The Last Victim (42 page)

“What are the chances of this guy’s house burning down
today
?” Having reached the lineup of cars, Tony was already looking for a place to park. His tone was savage.

“You think Hannah Beckett might be in there?” Kaminsky’s voice was sharp with alarm.

“I’m not a big believer in coincidence.” Tony pulled the SUV right onto the edge of the lawn, behind the first fire truck, shoved it into
park, shut off the engine, and jumped out. “Come on, let’s go see if there’s any chance somebody could be in there and still be alive.”

They all piled out of the SUV. Tony, Kaminsky, and Crane ran toward the house, while Charlie hung back, not wanting to get in the way. The roar of the fire was truly terrible. Combined with the shouts of the firefighters, the hiss of the water shooting from the hoses, and the various clangs and pops and thuds coming from the collapsing structure, it was overwhelming.

Another fire truck arrived, siren blaring, and Charlie hurried to get out of the way. She was watching Tony, with a cop on one side and a firefighter on the other, gesture forcefully at what seemed to be the house’s basement when something flashing in her peripheral vision made her turn.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d seen a blond teenage girl slide between two vehicles parked across the street.

Her first thought was that it was Hannah’s ghost, and she had just died in the fire. Heart in her throat, Charlie hurried across the street to check. Her second was that maybe it had been Hannah, alive, and she had somehow escaped the fire. Her third was that maybe it wasn’t Hannah at all.

Of course, the girl was gone when she got across the street.

Charlie hesitated, looking around. It was bright daylight, lots of people, all kinds of activity everywhere. But really there was no place that the girl could have disappeared to, so …

Eyes looking at her from behind the tinted window of the small van her left side was practically pressed against caught her attention, had her looking back. There was the girl she had seen, inside the van, turning away from the glass now.

Charlie’s heart started to pound.

“Hannah?” Charlie knocked sharply on the window, peering through the glass. The girl looked at her.

Charlie just had time to realize she wasn’t looking at Hannah at all, but at Bayley Evans, when she heard a footstep behind her and started to turn.

Then something that felt like a mule’s kick hit her in the side.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Goddamn it, Doc, wake the hell up!”

The first thing Charlie heard as she regained consciousness was that roar. Even at top volume, which she figured it had to be close to, she would recognize that honey-dipped voice anywhere in the universe.

She smiled a little as her eyes blinked open. Garland was the first thing she saw. He was leaning over her, his big body seeming way too overwhelming for the enclosed space they were in. Then she got a good look at his face. It was flushed. His eyes were wild. His mouth was grim.

“You awake? You with me?” He bent closer, reaching for her, meaning to shake her or gather her close—or what, Charlie didn’t know. Of course his hands passed right through her body. An electric tingle was all she felt.

She smiled at him. His face contorted. “Damn it, Charlie. Are you hearing me?”

Even as she started to feel the first real niggles of alarm, she registered that she was lying on a narrow twin bed with her left arm up in the air. Her arm was in the air because, she saw as she looked at it, her wrist was handcuffed to a metal ring affixed to a wood-paneled wall.
The bed was covered with a rough-textured blue blanket, and smelled of damp, of mildew. Then a whisper of movement redirected her attention, and even as her stomach started to churn she saw that Bayley Evans was present. The spirit of the pretty blond teen knelt practically at Garland’s feet, folded into the narrow space on the floor between the two beds. Bayley’s eyes were closed, and she seemed to be crying silently, tears that appeared shiny wet pouring down her cheeks. On the other bed, apparently unconscious, lay Hannah Beckett. Unlike Bayley, Hannah was, Charlie ascertained as she saw the girl’s chest rise and fall, alive.

Hannah was wearing a neon green sequined mini-dress, hiked high around her thighs, with black stilettos. Traces of what appeared to be bright red lipstick smeared the ratty white washcloth that had been used to gag her, and sparkly green eye shadow covered her lids. While Charlie’s only restraint seemed to be the handcuffs, Hannah’s ankles and knees were tightly bound with what looked like clothesline. Both wrists had been cuffed together before being secured by a second set of handcuffs to a ring in the wall identical to the one above Charlie’s bed.

“Oh, my God,” Charlie breathed as the true horror of the situation burst upon her. It was clear to her that the killer they’d been seeking had seen her looking into the back window of the RV she was now in, had assumed she had seen Hannah, and then somehow rendered her unconscious and snatched her away. Remembering his affinity for stun guns, she guessed that was what he had used on her. The fact that she was not gagged or otherwise secured except for the handcuffs told her that it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Her mouth went dry. Her pulse started to pound.

“Be quiet. He’s right there. If he hears you, he’s liable to come back here sooner rather than later.” Garland’s face was tight with fear and frustration. For him to look afraid for her, Charlie realized that the situation must be dire. She could feel the van’s motion, and knew that they were en route somewhere, that they were no longer anywhere near Tony and the others. None of them, no one, knew where she was. A radio crackled, not with music, but with static and voices. She couldn’t make out the words, but she looked instinctively toward the sound. That took her gaze forward, toward the front of
the van, through a narrow opening between what looked like a tiny kitchen counter and a closet. Water was dripping loudly in the sink. A handheld police scanner was propped against the dashboard, and she realized that the chatter over it was the other sound she was hearing and remembered Garland’s prediction that the killer would have one. She could see the gray bucket seat where the driver sat. She could see the back of his head, with its short, toast-brown hair. She could see his right leg. He was wearing black pants and black sneakers. She could see part of a black jacket lying across the passenger seat. He was young. A copycat, as she had thought, which, ridiculously, came as a relief. Why she should feel relieved she didn’t know, because that certainly didn’t make him any less of a threat. Even if this wasn’t the man who had killed Holly and her family, he was still a vicious killer who got his jollies slashing young girls and their families to death.

Charlie pictured how Bayley’s body had looked in death, and her blood ran cold.

“He’s going to kill her.” Brimming with tears, Bayley’s eyes were open. Still on her knees, she was talking to Garland, with her head tilted back so that she could see his face. The hideous injuries she had suffered, that Charlie remembered from Jockey’s Ridge and had just seen again in her mind, were no longer in evidence. Bayley was wearing a pale blue, summery, go-to-church dress, and Charlie wondered if that was what her family was burying her in. “He’s going to kill them both. He hurt me so much. He is
evil
.”

Garland’s nostrils flared. His jaw clenched.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said to Charlie. His tone was very calm now, very even. He was trying to reassure her, Charlie knew, but she saw the truth in his eyes: as big and bad as he had been in life, he had no substance in death, and there was nothing he could do. “Look, I’m going to see if I can’t get your FBI boyfriend here. I’ll be back as quick as I can. You stay quiet.”

With that he was gone.

“He’s going to hurt Hannah.” Bayley was looking at Charlie now. Her big blue eyes still rained tears. Her voice shook. “Just like he did me.”

Charlie felt the upsurge of nausea that a close-at-hand spirit always
provoked. Her heart ached for Bayley and she longed to offer comfort, but with Garland’s warning fresh in her mind, she didn’t answer. She was getting a handle on the true danger of her position. Whatever this madman wanted from Hannah, he didn’t want the same from her.

She wasn’t part of his fantasy. She was
interfering
with it. If she knew anything of how killers of this type worked, he was in a rage right now because of it. He’d kill her as soon as he could.

Please, God, let me figure a way out of this
.

Being very careful not to make a sound, Charlie adjusted her position enough to allow her to tug at the metal ring. Yanking it out of the wall probably wasn’t going to happen: she wasn’t all that physically strong, and it had been solidly installed. Careful not to make the chain rattle, she felt the bracelet around her wrist and each metal link that secured her to the wall.

Not going to be able to break it
.

Charlie realized that she was breathing way too fast, and had to force herself to slow it down.

Stay calm
.

“He made me call him
Terrybear
,” Bayley wept. “He said if I was a good girl he would let me go home.”

Terry Kingston
. Charlie remembered the suspect’s name.

The van slowed and then turned left. Bright sunlight poured through the front windshield. The windows in the back were lined with a tinted film that from the outside would make them almost impossible to see through. If Bayley had been alive, Charlie realized, she never would have been able to see her inside the van. But the dead had their own way of making their presence felt, and Bayley had been trying to bring help to Hannah.

Instead of helping her, I’m probably going to die with her
.

Cold sweat prickled to life around her hairline. Try as she might, Charlie could see no way of freeing herself. She was as trapped and helpless as Hannah. As Bayley and the other girls had been. As Holly had been.

Please, God, help us. Please
.

“But he didn’t let me go. He killed me.” Bayley’s voice shook. “He cut me. I screamed and screamed and then …”

She bent double with the force of her sobs.

Charlie felt desperately sorry for her, and sick to her stomach, and terrified all at the same time.

The van was stopping. Brakes squeaked, and the vehicle lurched slightly as it came to a halt.

Charlie’s breath caught. A fresh burst of fear shot through her.

Here we go
.

“He kept telling me I could go home. He
promised
. But—” Bayley looked up, and her sobbing voice broke off. Her eyes went wide. “He’s got his knife,” she added in a very different tone. She sounded scared.

Charlie instantly saw why. Having shoved the transmission into park, the driver rolled to his feet and headed straight toward the back. No hesitation whatsoever. In such a cramped space, three strides brought him to the foot of her bed. A wickedly sharp-looking, silver-bladed hunting knife was in his hand. Charlie’s breath stopped as her eyes fixed on the knife for one terrified instant. Then she looked up at his face, and her heart started to thump like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.

She’d seen that expression in the eyes of any number of the men she had studied: he was in full serial killer mode now, primed for murder, hungry for the kill.

“You shoulda stayed away from my van,” he said, his tone brutally casual as their eyes connected. Charlie saw that along with a puffy right eye he did, indeed, have a broken front tooth.

Even as Charlie spotted it, Bayley was screaming and jumping to her feet. She was right under his nose, but of course he could neither see nor hear her. Only Charlie could. The scream rattled her a little. Didn’t faze him at all.

“I did everything you said. I did! You told me you’d let me go,” Bayley cried to her murderer. He couldn’t hear her, but his hand tightened on the knife.

A scream of her own burbled into Charlie’s throat. If she let loose with it, she knew he’d fall upon her and she would die right there and then. Scrambling into a crouch on the bed because she just couldn’t stand to lie there so helplessly, tethered by that hopelessly short chain,
Charlie had one hideous instant to swallow the scream. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might explode.

“Stop, Terrybear.” Charlie did her best to make her voice both authoritative and calm. She met his widening eyes.
Show no fear
. “We need to talk about why you didn’t keep your promise to Bayley.”

He froze, knife suspended. “Why did you call me that?”

“ ‘Terrybear’? Bayley told me that’s what you like to be called.” Charlie was having to work to keep her breathing under control. Icy shivers of terror raced over her skin. She was crouched in the far corner of the bed now, as far away from him as she could get, which wasn’t very far. One lunge and she would be done for. There was nowhere else she could go: she could feel the wall at her back; the damned chain kept her prisoner. “She said you promised to let her go, but you didn’t. You broke your promise. She wants to know why.”

“How did you talk to Bayley?” His voice was sharp. Something—suspicion? fear?—flickered behind the killing light in his eyes. The physical description they’d been working with fit: he was tall, rangy, with a long, thin, moderately good-looking face. Twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Kaminsky had said that besides working for Frigate Security, he was a used car salesman who delivered pizzas. Charlie recognized him now: he had delivered a pizza to the beach house the night Tony had kissed her. She had seen him leaving.

If only I had known
.

“Bayley is here with us right now,” Charlie said. “I can see the dead, you know. She’s right in front of you. She wants to know why you broke your promise to let her go.”

“Tell him I hate him,” Bayley said. “He made me say I loved him, but I hated him the whole time.”

“She lied to me.” The left corner of Terry Kingston’s mouth started to twitch. “She said she loved me, but she didn’t.”