HOSTAGE (To Love A Killer) (6 page)

              “Hunter, get your ass down here now,” whispered Ash from the street below.

              Hunter did. Quickly and quietly she placed one foot after the next, descending the fire escape ladder. When she was nearing the final few rungs of the ladder, Hunter realized something.

              It had been her father.

              There was no way the cops could’ve connected Dale’s body at the sugar factory with her exact address this quickly. When Ash had comforted her, telling her that it would take at least a few days for the cops to make that leap, he was right. Unless they were psychic, there would have been no way for them to put two and two together like that. Not this fast. It had to have been her father. Had he made a call? He had to have told the cops to come looking for her here.

              And that’s when Hunter realized the magnitude of her father’s sickness. He really was giving her absolutely no choice. He set the whole thing up. She would have to flee New York City. If she didn’t, she would undoubtedly be arrested. Tipping off the police was Grizzly’s insurance that Hunter wouldn’t say fuck it, abandon her sister once again, and stay in Brooklyn. He was forcing her to leave.

              It was terrifying how smart he was, how thorough, how well planned. He had referred to it as a game, and to him it was. That’s what was so incredibly sick about the whole thing. He was killing girls, torturing them, manipulating others, and it was all a game to him.

              Part of her wished she were strong enough, defiant enough to climb back up the fire escape and allow herself to be arrested. She wished she had the gumption to go to the police and tell them the truth, the whole truth, but Hunter didn’t have it in her. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in prison. She had suffered enough.

              Or was that not the issue?

              By the time Hunter reached the final rung of the fire escape and let go, she accepted the real truth in her heart. The only form of justice she would be willing to accept, the only justice she wanted, was to see her father dead. Not just dead, Hunter wanted to kill him herself. Hunter wanted to kill every last man at the farmhouse.

              That’s why she couldn’t turn back. That’s why she couldn’t involve the police and go about this the right way. During all these years of freedom she had only wanted one thing: to go back one day and take them all out.

              It didn’t matter that Grizzly had forced her hand, manipulated her into returning. She was planning on it anyway, and she was looking forward to it.

              Ash held Hunter’s hips, lowering her from the last rung of the fire escape into his arms, as Twitch pulled the dark sedan, headlights off, at a crawl through the alley to meet them.

              Ash set Hunter on the ground gently, but didn’t let go. He held her tightly pressed against him, palms spread firmly across her lower back.

              “You have to stay with me,” he whispered.

              “I am,” she said quietly.

              “Not just physically, Hunter. I mean you have to stay focused, present, stay with me,” he clarified.

              Hunter could see the fear behind his eyes. He was getting to know her, her tendencies, her weaknesses, and those weaknesses endangered them all. He was scared. What could she possibly say to put his mind at ease? Nothing. The fact of the matter was that she scared as well.

              “I’ll do my best,” she said, finally responding. It was clear her words did little to comfort him.

              He reached up, holding the back of her head tenderly, and pulled her close. When his lips pressed against hers, Hunter melted in a wave of comfort. Ash was her home. She could never have gotten through any of this without him. If her father had hired anyone else to track her, retrieve her back to the farmhouse, Hunter would be dead by now. She knew that.

              The sedan rumbled beside them, idling with a low purr, beckoning them inside. Ash released her and Hunter jumped into the backseat. Ash in the passenger’s seat as Twitch switched the gears from drive to reverse, backing out of the alley from where he had come.

              When they hit the street, Twitch flipped on the headlights and pealed out onto the empty city street. Hunter looked out the back window at her apartment. She spotted the detective’s car parked amongst heaps of trash. That woman detective must still be upstairs, which relieved Hunter for a moment.

              Then the shrill cry of sirens filled the night.

              “Just in time,” said Twitch, nearly under his breath. His eyes were glued to the road as far as Hunter could tell. She had turned back and was looking at Twitch’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

              “We have to go back,” said Ash. He sounded panicked as he patted himself down from chest to back pockets. “I don’t have anything with me.”

              “We can’t go back,” said Twitch firmly. “Did you see the cops pulling up?”

              Ash appeared to have gone white with dread. Hunter had never seen him like this. He was always so cool, calm, and collected, always a step ahead, well planned, in control. She could see his eyes widen. It didn’t look like he was breathing.

              Hunter placed her hand on his shoulder. The bandage at his neck was starting to peel off his skin, probably from sweat, she guessed. Everyone was hot, especially from nerves.

              “I don’t have my weapons. We can’t exactly walk into a firearms store and buy them,” he shouted, his voice cracking in anger.

              “We can in New Hampshire,” said Hunter.

              “Not if cops have an APB out on us,” said Ash.

              “I’m sure they already do,” said Hunter. “We’re driving a dead man’s car, but Ash, there are some things we don’t have a choice about. We need to get out of the city and figure things out as we go.”

              “Ash,” said Twitch for the fifth time. Neither of them had been listening. “Ash! I got your trunk!”

              “You what?” e said, not trusting his hearing.

              “I have your weapons. I got the black trunk,” Twitch said.

              “You do? How?” said Ash as a smile began to replace his panicking breaths.

              “What do you mean ‘how’? You want me to sit here and explain how carrying things works?” Twitch responded in a tone of boastful sarcasm that put everyone at ease.

              “You’re the man,” Ash boomed, while ruffling Twitch’s hair into a playful mess with his hand.

              Hunter was smiling as well. There was still so much to figure out, everything in fact. Everything was up in the air and that should’ve worried her greatly. But as Twitch drove coasting up the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, all Hunter could do was stare out the window at the bright city lights that shined starkly against the black night sky that seemed to tremble with its own darkness.

              Goodbye, New York, she thought.

              She had no idea when she would be back, if she would be back, if she would make it through whatever lay in store for them at the farmhouse. She had no idea if she’d make it out alive.

              The car had fallen silent. Ash looked over at Twitch behind the wheel. The bandage on Ash’s neck itched against his skin as he turned his head. The laceration beneath burned.

              Ash watched as tears rolled down Twitch’s cheeks.

              “It’ll be okay, man,” said Ash softly, his tone returning to its usual deep, comforting, velvety timbre.

              “Molly’s dead,” said Twitch. “How is that going to be okay?”

              “Andy, Devon, Margot, and Jenna aren’t,” said Ash. “Hunter’s sister, Blair, is still alive.”

              “We don’t know that,” said Twitch.

              “We have to believe it,” said Ash.

              Twitch began to slowly shake his head.

              “This is a suicide mission, you know that right?” he said finally, as he wiped the tears from his dirt stained cheeks.

              It had been on everyone’s mind, the possibility that they’d all be killed, the probability that they were walking into a trap.

              Hunter caught Twitch’s gaze in the rearview.

              “Remember the fifth rule?” she asked from the backseat.

              Twitch’s eyes grew wide. He began to nod, though only slightly.

              Ash turned around, his eyebrows rising in question.

              And Hunter provided the answer, “Kill or be killed. Welcome to adulthood.” 

*              *              *

              There were so many cops crawling around Hunter Mann’s apartment that Sarah feared the evidence would be compromised. Why couldn’t Linden keep a better eye on them, get them to focus their search of the apartment? Christ, he was getting more and more useless by the minute.

              She returned to the bathroom and hovered over forensics, two guys on their knees at the tub who were pulling various chemicals out of a kit that lay on the bathroom floor.

              “Anyone got a photo of the resident? Hunter Mann?” asked one of the guys loudly over his shoulder, as the other took a closer look at the letters carved into the girl’s forehead.

              “Swiss Army knife, I’m guessing,” he said before turning back to Sarah, “but I won’t know until I’m back in the lab.”

              A uni entered, holding a faded photograph in his hands. He handed it to Sarah.

              “It’s a guess,” said the uniform officer. “This could be Hunter Mann, or a friend of hers. Most of these photos are random shots of the city.”

              Sarah studied the photo in her hands. The girl in it had dark brown hair, wavy. She immediately glanced up at the girl in the tub who had blond hair. Sarah then kneeled down beside forensics.

              “It’s not the same girl,” said Sarah, as an immense wave of relief washed through her.

              Forensics studied the photo in Sarah’s hand and agreed.

              “Someone murdered this girl and carved another girl’s name into her forehead?”

              “Not only that, Detective,” said the uni. “But the multiple murders out here all came from different weapons, different killers.”

              “Multiple murders? There’s only one body out there,” said Sarah.

              “That large blood stain ain’t the same blood as the body. Different Vic. Different gun residue,” he explained.

              “Linden!” Sarah called as she rose up to her feet. She got no response. “Linden?”

              “Voss,” he responded while making no effort to move from his position in front of the open window, no doubt more concerned with breathing fresh air than solving a triple homicide.

              “Any word on Dale Williams’ home address? Does he have a vehicle? Anything?” She asked.

              Linden gazed at her with a blank stare.

              He looked sweaty.

              Christ almighty.     

              “Everyone out!” she shouted abruptly. “Forensics can stay. I want all the unis out on the street looking for this girl.” Sarah held up the photo of Hunter Mann in front of each cop, giving them a long moment to commit to memory exactly what the girl looked like. “You four, take the back alley. You three, start knocking on doors. I don’t care that it’s 4:00 am in the morning. We don’t have time to let the neighbors wake up with the sun. We have to find this girl.”

              With the room mostly cleared except for Linden and the two guys from forensics, Sarah paced slowly about the apartment, shifting her gaze back and forth from the room to the photograph of Hunter Mann that she held in her hands.

              There was something about the dead look in the girl’s eyes the camera had captured, that Sarah found unsettling. If the eyes were the window to the soul, it was as though the girl didn’t have one. She appeared to be hiding, albeit within herself, deep down, that is if she was in there at all. And yet she was smiling. That’s when Sarah placed it, placed why it was such a disturbing photo. The girl was smiling with dead eyes, and for that reason the smile looked more like a grimace, a wince of pain, as though she was wearing a mask that had begun to melt off.

              That’s when Sarah realized Hunter reminded her of herself.

              “Hey, boss,” said one of the forensic analysts who had moved on from the bathroom to work on the male body in the studio.

              Sarah walked over to where he was kneeling.

              “Go ahead,” she said giving him her full attention.

              “We got a hit on these shell casings,” he said.

              “Please tell me they’re the same as the ones we found at the sugar factory so I can make sense of this shit storm.”

              “Not quite,” he said. “But close. They match to a number of shootings around the Gowanus spanning the past few months.”

              “Okay,” she responded, waiting for him to elaborate.