Debra Webb - A Deeper Grave

“When did you notice you were being watched?” he asked, curious. He dared to loosen his hold on her mouth.

“I didn’t.” She inhaled a big breath, her breasts moving against his arm. “Yesterday my neighbor thanked me for the money I’d been leaving in his coffee can.”

Nick laughed. That was what he got for trying to help the old guy out.

“Who hired you?” she demanded. “Let me go and I’ll pay you twice whatever you’re being paid.”

Keeping a firm grip on her, Nick moved toward the bed. She squirmed, elbowed and kicked in earnest. “I’m afraid,” he said between her attempts to head butt him, “you can’t afford me.” He tossed her on the bed.

“I could scream,” she warned as she tried to scramble away.

“You could—” he snagged her easily “—and the police would likely be summoned. Then I’d have to show them all those trophies you’ve kept from your kills.”

When he started to cover her mouth once more she clamped her teeth down on his hand. He growled and yanked his hand away. As he shouldered off his backpack, she fought even harder and spewed curses. He manacled her slim wrists in one hand and kept her pressed against the mattress with his forearm as he fished for the duct tape in his pack. He grabbed the edge of the tape with his teeth and pulled.

“Bastard,” she muttered. “What are you? Some sort of bounty hunter?”

“Not exactly.” He flipped her onto her belly. She tried to squirm away, but he held her in place. He wrapped her wrists tightly in duct tape, binding them together. She muttered more curses against the pillow as he ripped off another length.

He reached for her legs. She quickly spread them apart and arched her butt upward. “Don’t you want some of this before you do whatever you came here to do?” She laughed. “They all want it so badly until they realize just how much it’s going to cost them.”

“No, thanks.” He pulled her legs together and bound her ankles tight despite her wiggling. With her arms and legs secured, he rolled her onto her back and readied to place a strip of tape over her lips.

“Who are you?”

“No one you know.”

Nick pressed the tape over her mouth while she glared at him. Then he rolled her to her side and wound several layers of tape around her neck. He pulled her calves toward her back, forcing her body into an arch, and then wound more of the tape around her ankles, effectively hogtying her. She groaned and grunted and struggled but couldn’t move more than an inch or so without choking herself.

That would do.

He returned to the bathroom as Cashion was struggling to his feet. Nick put him down again. “Tomorrow you’ll understand that this was the luckiest night of your life.”

Nick bound Cashion as he had the woman in the other room. When that was done he went to her walk-in closet and removed the faux drawer that hid her keepsakes. He brought the photos and the trophies into the bedroom and spread them around her on the satin linens. No matter how she pleaded when the police arrived the photos and newspaper clippings would tell the tale.

Nick used her cell to call 9-1-1. He gave the operator the address and left the phone line open as he tossed it onto the bed. Three minutes later he was in his car and headed away from her street. He hadn’t driven a mile when blue lights barreled past him heading toward the scene he’d left behind.

Tomorrow the Executive Executioner’s capture would fill the headlines, print and electronic. Nearly a dozen homicide cases would be solved.

One less serial killer to take lives.

Nick pondered the other names on his ever-growing list. His cell vibrated before he could decide on his next hunt. He dug the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. The name gave him pause.

Malcolm Clinton.

He’d only met Clinton on one occasion and that had been two months ago. Clinton was a guard at the prison where Randolph Weller resided in far better circumstances than he deserved. For an agreed-upon fee, Clinton had promised to call Nick with the names of any visitors beyond the usual FBI profilers who wanted to pick the monster’s brain. This was the first time Clinton had called. The idea that his father hadn’t had the first visitor who wasn’t FBI in all that time made Nick inordinately happy.

Or, even better, maybe the bastard was finally dead.

He accepted the call. “You have an update for me.” His pulse reacted to the anticipation pumping through his veins.

“Yes. Dr. Weller had a visitor this evening. I had to pull a double shift so I couldn’t call until now.”

“I’m listening.”

“It was a woman his attorney called for him. A detective from Montgomery.”

Tension slid through Nick.

“Detective Bobbie Gentry,” Clinton said.

“How long did she stay?” Why the hell would Bobbie visit him? Nick couldn’t fathom any reason she would visit Weller.

“Not more than fifteen minutes. She seemed a little distracted or unsettled when she left.”

Nick glanced at the time on the dash. “What time was this?”

“About five thirty.”

“Thank you.” Nick ended the call before Clinton could say more. He tossed the phone onto the seat. “What’re you up to, Bobbie?”

He’d kept up with her since he left Montgomery. As hard as he’d tried to forget her, he could not. She showed up in his dreams when he slept and in his thoughts when he didn’t. He’d learned Bobbie had a new partner, a Detective Steven Devine. Nick had done a thorough search of Devine’s background and found nothing troubling except that he was single and close to Bobbie’s age.

The idea of her spending long hours each day with the guy grated on Nick. He’d watched her interactions with Howard Newton—the partner she’d lost. The bond had been palpable. Would she forge that same sort of bond with the new guy? Wasn’t that what cops did?

None of your business.

He shook off the thoughts. He had more pressing concerns. Why would she visit Weller?

There had to be something going on. He’d been mostly out of touch the past forty-eight hours. When he closed in on his prey, it was important that he not be distracted. Even a major homicide case wouldn’t explain why Bobbie would go to Weller. Whatever had happened, it had to be specific to a serial killer she believed Weller would know, and even then the FBI would likely insist any questions be funneled through their channels.

Nick glanced at his phone and resisted the temptation to call her. Five or six times in the past two months he’d pulled out the one video of her he’d kept and watched it just to hear her voice. The video had been made before her abduction by the Storyteller. She’d been in the backyard with her husband and child—the husband and child the Storyteller had stolen from her. Nick kicked himself every time he watched. What kind of fool was jealous of the life a dead man had lived? And yet, Nick watched the video over and over, the life depicted in those captured moments making him yearn for things he could never have.

“This is your life,” he reminded himself. There was no need to pretend otherwise. Feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t get the job done.

Nick made the trip across town to the low-rent motel he’d been staying at since his arrival in New Orleans. He backed into the parking slot directly in front of his door. Inside, the dark room smelled musty but it was cool and quiet, two things he required on a hunt. He closed the door and turned on the light.

The reports and photos he had gathered on the Executive Executioner lined one wall. He knew many things about Adele. Where she was born, where she’d lost her virginity, how she lured her prey. His research was always in hard copy. He didn’t have to worry about a housekeeper stumbling upon his work since he always made an arrangement with motel management. He cleaned up after himself and picked up fresh towels and linens at the front desk. There was some risk using this method but not nearly so much as leaving electronic tracks for his friends in the FBI to follow.