Fear for Me (16 page)

Anthony kicked in another door, and in the cavernous darkness, his flashlight fell on the man cowering in the corner.

“Steve Lynch?” he demanded as Paul rushed into the room behind him. It looked like the guy from the grainy photo he’d seen at the station.

The man nodded and lifted his hands before his eyes, as if trying to shield from that bright light.

Anthony kept his flashlight trained on Steve as Paul’s light swept around the room. There was no one else in that place. No damn body else, and as far as Anthony could see, there wasn’t so much as a scratch on Lynch.

“What the hell is going on?” Anthony asked as he took another step toward Lynch. The more he studied him, Anthony realized how different Lynch appeared from his driver’s license photo. Thinner, haggard. Terrified.

“I had to do what he…wanted…” Lynch whispered. “He has…Helen.”

Anthony’s gut clenched. Then he heard the thunder of footsteps coming down the hallway.

He spun away from Lynch, just in time to see two uniformed cops rush into the room.

Anger pulsed through him. “You’re supposed to be outside with the DA!”

The cops froze. “We were securing the back exit, sir!” one shouted.

There was no need to secure the back exit. Walker wasn’t here. He wasn’t…

Anthony turned back around, frowning. From Lynch’s position, he would have been able to look out the side window—a window just inches away from him—and see the cops. “You screamed to get us inside.” Shit,
shit
.

“I’m sorry! He made me! He said I had to scream—” Lynch’s cry followed Anthony as he raced from the room, but he didn’t stop. He was running as fast as he could toward the front door. Paul was behind him, shouting for him to stop. Did the fool not realize what was happening?

Lynch hadn’t been Walker’s target. The guy had been the fucking bait.

The target was the same one Walker had been focused on all along.

Lauren.

He burst out of the house, shouting her name. One look at the patrol car, with its door swinging open, and he knew something had happened. Something bad.

No!

He jumped off the porch. Leaped for the car. He saw the downed cop. The man had fallen face-first into the earth, a knife shoved deep into his back. “Lauren!” he yelled.

Paul’s footsteps thundered after him.

Anthony bent and put his fingers to the downed cop’s throat. A pulse still beat there, barely. Damn barely. He whirled to face Paul. “Get an ambulance!”

“Lauren?” Paul said, fear cracking her name.

He didn’t know where she was.

Not in the house.

He spun back around and faced the woods. His flashlight cut through the darkness. Near the left, it looked like two branches were bent back. As if someone had rushed through that spot.

He ran into the woods. Twigs slapped at him, but he ignored them. He had to get through the woods. He wasn’t losing Lauren.

His foot smashed down onto something. Something that cracked beneath his weight. Fuck, a phone. He froze, then bent, grabbing it quickly. The screen was broken, but the phone still worked, and he recognized the image saved there—he’d seen it on Lauren’s phone when she’d used it before.

The SOB had taken her this way. Anthony started running again. Faster, faster. The woods stretched and twisted before he hit a path that split in two directions. Which damn path? Which one? “
Lauren!
”

She wasn’t answering his shouts. He wouldn’t let himself imagine why she wasn’t answering. He couldn’t think about that and stay sane.

The squeal of brakes shattered the night.
To the left
. He clenched his gun tight and rushed to the left, moving as fast as he could go. More twigs and branches cut into him, but Anthony didn’t care. There was only one thing that mattered to him then. Just one.

He would get her back.

Anthony burst from the woods just as a pair of taillights raced down an old, two-lane highway. The car was fishtailing and shooting up gravel in its rush to get away.

You won’t get away.
Anthony lifted his weapon, preparing to fire.

“No!” Paul’s voice. The detective burst out of the woods behind him. “Are you fucking crazy?” Paul demanded. “Lauren could be in that car!”

Could be? She
was
—and Walker was taking her away. If Walker took her to a second location—

Anthony’s eyes narrowed as he took aim at the back tire.

Then Paul jumped in front of him. “You aren’t shooting! I don’t know how the hell you marshals normally handle things, but you aren’t shooting at her!”

The car vanished around the bend.

Fuck,
fuck
. Anthony shoved his gun into its holster, dropped his flashlight, and yanked out his cell phone. Two seconds later, he had Matt on the phone. “Get a roadblock up at the end of—of—” Where the hell were they? He tried to picture the map he’d studied earlier, one that showed Lynch’s property. The images flew through his head. “Lincoln Road.” That was the road he was on—it was also a road that was surrounded by woods on the north and west. “Walker’s out there. He has Lauren—”

“You don’t know—” Paul began behind him.

Anthony rounded on him and froze him with a glare. If it hadn’t been for Paul, then Walker wouldn’t have gotten away. Anthony would have killed the bastard.

Lauren would be safe.

Anthony returned to his call. “He was driving an old-model sedan, one with a busted taillight on the right. The car’s color looked dark.” His words were tumbling out quickly as the
adrenaline coursed through his veins. “Get that car.
Stop
that car.” Then he ended the call. His fingers clenched around the phone, nearly smashing it to pieces. “You’re not fucking in charge anymore, Voyt,” he snarled.

Paul clenched his fists. “I’m the lead detective here, I—”

“Lauren is a district attorney, a person of special interest in the Walker case, and she’s
mine
.” Guttural. “She’s my responsibility from here on out. I’m getting her back.” He grabbed the guy because he couldn’t control his rage. “And if you
ever
get in my way again, I’ll fucking shoot through you.”

Under the moonlight, he could see Paul’s glare. Was he supposed to give a shit about it?
He’s been warned. I
will
shoot his ass.

Anthony tossed him aside. As much as he wanted to chase after the car on foot, it wouldn’t do him any good. He’d never be fast enough. So he raced back through the woods to Lynch’s house.

Lynch…

At the station, he’d seen a grainy photo of Lynch, courtesy of the DMV.
DMV.
He’d scanned the photo and also learned that…shit, the guy was registered to drive a ’92 Oldsmobile sedan.

Anthony shoved his way through the last of the bushes and was back at Lynch’s house. One cop was bent near the fallen officer as another shoved Lynch into the patrol car. Anthony locked his gaze on Lynch. The guy was sobbing. He’d give Lynch something to sob about.

Anthony yanked the cop out of his way. In the distance, he heard the shriek of a siren. Still faint and too far away, but coming.

He grabbed Lynch. His hands fisted in the material of Lynch’s shirt. “You gave the bastard your car.”

Lynch nodded miserably. His gaze was on the ground.

“You lured us into that house so he could get her.” He wanted to rip the guy apart. Lynch had been screaming, yelling so loudly. Had Lauren been outside, crying for help then? And they hadn’t heard her over Lynch’s screams? “
Why?
”

Paul moved behind Anthony then. Anthony heard the detective speaking into his phone and ordering an APB on Lynch’s car.

“He has Helen!” Lynch whispered as his gaze lifted. “You have to understand. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Helen’s his ex-wife,” Paul muttered as he stalked closer. Then his voice rose as he snapped into his phone, “Yes, dammit, a ninety-two sedan! Stop the car and approach it with
extreme caution
because we think the DA is his prisoner.”

“I still love her,” Lynch said, swallowing thickly. “I couldn’t let Helen die.”

The wounded cop on the ground was gasping for air. Anthony hauled Lynch toward him. “But you could let that guy die?”

The uniform next to the fallen man looked up, the pain clear on his face in the weak moonlight. “McHenry’s got a wife, a baby on the way…”

“I’m sorry!” Lynch cried. “So sorry!”

“Fuck sorry,” Anthony said. Sorry wouldn’t change anything. He was trying not to picture Lauren at that moment. Trying so hard not to imagine her fear, but—

A killer had taken him as a hostage once, too. Anthony had been tied up and left to die. He’d been so sure death would come for him. Hope had bled away, moment by moment.

He didn’t want Lauren to feel the same way he had.

But while the Valentine Killer had toyed with him, the guy hadn’t tortured Anthony with his knife.

The Bayou Butcher was all about torture.

“Tell us every damn thing you know about Walker,” he snarled as the rage threatened to burst free. “Where the hell is he going?”

“I don’t know anything!”

Anthony’s back teeth ground together. “He told you that if you pulled us in, you’d get your wife back.”

A miserable nod. The shrieks from the ambulance were closer now. “I’m sorry about the cop. I didn’t think…”

No, he fucking hadn’t. If he had, he would have gone to the authorities for help and they could have sprung a trap on Walker.

“How were you getting Helen back? Where were you supposed to go?”

Lynch’s tongue swiped over his lips. “The old fishing pier on Rattlesnake Bayou. He said to go there at dawn.”

The ambulance was pulling onto the road. The flashing lights lit up the scene. Anthony shoved Lynch away. “Take him to the station,” he ordered to the other cop. “Stay with him. Don’t let the bastard out of your sight!”

“I’m sorry!” Lynch cried out. “I didn’t have a choice!”

Same damn song. The guy didn’t even know what sorry was, not yet. If Anthony didn’t get Lauren back, he’d make sure the guy knew.

He jumped into his SUV. Revved the engine.

Paul yanked open the passenger side door. “You aren’t going without me!”

Anthony wasn’t wasting time arguing. He wheeled the vehicle to the left and headed as fast as he could for the old highway.

Her head hurt like a bitch. Something wet and sticky was in her left eye. She reached up her hand—
blood
. Her blood.

Darkness surrounded her. The kind of thick, total darkness that made her think of tombs and death.

The Bayou Butcher has me.

A scream built in her throat and burst from her, but the scream didn’t do any good. She could tell that the car was moving. There was a grinding sound, like wheels, and she was bumping every few moments.

Lauren lifted her hands and her fingers pressed into a hard surface, one just inches from her face.
The trunk. He put me in a trunk.

He’d put her in the trunk, and now he was trying to take her someplace. He hadn’t killed her at the scene, the way he’d done to poor Officer McHenry. Walker had taken her.

So he could play with her.

She wasn’t in the mood to be his plaything.

Lauren twisted her body, shaking and maneuvering so that she could try to search the area for some kind of tool. Her fingers fumbled in the dark. At least he hadn’t tied her hands—that would make it easier for her to escape or to fight back. Her nails shoved into the trunk’s walls, but she kept searching. The drumming of her heartbeat filled her ears. She was so afraid that, at any moment, the vehicle would stop and Walker would come for her.

Then I’ll be dead.

Her fingers swiped over something sharp. She stopped, breath heaving, and her fingers slid over the object. She could tell by its shape that she’d found a screwdriver.

Thank you, God.

Her right hand held it tight, while her left started to run along the trunk’s wall. She had to locate the rear of the car, had to find the spot where the trunk locked. Once she found the actual lock, she could try to use the screwdriver to pry it open. If the trunk
had a separate release latch, she could try to find that. She would find
something.

Because she
would
get out of there. Lauren wasn’t going to give up. No matter what.

She had a tool now, one that she could use to escape. If Walker came for her before she got her freedom, she’d damn well use the screwdriver as a weapon.

The car bounced, hit a deep hard hole, then jerked forward.

Lauren tensed. It didn’t feel like they were on a road anymore. No, the vehicle had turned, and Walker was taking her away from civilization. That was the way he worked, right?
Take the prey into the swamp to torture for hours.

They were on a bumpy road. A dirt road?

Her fingers were sweating around the screwdriver as she frantically went to work.