Wanted (19 page)

Because somebody else was already there.

He looked back just in time to see another silhouette. This one was moving. Fast. Coming at him. A blur in the darkness of the hallway, rushing at him, growing huge.

He twisted round and stood as fast as he could, a blot of adrenalin rushing through him, as he swung the ice pick back to strike. But his heavy new hiking boots made his feet move slowly. He got himself tangled in the doorway. In an agony of panic, he stumbled sideways and fell.

Which more than likely saved his life.

The intruder hurtled past, tripping over Ray, hitting him so hard with his knee that he actually heard his own rib crack.

Whoever had rushed him sprawled headlong into the kitchen, tumbling across the floor into the table, so terrifyingly fast that it felt to Ray as if the very air had just been vacuumed out from around him, leaving him gasping for breath.

Now that the dam of silence that had previously reigned over the house had burst, a torrent of noise filled the room. A clattering of furniture, as the intruder rose, hurling a chair aside as though it were made of balsa. A scream of fury. A guttural growl that chilled Ray’s blood.

He already knew it: this was no cop or neighbour. There was only one person this could be.

Fear gaping inside him, Ray watched as the other man rose, scrabbling up from the floor, gathering himself once more to attack.

And also there – even as Ray struggled to get to his feet – he caught a glimpse of the silhouette of the man outside the back window, which, impossibly, it seemed, still hadn’t moved . . .

Ray snatched up the ice pick with his right hand, while the grasping fingers of his left fumbled with the pen torch. He nearly dropped it but,
thank God,
didn’t.
Use it to blind the fucker, whoever it is,
his racing mind screamed. And then: click. The beam shot out like a fist into the dark.

Ray caught only a glimpse of the man’s face, but it was enough for him to know for certain who this was.

The man crouched in the beam of Ray’s torch, even now rocking back on the heels of his mud-spattered running shoes, flexing his legs and readying himself to spring, had a blue-paper gauze surgical mask covering his nose, mouth and his jaw. But other than that he matched the description Danny Shanklin had given. Right down to the same shaved head and eyebrows – proof, Danny had claimed at the time, that whoever this psychopath was, he knew all about the dangers of DNA and forensics.

But it was the eyes, which matched Danny’s description of the man, that really took Ray Kincade’s breath away. They were more reptile than human. They contained no mercy, no empathy. They spoke of nothing but feeding on death.

Only then did Ray catch sight of the weapon – the
two
weapons – gripped in the PSS Killer’s neoprene-gloved fists: a cosh in his right and a pistol, fitted with a sound suppressor, in the left.

So why hasn’t he already shot me? And why isn’t he firing at me now, when again he so easily could? Because
– Ray straight away answered his own question –
he wants to use the cosh on you instead . . . He wants to subdue you with that so then he can find out who you are and what you know . . .

The PSS Killer did raise the pistol then, almost as if reading Ray’s mind, as if sensing his growing understanding and trying to smash it down.

But it was too late. Because now, instead of doing what the killer might have expected, instead of surrendering or trying to escape, Ray chose to gamble with his life that his instinct was right – that the PSS Killer had no intention of shooting him at all.

Ray didn’t surrender.

Ray didn’t turn and flee.

He did the one thing the killer wouldn’t be expecting. He threw himself upright and ran at him.

Ray’s adversary might be twenty years younger than him, stronger than him and faster too, but none of that would count for shit the second the ice pick was embedded in his head.

The second Ray was moving, his torch beam was off the killer. But, damn it, Ray still had locked in his mind the exact spot he needed to strike.

Two paces into the kitchen and he brought the ice pick swinging round fast in an arc, aiming on driving it down as hard as he could into the other man’s face or neck.

He hit neither.

He hit nothing at all.

Instead the pick, rather than slamming into flesh and bone, just kept accelerating, bringing Ray’s torso pivoting round with it.

Then –
crack.

Ray lurched sideways. From what? A punch? A cosh? It felt more like a sledgehammer thundering into the side of his skull.

He reeled. His legs gave way beneath him as if he’d just stepped into a hole. He hit the floor face down, and heard the ice pick skittering across the wooden boards, before he even realized it had slipped out of his grip.

But somehow he’d kept hold of the pen torch. Its beam lurched maddeningly across the furniture, walls and ceiling, as he floundered and tried to right himself. But his balance was off. He couldn’t even tell which way was up.

You’re screwed,
he thought.
You’re dead.

A sudden weight pressed down on him, driving the air clean out of his lungs. He struggled and managed to twist onto his back, lashing out with his arms and legs. But the killer was on top of him now and pinned Ray’s flailing right arm to the floor.

For a split second, the beam of the torch – still gripped in Ray’s left hand – illuminated the PSS Killer sitting astride him. He braced himself as the killer’s arm came swinging round.

Crack
. . . Another blow from the cosh, onto Ray’s left arm this time, a wave of agony shooting through his body, and sending the pen torch tumbling across the floor.

The killer’s arm whipped back to strike again. But this time Ray managed to move. Only a fraction, but enough. The blow would have knocked him clean out if it had connected with his head, as the killer had intended, but instead it struck his shoulder.

And the killer had made another mistake. In failing to restrain Ray’s left hand, he’d enabled him to get a hold on the grip of the knife he had tucked into his belt, using the PSS Killer’s motion to disguise his own.

Ray knew he wouldn’t get another chance. Mess this up and he’d wind up tortured to death.

He sucked air into his lungs and used every last ounce of his strength to twist his body right, and buck the killer off balance just enough to give himself the room to thrust the knife up as hard as he could into his attacker’s chest.

He didn’t miss.

A gasp of pain, loud enough to make Ray think he’d rammed the blade in hard enough to rip right through the killer’s jacket and plunge into his flesh. Ray twisted the knife as fast as he could anticlockwise, picturing the wicked curve of its embedded barbed hook, using all his might to try to drive it in deeper.

He was rewarded with another – deeper – gasp of pain. Even better, the next blow he’d been expecting from the cosh never came. Instead, he felt the killer’s weight lifting, first off his right arm, where the killer’s knee had previously pinned it, and then off his chest, where the killer had been squatting astride him.

Enough, Ray suddenly realized, for him to throw himself forward and upwards, as if he wanted to launch himself right off the floor, as if he wanted to fly.

The hard thick slab of Ray’s brow smashed full force into the PSS Killer’s face. And elicited not just a gasp this time, but a scream. And then another. And not just from the impact of the head butt, but from the knife, which Ray was still twisting hard into the killer’s side.

He registered a swift, dark blur of movement immediately above him. The cosh, he guessed, again twisting hard to his side, using the force of the movement to drive the knife in harder too.

The cosh missed Ray entirely and, this time, it was the killer’s turn to be swept sideways by the momentum of his own swing.

He toppled clean off Ray and hit the floor with a clatter, and in the same movement Ray’s knife was shucked free from his side.

The two men scrabbled to their feet, less than six feet apart. Ray almost fell straight back down, still struggling with his balance, feeling the floor beneath him shudder and shift. Lurching to his left, he reached out desperately to steady himself against the dark edge of the table. He held the knife up before him like a shield. By God, he managed that, all right. He held it in the shaft of moonlight, as the rain poured down outside. He made certain the PSS Killer could see.

Ray had expected the PSS Killer to rush him again. But instead he was standing unsteadily, too, breathing heavily, with one hand pressed tight to his side. To staunch the blood? How far in had the blade gone? What damage had it done?

Not enough, Ray saw. Because the killer took a step sideways then. Not a stumble. A much more controlled movement.

Ray tensed himself for the next attack. He’d already planned his move. A half-step back as soon as the killer moved forward. But that would be a feint. Ray would then lunge. One stride forward and strike. He’d meet him halfway and stab once more for the torso.

But instead of attacking, the killer’s head tilted, as he looked down at the floor.

The pistol, Ray realized. Where the fuck was it? Was that what he’d heard clattering off into the dark? He glanced down too, hunting for a glint of cold metal, because whoever got that pistol first . . .

That was when the idea hit him, an idea he knew straight away might just save his life.

He took a step back. Then another. Out of the moonlight, which was fading now as the storm grew. Into deeper shadow. He didn’t try to hide the movement. He did it for show. And then, once he was sure he had the killer’s full attention, he dropped swiftly into a crouch – fighting and praying not to lose his balance – and made as if to grab something from behind the table leg.

Then, just as quickly, before the killer had a chance to move, or even work out what was happening, Ray got back up, using the speed of the movement to switch the knife from his right hand to his left, and turn it around.

‘Put your fucking hands up,’ he said, aiming the knife hilt forward into the gloom, as he would a pistol barrel.

The hissing of the killer’s laboured breathing slowed, then stopped.

Ray couldn’t see his face. He couldn’t even guess what he was thinking. Had he bought it?

A flash of movement.

Something big, something solid, hurtled through the air towards Ray. He lurched sideways in the nick of time, as whatever it was lanced past his head, missing by mere millimetres.

A crash. A splintering sound. As Ray steadied himself and looked back towards where the killer had been, he saw that he had gone.

A blast of cold air. Twisting to his left, Ray saw the kitchen door – half smashed off its hinges – was wide open.

His legs gave way, dragging the rest of him down with them.

‘Get up,’ he told himself. ‘Get up, goddammit. Move.’

Danny Shanklin must have read Ray Kincade’s email twenty times. But in spite of its brevity and the fact that it was written in plain English, his brain was still having trouble processing it and taking the information it contained on board.

Ray had emailed to say he was in the UK, about to break into an isolated farm in a remote part of Scotland where a multiple homicide had taken place. Even though the Scottish cops had made no connection between these murders and the PSS Killer, Ray was convinced they were indeed his work.

He had written:

I do not believe you are guilty of the crimes the papers say. Nor do I believe the PSS Killer is dead. Or in prison. I believe he is near here. In short, I believe the PSS Killer is back.

Everything that had happened to Danny since he’d been forced on the run . . . This last sentence had blown it all away, taking priority in his mind.

All he could now see, as he stared into his iPhone’s screen, was the disbelief in Jonathan’s eyes before he’d been killed. All he could hear was Sally’s choking.

It was as though the intervening years had not happened and he was now back there, tied to that chair with that madman making him watch, while Lexie hid outside in the snowbound woods and listened to her family’s screams.

But as well as taking him back in time, the email, it seemed, had the power to take him forwards, to a future he had dreamed of and yearned for in the days, months and years after his wife and son had been killed. He couldn’t count the ways he had imagined of bringing the PSS Killer’s life to an end. Bludgeoning him, strangling him, decapitating him, stabbing him, shooting him, drowning him, torturing him – doing to him everything he’d done to others, making him pay, beg, scream and die.

But as the years had passed, these crazy, self-destructive fantasies that
would not bring Sally and Jonathan back
had dwindled, loosening their grip, until he’d seen them for what they were – not a way forward, but a way to prevent him moving on.

But he couldn’t kid himself either. Even though he had made a semblance of a life for himself since, he’d not quenched the thirst for revenge.

Even though a part of him had always hoped that one day the PSS Killer would be brought to account for what he had done, and even though he’d still craved to be the one who made it happen, another part of him – a better part, he’d come to believe – had been grateful that the PSS Killer had failed to surface. Because his not being there had meant that other families had not had to suffer as Danny’s had.

As much, then, as he had wanted to kill the PSS Killer, he’d come to hope that the PSS Killer was already dead.

But not any more. That hope had just been extinguished. And, in its place, his desire for revenge burned.

Believe:
that was the word Ray had used. Not
know.
Just
believe.
And with anyone other than Ray, Danny would have taken that belief with a pinch of salt. But not Ray. He had chosen Ray to continue the hunt for the PSS Killer after the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit had gone cold on it. And he’d chosen him because he was the best, and certainly not likely to ring a false alarm. As witnessed by his silence concerning any leads until now.