He turned his attention back to her, his intense blue eyes clouded with concern. “I don’t know, exactly,” he answered. “But something’s not right.”
It seemed to take forever to get off the damn airplane once they had nosed into the terminal. Cait had expected to leap out of her seat and hurry out the door the moment they stopped moving. Their unscheduled return to the gate had meant the flight would depart at least fifteen or twenty minutes late, so she assumed it would be in the airline’s best interest to move things along.
Her assumption was wrong. The plane rolled to a stop and Cait rose immediately, but the harried flight attendant rushed down the aisle before she could take two steps. “There’s no one available inside the terminal to operate the motorized jetway,” the woman said, smug satisfaction written all over her face. “You’ll just have to take your seat again until dispatch can send someone over.”
The unscheduled detour had annoyed most of the passengers in addition to the now-maddeningly polite flight attendant, and the next few minutes passed uncomfortably slowly, as all around them people muttered under their breath, leveled hard stares, and shook their heads in frustration.
At last they were allowed to leave. They walked off the airplane and into the otherwise empty tunnel leading back into the terminal building, passing the flight crew without acknowledgment, not that Cait cared.
She could feel Kevin’s body tensing as they approached the mouth of the jetway tunnel. He had put his career on the line to convince the captain to return to the gate by claiming to be working with the BPD and identifying Cait as his partner. If the police really were waiting for them to exit, as he had said they might be, a call to Tampa would undoubtedly follow and the ruse would be discovered. What would happen then, Cait didn’t know, but she suspected it would not be pleasant, particularly for Kevin.
But the boarding area was quiet. The only people at the gate were a youngish man and woman, college kids perhaps, dozing side by side on two of the hard plastic chairs, clearly waiting out a long layover. Cait turned left and began the long walk through the terminal building with Kevin a step behind. He was deep in thought, still clearly bothered by Victoria Ayers’s sudden change of heart and the resulting strange phone call.
Cait didn’t see the problem. People changed their minds all the time, especially where momentous, life-altering events were concerned. She had put herself in her mother’s shoes for a moment while sitting on the airplane and quickly realized getting contacted out of the blue by your long-lost daughter after three full decades would certainly have to qualify as life-altering.
She slowed to allow Kevin to catch up and they walked side by side, not talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Outside the terminal they hailed a cab and climbed into the backseat, settling in for the ride back to Everett and their second meeting with Cait’s mother in two days.
This one would go better than the first. Cait was sure of it.
CHAPTER 35
This time when Cait rang the bell it was with a genuine smile of pleasure on her face rather than one of nervousness. She still had no idea what might have changed her mother’s mind—Kevin was right about one thing, Victoria had been dead set against ever seeing her again the last time they talked—but at the same time, she didn’t really care. The important thing was that the telephone call represented real progress.
The door swung open and Cait’s mother stood on the other side, just as before. Something was wrong, Cait could see that immediately. Her mother’s face was pasty-white, her lips set in a straight bloodless line. She looked even frailer than before, if that was possible. It seemed to be taking all of her willpower to…what? Avoid screaming? Look Cait in the eyes? Welcome them into her home again?
But it didn’t make sense. She was the one who had called Cait and invited her here. She was the one who had pulled them off the airplane just as it was about to take off. Had she changed her mind again, and now didn’t want to see her? Maybe the woman was just plain crazy; who the hell knew? It wasn’t like Cait had any history to go on. They had just met twenty-four hours ago.
Cait wrinkled her forehead. “Are you all right?”
That was when she noticed the blood.
Victoria Ayers’s right hand hung limply by her side, unmoving and apparently forgotten as the woman gazed at Cait with dead, empty eyes. A slow but steady drip-drip-drip of thick maroon-black blood gathered at the tips of two of her fingers and fell to the floor in a steady rhythm, dropping first off one finger and then the other. It seemed to be a fair amount of blood. It wasn’t a river, exactly, but it fell in a continuous pattern, like the beginning of a soft summer rain, and was gathering into an impressive little pool on the hardwood floor.
“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Cait asked as she stepped through the door, overcome by her natural impulse to help the elderly woman. She felt Kevin hang back, still concerned about whatever had been bothering him since the phone call on the airplane. He had stepped one foot through the door, resting it on the interior floor, but his body hovered half in and half out.
Kevin grabbed Cait by the elbow as she was reaching for her mother’s injured hand, pulling her insistently backward, trying to drag her out the door and away from her mother, who clearly needed help! Cait resisted, struggling, pulling in the other direction, but she was no match for his superior size and strength. She opened her mouth to complain. What the hell did he think he was doing?
And then a man stepped out from behind the front door. He moved smoothly and quickly behind Victoria, wrapping one arm around her waist, gently, like a lover, and the other around her throat, a long knife pressed to her skin. The blade glittered and winked in the light, drawing Cait’s attention. She froze, her anger at Kevin forgotten.
Her heart stuttered and her stomach flip-flopped. It took only a second to recognize the stranger; his face was burned indelibly into her brain. It was the man from the horrible Flickers of the last couple of days. The man who had tortured the poor girl strapped into the blocky wooden chair. The cold-blooded killer who had begun haunting her dreams.
This was the man.
And he was holding a knife to her mother’s throat.
The intruder offered up an easy smile, the smile of a man comfortable in his surroundings. In control of the situation. “Please, come in,” he said, directing his attention at Kevin, who had stopped tugging on Cait’s arm and now stood unmoving.
Cait tore her eyes from the intruder and glanced back at her boyfriend. She had known Kevin a long time and instantly recognized he was reverting to cop mode, sizing up the situation, trying to determine what action he might be able to take to neutralize this unexpected threat. He instinctively grabbed at his hip, but of course his gun wasn’t there. His gun wasn’t within a thousand miles of there. It was locked safely away in the closet of his apartment in Tampa.
The intruder watched Kevin with dead eyes and a smile flickered across his face and disappeared. “No, really, come in,” he repeated. “I insist. We insist, isn’t that right, dear?” He waved the knife theatrically in front of Virginia’s face before replacing it against the wrinkled alabaster skin of her throat.
“Don’t hurt anyone,” Kevin answered, raising his hands in a calming gesture, his voice steady and reasonable. “If it’s money you’re after, I’m sure we can get some together for you, maybe not as much as you’d like—none of us is rich, as I’m sure you can tell—but we will all be happy to contribute to the cause.”
The man laughed. The sound was unexpected, Cait thought, and blood-chilling. His knife jittered against Virginia’s throat as he chuckled and she let out a gasp either of fear or pain, Cait could not tell which. So far there was no blood besides the droplets that continued to drip steadily off the ends of her fingers. “This isn’t about money,” the man said coldly.