Taylor hadn’t gone to the airport. Security was watching for him there. The Canadian border was a four-hundred-mile drive north. Would he head up that way? If he did, he’d be captured. Leila had sent photos to the state police in both Pennsylvania and New York so they’d be looking for the man.
Mexico seemed like too long a shot. Too many chances to be recognized and caught between here and there.
What else?
In situations like this a criminal would either flee, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the police at the crime scene as possible, going as far and as fast as he could, or hole up somewhere he thought he’d never be found.
The attack had been premeditated. Taylor must have followed him to the restaurant. He’d staked out the station from afar, didn’t want to do the shooting there, too close to too much heat. Then Bing had been in his car, a moving target, a tough shot even for a professional. But at the restaurant, sitting outside—much easier.
If the hit had been planned, then it stood to reason that the man’s escape plan would be set up and thought out too.
Did he have a safe lair somewhere?
Bing sorted through all the reports he had, going line by line through Taylor’s tax returns. Then he backed up a little when something caught his eye.
Three years before, Taylor had reported rental income from a cabin he owned just outside Broslin, on the other side of the reservoir. There were a number of cabins scattered through the woods out that way, used by hunters. Taylor probably rented his cabin out to people who came in from out of state during deer and wild turkey season.
Bing opened another window on his computer and searched property records, but Taylor was no longer listed as the owner. The cabin had been sold some eighteen months back.
And yet…
Hunting was closed for the time being for everything but woodchucks, and nobody would rent a cabin for that, so the woods would be just about deserted. What better place to hole up until Taylor figured out his next step? He knew the area. He might even have kept a key to the cabin.
Bing checked his weapon, made sure he had an extra clip, pulled his ankle holster from his desk drawer and strapped it on and checked his backup weapon. He shrugged into a Kevlar vest before he put on his jacket. The cabin was a long shot, but he wasn’t about to head out unprepared.
On his way out, he told Leila where he was headed.
“You want me to send one of the boys over as backup?”
“Have whoever is closest come over if he can.”
He drove out past Jack and Ashley’s place, past the reservoir and around it. It had rained the night before, so once the paved road ended and the dirt road began, the going got a lot slower.
When his phone rang, he picked it up. Brian Haynes.
“I think I figured out what the burglar took,” the man said. “I was trying to access a vacation savings account Kristine used to handle. I can’t find her password book. She kept a little address book, but instead of addresses, she kept all her passwords in it.”
Made sense. People had a million different passwords these days, e-mail, social-media accounts, banking; basically everything you had online needed one. After a while, it got confusing. “Do you know exactly what was in that book?”
Haynes listed off everything Bing had just thought of. “I don’t know beyond that. I haven’t really looked at it much before.”
“All right. I appreciate your calling. Let me know if you remember anything else.”
If Kristine kept her passwords in there, it was possible she kept other things she needed to remember. Like account numbers that might lead to Taylor. So Taylor had to go and get it.
Bing considered that as he kept his eyes on the road that was getting progressively worse. And then he reached a really bad spot and the tires spun out, the back of the cruiser fishtailing. During winter snows and after a good spring rain, the dirt roads got pretty dicey.
He had about a mile to go to the cabin he was looking for. He shut off the engine, stepped out into the mud, and got started, moving toward high ground. Without the car, he could leave the road and walk wherever he wanted instead of having to slog through ankle-deep mud. He pressed forward, alert to every movement and noise around him, ready for anything. But Sophie was in the back of his mind, and he worried.
He dialed the ER as he pushed forward. “This is Captain Bing. I’m checking on the woman I came in with earlier. Sophie Curtis. She came in with a gunshot wound.”
“One moment, please.” A few seconds passed. “She’s still in surgery. I can’t tell you anything new. I’m sorry.”
He felt as if his own heart was being ripped out. He would have given anything just to hear the words that she was safe. Her life was the only thing that mattered, not where her heart had come from, nothing else but that she lived. His throat was so tight he could barely speak. “I want her room secured when she’s out of surgery. Nobody is to see her except essential medical personnel.” He’d given those orders before he left her, but he wanted to make sure they were being followed.
“Yes, sir. It’s already written in her file. We have a security guard waiting for her outside the operating room.”
He thanked the nurse, then hung up and kept going.
He slowed only when he could see the cabin through the trees. The place was small, probably one room with a couple of beds along the wall and a cooking stove. All wood construction, two dirty windows to the front and a heavy-duty door. Weather had scarred the siding, darkened it here and there with mold. Dead branches littered the roof.
No car in sight. But as he got closer, he could see tire tracks, a day or two old. Anything older would have been washed away by the rains. Someone had been here recently.
He walked around in a bigger circle, looking for any sign that would tell him if it’d been Taylor out here and what he’d been doing. He received the answer behind a thick stand of bushes—a mound of freshly disturbed earth.
The right size for a grave.
Who was this now? Probably someone who’d been part of Taylor’s scam and could finger him like Stacy and Kristine. Or Amanda, he thought, and fury bubbled up inside him. He didn’t think she’d been part of Taylor’s dirty business. But did she figure out what he was doing? Did Taylor kill his own wife to silence her?
Bing approached the cabin with caution, going around, coming in from the back, and keeping in a crouch as he stole up to a window. He didn’t see anyone inside, but he did see open shelves stocked with canned food and bottles of water. Taylor piling up supplies for his hiding place? Why not? He seemed to be the careful type, the type who planned.
Everyone involved in his dirty business was dead. Possibly Amanda. And for sure Stacy, Greg, and Kristine.
Greg.
Some half-formed thoughts in the back of Bing’s mind gelled together at last. Maybe Greg Bruckner’s death wasn’t an accident.
And Bing suddenly knew, with a sick certainty, that it hadn’t been. The hit-and-run was way too convenient when all the rest was considered. Taylor killed Greg Bruckner so Bruckner couldn’t finger him later. But…
He froze.
The paper had run the stupid article about Sophie getting Bruckner’s heart and his memories. And they used Bing’s finding the gun as proof of that. It all sounded real. The news crews certainly believed it.
It wasn’t true, but what if Taylor believed it too?
What if the bullet at the restaurant had been meant for Sophie?
Bing broke into a run, back to his car, moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life, fracture boot be damned. Sophie was in danger.
Taylor had to have been the intruder at Sophie’s place in the middle of the night. It hadn’t been a random break-in. Cold spread through his chest. Taylor had alibied out of that night on the strength of his computer records. What if those could be faked?
Taylor hadn’t come to the restaurant to kill Bing. He hadn’t missed his target. He’d intended to kill Sophie.
Bing careened around trees, ignoring the pain shooting up his broken foot. He was probably doing more damage, but he didn’t care if they had to cut the damn thing off, just as long he reached Sophie in time.
He came out of the woods by the road just as Chase was pulling up behind his cruiser.
Bing told him about the possible grave, and asked him to secure the potential crime scene until it could be processed. “I need your car.” Since his own was now blocked in.
He caught the keys Chase threw. He radioed to the rest of his team as soon as he was behind the wheel. “All available units to the hospital on full security detail for Sophie Curtis. Do not let anyone near her.”
He rattled down the uneven dirt road, putting his siren on as soon as he reached the main road, unable to think of anything else but the fact that Sophie was lying in some damn hospital room, and she was on a killer’s hit list.
* * *
She was in a recovery room set up for multiple patients, but she was alone in there for the moment. The nurse had come to check on her and reassure her, then went away. Sophie glanced at the monitors she was hooked up to, her mind sluggish, her body heavy.
She tried her hardest to remember what happened. The nurse had said something about a bullet and not to worry. What bullet?
Where was Bing?
They were supposed to have lunch, and he’d come, and he’d looked so good. She’d wished things could be different between them, because she was in love with him. That was her last memory.
The door opened, drawing her attention to the man who came in, a surgeon wearing scrubs, a face mask hanging around his neck, surgical gloves on his hands. Maybe he would tell her what was going on.
He came real close and bent over her, peering into her eyes as he searched her face. “Do you remember me?”
She blinked. Was she supposed to? “Did you help me?” Her mouth was so dry she could barely form the words. Her tongue didn’t want to turn. “What happened?”
He reached for a pillow from the empty bed next to her. She was about to tell him she was fine, it felt good lying flat. But the next second he pressed the pillow over her face.
Her heart clamored in her chest. She tried to fight, but she was too weak, too disoriented. And she couldn’t breathe.
* * *
Bing reached the hospital’s main entrance at the same time as Joe did. Sophie was on the second floor. Screw waiting for the elevator. Bing ran all the way.
Joe followed. “What happened?”
“I’ll explain later.” He saw the guard in front of the door as soon as he turned the last corner. He’d hoped to see his own men. He ran forward. “Is she okay?”
The security guard pulled himself straight. “Surgeon’s in there with her.”
Bing rushed by him, pulling his gun as he shoved the door open. Joe pushed in behind him.
Taylor spun, the motion knocking off the pillow he’d been holding over Sophie’s face. Fury filled his cold blue eyes. But by the time Bing raised his weapon, Taylor had his out too, the same model that had gone missing from the Haynes house. He pressed the barrel against Sophie’s temple.
Her lips were purple, her face white, but the heart monitor showed a heartbeat, and after a moment her eyes blinked open.
“Drop your weapon!” Bing spread his legs and steadied both hands on his gun.
Taylor flashed him a cold look of hate. “Why would I do that, when I have the perfect hostage? I want you two to back out of this room.”
Joe stepped back out into the hallway. Bing only backed to the open door. He had no intention of going any farther.
Taylor had his chin up and his spine ramrod straight, trying to act the man in control, but his glance, darting to Bing’s weapon, betrayed his nervousness. It was probably the first time anyone had pulled a weapon on him. He probably hadn’t expected to be caught here.
Bing didn’t want him nervous. “How about we both put our guns down and talk like old friends?”
“I’m not talking. I’m leaving. I’ve got ten million dollars and a life waiting for me I worked too hard to set up.”
“Then stay alive for it. Put the gun down.”
Hate filled the man’s eyes. “I don’t plan on going to prison. I can’t stand small places. Being locked up isn’t for me.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Maybe the DA won’t be able to make the charges stick. Maybe you’ll get off on a technicality.”
“Maybe I’ll shoot my way out of here. There’s a sandy beach with my name on it. There’s a house on that beach. I’m going to make it to that hammock between the palm trees. That’s mine,” he shouted, desperation creeping into his voice. “Do you hear me?”
He probably had something all set up down in South America. Some nice country without an extradition treaty with the US. Hell, ten million dollars would go a long way just about anywhere.
“All right.” Bing kept his eyes on Taylor’s face instead of the gun. When the man made the decision to shoot, it’d show there first. “So maybe you have the upper hand here. But a semiconscious woman hooked up to machines doesn’t exactly make the most portable hostage.” His brain was moving a mile a minute, trying to come up with a solution. “How about a switch? I put my gun down, push her out the door, bed and all, and you’ll have me.”
Taylor hesitated, eyes darting around the room again.
Bing kept going. “Nobody’s going to storm this room as long as you have a police captain in here. These are my men.” He gestured with his head back to the hallway, where Mike was arriving with Harper. “They’re not going to put my life at risk.”
Taylor shifted on his feet as he peered out to the hallway past Bing. “And then what?”
“We’ll negotiate for a car and safe passage. We walk down together, get into the car, and drive away. You let me out once you feel safe.” He shrugged. “And then you’re free.”
Taylor glanced to the door, to the window, to Sophie, his face turning grim. He shook his head. “I’ll be shot dead the second I let her go.”
“Maybe Kristine Haynes’s death was an accident,” Bing rushed to say.
He had a clear shot at the man, but he couldn’t be sure that Taylor’s finger wouldn’t twitch on the trigger at the last second. The barrel of his gun was pressed against Sophie’s temple. If the weapon discharged, there was no way the bullet could miss hitting her.