms were nearly useless.
But with blood coating her wrists, maybe she could just turn her hands and slide out of the ropes.
She didn’t see the bitch anymore. The woman had gone up the stairs.
A faint breeze blew over her skin.
Goose bumps rose on her flesh. There’d been no breeze before.
She could smell fresh air over the cloying scent of her blood.
More tears filled her eyes.
Then a hand pressed against her cheek. It was gloved. The hand wiped away her tears.
Ronnie jerked.
“Shh…” It was a soft rumble of sound. “I’m not here to hurt you,” a man’s rumbling voice said.
Then, squinting, she saw the flash of a knife, and knew his words for the lie they were.
Valentine?
“What did the killer say?” Katherine asked as they sped toward Millway.
Dane’s hands had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He kept his eyes on the road as he answered, “He was just jerking us around.” Jerking me around.
“Are you sure he has Ronnie? Are you sure she’s still alive?”
The cop cars weren’t going in with sirens wailing. It was the same approach they’d tried when looking for Amy Evans. Just as before, they were afraid they’d spook the guy. And if he got spooked, he’d kill.
“Dane, are you sure?” Katherine pressed.
He told her what he hadn’t told the others. “She screamed. The dead don’t scream.”
He could feel Katherine’s stare on him. “He’s luring you to the scene, just like before. It’s all just like before.”
It had better not end the same as before. Mac would shatter at the sight of Ronnie’s body.
“Why did he call you? He’d been calling me.” Her voice was confused. “Why switch now?”
“Probably because he knows that we’ve been monitoring your phone line. We’ve been preparing for the call. Maybe he thought it would take us longer to track him this way.” Plus, the prick wanted to taunt me and get in my head to piss me off.
He had.
“We won’t be too late,” he said. “We won’t be.”
Ronnie was smart. She was strong. She knew what was coming. So use that, Ronnie. Distract the bastard. Just buy us some time.
The ropes fell away from Ronnie’s wrists. Tears were running down her cheeks because it felt like a thousand needles had just jabbed into her fingertips.
“She tied you too tight.” His voice was angry. “Fucking amateur hour.”
Part of her was terrified. Shaking. Screaming on the inside.
The knife sliced away the rope at her ankles. “You’re a very lucky woman, Dr. Thomas.”
She wasn’t feeling so lucky right then.
“If your glasses hadn’t been smashed and left back in that parking lot, I’m afraid you’d be experiencing an entirely different ending right now. I couldn’t have you seeing my face.”
She turned her head, making sure not to look toward the end of the table.
He laughed softly. “Even if you turned my way, how much would you see? I’ve done my research on you. Genius mind, but truly shitty eyesight.”
Then he was reaching for her right arm. She flinched when he curled his fingers around her wrist. “I’m sure you realize,” he said softly, “that she cut you too deeply here. If you don’t stop that blood flow, you could die. Do you want to live, Dr. Thomas?”
Mac’s image flashed in her mind. She nodded.
“Then you’ll get off this table. You’ll walk straight ahead, seven feet. Seven feet. You’ll reach up to your left. There’s an old window there. I took the liberty of leaving it open for you.” He was pulling her to her feet. Holding her when her knees wanted to buckle. “I even put a box there so you could stand on it and reach the window.”
He shook her. “Focus. The drugs are still in your system, so you may have trouble getting out on your own. You have to fight them, understand? Push with everything you’ve got. Get out of that window. Get away from this house. Fucking crawl if you have to do it.”
She would. She’d do anything to survive.
And she still wasn’t looking at his face.
He brought his head in closer to her. Ronnie squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear creaks from upstairs.
The bitch was coming back.
“Do you know who I am?” He asked in Ronnie’s ear. The light whisper of his breath sent a shiver of pure terror through her.
She didn’t move.
His gloved hand was over her deepest wound. Applying pressure.
Helping me.
“You’re so smart, of course, you know…”
She only saw blackness. Her eyelids were squeezed so tightly together that they hurt.
“If you tell anyone about me, Dr. Thomas, I will find you. There is no police officer who can protect you. No lover who will keep you safe. I will find you, and then I’ll make this little torture scene look like a fond memory in comparison with what I’ll do to you.”
The promise was unmistakable.
“Go forward seven feet. Climb on that box. Push your body through that window. Don’t look back, and don’t fucking tell anyone about me.”
She nodded frantically, willing to promise anything, do anything, if she could just get away.
“Because if you tell them, I’ll come for you.”
He released her. Ronnie took one trembling step forward. He caught her when her legs gave way. “Crawl if you must,” he reminded her, gritting the words.
She would. But when she heard another creak from upstairs, her head jerked toward the sound. Even if Ronnie escaped now, would that bitch just track her? Kill her?
“Don’t worry about her,” he said, and she could almost hear the smile in his words. “She’ll be dead. I owe her some pain.”
Then he released her. Ronnie hit the floor, and pain burst in her kneecap. The old wound had never healed right, not since it had been battered in an accident with a drunk driver. But she didn’t care about how fucked her knee had just become.
She started to crawl.
Seven feet. Just seven feet.
His footsteps pounded behind her. He was heading away.
Her bloody fingers touched the box. She hauled herself up. Climbed. Fought her way to the window. Fresh air hit her face.
And, behind her, she heard the sound of a scream.
Dane jumped from his car. There were five houses on this dead-end street. Old houses, abandoned, boarded up, and left to rot. Big, overgrown fields sat around each house. Nature was trying to take back the area. Trying and succeeding.
But Dane knew a construction company was scheduled to come into the area soon. They were going to bulldoze all the houses in just a few weeks. Until then, no one would be there.
&
nbsp; The killer had chosen well.
But not well enough.
Katherine was behind him, guarded by two uniforms. Mac was leading a team toward the first house.
Not that one.
The first house was too obvious. Too easy. Dane’s gaze darted to the second house. The third.
The fourth had dead roses near the door. Twisting roses that had withered in the winter.
“It’s the fourth house,” Dane snarled into his headset. He’d grabbed the headset and hooked up as fast as he could moments before. They were all linked now, communicating with each other as they searched.
He yanked out his gun and ran toward that fourth house. His attention was on the doors. The boarded-up windows and—
Someone was coming toward him. Crawling from the house.
Dane took aim with his gun. “New Orleans PD!” He yelled. “Put your hands up!”
But no hands came up into the air.
The figure slumped down even farther in the overgrown grass. Footsteps raced behind him as the others closed in.
“Identify yourself!” Dane demanded even as he yanked out his flashlight with his left hand.
The light fell on a tangled mass of red hair. Hunched shoulders. Bloody fingers digging into the earth.
Ronnie.
He ran to her. “I’ve got the doc!” he shouted, and oh, damn, she looked bad.
Carefully, he rolled her over.
Other cops approached, shining their lights on her.
He saw that her mouth was covered with duct tape. Blood was everywhere. Soaking her shirt. Drenching her clothes.
“Ronnie?” He grabbed the tape and carefully pulled it away. “Where is the bastard?” Dane whispered to her even as he saw the blood pumping from her sliced arms.
“Get the medic!” he yelled before Ronnie could speak.
Her body was shuddering against his. Trembling so hard.
“Ronnie?” Mac was there, his voice broken. Her head jerked toward him. Then she was crying and pulling away from Dane as she lunged for Mac.
Mac’s arms closed around her. He lifted her up against him and held her tight. “You scared me to death.”
But then her shudders deepened. Not just trembles. Convulsions. “Medic!” Dane yelled again.