As they walked beyond the empty concrete chamber where the tunnel ended, they entered another room that was clearly still in use, though apparently had not been occupied for some time. It held old aluminum chairs and beat-up desks. A row of battered filing cabinets, standard 1950s office equipment, lined one long wall.
“No sign of Maggie or Fearmonger, then?” he asked, the feeling of urgency still pressing on his chest. He wondered if this was what Maggie’s panic attacks felt like. Becca followed on his heels as he made his way up the stairs and out of the basement.
“Nothing.” The disappointment rang clear in her voice. “Lorena is hanging out near Maggie’s classroom. You know, in case Fearmonger takes them back to the scene of the original crime.”
Indeed, they came upon the SSAM mindhunter roaming the hallway outside the classroom as Becca spoke. “Though some serial killers go back to the scenes of their crimes, I don’t think he’s going to show up here.” Her dark eyes were troubled as she frowned.
“Then we need to think of other options, fast. Talk to me, Lorena. This is your specialty. Help me think this through.” Ethan fought to bring organization to his jumbled thoughts. “All along, Fearmonger has been talking about fear, and how important it is. He wants to prove it to Maggie. And it looks like he brought her to the university to do that.”
Lorena nodded. “Most people go where they’re comfortable, and he’s killed here before. He seems to know the tunnel system. It makes sense he would come here again. Besides, he has fantasies of being a professor, of being in charge, of proving he’s worthy to others.”
“But what if it’s more than that? What if it’s about the fear?”
“About Maggie’s fear, you mean. What does she fear most?”
“Losing her loved ones.”
“But he already has them. So we assume he’ll make her watch as he kills her sister.”
Ethan felt sick to his stomach. But the adrenaline rush pushed it to the fringe. They were closer to catching this guy than ever before. He could feel it. “This is his last stand. What would he do to make the event even more profound?”
“The first victim, years ago,” Lorena said, “was found in her apartment. She’d been strapped to the bed and covered in spiders before he’d sliced her up. The second victim had been burned, but only from her waist down. So that he could keep her alive and conscious longer, I suppose. The third was drowned. She still had cuts all over her body, but the ultimate cause of death was drowning. Spiders, death by fire and drowning must have been their greatest fears.”
Lorena continued to play out the theory, pacing now in the hallway. “So with the twin sisters, he strapped them to the walls opposite each other, made them face each other, and made them watch each other die. Slowly.”
“And in the apartment where they lived together,” Becca added, having remained silent until now, content to watch them work out their thoughts.
“Of course,” Lorena said, her words picking up in tempo. “The location is just as important to him as anything else. With the twins, he’d evolved. Their greatest fear could have been being separated, and living without each other. But performing his act in a place that was so personally important to them would heighten the emotion.”
“That sounds plausible.” Ethan was pacing the corridor now. “So what place on campus, other than her classroom, would Maggie feel personally connected to?”
“She didn’t go to school here, right? So what other areas has she worked in?” Lorena asked.
Ethan’s heart pounded in his throat. “The shooting. It was in her office in the medical school building.” She’d told him herself how her brother had been standing in the doorway when Deborah had seen them give each other an affectionate goodbye. Her office, which she would once have seen as a safe haven for herself and the clients she treated, would have become a symbol of fear after what Deborah did. Fearmonger, having done his research, would surely know that.
“That’s where he must have taken her,” Becca said.
“Lorena, call Damian and find out where, exactly, in the medical school building Maggie’s office was.” Ethan began down the hallway at a trot, Becca following on his heels. “I’m heading over there.”
“Be on your guard,” Lorena called after them. “Fearmonger might have discovered a thing or two about your past that he can use. Fear is his weapon, and he’s learned to wield it well.”
Picking up speed, Ethan ran outside into the warm summer night air. There was little breeze to cool the sweat on his brow. Becca was right behind him, following as he veered to the right where a large brick building loomed. He recognized the bench where he’d found Maggie and Damian sitting on the morning they’d discovered Sharon’s gruesome murder. She’d never said anything then about the significance of the other campus building. But then, she hadn’t shared the details of that particular personal tragedy with him yet.
He only hoped he’d have many more chances to talk with her, share with her, after tonight.
The knife hovered at Julia’s throat, but Maggie kept her focus on Fearmonger. If she looked at her sister, she’d lose her battle with anxiety. And she knew her sister was fighting her own inner battle. She had to help Julia.
I am in control.
Her mantra helped her remember to breathe in and out.
“Come on, Maggie,” he urged. “Give in to the fear. I know you want to. I can see the panic glazing your eyes.”
His teeth glinted in the low light of the camping lantern as he smiled. She tried not to think about what he intended to do with them in this small, dark room he’d led them to. A room just off the tunnel by which they’d left the medical building.
“That’s not panic,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s determination.”
Fearmonger laughed. “Even as you pretend to hold strong, Julia here is quivering in my arms. You see, like every noteworthy scholar, I’m a very thorough researcher, and I found out Julia’s greatest fear. Small, dark, enclosed spaces. Isn’t that right?”
Julia whimpered.
“And what are you afraid of, Owen?” Maggie prayed she could distract him from torturing Julia further. “Being a nobody? Being
stupid?
”
His smile slipped, and Julia hissed out a breath as Fearmonger jerked her head to the side, exposing her tender throat to the tip of the knife. It pressed precariously close to a vein pulsing at her neck. With her arms still tied behind her and Fearmonger holding her off balance, Julia could do nothing to fight back.
“Call me Fearmonger,” he told Maggie in a hard voice. “I’m not Owen or J. P. or Christopher Armstrong.”
“I think you just answered my question. You’re pretending to be someone you’re not. Someone smarter than you are.”
“No!” he roared, his face reddening in the dim light, making him look like the devil he was. “I’m not afraid of who I am, or my bastard of a father. He was weak. He exploited his physical prowess. He wouldn’t know what someone with a functioning brain looked like.”
Maggie scoffed, adopting on a blasé attitude she didn’t feel. Not with that knife still aimed at Julia’s throat. “Like
you
do?”
He waved the knife at her and Maggie sucked in a breath. For the moment, her sister wasn’t the target. “Yes. Like
I
do. I use my intelligence. I got you two here, didn’t I? I got to those other women and taught them their lessons, didn’t I?”
“And the way you overpowered and killed them didn’t require your physical strength? You’re such a hypocrite.”
“Don’t mock me!” His voice was as loud and sharp as a slap. Maggie prayed someone outside could hear them. But who would be in the dark tunnels underneath a university on a hot summer night? Fearmonger seemed to think Ethan would come for her—indeed, he seemed to relish the thought of killing him in front of her—and she knew Ethan wouldn’t hesitate to come if he knew where to find them. If someone tracked the van, or thought about Fearmonger’s old hideouts, maybe they’d be on campus. And maybe they’d guess he’d taken them to the tunnels. But it would take them forever to search all the dark passages.
“I’m not mocking. I’m just telling the truth.”
Suddenly, Fearmonger smiled, an unholy light in his eye. “Well played, Maggie. You almost had me losing control. But you’re the one who’ll be losing the control you prize so highly. And it won’t take much. You’re already feeling the fear, aren’t you? Pressing on your chest, making it difficult to breathe?”
Maggie struggled to ignore the squeezing in her chest that his words created. She focused on her breathing.
In. Out.
Fearmonger was smiling again. “It’s
only fear
, Maggie. Isn’t that your attitude? That you can conquer it? We’ll see. You’ve been to the place where your brother breathed his last. Where your hope for mankind led to your downfall. I’d hoped to finish things for you there, after you watch your sister’s greatest fears come true.”
He shook his head as if disappointed. “But that’s the first place they’ll look for you, if they have any brains.” He shrugged. “Intelligent people adapt. As you listen to your sister’s dying breaths, I’ll be hunting down another present for you. You’ve fallen for Agent Townsend. I could see it today.” His sneer turned feral. “And he’ll die for that.”
She couldn’t breathe. Julia. Ethan. They were going to die if she didn’t stop him. And her parents might never recover from such a loss.
As her breathing continued to hitch and her vision swam in the dim light, Fearmonger continued speaking in a singsong voice. “I’ll bring him to you and we’ll have a little reunion.” He jerked Julia up and back, choking off her air. “In the meantime, you get started on the party without me. Welcome to your own private hell.”
Before Maggie could understand his intent, he shifted the knife in one fluid motion from Julia’s neck and stabbed her forcefully in her side. Julia’s mouth rounded in a soundless
O
as Fearmonger released her and she slipped to the floor.
His laughter echoed off the walls as Maggie’s knees gave out and she sank down beside her sister. “No!”
“Excellent, Maggie,” he said, raising his lantern to look in her eyes like a doctor would. “You’re getting there.”
Taking the light with him, Fearmonger rushed from the room, his shadow cast over Julia’s body. The shadow grew and turned to complete blackness as the door slammed shut. She heard the grate of metal on metal as the monster locked them away. Gritting her teeth, she squeezed her eyes shut against the overbearing darkness, pretending it was dark because her eyes were closed.
Maggie fumbled on the floor in the pitch black, crawling forward and reaching for where her sister had fallen before the lights went out for good. She felt something warm and wet. Blood. Julia’s blood. Trying to control her racing pulse, she forced herself forward until her fingers brushed sticky, wet fabric at her sister’s waistline.
“Julia?”
No response. She refused to think that her sister was dead. People survived knife wounds all the time, didn’t they?
One hand felt for a pulse at Julia’s neck, but in the blackness, found her sister’s chilled lips instead. But—thank you, God—there was an exhale of breath coming through them. She felt a little further down, following her neck until she felt the thready pulse there.
Alive. Definitely in trouble, but not hopeless yet.
She gently probed for the edge of the warm wetness on her sister’s shirt and found where blood seemed to be issuing forth. She pressed her hands there as she said a prayer.
The monster had locked them away in a tomb. Away from help for Julia. Away from Ethan.
“What was that?” Ethan whispered into his cell phone.
On the other end of the line, Noah, who was down in the tunnels while Becca and Ethan scouted out the medical building, wouldn’t have reception much longer. Ethan knew from his previous experience in the tunnels that once he moved more than fifty yards into the ground, all connection to the outside was lost.
They were in Fearmonger territory.
“Sounded like metal creaking and banging,” Noah said in a hushed voice. “But it’s hard to tell down here how far away it was. Maria and I are heading in. We’re about to lose contact with you.”
“Got it. I think we’re closing in. I feel it in my gut.” And his heart told him he was close to Maggie. God, he hoped she was okay. But if the maniac was on the move, and there was no other sound than the opening and closing of doors, his brain told him maybe it was too late.
“Mine, too. Be careful, man.”
And then the phone was dead.
“This is the number Damian gave us, 303.” Becca’s voice was barely audible as she approached the room that had once been Maggie’s office. The threshold where Brad had lost his life. And an office Christopher Armstrong probably associated with failure. While crossing the campus, Becca had received a text from Catherine that explained Fearmonger’s connection to Maggie. A Christopher Armstrong had indeed attended various colleges in the vicinities of the previous murders—and had flunked out of all but one. The period when he hadn’t been torturing and killing innocent girls was the timeframe when he’d earned his Bachelor’s degree. Apparently buoyed by that success, a Christopher Armstrong had applied to medical school at Chicago Great Lakes University a year ago and been denied. And Maggie’s name had been on the committee that had denied him.
As a team, Ethan and Becca moved quietly, but no sound came from within the office. There was no reason for stealth. The room was empty, the door standing wide open.
“What’s this doing here?” Becca asked circling a wooden podium that stood in the middle. “Odd place for a class, don’t you think.”
“But not for a lesson,” Ethan added grimly, crouching down beside it. He found the logo he was looking for. Custom For You Furniture.
“They
were
here.”
“And we’re still playing catch-up.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “There’s got to be a tunnel leading into this building. We didn’t see them leaving as we arrived.”
She nodded in agreement. “Must be in the basement, like the ones that lead to the other buildings on campus.” They took off at a run down the stairs.
“Julia?” Maggie’s voice was hoarse with unshed tears. She was beginning to shake, but not with fear or anxiety. With fatigue. The muscles in her arms had been pressing firmly on Julia’s side for what seemed like a long time now. It had probably only been a few minutes, but in this unending darkness, who knew? It messed with your mind.
She gritted her teeth against the urge to give in to panic. Not yet. She had to keep it together for Julia.
I am in control.
It was only fear, after all. An emotion. She could control it—or at least her reaction to it.
It was just darkness. She imagined herself lying in the dark on a featherbed with Ethan’s arms wrapped around her. They were making love. Slowly. And he was whispering words of love and encouragement in her ear.
She wanted that so badly. That future with Ethan. She had so much to live for. And Julia would be proud of her for choosing to reach out for it, she thought, choking down a sob.
“I’m not giving up hope,” she told her sister.
She had to get Julia out of here. The regular rise and fall of her chest as she breathed had turned irregular.
Maggie squinted into the bright light that appeared as the metal door squeaked open again.
Ethan?
Her heart leapt, then plummeted as she recognized the lantern Fearmonger had held before.
He was back to finish the job.
She continued applying pressure to the wound at her sister’s side. The bleeding had slowed, but she still needed a hospital, fast.
“Time to go, Maggie. It’s time for the next lesson.”
“No. I’m not leaving her.”
Fearmonger held the lantern up a little more, throwing his features into frightening patterns of light and shadow. “Then I’ll finish her for good.” He stepped forward and the blade of the knife caught the light. Parts of it were dark, and Maggie realized it was her sister’s blood that stained it.
Saying a silent prayer for Julia, Maggie rose on shaky legs and held out a hand protectively over her sister, as if she could ward off evil. “No, wait. I’ll come with you.”
He glanced down the tunnel as they heard a noise that seemed far away. Another door? Hope soared, even as the knife in Fearmonger’s hands had her heart pounding harder. He’d used it on her sister, and she had no doubt he’d use it on her. Or, worse, on Ethan.
“Walk.” He waved his lantern toward one direction of the dark tunnel.
Was it the direction from which the noise had come? It was hard to tell. The acoustics in the tunnel distorted sound and other sensations. But somehow she doubted he was leading her toward safety. No, it was more likely he was setting the trap for Ethan. With her as bait.
Was that a flicker of light ahead?
Ethan motioned to Becca to stand still behind him, then switched off his flashlight to hide their location and stood still, holding his breath as they listened. The light farther down the passageway seemed to grow stronger, but then it went out completely. The tunnel was deathly silent.
A long, low, bone-chilling laugh replaced the quiet. “E-than. I know you’re out there somewhere,” a voice said. Fearmonger. The way sound carried in this place, he could be anywhere. “We’ll be waiting.”
Ethan said nothing, only walked a little faster, a little less cautiously as the man spoke. He heard Becca’s light footfalls right behind him, her hand resting lightly on his elbow so she could feel when he moved. Choosing speed over stealth, he risked turning his flashlight on, realizing it could be more dangerous to them to run in the dark.
“What’s that?” came Becca’s whispered question.
Guns drawn, they approached the metal door that stood ajar. No light, no sound came from within. There was only the stillness of a tomb.
Ethan signaled to Becca to stay back as he checked it out. His flashlight swung across the interior, then lower. It stopped when he spotted a still form on the ground. His breath caught and held until he stepped forward and realized it wasn’t Maggie. But Julia was in obvious trouble and needed medical attention fast. He knelt and felt the bleeding wound his flashlight had illuminated, and immediately applied pressure.
“Do you get reception here?” he asked Becca, keeping his voice as low as possible in case Fearmonger was nearby.
She checked her phone and shook her head. “Not enough, but the tunnel entrance from the medical building wasn’t too far back.” Every second counted, for both Julia and Maggie.
“Go back and call Damian. Tell him where Julia is and that we need an ambulance. Then get back here. Fast.”
Becca took out her own flashlight from a loop at her belt, switched it on, and took off at a run. Ethan was left with the warm, sticky feel of Julia’s blood under his fingers, wondering what Fearmonger had in store. The killer knew Ethan was here. Had called him by name. Which meant Fearmonger must have guessed how important Maggie was to him.
The question was, how did the monster plan to use that information?
Maggie stumbled and Fearmonger cursed, kicking her in the leg. Her cry of pain echoed down the silent, dark tunnel.
“Shut up and keep walking. Faster.”
She didn’t know what was better—the calm, philosophizing Fearmonger, or the tense, desperate Fearmonger. She fought to keep her breathing and pulse under control as she continued along the tunnel, pressing her hands against the walls every so often for balance. And to leave a handprint in Julia’s blood. He seemed to believe her fumbling act. Either that or he didn’t care if Ethan tracked them. He’d already admitted he had plans to kill Ethan while she was forced to watch.
Like Julia.
She hoped to God Ethan was getting help for Julia at that very moment. The rest of the SSAM team couldn’t be too far behind. Even her captor had known they were coming, taunting Ethan. But that also meant he had something planned.
“Through there.” Fearmonger nudged her with the point of his knife toward the door on her left. For good measure, she stumbled again, using the door to pull herself upright. “Now!” He pulled the door shut tight behind them.
“Good girl, Maggie,” Ethan whispered, finding her handprint on the door to his right. Forcing himself to slow down and be more careful had paid off. Sweeping the flashlight from side to side had revealed a bloody handprint. He was sure Maggie’s hand had left it—with Julia’s blood. At least, he hoped Maggie wasn’t bleeding as well. With Becca’s return after her phone call to Damian for help, which she’d assured Ethan was only seconds away, he’d relinquished his position at Julia’s side to her and taken off after Maggie. Still, he estimated he was about ten minutes behind them. Of course, Maggie might be slowing Fearmonger down.
Becca had cursed at him as he stepped back out into the tunnel, telling him to wait for backup, that it would be there any second, but he hadn’t listened. How could he, when every second that passed, every heartbeat, meant risking Maggie’s life?
The squeak of rusty hinges sliced across Ethan’s taut nerves as he pushed open the ancient door. The maze of tunnels beyond the door wasn’t marked on the map. And he could deduce why. This tunnel appeared unfinished. It didn’t have the echoing concrete of the other passageways. Instead, a warm, moist earth smell swamped his nostrils as he tentatively poked his head around the doorway, listening carefully for any sign of a human—or in the case of Fearmonger, perhaps nonhuman was a better description—presence. Something dripped and echoed in the distance.
Cautiously, Ethan entered the tunnel, one step at a time. Instead of the sound of footsteps, his foot met soft dirt. Definitely an unfinished tunnel. Would his backup be close behind? He hoped to God they’d found Becca and gotten Julia to safety first.
A whistle of air brushed past his head, lifting a lock of hair, then stopped. Someone had opened a door on the other end of the tunnel, creating a brief draft between the ends. And now the door was closed again.
Deciding to go with his instinct and throw caution to the wind in favor of speed, Ethan’s long strides ate up the distance as he broke into a jog. His flashlight, in one hand, pointed straight ahead. In the other, he held his gun.
A minute later, he halted, his light bouncing off another metal door. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he holstered his gun and dug the tunnel blueprints out of a pocket, aiming his flashlight beam at it as he tried to judge where he was. But the darkness had been so disorienting, he couldn’t be sure. He thought he’d jogged due west, toward the edge of campus, but at some point, the floor had sloped and curved gently. He couldn’t be certain he wasn’t just linking up again with the same tunnel, with Fearmonger creeping up behind him. But it didn’t matter what danger awaited him if Maggie was on the other side. He’d walk into certain death for her.
“Holy shit,” Ethan breathed. “The radio station.”
If he was right in his calculations, that he’d headed due west, he was now near the building on the edge of campus that housed the radio station. It made sense that Fearmonger would take her there. It was meaningful to him since their dialogue about fear had begun in that setting, but what if he guessed wrong? Time was of the essence.
Heart racing, he stuffed the map back into his pocket and drew his gun again, pushing open the door and finding himself with a choice to make. Right or left. There was no sound or light from either end.
An examination of the floor gave him his answer. The moist dirt from the older tunnel had stuck to someone’s shoe, just enough to leave a faint outline of a shoeprint. It had to be Fearmonger’s. Leading toward the left. Toward the radio station, he surmised.
Adrenaline pumping through his system, he raced in that direction.
A few minutes later, the oiled door at the end of the tunnel didn’t squeak as he pushed it open. It had clearly been used more recently. He entered a cement room in a basement he didn’t recognize and halted when he heard voices ahead, just past a doorway.
“And what are you afraid of, Fairy Princess?” That had to be Fearmonger, only this time his voice wasn’t echoing off tunnel walls. Ethan had finally caught up to him.
Fairy Princess?
“I guess I’m supposed to be afraid of you,” the princess returned, sounding breathless.
Becca.
Shit.
Somehow she’d found Fearmonger first. She must have run across campus the moment help arrived for Julia, guessing where Fearmonger was headed. Was Maggie there, too? He couldn’t see around the edge of the doorway without risking exposure. Ethan edged forward quietly until he could see the room. Fearmonger had Becca in a corner, a gun aimed at her head. Her gun? How had he gotten it? And how had she figured out which building he was in?
He tried to see Maggie, daring to peek around the edge of the doorframe as Fearmonger’s back remained to him, not twenty feet away.
There. Maggie stood near the wall, not five feet from Fearmonger and Becca.
“I’m the King of Fear,” Fearmonger said, leaning toward Becca. “I’ll help you face your fears, embrace them. I’ll set you free.”
Ethan felt some pride for his trainee. Even in her trapped position, she was staring the guy down. Blood now streamed down her temple past the bandage that had once been white, as well as from several scrapes on her arms. She had put up a hell of a fight, but somehow the monster had gotten hold of her gun.
“Dr. Levine is the healer,” she said. “You’re just some little boy playing with fire, pouting because he didn’t get into med school. I figured out you were heading to the radio station. How long do you think it’ll take Ethan and the others to find us here?”