Paul moved behind Anthony then. Anthony heard the detective speaking into his phone and ordering an APB on Lynch’s car.
“He has Helen!” Lynch whispered as his gaze lifted. “You have to understand. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Helen’s his ex-wife,” Paul muttered as he stalked closer. Then his voice rose as he snapped into his phone, “Yes, dammit, a ninety-two sedan! Stop the car and approach it with extreme caution because we think the DA is his prisoner.”
“I still love her,” Lynch said, swallowing thickly. “I couldn’t let Helen die.”
The wounded cop on the ground was gasping for air. Anthony hauled Lynch toward him. “But you could let that guy die?”
The uniform next to the fallen man looked up, the pain clear on his face in the weak moonlight. “McHenry’s got a wife, a baby on the way…”
“I’m sorry!” Lynch cried. “So sorry!”
“Fuck sorry,” Anthony said. Sorry wouldn’t change anything. He was trying not to picture Lauren at that moment. Trying so hard not to imagine her fear, but—
A killer had taken him as a hostage once, too. Anthony had been tied up and left to die. He’d been so sure death would come for him. Hope had bled away, moment by moment.
He didn’t want Lauren to feel the same way he had.
But while the Valentine Killer had toyed with him, the guy hadn’t tortured Anthony with his knife.
The Bayou Butcher was all about torture.
“Tell us every damn thing you know about Walker,” he snarled as the rage threatened to burst free. “Where the hell is he going?”
“I don’t know anything!”
Anthony’s back teeth ground together. “He told you that if you pulled us in, you’d get your wife back.”
A miserable nod. The shrieks from the ambulance were closer now. “I’m sorry about the cop. I didn’t think…”
No, he fucking hadn’t. If he had, he would have gone to the authorities for help and they could have sprung a trap on Walker.
“How were you getting Helen back? Where were you supposed to go?”
Lynch’s tongue swiped over his lips. “The old fishing pier on Rattlesnake Bayou. He said to go there at dawn.”
The ambulance was pulling onto the road. The flashing lights lit up the scene. Anthony shoved Lynch away. “Take him to the station,” he ordered to the other cop. “Stay with him. Don’t let the bastard out of your sight!”
“I’m sorry!” Lynch cried out. “I didn’t have a choice!”
Same damn song. The guy didn’t even know what sorry was, not yet. If Anthony didn’t get Lauren back, he’d make sure the guy knew.
He jumped into his SUV. Revved the engine.
Paul yanked open the passenger side door. “You aren’t going without me!”
Anthony wasn’t wasting time arguing. He wheeled the vehicle to the left and headed as fast as he could for the old highway.
Her head hurt like a bitch. Something wet and sticky was in her left eye. She reached up her hand—blood. Her blood.
Darkness surrounded her. The kind of thick, total darkness that made her think of tombs and death.
The Bayou Butcher has me.
A scream built in her throat and burst from her, but the scream didn’t do any good. She could tell that the car was moving. There was a grinding sound, like wheels, and she was bumping every few moments.
Lauren lifted her hands and her fingers pressed into a hard surface, one just inches from her face. The trunk. He put me in a trunk.
He’d put her in the trunk, and now he was trying to take her someplace. He hadn’t killed her at the scene, the way he’d done to poor Officer McHenry. Walker had taken her.
So he could play with her.
She wasn’t in the mood to be his plaything.
Lauren twisted her body, shaking and maneuvering so that she could try to search the area for some kind of tool. Her fingers fumbled in the dark. At least he hadn’t tied her hands—that would make it easier for her to escape or to fight back. Her nails shoved into the trunk’s walls, but she kept searching. The drumming of her heartbeat filled her ears. She was so afraid that, at any moment, the vehicle would stop and Walker would come for her.
Then I’ll be dead.
Her fingers swiped over something sharp. She stopped, breath heaving, and her fingers slid over the object. She could tell by its shape that she’d found a screwdriver.
Thank you, God.
Her right hand held it tight, while her left started to run along the trunk’s wall. She had to locate the rear of the car, had to find the spot where the trunk locked. Once she found the actual lock, she could try to use the screwdriver to pry it open. If the trunk had a separate release latch, she could try to find that. She would find something.
Because she would get out of there. Lauren wasn’t going to give up. No matter what.
She had a tool now, one that she could use to escape. If Walker came for her before she got her freedom, she’d damn well use the screwdriver as a weapon.
The car bounced, hit a deep hard hole, then jerked forward.
Lauren tensed. It didn’t feel like they were on a road anymore. No, the vehicle had turned, and Walker was taking her away from civilization. That was the way he worked, right? Take the prey into the swamp to torture for hours.
They were on a bumpy road. A dirt road?
Her fingers were sweating around the screwdriver as she frantically went to work.
There was a roadblock up ahead. Anthony saw the flashing lights of two patrol cars at the end of Lincoln Road before the road branched and led back to the city.
He slammed on the brakes and jumped from the vehicle. He’d just gone all the way down the road, and hadn’t seen a sign of the sedan. “Where the hell is he?” Anthony demanded.
Matt rushed toward him. “No one’s come this way. We were on scene as fast as we could be, but no one’s passed our way.”
No. No fucking way.
“He got out before you were here,” Paul said as he climbed from the car. His voice was flat. “The bastard took her out before the roadblock could be set up.”
The road was old, and from what Anthony had learned on his one-hundred-mile-an-hour drive there, not well traveled at all. “He likes the swamp.” There was plenty of swamp around. They’d flown by the twisting cypress trees, and he’d seen the black edge of the bayou water gleaming in the moonlight.
Matt took a few more steps toward them. “He could have driven through before we got here. We hauled ass, man, but it still took us twenty minutes to get here. The cop”—he pointed behind him to one of the patrol cars—“beat me by a bit, but not much.”
It had taken Anthony ten minutes to get there from Steve’s house, going hell fast. Matt and Paul were right—Walker could have gotten away and gone back to town.
But that just wasn’t the way he liked to play.
He’s changed the rules. The guy had busted out of prison like some kind of alpha dog, and instead of hiding in the shadows like he’d done in the past, had attacked Karen right away with a brutal in-your-face kill directed to hurt Lauren. The guy thinks he is in charge, so he’s trying to make us dance to his damn tune. Anthony looked at the dark mass of swamp and woods. “Get Wesley Hawthorne out here.” If they had to search the woods, he wanted the tracker.
“Walker keeps his prey out there, he plays with them…he is in the area.” He just had to find out where. His eyes narrowed as he glanced back at Paul. “We passed a little road, didn’t we? A dirt road…” It had been but a blur at the time, but now…