Michael Prescott - Last Breath

At the time Adam had been worried that he himself might inadvertently trip the system. It hadn’t even occurred to him that C.J. could get loose.

The BMW motored along the south side of the office complex, its high beams searching the night. He stared through the web of fractures in his windshield, looking for any hint of a human figure.

He had underestimated her, he supposed. Probably he should have killed her right away, while she was chloroformed and unconscious. Would have been simpler that way. Nothing would have gone wrong.

But he’d wanted to let the full four hours pass. Wanted to match the Hourglass Killer’s MO.

And there had been more to it, hadn’t there?

He reached the rear of the office park and guided the coupe among a checkerboard of poured foundations. The only building back here was a warehouse occupying the northeast corner.

Yes, there had been more than simple practicality. Even leaving aside the serial killer’s MO, he’d wanted to see her squirm and sweat as long as possible, wanted her to feel the bottomless fear of true helplessness, and most of all, he’d wanted her to be awake and alert when he caressed her neck and the caress became a strangling squeeze…

He still wanted it, all of it. Still wanted to choke off her last breath while staring into her frightened green eyes.

Except somehow that no longer seemed good enough, satisfying enough, did it? She had injured him, humiliated him, outmaneuvered him. She had put him through hell, and now he wanted her to find out what hell felt like.

He cruised past the big front doors and the alley on the side, still looking into every shadow.

The Hourglass Killer didn’t torture his victims. But maybe it was time to risk playing a little fast and loose with the MO. Make her suffer a little more…

He’d picked up some ideas from those S amp; M Web sites he’d visited. He might put some of them into practice There.

In the alley. Movement.

He spun the wheel, the BMW’s high beams cutting through the shadows, and yes, there she was, retreating at a run down the strip of grass between the warehouse and the fence.

She’d taken cover there. Wrong move, C.J.

He gunned the motor. The tires kicked up a spray of dirt as the coupe accelerated, barreling into the alley, closing in on his prey. C.J.’s lithe figure came into focus in the halogen glare, blond hair bobbing on her shoulders, arms and legs pumping. She still had a nice tight ass, he noticed, with a distant memory of cupping his hands over her buttocks and feeling their lean muscular strength.

He stamped harder on the gas pedal, and then C.J. sprinted to her right and picked up something that looked like a paint can, flinging it with both hands.

He hit the brakes, expecting the can to shatter the windshield.

But it wasn’t aimed at the car. It flew through the side window of the warehouse, setting off a new alarm. C.J. scrambled through the window frame and disappeared into the darkness within.

Adam parked the BMW near the window. He left the lights on, engine idling, as he prepared for the endgame.

She was finished now. The warehouse, as he’d noted on his reconnaissance missions to the office park, had only this one window. Its remaining means of access were two huge doors and two smaller ones, all securely padlocked.

C.J. was cornered. He could track her down and then do whatever he liked with her and make it last a good long time.

With a smile he removed a flashlight from the glove compartment, then pushed open the car door and limped down the alley, his shoes crunching on dry leaves.

With the flashlight to guide him, finding her shouldn’t be hard. The warehouse was big-sixty thousand square feet, by his estimate-but it would be empty. No hiding places, no crawl space, only an open floor penned in by metal walls under a high metal roof.

As a kid, he used to pick up bugs and put them in a tin can for safekeeping, and that was what C.J. was now-a bug in a tin can.

He reached the window and drew his gun. He would go in cautiously. It was possible she’d be crouching just inside, wielding a makeshift weapon. He would take no chances now, not with the contest nearly won…

Wait.

He smelled something acrid, tangy.

Smoke.

He glanced around the alley, and in the glare of the high beams he saw a dim mist, which was not mist, rising from beneath his car.

The engine was still idling. And the leaves, the dry leaves-the heat of the catalytic converter must have set them smoldering.

No big deal, but he’d better shut off the engine.

He was limping back to the car when a new scent reached him, unfamiliar and vaguely threatening.

For the first time he considered his situation. Narrow alleyway, fence on one side, metal wall on the other, little room to maneuver.

C.J. wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t allow herself to be trapped so easily.

Unless it was a way of trapping him.

The leaves, smoldering…

That other smell.

Oil.

God damn it. It was oil.

Adam knew what was going to happen, and his body reacted with an instinctive pivot and then a desperate leap toward the window, and behind him A whoosh of combustion. A rush of heat.

“What the fuck is that?”

The shout came from the Sikorsky’s copilot, who’d been watching the FLIR data on the video display screen and had seen the screen nearly white out with a bloom of incandescence.

But it didn’t take an infrared sensor to detect the red splash of light wavering northeast of the chopper, in the desolate hills.

Tanner glanced at Walsh, peering over his shoulder. “It’s gotta be her,” Tanner said.

Walsh turned to the pilot. “Set us down over there!”

Behind them, there was movement-Deputy Pardon, his scout, his two assaulters, his rearguard, and an attached sniper team of shooter and spotter, all checking their utility belts, goggles, and firearms.

They’d sat stiffly patient since boarding the chopper in downtown LA, but now they were coming to life.

Tanner knew the feeling.

Show time.

Brightness at his back. White heat in a solid wall.

It singed Adam Nolan’s neck, his ears, and for a split second he thought he was on fire, actually ablaze like a corpse on a funeral pyre, and then the momentum of his leap carried him through the broken window and he landed on a concrete floor, his injured knee crying out.

While the alarm shrieked around him, he rolled over and over, trying frantically to smother any flames on his clothes or his hair, but there were no flames. The heat had reached him, seared him, but that was all.

He remembered C.J.

Up in a crouch, the gun still in his hand. He snapped off two rounds into the dark. The shots echoed above the alarm’s ululant siren.

He hadn’t hit her, but he must have convinced her to keep her distance.

Now just switch on the flashlight, hunt her down…

No flashlight. He had lost it in his dive through the window. The only light in the warehouse was the fireglow from outside, and it did not extend more than a few yards into the interior.

He would have to track her in darkness, with the alarm wailing and his knee pulsing with pain.

God damn, he hated that whore.

In the flickering firelight he saw the can she’d flung inside. The label read, “WOOD STAIN.”

Oil-based. Inflammable.

She must have poured the can’s contents over the leaves, where she had known he would stop. She had counted on him to leave his motor running, counted on the heat of the catalytic converter to ignite the fuel. She’d meant to roast him alive.

“You cunt,” he breathed, then raised his voice to be heard over the alarm. “You fucking cunt, C.J.!”