Michael Prescott - Last Breath

If his plan’s timing had been disrupted, did that mean he wouldn’t wait three hours for the kill? Would he end things now?

Footsteps. He approached her. She waited, thinking of the gun that had nuzzled her chin. Was the gun in his hand? Was he about to pull the trigger?

She wished the son of a bitch hadn’t taped over her eyes.

Then with a chuckle, he said, “Not yet, C.J.”

The words ought to have come as a relief, but hearing him address her in that fraudulently affectionate tone only shot another surge of fury through her. She twisted her wrists behind her back.

“Your friends at the LAPD are moving faster than I thought,” he went on. “But it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all.”

She caught the quaver in his voice and knew he was working hard to convince himself that things would still be okay. He hated surprises, hated to improvise. He was a control freak-always had been. A place for everything, everything in its place.

“Anyway, I have to go away for a while and talk to a detective about you. Should be a very interesting conversation. But don’t worry. I’ll be back. I guarantee it. In the meantime, you just sit tight. Think good thoughts.”

He walked off, his footsteps receding. From what seemed like far away he spoke again, his voice raised to cover distance.

“By the way, I lied about not remembering that song. And, darling-I’ve saved the last dance for you.”

Treat paced his bedroom, clenching and unclenching his fists, lifting his hands to run his long fingers through his hair. He almost believed that he was agitated, but he was never agitated. He prided himself on his self-control. The world could not touch him. He had risen above it. He had mastered death and life.

Even so, he could not stop pacing. He traced a series of irregular ellipses over the bedroom carpet.

By now he should have had her. Should have already begun the night’s entertainment. And it would have been such a special night, because she was special.

Instead she had been removed from his reach, and why? Because the police were on to him.

It was the only explanation for the insane vision that greeted him when he drove down her street at 6:45, only an hour ago. He had expected to see lights burning in the windows of her bungalow, the yard dark. Perhaps there would be the soft chatter of television voices from inside. That was how it had been on other nights, when he had reconnoitered the house.

Instead he saw a police car-a Sheriff’s Department patrol unit-parked in her driveway. At her front door, two deputies.

He cruised past without slowing. Whatever was happening, he could not afford to be seen there.

For fifteen minutes he drove aimlessly, trying to decide what to make of this unwelcome development. Deputies at her house? It made no sense. The mid-Wilshire area was not even under the Sheriff’s jurisdiction. There was no reason for any deputies to be there.

Perhaps they were friends stopping by to say hello. If so, they might already have left.

Once this cheering prospect occurred to him, he returned to her neighborhood for a second look.

This time things were worse.

The deputies’ car was still there, but joining it were three unmarked sedans, obviously official vehicles, and a pair of LAPD squad cars. The bungalow blazed with light. Uniformed and plainclothes cops were visible inside.

Again he drove past without reducing speed. Then he headed home.

He had not permitted himself to formulate any opinions until he had more information. Hasty, unwarranted speculation was anathema to him, the bane of methodical reasoning.

Once home, he had switched on his laptop and checked the Web site’s video feed. It was still running. The lights in her bedroom were on, and cops wandered in and out. Nobody was looking at the camera or seemed to suspect its existence. That was one good thing, at least.

He owned a police scanner, which he tuned to the frequencies used by the LAPD’s Wilshire Division. He monitored the cross talk as the scanner hopped from band to band.

Finally he turned on his TV and clicked through the channels in search of a news bulletin. He saw nothing but entertainment programs, each more witless than the last.

His gaze had kept returning to the computer screen. Once, he saw an older, rumpled man in a wrinkled suit walk slowly through the bedroom. He knew that man’s name. Morris Walsh, head of the task force hunting the Hourglass Killer.

Now what the hell was he doing there?

There could be only one answer. The police must have discovered that Caitlin was his next target. He had pressed his luck too far, following her after she left work. She had seen the van-he’d caught her looking at him outside the Korean market. No doubt she’d reported the incident to her fellow cops. Somehow a white van had been linked to one or more of the previous Hourglass Killer slayings-perhaps somebody had spotted it near one of the abduction sites or the dump sites of the bodies. Walsh had moved Caitlin to a safe house and was now inspecting her home for clues. But they had not yet learned of the Web site itself. If they had, they surely would have taken it down by now.

What to do, what to do?

He didn’t know, and he hated not knowing.

Uncertainty was rare for him. Ambiguity was not a daily feature of his life. He felt lost, and this was a feeling both new and disagreeable.

He stopped in the middle of his bedroom, worn out by worry. For a few moments he just stood there. The TV flickered in a corner; the computer, resting in its docking station, displayed the video feed; the scanner hissed and crackled with snippets of radio code.

Treat ignored it. He looked at himself in the mirror over the bureau, a tall man with thinning hair and sharp features and a spindly, angular body. For a moment he saw the teenager he had been, the lonely, remote, pale thirteen-year-old dubbed Spider-Man by his peers-not from any similarity to the comic-book crime-fighter, but because he had reminded them of a spider with his double-jointed appendages branching out in weird directions.

He hadn’t minded the name. He liked spiders. He admired their patience, their craft, and their cold ruthlessness. Even as a child, he had known that these were the special qualities he wished to nurture in himself. He had taken to raising spiders in the cellar. His parents hadn’t objected. They had heard that it was advisable to encourage a gifted boy in his hobbies and interests. Besides, they were afraid of their son.

He had learned much from spiders, so much that he supposed he had become something of a spider himself. Certainly he was a creature who spun elaborate webs and even lived, in a sense, on the great Web of the Internet.

But now he felt entangled in a web not of his own making-and he didn’t like the feeling, didn’t like it at all.

Perhaps he should flee. He had done it before, in other circumstances, when he had begun to feel that his luck had run its course.

Oh, but he hated to leave when Caitlin’s fate was still unknown. When there was still a chance he might have her.

Besides, he was safe in his apartment. His shock troops would protect him against all intruders. In the event that the barbarians stormed his castle, he could count on holding them off long enough to flee.

He decided to risk staying a little longer. Had the victim been anyone else, he would have yielded to prudence and made his escape. But Caitlin was indeed special.

He had wanted her for so long.

Walsh was in C.J. Osborn’s living room, conferring with members of the Scientific Investigation Division, when his cell phone buzzed.