Already Taken, page 18
Laura dialed her phone furiously as she slammed the front door of Hannah’s home behind herself and jumped into the car, waiting impatiently for it to connect. It did so as she turned her key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life before she’d even put her seatbelt on.
“Agent Frost?”
“Agent Moore!” Laura called out. “No time to discuss—just listen. I need you to head over to the Bluton farmhouse right now. Get a deputy to drive you and bring back-up. Right now!”
“I’m on my way!” To her credit, Agent Moore was already ending the call before Laura threw the phone down. Then all that was left was for Laura to punch the accelerator pedal to the floor, paying no heed to the darkness or the uneven country roads as she sped as fast as she dared toward Maria Bluton.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Laura pulled up at the Bluton farm and leapt out of the car, leaving the engine idling, not wanting to waste even the moment that it would take to turn it off. She raced toward the front door in the darkness, almost tripping over a loose stone on the path. The house was silent, but the kitchen light was on. That and her headlights were the only illumination around.
There was no time to waste on knocking and waiting politely for Maria to answer the door. Laura tried it and found it locked, then raced around to the side in the direction of the lights, thinking she could get Maria’s attention through the kitchen window. There was a door round there, too. Laura ran toward it—
And stumbled again, this time hitting the ground as she stumbled over something lying there in her way. Her hands groped for it blindly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness enough to make out a long shape as her fingers closed on it. The smooth metal was a familiar shape, the weight a known one when she lifted it.
A shotgun.
She should have been wearing gloves; maybe it was evidence. But it was too late now. She’d touched it, even the trigger. Useless for evidentiary value now. She kept her grip on the barrel firm, taking it with her as she stood and turned in a circle, straining her eyes for some sense of movement and her ears for a sound. All she could hear was her own engine rumbling quietly behind her. Damn. She should have turned it off.
Laura turned back to the kitchen door and fumbled with it, finding it locked as well. At least that was good. If Maria was inside, she was being sensible. But the discarded shotgun was giving her a sense of unease that crept all the way down her spine as she pounded heavily on the glass of the door, trying to get Maria’s attention. She waited a moment and then did it again.
Nothing.
The night was almost silent, except for her damn rental car.
Laura blew out a heavy breath, then began to race around the side of the house, her eyes searching all directions as she went. Somewhere out here, there was a woman who was in danger.
Laura hoped beyond words that she wasn’t about to stumble over her corpse.
She made it almost a three-sixty around the house when she heard the scream.
Laura froze for just one moment, her whole body going stiff with fear, all her senses straining to pinpoint the sound. There was a small copse of trees, the beginnings of a wood, right behind the home on the final side, the one not far from where she had parked her car, at a distance of maybe five hundred feet. That was where the scream had come from. She was sure of it.
Laura had no time to let fear rule her. She had to move. It was the only way she could help to save a life. That was her job—the duty she had sworn to complete when she signed up for this.
It didn’t mean her heart didn’t pound, her veins didn’t freeze, her mind didn’t flash into fight or flight mode immediately.
It just meant that, as she threw herself headlong toward the trees, she chose fight.
Laura only had a few brief and blissful moments of that open view on either side of her, that clear sight, until she plunged into the trees and the cover of darkness. It was like running headlong into pure night. The trees shaded the light from the moon, which was strong enough to illuminate her path when it was out from behind the clouds. But it was drifting under cover and out of it, a light wind pushing the clouds across it, and when it was covered it was blacker than tar under those trees.
Laura paused a moment, getting her bearings. Hoping her eyes would adjust more. If she lit up a flashlight, she would give her own location away, make herself a target. She might even lead the killer right to Maria, if she wasn’t already dead.
She shoved the shotgun through the back of her belt, drawing her own gun instead. It was lighter, easier to run with, easier to aim at closer distances. In here, between the trees, there wasn’t much room to maneuver. If she did come across the killer, it was going to be fast and unexpected. It was going to be close.
Laura couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t waste any more time. Even though she could barely see much more than the few trees around her, Laura plunged further into the darkness of the woods, fighting her way through branches that threatened to snatch at her clothes and raise roots that threatened to trip her. She had no way of knowing if she was going in the right direction, only her memory of the scream and the rough area it had come from. She was relying on luck, on the possibility of a vision, on something, anything. All she knew for sure was that she had to keep going.
Maria, Maria, Maria—the name raced through her head as she fought her way forward, all too aware of how much noise she was already making as she crunched twigs underfoot and snapped them off branches as they caught on her FBI windbreaker. She wanted to call out the name, to tell the woman she was coming. To let her know that help was at hand.
But she couldn’t give away her position so easily. Not without putting herself—and the very rescue she was attempting—at risk.
She was making too much noise as it was. Every snapped twig could be the one that gave her away. She wasn’t trained in moving quietly through woods like this, and even if she was, in the dark it would be next to impossible. The only thing she could hope was that it would be the same for the killer, that he wouldn’t hear her over the noise he was making—
She stopped dead, realizing how stupid she was being. All she had to do was listen. Stop making noise of her own, and listen.
Laura strained her ears, looking around, her eyes as wide as she could make them even though it wouldn’t help her see anything in the near-complete darkness. She listened. Just listened. Her own heavy breathing from her run, her heart pounding in her ears, the rustling of the breezes through leaves that were dry and dying—
There!
Laura turned toward the cracking noise she’d heard, forcing her body forward with all the strength she had, racing right through a tightly grown pair of trees whose branches interlocked. She felt the branches whip at her clothes, catching her hair in its ponytail, scraping over the bandage on her hand and threatening to tear it off. She thought she’d heard something else. Something that put even more fire into her steps, even more speed in her reckless headlong approach.
The quiet whimper of a woman’s voice.
There was a chance that Maria was still alive.
Laura raced toward the sound, and she burst out into a small open clearing between the trees just as the moon came out from behind the clouds, leaving her a full view of the scene in front of her—
It was like a tableau before her eyes, her senses so heightened with the adrenaline surging through her veins that she took it all in at a single glance and understood everything.
There was the killer, a man she’d never seen before. He wore dark clothing, shrouding his face in a hood, a look that combined with the bloodied scythe he held to create a chilling image. A vision of Death himself. He looked at Laura as she emerged from the trees, his eyes swinging around, and she saw that he had a facial structure she knew. He was clearly related to Allan McLean—the same dark hair and eyes, the same long nose, the same mouth. He was younger, though. Maybe in his early or mid-twenties.
Maria Bluton was on the ground in front of him, struggling to crawl backwards, trying to get away from him. Her leg was bleeding heavily from a cut that had slashed through her jeans, the fabric already starting to drip, stained red from the wound downward. The ground was getting soaked with it, splashes sinking into the soil with every movement she made.
With a flash, Laura saw it all. The sickle ready to sweep down and harvest her, almost like she was an ear of corn ready to be slashed in half. The killer, his victim, the fact she was so close to losing her life. With a flash, she had her gun pointing in the right direction, aiming right at the killer’s head, the range close enough that she wasn’t at all concerned about not being able to hit him.
But with a flash, the killer, too, had seen her—taken it all in—and reacted. In the same moment she brought her gun to bear on him, his sickle slashed through the air toward Maria’s neck, freezing just the moment before it cut her a second smile to match her husband’s.
He stared at Laura. She stared back. On the ground between them, Maria sobbed once, then froze too, her neck having touched the sharp blade with the outward breath.
If she shot him, he was likely to cut her neck, the curved blade severing her arteries even as he fell.
If he cut her neck now, she would shoot him, killing him where he stood. They both knew that there was no chance she would miss at this distance.
They had themselves a stand-off.
“Well,” the killer said. “What now?”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
“Now, you stop,” Laura said, simple, authoritative. Somehow, despite her headlong run through the forest, despite the adrenaline and the fear, she kept her voice level and calm. The hand pointing her gun at his head did not shake. She had trained for this—not in the Academy, but in all the years since, every chase, every confrontation.
Every killer she had taken down.
This one had to be just the same as the others. There was no other option for her. Laura wouldn’t accept the death of one more person at the hands of this man.
“Stop?” he repeated. His own voice was surprisingly level, too. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Hysteria was sometimes the way with killers who were caught in the act. Anger, snarling, aggression. Sometimes, abject fear at the fact that they had been caught. But this one—he was cool. There was maybe a little desperation under his tone, but not as much as she would have expected. It was almost as though he had known this moment would come, sooner or later. Planned for it. “I can’t stop. You don’t understand. I have to do this.”
“How could you possibly have to do it?” Laura asked. “You’re taking someone’s life. There’s never a good reason for that.” Inwardly she knew that there were people, even in her own organization, who would disagree with her. Even her boss, Division Chief Rondelle, might frown at her for saying it.
There were times when you needed to kill. To save a life. Some would argue, to punish those who had taken the lives of others.
There was a strong possibility that if he didn’t back down, Laura was going to have to shoot him herself. She would do what she could to avoid it—but not at the cost of Maria’s life. Never at that cost.
“I have to,” he said. There was a simplicity to his tone, a genuine belief that could not be shaken. A feeling that the reason should have been obvious, almost. On the ground between them, Maria whimpered again. “My ancestor commands me. Who am I to deny her justice after all these years? My own blood?”
Blood—Laura was all too aware of how much of it Maria was losing. They needed to end this sooner rather than later, one way or another. Laura needed to get her to a hospital. She would need stitches. Maybe, by the time she got there, a transfusion.
“You know that you’re related to all of them, don’t you?” Laura asked, her voice low. “Not just the survivors. The victims, too. You’re all blood. Why make yourself as bad as Ebediah Michaels was, all that time ago?”
He snarled then, a dark look coming over his face at last. “I’m not as bad as Ebediah,” he said. “I’m not. I’m balancing the scales. Restoring justice. Taking the lives of people who should never have been here in the first place. He should not have been allowed to live, to thrive, to father all these generations since.”
“That doesn’t make it their fault,” Laura argued. “Do you think these people asked to be born as they were? That they wanted to be the descendants of a killer? They’re innocent. Faultless. You’re taking lives for no reason—for an injustice committed so long ago that barely anyone remembers.”
“She remembers,” he said, his voice a sharp snap in the night. “She’s trapped here. Did you know that? Trapped by the fact that he got to live while her family did not. She had to spend the rest of her life without them. Had to grow old knowing she was the only one left—orphan, cousinless, not a single blood relative left other than her own children.”
“And him,” Laura reminded him. “Ebediah and his offspring. They were her blood, too.”
He shook his head hard, like he was trying to dislodge a fly buzzing around his face. “No,” he muttered. “No, I’m not listening. I won’t let her change my mind. She’s not going to sway me from you.”
Talking to himself. Never a good sign. If his mind was unbalanced like that, Laura knew that Maria was in even more danger. If he wouldn’t act rationally, they could be making the wrong gamble here. Maybe she should just shoot.
But if she did, she risked the blade coming up and taking Maria’s life as it did so.
As a mother herself, Laura thought of Maria’s children, already left without a father, and shuddered.
“These people can’t be held responsible for something that happened almost two hundred years ago any more than you can,” she said. “Why should this burden fall on you? It’s not your fault you were born into this bloodline, either. Why should you have to give up your life for her?”
His eyes snapped onto her face from where they had trailed down to Maria. “I’m not giving up my life,” he said, almost as though he was injured by the accusation.
“Of course you are,” Laura told him. “You think you’re going to walk away from this unscathed? We know who you are. Not just me. Others, too. The FBI. The local sheriff. We found you here by tracing your movements. We can do it again.”
He frowned. It was a lie, but he didn’t know that. It must have sounded believable for the way he faltered.
“Anyone would do what I did, in my position,” he said. “I had to.”
Laura realized with a growing sense of horror what his particular brand of self-deception was. They all had it, to some extent. Some killers believed they were so clever they would never be caught. Others knew they would go out in a hail of bullets and fancied it would turn them into a folk hero. This one—he truly believed he was going to get away with it. He must have pictured a courtroom, a jury of his peers all putting their hands up in the air and delivering a “not guilty” verdict. Like something out of a movie, deciding that even though he was clearly the killer it was so justified that he did not deserve punishment,
She didn’t even think she had time to convince him he was wrong.
There was a sound somewhere nearby—near but not too near—a kind of rustling. Maybe an animal.
Maybe not.
“What’s your name?” Laura asked, to distract him. She risked him figuring out that she had been lying earlier, but right now what she really wanted to do was to keep him talking while she figured this out. Maria was bleeding out—but she would do it a lot quicker if he moved that scythe in the wrong direction.
“Arthur McLean,” he said.
“Allan’s your… what? Cousin?” she asked. There was something moving between the shadows of the trees behind him. A darker shape amongst all the dark shapes. Laura tried very hard not to let herself look, in case he turned, keeping it in her peripheral vision only.
He blinked. “You know Allan?” For the first time, she noticed some uncertainty in his voice. He muttered to the side then, as if talking to someone else again. “No, I know, I’m not letting her distract me. It’s just, if she shoots me I won’t be able to carry on and do the rest. I’m doing this for you.”
“I spoke to Allan earlier,” Laura said, allowing some amusement to bleed into her voice. “I actually thought he was the one behind all of this, for a few moments. I realize now how wrong I was.”
“Allan had nothing to do with this,” he said quickly, forcefully. “It was just me and her, no one else. There’s no reason to drag anyone else into it.” Behind him, Laura could make out the faint glow of auburn hair hit by the moonlight. Agent Moore, stepping carefully out toward the open space of the clearing.
“Hmm,” Laura said, pretending not to notice, even though her heart was racing faster and faster in her chest. “But they will be dragged in, won’t they? This is about genetics. Everyone related to you will be under scrutiny. If not from us and the police, then certainly the world’s media. A lot of people are going to have a lot of questions.”
“That’s not what I—” Arthur began, but then looked around quickly, and Laura cursed under her breath. He moved the blade so fast she couldn’t do anything about it, clearly in response to the sound that she had also heard above his words—a crunch of another broken twig. Her finger twitched on the trigger of her gun but then she saw the blade hesitating at Agent Moore’s neck and she stopped, unable to make a move again. On the ground, Maria stayed frozen, staring at everything in abject terror, her leg still bleeding out.
A different stand-off this time.
“Backup?” Laura asked quickly, needing to communicate with Agent Moore fast and get the reaction she wanted. There was a plan forming in her mind—a sketch of a plan only—an if he does this, then maybe…
“Behind me in the trees,” Agent Moore said, her voice a strained gasp. She had frozen like a deer in the headlights with the scythe poised at her neck, the cruelly sharp blade curving around from one side and cradling her, the long edge of it pointing out across her other shoulder. Poised to slice her down in an instant. There was a thin bead of blood already running down across her collarbone where he had moved too fast to fully control the trajectory.
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