Killing Secrets (43 page)

Was Skip the mentally ill family member Karly worried about? An insanely jealous brother? The Angel Killer’s victims looked nearly identical to the young Karly in the photo. Was Skip obsessively killing Karly over and over again?

The tenor of his thoughts set like seasoned concrete in his gut. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Skip had never struck him as dangerous. The man had shown up on his doorstep freshly released from the service two days after Karly died. Patrick had seen his expression when he was told his sister was gone. He’d been devastated by the news. Was he that good an actor?

He’d been part of the family since then, became Patrick’s right hand man. He was conscientious, easy-going, and eager to please. Had he been right under the noses of the cops in the family, and fooled them all, for nearly two years? Patrick’s site troubles hadn’t started until about eleven months ago. The first woman the Angel Killer took was killed a month later.

How were they related? What could have set Skip off?

Maybe he and Jack had this all wrong. Patrick
wanted
to be wrong. The ramifications of being right didn’t bear thinking.

He was half an hour from the hospital when his cell phone beeped a low battery warning. He cursed and plugged in his car charger. He should have checked it before he left Denver but, knowing it wouldn’t work once he got to the cabin, he’d blown it off. Jack needed to reach him when he found Skip….

His cell vibrated, almost giving him a heart attack. Expecting it to be Jack, he was surprised Rachel’s name popped onto the screen. She’d sent him a photo. His pulse leapt for a much different reason. He wanted to see her so badly he didn’t think twice about opening the file.

The air sucked out of his lungs as he took his eyes off the road. It wasn’t a picture from Rachel, but a picture
of
her. Her head lolled to one side, the bruise from the truck accident a brilliant mass of purple, green, and yellow on one pale cheek above the duct tape over her mouth. Her hands bound in her lap, some kind of wire was wrapped around her breasts and waist tying her to an exposed metal girder.

That was the space he’d been working before all hell broke loose with Jane’s confession and Rachel’s accident two days ago! He recognized the exterior wall behind her where he’d made a measurement notation. Right above it, in big red letters that looked too much like blood, one word was scrawled.
Southgate.

“Son-of-a-bitch!”
Skip had Rachel at Southgate.
Five minutes away.

A horn blared. He swerved the truck across several lanes of highway traffic to another blare of a horn, but caught the exit ramp. “Hang on, sweetheart,” he muttered.

Heading south he forwarded Rachel’s picture to Jack, tossed the phone on the seat, and hit the gas. He made it to the Southgate gate four minutes later and squealed to a stop. Jumping out of the truck, his heart sank when security didn’t come out of the guard shack to investigate.

Reaching under the seat for his Glock, he racked the slide to load the chamber. As an added measure, he grabbed a heavy wrench from the side pocket and tucked it into the back of his jeans under his T-shirt. He eyed the other tools. Wire cutters went into his left boot, a screwdriver in the other. When he dropped his pant legs back into place, they disappeared from view.

Better prepared, he turned toward the gate before Jack’s voice resounded through his head. “No heroics.” His brother would want him to wait for back up.

To hell with that.
Patrick picked up the cell again, called Jack’s number, and got voice mail. “Jack, I’m at Southgate. Skip has Rachel on the fourth floor of the unfinished building, west side. Come when you can. I’m not waiting for you.”

Tossing the phone back into the truck, Patrick ran for the gate working to calm the fear rolling in his gut, not for himself but for the woman he loved. In the photo, she was unconscious, possibly injured. Patrick refused to believe she was dead. Just thinking about what the Angel Killer did to his victims froze the blood in his veins.

His gun in hand, he ran through the unlocked front gate to the guard shack five feet away, hoping he wouldn’t find the guard. If the man was checking the perimeter, Patrick might yet have some backup. He found the guard lying on the shack floor in a pool of blood, his throat cut. The body still felt warm, but the Denver temperatures were hovering in the eighties despite the late hour, so it was hard to tell how long he’d been dead. Looking at the drying blood pool, Patrick was guessing at least an hour. That meant Skip had had enough time to secure his position while he waited for Patrick.

Patrick hunkered adjacent to the interior wall of the guard shack and considered his options. The situation had become all too real. Was he stalking a murderer or was the murderer stalking him?

Adrenaline surged through him. He forced it down and searched the guard’s pockets and belt. The man’s gun was missing. So was his cell phone.

Patrick closed his eyes and visualized the site, identified where he’d find cover, where he’d be exposed in the open space. The parking lot lights were iffy between the trailer and the first building, which actually helped with cover, but if Skip looked at just the right time he’d spot Patrick.

It didn’t matter. Patrick had to get to Rachel.

Keeping to the shadows, he made it to the trailer seventy feet away. Spotting the cut phone line dangling from the pole next to the front door, he didn’t bother going inside. “You’d better be on your way, Jack.”

At the end of the trailer, he peered across the open space searching the dark windows of the two finished apartment buildings. Nothing stirred. He studied the third, unfinished building where Skip had Rachel. He considered running straight for his destination. Then caution overruled. If Skip had set a trap, Patrick stood a better chance of seeing it before it was sprung if he took his time.

Decision made, he sprinted from building to building until he reached his destination on the far side of the property. So far, so good. But, Jack and his cavalry hadn’t arrived yet, so Patrick resigned himself to the knowledge Jack hadn’t received either of his messages. He was on his own.

Slipping inside the last building, it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to lower light. Thankfully, the glow of the city around the site seeped through the open windows allowing him to proceed without his flashlight.

Ignoring the elevator cage on the first floor—it was too noisy even if it wasn’t locked down for the night—he ran up the closest stairwell, his gun at the ready. Knowing which room he wanted, he bypassed the first three floors. He didn’t slow until he reached the door that opened to the fourth floor.

If Skip had laid a trap, it would be on this floor. They’d barely started closing in the rooms at the other end of the building, working first from the middle where the elevator bisected the building to his position on the stairs. If Patrick was right about what he saw in the photo, he’d find Rachel in the open space beyond the elevator. There were a number of hiding spaces between him and the elevator where Skip could set an ambush, so Patrick had to be on alert.

Opening the stairwell door, he eased into the corridor. One by one, he bypassed the apartment openings where doors remained unhung. He reached the elevator without incident, which worried him. Was Skip behind him? In front of him? Maybe Skip wasn’t there. Hell, he could simply be biding his time until Patrick ran out of cover.

When Patrick reached the last completed wall on the floor, he stopped to listen. Nothing. He closed his eyes and ran the layout through his head. The interior studs for the three remaining apartments were completed, but no solid walls were up beyond this point.

Skip had chosen his spot well. It was too damned open. Patrick wasn’t sneaking up on him.

Hunkering down, he poked his head around the wall. Peering through the studs, he searched the space. Shock ran through him when he immediately spotted Rachel tied to a girder thirty-five feet away, hunched over in a pool of light from the nearby window, her battered face slack. She looked dead.

No!

Whispering her name, he scanned the area twice before he ran to her side. When he saw her neon green blouse flutter over her breasts, he groaned. She was alive!

Checking again to make sure they were alone, he set his gun on the floor within easy reach next to the folds of her skirt. With one hand under her chin, he raised her head. He peeled off the duct tape as gently as possible with his other hand. “Rachel? Wake up.” He patted her unbruised cheek. “Come on, honey. Open your eyes and look at me.”

She moaned, tried to roll her head away from his grip.

“Look at me, Rach. That’s it.” He smiled when her eyes fluttered, opened. Staring into her huge, dilated pupils, his heart sank. Skip had given her something to knock her out. It didn’t matter if Patrick could get her to her feet on her ankle cast; she wasn’t likely to walk out of here on her own.

He wondered what the drug was doing to her, to the baby she carried.
Their baby.
Worry pounded at his insides.

“Patrick?” Rachel whispered.

“I’m here, sweetheart.” Unable to stop himself, he kissed her. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, speaking as much for his peace of mind as hers. “I need you to stay awake now so I can untie you. Do you understand?”

He waited until she nodded before he let go of her chin and looked at her hands bound by a zip tie in her lap, the electrical wire wrapped twice around her and the girder. Reaching into his left boot, he palmed his wire cutters and made quick work of the zip tie. After chafing her hands, he cut the wire over her breasts and waist. She didn’t fall over without the restraints, so he examined her eyes. “Good girl. Head feeling clearer now?”

“Yes.” Rachel nodded. She glanced around them. “Where are we?”

“Southgate.”

Her gaze darted around them in alarm. “Skip! At the hospital, he—”

“Kidnapped you,” Patrick finished for her, his anger and urgency peaking. Setting the wire cutters on the floor, he picked up his gun and tucked it into his waistband. With an arm around Rachel’s back and another under her legs, he stood, lifting her. “Let’s get you out of here before he comes back.”

“Too late, Thorne.”

Patrick turned to face his brother-in-law. “You don’t want to do this, Skip.”

An odd snort of laughter escaped the shadows just before the man stepped into the light. “Skip doesn’t, but we do.”

We?
Patrick stood there frozen, staring at a man who looked like Skip. Yet didn’t. This man wore the same work clothes, had the same carefree hairstyle. But he stood taller, with more arrogance and dark purpose. Anger shown from his manic brown eyes. Cruelty. The threat radiating from him was colder than the Beretta 92-F held in his steady hand.

Looking at the sneer on his smiling lips, Patrick knew that he and Jack had it all wrong. Skip wasn’t the Angel Killer. It was this man. “Hello, Robby.”

“Put her down,” Robby ordered. “Slowly.”

Patrick needed his hands free if he wanted to keep Rachel alive, but he hesitated. As long as he held her, Robby couldn’t see the gun tucked into his waistband. Once he was disarmed, their chances of surviving dropped dramatically.

Rachel squirmed in his arms and his gaze dropped to her face. She glanced to her left, where her right hand rested on the top of his Glock. Her eyelids flickered.

She was out of her mind if she was thinking what he thought she was thinking. He shook his head at her.

“If she tries to shoot me, Thorne,” Robby said, “my first bullet goes right through her. She’ll die and I’ll still get the second shot off before you can drop her to shoot me.” He chuckled. “Although I can’t see you dropping her then, either. She means too much to you.”

The bastard was right. If Patrick set her down, at least he could stand between her and Robby’s gun. “I’ll set her down.”

“Gun first,” Robby tsked. “Rachel, reach into his pants. Pull the gun out and throw it away.” He chuckled. “Don’t worry if you shoot his balls off. He’s not going to need them anymore.”

Her anxiety clouded her doe-brown eyes. “Patrick?”

“Do as he says, honey,” he said.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure she heard him. But then, she wrapped her hand around the grip and pulled the Glock free.

Held in Patrick’s powerful arms, Skip in range, Rachel wondered if she had the ability to point the gun at him and pull the trigger. She knew how to shoot—her dad had made sure of that—but whatever Skip had used to knock her out was slow to dissipate and she felt weak as a kitten. Her head buzzed angrily.

She didn’t want to die. There was too much to live for, her daughter, the baby. Patrick.

The arms under her legs and around her back squeezed a warning. “It’s okay,” Patrick murmured.

It was not okay! Skip wanted to kill them.
But Skip is sweet and gentle
. He pulled a knife on her, kidnapped her.
He saved Patrick from the gunman.
He was going to kill the man she loved. A sob crawled up her throat.

Patrick repositioned her in his arms like she was getting heavy, and the hand she had behind his back knocked into something hard. Was that another weapon under his shirt? She glanced up at him and, before she could question her own sanity, she tossed Patrick’s gun over her shoulder.