Fear For Me: A Novel of the Bayou Butcher (For Me 2)

Then I’ll be dead.

Her fingers swiped over something sharp. She stopped, breath heaving, and her fingers slid over the object. She could tell by its shape that she’d found a screwdriver.

Thank you, God.

Her right hand held it tight, while her left started to run along the trunk’s wall. She had to locate the rear of the car, had to find the spot where the trunk locked. Once she found the actual lock, she could try to use the screwdriver to pry it open. If the trunk had a separate release latch, she could try to find that. She would find something.

Because she would get out of there. Lauren wasn’t going to give up. No matter what.

She had a tool now, one that she could use to escape. If Walker came for her before she got her freedom, she’d damn well use the screwdriver as a weapon.

The car bounced, hit a deep hard hole, then jerked forward.

Lauren tensed. It didn’t feel like they were on a road anymore. No, the vehicle had turned, and Walker was taking her away from civilization. That was the way he worked, right? Take the prey into the swamp to torture for hours.

They were on a bumpy road. A dirt road?

Her fingers were sweating around the screwdriver as she frantically went to work.

There was a roadblock up ahead. Anthony saw the flashing lights of two patrol cars at the end of Lincoln Road before the road branched and led back to the city.

He slammed on the brakes and jumped from the vehicle. He’d just gone all the way down the road, and hadn’t seen a sign of the sedan. “Where the hell is he?” Anthony demanded.

Matt rushed toward him. “No one’s come this way. We were on scene as fast as we could be, but no one’s passed our way.”

No. No f**king way.

“He got out before you were here,” Paul said as he climbed from the car. His voice was flat. “The bastard took her out before the roadblock could be set up.”

The road was old, and from what Anthony had learned on his one-hundred-mile-an-hour drive there, not well traveled at all. “He likes the swamp.” There was plenty of swamp around. They’d flown by the twisting cypress trees, and he’d seen the black edge of the bayou water gleaming in the moonlight.

Matt took a few more steps toward them. “He could have driven through before we got here. We hauled ass, man, but it still took us twenty minutes to get here. The cop”—he pointed behind him to one of the patrol cars—“beat me by a bit, but not much.”

It had taken Anthony ten minutes to get there from Steve’s house, going hell fast. Matt and Paul were right—Walker could have gotten away and gone back to town.

But that just wasn’t the way he liked to play.

He’s changed the rules. The guy had busted out of prison like some kind of alpha dog, and instead of hiding in the shadows like he’d done in the past, had attacked Karen right away with a brutal in-your-face kill directed to hurt Lauren. The guy thinks he is in charge, so he’s trying to make us dance to his damn tune. Anthony looked at the dark mass of swamp and woods. “Get Wesley Hawthorne out here.” If they had to search the woods, he wanted the tracker.

“Walker keeps his prey out there, he plays with them…he is in the area.” He just had to find out where. His eyes narrowed as he glanced back at Paul. “We passed a little road, didn’t we? A dirt road…” It had been but a blur at the time, but now…

Walker could have taken her down that little road. He never would have made it to the roadblock then.

Paul shook his head. “If we focus our efforts on searching the swamp, and she’s not there”—Paul sighed, his face grim—“we could be f**king killing her.”

Anthony’s back teeth were about to grind to dust. “Then let’s divide our efforts. You go to town.” He pointed to the darkness behind him. “And I’ll search here for her.” His gaze flew to Matt. “Get the tracker, and tell him I need him with me, now.”

Every minute that passed would bring Lauren closer to death.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The killer had abducted the DA.

It was a move that FBI profiler Cadence Hollow had feared, ever since she’d heard about the photo Walker kept in his prison cell.

Walker had fixated on Lauren Chandler. He’d killed a woman in her house. Cadence had no doubt the man had gone into Lauren’s house intending to kill the DA, but when Lauren hadn’t been home, he’d found Karen instead…you thought you’d make her suffer by killing her friend.

Every move he’d made had been targeted around the DA, and as soon as he’d seen an opening, as soon as he’d lured Lauren to him, he’d attacked.

Cadence stood at the roadblock, watching the swirl of lights illuminate the scene. One of the marshals, Matt Meadows, was a few feet away, carefully screening a car that was passing. On Detective Voyt’s orders, they were checking every car that came their way, in case Walker had switched rides.

So far, they weren’t having any luck.

Meadows glanced up at her and slowly crossed to her side. “Not him.”

No, she hadn’t expected it to be. Her gaze drifted to the woods—she knew the woods stretched for a few miles, then gave way to the swamp. “Ross went in there?”

“Yeah, the Fish and Wildlife guy, Hawthorne, just went after him. Hawthorne said there are a few cabins back that way that Walker might be planning to use.”

“He likes to take his victims away from civilization.”

Meadows tilted his head as he studied her. “You think Ross is right? You think the Butcher took Lauren back into the swamp?”

“He wasn’t planning to kill her quickly.”

Meadows stared back at her. She’d never met this marshal before the Walker case, and she was discovering he could be tough and tenacious.

“If he had been planning to kill her right away,” she continued, “Ross would have found her body dumped next to the cop’s.” The cop had been lucky. Very lucky from the sound of things. McHenry was in ICU, but the doctors thought he would pull through. Walker hadn’t been interested in killing him; instead, it seemed as if he’d just wanted the cop out of his way.

Walker would have driven a knife into the back of anyone who stood between him and his target.

“He thinks she made him suffer,” Cadence said, “so now it’s her turn.” For the DA’s sake, Cadence hoped Ross found her before Walker started to play. Because once he started…

Cadence exhaled slowly. “You said there was a dirt road a few miles away? One that cut right away from Lincoln?”