Cut and Run (Criminal Profiler 2)

“I couldn’t really tell. She can’t know about you. I’ve been extra careful with you.”

Paige knitted her fingers together so tightly the circulation nearly cut off. Could someone out there be looking for her? She had to believe, or else she’d go mad in this hellhole. “Are you worried?”

He leaned against the wall and surveyed the room. “How do you know I’m worried?”

“We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well.” She nibbled a fry.

“Maybe you’re right about that.” He nodded thoughtfully. “In here, I can be honest and be myself.”

In here, the lovely mask he wore for the world could be lowered. In here, the monster could roam free.

“I’m worried,” he said. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Worry has kept me a couple of paces ahead of everyone all my life. Worry is what’s going to get me through this last job.”

“I’m a job?”

“That’s right. My freelance job.”

“And when the job is done?” She picked up the burger and tore it in half, staring at the ketchup oozing out over the pickles.

“Like I told you, I’ll keep my word.”

“You’re selling the baby.”

He shook his head. “There are people that’ll be better parents than you. Besides, you said you didn’t want it.”

She’d been tired, depressed, and scared when she’d said that. Now, she was scared not just for herself but for the baby.

He inserted the key into the manacle’s lock and twisted. The metal loosened, and he gently pulled it off her ankle, leaving a raw strip of flesh in its place. “That’s got to smart.”

“It does.”

“I got some salve for that.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a tube of antibiotic cream.

She accepted it, fingering the fresh tube and wondering how she could use it to escape.

“Eat up, girl. That burger is getting cold.”

She’d been nauseated with morning sickness the entire pregnancy, and it felt good to have an appetite again.

As she ate, he took the tube back and spread ointment on his fingers. He motioned for her to hold her leg out, and when she did, he carefully rubbed cream on the worn skin.

His touch was gentle, and it shamed her that she responded to his kindness. She was so starved for people and affection that even her jailer’s touch was welcome.

“What if something goes wrong with the baby?” she asked.

“Don’t borrow trouble. That baby and you are going to be just fine.”

He was going to kill her. She’d feared this since the moment he’d locked her in here, but the instant she’d seen the initials on the back of the dresser, she’d known those women had not survived.

Without a word, he took her by the elbow and helped her to her feet. “Time to go.”

She cringed. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a better place than this. A bigger room.”

When she didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed her tighter and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. “Let’s go.”

She dug her heels in. At least she was familiar with this hellhole. Here she at least had the pen and the two magazines containing the words of the other girls. “Where are we going?”

“Like I said, a new place.”

“I don’t want to die!”

He shook his head, grinning as if she’d lost her mind. “You ain’t going to die.”

Her belly felt heavy as she stood. “I don’t have shoes.”

“You don’t need shoes. You won’t be outside long.” Taking her by the arm, he pulled her out of the room, past her discarded cot still tossed against a cement wall, and toward a set of stairs. She glanced back at the room. Every night she’d dreamed of escaping it, but now that she was leaving, she was terrified. That room was the devil she knew, not the unknown hell about to come.

As she tried to keep pace with his long strides, her gaze swept the room. There was a washer and dryer and even some of her clothes drying on a clothesline strung between two posts. There were shelves stocked with canned food, baby provisions, and medical supplies. It could have been anyone’s basement. It looked ordinary. It was normal.

He yanked her and forced her up the stairs. She’d barely had any activity in the last few months and found by the time she reached the top stair, she was breathless with legs of rubber.

He yanked her through a kitchen equipped with avocado-green appliances that screamed 1970s retro. The smell of Clorox hung in the air.

“I’m afraid,” she stammered.

“No reason to be worried. We’re just getting you to a nicer room.”

“Please, just let me go. I won’t tell. I just want to go home.”

His fingers tightened around her forearm. Not painful yet, but close. “I could shove sleeping pills down your throat, but you don’t want me to do that. It’s bad for the baby.”

More questions sprang to mind, but she held them close, knowing he would make good on this threat. He always did.

He dragged her through a small living room covered in gold shag carpet and then out the front door. As her bare feet stepped onto the rough wood of the front deck, she was greeted by bright afternoon sunshine. Wincing, she had to look away from the sky, even as she savored the first lungful of fresh air she had inhaled in months. It smelled so sweet she nearly wept. Her face tipped toward the sun and absorbed every bit of its warmth. She’d been such a fool to take the sun, her mother, and her freedom for granted.

“No dawdling.” He jerked her toward his truck, opened the front door, and ordered her inside. She struggled with her belly and unsure legs. She was still breathless when she climbed up into the seat. “Put your seat belt on. Don’t want you getting hurt. And there are sunglasses in the glove box. Put them on.”

She clicked the seat belt in place. “Where are we going?”

“I told you not to worry. It’s a better place.”

“Like as in dead? Like heaven?”

He laughed. “Like another house.” He then pointed a meaty finger at her, and his tone changed instantly. “Get out of the car while I’m walking to my seat, and I will break your legs when I catch you. You hear me, girl?”

“I hear.”

He came around the hood quickly, watching her, and before she could map out or process escape, he was behind the wheel.

He started the engine and drove down the graveled driveway. She glanced back at the house, thought about the initials carved on the back of the dresser and the other women who’d been held there. Was this what happened to them?

“Don’t look so worried.” He flashed her that dazzling smile.

He slowed at a stoplight on the main road that she guessed was west of Austin, somewhere near the Hill Country.

They drove in silence, and she stared out at the clouds and blue sky. Soon side roads fed into smaller and smaller roads. She leaned toward her window as the first car she’d seen approached them.

“Sit lower in the seat,?

? he said.

When she didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm until she cowered down. They drove for almost a half hour, and soon the lights of Austin glistened around her. He exited the main road and took several rights and lefts before pulling into a little neighborhood and into the garage of a house.

When the garage door closed behind them, he shut off the engine and came around to her side of the car. He hauled her out of the car and into the house. She had barely seconds to register her surroundings before he dragged her down a set of stairs and toward another door. Another prison.

He opened the door and flipped on a light. “Go on, get inside.”

This space was half the size of the other. The bed was a twin, and there was no kitchen table but only a side table with a microwave and packets of noodles and bottles of water. There was a toilet in the corner, but no bath or shower.

“This place is so small.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t be here long.” He grabbed a chain from under the bed. “Sit down. I need to put this on you.”

“I don’t need a chain. I won’t run.”

He shoved her toward the bed and forced her to sit, clamping the chain around her other ankle. “You fooled me once. You should see the damn bruise on my arm. So that’s not coming off you until the baby is born.”

Death in childbirth was rare in light of modern medicine, but that was in a hospital with doctors, nurses, and clean sheets. “If I have it alone, the baby’s chances of survival are so much lower.”

“I got it worked out. It’s been a while, but I’ve delivered babies before. But you better hurry up and have that baby. If it doesn’t come in the next week, I’ll cut it out of you.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tuesday, June 26, 6:00 p.m.

Hayden met Brogan at the Austin Police Department Forensic Science Division’s forensic lab. Melissa Savage, a technician who favored jeans, flats, and brightly colored Hawaiian shirts, greeted them. Her dark curly hair was wound into a ponytail, and several pencils stuck out at different angles.

“Gentlemen, come on back to the lab,” she said.

She walked with long, even strides as she led them toward a light table. She’d methodically arranged neat rows of Macy Crow’s belongings, which had been found in her backpack and in her pockets. Her bloodstained clothes, which had been cut away by the EMTs and emergency room doctors, were also present.