Amnesia (46 page)

She did. Reluctantly.

When they entered the hallway, several doors opened and people peered outside. He brandished the gun around and fired two shots into the ceiling. Every door closed instantly. He reached underneath the serving cart and grabbed his duffle bag.

Within minutes, they had descended to the bottom level. He had left the SUV parked up the street, but he didn’t dare use a vehicle that could be so easily identified. Before entering the hotel earlier, he had commandeered a delivery truck after disposing of the driver. He really hated harming so many innocent bystanders, but it couldn’t be helped. If things went as he’d planned, today would be the culmination of a year’s hard work. Today good Quinn and bad Quinn would meet face-to-face. At long last.

He marched Annabelle to the delivery truck, opened the back doors and forced her inside the dark interior. He crawled in with her, picked up the rope he’d placed there, then tied her hands and feet.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace private, where you can spend some time with the bad Quinn.”

“What?”

He yanked a handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it in her mouth, then used one of the rags he’d brought with him to gag her.

There, that would do. She was as snug as a bug in a rug. She might roll around a bit in the back of the truck, possibly even tumble into the driver’s lifeless body, but it wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t scream.

Sanders pulled the Lincoln up in front of the Peabody and three men emerged. Bruce Askew stayed in the car with Sanders.

“You two go on up to my suite.” Griffin tossed Judd the key. “I’ll stop by and speak to Annabelle, tell her that you want her to go home to Austinville, but if I can’t persuade her, you’ll have to see her.”

Quinn nodded as they entered the hotel. But they didn’t get very far before they realized something was going on, something out of the ordinary. Hotel security had the elevators blocked.

“Wonder what this is all about?” Judd paused and studied the situation.

“You two wait here and I’ll find out.” Griffin walked over and spoke to one of the hotel guards, then turned and rushed back to Judd and Quinn. “Don’t jump to any conclusions.” He looked right at Quinn. “But there’s been a shooting upstairs, on the floor where Annabelle’s suite is. One man is dead, possibly Tobias. And they found an unconscious and nearly dead waiter in the stairwell.”

“He’s got Annabelle.” Quinn’s heart stopped. Whoever this guy was, the one who had already killed six women, had somehow overpowered Griffin’s agent, had either killed Anna-belle or would soon kill her.

“I have to get upstairs,” Quinn said, but when he started for the stairwell, Griffin grabbed him and none too gently shoved him up against the wall.

“You and Judd go out in the lobby and sit down. I’ll find
out what happened and if Annabelle was involved. If she was—and I’m saying if—then we’ll precede from there.”

No!
Quinn’s mind bellowed.
I can’t just wait here. I have to find out if Annabelle is safe. I have to do something
.

As if reading Quinn’s mind, Griffin said, “You do anything stupid and you’ll wind up back in jail, then you’ll be of no use to Annabelle. Is that what you want?”

Judd grasped Quinn’s arm and led him toward the lobby. But he couldn’t sit down. Instead he paced the floor. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but had actually been only a few minutes, Griffin reappeared. He could tell from the look on Griffin’s face that the news was bad.

“Tobias is dead,” Griffin said. “Shot at close range, right between the eyes.”

Quinn felt as if all the air had been knocked out of him.

“Annabelle?”

“She’s gone. Some of the people in the other rooms got a glimpse of a young guy dragging a woman down the hall. Their descriptions of the guy all vary too much to do us any good. Young. Tall. Brown hair. Wearing a white jacket and dark slacks.”

“Young, tall and brown-haired could be either of your employees,” Judd said.

“Yeah, it could be either Aaron or Jace,” Quinn agreed, despite his need to believe neither was involved. Two young men he had saved from lives of crime. He had befriended them, given them jobs, trusted them, thought of them as surrogate sons.

“The police are on their way,” Griffin said. “I think we should call Lieutenant Norton. Annabelle’s been kidnapped and is in the hands of a serial killer. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Annabelle didn’t know how long she had been in the back of the truck. All she knew was that she’d rolled into a dead body and screamed inside her mind for a long, long time.
Whether an hour or two or more had passed, she wasn’t sure. Time had ceased to be of any importance to her. Not when she was at the mercy of a madman.

Sunlight hurt her eyes when the door opened and a big hand reached inside and yanked her forward. She hadn’t realized she’d been lying so close to the door. He grabbed her legs and hurriedly undid the rope binding her ankles together. He pulled her out of the truck and onto the ground. Wobbly on her feet, she fell into her captor, who all but dragged her along with him as he sneaked around the side of a building she recognized as a motel. Surely someone would notice them and realize she’d been kidnapped by this man.

Your feet are free, even if your hands are tied and you’re still gagged. Don’t just go passively with him. Do something. Anything. Kick him and run
.

Annabelle did just that. Her kick missed its mark, striking him in the thigh, but it stunned him just enough for her to get away from him. She made it a good ten feet before he tackled her, shoving her down onto the concrete walkway in front of the motel. She lay beneath him, the breath knocked out of her and her body screaming in pain.

He jerked his gun from the back of his pants and pressed the muzzle against her temple. “Try something like that again and I’ll have to shoot you. I don’t want to shoot you, Annabelle. I’m not a cruel, unkind person. Not to the women we love. I kill them softly, tenderly and put them out of their misery. I’ll do the same for you.”

What was he talking about? What misery? What did he mean by
we
? And he couldn’t possibly love her. He didn’t know her, had only seen her—what—once?

When he hauled her onto her feet and marched her toward Room Ten, she looked right and left, hoping and praying she would see someone—that someone would see her. Not a soul in sight. That’s when she noticed there were no vehicles in the parking slots and the one-story motel looked shabby and rundown. The place was abandoned, probably on the brink of being demolished.

He shoved open the unlocked door to Room Ten and pushed her inside. The stale air reeked with various unpleasant odors. The interior lay in semidarkness.

He forced her toward the bed. “Sit down.”

She sat.

“I’m going to take the gag out of your mouth,” he told her. “Scream if you want to waste your breath. Nobody will hear you.”

When he untied the rag and pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth, she gasped, then sucked in a deep breath.

“I’m going to tie your hands to the headboard, just so you won’t try to run.”

When he loosened the rope, she head-butted him. Damn, but that hurt. Hurt her as much as it did him. But she took advantage of his surprise, leaped to her feet and ran to the door. He caught her just as her hand touched the doorknob.

Something hard hit her in the back of the head.

Quinn’s cell phone rang. He started not to answer it, considering he, Judd and Griffin were in the middle of a discussion with Jim Norton.

“You’d better get that,” Griffin said.

Quinn moved away from the others to take the call. “Cortez here.”

“Hi, Quinn.”

He recognized the voice instantly. Fear clutched his gut. “Where are you?”

“In a little out-of-the-way motel.”

“Are you alone?”

“Of course not, silly. Annabelle is with me.”

“Don’t hurt her.” The roar of his heartbeat thundered in his ears. “Whatever you want, you’ve got it. Just don’t hurt her.”

“Quinn Cortez begging. Hmm…I like that. Have you ever begged before, Quinn? I have. She used to make me beg and
plead. She’d point that damn finger at me and laugh when I cried in pain.”

“Who did that to you?”

“Who do you think? Kelley. My mother. The woman you used and forgot about, the woman you destroyed.”

“Kelley Fleming?”

“Fleming wasn’t her real name. She used lots of different last names. She changed our name every time we moved. I think her real last name was Ford. After you dumped her, she finally married some loser named Tony Ford, but he didn’t hang around for long.” He chuckled. “But at least he married her, that was more than you did. You don’t remember her, do you, Quinn? That tall, skinny girl who tutored you in English your first semester in college. You screwed her a couple of times and she thought you loved her.”

“Kelley…” Oh, my God!

He did vaguely remember an odd young woman who had tutored him that first difficult semester. But he’d forgotten her name was Kelley. Back then, he’d hump just about any willing female and Kelley had been no exception. When he’d broken things off with her, she’d stalked him for months, then she disappeared and he never saw her again. And to be honest, not once in all these years had he given her a second thought.

“Did you kill her, your mother?”

“Yes, I did. And I killed the others, too, just like I’m going to kill Annabelle. I’m going to put her out of her misery. She’s in love with you, just the way the others were and you’ll only break her heart and she’ll never be able to get over you and she’ll make others suffer because—”

“Annabelle isn’t like any of the others. I love her. Do you hear me—I love Annabelle and I want to marry her. I’ll never break her heart. I promise you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. I swear it’s true. I can prove it to you if you’ll let me. Just tell me how I can prove that I love Annabelle.”

Silence.

“Answer me, damn you!” Quinn said.

“All right. If—if you love her then you can save her. But you’ll have to die in her place. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to sacrifice your life, to pay for all your sins, in order to save Annabelle?”

“Yes. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come to you. You let Annabelle go and you can kill me in her place. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal.” Pause. “But you come alone and unarmed. If anyone comes with you, I’ll kill her. Or if I find out you have a weapon. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

Annabelle came to groggily, her head pounding. For a couple of minutes she felt completely disoriented, wasn’t sure where she was or what was going on. Then she began to remember the details of her morning, starting with when Mr. Tobias opened the door and a waiter had shot him right between the eyes. No, not a waiter…

“I’m glad you’re finally awake,” a voice said. An oddly familiar voice.

“Quinn?”

“Yes, honey, it’s me. Bad boy Quinn.”

She tried to sit up, but when her head started swimming, she lay back, resting her head against the dingy pillow. Then she turned to search for the voice and saw a shadowy figure on the far side of the semidark room, his shape outlined by a glimmer of sunlight peeking through the window where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

He was the same height and had a similar build as Quinn. And his voice sounded a great deal like Quinn’s. But Quinn didn’t call her honey and only the two of them knew that to him she was his darling, his
querida
.

“I can’t see you,” she said as she once again tried to sit up. Still she couldn’t manage to lift herself, but this time she
realized why. Not because of her headache and slight nausea, but because both of her wrists were bound to the rickety headboard.

The shadow moved toward her. The closer he came, the faster her heart beat. He paused about three feet from the bed. She shut her eyes for a few seconds, then reopened them, hoping what she thought she’d seen would disappear. But no, he was still standing there. Curly black hair. Cocky smile. Quinn, and yet not Quinn.

What’s wrong with this picture?
she asked herself.
How can he look so much like Quinn and yet not be Quinn?

“Please, come closer,” she said. “I can barely see you.”

He moved to the side of the bed, then leaned over and looked right at her. His black eyes were identical to Quinn’s, too. The similarity between the two men was amazing.

“You look a great deal like him,” she said.

He laughed. “I had you fooled there for a few minutes, didn’t I? You actually thought I was Quinn Cortez.”

“At a distance, the resemblance is remarkable.”

“Yeah, I know, especially with the black wig and the dark brown contacts.” When he spoke, his voice was his own again and not an excellent imitation of Quinn’s.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what? Why do I choose to look like Quinn when I perform my acts of kindness for his victims?”

Was that how he saw the women who loved Quinn—as victims?

“You killed those six women, didn’t you?”

“It was the right thing to do, the only humane thing.”

“I don’t understand,” she told him. “What do you mean it was the only humane thing to do?”

“They were suffering. I put them out of their misery. And I’ll do the same for you.”

Annabelle felt a rush of pure panic flood her senses. There had to be a way to stop him. She had too much to live for to give up without a fight. She tugged on her bound wrists.

He laughed again, then grinned at her, and she thought how eerily unbelievable it was that with only a few minor changes in his appearance, this man could easily pass for Quinn’s brother. His younger brother.

“You’re curious as to why I look so much like Quinn, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. The resemblance isn’t obvious at all when you aren’t wearing the wig and contacts,” Annabelle said. “And you’re not wearing your glasses, so that changes your appearance, too.”

“I have my mother’s hair and eye color,” Jace Morgan said. “But my features are a great deal like his. I’m the same height and the same size he was when he was a teenager. That’s what my mother told me a couple of years ago.”