UNSEEN (34 page)

Her hand came up instantly. "Dan,” she said, panting for breath. "You don't know what you're doing. Just walk away." In her other hand was a phone.

He attempted to hide his exhaustion. "Why don't you explain it to me, Amber?"

She lifted the phone. "If I hit send, Gabe dies. Just let me go, Dan; it was never my intention to kill him."

They circled each other in the parking lot.

"
You expect me to believe you? What have you been smoking? You're a serial killer."

The sound of sirens and the approaching beat of helicopter blades intensified her stance.

"
I
don
'
t
have
time
for
this
!
Do
you
want
to
be
responsible
for
the
death
of
Holly
'
s
son
?!”
she
spat
. "
This
is
how
this
is
going
to
go
down
.
You
are
going
to
let
me
get
in
this
car
and
watch
me
drive
away
,
RIGHT
NOW
,
or
I
am
going
to
press
this
button
and
end
Gabe
'
s
suffering
!"

"
How do I know you won't press it anyway?" he said, tortured by the thought.

"
Because
I
love
him
."
Her
chin
tightened
and
her
eyes
watered
.

Was it true? Did she really love him? Had she planned on killing him but gotten too close? Dan tried to put a hook in reality. His next move could extinguish a little boy's life. He had to make the right call. Amber's thumb rested on the trigger; time had run out.

He threw up his hands. "Fine! You win. Go! Just don't hurt him."

She backed toward the car and fumbled for the handle. But it was too late. A siren made a quick bleat as a police cruiser appeared from behind the rear of the building.

Amber turned toward Dan.

He could see the defeat written in her dead eyes. "If you had only left me alone, I would be long gone and this wouldn’t have happened.” She held the phone up where he could see it. "It's done," she said. "He's gone. You killed him."

At first the shock of her words didn't allow him to believe what she had said, but then a wave of nausea kicked him in the gut. She had pressed the button, and, just like that, it was over. There was no chance to leap for the phone, no opportunity for a last minute rescue. Gabe was dead, and it was all his fault. If he hadn't intercepted her, Gabe would still be alive. How would he ever explain this to Holly? She would never forgive him for killing her son.

Amber looked down at the phone in her hand and an odd expression crossed her face. She lifted the phone to her ear. Listened. Then her jaw went slack.

Chapter 51

Trees flew past outside the black sedan as Angela Grant raced down a thin country road, scanning each approaching mailbox for the number 1224. According to the directions, the mailbox was white on black, and at its base was a flower pot. There it was, exactly as it had been described.

She punched the brake pedal and pealed up the dirt driveway to a yellow house with brown shutters. The place looked deserted. All the plants on the front porch were dead, and the house looked like it hadn’t been tended in months. How had her people missed that?

She strode to the front door, opened the screen and gave the knob a twist. It was locked. It would have been nice to have Perez here; he would have made easy work of the door. But he wasn’t, so she had to improvise.

She looked around, grabbed a porch chair, and with one heave, threw it through a window. She blocked her face as glass exploded and wood splintered, then quickly climbed inside.

The dimly lit living room was quiet, and the air was still. She slid her handgun from its holster and listened. There was a noise coming from somewhere, but it was distant and nondescript. She bypassed a search of the first floor and headed straight up the stairs on a hunch. In the video feed, the killer was standing in a room outside of a bedroom. If her hunch was correct, Gabe would be tied up in that room.

Halfway up the stairs Angela heard people talking. She gripped her gun with both hands, and crept down the hall. Her shoulder came to rest against the wall just before a white wooden door; she strained to hear the conversation. It was a man and a woman, and there was music. Suddenly it clicked. It wasn’t a live conversation, it was a movie.

She opened the door carefully, for it was not uncommon for kidnappers to leave booby traps to keep out unwanted guests. Usually the traps were rigged to be dismantled from the outside, to provide the kidnapper access in an emergency, so she went slowly, examining the door jam and the ever-increasing crack at the top and bottom of the door for any sign of a thread. It was clear.

Slowly she slid through the doorway, her weapon sweeping the room. The bedroom was empty. She moved quickly to the open door where the sound was coming from and saw light flickering from the interior. She pushed the door open with her foot and peeked around the corner. There was Gabe, in the center of the room, just as she’d hoped he would be.

It had all come together for her when Gary Carter got to the bottom of his laundry list of how he figured out Amber was the Cape murderer. He’d asked Amber about the dead plants around her grandmother’s house, and she had claimed it was because her grandmother was too sick to care for them, but Carter was suspicious. Amber’s grandmother had been a florist all her life, and if she wasn’t able to care for those flowers, he knew she would have called someone to help her. So Carter started poking around and found the grandmother’s dead body in a shallow grave in the back yard.

And that’s when she realized what had happened. Amber had come back from her flight early in the morning, took Gabe from the apartment, and brought him to her grandmother’s house.

Gabe sat helpless in the center of the room duct taped to a kitchen chair. His face was wet from crying, and the grey tape on his mouth glistened as light from the HD television reflected off the wetness. He immediately started crying again when he saw her. Her first instinct was to run to him and free him from the horrible mass of grey tentacles, but her training kicked in.

"
It’s okay, Gabe. I’m here to help you.” She scanned for traps as she spoke gently to him. "Have you seen Amber recently?”

He shook his head.

"
We’re going to get you out of here, buddy, but you have to be brave for a few more seconds while I make sure everything is safe. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

She looked carefully all around the chair. It was so small that she didn't notice it at first. But there it was. A dim red glow shining off the carpet in the direct center under the chair. She got down on her hands and knees and peered under. Strapped to the bottom of the chair was a bomb, and hanging from it was a cell phone. She had seen this type of bomb before in a class she’d recently attended. The phone acted as a trigger. There were many variations, and some were wired to go off if tampered with.

"
It’s okay, Gabe,” she said as she snatched her Leatherman from the case on her belt. "I’m just checking everything before I cut you loose. You’re doing a great job, just sit still a little longer.” She wiped the sweat out of her eyes, and peered up at the device. The phone was dangling from two wires that ran into the main casing. If this was a homemade job, it was a simple matter of clipping the wires to prevent the current from getting to the trigger. If it was a professional job, there would be an internal trigger that sent a weaker signal through the loop. If that was the case, breaking the signal would detonate the bomb instantly.

Normally she would have called in a bomb squad, but with events unfolding on the bridge in Sunbury, the threat to Gabe's life was imminent. She needed to trust her instincts. The bomb had no official markings on it, and judging from the use of duct tape on the C4, it was most likely homemade. She opened the clippers on the Leatherman, reached up, and clipped the wires with one quick snip.

The phone fell to the carpet and immediately started ringing. This was never mentioned in the training. What did it mean? She picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID: Unknown caller.

She put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

Through static she heard a car door slam and a distant female voice. "It’s done. He’s gone. You killed him."

Angela's body spiked with adrenaline. Had she clipped the wires at the precise moment of detonation?

She spoke louder into the phone. "Hello? This is Special Agent Angela Grant with the FBI. To whom am I speaking?"

Chapter 52

Holly watched as Agent Perez scratched his final notes onto the official record with his fat brown hand. The debrief felt like it was taking forever, and there was still no sign of Gabe. How long did it take to get from Dedham to Sunbury? Certainly not an hour. She was tired of being in the police bull pen, and tired of being the focus of morbid curiosity. The police knew she was innocent, yet they still whispered and cased her with dispassionate glances. How much more intrusive would the stares of the uninformed be? Her face would be forever synonymous with a killer of children. Even though the world now knew it was all a lie, would people be able to forget her standing on the edge of that bridge baring the soul of a psychotic butcher as though it were her own?

Perez looked up through his bushy black brows. "Do you have anything else you'd like to add before we seal this thing up?"

"
No. But I have questions."

He rested his forearms on the table. "What kind of questions?"

"
Where is my son?"

"
I told you, he had to be checked out by medical and debriefed, but he’s on his way."

She scratched her wrist. "What’s going to happen to Amber?"

"
Dr. Carter has agreed to testify...”

"
You found Gary?"

"
Yes, and with his testimony and the evidence found at Amber's grandmother's house, we have enough to put her in prison for the rest of her life without parole."

"
How did you find Gary?"

She could hear the gears turning inside his head. What was he allowed to tell her? What did the standard operating procedure dictate?

Some things never changed.

"
We got a call from his sister's neighbor," he said. "He was hiding out at his sister’s camp and the neighbor noticed light coming from the basement window."