Conduit (30 page)

Jake slumped over the dining room
table and propped his head up with his hands. He had read the note at least
twenty times since waking up and discovering Emily was not in his bed.
Expecting to find her in the kitchen, the sight of her purse and cell phone on
the table jolted his system. He had raced to the garage, only to discover her
car missing as well. Then he sat at the dining room table and read the note.

The note provided most of the information he needed, but
left him with so many questions. She made it clear that she thought her plan
was the only way to get Cassie back alive. Once the killer had her, he no
longer needed Cassie. If she called the police or took Jake with her, she risked
getting Cassie killed.

Then her words took a cryptic turn. She pleaded for Jake to
find her and bring the cops to get her away from the killer. She wrote that he
was the only one who could find her, but to do so, he needed to have Cassie to
take him to the place they had been yesterday. Although he preferred not to
wait for Cassie to take him, he realized that Emily had never said where they learned
about conduits. He wouldn’t be able to find Emily alone, so he had no choice
but to wait for word that Cassie had come home.

His heart ached at the last part of her note. She loved him
and knew without a doubt that she wanted to spend her life with him, but first
he needed to bring her back from the darkness. Jake wanted nothing more than
for her to have told him that in person before she ran off on her dangerous quest
to save Cassie.

He also chastised himself for not having the courage to share
his feelings for her before she wrote it in a note. Both of them had ample
opportunity to express their love, to tell each other how crazy it was that
just after a week, they knew they belonged together. Yet neither of them
ventured to have that conversation.

Jake picked up her cell phone and thumbed through her
contacts until he found a number for Lionel. He answered with a tired and worn
voice. “Hi, Emily. We don’t have anything new on Cassie yet.”

“It’s Jake, not Emily,” Jake said.

Silence came from the other end of the phone.

“Are you there?” Jake asked.

Panic swelled in Lionel’s voice. “Where’s Emily?”

“She went after Cassie. We both took a sleeping pill when we
came home, but I think she only pretended to take hers. When I woke up, she was
gone. She left her cell phone here.”

“How would she know how to find Cassie?”

“I think...” Jake stumbled over his lie. “I think he
contacted Emily. It seems Emily was his real target, not Cassie. He probably
took Cassie to get Emily’s attention, and it worked.”

“Where are you now?” Lionel asked.

“At my house. She left her phone, her purse...” He started
to tell Lionel about the note, but decided to hold that information back for
the moment.

“Okay, stay where you are. Give me a number I can reach you
at.”

Jake gave him his cell number. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll call you as soon as I talk to Shawn. Don’t use Emily’s
phone again. We’ll have you bring it to the station so we can dump it and see
how they communicated.”

“I really don’t want to sit here and do nothing while—”

“It won’t be long, Jake, I promise. If Emily was his real
target, then it’s possible he let Cassie go to exchange her for Emily. Either
that or he killed Cassie. I need to talk to Shawn before we do anything else
since he took the lead on the case when Cassie disappeared.”

Jake hung up and sat the phone down next to Emily’s purse. Bob
jumped up on the table and meowed at Jake several times. “I wish you could tell
me where Emily ran off to,” he told Bob. “Or at least you could have woken me
up when she was leaving so I could stop her.”

Bob tilted his head back and forth, and stared at Jake with
his large, green eyes. He meowed a few more times, followed by warbling noises
that sounded like he was trying to tell Jake something.

“Yeah, I can’t wait until she’s home, either,” Jake said. He
thought about Emily’s note that he withheld from Lionel. He was acting the same
as Emily and Cassie, sneaking around, holding back secrets.

But just as Emily had snuck away to get Cassie, it was now
Jake’s responsibility to get Emily back, exactly as her note asked him to do. Once
he figured out where she was, he would tell the cops everything so they could
get her away from that monster. “Don’t worry, Bob,” he said. “I’ll bring her
home soon enough.”

“Emily’s gone?” Shawn asked. “What
the hell is going on here?”

Lionel shrugged and plopped down into the chair behind his
desk. “Jake said he thought she went to find Cassie, and that Emily was the
killer’s target all along.”

“Of course, the message. ‘Hear me, Em.’ Emily.” Shawn shook
his head and huffed. “That was his message from the start and we had no idea.”

“There was no way for us to know the last word was Emily,
let alone that it referred to our Emily.”

“Where’s Jake now?” Shawn asked.

“At his house. He called me on Emily’s cell phone, which she
conveniently left behind so we couldn’t trace her. I told him not to use it
again because we’d probably want to dump it. I got his cell phone number so we
can call him on that and have him bring it here.”

“Good thinking.”

“Anything from the tip line or the swab on the syringe cover?”

“Nothing. No saliva on the syringe cover and no tip that we
can use.”

“How is this possible?” Lionel asked. “We have his picture,
we have his first name. We have been right behind him with Stephanie Price,
Cassie, and now Emily. How can we have so much, but have so little?”

Shawn’s desk phone rang before he could respond. “Sergeant Brandt,”
he said into the phone. He sat up straight and listened to the caller for a
minute. “Okay, we’ll be right there.”

“What is it?” Lionel asked as Shawn stood up.

“They found Cassie.”

Lionel jumped to his feet. “Is she—?”

“She’s alive and at Wesley Medical Center. She was shot in
the arm, but it went all the way through and she didn’t need surgery. The crime
scene unit is on the scene where she was shot.”

They rushed out of their office, and Lionel got his cell
phone out of his pocket. “I have to call Jake.”

“Have him meet us at the hospital,” Shawn said. “Hopefully
Cassie has some answers to help us find Emily and finally stop this guy.”

Lionel and Cassie were engrossed in
conversation when Jake walked into Cassie’s private hospital room. Jake greeted
them both, and asked Cassie how she felt. She said she was fine, but then
launched into complaints about her surroundings, particularly the hospital gown
and the sling around her injured arm.

“Where’s Shawn?” Jake asked. He dragged a chair next to
Cassie’s bed and sat down.

“He was coming up the elevator with me,” Lionel said, “but he
took a call from the Chief. He’ll be here in a few minutes. Cassie, why don’t
you finish what you were telling me about when he took you?”

Cassie nodded. “He was waiting for me in the hallway when I
got out of the bathroom. He grabbed my arm, but didn’t get a good grip on me. I
managed to get away from him and ran to the bedroom to get my gun. He caught up
to me fast, and even though I fought him for a bit, I didn’t stand a chance.”
She clamped her mouth shut and her brow furrowed.

“Take your time,” Lionel said.

She looked down at her hands, and continued speaking about the
encounter. “He was much bigger than me. 6’4 or 6’5. He was big, not like
overweight big, but really strong. He caught up to me in the bedroom. I
stumbled, hit the nightstand, and gashed open the side of my head. He picked me
up like I weighed nothing and slammed me down on the bed. We struggled, but
then he pinned me down. The last thing I remembered was a needle in my neck.
Then I woke up in a basement. It was freezing cold down there and my hands were
restrained behind my back with rope.”

“Jake thinks Emily was his real target,” Lionel said.

“She was,” Cassie said. “When I was in the basement, he told
me they belong together. He truly believes he is in love with her and that she
feels the same way about him. Later, he took me to the alley and Emily was
there waiting for us.”

“How did she look?” Jake asked.

“She looked...” Cassie swung her eyes over to Jake. “I’m
sorry, Jake, but I don’t want to sugarcoat it or lie. She looked absolutely terrified.”

Jake’s lips parted and his chest swelled with pain and
anxiety. Before he fell asleep, Emily had told him how scared she was. If only
he knew her fear stemmed from her plan to surrender to the killer.

“What happened in the alley?” Lionel asked.

“He had her throw away her keys in the trash bin, but she
had put an extra key for me in the glove box. I’m so glad she thought that far
ahead. After she threw away her car keys, he had me get on my knees and he had
the gun...”

Listening to her speak about her ordeal, Jake no longer
wondered how she managed to survive in the grips of the monster that had Emily.
Cassie’s voice reflected an incredible strength and determination, and Jake
surmised she could survive just about anything. He only hoped Emily shared
those characteristics.

A commotion in the hallway caused Jake to look up. Shawn
rushed into the room holding a folder, his eyes never leaving Cassie. “Are you
okay?” he asked.

“After a little TLC from the docs,” Lionel said, “she’s
going to be just fine.”

Shawn gushed out more questions. “Which arm was shot? Are
you hurt anywhere else?”

“I was shot in the left arm. I have some stitches in the
side of my head and a hole in my arm, but other than that I’m doing okay.”

Shawn smiled and nodded. “I’m so glad.”

“What else can you tell us?” Lionel asked. “Why did he shoot
you in the arm? Why not just kill you?”

“I don’t think he’s had much experience with a gun,” Cassie said.
“He was unsure of himself when he used it. I know it was dark outside, but I
wasn’t that far away from him. He meant to kill me and if he were practiced at
shooting then he would have. Instead, he hit my arm with the first shot and
missed me entirely with the next two shots. I played dead so he thought he was
successful, but he didn’t even check to see if I was alive. If he thought I was
still alive, he wouldn’t have stopped shooting.”

“Why would he be so sloppy?” Jake asked.

“After he fired the third shot, he high-tailed it out of
there,” Cassie said. “I’m sure he wanted to get away from the alley as fast as
possible in case someone heard the shots. I had to wait a few minutes until I
was sure he was gone, but then I crawled into the car. The first thing I
checked was the glove box, and there was the key.”

Jake was glad that Cassie was on top of things and could
sort out the facts of what happened, but he needed something tangible to find
Emily. Until she was home safe, nothing would put him at ease.

“How far was the drive from where he held you until you
arrived at the alley?” Shawn asked.

“It was hard to tell because he had me lie down in the
backseat and I was blindfolded the whole way. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. He
held me in a secluded area, like a farmhouse. He blindfolded me in the kitchen before
we left, but even though I couldn’t see when we got outside, I didn’t hear any street
traffic from the house to the car. I heard a lot of crickets, but no city
noise. There also weren’t any lights that I could see through the bottom of my
blindfold until after we had driven for quite a few minutes.”

Lionel scribbled in his notepad. “We’ll get a radius set
from the alley and see what we can find as far as rural homes with basements within
that search radius.”

“Unfortunately, basements are very common out here,” she
said. “The room had a white tiled floor and concrete walls, with a drain in the
center of the room and a hose with a spray nozzle. It has to be his kill room
and also where he cleans the bodies before he dumps them.”

“How did he communicate with Emily?” Shawn asked.

“I’m not sure,” Cassie said.

Shawn took a piece of paper out of the folder and handed it
to Cassie. Jake angled his head and saw six pictures of men in rows of two. The
grainy pictures appeared to be ones caught by a surveillance camera.

Cassie pointed to the second picture on the bottom row. “That’s
him.”

After putting the paper back into his folder, Shawn sat on
the edge of Cassie’s hospital bed and laid his hand on her arm. “The crime
scene unit picked up a lot of evidence in the alley. They collected the two
spent bullets that missed you plus the one that went through your arm. They
also found the syringe he used to inject Emily, and that’s being tested now to
see what drug he gave her. But I know you picked up on something else we can use.
You’re too well-trained not to have more for us.”

Cassie sighed and fell into a silence. Her eyes clouded, and
Jake realized the more she remembered, the more painful those memories became. She
had been through hell, yet in spite of all his sympathy for her suffering, part
of him wanted to shake her into giving up anything and everything she could so
he could pluck Emily out of the same hell Cassie had endured.

Shawn looked up at Lionel. “Maybe we should come back later,
after she’s rested more.”

“I just needed to collect my thoughts,” Cassie said. “Doc’s
got me on some pretty heavy stuff for the pain. Can’t say I’m not enjoying it
from time to time, but it clouds my mind more than relieves the pain.”

Lionel smiled. “We can let the pain medicine wear off a
little and come back in a couple hours.”

“I wish you would both stop treating me like I’m some sort
of victim. My best friend is out there and I’m not playing the victim card
until she’s home. Got it?”

“Got it,” Lionel said. He looked around the room and his
eyes settled on Jake. “We all want Emily back right away. Shawn and I will check
on the evidence from the alley and see if he left a print somewhere. Then we’ll
sit on ballistics on the off-chance that it turns up something.”

“I think there’s something else you can look at while you’re
waiting on ballistics,” Cassie said. “I said at the beginning of this that he’s
killed before now. That was just educated conjecture then, but now I know
Wichita is not his first time on the merry-go-round.”

“How do you know?” Shawn asked.

“He told me.”