“Why does he call me every time?” Rick asked quietly. “Why not someone else. Why not the chief? It’s not about attention. He’s obviously focused on me. And if he’s focused on me, then he’d damn well know about Jessie. Or it could be a raging coincidence. Either way I have a sick feeling that the bastard has his hands on Jessie and if we don’t do something, we’re going to lose her.”
Chapter 14
Jessie woke to throbbing pain in her head. Her entire body hurt. Her muscles were still jittery and she couldn’t make sense of where she was or what had happened.
The first thing she became aware of was rain. The sound of rain, a gentle patter that soothed some of the vicious ache. She started to raise her head, because for some reason, the rest of her body wasn’t cooperating, but as soon as she moved, agonizing pain ripped through her knee.
She screamed and tried to flinch away, but she couldn’t move. She was tied to a wooden table, completely naked.
A face appeared above her. A face she remembered. And it all came back. The cop at her apartment. The bitch had Tased her.
The woman rammed the butt of her pistol into Jessie’s knee again.
The pain was so horrific that Jessie gagged and turned her face to the side, breathing fiercely through her nose so she wouldn’t vomit.
“Glad you’re awake. The hunt is about to begin.”
The words were said with such coolness and calm that they sent a shiver down Jessie’s spine. She lay there panting, frantic to make sense of her situation. What the hell was happening? This woman was a police officer for God’s sake.
“This is the way it’s going to happen,” the woman said.
Her hair was pulled back into a sharp ponytail, so tight that the skin stretched across angular cheekbones. She’d be pretty with makeup. Jessie almost laughed hysterically at the idea that she was contemplating how a maniac would look spiffed up.
She was tall. Even taller than Jessie had first realized. She had an athletic build that Jessie envied and was toned, with not an ounce of fat anywhere on her body.
She had on camo pants and a black tank, but what Jessie’s gaze was drawn to was the wicked-looking hunting knife in her hand. It gleamed in the low light, and as Jessie dragged her gaze from that knife, she realized that she was in what looked to be a hunting camp and God only knew where they were.
The woman leaned in closer until the knife was so close Jessie could see her own reflection in the blade.
“I’m going to let you go and you’re going to run. Then I’m going to hunt you and make the kill. It’s fair. You get a fighting chance. Everyone before you has been too stupid to know what to do with it, but that’s not my fault. I gave it to them.”
“If you wanted to make it fair, you wouldn’t have bashed my knee,” Jessie said through gritted teeth. “You have to know I can’t run.”
The woman shrugged. “I imagine you can do lots of things you don’t think you can when you’re life is on the line.”
She yanked the knife down Jessie’s side and Jessie felt her flesh split open. She screamed in shock and horror as pain assaulted her all over again. The smell of blood rushed through her nostrils and she gagged again.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jessie yelled hoarsely. Oh God, it hurt. It felt like she was on fire. This bitch was crazy. Batshit crazy. And you couldn’t reason with crazy.
“Tracking a kill is all about a good blood trail. I can hardly follow a blood trail if there’s no blood,” the woman replied calmly.
She dragged the knife down Jessie’s uninjured leg, making a shallow cut from her hip to her knee. Jessie arched off the table, straining against her bonds as she screamed once again. Tears trailed down her cheeks and she closed her eyes, praying for a way out. Praying for the strength to run when the time came.
“Why aren’t you begging?”
The obvious puzzlement in the woman’s voice made Jessie open her eyes and focus.
“Just let me go and let’s get on with it,” Jessie gritted out.
The woman chuckled. “So impatient to die. I like you. I knew from the moment I watched your interview with the chief and Bull that you’d prove more of a challenge than my past hunting trips. The last one was a huge disappointment. She wouldn’t even run. What’s the fun in that?”
“You are one fucked up bitch,” Jessie snarled. “Let me up so we can get on with this. I want to stand over you when your ass is arrested and kick you in the teeth a few times.”
The woman adopted a bored look. “Think your detectives will save you?”
The pain was starting to get past the anger-induced adrenaline burst and if she wasn’t set free soon, there was no way she’d make it even a few steps into the woods.
“I don’t think they’re going to save me,” Jessie said tightly. She sucked in steadying breaths as she fought the horrific pain eating away at her. “I’m going to save myself.”
This time the woman laughed but she started to cut the ropes tying Jessie to the table that was slick with Jessie’s blood.
“Consider this an adult version of hide-and-seek,” the woman said. “I’m going to go into the next room and give you a five minute head start. After that I’m coming after you.”
She slung a rifle strap over her arm and strode through the doorway into the back of the house. Jessie didn’t waste a single second. She pulled herself upright and slid off the table, testing the strength of her knee.
Pain tore through her leg and the knee buckled, leaving Jessie grasping the table so she didn’t fall. She staggered toward the door but her mind screamed at her to stop and not to panic.
She was bare-ass naked and had nothing to stop the blood that streamed down her body and left small puddles wherever she stepped. Shit, this was going to make it easy for the homicidal maniac to find her.
She didn’t see anything in the cabin that would help her stop the blood but then she remembered the sound of rain. Excitement coursed through her body and gave her a renewed adrenaline burst.
She limped out of the doorway and bolted off the rickety porch, swallowing the cry of pain when too much weight landed on her knee. She stood long enough to wash the blood off her body and then she ran toward the densest section of woods in her vision.
She gritted her teeth and pushed past the pain. Cognizant of how much she was bleeding, she held her hands over her wounds and ran blindly. After she put some distance between her and the crazyass bitch, she knelt and groped frantically along the ground, gathering dirt and mud and packing it over her wounds. She mixed the dirt with leaves and plastered them as widely over her body as she could, knowing she’d need whatever advantage she could muster.
“Smart. Be smart, Jessie,” she breathed as she staggered to her feet again.
She looked frantically around, searching for some point of reference, some idea as to where she should go. But all she saw was thick woods blanketed in darkness. With the clouds and rain, there wasn’t a single star visible and the moon was nowhere in sight either.
She wasn’t going to outrun the psycho. But she could damn sure outsmart her.
Thrashing around the woods like a wounded animal was the very last thing she needed to do. What she needed was a good place to hide and she’d stay there until daylight when she could see where the hell she was going, and more important, see the murdering bitch when she was coming.
Quietly she crept through the dense brush, ignoring the rising panic and the urge to flee. Had it been five minutes yet? It felt like an eternity had passed.
She winced when thorns dug into her feet, but she didn’t stop to pull them out. If she did, she might bleed even more, and she couldn’t waste the precious seconds it would take to alleviate her discomfort. A bubble of hysteria rose in her throat. She had a shattered knee and knife wounds to her body, and she was contemplating how much time and effort it would take to remove a few thorns from her feet?
A flash of light froze her in her tracks. Had she imagined it? She stared ha
rd, scanning the distant trees. There. Again. About three hundred yards away she saw a light bobbing through the woods.
Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. Panic welled in her throat and she forced herself to breathe slowly, afraid to make even the slightest noise. She had to get away but she couldn’t be stupid about it.
She forced herself to stand completely still as she strained her eyes to catch the direction of the light. For a moment it stopped and Jessie’s heart sped up. Had her trail been picked up?
She glanced down, trying to ascertain if she was still bleeding as heavily but she couldn’t see, so she gingerly patted her way down and cursed when she felt the sticky dampness of blood.
In the distance the light moved again and this time it tracked toward her in a straight line. Fearing she could be shot at any time, Jessie ducked down low and began creeping her way through the trees and bushes and the heavy ground cover. She took a course due east of her current position and then in a calculated risk she started south, moving toward, instead of away from, the killer.
If she were quiet enough they would pass each other with the bitch never being the wiser and by the time she doubled back, Jessie would have found a better hiding spot.
She hoped.
Her mind was so cluttered with panic and pain that it was hard to know if anything she thought made sense. But what she did know was that she was not going to give up, roll over, and die. She’d make that bitch trot her ass all over the thicket before the night was over.
Chapter 15
As dawn crept through the trees, shedding pale light over a dark sky, Rick rubbed his eyes and then slipped his hand behind his neck to rub at a kink.
They didn’t even know what they were looking for or if they were looking in the right area. Each time Rick’s phone rang, he dreaded answering, afraid that it would be the killer, taunting him with news of Jessie’s death.
But there had been no call. No news.
He and Truitt and several teams of volunteers had combed the woods starting late the night before and carrying on into the wee hours of the morning.
And nothing.
No sign of Jessie.
“Fresh batch of volunteers and the day shifters are coming on,” Truitt called over his shoulder as he continued a path through the trees. “They want to meet up and discuss areas already searched and strategize the best way to cover the most ground.”
Rick bared his teeth in anger and frustration. “You go. I’ll keep looking.”
Truitt stopped. “The hell you will. We’re in this together. We’re going to find her, damn it. I won’t leave her out here alone. But we’re searching blind. We need a better plan than this.”
Rick swore but he followed Truitt out of the woods to where a makeshift parking lot in a clearing held a multitude of cars and trucks.
Bull and the chief stood next to Kim Whalen and Victor Manning. All were dressed in boots and clothing suitable for slogging through dense vegetation.
“Thanks for coming out,” Truitt said as they neared the group of officers. Behind them another large group of fresh volunteers stood ready to receive instruction. Truitt was antsy and ready to go back, but he forced himself to remain calm because he was very close to losing it.
“We’re glad to do it,” Bull said gruffly. “She’s important to you, which makes her one of our own, and we owe her for what happened.” He took a deep breath and ran his hand over his head. “Hell, the son of a bitch wouldn’t have targeted her if it weren’t for that damn news story.”
The chief nodded his grim agreement. Kim glanced between Rick and Truitt, but her gaze remained on Rick for a long moment. “Let’s pull out the maps. I have an idea of where we can look next.”
As they spread maps on the hood of the chief ’s SUV, Kim leaned over, pointing to an area they hadn’t yet searched.
“My father hunts here a lot. There’s a cabin here and one here. It’s not an area the killer has used before. However, it’s a logical place for him to eventually get to. And it’s more isolated. Given that there’s been no call yet, I’m guessing he doesn’t want you to know where to find her, which means he’ll go to greater lengths to hide the body.”
At the mention of a body, Rick went rigid and his expression blackened. The ball in Truitt’s gut grew to a gigantic size.
“Sorry,” Kim muttered. “That was insensitive of me.”
If it were someone else they were looking for, Truitt would probably be using the same language. They all knew it didn’t look good for Jessie, but he couldn’t make himself dwell on just how bad the situation was or that, in any other case, they’d already be assuming they were looking for a corpse.
The chief circled the points Kim had called attention to and then drew a line from those areas to their current position.
“If we take the ATVs it’ll be faster but it’s entirely possible we won’t be able to cut through some parts because it’s pretty heavy in that area,” Kim continued. “We could send four-wheelers in and go the denser areas on foot.”
“Thanks, Kim,” Rick murmured. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “We appreciate this.”
Kim smiled. “Let’s get to it then.”
Jessie woke to distant shouts of her name. It shocked her how utterly weak she was. She tried to call out, but couldn’t manage more than a whisper.
She was curled into a tight ball and dug into a muddy overhang. She’d come on it by sheer chance, falling over the edge in the darkness the night before. Her strength gone, her reserves depleted, she’d dug her way into the thick mesh of brambles, covering herself with mud and leaves as she went.
It wasn’t so dark anymore and dim light hovered over the ground along with a thin layer of eerie fog. She tried to push herself up but she simply wasn’t strong enough to support herself.
A faint rustle reached her ears. At first she thought it was a squirrel or maybe a rabbit but it was too slow and too methodical. It sounded like human footsteps. Not very heavy ones. Slowly working their way through the woods.
She was tempted, so very tempted to roll away from her hiding place and run toward the sound, but she was too locked in fear, too traumatized to even consider leaving the one place that had seemingly thwarted a mad woman.
She closed her eyes and lay absolutely still, not that it was difficult because she was too weak to move. And it was easier to drift away, to pretend she wasn’t lying on the ground slowly bleeding to death. Or that she was being hunted by a psycho who apparently thought she was the next great white hunter.
“I’m so going to kick her ass,” Jessie muttered under her breath.
It made her feel better to say it and it gave her an absurd thrill to think of actually getting to do it.
The sound got closer and Jessie’s panic began to rise. What if she was seen? She couldn’t defend herself in this position. What if the bitch just walked up and shot her? Or knifed her to death? And here she was, lying in a ball blubbering like a sissy and hoping that no one could see her.
If I die, damn it, I’m going to die kicking her ass.
She dragged herself up, nearly dying with every move. Pain was constant, a bitter never-ending wave snaking through her body, coiling and ready to strike harder and longer.
She gripped a big-ass rock in one hand and curled her fingers over a club-sized piece of wood. It took every ounce of determination and sheer will to survive to push herself to a standing position.
It was then that she saw the bitch cop. Standing several feet away scanning the distance with binoculars. Curiously, her rifle was absent and she wore only a pistol in her shoulder harness. Was she playing the cop now?
Switching the rock from her left hand to her right, she took aim and threw the rock right at the back of the cop’s head. Six years of softball paid off in that moment because it smacked her hard, knocking her forward to her knees.
Jessie ran. And later she’d never really know how she’d ever managed to fly across that space when her
knee was such a mess. Pain crippled her but the thought of death kicked enough adrenaline back into her system that she performed the impossible.
Before Miss Batshit Crazy could react, Jessie nailed her with the piece of wood, knocking her completely to the ground so that she ate dirt. With shaking hands, Jessie yanked the pistol from her holster and backed away, her fingers glancing frantically over the stock in search of the safety. Shouldn’t there be a safety? Maybe not. This one looked like one of those aim-and-fire jobbers, which was just fine with her.
As the cop picked herself up off the ground, Jessie raised the gun and leveled it at the much taller woman.
“Jessie! Oh my God, Jessie!”
“Kim, what the hell is going on?”
The jumble of voices reached Jessie, but she refused to turn her head, though the urge to run straight into Rick and Truitt’s arms was so forceful that she had to jar her knee, sending a jolt of pain through her to keep her focused. Her sole concentration was on the woman in front of her. No way she could afford to divert her attention. It could cost her Rick ’s and Truitt’s lives. It could cost her her own.
“You deserve to die, you crazy bitch,” Jessie said fiercely.
Kim held up her hands and her eyes turned pleading. It was amazing how innocent Crazy could look. “Rick, Truitt, call your woman off me. I think she’s lost her mind. She’s obviously traumatized and has no idea what she’s saying or doing.”
Of all the things Jessie thought the moron would say, that wasn’t it.
“Look, I’m here to help you. Help them find you.” Kim motioned to where the guys stood to the side, then she turned in their direction. “She clobbered me and took my gun. Talk her down before somebody dies.”
Jessie’s hand shook and the numb that had settled in the night before was starting to crack.
“Jessie, honey, give me the gun. It’s over now. You’re okay. You’re hurt. Let us take care of you.”
Rick’s low, reassuring voice slid over her with soul-deep comfort. But she’d seen evil in the eyes of that woman. She saw it now behind the deceptive appeal, the pretense of innocence.