Michael Prescott - Last Breath

Deep darkness here. The light from outside barely penetrated this niche. She could see Adam only as a vague silhouette against the dim glow in the doorway.

She was stuck in the corner now. Nowhere to go. The shard was her only weapon, and it was no good to her.

She groped for some new tool to use against him, and behind her, in a recess in the wall, her fingers touched a tangle of wires.

Electrical wires, rubber-insulated. The plate that would cover them had not yet been installed.

Live wires? Was the power on?

Could be. The workmen needed power tools.

And she was due for a little luck.

Adam had paused a few feet away. Couldn’t see her in the dimness. Knew she was close by, so he was waiting for his vision to adjust to the minimal light.

It wouldn’t take long. She had seconds, no more.

She pocketed the shard and reached into the nest of wires. She knew that wires came in three varieties-hot, neutral, and ground. The hot wire and either of the other two would complete a circuit.

Adam took the final steps, closing on his prey.

She grabbed two of the wires, holding them by their rubber sheaths, praying that one of them was the hot wire and that the current was on.

Without sight, somehow she knew that Adam had raised the plank for the knockout blow. Lunging forward, she jammed the wires against his body.

And there was light.

A sudden spark, dazzling in the gloom-there was current in the wires, 120 volts that had raced from the hot wire to the other one via the intermediary of Adam’s body-and with a howl of pain, he staggered backward, falling, the plank gone from his grasp as he clutched himself and rolled.

Without meaning to, she had zapped him in his most vulnerable spot. She’d gotten him in the balls.

“Well, fuck you, mister,” she breathed. He deserved it.

He had been saved from unconsciousness or worse only by his reflexive retreat from the shock. He’d broken the circuit before it could seriously fry him.

If she could shock him again, she would put him down for the count. But he was too far away for the wires to reach.

She dropped the wires and darted around the spot where he lay. Even stunned, he wasn’t helpless. His hand caught her by the ankle. She stumbled, kicking free, but already he was struggling to rise.

The plank.

She grabbed it and batted him, deliberately aiming for his crotch this time, but he drew up a knee to ward off the strike and she heard the crack of the plank against the side of his thigh.

“ God damn it!” Adam gasped, jerking the plank away from her before she could use it again.

She couldn’t get past him, out the doorway, not when he had the plank in his hands, so she took the stairs, heading up to the second level of the garage.

Already he was following. Whatever damage she’d inflicted had barely slowed him down. Adrenaline could do miraculous things for the human body, enabling a person to absorb punishment and summon reserves of stamina unknown in ordinary circumstances.

“You can’t get away from me, you bitch!” His shout echoed up the stairwell

We’ll see, she thought.

The stairs were barricaded after the second landing. She couldn’t go all the way to the roof. Just as well-the roof would be a dead end anyway.

She ran onto the second level, identical to the first except that no stripes had been painted on the floor.

Adam burst out of the doorway, limping on his injured knee, but seemingly oblivious to the pain.

At the far end of the garage was a concrete ramp that must lead to the ground floor, but she didn’t think she could reach it in time.

Instead she veered to her right, toward a low guardrail. Got there, looked down. A twenty-foot drop onto asphalt. Not good.

Adam was closing in. She ran along the guardrail. For a crazy moment the image entered her mind of a mechanical rabbit at a dog track, speeding along an electrified rail while the hounds pursued.

Still no place to jump. And he was nearly on top of her now.

Again she glanced down. This time she saw something other than black asphalt below.

Dirt. A huge pile of excavated dirt.

Her best chance.

Adam reached for her-she felt the plank whisper an inch above her head-as she vaulted the rail and plummeted into space.

A cry escaped her, a long involuntary shriek, and then she landed atop the hill of dirt, all the breath shocked out of her by the impact.

She looked up. Adam had discarded the plank. He was drawing his gun.

Shit.

She dived down the slope, rolling onto the asphalt, then sprinted for the nearest cover, a trash bin ten feet away. Reached it and hunkered down, her breath explosive, heart hammering.

Adam hadn’t fired. Either he still didn’t want to alter the MO, or he simply hadn’t had a decent shot.

One thing was certain. He hadn’t given up. He would be after her.

She had to get the hell out of this place, wherever it was, and she had to do it fast.

Rawls had his hands full dealing with Steven Gader, whose mindset in the past two hours had changed from reluctant cooperation to indignant defensiveness and finally to outright hysteria. “I didn’t know about the women,” he kept saying. “Jesus, I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t, Mr. Gader,” Rawls said evenly. As Gader’s tone had risen in pitch and intensity, Rawls’s own voice had dropped half an octave and slowed down, as if to compensate. “You didn’t know anything. I hear you.”

“Well, all right. All right. I knew there might be some… funny business. You know, maybe the women weren’t aware, fully aware, that they were being taped. I mean, that was a possibility. A remote possibility.”

“Remote,” Rawls echoed, his voice deepening still further, entering the James Earl Jones range.

“But the other stuff, these killings, it’s news to me. I mean, a complete shock. I never had the slightest… Look, if I had even suspected…”

Rawls said nothing. He believed Gader, actually. But he wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily. The man was scum. Let him sweat.

“Maybe I’d better call a lawyer,” Gader finished.

“That’s your right.”

Gader trudged out of the room. Rawls stared after him, then glanced at Brand.

“What a prick,” Brand commented without looking up from Gader’s computer.

Rawls laughed, his first laugh in quite a long while. “Ned, you always know the right thing to say.”

His cell phone chirped. He took the call, and his smile vanished when he heard Morris Walsh’s first words.

“Got good news and bad news.” There was no life in his voice, and no hope. “Which do you want to hear first?”

“Just tell it all.”

“We identified Bluebeard. SWAT just raided his apartment. He was there, but he got away.”

“He’s at large?”

“Afraid so.”

“And the victim?”

“No sign of her.”

“You think he already did her?” Rawls hated that ugly euphemism, did, which stood for everything from consensual sex to rape to homicide, but he couldn’t bring himself to say killed.

On the other end of the line, Walsh sighed. “We don’t know. I had this theory that he holds them for four hours, but… Well, it looks like I was wrong.”

He sounded tired. More than tired. Defeated. As if he had given up. Not a good sign-for him, for the case, or for C.J. Osborn, if she was still alive.

“Possibly not,” Rawls said, trying to give Walsh some encouragement. “He may have stashed her somewhere.”

“And gone home? Maybe. I don’t think so. You know, the four-hour thing was based mainly on the tattoos.”

“The hourglass,” Rawls said.

“But I guess they had a different significance. Our guy is into spiders.”