At Close Range (23 page)

The archway led to a tunnel, with a rock-painted roof that hung low overhead and walls that pressed in on her, bringing her back in time. There were petroglyphs carved and marked on the cave walls, symbols she recognized from books and hiking trips, an amalgam of Anasazi and other cultures no doubt intended to set the mood of ancient times and other worlds without relying too heavily on accuracy.

“It’s working,” Cassie whispered to herself, needing the human sound as she worked her way through the tunnel. The atmosphere clung to her, making her feel as though her humanity, her civilization was being stripped away layer by layer.

When she reached the end of the tunnel, she swore she heard a slide of footstep behind her. She spun, slapped for the weapon that was no longer at the small of her back, and called, “Who’s there?” When there was no answer, no more motion, the fine hairs on the back of her neck rippled, and she shouted, “Show yourself, you coward! Step out here now, or I’m coming after you!”

An amplified voice chuckled in response, bouncing from speakers that must be hidden amongst the stones, which seemed more and more real by the moment.

“There’s no need to shout, Officer Dumont, and no need to threaten. We’re waiting for you. Just keep walking.”

She stood where she was. “I want an assurance that you’ll let the hostage go. You want me, right? Well, you’ve got me. Just let her go!”

She expected a mocking laugh. She wasn’t disappointed.

“Now where is the fun in that?” the voice asked on a chuckle. Only now she realized it wasn’t the same voice as on the phone. Even through the fuzz of mechanical distortion, this voice was deeper, darker.

There was another man.

She lifted her chin, not knowing whether he could see, but needing the defiant gesture for herself. “I’m not here for fun. I’m here to arrest both of you.”

“Stop stalling.” The voice cracked angrily from the loudspeakers. “You have ten seconds to reach the chamber.”

A woman’s scream sounded up ahead, spurring Cassie onward. Mental clock ticking down the seconds, she ran until she burst out of the tunnel and into a central courtyard of stone.

Signs pointed out the various exhibits. A splash of dark red wetness marked one, and Cassie followed the arrow beneath at a run, hoping the blood was from the woman’s finger wound and not something more serious.

Something more fatal.

The offshoot tunnel was a warmer tan color, sandy instead of dark rock, and marked with flowing, spiritual pictograms. She paid them little heed as, lungs heaving, she skidded into the chamber.

The exhibit was meant to be a kiva, a beehive-shaped room of the type the Anasazi had used for spiritual reflection and religious practices.

But the shrine had been perverted by a madman.

Redness splashed the walls, dripped down and pooled on the floor. The lax body of a woman lay off to one side. He hadn’t even bothered to pose her. He’d just dropped her when her arterial spurts had faded in death. A pair of surgical gloves lay nearby, along with a flipped-open five-inch buck knife that was covered in blood.

Cassie’s stomach dropped and her heart clogged her mouth. She was too damn late.

The woman’s skin hadn’t gone gray-blue with death yet, but the smell of it was in the air. The finality of it coated the inside of Cassie’s mouth and sinuses, and crept cold fingers into her heart.

Knowing it, hating him for it, she focused her attention on the lone man standing in the center of the domed room. He was in his late thirties, and of medium height and build, though the way he stood hinted at muscle and strength beneath the loose pullover and crisp new blue jeans. His brown hair was neatly trimmed and his brown leather shoes matched his belt. He looked like a businessman on casual Friday, come to the museum for lunch.

Until she stared into his eyes. They were winter-cold, an ice-blue that showed no hint of expression. They simply held…nothing as they looked at her, looked through her as though the man wasn’t even sure why she was there.

Fear, pure and icy, washed through Cassie as she finally understood what she’d gotten herself into. She had no weapon, no plan, and her backup was more hope than reality.

What the hell had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been thinking, she realized. She’d been reacting to the threat, to the victim.

Now the victim was gone. The killer had no more hold on her.

Cassie took a step back. Then another. The man’s eyes didn’t shift. He didn’t speak, didn’t react, as though he was made of wax, or maybe the composite that had been used to form the mud daub of the fake Anasazi temple.

Heart slamming in her ribs, Cassie turned to flee, to escape the smell of blood and the sight of death.

A rock-painted panel slid into place, trapping her in the kiva with the dead-eyed man. A loud, satisfied chuckle sounded from the loudspeakers. “Not yet, Officer Dumont. The fun’s barely even started!” There was a pause, then the voice said,

“Nevada? Will you please restrain Officer Dumont while we wait for the others?”

Nevada. The name rang a faint bell. That had been the name of the drifter who’d briefly lived in the first crime scene apartment. She didn’t know anything else about him, but wondered whether it was a coincidence that their other suspect had been named after a place. Denver. Nevada. Any connection?

Then it was past time to wonder. The dead-eyed man came at her in a rush.

Cassie lashed out a kick and shifted on the balls of her feet when he closed in.

Heart pounding, mind racing, she worked her way around, turning him toward the body, so she could slide a step closer to the bloody knife. Another step. Almost there.

“My name is Cassie. Did you know that? And your name’s Nevada, right?” She talked, hoping to distract him, to hide her intentions from the voice on the loudspeaker.

She didn’t know whether the other man could see into the kiva itself, whether he had control of the museum cameras or not.

“You don’t need to do this, Nevada.” She shifted sideways, wanting to duck down and grab the knife, but sure her adversary would lunge the moment she did. “You don’t have to listen to him. We can help you.”

Something flickered in those chill eyes.

She pressed the advantage. “We can help you. We know you didn’t mean any of it.”

Those cold blue eyes flickered again, but this time with mirth. Nevada’s lips curved.

“Oh, but I did mean to do it, Officer Dumont. And I enjoyed it. The slut taught me well.” He licked his lips and closed in on her, crowding her against the textured kiva wall.

Heart pounding, Cassie broke to the side, knowing that the fire code would require a second exit from the kiva but not having a clue where they’d stashed it. She ran from Nevada, but he only laughed and followed at a leisurely pace.

“It’s a round room,” he called. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Excellent!” the disembodied voice said over the loudspeakers. “Her friends are here, with the FBI agent in the lead. Sorry there’s no view-screen. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Cassie froze at the words FBI agent. Seth! He’d come for her!

Nevada grabbed her in that instant, and yanked her arm up behind her back. She screeched and fought, and shouted “Seth!” as loud as she could, not knowing if her voice would penetrate the intricate maze of tunnels and composite. “Seth, I’m in the kiva!”

“That did it,” the voice said, satisfied. “He’s headed this way now. Too bad for him he’s already dead.”

There was a click.

The rapid beep of a digital countdown.

And a searing, howling explosion.

Seth heard her voice, and bolted toward the sound, toward his woman, not caring that he left the other Bear Claw cops behind.

Forget backup. This was personal.

He lunged through a fake stone archway, his only concern getting to her before it was too late. He charged down a tunnel that was so narrow he had to duck down inside it, and cursed under his breath as he ran.

She’d better be okay, he kept thinking, or the bastard was dead. No due process, no Miranda, nothing.

Just dead.

He saw a light at the end of the tunnel and hurtled toward it, knowing she had to be near, knowing he just had to—

An explosion ripped through the tunnel, through the very fabric of the building, as though the world was ending with him in the middle of the chaos.

The shock wave blasted Seth off his feet and sent him sprawling into a larger space, where signs and corridors radiated off from a pseudo-archaeological site. He hit hard and cursed a punch of pain, but kept rolling until he slammed up against a wall. He struggled to his knees, pulled his weapon and fanned the area.

Deserted.

The tunnel he’d come from was completely demolished. He could hear shouts and groans from the other side, and knew some of the others had been trapped. Dust and fumes and chunks of rubble belched from the tunnel, warning him there would be no backup.

He was on his own.

He tried not to think about the men who were trapped beneath the collapsed tunnel. It hadn’t been made of stone, but the composite had been laid over steel supports and heavy sheets of plywood. That was bad enough.

Then the sprinkler system cut in with a thump and a hiss, and water rained down on him.

Seth cursed and hauled himself to his feet. His only hope was that the bomber would assume he’d been caught in the tunnel blast. That might give him an edge. An opportunity to get to Cassie.

With her image fixed in his mind, all attitude and hidden vulnerability, he struggled to his feet, weapon in his hand. He didn’t need to look far for evidence. A red smear mocked him from an arrowed sign.

He tried not to wonder whether it was her blood or another’s, tried not to worry that he hadn’t heard her shout again. He followed the sign down another tunnel, a narrower one with no light at the end, no sprinklers.

Hell, with nothing at the end. The tunnel simply stopped at a blank wall that looked the same as the walls on either side of him. The wall matched the floor and ceiling, as though he’d gone down a sandy wormhole and run into a dead end.

“Come on, come on!” He cursed under his breath and ran his fingers around the edge, working by the illumination provided by hidden lights, which flickered as though the blast had messed with the power.

There had to be a crack. A latch. Something. The exhibit designers wouldn’t have built a tunnel that led nowhere.

Would they?

The lights flickered again and died just as his fingers found a pressure pad.

Crouched in the darkness, alone and armed, he held his fingers to the pad and pressed his ear to the blank wall, which had to be a door.

At first, he heard nothing. Then he heard the sweetest sound ever. Cassie’s voice, giving somebody holy hell.

Then he heard a gunshot.

And his heart stopped.

“YOU WANT TO SAY that again?” Nevada asked. He gestured to the hole blasted in the roof of the kiva, at the powdery, plastery dust raining down.

Cassie’s heart drummed against her ribs. “I said that only a wuss would kill because someone else told him to. That’s not very original, you know. That’s not very—”

“Shut up!” He twisted her arm up higher, until her shoulder screamed with pain and she went limp because it was either that or pass out.

He shoved her to the floor beside the dead woman, not close enough to touch, but near enough that Cassie could see the woman’s skin going waxy, to see the cheerful pink polish on her nails and the stump of her severed index finger.

Cassie nearly retched from the pain and the sight, but held it in, held it together.

Barely.

She yanked her eyes up to Nevada and bared her teeth. Make him mad, she heard one of her instructors say. Get him to rush you, then go for his crotch.

It wasn’t Lee in her head now. He was gone. In his place, she’d found the memory of her classes. Her training. Her friends.

The man she loved.

Seth.

“What sort of a pansy goes after women, anyway? Not much of a challenge, if you ask me,” she goaded Nevada. Just a step closer, she urged him. Just. One. More.

Step. She’d kick him in the crotch, in the knee, in the stomach, wherever she could reach him.

She wouldn’t think about what might happen, what already had. Seth had been buried in the explosion. The bastard on the loudspeaker had switched the audio over to the museum lobby just after the blast. She’d felt the tremors, heard the shouts, and the awful, terrible silence. Then she’d heard her coworkers shouting over the echoes of secondary collapses. She’d heard her name and Seth’s. She’d heard the desperation in the voices, the rapid-fire orders to start digging through the rubble, to find another way through into the Anasazi exhibit.

She’d heard Alissa’s voice, sounding stressed. But she’d also heard Mendoza and Piedmont, and half a dozen others she could have sworn hated her.

They were all cursing and urging each other on, not just to find Seth, but to find her.

“They won’t get here in time,” Nevada said, as though he’d read her mind. “They’ll be too late. They always are. Stupid-ass cops.” He grabbed her by the throat without warning, and forced her to the ground with more strength than his midsized frame suggested.

She struggled, kicking at him and scratching at those cold, dead eyes.

They were shark’s eyes, she thought.

Predator’s eyes.

He replaced his choking hand with his shod foot and pressed down on her windpipe hard enough to send skitters of gray dancing across her vision. She gurgled and flailed out, but he had her pinned.

Her heart iced over when he bore down harder on her throat and shifted so he could grab her left hand. He reached across and plucked the bloodstained knife from the floor.