Brian Freeman - Stalked

"I don't know."

"Then you've got nothing to trade."

"Look, I don't know anything about him, but he's the one you want."

Stride waited.

"I paid him," Brandt continued. "We had a deal, and now he blows up my life anyway. It's like a fucking game to him."

"Who are you talking about?"

"I told you, I don't know," Brandt insisted. "You said I was the only one who knew about the alpha girls, but you're wrong. He knew all about them, too."

"Who?"

"The son of a bitch who's been blackmailing me."

Stride crumpled the tissues and tossed them on the floor of the car. He backed away from Brandt and heard Serena's voice, one word, just as he was falling asleep in the wake of their making love. One word in the box.

Blackmail .

"I'm still bleeding," Brandt protested.

"You'll live. Tell me more."

"This guy knows things. I don't know where he gets it. He came to me a couple of months ago, and he knew all about Infloron and the insider trading scheme. Dates, trades, dollars. He's been bleeding me dry."

"What about the alpha girls?"

"He knew about them, too. He joked about me and Lassiter meeting in the sex club. He asked me how it was with the alpha girls. He knew their names. And then last night, he called me again. He knew Lassiter was going to be the alpha girl tonight, and he told me that she'd been going behind my back with the SEC. He said I'd better take care of her. But the bastard must have called the SEC himself."

"Were you trying to stiff him?" Stride asked.

"No! The son of a bitch just decided to fuck me."

Stride got out of the patrol car and slammed the door behind him. He looked up at the outline of the tower on the hill and thought about the Enger Park Girl and then Maggie and Serena. And about rape, murder, and blackmail. He tried to sort it all out in his head and didn't like where it took him.

Mitchell Brandt was being blackmailed. If Serena meant what he thought she did, then Dan Erickson was being blackmailed, too. By someone who also knew about the sex club and the alpha girls. That made him a prime suspect in the string of rapes and in the murders of Eric and Tanjy.

He suffered a flash of anger as he wondered how much Serena knew and why she didn't tell him.

After months operating in the shadows, the blackmailer had to realize the clock was ticking. The police knew about the rapes now. It was only a matter of time before Stride put the pieces together.

That meant Dan Erickson was in the path of the hurricane. So was Serena.

Serena parked in an empty lot underneath the soaring span of the Blatnik Bridge leading across Superior Bay to Wisconsin. Its concrete Y-shaped supports aligned like a row of soldiers marching from the city out into the water, following a trail of white lights. Every time a car sped by overhead, the steel highway bed became a tin drum and boomed. As Serena got out of her car, the ice sheet of the harbor was on her right. On the opposite side of the road, where it circled back to the city, were the dark fields leading to the silos of the port terminal. This was where the industry of the city was done during the warmer months, bustling with dozens of ore boats loading and offloading their bellies. The port was abandoned now, locked up with ice and awaiting the spring thaw.

Snow had begun, whipping through the bridge lights like a field of shooting stars. She blinked as the flakes assaulted her eyes. She had her Glock tightly in one hand and a duct-taped shoe box under her arm, heavy with hundred dollar bills. The road, the park, the frozen water, the port buildings, and the fields leading across the railroad tracks were all deserted. She wondered where he was.

Her heels were buried in six inches of wet snow, and her feet quickly grew numb and cold. She didn't have time to change after finding the note, only time to make the pick up at Dan's house and follow the freeway back to the harbor basin. Now, she wished she had kept spare boots in the car. She found an open area near the bridge tower where the snow was matted down and waited there. She danced impatiently, stamping her feet. The chill traveled up her body.

A wave of vibration rumbled through the concrete as a double-trailored semi streaked along the bridge out over the water directly above her. The thunder of the tin drum made her shudder, as if the bridge were falling around her.

Her cell phone rang, and she put the shoe box down in the snow so she could grab her phone with her free hand.

"Where are you?" Stride asked.

Serena took a cautious look around the empty lot. As the snow intensified, it was becoming hard to see. "I'm on a job. I can't talk."

"Is this about Dan's blackmail?"

She hesitated. "Yes."

"Get the hell out of there," he told her. "Brandt was being blackmailed, too. This guy knows all about the sex clubs and the alpha girls. He may be our perp."

"Then this is our chance to get him," Serena said.

"Not by yourself."

"I was a cop for ten years. I can take care of myself."

"You should have told me what was going on with Dan."

"I couldn't, you know that."

"Where the hell are you?"

She thought about not telling him, but she realized she was being stupid and stubborn. "I'm down in Rices Point under the bridge."

"Are you completely fucking crazy?"

"He picked the spot."

"Get out right now, he may be coming after you."

"He's coming after a box full of money. That's what he wants."

"I'm sending a car down there."

" Don't do that," Serena insisted. "You'll scare him off."

"Then I'll come myself."

Her phone beeped in her ear. Another call was coming in. She knew who it was.

"No, don't do that, Jonny. Not yet. Give me half an hour. If I don't call you back, send in the troops."

She hung up before he could answer. When she switched over to the other call, she heard the blackmailer's voice and realized there was something distantly familiar about it. She wished she knew why, but it was one of those memories that had to come in its own time and couldn't be rushed. The one thing she knew was that the memory carried something dark with it, and the vibration in her spine this time wasn't from the traffic on the bridge, but from a sudden fear.

"Did you have fun tonight?" he asked.

Serena was silent.

"I was picturing you inside," he went on. "Did you get naked like all the others?"

"Fuck off."

"Did all that sex make you wet? Did you play with yourself?"

"I'm leaving," Serena said. "With your money."

"No, you're not. You're staying right there."

"Watch me." Serena bent down to pick up the shoe box and hoped he could see her. She waited, wanting to see what he did next.

"Tell me what it's like," he said.

"It sounds like you know."

"Do you want to be an alpha girl?"

"No thanks."

"Too bad," he said. "You could be just like your friend Maggie. Or Katrina. They were alpha girls."

The implications of what he said made her whole body go rigid. She clutched her gun tighter and didn't reply.

"You're afraid of me now," he said.

"Why should I be?"

"You know what I did to them."

She stood there, frozen, letting the snow paint her body white. "Yes."

"I'm going to do the same thing to you. I just wanted you to know that now."

"You bastard."

"And much worse, Serena. Much, much worse."

She hung up the phone. Stumbling, falling, getting up, she began running back to her car. She peered over her shoulder, hair flying, and then spun, spying everywhere around her, certain that she would see him coming for her. The tin drum boomed again; she screamed and bit her tongue, quieting herself, and tasted blood. Snow swarmed down and followed her like bees roused from a hive.