Taking, p.20
Taking, page 20
But the collision had killed his engine, and he hadn’t been able to start it up again. He was stranded right here.
As he wondered who the woman was and what she was doing here, he heard a whimpering cry. It came from the kill room. He’d almost forgotten that he’d left a victim in that converted closet.
He knew he’d slashed his victim’s wrist, and he’d assumed that the wound would eventually be fatal. Fortunately, her cries were markedly weaker now, so she was fading from the injury he’d delivered and perhaps also from the effects of the crash.
He glanced over at the motor home door. To his alarm, he saw that it was slightly ajar. The crash must have broken the lock. Anybody could walk right in. For a moment he considered leaping out and running.
Too late, he realized.
The woman outside had paused in her approach and was looking at the RV carefully. Then she pulled a pistol from a hip holster and called out …
“This is the FBI. Come out with your hands up.”
The man felt a jolt of panic as he realized …
She’s a law enforcement officer.
For a fleeting moment, he felt absolutely helpless. Then he decided …
I won’t go down without a fight.
Perhaps he’d even take yet another victim down with him, if it came to that. His adversary might be FBI, but she was just a woman, after all. If she entered his RV, he had no intention of letting her get out alive, no matter what his own fate might be.
But she’s armed, he thought. I’ve got to take her by surprise.
He looked around for the serrated knife and spotted it lying on the floor next to the table. He picked up the knife and looked around for a place to hide. His bathroom was right next to the kill room.
He ducked inside and shut the door behind him.
*
As Riley moved toward the Winnebago with her weapon drawn, she heard Crivaro call out …
“Riley, where the hell are you? I told you to wait for me!”
She was now standing just outside the Winnebago’s door, which she saw was slightly ajar.
Crivaro’s right, she thought. I ought to stay put.
But then she heard a faint noise from inside the motor home. It sounded like a weak and muffled woman’s voice. Riley couldn’t understand the words, but she recognized the sound of panic.
The killer had another victim in there—and she was still alive.
Riley’s heart pounded. She couldn’t wait for Crivaro.
She snapped on a penlight and stepped up into Winnebago. She saw no one inside, and for a moment she heard nothing.
Then she heard it again. The voice was clearer now, coming from somewhere nearby.
“Help me! Please!”
Riley took a few more steps into the motor home. She heard a moan that seemed to be right beside her. It was becoming from behind a door.
She turned the latch, swung the door open, and pointed her penlight inside.
A woman was curled upon the floor in a tiny room. She stared wide-eyed up at Riley, then weakly held out one arm. Her shirt sleeve was soaked with blood.
Riley’s Academy first aid training flashed through her mind. She put the gun down and hastily positioned the penlight to help her see what she was doing.
First, she knew she needed to clear the wound of any clothing. She ripped the woman’s shirt sleeve until she could see the wound clearly. Blood was spurting out in a steady pulse.
A cut artery, Riley realized.
She had to stop the bleeding if she possibly could. She tore off a strip of fabric from her own sleeve, then reached into her shirt pocket for her clean handkerchief. She pressed the folded handkerchief tightly against the wound, then tied it in place with the torn fabric.
She held the arm upward and kept pressure on the wound with her palm. Meanwhile, she noticed that the room wasn’t what she’d expected. It wasn’t a bathroom at all—just a bare little closet-sized space with insulated walls that were badly scratched and bloodstained. It appeared that some sort of drain had been installed in the metal floor to catch the victims’ blood.
And this victim was still bleeding. Riley’s handkerchief was soaked through, and the bleeding hadn’t even slowed. She knew the next step was to apply pressure to the artery at a specific point above the wound.
But before she could act, a sharp force yanked her backward. In an instant, she was lying on the floor. Someone’s foot was pressing on her chest. There was very little light and she couldn’t see the crouched figure clearly, but she could feel a sharp blade against her throat.
She heard a sinister chuckle.
“This will only hurt for a moment.”
Riley’s Academy combat training took over, kicking her into action before her assailant could slash her throat. She twisted violently and rolled aside, surprising the man and momentarily throwing him off balance.
He quickly regained his footing and sprang at her again, slashing wildly at her wrist. This time his knife caught her and she could feel that the cut was deep and dangerous.
Riley knew she had to act fast, before she weakened from loss of blood.
She got a hold on the man’s arm and twisted his hand, forcing the knife from his grip. Then she threw him on his back onto the floor.
She looked around for her gun. It was there, just within reach.
She managed to grab her weapon and point it at the man as he struggled to get to his feet.
“You’re under arrest,” Riley told him.
But she was getting dizzy and disoriented and wasn’t sure she could successfully get the man handcuffed. For a moment she thought she might die here along with the woman she’d tried to rescue.
Then she heard a voice call out from the open door …
“Jesus Christ, Riley. What the hell …?”
Her voice weakening, Riley said, “This is our man. I need you to get him in cuffs.”
As Crivaro started to comply, three people with blazing flashlights charged into the camper. The campground’s security team had gotten here at last.
Riley’s hand was shaking badly now, and she could barely keep her gun pointed at her assailant as Crivaro put him in handcuffs.
Tilting her head toward the victim, she managed to say to the security men …
“There’s a wounded woman in that room. She’s bleeding badly. She needs first aid—fast.”
She heard Crivaro’s voice chime in …
“My partner needs aid too.”
Then Riley fainted dead away.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
As a pair of orderlies wheeled Riley into her own hospital cubicle, she wondered …
Where is Agent Crivaro?
She hadn’t seen him since she’d been loaded into the ambulance back at the crime scene. She’d been disoriented, but she distinctly remembered that he’d growled at her …
“That’s the last time I’m letting you drive. Ever.”
He hadn’t sounded like he meant it as a joke.
The ambulance had whisked her away, leaving him behind at the campground.
Is he still mad at me? she wondered.
The two orderlies cheerfully helped her into a bed with clean sheets and made sure the bed controls and call button were within her reach. Then they left her there alone.
Riley lay still, listening to the muffled voices of hospital personnel as they scurried about nearby. She kept trying to replay in her mind all that had happened. After the fight back at the Delphi RV Resort, she’d lost consciousness a couple of times and the whole ordeal seemed like a blur now.
She remembered that Crivaro himself had kept pressure on her wound until a pair of ambulances arrived, one for the killer’s intended victim and the other for her. The paramedics had applied hemostatic dressings to her wound and had successfully stopped the bleeding en route to the hospital. They’d told her she was going to a hospital in the nearest town, called Duckwater.
Since then, her wound had been stitched up by an emergency physician. She’d been checked closely in the ER for a time and finally moved into this bed. The doctor had told her she was out of immediate danger but had suffered a lot of initial blood loss, and she should stay in the hospital for another night.
It seemed that the night when everything had happened was long gone. It was morning now, and there was still no sign of Crivaro.
Riley looked up hopefully when she heard approaching footsteps, but it was just a young nurse checking on her.
She was dozing off when a gruff voice startled her back to attention.
“Agent Sweeney, we’ve got some talking to do.”
Crivaro hobbled into the cubicle using a cane. He had a brace strapped on one ankle.
She was glad to finally see him, but disturbed to hear him call her “Agent Sweeney” instead of just “Riley.”
He’s still mad at me, all right, she thought.
She pushed the button to raise her bed so she could face him. He hung the cane onto the bedrail, then sat down in a chair next to her bed. He crossed his arms and frowned at her.
“I should bust you right out of the Bureau,” he said. “You damn near got yourself killed.”
“I’m going to be all right,” Riley said in a weak voice.
“So they tell me,” Crivaro said sternly. “But that’s not the point. Don’t you know what a partner is for? I was right there. I told you to wait for me.”
Riley was tempted to remind him, “But you had a sprained ankle.”
But she figured she’d better hear him out.
Crivaro’s voice was getting loud as he continued, “Next time I tell you to wait for me, you wait for me, damn it. You’re an FBI agent—a trained professional, not some stupid kid with more guts than brains. And you’re sure as hell not a superhero. There are no superheroes in the real world. People who try to be superheroes get killed off early.”
The young nurse poked her head into the cubicle and sharply shushed Crivaro.
He turned and snapped at her, “Don’t shush me. This is my partner, goddamn it. I’ve got a right to give her a piece of my mind.”
Looking quite terrified, the nurse disappeared, and Crivaro sat in sullen silence.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then Riley realized …
He’s actually downright wrong.
If she’d waited for him to get on his feet, the woman in the kill room would probably have died from her wound. But instead of being angry, she felt oddly relieved.
She’d noticed a slight quaver in Crivaro’s voice when he’d yelled at her.
She knew him just well enough to know the quaver meant he was more scared than angry. He’d genuinely been fearful for her safety. Scolding her was his way of giving vent to his concern.
Finally he mumbled, “How are you feeling?”
Riley almost grinned and said …
“Thanks for asking.”
But she thought that might be pushing her luck.
Instead she replied, “OK, pretty much. I’m really weak. I guess that’s from the blood loss.”
Fingering the bandage on the side of her head, she added, “Really, it hurts most right here, where I got banged up during the accident. I’ve still got a headache. How’s the woman we rescued doing?”
“About as good as can be expected,” Crivaro said. “She got cut more than you did and she bled a lot. They had to give her a transfusion. But she’s going to be OK.”
Riley stifled a sigh as she thought …
OK might not be the right word.
That woman would be struggling with this trauma for a long time, maybe the rest of her life.
Riley asked, “Is the killer still in custody?”
Crivaro nodded and said, “And he’s going to stay that way—probably for good.”
Something else occurred to Riley.
“We were wrong about the kill room, weren’t we?” she said. “It wasn’t a bathroom after all.”
Crivaro said, “No, I got a good look at the place. He set things up pretty cleverly. The room with the insulation and the drain was originally a storage closet. He’s turned the shelves into a unit he could pull out, kind of like a deep bookcase on wheels. He could easily put the whole thing in another location when he needed the room and then put it back again. Only a very close inspection would have found that. That’s why he wasn’t caught at the roadblock. It just looked like a little closet at the time.”
“Who is he?” Riley asked.
Crivaro let out a slight grunt and said, “There’s a lot we don’t know about him yet. But the guys back in Quantico are already finding out some stuff. So far, we know that his name is Philip Hague, and he’s from really old money, the family heir to an old Colorado mining fortune. He’s always lived a life of leisure.”
Riley felt a prickle of curiosity as she remembered her own attempt to profile the killer.
“Did he have a reputation for violence against women?” she asked.
“None at all,” Crivaro said. “Judging from the occasional newspaper or magazine profile, he was considered to be quite likeable, excellent company at a party. A real bon vivant, you might say—a playboy. He had a steady stream of girlfriends coming and going, but none of them seemed to ever mention him being cruel or dangerous. From what we know so far, a lot of his acquaintances are going to be as shocked as hell to find out the truth about him.”
Riley squinted and said, “This doesn’t make sense to me. How could a guy like that go through life without anybody realizing …?”
Her voice trailed off.
Crivaro said, “I’ve seen cases like this before, so it makes some sense to me. He was a ticking bomb of hatred and misogyny. The fact that he kept it bottled up for so long made him all the more dangerous when he really started killing. Anyway, we’ll find out more about him in the near future.”
Riley shook her head and said, “I was wrong about so many things. I even sent us chasing after the wrong man.”
Crivaro shrugged and said, “Well, you were right about some things. Your impressions at the crime scenes were pretty accurate. You just need to learn how to balance your intuitions with logical thinking. Believe me, that can take time.”
“I’m starting to get that,” Riley said.
“At least this undercover thing didn’t turn out to be a complete bust,” Crivaro added with a grin.
Riley knew that was true. The information she’d gotten about boondocking hadn’t been completely off the mark. Although her theory had led them at first to the wrong criminal, the real killer had turned out to be boondocking in his own way. He’d avoided hooking up to utilities even within a campground.
More importantly, if she hadn’t gotten into that conversation back in Sedona, she’d never have heard of the Delphi RV Resort where they’d actually found him.
Then Crivaro slouched a little in his chair.
He said, “Riley, I need for you to … well, not let mistakes and setbacks get the best of you. We all make them, they’re part of the learning process. Most of all, I need for you not to quit. You’ve got to stick with it, become the best agent you can possibly be. You’ve got to do it … for me.”
Riley was startled by how serious he sounded. She sat staring at him, expecting him to say more.
He smiled and patted her hand and said, “One of these days I’ll tell you what I mean. Probably soon. Not now, though. I need to get out of here and let you get some rest. And I need to call Harry Carnes. He’ll be thrilled his gut was right on this one, but I’m guessing he’ll also be a little mad he couldn’t play a part in actually catching the killer.”
He got up from his chair, then said …
“Oh, I forgot something.”
He reached into his pocket and took out Riley’s cell phone.
“I’ve had this since you got hurt,” he said, setting it down beside her. “It’s been buzzing almost nonstop. I guess someone’s really anxious to get in touch with you.”
Then with a wink he added, “I wonder who that could be.”
“Ryan,” Riley said.
“Yeah, probably,” Crivaro said. “I’ll see you later.”
He picked up his cane and limped away, leaving Riley alone in her cubicle.
She looked at the cell phone and saw that she had about a half dozen messages from Ryan. She decided not to bother listening to them. What she really needed to do was call him.
She punched in the call and he answered the phone.
“Riley! What’s going on out there? I’ve been worried sick!”
His voice sounded tired. As she considered the time, she figured maybe he hadn’t yet gotten out of bed.
She also realized …
I’ve got no idea what to say.
Ryan continued, “Last night on the TV news there was this story about a serial killer out in that part of the country. They said the FBI was looking for the killer. Was that the murder case you were working on?”
Riley took a long, slow breath. “Yeah, that’s the case Crivaro and I came out here for. Don’t worry. We’ve caught the killer. Everything’s …”
She couldn’t quite get the word “fine” out.
He obviously had no idea that she’d been injured. Riley knew he’d have to find out sooner or later, but now didn’t seem to be the time to tell him.
Instead, she said, “Look, Crivaro and I … we’ve still got a few loose ends to tie up. I’ve got to stay out here another night. Then I’ll be able to come home.”
“So you’ll be home in time for Christmas,” Ryan said.
“That’s right. Anyway, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk again soon.”
“OK,” he said, “I love you.”
This time, Riley was able to say it back to him before he ended the call.
Riley sat staring at the phone for a few moments.
She remembered telling him the last time they’d spoken on the phone …
“I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about when I get home.”
She knew that that was just as true now as it was then.
They were still a long way from settling into the new lives they’d both chosen, and there were huge challenges ahead.
_preview.jpg)
