Plain Jane (26 page)

Trying to get a clean shot on Rebecca, Kent watched as the meter maid prepared to jump into the uterus with Nicole. He couldn’t let that happen. “Let her go!”

Unfortunately, Rebecca held all the cards and was well aware of it. “Or?”

Luckily Kent had no problem pulling an ace out of his sleeve. He lowered his weapon, and aimed straight at the body of the uterus. Without hesitation, the profiler shot into it. Liquid squirted out the hole.

“Or I’ll do that.”

“No!” Rebecca screamed as the precious fluid left the bulging vessel.

“Oh ya. I’ll put in enough holes to drain it dry.”

The meter maid searched his face. If she had done her research as well as he thought she had, Rebecca would know that he meant it.

She swallowed before speaking. “If I let her go?”

“I’ll let you jump in. Alone.” Kent nodded to the uterus. “That’s what you wanted, right? To go back in?”

The woman seemed lost in her own world. “My mother… She said I never should have come out.”

Damn it, did psychos never tire of their own self-flagellation? “Yeah, yeah. Your poor sob story. I heard it already. How your mother wished she had aborted you.”

Now it was Rebecca who shed tears. He needed to leverage that emotional vulnerability and leverage it now.

“And how she forced you to have one.” The profiler indicated the enormous, adult-sized uterus. “Isn’t it about time we wrapped up this whole psycho quest of yours?”

CHAPTER 105

Nicole held her breath, not because she was being choked, by now Rebecca’s grip was almost loose. No, it was because of Kent’s bizarre strategy. How could he go from being emotionally stripped to the marrow, then suddenly taunt a serial killer?

Being downright mean to her?

But somehow it was working. Rebecca appeared distracted. Worried. Uncertain.

Nicole wondered if she should not throw an elbow and knock the meter maid off-balance, but this close to the edge of the platform? With a garrote around her neck? It seemed to Nicole more likely that she’d hang herself than reach freedom. Which meant that her life was in Kent’s hands.

And Kent’s hands were tight around her gun. With great showmanship, the profiler leveled the barrel toward the uterus and cocked his head to the side, daring Rebecca.

“No! Don’t!”

Nicole saw it in Kent’s eyes. He was going to shoot and keep shooting if the meter maid didn’t comply. Then he did the strangest thing, he winked just before he fired.

She knew a signal when she saw one. Her hands flew up to her neck, grabbing hold of the garrote just as Rebecca shoved her at the steps. Nicole hit her head on the railing, but managed to free the wire from around her neck. She tried to right herself, and might have succeeded, but Rebecca leapt from the platform into the gaping uterus.

The loss of Rebecca’s weight tilted the catwalk and Nicole lost her footing and tumbled headlong down the stairs.

CHAPTER 106

“Nicole!” Kent shouted as he ran forward.

The woman he loved sprawled at the bottom of the staircase. He skidded to a halt and knelt beside her.

“Talk to me, babe,” Kent murmured as he kept one eye on the uterus where Rebecca thrashed. “Talk to me.”

He smoothed back the hair around her face and quickly checked her limbs. They seemed intact. Nothing broken. At least not externally.

“Come on, Nic.”

Her eyes fluttered and her voice sounded pretty much like she looked. “Next time, it’s your turn to be the hostage.”

A faint smile flickered across Kent’s lips. She was going to be fine. “I need you to stay here, okay?”

Nicole grabbed his hand. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not. I’m not going far at all.”

The detective’s hand fell to the ground as Kent reached his feet and began firing fiercely into the uterus.

“What are you doing?” Nicole asked. “She’s drowning already.”

Kent kept up his barrage, taking a step closer to the womb. “No. That’s what she wants us to think.”

The thrashing stopped as the uterine walls began to undulate. Kent hated it when he was so fucking right.

“She’s giving birth…” he explained, then realized that wasn’t quite right. “Giving birth to herself.” Okay, that sounded even lamer. Kent shrugged as he looked back at Nicole. “Whatever. You get the point.”

By now the uterus was having violent contractions. Kent emptied the clip, and knelt down beside Nicole to get another one from her belt.

“I thought she wanted to end her life,” the detective said, her voice weaker than before.

Rapidly loading the clip, Kent returned to firing, then answered Nicole. “Female serial killers are neither fame seekers nor suicidal.”

“I don’t understand.” The detective was fading. Kent could hear it, but what could he do?

Rebecca was getting away.

Running forward, the profiler quickly emptied the second clip as the uterus collapsed on itself.

Grabbing the walls of the womb, Kent gained purchase in a bullet hole and ripped the vessel open. He wasn’t surprised by what he found.

A drain.

An empty drain.

Large enough for a woman to squeeze through.

“Damn it!”

He looked over his shoulder to tell Nicole to stay put, but her head was bent back at an odd angle.

“Nicole!” No response.

Rushing to her side, his heart stopped as he waited for a breath. “Don’t you dare do this to me.”

Finally her chest moved up and down. A good deep breath. He checked her pulse. Regular and strong. She was just unconscious.

Sounds from the sub-basement made him look toward the drain. A serial killer was getting away. The love of his life was knocked out, possibly critically injured.

Did he haul Nicole out or go after the nutty one?

Ruben would stay. The cop would never leave Nicole. But Kent wasn’t Ruben. He wasn’t that man.

Quickly removing his coat, he placed it under Nicole’s head. Kissing her forehead, “I’m sorry, babe, but I’ve got to go after her.”

He looked down the dark hallway that had brought them here. “Torres can’t be far behind.”

CHAPTER 107

Ruben was still wrapping things up at the convenience store. It was amazing how many details there were when not only did a profiler get kidnapped, but a city employee was caught with stolen body parts. Ruben wanted to be out in the field. Out of this damn store, but Glick had put him in charge. He couldn’t leave until everything was in order.

Yet another uniformed officer came up. “Have you got the western perimeter set?” Ruben asked.

“Sorry, no.”

Ruben groaned. Did he have to do everything?

“This kid stopped me before I could get it done. Says he has information.”

This was all he needed. Even the ten year olds were weighing in. Ruben walked over to the child and tried to be polite. It was not the kid’s fault it was nearly 4:30 in the morning. “Yes?”

“Look, for all this effort, I’m going to need another twenty bucks.”

The boy had guts, though Ruben wasn’t in the mood. “Sorry, we don’t pay for information.”

The kid cocked his head to the side. “Really? Even about the lady cop?”

Damn. Still, Torres wasn’t going to give in that easily. “I’m going to need a little more information than that before I part with a Jackson.”

“He told me to tell her to go alone.”

Shit. Plain Jane. Ruben’s wallet was out in a flash. He handed the boy a crisp twenty.

“She went down the alley.”

“When?” Torres asked.

“A while ago.”

A while ago? “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“She told me to wait outside. That you would come looking for her.”

Fuck.

“Glick!”

CHAPTER 108

Kent crept down the dark, dirt tunnel. He could hear muffled scrapes up ahead. Rebecca hadn’t gotten far. He must have winged her while she was “giving birth.”

Unfortunately the sub-basement was made up a patchwork of natural catacombs. Noises traveled through a tangled maze down here. Rebecca could be twenty yards away or right beside him.

“Was it worth it?” No verbal response, but the steps quickened. “All those lives for that loser experience?” He cocked an ear. Had she stopped? “You’re so not going to be able to sell tickets to that ride.”

“You would be surprised.”

Before Kent could turn toward the sound, Rebecca lashed out with her scalpel blade, slashing the profiler’s gun hand. The thin slice hurt like a bitch as he spun away, however, he held onto the weapon.

“That’s cheating.”

Rebecca was now the one to taunt him. “That’s why I have the upper hand. I know no rules.”

Kent stopped as he came to a juncture of tunnels. Which way? He needed to keep her talking. “Darlin’, you’ve got a lot to learn about me.”

The glint of the blade caught Kent’s attention. He pivoted out of the way as Rebecca lashed out again.

Continuing the arc, he fired three shots in quick succession. A muffled scream was his reward. With any luck, a body shot. Fuck hitting a leg to slow them down. A bullet in the kidney was much more effective.

The meter maid didn’t sound quite so cocky anymore. Blood loss and pain tended to do that. “You need me alive.”

The tables had turned. Kent could feel it. It was she who was unsteady now. Unnerved.

He planned to keep it that way.

“Don’t you know what I was hospitalized for?”

No answer. Kent spotted a thin blood splatter on the floor. “I was on the trail of another serial killer. A Lecter wannabe or House of the Dead groupie, anyway, he was killing people and eating their brains.”

“So you decided to see how it felt?”

Spinning around, the profiler realigned his shot. The voice had come from behind him. There must be smaller access tunnels. He’d have to be more careful.

“Yeppers. I went into the morgue, found some homeless guy’s body.”

Kent stopped and listened. Rebecca had to support herself along the wall now. Her pace had slowed. “I mean his brain was just sitting there on the scale. I figured, who’s gonna miss a few ounces?”

“But they did,” Rebecca said, but he had a hard time deciding which direction her voice came from. Sound traveled strangely in these convoluted tunnels.

“That time? No, but once I got it home and ate it, I had a revelation.”

He adjusted to the left as Rebecca spoke. “The power of consuming another’s center of reason?”

He had the bead on her. “No… It tasted bad. I mean really bad.” She had stopped again, so he paused his feet as well. “I figured nobody is going to eat three pounds of this crap, at least not like that.”

“So you went back for more?”

Kent was pretty damn sure she was up ahead about ten feet, down to the right. “Oh yeah. I figured the ME was done with it. We might as well progress behavioral science.”

He waited. No footsteps. No hands sliding down the wall. Her shallow breaths echoed in the tight space. “Anyway, I tried everything. Sautéed, basted, even deep-fried the stuff. No better.”

Movement. She was trying to backtrack again. Kent adjusted his course. “Then it came to me. The killer was following ancient traditions. So he was probably following an ancient recipe. So to make an extremely long story a little shorter, I tracked down an importer of exotic ingredients and ‘boom’ I’ve got my man.”

“Captured alive?”

Rebecca couldn’t have been further off. Kent snorted, “No, I shot him
twice
.”

“Oh, I’m so scared.”

“Once in each eye,” Kent clarified. “Just as he had done to his victims. You can imagine how hard that was to sell as self-defense.”

“That’s when they figured out your brain cravings?”

“No.”

Oh, she was so very close. He could feel it. Another step forward, turn to the right. Striking out, Kent grabbed Rebecca from behind, putting his gun to her temple.

He pulled Plain Jane close to him and whispered in her ear, “It’s when I stole a chunk of the perp’s brain…and was cooking it up at home when they found me.”

Kent tightened his grip on her neck. “So don’t think for a second I won’t shoot
you
.”

Rebecca lashed out with her knife, flailing, trying to hit anything she could. “And don’t think I won’t kill
you
.”

Keeping himself behind her and out of reach of the sharp blade, Kent couldn’t help himself. “But you promised you wouldn’t.”

“That’s before I got to know you.”

She struggled fiercely, forcing him to lower his gun. But that was exactly what she was angling for. With an expert lunge, Rebecca knocked the gun from his hand. It skittered away into the darkness. His hand slipped from her neck. The only one armed, it was Rebecca who now had the advantage.

“Guess you got a little rusty,” the meter maid commented as she lashed out again, forcing Kent back.

“Padded walls do tend to make you a little soft.”

Kent blocked her attacks over and over. She was a maniac with the blade. And well practiced. He couldn’t find an in, but he was not about to admit that to her. “Fighting off the nurses at meds time? Now
that
was combat training.”

And there it was. His window. Kent realized whenever Rebecca was recovering from a backhanded downward slope, her follow-through was exaggerated. He just had to wait for it to come back around.

Kent hyper-focused not on the meter maid’s knife, but rather on her shoulder. She slashed down, than rapidly reversed direction and came back up. There was that hitch. That momentary shift of weight as she tried to bring the blade back around to bear.

Kent sent an elbow into her side, throwing her off-balance and with her shoulder already back, it opened up her abdomen. He jabbed at the bloodstain. Rebecca cried out. Each time she tried to slash, he blocked early, causing her to abort her swing, the knife now neutralized.

And he would have snatched the damn weapon, if he hadn’t slipped in a pool of blood. His left foot went out from under him at the same moment he had brought his right fist back to prepare for a punch. The combined momentum threw him backward, hard into the wall.

Rebecca didn’t miss her golden opportunity and leapt. Knife against his throat before he could recover.