Edge of Midnight (39 page)

It looked like blood.

He recalled from a forensics entomology class that pharaoh ants would consume almost anything…including plasma. Alert, his eyes searched the perimeter as Cameron continued talking. An alley ran behind the look-alike bungalows across the street. He barely made out the black van sitting in shadow. Eric felt his heart turn over.

Levi was here.

Based on the blood, at least one of the deputies had gone down.

He’d already been standing outside the bungalow for a full two minutes engaged in phone discussion. Trying to appear calm, he strolled casually back onto the sidewalk, pacing a short distance out with one hand on his hip and the cell phone pressed to his ear as if nothing had changed. He suspected he was being watched from behind the curtains.

“Cam, listen to me,” he interrupted, voice low as he stared onto the road, his back to the house. “I need a SWAT unit at the rental property. Sirens off. Get them here but keep them covert—”

“What’s going on?”

“I think Levi’s in the house with Mia. There’s blood on the front stoop and a black van’s parked in the alley across the street.”

“Jesus. Where are the deputies?”

“I don’t know.” His gut told him both men were dead or incapacitated. Things were too quiet. How had Levi known where to find her?

Maybe Mia was already dead, too.
The possibility felt like a knife through his chest.

“Eric.” Cameron’s voice was insistent. “I know what you’re thinking and you can’t go in there. If he
is
inside, you’re as good as dead! Levi
wants
you.”

“He’s already seen me outside. If I don’t go in, he’s going to know he’s been made.” And then he’d get desperate. If Mia was still alive, she wouldn’t be for much longer if Levi thought they were on to him.

There wasn’t another choice.

“He’s lying in wait for you! You’ll be giving him exactly what he wants—”

“I won’t leave her alone with him. I’m counting on you, Cam. Don’t let them rush the place—it could get her killed. Levi can’t know he’s cornered or it’s over.” He recalled the sliding glass doors in back. They were covered by cheap vertical blinds that gapped slightly even when closed. It was possible a shot could be fired through the glass. “Get a sharpshooter here, too. I’ll try to get him into the kitchen.”

“He may not give you that chance—”

“Sounds good,” he said loudly, facing the bungalow again. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

“Eric!”

He closed the cell phone. Eric’s heart pounded. He thought of Mia and prayed there was still a reason to risk going inside. Wind chimes danced in the soughing wind as he stepped back onto the porch.

There was a possibility Levi would kill him on sight, but Eric believed his sadistic nature would make him want to draw out his victory over him, especially if he thought he had taken him by surprise and had all the time in the world. Hopefully it would be long enough to get the SWAT unit and sniper there. He put his key into the lock, briefly closing his eyes, and attempted to prepare himself for whatever he was about to walk into.

40

E
ric felt a vortex suck the air from his lungs. The deputies’ bodies lay on the floor in front of him. In the same instant, he heard the metallic clink of a round dropping into a chamber. He froze; he hadn’t drawn his own weapon. To do so would be giving away that he’d known of Levi’s presence before entering.

“Good evening, Agent Macfarlane.” He stood about ten feet away, his gun trained. “Careful now. Keep your hands where I can see them or this gets ugly fast.”

“Take it easy, all right?” Slowly, Eric lifted his hands and looked around. Mia was in a chair on the other side of the room. Stripped to her underwear, her head sagged onto her chest, her curtain of dark hair obscuring her features. The sight of her hit him hard. She appeared unconscious but alive.

It had to be good enough for now.

“She’s an exotic little thing, isn’t she? Now, I want you to very slowly remove your gun. Then slide it on the floor to me and close the door.”

He did as told. Once Levi had confiscated the weapon, he motioned Eric farther inside, keeping carefully behind him with his own firearm raised. They stepped around the deputies. The larger of them—the one whose last name was Graham—lay facedown. The back of his skull was a gory mess. The other one, Cutshaw, had at least one gunshot wound to the chest. Eric’s pulse thudded, his mouth dry. Both men’s weapons were gone.

“I’m afraid you’re going to lose your cleaning deposit,” Levi commented drily.

Moving closer to Mia in the room’s subdued lighting, he felt his insides twist. His neckties had been used to bind her forearms to the chair, another used as a gag. Her right cheekbone appeared swollen and her neck bruised. Her eyes were closed, her dark lashes in stark contrast to her deathly pale skin.

Eric winced. The wounds on her fingers had been reopened and were bleeding badly. Two more fingernails had been removed. He wondered how long Levi had been here—how long she’d had to endure his torture. He shoved down his anger, knowing it would get them both killed. One of the deputy’s shoulder radios lay on the coffee table on top of his paperwork. He realized that when he’d called the second time, he had been speaking to Levi instead. It confirmed he’d used a voice disguiser in the audio recordings.

“As you can see, we’ve been having a little fun while we waited.”

“Waited?” he asked.

“For you, of course. Are you carrying any other weapons?”

“No.”

“Mind if I check? Hands on your head. Now.” Levi kept behind him, shoving the gun into his spine. Eric raised his hands like a suspect being placed under arrest and interlocked his fingers behind his neck. He remained motionless as Levi patted him down, keeping the firearm’s barrel snug against his body as he checked for another gun. He took his cell phone. When he was satisfied, he said, “Now turn around slowly.”

They came face-to-face. Nearly as tall as Eric, Levi was an animated version of the artist’s sketch—receding dark hairline, finely arched brows, a somewhat weak chin. A face that could easily blend in or be forgotten. But the pale eyes were bloodshot and cold. He smiled thinly, enjoying the fact that he had the upper hand. The gun was pointed at Eric’s chest.

“You raided my home tonight. Did you find my girls?”

He gave a faint nod. “We found your mother, too.”

For a split second, the cool veneer disappeared. Regret flashed in Levi’s eyes before it flickered out again. “Then you saw the vial marked Rebecca. Very lovely woman, your wife. I recall how she screamed for you as I was cutting her up. But you know that already. I sent you the audio to remember her by.”

Eric’s jaw tightened but he held Levi’s stare. He had to stay calm.

Mia moaned, her head moving weakly. She was beginning to come around.

“You attract the pretty ones, don’t you?”

When Eric made no comment, Levi added, “Oh, come now. You’re quite handsome, Agent Macfarlane. I saw the two of you outside her apartment building that night. You practically made love to her in the shadow of the squad car. You’ve been spending your nights here with her. A convenient setup, I think. The sheets on the couch are a nice touch, but I’m sure you’ve been slipping into her bed. A lonely widower like you must have needs.”

Keeping the gun on Eric, he ambled around behind Mia. “Let’s help her wake up.”

Eric’s hands clenched into fists as Levi roughly grabbed her hair with one hand, snapping her head back. Her soft brown eyes fluttered and she cried out through the gag. Tears trickled down her face when she saw him, her gaze locking with his. Eric’s heart ached.

“There’s your hero, Mia. But he won’t be able to save
you,
either. You’ll be the second of two loves he’s failed.” He reached into his pocket with his free hand, pulling out a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs. “I went through your things while we were waiting—I hope you don’t mind. I thought these might come in handy.”

He tossed them to Eric and nodded to a second spindle-back armchair that had been relocated from the dining area. “You know what to do. Your right wrist, please.”

The chair faced Mia but was about a dozen feet away. Levi put the gun to her head to show he meant business. Eric had no alternative. He sat down in it and snapped one of the cuffs on his wrist, the other on the chair arm, giving it a tug to show they were secure.

Satisfied, Levi walked over. His lips twisted into a sneer. “I didn’t appreciate what you said about me at your press conference.”

Hauling his arm back, he struck Eric’s temple hard with the gun barrel. Pain exploded inside his head, his vision blurring and the room tilting. He heard Mia whimper.

“I’m in charge now, Agent. And I’m hardly the underachiever you think I am.”

Don’t black out.
Warmth ran down the side of his face. Several heavy drops of blood splashed onto his shirtfront.

Levi returned to Mia. Her injured fingers were splayed on the chair arm, secured tightly in place. He applied pressure to the oozing wounds with the heel of his hand. She released a muffled, agonized scream and tried to lurch off the chair.

“Don’t touch her!” Breathing heavily, dizzy from the hard blow, Eric attempted to draw Levi’s focus back to him. “It’s me you’re pissed off with!
I’m here.
”

“I have to admit, I
have
been playing with her fragile fingers for a while now. All right, Agent. You don’t want me to touch her—let’s move on to a new game.”

Levi took something from the table. A transparent dry cleaning bag. He snapped it in the air to open it. Every muscle, every nerve under Eric’s skin jumped to attention. His clothes had been inside it, hanging in the bedroom closet.

“It’s interesting how one can find lethal instruments in the most mundane things,” Levi said with a smile.

Eric felt his throat close with dread. He understood what the placement of the chairs was about. Levi’s compulsion to kill and torture in front of a witness—a witness destined to be his next victim—hadn’t been satiated in some time. What he wanted was for Eric to watch.

“For better suction.” Levi took the gag from Mia’s mouth. She sobbed, her narrow shoulders shaking.

“Don’t,” Eric pleaded. He gave an involuntary shake of his head. Things were moving too fast. He needed more time for the SWAT team to assemble, to strategize the best way inside.

“Why so glum, Agent? You’ve got the finest seat in the house.”

Eric’s eyes held Mia’s for a bare, emotional second before the plastic bag went over her head.

The SWAT team was assembling two doors down, out of visibility from the bungalow. Vacationers staying at the nearby properties were being warned to keep indoors. Men in body armor, equipped with assault guns and stun grenades, stood waiting for the command to strike. Overhead, iron-gray clouds had eclipsed the moon, further darkening the sky and promising to bring the rain the meteorologists had been talking about.

Cameron felt a rush of anxiety, though he kept it hidden from the others on standby in the sparsely grassed yard. He had been heading back to St. Augustine when he’d made a sharp U-turn on the road.

Eric had cut off their phone conversation to walk willingly into a death trap.

From here, watching through binoculars as he stood among the SWAT team and other federal agents, things appeared deceptively quiet. Thin, yellow light leaked from behind the bungalow’s closed curtains. Cameron wondered what the hell was going on inside.

Either way, they had Levi—he would be theirs, dead or alive. But what about the others who were in there? Cameron felt the heavy weight of responsibility. He had called Eric in on this; he was the one who had brought him down here.

I’m counting on you, Cam. Don’t let them rush the place—it could get her killed.

Anytime law enforcement was forced to enter a hostage situation, the chance of casualties grew. But for all he knew at this moment, it was too late already. Eric, Mia, the two deputies—all of them could be dead.

“We can snake in a thermographic camera,” the SWAT team captain said as he approached. He was buzz-haired and heavily muscled. A tattoo on one forearm indicated him as former military. “Body heat readings will tell us where they are.”

“How long to set it up?”

“Hard to say. We’ll have to find an entry point, like a vent. But we’re going to need it to determine specific locations before we go inside. It’s the best chance you’ve got. Otherwise, we can throw in the grenades, storm the place and hope we get to your suspect before he takes anyone out.”

“Get the cameras in there,” Cameron said, stomping sand off his shoes. He described the house’s ventilation system. “What about the sniper?”

“He’s on his way—he got caught in a traffic snarl on I-95.” The captain held a command radio in his right hand. “Until he gets here I’ve got a man outside the fence in back with binoculars and a limited view into the kitchen. But he says no one’s visible from that vantage point.”

The wind had picked up and the first rain began to fall—hard, fat drops plunking onto the earth around them. Cameron heard one of the field agents curse. The downpour was expected to worsen throughout the night.

Damn it, Eric.
He blew out a tense breath, perspiring in the muggy night air. If Levi didn’t kill him, he just might do it himself when this was all over.

He only hoped he got the chance.

Levi was a cat toying with his prey. For the fourth time, Mia’s body twisted against its restraints as he tightened the seal over her mouth and nose, pulling the thin, transparent plastic taut with one hand.

Thirty seconds. Forty seconds. Too long without oxygen.
Cuffed to the chair, Levi’s gun on him, Eric watched in agonized helplessness before the bag was once again loosened enough to keep her from slipping into unconsciousness. She wheezed, sobbing, the flaccid plastic making smacking sounds against her lips as she feebly drew in air.

Face hot and eyes red, he felt as though he were being slowly pulled apart.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered, voice ragged.

Levi’s expression back to him was one of unadulterated glee. He waited for her lungs to fill a few more times and then he tugged the plastic tight again. Forearms tied down, Mia’s back arched off the chair, her throat making a desperate choking sound as she fought in vain to breathe.