The Last Time I Saw Her (24 page)

Her eyes slid from Melissa's tense face to Glory's. The girl's brown eyes were huge with fright. She had been crying. Tear tracks were still evident on her cheeks.

The air was thick with fear.

Charlie was suddenly freezing, a bone-deep cold that had nothing to do with the basement's slight chill. Her hands fisted at her sides. Her palms were damp, she discovered as her nails dug into them.

I have to help them. I have to help
me.

“I explained to your neighbors that I really came here for you,” Abell said, shoving Charlie forcefully away from him as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “But you had a guy spend the night at your place, so I had to find accommodations elsewhere.”

Charlie pitched up against the washing machine and whipped around to face him, her hands resting on the cool metal surface as she tried to get her bearings. She was breathing too hard, and she tried to control that.
Be calm.
Even if Tam wasn't catching her psychic messages, Tam would miss her. Tam would search, call for help. What Charlie knew she needed to do, first and foremost, was stall for time. The situation was beyond bad. She had no doubt at all that Abell meant to kill her, and Glory and Melissa, too, although if they were still alive it must mean that he had a use for them.

But he'd come here for
her.
To kill
her.

There was only one way that was even remotely possible.

Ask him about it. Get him to talk.

“You were in the trunk of the patrol car that brought me home last night, is that it?” she asked, trying to sound much cooler than she felt. She could feel goose bumps rippling to life all across the surface of her skin. Her throat was dry with fear. But delay was her friend.
Delay, delay.

She tried not to remember how quickly and unceremoniously he'd ended the blond prison guard's life. Like now, his gun had been in his hand. He'd simply jerked it up and…

Oh, God, please. Tam.

Abell looked at her with surprise. “You're smart. Yeah, I was in the trunk. I was also in the back of that truck that brought you down the mountain.”

Melissa and Glory sat perfectly still. Their eyes darted between her and Abell. She could feel their rising terror like a vibration in the air.

Try reasoning with him.

“Are you afraid of what I know about you, Mr. Abell? Is that what this is about? Because everything I know is written down in my files. Even without me, the authorities have access to it all.”

He snorted. “You think I don't know how the
authorities
work? They've got so much information on me that it'll take them months to get to your files. But you—you can just tell them. And I need time to grab my daughter and get away.”

Charlie felt her stomach twist. “You're going to take Heidi with you?”

“She's my little girl. Of course, that bitch of an ex-wife of mine had her second husband adopt her. She's not even listed on any of the records as mine anymore. But I made a mistake and told you. Once you mentioned my daughter, I wasn't letting you off that damned bus alive. When you got off anyway, I had to track you. I was going to kill you the first chance I got, but you were always with that guy.” He frowned. “That guy—who the hell is he? He looks like—”

Charlie seized on that, and was getting ready to say
He's Michael Garland, the guy you knew on death row,
was getting ready to play the a-dead-guy-is-stalking-you card in hopes of rattling him, of throwing him off his game, of at least keeping him talking when he said, “I don't give a shit,” and glanced at Glory. “Shut your eyes, cutie pie.”

Charlie's heart lurched with horrified realization.

Here it comes.

“No, no, no,” she stuttered. Panic surged in an icy tide through her veins as Abell's hand holding the gun jerked up. He aimed right between her eyes and—

Screaming, Charlie threw herself to one side.

But the gun didn't fire. Instead, Abell seemed to freeze. His eyes widened. Then he toppled like a felled oak, pitching forward to smack the floor with his face.

For a split second Charlie stared at Abell's sprawled body in stupefaction. He lay unmoving, his eyes still open, his gun still in his hand. She was as sure as it was possible to be without actually checking that he was dead. A brown-handled knife stuck out of the back of his neck right below the base of his skull. Blood was just beginning to well up around the blade.

It didn't require an expert knowledge of anatomy to conclude that his spinal cord had been severed.

Abruptly her knees gave out. Legs folding beneath her, she sat down hard on the basement floor.

Michael came down the stairs, stepped over Abell with no more than a cursory glance, bent to pluck the dead man's gun out of his hand, and then headed straight for her, tucking the gun into the small of his back as he came. Glory, who like her mother had been frozen in place, drew her legs back out of his way with a quick scrambling movement that spoke of fear. Her eyes on Glory, Melissa made a muffled sound of distress. Grim-faced and intimidatingly large in that enclosed space, Michael paid no attention to either of them.

“It's all right,” Charlie said to them. Her voice was clear, if a little high-pitched. The surprise was that she could talk at all. On the inside, she was shaking like a paint mixer. If she had any muscles, they were concealing their existence well. “He's a friend.”

Michael loomed over her, distracting her attention from her neighbors as she tilted her head back to see his face.

“We gotta stop meeting like this,” he said. The words may have been jokey, but his tone wasn't. It was grim.

She looked up at him. His mouth was tight with anger. His face was hard with it.

She said, “Was that one of the Powells' kitchen knives?”

He nodded.

“What happened to the gun you took off Fleenor?” She was trying to sound normal, trying to keep it calm and controlled, trying to keep the waves of reaction that were hitting her at bay.

“I left it in the top drawer of your nightstand. Dumb of me not to realize I might need it to shoot a serial killer who was trying to off you in your next-door neighbor's house in broad daylight, I know.” The bite in his tone hadn't abated. He hunkered down in front of her, and she got a good look at his eyes. They were leaping with emotion, blazing at her. She could feel the heat of his anger and fear for her coming off him like sun rays.

She would have held out her arms to him except she was pretty sure she couldn't lift them. She wanted to swallow to try to get rid of the tightness in her throat, but she couldn't do that, either. “How did you find me?”

“I was all the way down at the end of the street when I heard Tam outside screaming your name. I ran back, got told you'd disappeared, did the frantic look-all-around thing, saw the cat scratching at your neighbor's back door, and rolled the dice. You came up lucky one more time.” His voice was as grim as his face. His eyes were moving over her. She was hoping he couldn't tell what an absolute mess she was inside—but she was pretty sure he could.

She offered him a placating little smile. “Okay, now I am so totally going to write that book.”

“You better,” he growled, and gathered her into his arms, kissing her cheek and then her mouth with brief hard kisses. Regaining enough control over her muscles to wrap her arms around his neck, Charlie was enjoying being crushed in his arms and kissed until, over his shoulder, she saw the mist that she dreaded start to rise up out of Abell's body. She sucked in a breath, staring. Michael must have registered that, because he looked swiftly around in time to see the vapor form itself into Abell's spirit, which was an exact replica of how Abell had looked in life. Michael stiffened as he saw and recognized Abell, and realized what was happening, but before he could do anything else Abell looked behind him and screamed, an otherworldly shriek that made the hair on the back of Charlie's neck catapult upright. Then Abell bolted across the basement floor as if all the hounds of hell were after him, which they probably were, only to vanish when he reached the far wall.

Charlie shuddered.

“Fucking freak show,” Michael muttered in her ear as he scooped her up and stood up with her. His words eased the sudden, reactive spike in her supernatural-exposure-induced tension. God, how great was it to have someone in her life who could actually see the same things she saw? And also, how much did she like the fact that he could just pick her up like that? That last had to be some atavistic female reaction, and she was so going to keep it to herself, she decided as he started walking with her, clearly meaning to carry her out of the basement. Some things he did not need to know.

Melissa and Glory were looking up at the two of them, wide-eyed. To Michael Charlie said, “Wait, you need to free them,” meaning the Powells. At the same time she saw Tam, wide-eyed, on the stairs, and heard a commotion as if many people had suddenly burst into the kitchen.

“I called the cops. They're here.” Tam sounded breathless. Then Big Stone Gap's finest were clattering down the stairs and the basement was suddenly full of people.

Charlie was recounting her part in what had happened for what must have been the dozenth time, this time to a state police captain at the Powells' kitchen table, when Michael came up the stairs from the basement. As he stepped into the kitchen his eyes touched hers, slid over her, checking in with her, making sure she was all right. She smiled faintly at him in response. Two cops trailed behind him, no doubt asking what he'd seen and how he'd managed to kill Abell, probably for the dozenth time. It was unquestionably justifiable homicide and every law enforcement officer on the scene was full of admiration. The only exception was Tony, and by extension Lena and Buzz, who regarded “Rick Hughes” with barely veiled suspicion. Which was entirely her fault, Charlie knew.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

Charlie pulled her gaze away from Michael as a state police officer asked her another question.

Glory and Melissa had previously given their statements, and, after accepting Charlie's apology for bringing a serial killer to their door and thanking Michael over and over again for saving their lives, had been taken to the hospital to be checked out. Melissa had pressed a spare key into Charlie's hand and asked her to check on Pumpkin, who was at that moment sitting on the kitchen counter watching the proceedings, if they should be gone overnight. They'd been traumatized and were suffering from shock, but both were going to be okay. Brett Powell, who'd been away on a fishing trip, was rushing home to be with his wife and daughter. Abell's plan, which he'd talked about openly from the time he'd broken into the Powells' house in the small hours, had been to kill Charlie and then to head for Mobile, Alabama, where his daughter now lived. He'd intended to take the Powells' car, holding Glory at gunpoint while Melissa drove. Left unsaid was how soon he would have murdered the pair of them—Charlie bet relatively soon.

“I almost got them killed. I feel so bad about it,” Charlie confessed in a low voice to Tam, who was sitting beside her, as the officer they'd been talking to put away his notebook and left the table. Leaving out the part about Tam being a psychic—nobody who didn't already know had been let in on that—they'd pretty much told the truth: that Charlie had gone out into the backyard, been grabbed by Abell, then been missed by Tam, who'd gone outside yelling for her. That in turn had brought Michael, who'd been out for an early-morning walk, running. As far as Charlie knew, no one had thought to ask where Michael had been walking from or to, and the fact that he was wearing the previous day's clothes, something that would only be apparent to Tony, Buzz, and Lena anyway, had seemingly passed unnoticed.

“You're a danger to yourself and others, cherie. Face facts,” Tam's voice was equally low, but tart. “Lucky for you, a few of us love you anyway.”

Charlie made a face at her. “Lucky for me, you're psychic. I was beaming messages to you the whole time.”

Tam nodded complacently. “I know. I got them. Next time, try to be more specific about your location so I don't have to just run around outside screaming blindly for you.”

“Got it: next time someone's trying to kill me I will beam you an address.”

Tam made a face at her, and then Charlie was distracted by yet one more cop stopping to ask one more question.

In the aftermath of her encounter with Abell, Charlie was still feeling shaky. She had her hands clasped together on the table in front of her (the better to make sure that no one could see them tremble) and she'd been sitting at the table for longer than she normally would have done because she didn't quite trust her knees yet.

The house was crowded with law enforcement officers from so many agencies she couldn't keep them straight. The Virginia State Police were there in force, as were representatives from the local FBI along with what seemed to be most of the Big Stone Gap Police Department. Tony, Buzz, and Lena were in the basement with the local FBI and a couple of the ranking state police officers on the scene as the contents of Abell's pockets were gone through, his clothing was searched, and his shoes were removed so that any residue on the bottom of them could be analyzed in a search for any clue that might lead them to the whereabouts of the other escapees or the hostages. Until they'd gotten the call that he was in the Powells' house and dead, the cops had feared that Abell had one or more of the missing teens with him. With Abell's death that fear had been eliminated, but now it became more imperative than ever to find the remaining hostages. Bree was the consensus pick as the one Abell would have been most likely to zero in on. Now that he was dead, the possibility loomed large in investigators' minds that he'd left her tied up or imprisoned somewhere, never to be found. That wasn't likely, as Charlie told them: Abell never would have left her behind alive. All anyone could do was pray that Bree had managed to escape, or that one of the other escapees had her. They had the same concerns about the missing boys, although it was felt that Abell would have been less likely to target them. Still, all three teens were out there somewhere, along with the three remaining escapees. More home-invasion scenarios like this one, carjackings, random murders, and hostage takings haunted the thoughts of the investigators tasked with recovering the hostages and bringing the fugitives in.

Charlie had already told them that while she didn't know anything about Doyle, she felt that Torres and Ware would stick together, and that Torres would be the leader and would head for his native Matamoros, Mexico. He'd been jonesing for a Whataburger during their last session, so she felt it was highly likely that he would stop by one of the chain's restaurants. She also told them that she had no doubt that the pair would kill anyone who got in their way, and that she felt sure that Torres would have taken one or more of the hostages with him if it had been possible for him to do so. As a result of her information, BOLOs had been issued along every route heading south, and patrol cars sent to stake out every Whataburger along the two or three most likely routes, even as the search of the mountain continued.

Tony emerged from the basement, followed by Lena and Buzz. Charlie smiled at him, but he wasn't paying any attention to her and didn't see. Instead he was focused exclusively on Michael, who was still talking to the other cops. As Tony stopped beside Michael with Buzz hovering at his elbow, Lena came on over to join Charlie and Tam, whom the three FBI agents knew from a previous case. Michael finished his conversation with the cops. As they moved away, he was left alone with Tony and Buzz.

Charlie was suddenly very interested in listening in on that conversation.

“So where exactly did you learn to throw a knife like that?” Tony asked Michael. Charlie didn't even have to strain her ears to hear him. Tony's voice wasn't loud, but there was a quality to it that made it carry. A hard quality, like he was talking to a suspect.

“It's a hobby of mine. I practice a lot,” Michael replied, perfectly bland.

“That's quite a skill set you have. Throwing knives, breaking necks.” Tony's body language was all cop. Like Michael, and Buzz and Lena, too, he was dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, but unlike Michael Tony had managed a shave. “Quite a body count, too. Three killed in two days.”

Michael said, “I'm just glad I was in the right place at the right time to make a difference.”

Charlie couldn't help it: her lips curved a little at that one. He sounded like a beauty contestant proclaiming that her greatest wish was world peace.

Lena was standing beside Charlie. She leaned close to whisper, “Bartoli thinks Hughes has to have had some advanced military training, but we can't find any record of it. And that was before he saw the knife in Abell's neck. Now he's going ape. He doesn't think there's any way a man with Hughes's background should have been able to do that.”

“He saved my life. And Melissa and Glory Powell's. And Paris Troyan's,” Charlie pointed out, as she had already done to Tony. “However he came by the skill set, I'm grateful.”

Still whispering, Lena continued, “The boss says there's something wrong somewhere. He's got people looking into the serial killer angle you suggested. He thinks there's something to it.”

Charlie barely stifled a sigh. That was exactly what she wanted, except for the cursed issue of timing.

“Umm,” she said. So maybe she wasn't at her eloquent best. She'd had a trauma, damn it. And the Michael/Hughes situation was getting twisted beyond unraveling.

Lena said, “I just wanted to let you know. Because I've seen the way you're looking at him, and the way he's looking back. Not that I'd blame you for tapping that, I totally would, too, but given what we all suspect, you should probably be careful.”