“What did you give me?” she asked him, her words slurred.
“Ketamine. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off. And it’s not addictive, although that doesn’t really matter. You wouldn’t be living long enough to care if it were.”
“Noah… will find you.”
Pierce laughed out loud. “No, he won’t, my dear, but you go on thinking that if it makes you feel better. How’s your leg?”
“Shot,” she said, her teeth clenched. She was lying on the backseat of his car and her thigh burned where his bullet had pierced her flesh.
“Well, I’ve bandaged you up,” he said, mockingly benign. “Don’t want you to bleed out. I’m not done with you. In fact, I haven’t even started.” He smiled and Eve tasted true fear. She’d seen that smile before, on Winters’s face… before he killed me.
“Very good,” he said. “I can see the fear in your eyes. Did you like my message?”
Pain mixed with fear to back the breath up in her lungs. “I thought it was Dell.”
“And it suited me for you to think so. But now, I find I want the credit.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another syringe and she twisted hard to roll, move, anything to get away. But his knee clamped over her thighs. “It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight me.” He plunged the needle into her neck. “That will hold you until I get you where we’re going. Listen, Eve.” He put a microrecorder near her ear and clicked a button.
And once again Eve heard Winters’s voice. “I stabbed her, eight times. She tried to claw at me. Feisty little thing she was. So I slashed her hand, then her face.”
“Why her face?” another man asked. “I mean, you’d already all but killed her.”
“Because she thought she was pretty. Because I wanted to. Because I could.”
She was fading fast, faster than before. She blinked hard, and clicking off the recorder, Pierce leaned close. “I’ll kill you,” he whispered, “because I can. Because I wish it. Because it will give me pleasure. But it won’t be quick. You’ll wish you were dead, but I won’t make it as easy as Winters did. Don’t worry, Eve. You’ll see.”
He stepped back, drawing sweet cold air through his nostrils. This was going to be so good. He’d been in a constant state of arousal since he’d forced Eve to the back of his wife’s car. The knowledge he’d been carrying his wife and Liza in the trunk all this time… This was going to be so good.
He wouldn’t limit himself to killing her only once. Eve had died twice before. I’ll let her relive that, moment by moment, again and again. He had visions of his hands around her throat, taking her almost to death. Then letting her come back. And letting himself go. Again and again. It was going to be an amazing experience.
He slid from the backseat and looked both ways. No one was coming. He’d pulled to a side road, well outside the city limits, a smart move given the chatter on his police scanner. They were searching the city and the highways, but they’d never look for him way out here. Still, he needed to hurry. He was only another twenty minutes from his place.
He prepared another syringe to administer to Eve just before he took her into the house. She was tall, and stronger than she looked. She’d nearly gotten away, back in the garage. Bitch. He rolled his shoulder gingerly. That computer bag of hers had been as hard as a brick. That’s why he always went for the petite types. They took far less effort to subdue, leaving him more energy for the main event. He didn’t want to fight with Eve again until he had her tied to the narrow bed in his basement. But when he was ready… He liked it when they fought on his terms. It made it so much better. Eve was going to be the kill of his life.
He went around to the trunk to check on his other passengers. His wife was still quiet. Being dead did help that. And Liza was still in a stupor. She wouldn’t give him much trouble. She’d been bordering on catatonic since she’d realized she was riding with a dead woman. She probably still thought it was her sister. That made him smile.
“You shouldn’t have come looking for your sister,” he murmured. “And she shouldn’t have been a hooker. But she was, and you did, and now you’re mine.”
He closed the trunk and headed for his place. Arranging the details to explain his wife’s upcoming extended absence had taken most of the morning. It was only sheer luck that he’d been back to his car in time to hear police scanner chatter about the discovery of another homicide. He couldn’t let the opportunity to watch Webster’s horror at his final “Red Dress Kill” pass by unenjoyed. And it was good that he had not. Good to know Donner was dead before he set him up any further.
Of course the best thing to come out of his visit to Virginia’s this morning was the news that Eve was going to a safe house. Once she’d been so ensconced, it would have been nearly impossible to get to her without arousing suspicion.
Taking her in the police garage had been a necessary risk. And, he had to admit, an awesome thrill. But even better thrills were to come.
Thursday, February 25, 12:45 p.m.
Noah put his head in his hands. Eyes all over the city and no one had seen anything. She’d been gone an hour. Time enough for whoever took her to be miles away. “Where’s Pierce? We need a better profile.”
“I’ll call him,” Abbott said and Noah began searching each pile of photos again as Micki returned with two cameras, both with a long-range zoom.
“Here it is,” she said. “And I think I found out what he meant by ‘he almost got you.’ ”
She showed Noah the view screen, pointing at the shadowy interior of, surprise, a black SUV. “Whoever that is had a gun trained on you and Eve.”
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“Farmer’s got pictures here of you in front of Jack’s house last night,” she went on, “but most of the rest of what’s on this memory card he’s already printed out.”
“So we keep looking,” he said, and started searching again. Everyone at the table picked up a stack, even though none of them knew what they were looking for.
Abbott rejoined them. “I left Carleton a message. Give me those pictures, Noah. You’ve looked through them twice already. Look at something different.”
Noah handed him the photos from Martha Brisbane’s and picked up a new stack. They were from Christy Lewis’s house. Monday night. He put the pictures in sequential order, trying to remember what had happened that night three days before.
They’d arrived first, he and Jack. There was a picture of him taking Eve out the back of the patrol car and the officers uncuffing her. He’d put her in his own car and then the rest of the team had arrived in waves-Ian, Micki, and Carleton.
That was the night Jack was afraid of the snake. Noah saw the picture of Jack leaving the house, getting in the car with Eve. Then Ian left, he remembered, followed by Carleton. Noah frowned, not knowing how to order some of the pictures. He squinted at one, unsure of even what or who it was.
“This is Eve’s car parked in front of Christy’s,” he said. “But who is this?” He angled the picture toward the light. It was a man, hunched over near the hubcap.
“That’s Carleton,” Micki said. “I’d recognize those Bruno Maglis anywhere.”
“Is it always the shoes, Micki?” Abbott asked, exasperated.
“Christy’s shoes might be important,” she insisted stubbornly, “no matter what Dr. Pierce said. Noah, are you okay?”
Noah had brought the picture to an inch from his eyes, still squinting. “Is this still on the memory card of Farmer’s camera?”
“Yes.” She began scrolling back through the pictures Farmer had taken. “Why?”