JD had not taken his eyes from Lucy’s face. She was terrified, in pain. And staring back at him. Needing him. Trusting him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘He could still have four other hostages, including Gwyn.’
‘We need a negotiator.’ Stevie grabbed the bullhorn. ‘We need to talk, Evan.’
‘No. You need to back off,’ Evan yelled back. ‘Or she dies. You know I will.’
‘We know,’ Stevie called. ‘We’re backing away. But we need to talk. Does anyone inside need medical attention?’
There was silence. Then Evan yanked Lucy from view and JD’s heart skipped a beat. Minutes later a wheelchair came barreling through the door, a body slumped across the top. The chair hit the end of the sidewalk and pitched forward, the body flying to the ground. The victim was male and had bullet holes in his back and the back of his head.
‘Ron Trask,’ Stevie said. ‘Shit.’
JD’s cell rang, the number the one that had lured both Bennett and Gordon to their deaths. ‘Fitzpatrick.’
‘I don’t need any goddamn medical attention,’ Evan snarled into his ear. ‘Now back off or your girlfriend will end up just like her daddy. You got three minutes.’
The phone clicked. ‘He’s going to kill her,’ JD said in a voice that was both cool and controlled. ‘Back everyone away fifty feet and let’s figure how we’re going to get behind him.’
Stevie gave the order and cars and cops began pulling back. ‘You were studying that floorplan of the place on the way here. Which door will get us behind him?’
JD created the picture in his mind. ‘We got ten doors and two loading bays. The door where he’s standing leads to the main manufacturing room, where all the machinery is. If all the machinery on the plan is still there, he’s got lots of places to hide to see us coming, whichever door we use, so we need to keep him in the doorway. Keep him talking.’
‘So which door, JD?’ Stevie asked quietly.
JD scanned the front of the building, then frowned. ‘The one that just opened.’
Gwyn Weaver had slipped from the door at the far end of the building, flattening her body against the outer wall. She rounded the corner so that she now faced the water where both Edwards’ cruiser and Trask’s sailboat were docked. Her knees buckled and she slid to the ground. Reardon wouldn’t be able to see her from the front door.
‘Unit on the east,’ Stevie said into her radio, ‘get the woman away from the building. If she needs no medical attention, keep her there. We don’t want to attract Reardon’s attention.’ To JD she said, ‘I wonder if he knows she’s gone.’
JD thought Evan probably did. ‘You talk to him. Get him to come back to the door. I’m going in the way she just came out.’
‘No way. We wait for backup, JD. I want the snipers here before we go in.’
‘How long till they get here?’
‘Twenty, thirty minutes. He’s not going to kill Lucy yet. She’s his way out of here.’
Twenty minutes was too long. In twenty minutes she’d be dead.
‘But he will kill her, Stevie. It’s what he came to do. We need to take advantage of
time
right now. He thinks we’ll negotiate. So do that. But we need to get in there.’ He stayed calm. ‘I’ve done this before.’
‘Keep talking.’
‘The size of this place is on our side. He can’t watch all the doors. He doesn’t have to know the snipers aren’t here yet, either. Let him think they are. And let him think you’ve taken me off the case. He needs to see us argue. You make me leave. I’ll double back and go to Gwyn, find out what’s going on inside, then I’ll go in.’
She paused, then shook her head again stubbornly. ‘I want the snipers here, JD.’
He clenched his jaw. ‘What do you think I was?’ he asked, and she let out her breath.
‘This is different. This is Lucy. She’s yours, JD.’
‘Yes, she is. But he also thinks she’s his. She’s his revenge. I’m not willing to risk that he values his own freedom over making her die. Make a choice. You know he’s watching us.’
She started shaking her head hard but then extended her arm, pointing away from the building as if ordering him away. She looked away from him, hanging her head. ‘Hide behind one of the vans. I’ll have them bring you a rifle.’
JD pretended to take a desperate step toward her, then ripped off his flak jacket in feigned disgust. He departed in an angry huff, pushing through the crowd of personnel who waited, poised to move. He ducked behind a van and put his jacket back on, then waited until a rifle was thrust into his hands by one of the state cops.
‘Your partner says “Don’t fuck it up”,’ he said. ‘We’ll cover you.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wednesday, May 5, 11.05 A.M.
‘
T
hey’re backing off,’ Evan muttered, the end of his gun hard against her temple. She leaned her cheek against the wall, trying to fill her lungs with shallow breaths. He was standing behind her, between her and the door, peeking outside. Lucy braced her hands against the wall, trying to keep the weight off her leg.
He’d dragged Lucy back to the hall, shoved her father’s body into the wheelchair and out the door. Then he’d dragged her back. The pain had come in nauseating waves, but now surrounded, unrelenting. She clenched her teeth. She had to stay sharp and watch for whatever opportunity JD created for escape. Because he would. Of that she was certain.
At least Evan was also in bad shape. He weaved slightly on his feet, his skin gone gray. He was sweating bullets from the exertion and the blood loss. But he didn’t seem terribly scared and the hand that held the gun to her head was very steady.
‘How did he find you?’ Evan asked quietly. ‘I found the tracker they hid in your compact. Do you have another?’
So that’s what took them so long to get here
. ‘No, there were only two. The one you put in my purse and the one you found.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Maybe they’re just good detectives.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Nobody knew about this place.’
‘The person it belonged to did. Who did it belong to? Malcolm? Russ?’
‘James Cannon,’ he said with a sneer.
She recognized the name. Stevie had mentioned him as one of the four other seniors on her brother’s football team. ‘One of Buck’s friends. I assume he’s dead too.’
‘Very.’
‘Why didn’t you leave him for me to find?’
‘Because when I killed him, I didn’t know what you’d done.’
She remembered the words he’d screamed at her, right before he brought his boot down on her thigh. ‘You think I sold the necklace. The one your sister was wearing that night.’
He shoved the gun hard against her temple. ‘I
know
you did.’
She didn’t dare deny it again. It made him too angry and she didn’t want any more injuries. She could still crawl if an escape opportunity opened up. And there was the gun in his hand.
With which he killed my father
. She’d seen more bodies during her career than she could count, but before today she’d never actually witnessed a murder. Now she had. Maybe two, if Skinner had died.
Please don’t be dead
. Lucy pushed it all from her mind.
I can’t think about that now. I have to keep him talking. Distract him
.
‘How?’ she asked calmly. ‘How did you find out about the necklace?’
‘Russ Bennett told me, while I was cutting off his fingers. He said he’d seen you wear it.’
Lucy could clearly see Russ’s mutilated hands in her mind. She had to grit her teeth to keep the panic from choking her. ‘You were torturing him. He would have said anything.’
‘I thought the same,
Doctor
, so I got a second opinion from your own BFF.’
Lucy blinked, stunned. ‘From Gwyn?’
‘You got it,
Doctor
,’ he said bitterly. ‘Pump the girl full of margaritas and she’ll tell you damn near everything. I asked her if you had any diamonds and she said you did once. She said you paid for your share of your precious club by selling a diamond necklace.’
Lucy closed her eyes.
Not your necklace
, she wanted to say. It was the necklace she’d had made from her old engagement ring. But he wouldn’t believe her, so she wouldn’t even try.
Evan’s laugh was sour. ‘Nothing to say, Doctor?’
‘Nothing you’ll believe.’
‘You could tell me the sky was blue and I wouldn’t believe you,’ he said with malice. ‘You and your family lie easier than you breathe. You walk on people who can’t fight back. Steal from people who can’t afford it. Just because you can. You laughed at us. Called us “white trash”. Your father ruined us. And
you
had it all along.’
Her father had laughed, had called lots of people trash. But Lucy never had. There was no way she’d make Evan believe that, though. ‘So you decided to track me.’
‘No, I started to track you when I first came here. But you’ve always been on my list. Since the day you hit me when I came to ask you for help.’
The three minutes he’d given the cops had to be long gone, Lucy thought. But Evan hadn’t moved. He leaned against the door jamb, staring outside. From the corner of her eye she could see that the stain on his arm bandage had stopped spreading, but he’d lost a lot more blood. It was a wonder the man still stood. But his gun was still steady.
Keep him standing. Keep him talking. Maybe he’ll pass out on his own. And I can escape
.
How? You can’t run.
Then you’ll crawl.
‘What list?’ she asked.
‘My kill list. You were always on it, for years. Long before any of them talked.’
Any of them?
Who else talked?
Think
. Malcolm Edwards was first. Malcolm had been dying. Cancer. He’d joined a church. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. Church of the Divine Forgiveness.
‘Malcolm asked for forgiveness,’ she said and felt Evan stiffen in surprise.
‘How did you know that?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t, until right now. I guessed. He was dying. He confessed.’
‘With a little help, yes.’
‘You tortured him.’
‘Oh, yes.’ There was a quiet, gleeful pride in his voice that made her stomach turn.
‘Then you killed him and his wife.’
‘Oh, yes. I did.’
‘I get your kill list. But why the hooker? And why the PI?’ she asked, knowing that JD would want to know. Because he would get her out of here. He would.
‘The hooker stole from me. The PI just pissed me off. Like you do. So shut up.’
He hadn’t planned to kill them, she thought. They were mistakes. Kevin Drummond had probably been a mistake, too. Evan had been more than willing to talk about the successes. His kill list. ‘When did you put the trackers in my purse?’
‘Any time you weren’t looking. Women are remarkably careless about their purses. You asked me to hold it while you looked for your jacket in your suitcase on Sunday night.’
When he and Gwyn had picked her up at the airport. She’d been trying to think of who’d had access to her purse since Monday morning. She’d totally forgotten about Sunday night.
Behind her, Evan shifted his balance, watching outside. Lucy could no longer hear the helicopter. Where were they?
Okay, JD. I’m ready to get out of here. Any time would be good
.
‘Ileanna had a purse, that night,’ Lucy said. ‘It was never found.’
The gun jerked against her temple. ‘Because your brother
took
it,’ he spat, emphasizing the word with a sharp jab of the barrel. ‘After he
raped
my sister.’
‘I think Buck took her purse,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think he raped her.’
‘Because he told you so?’ he asked bitterly.
‘No. You don’t believe me, but he never said a word to me about any of this. I think it because I read Ileanna’s autopsy report last night.’
‘No, I don’t believe you, and who cares about the report? Your mother wrote it.’
Oh
. That he would think so made sense. ‘Just because she was the doctor on the scene doesn’t mean she did the autopsy. Maryland had a state ME even then. The autopsy was done by the state, not my mother. That you can check yourself.’ He said nothing but she could sense him listening. ‘The man who raped Ileanna had a different blood type than my brother. It matched Ricky Joyner’s. Ricky did the rape.’
‘So Malcolm and the others were telling the truth.’ She felt him shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter if your brother raped her himself. He let it happen. Stood by and watched while it
happened
. That’s all I need to know.’
Then she understood. ‘They watched. Malcolm, Russ, James, Ryan, Sonny. And Buck.’
‘They
watched
. And they
laughed
. And they
cheered
him on. And left her to
die
.’ Pain and rage filled his voice, made it shake. ‘It’s been more than three minutes. Move,’ he barked, dragging her to her feet and down the dimly lit hall.
Her leg buckled beneath her and she went down on her knees. Pain radiated, burning, and a sob tore free. ‘I can’t.’
‘Get up.’ His fingers grabbed at her hair, yanking her up and all she could see was red.
‘No,’ she gritted, then twisted, throwing her elbow into his bandage. He stumbled, snapping her head back, but she threw herself forward in desperation. Her scalp burned as her hair pulled, her eyes teared, and his curses filled her ears.
‘You bi—’
Suddenly free, Lucy shot forward, scrambling on her hands and one knee as Evan jerked, then slumped to the floor. She stared at his head. Much of which was no longer there.
JD
. It was the only thought that penetrated the haze.
Footsteps pounded around her and she let herself slide to the floor.
JD ran the length of the hall, which seemed to stretch forever. Lucy was lying on the floor, not moving. She wasn’t moving.
I didn’t hit her. I couldn’t have hit her
.
One of the state cops who’d come in with him was running from the opposite direction and reached her first. ‘She’s alive.’
Thank God
. JD reached her side and set the rifle on the floor, barely casting a look at Evan Reardon. The man’s head looked like a crushed cantaloupe and he deserved far worse.