The Avenger (23 page)

He slipped behind the armoire and adjusted the camera. Then he lighted the red tapers and placed them around the room. The candles weren't necessary in the daylight, but he thought they enhanced the seduction scene. "A few more minutes. We want everything to be just right."

He smiled down at the petite blonde. She wasn't nearly as attractive as the redhead who was the star of his film escapade last night, but Buffy's surgical augmentation made up the difference. What kind of mother saddled her daughter with a name like Buffy, anyway? He grinned. Two women in less than twenty-four hours was a spectacular record.

The woman lay partially clothed on the bed, her legs artfully arranged for maximum sensuality. Her bikini panties wrapped around one ankle, and her bra pushed up to reveal the fake fleshy breasts with their dainty areolas. Her head rolled to one side, her mouth open unbecomingly.

Ted frowned, walked around the bed, and pushed the slack jaw shut. "There, that's better." He smirked and readjusted the angle of the camera. His erection bulged against his pants. "Much, much better."

When he was satisfied with the artistry of his production, he returned to the bed and gazed down at the semi-conscious girl. "What was it you said, Buffy? Oh, right, you wanted to have a good time. I think you said, 'A night to remember.' The night's long gone, but I find a little afternoon delight just as memorable."

He unbuttoned his shirt. "Did you know the phrase 'a night to remember' was the title of a book? About the sinking of the Titanic? No, probably not."

He tossed the shirt on the floor. "It's the story of an unsinkable ocean liner that hit an iceberg and plummeted to the bottom of the ocean." He looked down at himself and laughed. "I'm quite unsinkable, too, don't you think?" He unsnapped his jeans and chuckled quietly. "I don't know how much you'll remember, but this delight will be an unforgettable experience for me."

He smiled and trailed his hand up her thigh.

Removing the last of his clothing, he knelt between the girl's outstretched legs, positioning himself comfortably between her thighs. He brushed the tangled hair from her face. "You're going to really enjoy this, sweetheart. Even if you don't remember a thing."

Fully aroused, he began a frenzied suckling of her breast, his engorged erection pressed against her bare flesh.

Suddenly a thunderous crash resounded from below, and he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps tromping up the stairs.

Oh, fuck!

#

Jack's visions were careening out of control.

Usually his visions channeled through the eyes of the man he hunted, but sometimes the victim or a third person provided the conduit. Whose head had he been inside in this latest vision? The killer? His victim? Or someone watching the killer?

He didn't know if his overloaded brain circuits or the transposed sensory images caused the confusion. But he was certain of one thing – he'd seen a red-haired girl, not a brunette, with her attacker.
The killer?

Last night, he believed, not this afternoon, but he couldn't be sure. Not Olivia, he thought, not with the hideous hair color. His pulse raced with dread that he might be wrong.
Pray God, not Olivia.

While Jack waited for the reverse address information to come on his laptop, Slater knocked on the guest house door. Jack waved him into the kitchen, eyed him thoughtfully, and thought it was time to come clean with the man who'd once been like a brother to him.

Slater was a man driven by reason rather than instinct. A man of rational thought would have a hard time believing someone could change physically like Jack had in such a short time. Even with the explanation of the special designer drugs pumped into his body, Slater would scoff at the idea.

"I need to talk to you about ... about what happened when I left," Jack began. By the time he finished fifteen minutes later, Slater was pacing the living room, looking agitated and horrified. "Damn it, Jack! We all thought you were dead. I heard your foster parents got a death certificate from Texas."

He threw himself into a kitchen chair. "I can't ... I don't understand it."

"You were meant to think I was out of your life. Permanently. They didn't want anyone to come looking for me."

"Shit," Slater said, jumped up and began his pacing. "Shit, shit."

"Invictus held me in isolation three months, used me as their own private guinea pig, told me I was unique."

Jack remembered the white-walled, clinical cell and the endless questions and interviews, the blood draws, the x-rays, and the recently developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the MRI. The incessant psychological and endurance tests.

"When they finished with me, I understood who I was, what I had to do, where my future lay. I couldn't go back."

A pregnant pause dominated the kitchen for long moments.

Finally Slater said, "That story's too damn bizarre to be made up."

Jack felt dizzy with relief. Olivia had believed him. Slater believed him now.

He took a few minutes to explain his unexpected "lead" and offered the name that'd just come through from the reverse directory. A man named Theodore Burrows had just jumped to the top of the suspect list.

Slater frowned. "You want to explain how you came up with this lead?"

"Nope," Jack said calmly. "You probably don't want to know."

"Figures."

As they walked to his truck, Slater glanced across the top of the truck and spoke without inflection. "Jack, if you hurt her again, I'll kill you."

Jack didn't answer. What would he say to that? After a moment he spoke quietly. "I'd like you to have a deputy check at her house. Can you do that?"

"I guess you're not explaining that either."

"Just a gut feeling. I'm probably wrong."

Slater used his shoulder mike to order Waylon Harris to drive to Olivia's house.

They arrived at the Sacramento address of Burrows thirty minutes after the call to Harris. Slater had a judge who owed him a favor and agreed to a no-knock wire warrant. Jack wouldn't have followed protocol even without the warrant. Not when he couldn't be sure Olivia was safe.

"On three," Jack said, taking the lead as they hovered at the front door of 2776 Mitchell, their weapons drawn. He gestured for Slater to take the backup position behind him. On three, Jack turned the door knob. It was locked. He waited fifteen seconds, kicked in the door, and let Slater go in low, while Jack wrapped himself around the entryway. Left, then right.

"Clear."

"Upstairs." Slater indicated with his head toward the staircase.

Jack raced up the staircase two steps at a time, reaching the landing seconds before Slater. He nodded toward a room at the far end of the hallway where a reddish glow emanated from the partially-open door. He pointed with his left hand, keeping his gun hand firmly wrapped around the handle.

If Burrows was in the house, he would have heard them by now, but they crept carefully forward anyway. Slater nudged the door open with the barrel of his gun, placing his body to the right of the door frame. Jack slowly pushed the door open wider.

He saw the woman first. Confusion froze him for a second. Not a redhead, but a blonde. This girl was a new conquest, and that meant Burrows had been with another woman last night, a redhead. Not Olivia.

The blonde appeared unconscious or dead as she lay on the bed, her legs and arms spread in a grotesque caricature of obscenity. The man sprawled between the girl's legs sprang off the bed, stumbling onto the carpet in a comical parody of the cheating husband. Jack would've laughed if the situation hadn't been so revolting.

Slater checked the woman's vitals and called the EMTs. Jack kept his weapon carefully trained on the man he presumed was Theodore Burrows. "Got a strong pulse," Slater said.

Burrows' handsome face twisted in protest. "Hey, man, she's not dead. We're just having a little fun. Private fun," he added growing bolder. "You have no right – "

Slater growled, "A warrant's our right, asshole."

Jack picked up a pair of pants from the floor and tossed them to Burrows. "Get dressed. You look pathetic."

Slater lifted one of the woman's eyelids. "She's got a pulse, but I can't rouse her." He reached for a blanket lying next to the bed and covered the woman, then turned toward Burrows who was struggling to get into his jeans. "You drugged her, you bastard."

"No man, no way. She's into this kind of thing. I promise." He gestured toward the unconscious girl. "This is what she wanted."

"Oh, she asked you to drug and rape her?" Jack holstered his gun and jerked Burrows' right arm around his back, twisting harder than necessary. Then he yanked the other arm around and handcuffed him.

"Ow, man, take it easy."

The familiar stripping away of human emotion descended on Jack, the animal preparing to hunt with a deadly, calculated purpose. He batted the feeling away, strained to hold on to his humanity in the face of a punk-ass reprobate like Theodore Burrows.

He shoved the man into a chair next to a large mahogany cabinet.

"Shut up." Jack leaned forward, withdrew his weapon, and dangled it carelessly in front of him, piercing his captive with a hard look. "Where is she?" he asked on a hunch.

"Where is who?"

"The redhead."

"Burrows frowned and began shaking his head. "I don't know what you – "

"Shh." Jack softened his voice. "Here's how this is going to go, Teddy-boy. You're going to tell me where the other girl is." He smiled grimly. "And then I won't bust both your knee caps."

"Hold on, Jack," Slater said. "There's something over there." He walked closer and peered around the back of the cabinet. "It's a red ... what the hell?" He examined the unit and retrieved the camera hidden behind the console. "It's still operating." He pointed toward the bed where the unconscious girl lay. "Take a look at where the lens is aimed."

Slater pulled the camera out of the cabinet. "Well, what have we here? Looks like Mr. Burrows is into the whole art photography scene."

"You've been videoing her?" Jack clamped down on the instinct to rip the man's throat out with teeth and claws.

Burrows darted his tongue out to moisten his dry lips. "I haven't done anything illegal."

"Maybe, maybe not." Jack heard the sirens wailing in the distance. Then the subsequent slamming of feet through the downstairs.

"Upstairs," Slater yelled to the paramedics.

Jack turned back to Burrows. "You'd better hope nothing shows up in the girl's bloodstream, Teddy. GHB, Rohypnol, whatever you used to subdue her hasn't passed through her system yet, and toxicology will find it."

"I want a lawyer," Ted demanded, narrowing his eyes.

"Good move," Jack snarled, dragging him from the chair and shoving him towards the bedroom door. "You sure as hell are gonna need one."

Within a short time, the ambulance had stabilized the drugged woman and transported her to Sutter General Hospital in downtown Sacramento. Slater dispatched a squad car to transport Burrows to the county jail.

"I thought he had Olivia," Jack confessed as they watched the ambulance pull away. He slid a glance sideways at Slater who stood on the front steps of Burrows' house.

"She's probably safe at home in bed."

Jack stared at the cloudy sky. "Yeah, she wasn't ever here. I've been running down the wrong lead. Burrows isn't the UNSUB, but it doesn't mean he's innocent."

"Hell, no," Slater rejoined. "I figure we've got any number of charges to bring him up on." He slanted a knowing look at Jack. "And you're not going to tell me about some redhead, are you?"

"Nothing to tell," Jack said.

The raid had been an absolute fiasco as far as the DLK case was concerned. But if not Burrows, then who the hell was the Dead Language Killer? Were Jack's visions failing him?

He thought back to the interview Isabella Torres and Olivia had with Diego Vargas. Torres was convinced Vargas was capable of that kind of violence, but that didn't make him Jack's suspect. No physical or circumstantial evidence tied the Councilman to the DLK, and Jack couldn't rely on an ADA's instincts.

The two-way radio jangled as Slater pushed Burrows into the waiting patrol car. He jabbed the mike key.

"Chief?" Waylon Harris' voice over the radio sounded rattled. "Dr. Gant's not here, sir. The house is empty."

He knew before Slater spoke that something had happened to Olivia.

God, he should've paid attention to the fleeting warning he'd had about her, Jack thought. Panic rippled through him. Where was she?

"We're on our way," Slater said, turning to Jack. "Check the university. She might've left without Waylon seeing her."

But Jack was sure the sharp-eyed Harris wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.

Chapter Twenty-two

Slater and Jack jumped in the truck and drove the scant seven miles to Olivia's house while Jack tried calling her cell and the university office phone. No one had seen her since she left school last night. She'd missed her morning classes. Minutes later they stood on the neatly clipped lawn at the front of her house and stared at the brick façade of the outside walls. The ivy curled charmingly over the red and gray stones toward the second floor.

During the perimeter walk Harris showed them the unlocked back door, but when they searched the house from top to bottom, they found nothing to indicate foul play. Although the bed was unkempt, nothing seemed out of place.

Only the unsecured back door.

"She would've locked up," Jack said. He turned to Harris. "You're sure the door was like this?"

"Yes sir, I knocked at the front and when I got no answer, I went around to the back, tried the knob first ... uh, you know ... I didn't want to damage Dr. Gant's ... "

"Thanks, Harris, we'll take it from here," Jack said, effectively dismissing the deputy.

Inside the house, Slater stood in the kitchen looking around thoughtfully. "We'll do another sweep. See if we missed anything the first time through."

"Yeah." Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, his gun dangling by his side. What next? He holstered his weapon and noted the slight tremble of his hand. He glanced quickly at Slater. He'd noticed too.