Deadly Dance (38 page)

Another image filled her mind. The metal bed—from a dorm. She felt a flood of triumph. But almost as quickly
she remembered the earth-filled window. She wasn’t
in
a dorm. She was underneath it.

The color yellow danced before her eyes like a beacon. Her mind scrambled to make sense of the message, but her head was growing cloudy again, so she closed her eyes and let the pain carry her away.

I
’m not sure I can watch this anymore,” Harrison said, gut churning and heart twisting as he watched Draper cutting into the woman he loved. “Goddamn it.” He pushed away from the table in the computer room, shaking off both Tracy and Tyler, who’d been hovering since they’d discovered the mpeg on his computer.

The footage was amateurish and, thankfully, grainy, but he could still see Hannah and feel her pain as that bastard carved into her with a relish that physically made him sick. “Have we heard anything more from the rest of the team?” Harrison asked, forcing himself to concentrate.

“Not in the last two minutes.” Tyler shook her head. “No.” She was poring over blueprints of the college, which had always seemed small to Harrison, but now that they had to search every nook and cranny, seemed unbearably large.

“They’ve finished with the buildings by the quad,”
Tracy said. “So at least they’re making progress. They just have to go carefully. You know that.”

“I should be out there.” He walked over to the table, looking up at the screen, the image of Hannah burned into his retina. “I should be looking for her.”

“You need to be here, Harrison. If you can figure out where this came from, or if we can find something in the room that could identify where she is…” Tyler broke off.

“I know.” He sighed, sitting back down in front of the computer. “But he’s rigged the transmission so that it’s an endless loop, it bounces from server to server and then lands smack dab here at my IP address again. If it were live, maybe I could tweak the feed, but this is like a static print. It’s already past tense. So there’s nothing more I can do.”

“So what about the room?” Tracy asked. “Surely you guys can recognize something.”

“I wish I could,” Tyler said, “but there’s nothing to see but a brick wall and a bed.”

And Hannah
, Harrison finished silently.

“They could be anywhere on campus. All the buildings are brick. We’re searching blind, which means we’re totally dependent on luck.” Tyler sat back, exchanging a glance with Tracy, their faces grim.

“What?” Harrison asked, trying to interpret the look. “You think it’s hopeless? That we’re already too late?” He looked down at his watch. It had been almost ten hours. “We’ve still got time. He likes to toy with his victims. Hell, he likes to toy with me. We’ve got time.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tyler said, her voice artificially cheery as she picked up the stills they’d printed from the video.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, panic rising as he turned to Tracy.

She hesitated, her dark eyes full of regret. “The first wound he inflicted. It was deep. Really deep. And in her abdomen.”

The reality of her words hit hard, but Harrison managed to form the sentence. “She’s bleeding out.”

Tracy nodded.

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. It varies depending on the person. The relative health, size, weight. And there’s no way for me to judge the severity of the internal injury.”

“How long,” he pressed.

“Somewhere between three to five hours, if I had to call it,” she said on a sigh. “Maybe a little more if the injury is primarily venous as opposed to arterial.”

Harrison clenched his fists, fighting a wave of hopelessness. Hannah was a fighter. And this was A-Tac, for God’s sake. They’d find her in time. They had to.

Avery walked into the room, shaking his head at Harrison’s unspoken question. “They haven’t found anything. There are just so many different places she could be.”

Harrison nodded, and turned back to the computer.

“Has he sent anything new?” Avery asked, coming to sit at the table.

“Not yet,” Tracy answered. “Although I’m surprised. He needs for Harrison to see this. It’s become part of the fantasy. In his mind, he’s exacting revenge for his wife.”

“But he killed her, not me,” Harrison said, his head spinning.

“In his mind, somehow, he equates his break with you.”

“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” he said,
burying his face in his hands. “If she dies—it’s my fault.” He knew that self-pity wasn’t going to do anyone any good, but he felt so damn helpless.

In front of him the computer chimed, a signal for incoming email. Harrison lifted his head, his eyes already scanning for the new missive. There was no title, just an attachment. With shaking hands, he activated the icon.

The screen above them sprang to life. Hannah was still tied to the bed, but she was covered with blood—her blood. Draper was tracing patterns in it with his knife, the angle such that Harrison couldn’t tell if he was actually cutting her, but the image still sending shudders of revulsion and fury washing through him.

His fingers raced over the keyboard as he tried to trace the source of the video. At first the results were similar to the first time. His search bouncing from proxy server to proxy server, but then he noticed something new. A timestamp.

“Guys,” he said, his gaze still on the trace, “this feed is live.” His eyes jerked back to the screen, his heart threatening to break through his chest. He wasn’t just watching this maniac hurt Hannah—he was doing it in real time.

Draper moved to sit on the side of the bed, stroking Hannah’s hair. But she jerked away from him, her eyes flying open. Harrison’s heart rejoiced. She was still alive. Draper bent low, whispering something in her ear. And she turned away. And he stabbed the knife deep into the skin between her shoulder and chest.

Hannah’s eyes closed as she bit off a scream, her body tensing as the pain lanced through her. Harrison slammed his fist into the table, feeling like his nerves were going to jump out of his skin.

Draper’s hand remained on the knife embedded in Hannah’s shoulder, his eyes steely, focused. He was still talking, his voice muffled by the distance. Harrison forced himself to shut out the horror—to concentrate. He adjusted the feed for sound, focusing on the timbre of Draper’s voice. The words became clearer.

“Talk to me, pretty Hannah,” Draper was saying. “Or better yet, talk to your boyfriend.” He nodded toward the camera. “Before it’s time for you to say good-bye.”

Hannah’s eyes flashed open, and even with the distortion of the shadows, he could see her determination. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. He could see her fingers digging into the mattress as she struggled to find strength. He willed her to speak. His entire being focused on the screen above him.

“I… just…” she began, her voice barely a whisper.

He hit the sound button, pushing it all the way to the top, feverishly working to adjust the levels.

“I want to tell him that I’ll…” she sucked in a strangled breath. “… that I’ll always remember the night at GTAHAS… when he told me…” She faded and then roused herself with a small shake of her head. “… when he told me that he loved me…”

Her voice was growing stronger. “… in the gazebo…” she paused, this time seeming to gather her thoughts “with the girls… singing… I was beneath… beneath him… in a yellow… dress…” The words faded on a sigh, and Hannah closed her eyes again, whatever strength she’d summoned clearly deserting her.

Draper stared at the camera for a moment, then reached back to twist the knife. A shudder rippled through Hannah’s body, but she didn’t scream. And Draper turned
back to the camera, leering into the screen. “An eye for an eye—” he said.

Then he hit a button on the console in his other hand, and the feed went dead.

For a brief moment, Hannah forgot where she was, her mind filled instead with the smell of bacon and pancakes.
Harrison
. She smiled at the memory. Their night together had been so wonderful. So magical. She started to stretch, and the pain superseded everything else—searing, unbearable agony. She struggled to hold on to the image of Harrison. Of his strength and his love. But another face filled her brain.

Draper’s.

Her eyes flickered open, and her gaze darted around the room as she searched for him. But her prison was empty. Maybe he’d finished with her—leaving her to die. But even as she had the thought, she knew that it wasn’t true. Madison had told them. Every cut, every slice, was part of a plan. A way to inflict the maximum amount of pain. There was no way he was finished with her.

It would be too easy.

He still wanted more. And he’d take it. She tried to remember the rest of what Tracy and Madison had said. The cyber killer tortured his victims for at least twenty-four hours. She had no idea how long it had been—but she also knew that, with A-Tac searching, he’d most likely speed up the timetable.

Maybe that should be a relief. The thought resonated in her head, and she rebelled against it. She wanted to live. She needed to live. Angry, she tried to raise her head, but the effort was simply too much, the pain spiking with the
movement. She stopped moving, concentrating instead on breathing. She needed to keep her blood pressure down.

There was no question that she was dying, bleeding to death. Slowly, but inevitably, if she didn’t get to a hospital. Time was running out. But he hadn’t brought her here to leave her to die alone. Draper would definitely be back. He’d want to witness life slipping away from her. And he’d want to make it as painful as possible.

At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d be leaving him frustrated. That she hadn’t given in to her fear—depriving him of the terror he needed so desperately to get himself off. If she was going down, she sure as hell wasn’t giving him the satisfaction he craved.

She swallowed, pushing thoughts of Draper aside. It was better to try to use the respite to build her strength. So instead she visualized Harrison. His oddly colored eyes, one brown, the other green. And his hair—the way it curled over his ears, and the way he ran his fingers through it when he was frustrated or tired. She pictured his smile—crooked and endearing.

God, she loved him so much. It had snuck up on her. Surprising her with its intensity and passion. But nevertheless, she’d never been more certain of anything in her life. She was in love with Harrison Blake.

She laughed at the irony, wincing at the pain. Typical that she’d realize how very much she cared only when it was too late.

But there was still an inkling of hope.

She turned her head so that she could see the yellow sign. She still hadn’t figured out the significance of the color, but she knew that it mattered, so she’d included it in the clues she’d given Harrison. Of course, he could
be dismissing everything she’d said as pain-induced rambling, but she prayed that he’d understand. Hear her words for what they really were. If they didn’t come soon…

She closed her eyes, the pain overwhelming her now. In front of her, with her mind’s eye, she could see an open door. And she longed to go there. It had saved her when she was a child. And now, she knew it offered an escape from the pain. But if she crossed the threshold, she knew that this time, she might not come back.

So as much as she longed for the solace it offered, she turned away, forcing herself to remain conscious. All she had to do was wait.

Harrison would come. He had to come.

“I’m telling you, she’s trying to tell us something,” Harrison said, turning away from the images projected onto the screen to the team assembled around the conference table. They’d moved to the war room. Everyone present, the enormity of figuring out Hannah’s clues better served with all of them working together.

He knew they were working against time, the fact that Hannah was bleeding to death also playing into the schedule in Draper’s twisted mind. The break in the feed had scared him at first, but Tracy was certain that it was because Draper wanted to stretch the moment—build the fear.

So they were frantically trying to figure out what Hannah had truly meant to say.

“How can you be sure,” Tyler asked, her voice gentle. “She’s in a great deal of pain. She could have just been talking nonsense.”

“No.” Harrison said. “I know her. She’d never waste the opportunity like that. Look at her eyes.” He pointed to the frame frozen on the screen. “She’s alert. She’s thinking, for God’s sake.”

“All right then.” Avery nodded. “Let’s figure it out.”

“I’ve made a transcript,” Simon said. He was sitting in Hannah’s place, using her computer console, the effect jarring, but under the circumstances, necessary. “I’ll put it up on the screen.”

Hannah’s words looked even more bizarre on the screen, but Harrison forced himself to try to look at them rationally.

“So what do you see?” Drake asked.

“Well, first off, she’s making it up,” he said. “Because I haven’t told her I love her yet. At least not in so many words…” He trailed off, knowing that he’d revealed too much, but then suddenly he realized he didn’t care who the hell knew. He loved her. So fucking what?