Michael Prescott - Next Victim

Mobius.

This was his MO. McCallum had told him about it.

But Mobius killed women…

Not always. There was McCallum’s partner in Denver. And the kid in the chem lab.

Shit. He blinked, looking around.

The room was dark, the curtains shut, the glow of an outside spotlight trickling through. Dodge thought it must be around eight-thirty, maybe as late as nine. There was a chance that a call would come in for him. He and Bradley were still catching calls, and when he didn’t answer, Bradley or the watch commander would get worried and send a unit to check out his house. The patrol cops would see signs of a struggle in the carport, would come in with their guns drawn and blow this crazy asshole Mobius away.

Sure. It would happen just like that.

Dodge had heard enough bullshit from suspects and witnesses, not to mention from other cops, to know when he was slinging the bull himself. There wasn’t going to be any last-minute rescue. In the carport he’d had one shot at walking away from this situation with all his parts, and it had gone wrong and now he was fucked and it was over. Just that simple.

Movement in the dimness. The man who must be Mobius, pacing. He wore a dark windbreaker and latex gloves. His face was barely visible, a shadow among shadows.

"Sorry I hit you so hard," the man said.

Dodge didn’t remember getting hit. The footstep he remembered. The sudden sense of danger. After that-nothing. Concussion, he figured. Amnesia. Common in head injuries. The least of his fucking problems.

"I knew you’d be armed," Mobius went on in a quiet, conversational tone. "So I had to subdue you immediately. It was the same with Paul Voorhees. Only he never woke up. He was lucky. Luckier than you." Mobius took a step closer. "Are you afraid? Afraid of dying?"

Dodge wouldn’t have answered even if he could. The answer was fucking obvious. Yeah, he was scared. He was propped up in bed, his pants wet, a sick feeling at the back of his throat, his heart working double time, his body quivering all over-and this cocksucker had the balls to ask if he was scared.

"You shouldn’t be. Dying is nothing. I died when I was eight years old. I’m dead now. So are you. We’re all dead, all of us, though we try to pretend we don’t know."

Dodge worked his mouth under the tape, as if he could gnaw through it and then sink his chops into Mobius himself. This was great, just fucking great. Not only was he going to get offed by this piece of shit, but he would have to listen to a goddamn philosophy lecture first.

But Mobius seemed to have said his piece. He moved around the bed, and in the chancy ambient light Dodge saw the glint of a knife.

He cuts their throats. That’s how he does it.

Fear flashed through him like a punch of nausea, and he released it the only way he could, by shaking his arms wildly, tugging at the duct tape, and when it didn’t break, he thrashed his legs, kicking like a petulant kid, and distantly he felt his bowels loosen and he knew he had crapped himself.

God damn it, he didn’t want to die.

He exhausted his strength and lay quivering on the tangled sheets. Mobius just watched him from the shadows. The guy didn’t look very big. Tall, maybe, but not pumped up the way ex-cons usually were. One on one, Dodge could take him, no problem.

Come on, shithead, untape me and we’ll see which one of us is the alpha dog.

He tried to force out the challenge past the tape on his mouth, but all that emerged was a grunt, low and plaintive and humiliating.

It sounded like a plea. He hated that sound. He’d made many men plead, men he’d stomped and pounded, men whose fingers he’d broken and whose ribs he’d bruised, and although he enjoyed it when they begged for mercy, he was always secretly embarrassed for them, dismayed by their show of weakness.

Now he was the one being weak. He shouldn’t let things play out that way. He should be tough, go down in defiance, not give an inch.

Should, but couldn’t. He was forty-four. He wasn’t ready for this. It was too soon. He had plans. He had the money he was making on the side, his retirement money, and what he meant to use it for-the islands, every day spent beachcombing, every night a visit to a different island bar to bag a different island girl. Sun and sand and sex-decades of it-fuck, he was only forty-four.

"Are you ready, Detective? I don’t like to start until the subject is ready."

Bite me, you faggot asshole.

"Usually I see a kind of resignation. It makes things easier."

Dodge wouldn’t make it easy. He was not through living. He would not let this scumbag take his future away.

"Of course, some people simply lack the proper temperament."

Eat shit. Dodge wished he could scream it at him.

He’d never really believed he would die. Never believed in a point of termination. Not for him. Other people died. He was forever. Other people left the world, but he…he was the world.

Dodge shook his arms once more against the duct tape. The headboard rattled, banging on the wall. The mattress creaked.

"There, there," Mobius said. "There, there."

Everything blurred. Dodge thought Mobius had done something to his eyes. Then he realized he was crying.

They would find him-someone would find him-and he would be dead in his own shit and piss, with dried tears on his face, and people would make remarks and get a laugh, and then he would go under Winston’s knife-his second trip to the morgue this weekend…

A gloved hand on his face. Pushing up his chin. He fought to twist free of the hand. Couldn’t.

In the other hand-the knife.

Let me out of this, let me out…

Like it was a bad dream and he could wake up. Like it was a TV show and he could change the channel.

"There, there," Mobius said, and the knife flicked-a hot wire of pain in his neck, then something warm and wet, which was blood.

When Tess could move again, she got to her feet and staggered to the door and flung it open, leaning against the door frame to inhale the warm, dry breeze.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, letting the uncontaminated air refresh her body and dilute the toxins in her blood.

The sluggishness left her muscles, and the flulike symptoms that had been her first warning signs finally abated. She was still exhausted and shaky, sore where her arms and legs had seized up in convulsions, and her heart was running too fast and too hard, but she knew she was past the worst of it. She would be okay.

Looking down, she was surprised to see that her purse was in her hand. She must have picked it up without conscious thought. The cell phone was gone, of course, as was the antidote kit, but she still had her gun, her FBI credentials, and her car keys. She wondered if she ought to drive herself to a hospital for observation, or use the phone in the manager’s office to call the police, or Thinking of a phone call reminded her of using redial on her cell phone, trying to reach Dodge…and getting no answer.

It was his cell phone number, the one he handed out to informers. He would have answered it-if he could.

"He’s in trouble."

Her own voice startled her, coming raspy and thick.

She’d been working with Dodge. If Mobius had been following her or watching the arson site, he might have seen them together. Having targeted one of them, he might also have set his sights on the other.

Dodge had told her his address. It wasn’t far. She could be at his place in ten minutes.

She shook off the lingering effects of the gas, then closed and locked the door of room 14 so nobody would venture inside. Her bureau car was parked only a couple of yards away. She felt steadier on her feet as she walked to it, and when she started the engine and pulled out of the lot, the sense of purpose revived her further.