Take over what? She had no idea where to go with what they had any more than he did. How did you deal with a guy who ignored the usual laws of being human? “I’ll guess this scene is clean. The doll is the clue, but what we do with it, I have no idea right now. Nick? You think of any connections at all the doll might have?”
The frustration on his face was apparent. “Not off the top of my head, no. It might not have any connection at all.”
Shelby stepped into the room then, looking a little windblown. Jackie realized the speed with which she had arrived defied reason. “Something to do with doll making, perhaps?”
Gamble snorted. “That would narrow it down to every craft store in the Chicago area, not to mention any community groups that do any of that stuff.”
They would never cover those kinds of possibilities within the day or so they likely had. There had to be something though. Standing around waiting for a killer to kidnap a little girl so he could drain her blood was unthinkable. “We have nothing else right now, so at least it’s a start. The guys in the Geekroom might be able to make some kind of connection for us.” She needed to contact them ASAP to find out if there had been anything new in the past day.
“And,” Gamble added, “you need to get downtown and get clearance to be doing this. I went out on a limb getting you over here, Jack. So go sign whatever papers you have to before you put my ass in a sling.”
Shit. That meant talking to Tillie. “I will, don’t worry. I’m going to want updates every hour, and if we don’t have anything definite by five, I’m taking this to the six-o’clock news.”
Gamble winced. Shelby smiled in agreement, and Nick looked resigned to the obvious publicity it would make. They had no choice. A public warning just might give whatever little girl Drake had picked out a chance.
“Boss may not like that one too much,” Gamble said.
Jackie shrugged. “He’ll deal.”
The annoying chirp of a cell phone interrupted them, and Nick pulled his out of his pocket, cocking an eyebrow as he looked at the screen. Even before it reached his ear, Jackie heard what sounded a lot like someone throwing up.
“Cynthia?” Nick said, looking worried. “Cyn, you okay?” The sound of shattering glass had him pulling the phone away from his ear. “Shit. We need to leave. Now.”
Shelby stepped up to him and grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?”
Nick shoved the phone into his pocket and was already moving toward the door. “No idea. Cyn’s in trouble.”
“Need our help?” Gamble said.
“Maybe,” Nick called out over his shoulder. He was already running for the door.
By the time Jackie caught up to them, Shelby was on her BMW. Nick was getting into the driver’s side of the Durango. He motioned to her to hurry up. “Give me your keys.”
For a second, Jackie hesitated. She’d never handed the keys over to anyone other than Laurel. She didn’t trust anyone else to drive her around, but the look of panic on Nick’s face pushed the trepidation aside, and she tossed her keys to him before getting into the passenger side.
“Where we going?”
“Not far. Buckle up.”
He gunned the engine and didn’t even bother backing out. The Durango spun its wheels for a moment and then churned up grass and mud as it sped across the lawn toward the street.
Not far was a twenty-minute ride through hell. They followed Shelby, catching up to and losing her several times as she dodged around traffic, jumped several sidewalks, and occasionally defied the laws of physics. Jackie braced her feet on the floorboard and held on to the handle over the door for dear life. The flashing light on top did little good, as Nick was going far too fast for anyone to notice in time to pull over to the side of the road. For the first time, she realized how Laurel must have felt during the few chases they had been on together. She swore never to take being a passenger for granted again.
Sliding around a corner into a quiet neighborhood of mostly 1930s bungalows, Nick finally eased off the gas as they approached the end of the street. “Call nine-one-one.”
Jackie then realized the source of his order, a black plume of smoke rising over the treetops up on their left. She barely got the call through before Nick bounded over the curb and slid to a halt in the front yard of a house in chaos.
“This is FBI Agent Rutledge. We have a house fire at… Nick, where are we?”
“Thirteen-fifty Applewood!” he yelled at her. He was already out the door.
Jackie repeated the address and left the phone in the seat of the truck before leaping after him.
Shards of glass were scattered across the front lawn, the remnants of the living room window having been blown out. Flames licked at the sides while a curtain of black smoke whipped upward into the sky. Shelby’s motorcycle lay on its side in the grass, and Jackie ran around it, heading for the front door, where Nick shoved Shelby aside and kicked it in off its hinges. He started to move in but immediately turned and ducked when a piece of furniture, an end table by the look of it, bounced off his back and went tumbling into the yard.
Jackie drew her Glock and crouched as she approached the blown-out window, but the haze of smoke made it difficult to see what was going on inside.
“Stay back!” Shelby yelled. “The little fucker is on a rampage.”
“Is Cynthia in there?” she wondered.
Nick turned and pointed a finger at her. “Stay here. Don’t come in unless I say so.” His finger shifted to Shelby. “You, too!” With that, he assumed a defensive crouch and darted inside.
What the fuck? Since when did the law remain outside while the civilian entered a potentially lethal situation? Shelby looked at Jackie and rolled her eyes in Nick’s direction. She didn’t need to say anything for Jackie to know what Shelby intended. Jackie returned the nod and ran up next to the door, gun held at the ready. With Shelby’s second nod indicating her readiness, they rolled around the edge of the doorway and entered the house.
Smoke clouded the initial view looking from the entry into the living room, but Jackie didn’t even have time to react to the box of CDs that came zipping out of the gloom and caught her solidly in the thigh.
“Son of a bitch!” She leaped across the hardwood floor to take cover against the edge of the archway leading into the room. Able to see inside more clearly, the scene froze her in her tracks before she could follow behind the hunched-over form of Nick.
A tornado had spawned in the middle of Cynthia’s living room. Every loose item in the room, from vases to books and every possible form of decorative knickknack, whirled about the room with deadly speed. Fire was beginning to take over the ceiling above the front window, and an overstuffed chair beside it was spewing forth dark, acrid smoke.
In the middle of the floor between the window and the fireplace on the far wall, two figures, pale and translucent, were engaged in a fight. It looked like a poorly functioning hologram was playing out the fight scene from a movie. One figure wore a derby hat with a long trench coat and had the smaller, far slighter figure in a choke hold. Jackie watched the smaller one stomp on the arch of the derby man, and he made a silent yelp of pain before letting go. The figure turned, and Jackie’s breath froze in her lungs.
It was Laurel. Jackie fired a shot at the man, only to see a cloud of plaster explode from the wall behind him.
“Use that table, Jackie!” Shelby said before diving into a roll across the floor to reach Nick, who knelt on the floor beside the far end of the couch on the other end of the room.
A small table stood behind Jackie in the entry, a pair of flowering plants perched on top. She was not quite sure what Shelby meant until a candlestick whistled by her head and dented the plaster in the wall on the far side of the entry. She quickly holstered the gun and grabbed the table, hoisting it up before her as a shield.
She followed them in, one eye on Laurel, who struggled against the far more powerful man. She blocked his roundhouse punches, flashing her fist in with quick jabs to the man’s face. Where had she learned to fight like that? Something heavy and wooden slammed into the table, nearly wrenching it from her hands, and Jackie was forced to refocus her attention on Nick, who was struggling to his feet with Cynthia’s limp body cradled against his chest. A six-inch metal figurine bounced off his shoulder, and Nick dropped back to a knee, swearing up a storm.