Deathscape (29 page)

He flicked on the light, then eased down the stairs step by careful step, his muscles coiled. His stomach turned again as a familiar musty smell, mold mixed with paint, hit him.

This was it. The smell, the feel, the woodstove in the corner, instruments of torture mixed with instruments of art. His gaze settled on the walls—professionally soundproofed. That explained why nobody had heard him scream.

Unfinished canvases lay against the wall here and there, painted with a mixture of paint and blood, some probably his. He’d imagined himself finding Blackwell’s lair a million times. But it hadn’t been nearly as sick as this. Ashley’s paintings were macabre, but this was something else entirely.
This
was all the way insane.

His gaze caught on a metal chair, the chair he’d been chained to for three endless days. Rage built inside him. He wanted Blackwell. He wanted to end the bastard. Where the hell was he?

“
Jack?” Joe’s voice came from above. “Jack? Are you down there?”

“
Right here.”

The rookie drummed down the stairs, his gun straight out in front of him, looked around, paled when he understood where he was standing.

“
This is it?”

Jack nodded, suddenly suffocating. “Don’t touch anything. But see if you can find something that would identify the bastard. Got a crime-scene kit?”

“
Up in the car.”

“
Go get it.” Jack ran up the stairs just as Mike was climbing in through the window they all used as an entrance.

“
I want to know who owns this building,” Jack told him, although he wasn’t sure how helpful the information would be. Could be the bank still owned the place and Blackwell was squatting here, knowing nobody would notice, nobody would come looking.

He panned his flashlight, and the circle of light caught on the stairs leading up to the next level, another steel security door up there.

“
That’s some heavy-duty lock,” Mike said from behind him.

Jack ran up the stairs. He didn’t shoot the lock this time. He’d taken the chance of a ricocheting bullet when he’d been alone, but wouldn’t now that he had Mike behind him.

He kicked to door, and again and again, using all his strength. He was close, so damn close. Nothing was going to stop him now. And the door did bang open at last.

Did Blackwell live up here? He pushed through, weapon drawn, ready for anything. Nothing moved in the darkness in front of him. He sensed more than he saw a great open space as he ducked in, went low to the left. Mike rolled to the right in a move straight from the police academy.

“
Lights.”

Mike reached up to flick the switch, and it did work. This level too had electricity. Light flooded the cavernous space.

“
Jeezus
,” Mike groaned and lost his dinner where he stood.

Jack damn near followed his lead.

* * *

He stood at the top of the stairs in Ashley Price’s house. He’d planned this moment carefully and would pull it off without a hitch. That was why he was a true master.

He walked softly into her bedroom, careful not to make a sound. A pretty room, lots of white linen, the sort of simple elegance he appreciated. She wasn’t as great an artist as he, but she had taste.

He had nothing against her. He’d even liked her. Of course, she thought her paintings were too good for the likes of him. He could smile now at the irony.

She slept the sleep of the exhausted—big party tonight. He picked up her cell phone from the nightstand, scrolled through her contacts, sent a text to Sullivan. Then he turned off the phone and dropped it into his pocket.

The police would find it at the bottom of the reservoir. Along with her body. And Sullivan’s. The police report would say she committed suicide, her troubled mind snapping. Sullivan had tried to save her but got pulled down. The detective might even get some posthumous medal.

He reached for his gun, ready to wake her.

“
Mommy?”

The sleepy voice behind him, coming from the doorway, nearly had him dropping the gun. He whirled around. What the hell was the kid still doing here?

* * *

“
Where does he come in?” Jack asked, back on the main level. He could take only so much of the “exhibit” at the top of the stairs.

“
What?” Mike looked shell-shocked still, but trying hard to pretend he wasn’t, doing his best to suck it up.

Jack scanned the place. “Where does Blackwell come in here? The front door to the street is rusted shut. The back entrance the same. He isn’t coming through a broken window every time, not with tools and supplies and those big canvases. He didn’t carry me through a window. No way.”

“
A secret door?” Mike was snapping back to a straighter frame of mind, where he needed to be for this.

“
Find it.”

And they did, now that they knew what they were looking for, behind some heavy-looking scaffolding that actually rolled pretty easily out of the way on wheels.

Another door back there, painted the same dirty white as the wall, cleverly camouflaged. Jack sent a bullet through the lock just as his phone buzzed in his pocket with an incoming message. Probably Bing wanting to know what was going on. Leila would have called him.

Not now.
Jack ignored the call as he stepped into the dark. A narrow passageway opened up in front of him, and he swore as his flashlight illuminated his service weapon and badge on the ground, tucked to the side, the originals Blackwell had taken off him.

He reached for them as Mike said, “They’ll have to be dusted for fingerprints.”

Whatever. He wasn’t planning on Blackwell going to trial. But he moved forward, the light landing on a regulation army shovel and a pair of dirty boots. Straight ahead, at the end of the short passageway, stood yet another door, this one plain wood, no super security here.

He kicked it in on the first try.

And then they were in the gallery next door, Graham Lanius’s life-size portrait the first thing his flashlight hit. And behind it, two familiar-looking mushroom paintings.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place.

Graham had recommended the artist for the commission. He’d probably gone out to the mushroom factory for the handover of the paintings. And had gotten spores on his shoes…

Jack turned on his heels and dashed back through the passageway, pushing Mike aside. “Ashley Price. Call it in!”

Then he ran as if his life depended on it.

* * *

“
Mommy,” the little girl cried again.

Fury swirled inside him. He didn’t want the girl. He didn’t need the girl.

He had plans, and nobody was going to ruin them. He gripped the gun hard. Then drew a deep breath and forced himself to think.

Fine. The kid was here. He would deal with it. He was smarter than the rest of them put together. Certainly smart enough to adjust his plan on the fly. He prided himself on creativity.

The story would have to change.

The evidence would show that Ashley Price snapped, went crazy. She took her own life and took her kid with her. Not that far a stretch, considering last year’s accident on the reservoir.

When he was finished with them, after all three were dead, including Jack, he could come back to the house and type up a suicide note on her laptop. Spell it out, not leave the cops too much to think about.

He drew another deep breath. It would work. All right.

As the mother stirred, he backed out of the room and went for the kid.

* * *

Ashley woke from a dreamless sleep to her daughter’s voice. But when she opened her eyes, instead of Maddie she saw a dark figure looming over her bed, his gun glinting in the dim light. With his other hand, the man held Maddie.

Her heart jumped into her throat, her sleep-fogged brain scrambling to think.

Then the man shifted, and the pale moonlight washed over his face.

Recognition shocked her. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“
Get up.” He backed away, and, as she slipped from the bed, thrust her daughter at her.

“
Mommy.”

“
It’s okay, honey.” She gathered her trembling baby up into her arms. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

“
Down the stairs.” Graham gestured with the gun.

“
Please don’t do this.”
Why?
Her brain couldn’t catch up with the moment. But she moved. He was clearly deranged. She didn’t want to make him angry. “What do you want?”

“
Outside,” he said when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

“
I’m sorry. I know I was rude to you. I didn’t mean it. We can talk. I apologize.”

His only response was a cold sneer as he shoved her from behind.

* * *

Jack dialed Ashley as he drove. She didn’t pick up her cell and not her landline either.

And then at last he glanced at the message that had come in earlier, from Ashley’s number. One heart-stopping word.

GOODBYE.

The bastard was setting her up. Another trap, Jack realized. A trap baited with something Blackwell knew Jack wouldn’t be able to resist.

A trap he would willingly walk into this time. He didn’t care if he died tonight, he didn’t even care what happened to Blackwell—as long as Ashley lived.

He slammed his foot on the gas. Dark premonitions settled on him as he drove, filling his chest with lead. He was going so fast he nearly flipped the car over when he turned the last corner. But he reached her house in record time, didn’t bother to shut off the engine as he ran for the door, banged on it. “Ashley? It’s Jack.”

Nobody answered.

“
Police. Open up.” He banged again, then swore and kicked the door in, weapon in hand.

He scanned the downstairs. Swore when he spotted Maddie’s pink coat on the peg, her pink boots on the floor under it. Was she spending the night?

“
Ashley? Maddie, honey?” He ran upstairs. Empty, though both their beds looked slept in.

He stood in the middle of Ashley’s bedroom, fear and fury coursing through him as he scanned everything, desperate for a clue that would lead him to them. Then his gaze snapped to the window. The room was in the back of the house, the window looking over Hadley Road and the reservoir. Moonlight glinted off a vast expanse of white.

His eyes caught on the dark shapes moving across the ice.

* * *

Her feet were frozen, her bedroom slippers little protection against the snow. Ashley wrapped her arms around her daughter as best she could, trying to keep Maddie warm. Her own body shook, and not only because of the cold. Dark panic gripped her as she shuffled forward on the ice.

For the past year, she had barely been able to look at the reservoir. And now here she was, the place where Dylan had died, where she’d lost her life, then gained it back, thanks to the paramedics. Where she had nearly lost Maddie.

So much grief and guilt was tied up in this expanse of rough ice. She couldn’t think here. All the fear of the past was getting mixed up with the panic of the present.

She forced her brain to focus. “Why are you doing this, Graham?”

The man shoved her toward a dark hole hacked into the ice. Another kind of grave. She recognized her axe next to it, the handle painted pink. He must have taken it from her garage. Next to the axe, a large cement brick waited with a rope tied to it. He pointed to that. “Tie it around your waist.”

She felt lightheaded, as if all her blood had left her body. “You can have the paintings. You can have whatever you want.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “You think this is about your so-called art? You don’t know what real art is. I didn’t even mind. I liked you anyway. I could have taught you. I didn’t plan it like this. But you chose him.”

She couldn’t think. She was too scared for her brain to work.

“
You shouldn’t have dug up Sullivan,” he told her, his voice hard and filled with hate.

Her mind spun to process that, her throat tightening as she made sense of it at last. “You’re Brady Blackwell?”

“
I’m the Master,” he snapped at her. “Someday, they’ll all know that. Someday, when nobody even remembers your name,
my
art will be worshipped.”

“
Let Maddie go. Please,” she begged. “She’s just a child.”

“
Old enough to finger me.” He shook his head. “I’m prepared to be misunderstood and persecuted for my genius. I won’t be the first in history. But not yet. My work isn’t finished.”

He talked like a man possessed, his tone cold, his mind focused on his delusions of grandeur. And she understood at last that there was no reasoning with him.