Killing Secrets (10 page)

He didn’t have time for this unwelcome barrage of self-analysis.

Rather than taking out his frustration on the drywall he should be making phone calls to locate a new source for the bathroom sink fixtures for the Mortenson condos, mistakenly shipped to Ohio. He had no time to wait for the supplier to straighten out the shipping mess, and he had an entire crew to replace damaged walls here at Southgate.

He glared at what was left of the bedroom he was working on. It wasn’t enough to spray paint obscenities this time, something a fresh overcoat would quickly fix. No, his saboteur punched vicious holes through eight units on the second floor. The loss to Thorne Enterprises, both in time and money, was substantial. This was his third major claim this year, and the year wasn’t half over. His insurance agent was having kittens.

Patrick pulled a bottle from a nearby cooler. The icy water did nothing to cool his anger for his unseen nemesis. “Okay. I get the message you’re pissed,” he muttered. “Just face me like a man when you rip my guts out, you miserable coward.”

“There you are!” John Branson, the Southgate foreman entered the room with an odd expression on his face that set off Patrick’s internal alarms.

“What’s wrong?”

The man grinned. “I hear you’re having slumber parties at your house, and I didn’t rate an invitation? What’s up with that?”

He almost groaned out loud. Was it too much to hope Jane hadn’t broadcast to the world she and Suze had stayed overnight at his house after Jack insisted he keep an eye on Amanda so Rachel would stay in the hospital? “Tell me Jane only shared details with you,” he growled, “so I don’t have to fire her.”

“Well, as long as everyone’s radios were like yours,
off
,” John said pointedly, “I’m the only one who heard you had a pizza party with Suze’s teddies and dollies.” He grinned. “There was also something about building Barbie a ski chalet with Popsicle sticks?”

Patrick did groan, then. Every Thorne employee carried a radio to ease communications among the crew, which meant more than fifty men and women could have heard about his impromptu slumber party for Amanda. He hadn’t known what to do with a four-year-old, especially a girl who didn’t communicate. Asking Jane and Suze to stay overnight in one of the five spare bedrooms had been his only line of defense.

He hadn’t expected to be drawn into their game plan for the evening, though, so now he was in for it. He’d be finding dolls, bears, and Popsicle sticks stuffed into the crevices of his truck for the rest of the summer. A few of his crew could be evil pranksters when inspired. Nothing inspired them more than a show of alpha-male slippage.

With a shake of his head, he glanced down at the radio clipped to his belt. The yellow battery light blinked back at him. “Sorry you were pulled off the job, John. I forgot to charge my radio yesterday after returning from the hospital. Did Jane say what she wanted…beyond ruining my macho image?”

John chuckled. “She wanted me to give you a message. Guess Amanda’s mama checked out of the hospital already. Jane said to tell you she picked her up so you don’t have to cut out early. Said she’d stay with her and the girls at your folks’ house with the security alarm set until you get home tonight.”

Patrick told himself he was relieved to have that chore off his plate. Between the sabotage, a construction schedule in danger of imploding, and his dinner tonight with the Landers to go over spec changes on their dream home he didn’t have a minute to spare today.

Why, then, did a pang of disappointment wrench through him?

It didn’t. That was heartburn from the roast beef, fried onion, and hot pepper sandwich he’d slammed down when the roving food truck stopped at ten o’clock. He didn’t
want
to spend any more time with Rachel of the luscious brown eyes and fragrant skin. That way was a pipeline to disaster.

“Thanks, John.” He forced himself to turn to other, more pressing concerns. “How did inspections go this morning?”

The man grimaced. “I understand why it’s necessary to kick in new security procedures after this latest,” he waved at the remaining damaged wall in the bedroom Patrick was working on, “but conducting detailed inspections of all of the sites before the crew clocks in every day is cutting deep into our schedule. Took me an hour and a half just to check Southgate. Chavez wasn’t able to do much better with the Mortenson condos. I hate to think how long it will take once we break ground on the villas next week. Add in all of the time it takes to travel between sites and we’ve got us a mess of hurt.”

“I know.” The saboteur hadn’t seriously damaged the integrity of any of Patrick’s structures. Yet. It didn’t mean he couldn’t. “But crew safety comes first. So, until I say otherwise, no one walks onto a Thorne site until it’s thoroughly checked out.”

Patrick rubbed a hand over the back of his neck like the gesture would wring out another solution to his dwindling options. “If it will speed things up, team yourself and the other foremen with supervisors. I’ll okay overtime for two man inspection teams to come in an hour before regular shift. Concentrate your efforts only on whatever sites are active that day.” Problem was, most of the sites were active and they both knew it.

John nodded his approval. “Teams and an earlier start might help keep our noses above water for a while longer.”

“I’ll tell Skip to radio the other foremen. Have you seen—”

“Here, boss!” Skip Davis poked his head around the doorjamb like a jack-in-the-box.

Patrick shook his head, amused by how often his lanky brother-in-law showed up exactly when needed, just like Radar on the old M.A.S.H. reruns. Skip had come aboard Thorne Enterprises almost two years ago after he was discharged from the army on the heels of Karly’s death. Skip was so devastated to have lost his sister, felt so guilty at not being there to save her from herself that Patrick found a comrade in arms. It was easier to deal with Skip’s grief, rather than his own.

When Jane couldn’t continue with site work after she took on Suze full time, he’d hired Skip as his personal assistant. Even with limited construction knowledge, his trusty notebook in hand to combat the memory losses he occasionally experienced since his return from Afghanistan, Skip had become Patrick’s invaluable set of extra hands. “Did you—”

“Heard you comin’ in. Already in my notebook.” He waved it in the air. “And before you waste time on the phone, the sink fixtures will be here tomorrow. All two hundred sixty of ’em. The new supplier I found is so happy to get in bed with Thorne Enterprises he shaved off an extra fifteen percent. So, I went ahead and ordered the fittings you wanted for the Caston job. All the supplier needs is your authorization on the invoices, and we’re good to go.” He barely paused. “I also called the plumbing sub-contractor to tell him we’re back on schedule. He’ll be at the Mortenson site with his crew day after tomorrow.”

The day was definitely looking up. Patrick smiled. “I’m going to have to give you another raise, aren’t I?”

Skip grinned at John. “You’re my witness!” Then, he sobered when he turned back to Patrick. “With the stuff going on lately I’m just grateful to have a job. Which reminds me, Morgan radioed from the trailer. Jack is waiting to talk to you.”

Patrick nodded. “I’ll head that way soon as we’re done here.”

After a few last instructions for John and Skip, Patrick put away his tools, took a final draught on his bottle of water, and poured what was left into a rag to clean construction dust off his face and hands. Then he left the building and walked across the site toward the trailer. Jack told him last night he’d check in as soon as he had an update on the arrest of Rachel’s ex-husband. With any luck, he’d also learned who was out to destroy everything Patrick had worked so hard to build.

With the number of challenges his crews had experienced these past ten months, they all deserved raises. Yet it was all he could do to make their current paychecks. Each attack on one of his jobs poked another hole in his bottom line and he was sinking. Fast.

He had to keep his priorities straight.

That meant no more rescuing doe-eyed blonds with felonious exes on their heels. As Jack pointed out at the hospital last night that became his job the moment authorities in California put out an APB on “Preppy” for grand theft, arson, and attempted murder. If Rachel’s doctor friend didn’t come out of his coma and died, Greg Bishop would be facing murder charges.

Patrick handled the situation all wrong with Bishop yesterday. If he hadn’t let the man get to him, the police would have arrived and Rachel’s ex-husband would be in custody today. Rachel and Amanda would be back on their side of the hedge, and he on his side. He’d screwed up, so now he was stuck babysitting the pair of them until Jack could arrange for official protection. Who knew how long that would take? The department’s manpower was already overextended with their search for the missing coed.

Patrick was shaken from his reverie when he walked into the air-conditioned trailer and collided with his brother pacing in front of the door. “Whoa! Sorry you had to wait, Jack. I was finishing up—”

A cold knot of uneasiness developed in his gut when he saw his brother’s severe expression. “What’s wrong?”

Jack’s scowl deepened. “They’ve identified some of the clothing your saboteur left behind,” he said without preliminary.

“And…?”

“It’s bad, Patrick. There are traces of semen and blood on everything. Sondra Manning’s blood type.”

The feeling of imminent danger he’d felt as a Ranger about to enter a hot zone stirred in his chest. “The councilman’s daughter that went missing last week?”

His brother nodded.

Patrick quickly worked through the implications staring him in the face. “You think there’s a connection between my saboteur and the Angel Killer.”

“Yes. Your saboteur just hit the top of our ‘To Do’ list.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. “Let’s go. We’ll take my car.”

Chapter Eight

Three Weeks….

Three Days….

Two Hours….

…’Til death.

Sondra Lynn Manning yanked hysterically on the thick chain that led from a centralized eight-by-eight inch pillar to her cuffed ankle. Then she sagged to the floor of her prison and sobbed in defeat. A line of blood that was sure to upset her captor trickled from a new tear on her ankle down her foot to seep into the rug beneath her, but she didn’t care. She suddenly understood why a fox would chew off its own foot to escape a trap.

Her
trap had been well laid. The pillar, chain and cuff that confined her were made of strong steel. The bed and lone chair were bolted to the concrete floor in the middle of a windowless room large enough she could use the furniture, but couldn’t reach any of the padded walls or ceiling that blocked the sound of her screams. The only thing not bolted down was the camp toilet, and the floor lamp that glared twenty-four, seven in the corner well beyond her reach.

Her days had run together. At least she thought it had been days since she returned home from work and fell into her kidnapper’s hands. His visits were irregular. She’d been drugged at least twice, and she had no natural light to give her body a sense of daily rhythm.

At twenty-one years old, she’d never once given a thought to her death. Until Death gained a name and a face, and locked her in this godforsaken place. Now she had time to think of nothing else.

With a gasp, she shifted position to ease the pain of the tattoo her captor had burned into her left butt cheek when she regained consciousness the first time. She looked away from the stain darkening the concrete two feet away—not quite covered by the rug she sat on—unwilling to acknowledge she wasn’t the first to be kept in this prison.

She regretted the day she’d moved out from under her father’s protective roof. Regretted they’d argued and both been too stubborn to resolve their differences in the three months since. Now, when she was certain it was her fate to die here, she wished she hadn’t declared her independence from their gated community and security systems quite so completely.

Did her father know she was missing? She hadn’t talked to him in weeks thanks to her moratorium on his nightly phone calls to check on her. And her jailer told her there was no ransom note.

Until he’d told her she wasn’t kidnapped for the ransom her lawyer father could pay for her release, Sondra had held out hope. Ransomed, she at least stood a chance of surviving this…whatever
this
was. But, though she knew deep down who her kidnapper was, she didn’t understand what he wanted from her.

He ranted. He raved. He talked about people she’d never met and, every time she tried to tell him he’d mistaken her for someone else, he became enraged and threatened to kill her. To kill everyone she loved.

When he wasn’t acting crazy, he brought her presents. A book. Perfume. Clothing. She hated the last, not because the girlish blouses and skirts were awful or didn’t fit, but because he insisted she strip in front of him and give him everything. The first time, she’d refused. Dragging her by her chain to the bed, he’d cut everything off her. And he’d not been gentle. She still had several cuts from the knife he’d used. Since then, she’d swallowed her humiliation and done as he asked.

Thank God, he’d taken each change of clothing and his disgusting hard-on with him when he left her alone again. But she was terrified of the day when he didn’t. “Daddy, please,” she sobbed, praying into her knees. “Bug me. Smother me. Make me move back home. Just come get me before it’s too late!”