First Night of Summer (30 page)

Charlie
. He remembered sitting on the porch that evening with his friend, having a beer while the kids played. Sarah was out of sight, just inside the screen door.

It sent chills down his spine. They had been stalked, tested for weaknesses. It was not by chance that he had come into their lives. If the twins had never saved Jason and made headlines, life would have gone on as usual. The canvas was much larger than he ever fathomed, sobering yet enraging.

He continued through the pages dedicated to Bailey Davis, followed by Lindsay Watson and, finally, Mindy Kessler. After Mindy, the next sheet of paper was devoted to the young teenage girl in the cabin. Now that he could see her face, he placed who she was. She was the cashier from the grocery store, Ashley. He had taken her sometime between yesterday evening and that very morning. The man posing as Derek was the culprit, and he had snared her out of convenience.

The last page before the blank sheets began was titled “Josephine Snow.” There was a photo of her, Isaac’s Cessna, an outline of the weekend’s events, and a short synopsis of intent. The final inscription was the most recent and meaningful. It read simply “Ghost Town.”

There was no question that the words implied Josie’s current locale. Without a second to lose, Isaac closed the journal. A flicker on the front flap caught his eye. In the lower, right-hand corner of the leather cover were three letters, each stamped in gold leaf: R.E.D.

Do you like … red
? Isaac recalled the unwelcome posts, all ending with the same unexplained question.
We’ve had his initials from the beginning. He was asking if they liked … him
.

Isaac bolted up the mountainside in a flash of raw power. R.E.D. had to be somewhere between the two locations. This was the pivotal wormhole in time, an opportunity to find Josie without the dangerous tension of a standoff.

He had flown over the ghost town multiple times on patrols. In fact, the reference point was often used in his flight logs. She was there. He could feel it.

The device inside Isaac’s pocket was now an invaluable form of communication. He tugged at the flap on his cargo pouch without breaking stride. With sure fingers, he activated the personal locator beacon. Somewhere, a dot on a screen was about to start blinking. Search and Rescue would scramble and arrive at his exact whereabouts. Isaac was no longer off the grid. He was at the center of a map and screaming for help.

Hopefully, word of the crisis had spread to all local authorities by now, and the rescue signal would bring more than just a search team. He wanted the whole damn cavalry.

Chapter Seventy

A
s an adolescent, Ricky never imagined he would be brave enough to stash an extensive porn collection in his bedroom, but he had. And while he obsessed over magazine prints, he never fathomed the audacious task of buying dirty videos from a stranger on the street, but he had done that too. It definitely never crossed his mind that child pornography would become his addiction. One lustful pleasure after another morphed him into a predator.

His history was one of repetition. The quest for stimulation was in his nature, and new sensations led the way to satisfaction. His bored, neglected intellect always craved something to do. Someone to do.

Now, a grown man apart from his humble beginnings with an X-rated magazine, he was a cold-blooded killer many times over. And with the shot to Isaac, he had laid waste to his first non-target victim.

New gusto flowed through every step he made from behind the pickup and toward the cabin. Adjacent to the back landing, he pressed himself against the exterior log wall. Isaac was cunning, and for his own safety, Ricky aired on the side of caution.

Slowly, his sharp, aqua eyes peeking around the corner, he bolted into the doorway, gun in front and swinging left to right. Instantly, things didn’t add up.

Ashley’s body was there, covered and alone.
Dammit! Where is he?

Chapter Seventy-One

T
he ghost town appeared very different at ground level than from above. Everything seemed smaller from the air, more manageable. The perspective on foot was much larger.

Isaac estimated there had originally been twenty or more buildings in the old mining camp. Maybe five of them were still in fair enough condition to safely enter. One in particular looked to be in better shape than the other four, and it seemed the logical choice. He decided to begin there.

Finally, he had some hard-earned time on his side. The play-by-play of events had been the most intense of his life, even beyond those in the air force. But in the last five minutes, the tables had turned. Even if it were only marginal, he was in the superior position.

Still, the clock ticked. Short of breath, Isaac raced into the clearing of the ramshackle town. He held his left arm snuggly against his shredded rib muscles. The wound bled enough to leave a dribbling trail if he didn’t apply pressure. He clutched the shotgun in his right hand with the barrel pointed out front and ready for a fight.

The rickety shanty was not airtight, and the single entry point stood permanently agape. Cracks in the walls let in tiny beams of filtered light, but not enough to spy into the inner hollow. He desperately wanted to call for Josie. In the mountains though, a voice could resonate and he thought better of it.
What if he’s already in there? No, he can’t be. Not yet
. Only the intonation of the woods whispered.

The operation required stealth, and stealth meant complete silence. Soft earth and sparse blades of grass cushioned his approach. Fear begged the obvious question.
What will I do if she’s not here?

Enough natural sunlight came through the doorway to reveal two separate tripods. One supported a camera; the other had a camcorder. Both were pointed to a pallet of bedding. And there, in the middle of it all, Josie laid bound and gagged. She appeared unharmed, but her eyes were wild with trepidation.

Isaac’s silhouette, the outline of a man holding a gun, revealed itself in the backlit portal, and she thought it was her captor. The sound of gunfire from down the hill had heightened her terror.

The roughly spun ropes that fixed her in position were excruciating. Her hands and feet throbbed with each rapid pump of her heart and swelled with a bluish tint. She tried to scream. The grass-rope gag gnawed into her cheeks.

Relief blossomed inside of Isaac. The angst he had of losing Josie relinquished its grasp and pulled the corners of his mouth into a grin. Water filled his eyes, and joy flooded his heart.

Moving further into the room, he went to his knees beside her. “It’s me, baby,” he whispered.

Josie wriggled hard, not realizing who it was.

“Shhhh!” he demanded, holding a finger to his lips. “It’s okay, Jo. It’s me.” He leaned over, put his face in front of hers, and gave the best reassuring smile he could muster. “He can’t know I’m here,” he said in a hushed murmur. She needed to stay calm.

The distress was still there, visibly emanating through the passages of her eyes.

“We’re getting out of here, kiddo.” Their departure needed to go quietly and quickly. “I’m going to cut these ropes.” His hand ran along one of the taut cords marring her young skin. He couldn’t bear to see her tied like some wild, untamed beast.

He leaned the shotgun against the wall and immediately took out his knife, grateful that he had kept the tool and not abandoned it after the weapons upgrade.

As badly as he wanted to whisk her away into the forest and be done with the killer forever, Isaac snapped back to reality. What he wanted and what was necessary were entirely different. R.E.D. would continue to hunt them and haunt their dreams. Just like he had done all summer, he would pursue them relentlessly, never retreating until he fulfilled his purpose. Running and hiding were no good.

With knife blade ready to cut away the painful restraints, he had to make a judgment call. Footsteps from outside were heading their way. He would have never heard them, but the swirling sierra breeze blew in the right direction and cemented his decision. To liberate Josie now would alert the huntsman, and battle would surely ensue.

He held his finger to his lips once more and gestured for Josie to be silent. The appearance of her solitude was the best way to save her life.

“Jo,” Isaac whispered. “I am not leaving you.” He gave her a hard, uncompromising stare. “Don’t … move.”

She nodded.

“I have to hide. Do not look at me. We can’t let the bad man know I’m here, okay?”

She nodded again, so brave and trusting of her father.

“Good girl,” he said, barely audible. He stroked a lock of hair from her face and assured her with another smile. “I’m going to get him. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

They were on the edge. One blunder could end it all, this duel to the death. No rules.

Isaac rose and pocketed his knife. He took up the shotgun and backed into the darkest corner of the room. It was against the same wall as the entrance. He stood rigid in the nook, gun pointed at the doorway, safety off, and finger on the trigger. All the maniac had to do was walk into the line of fire.

Josie trained her eyes on her father, and he tilted his head toward the door. She moved them appropriately.

Good girl. Don’t give Daddy away
.

A shadow of a man materialized along the outer wall, opposite where Isaac hid. The figure blocked sunshine from passing through pinholes and cracks in the wood. It slid forward and crept to the corner nearest the entry.

Isaac watched, unblinking, each calculated step. At such close range, the lead projectiles would rip through R.E.D., much the same as they did Ashley. There was no way to prevent Josie from witnessing the slaughter.

Isaac could hear his own heartbeat. Intensity bled from his pores, and sweat slicked his palms. He feared that his presence might be sensed. The frozen moment lingered, an undetectable lapse in time. The stalker loomed, his silhouette obstructing shafts of sunlight. Isaac wondered how long he would wait there.
C’mon, you bastard
.

Then a solution rang crystal clear.

Chapter Seventy-Two

I
f he were going to unleash a barrage through the thin wall, Josie had to be completely free of potential harm. Isaac gauged the direction of his aim. The dark shape was on full alert, and Isaac suspected the least little noise might send him running.

I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch
. In a seamless motion, he rotated at the hips and aligned the shotgun barrel, high enough to dispatch the man’s vitals. The trigger clicked, the firing pin struck, and a deep concussion filled the tiny room with thunder. It blew a silver dollar-sized hole through the brittle timber.

A frantic holler immediately followed. Isaac manifested outside the hut like a crack of lightning. The semi-auto shotgun had already loaded the next shell into the chamber and was ready to fire again.

R.E.D. was curled on the ground, his rifle negligently dropped two feet away. The lead discharge had passed through the dry-rotted logs, entered his tissue by way of shattering the right shoulder blade, and exited the front of his torso, just below the clavicle. The resulting aperture was the circumference of a baseball. In addition to an exorbitant amount of blood and tattered flesh, the wound was littered with fabric from his shirt and woodchips from the shack.

Isaac reached down and tossed away the rifle. R.E.D. was on his back, drawn into himself and moaning in pain. His discomfort was too great to consider fighting.

Isaac stood tall over the only person he had ever truly wanted to kill. Hate swelled in his heart, and a sense of pleasure from the man’s agony warmed his blood. He had dominated his opponent and felt powerful. He aligned the shotgun with the murderer’s face and pressed the barrel against his lips. One shell was left in the chamber. R.E.D. stopped his display of misery and froze. Isaac pushed the tip of the barrel harder until he opened his mouth and let the warm metal slide past his teeth. Both of their orbs burned hot, one with dismay, one with malevolence.

Isaac’s features fell expressionless, and Caroline filled his mind. If not for this man, she would be alive and well, a happy, vibrant child with lots to offer the world in the long years to come. He wanted to kill the bastard badly, and had he not found the leather journal, he would have gladly done so without hesitation. Now he wrestled with the notion.

In retrospect, Caroline was only a small piece of the puzzle. Numerous families across the country had lost their children to the hands of this butcher, and none had found closure or even a body to bury. Isaac flinched. To be the parent of a missing child—not knowing if she were lost or dead—had to be one of the worst feelings imaginable. When Caroline died, Isaac, Sarah, Josie, Tom, and Helen had all suffered for it. But at least they knew her fate and had a vessel to place beneath the earth.

Isaac realized he played but a single role in one scene of a much larger drama. Maybe he was the hero to finally track down the villain, but others deserved justice as much or more than he did, to stand in front of R.E.D. and watch as his punishment was carried out. Isaac stared at the agonized creature below him and waited for the scales of consequence to tip in favor of life or death.

“What’s your name?”

The man’s shoulder drained clabbered gore onto the dusty soil. He didn’t reply.

Isaac extracted the barrel from his mouth. “I have your book, and I know your initials, R-E-D. Now,” he repeated flatly, “tell me your name, or I’ll kill you and find out anyway.”

His eyes darted around, but there was nobody there, no one to help him or intervene. He was alone in the hands of an enraged captor, like his own victims had experienced.

Isaac pressed the gun to his forehead this time, finger never leaving the trigger. He shoved his foot down on the wounded shoulder. The knobby, rubber soles dug in, and the killer shouted in anguish.

Isaac’s voice was eerily calm and resolute for the circumstances. “Last chance. Tell me your name, or I end your pathetic life.”