The Avenger (22 page)

A kaleidoscope of images whirled in his thoughts, but nothing made sense yet. His human-mind wasn't prepared to dissect the dream. His animal-mind couldn't. He couldn't tell yet whose sight he was about to invade. The killer? His victim? A third party?

Jack downed more red pills, sprawled on his back, and stared at the stars until his eyelids drooped once again. This time he smelled the enemy before he heard or saw him. His nostrils filled with rotting decay and he exhaled sharply like a dog wheezing out a bad scent. Then he heard a bestial growl as he sniffed out the trail.

Himself or his prey?

He felt the hideous intent of the killer. Tasted the thick desire that spurred him on. Smelled the lust that propelled his dark needs. Then he saw a man peer through a peephole, light candles, adjust a camera lens. He glimpsed the border of a red ripple of cloth. Through the man's eyes, he descended concrete steps in a fast gallop, opened a car door. Saw a pretty redhead with pale, freckled skin that glowed in the evening light. Heard a muffled word. "Baby?"

And saw the front of a house, the lighted number clearly visible – 2776.

But what street? Turn, damn it, Jack mouthed silently to the man whose mind he now inhabited. Pass a mirror. Cast a reflection. Let me see your face.

But the man rushed into the house carrying the pale-skinned girl, her fiery curls dangling down his back. Jack could feel the slight weight of her, how easily she flopped over his shoulder, how supple and pliant her body was. As he passed the entryway, he glanced down, saw the envelopes lying on the wooden surface of a half-circle table. Yes, there!

Occupant, 2776 Mitchell Avenue
.

Now he passed the table and climbed the stairs, entered a bedroom and deposited the girl on sheets the color of spilled wine.

Spilled wine.
He jerked out of the vision. Something else, he thought, not the red-headed girl. Why did the image of spilled wine strike such terror in him? He saw deep-piled carpet, a dark red stain. Momentarily the image vanished and Olivia stood at an open door, her perfect mouth a round oval of surprise. He sensed her surprised gladness and then ... darkness.

A threat to Olivia?
But he could see nothing else through the black-out curtain of his mind. The image remained stubbornly hidden.

Instead, the original vision returned and he felt eager carnality as he stared down at the helpless redhead. The man's lechery rippled through Jack. A white, hot flame erupted in his head, pierced his right eye with a jolt that roused him awake. He clutched the side of his temple, dug the heels of his hand into the eye socket, and writhed on his bed roll until the pain eased.

He jerked upright, his body clammy with sweat even though the night temperature had fallen again. Shivering, he pulled a jacket over his shoulders. When he was half-way warm, he crouched again at the water's edge and drank his fill, then returned to camp and climbed into his bedroll, hoping for another vision.

Nothing happened. In the morning he packed up his gear and set off on the long walk back to the clearing at the base of the mountain where he'd parked the Blazer.

Someone was in danger.
But he had no way of knowing who, how, or even when
.

As he hiked down the mountain, he had plenty of time to think about how he'd gotten himself into the mess of Invictus life.

Graduation night nearly twenty years ago. The sheer shock of returning to the Morse house only to find Roger's body had gone. The broken beer bottle gone, not even a shard left on the steps. The puddle of blood from his laceration gone, not even a stain on the cement sidewalk.

His seventeen-year old self had stood dazed and wide-eyed at the spot where a half hour before the broken body had lain. Jack remembered thinking that he must've been wrong. That he
hadn't
heard the loud snap of the neck, that he
hadn't
been strong enough to kill a man nearly twice his size, and that in a drunken stupor, Roger had stumbled back into the house.

Cautiously, Jack had pushed open the door and crept inside.

He counted at least five of them.

Burly figures dressed in black gear with masked faces and armed with some bad ass kind of guns that Jack couldn't identify but knew instinctively were deadly enough to blow a giant hole in him. Instinct made him turn and run, but two of them blocked his escape. He felt a sharp prick at his neck and then ... nothing.

That was the beginning, Jack thought, of a long descent into the murky realm of Invictus.

Now, fueled by the insight of his latest dream and the possible address of the killer, Jack stowed his gear into the rear of the Blazer and started to climb into the vehicle. At that moment another vision slammed unexpectedly into his brain, doubling him over with pain. He fell to his knees and clutched his temples.

Olivia.
Olivia, bruised and bloody and cold. Scrabbling barefoot on gravel and mud. Pitch black night. He swiped at the sweat on his forehead. Olivia was in trouble, but where and how? God, was the image past or future or present?

He must've blacked out for several minutes for when he roused himself, the slice of agony in his head had subsided to a dull throb. He slid behind the wheel, dazed by the multiple visions and their confusing implications. The first visions had given him an address. Whose? The Dead Language Killer's? Had Olivia somehow been caught up with the killer?

As Jack drove the forty miles from the foothills, the address he'd seen in his dream-vision thrummed through his mind:
Occupant, 2776 Mitchell.
He made a decision. This part of the mission belonged to him alone. He saw no point in sharing the information with Slater. The visions were iffy at best and the address could mean a lot of things – a benign slice of the present, a memory from the past, or the killer's address. As yet he had no idea.

When he reached the base of the mountains, the sun had long ago pushed its pinkness over the Sierra Nevadas. Arriving at Slater's guest house, he grabbed his laptop and went straight to work. He waited impatiently for the address check to come through the reverse directory.

Chapter Twenty-one

When the world righted itself again, Olivia opened her eyes. She was cold. Her hips were numb. Pitch surrounded her. Thunder rushed through her temples and lingered as a throbbing pain behind her eyelids. Her shoulders ached as if someone had tried to jerk her arms out of their sockets. She realized she was bound to a hard folding chair, her arms tied behind her.

As the black shadows sharpened into gray shapes, she had a sense of a wide open space. A breeze slid over her bare arms and legs with ghostly fingers. She tried to rub her forehead, but her arms pulled against the restraints. She shuffled her feet. They were free.

The light weight of her bedtime clothing reminded her that she'd gone to her back door to answer a knock she'd thought was Jack's. She'd flung open the door without checking. A bright light had flashed in her eyes right before the crushing blow to the side of her head.

Stupid, stupid. How could she have been so careless?

Tears stung her eyes. Stop that, she scolded silently.
Stay calm. Think.

Where was she? Who had taken her? Why?

Her mind raced to the meeting with Councilman Vargas, and she remembered the hot fury in his eyes and the cold disregard of his henchman Santos. She shuddered.

A ray of light suddenly gleamed through a slit that opened to her right. She bit down on her lip and fought against the urge to scream.

"Good. You're awake."

The realization of whose voice spoke through the dark momentarily calmed her.
Bill!
She almost felt relieved that it was her quick-tempered ex-husband. He had never hurt her – never
hit
her before. Verbal abuse was his forte.

What did he want? Did he actually think he could get away with kidnapping? Her heart beat double time in her chest. Bill always claimed he loved her, but beneath his ardor was a possessive desperation that unnerved her.

She realized no one knew where she was. Jack was gone and she wouldn't be missed at school until late morning at the earliest, possibly longer. Terror bubbled up inside her, choking her. She tapped it down hard, fighting the urge to struggle against her bindings. Bill would smell her fear and enjoy it. She knew instinctively that it would arouse him. Lifting her eyes to the light, she squinted and stared toward the sound of his voice.

"Always so calm, so in control," Bill taunted. "But not in charge right now, huh, babe?"

She heard the quiet tread of his steps moving closer and finally saw the shadowy outline of his bulk in the doorway's light. In his hand he held an object that glinted as he swung it idly back and forth. A knife, for God's sake?

The trembling started in her jaw, worked its way downward to her shoulders, and ended in her bare knees which knocked gently against one another. She told herself it was the chill of the vast, unheated room, but she knew better. Her heart sped around inside her chest like the rapid beating of a new-born infant.

What was he going to do with the knife?

"Nothing to say, Olivia?" Bill knelt in front of her and placed one hand on the inside of her knee.

His mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile and his lips were slack with lust. She clenched her jaw and willed her thighs to stop trembling. She reminded herself that Bill would feed on her fear. His eyes were round dark holes in a fleshy face. She smelled the liquor heavy on his breath. Glaring at him through the darkness, she summoned up anger, imagined her thumbs grinding into those empty pits.

His fingers inched up her leg. "You should have been nicer to me when we were married, Olivia." His voice hardened and he pinched the tender flesh of her inner thigh.

She bit her lip to hold back a cry of pain.

Without warning, he stood and walked around to the back of the chair. He rested his hand on her shoulder and toyed with her hair, tangling his fingers in her curls. Not seeing him made her feel more vulnerable.

She inhaled the astringent odor of the cheap cologne that he'd always saturated himself with. His hot breath was at her ear, his lips moist. "You act so coy, so frigid, so virginal. But you're a whore." He grabbed her hair with a vicious tug and pulled her head back. "A slut!" he spat and released her with a jerk.

Unexpectedly, the door banged open and a wider slash of light streamed into the room. The knife pressed into her neck. "Make a sound and I'll slit your throat," Bill growled close to her ear.

A series of noises, shuffling feet and the sound of boxes or crates being shoved around. No one appeared to see Bill and her, and she realized they were hidden in the shadows.

"You're mine, Olivia," Bill whispered. "You'll always be mine. If you're screwing that man who left your house tonight, I'll kill you both."

Olivia knew with certainty that Bill had it in him to hurt her. Viciously. A beating? Rape? His grip on her hair squeezed involuntary tears from the corners of her eyes, and twisted her neck back. He ground his lips into hers. She tasted blood from the jab of his teeth, felt the ugly thrust of his tongue inside her mouth.

He lifted his lips from hers and stared over her head, panting with arousal. "You're mine," he said again, "and if I can't have you, no one can." He gripped her jaw in one hand and squeezed viciously. "This isn't over yet."

The sound of voices grew louder. Olivia realized this was her last chance and opened her mouth to scream. Without warning, Bill's hand slashed through the air, and the night curtained around her brain again.

She roused long enough to remember being carried and dumped in the back seat of a car. When she woke, perhaps some minutes later, she was blindfolded again, her wrists tied in front of her this time. She felt the smooth pursuit of the tires on pavement. He was taking her somewhere else. Was he going to kill her and dump her body in some god-forsaken place? Bill was vicious, but pragmatic. Wouldn't her death create an investigation that pointed toward him, the ex-husband?

After some time, the car slammed unexpectedly to a halt. Olivia lurched forward against the seat. The back door opened and he dragged her from the car, flung her to the ground where rough cement scraped her bare knees. She balanced herself on one elbow while silence reigned for several long moments.

This was it then. He was going to kill her.

Seconds before she heard the growl at her ear, she smelled his hot breath. "You can go now, you little whore," he taunted, "but I'll be back. You remember that I'm just as far away as your next nightmare."

A few moments later, she heard the slamming of the car door and the soft whirring of an electric window. Olivia didn't move for long minutes, certain he'd return and finish what he threatened. When her wrists lost feeling and her shins burned, she stumbled to her feet. Working the blindfold with her bound hands, she gradually loosened the fabric until it dangled around her neck. When she glanced down at her flimsy clothes and bare feet, she burst into frustrated tears.

At last the weeping segued into deep breaths and then subsided into hiccups. When she gained control of her emotions, she glanced around to get her bearings.

Bill had driven her to the dark underbelly of the freeway, where concrete roads and supporting beams criss-crossed above her. She could hear the roar of traffic above her head. So close, but so far from where she stood in the muddied tangle of debris hidden beneath the overpass. She tugged at her wrist bindings for some minutes, but finally realized they only tightened with the struggle. With determination, she turned toward the freeway and awkwardly climbed up the incline toward the freeway. Her feet made slippery purchase on the moist dirt, and with her hands tied, she lost her balance and slid to the bottom.

The rushing of vehicles thundered at warp speed all around her.

#.

"Hold still, sweetheart," Ted Burrows said, even though he knew the pretty blonde coed was too far gone to hear him.