The First Victim (22 page)

He laughed at her. “Loser!”

Eyes. Nose. Throat. Groin. Eyes. Nose. Throat. Groin.

She switched her grip on the can, so that she was holding it like a knife, and jammed it right into his throat.

Gasping in pain, he loosened his grip on her hair. She kneed him in the groin, and he let go altogether. Moving quickly, she headed for the window. Despite his injuries he followed closely behind.

When she’d been a little kid, she’d liked to climb out on the parapet that stretched below her window. For the first time, she was glad of her father’s penchant for excess. While the parapets looked foolish on a lake house, they might just offer her a means of escape. She clambered outside, as he reached for her. Arms outstretched like an acrobat in a high-wire act, she tentatively picked her way toward the large oak tree that almost reached the house. The tree was old and strong. If she could jump onto its branches, she hoped it could support her weight.

She heard him coming after her, his breathing labored, his footsteps heavy, but she didn’t dare to look back. She kept moving forward, toward freedom. She led him farther and farther away from the girls.

Bailey was breaking the glass of the kitchen door, when he heard the gunshot. His heart stopped, but his body kept moving. Blindly he fumbled for the handle of the door, unlocked it and swung the door open. Weapon drawn, he raced through the house toward the sound of splintering furniture.

At the top of the stairs, Chase was attempting to wrestle to the floor a man who looked a lot like Bailey’s dad. Animalistic rage contorted Oliver O’Neil’s features, an expression Bailey had witnessed all too often on his own father. He was gaining the advantage in the hand-to-hand combat with the older FBI agent.

Unable to get a clear shot, Bailey holstered his gun and ran up the steps, not even pausing to check on Sebastian who lay slumped against the stairs, his shirt soaked with blood.

Using the potent mixture of anger, fear and shame that coursed through him, he tackled his uncle with a bone-jarring crunch. Oliver tried to scramble away, but Bailey held on to him.

“Where is she? Where’s Emily?” he shouted, shaking the older man so hard that the back of his skull bounced against the floor.

“Stop!” Chase, having staggered to his feet, tugged at Bailey’s arms, trying to get him to release his grip. “Let him go. If you kill him we’ll never find her.”

Bailey shrugged the other man off him, determined to make Oliver talk. He could see the fear in his uncle’s eyes.

“Bailey! Bailey, this isn’t how you do things!” Chase reminded him, breathless from his exertions.

Bailey hesitated. He’d always taken pride in the fact that he had control over his emotions and that the O’Neil family temper had never gotten the best of him, but in this moment, with the woman he loved in mortal danger, he was about to explode.

Disappointed with himself, with the man he’d almost become, he loosened his grip.

“Cuff him,” Chase urged.

Oliver offered no resistance as Bailey flipped him to lie face-first on the floor, yanked his wrists behind him and snapped on a pair of handcuffs.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Chase limp over to his partner. “I’m calling an ambulance. I’ll keep an eye on the suspect. You go find the sisters. He came out of the second room on the right.”

Bailey looked to where Chase was pointing. Emily’s room. Of course, with all the locks on the door, she would have thought it the safest place in the house.

Pulling his service weapon out, he crept down the hall, hoping against hope he wasn’t too late.

Gun drawn, he burst into her room, but there was no one there. Hearing a sound in the closet he swung his weapon in that direction. “Come out with your hands up!”

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The voice was definitely young and female.

“Anna, is that you?” Relief flooded through him. She was still alive!

Metal scraped against metal and the door slowly swung open, revealing Laurie and Anna huddled on the closet floor. Anna brandished a can of pepper spray.

“It’s okay, girls. You’re safe.” Realizing Emily wasn’t in the closet too, Bailey asked. “Where’s Emily?”

Lowering the spray, Anna looked toward the open window. “She led him away.”

“She said to tell you the frog would protect her.” Laurie’s lower lip quivered and tears streamed down her face.

The Snack Shack. The only other place she felt safe. Bailey spun back around. “I know where she is.” He just didn’t know if he could get there in time.

That fucking bitch!

He was going to kill her.

He was going to enjoy killing her.

He was going to enjoy killing her more than he’d ever enjoyed killing anyone.

Ever.

Even more than he’d enjoyed killing his own grandmother. He’d just killed
her
to shut her up. He’d liked her screams the best.

He’d thought he liked the fight in Emily Wright, but now he wasn’t so sure. It was not part of the plan to go chasing after her in the dark. It was definitely not part of the plan to jump into a tree while two stories up, but he couldn’t let her get away.

He had to have her.

He had to own her.

He had to be the one to snuff out her life.

“I’m coming for you, Emily! You can run and hide, but you’ll never get away from me!”

The branches clawed at her body, and the rough bark tore at her skin when Emily launched herself into the tree. She was falling, bouncing from limb to limb, desperately reaching for something to hold on to. Everything was slipping through her fingers. Miraculously, she teetered for a long moment on a particularly sturdy limb and was able to get her balance. She lay there for a long moment, trying to catch her breath, but a crash from above told her he was closing in on her. She swung herself lower and lower on the tree, ripping her hands open in the process. If she could just get her feet on the ground, she could run. She was a runner. She would be able to get away.

She dropped the last few feet to the ground, ready to take off. She hadn’t counted on the acorns. Her feet slipping out from under her she wrenched her ankle, and fell to the ground. Scrambling to get away, she stood up, and immediately fell down again, getting the wind knocked out of her.

Looking up, she saw him climbing down the tree. She hauled herself upright.

She limped, ignoring the pain that threatened to cripple her, down the path that led toward the lake. It was her only escape route. He’d catch her if she tried taking the road to the Snack Shack. She had to keep moving. She had to get him far away from her sister. She’d run marathons. She could deal with a little discomfort. Her body could handle this. She’d been training for this race for half her life. She could beat him.

The tree cover made the now-unfamiliar path pitch-black. Emily stumbled down it, falling a few times, but refusing to stop moving. He was getting closer. She could hear his footsteps which were even louder than her pounding heart approaching.

She pushed herself to go farther. Faster. Her old mantra came back to her, and she started saying it under her breath. “I am not going to die. I am not going to die.”

The path was getting lighter. She must be getting near the end. “I am not going to die. I am not going to die.”

The lake came in sight, reflections rippling like silver droplets on the surface. Stumbling across lawns and docks she raced toward the Snack Shack, knowing that if she could make it there, she’d be safe.

Finally she hit the sand of the public beach. The finish line was in sight. She could make out the shadow of the cement frog that Bailey had told her the key was hidden in. She’d made it!

And then Billy was on top of her, tackling her to the ground. The air left her lungs in a painful whoosh. She kicked. She scratched. She kneed. She clawed. She fought like a wildcat, but still he hung on to her. She bit him.

He backhanded her. The pain radiating from her cheek through her head was excruciating. She couldn’t even lift her head off the ground.

He rolled her over so that she was looking up at the stars. He straddled her, his weight pressing down on her diaphragm, making it hard to breathe. She took short, shallow breaths, trying frantically to take in air.

Brandishing his knife with one hand, he wrapped the other around her neck. “How’s it feel, Emily? Scared? Am I the one scaring you now?”

This was it. He was going to kill her.

“You were so scared when you were a kid. I used to watch you. There were all those secret passages in that basement. I watched you all the time. You knew it, didn’t you? Sometimes you’d look right at the wall I was hidden behind, like you knew I was there. You could feel me. Just like you can feel me now.”

She beat at him with her fists ineffectively. She couldn’t get any leverage.

“You cried like a baby. I’ve watched you at night. You still cry a lot.” He squeezed tighter.

She couldn’t breathe. She was dying.

“I’m the one who brought you home. Wasn’t that hard. Just topped off the tank of the good doctor’s boat with some bad gas and before he knew what was happening it stalled smack-dab in the middle of the lake. He was dead in the water. Just didn’t know it. I’d attached a small explosive to the boat. Remote controlled. One flip of a switch and BOOM!”

Emily flinched which made the man on top of her chuckle.

“My father’s impotent,” he told her conversationally. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? He had his chance with you and he couldn’t seal the deal.” Pressing the blade to her throat, he cut off her air supply. Using his other hand, he lowered the zipper of his khakis. “He likes to play with the girls, fondle them. But not me, I like to own them. I like to pound into them, hearing them beg me to stop. Emily? Emily, are you listening?”

As her oxygen supply dwindled, everything became fuzzy for Emily. She stopped fighting back. Everything was going dim.

He eased up on the pressure on her throat, and lifted himself off her diaphragm. She gulped in life-giving air greedily, her chest heaving with the effort.

“Good girl.” He held up his hunting knife so she could see it. The moonlight glinted off the silver blade.

His other hand was stroking his erection. “This isn’t how I’d planned this moment, Emily. I had much more elaborate ideas of what we could do. I wanted to make this last a very, very long time. I wanted to be the one feeling you. I’ve waited all this time. I’m the one who gets to touch you now, Emily.”

Emily started to tremble as she realized exactly how helpless she was. Tears seeped out of the corners of her eyes.

“I was eight when he took you, Emily, making you his toy. I was in the next room, sucking on cherry lollipops, watching through the peephole as he held you on his lap and touched you.”

Releasing his erection, he grabbed her breast through her shirt. Instinctively she moved to push him off her. She’d forgotten about the knife until he plunged it into her shoulder.

Pain erupted and she screamed. She could feel her blood, warm and sticky, spread from the wound. Its coppery scent mixing with the night air. She dug her fingers into the sand, trying desperately to hold on.

“Now look what a mess you’ve made.” He yanked the knife back out of her.

Bailey barreled through the doorway, and past his uncle. They couldn’t be far ahead. He had to get there first.

Chase had Sebastian propped up against a wall. Applying pressure to his partner’s wound, he asked, “They’re okay?”

“Laurie and Anna are in there. I’ve got to get to Emily!”

Bailey galloped down the stairs and out the front door, running the most important race of his life.

He threw the car into Reverse. Tires spraying gravel, as he sped toward the Snack Shack.

He stopped the car a block from the sand, not wanting to alert his cousin to his approach. Weapon drawn, he ran the rest of the way to the beach, praying that he’d be on time. That he could save the woman he loved.

The moonlight glittered off the sand, revealing two figures struggling. Williams, Billy, as they now knew him to be, was on top of Emily.

They were too far away to get off a shot. Lungs burning from the effort he was expending, Bailey willed his legs to move faster. To carry him closer. To get him there in time.
I’m coming, Em.

She threw sand in Billy’s face, and then punched him in the balls. He reared back.

Bailey’s heart dropped as he saw the flash of a knife blade in his hand. He pulled the trigger, knowing instinctively he was too late. His shot rang out, echoing off the lake.

Billy crumpled forward. Both were still.

“Emily!”

Emily’s vision swam. She was growing weak. This was it.

Images of Laurie and Bailey flashed before her. She had so much to live for.

Billy turned his attention to removing her pants. She didn’t have the physical power to resist as he tore at them, but she still had her mantra.
I’m not going to die. I’m not going to die.
It echoed in her head, giving her the strength to make one last effort.

“But I want you to know, Emily, that despite all the trouble you were worth it. I can die a happy man having had you.”

She tightened her grip on the beach, waiting for her moment.
Eyes. Nose. Throat.

“Although I would have been happier if I’d gotten a piece of your sweet sister’s ass too—”

She flung a handful of sand in his face.

“Aaaahh!” Temporarily blinded, he clawed at his eyes.

She couldn’t reach his nose or throat, so she went for his groin. Oblivious of the knife he still held, she lashed out as hard as she could. It was so satisfying to connect with his naked flesh, to hear him cry out in pain.

Her victory was short-lived as he prepared to retaliate by raising the blade again.

A sharp crack split the night.

The blade sank into her again, as he toppled on top of her, smothering her.

Panicked, she tried to breathe, but couldn’t. She was pinned. She squirmed desperately, trying to get enough leverage to shove him off, but couldn’t.

“Emily!”

Bailey.

It sounded like he was far away.

“Em?”

Billy was shoved off her. Suddenly she could see the night sky. She could breathe. She’d never felt so weak. She couldn’t even summon the mantra.

Bailey leaned over her. “It’s okay, Em. You’re going to be okay.”

But she knew she was dying.

There were things she had to say. She had to tell him.

“Bay.”

“Shhh. Save your strength.” He cradled her to him, lifting her off the sand, but even that couldn’t chase away the chill that pervaded her whole body.

Then, as though she were now stuck in a new nightmare that would never end, a shadowy figure loomed behind Bailey.

Instinctively, with a Herculean effort, she tried to shove Bailey away, just as Billy attempted to plunge the blade of his knife into the man she loved. It still nicked his arm and he let out a gasp of pain.

“You can’t have her!” Billy shouted.

Injured, Bailey dropped her back into the sand. Off balance, the sand shifting beneath him, he twisted to face his attacker. He raised his arm protectively as Billy slashed at him again and again.

A sharp report echoed in the night, and Billy fell to the ground, a horrible sucking sound gurgling from his chest.

Bailey looked up the beach, in the direction the gunshot had come from. “Chase.”

Exhausted by her ordeal, Emily’s eyes fluttered closed.

“Em? It’s going to be okay. Just hold on, sweetheart.” Bailey’s voice shook with an emotion she’d never heard him express before. “Stay with me, Em.”

“Tell Laurie, tell her I love her.”

“You tell her yourself. You’re going to be just fine, Em.”

She tried to shake her head but it was too heavy to move. “And tell her that M-Mark’s her d-dad.”

“Hang on, sweetheart. Don’t you quit on me.”

“L-love you, Bay.”

Raindrops hit her face. Then she realized it wasn’t water falling from the sky, but Bailey’s tears. Then there was no feeling at all. It felt like she was floating, floating free of her body.

At least Laurie was safe. She took comfort in that thought. She wasn’t dying for nothing.