Tainted Mind (41 page)

Nick pulled to the side of the road, still a good distance from and out of sight of the barn. The others pulled up behind them.

Nick put a hand on her arm, stopping her from getting out. “Viv, luv, I don't think you're the right person to be going in there. If it's you he wants and you who sets him off, if you walk in there and aren't
able to hide your fear or feelings for Ian, it may set things in motion in a way you don't want it to.”

Vivi knew this, it was actually her worst fear right now—well her second-worst fear, her first being that Travis had already taken out his frustration on Ian. But it had to be her because she was pretty sure that, at this point, she was the only person who had any chance of reaching Travis. Once he understood that she and the entire team suspected him, he'd have nothing left to lose and she was hoping, that his feelings for her, no matter how warped, would slow him down enough that one of the others would have a chance to intervene.

“It has to be me and you know it. I know I'll be a sitting duck when I walk from here to the barn. I'll be out in the open and exposed. We don't know if he has a weapon, but we should assume he does and that he's not afraid to use it. I'll need you to cover me and lead the rest of the team. I won't be able to carry a weapon, because I don't want Travis to see me as a threat.”

Nick's jaw ticked. He didn't like it, but at this point, there was no other way.

“Fine,” he finally conceded. “But you don't go in until I get the others on the ground and in a position where they can assist if it comes to that.” They climbed out of the car and met the three officers. Motioning them all into a copse of trees, Nick started issuing orders. Nick would cover Marcus as Marcus scoped out the barn. Once they had a general idea of the layout, Nick would put folks in place and only then would Vivi be allowed to move toward the barn. The wait was torture, but she knew it was the right thing to do, for her and also for Ian.

Using a scope to look through a window, Marcus spotted Ian inside, lying on his side with his feet and hands bound. As this bit of news crackled softly over the radio, Vivi's stomach plummeted; it crashed even more when Marcus reported that Ian wasn't moving. Vivi forced a breath in and told herself he wasn't moving because he was tied up, not for any other reason. So focused on maintaining control over her own self, she didn't even notice that Nick had already processed Marcus's intel and positioned Carly and Wyatt.

“Give me forty-five seconds to get into position then start walking toward the barn,” he directed.

Vivi nodded at the order.

“And so help me god, do not let anything happen to you. MacAllister would never forgive me and, as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of like it here and wouldn't mind coming for a visit or two, which isn't as much fun when you're on the police department's shit list.”

Despite everything, a smile crept onto her lips. “Thanks, Nick.”

He gave her one last look, nodded, then vanished into the woods. Vivi glanced down at her watch and began to plan what she might say to the man she had played with as a child, the man she had grown up with and thought of as family. The man she now believed killed so many women because of her.

C
HAPTER
30

LYING ON THE PACKED DIRT FLOOR,
Ian's body felt twice its normal weight. Disjointed thoughts floated through his mind including an abstract awareness that his hands and feet were restrained. The various times and ways he'd used duct tape throughout his career flashed in random images in his head. He could feel the slow rhythm of his heart, much too slow to be healthy, and he could feel the familiar effects of a prescription painkiller.

Vaguely, he remembered drinking a flavored water Travis had given him in the car. He thought he'd pulled out his cell to call Vivienne, but couldn't say for certain. And he had no idea what had happened—or how much time had passed—between drinking the water, which must have been laced, and semi–waking up on the ground just now.

Some latent instinct from his days as a Ranger must have kicked in; he had managed to keep his breathing intentional and slow and he hadn't opened his eyes yet. Travis, if it was Travis who had done this, would likely think he was still unconscious. Ian wasn't sure what he was going to do about the situation—he wasn't thinking that clearly yet—but given that he was still alive, he was hoping that by playing dead he might stay that way long enough for the fog to clear.

“Vivi! What are you doing here?”

Travis's voice and, more to the point, his question, did more to focus Ian's mind than probably anything else could have.
Shit
, he had no idea why he was where he was, or what Travis had to do with the price of bread, but whatever it was, it wasn't good and he didn't want Vivienne anywhere near it.

“I'm looking for Ian,” she answered. Judging by their voices, the two were standing a bit away and maybe in another room. Choosing to take the risk, Ian cracked an eye. When he didn't see anyone, he opened both and tried to assess his situation. He was lying on the floor of what looked like a hay storage barn. Being spring, it was empty but, taking a deep breath, he recognized the scent of alfalfa and timothy hay.

There was a large door, and though it was open and Ian could see the field beyond, he couldn't see either Travis or Vivienne.

“I told you, I dropped him at the hospital, did you check there?” Ian heard Travis say.

That
didn't make much sense, but Ian figured he could sort that out later. What he needed to do now was focus on getting his hands free.

“I did check, he wasn't there, and, since you're here, I thought I would ask you. Since you know me so well, it shouldn't come as a surprise to see me here.”

Vivienne's voice sounded strained—terse but also nervous.

“Look, I apologized for snapping at you earlier, Vivi. Really, I'm sorry. It's just been a hard few weeks, is all. I'm not sure what to tell you about Ian,” Travis responded.

“Other than I don't know him all that well,” Vivienne said.

The conversation wasn't making any sense to Ian, but he was following it even as he did his best to work the duct tape against his cast in the hopes of starting a tear.

“Well, you don't, Vivi. You never do,” Travis countered.

“Have you noticed Travis, the only times we fight it's always either about someone I'm seeing or because I'm making a decision to do something you think I shouldn't?” Vivienne pointed out.

“We don't fight all that much, Vivi, so I don't get what you're trying to say.”

“I'd say, over the last eighteen years or so, we've had at least twenty-one fights. Is that about right, Travis?” Vivienne asked.

Ian froze.
Twenty-one
. That wasn't a number Vivienne had pulled out of her hat. That was the number of potential victims they'd identified. Ian began to double-time his efforts.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Vivi,” Travis hedged.

“I think you do, Travis. And I think I want to see Ian now. After all, you know me better than to think I'm going to walk away from this barn without seeing him.”

Ian felt the start of a tear in the tape as the two came into view. Vivienne was leading, and for a split second, his eyes met hers before he went limp and feigned unconsciousness.

“What did you do to him?” Vivienne's voice came closer to him as she spoke.

“Don't go near him, Vivi. I swear to god I will kill him.”

In that moment, Travis's voice went dead flat—no inflection, nothing. Just the monotone speech of a man speaking with disinterested certainty. Ian fought the urge to open his eyes and see how Travis planned to do the job. It was possible Vivienne was between him and Travis, but he couldn't be certain.

“With his own service revolver. Nice Travis. Very clever. And what did you do to him?” Her voice was coming closer to Ian as she spoke, and he had no doubt she was speaking more to feed him information than for any other reason. And then he felt her fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. “You drugged him, didn't you? Probably with the painkillers the hospital sent home with him, or something similar. Is that right?”

She was putting herself between him and Travis, and though he didn't want her there, he wouldn't have expected anything different. That was why it came as such a surprise when she stood and walked behind him, exposing both of them to Travis and his weapon.

“Don't touch him again, Vivi.” Travis issued an order, but his voice had changed again. It was thin and high-pitched, and to Ian it sounded on the verge of hysterical. And Vivienne calmly ignored him.

“I want to look at his hands, Travis. He had surgery a few days ago, and I'm a doctor, remember. You know me better than to think I wouldn't want to check on him. But I won't touch him.”

More than a few times, Vivienne had referred to how well Travis knew her. Ian didn't understand the reference at all, but it was beginning to sound ominous and a harbinger of something to come.

“He should be dead already, but the stupid bastard didn't drink enough of the water.”

Vivienne nudged Ian in the back with the tip of her shoe. “Oh, you didn't know? Ian has an unusually high tolerance for pain medication. Comes from back in the day when he was recovering from an IED attack. He was a Ranger you know. An excellent marksman, too.”

Vivienne's tone was goading Travis, but Ian sensed she was trying to tell him something, too. And when she nudged him in the back again, it clicked into place. Doing his best to keep the rest of his body still, he wiggled his fingers until he felt her ankle. And the gun in her holster.

“I swear to god, Vivi, I will shoot him if you don't move away,” Travis said.

“You're not going to shoot him while I'm standing here, Travis. After all, everything you've done, you've done for me, haven't you?”

A terrible silence fell across the barn. Even the birds seemed to stop chirping in the field.

“Not for you, Vivi.
Because
of you.”

Ian knew in that instant that Travis had reached the point Vivienne referred to as devolved. His voice was shaking and, though Ian hadn't opened his eyes, he had no problem picturing Travis's expression: tight, white, and livid.

“Because I know you, and you—you don't seem to ever even
see
me,” he continued. “You never call me, you never listen to me, you never ask my opinion. And when I offer it, you never give it any credit. You never stop by and visit. You, the perfect specimen, top of your class in everything you do. You are so caught up in yourself that you never—” Travis cut himself off, but Vivienne finished his statement.

“I never noticed that you were in love with me. That you wanted me the way a man wants a woman.”

“I don't,” Travis spat.

“You do. And when you can't have me or when I do something that takes me completely out of your life, you look for a substitute you can control. Another woman you can take out your anger and frustration on. At least twenty-one times since I turned seventeen, Travis. Twenty-one women you've tortured and killed because I treated you like family.”

Vivienne's voice had a calm certainty to it that almost, but didn't quite, hide the sorrow Ian knew she was feeling. Sadness for the victims, but also for what this would do to her family.

Ian's fingers closed around the gun. He opened his eyes to see Travis raising his weapon, his hand eerily steady for someone so close to the edge.

“I was going to make it look like he'd killed himself, succumbed to his PTSD and all that shit. Now, I guess I'll have to make it look like murder-suicide.”

It was such a preposterous statement that it, more than anything, told Ian how far into his own mind Travis had gone. Making himself believe things that couldn't ever be true.

“You know that's not how it's going to work, Travis.” Vivienne responded. “You've left enough DNA in this barn that you may as well post a neon sign proclaiming your guilt. Not to mention that you can't possibly believe I came here on my own.”

“Vivienne,” Ian warned. With every word out her mouth, every word that reminded Travis of just how beneath him she was, Travis was raising his weapon higher and higher. But he paused when Ian spoke and his eyes darted down. With a clear head and a clear sight, Ian met and held his gaze. Vivienne's small gun was in his hand and Ian knew he had a clear shot, but he was also certain that if Travis was good enough to shoot the tire of his Jeep, he was good enough to get off at least one shot before Ian had the chance to fire.

“Naomi has already placed you and Ian in real time in this barn together. I told Nick everything on my way here. He'll call Lucas and execute a search warrant on your home. What will they find? What trophies did you take from all those women, Travis?

“Vivienne.” Ian's tone was short; Vivienne was going too far. Travis was clearly on the edge and Vivienne kept pushing.

“Nothing,” Travis exploded. “They won't find anything. What would I want with them when I was done?” he demanded. “They weren't you. They were nothing but cheap imitations. Oh, for a moment, for one tiny moment, I could pretend they were you and everything was as it should be. But then I'd open my eyes and see them. See them for who they really were. Just little fakes, pretending to be you.”

“And that made you angry.” Ian finally understood the dangerous game Vivienne was playing. Until this point, until she'd pushed him to this point, he hadn't actually admitted to doing anything other than to drug him. As a Ranger he hadn't needed to think about things like evidence and prosecution. As a seasoned law enforcement officer, Vivienne knew otherwise. Every bit of information they collected now would help build the case against Travis. Of course, if he ended
up with a good lawyer, he'd plead insanity, but Ian knew Vivienne wasn't going to plan for that. She wanted evidence. She wanted a confession.

“Of course it made me angry,” Travis erupted. “They weren't you. How could they possibly be you?” Suddenly Travis dropped his hand, and Ian watched as the man deflated in front of them. “How could anyone possibly compare to you, Vivi?”

Ian knew the sad, lost look in Travis's eyes made Vivienne pause. He glanced up in her direction and saw her own sadness reflected in her eyes. This whole situation was almost more than she could handle. On top of everything else she'd gone through in this last year, she'd now been betrayed by someone she loved and told that she was the reason twenty-one women were dead. Ian wanted to reach out and hold her, pull her close to him, and take her away from it all. But with the gun in his good hand, he settled for wrapping the tips of his other fingers around her ankle. It was all he could do without risking alarming Travis.