Sitting at her laptop, he went into her open Shadowland
account and hung the wreath on her virtual door. He already knew he couldn’t
paint her avatar’s face. Rachel hadn’t bought her Delilah from Pandora, so he’d
have to be content with hanging the dancer from a virtual rope and setting the
virtual scene. He could do it in a couple of clicks, as he’d done it so many
times already. Then he took her computer, let himself out of Rachel’s house,
locking her deadbolt behind him, and pocketed her key.
He’d driven to the edge of Rachel’s neighborhood when
his heart nearly stopped. Pulling into the subdevelopment was a cop. Not just
any cop. A homicide detective.
Olivia Sutherland
. His heart started to pound in his ears.
How had she known? Who
told her to come here?
Her car slowed as she passed and he held his breath.
She had no legal reason to stop him. After the police had seen the car he’d
used in Christy’s murder on the diner’s security video, he’d changed cars and
plates. All part of the plan.
Sutherland resumed driving, and letting out the breath
he’d held, he carefully pulled onto the nearly deserted two-lane highway, going
east when he really needed to go west. West was toward the highway and home.
But if any other cops were joining her, they’d come the same way she did and he
didn’t want them finding him.
Who called Sutherland?
he fumed.
Who the hell had known about Rachel
Ward?
Now that he was breathing again, he had a pretty good idea.
Noah Webster had the study participant list, he knew.
But there were five hundred names on that list. How had they guessed that
Rachel Ward was next? He’d left no pattern, left no clues that would alert them
to his next victim. Webster was smarter than the average cop, he allowed, but
that still didn’t make him very smart. And Webster was no clairvoyant, that was
for damn sure.
It had to have been Eve
. He wasn’t sure how she’d known, but instinct had
told him the girl would be dangerous. Now he realized he’d underestimated her.
He would not make that same mistake again.
He forced himself to calm and rationally think things
through. Eve had known about Martha and Christy and now Rachel.
I knew they
were prime targets because they were always in Shadowland. Because I’m in the
game with them.
And so, he realized, was Eve. She had to be.
Clever girl
.
Too clever for her own good.
He’d thought that even if she told Webster about
Shadowland, there’d be nothing to fear, but he’d been wrong. He’d come too
close to getting caught tonight. Eve had come too close. She needed to be eliminated.
Unfortunately, she was never alone.
Lure her out, kill her
. It could still work, but not as long as she was on
guard, careful. He had to throw her off-balance. Scare her to death. Then he’d
lure her out and kill her.
Wednesday, February 24, 3:10 a.m.
Eve was cursing herself for leading Noah to the wrong
address.
But how could you have known?
She couldn’t have, she knew, but
what if Rachel was next? What if they didn’t find her in time? Rachel Ward
would be one more death on her head.
She was staring at the list, wondering how many more
addresses were mailbox stores, wondering if there was a fast way to weed them
out. Just in case this happened again.
It can’t happen again. We have to
stop this guy.
She zoomed in on the address column on her participant
list. And then cursed herself again, peering at the column next to the
addresses. Social Security numbers. Dammit, she had Socials on every
participant. She already knew Noah had four Rachel Wards to check out. She’d
run an address check of her own as soon as they’d hung up. Socials would tell
her which Rachel Ward was theirs.
She logged into the website Ethan used for background
checks with the user name and password he’d set up for her when they’d talked
that morning, blessing him for his foresight. She plugged in the information
she knew and set the search in motion.
Rachel, where are you? Please be all right.
Feeling helpless, Eve toggled back to Shadowland and
retrieved Greer. Maybe they were worried for nothing. Maybe the purple-haired
dancer was wrong. Maybe Rachel’s Delilah had taken a goddamn virtual football
team to her virtual condo for a virtual orgy.
She thought of Sal. How right he’d been.
Aviators
and orgies, indeed
.
Eve guided Greer to Delilah’s condo, trepidation
tightening her throat. And then she saw what she’d known deep down would be
true.
Too late. We’re too late.
Slowly, she backed Greer away from the black wreath on
Rachel’s door, not wanting to see what was inside. Eve could still see Christy
Lewis’s empty eyes staring at her in real life. She didn’t need to see the
virtual equivalent one more time.
Four
.
Samantha, Martha, Christy, and now Rachel. He’d killed four women.
At the bottom of her screen the tab for the background
check web-site was flashing. Her search was complete.
Too late.
Blindly Eve reached for her cell and dialed Noah.
Wednesday, February 24, 3:15 a.m.
Olivia parked her car in front of the address Noah had
given her and walked up to the house. It was dark. As quiet as the rest of the
street. Carefully she picked her way around the back, through the snow, and
looked up.
Her heart sank. “Dammit,” she whispered.
The upstairs bedroom window was wide open.
Wednesday, February 24, 3:15 a.m.
Noah answered Eve’s call on his cell. “I don’t know anything
yet,” he said.
“I do,” she said quietly.
Noah slowed his car to a stop, a block from the
address he’d drawn. “Tell me.”
“I found Rachel’s address.” It was the one Olivia was
checking at this very moment.
“How?” he asked. In her voice he heard defeat and he
knew.
Too late.
“I had their Socials. We paid them a small study
stipend and needed the Socials for tax purposes. I ran a background check and
found the Rachel we’re looking for.”
“But?”
“There’s a black wreath on her door in Shadowland.
We’re too late, Noah.”
“You stay put,” he ordered. “And stop feeling guilty.
I’ll call you when I can.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” No sooner had he hung up than his
phone vibrated again. Olivia. “You found her,” he said dully.
“I’m looking at an open window, second story. How did
you know?”
“Eve found her dead in the game. Call CSU. I’ll be
there in under fifteen.”
“And Jack?”
Noah put his car into gear. “Still not answering his
phone.”
“Noah, we have to call Abbott. You can’t keep covering
for Jack.”
“I know. Don’t go in without me. Last time he used a
poisonous snake.”
“More fun and games,” she said bitterly. “This guy’s a
vile piece of shit.”
Olivia was waiting for him in front of Rachel’s house.
Jack was nowhere to be found.
“I think it’ll be easier to get in through the back
door,” Olivia said.
It took only one thrust of his shoulder. “Police,”
Noah called, weapon drawn.
“Do you smell something burning?” Olivia murmured.
“Yeah. That’s new.” He lowered his weapon as he
entered Ward’s bedroom. There she hung, like all the others. Right down to the
shoes.
“Her eyes,” she whispered. This was her first time
seeing it in person. There was something about the victims’ eyes that didn’t
get captured in the crime scene photos. She touched Rachel’s arm, then whirled,
her own eyes wide. “Noah, she’s still warm.”
Noah was there in two steps. “She’s been here maybe an
hour,” he said.
“If that.” Her round blue eyes flashed fury. “A car
was leaving the neighborhood, just as I was driving in. Brown Civic. I missed
him. If I’d been a few minutes faster…”
Frustration clawed.
Dammit, if Jack had answered…
He let himself finish the thought.
This woman would be alive and we’d have a
killer in custody.
“He wasn’t driving a brown Civic when he followed
Christy Lewis home,” he said tightly. “But changing cars could be his newest
up-yours.”
“I remember his plate number. I’ll call it in.”
While she did, Noah dialed Micki, who was on her way.
“We have another.”
“Any snakes this time?” Micki asked and Noah crouched
to check Rachel’s ankles.
His stomach lurched. “No. It appears Miss Ward was
afraid of fire.”
Olivia finished calling in the BOLO on the brown Civic
and crouched next to him, her pretty face twisted in a horrified grimace.
“Aw, hell, Web,” she murmured.
“What did he burn?” Micki asked.
Noah swallowed hard at the sight of Rachel Ward’s
blistered flesh. “Her feet.”
Wednesday, February 24, 4:15 a.m.
“I thought I smelled something burning,” David said,
leaning over the stove where Eve had left a scorched pot. “You’ll never get
this clean. What were you trying to cook?”
“Cocoa.” Coffee had become too much for her churning
stomach. Rachel was dead.
We were too late.
“I got distracted when I was
making the first batch and it scorched.”
He took the mug next to her elbow and tasted it. “Not
bad.”
“You’re not the only one who can make stuff,” she
muttered. “So make your own.”
He took another sip instead. “Where’d you get the
recipe?”
“Internet.” She took her mug, sloshing hot cocoa over
the sides. “Go back to bed.”
“Can’t. I wake up when I smell stuff burning. I’m a
firefighter, remember?” He said it teasingly but she didn’t smile. “Spill it.”
He was serious now. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She haltingly obeyed, starting with Buckland and the
photos, ending with Rachel. David’s face had darkened through her story. “Does
the fact that this Buckland asshole pops up at the same time as a serial killer
bother anyone but me?”
“No, it bothers Noah, too. Buckland’s officially on
the radar. But Buckland’s been reporting for a couple years. Local color,
obituaries. That he’d suddenly start killing people…” She shrugged. “I’m too
tired to think.”
“Then go to bed, honey. I’ll take the couch.”
“No, I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Rachel
and the others.”
“Not your fault,” he said softly, tilting her chin up.
“What happened with Webster?”
“Nothing.”
He sat back, brows lifted. “So… did he kiss you yet?”
His tone was so engagingly nosy, she might have
smiled. But the thought of that kiss in the bar, so… proprietary. So necessary.
So impossible. Her eyes stung. “Stop.”
“Stop what, Evie? Stop trying to keep you from making
a big mistake? I have seen you through too much to let you hide again.”
Misery stepped aside for blessed anger. “I am not
hiding. Not anymore.”
“You think just because you’re not holed up in Dana’s
shelter anymore that you’re not hiding? Give me one good reason you’ve written
Webster off. And don’t tell me it’s because he’s too old, because he’s my age
and I’ll have to hurt you.”
She let out a long, quiet breath. “You know why.”
He stared at her in contrary confusion, and then his
expression changed again to one of devastated understanding. “Oh, Evie. You
can’t possibly…”
“No, I can’t,” she said, twisting his meaning.
“That’s not fair to Webster, or to any other man who
might care about you. He might not even want kids. Especially at his age.”
“I thought you were his age,” she said quietly.
“I am. And I want kids. But I would be furious if a
woman I cared for didn’t give me a chance because she assumed she knew what I
wanted. You think you know people.”
His words had rattled her, but pride ran deeper than
anything else. “I do.”
“Because you study them? Watch them? You don’t know
shit, kid. You have been standing back and watching the world go by ever since
Winters sliced you up.”
She flinched. “You cross the line, David.”
“Well, it’s about time somebody did.”
She stood, vibrating with ire. “Like you’re the
expert? You, who stood back and watched the woman you loved marry somebody
else? You, who’re still standing back and watching as she has baby after baby,
building a family with
somebody else
?”
David jerked, his face going pale beneath his winter
tan.
“Yeah,” she said bitterly. “I noticed. Did you ever
think
about telling Dana how you felt all those years? Or did you
assume
you
knew how she felt? What she wanted?”