Already Lured, page 17
But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t consider it if he got desperate.
Laura swore and raced to the car, grabbing her cell phone as she went. She hit dial, turned on the speaker, and threw it onto the passenger seat so she could drive as she spoke.
“Laura?” Nate’s voice came through the line as it connected.
“Nate, I’m just leaving Callie Scrivener’s place,” Laura said, glancing over her shoulder as she moved back onto the road and started to move forward. “She’s not at home. She traveled away to visit her sister this week. The killer wouldn’t be able to target her.”
“Right,” Nate said. “Goddamnit, we just arrived at where she works. Okay. You’re going to the other place?”
“Yes,” Laura told him. “I’d better give her a call and let her know of the change in circumstances. Maybe we can arrange some backup as well – that patrol car is sounding like a better idea by the second.”
“I’ll make that call and then set off,” Nate said.
“See you there,” Laura replied. The call cut off, and she raced forward until she hit a stoplight. Taking advantage of the lull, she hit redial on the landline she’d called earlier – the one belonging to Clara Brand.
The dial tone rang out. The light changed and Laura surged forward, biting her lip. The tone rang again and again, filling the car.
Then it went to a generic voicemail message, and Laura swore and put her foot down further on the gas pedal.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
He settled in behind the armchair, letting the darkness of the shadows embrace him. It was comfortable down here. The carpet was soft enough to take away the sting of the floor, and the room was warm. He didn’t mind waiting for as long as he needed to wait. Even if he eventually had to steal out away from here and find her in her bedroom, it would be fine.
It was almost a meditative experience, this part. The waiting. He’d done all the planning, all the watching, all the preparation. All that remained now was the final movement. He just had to leap up and put his ligature around her neck and pull, and it would be all over. Another one down.
This house was pretty. Nice. The carpets were soft and the armchair looked new, like the cushions would still be bouncy and supportive, everything comfortable. It was the home of a person who had everything they needed. She was still single, but did that matter? She was obviously doing well in herself. Maybe she didn’t feel the need for a partner yet. She was still young.
She was young, and she was already doing better than he was.
He ducked his head, feeling the simmering rage building inside him again, trying to fight down the growl that wanted to rise inside his throat. All these people. They made him feel sick. They just went on, living their lives, being normal people. Being happy. As though none of it had even happened.
Didn’t they feel the guilt? Didn’t they know they weren’t supposed to survive?
There was a noise on the floorboards overhead and he looked up, his senses tuned in that direction, trying to sense whether she was coming down. Seconds ticked into minutes and there was no further noise. He relaxed back into his ready posture. He would wait a bit longer.
He tasted blood and realized that in the depth of his rage, he must have bitten the inside of his lip right through. He probed the wound with his tongue. It wouldn’t take long to heal. They never did. No matter how much he wanted to hurt himself, it would always heal in the end. Just like the burns on his right side. Just like the slash across his right shin where the door had cut him. Ten years, and the scars were faded to the point that he couldn’t even imagine what they had looked like when they were fresh.
It wasn’t right.
Ten years of trying to make up for it – of trying to find a way to get through the guilt. The memory of his mother’s eyes, wide and white and seeing nothing ever again, still haunted him. It was when he’d realized that the nightmares had dropped down to once a month, not every single night, that the guilt intensified. He was forgetting her. Forgetting the sacrifice she had made for him.
That accident had taken her life, and he’d walked away with scars that he barely even noticed anymore.
How was that in any way right or fair?
And these people, they were all the same. They’d seen death and walked away from it. Their lives should have ended, but they hadn’t. And what was the cost? Whether it was a car accident in which the other driver died, a school shooter who killed the others but missed their mark in one case, a bomb going off in a public place where one or two survived…
They never seemed to think about the people who hadn’t been as lucky.
All of them had carried on with their lives. Brooke Ware got married and found a home, a place to raise future children. Haydn Townsend had run his store so successfully, building relationships with members of the local community, becoming such a pillar of the town that they were probably going to name a street or a building after him now. And Jessika Granger – well, Jessika Granger made him feel sickest of all. Not only had she married, not only had she made her small business a success, but she had also spent her career telling other people not to feel guilt over what they had done.
Every single day, she told people who had survived that it was okay. That they could go on living their lives. That they didn’t have to feel bad.
And every day, he had lived with this guilt and this burning rage, bringing him to his knees, burning down his whole life and anything in it that might ever have brought him happiness.
All of them deserved to die for the lives they had built when they should have been dead.
There was another creak from upstairs, then the sound of footsteps quite clearly coming in his direction. He tensed, shifting his body slightly to be ready. She was coming down. She would be his soon.
As he waited, there was only one thing in his mind beyond the job he had to do. He saw her now, as he always did. He remembered the day the guilt had become too much and he had tried to take his own life.
He remembered the way she had flashed into his mind, the way he had seen her as if he was back there in the wreckage of the car, the way her white eyes had seemed to send him a message.
Don’t die, son. Stay. Stay and make sure that anyone who dares to live when I did not learns the error of their ways.
She hadn’t said a word, but he’d known what she wanted to tell him. Why she had appeared in front of him then.
And he wasn’t going to let his mother down.
There was movement inside the room and he tensed further, his hands almost slippery inside his gloves, the ligature a reassuring presence as he wrapped it tight around his fingers for grip.
She moved through the room with light steps, and then –
The chair creaked as she settled her weight into it.
And he leapt up, the ligature ready, and looped it around her neck, pulling tight immediately, using his weight against the back of the chair to pull it so tight she had no chance of getting away.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Laura knew from the emptiness of the street that she was the first to arrive. There was one car parked out front in the designated space, but she knew that had to belong to Clara. Nate, or the patrol car backup, had not yet arrived.
Laura was on her own, and she couldn’t wait to take action. She had to do something. She had to move.
She got out of the car with a cautious look around, all too aware that if the killer was watching, she was turning herself into an easy target. She kept her hand on her gun as she walked with quick and quiet steps to the front door. It was totally dark now, the only light supplied by the neighboring properties or the glow from one upstairs window.
Laura reached out to knock on the door, her hand hitting it lighter than she had intended and making no sound as she faltered under the weight of a sudden headache, stunning her into pulling the punch –
Laura was inside the house, and so was Clara. She was moving through the dark, but she didn’t appear nervous or even uncertain. She looked determined. Without knowing how, Laura knew this was her logic: that she would go downstairs and sit in her favorite chair without turning the lights on, and anyone who wanted to hurt her would think she was still upstairs, and she would stay safe.
She walked confidently through her own space, knowing exactly where everything was despite the darkness. She didn’t need to turn on the lights. She’d placed everything here where it was. She could walk around this place with a blindfold on and one hand tied behind her back. She walked to her favorite chair and sat down, grabbing a book from the side table and a small reading light.
And the garotte went around her neck, pulling her back against the chair, the string looped into a circle and restricting her throat as her eyes flew open in shock, the light clattering to the floor.
Laura blinked. A throbbing headache launched itself through her temples so hard that she was left gasping for breath. The killer was already inside the house.
The killer was already inside.
She lifted her hand to knock again, properly this time – and then she heard it.
The clattering noise made by a light falling to the floor.
Laura knew what it was. She knew it was the killer. She didn’t have time to mess around knocking and hammering on the door, shouting, trying to get him to stop because he was spooked. This killer wasn’t like that. She had a feel for him now, for his determination. His usual method had been thwarted, so he had changed, adapted. He would take Clara’s life no matter who tried to stop him.
She had to think, and fast.
He was in there. How had he gotten inside?
Laura rushed around the back of the property. He couldn’t have known before he set off that the victim he wanted to attack was not going to be accessible.
There was a gate into the backyard which was hanging open; she pushed through it, recognizing that this must be where the killer had gone before her.
He’d probably planned to get her as she left her home, or at least as she left work earlier in the day. When Laura warned her off, she had ruined that plan. So, he must have gotten inside somehow after the fact.
Which meant that somewhere, there was a door or a window through which she could also enter.
She turned a corner –
And saw it. The back door. There was a neat hole in the glass, right next to the handle. It must have been achieved almost soundlessly with professional tools. Once he had cut the hole, he would have been able to reach inside. He could have turned a switch lock on the door handle itself, or pushed a bolt aside, or just reached for a key hanging inside the door.
Laura reached out and the handle turned when she tried it, opening the door outwards. She ran inside, the small sounds of struggle she could hear as well as her memory of the vision leading her to a room on the right-hand side of the house. She burst inside and saw them: Clara Brand in her chair, standing, dragged up to where she was leaning against the back of the chair itself and wrestling to get the ligature from around her neck. Behind her, still robed in darkness, the killer was there, his hood up to hide his face, his gloved hands pulling the ligature tight.
She reached for her gun by instinct, but the room was dark and the killer was close to his victim. Right behind her, in fact. If she shot now… there was a higher than good chance that she would hit Clara, not the killer. She couldn’t risk that. She couldn’t take a life in the process of attempting to save it. There was only one option.
Laura ran from a standing start and launched herself across the room at the killer.
She threw herself bodily into him, knocking into him hard enough to loosen his grip. Within the rush of a moment they were both on the floor, and Clara was somewhere on the other side of the chair, gasping for breath – wheezing. Laura knew she was free but also that she wouldn’t be much help, and she knew it wasn’t over. The killer recovered from their knock to the floor too fast, getting to his feet and scrambling away from her – back towards Clara.
No. No, Laura couldn’t allow it.
She charged at him again, this time purposely tackling him like they were playing football, aiming herself right at his middle and pushing. He stumbled back the few steps she wanted – stumbled back into the window – the locked window –
The shattering of glass filled the world around her, hundreds of tiny glittering shards exploding around them, for just a moment putting her back into the vision of the car crash she had seen from Haydn Townsend. Then she hit the ground hard, rolling over and over, the thought flashing through her mind that she was grateful Clara had cultivated grass around the side of her house instead of concrete.
But a moment of thought was all it could be. Even as she rolled she was trying to see him, where he had landed. She looked back and saw him, struggling for a minute and then falling again, and she launched herself to her feet to grab him. Before she could do anything he was up and gone, moving back toward the street.
The street – where he would be able to get away.
Laura wasn’t going to allow that, either.
She charged after him. He had taken the brunt of the glass, and the brunt of the fall, too – he was heavier than her, so he had gone down harder. She had the advantage. He made it out onto the front lawn and stumbled slightly, hesitating like he wasn’t sure of where to go, like he couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car.
Laura didn’t waste any time. She launched herself into the air again and took him down, tackling him to the ground, getting him down so she could grab his arms. She reached for her belt –
And remembered at that moment that she had used her handcuffs to restrain Sean Jardine, and never taken them back when they got to the precinct.
The hesitation on her part was enough for the killer to throw her off, making her land on the lawn again, and then he was getting into a position from where he could spring away –
Everything happened so fast then. Laura made to grab for him, but it didn’t work. She was too slow. He was leaping forward, out into the street. And then the headlights swept across both of them, blinding her momentarily.
All she heard was the crunch of the impact.
When she was able to clear her sight enough by blinking rapidly, Laura saw the aftermath. The car had come to a screeching stop, and the doors were opening as Nate got out of one side and Princess out of the other. Their attention was on what they had hit: the killer, now laying prone on the pavement in front of them. He groaned faintly, prompting both of them to rush forward to examine him.
“Nate!” Laura called out, finding her voice weaker than she expected. He turned, saw her, and rushed over, leaving the detective with their suspect.
“Jesus, Laura, what happened here?” he asked.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Inside. He was strangling her already when I got here. In the room with the smashed window.”
“It’s bad!” Princess called out.
“Go,” Laura told Nate, struggling her way up to her feet, finding herself more weary than badly injured. She was gradually becoming aware of small cuts from the glass, bruises from the various impacts – but nothing that would stop her from arresting a killer.
She made her way to where he lay on the street, wheezing breaths coming from his chest. His eyes were wide. His face was smeared with blood from the various cuts he’d gained going through the window. Lifting his hoodie, Laura saw a dark bruise already spreading across his midsection. It was more than possible he had internal bleeding, maybe some damage to internal organs from the hit of the car. It had been going at a good speed.
“It’s over,” he wheezed. He was looking at Laura. Right at her. Like he knew that, ultimately, she was the adversary who had been tracking him down, working against him this whole time. That she was the one he had to be afraid of. “Just let me die.”
Laura looked right back into his eyes and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Thankfully, it was undamaged. She dialed and put it to her ear.
“Hello? Yes – this is Special Agent Frost. Requesting urgent ambulance assistance.”
The killer groaned and closed his eyes with a half-sob, and Laura stood to wait for the red and blue lights to flash their way down the street.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“It’s like the ultimate insult.”
Laura looked up at Nate, bringing her a fresh cup of what could barely be called coffee from the hospital’s machine. “What are you talking about?”
He sat down next to her with a grin. “Well, he was against people with near death experiences. Now we’ve made sure that he survived not just one, but two. He is the thing he hates… twice.”
“That’s true,” Laura said, after a moment of thought. She glanced around at the other people in the waiting room. It was frustrating to be personally able to leave, but stuck waiting for someone else to be finished up. She’d had a bit of disinfectant dabbed on the small cuts left by the glass, and an examination to ensure there was no internal damage. She was fine, in much better shape than she had been after some other recent cases.
“Lawson West,” Nate said aloud, using the name that they had discovered belonged to the killer. “He wasn’t even on our radar. If it hadn’t been for catching him in the act, I have no idea how we would have managed to identify him.”
Laura nodded. “If he had decided to lay low until the heat was off and his victims were no longer being protected, we would have had no way to stop him.”
“Sure, we would,” Nate said, nudging her with his shoulder.
“What?” Laura asked, nonplussed.
“We didn’t catch him because of the book,” Nate said. “We would have had no idea that the book even existed if it wasn’t for you. For what you saw.” He emphasized the word enough that she would know what he meant, in case one of the others sitting in the hospital’s waiting room were listening.
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