Fear No Evil (35 page)

“You don’t have to say it, Kate.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“Where’s Jeff Merritt now?” Dillon asked.

“He had a flight out this morning to Washington. I’m going to alert the OPR about this latest situation. I imagine they’ll be doing something about it.” Quinn looked at Kate. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded, glanced at Dillon. Felt warmth, strength, and love pouring from him into her. “I could use a shower.”

“We have a full bath in the break room. I’ll show you where it is, but we only have thirty minutes before we have to leave to catch our flight to San Diego.”

Trask watched the Kincaid family from afar for nearly twenty-four hours. Jack Kincaid, the military brother, was the most dangerous. He was everywhere Lucy was. To get to her, Adam would have to find a way to take Jack out first.

Connor Kincaid pretty much stayed at the hospital with the other brother, Patrick. The female detective lived nearby. The sheriff went home with her. The parents were old, they wouldn’t be a problem.

The shrink who screwed up his plans was nowhere. Trask searched the Internet, found out that Dr. Dillon Kincaid owned a house only a few blocks from where Lucy Kincaid lived. He drove by several times, but it was dark. Had he stayed in Washington? Why? Was Kate still there? Did the doctor and Kate have something going on? Or was the shrink trying to get Roger Morton to talk?

Trask wished Roger had been killed along with everyone else. He didn’t trust him. The bastard would turn on him in a flash. If he’d been able to get to him, he would have killed Roger himself. But there was no way he could show his face.

He’d darkened his hair a bit, nothing drastic because he didn’t want the dye job to be obvious. He wore sunglasses, stuffed cotton in his cheeks, and put on colored contacts. Brown. The overall effect worked to tone down his appearance, making him look more average. If someone who knew him looked twice, they might recognize him, but at first glance he could pass as a stranger.

All he needed was one chance.

He’d never considered a woman a threat, except for that bitch Kate Donovan. But now he had the upper hand where she was concerned.

He knew exactly how to draw her out.

The only people living at the Kincaid house were Lucy, her parents, and Jack Kincaid. How long was Jack going to stay watching Lucy? Soon it would be just Lucy and her old parents.

Adam didn’t want to wait, but he was willing to. He had money—a fraction of his wealth, thanks to that idiot Paul Ullman, who didn’t have the brains to avoid the feds and let him know what was happening so he could transfer more funds.

He’d wait, but if he saw an opportunity he would act.

He drove by the doctor’s house again. Still dark. When would he be coming home? He wouldn’t be staying up north indefinitely.

But since the house was vacant now he had a place to hide. To put the finishing touches on his plan.

As soon as he had Lucy Kincaid again, he’d put her back online. Send the link to Kate.

Kate Donovan would walk right up to his door. And then he’d kill her and take Lucy with him, to serve him forever.

THIRTY-TWO

L
UCY WAS BACK
in the cabin. Tied to the floor. Trevor Conrad stood over her; Roger and Frank flanked him.

“You’re dead,” she said, but no words came out.

Roger and Frank disappeared, but Trevor remained. “I’m not.”

He poured gasoline all around her and picked up a phone.

“Patrick,” he said, “I have your sister.”

Patrick ran through the door. “Lucy!”

“It’s a trap! Run!”

The room exploded. Patrick flew through the air, his head bandaged. He landed in the wall. She smelled smoke and heard Trevor laughing at her.

Sharp steel sliced her neck.

Dillon jumped through the window, his face and hands bleeding. He grabbed Trevor by the neck and began to strangle him. Trevor took the knife and cut out Dillon’s heart.

Lucy jumped from bed, still half asleep. Frantic, she ran around her room, feeling the windows and the door. Cool. There was no fire. Her neck burned. She flipped on the light and looked in the mirror. The wild eyes that stared back couldn’t possibly be hers.

The bandage that had covered the wound on her neck was in her hands; the red welt throbbed and bled. She stared at her hands. Blood coated her fingers.

Her door opened. Jack stood there. “Lucy. It was just a nightmare.”

He crossed the room, concern on his face. Lucy must have looked frantic. She would never have imagined that Jack could be worried about anything.

Jack took the bandage from Lucy’s hands and together they walked to the bathroom. In silence, he cleaned the wound and reapplied the bandage. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

She shook her head. “I need to see Patrick.”

“Are you sure?” He looked at his watch. “It’s only seven.”

“Now. I have to make sure he’s alive.”

Jack hesitated, then said, “All right.”

Lucy relaxed. “I just need to get dressed. I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes. Okay?”

He nodded and left.

She sat in the bathroom for several minutes, gathering her strength, trying to push that awful vision from her mind. Her heart was beating so fast Lucy wouldn’t have been surprised to see it leap from her chest.

The dream had seemed so real.

Kate felt a million times better after a hot shower. She dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the day before, and went back to the interview room. No one was there. She found Quinn and Dillon in Quinn’s office. Both of them were on the phone.

Quinn hung up first.

“Any word on Adam Scott?”

Quinn shook his head. “Yes and no. He’s disappeared again. My agents out in New York have managed to track down some of his identities, but they’re old. We were able to put together his past movements, but we don’t know where he went. He could still be here in Seattle—or he could be halfway across the world.”

“What about the yellow Hummer?”

“We found it at the airport, long-term parking. We’ve brought it in as evidence, but there’s nothing to tell us what his plans are.”

“You think he flew somewhere?”

“He didn’t leave the parking ticket in the car, but security cameras indicate that it went through the kiosk at ten forty-five Sunday morning.”

“Right after Lucy left with her family.”

“I flew her out of a private airport. She wasn’t at Sea-Tac.”

“Maybe he wasn’t following Lucy. Coincidence?” She frowned and sat down across from Quinn and glanced at Dillon, who was watching her. He hung up his phone.

“That was Jack,” he said. “He’s taking Lucy to the hospital. We’ll meet them there at noon.”

Quinn pulled out some notes from a stack in the corner. “You and Dillon arrived at the island about two p.m. He brought Lucy to the helicopter at two fifty-six p.m. By the time we went back, found you, it was after four.”

“I can buy that he watched Dillon rescue Lucy. I think he would have monitored her online virtually the entire time he was gone. So he knew what happened, he couldn’t reach his people, he disappeared. Why not go to the airport right then? Why wait until Sunday morning?” Kate pondered.

“You think he was waiting for a chance to grab Lucy again?”

“Yes.”

“But he must have seen the security on her. Jack Kincaid could intimidate Osama with one look.”

“Right,” Kate said. “But he’s patient. He isn’t going to do anything stupid. And do you think Jack Kincaid is going to stay in San Diego forever? That man is itching to get back to whatever it is he was doing in Mexico in the first place. A week, if that. He’ll leave her in good hands, I’m sure. But eventually everyone will become complacent. They’ll assume Adam Scott left the country. And when they least expect it, he’ll get Lucy. We stole her from him. His ego took a huge blow. He’s not going to sit by and do nothing.”

“We’re not going to get complacent,” Dillon said. “I know what Adam Scott is capable of. He’ll wait a day, a week, a year to get to Lucy. And to you. But I don’t think we’ll have to wait a year.”

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“Because he’s been dealt a huge blow. That’s eating at him. We have Roger Morton in custody. Eventually, we’ll get information from him. Scott doesn’t know what or when. He’s fuming—betrayal by his supposed friend, Kate rescuing Lucy, Lucy back home.” Dillon paused. “I think he’s already in San Diego.” He opened his cell phone. “I’m going to warn Jack.”

Trask followed Jack and Lucy to the hospital. Visiting her near-dead brother perhaps? Interesting. Add another dynamic to the situation.

Just how loyal was Lucy to her family? What would she do to save them? She would be home soon enough, and he needed time to plan the next move.

He quietly broke into Dillon Kincaid’s house.

Trask walked through the small bungalow. He admired the doctor’s taste. Not quite minimalist, simply sparse, classic, and dark. Dark furniture against hardwood floors; luxurious rugs in the living room and dining room. The kitchen was well-appointed, with gourmet cooking utensils and state-of-the-art appliances. The master bedroom continued the dark theme, navy blue bedding and window treatments. The second bedroom had been converted into a home office.

Though the house was not even fourteen hundred square feet, it was well laid out. Particularly for his purposes. Set far back from the street with a long, narrow front yard and a long, narrow backyard. The garage was in the rear, detached.

Perfect.

Trask sat down at Dr. Kincaid’s computer and logged onto his private server. The feds hadn’t found it; even if they had, they wouldn’t be able to track him here before he was ready to reveal his location. He took out his equipment, set it up in Kincaid’s bedroom.

He couldn’t have planned this better had he tried.

All he had to do was wait, and with the doctor gone he could stay here indefinitely as long as he was careful. One of the many Kincaid clan members could be checking on the house, though so far he hadn’t seen anyone drive by. He wouldn’t use the lights. There was food in the refrigerator and pantry. Enough to sustain him for some time.

He had three options. Wait until Lucy was free of her military bodyguard. Wait until Dillon Kincaid came home and use him as bait. Or find a way to kidnap Lucy from the hospital. Out of her house she was far more vulnerable. Trask wouldn’t take his chances head-to-head with Jack Kincaid, but a well-placed bullet in the back of the head could stop any man.

Lucy walked into Patrick’s room alone—Jack was waiting right outside the door.

She closed the door, feeling for the first time like she could breathe. She loved her family, appreciated everything they were doing for her, but the last two days had been suffocating. All these people who loved her and they were trying not to walk on eggshells around her because they wanted life to return to normal as much as she did. But they’d seen what had happened to her. They couldn’t pretend they didn’t know. Nothing had been left to their imagination. They had feared the worst and seen it happen. She couldn’t look at them without the guilt crashing down around her.

All she wanted was to be alone. But at the same time, she never wanted to be alone again.

Her heart beat with the rhythm of fear, which saturated her blood and made her doubt that she’d ever be able to reclaim her life.

She stared at Patrick in the hospital bed, her pulse racing. His long lanky body seemed to have shrunk. He had on an oxygen mask and an IV gave him nourishment. He was in a coma, because of her.

Not being dead hadn’t really sunk in. Death had come too close, and she was still trying to wrap her mind around her mortality. She couldn’t think about being raped, maybe later. Maybe much, much later.

Dillon had risked his life to save her. Jack, a brother she barely knew, had come home just for her. Patrick was in a coma because of her.

She’d been so stupid. No, stupid didn’t cut it. She’d been irresponsible. She deserved everything that had happened to her. She had listened over and over to the warnings from her family about strangers and the Internet, but never in a million years had she thought anything would happen to her.

You didn’t deserve anything that happened, Lucy.

It was Dillon’s soothing, commanding voice in her head.

None of this is your fault.

She didn’t know if she believed the phantom Dillon, but somehow it made her strong enough to cross the room and sit next to Patrick’s still body.

His head was bandaged, and for some reason that bothered her more than anything. It made everything more real. That he’d had brain surgery because of the explosion that nearly killed him. That he was in a coma and might not survive.

She ached for Patrick, and for herself. For what she had done to her family.

What Adam Scott had done.

Intellectually, she knew she had to stop blaming herself. Emotionally, she couldn’t. Not yet.

Lucy took Patrick’s hand. Suddenly, the urge to talk, to tell Patrick everything, hit her. He couldn’t look at her with pity, he wouldn’t tell her everything would be all right. He wouldn’t offer her food or suggest that she get some sleep.

“Patrick,” she whispered, “it was so awful. At first I didn’t want to die, I wanted to fight and hurt them back. Then, later, all I wanted to do was die. And I hate that. I hate that I was giving up when you and Dillon were working so hard to find me. You had more faith in me than I had in myself. I’ll never disappoint you again.”

THIRTY-THREE

J
ACK WAS STANDING
outside Patrick’s hospital room when Dillon arrived at noon.

“How are they?”

“Lucy’s been in there for nearly four hours,” Jack said, nodding to Kate, who stood next to him. “You were right, Dil. She’s calmer since she’s been here.”

Dillon nodded, relieved that he’d been right. So much of psychology was second-guessing human nature, trying to understand people better than they understood themselves. Anticipating what they needed before they realized they lacked anything.