Unforgivable (39 page)

He cursed under his breath, and Jonah shot him a look.

“What? What is it?”

“Nightclub manager,” Rey said. “Delmonico talked to him. There’s a black Tahoe in the parking lot, but Sophie Barrett hasn’t shown up yet.”

The slimy ball in the pit of Jonah’s stomach expanded. “Any black Audis seen entering or leaving the area?”

Rey relayed the question, then glanced over. “No. We’ve got an APB out, though.”

Jonah tried to stay focused, but his imagination kept getting away from him. The moment he’d seen Sophie’s picture, he’d known she was in serious trouble, and learning that their prime murder suspect drove a black Audi only confirmed it. That car had been at El Patio the other night when Jonah had walked Sophie to her SUV. And judging by the look on her face, it was a car she’d seen before, one that made her nervous. Damn it, why hadn’t he pressed her about it then? He hadn’t wanted to
come off as pushy and overbearing, and now look what had happened.

“I don’t like this game plan,” he told Rey when he got off the phone. “What are we going to find at this club? He took her someplace else. Our focus should be on figuring out where that is.”

“Maybe we can drum up a witness who saw something.”

“Like what? A woman being forced into a car?” He pounded the steering wheel with his fist. “That doesn’t tell us shit about where she is now! This is a waste of time!”

Rey looked at him. “You involved with this girl?”

Jonah took a deep breath. “No.”
Fuck.
“Try Singh again. See if they’ve spotted him out near the lake house. He’s got to be taking her there. That’s his MO.”

“Yeah, well, his little hideaway’s not going to work tonight.”

Rey got on the phone again and learned that Lane’s vehicle had not been spotted in the vicinity of the lake house, despite the lookout they’d posted at both ends of the road.

Not that that meant anything.

“Who’s posted on the eastern side?” Jonah asked. If he was taking her from the nightclub to his lake house, he’d be coming from that direction.

Rey asked the question, then gave Jonah a name.

“That guy? Shit, isn’t he the one who missed Ric sneaking into Mia’s earlier this week? Our best chance to intercept this guy is probably blown to hell!”

Rey disconnected again, and the car went silent except for the swish of the wiper blades. Sweat beaded
on Jonah’s brow. His hands felt clammy. He envisioned Ashley Meyer’s autopsy photos and felt sick.

“It’s good, you know, that we’ve disrupted his plan,” Rey said. “If Ric hadn’t found his cave, she’d probably already be back there with him.”

Jonah shot him a look.

Rey checked his watch, his face grave. “And it’s only been an hour. She might still be okay.”

Jonah trained his gaze on the road as he sped toward the last place Sophie was known to have been. Rey was trying to be hopeful, and Jonah wanted more than anything to believe him. But the cop part of his brain kept getting in the way.

“Any minute,” Jonah said tightly, “Lane’s going to realize his game is up, if he hasn’t already. Then he’ll turn tail and run, like the dog that he is.” He glanced at Rey. “The last thing he’s going to want at that point is a woman slowing him down.”

Mia tripped through the brush, desperately trying to figure out where she was. She’d exited on the south side of the building—she knew that much. But a mental picture of the grounds wouldn’t form, because she’d always made an effort not to think about what surrounded the laboratory. Maggot-infested corpses. Decaying animals. Pits filled with half-buried skeletons. Mia’s fear mounted with every step, and the only thing propelling her forward was the certainty that she couldn’t go back. She was being followed.

She squinted at the darkness, trying to make out the varying degrees of black. Sensing an obstacle ahead— maybe a tree?—she veered left and kept her hands in
front of her as she continued into the blackness. Where was Ric? How would he find her? And if he didn’t find her, how was she going to evade the ski-mask guy, who was armed to the teeth? Mia had watched him, quaking with fear, from the window of the stairwell nearest the ballistics lab. He had some sort of rifle strapped to his back and a pistol gripped in his hand, and he might as well have carried a scythe, too, because to her he was the Angel of Death. Soul-freezing terror had sent her scuttling up the stairwell and racing for the nearest fire exit.

Which had sounded an alarm, no doubt pointing him right to her.

Mia paused to listen now. The alarm had ceased. Rain pitter-pattered around her, and wind rustled through nearby branches. The noise covered her movements, but it was impossible to see. What if she crashed right into him? The thought petrified her. But the alternative— standing there and waiting for him to find her—was even more frightening.

She forced her feet forward. The cell phone tucked deep within her pocket had vibrated three times now. Ric was looking for her. Could she risk the noise and light that using her phone would create? Maybe she could huddle at the base of a tree and text him something.
SOS!
But he knew that already. And how could he come to her rescue if she didn’t even know where she was?

Mia pressed forward and willed her brain to work. She had to think her way out of this. She struggled for calm as she catalogued her assets. She had no gun. She had a phone but couldn’t risk using it until she found some sort of cover. She had a tube of Mace clutched in
her hand, which was better than nothing but no match for a bullet. Her greatest asset was that she was familiar with the landscape, and her assailant probably wasn’t. On the verge of hysteria now, Mia tried to conjure a map of what lay south of the building. There was a winding path leading past cordoned-off burial sites. She pictured Kelsey and her teams of students filing out there to document their experiments.

The teaching pavilion. She suddenly remembered the open-air classroom where students would sit at picnic tables, sheltered from the blazing summer sun as they discussed cases. It was an outdoor facility, but there were restrooms there and a drinking fountain. If she could lock herself inside one of those bathrooms and make a call to Ric—

Her toe caught on something hard. She flung her hands out and fell head-first into a void.

Ric raced through the blackness, tracking the man who was tracking Mia. He was going by sound mostly, with an occasional flash from his penlight to keep him on course.

Hang on, Mia, I’m coming.

He pictured her running for her life out there in the freezing dark. The thought that someone might get to her before he did and snuff the life from her eyes chilled Ric straight to his bones. He couldn’t let it happen. He
wouldn’t
let it happen. He’d do anything to get her out of harm’s way.

Get low, Mia. Get still somewhere and hide.

She had to be terrified by now, reduced to raw animal instincts. But instincts were good, especially given
her lack of training. Instincts might be her best chance for survival.

Ric said a prayer to himself—something from his childhood, something he hadn’t said in ages and hardly remembered—as he plunged through the dark.

If she’d only stop moving, her pursuer would have to stop to get his bearings. He might even break out a flashlight, and Ric would be on him in a heartbeat.

Ric halted in his tracks. The rustling continued, but the noise was no longer man-made, just a light wind through the trees. He eased forward, waiting for the slightest mechanical sound that would give away the gunman.

Mia sprawled on her stomach, struggling to get her breath back. Blood filled her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. She sucked in air, and along with it came a sickly odor. She pushed up on her palms and registered the lumps beneath her frozen fingers.

It couldn’t be. She hadn’t … ?

Dear God, she had. Revulsion flooded through her as every one of her senses confirmed that she’d fallen into a grave. She scrambled to her knees and clawed out of the pit, only to realize that she was hyperventilating. She clamped her mouth shut, but the silence came too late. She heard him now, advanced toward her through the brush, and the confidence in his footsteps told her that he understood their roles. He was the hunter. She was the prey. And he intended to finish her off as he would a wounded doe. She scrounged frantically for her Mace, but it was lost amid the dampened leaves and rotting limbs.

A flashlight beam pierced the darkness. It swung left, then right, searching for her. She scampered backward out of the pit and away from the hunter. The light swept over her face.

Mia screamed to wake the dead.

Everything came at once: a flash of light, a panicked scream, a slight shift in the shadows. Ric raised his gun and fired, purely on instinct. Something howled in agony, and the flashlight hit the ground.

“Mia, get down!”

To his side, movement. Ric dropped to a knee, pivoted, and raised his gun again. He got a shot off just as a bullet zinged so close it made his ears ring. Her attacker was wounded, not dead. Ric lunged sideways, crashing into something hard. A tree. He yelled out, trying to draw attention away from Mia. Another shot rang out, this one hitting the tree trunk just inches from his head.

Mia snatched up the flashlight and pointed it toward the noise. The beam landed on a patch of mud where the rifle had fallen.

The rifle!

She realized she’d betrayed her location the same instant another shot sounded. Swaying with fear, she switched off the flashlight. This was crazy! Everyone shooting in the dark! Mia dropped to her knees and groped around until her hands found the rifle butt. She picked it up and looked around in a panic. Now what? She couldn’t see to aim it.

A sudden
oomph,
followed by a
thud.
Then grunts and snarls, like a pair of wolves wrestling on the ground. Mia
tucked the rifle under her arm and fumbled for the flashlight. She aimed it at the noise, illuminating the man in black—Burleson—fighting viciously for control of a gun. Ric was beneath him, a knee pinned to his chest, his own pistol out of reach at his feet. The gun pointed up, toward the sky, but Burleson was locked in a mortal struggle to point it down toward Ric’s head. The ski mask was gone now. Mia shone the light straight in the man’s eyes, hoping to break his concentration, but he didn’t blink.

“Mia … gun,” Ric ground out.

She lifted the rifle, and the flashlight beam wobbled.

“Stop right there, or I’ll shoot!” The threat sounded pitifully weak, which it was, because the thought of firing a bullet so close to Ric’s head made her dizzy. Instead, she set the flashlight on the ground so she could see by the glow, then rushed to Burleson’s side and, with all her might, jabbed the rifle butt at his head. Pain reverberated up her arms. He slumped sideways, and Ric leaped on top of him. In an instant, Ric had him flipped onto his stomach, with a knee in his back and a pistol jammed into his neck.

Blood oozed from the man’s temple. He’d gone limp.

“Oh my God,” she croaked. “Did I kill him?”

“No.” Ric held the gun at his neck, chest heaving, and in the glow of the flashlight, she saw the battle raging in his eyes.

“Ric, don’t do it.”

But he wasn’t listening.

With shaking hands, she lowered the rifle to the ground and stepped toward him. “It’s over, Ric. You can’t just execute him.”

He groaned painfully, still at war with himself. She watched his chest heave, his jaw clench, the beads of sweat slide down his temples. And in a flash, she saw all of her dreams for a future together being destroyed by a single unchecked impulse.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Ric,” she whispered. “I’m okay. It’s over.”

Something flickered in his eyes. He reached a hand around and dug a pair of cuffs from his back pocket. He wrenched the two arms backward, eliciting a moan from the man beneath him as he slapped on the cuffs.

Ric got to his feet and stared down at him. If she’d ever wondered what pure hatred looked like, it was right there in front of her, etched on Ric’s face. He still held the gun in his hand, and Mia took his sleeve and tugged him away as the sound of sirens drifted toward them over the treetops. The sound grew louder and louder as she stood there watching him.

He turned to face her and seemed to be seeing her for the first time. He tucked the gun into the back of his jeans and cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs stroked her cheeks, and he stared down at her with so much intensity she couldn’t speak.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“You sure?”

She nodded again. And then she buried her head against his chest and held on tight.

“We got a call from our spotter at the airport,” Rey said. “Kurt Lane just climbed aboard his dad’s plane.”

“Which airport? Where?”

“Marble Falls. It’s a private runway out near the golf course.” He exchanged some more info over the phone with Singh. “They’re sending a team over there, ETA four minutes.”

Jonah floored it, hoping against hope that they weren’t too late.

“Did the spotter see—”

“He’s traveling alone.”

Jonah flinched at the words. “Who is this spotter?”

“We put an agent there two days ago. Family’s got access to a private plane, so we’ve been treating everyone like a flight risk.”

Rey navigated, and the twelve minutes it took to reach the airport felt like an eternity. Jonah ignored the “Authorized Vehicles Only” signs and drove straight onto the tarmac, where a SWAT team was standing in the sleet, surrounding a small Cessna. Jonah pulled over next to an unmarked unit and jumped out.

Rey jogged over to Delmonico, who was on the sidelines watching the takedown. Maybe it was a hostage situation, with the pilot caught in the middle.

Jonah scanned the area, hungry for any sign of Sophie. On the other side of the chain-link fence surrounding the tarmac was a lot filled with pickups, SUVs, and several nice sports cars but no black Audi. How had Lane gotten there?

And then he saw it. Parked at the very far end of the lot was a black sedan. He didn’t realize he’d started running until he was halfway across the lot with his gun in his hand. He halted just feet from the car, and dread gripped him as he read the bumper sticker. This was the vehicle. Everything he knew about crime-scene protocol
went out the window as he yanked open the door. Not even locked. His gut tightened as he looked inside. A roll of duct tape sat in the cup holder. On the backseat was a heavy-duty Maglite and a woman’s purse, the contents strewn across the floor.