‘It’s just my guess. The Bryans had been accusing Ron and Kathy of stealing their daughter’s necklace. Suddenly the Bryans moved away. We all knew Ron was capable of using his power to further his own agenda. Nobody wanted to make him angry after that.’
What a fucked-up town
. ‘Why did you get the trial articles for your son?’ JD asked again.
Bennett looked away. ‘Russ threatened our visitation privileges with our grandchildren.’
Kathy Trask wasn’t the only coward
. ‘Where was Russ going to meet the reporter?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mr Bennett paled further. ‘It wasn’t a reporter, was it?’
‘No,’ JD said quietly. ‘It was probably Evan Reardon.’
The Bennetts flinched. ‘Oh my God,’ Mrs Bennett whispered.
‘I didn’t know,’ Mr Bennett murmured. ‘I didn’t know. I helped him . . . Oh God.’
Stevie touched JD’s sleeve. ‘Detective Fitzpatrick, let’s go.’
Wednesday, May 5, 10.20 A.M.
He was coming. Lucy could hear his steps echoing as she lay in the car’s dark trunk. She had no idea what time it was, but knew enough time had passed that something was wrong. If JD had been able to track her, he’d have been here by now.
The trunk popped open and she closed her eyes, hoping he’d think she was unconscious.
‘I know you’re awake, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You might as well open your eyes.’
But she kept them closed, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. He leaned into the trunk and lifted Gwyn out, and she heard the creak of a wheel. Then a thump.
‘I’m going to take you out next,’ he said. ‘I have a gun in my hand. I will shoot you if you struggle, but not to kill you, just to stop you. I will then gut your friend Gwyn while I make you watch. I guarantee she will feel every slice. Nod if you understand.’
Lucy thought of Nicki Fields, her stomach turning over. Then she let out a startled yelp when he yanked her head off the trunk floor by her hair.
‘I said,
nod
if you
understand
,’ he snarled.
Lucy nodded and he released her hair. He lifted her out of the trunk with one arm wrapped around her waist. She clenched her body when she was dropped on a cold steel surface.
She smelled rust. She heard the wheels squeak. She opened her eyes to find that she and Gwyn were on a flatbed cart. They were in a large loading dock and from the corner of her eye she saw a garage door, tall enough for an eighteen-wheeler to pass through. But the room was deserted.
It was just Evan,
and us
. Help should have come already.
You’ll have to take matters into your own hands
.
Evan loomed over her, large and terrifying, the hand of his uninjured arm clenched into a fist. ‘I’ve waited a lot of years for this moment,’ he said. The blow came fast and hard, straight into her face. The pain was blinding and her eyes filled with tears.
Warm blood covered her face. Her nose was bleeding and her mouth was covered. She struggled to breathe, white lights dancing in front of her eyes. Suddenly the tape was ripped from her mouth and she gasped, wheezing.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was for breaking my nose.’
Lucy gagged and had to force herself to take slow breaths as the blood gushing from her nose threatened to choke her. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . didn’t . . . I don’t . . . remember.’
Evan’s face grew darker. ‘You don’t remember?’
‘I fought . . . a lot. I’m . . . sorry.’
‘You’ll be sorrier, I guarantee. Because we aren’t even close to being even.’
Wednesday, May 5, 10.30 A.M.
Daphne was waiting for JD and Stevie at James Cannon’s apartment where CSU was already searching. ‘The warrant is for plain sight and only for any documents you find linked to Cannon’s involvement in the Bryan girl’s assault. Sorry, it was the best I could do quickly.’
‘Let’s hope it’s good enough,’ Stevie said, pulling on a pair of gloves. ‘Drew?’
Drew looked up from a pile of paper on the dining room table. ‘The neighbors recognized Evan when we showed his picture. They said he moved in about six weeks ago. We’ve found loads of documents, but so far nothing to tell us where he’s gone. Good news is I got a match of a fingerprint to one that my team took from the black Lexus in Anderson Ferry.’ He hesitated. ‘They also found a knife in his trunk. Long filleting knife, very sharp. Based on the photos they sent to my email, it could be the murder weapon for the valet, the hooker and the PI.’
JD searched Cannon’s desk, trying not to picture the knife while Stevie tackled the hall closet. In minutes, JD hit paydirt. ‘Daphne?’ he asked, his pulse hiking. ‘Reardon has no expectation of privacy here, does he? Since he’d be squatting?’
‘No, darlin’, he most certainly does not.’
‘Good,’ he said fiercely. ‘Stevie, look what I found.’ He held it out to her. ‘It’s a user manual for a flash freezer. He printed it out from his computer. Look at the date.’
‘Two weeks ago,’ Stevie said. ‘The day after Bennett went missing. Nice, JD.’
‘Let’s find out where the freezer is. Before it’s too late.’
JD pulled out another drawer.
Yes
. ‘Got something.’ He brought out a handful of architectural drawings, spreading them on the table next to the credit card statements. ‘It’s a factory.’ He pointed to one of the pages. ‘Right there is the freezer. It’s enormous.’
‘Big enough for a man?’ Stevie asked.
‘The manual says it’s big enough for six tons of meat in sixty-pound boxes,’ Drew said. ‘That’s damn big.’
‘I saw something on that,’ Daphne said excitedly, searching through the pile of documents she’d been reading. ‘Here it is, dated two years ago. James Cannon applied for a loan to renovate a fish processing plant. It was supposed to go operational a year ago, but the bank withdrew the loan. Credit crisis. James Cannon must have run out of money.’
‘So his factory’s been sitting abandoned,’ Stevie said.
‘Until Reardon decided to make himself at home,’ JD said, his heart pounding now.
Lucy, we’re coming. Hold on a little longer
. ‘What’s the address?’
Wednesday, May 5, 10.40 A.M.
Lucy lifted her head when the cart shoved two swinging doors open. They’d left the darkened corridor that connected the loading dock to . . .
what?
She blinked back tears and looked around her. It was a factory. A dead one. In the dim light she could see conveyor belts that sat unconnected and unmoving. Big pieces of equipment gathered dust, and, surprise, surprise, there was a big flash freezer. It was the perfect size for about a million frozen peas. Or one man.
She lifted her head a little higher and froze. On the floor beyond were two people. Her father lay on his side, tied and gagged. Several feet away was her mother and Lucy’s heart clenched. Kathy Trask sat up, propped against a support post. Her legs were stretched out, her ankles bound. Her hands were tied in front of her. She looked sick, her face gray. But she was alive.
Against the back of her leg, Lucy felt a tiny tap. Gwyn was conscious. Lucy’s first thought was to give thanks, but then she reconsidered. If Evan planned to hurt Gwyn, he’d want her to feel it. Lucy wished Gwyn hadn’t come to, not yet.
Past the equipment and her parents were two steel tables. On the large table she could make out the form of a man. She blinked again, bringing him into better focus. Sonny Westcott. He was naked and spreadeagled, his wrists and ankles tied to the corners of the table, the rope secured to the table’s legs. She couldn’t tell if he was still alive.
On the smaller table were . . . tools. Knives, hammers. The Sawzall. Lucy closed her eyes, unable to shake the image of the bodies she’d seen.
He cut out their hearts. He’s going to do that to us
.
She heard herself whimper and gritted her teeth.
Stop it. You can’t lose it or you won’t get out of here alive
.
She forced herself to look up into Evan’s eyes. ‘You were shot. You’ll need stitches.’
One side of his mouth lifted cruelly. ‘And you’re offering? But first I’d have to untie you, right? Do I look that stupid to you? Don’t worry about me. I stitched it up myself.’
She couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘How?’
‘Lots of experience with doing doctors’ dirty work.’
She studied him as he stared down at her. He had medical experience, which came as no surprise. The cuts on his victims had been dead on.
His face was still pale and he held his arm against his side gingerly. He was still weak, but gaining back his strength. If she was going to do something, take advantage of his blood loss, she’d need to do it soon.
‘Is Sonny alive?’ she asked, stalling for time.
He smiled at her, as if guessing her purpose. ‘Unfortunately he is. I’m waiting for him to come to so I can finish him off.’
‘You realize the police will be looking for you,’ she said quietly.
‘I realize the police will be looking for
you
,’ he countered. ‘Nobody knows to be looking for me. I’m dead. I paid a lot of money to be dead.’
His being dead made no sense, so she let it go. ‘You’re Ileanna Bryan’s brother. They are definitely looking for you.’
Fury flared in his eyes. ‘Don’t you even say her name.’
‘Wasn’t that what you wanted us to do? Guess her name? Isn’t that why you burned the letters into their backs? Russ and Janet Gordon and Ryan Agar?’
‘Don’t you dare try to play me,’ Evan snapped. ‘I know what you’re trying to do.’
‘What am I trying to do?’ she asked.
He smiled again and Lucy wondered how she’d missed the flashes of madness in his eyes all those weeks she’d thought he’d been Royce. All those weeks he’d been close to Gwyn.
And me. He could have killed me a dozen times
. That he hadn’t made her think he had a bigger plan.
‘You didn’t have to guess her name,’ he said. ‘You always knew it. You had her things.’
# 1 Sister
. ‘I had her bracelet,’ she agreed. ‘I thought it was mine. I thought my brother had bought it for me. But I never had the necklace.’
‘You are such a liar.’ Evan crouched beside her, trailing his fingers over her face in a way that made her shiver in disgust. ‘Who did you sell my necklace to? I want it back.’
‘I don’t know where your necklace is,’ she said, then cried out when his fist plowed into her jaw. The impact sent the flatbed cart on which she lay rolling. White stars danced in front of her eyes as he grabbed the cart and stopped it. ‘You sold it. You know you did.’
‘No, I didn’t. I never had—
Ugh
.’ He dragged her from the cart to the floor and kicked her ribs. She curled up, feeling like she’d throw up. ‘I swear it.’
‘You’re as big a hypocrite as your father.’ He cast a sneer to where her father lay. ‘Stealing jewelry off of bodies, throwing families on the street because they want justice.’ He crouched beside her, grabbed her chin and got in her face. ‘I gave you a chance to make things right but you were just as big a bully as he was. I came to you. I thought you’d help me.’
She thought of what he’d said before he punched her in the face. ‘Did I hit you?’
‘You know you did. You broke my fucking nose. Looks like I returned the favor.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, unable to keep the desperation from her voice. ‘I hit some kids after my brother died. I’m sorry you were one of them.’
‘I wasn’t just one of them,’ he gritted. ‘I was the kid whose family was ruined by your father. I was ready to beg you that day. I wanted to save my family.’
She hurt. Her ribs were burning. ‘What did my father do?’
‘You know what he did.’
‘I don’t. I was only fourteen,’ she cried and something flickered in his eyes.
Belief?
‘He threatened to frame my father,’ Evan said. He looked over at her father with such hate. Lucy could understand. She’d hated Ron Trask all of her life.
‘How?’ she asked softly and Evan turned his hate-filled eyes on her.
‘He said he’d make it look like my father stole money.’
‘So why did you come to me?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Your father had my mother’s property. If you’d just given it to me that day, my parents would have been fine. My father wouldn’t have lost everything.’
Her heart sank.
And then Evan’s father took his own life
. ‘I didn’t know what my father had done. I didn’t know what my brother had done. If you’d asked me, I would have told you.’
Evan’s eyes went cold. ‘I tried to ask you. You wouldn’t stop to listen.’
Lucy closed her eyes, trying to remember, but she couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry I hit you. I don’t even remember doing it.’
That was the wrong thing to say. Lucy knew it as soon as the words left her mouth.
‘You don’t even remember?’ he whispered. ‘My father shot himself. My mother drank herself to death. You could have stopped it by just giving me the necklace.’
‘I never had it,’ she said, trying to calm him. ‘I never had your necklace.’
He straightened abruptly, his body tense with new rage. ‘You lie,’ he shouted. He ran over to where Sonny Westcott lay tied on the large table and grabbed a wooden bat. Before Lucy could shrink away, Evan was back, the bat raised high. ‘You had it. You had it all along. And you
sold
it. You
sold
it to pay for your damn
club
.’ He brought the bat down hard on her thigh and Lucy felt the bone snap. She screamed, unable to hold it back.
My leg
. Broken.
Oh God
. The searing pain took over until it was all she knew.
‘Did that hurt, Dr Trask? Let’s see what else I can do.’ He ran to the steel table, pushed Sonny Westcott to the floor, and ran back to her, his face florid from the exertion. Large beads of sweat covered his forehead. He grabbed her from the floor with one arm, yanking her to her feet and dragging her toward the table. Lucy thrashed and fought and bucked, trying to get away. His steps faltered and he brought his wounded arm around her throat.
Lucy threw her shoulder into his bandaged bicep. With a yelp of pain he staggered and together they fell.