Beg for Mercy (46 page)

“Hey, what are you doing?” A guy with heavy-framed glasses and a goatee had opened his door two doors down. “I’m gonna call the cops!”

“I am the cops,” Cole said as he shoved inside Nate’s apartment. He did a quick sweep, though every instinct screamed the place was empty. What had he expected? That Nate would suddennhange his MO and bring Megan and Talia back to his condo?

He pawed through Nate’s desk, through his bedside table, looking for something, anything to give a clue as to where he might have taken them. He’d killed in aban
doned homes around the city, with no evident pattern in how he chose the locations for his kills.

Fuck.
He dialed Petersen. “I need you to look something up for me,” he said as soon as she answered. “Find out if Nate Brewster has any property besides his primary residence.” He hung up before she could utter a sound.

He could hear voices outside, neighbors wondering what to do about the maniac who had just kicked down the door. Time for Cole to get out before the police made it here.

He sped away from the building and parked two blocks over, banging his head against the steering wheel.

Nate had Megan. She’d been gone for over an hour. Plenty of time to hurt her, to kill her. His eyes stung and he wracked his brain, coming up dry. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. He’d done this. He’d left her alone, and now she was going to be killed—if she wasn’t dead already.

His phone rang, a number he didn’t recognize on the display. Cole answered, his voice choked.

“Detective Williams? It’s Devany Sinclair.”

Cole almost lost it. “Where are you? Where’s Megan?”

“I’m at the Pick n’ Save store in—Where the hell am I?” Cole heard a muffled voice answer in the background. “I’m in Coal Creek.” Cole knew the area, a town southeast of Seattle. Most days it took about twenty minutes to get there, but that was without a storm blowing trees down every other block. “But that guy Nate—Megan’s friend—he still has her. He killed my mom.” Cole heard her voice rise in hysteria. “He killed her and now he’s going to kill Megan, too, if you don’t help her.”

“Where’s the house? Tell me the address.”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I know it’s on 168 southeast, but I don’t know the number. I can show you—”

“Stay where you are.” Cole put the Jeep in gear and floored it. “Keep trying nine-one-one and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

At some point Megan’s screams faded to whimpers. Deafening sounds of horror filled the room from the blaring speakers as Nate showed them one sickening video after another of him and his victims.

But he hadn’t raped Talia—not yet anyway. In fact, his penis hung flaccid between his legs as he loaded up a new video. He left Talia prone, silent on the floor. Her dark eyes were slitted open, staring and empty like she’d escaped to a faraway place only she could reach, away from the horror of what was happening.

Megan wanted to join her, but she was acutely aware of every noise, every image, the metallic smell of blood, the acrid sweat hanging in the air. Nate didn’t have to tell her to watch—she couldn’t look away, couldn’t shut it out as every sickening detail was branded into her brain. The small part of her brain capable of logical analysis noted that he was taking an abnormally long time making his kill.

He was drawing it out, making them both suffer. A sick part of her wanted to scream at him to do it already, get it over with and put them all out of their misery. In a flash of clarity, she understood, on some primitive level, why Sean had chosen the path he did.

But while they were alive, there was still some chance someone would find them.

But how? The only person who knew they were with Nate was Devany, and she…

Megan bit back a sob. He was going to kill Devany, too, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Cole had no idea where she was.

Oh God, Cole, is this how it really ends for me? For us? For Sean?

She scanned the room, searching desperately for something, anything, she or Talia could use as a weapon. But the more she struggled against the flex ties binding her hands and ankles, the deeper they cut into her skin.

She tried to catch Talia’s eye again, but the other woman was gone. Not dead, not yet, but definitely someplace other than the room.

Her fear increased as Nate loaded another video, this one of an exotically beautiful woman in her early twenties. Nate stared, fixated, at the screen, absently running his thumb over the blade of his knife. The woman smiled uncertainly at the camera as Nate said something offscreen that Megan couldn’t quite make out.

Whatever he said replaced the woman’s ingratiating smile with a look of terror, a look that said the woman had seen the face of death and knew it was coming for her.

Nate let out a frustrated curse. Megan’s attention snapped to him, and she realized with horrified disgust that he was masturbating. Or trying to. Tugging and jerking brutally at his penis, he couldn’t get it up.

Relief that she and Talia wouldn’t be raped shot through her.

It lasted a mere second before Nate turned his terrifying anger on Megan.

“I did everything for you, and now you’re taking it all away,” he raged.

Megan tried to scramble away as he lunged at her, but with her bound hands and feet, she only managed to fling herself to the floor, where she heaved herself like a spastic inchworm toward the narrow hall that branched from the right side of the room.

He caught her by the hair and twisted her around with such force she thought her neck would snap. With her face now level with his groin, she lunged without thinking, teeth snapping, but he caught her with an open handed blow that sent pain exploding across her cheekbone. She would have fallen had he not still had his fist twisted in her hair.

Another blow splt her lip, and his knee to her ribs made the oxygen spew from her lungs in a rush. A loud buzzing sounded in her ears and a red fog clouded her vision.

Cole turned up Stonegate Road in Coal Creek, a twisting road that wound up a hillside and was lined with dozens of large properties. He blew past an emergency crew that tried to flag him down and continued up the road. He’d lost cell coverage a mile back. No way to try 911, no way to find out if Petersen had gotten anywhere. He was on his own.

The dread grew stronger with every passing minute. Nate had taken her more than an hour ago. He had no idea
how long Nate kept his victims alive after he first took them. Days? Hours?

Minutes?

How long would he torture her? Cole tried but couldn’t stop thinking about the other victims. Jesus, was Megan at that very second screaming in pain, begging Nate to end it so she could stop hurting?

Cole swallowed back a surge of bile.
Focus.
He couldn’t afford to dwell on the worst-case scenario if he wanted to have a chance in hell of saving her.

Megan was alive. He was going to find her.

He nearly missed the turnoff to the convenience store where Dev was waiting. The Jeep fishtailed as he swung it through the turn and into the store’s tiny parking lot. He bounded up the stairs of the building and found Dev inside, behind the counter huddled on a stool in a sweatshirt that was two sizes too big for her.

She jumped to her feet. “Took you long enough.”

“Just let me use your goddamn phone,” a male voice boomed from the back of the store.

“Let’s go,” Dev said, heading for the door. “A crazy guy just burst in here.”

A chubby teenager rounded the corner. “Dude, find a pay phone. I’m gonna call the cops.”

A large, barefoot man followed close behind. He was soaked from head to toe, dressed only in a thin T-shirt and cargo pants. “I don’t have any money,” the man said in a strained voice. “Don’t make me kick your ass—”

“Jack?”

The man’s dark head whipped around. Jack’s face was almost gray, his lips blue.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Cole asked.

Jack shook his head. “Fuck if I know. All I know is I woke up about half an hour ago, facedown in the woods.” A shudder racked his large frame.

Cole didn’t know how long he’d been out in the rain, but it was long enough for Jack to get good and cold. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, you know him?” Dev asked as Cole herded her to the car.

Cole ned and they all scrambled into the Jeep. He cranked the heat and peeled out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel. He filled Jack in on the details as they sped up the road.

“Son of a bitch got right by me,” Jack said tightly, his hands shaking as he held them up in front of the vent. “Must have dosed me with something strong. All I know is I woke up facedown in the mud, no shoes, no money, no gun, no idea how I got there.”

Jack still looked foggy from both the cold and the drugs, shaking his head every so often as though to clear the cobwebs. He flexed his fingers in the hot air pouring from the dashboard and winced as his skin started to pink up.

“How much farther?” Cole asked Dev.

“Not too far.” She stared intently out the back passenger window. A few more minutes passed. “There it is. On the right, past the boulder.”

They parked on the side of the road. “Do you have any idea where in the house he took them?”

“Not in the house,” Dev said. “He put me in the kitchen, but then he went outside and didn’t come back in.”

So they were looking for a shed or a garage or something. “You two wait here,” Cole told them.

“No fucking way,” Jack said. “You’ll need backup.”

“You’re half hypothermic and coming off whatever he hit you with. Besides, you need to get her out of here,” Cole said, nodding toward Dev.

“You have to save Megan,” Dev said. “Don’t worry about me.”

Jack’s jaw tightened and his shoulders went back. “I’m fine,” he said. His face was still ashen, but the shaking had lessened in the warmth of the car. “I fucked this up and let him take Talia. Let me help.” The look in his eyes said he was coming with Cole whether he liked it or not. Cole was pretty sure he could take him, but he didn’t have time to waste fighting.

Cole caved. He turned to Jack. “If you fall on your drugged ass, you’re on your own.”

“Do you know how to drive?” he asked Dev.

Dev nodded. “If Jack isn’t back here in five minutes, take the car back to the store. Find out where the nearest sheriff’s station is and send them here with the paramedics.”

They cut through the wooded area on the neighbor’s lot in case Nate was keeping watch. Creeping between the trees, they sidled up to the detached garage. Cole heard nothing. They entered through an unlocked door. Nothing but a black SUV was parked inside.

“Motherfucker stole my car,” Jack muttered.

The guy was tough. Cole had to give him that. Jack’s jaw clenched against the shudders as the icy rain pounded down on them, and he hardly winced as his bare feet crunched against the wet gravel of the driveway.

There were no other structures on the property that they could see. Despite what Dev had told them, Cole
picked the lock on the back door and they ducked inside the house. A quick search of the rooms revealed nothing.

“They have to be somewhere close,” Cole said, trying to clear his mind of the panic so he could think. “Dev said she didn’t hear a car.”

Jack’s gaze swept the room, locking on an old-fashioned metal floor vent. “There’s a heat vent, but I didn’t see a furnace anywhere up here.”