Beg for Mercy (45 page)
Megan came to as strong arms lifted her from the back of a vehicle and hoisted her over a broad shoulder. A quick twitch of her arms and legs told her that her hands and feet were bound tight.
“Why are you doing this?” she croaked, wincing as even the short question seared her throat. When he didn’t answer, she tried yelling for help, but nothing emerged but a pitiful rasp.
“You know why.” A car she didn’t recognize was parked in a garage behind a small house, away from the road. Rain pelted her as he carried her several feet before setting her next to a door on the side of the house that led to a cellar. “I thought you were different. I thought you were like Sarah.”
“I don’t know who Sarah is, Nate, but I promise you I am different. I’m your friend. I care about you. If you just untie me, we can talk about it—” She gasped, the breath knocked out of her as he slammed her head against the wall.
“You’re a fucking whore, soiling your body to get what you want. I thought you were good, like her.”
“I am good, Nate,” she sobbed hysterically, wondering how someone so perfect-looking could hide such evil. Now with his face contorted in rage and the manic light
in his eyes, it seemed impossible that she had ever thought him handsome, that she had turned to him for help, trusted him as a friend.
As she struggled through her panic to find the words that might convince him to let her go, she wanted to vomit at the memory of him touching her.
“I saw you with him!” Nate screamed, saliva flying from his mouth as his hand cracked hard against her cheek. “After the way he treated you, you let that cop put his hands on you, let him fuck you.” He shook his head and stepped back, and Megan slumped to the floor, her vision swimming.
“I told myself you were good, that you’d learned, that you’d never let him touch you again, but you goddamn cunt, you let him use you all over again. You’re nothing but a whore, just like her.”
He moved then, and that was when she saw the figure slumped on a leather couch. Talia.
She didn’t stir. Megan’s gaze darted frantically around the sparsely furnished room, taking in the barren walls covered, oddly, in some kind of thick fabric. The small speakers mounted he ceiling. The enormous plasma-screen television mounted on the wall across from the couch.
“Where’s Devany?” she asked, frantic. “What did you do to her?”
“The girl will be taken care of.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you—”
His hand cracked across her face again. “I have the knife. That means I make the threats, not you.”
She barely breathed as Nate pulled something from his pocket and ducked through an opening in the wall
near the TV. “Talia! Talia, wake up,” she whispered as she tried to roll toward the other woman. Maybe if she could get close, they could untie each other.
“She can’t help you.” Nate’s laugh froze her blood in her veins.
She watched in horror as he drew a knife from his waistband, its lethally sharp blade catching the light as he hefted it in his left hand. Custom made, favored by troops who served in the Special Forces. Nearly identical to Sean’s, which had been used to kill Evangeline.
He knelt over Talia and the knife slashed forward.
“No!” Megan screamed, but Nate was cutting the flex ties around Talia’s wrists and ankles. Next went the clothes, the sound of the fabric splitting under the knife sending a ripple of fear through her.
He shoved something under Talia’s nose and her head snapped back, the whites of her eyes showing as she struggled to open them.
“Wake up, bitch,” Nate snapped, waving the packet under her nose again. “I want you awake for this.”
The scratchy sound of tiny feet sent a wave of nausea through Dev’s body. She heard muffled voices outside, then silence. Something skittered over her feet.
Oh God, she was alone in a pitch-black pantry full of mice, and Nate was taking Megan somewhere else in the house. To kill her. She didn’t try to kid herself that there would be any other outcome. Dev started to cry again, thinking of her mom. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking when Nate had taken her from the trailer.
Blood, so much blood. The slice across her throat gaping, just like Bianca. Nate was going to do that to Megan, maybe worse, if she didn’t do something. And she was next.
She drew her hands up and tugged at her gag. When she got it free, she screamed and yelled as loud as she could. But the house was far from the road, isolated in the woods. Her throat was raw, and still no one came.
“You motherfucker!” she yelled into the darkness. “You son-of-a-bitch cocksucker! I’m not gonna let you kill me! I’m not gonna let you kill me!”
Her bound feet flailed, kicking at the walls like she would break them down. Boxes fell from the shelves, and a can of omething thudded painfully on her chest, but she didn’t stop. A jar smashed near her head and she froze.
She turned to her side, glass slicing her fingers as she grasped in the dark. Her cupped hands closed over a big shard.
She pushed herself to a seated position and wedged the glass between her clenched knees. It took a few tries and several more painful slices to her hand, but she managed to find the right angle. Her panting echoed in the dark as she frantically sawed the plastic tie against the sharp edge of the glass.
The tie split with a faint pop. Her hands were slick with blood, and she fumbled with the glass, but she managed to saw through the ties around her ankles. She shoved to her feet and flailed her hands until she found the doorknob. She turned and pushed, but the dirtbag had locked her in.
Frustration roared through her and she threw herself against the door, sobbing as she bounced back into the darkness. Her foot lashed out, hitting the door with
enough impact to rattle it on its hinges. Again, again, again, but she was too small, too weak….
Crack!
Dev’s sneakered foot went through the bottom of the door. She fell on her ass with a yell of surprise. She yanked her foot free and kicked again, over and over until the hole was big enough for her to slide through.
She squirmed through like an eel, barely feeling the scrape of splintered wood along her stomach. Her bloody hands left prints on the linoleum as she pulled herself out. She was sprinting for the door before her feet were even under her.
J
immy Caparulo lived with his aunt in a tidy moss-green house in the Crown Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
“Just a moment,” a voice called when he knocked.
It seemed to take forever for the slow footsteps to reach the door.
Deep lines carved Angela Giovanni’s wan face, and Cole immediately saw why it had taken her so long to reach the door. Her clothes hung off her frail frame, and small plastic tubes emerged from her nostrils. The tubes led to a small oxygen canister that she cradled in her left arm.
Her eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles as she looked up at him. “Can I help you?”
He quickly introduced himself. “Can I ask you a few questions about Jimmy?” Cole asked, pitching his voice to be heard over the pounding rain.
She gave him a wary look and started to close the door. “Anything you want to know, you ask his lawyer.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“Are you the cops?”
Cole pondered his answer. “Not at the moment. I’m trying to help out a friend of Jimmy’s—Megan Flynn. You know her, right?”
Angela eyed him for a few more seconds and shrugged. “Might as well come in from the rain.”
Cole went inside and waved off her offer of coffee. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m a little short on time. The police arrested Jimmy here last night. Is that correct?”
“Yes. They came right before ten. Jimmy was in his room, and I had just sat down to watch the news.” She pressed her lips tight. “Jimmy’s had a hard time, but I know him, and I know he didn’t do what they’re accusing him of. He’s taken care of me—his sick aunt!—for over three years, ever since he got out of the army. You think a young man who is so loyal would hurt women the way they said he did?”
Cole shook his head. “I couldn’t say, ma’am.”
Her mouth pulled tight. “The police said they found a knife and all kinds of camera equipment in there, but I never saw anything like that.”
“What was Jimmy doing last night before he was arrested? Did he go out at all?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, he’d barely been out for almost a week. Comes right home after work and gets on his computer.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I was here all day. He came home at six, had supper, made sure I was settled in front of the TV, and then he excused himself.”
Cole’s doubts about Jimmy’s innocence faded another degree. No way he could have taken Talia and Jack without a hovering mama like Angela noticing. “Do you have any idea who he might have been talking to? Anyone who would have a reason to blame him for this?”
She shook her head and blinked back tears. “He hasn’t talked much. He’s been upset with me.”
“You had a fight?”
“It was the stupidest thing,” Angela replied, shrugging her thin shoulders in bewilderment. “A friend from his army days came by to see him. Jimmy wasn’t home, so I offered him a cup of coffee. But when Jimmy came home, he was furious, ranting and raving. He’s never talked to me that way! But he kept going on about how I never should have let this man into the house. Oh, and when he found out he was a computer guy and that I asked him to fix the computer cable in Jimmy’s room, you would have thought—”
The skin prickled on the back of Cole’s neck. “What’s the friend’s name?”
“Nate, Nate Brewster. Nicest young man, and so handsome. He and Jimmy got to be friends in the army. I never knew they had a falling-out….”
Cole didn’t hear her over the alarms shrieking in his head. Nate, who had taken off after Sean’s arrest and come back to Seattle about a year ago, right when the murders started.
Nate, the computer consultant, who could have easily built and managed an exclusive escort site and had access to Club One’s networks and security cameras.
A friend of both Sean and Jimmy, with access and opportunity to frame both men.
But why?
Cole shook his head. The why didn’t matter right now. He had to find Talia and warn Megan.
He cut off Angela with a terse “thanks” and headed for the door.
“Wait,” she called to him as he sprinted to his car. “What about Jimmy?”
“I know he didn’t do it,” Cole called over his shoulder. “I promise the truth will come out soon enough.”
He drove as fast as the weather would allow back to Dev’s trailer, his knees buckling at what he discovered. A woman dead, her throat cut on the floor.
Megan and Devany nowhere to be found.
Devany ran back in what she thought was the way Nate had come, but it was hard to tell since she’d been on the floor of the car during the trip. She ran for what felt like forever before she hit another house. She banged on the front door, sobbing with frustration when no one answered. There was no one at the next house either, or the next, and she was starting to wonder if the whole fucking neighborhood was deserted when she caught a flash of headlights through the sheets of rain.
She ran into the road, waving her hands until the minivan screeched to a stop. The window rolled down and a woman leaned out to yell, “Are you crazy? I could have killed you—”
Dev ran around to the woman, whose expression softened a little when she got a closer look at Dev.
“What are you doing out in this, dressed like that? You’ll catch your death if a tree doesn’t come crashing down on you first.”
“I need to borrow your phone. It’s an emergency!” Dev’s hands came up to grip the door. The woman gasped when she saw the deep cuts welling with blood.
“There’s a guy, he has my friend, and I really need to call the cops.”
“I don’t get cell coverage up here.”
“Then dammit, give me a ride to a real fucking phone!”
The woman’s face paled and she glanced behind her. Dev followed her gaze and saw two boys strapped to car seats in the back. “Mommy, she said
fuck
,” said the older one.
“I know, Wyatt,” the woman said through clenched teeth.
“Please, lady,” Dev said, her teeth chattering as the cold finally caught up with her. “Just take me to a gas station or something.” She pitched her voice lower so the little kids wouldn’t hear her. “He’s going to hurt my friend. Please help me.”
The woman closed her eyes and gave a qu nod. Dev dashed around to the passenger side and climbed in. They drove down the road another mile or so before the minivan had to stop for a fallen tree.
“Can’t you go around it?”
“There’s a market just up ahead, at the junction of this road and Forest Drive.” The woman leaned over Dev and opened her door. Dev took the hint and hopped out with a muttered “thanks.” She picked her way over the tree, cursing when she slipped on the wet bark and skinned her knee.
The little market was right where the woman said, and the guy working the register took pity on her and pointed her to the phone in the back. She dialed 911 with shaking hands.
“Thank you for calling the King County central dispatch. To reach the fire department, press one. To reach the sheriff, press two.”
A fucking voice mail menu?! Dev punched two.
“Emergency services are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please hold…”
“I don’t have time to fucking hold!” Dev slammed the phone down and swallowed back angry tears. What the hell was she supposed to do?
Duh.
She dialed, picturing the card Cole Williams had given her the night of Bianca’s murder, thanking whatever powers had blessed her with a freakishly good memory for numbers. She bounced on her toes as the phone rang, praying he could get here before it was too late.
Megan watched as Talia blinked foggily for a few seconds; then, as she became aware of her surroundings and her nudity, she let out a high, frantic scream. Megan joined in, Talia’s hysteria feeding her own, until it seemed impossible that someone wouldn’t hear them.
Nate laughed as Talia launched herself clumsily off the couch, her legs buckling as the effect of whatever he’d drugged her with maintained its hold.
“Scream as loud as you want. No one can hear you except for me.” He dragged Talia to the middle of the floor, positioning her on a beige rug that Megan just now realized was covered with heavy plastic.
He grabbed Megan from the floor and shoved her onto the couch. “I want to make sure you can see everything.”
He pulled out a remote and pointed it at the TV. Megan swallowed back a rush of nausea, fully expecting to see Talia’s image on the screen as the naked woman tried to
crawl away, only to fall flat on her stomach as her legs and arms collapsed under her weight.
From the corner of her eye, Megan was aware of Nate stripping off his shirt. The smell of a match striking and burning tobacco stung her nose. She gasped as Nate turned, and she saw his naked torso for the first time. He had a tattoo on his upper right biceps, just like Sean, Jack, and Jimmy Caparulo.
But Nate’s ink didn’t stop there. “You like it?” He smiled and spread his arms wide. On his right arm was the head of a snake, fangs bared, the rest of its gold and black scaled body coiling up his arm, down his back, and around his torso. He flexed his muscles and Megan stared, transfixed, as the snake undulated around his body.
On his chest was a bloody heart with a knife through it, with tear-shaped drops of blood dripping out of it, all the way down the left side of his chest and abdomen. “One drop for every kill,” Nate said.
There were dozens.
“She was one of my favorites, though.” He pointed at the TV.
“Oh my God.” There, in full color, was Evangeline Gordon, naked, on her knees, her blue eyes wide with terror, her screams muffled around the gag stuffed down her throat. Megan recognized the familiar furniture of Sean’s living room. She watched in horrified fascination as Nate appeared on-screen and mugged sickeningly for the camera. His image blurred as he approached the camera, which was abruptly wrenched to the right.
Nate laughed at Megan’s audible gasp at the image of Sean, slumped against the wall, completely unconscious.
Oh God, oh God.
Megan had always wondered if
something like this had happened, but she’d never envisioned this kind of horror.
“Sorry you have to miss all this, buddy, but you’ll see soon enough what happens to people who fuck with me.”
On-screen, the camera swung back to Evangeline, her screams getting more frantic behind the gag as Nate’s hulking form came into the frame. Without warning, he pressed the lit cigarette into the skin of Evangeline’s buttock.
Megan’s attention snapped back to the room at Talia’s animal cry of pain, the smell of burning flesh making Megan gag.
“Stop!” she screamed as Nate hefted the knife.
His hand moved, blindingly fast, and a red stripe welled across Talia’s back as she arched and screamed in pain.
“Please stop hurting her!” Megan cried. “You don’t need to do this. Let her go.”
“You have no idea what I need.” He shifted the knife to his right hand and made another cut, creating a bloody X that covered Talia’s back from hip to shoulder in each direction. He leaned down until his mouth was at Talia’s ear. “What made you think you could talk and get away with it? No one else ever has.” Talia’s spine arched as Nate traced a bloody line along the skin of her inner arm.
From the speakers, Evangeline’s screams grew louder. Megan squeezed her eyes shut against the violation replaying on the screen, against the horror happening in this very room.
“No!” Nate was screaming in her ear, yanking her head up. “Open your eyes and watch, you bitch, or I’ll make it even worse for both of you.”
She opened her eyes just in time to see Nate flip Evan
geline Gordon to her back and tease her with his knife before delivering the killing blow.
A choked sob ripped from chest, and she snapped her focus back to Talia, who was on the floor, her eyes locked on Megan’s, pleading, as though Megan could somehow get them out of this.
“I did all of this for you,” Nate said with a savage yank of Megan’s hair. The cold bite of his blade pressed against her throat. The slightest movement would draw blood.
“I did everything, set it all up so perfectly, so we could be together. Sean tried to keep me away from you, and he lived to regret it. They tried to keep me away from you.” His hand ran down the side of her almost tenderly. “And you don’t even care. You ruined everything.”
The blade sank into the tender skin just under her ear. “You’re going to watch every second so you see exactly what I did for you. So you can understand what you’re going to suffer for failing me.”
He released Megan and stripped off the rest of his clothes. Completely nude, except for the tattoos that continued down the lower half of his body, he was even more terrifying.
He pounced on Talia like a hyena taking down a wounded deer and flipped her to her back. His blade flashed and Talia’s screams filled the room.
The screams filled Megan’s head, tore from her throat, the scents of blood and fear choking her as she succumbed to the living nightmare unfolding in front of her.
Cole screeched to a halt in front of Nate Brewster’s building. He’d left a message for Petersen but didn’t have
much faith she would follow up on his findings. Not that he could blame her. They had a suspect in hand and a load of damning evidence. It didn’t make sense to chase down a less likely suspect based on little more than a hunch.
Cole might have felt that way himself, if he weren’t stone-cold sure Nate had taken Talia, Devany, and the woman he loved.
Please, God, let her be alive.
Cole couldn’t even contemplate the alternative.
He scanned the directory, saw Nate’s name, and rang the buzzer. Shocker, no one answered. He didn’t have to wait long before another tenant came into the entryway, shaking rain off her trench coat as she slid her key into the lock. She didn’t even give him a second look as he slipped into the building behind her.
So much for a secure building.
He knocked on the door. No answer. He gave the door a quick once-over. Strong, but not steel core. He drew his gun as a precaution, angled his body, and delivered a hard kick, just under the dead bolt. Another kick, and the sound of splintering wood echoed through the hall as the door swung open.