Serial Escape Page 20

  There was the desk under the window, which was more-or-less empty even before the VPD team got to it. Only a dog-eared address book and a container of pens—knocked over, then picked up again—sat on top. Neither thing screamed of being a clue.

  Raven’s attention swung from the desk to the small bookshelf. It was tidily arranged. Alphabetized by author name. It was all fiction, and no titles about fire or ash to speak of.

  She spun toward the closet, which hung open, evidence of the search on display. Open shoeboxes. A dress, knocked to the floor. Hangers askew. Nothing that stood out any more than the rest.

  Raven moved on. The dresser was much the same as the rest. It’d been opened. Rifled through with as much delicacy as anything could be rifled through. A pair of flannel pajama bottoms hung out of the bottom drawer, where extra care hadn’t been taken in closing it.

  Absently, Raven stepped toward the pj’s, preparing to tuck them back in. But as she bent down, something under the bed caught her eye. Her heart did a hopeful leap in her chest. She abandoned the flannel before even touching it, moved across the room and dropped to her stomach. The space under the bed was very narrow, the frame only a couple of inches from the floor. And the object that had somehow drawn her attention was quite small, very close in color to the carpet. It was obviously hidden deliberately. She could see how it could’ve been overlooked. In fact, the only reason she’d seen it was sheer luck.

  Or maybe fate, she conceded silently as she slid a hand under the bed, reached for the item and realized what it was—a nearly flat, three-inch-by-three-inch box. The perfect place to stow a secret.

  Knowing she should probably be calling out to the officer on the other side of the bedroom door, Raven cast a single, guilty look in that direction, then opened the box anyway. She almost laughed at what she found inside. Ticket stubs for a few circuses. A matchbook with a fiery logo on the front. And a flyer for a class on throwing flame sticks.

  “Astound your friends,” it read. “Delight and enchant with Magic Fire!”

  If Raven hadn’t known Hanes enough to know better...she probably would’ve assumed it was a setup. But she was sure he wouldn’t have manipulated his own bread crumbs in that way. And even if she hadn’t been quite certain if it just based on Hanes’s history, there was just something about the placement of the box and its harmless items that made it easy to picture Sally stowing them. The woman was, by her parents’ accounts, driven and scientific. Circuses and fire sticks were way outside that. A little kid’s dream. Embarrassing as an adult, but no less real.

  Raven stole another look at the closed door.

  “Just one more thing,” she murmured. “Then I’ll share it, I promise.”

  She pulled Lucien’s phone from her pocket—glad she’d snagged it back from the pile of evidence-related things downstairs—and opened up the search engine. Quickly, she typed in the words Magic Fire. She was immediately rewarded with a going-out-of-business announcement, which she clicked. Four months earlier, Magic Fire had gone into foreclosure and shut its doors for good. But just six weeks ago, some of the leftover supplies had lit up and destroyed the place. All that was left was a concrete shell. Perfect for Hanes’s macabre hobby. Sally was there. No doubt about it.

  Raven squeezed the items in her hand for a second. Part of her wanted to tuck them back into the box, stuff the whole thing into her bra, then go back out the way she’d come in—through the window. But she knew she had to give it to Sergeant Gray and his men. Even if she wanted to run straight to the burnt warehouse on her own, Sally deserved the benefit of having the police come for her. And if Lucien was going to be on the other end of the next clue, then he also deserved to have the experts on his trail.

  But is he going to be there? she wondered.

  It would mean a serious break in Hanes’s pattern. The pattern Lucien himself swore wouldn’t change.

  Raven’s heart fluttered with worry. If Hanes had deviated in this, he might deviate in other things. And unpredictability was a bad thing, where serial killers were concerned. But the alternative was worse. Because no shift in the usual would mean Lucien could be very hard to find.

  Refusing to accept the possibility, she shoved the matches, advertisement and ticket stubs back into their box, then stood up and made her way to the door. As she’d suspected, there was a fresh-faced, uniformed officer standing just outside.

  He acknowledged her with a nod. “Everything okay, Ms. Elliot?”

  She bit back an urge to remind him that nothing was okay, and instead said, “Yes. But I think I found something. I’d like to give it to Sergeant Gray.”

  “I can do that for you,” offered the young cop.

  Raven stared at him, seeing the way things would go. She’d hand him the box. In turn, he’d hand it over. The task forced would do just as she had done and hit up the internet for answers. They’d assemble a team. Retrieve Sally. Which would be a good thing. But after that, they’d move on, and Raven would most definitely not be a part of the equation. She’d be lucky if they even shared the next clue with her. And could she really blame them? She wasn’t a member of the VPD. She was just a former victim, turned current pain in the butt.

  “Ms. Elliot?” the officer prodded gently, his hand out and his eyes on the little box.

  She stopped just shy of yanking the box away and clutching it to her chest. “I’d like to give it to him myself.”

  “Ms. Elliot, you really don’t need to—”

  “Please.”

  He sighed, then shrugged. “Sure. Follow me.”

  And she did. She put her eyes square between his shoulders. She matched his pace up the hall, then again down the stairs. She stood to his side and let him apologize to Sergeant Gray for the “minor interruption.” She even pretended not to notice when he waited a couple of feet away for her to say her piece to the boss. But as soon as she was done handing over the information and the box of evidence that proved her theory, she was also done with being under the young cop’s scrutiny. And thankfully, her revelation brought a flurry of activity that made it easy to do what she’d decided to do.

  She knew her plan was reckless. Possibly crazy. But she needed to do it anyway. So she slipped out of the living room and into the kitchen. There, she grabbed Lucien’s keys from the counter. She’d set them in the ceramic bowl herself, so finding them wasn’t an issue. And her actions didn’t even earn her a second glance.

  Harmless civilian, she thought as she offered a smile to one of the detectives.

  He gave her a wave.

  And less than a minute later, she was in the SUV, armed with only the bear spray, the address and the surety that she was doing the right thing to get Lucien back.

  Chapter 19

  Lucien wasn’t sure if the water was rising more quickly, or if he was just hyperaware of its presence now. It was midway up his thighs. Soon, it would cover his legs completely, and that fact was sending muted panic up every fiber of his being. He was a good swimmer. Excellent, even. Except that didn’t matter at all if he was pinned down with zip ties.

  How long? his mind kept asking.

  The passage of time was hard to determine. It felt like hours had gone by, but he knew that was impossible. Hanes would be sticking to his schedule, which meant the other man would have to get back to Sally Rickson within a certain time frame. No way was he simply going to let Lucien die without sharing the reason why.

  And there has to be a reason, even if it’s a crazy, utterly misguided one.

  For however long he’d been secured to the pipe, Lucien had been floating between searching for an explanation and trying to find a way to free himself. The only conclusion he’d come to was that in order to make the latter happen, he’d have to figure out the answer to the former.

  What does Georges Hanes want?

  Lucien truly didn’t know. If the man wanted him dead, he coul
d’ve simply killed him. A quick gunshot. A harder smack over the head. There’d been ample opportunity. Hell. Now was an opportunity. He and Raven hadn’t been subtle in their movements. They hadn’t been under guard. Lucien himself was the guard, and he’d clearly let himself be vulnerable.

  Too vulnerable.

  He shoved down the thought. He couldn’t waste time beating himself up over what he could’ve done differently. There’d been no reason to suspect Hanes would grab him. In fact, if it weren’t for the current, overly complicated scenario—which seemed to be deliberately catered to Lucien—then he would’ve simply carried on as he had been. Searching out the clues. Letting Raven in on the process.

  Sure you don’t regret that? At least a little?

  “Shut up,” he growled under his breath.

  He switched his focus away from thinking and forced it on to doing instead. He vigorously rubbed the zip-ties on his wrists back and forth over the pipe, ignoring the way it made his arms ache. It was an effort he’d been making on repeat, and his muscles were sore. But the awkward angle and multiple ties gave him little hope. Not one had broken. They still felt no looser. If anything, it was his skin that was taking the brunt of it. His movements were a testament to the fact that his wrists were growing raw.

  He’d experimented a little with his plan to stand up, if it came to that. So far, all he’d managed to do was discover a remarkable lack of flexibility in his body. In spite of his habitual running and natural physical strength, he was far from a contortionist. Every time he’d bent his knees, then tried to push his way up the pipe, his shoulders had twisted, then simply stopped cooperating. He tried again now anyway. Inching, inching, inching up.

  “C’mon,” he muttered as the pain seared across his back. “Cut me the tiniest bit of slack.”

  His words didn’t earn him anything. The biting protest of his muscles and bones only intensified, and his eyes started to water.

  Okay, he said to himself. Maybe now is the time to think. Concentrate on something else and keep moving.

  The elaborate setup was all Hanes. No one could say the serial killer didn’t enjoy complicated. He’d obviously staged the strange room—which Lucien still hadn’t found a definition for—ahead of time. So Hanes had definitely been planning to use it.

  But maybe it wasn’t intended for you.

  The thought made Lucien pause in his efforts, and he nearly collapsed as the burning pain lessened. He drew a breath and made himself try harder.

  Maybe it really hadn’t been for him. Maybe Lucien had just been in the way when Hanes came along for his true target. It was a possibility, at the very least.

  He inched up a tiny bit more. The eye-watering had become a gush that spilled over to his face and tickled unpleasantly at the stubble on his cheeks and chin. But he was up farther than he’d gotten yet, so he kept pushing.

  If he’d simply been in Hanes’s way, then Lucien needed to consider who had been the target. Hanes’s pattern dictated that it was Jim and Juanita’s son. If that was the case, then the other man obviously knew more about Sally Rickson’s brother—or half brother, as the case might be—than Sally Rickson herself did. More than Jim did, too, because he couldn’t picture the caretaker lying when both his wife’s and daughter’s lives were at stake. So how had Hanes acquired the information? Where was the brother in question?

  “You need a hint?”

  The question floated down from above, startling him both because he hadn’t heard Hanes’s approach, and because it seemed to synch so well with his own thoughts. He lost his momentum and slipped back down, sending up a splash of water.

  “I hope you haven’t drowned already.” Hanes punctuated the statement with a dark laugh.

  Lucien’s jaw ticked. “Still alive, still planning on seeing you back behind bars.”

  “Oh.” Hanes paused dramatically. “So you’ve got all the answers, then? You know where you are. And why. You know who I saved this spot for. And also why. So I can just go?”

  The tick became a pulse. Lucien hated the overblown display of cockiness mixed with amusement, and it took a serious amount of effort not to react.

  “I told you before,” he said calmly, “I’m not interested in playing along. So unless you’re here to unlock me and turn yourself in, you can just crawl back into whatever dark hole you came out of.”

  “I’ll take that to mean you’re still clueless and do want the hint. And you know I’m a fan of hints, Detective.”

  The air went silent for a moment before a nearly inaudible flutter carried through it. A second later, a flash of something white caught Lucien’s eye as it floated down in front of him. It was a single sheet of paper. It landed on the water, featherlight and just out of reach. And overhead, the scrape of Hanes’s exit provided no further explanation.

  * * *

  This was a mistake.

  Raven swore it was the three hundredth time she’d had the thought in the last minute or so. She’d felt confident until she’d actually turned into the industrial district. Now the adrenaline—brought on by the exhilaration of having outsmarted the police—was clearly wearing off.

  You didn’t outsmart the police, said her subconscious. You outsmarted common sense.

  Her pulse fluttered a little faster as she turned a corner and caught a whiff of charred air. It was a foreboding scent. The fact that it hung on so strongly, weeks after the fire, was a testament to its destructive power. It made Raven’s hands itch to swing the wheel and drive at full speed back in the opposite direction.

  Her subconscious piped up again, louder than before.

  You’re not just making a mistake, it said. This isn’t the spontaneous, online purchase of an overpriced pair of shoes. This is knowingly walking into a serial killer’s territory. Knowingly putting yourself in the sight lines of the man who murdered your whole family.

  Pain stabbed at her chest, and she fought it.

  “Don’t you think I know all that?” she responded aloud. “Because I do. And I know more, too. Hanes took Lucien. And all I have is the dumb bear spray to protect myself. But I’m going in anyway, so you might as well just cool it.”

  As she finished, her voice rose to a near yell, and a semihysterical laugh at the absurdity of the self-directed argument nearly burst free. But any hint of mirth abruptly disappeared as she rounded a street corner and spotted the gated industrial park. The burned-out building stuck out from the rest, even in the dim light. Its sides were black and broken, and reams of yellow caution tape underscored the danger and blocked the way in.

  Are you still sure about this?

  “Yes,” she murmured, pulling the SUV to a stop as close as she could get. “I’m sure.”

  She had the first aid kit in the back, and she was trained in how to use it. She’d been the one to figure out how to help Jim. And no one knew better than Raven did that in this situation, the mere presence of a friendly voice was the more important than all the rescue equipment in the world.

  With that in mind, she cut the engine and gazed at the shell of a building. She tried to picture what it might’ve looked like before. A big sign overhead, maybe, with the Magic Fire logo? A color scheme that suited the place? Red and orange and a bit of black and gray to add to the mystery? Raven stared for a second longer, then shook her head and told herself to quit stalling.

  The moment she opened the door, the smoky scent went from a light trace to a thick slap. It was cloying. Too much, really. And it got worse the closer she got. But she made herself ignore the smell and move forward anyway.

  There was no door to step through, but a large open space at the front was entrance enough. Raven picked her way over the rubble, then stepped through into what had once been a large two-level warehouse. She stood still for a moment, her eyes roving over the place. There were bits of pieces of utterly unidentifiable equipment and piles of ash littered
throughout. In spite of the missing chunks of roof and broken-down walls, it still seemed big. Overwhelming. And very unstable. Raven had the feeling that one wrong move was going to equal a broken leg. She realized that she’d somehow expected to walk into an empty space with a clear path to Sally Rickson.

  This is Hanes, she chastised. You should’ve known better. She swept her eyes back and forth again. So what now?

  Did she yell out Sally’s name? Would it draw unwanted attention? She hadn’t seen any other cars in the area, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was alone. Was she alone?

  She worried at her lower lip with her teeth and silently urged herself to make a decision. But another moment of hesitation saved her from having to do it. A sound—a whimper—carried through the building, echoing a little. Then it stopped abruptly.

  “Sally?” she called.

  The whimper came again, and Raven drew in a breath then held it while she tried to pinpoint the sound’s location. She tipped her head to the side and listened hard.

  It’s coming from above.

  Her eyes went up, and the whimper turned to a plea.

  “Is someone there?” asked a voice—raspy but still undeniably female. “Please...”

  “I’m coming,” Raven replied, hoping she could keep the promise.

  Carefully, she moved a little farther into the space. Even more carefully, she climbed over a pile of charred metal. She nearly lost her footing twice in the process, and once she got to the bottom of it, she did stumble enough that she bit down on her tongue and let out a yelp. But finally she reached the other end of the warehouse. And there she was forced to stop. A set of stairs led to the next floor. Or they once had. Now the steps ended halfway up, and a large chunk of the floor above was missing. As Raven stared up, wondering how she could possibly make it to Sally without breaking her own neck, an ominous cr-r-rack sounded overhead. And the noise was immediately followed by a piece of tumbling debris. Raven’s eyes followed it as it bounced down the first few stairs, slipped through the gaping hole, then hit the ground below and carried on until it smacked into the nearest wall.