“Dane, are you sure?” Katherine pressed.
He told her what he hadn’t told the others. “She screamed. The dead don’t scream.”
He could feel Katherine’s stare on him. “He’s luring you to the scene, just like before. It’s all just like before.”
It had better not end the same as before. Mac would shatter at the sight of Ronnie’s body.
“Why did he call you? He’d been calling me.” Her voice was confused. “Why switch now?”
“Probably because he knows that we’ve been monitoring your phone line. We’ve been preparing for the call. Maybe he thought it would take us longer to track him this way.” Plus, the prick wanted to taunt me and get in my head to piss me off.
He had.
“We won’t be too late,” he said. “We won’t be.”
Ronnie was smart. She was strong. She knew what was coming. So use that, Ronnie. Distract the bastard. Just buy us some time.
The ropes fell away from Ronnie’s wrists. Tears were running down her cheeks because it felt like a thousand needles had just jabbed into her fingertips.
“She tied you too tight.” His voice was angry. “Fucking amateur hour.”
Part of her was terrified. Shaking. Screaming on the inside.
The knife sliced away the rope at her ankles. “You’re a very lucky woman, Dr. Thomas.”
She wasn’t feeling so lucky right then.
“If your glasses hadn’t been smashed and left back in that parking lot, I’m afraid you’d be experiencing an entirely different ending right now. I couldn’t have you seeing my face.”
She turned her head, making sure not to look toward the end of the table.
He laughed softly. “Even if you turned my way, how much would you see? I’ve done my research on you. Genius mind, but truly shitty eyesight.”
Then he was reaching for her right arm. She flinched when he curled his fingers around her wrist. “I’m sure you realize,” he said softly, “that she cut you too deeply here. If you don’t stop that blood flow, you could die. Do you want to live, Dr. Thomas?”
Mac’s image flashed in her mind. She nodded.
“Then you’ll get off this table. You’ll walk straight ahead, seven feet. Seven feet. You’ll reach up to your left. There’s an old window there. I took the liberty of leaving it open for you.” He was pulling her to her feet. Holding her when her knees wanted to buckle. “I even put a box there so you could stand on it and reach the window.”
He shook her. “Focus. The drugs are still in your system, so you may have trouble getting out on your own. You have to fight them, understand? Push with everything you’ve got. Get out of that window. Get away from this house. Fucking crawl if you have to do it.”
She would. She’d do anything to survive.
And she still wasn’t looking at his face.
He brought his head in closer to her. Ronnie squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear creaks from upstairs.
The bitch was coming back.
“Do you know who I am?” He asked in Ronnie’s ear. The light whisper of his breath sent a shiver of pure terror through her.
She didn’t move.
His gloved hand was over her deepest wound. Applying pressure.
Helping me.
“You’re so smart, of course, you know…”
She only saw blackness. Her eyelids were squeezed so tightly together that they hurt.
“If you tell anyone about me, Dr. Thomas, I will find you. There is no police officer who can protect you. No lover who will keep you safe. I will find you, and then I’ll make this little torture scene look like a fond memory in comparison with what I’ll do to you.”
The promise was unmistakable.
“Go forward seven feet. Climb on that box. Push your body through that window. Don’t look back, and don’t f**king tell anyone about me.”
She nodded frantically, willing to promise anything, do anything, if she could just get away.
“Because if you tell them, I’ll come for you.”
He released her. Ronnie took one trembling step forward. He caught her when her legs gave way. “Crawl if you must,” he reminded her, gritting the words.
She would. But when she heard another creak from upstairs, her head jerked toward the sound. Even if Ronnie escaped now, would that bitch just track her? Kill her?
“Don’t worry about her,” he said, and she could almost hear the smile in his words. “She’ll be dead. I owe her some pain.”
Then he released her. Ronnie hit the floor, and pain burst in her kneecap. The old wound had never healed right, not since it had been battered in an accident with a drunk driver. But she didn’t care about how f**ked her knee had just become.
She started to crawl.
Seven feet. Just seven feet.
His footsteps pounded behind her. He was heading away.
Her bloody fingers touched the box. She hauled herself up. Climbed. Fought her way to the window. Fresh air hit her face.
And, behind her, she heard the sound of a scream.
Dane jumped from his car. There were five houses on this dead-end street. Old houses, abandoned, boarded up, and left to rot. Big, overgrown fields sat around each house. Nature was trying to take back the area. Trying and succeeding.
But Dane knew a construction company was scheduled to come into the area soon. They were going to bulldoze all the houses in just a few weeks. Until then, no one would be there.
The killer had chosen well.
But not well enough.
Katherine was behind him, guarded by two uniforms. Mac was leading a team toward the first house.
Not that one.
The first house was too obvious. Too easy. Dane’s gaze darted to the second house. The third.
The fourth had dead roses near the door. Twisting roses that had withered in the winter.
“It’s the fourth house,” Dane snarled into his headset. He’d grabbed the headset and hooked up as fast as he could moments before. They were all linked now, communicating with each other as they searched.
He yanked out his gun and ran toward that fourth house. His attention was on the doors. The boarded-up windows and—
Someone was coming toward him. Crawling from the house.
Dane took aim with his gun. “New Orleans PD!” He yelled. “Put your hands up!”
But no hands came up into the air.
The figure slumped down even farther in the overgrown grass. Footsteps raced behind him as the others closed in.
“Identify yourself!” Dane demanded even as he yanked out his flashlight with his left hand.