Known (39 page)

Becker didn’t answer. They’d both already imagined the worst. Several times.

“How far away are we?”

“Twenty minutes. Depending on the traffic.”

“I’ve tried calling Gianna and Chris. They must be in a cell phone dead spot.”

From his position on the floor, Chris stared at Reid Kruger’s boots. After Reid carried Violet down the ladder, he’d been too close for Chris to crane his neck to see his face. His ankles and wrists were tied tightly; someone had been efficient. His head hurt like a bitch and double vision came and went in waves that nauseated him.

Gianna stood between him and Kruger, arguing about a thumb drive.

Chris was no help. He knew nothing about it, but it sounded like Richard Messina had stolen some private information that could destroy Kruger’s father’s business.
Does it really exist?
Gianna’s father hadn’t been right in the head. Perhaps he’d made up this storage device to threaten the man who’d ruined his life?

Chris closed his eyes against an avalanche of nausea.
What if all these people died because a crazy old man made up a story?
What if three more were about to die?

Reid Kruger had left multiple bodies in his wake. Three more would be nothing.

His lids flew open as the ground shook while Kruger took two steps and shoved Violet onto the couch. She flopped on the cushions and fought to keep her balance, her terrified gaze meeting Chris’s. Her hands and feet were still bound, but Reid had ripped the tape from her mouth. Chris twisted his neck and rolled to his side to look up as Kruger stepped closer to Gianna, his weapon inches from her eyes. He took a quick glance down and made eye contact with Chris.

“You! Scarred man! You want to see your woman’s brains turn into a pink mist?” Fury sparked from Kruger’s pale eyes. “Where is it?”

Kruger took a step and kicked Chris in the stomach.

Bright lights exploded in his vision and his lungs refused to let him take a breath.

He wheezed.

Kruger laughed. “I think you’ve been beat on before, scarred man. I know those round marks. I’ve given plenty of them.”

A too-white face from the past rose up in Chris’s mind.

He’s dead. The Ghostman is dead.

Kruger’s accent resonated in his brain. He sounded nothing like the Ghostman.
That’s not him.
Chris looked over at Violet on the couch, her brown eyes wide in horror. In the depths of her eyes, he saw every child who’d vanished with him but had never returned. The pain in his chest echoed with the memories of torture.
Burns, chains, knives.
The other children’s voices filled his mind, their names, their faces. He’d sworn never to forget any of them.

Were he, Gianna, and Violet about to join their ranks?

Who would keep alive the memories of the children who’d died?

Had he deceived fate for too long? He should have never survived. Now nature was catching up.

He gagged and his lungs sucked in oxygen. Kruger laughed at his desperate gulps of air. His leg swung back for another kick and Gianna stepped in the way. Her legs tangled with Kruger’s, and he hit her across the face with his weapon. She collapsed to the floor, falling across Chris.

Kruger fired.

Chris felt Gianna’s body heave and jerk at the impact of the shot, and her shriek burned his ears.

“Fuck you all,” Kruger shouted. “I’ll find it!” He strode toward Chris’s tiny kitchen.

Chris twisted his body under Gianna as she shook with silent sobs. He stared as blood soaked through her shirt near her abdomen. The warmth of the liquid touched his arm.

She’s crying; she can’t be dead.

“Gianna! Can you move?” he begged. She pulled into a ball, shaking her head.

Smoke registered in Chris’s senses. Flames rose from his kitchen stove, and he watched Kruger rip the curtains from the kitchen window and add them to the blaze. The flames grew higher. Kruger pulled the top off an old-fashioned oil lamp and threw the oil across the weathered boards of the kitchen wall. He grabbed two more and did the same. The flames followed the new path and eagerly licked the dry wood. Smoke gathered at the peak of the roof and quickly filled the loft.

He turned toward Chris, a silhouette in front of the red-and-yellow fire, but his gaze burned with a cool intensity.

He’s fucking nuts.

Kruger paused and grabbed the last of Chris’s emergency hurricane lamps. He dumped the oil over Gianna and Chris, smiling as the oil soaked into their clothes. Chris flailed as if he could shake the flammable liquid off his body.

This isn’t happening.

Kruger strode to the door and glanced back at the three of them. “Burn in hell.” He opened the door, stepped out into the night, and slammed it shut.

“Gianna!” Chris shouted, shaking her with his body. “Get up!”

She shook her head and burrowed it into his torso, her legs pulled up to her injured abdomen. More of her blood warmed his side. She hadn’t flinched when Kruger flung the oil over them, but Chris was more than aware of it for the both of them. He looked over at Violet, the sound of the growing flames starting to fill the cabin. “Get out! Just get yourself out! Roll if you have to.”

The girl slid awkwardly off the couch and scooted on her butt toward him and Gianna. “Is she going to be okay?” Tears streamed down Violet’s face.

“Yes,” Chris lied, “but you need to get out. I’ll get your mom out.”

Violet’s gaze said she knew he lied. “Let me try to untie you.” She scooted around him and tried to line up her hands behind her back with his. Her fingers fumbled uselessly with his bindings. The heat of the fire toasted the skin of his face as he willed Violet to untie the knots.

“I can’t get them!”

“Then get yourself out!”

“No!” she shrieked, turning. “Not without my mother! Mom!
Get up!
”

Gianna lifted her head, and Chris saw her gaze lock with her daughter’s. With a shaking hand she reached out and plucked at the knots she’d tied at his wrists. They didn’t budge.

“Can you get to the kitchen?” Chris asked Gianna. “Get a knife.”

Gianna pushed to her knees and the bloodstain on the side of her shirt expanded. Her arms quivered and she closed her eyes in concentration. Chris fumbled up to a sitting position, knowing he’d have to try. “See if you can turn the doorknob,” he ordered Violet. He moved to the kitchen, scooting in the same way Violet had. A small voice in his head worried that Violet would add more oxygen to the fire by opening the door, but the flames were still expanding, showing they had an ample oxygen supply in the cabin. She wouldn’t create a backdraft explosion unless the oxygen inside had been nearly depleted.

He pressed his back into the wall of the kitchen island and scooted his way up to standing, feeling the heat on the back of his head. Violet mimicked his movements at the front door, concentration on her face. With his hands behind him, he yanked open a drawer and fumbled for a knife. A slice along his finger told him he’d found a good one. He felt carefully for the handle, trying to ignore the growing heat.

His fingers wrapped around a handle.

He hopped back to Gianna and fell to his knees beside her, dropping the knife. “Cut the ropes.”

She picked up the knife, her lips pressed together in a white line, and sawed at his bindings. His arms jerked apart and he grabbed the knife out of her hand. He slashed the binding at his feet and swept her up into his arms, acutely aware of the warm wetness that immediately soaked the front of his shirt. Violet shuffled out of his way and he opened the door and stepped out into the cool night air and sucked in a deep icy breath.

The rumble of a V8 engine sped away in the distance.

Twenty-four hours later

Gianna smelled smoke and jerked open her eyes. In a chair beside her hospital bed, Chris leaned forward, concern crossing his face. “Do you need the nurse?”

“Where’s Violet?” she rasped. Her throat was unbearably dry.

“She’s fine. She’s with my parents. She’s not hurt.”

Relief flowed through her and her lids fell shut.

My baby is safe.

“You’ve asked me the same thing five times,” Chris said softly.

She realized he was the source of the smell of smoke. He hadn’t showered and he wore the same clothes that—

“How long have I been here?” She lifted a hand and gently touched her side. It burned under the thick bandaging. “I remember you carrying me out.” Her mind was fuzzy, and she recognized the floaty sensation of narcotics pulsing through her system.

“Since last night. You’re going to be fine.”

She struggled to focus on his bandaged hovering face. “He hit you in the head.”

“It’s not much.”

“He shot me,” she whispered, remembering the sound of the gun.

“Yes. But the bullet went through cleanly. A couple of inches another way and you would have bled out immediately.”

Her brain created an image of her cold body on a stainless autopsy table. Dr. Rutledge probing the opening in her corpse.

We’re fine. Violet is fine. Everyone is okay.

Chris’s warm hand took hers as he leaned his elbows on her mattress. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. Your daughter had pressure on your wounds before I could even think straight. She’s a level-headed girl.”

“What happened?”

“The detectives showed up minutes after we got out. They’d spotted the smoke from the other cabin and when they saw your injuries, they radioed to call back the paramedics who’d responded to the shooting. We’re lucky they weren’t far away. I would have had to drive you out to get cell service.”

“Kruger?” She hoped he was dead in a ditch.

“Gone. Don’t know where. We’ll find him.” A fierceness entered his voice. One she’d never heard from him before.

“
We
will?”

“I mean the police.”

She studied his face. He was up to something. Between him and Michael, no doubt they were exercising every resource they had to find the rock Reid Kruger had hidden under. Then she remembered the thought she’d had at the cabin.

“I know where the thumb drive is,” she said.

His jaw dropped. “You do? Becker and Hawes have been all over me about that. I was convinced it didn’t exist. I think Kruger might be, too.”

“I
think
I know.”

“Where?”

“Are my clothes here? The stuff I had on?”

Chris stood, looking around the room. He walked over to a small closet and found a plastic bag. He opened it and pulled out the shirt she’d been wearing. He wrinkled his nose. “Do I smell this smoky?”

“Yes,” said Gianna. “Now look in the pocket of my jeans.”

I think I’m right.

He set down her shirt and removed her jeans. He slid the folded drawing of Violet out of her pocket along with the Darth Vader PEZ dispenser. He froze for a second and then looked at her with wide eyes as he flipped back the plastic head.

“Is it there?” she asked.

“How did you know?” Chris shook the Star Wars figure and a slim silver USB drive slipped into his hand.

“I didn’t. I grabbed it because it was the only thing in that whole apartment that represented the man I remembered. He’d collected all sorts of Star Wars memorabilia. At some point during the night, I realized that it was the right size and wondered if he could have hidden it in there.”

Chris closed his fist around the small drive and handed the dispenser to Gianna. “There’s probably another one in the other dispenser. I’ll tell Hawes to check.”

Gianna stared at the small plastic figure. “Hiding in plain sight. That sounds like something my father would have done.”

He died for this device.

She smiled and looked at Chris, who was eyeing her with a bit of awe.

Her heart filled as she spotted a smudge of ash at his jawline. He’d washed his face and hands, but hadn’t taken the time to do much else. She imagined the nurses had urged him to go home and change while she was unconscious, but she knew he hadn’t listened.
She knew.

His expression changed to bewilderment. “What is it?”