Aim to Kill (30 page)

Daughter? There was nothing in his records that indicated he had any children or had ever been married. It could be the truth, or a ploy.

“Do you know his daughter’s name?”

“Angel.”

Olivia sucked in her breath, but quickly recovered. “I need to see his employment records right now.”

“I—I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that.”

“I can get a warrant and come back in an hour, but in the time it takes me to return someone might die. Do you want that on your conscience?”

Denise looked like she was ready to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Come to the office.”

“One second.” She flipped open her phone and dialed Zack. “Bingo. Restaurant at the pier . . . the Crab Shack. I’ll be in the back office with the manager.”

Thirty minutes later, Zack and four sheriff deputies from the Vashon Island substation had the cottage rented by Steve Williams, a.k.a. Chris Driscoll, surrounded.

The small house sat on the edge of the woods where Jillian Reynolds’s body had been discovered less than a mile away. The property felt empty, but Zack didn’t take any chances. He had the deputies do a complete perimeter check, then knock on the door. When there was no answer, they entered the house.

Chris Driscoll had lived on Vashon Island for well over a year, but the cottage reflected nothing personal. No photographs. No pictures on the walls. When Zack had called the landlord about the property, he’d learned that it had been rented partially furnished. Driscoll paid cash rent and told the landlord it was from his tips. He never paid late.

The cottage was sterile, immaculate, without personality.

The garbage had been emptied. No dishes on the counter or sink. No plants in the window box. The glass-topped table had two chairs perfectly aligned.

The bedroom didn’t look slept in except that the bed had white sheets and two blankets tucked tightly in, military style. Zack feared Driscoll had already escaped, that he had no intention of returning after Nina
Markow
.

He checked the drawers, relieved to find clothing. Three sets of uniform clothes for the restaurant—black slacks and black polo shirt—were stiffly folded. Even Driscoll’s underwear and socks were orderly. There were no dirty clothes in the hamper; no clothes in the washer or dryer.

Because the room was devoid of everything personal, the lone picture stood out like a beacon.

Gloved, Zack picked it up.

The boy was Driscoll, age nine or ten. Blond hair cut in a short buzz popular in the fifties and early sixties. The girl was four or five, a beautiful little girl. A little girl who at nine would look remarkably like Michelle Davidson or Nina
Markow
. There was a woman kneeling between the two children, her arms around their shoulders. Smiling for the camera.

Zack turned it over.

Mama and Angel. February 10, 1960.

It had been taken six months before Bruce Carmichael killed Miriam Driscoll.

Oddly disturbed, Zack put the picture down and went to the closet. Inside was a briefcase of sorts, more like a large black box that one might see a traveling salesman use.

It was locked.

Could Driscoll have rigged the cottage with some sort of explosives? Zack didn’t have the tools to defuse them, and it would take the bomb squad at least thirty minutes to get to the island, even if they used the Coast Guard.

He called Doug Cohn. “Doug, I need you and your team out to Vashon ASAP. Bring George Franz with you.”

“Bomb?”

“Probably not, but I don’t want to take the chance of not seeing your ugly face in the morning.”

“Got it.”

Zack gave him the directions, then instructed the sheriff’s deputies to secure the cottage and let no one in until the crime scene investigators arrived. Then he looked for Olivia.

Where in the world had she disappeared to?

Had she seen something? She wasn’t stupid—she wouldn’t have gone off after Driscoll on her own! Would she? Had he read her wrong the entire time? Her heart and mind were so wrapped up in this case, between her parents and her sister and what had happened with the Davidson family.

No. She was a professional first.

But his heart beat rapidly and he drew his gun, holding it at his side as he circled the cottage.

He saw her in the moonlight, kneeling in the dirt on the edge of the woods. Relief flooded his body and he
reholstered
his weapon.

Olivia knelt on the ground, her legs unable to support her any longer, the beam from the flashlight dancing over the gray stone in front of her.

It looked like a gravestone.

The now-familiar dots and dashes had been carved deeply into the stone, as if the craftsman had spent hours and hours at work, then polished it until it was as smooth as river rock.

“Olivia!”

She heard Zack’s voice, but it seemed to come at a distance. Instead, she heard Missy’s voice, loud and clear.

“Just let me finish this chapter.”

The names and faces of thirty similar victims flashed through Olivia’s mind until she felt nauseated. Lives cut short, girls who didn’t have the chance to grow and learn and love and be loved.

Nor had Olivia ever learned to truly love. She had never accepted anyone’s love because she’d been trapped in the past, her heart dead.

No longer would she allow Missy’s murder to stop her from living. No longer would she be a prisoner of her regret and guilt.

Zack knelt on the ground beside her. “
Liv
, what’s wrong?”

He sounded worried. She pointed to the stone.

“It looks like a gravestone, but there’s no disturbed earth.” She shined her light on the garden that surrounded them. In the daylight, the area would seem to burst with color.

“It’s a shrine,” she said, “to his dead sister.”

Zack nodded. “I called in Doug Cohn’s people. They’ll be here shortly. I’ll point this out.”

“For so long I’ve let the past control me. The career choices I made, the friendships I fostered, my relationships with people.” She stared into Zack’s eyes, imploring him to understand her. She didn’t know how to express the revelation that had come to her as she stared at the sad stone half-buried in the earth.

“My father’s indifference, my mother’s grief, my own feelings of guilt. I’ll be forty next year and I feel like I haven’t led my own life.”

She stood and looked down at Zack squatting next to the marker. “No longer. My decisions are my own. My
feelings
are my own.” She touched his head, her fingers brushing against his ear, his rough cheek, her fingers skimming across his lips. He kissed her thumb, took hold of her hand, and stood.

“You know what I think?” he said, his voice low and smooth, sending shivers across her skin. He took her hands in his, his thumbs skimming along her palms. “I think every choice you made in your career has led you here to this place and time. To me. You can’t think about the past, what might have been. What is, is. What you’ve done, you’ve done. So many things are out of our control,
Liv
. Too many things. But the choices we’ve made, to be on the right side of justice, balance the scales.”

He kissed her lightly, all too briefly. “Let’s go meet Cohn at the docks. I hate waiting around, but until we have more information, we can’t do anything else.”

They walked away from the garden shrine.

“Thank you, Zack.”

“For what?”

“For helping me find myself.”

He shook his head. “You were never lost.”

CHAPTER

25

Chris stopped the truck halfway up the Cascade Mountains, ninety minutes east of Seattle. The temperature had already dipped into the forties, and he had to set up camp. He’d checked out the area many times and had never seen hikers or campers here. He’d gone through the surrounding area, up and down the road, on foot and never seen recent tire treads or evidence of people. He suspected it was used primarily by rangers, and he’d hear them coming long before they reached him.

Being in the military had served him well; years of preparation and planning made setting up camp painless and easy. He’d leave nothing of himself behind. And any mess that was left when he freed the angel would within months be buried under snow. The ground would soak up her life, and he’d dispose of her shell.

She would be free, living without pain and sadness.

He sat on the ground, closed his eyes. Prepared.

It started when Mama died. Chris didn’t know how she’d died, not then, because Bruce took him and Angel from school and they left
New Jersey
.

“Your ma died in an accident. I have to find work.”

They never went home. Never collected his bug collection or books or toys. Angel wept for her teddy bear until Bruce slapped her.

They first went to
Texas
, a long way off. It took days and days to get there.

They had a one-room apartment where Chris could hear the people next door fighting. Bruce slept in the bed with Angel. Chris slept on the floor. Angel cried all night.

Bruce hurt her.

It didn’t take long for Chris to know what Bruce was doing to Angel, but he didn’t stop him. He was small for an eleven-year-old. His mother told him he’d grow big and strong, but he hadn’t. Bruce was so big and mean and Chris didn’t want to be hurt, too. But he took care of Angel when Bruce left. He cleaned her up and hugged her and bought her a new teddy bear with money he’d stolen from Bruce’s wallet.

He had loved her and taken care of her for three years, and now she wanted to leave him.

He couldn’t let her. He would be lost without her.

Angel could never leave.

Chris rose from his spot and crossed to the truck. He unlocked the back and reached in for his angel.

A sudden, sharp jolt across his chest startled him. He reached out blindly in the dark, his fingers brushing against hair, but he was falling down.

He jumped up immediately, sensing rather than seeing his angel leap from the back of the truck and start running.

Anger burned deep and hot in his veins. She was trying to run away. Leave him.

He would never allow that.

*   *   *

Zack and Olivia met the Coast Guard at the docks. Doug Cohn and his team disembarked. Zack filled him in on what they’d discovered, then went back across the Sound with the Coast Guard.

“Detective Travis? You have a radio call,” one of the officers said and handed him a walkie-talkie.

“Travis here.”

“It’s Quinn Peterson. We have an Amber Alert call. Two sightings of the truck in question on Highway 90 heading east into the Cascades. One guy swears he saw a white truck turn off onto Road 56, which crisscrosses the middle north fork of the
Anchor
River
.”

“The Cascades are huge, and Road 56 is virtually impassable in places.”

“That should make it easier for us to find him. I’ve called the forest rangers to increase patrols; we have a helicopter standing by. The sheriff’s department has already called in all off-duty personnel to start a manhunt.”

“It’ll take us two hours to get there,” Zack said, discouraged. Two hours could be the difference between Nina living or dying.

“Thirty minutes, tops. I have a helicopter waiting for you at the Coast Guard station, with a search-and-rescue expert already on board.”

“Who?”

“My wife, Miranda. And if anything happens to her, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”

Nina ran faster than she’d ever run before. Even when she was exhausted and didn’t think she could take another step, she kept going. Or stumbled. Sometimes she crawled. But she was too terrified to stop moving.

She was in the mountains, that much she knew, so she focused on running down, down, staying off the road. Couldn’t chance that he would see her, hear her. It was really dark up here, too dark.

Nina hated the dark.

There were so many sounds competing with her rapid breath and occasional cries. Hooting owls. Scurrying rodents. The call of larger animals. Rushing water, a river.

None were as fearsome as the man she’d seen.

He looked normal. But one glance into his hateful eyes told this little girl that if she didn’t find the strength to run, he’d hurt her bad.

How long had she been running? Was he still coming? Would he catch her? Could he hear her?

She was in the middle of nowhere, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t wait and try to hear him. She prayed and pleaded with God to help her. The moon came and went behind clouds, alternately guiding her and hiding her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement even before she heard the rustling of a body moving through trees. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt.