Mecum lunged forward, howling in rage, just as Ramsey fired a second and third shot. Pop, pop.
Both bullets struck Mecum in the chest and he fell backward. She raced forward, her gaze on the knife in his hand. As she approached, he jerked the knife forward, but she easily dodged it as he fell back.
Mecum released his grip on the girl and Melina yanked the child free, gathering her up in her arms. She held the child’s trembling body close. She remembered the extreme fear she had felt when Bonnie had abandoned her, and then she recalled the sense of relief that had followed when her father had found her.
Melina turned from the door and shielded Elena’s body with her own as they dropped to a crouch. She turned from the scene, covering the child’s eyes. Elena wrapped her arms around Melina’s neck. “Melina.”
“It’s okay, Elena.”
Her side burned and she could feel the blood staining her underpants and soaking Elena’s dress. She looked down and knew the wound was deep. Ramsey’s hurried footsteps pounded across the yard and up the stairs to the porch.
“You’re bleeding,” Elena said.
“It’s okay,” Melina lied.
Ramsey cuffed Mecum before confirming he was dead and called Jackson to move in with his team. He also ordered an ambulance.
“Melina,” Ramsey said.
“He cut me,” she said. Whatever physical damage Mecum had done to her would most likely heal. Most likely. All that mattered was that Elena was okay.
He tried to pry the girl from her arms, but Elena squealed and held tight. With no choice, he led the two to the edge of the porch and helped her sit down.
In the distance sirens wailed. Melina could feel her head starting to spin, and she blinked to clear her vision. “It’s starting to sting a little.”
“Elena,” Ramsey ordered. “Come to me.”
“I want Melina!” she shouted.
“She’s hurt,” he said. “Can you help me fix her cut?”
“It’s okay, Elena.” Melina watched as the police car’s lights bounced off the trees.
The girl went to Ramsey as the paramedic raced to the porch. Melina fell back against the wood surface, her vision narrowing.
Ramsey pulled off his jacket and balled it up, pressing it firmly against her side. She winced and hissed in a breath.
“Ouch!” Melina’s eyes widened as her mind cleared.
“It’s bleeding a lot.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
He held the pressure steady against the wound. “You take too many chances,” he said.
“Not as many this time.” She looked over at Mecum’s body, knowing how close she had come to dying at his hands not once but twice.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he growled.
She smiled up at him. “What a sweet thing to say.”
The paramedic came up beside Ramsey, ordering him to step aside. Ramsey hesitated but complied.
“Call my mother,” Melina said. “She needs to know Elena is okay.”
Ramsey nodded in agreement. “She has every right.”
Melina smiled up at him, doing her best to stay calm. “Are you going to make a fuss?”
“Maybe.” He cupped her face. “Yeah, definitely.”
The sirens grew loud and she heard men shouting. “I think I might be looking forward to that.”
EPILOGUE
Wednesday, September 9, 11:00 a.m.
Melina shifted on the couch in her parents’ den and readjusted her earbuds. Her father was currently watching a classic football game—a.k.a. the 1971 Super Bowl. Super Bowl V featured the matchup of the Dallas Cowboys versus the Baltimore Colts. Her father fast-forwarded to all of the eleven turnovers and to the final scoreboard: Colts, 16, and Dallas, 13. In her lifetime, she had seen this game at least a dozen times. As much as she hated watching it, she found comfort in the sameness of her father’s habits.
When Dad had keyed up the game, her mother had taken Elena into the kitchen, offering to bake cookies.
Melina tried to rise and follow, but the gash in her side tugged painfully. The stitches had come out yesterday with doctor’s orders to take it easy and stay off her feet a few more days. As much as she wanted to rush recovery, a relapse meant more time at home with her parents, whom she dearly loved but who were also driving her as insane as she was driving them.
Easing back on the couch, she selected a podcast. She closed her eyes, refocusing on the narrator’s rich voice, which made murder almost appealing.
Instead of losing herself in a long-ago solved case, she saw Mecum’s face. He came at her, wielding a knife and cutting her flesh. There was pure, raw delight in his dark gaze. He did not seem human.
She opened her eyes and pulled out her earbuds, shifting her gaze to her father, inspecting turnover number eight. Three to go. Game almost over.
Elena giggled in the kitchen, and the delightful sound chased away the fury and outrage directed at the man who had taken the lives of thirteen women.
Mecum had started killing in 1998, not 1999 as first thought, while he was still living in Georgia. Over the next five years, six prostitutes had been murdered. The bodies were almost completely decomposed, but the medical examiner had noted that each victim had suffered multiple broken bones and the cause of death for each had been strangulation.
Two of those six prostitutes had vanished from Savannah, Georgia, where he had a vacation home. More died in Baltimore and in Wilmington, North Carolina, and the final two died in Nashville during the summer.
Mecum had a type and he never wavered from his profile. Young, under thirty, and with dark hair and pale skin. He had preferred very small-boned women.
Sonny had brought so much evil, but a part of her felt sorry for the tortured soul who had lost so much. Bonnie had spent years manipulating him. When she was arrested and he was left alone, his fears of abandonment had been realized. She understood what that felt like, and there was even a trace of pity in her for Bonnie. Jordie Tanner, the long-haul trucker with the surveillance cameras in his yard, had provided footage that had captured Bonnie racing down the street seconds before she had crashed her car by accident—not on purpose, as they had first theorized.
Whatever tender feelings she’d had for the man she knew as Sam faded as the FBI identified each of the fingers found in Sonny’s pickle jar and the one Ramsey had found in his kitchen cabinet. That appendage had belonged to Tammy West, whose body had been discovered in her bathtub.
The women who had vanished in the cities other than Nashville went missing about the time Sonny had been in their cities with one of the bands he managed. Several of the men who had worked with Sonny on the road said that whenever the road crew had a night off, they went out drinking. The one exception had been Sonny, who had always said he had a date with a local girl. One had even produced a picture of Cindy Patterson, who had gotten a backstage pass.
Melina was frustrated with herself and for several nights had trouble sleeping. However, slowly the controlled chaos of her parents’ house, now filled with Elena’s laughter and growing collection of toys, reminded her she had gotten a few things right.
Elena’s and her mother’s giggles trailed out from the kitchen. Melina shifted her torso, winced, and pushed up off the couch. She’d had no idea how critical abdominal muscles were until she did not have the use of hers. More core work at the gym was a must now.
“You’re supposed to be resting, kiddo,” her father said without looking away from the television.
“I’m going in the kitchen to see what the girls are baking.”
“Turnover number nine is about to happen. Give me a second . . .”
“That’s okay, Dad.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I’d rather have a cookie.”
“Send some in for me, will you?”
She smiled. “Will do.”
She had had no contact with Ramsey since he’d left for Quantico over a week ago. In the hospital, he had asked all the right questions, but he had kept his emotions in check. He had looked after her care with the same cool reserve he had mustered in the fight with Mecum. She had considered calling him. Anyone else, she would have dialed the number and called them out. But with him, she could not bring herself to call. She really liked him and, on some level, feared whatever it was they had had was over. She didn’t want to hear him say they were done.
She maneuvered slowly, keeping her hand pressed to her side. It had taken forty-two stitches to close up the deep gash that had gone through muscle.
Her mother appeared in the kitchen door. “What are you doing up?”
Melina jabbed her thumb over her shoulder at the television. “I need a cookie.”
Her mother watched turnover number nine. “At least there are only two to go.”
The front doorbell rang. Melina felt as if the cavalry had arrived. “I’ll get it.”
Her mother’s eyes sparked with amusement. “No fast getaways.”
“Got it.”