The third tactical man had lost his balance when the chopper ascended sharply. He was clambering to regain a semistable firing position. Collier still lay stunned, half in, half out the door.
Begley was looking down into the bore of Burton’s rifle. He shouted, “Don’t shoot me, you motherfucker!”
Burton’s face was a mask of agony and madness. “Fuck you!”
Begley saw the words form on Burton’s lips a millisecond before the bullet pierced his forehead and the back of his skull disintegrated, spraying the snow behind him with a red mist. He fell backward, spread-eagle, a snow angel with a red halo.
Begley whipped his head around to thank the expert marksman.
Charlie Wise slowly lowered the sniper rifle from his shoulder and handed it back to Collier. Calmly he replaced his eyeglasses.
Begley swallowed hard in order to push his heart back down into his chest, where it belonged. “Nice shot, Hoot.”
“Thank you, sir.”
• • •
William Ritt removed his hand from Lilly’s mouth, switched off the transmitter, and set it aside. “I told you it was brilliant.”
“Why?” Lilly asked on a filament of breath.
“Why did I claim that Tierney had left you here dead? Isn’t the answer obvious?”
“No, why did you kill them?”
“Oh. That.” William wrapped the ends of the ribbon around his hands and tested its strength with firm tugs. “I could blame my dysfunctional parents, or low self-esteem, but those are such hackneyed excuses. Besides, I’m not insane. I kill them because I want to.”
She kept her features composed, but her mind was reeling. Was Tierney dead? Dutch had shot him, that she knew. But he’d said that Tierney was “down.” He hadn’t said that he was dead. If he were alive, he would come back for her. She knew it.
Until then, what could she do to help herself and keep William Ritt from killing her? She couldn’t get away from him. For hours she had tried and failed to free her hands from the cuffs.
To show fear would be to give him exactly what he wanted. Instinctually she knew that he enjoyed killing. It gave him an identity, a standing in the community that he wouldn’t otherwise have. He was Blue, the most feared, the most wanted. The persnickety, busybody pharmacist’s alter ego was a lady killer. What a head trip that must be for him.
He claimed to have low self-esteem, but she thought just the opposite. He had an inflated ego, believing himself intellectually superior. For two years he had outsmarted everybody, but thus far he’d been unable to brag about it. She would give him a chance to boast. Her only chance of surviving was to keep him talking until help—please, God, let it be Tierney—arrived.
“How did you choose your victims? That’s one thing that’s baffled investigators. The missing women seemed to have nothing in common.”
“Me,” he said, giving her a chilling smile. “They had me in common. They were all looking at me when they died. Soon you’ll have that in common with them, too.”
Don’t give him the satisfaction of showing your fear. “Besides you, what did they have in common?”
“That’s been the beauty of it. Criminal profilers look for patterns. With me, there isn’t one. I killed all of them for different reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Rejection.”
“Torrie Lambert?”
“Long before her.”
“There was another?”
“A young woman at college.”
“A girlfriend?”
“No. I wanted her to be, but she laughed at me when I asked her for a date. She’d assumed I was a homosexual. Her teasing was cruel. I . . . snapped. I guess that’s an accurate word for what happened. She was laughing. I was trying to stop her.