Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (26 page)

And then he heard, “Sophie-ee,” in a sing-song voice. 
“Where are you?”

Even as he felt a jolt of fresh adrenaline, he stopped in
confusion.  Shit.  Had he passed them?  It was all too possible.  Were they
behind him now?  Off to the left?  Not to the right – he thought.

For the first time he understood what she’d meant about how
fog distorted sound.  It didn’t just muffle the voice.  Instead, he felt like
he was in an echo chamber.  Another, softly called “Sophie-ee” bounced around
him like a ball in a ping-pong machine.

Ahead, he gambled.  Blinking dampness from his eyes, he
eased one foot forward, then the other, his weapon gripped two-handed as he
searched the murk for any shape that moved.

“Sophie-ee!  Where are you-uu?”

If anything, the voice sounded farther away.  Where was
Sophie?  Hiding?  Or running?

*****

The pain sharper with every step, Sophie pushed beneath the
low-growing boughs of a cedar.  Would she be completely hidden here?  If only
she hadn’t worn a bright pink shirt today!  She’d tear it off, except her skin
was so pale she was afraid she wouldn’t be any less visible.

She didn’t dare push back out the way she’d come.  Instead,
she dropped to her hands and knees to crawl, and then to her belly to wriggle. 
The low hanging limbs of the cedar scratched and clawed at her.

The sudden crunch of a footstep breaking a small branch came
from frightening close behind her.  She emerged from the spreading cedar tree
and ran, lurching, her breath whistling.

And then, oh God, she was out of the trees.  There was the
lodge, rearing out of the fog but well off to her right.  She might not have
seen it at all, but for the lighted square of a window.

Could she make it there?  Was his wife home?  Would she – or
could she - protect Sophie?

Does he even have a wife?  Has anyone actually seen her?

A shout of triumph behind told her he’d spotted her.

She pelted toward the shore and the cover of grassy dunes. 
With each footstep she thought,
Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Should have stayed
in the trees.

Too late.

The roar of the ocean was so close now.  Over it, she barely
heard the thud of running footsteps behind her.  Rough grass had given way to
thin, sandy soil.

The sagging remnants of a split rail fence appeared too late
for her to avoid falling over it. 
Hurt
.  She crawled forward and felt
her hands sink into the cool, gritty depth of real sand.  Pushing herself to
her feet, she staggered on, following a natural valley between the rise of
dunes.

Maybe she should climb…  Too slow.  He’d be on her before
she could reach the top.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a narrow vee to her
left.  She swerved and took it.  She didn’t know this part of the dunes.  She
and her mother had rarely had occasion to come this far from the cabin and the
river.

Benjamin might not know these dunes any better.  Dimly she
wondered whether they were even on resort ground anymore, and then she had a
useless memory.  In Oregon, the shoreline was all publically owned.  The forest
had been
his
, but the dunes weren’t.  The realization fired something in
her, and she broke into a sort of trot even though the loose sand sucked at her
feet with every step, and, oh, she hurt.

*****

Daniel hadn’t know he was close to emerging from the
treeline until he suddenly burst into the open.  He’d swear the fog had
thinned.  Sometimes it did that, the dense wall rolling in off the ocean and
settling in to stay amongst the trees as if trapped there.  He flinched from a
flash of remembrance – Sophie saying how thick the fog was that long ago
morning, except she could see intermittent openings toward the water.

Where would she go?  Toward the ocean or back into the
woods?

A glint of headlights reflected oddly toward the lodge.  He
realized he’d heard the engine without taking conscious note.  Now there was a
flash of red, blue, white.  Oh, damn.  Should have told them not to use lights
or sirens.  If Billington saw that they were closing in, he might decide he had
to kill her
now
and make his escape.  He could still be deluding himself
that he could drive away and an hour from now pretend to be returning from
Portland.

Trotting across the open ground, Daniel thought for a moment
the flash of movement he saw was an illusion.  But the fog parted enough to
allow him another glimpse, of the dark shape of a man.

He broke into a full run.  He knew this ground.  He’d broken
up parties here.  Nothing but a killer was between him and the dunes.  In his
fear, what couldn’t have been more than a minute seemed to take five.  The
mostly collapsed fence emerged from the fog.

He’d have vaulted it right away, but a dune rose
precipitately just over the rotting split rails.  He took a chance and turned
left, away from the lodge, looking for any opening into the dunes.

The hunt had now become silent.  Billington was no longer
calling her name.  That mean Billington now knew he was being hunted.

*****

It was a maze here, between the wind- and water-shaped
dunes.  Sophie didn’t let herself slow down.  Instinct drove her.  Left here. 
Right there.  Climb a little.  Slide down the other side.

Patches of tough, coarse beach grass clung to the sides and
tops of the hillocks.  She knew the shrubby beach knotweed.  Other, smaller
plants.  She and her mother had taken pleasure in identifying them.  Sea watch
and sea blush, so pretty when shyly in bloom.

Nothing big enough to hide her.

Should have stayed in the trees.

Too late.

Exhaustion was tugging at her every step, slowing her
further.  Was he right behind her?  Would she even hear him before a hand
closed on her?  Even her terror had become dulled, until it spiked at a sudden
glimpse ahead of the surf.

If the fog abandoned her…

Maybe…maybe she should try to burrow into the sand.  Mommy
had let Sophie bury her sometimes, until only her laughing face was visible. 
Sometimes Sophie let Mommy bury her, except she always got scared before much
more than her legs was covered.  Now, though…

So long as I can breathe.

But what if he was close?  So close, he’d be on her if she
stopped?

But I can’t go on
, she knew in despair.  He’d find
her eventually.  She should have turned back toward the road.  There was no one
at all out here except her and her deadly pursuer.  No possible rescue.

The dip between dunes forked again, and she chose the way
that led inland.  Mustn’t let herself be driven out onto the beach, where she
would be completely exposed.

Another dodge, almost back the way she’d come, and she saw a
steep slope of sand no vegetation had managed to take root in.  She scrunched
down as small as she could make herself and pulled frantically at the rise
above her, causing a sliding avalanche of cold sand.

More, more. 
Bury me.

On an icy chill of horror, she thought, Oh, dear God – was
this
where the bodies of all those other women were?

*****

Daniel moved as if he was clearing a warehouse piled with
shipping crates.  The enemy could be behind any one of them.  He held the Glock
in firing position.  A part of him was cold and purposeful.  He wanted to kill
this scum.  He almost hoped he had to.  It would be like eradicating smallpox. 
Nothing to mourn.

The fog had altered subtly, until it was no longer evenly
dense.  Now it thinned into moving wisps and then deepened abruptly,
unpredictably.

The constant choices of which way to go were making him
crazy.  Sometimes he thought he saw footprints, sometimes not.  Sophie could be
anywhere in this strange labyrinth, so beautiful on a sunny day, so threatening
in the fog, with dusk nearing and a killer stalking her.  Daniel stopped every
few feet to spin in place, searching his limited sightline.

He was about to make another choice – left? straight ahead?
– when movement in his peripheral vision brought his head around.

Gotcha
, he thought with grim satisfaction, and
stepped silently forward.

*****

The sand was still slithering downward, but too much of her
remained exposed.  She felt betrayed.  All these years, she had hated fog with
a passion, and now that she needed it desperately, it was abandoning her.

If he came this way, he would see her.

And then she heard a rasp of breath.

Sophie went utterly still.

Oh God oh God, there he was.  If he turned his head, he
would see her.  He took a step, another, looking all around him.

Make me invisible.

As if she’d made a sound –
I didn’t, I didn’t!
– he
swung toward her.  A furious dark gaze pinned her.

Run, run, Sophie
, he’d said. 
There’s nothing
better than a good chase.
  But he didn’t look like he’d enjoyed this one.

With a guttural sound low in his throat, he leaped forward.

Sophie struggled to free herself, and when his hands closed
on her, she screamed.

*****

Oh, Christ.

The sound of her scream ripped Daniel open.

He gave up on silence and ran again.  The soft sand
underfoot had become a curse.  It felt like a bad dream, the kind where you
tried to run full-out but had the sensation of molasses sucking at your feet.

Quicksand.

And then he was on them.

Billington had clasped a hand over Sophie’s mouth.  The
other arm was locked around her throat.  Still, she fought wildly, small
desperate sounds escaping.  She was kicking backwards, and he gave a grunt of
pain.

“Let her go!” Daniel yelled.  “It’s all over.”

Her captor wrenched her around so that her body shielded
him.  Above his hand, Sophie’s wild eyes found Daniel’s and never looked away.

“The hell it is!” Billington snarled.  “Back off.  I’ll
break her neck.”  The muscles in his arms knotted as he tightened them.

“Hurt her and you’re dead.”

“She’s dead if you don’t turn around right this minute and
go back the way you came.”

There wasn’t much room to maneuver here in the narrow cut
between knobby dunes.  Every time he took a step, Billington did, too. Daniel
didn’t have a shot.  Billington had wrenched Sophie up on tiptoe to make her a
better shield.  His shoulders were broader than hers, and glimpses of his head
came – but head shots were chancy.  And if he moved at the wrong moment..if she
moved…

She was still watching Daniel with something like trust.  He
met her gaze, tried to convey reassurance, and something more.

“Back away!  Do it now!”  Billington’s voice was rising in
panic.  He had to be sweating.  Maybe his hand was slippery.  He was trying to
drag Sophie backward, even though he risked losing some of the cover she
provided.

She didn’t struggle, but she didn’t cooperate, either.  She
had let herself become a dead weight.

“Bitch!” he screamed.

Daniel heard a wretching noise as that forearm tightened
inexorably.  He didn’t let himself get distracted.  Following, step for step,
never letting his weapon waver, he kept his eyes on Billington  Wait.  Wait.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement and a roar came from
the bastard, who dropped his hand from her mouth.  Daniel saw blood.  He also
saw that Billington was reaching behind himself. 
Weapon
, he thought,
with cold certainty.  The next moment, Sophie shoved an elbow backwards.  The roar
became a bellowed invective, and Sophie collapsed to the sand.

Daniel lunged right over her, his shoulder slamming into
Billington’s mid-section.  He went down, Daniel on top of him.

“My arm’s broken!  My arm’s fucking broken!”

Even so his body heaved and a fist connected with the side
of Daniel’s head.  He saw his moment and jammed the barrel of the Glock into
the bullish neck.  He growled, “So much as twitch, and you’re dead.”

Billington went utterly still, his face frozen in a rictus
of pain and fury.

     “Roll over.  That’s it.  Very carefully.”

The scum obeyed, his eyes burning with hate.  And there it
was, a handgun shoved in his waistband.  Daniel yanked it out and tossed it
aside.

And then, ignoring the screams of pain, he wrenched the
other man’s wrists behind him and cuffed him.

Rising above him, he groped for his phone and called for
backup even as he turned his head in search of Sophie.  She had stayed where
she’d fallen, but managed to sit up.  Her hair was tangled around her face. 
One cheek was misshapen and discolored, that side of her mouth swollen
grotesquely.  She looked dazed, disbelieving.

He said her name, hard and rough, and saw her try to smile.

“Honey, let’s not try to get that T-shirt over your head,”
the nurse advised.  Middle-aged, kind and sensible, she had become Sophie’s
best friend this past couple of hours at the E.R.  “It’ll be easier to wear the
hospital gown home. We’ll let you borrow one of our oh-so-beautiful blankets,
too, to keep you warm until…”

Daniel’s voice, loud and peremptory, penetrated even through
the closed sliding door and the curtain that maintained Sophie’s privacy. 
“Where is she?”  He sounded as if his patience had reached the snapping point.

The nurse’s eyebrows rose.  “Would that be your ride?” she
said in amusement, just as the door was thrust open and the curtain aside. 
Daniel filled the tiny room.

“That would be him,” Sophie got out, before the nurse
stepped back to let him take her place.

As if no one else was there, his gaze swept her, from her
heavily wrapped leg to the now-drippy ice pack she kept pressed to her cheek
and mouth.  His survey paused on every visible scratch, and his jaw got tighter
and tighter until she’d have sworn she could hear teeth grinding.

“He hurt you.”

“Except for the face,” she eased the ice away, “I did most
of the damage myself.”

He swore, then stepped even closer so that he could thread
his fingers into her hair to cradle her head.  “I’m sorry it took me so long to
get here,” he said in a low rumble.  “Booking him took a goddamn eternity.”

The sound of the glass door sliding closed made Sophie
realize they were alone now.

Her eyes closed for a moment.  On an exquisite sense of
relief, she tilted her head to rest against his big hand.  “I do know.  You
warned me.  It’s okay.  The doctor just barely finished with me.”

“Your leg broken?”

“No, just sprained.  Although I’m going to have to use
crutches for a few weeks.”  She hesitated, lifting her head so she could see
him.  She knew how he’d react.  “My cheekbone has a hairline fracture.  It may
be awhile before the swelling goes down.”

He growled something better left unheard but his embrace
stayed gentle.

“Um…where is he?”  She didn’t even want to say his name. 
Didn’t want to think about him, but she knew she’d have to, sooner or later.

“County jail.  It’s in North Fork.  One of the detectives
transported him for me.”

“He told me he killed my mother.”

“Yeah.”  Daniel cleared his throat.  “You said that.  We
have additional confirmation now.  The detective – Seth Holbeck – called to say
they got a pretty decent partial fingerprint off the back of the heart pendant
your mother wore.  No match in any database he ran, but once we printed
Billington, we all took a look.  I’m no fingerprint expert, but it was like two
cherries lining up.  We could all see it.”

“He could claim he found the necklace later.”

“Wouldn’t do him any good, not when he had all the other
jewelry, too.  We’ve already matched a couple of pieces up to victims.  How
would he have explained those?”  He shook his head.  “Doesn’t matter anyway. 
He’s a serial sexual predator and killer.  Maybe his first thought was to
recover the jewelry to protect himself, but I’m betting the minute he saw you,
he targeted you as his next victim.”

“He hasn’t admitted anything?”

Daniel grunted.  “Not yet.  Won’t surprise me if he does
later.  He’ll want to brag, or think he’s going to cut a deal.”

She shuddered.  “A deal?  If it’s true there were all those
other women, too?”

“Oh, he’s never going to walk out of prison even if he
doesn’t get the death penalty.”

Sophie finally voiced a thought that had stuck with her like
a burr since she understood the implications of the collection of jewelry in
the shoebox.  “Do you think he kept killing women?  I mean, other places he’s
lived?”

“I doubt he was capable of stopping,” Daniel said, his voice
harsh with the hideous knowledge.  “I alerted the FBI.  Agents are on their way
to interview him, and they’ll be searching his house in Beaverton.  I’m going
to bet they find mementoes there, too.”

How many women had died at Benjamin Billington’s hands?  It
was worse, now that she knew exactly how it happened.  How each of those women
had felt.

Run, Sophie.  Run.  There’s nothing better than a good
chase.

And then the high-pitched, excited way he’d called her name
as he pursued her through the fog.

Another shiver rattled her. 

“Damn,” Daniel said roughly.  He tugged the thin blanket up
to swaddle her.  “Is this all they’ve got?” he said in frustration.  “You’re
freezing.”

“No.”  She freed her hand from the cocoon to lay it over
his.  “I’m not that cold.  It’s thinking about him.”

“Don’t.”

“I need to.  Otherwise, I just wonder.”

Showing reluctant understanding, he sat on the edge of the
bed, his hip pressing hers, his gaze never leaving his face.  “What do you want
to know?”

“Is he really married?”

“Yeah.  His wife is in shock.”

“How could she not know?”

Daniel shook his head.  “Hard to imagine, but it’s not
uncommon for a really organized serial killer to present a fairly normal façade. 
They can be married, hold a job or own a business, have friends or at least
friendly acquaintances.”

“Be a nice, quiet neighbor who takes good care of his yard,”
she said softly.

“Yeah.”  He picked up the wet ice pack from where she’d set
it next to her on the bed and stretched his arm to deposit it on a metal,
rolling table.  “You said the doctor’s done with you.  Can we go home?”

“I’m just waiting for a prescription—”  At the sound of the
door, she peeked around him.

In no time, she was ready to go, all the belongings she had
arrived with in a drawstring-closed plastic bag.  Aghast, Sophie remembered her
messenger bag and laptop, but Daniel assured her both were locked in the trunk
of his car.  What’s more, since she’d left her keys in the ignition, he’d had
her Prius driven to his house, too.

“The laptop is what really matters,” she told him.  “I do
have a flashdrive, so I wouldn’t have had to quite start over, but I haven’t
backed up my work in days.”

Daniel gave a short, astonished laugh.  “Nothing stops you. 
You’re a stubborn woman, aren’t you?”

She tried to make a face at him, then made an involuntary
sound at the jab of pain.  “You’re just noticing?”

His smile was astonishingly tender.  “No, it’s come to my
attention before.  Here.”  He helped her slide off the bed, supporting her
weight until she sat in the wheelchair an orderly had rolled into the room. 
Her friendly nurse draped the white cotton blanket loosely around her, Daniel
carried her crutches and the bag with her clothes, and they were able to leave.

Of course it had become night while she was at the hospital,
but she was somehow startled anyway.  Stranger yet, the fog was gone, leaving a
clear, velvet black sky with the stars bright overhead.

When Daniel said ‘home’, he meant his house, not her rental
cottage.  Would he want her to stay here until she finished work on the
auction, or would he hint she return to the cottage?

Would there be an auction?

“He still owns the resort,” she blurted, as Daniel pulled
into his garage.

He turned off the engine and looked at her.  “It might get
complicated,” he conceded.

“He’ll need money to defend himself.  And…and he’s lost the
motivation to take less.  If he wanted the land preserved because that’s where
he buried the women.”

“I think that’s a given.”  Daniel sounded grim.  “We’ll
start searching tomorrow.”

“While I was trying to bury myself in the dunes, I thought—”

“That’s where they were?”  He shook his head.  “Winter
storms wash waves up that high, you know that.  Probably re-shape the dunes.  My
guess is the edge of the woods.  We’ll bring in ground-penetrating radar.”

“Would any resort still
want
to build there?”

“I can’t imagine.  Not in the foreseeable future, anyway.  I
suspect, if you can raise a decent amount of money, you’ll be able to buy the
land.  Given the fact that the property is tied to his crime, if he’s convicted
I doubt he’ll be allowed to make decisions regarding it.  I can’t promise,
but…”

She nodded, thinking about it.  How could the forest and
dunes and falling-down cabins across Mist River not be haunted?  She couldn’t
imagine resort hotels going up there, a parking lot being paved atop ground
that had once been the site of burials.  No.  Let nature take back what was
hers and heal it.

Sophie lifted her chin.  “There’ll be an auction.  We’ll
raise that money.  I swear we will.”

One side of Daniel’s mouth tilted up.  She’d never seen his
eyes so blue as now, when they searched her face.  “You’re really something,
Sophie Thomsen,” he murmured.  “And I want to kiss you, but it would hurt you
if I did, so let’s go in and get you comfortable.”

Realizing how many aches and pains she had, Sophie said
simply, “Please.”

*****

Letting an aide car take Sophie away while he remained at
the scene had been one of the hardest things Daniel had ever done.

By that time, other cops, city and county, swarmed the
resort, but it was his arrest, his jurisdiction.  He’d seen for himself that
Sophie’s injuries were relatively minor, although he had a bad feeling it was
going to be a long time before he was really convinced.  The hour or two after
he found out she’d been abducted had been hell on earth, as far as he was
concerned.

And now she was talking about going ahead with the auction
in a way that struck him as brisk and no-nonsense.  It was enough to bemuse
him.  He couldn’t decide if she really was that strong and determined, or
whether she was practicing avoidance.

Maybe a combination.

If she didn’t have nightmares tonight, he’d be astonished. 
One good thing - since she’d be in his bed, he would know if she had them and
be there to hold her.

Sometime in the last week, a whole lot of what he’d thought
he knew about himself and his future had shifted.  He wasn’t even surprised. 
The first time he set eyes on Sophie Thomsen, he’d felt something unfamiliar
and suspected she could endanger his certainties.  Turned out he’d never been
so right in his life.

What he wished he knew was whether her wariness with him had
evolved into emotions anywhere close to this powerful and important.

“Can you eat?” he asked, once he’d helped her change to her
own pajamas and had her settled on the sofa, cuddled under an afghan.

“Eating is going to hurt, isn’t it?  But I have to admit I’m
starved,” she admitted.

“Soup it is.”  He bent and kissed the top of her head.  “You
can drink it.”

He left her watching a mindless sitcom, but when he returned
with a tray, she used the remote to turn the TV off.

“Oh, that smells good,” she said eagerly, sitting up and
laboriously shifting her foot to the floor.

He set up a pair of folding wooden TV trays he’d almost
forgotten he had in a closet, and they ate side by side.  She drank two mugs of
the cream of tomato soup and savored a bowl of blueberry cheesecake ice cream. 
Her occasional hum of pleasure strained his self-control.  She made the same
sound in bed.  To hell with the ice cream, he thought, but knew he wouldn’t be
doing anything but holding her tonight, and maybe for several nights to come. 
Aside from her ankle and the original blow to her cheek, hard enough to knock
her out, she’d bumped her head and severely bruised her shoulder when
Billington dumped her out of the back of his Durango.  Then there were all
those other scrapes and bruises from crashing through the woods.  She didn’t
need his hands all over her.  It was too bad he’d never wanted so desperately
to put them on a woman as he did now.

“You’re quiet,” she said suddenly, and he turned his head to
see that she was watching him.

“It’s been a hell of a day.”

“There was the bank robbery, too,” she remembered.

He had trouble believing that had happened today.  It was on
the other side of a Grand Canyon – before he’d almost lost Sophie.

“I fired an officer this morning, too.”

She encouraged him, and he told her about it, then more
about the bank robbery.  “We were lucky to skate out of it with no one hurt. 
The idiot with the gun was nineteen and strung out.  He and a buddy were
camping on the beach a couple of miles south when he got this great idea.  The
buddy was hung over and not so enthusiastic, so our guy set off on his own
figuring, hey, small town bank, they’ll hand over a bag of money no problem,
only next thing he knew a law enforcement officer was walking in, right in the
middle of the stick-up.”

“I was scared,” she said quietly.  “For you, I mean.  I knew
if it looked like he was going to hurt the hostages, you might have to go in.”

He set his TV tray aside and reached for her.  She came into
his arms with a rush, as if she’d wanted the contact as much as he did.

Face buried in her hair, he said, “I had no idea it was
possible to be so scared.”  His voice was raw.

“You saved me.”

He had to swallow a huge lump in his throat.  “You did your
part.  We were stuck in a stand-off until you let him have it.”

Her arms gripped him so tightly, he knew she was remembering
the terror, but there was also satisfaction in her voice when she said, “He
loosened his hand just enough.  And then—  I don’t know what he was doing, but
he twisted a little and that gave me enough room to use my elbow.”

“He was reaching for his gun,” Daniel said flatly.

“Oh.”  She was silent for a moment.  “I guess I saw that,
after.  It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind.”

“With what happened to your mother?”

“A little.”  Tension seemed to shimmer through her body, and
he sensed she was thinking.  “Fog has given me the willies for years.  Ever
since.”  Her arms loosened and she sat back enough to tilt her face up.  “You
know.”