A Man to Die for (41 page)

Hunsacker lifted the knife toward her other cheek. Casey instinctively defended herself. Pulling away, she brought her left hand up. She never stood a chance. Hunsacker just sliced her palm, from ring finger to thumb.

Casey cried out, jerked away. Hunsacker grabbed her by the hair and held her back on the chair. “I don’t think you understand,” he told her in a gentle voice, his eyes purposeful. Reaching down behind the chair, he brought up a heavy black gun and pointed it at the same eye he’d showed the knife. “I also have the officer’s gun. And you know I like guns, too, Casey. I can kill you both now, and then go down and slice up your mother…or”—he smiled, slowly, significantly—“you can play along for a while and still have a chance at escape. What would you like?”

She was whimpering now, tears mingling with the blood on her cheek, her hand clenched to hold in the pain, her fingers already sticky and warm. Staring down the black, black barrel of that gun where it waited, steady and silent before her. She didn’t even notice the storm anymore as it threw its greatest artillery at the house. Windows rattled. Boards moaned and popped. Thunder echoed nonstop from one hill to the next and back again. And Casey never heard. Never saw anything but that gun, the black gleam of blood on the sleek tip of the knife.

“Tell me, Casey,” he demanded softly.

She couldn’t speak. He yanked a little harder on her hair, pulling her head back. He brought the blade down against her throat. “Tell me.”

“Wait,” she gurgled, shaking and sick, her eyes instinctively squeezing shut.

“Please,” he reminded her, just like a parent instructing a recalcitrant child.

She gasped, sobbed, struggled to regain her control. “Please.”

“Please, Daddy,” he taunted. “Don’t go.”

Casey’s eyes flew open. “No—”

The knife bit, so close to her carotid she could feel her own driving pulse push at the blade. “You heard me,” he demanded.

“P-please, Daddy, do-don’t…go.”

She was going to vomit; she was going to faint. Her head swam with fireflies. The house closed in on her, fetid and cloying, like the smell of funeral flowers. The smell of her own blood filled her nostrils, thick and metallic. The sweet stink of death.

The knife lifted. Hunsacker raised his head and sniffed. “Ah, there it is.” He smiled brightly. “Coffee. I knew I could count on her.”

Casey heard him place the gun on her desk, just out of reach. She knew his attention was wavering just a little. She should jump up. She should at least try to disarm him, give them all a fighting chance. She wasn’t even tied to the chair, for God’s sake.

She didn’t move. Her cheek shrieked in protest. Her hand curled in on itself, her middle two fingers limp from the tendons he’d sliced. Her blood splashed color into the faded roses on her oriental rug. Her ears rang with terror.

He’d restrained her with no more than the memory of that terrible knife against her skin, the knowledge of what it could do to her face, her eyes. She couldn’t move for fear that the knife would strike before she could escape.

He’d won after all. No matter whether or not the evidence to convict him waited down in her bag on the kitchen floor. He’d made her crawl, made her beg for more, just like before. He’d swamped her in shame, and was going to make her wallow in it before he finally did just what he came to do. She was helpless, and that was his victory.

Still, instinctively, she fought. “You and I have a lot in common,” she offered, willing interest into a voice already dead. Facing him, forcing him to see her as a person instead of a target.

Surprised, he looked back down at her. “We don’t have anything in common,” he assured her, lifting a hand to run his fingers through her hair. “I’m a doctor and you’re just a nurse.”

Absurdly, Casey giggled. How many times had she heard that one? Every doctor who had ever been threatened by her assertiveness, every resident who had ever been insulted when she’d questioned an order. She didn’t think that insult would ever sound the same again.

If she heard it again. The giggle ended in a strangled little hiccup. “No, I mean our fathers,” she offered on a voice that wavered with resurrected fear.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Hunsacker answered. “Your father was an asshole who worked in a brewery and beat his wife. My father was a well-respected surgeon from a very good family.”

Who molded the monster before her with his own hands, Casey wanted to say. “You got along with your father?”

The fingers tugged hard, pulling some hairs from their shafts. “I respected him. Just like everybody.”

Silence. Outside, the storm paused, receded before striking again. Casey fought for something more to say, some way to show that she understood what he’d faced as a child.

“I think it’s just about showtime,” he murmured, his fingers clenching in Casey’s hair. “I want to be gone before the storm’s over.”

Casey could only see one side of his torso. Some of her blood had stained the dull green. He looked as if he’d just walked out of a delivery.

“Take off your clothes,” he commanded.

Casey froze. “What?”

He pulled harder, lifting her just a little way up by her hair. “I said take your clothes off. Now, do it.”

She began to shake, closing her eyes and then opening them, her hands lifting helplessly, stopping short of interfering. Choking on the new, flashing fear. “I can’t…my hand.”

Hunsacker yanked her straight to her feet. Casey cried out, her good hand instinctively reaching for the pain. Fresh tears burned her eyes, scalded her cheek.
Please
, she wanted to beg. Please don’t do this to me. I’ll do anything.

I’ll do…

No.

No. It was what he wanted. He wanted her to beg, to plead. He wanted her on her hands and knees.

Casey wasn’t sure how the revelation wormed its way through the terror. She didn’t know why suddenly she saw it so clearly when only seconds before all she wanted was to be away from the knife.

He was going to kill her. But the torture he intended was the very act she most dreaded. Not rape or disfigurement. Humiliation. Pleading for him to do anything, just as long as she stayed alive.
Pleading for him to continue
.

If she begged again, he’d win. He’d ruin her in a far worse way than even rape and murder, because she wouldn’t have escaped her past after all. She’d let him act out her worst humiliation.

He would make it worse if she begged him.

Casey struggled for composure. She swallowed her tears and let her hands fall back to her side. The knife danced next to her throat, chilly and lethal. There was a new fire in Hunsacker’s eyes.

“Say please,” he coached. “Please, Dr. Hunsacker, don’t do this to me, and I might not make you strip.”

She wasn’t sure where she got the courage. Maybe it was only blind rage. Instinctive pride. Her breath still caught on sobs. Her heart beat even harder. Her knees wavered. She was going to die. Helen wasn’t going to save her and Bert wasn’t going to save her. If she didn’t save herself, it wouldn’t matter. So, she was going to at least fight for her self-esteem.

“Now you’re going to have to beg on your knees,” he commanded. “And maybe I won’t kill you after all.”

Casey pulled away and faced him. Silent. Challenging. Pushed as far as she could go.

It took some effort one-handed, but in the end, her uniform lay in a blood-smudged pile at her feet. She stood before Hunsacker in bra and panties. The storm gave a howl and swung back into action. Casey ignored it. She met Hunsacker’s gaze with every ounce of determination she could muster.

Keep him off center. Keep an eye on the gun.
Do something
.

Hunsacker shook his head in wonder. “You’re not nearly as much fun as the last one,” he admitted. “She begged for two hours before I killed her.” The knife homed in, circling, searching. “I think this time I’ll send Scanlon one of your breasts.” Hunsacker looked her in the eye, daring her to say something. He let the knife caress her nipple, rasping against the silk like an adder. “Not very big breasts,” he taunted with that slick, horrible smile of his, “but nice.”

Casey fought down a shudder, then another. She choked on more tears. But she faced him, silent, straight, her hands clenched and her head up.

Anger. White, fierce, brushing at the edges of the terror, demanding room. Casey was furious that she was a victim, that all the other women had been victims to this man without anyone helping or interfering.

“Nothing to say?” Hunsacker asked, letting the knife press deeper, slicing through the fabric. “I’ll do it, Casey. Just ask for it.”

Thunder shuddered through the house. Rain swept back over it. The wind howled and whined. Casey remained silent.

“Casey, dear?” There was tapping on the door.

Hunsacker froze. The knife slid along the edge of Casey’s skin.

She jumped back. “Mom!” she yelled. “Get out of here! You—”

Hunsacker swung at her, the knife fully extended. Casey lunged away. She blindly reached across him for the gun. She was inches from it when he caught her by the hair and yanked her back. Casey screamed, furious, fighting. Both hands up to ward off the terrible slice of the knife. She never heard the crack of a branch. Never saw the lightning sever it or the wind wrench it free. Suddenly it slammed into her window. Glass exploded over the room. The wind swept in, tumbling books and magazines.

Casey shrieked in surprise. Hunsacker whipped around at the sudden fury, dragging Casey around with him. She couldn’t take her eyes from the knife, the terrible knife. She kept both hands on his wrist, writhing in his grasp, kicking.

To her left, the door slammed open. It should have swung shut with that wind. Rain pelted her, even across the room. The cold wind stung her. It plastered Hunsacker’s hair in his eyes so that he couldn’t see well when he turned back to threaten Casey’s mother.

Only it wasn’t Casey’s mother. It was Scanlon.

“Jack!”

Hunsacker pulled her against him, the knife back to her throat. Taut, trembling, very lethal.

Game time was over. Casey went limp.

It was all right, though. Jack was here. He’d take care of her. He’d pull her away from Hunsacker before he loosed that knife on her. Casey felt the sobs breaking free again, even with the razor-thin blade against her throat.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Hunsacker demanded.

Jack had taken up the shooter’s position. His clothes were sodden, his hair plastered back. His legs were planted wide for balance and his arms were outstretched, holding his gun in perfect alignment with Hunsacker’s head.

“Casey,” he said, never looking away from his target. “I had to cancel my trip. Chicago found my witness and I had to go get her.”

She tried to nod, but Hunsacker held her too tightly. “He’s got a gun,” she managed, just before the blade punctured. Another tiny hole, a warning. A promise. She flinched again, tried not to close her eyes or weep. The blade was pressing against her trachea. One slice and she’d be gurgling through her neck, drowning in her own blood. She tried to concentrate on Jack, on helping him get her free, but it was so hard to do.

Jack nodded. “I know. Are you okay?”

She wanted him to look at her. She needed him to tell her that everything was going to be okay now.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, even as her blood slid in watery rivulets down her neck, down her chest to stain her bra.

“You can see how sharp the knife is,” Hunsacker said in a conversational tone. “I’d hate for it to slip.”

“Me, too,” Jack agreed. “Because if it did, I wouldn’t kill you. I’d cripple you. You’d spend the rest of your life in prison hobbling around on your knees and pickin’ your ass with your toes.”

Casey could almost hear Hunsacker’s smile. “And I,” he said, “can disfigure. I can ruin her without ever being enough in the clear for a good shot. So who wins?”

The lightning was in the room now, the thunder spilling over the shattered window. Rain peppered the floor and the wind whirled through to snuff the vigil lights. Casey was shaking again, caught between hope and despair. The knife too close, too quick for Jack to save her. She sated herself on the sight of him, settling all her prayers on him. All her wasted aspirations. Tears spilled over unheeded now that it was too late to care.

“So,” Jack said to Hunsacker, “what do we have to trade?”

Casey felt her knees giving out on her again. She could only stand this so long. She could only hurt and dread and hope so much.

“Nothing,” Hunsacker said. “See—”

Another branch slammed into the window. The sound was like a fresh explosion. Hunsacker jerked back and around. Casey’s eyes flew open to see Jack coiling to spring. The knife had slipped a little. Hunsacker had let go one arm to reach around him.

Casey twisted away. She heard Hunsacker yell at her. Jack fired. Hunsacker jerked and spun back around. Casey saw it, then. He had the gun in his hand.

“Jack, no!” she screamed, whirling on her knees.

She was too late. Hunsacker fired. The impact of the heavy weapon threw Jack back through the door. His gun clattered to the floor out in the chapel where the votive lights had died.

And Casey was left with Hunsacker, who had just leveled his gun back on her.

“BEG NOW,”
he advised, standing over her, the gun wavering in his left hand, the rain slicing his face like tears, his eyes dark hollows in the storm. “That son of a bitch shattered my right elbow. My operating arm.”

Casey didn’t take her eyes from him. She knelt before him, her chest heaving, her limbs trembling and spent. She saw the blood soak his forearm and wash over his hand. His wasted hand that could have performed miracles.

The knife he’d wielded lay between them on the carpet. Casey could easily reach it and he knew it. She thought he counted on it. He was waiting for her to try for it, to expend her hope on a futile move. Because the minute she wrapped her hand around that blade, he’d put a bullet through her head.

She held hands out to her sides, face up to Hunsacker. In a classic pose of supposition, Bernadette at Fatima, St. Catherine before her Christ. All those martyrs before their executioners. Only Casey wasn’t going to be a martyr. Not after what Hunsacker had just done. She had to pay him back for Jack.

Her chest shrieked with impatience. Her hands trembled to be doing something. Anything. Jack could be lying in there dying, and she needed to help. But she held still, because it was the only way.

“I said beg to me, Casey my sweet,” Hunsacker grated, shoving the gun closer.

He didn’t realize that a gun, in the end, was no more terrifying than a knife. A gun was too abrupt, too imprecise to insinuate its power. It couldn’t nick and slice, inflicting punishment before the pain was felt. It couldn’t slide home without a sound, which was the most terrifying thing of all.

Casey sobbed and shuddered, but she held still. She knew better than to try for a knife she’d never use. Besides. She didn’t need a knife or a gun. She’d just realized that she had an effective weapon at hand. If she could only get that hand to work.

“He’s dying out there,” Hunsacker taunted, his smile slick. “This is a .357 Magnum. Your friend likes a lot of firepower. You’re a trauma nurse. You know what a slug like that can do, ripping through tissue, severing arteries. He could be bleeding to death out there. Maybe you can still get to him if you beg me.”

She edged her hands out just a little more. Folded just a little into herself as if she were settling into a better position for pleading. She was really steeling herself to move. The next lightning flash. The next clap of thunder. Anything to get his attention.

“Hunsacker!” Jack yelled. “Here!”

That would work.

Jack rolled across the doorway. Hunsacker swung the gun after him and fired. Casey lunged for the chair and shoved it straight at Hunsacker.

It threw him off balance. She jumped to her feet and grabbed the chair with both hands. Hunsacker was just pulling the gun around to her when she swung the chair right for his knees. He fired. The bullet exploded inches from Casey’s head. She dove for the far side of the desk just as Hunsacker lost his balance and toppled.

“Casey!” Jack yelled. “Stay down!”

She sobbed just at the sound of his voice. God, she’d thought he was dead. She’d thought she’d survived just long enough to lose him. She heard Hunsacker’s gun thud to the floor. She heard Jack scuttle into the room. And then she heard what could only be fists.

She wanted to get up and help. She needed to help Jack. She knew he’d been hurt, and even though Hunsacker was hurt, too, she knew what his strength was like. He was crazy. Crazy people had no physical limits. She needed to get over and see to Bert. At least to run out that door and get more help.

Suddenly though, curled in her little corner with her knees in the glass and her arms wrapped around her chest, she couldn’t move. She just didn’t have any more in her. Her chest was on fire from fear. Her cheek and throat ached and her hand still dripped blood down her other arm. She heard the grunts and scuffling, heard Bert’s mutters of desperate frustration, heard the dying whine of the wind and the irritable grumble of thunder, and all she wanted to do was hold herself together, because she knew if she let go she’d shatter into a million pieces and never find her way together again.

A gun spun into view. Casey looked up. She could hear Jack and Hunsacker struggling. She saw the gun, out there by itself on her carpet, and knew that she had to be the one to get it. Bert moaned with rage. Casey didn’t hear him. She had to move from her position of safety. She shuddered, the terror still a living thing, twisting through her guts and spilling down her legs.

“Casey…” Jack panted. “Throw…throw something out…the window.” His words ended in a grunt of pain.

Casey stiffened behind her desk, afraid to look, sure she was going to lift her head and come face-to-face with Hunsacker. Knowing if she did, it wouldn’t matter if she lived or not. It would already be too much. She scuttled instead for the gun, not even feeling the glass against her legs. Not feeling the cold wind that raised goose bumps on her naked, wet skin. Only hearing the desperate sounds on the other side of that solid desk, only swimming in her own desperation.

The gun was heavy. She hadn’t really ever held one. It drooped in her fingers, surprisingly warm for the chill of the room. She lifted it, weighed it. Briefly squeezed her eyes shut when she realized that by picking it up, she’d consigned herself to action.

“Casey!”

She started. Looked around. For a minute she actually thought of throwing out the gun. Then she found her
Taber’s Medical Dictionary
right at her elbow, the pages fluttering in the breeze. Small, compact, heavy enough to make an impact. Symbolic as hell. She picked it up and heaved it as hard as she could. It bounced with several satisfying thumps over the porch roof and off. She hoped that was what Jack meant.

Then she lifted the gun again and crept around the desk.

Hunsacker had his hand around Jack’s throat. Jack fought him off, raining bruising blows to his face and head, pulling at his fingers. It was Jack’s shoulder that had been hit. Casey could see the blood, black against his shirt, saw the weakness in that hand. She saw the madness in Hunsacker’s eyes, and knew that Jack would never break that hold. He was dying and he didn’t even know it.

She couldn’t shoot. She’d never done it, and they were too close, rolling back and forth. She held the gun impotently out before her, her hands slippery against the grip, pointing it and knowing that it wouldn’t do any good. Still sobbing, still trembling so badly she couldn’t hold the gun still. She was doing no good. She heard noises downstairs. Footsteps. Help. But they were going to be too late. Hunsacker was already smiling in triumph. Jack’s strength was ebbing.

That was when she saw that Hunsacker had managed to grab the knife in his injured hand. And she knew what to do with her gun. Taking it by the barrel in her good hand, she swung it at him. Hard.

He didn’t fall. But he faltered, just enough for Jack to get leverage. Forcing those deadly fingers from around his neck, he landed a roundhouse punch that laid Hunsacker flat out. It sent Jack right over, too. He’d used the injured arm.

Casey scuttled over to him.

“The gun,” he grunted, doubled over and gasping as he pushed her away.

Looking down, she realized that Hunsacker was already stirring. She turned the gun around and fitted it back in her hands. And then, kneeling just alongside where Hunsacker lay sprawled on her ruined carpet, she nestled it right against his cheekbone.

His eyes fluttered open. Casey shuddered, deep inside her. He stared right at her, Satan spotting a vulnerable soul, and smiled. And just with that small expression, he almost broke the rest of her reserve.

Fury slammed through her. Hatred, as vivid and scorching as the lightning that had seared the sky. Exploding in her chest, racing through her arms, warming the gun in her hands.

It trembled in, her grasp, grating against his cheekbone. It dug deep with Casey’s fight for control. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to blow his brains out. To win this game the way Hunsacker would have played it. She saw that cocky, slick smile that told her he knew just what she was thinking, and she wanted to obliterate all thought from that diseased mind. She wanted something back for all the times she’d begged in her life.

She suddenly, desperately, wanted to live out the fantasies that had seen her through his tormenting.

Beg me
, she thought, just the way she’d thought over the phone, in the hallway, in the patients’ rooms. But her litany had changed. Beg me to live, grovel and sweat and shake because I won’t listen.

She didn’t even hear the pounding of feet up her stairs. She didn’t see the crowd of police in SWAT uniforms jostle for position at the door and spill into the room, rifles and pistols and shotguns bristling. She didn’t see Jack helped to his feet or Bert untied. She was communicating with Hunsacker.

“Tell me,” she said, her voice high and quavery, tears dripping onto Hunsacker’s throat. “Tell me you killed them. Admit to it.”

His smile just broadened. “Or what?” he asked. “You’ll kill me?”

She smiled back, a terrible smile. “And nobody here would see it.”

She knew there were other people in the room. But except for Jack and Hunsacker and Bert, they didn’t matter, The four of them were the only people in the world, the only ones with voices right now. Casey never took her eyes from Hunsacker, demanding his answer. Demanding retribution.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “I want you to think of me. When you turn off the lights and you think you see a shadow, or when you see an almost-familiar face in the crowd. When you look at scrubs or a hospital incinerator. I want you to wonder how I slipped by everybody. How many times I slipped by. I want you to die wondering.”

Casey felt the trigger against her index finger, a smooth crescent of steel, cool, compact, efficient. She heard the breath go out of the room. She knew Jack stepped up behind her. She could feel him, a curious warmth that seeped into the edges of her consciousness. He never said a word. Never spoke caution or intervention. He never reached for the gun.

He didn’t have to.

Casey saw it. She wasn’t sure how close she was to crossing that line, to actually giving in to the poison Hunsacker had fed her. Her hands began to shake so badly that she was abrading his skin. Her jaw ached and her heart stumbled. She was too spent to differentiate between Hunsacker’s cruelty and Frank’s and Mick’s. She just wanted closure on all of it. She wanted to be the one to walk away whole for a change. She wanted them to understand even for that brief millisecond before she pulled the trigger what she’d gone through.

But then she realized what Jack did. She saw, as brief as the flicker of dying lightning, the truth in Hunsacker’s eyes. She saw the anticipation, the sudden yearning.

He wanted to die. He wanted her to kill him.

Casey shook her head. She struggled to breathe. Her purpose died in silence. The game was over and nobody won. But at least Casey had stopped being manipulated. Hunsacker had targeted her, because he’d instinctively known she could be the one to kill him. He’d been taunting her to do it all along, to commit the act he hadn’t had the guts to commit himself. To shoulder that terrible responsibility. But she wouldn’t. And maybe that would be enough.

Very carefully, she lifted the gun away. She removed her finger from the trigger guard and handed the weapon back to Jack. He plucked it out of her hands.

“Get this piece of shit off the nice lady’s floor,” he grated, and three of the other cops jumped at the chance.

Casey felt Jack’s hand at her shoulder. He helped her to her feet and slid a robe over her shoulders. She couldn’t look away from Hunsacker as they cuffed his hands behind his back. He still looked so calm, so composed. If a stranger walked into this room, and somebody said to pick out the serial killer in the crowd, they would have pointed to Jack before they would have singled out Hunsacker. Jack looked angry and frustrated and disheveled. Even after what had happened, Hunsacker looked like a man without worry, without sin. He walked out of the room without once looking back.

“Sarge, you’d better let the paramedics take a look at you.”

Jack waved off the SWAT officer’s concern. “Get down and tell one of the county guys to find where he left his car. I want it searched.” The guy nodded and followed his friends down, and Jack turned back to Casey. He could hear the troop of feet clatter down the stairs along with Hunsacker. He heard Mrs. McDonough’s high, thin voice as she greeted everybody as if they were a high-school football team on their way home from a victory. The bullet-proof vest suddenly felt very heavy. Blood slid down his arm and dripped from his now-useless hand. His shoulder throbbed all the way up his neck. His neck felt as if it were on fire. He could still feel Hunsacker’s fingers around it.

But right now, his attention was all Casey’s. She stood staring after Hunsacker, a robe draped over her shoulders, her face ravaged and her eyes as flat as death. Jack hoped he would never again feel, like he had when he’d swung that door open. He’d taken in the scene in practiced eye, the clutter of debris, DeClue struggling in the chair by the window, that damn branch only inches from his head. Hunsacker, his eyes triumphant and deadly, with that flensing knife at Casey’s throat.

Jack had damn near shot him on the spot. He might have tried if it hadn’t been Casey he’d held, if it hadn’t been her throat streaming in blood from the cuts he’d inflicted, fresh blood welling from the tip of the knife as Hunsacker had sunk it in just deep enough to make a point.

God, she’d scared him. Scared him deep where he didn’t think he could feel it anymore. From the minute he got the news until he’d seen her turn those haunted blue eyes on him, he’d lived a hundred lives. He’d lived ten more trying to get Hunsacker away from her before he had the chance to lay open her throat.

And then, waiting until she’d made up her mind that Hunsacker wasn’t worth killing back.

Standing beside her, watching her stark, ashen face, Jack shook his head. He’d seen a lot of victims. He’d seen a lot of perps. He’d never seen anyone with more strength.