Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“Too late,” the caller said. “He never could stand the heat.”

The connection broke. Mac was left in the middle of the parking lot, gripping his impossibly tiny phone and cursing a blue streak. He punched send again. The number rang and rang and rang, but the person didn’t pick up and wouldn’t until Mac was contacted again.

“Damn,” Mac said again. Then, “Damn, damn, damn.”

He found his rental car. Inside, it was approximately two hundred degrees. He slid into the seat, leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, then banged his head against the hard plastic three times. Six phone calls now and he was no closer to knowing a single goddamn thing. And time was running out. Mac had known it, had been feeling it, since the mercury had started rising on Sunday.

Tomorrow Mac would check in with his Atlanta office, report the latest call. The task force could review, rework, reanalyze… and wait. After all this time, that’s about all they had left-the wait.

Mac pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. Exhaled deeply. He was thinking of Nora Ray Watts again. The way her face had lit up like the sun when she had stepped from the rescue chopper and spotted her parents standing just outside of the rotor wash. The way her expression had faltered, then collapsed thirty seconds later after she’d excitedly, innocently asked, “Where is Mary Lynn?”

And then her voice with that impossible reedy wail, over and over again. “No, no, no. Oh God, please no. ”

Her father had tried to prop her up. Nora Ray sank down on the tarmac, curling up beneath her army blanket as if that could protect her from the truth. Her parents finally collapsed with her, a huddle of green grief that would never know an end.

They won that day. They lost that day.

And now?

It was hot, it was late. And a man was writing letters to the editor once again.

Go home, little girls. Lock the doors. Turn out the lights. Don’t end up like Nora Ray Watts, who ran out with her younger sister for a little ice cream one night and ended up abandoned in a desolate part of the coast, frantically burying herself deeper into the muck, while the fiddler crabs nibbled on her toes, the razor clams slashed open her palms, and the scavengers began to circle overhead.

Fredericksburg , Virginia

10:34 P . M .

Temperature: 89 degrees

“I’M READY,” Tina said two inches from Betsy’s ear. In the pounding noise of the jam-packed bar, her roommate didn’t seem to hear her. They were outside Fredericksburg, at a little hole-in-the-wall joint favored by college students, biker gangs, and really loud Western bands. Even on a Tuesday night, the place was jamming, the people so thick and the bass so loud Tina didn’t know how the roof stayed on over their heads.

“I’m ready,” Tina tried again, shouting louder. This time, Betsy at least turned toward her.

“What?” Betsy yelled.

“Time… to… go… home, ” Tina hollered back.

“Bathroom?”

“HOME!”

“Oooooh.” Her roommate finally got it. She looked at Tina more closely and her brown eyes instantly softened with concern. “You okay?”

“Hot!”

“No kidding.”

“Not feeling… so well.” Actually, she was feeling horrible. Her long blond hair had come untangled from its knot and was plastered against her neck. Sweat trickled down the small of her back, over her butt, and all the way down her legs. The air was too heavy. She kept trying to draw deep, gulping breaths, but she still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. She thought she might be sick.

“Let me tell the others,” Betsy said immediately, and headed out to the jostling dance floor, where Viv and Karen were lost amid the sea of people.

Tina closed her eyes and promised herself she would not projectile vomit in the middle of a crowded bar.

Fifteen minutes later, they had pushed their way outside and were walking toward Betsy’s Saab, Viv and Karen bringing up the rear. Tina put her hand against her face. Her forehead felt feverish to her.

“Are you going to make it?” Betsy asked her. After screaming to be heard in the bar, her voice cracked three decibels too loud in the parking lot’s total silence. They all winced.

“I don’t know.”

“Girl, you had better tell me if you’re going to be sick,” Betsy warned seriously. “I’ll hold your head over the toilet, but I draw the line at puking in my car.”

Tina smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

“I could go get you some club soda,” Karen offered from behind her.

“Maybe we should just wait a minute,” Viv said. She, Karen, and Betsy all drew up short.

Tina, however, had already climbed into Betsy’s Saab. “I just want to go home,” she murmured quietly. “Please, let’s go home.”

She closed her eyes as her head fell back against the seat. With her eyes closed, her head felt better. Her hands settled upon her stomach. The music faded away. Tina let herself drift off to desperately needed sleep.

It seemed to her that they had no sooner left the parking lot than she was awakened by a savage jerk.

“What the-” Her head popped up. The car lurched again and she grabbed the dash.

“Back tire,” Betsy said in disgust. “I think I got a flat.”

The car lurched right and that was enough for Tina. “Betsy,” she said tightly. “Pull over. Now! ”

“Got it!” Betsy jerked the car onto the right-hand shoulder of the road. Tina fumbled with the clasp of her seat belt, then fumbled with the door. She got out of the car and sprinted down the embankment into the nearby woods. She got her head down just in time.

Oh, this was not fun. Not fun at all. She heaved up two cranberry and tonics, then the pasta she’d had for dinner, then anything else she’d ever eaten for the last twenty years. She stood there, hands braced upon her thighs as she dry-heaved.

I’m going to die, she thought. I was bad and now I’m being punished and my mom was right all along. There is no way in the world I’m going to be able to take this. Oh God, I want to go home.

Maybe she cried. Maybe she was just sweating harder. With her head between her knees, it was hard to be sure.

But slowly her stomach relented. The cramping eased, the worst of the nausea passed. She staggered upright, put her face up to the sky, and thought she’d kill for an ice-cold shower right about now. No such luck. They were in the middle of nowhere outside of Fredericksburg. She’d just have to wait.

She sighed. And then for the first time, she heard the noise. A non-Betsy noise. A non-girls-out-on-the-town noise. It sounded high, short, metallic. Like the slide of a rifle, ratcheting back.

Tina slowly turned toward the road. In the hot, humid dark, she was no longer alone.

Kimberly never even heard a noise. She was an FBI trainee, for God’s sake. A woman experienced with crime and paranoid to boot. She still never heard a thing.

She stood alone at the Academy’s outdoor firing range, surrounded by 385 acres of darkness with only a small Mag flashlight. In her hands, she held an empty shotgun.

It was late. The new agents, the Marines, hell, even the National Academy “students” had long since gone to bed. The stadium lights were extinguished. The distant bank of towering trees formed an ominous barrier between her and civilization. Then there were the giant steel sidewalls, designed to segregate the various firing ranges while stopping high-velocity bullets.

No lights. No sounds. Just the unnatural hush of a night so hot and humid not even the squirrels stirred from their trees.

She was tired. That was her best excuse. She’d run, she’d pumped iron, she’d walked, she’d studied, then she’d downed three gallons of water and two PowerBars and headed out here. Her legs were shaky. Her arm muscles trembled with fatigue.