The Dark Gate (5 page)

“Do you get the
Post?
” she asked. Her gaze met his, then darted away with a glimmer of fear. She must know he intended to dig her secrets out of her this morning and he hated that she did. Hated that she feared him. An innocent woman would have nothing to fear.

“It's in the foyer,” he told her. “The plastic sleeve is wet. It's been raining since dawn.”

She returned moments later holding the newspaper in one hand and a folded white sheet of paper in the other. “I think you'd better see this.”

At the strained look in her eyes, he set down his mug and reached for the folded sheet. A handwritten note. As his gaze skimmed the bold black letters, the hair rose on the back of his neck.

His gaze pinned Larsen. “Where'd you find this?”

“It fell out of the newspaper when I picked it up.”

She was lying. He wasn't sure how he knew that. The answer wasn't necessarily in her gaze, which was finally meeting his, nor her erect, self-assured stance. Nor was it in the stubborn, upward thrust of her chin. He simply felt it in his gut. And he'd long ago quit second-guessing his gut. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

He skimmed the note again. Did it matter? Didn't he have what he needed—a way to catch that son of a bitch? If he still had questions afterward, he'd interrogate her then.

He'd know where to find her. Larsen Vale wasn't going to make another move unless he said so.

 

Larsen's nerves were eating her alive.

She paced Jack's living room, her sandals clipping over the hardwood floor as she waited for word from the Tony Jingles stakeout. The Orioles game was scheduled to begin in twenty minutes unless they called a rain delay, which was a real possibility given the drizzly skies.

The woman cop Jack had sent to babysit Larsen walked through the living room on one of her quarter-hourly rounds. The woman, Sergeant O'Malley, wasn't much in the way of company. Short, stocky and unsmiling, she'd relinquished no more than one-word answers when Larsen tried to engage her in conversation when she'd first arrived. When the cop wasn't making her rounds, she remained firmly by the kitchen door.

Outside, two male cops kept an eye on the house. Larsen hadn't considered the fact that whoever supposedly put the note in Jack's paper obviously knew where he lived. Of course, that person had been her, though she could never tell him that. So she cooled her heels in a protective custody with no means of escape short of outside intervention.

It wouldn't take much to get herself out of here. She was convinced of that. A phone call, maybe two. Heaven knew she'd made enough of them already this morning, apologizing for yesterday and clearing her calendar for the next few days until the police caught the albino and ended this nightmare.

Why was she hesitating? Maybe because if she left now she'd never know what happened. Larsen stared out the front window at the damp, gray afternoon, the trees in front of the row house wilting with the drizzle.

And maybe the problem was Jack himself. She needed to get away from him. She
knew
that. But it didn't change the fact that she was drawn to him in a way she hadn't been to a man, to anyone, in longer than she could remember. But staying here was foolish. She was playing with fire.

With a sigh, she turned from the window as the clock on the chest in the corner chimed two o'clock. The Orioles game was about to begin. Her heart gave a nervous kick. If she was right about the murder happening pregame, it would happen soon.

Larsen turned on the television and stared as the Orioles mascot ran onto the field exactly as she'd seen him in the premonition. Chills raced over her skin, standing her hair on end.
The murder had begun.
The memory of that vision, that
nightmare,
replayed in her head like a horror film—the restaurant, the albino, every patron hypnotized but one. And she'd sent Jack and the D.C. police into the thick of it.
With guns.

A sudden, horrible thought struck her. What if he controlled them, too?

Oh, God, what have I done?

“S
abrina's in love,” Henry said, his dark head glistening from the misty rain. “Says she's going to marry the guy.”

Jack scanned the street outside Tony Jingles for sign of anything…or anyone…suspicious. The two men were tucked into a doorway across the street from the restaurant. Watching.

Waiting for the Dupont Circle Rapist.

“Fourteen's a little young to be getting married.” Jack glanced at his partner. “Who's the lucky kid?”

“I don't know, man. I don't even let her date, yet. Shook me up good.”

“What does Mei think?”

“She's laughing at me. Says
she
was planning to marry Michael Jackson when she was that age. She doubts Sabrina's even met the guy, but I don't know. I don't like my little girl talking about getting married. It's not right.”

Henry's despondency made Jack smile. He clapped his friend on the back. “Don't sweat it, Hank. Sabrina's a smart kid. When the day comes, she'll pick a great guy.”

“I'll still hate him.”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, so will I.”

Henry grinned. “That's one of the things I like about you, man. If anything ever happens to me, I know you'll watch over my family. You love my kids near as much as I do.”

“Your kids are great, Hank. The best.”

For once he didn't feel the usual pang of melancholy that being “Uncle” Jack brought him. Always before, he'd thought this was the closest he'd ever come to being a father. He'd always known he could never have kids of his own. But now he wasn't so sure. A fragment of hope lodged in his chest the day he met Larsen. The day he realized she could stop the voices.

A flash of white caught his attention inside the restaurant. As he peered closer, he realized he was staring at the same stark white hair, the same odd clothes as on that news report last night. His blood went cold.

“He's in there.”

Henry pulled his gun. “Where? I don't see him.”

Jack yanked out his phone and called Griff and Duke who were inside the restaurant posing as patrons. He could see Griff's red hair, knew he was facing the Pied Piper. Why hadn't he called for backup?

“Griff, he's there. Do you have him?”

“Where? I don't see…”

A sudden crash reverberated through the phone, the sound of breaking glass and shattering plates, followed by an eerie silence.

“Griff? Griff!” In the background he could hear someone…
singing.
The hair rose at the nape of his neck.

“Come on.” Jack snapped his phone shut and dodged through traffic, Henry racing behind him.

Jack pulled his gun and burst into the restaurant, aiming the weapon at the whitest man he'd ever seen. The man wasn't merely blond, but a true albino, skin without color.

“Police! Hands in the air!”

The man turned to face him, still singing the odd, tuneless melody Jack had heard through the phone. A movement in the booth beside him caught Jack's attention.

A man was strangling a woman.

Jack fired at the ceiling. No one seemed to notice, no one reacted at all. Their expressions, to a man, woman and child, were blank. As if every one of them was completely stoned.

He ran and lunged for the strangler, hauling him off his victim. The woman gasped, coughed, then screamed when the man reached for her again.

“Stop!” Jack lifted his gun to shoot him.

“No!” the woman cried as she scrambled out of her assailant's reach. “It's him.” She pointed at the albino. “It's his singing.”

Jack aimed his gun at the pale man. “Quiet!” When the man ignored him, Jack shot him in the leg. The song stumbled, but never ceased, and the Pied Piper's expression never changed.

Jack stared at the uninjured leg. Had he
missed?
A second shot rang out and a bullet ruffled his hair. He dove for cover as another hit the table beside him. Were they trying to turn this into a shoot-out? Jack lifted his gun in the direction of the shots, and froze.

The only one aiming for him was Henry.

“Hank!”

But his partner's eyes had gone as blank as the others. His partner and best friend fired at him again.

“He's hypnotizing them,” the woman shouted, scrambling under the table as a man lunged for her over the back of her booth. “They don't know what they're doing. You've got to stop the white man.” Two men surrounded her table and she screamed again.

Pulse thudding through his veins, Jack rolled under another table a second before Henry's shot hit the place where he'd been. Henry was slow, he realized. His reflexes weren't his own.

If he kept moving…

“Stop it!” the woman cried.

Jack's gaze jerked toward the sound and he nearly choked. The Pied Piper was pulling out his dick while a teenage girl pulled down her shorts in front of him.

The rapes.
The victims never remembered.

Rolling out of Henry's line of fire, Jack took aim at that engorged piece of white flesh and fired right at the base of it, right into the heart of the bastard's groin…and didn't miss.

The man let out a howl that would have done a wolf proud. The gunfire came to an abrupt halt, an eerie silence pressing at the walls of the restaurant. Jack held his breath, his pulse pounding in his ears. As long as Henry was firing, Jack had a fix on him. Without that, he could be anywhere. Creeping up behind him…

Suddenly, as one, the people who'd been controlled sank to the ground, unconscious. Or dead. Jack saw Henry fall with a silent thud and turned back to the white bastard, the man he was now certain was the rapist. This bad guy was
his.

But as he lunged for him, an arrow missed his face by millimeters.
Damn.
He dived for cover, more arrows clattering on the empty tabletop above him. In the background, the low sounds of the Orioles baseball game provided an eerily normal soundtrack to a bafflingly surreal battle.

Jack fired at the nearest archer, but the shot went high as the small man ducked behind a booth. His gaze swung to the rapist and he found him pushing his dick back into his pants as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't just been shot.

Jack stared with disbelief at that white flesh.
He wasn't bleeding. Why wasn't he bleeding?

The albino met his gaze, his yellow-green eyes lit with hatred. “I will kill you.”

“Not if I kill you first,” Jack murmured, taking aim at the bastard's forehead. He pulled the trigger. A hole appeared in the center of that snow-white forehead…two seconds before it disappeared.

Jack's blood went cold.
No way. No damn way.
He was losing his mind. This could
not
be happening.

Hands shaking, he shot him again.

The white man simply looked at him with venom in his eyes. “I will kill you.” Then he turned and walked toward the kitchen as if Jack's gun had been firing nothing but blanks.

Jack stared at him. How in the hell…? He jumped up to chase after him, but a hail of arrows forced him back under the table. When the attack finally ended, he raced after them, but he was too late. By the time he reached the swinging door to the kitchen, they were gone.

His head pounded with questions as he called for backup and returned to the front of the restaurant where the booths and floors were littered with bodies.

He ran to Henry and felt for a pulse. Steady. Strong.

He'd tried to kill him.
His partner and best friend had tried to kill him. And if he was right, if this crime scene played out the way the others had, he wouldn't remember. None of them would remember a thing. Hell. How was he going to write up this one? He couldn't tell the truth. Henry would be put on administrative leave and it hadn't been his fault. He hadn't known what he was doing.

Besides, no one was going to believe any of this. He wasn't sure
he
believed it. Had his mind finally snapped?

The big man moved and gave a small snore. “Hank.” He shook him. “Hank!”

“You can't wake them,” the woman called from the end of the aisle. Fortyish and carrying an extra fifty pounds, she knelt on the floor, fastening her sleeping daughter's clothes.

Jack went to her and squatted in front of her. “Is she okay?”

“I think so. But I can't wake her or my husband.” She looked up, her distraught gaze meeting his. “I'm a doctor. An anesthesiologist with Children's Hospital. I put kids under all day long and I've never seen anything like this.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

A host of conflicting emotions crossed her face. “We were eating lunch when the white man walked into the restaurant. He was so odd-looking. I mentioned him to my husband and daughter, but they couldn't see him.” Her brows pulled together and an expression that was almost hurt entered her eyes. “Where I pointed, they saw only a normal-looking businessman. Then he began to sing and everything stopped. All the conversation stopped. It was like he hypnotized them. With a song.”

She looked at him like a child whose most treasured belief had just been shattered. “How can that be?”

“I don't know. I wish to hell I knew.” The only one who might know something was the person who'd put the note in his newspaper. The person who'd sent him here. The person who'd set him up to be killed.

Larsen.

 

Jack slammed the front door behind him, his face hard, his blue eyes blazing. Larsen's heart gave an anxious lurch as she rose from the chair and watched him toss his sport coat on the back of the sofa without so much as a glance her way, making it pretty clear his anger was directed at her.
He knew.
But what?

He went into the kitchen to talk to Sergeant O'Malley, telling her she and the other cops would no longer be needed.

What happened? It was nearly six o'clock and she still didn't know anything except that things had gotten ugly. Sending him into that without a warning had been a mistake. But how could she have warned him? And if the cops couldn't catch the villain, who could?

She stood rooted as Jack escorted the policewoman to the door, then closed and locked it. Slowly he turned and met her gaze, the hard mask melting beneath his fury, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

A primal fear lodged in her chest as he started toward her, his stride slow and deliberate. Larsen took a step back.

“You set me up to be killed.”

“I didn't.”
I didn't mean to.
She bumped into the table behind her. “What happened, Jack?”

He closed the distance between them and grabbed her with both hands, his fingers digging painfully into the bare flesh of her upper arms. “What happened is you put that note in my paper this morning, sending me to Tony Jingles where I damned near
died.
” Jack shook her roughly, making her teeth rattle. “How did you know, Larsen? How did you know he was going to be there?”

The air caught in her lungs. “I didn't,” she lied. “How could I possibly know something like that?”

“You couldn't.” His lip curled nastily. “Not unless you worked for him.”

Larsen gaped at him, fear congealing in her chest. “No. Jack…How can you even
say
that? He's a rapist. A murderer.”

“And you knew what he had planned.”

Had he seen her put the note in the paper? No. He couldn't have. He was guessing.

She forced herself to look him in the eye. “You're wrong. I'm not part of this.”

He shook her again. “Quit lying to me. How does he do it, Larsen? How does he control them?” A bolt of pain flashed through his eyes. “My men…my
partner
…tried to kill me.”

She caught her breath on a burst of understanding.
Dear God.
He was like her. He couldn't be controlled. And the albino tried to kill anyone he couldn't control.

Jack's mouth grew pinched. “I shouldn't have said that.” He released her and turned away. “Henry doesn't even know. None of my men remember any of it.” He stared at nothing, his eyes narrowed in thought. “It's just like the murder. And the assaults. No one remembered a thing.”

“Did he…was anyone hurt?” The woman she'd watched strangled had haunted her dreams. And her poor daughter…

“No. I stopped a murder in progress and foiled an assault. Barely.”

Larsen had to struggle to keep the relief from showing in her face. “What about
him
…the albino. Did you catch him?”