Michael Prescott - Last Breath

Now he was-or had been-the Hourglass Killer of Los Angeles. He’d preyed on single women in their twenties and thirties, leaving his signature tattoo, his coy calling card. He kept his victims alive for four hours. Why four? Well-why not? The time period had no significance to him. Neither did the hourglass tattoo, except as a private joke relating to his passion for black widows. Such details were merely part of his latest act, virtuoso flourishes in the new role he had written for himself, a magician’s sleight of hand. While the police were writing their profiles and studying the pattern of his crimes, he would simply vanish, then reappear in a new guise, with new ground rules, in a new locale. And nobody would make the connection. Nobody would link the Hourglass Killer in LA with, say, the Mesa Campus Stalker or the Boise Bride Snatcher or whatever new identity he crafted for himself.

By this means, he stayed always one step ahead of the authorities. Tonight, admittedly, had been a close call, and in retrospect he should have left town immediately upon noting the police presence in Caitlin’s house. Still, his precautions, a product of experience and long habit, had served him well. He was free, sufficiently far from his home territory to make his arrest unlikely, and he could start over somewhere else, under a new name, in a new occupation.

In his dash for escape, he had left behind his van, most of his clothes and all of his furnishings, not to mention his arachnid menagerie. All he had was the old Buick-and his laptop computer, which he’d grabbed as he fled, and which now rested on the passenger seat. He was glad not to have lost it. Of course, the hardware could be replaced easily enough-in addition to the cash in the trunk, he had money banked in untraceable accounts, readily available, and he was quite an accomplished burglar as well. But there was a great deal of private information on the computer, including his bookmarked Web pages, one of which was the video display of Caitlin Osborn’s bedroom.

As far as he could tell, the police remained unaware of the Web site. They had exhibited no knowledge of the secret surveillance and had neither disconnected the camera nor pulled the plug on the site. Conceivably he could continue to use it.

To watch Caitlin, if and when she returned home.

To watch… and perhaps to strike.

He shook his head. Smarter to forget her. Smarter to move on, reinvent himself once more, start the games anew.

But she had eluded him once before. It galled him to have been cheated of her not once, but twice. To leave their relationship unconsummated.

Well, perhaps all was not yet lost. Anything was possible. And he was patient. He could wait for her. He had already waited so long.

No way out.

C.J. had sprinted past blocks of lightless buildings, across swards of brown grass, until she reached the chain-link fence at the edge of the complex. From a distance it didn’t look like an insuperable barrier. Only when she drew close did she see the coils of razor wire cresting the fence like spiked, unruly hair.

The wire would cut her to pieces if she tried to climb over.

Next she skirted the perimeter in search of a gap in the fence or an open gate. She found no gaps, and the gate, when she came to it, was padlocked.

Pick the lock? She didn’t have any tools. Cut the chain or the hasp? Not without a hacksaw.

Craning her neck, she peered up at a sign over the gate, which read “COMING SOON-MIDVALE OFFICE PARK.”

Below the words was an artist’s rendering of an immaculately landscaped commercial development on narrow, winding streets. The colors were bright and clear, and the picture had the wholesome appeal of a storybook illustration. But it was streaked with dirt and rain, and she guessed that construction on the project had halted some time ago.

She looked through the steel mesh of the gate at the surrounding darkness. There had to be a road or a home nearby, some sign of habitation or activity.

There was nothing. The office park lay in an unpopulated wasteland of sere desert hills, an environment that reminded her a little of the Mojave Desert where she had grown up. In the congested sprawl of the LA basin, Adam had managed to find that ultimate rarity-a secluded place.

She leaned against the gate, fighting for breath, trying to decide what to do.

Well, there was one option. She could bust her way out.

Adam must have parked his car near the garage, although she hadn’t seen it during her escape. If she could find it…

Maybe she could hot-wire the engine. All she needed was a tool to pry off the ignition cylinder-any bit of scrap metal would do. Then ram the gate and blow it off its hinges.

The difficulty lay in defeating the BMW’s antitheft system. But maybe she would get lucky. Maybe Adam had left the car unlocked. Even if he had, the system might automatically lock the doors and arm itself after a set period of time. Well, she would face that problem when she came to it. For all she knew, Adam had left the doors open and the key in the ignition. She could dream, couldn’t she?

At least it was a chance. A plan.

Carrying it out meant returning to the vicinity of the garage. If Adam had anticipated her strategy, he might still be there, lying in wait.

No, that was crazy. He couldn’t read her mind, for God’s sake.

Anyway, she had to risk it.

She headed back toward the garage, hoping Adam wasn’t smart enough to set an ambush there.

Adam had hated his ex-wife for a long time, but until tonight that hatred had been impersonal, driven by the conviction that she had wronged him, that justice demanded retribution.

Now he knew what real hatred was. He knew it with the agonized throbbing of his genitals, where she had shocked him-Jesus, shocked him like some prisoner in a Third World jail with his nuts hooked up to a car battery. He knew it with the complaint of his left knee, already stiffening up. She’d struck him with the flat of the plank, hard against his lower thigh, close to the knee, and though he didn’t think there was any permanent damage, he could feel the swelling of a nasty bruise.

She had hurt him.

He repeated the thought in his mind, trying out different emphases- she had hurt him, she had hurt him, she had hurt him.

No matter how it came out, it sounded equally incredible.

For her to hurt him had never been part of the plan. He was the one who was supposed to inflict pain and punishment. Hell, he was entitled to.

Now here he was, limping through the dark streets of Midvale Office Park, his balls aching, his knee on fire, and she was out there somewhere, uninjured as far as he knew, having equalized the contest.

He was pretty sure she couldn’t escape. That was one reassuring thought. He knew the complex well, and with the gate locked, it was a giant cage.

A cage. That was the first thought to strike him on the night when Roger Eastman had shown him this place.

Eastman was another attorney at Brigham amp; Garner, but unlike Adam he was no newcomer to the firm. He’d been there fifteen years, developing a healthy roster of clients and an even healthier paunch, which hours on the golf course did nothing to reduce. For some reason he had taken Adam under his wing.

One day three weeks earlier, Eastman asked if Adam had plans for the evening. “Nothing important,” Adam said, aware that the only item on his personal agenda was a visit to the Web site he had discovered, the one showing C.J.’s bedroom.

“Great.” Eastman smiled. “I want to show you something.”

He was very mysterious during the drive out of town. He refused to answer any questions. “You’ll see” was all he would say as he steered his Lexus away from the last remnants of the January sunset.