Known (38 page)

Now he was carving his own violent path through Oregon.

Is Violet still alive?

Beside him Gianna had been silent during the drive to his cabin. He knew her thoughts were on her daughter.

“We’ll get her back,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. It felt like ice.

“He’s a killer,” whispered Gianna. “He kills whoever gets in his way. Frisco. My father, Jamie . . . those deputies. Jamie is so lucky.”

Please let Violet be that lucky.

“I’ve tried calling Detective Hawes,” she said. “I keep getting her voice mail. I left a message saying where we were and what we’d heard from that deputy.”

“Good,” said Chris. “I don’t want to sit and wait either. After we stop at my place, we can drive around and see if we can spot his vehicle and report it. At least we’ll feel like we’re doing something.”

Gianna followed Chris up the steps to his cabin. Had it been only two days since they abandoned the cabin, worried a killer was about to show up on his doorstep? She’d spotted the felled tree that’d ended their escape from the forest in Chris’s truck. It’d been pushed to the side of the road and Chris’s truck had been towed. It felt like it’d happened a lifetime ago.

“I just want to grab a few things,” said Chris as he put a key in the lock. He pushed the door open and stepped back to allow Gianna to enter first. The cabin was dim, and she moved toward the closest window to raise a blind.

A loud crack sounded behind her and she spun around to see Chris crumple to the floor.

She locked eyes with Reid Kruger and froze, her heart in her throat.

Reid dropped the piece of firewood he’d slammed into Chris’s head.

“Chris?” she whispered, her vocal cords numb.

“Shut up!” Reid Kruger was big. Bigger than he’d seemed on camera. He pointed at her. “Don’t move.”

I can’t.

Her feet couldn’t budge and her knees threatened to collapse. She pulled her gaze away from the giant and looked toward Chris.

“Don’t move!”

She lifted her hands and held still but kept her gaze on Chris.
Breathe!
Time started to tick off in her head. She watched his chest, his eyelids, his fingers. No movement. Dimly she was aware that Reid didn’t have a gun in his hands. Given that he’d shot three people in one day, she’d expected him to be armed. Had she and Chris surprised him?

Chris’s chest moved with a deep breath, and she gasped in relief. She looked up at Reid. “Where’s Violet?”

He jerked his head toward the loft. “Upstairs.”

Gianna hadn’t heard a sound out of the loft since she’d entered. “Violet?” she yelled, holding Reid’s eye contact.

Silence.

“She can’t talk.”

“What did you do to her?”
Rage rose from the depths of her gut and fired through her chest. Her fingers curled, aching to rip at his throat, gouge his eyes, and pull his hair out at the roots. Hatred boiled over.

Surprise lit his freakishly blue eyes. “She’s fine. I just needed her quiet for a while.”

“What did you do to her?”
Gianna screamed at him. She took a half step in his direction.

Reid leaned toward her. “I. Needed. Her. Silent,” he said in a low voice that made the hair curl on the back of her neck. Seeing her fear, he let his gaze drag over her from head to toe and back up. Sexual desire laced his stare and made Gianna’s stomach churn. A new suspicion settled over her and her limbs turned to ice.

Did he rape my daughter?

Touch me like that and you’ll never be able to touch another woman.

Teeth. Nails. Knees. Elbows. She mentally prepared her arsenal and spread her feet, rocking up on her toes and bending her knees. She wasn’t going down without causing as much damage as possible. She stared back at him, daring him to put a hand on her.

He threw his head back and laughed. “The little tiger has claws!”

She didn’t say anything.

Blinding white teeth grinned at her. “She has spice, too. I like that.”

“Fuck you.”

He found that hilarious. Her anger shot higher.

A glance at Chris showed blood flowing from a gash by his ear. A million questions shot through her brain.
How injured is he? Are the police coming? What will Reid do next?

Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know.

He shoved the door shut and the cabin darkened. He turned on a small lamp. As her eyes adjusted, he reached behind his back and removed a gun from his waistband and a knife from his pocket. He stepped to the blinds and slashed at the cords, then tossed them at Gianna. She instinctively caught them. “Tie him up. And do it good. I’m watching.”

She knelt next to Chris. His chest still moved with quiet breaths, and she rested the palm of her hand on his forehead as she would for Violet when checking for a fever.
Hang in there.
She started to tie his hands together.

“Behind his back!”

She awkwardly shifted him to get both hands behind his back. He was incredibly heavy, his limbs difficult to move, but she managed. She tied a loose knot.

“Tighter! Jesus Christ. I’m not blind.”

Gianna gritted her teeth and pulled the knot tighter. “You haven’t proven to be a very good criminal, have you?” she snapped.

“Watch your mouth.”

“How much trouble did you get in when your father found out you didn’t have the thumb drive?”

He said nothing.

Aha! He still hasn’t told his father.
“What about Rafael Jones? What did he do wrong?”

“Shut up.”

She lifted her head to look at him, one hand still on Chris’s wrists. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “You weren’t supposed to kill your partner, were you? Did you have to do that to cover your initial fuck-up?”

He stepped closer and pointed his gun at her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Now tie his ankles.”

She moved to Chris’s feet, keeping her focus on the killer. “Then tell me, Reid.” She saw his eyes widen the slightest bit at her use of his name. “Tell me how Rafael died. And what did your boss say when he found out my father was dead but you didn’t have the thumb drive?”

“Rafael was a fuck-up.”

“Why was I drugged?”

The grin that crossed Reid’s face would haunt her nightmares forever. “You were both to be drugged. Rafael had planned a little going-away party. But the girl never drank the juice.”

“So you started the fire anyway? No thumb drive and one unconscious victim?” She shook her head at him. “No wonder you had to leave your own country. You suck as a crook.”

“I didn’t have to leave!” His hand tightened on his gun. “I chose to leave.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Gianna said, raising a brow.
Keep him distracted and talking.
“I heard your father had to hustle you out of the country and buy you a new job. Your reputation isn’t the greatest.”

Irritation and rage crossed his face.

“You’re as stubborn as your father was. And you piss me off just as easily.” His accent grew thicker as the rage filled his voice. “It felt good to beat the crap out of that old man.” The words poured out of his mouth, and she felt their loathing stab her brain. She slapped a hand over one ear as if it could stop the sounds.

“He wouldn’t give it up, and I’d never failed before. I know how to interrogate people, but he deflected my questions at every turn.” He paused. “He screamed as I kicked him, Gianna.” The tone of his voice made her skin crawl. “He screamed like a little girl and begged me not to hurt you and his granddaughter. I took great pleasure in telling him everything I planned to do to you and your daughter. He was crying at the end. He knew his years of hiding were about to come to nothing and that he’d exposed his family to a great risk.”

“You’re fucking sick,” she whispered.

She calmly held his gaze as her stomach threatened to hurl its contents at his feet. The entire time her hearing had been focused on the loft upstairs as she ached to hear any sound that Violet was alive. She wasn’t taking Reid’s word for it.

“You need the thumb drive to save face with your father,” she stated. “You think I’m going to give it to you? You killed my father. I don’t owe you a thing. And if you shoot me, then it’s gone forever.”

“I knew you had it,” he said triumphantly. “Where is it?”

“Sorry, Reid. You need to give Violet back to me. Don’t you know that a mother would give her own life for her daughter? Keeping her from me gets you nothing.” She slowly stood, holding his gaze the whole time.

Indecision fluttered in his eyes. He backed away from her and put a hand on the ladder to the loft. “Don’t move. Try to run and Violet will have two holes in her head.”

Gianna believed him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He backed up the ladder, using one hand while keeping the gun trained in her direction with the other. She stood immobile and watched him the entire way. As soon as his head disappeared, she bent next to Chris and felt his pulse. Strong. Steady.
Thank you.
She looked up just in time to see Reid appear at the top with Violet clasped in front of him.

Gianna fought back her tears.
She’s alive.

Every muscle in her body wanted to collapse at the sight. Instead she kept her gaze locked on the girl’s face, as if she could keep her from vanishing again.

Duct tape covered Violet’s mouth, and her arms and legs were tied. She didn’t look scared; she looked angry.

Pride in her daughter rushed through Gianna.

How will I get us out of here?

With one arm Reid hefted Violet over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He turned his back to move down the ladder, and she noticed Chris move his head. He opened one eye and looked directly at her as he tried to pull his arms apart.

She reached to loosen his ties.

“Get the fuck away from him!”

Gianna rose to her feet. Reid lowered Violet from his shoulder and held her in front of him, facing her mother. Gianna studied her daughter, searching for any sign of injury. “Are you all right?”

Violet nodded, her mouth still covered. Reid shoved the barrel of his gun under the corner of Violet’s jaw, making her tip her head away from the pain. Her eyes widened, holding Gianna’s gaze.

I
am
capable of killing him.

“Now. Where is the thumb drive?”

Nora Hawes was ready to punch through Becker’s dashboard. Two good police officers had been murdered at the burned cabin.

What the hell happened?

A false lead had taken her and Becker to the other side of the city and wasted hours of time. No doubt someone had truly seen a black Escalade near Gianna’s home, but as soon as Nora had heard there’d been a different sighting in the Cascade Range near the scene of the cabin fire, she’d known they needed to be there. They’d had to cross town in heavy traffic, taking way too much time. Thirty minutes later they’d heard the officers had been killed.

Leo Berg had called her. He’d told her that Gianna and Chris were already headed up to the cabin area. Leo had also provided a name and some background to go with the face she’d seen on the video from outside the furniture store. She’d made some calls and found that Reid Kruger had a short arrest record from the Los Angeles area. Nothing worth shouting about, but enough to show that he had too much time on his hands. And too much money. “This guy has hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in his checking accounts,” muttered Becker. “What the hell? What’s it like to have that kind of spendable income?”

Nora had shaken her head. Apparently Kruger’s father was worth millions . . . possibly billions. Enough to buy his son a new life in the United States.
This time he’s fucked up.
No amount of money would buy his way out of the murders of the two cops in the last hour. And then there were Richard Messina, Rafael Jones, and Francisco Green. The attempted murder of Gianna, Jamie, and Violet. And now kidnapping.

Her gut told her Reid Kruger had pulled the trigger every time.

She wanted to see Kruger’s father try to make that go away.

“From what Saul said, this guy is brutal and dangerous. If he’s hurt Violet Trask . . .”