Love you to Death (32 page)

“I was just taking her to the airport,” said Trent in a tone that indicated the detective should have already known that.

Woodward glared at him. “I know all about what you were doing.”

“That makes one of us,” said Elise. “Care to fill me in? Trent won’t.”

Trent shot him a look so thick with warning, the air between them wavered.

Detective Woodward hesitated. “He’s worried about you. We all are.”

“Worry less about me and more about Ashley, and I’ll be fine.”

“Bodies are piling up, Elise. You should leave town and let the police and FBI handle it from here.”

“Is that why you were taking me to the airport? To shove me on a plane and get me out of the way?”

Trent didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. “They don’t need your help anymore. You’re only going to get in the way.”

“Then why is there someone waiting at the station to talk to me?”

Trent glared at the detective. “Because Woodward is an ass.”

Elise didn’t know what was going on between these two, but she had other things to worry about. “Are you going to let me down there to see Susan?”

“No,” said both men at the same time. At least they agreed on something.

“Why don’t you go back and meet with the profiler, and Trent and I will go over some things here.”

“I’m going with her,” said Trent.

“She’ll be fine at the station, surrounded by cops.”

“I’ll drive her and come back.”

Woodward gritted his teeth. “I was hoping you’d stick around a bit longer. There’s something I wanted to show you. I’ll get a patrolman to escort her back.”

Trent looked at Elise for a long time, as if trying to decide.

Screw that. She’d been making her own decisions for a long time now, and she wasn’t about to hand the reins over to someone else.

She dug the keys out of her pocket and walked around the car to the driver’s side. “Call me if you need me.” She got in the car and shut the door.

“Elise, wait,” said Trent.

She started the engine, rolled down the window, and cast him an impatient stare.

“I… Be careful.” He’d been about to say something else, but Elise didn’t have the time to figure out what.

“I will.” Then he leaned through the window and kissed her, and she no longer cared about what he was going to say, or why he was acting so odd. All she knew was that his mouth was on hers, his breath was filling her lungs, and the scent of him surrounded her.

It was a sweet, gentle kiss, tinged with helpless desperation. He pulled away slowly, caressing her cheek with his thumb. He looked into her eyes, and the splinters of gold shone bright, surrounded by blue. “Stay safe. I’ll come get you as soon as I can, and then we’ll talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not leaving until we find Ashley.”

“You could get hurt.”

Part of her wondered if it wasn’t already too late. Walking away from Trent wasn’t going to be easy. She’d fallen for him somewhere along the way, and even though she knew their two lives could never blend together into one, leaving him was going to hurt.

“We all get hurt sometimes,” she said. “I’ll survive.”

Ashley woke up with the stench of smoke stinging her nostrils. She opened her eyes, expecting to see the flames, feel the heat of them searing her skin, but instead, all she saw was textured white ceiling.

She blinked a few times, trying to clear her head. Had she dreamed about setting the fire? If so, why did she smell it?

Her head was pounding and her throat was raw. She needed some water to ease her throat and wash away the grit drying her eyes, but when she tried to get up to go to the bathroom, she couldn’t move.

Her arms and legs were strapped down.

Panic exploded behind her eyes, and a high cry of fear bubbled up out of her.

“Good,” said Gary from somewhere on her left. “You’re awake.”

He sounded cheerful.

Ashley turned her head, more because of reflex than because she wanted to see him. His clothes were charred, and he had a nasty burn on his forearm. His usually flawless hair was mussed, and a fine chalky powder coated the glossy strands. His face was pinched with rage, but it was his eyes that scared the hell out of her. Those oil-slick eyes were bulging with fury, glowing with malice.

Instinctively, she tried to run away from whatever he had planned, but there was nowhere she could go. She thrashed around uselessly, making the table she was strapped to vibrate against the concrete floor.

“That was a naughty trick you tried to pull,” he said as he reached beneath the table and did something to make a metallic clicking sound. “Now I have to punish you.”

The table started to move, folding her into a sitting position.

Panic throbbed through her system with every beat of her heart. Tears streamed from her eyes, burning hot against her cheeks. She fought against the bonds holding her down, but it was no use. The restraints held firm, thrusting her into his mercy.

The man had none. If she hadn’t realized it before, as soon as he stepped aside enough to clear her view, she was sure.

A young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty sat trapped into the chair Constance had died in. She was held in place with wide leather bands, and a blue cloth had been shoved into her mouth. The pitiful whimpers she made were barely audible over the sound of Ashley’s racing pulse.

“You tried to kill us all tonight,” said Gary. “It almost worked, too. I never would have thought you were that resourceful, but now I know better. Thankfully, I had a fire extinguisher on hand.”

He moved across the room to the frightened, gagged girl.

“Of course, your room was destroyed. I’ll have to rebuild it before I can have another guest stay there.”

“Good,” she spat out with bravado she could only pretend to feel. “Serves you right, you sick fucker.”

“Sick?” he said, his tone filled with a creepy kind of blandness, as if he were discussing his dry-cleaning bill. “Hardly. I simply like things a certain way.”

“You
like
cutting off women’s hands?”

“Among other things.”

Ashley was going to puke. She was going to lose her stomach right here and vomit all over herself, making matters worse.

“But today, we’re going to try something new. You wanted to set us all on fire, so I’m going to give you your wish. Sort of.”

He lifted an acetylene torch, twisted the knob to start the flow of gas, and lit it. A blue flame shot out like a spear.

The gagged woman let out a muffled cry of panic.

Ashley was beyond making noise. Her throat had clamped down hard, shutting off her air supply. She knew what he was going to do. She could see the excited gleam glowing in the oily depths of his gaze as he smiled at her.

Gary moved the torch toward the young woman’s bare toes. “We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up, shall we?”

E
lise thought the FBI profiler looked too young to know what she was doing. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and the glasses perched on her dainty nose had lenses too small to be of any use other than making her seem more intelligent. She wore a black pantsuit, but the cut was too trendy to be reassuring.

Agent Robin Laurens looked like she was playing a role in a TV show, and had been cast for her good looks rather than what was inside her head.

“Can you tell me a bit about what kind of men your sister dated?” asked Agent Laurens.

“I don’t see how this is going to help.” Elise also didn’t understand why she’d thought this was a good idea when she could be back at the crime scene with Detective Woodward, helping look for clues. Sure, she wasn’t trained, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help. Maybe she’d see something they didn’t—something only she would know about Ashley that would help find her. What if something that belonged to Ashley was there and they didn’t recognize it?

Agent Laurens swept the glasses from her face in a dramatic move. “I realize this is difficult for you, but it’s important. Having an accurate profile of the killer can help track him down. It can help us understand his patterns and define an area in which to look for him. It can even tell us what kind of profession he may have.”

Elise gripped the paper cup of coffee and sighed in frustration. She was here, she might as well play along. “Ashley likes calm guys.”

“Calm?”

“Steady, levelheaded. She doesn’t go for the flighty artistic types—she butts heads with them too much.”

“What else? Any physical characteristic she might find more appealing?”

“She appreciates men who stay in shape. She goes for men who are older than her by a few years—late twenties, early thirties.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-two.”

Agent Laurens scribbled something down. “What about hair color, eye color?”

“She wasn’t fond of blonds when we were younger, but she hasn’t mentioned any similar aversion since she was out of high school. Her tastes may have changed.”

“Does she tend to date a lot of men?”

“Yeah. She said she was too young to settle for just one. She likes the attention she gets from a new guy—one who isn’t bored with her. She likes the thrill and excitement of a new relationship.”

“Do you know of any men she’s rejected who might want to exact some kind of revenge on her?”

Elise shook her head. “If there was one, she wasn’t aware of it, or at least she never mentioned it to me.”

“Do you think she would have hidden something like that from you?”

“No, I don’t. And if I’d thought there was some scorned lover in the mix, I would have mentioned it a long time ago. I’m not an idiot.”

Agent Lauren’s lips tightened in irritation. “I’m sorry if I came across as accusing you of that. It wasn’t my intent.”

“I should be doing something more than sitting here with you. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“It will, Ms. McBride. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so, because my sister has been missing for a week now. If we don’t find her soon . . .”

Agent Laurens laid her hand on Elise’s arm. “There are a lot of people working on this case. We’ll find this man and put him away forever.”

“That’s great, but I’m much more interested in finding Ashley.”

Ed Woodward walked into the small office with Trent right on his heels. Whatever was going on had Trent mad enough that his face was dark red and his mouth was drawn into a thin, flat line.

“Hey, Robin,” said the detective. “Glad you could come.”

“No problem, Ed. I owe you after that thing last fall.”

“Mind if I interrupt for a minute?”

“Go ahead.” Agent Laurens stood and offered Detective Woodward her seat.

“This is a mistake, Woodward,” said Trent.

Elise looked from one man to the other, trying to figure out what was going on. “What’s a mistake?”

Detective Woodward placed a notebook in front of her. Across the page was scrawled a bunch of numbers. “Any idea what this means?”

Elise had no clue. “Sorry. What is it?”

“Don’t.” Trent uttered the harsh command.

“Don’t what, Trent? Why are you acting so odd?”

“I don’t want you involved in this any more than you already are.”

“The message was left for her,” said Woodward to Trent.

Elise frowned at the men in confusion. “What message?”

Woodward pointed to the paper. “These numbers. They were left on a victim.”

“On Susan?”

“No. On the other victim we found tonight.”

Another victim? Elise started shaking and her mind jumped once again to that single conclusion that scared her the most.

She pushed her chair back from the table and looked at Trent. She trusted him to tell her the truth. “Was it Ashley?”

“No.”

“Her name was Constance Gregory,” said Woodward. “And the man who killed her left this message for you.”

“How do you know it was for me?”

“It had your name on it,” said Trent, stepping over whatever Woodward had been about to say.

Elise looked at the paper again. There were six numbers on the top line, eight numbers on the middle line, a dash and eight more numbers on the last line. “Can I see the note?”

Trent spoke first. “No.”

Woodward gave Trent a hard stare, then said, “It’s evidence we don’t want you to contaminate, but this is exactly how the message was written.”

Elise stared, read the numbers aloud. “One-two-one-four-eight-eight. One-twenty-one, four-eighty-eight.” Eighty-eight. That was the year Ashley was born. “Twelve, fourteen, eighty-eight. That’s Ashley’s birth date.” A rush of victory flooded through her, until she realized what that meant. “He’s giving me a message about my sister.”

“What about the rest of it?” asked Woodward. “Does it mean anything to you?”