Justice for Mackenzie (19 page)

The vehicle stopped on a street in a nice neighborhood in northern San Antonio. The lawns were all well-kept and Dax could even see some people out playing in the yards. It wasn’t the type of neighborhood he expected to see a scumbag like Staal living in. He tapped his phone to unmute it.

“Mack?”

“Daxton! I’m here, I’m here.”

Dax’s stomach hurt. Of course she was there. Where would she have gone? “I love you. You’re doing great.”

“I…it hurts to breathe.”

Dax shut his eyes. Fuck. “I know, but keep doing it anyway. The forensics team just came in and I’m going to be busy for the next bit, but I’m not hanging up. But don’t talk, baby. You need to save your air. Just relax for a bit, okay?”

“It’s too quiet…ringing in my ears. I don’t…it.”

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to reassure her for at least the next fifteen minutes or so, Dax suggested, “Would it help if I put my phone up to the radio? Then it wouldn’t be quiet and you wouldn’t waste your breath with talking.”

“Yeah, I’d like that. As long as…not the god-awful silence.”

“Okay, sweetheart. You know I love you, right? I’m gonna find you. Soon. You just have to hang on.”

“I’ll try, but…it’s getting hard. If you don’t…me, don’t blame…I wouldn’t change…about loving you. Not one thing. I’ve heard it doesn’t hurt…you know…that I’ll…basically fall asleep… The last thing…about is you. I’ll remember the feel…hands on my body and…lips on mine. Don’t mourn me forever, Daxton. That’s an order.”

Dax swallowed hard, ignoring the heavy hand Quint laid on his shoulder in silent support. “I’ll love you forever, Mack. No one will come close to replacing you in my life and my heart. You’re seriously the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. Hang in there for as long as you can…but if it gets too much and you need to fall asleep…it’s okay. Don’t hang on for me if it hurts. You do what you need to do. I don’t want you in pain. Got it?”

Dax could hear Mack sniff. Her words were just a wisp of sound. “I don’t want to die. I want to live…fifty years with you.”

“I know, Mack. I know. God, baby.” Dax didn’t know what to say. He sure as hell didn’t want her to die either, but right this second, he had no idea how to prevent it. He was completely helpless to do anything for her, other than to try to reassure her.

“I love you, Daxton Chambers.” Her words fortuitously didn’t cut out.

Dax knew he had to get going. “I love you, too. I’m going to let you listen to some eighties music. Okay?” He heard her chuckle.

“Eighties music. What every girl stuck in…coffin wants to hear. It’s fine. Anything…be okay, as long as it’s not silence. Stay safe, Daxton. Don’t…anything stupid.”

Dax whispered his words. “I will. I love you, sweetheart.” He didn’t wait for her response, knowing it would tear his heart right out of his chest if he had to hear one more thing from her. He put his cell on the dash and took Quint’s phone that he held out. He clicked on the music app, pulled up the eighties channel, and waited for the music to start. He placed Quint’s phone face-down on his own, then closed his eyes, kissed his fingers and pressed them to the phones for a moment.

Abruptly he turned from the dashboard of the car and opened his door. He eased the door shut, making sure no sound could be heard over the phone lines, and nodded in approval as Quint did the same thing.

Neither man said a word as they got in position behind the Special Response Team. It was time to catch a rat in its hole…and hopefully pry the location of where he’d stashed Mackenzie out of him before it was too late.

* * *

Dax followed the ten men into the small, nondescript house. They’d used the breaching tool to break down the front door and had swarmed inside, quickly fanning out to find where Staal was hiding. Within seconds, there were shouts from the back of the house. Dax moved that way with Quint and Cruz at his heels and stood in the doorway of what was obviously an office.

Staal was sitting behind three monitors with his hands on his head, grinning. He didn’t bother to look at the officers who were pointing their AR15 rifles at him and ordering him to stand up and turn around. Cruz motioned for the officers to wait. Typically they would’ve grabbed him and cuffed him, but at the moment Staal had the upper hand. They didn’t know if he was armed, and they needed information from him. They’d give him space until they had to make a move. At the moment he didn’t look like a threat to them. They had to get him to talk.

“Well, well, well. Look who finally tracked me down. Took you long enough, Ranger Chambers.”

“Shut the fuck up, Staal. Where is she?”

“Who? Oh…poor little Mackenzie?”

“You know that’s who I’m talking about. Stand up and turn around, asshole.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You didn’t think the game would be over that soon, did you? You really thought I’d stand up quaking in my boots and tell you where she was? That would ruin the fun now, wouldn’t it?”

“Why are you doing this?” Cruz demanded, impatience in his voice.

“Why not?”

“That’s not a fucking answer, Staal.”

Staal’s voice lost some of its easiness. “You want to know why? Haven’t your precious profilers figured it out yet? Where’d you get them anyway? Profilers-R-Us? They don’t know shit.”

“Why don’t you tell us then?” Dax tried to keep calm, when all he wanted to do was reach across the desk, over the fucking monitors blocking his view, and choke the shit out of the man.

“You ever seen anyone die, Chambers? I mean, not because you shot them from ten feet away, but watched them moment by moment as they took their last breath? It’s absolutely fascinating. If you watch closely enough, you can see the life literally drain from their eyes. I didn’t understand it at first. My mother did though. She made me see.”

“What are you talking about? Come on, stand up, and turn the fuck around.” Quint’s voice was testy.

“Oh, Officer Axton, you have no patience. My mother always told me I was the most patient little boy she’d ever seen. She taught me everything she knew. First, it was my little brother. He wouldn’t shut up, you see. So she had to shut him up. She made me stand in the corner of the room and watch. She put her hand over his mouth and nose. He wiggled a bit and made some grunts, but eventually he quieted. It was beautiful. His little eyes were glazed and staring at the ceiling. I was afraid at first, but mother made me touch him, made me see how beautiful it was.”

“Motherfucker.” The officer standing next to Dax breathed the words almost tonelessly.

“And it was beautiful, but she showed me that doing it that way was too easy. She trained me. She showed me how it worked. She’d hold me down in the tub, making me look her in the eyes as she held me underwater. Just when I didn’t think I could hold my breath anymore, she’d let me up. She went to an estate sale one year and bought a brand-new coffin. It was a piece of beauty. I wish I still had it today…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Mother would put me in it and close it up, leaving me there for what seemed like hours on end, but was probably only twenty minutes at a time. She showed me what it meant, how it worked. How beautiful death could be. The more I struggled, the better it was. She got me a birthday present when I was just six years old. We lived in a crappy neighborhood with crackhead parents who didn’t watch their kids. There was a little girl, Dorothy Allen. I’ll never forget her. She trusted me. I told her we were playing a game. She climbed into that coffin all on her own. Mother and I listened as she cried and beat on the lid for two hours. Mother walked me through what was happening. She understood. Finally when the fervor died down and no one cared about finding Dorothy anymore, mother let me open the lid. I’ve never experienced anything like I did with her that first time.”

Dax was appalled. Staal was sicker than they’d imagined. “Where. Is. Mackenzie?” Dax bit the words out, not wanting to hear the filth spewing from Staal’s mouth anymore.

“Calm down, she’s right here, Ranger Chambers.” Staal reached out and turned one of the three computer monitors around until Dax could see what Staal had been watching. It was grainy, and had a greenish hue to it, but everyone in the room could see what it was. It was Mackenzie. Inside a box.

“She’s beautiful. So much more than any of the others. And I’ve come so far since Mother taught me what she knew. When she couldn’t teach me anything else, I put
her
in our coffin and listened as
she
died a beautiful death. I’ve honed my craft. The water gives them hope, makes them hold on just a little bit longer. Prolonging their deaths. I tried using a walkie-talkie, but that didn’t work at all, not enough range. I then found that using a special satellite phone, with extra strength, used by the toughest military teams in the world, was the key.”

Staal leaned over and pushed a button on a small console on his desk. The haunting notes of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” sounded loud in the room. “Your last words to each other were beautiful. Epic. That’s what I’d been missing with all the others. They died, but no one knew. With Mackenzie, you knew. She knows she’s dying. You know she’s dying. You gave her permission to die. Fucking perfect. You told her to die, Chambers. It’s my masterpiece. A beautiful death. I’ve recorded every second so everyone around the world can watch it as well. Once the media gets ahold of it, I’ll be famous. Mackenzie will be famous. My beautiful death will be famous.”

Staal finally stood up, holding a small pistol pointing straight at Dax.

Dax knew what was going to happen seconds before all hell broke loose. He screamed out, “Nooooooo, hold your fire!”

Just as the men around him opened fire on Jordan Charles Staal.

The smoke in the air was thick and choking. Dax coughed once, then twice as the air slowly cleared around them.

“Steady. Hold your positions!” Cruz yelled out. “Hold your fucking positions!”

Dax moved as if in a trance. He walked past the officers standing with their rifles now pointed at the ground, and around the side of the large desk Staal had been sitting behind. Dax felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience, he couldn’t hear or see anything but Staal’s dead body. He’d fallen backwards with the force of the bullets hitting his body, knocking the chair over in the process. He was lying on his back, arms outspread, blood slowly seeping into the light-blue carpet under Dax’s feet. His legs were propped up on the seat of the tipped-over chair and his eyes were open, staring straight up. The gun, which Dax could now see was a fucking water pistol, lay next to his open hand, mockingly.

Dax moved his eyes to the desk top, turned the monitor Staal had twisted to face the doorway back to its original position, and groaned. He leaned over and propped himself on the desk with both hands and stared, not believing what he was seeing. The song coming through the speakers changed to the upbeat tones of the B-52s singing “Love Shack”. The song so incongruent to what he was seeing, Dax could barely process it all.

There were three views of Mackenzie in the coffin. One was a viewpoint from the top corner of the small box. Another monitor showed a view from Mack’s feet upward. Dax could see how small the box really was. Her breasts were almost brushing the top of the box and he could see her shift restlessly.

But it was the third view, on the monitor that Staal had turned to the room, that hit Dax the hardest. It was a close-up of Mack’s face. It looked as though Staal had used a wide-angle lens and mounted it in the lid of the coffin, over her head.

Her eyes were huge, open wide as she struggled to see something, anything. Her pupils were dilated as far as they could go. Dax could even see the tear tracks on her face from where she’d sobbed in fear. She had a dark spot on her forehead, where a bruise from hitting the lid of her tomb was forming. She was holding the satellite phone up to her ear with a death grip. He could see her struggling to breathe. Her mouth was open as if she was gasping for air, and not getting any. Every now and then she’d tilt her head back, as if doing so would mean what little air was left in her tomb could get into her lungs more easily.

Dax could hear some of the SRT members walking through the house, making sure there was no one else lurking around waiting to ambush them and that Staal really was working alone. A door opened, footsteps sounded on the floor above them, the low murmurings of the officers clearing the rooms as they searched. Dax figured it was useless. Staal wouldn’t have Mack stashed here. He’d already buried her somewhere, he was sure of it.

TJ came up beside Dax and put his hand on his shoulder. “Fucking hell, Dax. Come on, you don’t need to watch that.”

Dax shrugged off TJ’s touch violently. “Don’t touch me!”

“Let the guys get into the hard drives to see what they can get. There’s still time to find her, Dax.”

Dax just shook his head. “It’s too late. Look, TJ.” He turned to his friend, throwing out a hand. “Fucking
look
! Without Staal here to tell us where she is, it’s too late. We’ll take too long. We’ll never find her in time.” Dax said the words, but readily moved when two officers came up behind him. One immediately started typing, careful not to blacken the screen with Mackenzie’s face on it, knowing Dax would lose it if he lost sight of her.

“Maybe we can track the feed,” one of the officers said to the other, entirely focused on what he was doing.

“Yeah, see if you can pinpoint where it starts. If it’s within a few miles we can be there in minutes.”

Ignoring the two men frantically trying to use their computer knowledge to find out where Staal had stashed Mackenzie, Dax ran his finger over the screen as if he was actually touching Mack’s cheek. “God.” The word was spoken with such angst, it was obvious to everyone in the room Dax was suffering.

TJ had no words for his friend, and finally backed off, leaving Dax to his grief.

“Dax, your phone.” It was Quint. He’d run out to his patrol car and retrieved their phones. “The last words she hears should be yours.”

Dax took the phones Quint held out with shaking fingers. There was still music coming from it. Mack was still hearing the sound of cheesy eighties melodies in her coffin. Dax didn’t know if he could do it. He looked back at the monitor.