She was older, not particularly athletic. More inclined to hours at a desk, a keyboard, a phone than physical pursuits.
Playing in her fancy fitness club so she could show off her body.
Yes, she showed off her body, he thought, but didn’t tend it, didn’t discipline it. If she lived she’d grow soft and fat and slow.
Really, he’d be doing her a favor, ending it while she was still young and smooth and tight.
He’d been busy during his time in Seattle. He’d changed his license plates twice and had the car painted. Now when he returned to Orcas any cops watching the ferry traffic wouldn’t note the return of the car—not that he gave barely educated hayseeds that much credit.
Still, Perry had schooled him carefully on precaution.
He considered the best time and location to take her, then simply waited for Seattle’s weather to give him the final element.
Kati shot up her umbrella and stepped out into the drenching rain and gloom. She’d worked late, polishing up some details on her next article. For now, she didn’t mind inhabiting a cubicle in a small building in the rainy Northwest.
It served as a stepping-stone.
Her series was gaining her the attention she wanted, not only from readers but from the powers that be. If she could keep the heat turned up, just a little longer, she had every reason to believe she’d be packing her laptop and looking for an apartment in New York.
Fiona Bristow, George Perry and RSKII created and stamped her ticket out of Seattle and into the Big Apple. And it was there she’d shop her book.
She needed to crack Fiona open a bit, she thought as she dug for her keys. And it wouldn’t hurt for RSKII to take another coed, keep that flame high—and her byline front and center.
Of course, if the feds broke the case, that wouldn’t hurt either. She had sources primed, including the one who’d fed her the information that the Tawney-Mantz team had interviewed Perry again that day—and the fresh, hot juice that Fiona had joined in.
Face-to-face with the man who abducted her, killed her lover. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room. But even without the access, she’d gotten enough from her sources for a solid piece—above the fold—for tomorrow’s edition.
She hit the unlock button on her key ring and in the flash of lights saw the flat rear tire.
“Crap. Crap!” She hurried closer to make certain. Even as she turned, digging into her bag for her phone, he boiled out of the gloom.
Out of nowhere, no more than a blur.
She heard him say, “Hi, Kati! How about an exclusive?”
The pain shot through her, an electric bullet that sizzled in every cell of her stunned, seizing body. The rainy gloom burst into blinding white as a scream gagged in her throat. In some shocked part of her brain she thought she’d been struck by lightning.
The white sliced to black.
It took less than a minute to bind her, to lock her in the trunk. He stowed her bag, her computer, her umbrella in the back, for now, carefully turned off her phone.
Filled with power and pride, he drove off into the rainy night. He had a lot of work to do before he slept.
Twenty-Eight
Kati’s phone provided a wealth of information. Scrolling through, Eckle carefully copied down all the names and numbers, studied her incomings, outgoings, her calendar, reminders. It fascinated him that virtually every communication, every appointment in her logs—but for an upcoming dentist appointment—dealt with professional interests.
Really, he mused as he wiped the phone clean, he and Kati had a great deal in common: no real connection to family, no particular friends and an absorption with rising in their chosen field.
They both wanted to make a name for themselves, leave a deep mark.
Wouldn’t that make their brief time together all the more important?
He tossed the phone in the trash at the rest stop where he’d parked, then backtracked, exited the interstate and drove the wandering twenty miles to the motel he’d chosen for this leg of the work.
He paid cash for a single night’s stay, then parked away from the lights. Though he doubted he’d need it, he angled her umbrella to shield his face as he climbed out of the car. People who frequented motels of this type didn’t sit around their shitty little rooms looking out the window at a rain-swept parking lot, but it paid to be cautious.
He opened the trunk.
Her eyes were wide open, full of fear and pain with that glaze of shock he found so arousing. She’d struggled, but he’d learned a thing or two and had linked the bindings on her wrists and ankles together in the back, hog-tying her so she could do little more than hump like a worm. Still, it was best to keep her absolutely still, absolutely silent through the night.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he told her as he pulled a syringe from his pocket, removed the tip. Her screams were no more than harsh whispers swallowed by the rain as he gripped her arm, shoved up her sleeve. “Sleep tight now,” he said, and slid the needle under the skin.
He replaced the tip. She, like the others, wouldn’t live long enough to be bothered about any infection from shared needles. He watched her eyes dull as the drug took her under.
After securing the trunk, he got his suitcase and her belongings out of the back and carried them across the broken pavement of the lot to his room.
It smelled of old sex, stale smoke and the cheap detergent that couldn’t mask the brew. He’d learned to ignore such annoyances, and he’d learned to ignore the inevitable groans and thumps from adjoining rooms.
He switched on the TV, scrolled until he found local news.
He entertained himself first with a pass through Kati’s wallet. She carried nearly two hundred in cash—for payoffs? bribes? he wondered. The money would come in handy, another advantage of changing his target type. The coeds rarely had more than five or ten, if that.
He found the current password for her computer hidden behind her driver’s license. He set it aside for later.
He made piles of what he could keep and what he would dispose of from her handbag, and munched on the M&M’s she had in an inside pocket, toyed with her bag of cosmetics.
She carried no photos, not his all-work-and-no-play Kati. But she had a street map of Seattle and one of Orcas, tidily folded.
On the Orcas map she’d marked several routes from the ferry. He recognized the route to Fiona’s, wondered about the others. If time permitted, he’d check them out.
He approved of the fact that she carried several pens and sharpened pencils, a small cube of Post-its, a bottle of water.
He saved her breath mints, towelettes, pack of tissues, removed her IDs and credit cards to be cut up and disposed of along the way.
He used the money in her change purse to buy a Sprite and a bag of Lay’s potato chips from the vending machine outside the room.
Organized and settled, he opened her computer. As with her phone calls and texts, all of her e-mails centered on work and many were cryptic. But he could follow the dots, as he’d been following her.
While he, Perry and Fiona weren’t her only stories, they were, unquestionably, her focus. She’d pushed, and was pushing, for nibbles and bites from numerous sources.
Tenacious, thy name is Kati Starr.
She did well, he thought, digging, digging, digging, amassing details and comments from Perry’s past, from Fiona’s, from past and present victims.
She had files full of information on Fiona’s search unit, on the other members, on her training business, on her mother, her stepmother, the dead father, the dead lover. The current lover.
Thorough. He respected that.
And he understood she’d gathered and was continuing to gather more information, more deep background and areas than a reporter could possibly use in a series of articles.