Pretty Dead (31 page)

“Let the girl go.” The words were quiet, not much above conversational, but they carried. “Let her go. Take the car. Get the hell out of here.”

Jay Thomas laughed. “Go away, old man. Go away or I’ll kill you.”

“You’re done. They know who you are. It’s all over. I’m offering you an escape.”

“It’s never over.” Jay Thomas shifted the weapon from Audrey’s head to Sweet’s.

“Let the girl go.” A fresh wave of nausea washed over Sweet, but he fought it. His leg trembled with weakness while he called upon his inner strength to get him through the next few minutes. Just a few minutes. That was all he needed.

Fear was the key, and belief was born out of fear. To test Jay Thomas’s fear and belief, Sweet chanted something he’d learned years ago:

“If I hang by a single thread

In a place no one shall see

When the time comes for you to sleep

A sleep of death will be.”

White men weren’t conjurers. White men couldn’t bend people to their will. But when an old Gullah man chose Sweet to follow in his footsteps, Sweet had taken up the mantle. He should have refused. Look how it had screwed up his life. And Elise’s.

And yet she’d become a cop. Like Sweet. And she had whatever he had. He’d felt it in her. Audrey too.

Not magic. Hell no. It wasn’t anything supernatural, even though he let people think so. What he had was a
connection
, an ability to tap into something he didn’t understand. And from practice, he knew the person on the receiving end needed to believe.

Elise had been right about him all along. He had no real power. The power was in the belief. Question was, did the man in front of him believe?

Sweet was close enough to see the color of Jay Thomas’s eyes. Green and gold. “Let the girl go.” Sweet held out his hand, car keys in his open palm. “I take Audrey; you take the keys. Simple as that.”

Without breaking eye contact, without blinking, Sweet began to chant a confusion spell:

“
Cobwebs in your brain

Fear I do sow

Allow your thoughts to scatter

Let the girl go.”

The reward, when it came, was everything Sweet could have hoped for—that split second when Jay Thomas redirected his attention to the keys in Sweet’s hand, when the chant distracted him, confused him.

Belief.

Sweet lunged, taking Jay Thomas by surprise and knocking him to the ground. Leaping back to his feet, Sweet stomped the killer’s wrist, jarring the weapon free—he quickly swept it up and aimed it at Jay Thomas while Audrey ran to her grandfather’s side.

Keeping the weapon trained on Jay Thomas, Sweet pulled the tape from Audrey’s mouth, and she let out a gasping sob.

Sirens sounded in the distance, and Sweet detected what might have been the approach of a far-off helicopter. Or maybe the hum came from inside his head—because with no warning, the picture tilted. Sweet tried to catch himself, stumbled, then pitched forward, slamming into the ground.

Audrey screamed as a foot kicked Sweet in the stomach.

He curled into a ball and shouted, “Run, Audrey!”

Sweet opened his eyes in time to see her black boots turn and leave his field of focus, the sound of her feet pounding over the cracked pavement as she raced toward the abandoned mill. “Hide!” he shouted.

Jay Thomas kicked him again. Sweet gasped in pain as the gun was wrenched from his hand and the sound of sirens increased.

Elise’s cell phone buzzed, indicating a text message. Heart hammering, she checked the screen:
Jay Thomas
.

Hands on the wheel, David glanced over at her, then back at the road.

“He sent a video,” Elise said.

“Wait! Don’t—”

She understood his command. He was afraid she’d see something no mother should see. She hit the “Play” icon.

A second passed before her brain made sense of the scene: Jackson Sweet on the ground, his face bloody and pale. After a moment, Jay Thomas turned the camera on himself and said, “Call off the cops or I’ll kill your father.”

In the background, she heard a pain-filled laugh. Sweet. “You just made her day.”

Beside her, David put in a call to Avery. “I ordered stealth. Tell everybody to back off. Immediately!”

Elise hit the “Return Call” button, and Jay Thomas answered. “No police,” he said. “Get rid of them right now.”

“Done. It’s done.”

“Good. And Elise? Your dad doesn’t look so hot.”

“Where’s Audrey?”

“No roadblocks, you hear?” Jay Thomas told her. “No helicopters. I’m bringing your father with me. If I see a roadblock or a helicopter, he’s getting shot in the head.”

“Where’s Audrey? Where’s my daughter?”

“It’s your dad you need to worry about.” He hung up.

Jeffrey Nightingale kept the gun trained on Jackson Sweet’s head. “Get up.”

Sweet curled to his knees, then slowly pushed himself upright.

“Walk.”

Sweet began moving, achingly, shakily, his feet shuffling through the dirt. He staggered, and for a moment Nightingale thought he might go down again. “Hurry, old man.”

The words had barely left Nightingale’s mouth when Jackson Sweet pivoted and came flying through the air, tackling Nightingale, both of them hitting the ground with a loud
whoomph.
Sweet was strong for a sick man, but not strong enough. A minute into the struggle, the gun went off and everything stopped. Nightingale broke away in time to see Sweet’s eyes roll back in his head. The killer stumbled to his feet, and with detachment he observed the man on the ground.

One down, one to go.

CHAPTER 54

D
avid and Elise were first on the scene.

David pulled to a hard stop and slammed the car into park. Dressed in black bulletproof vests, they dove out, weapons drawn.

The cab was gone, but Jay Thomas’s car sat beyond the mangled gate, its doors open.

“Could be a trap,” David said as they approached the vehicle, guns braced.

More cops were coming, following without sirens. Along with reinforcements, unmarked cars were moving to designated areas along the escape routes most likely to be taken by Jay Thomas.

“Blood.” Elise nodded toward a dark stain on the cement. “A lot of it.”

David pointed. “Shell casing.”

A wave of weakness washed over Elise. Jay Thomas had her father with him, and there’d been no mention of Audrey. She lowered her weapon, its weight suddenly too much.

This was it. The thing she most feared, the thing that had snapped at her heels for years. Maybe she
did
have some kind of power, because she’d felt this day coming for a long, long time.

She tracked the path of blood—one wide strip that led to the trunk of Jay Thomas’s car.

“No . . .” The word was long and quivering. Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, knew it was David. Didn’t matter.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said.

She dragged her gaze from the blood to David. She wanted to grab his words of hope, hug them to her, but she saw his face—saw her own pain and shock there.

His hand dropped away. “I’ll look.”

She might have said something; she wasn’t sure. Breathing, living, were suddenly too much work, but she managed to shove herself to her feet. Upright, she moved stiffly in the direction of the car.

“Locked.” Peering through the windows, David did a visual sweep of the interior, then circled to the back of the vehicle. Positioning himself so the bullet would miss the trunk cavity, he fired at the lock, kicked it hard two times, then raised the lid.

A body, curled among boxes and a flat of cardboard.

Gray hair.

Gray hair.

Elise let out a sob and pressed her hand to her mouth while David pocketed his weapon and leaned into the trunk.

“He’s still alive.”

Elise pulled out her phone and called dispatch. “We’re going to need an ambulance at the paper mill. Gunshot wound. And tell them no sirens.”

After disconnecting, she asked, “Is he conscious?”

“No.”

Which meant he wouldn’t be able to tell them anything about Audrey.

“I’m guessing Jay Thomas never intended to let him live,” David said. “He just wanted us to think your father was with him. He shot him and hid the body.”

“Audrey?” Elise knew the answer. She was a cop. She’d worked homicide for years. Audrey was either with Jay Thomas or she was dead.

“He would have told us he was holding her hostage if she was still alive,” Elise said. “She was a better bargaining tool.” The words they were both thinking. “He would have sent us a video of Audrey, not Jackson Sweet.”

David didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His thoughts were written on his face. Audrey was dead.

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Elise’s world stopped, and the life she’d known that morning no longer existed. There was nothing to feel, nothing to keep her going.

Yes, a killer was on the loose.

And yes, he’d most likely murdered Elise’s daughter.

But in that moment, Elise died inside. She didn’t have enough emotion left in her to want to catch him and bring him to justice. Trying to catch him was why her daughter was gone. Gone, not dead, because she couldn’t say dead, not even in her mind.

“I’ll find him and I’ll kill him,” David said.

“I don’t even care.”

She collapsed and rolled to her back to look up at the sky. “I don’t even care.”

From off in the distance came engine and tire sounds of approaching vehicles. Probably the ambulance. Probably police cars.

She didn’t care.

She rolled to her side, curled into a ball, and began to sob.

“Mom?”

She heard, but the import of that one word didn’t connect with her grief-stricken brain, not until the word was repeated.

Elise turned enough to look beyond an expanse of cement. Black boots. Bare, skinned legs. A floral skirt. Just like the floral skirt Audrey had worn to school that morning.

Elise was unaware of getting to her feet, but suddenly she was flying across the cracked cement to sweep Audrey into her arms, hugging her, pressing her face into her hair, breathing in the scent of her, both of them crying. Finally, Elise leaned back to get a good look at her daughter, smoothing her dark hair over and over, removing the rope from her wrists. “I thought you were dead.”

“Me too. I mean, I thought he was going to kill me.” Her gaze shifted. “How’s Grandpa? Is he . . . ?”

Elise turned to see medics lifting her father onto a stretcher while a third medic prepared an IV.

David joined mother and daughter, embracing Audrey, appearing unable to speak. Over Audrey’s head, he caught Elise’s eye, reached for her, and squeezed her hand.

CHAPTER 55

E
lise pulled a female officer aside. “Please escort my daughter back to town.”

“Of course.”

“No. Mom.”

Elise would have liked nothing better than to return to Savannah with Audrey. Take her home, close and lock the door, and stay there, waiting for a call from David to report that Jay Thomas had been caught. Jay Thomas. Not his real name, she knew that now, but Jay Thomas was the name in her head.

She held Audrey firmly by both hands. “I have to see this through.”

“Elise. Go back with her,” David said. “I’ll take care of it. You’ve been through too much already.”

“I can go through a lot more.”

David watched her, understood, and nodded.

“Take her to the police station,” Elise told the officer. “She can wait in my office.”

“He tricked you both for a long time,” Audrey argued. “He’ll trick you again.”

Elise’s phone rang. It was Avery.

Elise gave her daughter a gentle push. “Go on, honey.”

A final look of pleading, and Audrey turned and walked away with the officer.

On the phone, Avery said, “We’ve got roadblocks set up at Talmadge Bridge and Highway 17. Officers stationed on side roads. We’ve got a helicopter in the air and another coming from Atlanta.”

“Have you contacted the crime-scene team?”

“They should be there in an hour.”

“How about the media?” Elise asked as she and David ran for her car. “I want his face plastered on every television screen, every Facebook page, every Twitter feed.”

“We’re in the process of putting a package together to send to local and national news outlets. Should have it ready in five minutes.”

“Keep me posted.” Elise disconnected and relayed the message to David as a line of police cars exited the plant and dispersed onto the highway. Their own car came to a hard stop at the end of the cracked cement road. “Right or left?” David asked.

“He wouldn’t have headed back to Savannah,” Elise said.

“Unless he thought he might have better luck blending in there. He’s driving a yellow cab, which is going to be hard to miss outside the city. He has a pretty good lead on us. He could have easily gotten into town before the roadblock was set up.”

“We have to decide.” They couldn’t afford a mistake. Yes, a manhunt had been launched, but she was afraid the killer would escape once again. Those chances would be reduced if she and David were in on the capture and takedown.

“I’m trusting you to make the decision,” she said.

“Both choices feel wrong.” Foot on the brake, car idling, time ticking away.

“If both feel wrong, what remains?” Elise asked.

Hands on the steering wheel, David looked at her. Then, without a word, he slammed the gearshift into reverse, executed a three-point turn, and drove back down the broken cement road in the direction of the plant.

“What are you doing? The cab is gone,” Elise said. They’d both seen police cars making a cursory sweep of the grounds before leaving to pursue Jay Thomas. “He’s not here.”

David pulled up behind a crumbling retaining wall that surrounded the plant and cut the engine. “Maybe.” He removed the keys from the ignition and checked his .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. “Maybe not.”

Elise allowed her brain to consider what he was saying. “You’re guessing he never left.”