“That’s it?” Maxwell shouted, coming to a standstill to face her. “As much money as I’m paying you, I hope you’ve got something more to go on than that!”
She frowned. “I’d estimate somewhere within a five-block radius of our current location.”
“Five blocks,” Maxwell growled. He looked ready to tear the specialist apart. “My daughter is missing and the best you can do is five blocks! Do you know how many fucking buildings there are in a five-block radius?” He turned to say something to Thomas, but stopped when he saw the detective punching out numbers on the phone.
Thomas resumed his pacing as he spoke to the police chief on a landline, bringing him up to speed. He listened to the chief’s response, desperate to hang up the phone and begin searching. “Good. I’m going to start combing the streets. Call my cell if any tips come in.” He slammed the phone down and began jogging toward the door.
“Detective!” Maxwell shouted. “I want to go with you.”
“No,” Thomas threw out over his shoulder. “I need you to stay here where you are accessible to the media. Phone me if any leads come in.”
“But my daughter—”
“Needs you to stay out of my way,” Thomas growled. He was anxious to get moving, his control tenuous at best.
Nikki. He had to find her.
Still, he understood what the old man was going through. He’d lost Amy. No man should have to go through losing a daughter like that. He could see the fear and helplessness etched into Maxwell’s face like a mask of pain.
Pausing long enough to quickly bring him up to speed, he told him, “Every available patrol officer in the area is now combing this five-block radius. I need to go be one of them.”
Maxwell nodded, his expression frightened but rational.
“Help your daughter,” Thomas said softly, “by staying here. The phone number to this place is being plastered all over the media as we speak. If any viewers call in with a lead, however far-fetched, you phone me.” At four A.M., he doubted many would be watching, but it helped to give the senator’s father some focus.
“Yes,” Maxwell whispered. “Yes, I will.”
Thomas inclined his head before running out of the building.
Nikki’s eyes clashed with his, defiantly meeting his gaze
as he prepared to deliver the deathblow. There was no possible way to survive it, she realized. Not with that much force and hatred behind it.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” a male voice snarled, making Nikki blink. She stilled. She recognized that man from TV. Nikki gasped as she watched Detective James Merdino lunge at Lucifer, both men toppling to the ground when their bodies collided. Hope surged in her chest, crashing almost as quickly when she saw that the detective’s hands were cuffed together.
He had escaped jail. He had found them. But James Merdino’s only weapon, his hands, were chained together.
Nikki struggled with the knots that held her naked body roped down, like the senator, trying to loosen them. Priscilla was feverishly working the knots at her legs, her hands now free. But like Nikki, there were so many of them on either of her legs—intricate bondage knots that kept their ankles and thighs tied together, secured to more knots that roped them down.
James knocked Lucifer into a stone wall with his shoulders, a growl erupting from both of their throats at the force. Lucifer blindly slashed out with the knife in his hand, slicing open James’s shoulder in the doing. The pain startled James for only a moment, but it was enough time for Lucifer to lunge back at the detective.
Both men hit the wall this time, knocking James out cold from a blow to the back of the head. Lucifer took a blow to the mouth, blood immediately gushing from between his lips as he fell to the ground.
He was stunned, Nikki thought as she struggled with the knots. He was stunned but he was not out cold.
Hands at her arms shocked her. Her neck shot to the right.
Priscilla. She was free. Free and trying to undo the knots that held Nikki down. But there was too much wet blood dripping from the senator, slicking her hands and making them repeatedly fumble.
Lucifer moaned, quickly coming to.
Nikki’s eyes widened. “Run,” she whispered. “Go—now!”
The senator seemed not to hear her.
“Run!”
Priscilla’s head came up. She didn’t look very lucid. “I—I can’t leave you.”
“You’re our only hope,” Nikki frantically insisted, hysteria bubbling inside of her. “Go get help!”
The senator blinked. The iron-will determination she was known for finally took over. She quickly glanced to their momentarily felled captor, then back to Nikki. “I
will
be back.” And then she was running, dashing down the watery stone corridor that would take her from this basement of horror.
Lucifer bellowed when he realized the senator had gotten free. He lunged up to his feet and stumbled after her.
Her heart racing, Nikki continued to struggle with the blood-slippery knots.
Chapter 29
Monday, July 28 4:07 A.M.
“Damn it,” Kim muttered under her breath to Megan as
they walked back and forth in the alley next to Jake’s café in the Flats. This was the alley Nikki had originally been assaulted in. She knew—
knew
—that was significant. She didn’t know how, only that it was.
“I wish Ben O’Rourke had been right about your dreams being voodoo, dear,” Megan said as she frantically paced. The revolver was securely in her hand. “Because it would be nice if you could force a dream to come on right about now.”
Kim stilled. Ben O’Rourke . . .
Ben O’Rourke
.
Oh my God, she thought, memories flooding back. There had always been something about the detective that sent shivers down her spine. Something about him that told her he’d bring trouble into her life.
Was he to blame for this? Had she sat side by side in a car with the devil himself and not even realized it?
Ben O’Rourke had found one of the victim’s bodies. Ben O’Rourke also possessed vivid, too-blue eyes . . . .
It didn’t matter, Kim staunchly told herself as she resumed her pacing. All that mattered now was finding Nikki.
“What are you two doing here?” a male voice growled, about giving Kim a heart attack. Her pulse jumping, she stopped pacing and whirled around in her tracks.
“Oh, goodness,” Megan squeaked. “I almost shot you, Detective. Don’t frighten us like that.”
Thomas frowned at the revolver in Megan’s hand. “I’m pretending I don’t see that, Mrs. Cox.”
He turned his attention to Kim. His expression was stony, but she could see the naked vulnerability in it. He’d been searching hard for Nikki, she could tell. His breathing was ragged, perspiration covered his forehead, and his dark eyes were desperate.
“I’ve looked everywhere I can think to look,” he rasped out. He drew in closer to Kim, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Please think. Your dreams—anything. Give me anything, here,” he pleaded.
“Anything.”
“Don’t you think I’m trying?” she whispered, her gaze as tortured as his.
He briefly closed his eyes. “Yes,” Thomas said quietly before releasing her shoulders and turning around to give her his back. “I don’t know what to do.”
Think!
Kim told herself.
You can do this!
“The scent of water is strong,” she murmured. He slowly turned around to face her. “In my dreams,” she clarified. “A dark, enclosed space. No windows. I smelled water and something rotting, garbage I think.” Her face scrunched up a bit. “I didn’t see it, but I smelled it.”
Thomas stilled, trying to think.
“That’s striking a chord in me,” Megan murmured. “But why?”
He glanced up. “What do you mean?”
“I was raised in this city,” Megan said thoughtfully. “And I’ve got more than a few years on you two.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Now if only I could remember . . .”
“Please,” Thomas choked out. “Let it come to you. Don’t force it. No matter how much you want to, let it come out naturally or it’ll get stuck.”
Kim’s teeth sank into her lower lip as she watched her stepmother’s face.
“The sewers,” Megan finally whispered, making chills run down Kim and Thomas’s spines. Her eyes slowly rounded. “A little girl was killed down in the sewers about thirty years ago. There was an old abandoned boat shed with a passage that led to them. Kids used to dare each other to go down, all of us afraid, naturally.” She swallowed. “They locked up that old shed ages ago, though. When that little girl was killed. They might have even torn it down. I don’t recall.”
“Where was it back then?” Thomas asked, his voice raw and gravelly.
Megan closed her eyes tightly, her face scrunching up as she tried to remember.
Kim’s gaze slowly flicked up to the sky. Her eyes widened.
Déjà vu . . .
“The northwest docks,” Kim murmured, recalling the vantage point of her most intense dreams, the direction from which the moonbeams had spilled down. Her heartbeat sped up as she turned her eyes to Thomas. “I’m positive. Go.
Now.
”
He did. Faster than Kim thought a man his size could move. She could only pray he reached Nikki in time.
“Call the police,” Megan said, breaking Kim from her thoughts. “Tell them where he’s gone so they can help.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Thanks for remembering that,” she said shakily, fumbling in her purse for the cell phone. “I’m so on edge I’m not thinking right.”
“You did wonderful, honey.” Megan’s smile was proud. “Nikki will be all right now. We have to have faith.”
Kim stared at her for a long, intense moment, her eyes searching Megan’s. “You’re the hero tonight. Not me.”
Her face colored. “That’s not true. I—”
“I love you, Mom,” Kim said softly, making Megan’s eyes widen. “I’m so incredibly proud to be your daughter.”
Megan’s eyelashes tried to bat away her tears, but they fell anyway. “I love you, too,” she said on a shaky smile. “More than anyone or anything on earth.”
Kim swiped at the tears falling down her face with the back of her hand. “We better do this later,” she said with a wry smile. “I need to call the police.”
After she’d made the call, Kim held out her hand and waited for Megan to thread her fingers through hers. They walked back to the BMW and got inside, deciding to wait the finale out at police headquarters.
“How sad for that little girl,” Kim murmured as she started the BMW and put it in gear.
“Yes.” Megan sighed. “I still vividly recall the day her body was found. Thirty years ago a murder that disgusting in scope was big news.”
“I can imagine.” She frowned, pausing a moment. “I’m curious . . .”
“What about, dear?”
“The little girl.” Kim turned her gaze to the road as she slowly drove away. “Do you remember how she died?”
Megan nodded. “A tragic story, really. She was raped by her father down in the sewers. Her mother went crazy—not out of love for the little girl, but out of jealousy that her husband was interested in their daughter instead of her, if you can imagine.”
“That’s sick.”
Megan sighed, agreeing. “Anyway, she killed her husband, then as a sort of symbolic punishment, she took their two children down into the sewers and tried to kill them both. Fortunately, her son escaped. But not until after the poor boy witnessed both his father and his sister’s murders.”
“How horrible.”
“Yes, it was,” Megan commiserated. “The little boy ended up being raised in foster care.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Michael,” she said. “Michael Sorenson.”
Kim’s breathing stilled. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
Nikki had prayed James would wake up before Lucifer
returned, but that was not to be. Her only consolation was that he’d come back empty-handed, the senator nowhere in sight.
She hoped that meant Priscilla had gotten away, not been struck down and disposed of. Otherwise, she realized, her nerves so raw she couldn’t stop trembling, she was as good as dead.
Something about him was different now. Lost, almost. His fake blue eyes didn’t so much as blink as he walked toward her, nor pay the fallen detective any attention. Nikki would have thought disposing of James would have been his first priority, torturing her his second. But he was lost in his own twisted world.
“She escaped,” he said in a monotone, his gaze faraway. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Hope surged inside of her.
The senator had escaped.
Nikki’s eyes were wild, desperate. She didn’t know if she was supposed to respond to him or not. She’d done a bit of research on serial killers since escaping Lucifer the first time and, while not exactly an expert on the subject, knew they tended to be very ritualistic in their thoughts and behaviors. Whatever intricate killing pattern he’d etched out in his brain had just been shredded to bits. That wouldn’t keep him from killing her, though.
“What was supposed to happen, Michael?” she whispered.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. Dr. Sorenson—her nemesis—she still couldn’t believe he was Lucifer, that she’d known him all along. She had expected a bad man to look like a bad man, but Michael Sorenson, while always on the strange side, possessed a perfect face and an equally perfect physique.
He blinked. His gaze slowly found hers. “She was a liar. She was supposed to be punished like Lisa. She was supposed to be punished in front of you.”
Oh dear lord he was crazy. What little hold he still had on reality was tentative at best. “Maybe you should go look for her again,” Nikki said, hoping she sounded helpful. Anything to stall for more time. “Maybe she’s still out there—”
“Shut up!” His nostrils flared. “You just want me to go away,” he yelled. “I’ve loved you for years, and look how you betray me!”