Deadly Dance (37 page)

Bile filled her throat, as she realized with horror that like Walker, Draper intended to film his debauchery, which meant that Harrison would be forced to watch her die.

I
feel like I’m on a fucking first-name basis with Draper,” Harrison said to Tracy as he paced in front of his computer. “But there’s nothing here to tell us where he might have taken Hannah. We know he has a propensity for cellars. But that’s after the fact. And the bedrooms in the houses he chose seem to have nothing in common. And the same goes for the houses themselves.”

“And in all honesty,” Tracy added, her face reflecting Harrison’s fear and frustration, “we don’t even know if he’ll stick to that MO. He left his wife in the bedroom where he killed her. And Walker is hardly the right victimology and his death raised the degree of violence more than a couple of notches.”

“So we’re never going to find her.”

“Of course we are.” Nash Brennon strode into the room, his presence reassuring in a way Harrison hadn’t expected. “We’ve just got to keep plugging away at what we know.”

“He’s right,” Tyler Hanson said as she dropped a duffle by the door, “it’s just a matter of putting ourselves into his head. Thinking the way he’d think.”

Harrison introduced them both to Tracy. And the four of them took seats at the table he’d set up to examine all the documentation they had on Draper.

“I stopped by the explosion site on the way in,” Tyler said. “And from what I can tell, the fire marshal was dead on. The point of origin seems to have been an old paint can stuffed with rags and filled with paint thinner. The whole thing was placed beneath the gas tank. It wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes from ignition to explosion. It’s primitive, but it worked.”

“But that means Draper was there to set it off, right?”

“Possibly,” she shrugged. “But Avery said that he doesn’t show up in the footage from the house, right?”

“Yeah,” Harrison confirmed with a frown. “We’ve just been going over the report from security, and there was no sign of him. The angle isn’t perfect, but they would have at least been able to recognize movement.”

“Well, I found a bit of filament wire,” Tyler said, pulling a Ziploc from her pocket and tossing it on the table. “I’ll need to do some further testing, but it’s possible he wired it so that he could spark the fire while out of range of the cameras.”

“Okay, but he still would have had to put it there.” Tracy shook her head. “And no one saw him.”

“How far back on the tapes did the security team go?” Nash asked.

“It’s on a continuous loop,” Harrison said. “It resets every two hours or so. But they looked at the whole
thing. And, at least according to the report, there wasn’t anything to see.”

“Except that, based on what the fire marshal said, they probably didn’t even consider remote detonation. Which means they’d have only concentrated on the fifteen minutes or so leading up to the explosion. Which is probably exactly what Draper wanted.”

“So we need to go over the footage again,” Harrison said, already bringing up the proper recording. “This time focusing on the earlier parts.”

The video feed appeared on a wall-mounted monitor behind the table. “Okay, so it was already dark when we got there.” The footage showed the Jeep pulling up to the curb. Then Hannah got out, laughing at something Harrison said. His stomach tightened as he realized he might never see her laughing again.

“We’re going to find her,” Tyler said, her hand covering Harrison’s, her word’s echoing Nash’s.

“Okay,” Harrison said, pushing through the pain, “once we were inside we didn’t come back out again. We worked for a while and then went to bed.”

The video played on, the street quiet and heavily shadowed. They watched in silence, Harrison occasionally moving it forward at a faster speed. The night grew darker as some of the brighter stars set, and Harrison squinted to try to discern movement against the grainy black-and-white photography of the security footage.

“Wait a minute,” Nash said. “Run it back. About two minutes.”

Harrison hit rewind and then play, and they all leaned forward in anticipation, staring at the shadowy shape of the Jeep.

“There.” Nash pointed to the screen, and Harrison froze the image. “By the bushes. See?”

Sure enough, there was a darker shadow. Taller than the surrounding shrubs by a foot or so. Harrison hit play again, and the shadow detached itself from the bushes.

“That’s got to be Draper,” Tracy said. “Is there any way to make it clearer?”

“I can try.” Harrison nodded, centering on the shadow and hitting keys to try to pull the image into sharper focus.

The computer whirred to life, and the image enlarged, the shadow clearly becoming the figure of a man. He moved forward, then bent and placed something under the back of the Jeep, straightened, and after a quick look at the houses across the way, disappeared into the bushes again.

“Go back to where he looks up,” Tyler said. “The light hits his face for like a second. See if you can freeze it and enlarge.”

Harrison moved to the proper time setting and then ran the footage from there, freezing the frame just as the man looked out toward the street in front of him. The light hit his face, and as Harrison enlarged it, the face took on the shape and features they knew to be Jeremy Draper.

“Looks like we’ve got visual confirmation that he was behind the explosion,” Tracy said, “which, tied with the microscopic evidence we have for the blood from the back kitchen wall, means we’ve got him dead to rights, if we can just find him.”

“So what about the rest of the security cameras? Is
there anything in the report to give us an idea how he got on campus in the first place?” Nash asked, leaning back in his chair with a frown.

Harrison flipped through the pages of the report. “There was nothing on the tapes that suggested an unauthorized person trying to get in. In fact, they were able to visually verify everyone in the footage.”

“Wait a minute,” Tyler said, still staring at the enhanced image of Draper by the Jeep. “What’s he wearing?”

“A jumpsuit?” Tracy shook her head, clearly not following Tyler’s train of thought.

But Harrison followed it instantly. “A Sunderland jumpsuit.” He typed in another command, zooming in on the breast pocket. At first the image was blurry, but with a little adjustment, Harrison cleared the focus and the Sunderland crest filled the screen. “He’s been masquerading as one of us.”

“That still doesn’t explain how he got through the checkpoints,” Nash said.

“He probably didn’t,” Tyler shrugged. “There are all kinds of ways to access campus on foot. And if you’re paying attention, it isn’t even that hard to avoid the cameras. But once on campus, especially with the lockdown, it would be harder to avoid detection.”

“Unless he’s hiding in plain sight,” Nash said. “No one would think to question a maintenance man.”

“So then he’d have used the same way to get her out?” Tracy queried. “Surely that would raise more suspicion. I mean people might overlook a guy in Sunderland garb, but if he’s hauling a woman with him, I’d think that’d
raise questions. I mean after all, it was broad daylight when this happened.”

“So maybe he never left the campus,” Avery said, striding into the room. “Good to see you guys made it.” He nodded at Tyler and Nash. “I’ve just been having an interesting conversation with one of the cafeteria ladies. She’d forgotten her purse in the haste to evacuate yesterday. So she came back for it this morning, and on her way out of the building, she saw a man with a wheelbarrow walking away from the quad.

“It registered because she thought that the sack in the wheelbarrow was moving. She thought it odd, but wrote it off to her imagination, because when she shifted for a better view, the sack was perfectly still, and the guy was clearly staff. She didn’t think anything else of it until she saw on the news that Hannah was missing. So she called the security office, and they sent her to me.”

“So you’re thinking he’s holding her someplace on campus?”

“What better place than a warren of deserted buildings?” Avery posed. “And right under our noses to boot.”

“So how do we go about searching?” Tracy asked. “If we aren’t careful, he’ll know we’re on to him and kill her before we get the chance to rescue her.”

“Well, I figure we have two things in our favor,” Avery said. “First, he likes to take his time with his victims. If I remember correctly, you said the original murders took place a full twenty-four hours after the women were abducted. He’s bound to know there’s a ticking clock, but even if his MO is evolving, he’s still going to need time to work up to fulfillment of the fantasy.”

“You do realize,” Harrison said, his fingers tightening on the edge of the table, “that the fantasy you’re talking about involves torturing Hannah.”

“I do,” Avery acknowledged. “And I also realize that we can’t separate our personal feelings for her from the situation we’re dealing with. But we have to try. It’s her only chance.”

Harrison nodded, knowing that Avery was right. But it was so goddamned hard.

“You said there were two things,” Tracy prompted, offering Harrison a moment to pull himself together.

“Yes,” Avery said. “The second is that if this guy is truly interested in punishing Harrison, he isn’t going to play this out in a vacuum. He’s going to want to share the play-by-play.”

Hannah came to slowly, the plaster ceiling above her coming into focus only with great effort. She could feel blood dripping into her eye and down the line of her nose. But with her hands bound, there was nothing she could do about it. As the world stabilized, she took the chance and looked toward the end of the bed.

Draper was still there, adjusting the lens of the camera he’d set up on the tripod. His attention for the moment was centered on the photographic equipment, so Hannah took the opportunity to check her bonds. This time there was no give. He’d even tightened the rope holding her feet so that she could no longer raise her body.

Obviously, the man was quick on the uptake. She watched him through half-open eyes, looking for something—anything—she could turn to her favor. He was tall, and as she’d already witnessed, incredibly
strong. His hair was cut short, military fashion, and he had a tattoo on his arm. A snake curling through some kind of shield, two M60 machine guns angled on either side.

This guy wasn’t going to be easy to outwit, but she was determined to rise to the challenge. And his need to screw with Harrison might just buy her the time she needed to figure out where she was and, hopefully, convey that fact to Harrison. But to do that she had to survive whatever hellish things Draper had in store for her.

There was no way he was going to provide Harrison with video images unless there was something to show him. On the surface, the idea scared the shit out of her. But deep inside, she knew that, if necessary, she could survive almost anything. She’d done it before. And somehow she’d find the strength to do it now.

According to Madison and Tracy, this guy only got off when his victims showed their terror. And that was something Hannah had learned to compartmentalize a long, long time ago. It was going to take a lot for him to break her. And with any luck, Harrison would find her before that happened.

Draper finished futzing with the camera and walked over to the bed. “Good,” he said, smiling as he bent over her. “I’d hate for you to miss anything.”

She lifted her gaze to his and spat, hitting him on the chin, thankful that she’d had a foster brother who’d thought it a useful skill.

He hit her, backhanding her this time. But she took satisfaction in the fact that she could rile him. He stared down at her a moment, his eyes reflecting anger, not excitement,
and despite the pain, she took joy in the fact that she’d managed to score a point. He moved back to the camera, adjusting something and then turning it on.

With a smirk, he picked up a hunting knife, the kind with a serrated edge. And as he walked back over to her, careful to leave the line of sight to the camera unobstructed, she had to fight against rising panic. She wouldn’t give in. She couldn’t.

Steeling herself, she watched as he lifted the knife and, with a self-satisfied smile, made an incision in the lower quadrant of her abdomen. The pain was instant and so intense it robbed her of breath. But she swallowed her scream—staring up at him defiantly.

But his smile only widened as he lifted the knife again, and this time she turned away, staring at the far wall, concentrating on the yellow sign and the letters GHS visible now in the light from the camera.

The cut this time was shallower than before, but the pain was just as intense. She sucked in a breath, still staring at the sign. G_ _H_ S, her mind, desperate for anything to take her away from the pain, suddenly recognizing the spacing and making sense of the letters. Good Things Are Happening At Sunderland. GTAHAS. It was an annual party at Sunderland, dating back to the founding days.

The barrel and the oar were for making hurricane punch.

Her heart started pounding as Draper ran the knife edge along the new incision, but she forced herself to ignore him. To concentrate on the sign.

She was somewhere on campus.