Hunted (36 page)

With a suddenness that was mind boggling, Kyle bolted forward, whisking Lanie away from the terrible sounds of Chase Wylie answering for his wrongdoings. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lanie was being raced through the night so fast that it was unbelievable.  Kyle’s feet were pounding the ground and the icy wind was screeching by, pushing at her, roaring in hear ears and biting at her flesh through her clothes so that she felt numb within a matter of seconds.  The bite and push of the wind drove her to turn her face into Kyle’s neck just so she could breathe, which was difficult when it felt like her body was being compressed by the sheer force of their forward momentum.

Her house was a good fifteen minutes away from the Drive-In, and after just a few moments of suffering through the freezing wind clawing at her and the force compressing her lungs, she thought she was going to have to ask Kyle to stop.  She’d rather walk the entire way than endure the frigid, crushing air overwhelming her.

Without warning, Kyle screeched to a halt with such abruptness that Lanie’s organs all sloshed against her ribcage, making her stomach lurch in protest and eliciting a groan from her. Opening her eyes, Lanie realized that she was standing on the front porch of her house, beneath the porch light, looking out at her dad’s cruiser parked in the driveway and the fancily dressed scarecrow still standing guard by the steps.

“Are you alright, Lanie?  Was that too much for you?” Kyle asked her, setting her onto her feet, his handsome face lined with worry.

Lanie pulled in a breath, noticing the little pool of blood at the edge of his mouth.  “Did they hurt you?” she asked him, her words sounding slightly thick because her insides were still moving around.

“No.  I was trying not to hurt
them
,” he told her.  “Can you forgive me, Lanie?  I had no idea that would happen to you or I wouldn’t have left you there, not even for a second.”

So, those eyes on her
had
been Kyle’s.  He was staying close by, just like he promised.  “This wasn’t your fault.  It was Chase’s.  He…I-I had no idea he was-was…”  Capable of behaving like a depraved animal.

Kyle’s expression went hard and his sparkling green eyes went dark.  “It is my fault,” he repeated with feeling.  “I thought you’d be safe with your friends, so I went off to make sure Frederik wasn’t around.  But, I
never
should have left you.”

Lanie started to speak, but Kyle shot a look at the door, spun on his heel, and with a flare of his leather coat, was gone.  A few seconds later the front door opened and her dad stepped out, his brows shooting up as he found her there. 

“Lanie?  I-I thought you were with your friends,” he said, looking taken aback.

“I-I…I was,” she said weakly, trying to gather herself together enough to focus her thoughts. 

Daddy, Chase Wylie attacked me
! she wanted to scream out the words, but they stuck in her throat when she noticed the set of her dad’s jaw and the hard expression on his face. 

Something was wrong. 

“Daddy?  What is it?” she croaked out, her stomach tightening into a painful knot.

Sam Bancroft let out a sharp breath.  “I’ve called Gretchen to come over and help you pack a bag,” he said.

“Wh-why?” she asked hesitantly, afraid to hear the answer.

“I just got a call.  Someone else was found,” Sam stated in his official voice.

Lanie felt her heart drop.  “Wh-where?” she whispered.

“At the park near Stoney’s Bar.  One of the passersby going for a drink saw them lying there next to the road,” came the answer.

Oh no.  He’d killed again.  And he’d left the body in the park she’d been in only the day before.  Was that some sort of message?

There suddenly wasn’t a single fiber of her entire being that didn’t ache to tell her father the truth about what was happening and who was doing the killing.  But, she clenched her teeth and said nothing.  She would not tell him.  She would not risk him getting in Frederik’s way and then winding up in the cemetery next to her mother.  She couldn’t!

“You’re going to stay with Gretchen for a bit.  I can’t do my job if I’m worried about you,” Sam told her. 

“Okay,” she breathed nervously.  “How long do I have to stay?”

“This is the third person, Lanie.  This classifies him as a serial killer.  You’re going to stay where you’ll be safe, no matter how long it takes for me to find this monster.”

Yes.  It
was
a monster who was killing the residents of Fells Pointe.  A monster that could kill Sam Bancroft without any effort at all.

“What’s going to happen now?  Everyone’s already afraid,” she wondered as her dad took her by the shoulders and ushered her into the light and warmth of the house. 

What Chase Wylie had tried to do to her would have to wait for a bit.  Her dad had other business to see to.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I doubt it will be anything good.  But, I don’t want you to worry about it.  We’ll get through this,” Sam assured her.  “Now, I have to go, so stay inside until Gretchen gets here and I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

Lanie nodded, feeling the urge to cry.  “You’ll be careful, right?”

“I will,” he answered, but then paused for a minute.  “Lanie, if you knew anything, if you saw something in the park that night that would help with this mess, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Lanie was swept with something so strong it almost caused her knees to buckle.  She could tell him.  She could open her mouth and tell him what she knew and…and what?  Sam Bancroft and his two deputies would not be able to stop what was happening.  Gretchen was right.  She just wasn’t willing to risk it.  Who would she be risking him for, really?  People like Chase Wylie?

“I don’t know who it was,” she said, the lie slipping off her tongue with more ease than she thought it would.

Sam let out a breath.  “Alright.  Just wait for you aunt and I’ll call you later.  Love you, squirt.” 

“Love you, Dad,” she answered unevenly. 

With that, Sam was gone, leaving Lanie standing alone in the foyer, staring at the closed door, her heart hammering hard and her ragged breathing sounding like shotgun blasts in the silence. 

Another person was dead.  Frederik had killed another innocent person.  And there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

A sudden knock at the door exploded through the house and Lanie’s heart leaped into her throat, forcing a shriek out of her.

“Lanie?  It’s me!” the familiar voice called to her.

With a surge of relief, Lanie rushed forward and opened the door, throwing herself into Kyle’s arms with a sob.  “Kyle, he’s killed someone else!”

Kyle said nothing for a long minute, he just held his arms tight around Lanie and rested his chin on her hair.  “I’m sorry.  Maybe if I hadn’t decided to follow you I might have been able to stop him,” he finally said, his tone thick with remorse.

“You wouldn’t have,” Lanie told him.  He hadn’t been able to stop Frederik so far, had he?  

“But, I might have,” Kyle told her stiffly.  “I-I just didn’t want to leave you.  And now he’s taken another person.”

“Kyle, don’t,” Lanie beseeched.  “This can’t be all on your shoulders.  You’d stop him if you could, but he’s too…too…”

“Evil,” Kyle finished for her.  “He’s pure evil.  Sometimes, I don’t think anything will ever stop him.”

Lanie couldn’t speak on that.  Maybe nothing ever would stop him.  Maybe he was a way for the Universe to thin the herd a little.  Who knew.  But, Kyle Vincent didn’t need to carry the weight of all Frederik’s victim’s on his shoulders.  He wasn’t the one doing the killing.

“He’s been stalking you, Lanie,” Kyle said to her, tightening his hold on her and moving them both back inside the house, using his foot to shut the door behind them.

“What?” Lanie asked, her nerve endings tingling with fear as she looked up into Kyle’s concerned face.

“I can get his scent, it’s always where you are, but I can’t ever find him.  But, he
has
been stalking you.  And I-I don’t know what I’ll do if he takes you,” Kyle said, shaking his head in a gesture of helplessness.

Lanie felt her breath quicken.  “Wh-I-I…why hasn’t he…tried to…”

“Because I’ve been too close to you.  He knows I’m watching you and I know he doesn’t want to have to kill me.  I think he’s just waiting until I let my guard down.”

Lanie felt her heart drop by several inches.  She did not want Frederik to take her.  She did not want to wind up like
that
! 

“I won’t let him get to you.  I
won’t
!” Kyle swore vehemently, squeezing her tighter against him.  “I’ll watch you day and night if I have to.”

“My-my dad is sending me to Gretchen’s house for a while,” she told him. 

Kyle seemed to relax marginally upon hearing that.  “Well, that’ll make things easier.”

Lanie didn’t know if that was true, but she had no choice in the matter.  Whether she wanted to or not, she was being sent off to Gretchen’s house, which was akin to ending up in the belly of the beast in her opinion.  But, better that than ending up in Frederik’s hands. 

“You should pack a bag before Gretchen gets here,” Kyle told her, but kept his arms around her for another few heartbeats.

Lanie let go of Kyle and they hurried up to her room, where Kyle sat on her bed while she hustled around throwing things into her overnight bag.  Once she had enough things packed to get her through a couple of days, she and Kyle headed back down the stairs to wait for Gretchen, who only lived a few blocks away and was clearly running late. 

“Are you sure you’re okay, Lanie?” Kyle asked, dropping her bag by the front door.  “What that boy tried to do to you…are you sure you’re alright?”

Lanie gave that question a moment’s consideration as she went for her purse and a sweater.  She’d been…assaulted…by an oversexed degenerate she’d thought to be her friend.  And she was going to have to tell her father about it, which meant there would probably trouble for them
both
because Mayor Wylie was not going to like his own son having such an allegation lobbed at him. 

But, she would have to tell because she doubted that Finn’s attempt at setting him straight would keep him from doing it to another girl.

“I’ll be okay,” she answered Kyle.  She would.  She might have nightmares for a while, and she would have to suffer through whatever backlash accusing Mayor Wylie’s son of attempted assault would bring, but she would be okay.

“Do you want to talk about it?  I mean, I think you’re supposed to talk about it,” Kyle said, sounding an awful lot like Gretchen.

Lanie gave her head a shake.  No, she did not want to talk about those terrible seconds when a deviant had been groping at her like some sort of wild animal.  She just wanted to forget about it, to forget how it felt.

“Is there anything I can do?” Kyle questioned, his brows drawn together.

Again, she shook her head.  She didn’t need help.  She would take care of this on her own just as soon as she could.

Headlights flashing through the window of the front door announced Gretchen’s arrival and Kyle quickly grabbed Lanie’s bag and ushered her out of the house and over to her aunt’s Prius.  Gretchen drove them the few blocks over to her house on Magnolia Street and Lanie was ferreted inside with much haste. 

Gretchen’s house was a sizeable, comfortable old place that was decorated to look like a princess lived there.  Everything in the house, from the furniture, to the lamp shades, to the walls, was either white or pink, or a floral pattern made up of white
and
pink.  There were floral paintings hanging all over the place, lace doilies on all the white painted tables, and dangly crystal things hanging from anything that would hold a dangly crystal thing.  It looked like a life sized Barbie playhouse. 

The place actually gave Lanie a case of the creeps.