Blake Pierce - Once Gone

He held something in his hand – a crowbar, she now realized. He seemed to be in his stocking feet. He must have been somewhere in the house all along, waiting for the right moment to come and take her by surprise.

Her arm and her head hurt horribly. She felt a sticky, liquid warmth on the side of her skull. She was bleeding, and bleeding badly. She struggled against unconsciousness.

She heard the man laugh, and the laughter wasn’t a familiar voice. Her thoughts became hopelessly confused. It wasn’t Peterson’s voice, so cruel and mocking in that darkness. And where was his torch? Why was everything so different?

She groped about in her mind for the truth of her situation.

It’s not Peterson, she told herself. It’s Dirk Monroe.

She whispered aloud to herself, “One monster at time.”

This monster was bent on killing her.

She clawed around on the floor. Where was her gun?

The man moved toward her, swinging the crowbar with one hand, slicing the air with it. Riley got halfway to her feet before he landed a blow across her shoulder and knocked her down again. She braced herself for another blow, but then heard the sound of the crowbar falling to the floor.

Something was looped around her left foot, pulling her. He’d gotten a rope around that foot and was dragging her slowly across the floor, through the litter and toward the pipe in the middle of the room. It was the place where four women had already suffered and died.

Riley tried to probe his thoughts. He hadn’t scouted her or chosen her. He’d never seen her buying one of those dolls he so deeply loathed. Even so, he intended to make the most of her arrival. He was going to make her his next victim. He was determined to make her suffer. She was going to die in pain.

Even so, Riley caught a glimmer of impending justice. Bill and a team would get here soon. What would Dirk do when the FBI stormed the house? He’d kill her, of course, and instantly. He’d never allow her to be rescued. But he was doomed all the same.

But why did Riley have to be his last victim? She saw faces of people she loved – April, Bill – even her father. Now Riley knew she shared with him a stubborn bond of dark wisdom, a comprehension of limitless evil in the world. She thought of the work she lived each day to do, and slowly, a new determination rose up in her. She wouldn’t let him claim her easily. She’d die on her own terms, not his.

She groped around the floor with her hand. She found something solid – not part of a doll, but something hard and sharp. She gripped the handle of the knife. It was surely the very knife he’d used on four women.

Time slowed down to a mind-numbing crawl. She realized that Dirk had just passed the rope around the central pipe. Now he was pulling her foot up against it.

He was turned away from her, too sure that she was defeated already. His mind was occupied with tying her to the post – and on what he would do to her then.

His unwariness gave Riley a moment, and one moment only, before he turned back her way. Still prone on the floor, she wrenched her body into a seated position. He noticed this and started to turn, but she moved quicker. She wrestled her free right foot beneath her, then rose up to face him.

She plunged the knife into his stomach, then drew it out and stabbed him again and again. She heard him shriek and moan. She kept stabbing madly until she blacked out.

Riley opened her eyes. Her whole body was in pain, especially her shoulder and her head. Bill’s face filled her vision. Was she dreaming?

“Bill?” she asked.

He smiled, looking relieved. He was holding something soft against her head, staunching the flow of blood.

“Welcome back,” he said.

Riley realized that she was still in the room, with the post nearby. She was seized by a moment of panic.

“Where’s Dirk?” she asked.

“Dead,” Bill said. “You gave him just what he deserved.”

Riley still wondered if she was dreaming.

“I’ve got to see,” she gasped. She managed to turn her head. She saw Dirk stretched out across the floor face down in a pool of his own blood. Eyes opened. Unblinking.

Bill turned her head back toward him.

“Don’t try to move,” he said. “You’re hurt pretty bad. You’re going to be okay. But you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

A spasm of nauseated dizziness told her that Bill was right. She managed to whisper five words before she lost consciousness again.

“One monster at a time.”

Special Agent Brent Meredith shut the thick manila envelope stuffed with photographs and written reports with a note of satisfied finality. Riley felt the same satisfaction, and she was sure that Bill and Flores did too. They were all seated at the table in the Behavioral Analysis Unit conference room. If only Riley weren’t bandaged up and hurting all over, the moment would have felt perfect.

“So Dirk’s mother wanted a daughter instead of a son,” Meredith said. “She tried to turn him into a Southern belle. That was probably just the tip of the iceberg. God knows what else he went through as a kid.”

Bill leaned back in his chair.

“Let’s not give him too much sympathy,” he said. “Not everybody with a lousy childhood turns into a murderous sadist. He made his own choices.”

Meredith and Flores nodded in agreement.

“But does anybody know whatever happened to Dirk’s mother?” Riley asked.

“Records show that she died five years ago,” Flores said. “His father disappeared long before that, when Dirk was still a baby.”

A sober silence settled over the group. Riley understood exactly what it meant. She was in the presence of three people whose lives were devoted to destroying evil. Even in their satisfaction, the specter of more evil, and much more work to do, hung over all of them. It would never be over. Not for them.

The door opened, and Carl Walder walked in. He was all smiles.

“Great work, everybody,” he said. He slid Riley’s gun and badge across the table toward her. “These belong to you.”

Riley smiled a wry smile. Walder was not going to apologize, much less acknowledge any fault of his own. But that was just as well. Riley didn’t know just how she’d respond if he actually said he was sorry. Probably not gracefully.

“By the way, Riley,” Walder said. “The Senator called me this morning, and he sends you his best wishes for your recovery, and his thanks. He seems to think the world of you.”

Riley now had to stifle her amusement. That call, she was sure, was exactly why Walder was giving her back her gun and her badge. She remembered one of the last things Newbrough had said to her.

“You’re nobody’s lapdog.”

The same thing could never be said of Carl Walder.

“Stop by my office soon,” Walder said. “Let’s talk promotion. An administrative position, maybe. You deserve it.”

Without another word, Walder left the office. Riley heard her companions breathe a shared sigh of relief that he was gone so quickly.

“You should think about it, Riley,” Meredith said.

Riley chuckled.

“Can you really see me in an administrative job?”

Meredith shrugged.

“You’ve more than paid your dues. You’ve done more tough field work than most agents do in a lifetime. Maybe you should become an instructor. You’d be great at training agents, with your experience and insight. What do you think?”

Riley thought it over. What would she really have to teach young agents? Her instincts were all she had, and as far as she knew, instincts couldn’t be taught. There was no way to train people to follow their gut. They either had it or they didn’t.