Her first thought was Ellington. Maybe he had come back to check on her.

  No, he would have called. And he doesn’t have a key. So how did he get in?

  This was the thought that shook off the last vestiges of sleep. She opened her eyes as she removed the washcloth completely.

  She saw the man, wearing a drama mask. And she saw the gun, close to her head.

  She acted on impulse. She threw up her left elbow, connecting with the man’s arm. The gun went off and she heard a ringing in her left ear at the same moment she felt an intense heat along her temple.

  It took half a second to realize that she had been less than an inch away from death and in that half a second, she brought her left hand up quickly, curled into a U-shape. She struck the man in the throat and he made a gagging noise at once. He did not release the gun but he staggered back…and that was all Mackenzie needed.

  From her lying position on the bed, she did a sort of half-somersault from the mattress, in the direction of the man with the gun. From the floor, she delivered a hard sweep to his ankle and he stumbled, nearly falling. As she did all of this in a very mechanical way, she also noticed that smell again.

  Mildew? Dirt? Is he homeless, too…like so many of his recent victims?

  As she carried out the action, a terrifying thought occurred to her.

  I’m not hearing any of this. I haven’t heard a damned thing since he fired that gun right by my head—a shot I can only assume was meant to go right into my skull.

  As the man stumbled backward against the wall and the clunky air conditioning unit, Mackenzie reached up to the table all of her records and laptop sat on. Her Glock was there, holstered. She grabbed it and as she unholstered the gun, she charged the man, not wanting to give him a chance to rebound. She could not hear him gagging but saw his masked head hunched over; he was clearly still in some sort of pain.

  Maybe I collapsed his trachea, she thought.

  The man surged for the door and opened it. Mackenzie steadied herself, her nerves and the sudden jar from sleep making her shaky. As the man went out the door, she fired off a shot. She watched as the plaster from around the frame splintered, missing him in the shoulder by about two inches.

  She did not hear the shot. Blind panic caused her heart to start thumping erratically. Still, she got to her feet and struck a crouching position. She wheeled around through the doorframe, onto the sidewalk.

  She saw the man about ten feet away. He was facing her way, the gun aimed at her. Mackenzie fired at the same moment she fell back into the doorway. As she hit the floor, she saw the man’s gunshot tear into the still-opened door.

  I’m deaf, she thought. That shot while I was in bed…it was too close. Shit.

  Near tears, she scrambled back toward the door, basically crawling on the ground. She dared another quick peek out of the doorway and saw him running across the parking lot, retreating. She took aim but her arms were trembling too much. Still, she fired. The only good it did was to scare the attacker as he dashed further across the mostly empty lot.

  She let out a scream of frustration, torn between giving chase and calling for help.

  It was not being able to hear that did it. If she went chasing after him and they got into some sort of hunt with one another, the loss of hearing would put her at a massive disadvantage.

  She ran into the room and grabbed her phone. When she pulled up Ellington’s number and called it, she could not hear the ringing. Crying now, she waited five seconds, giving Ellington enough time to answer, and started talking.

  “I’m hoping you’ve answered this,” she said. “He was here. The killer was here and he tried to kill me. Fired a shot for my head and missed. But I can’t hear…the shot was so close…I need you here. He’s on foot, headed west. He left the parking lot about thirty seconds ago. Male in a costume mask, about six feet tall, average build.”

  A thought then occurred to her, one that made her both paranoid and afraid.

  How the hell did he get into my room?

  “I’m going to check the main office,” she said. “Come quick.”

  She ended the call and placed the phone in her pocket. Then, still unable to hear and also unaware of a trail of blood slowly trickling down the left side of her head, Mackenzie sprinted outside, her Glock held down low, and headed toward the office.

  ***

  She knew it was borderline irresponsible to go out into the open with her hearing shot. But she simply could not sit in the motel room and wait for someone else to come save her, either. She figured going to the office to see if her fears were true was a compromise.

  As she neared the door, she kept her eyes on the parking lot ahead of her, making sure the shooter had not decided to return. With the coast clear and no one yet coming to see what the commotion of the gunshots had been about, Mackenzie reached the office door. When she pushed it open, she could tell right away that the news was not good.

  There was fresh blood on the counter and the little pile of takeout menus on the right side of the counter has been knocked askew, some littering the floor. Mackenzie strafed behind the counter and found the clerk who had brewed her a special pot of coffee the night before lying in the floor with two bullet holes in his head, one of which had basically torn away the right side of his head.

  A few of the drawers behind the counter had been pillaged through, one of which contained a collection of keys. She assumed the shooter had come in, demanded to know which room she was in while waving his gun around, and then killed the poor guy.

  Without warning, Mackenzie felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. It was hard to breathe and the world seemed to be spinning far too quickly. She stumbled back to the office door and as she leaned against it, she could blissfully hear something—though it was not a natural sound.

  Rather than the presence of absolute silence, she could now hear a high-pitched ringing in her ears. And while this was beyond annoying and a little scary, she also knew that it was a good sign that the hearing loss was going to be very temporary.

  Getting lucky on all fronts this evening, aren’t you? she thought morbidly.

  As she headed back to her room, a car came speeding into the parking lot. It came in so fast that the back end fishtailed a bit before it came to a stop several feet away from her. Ellington got out and came rushing to her. As he neared her, two police cars came into the lot behind him, their sirens flashing.

  Ellington took her face in his hands and spoke to her. All she could hear, though, was the ringing.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said. “He pulled the trigger right by my head, almost killed me. It’s coming back though. There’s a ringing…but forget that.” She then pointed in the direction. “He went that way. And he killed the desk clerk.”

  Ellington turned back to the cruisers that had come into the parking lot. She saw Fredericks get out of one. He and Ellington spoke to one another and shortly after that, the driver of the other patrol car got back into his car and headed west, in the direction the attacker had retreated to.

  Ellington said something else to her which she did not hear. He took her by the hand and led her back to the room. He eyed the bullet hole in the door uneasily before leading her to the chair beside the table. He then pulled out his phone and typed something into his Notepad app. He showed it to her when he was done.

  You’re bleeding. It’s very little coming from your head. Other than the hearing are you sure you’re ok?

  She nodded. “I’m fine. Just scared the hell out of me. I…I was about a half a second from dying. One more inch…maybe even just half an inch…”

  Ellington started typing again and showed it to her one more time. So this means you can kick ass even in your sleep. Tell me everything that happened.

  She did her best to recount it all, from waking up to the softest sound and thinking it might be him. She was starting to tell him about finding the clerk in the office when Ellington gave her a wait a second gesture. He then reached for his phone, apparently answering a call. He sat down on the edge of the bed and began speaking to someone. He nodded a few times and then looked to Mackenzie, his eyes growing wide as he nodded again. He finished up his conversation and when he did, she was relieved to find that she could hear the slightest murmur of his voice. She could still not make out any distinct words but it was much better than nothing.

  “What is it?” she asked when he ended the call.

  He typed some more and showed her the screen, which read: That was Harrison. Some news. Also have some more that came in from the Belton PD when I was racing here. Really gonna make me type all of this out?

  “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

  As he started, he stopped to go to the door where someone had apparently knocked. When he opened the door, Fredericks entered. They talked for a bit and moment by moment, the words became clearer. It was almost like hearing someone talk from underwater and then getting out of the water with her ears clogged up.

  After a while, Fredericks finished up and headed back out. Ellington said one more thing to him, which Mackenzie could thankfully hear most of. “Just send the calls straight to me,” Ellington said.

  “I can hear again,” she said when Ellington resumed his place on the edge of the bed. “It’s murky but I can make it out. So save yourself the time…don’t type anymore.”

  “Thank God,” Ellington said. “Okay. So here we go…Sam Hudson, the vagrant that appears to be a local that ended up in Utah…he had three previous addresses. Two were in Belton and one was in Elm Branch. While in Elm Branch, he lived in your father’s apartment building from 1982 to 1985.”

  “So that’s another clear connection.”

  “It is. And you can add Jimmy Scotts to it as well. He lived there for all of 1985 before he moved out. All of that information came from the Belton PD. But then Harrison called the PD because they’ve been working great together today. Your father ran that building between June of 1984 and February of 1988.”

  “So the killer is targeting people that lived there while he did?”

  “Seems that way. We’re currently digging for information on Dennis Parks to confirm it. And the guys in Omaha are working hard as hell to ID more of the vagrants.”

  “But Sam Hudson…he had a kid. The kid didn’t live there. He wouldn’t even be born for almost twenty more years.”

  “Maybe he’s gunning for family members, too. If he killed your dad because he happened to be the landlord, he could be coming after you because he knows you’re his daughter.”

  “Or because I was getting close to busting his ass.”

  Ellington nodded. “Okay. So you only rested for about fifty minutes before some psycho tried putting a bullet in your head. How’s the headache?”

  “I don’t even know,” she said. “I’m too on edge about the last twenty minutes or so.”

  “I think you need to lay low. He knows where you are. He knows why you’re here. If he took off on foot, he’s screwed. They’ll find him. This will be over in a few hours.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “No, we don’t. But I’m going to basically demand that you stay put for a while. I’ve already talked to Fredericks about it. He’ll station a few guys outside of the room for you.”

  “I can’t just sit here! He tried to kill me!”

  “And he almost did. You have a headache that seemed to be killing you earlier and your hearing was compromised. All I’m asking is that you take a few hours. Hang out here and rest. And if you start looking through your files and laptop, I’ll personally burn it all myself.”

  “No you won’t.”

  He looked at her with all the sincerity he could muster. “No, I think I would. With the shit you’ve been through these last few days and not knowing where I stood with you…it’s made me appreciate you on a whole new level. So yeah…if I had to destroy all this shit,” he said, nodding toward all of the material on the table, “to keep you safe…yeah, I would.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “I love you,” she said.

  “I know you do,” he said. “And I know how much it kills you to say it. So it’s a good thing I love you, too.”

  She smiled at him and then looked to her watch. “It’s two forty-five right now. I’ll stay here and rest until four thirty. But that’s the best you’ll get from me. And during that time, I expect any updates as they come in.”

  “I can agree to that,” he said. He then kissed her again and pointed back to the bed. “Rest. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  They shared a warm glance as he made his way to the door and then he was gone again. As he closed the door, she noticed two patrol cars parked nose to nose in the parking lot—apparently sent there to keep an eye on her.

  It made her feel like a child but after what she had just been through, she understood the need for it.

  Besides…Ellington was right. She needed to rest. If she was being honest, she probably needed to see a doctor. The weight of the headache still scared her and she had still not wrapped her head around the fact that she had almost died.

  Rest, she thought. That’s not a problem…but there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping now…

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  It was 2:47 when she lay down on the bed and by 2:50, she knew that sleep would be impossible. Still, it was glorious to lie down. She could feel the adrenaline wearing off as her body relaxed. The ringing in her ears came slightly for a moment and then died off. She had to lie down with her head at the foot of the bed to stay away from the hole in the mattress that showed where a bullet had nearly ended her life.

  She kept replaying the scene in her head. She saw the man, slightly perched on the edge of the mattress. He’d apparently been bringing the gun down to her head when she had woken up. She guessed her sudden movement had distracted him just enough to buy her the half a second she needed to save her own life.

  He’d been wearing the costume mask that the vagrants in Omaha had mentioned. She also recalled that they said he’d seemed like a fellow homeless person at first based on the way he had been dressed and seemed to know the area.

  Maybe he’d just been scouting the area out, she thought. If he is indeed killing people that lived in the same apartment building, he’d almost have to do some scouting. But one question remains: why wait so long between my father and Jimmy Scotts? Is there any significance to the timing of it all or has it always been random?

  And what would cause him to make the decision to kill these people? Was there some sort of perceived grievance on his end while he lived there? Or was there an actual event that occurred that he feels he needs revenge for?

  There were too many loose ends to make sense of, especially with the headache and the coming and going of the ringing in her ears. She then went back to another thing that had never really sat right with her: the business card left in Wanda Young’s mouth.

  WELCOME HOME, AGENT WHITE.

  Home.

  It was a strange word in the context the killer seemed to use it. She had never looked back to Belton with any real sort of fondness. She actually hated to think of the place and it had depressed her a bit to come back here even for this case.

  Maybe that had been his own morbidly poetic way of referring to Belton as his home, too. Had he been trying to tell them he was a local, trying to fill in the blanks for them?

  But that smell on him. No…he’s not a local. Not really. He smelled like someone who had been living on the streets. And if he lived on the streets here in Belton, everyone would know him—or about him, anyway.

  Beside her, her cell phone buzzed with a text from Ellington. Found a discarded gun in the woods about a quarter of a mile from the hotel. No prints but recently fired. Seems he ditched it and hid somewhere. Still haven’t found him.

  He killed the clerk, she thought. He was going to kill me. To do that, he’d have to have an escape plan…somewhere to go.

  She considered this, thinking that if Belton had the number of old decrepit buildings as Elm Branch had, he’d have any number of places to hide. But Belton was mostly open fields and forests. Surely he was hiding somewhere in the forest. And if that was the case, they’d have to bring bloodhounds in.

  I’m missing something, she thought. Something easy…

  She pondered it for a while, trying to make all of the pieces fit together into a picture that made at least some sort of sense.

  He lived in my father’s building while my father managed it. So far, it seems as if at least half of his victims did, too. Something happened to him there during that time…something bad enough that he saw fit to kill my father and all of those other people.

  She thought of people living together in a building that small, compact, and close. She focused in on that and it was that train of thought that carried her all the way to 4:30 when the alarm she had set on her phone buzzed at her.

  She sat up slowly and waited for her body to present itself with any complaints. The ringing in her ears was gone. The headache was still there, though it seemed mostly dormant. She did feel very tired but mentally sharp. Apparently, lying in the darkness and picking apart the details of a case that had been plaguing her for years was a great mental exercise—some sort of strange meditation in a way.

  She texted Ellington with a simple message, trying to reestablish herself as in charge. It’s 4:31. I’m done. Where are you?

  He started responding right away. She saw the little dots in the display, telling her that he was responding. At the PD, he answered. Trying to figure out where the gun came from. Come on down. There’s coffee.

  You DO love me, she texted back.

  She headed outside, nodded her thanks to the cops who had been watching over her, and returned to her car. The sun was still shining bright, reminding her that if the headache wanted, it could rear its ugly head at any time. For now, it seemed fine to stay at a low rumble in the back of her head. She figured she’d get as much done as she could before it changed its mind.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20