Scream for Me (23 page)

A bloodbath could be heading their way.

Kyle jumped into the vehicle. Punched the address in his GPS and hoped he wasn’t about to start following a trail of bodies.

Kyle stared down at the blonde as a tech took her picture, cataloging the scene behind the old diner.

The woman’s hair was blonde, falling just below her shoulders, and she was young. It looked like she’d been as young as Maria had been when his sister vanished.

Her hands were beside her, palm up.

She looked weak. Broken.

“Asphyxiation,” Cadence said as she stood behind him. “There’s petechial hemorrhaging in both eyes.”

He hadn’t seen the victim’s eyes. Hadn’t gotten close enough to touch her. “How long did it take for her to die?”

Cadence’s breath rasped out softly. “Her windpipe was crushed. She would have died within a few minutes.”

Strangulation was all about control. He’d worked a serial case hunting a strangler months before. Controlling the breath that your victim took could be the ultimate power trip.

They already knew their perp wanted power.

“If this is our guy, why didn’t he take her?” Why kill her and dump her so soon? That wasn’t his MO.

“There’s bruising on her hands.”

“She hit him?” Maybe there was DNA.

“Based on the pattern”—Cadence’s voice was thoughtful—“I think she was pounding on a hard surface.”

Like a trunk. “Pounding and screaming,” he muttered.

The screaming would explain the strangulation.

Cadence glanced at him. “
If
this is our guy, he would’ve been looking for a victim, been pissed because he lost Christa.”

“Your girl drove a red convertible,” Dani said as she walked toward them. She had a tablet in her hand, was scrolling through the information there. “It was just found, at a gas station about five miles away.”

“When my sister vanished, she was driving a red convertible.” Had the guy seen her, seen the car, and remembered?

“He took her,” Kyle said, certain now. “But she wasn’t what he wanted.” She hadn’t listened to his orders. He’d had to pick the girl too fast.
Did that mean you didn’t have time to screen her? To see if she’d be good enough?

“Hold on, Kyle.” Dani shook her head. He noticed she didn’t look directly at the victim. Danielle never did. The victims always made her too nervous. She wasn’t usually in the field. She stayed safely shut in her office. Behind all those locked doors at the bureau. “We need more evidence before we start saying this girl is
his
.”

Kyle’s phone vibrated. He yanked it from his pocket. Glanced down.

Blocked caller
.

The breath in his lungs became icy. “Cadence.” He snapped out her name right before he took the call.

She glanced at him, her left eyebrow rising.

“Who the hell is this?” Kyle demanded.

Cadence’s eyes widened.

Laughter rasped across the line. “You know.” A dark, rasping voice.

His
voice.

“We need a trace on that call,” Cadence said to Dani. “We need it
now
.”

“Do you feel hunted?” Kyle asked him. He knew he had to keep the guy on the line as long as possible. Dani was already working frantically, typing on her tablet and talking to her crew at Quantico. They’d need to ping cell towers and trace the signal. He had to buy as much time as he could. “We’re closing in on you. I
saw
you today.”

“I let you. Just like I let you find that poor girl behind the diner. The woman you’re standing over right now.”

Fuck.
He can see me
. He mouthed the words to Cadence. She eased back. Went to talk with the cops in the area. Then he saw them all spread out.

They’d start searching.

“I don’t buy that she’s yours,” he said, but he did. “This isn’t the way you kill.”

“You think you know me.” The words were mocking. “But Agent McKenzie, you don’t know anything.”

“You take your victims, you keep them. You didn’t keep her.”

“She wasn’t good enough.”

Sick prick
.

“My girls have to be just right.” His voice never rose over a low rasp. “I thought the little blonde might work, but she wasn’t like the original.”

Maria
.

“I know you, Agent. The man who takes down the killers…you like to see your name in the papers, don’t you?”

He didn’t give a shit about the press. “I’m going to take you down.”

“Maria’s hero,” that rasping voice mused. “How quickly you forgot her.”

“I
never
forgot!” The rage surged within him.

“Now no one will forget.” Satisfaction was there, thickening the words. “They will all know what’s been done. All know that no one can stop me.”

Bullshit. Kyle would stop him.

“You haven’t asked to talk with her.” The words faded into a whisper. “Don’t you want to hear from Maria again?”

What he wanted was to kill that SOB. “It’s hard to talk with a ghost.”

More laughter. “Why do you think I killed them all? You only found one body in those caverns.”

Kyle’s shoulders tensed. How the fuck did he know that?

Cadence had disappeared into the trees. Dani was still close. “Not yet,” she mouthed to him.

They didn’t need the cell tower pings. The SOB was right there. Kyle’s gaze swept the line of trees. The rolling hills. So many places to hide.

“If they die too quickly, then what’s the point?”

“You killed this one fast enough,” Kyle pointed out. The scent of death was heavy in the air.

“That bitch wouldn’t stop screaming, so I stopped her! You don’t follow the rules, and you get punished.”

“Bullshit,” Kyle called. “You get off on killing, so you do it. That’s why you shot Christa.”

“Christa wasn’t the first one I aimed for.”

“The sheriff’s gonna make it.”
He’d better
. “Your aim was shit.”

“Yes.” A surprising admission. “I wasn’t trying to hit the sheriff, either.”

He tried to remember who’d been close to the sheriff.

“You took my girl away,” the voice told him, rasping now. “So I’m going to take
yours
.”

Cadence had been the only other person close to the sheriff. His blood had splattered on her.

His heart slammed into his ribs.
I can’t see Cadence
. She’d vanished into those woods.

The killer waited in those woods.

“No, no, you’re fucking
not
!” Kyle snarled into the phone.

Dani’s head jerked up.

“
Let me go
.”

That voice. Maria’s voice.

“
I want to go home. Kyle, I want to go home!
”

Tears choked her.

Then all he heard was silence.

“Kyle?” Dani touched his arm. “Kyle, the call is coming from somewhere in a five-mile radius. We couldn’t pinpoint it any better than that.”

The phone’s screen cracked. He tried to ease the pressure of his hand, but couldn’t. “Cadence.” It was all he could manage right then.

“She’s searching for him now.”

“He wants Cadence.”

Dani stumbled back.

Kyle’s fingers slid over the broken phone’s screen. With one touch, he was calling her, even as he raced for the woods. For the last spot he’d seen her.

Cadence’s gun had been out when she went into the woods. She was a federal agent. Trained. She could handle herself.

Answer the phone. Answer…

Cadence advanced slowly. She kept her gun up as she swept the area. From what she’d heard, it had sure sounded like the perp was watching Kyle at the diner.

Even with binoculars, he’d have to be close.

Where are you?

The land slanted upward. Four deputies had branched out, searching with her. She kept trying to find the telltale glint of metal in the brush. The flash of a lens on the binoculars, but she didn’t see anything.

Insects buzzed around her. The heat of the Tennessee summer had her T-shirt sticking to her skin.

Her phone vibrated, shaking in her pocket. She fished it out with her left hand. “Hollow.”

“
He’s after you
.” Kyle’s voice. Shaken. Furious. Harder than she’d ever heard before. “The sonofabitch told me that he wants you.”

She retreated a few steps, putting her back against the broad base of a tree. Her eyes kept scanning the area. “I haven’t caught sight of him.”

“Come back down here. Fuck, come on
now
, Cadence.”

“This is what I’m trained for. I have my vest on and I’ve got my gun.” She wouldn’t give in to fear. “He can see me regardless, and
if I start rushing out of here now, then I might just make myself more of a target.” It would be better for her to lie low and search for the perp.
You’re hunting me? We’ll see who gets caught first
.

“Then I’m coming to you! Where the hell are you?”

“About fifty yards northwest of the diner. There’s a tree here, a pine that’s been stripped of bark.” Like it had been struck by lightning.

“
Stay
there. I’m coming.” She could hear him running. Hear the hard rasp of his breath.

She also heard a twig snap, to the right of her.

Cadence whirled. A deputy stood about twenty feet away. “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to scare you.” A deep drawl accented his words. He inclined his head. The glaring southern sun was behind him, and his long shadow swept forward. A wide-brimmed hat drifted low over his forehead and he wore a pair of sunglasses. He began to retreat from her. “No sign of him in this area. I’m heading on up to check near the top of the slope.” The rising sun was behind him, pushing shadows over his body so that she couldn’t see his face clearly.

Cadence had to squint against the bright sunlight. She had her gun aimed toward the guy’s chest even as her left hand still clutched the phone to her ear. “Keep your radio on,” Cadence ordered as she slowly lowered her weapon. “If you see anything, you call me.”

With a quick nod, he turned away.

Her gaze fell down his body.

“Cadence, Cadence,
you better still be next to that tree
.”

The deputy was wearing brown hiking boots.

Hiking boots
.

She frowned. He shouldn’t be wearing those boots. The other guys hadn’t been. She’d noticed with a quick, cursory glance that
the other deputies were all wearing the usual black boots customary for officers in this area. Not hiking boots.

You wore hiking boots when you knew you would be climbing. The deputies today hadn’t known they’d be searching the woods, not until she’d given them the order.

“Deputy!” she called out.

He didn’t look back. The guy headed into thick patch of brush.

“
Deputy!
” Her cry sent birds flying into the air.

If she waited for Kyle, the man would be gone.

He
could
just be a deputy. One who’d come prepared with hiking boots. But why ignore her call?

Just a deputy…

Or he could be their killer. “I’m moving,” she said, clutching her phone with her left hand even as her grip on the gun remained steady. “Heading up the slope.”

“What?” Kyle’s bellow burst in her ear. “Don’t! Just stay where you are until I’m there. Dammit, I’m your backup. Wait for me.”

“Following a suspect.”

“No, Cadence.
No!
”

She wasn’t a helpless victim. If the SOB turned on her, she’d shoot him straight in the heart.

She hurried forward.

“I’m almost to you, Cadence,
stay
there. Just stay!”

She hadn’t become an FBI agent so that she’d hide and wait for someone else to protect her.

She burst up onto the slope. Cadence saw the back of the deputy. “Freeze!” she shouted.

The phone fell to the ground. She gripped the gun with both hands, her left coming up to steady the weapon as she took aim.

The deputy froze. His back was still to her. “What’s the problem, ma’am?”

“Turn around!” She wanted to see his face. Needed to see it. The wide hat covered his hair.

Slowly, the man turned. His weapon was drawn.