The Prettiest One: A Thriller (46 page)

Mostly, she hated Darryl Bookerman simply for being a monster.

And that monster was shambling toward her on his long, weak, stick-figure legs, carrying an oxygen tank in a hand so thin the veins stuck out like blue interstate lines on a map, wheezing as he came, grinning as he came, looking at her with eyes as dull and black as empty windows.

“Don’t worry, my pretty little one,” Bookerman said. “George isn’t here to participate. I didn’t wait all those years to share you with someone else.”

“He’s just here to watch, then?” Caitlin asked. “You must be so proud.”

“Well, he can watch if he wants, but no, he’s here to hold the knife. To keep you under control. You may have noticed that I’m not quite the man I used to be.”

“You’re not a man at all,” Caitlin said.

“Well, we’ll see about that, I guess,” Bookerman replied as he lowered himself to the couch beside her, putting a hand high up on her leg for support and leaving it there.

Caitlin was trapped. A sociopath to her right. A sick, murdering pedophile to her left. A knife at her throat. A bony hand on her thigh, moving higher . . .

She closed her eyes and again regretted having willed herself earlier not to fade away into another identity, another person, someone who might not remember this one day.

But who was she kidding? She wouldn’t be alive long enough to remember this anyway.

Hunnsaker was getting close to the address on Linden Road. Two black-and-whites weren’t far behind. She had learned that the house belonged to a George Maggert, which was interesting because the house from which Padilla had just called was in the name of a Michael Maggert, who had owned the place right up until someone had shot him to death recently . . . though apparently not as recently as the one-eyed man who someone had gutted and left lying next to Maggert. Forgetting about the guy with one eye for a moment, that left them with two houses and two Maggerts. Interesting. Also interesting was what Padilla found in Michael Maggert’s house. Apparently, the man had been stalking Caitlin Sommers. He had photos on the wall and a file of information on her. When the police eventually combed through that house, they were bound to find a lot of answers. And as Hunnsaker sped toward George Maggert’s house, she knew that even more answers awaited her there. She just hoped that Caitlin Sommers would be alive to provide them.

Chops had no desire to watch his father do whatever the hell he was planning to do to Caitlin Sommers, but he liked seeing the old man so excited and animated. He’d had a rough time of it for so long now. Twenty-two hard years in prison. On top of that, he’d been in nearly constant pain for almost a year, so much so that he kept saying he was looking forward to death. But now, at least for the moment, he was happy. So Chops could look away while his father sucked a bit of joy from what little time he had left to him.

When he turned his head, his eyes drifted to the window . . . where he saw a flash of movement, something less dark than the deeper darkness around it. It was fleeting, but it was there, and then it was gone.

Instinct and the quick glimpse he’d caught told him it wasn’t the cops out there. The guys who had been running around with Caitlin must have somehow found this place after all. Chops thought for a moment, then remembered that he hadn’t locked the front door.

What to do? He knew he couldn’t give his father the knife and hope he’d be able to keep Caitlin in check. He could barely lift his own arms; he couldn’t be expected to hold a healthy young woman captive with a knife. No, Chops had to keep Caitlin with him.

“Hang on a sec, Dad,” he said. He stood and yanked Caitlin to her feet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bookerman asked. “I finally have my—”

“Shhhh.”

Keeping the knife at Caitlin’s throat, Chops dragged her across the living room, over to a short stretch of wall beside the wide doorway between the hall and the living room. They’d be coming through here. They had no choice. It was the only entrance to the room. They were obviously hoping they still had surprise on their side. They didn’t.

Chops hugged Caitlin tightly from behind. He clamped one hand over her mouth. With the other, he held his knife against her neck. He heard her moan as the barest tip of it pierced her skin. He put his mouth right beside her ear and whispered, “Not a sound or I’ll rape you after my father does, and your men will watch it all, then I’ll carve them up and make them swallow the pieces until there’s nothing left of either of them. Understand?”

She nodded.

Chops waited.

The faintest footfall in the hall.

Then a sudden rush of movement and Caitlin grunted loudly in warning, goddamn it, and the men must have heard her because the one who came through the doorway ducked suddenly, and the knife Chops had taken from Caitlin’s throat and swung neck-high at him sliced through the air an inch above his head. The man’s momentum carried him to the center of the room, where he spun and pointed a gun at Chops.

Damn.

Chops hugged Caitlin even more tightly and held the tip of his knife against the soft skin of her neck again.

“Let her go,” the man with the gun said.

“No,” Chops said.

“I have a gun.”

“And I have a knife at your girl’s throat. I promise you, if you shoot me, unless you can put a bullet in my brain in a place that instantly stops all motor activity, I’ll be able to jam this knife through her neck before I die. Count on it. Where’s the other guy?”

“What other guy?”

Rather than play that game, Chops sliced downward with the knife, opening a painful but nonlethal slice vertically between her larynx and her carotid artery. Caitlin cried out.

“Don’t make me ask you again,” Chops said.

The barrel of the handgun never wavered as the man said, “Come on in, Josh.”

An unarmed man stepped slowly into the room. He looked from the guy with the gun, to Chops’s father on the sofa, and finally to Chops and Caitlin. When he saw the blood on Caitlin’s neck, his eyes widened.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded very carefully, which was smart when she had a knife at her throat.

“Drop the gun,” Chops said.

“No chance,” the gunman said. “Drop the knife.”

“I don’t think so. You can’t hit me without hitting her at this range. I don’t know you, but I know you aren’t that good.”

“I’ll shoot,” the man warned.

Chops just laughed. Then he tugged Caitlin with him as he walked slowly sideways, his eyes never leaving the barrel of the gun, until he was standing in front of his father. The man with the gun turned slowly, tracking their movement, but he didn’t pull the trigger.

Hunnsaker’s car crept up the first part of what looked to be a long, winding driveway. She reached a curve where it started to bend back on itself and shut off her headlights, keeping her engine running. A moment later, two black-and-whites pulled up behind her and did the same. Padilla had left cops at Michael Maggert’s house with the dead bodies and was on his way here, but he was several minutes away still and Hunnsaker didn’t feel as though she could wait. Quietly, she opened her car door and slipped out of the vehicle, leaving the door open. The officers in the patrol cars did the same.

She spoke in a soft voice. “We’re going on foot from here, quietly.” She pointed at two of the officers. “You, head around the right side of the house and watch the back. You two,” she said, pointing to the remaining cops, “split up and watch the sides of the house and make sure no one comes out a side door or window. You’re with me,” she said to the last cop. She looked at the first two again and said, “I’ll let you know when we’re about to go in. Everyone got it?”

They nodded.

“Good. Let’s move.”

Chops had seen headlights through the window, stretching for just a split second across the dark yard before they snapped off, and in that instant everything changed for him.

“I gotta admit, I didn’t think you’d call the cops,” he said. “Guess you don’t care if your girl here goes to jail for killing my brother.”

“We were more worried about you than the cops,” the guy without the gun said.

“You were right to be more worried about me,” Chops said, while never taking his eyes off the other guy and his handgun.

Chops was frustrated and saddened by this development. His mind raced. There was no way now that his wife wouldn’t find out just what kind of person he really was. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing the disappointment on her face, if indeed he lived to see it. And he wasn’t certain he would even want to live, knowing that his daughter would grow up with a father behind bars. Chops knew what that was like. Knew the shame of it. Knew the things the other kids would say about her family, and about her.

No, he couldn’t allow that to happen. Which meant that he couldn’t be arrested, no matter what. He didn’t think it likely that he’d be able to kill everyone in the room, and then every cop that was about to storm the house. That left him with three possible outcomes. Either Chops would be killed, which he didn’t intend to let happen, or he could use Caitlin and the others as hostages, but that rarely worked out for the bad guy. Or finally, he could escape out the back before the cops got the rear covered, which meant leaving almost immediately and not leaving witnesses. He had to escape and call Rachel right away and tell her to take Julia to a location where he would meet them once he found a way to get back to them . . . and it was critical that he make that call before the police discovered his involvement in all of this and put the clamps on his family. Rachel wouldn’t understand why she had to run, but if she loved him enough, she’d do what he asked; if she loved him enough, she’d understand who he was, what he’d done, and why they now had to go on the run and start over somewhere. And that was the big question, of course: Did she love him enough? He had to find out, which meant that everyone in the room—including his father—had to die and do so quickly. Since Chops had traveled under a false name, if he could get out of this house clean, it should take the cops a good while to figure out that he was involved, which should give him time to get in touch with Rachel . . . unless someone in the room told the cops about him. Which meant that Chops had to make sure that no one could.