The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (113 page)

Burning the midnight oil? That was just fine.

As she pulled up beside it, she noted the flat right rear tire.

“Bad luck,” Mantz murmured and smiled as she parked beside the Toyota.

Even as she reached for her umbrella something tickled in her gut. She sat for a moment, studying the lot, the rain, the building. Dark but for the security lights on the main level, she noted. You’d need a light in your office to burn the midnight oil.

She left the umbrella in the car, hitched her jacket back for easier access to her weapon.

She heard nothing but the rain and the wet whoosh of sporadic traffic when she got out. Traffic light enough, she observed, distant enough so the lot, the position of the car wouldn’t be in clear view. And the rain? There was that icing again.

She circled the car, studied the pancaked tire and, going with impulse, tried the door.

That tickle went to a buzz when she found it unlocked.

Following the buzz, she hiked to the building, banged on the locked glass doors. When the security guard crossed the tiled lobby floor, his walk, his body language said retired cop.

Sixty-couple, she judged, and sharp-eyed.

She held her ID up to the glass.

He studied it, and her, then used the intercom.

“Problem?”

“I’m Special Agent Erin Mantz. I’m looking for Kati Starr. Her car’s in the lot, rear right tire’s flat. It’s unlocked. I need to know if she’s in the building, or what time she logged out.”

He scanned the lot, then her face again. “Hold on.”

Mantz took out her phone. She gave her name, her ID number, and asked for the numbers for Starr’s home phone, cell and office.

The cell transferred her to voice mail as the guard came back.

“She signed out at nine-forty. There’s nobody here. Even the cleaning crew’s finished up.” He hesitated a moment, then unlocked the doors. “I tried her home phone and her cell,” he said as he opened the glass. “Straight to voice mail.”

“Did she leave alone?”

“According to lobby security she walked out on her own.”

“Is there security video on the lot?”

“No. Stops at the doors, and she walked out the door alone. That’s usual for her,” he added. “She doesn’t travel in groups or socialize much with coworkers. If she had car trouble, she’d have used her key pass and come back in to call for service. No reason she’d have done otherwise. Nobody else signed out within twenty minutes of her, either side.”

Mantz nodded, keyed in the number for her partner. “Tawney? We’ve got a problem.”

 

 

WITHIN AN HOUR, agents had convinced the building super to open Kati Starr’s apartment, roused her editor and took statements from the guard and the cleaning crew.

The editor blocked the request to open her desk computer.

“Not without a warrant. Look, odds are she’s following a lead or she’s banging her boyfriend.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?” Mantz demanded.

“How the hell should I know? Starr keeps her personal life private. So she got a flat tire? Probably called a cab.”

“None of the local cab companies made a pickup at this location.”

“And you want me to leap from there to foul play? So you can poke around in her files? Not without a warrant.”

Mantz pulled out her phone when it signaled and turned away in disgust to answer. “Where? Keep on it. We’re on our way there. We got a ping on her cell phone.”

“There, see?” The editor shrugged. “With a boyfriend, or out having a drink. She’s earned it.”

 

 

“OUT HAVING A DRINK,” Mantz said between her teeth as they stood in the rainy parking lot of the rest stop. She snapped on protective gloves. “He left the phone turned on so we’d get a signal. So we’d come out here.”

She waited impatiently while the forensics team documented the scene.

She took the iPhone. “We’ll need to dump the data, go through it.” She looked over at Tawney. “It’s got to be Eckle. It’s not a damn coincidence she gets taken from her office lot. He’s got her. He grabbed her right under our noses. She doesn’t fit his victim profile, but she fits him. Like a glove. We didn’t see it.”

“No, we didn’t see it.” He handed her an evidence bag for the phone. “He’s got a couple hours on us, but he expected more. A lot more. Nobody would notice she’s not around until morning, and even then . . . maybe her editor gets pissed when she doesn’t show, but he’s not going to call the cops. Maybe not for hours more, until somebody notices and mentions her car’s in the lot.

“He figures he’s got twelve, maybe fifteen hours on us. He’s only got two. We need boots on the ground. Now. I’ll drive, you work the phone.” He swung toward the car. “We want badges checking every hotel, motel, vacation rental. Focus on out-of-the-way spots first. Cheap. He’s used to living frugally. He doesn’t need shine. He wants a place where nobody looks too close, nobody cares.”

Tawney peeled out. “He needs supplies, food,” he continued even as Mantz relayed the orders. “Fast-food joints, places he can pick up road food. Gas. Gas marts would work best, get everything in one stop, move on.”

“He’s got her computer. She walked out with it, so he has it. Maybe he’ll use it. We can trace that. He thinks he’s clear, at least until morning. Maybe we send her an e-mail. We set up a name, a URL, send her a message. A tip. I’ve got information on RSK Two, what’s it worth to you?” Mantz flicked Tawney a glance. “He might bite on that. If he answers, we can track it.”

“Bargain with him, keep him involved. It could work. Get the geeks working on it.”

ECKLE SLEPT ON TOP of the thin bedspread, fully dressed. Still his mind raced. So much to do, so much to relive, so much to imagine. His life had never been so full that even his sleep swirled with color and movement and sound.

He dreamed of what he would do with Kati—bright, sharp Kati. He had the place for it, just waiting for him. The perfect spot—all the privacy he’d need. And the irony of it tasted sweet as candy.

Then when he was finished with her—or maybe not quite—he would take Fiona. While they looked for one, he’d take Perry’s lost prize.

Maybe he’d make her watch while he did things to Kati. Make her watch while he turned her from alive to dead. He’d have so little time with Fiona, wouldn’t that enhance the brevity?

So he dreamed of two women, bruised and bleeding. Dreamed of their pleading eyes. Dreamed of them begging him, bargaining with him. Doing whatever he told them to do, saying whatever he told them to say.
Listening
to him as no one ever had.

He’d be the single focus of their life. Until he killed them.

He dreamed of a room shuttered from the light, a room washed with red, as if he looked through the thin silk of a red scarf. Dreamed of muffled moans and high, thin screams.

And woke with a jerk, breath wheezing in, eyes wheeling.

Someone at the door? His hand shot under the pillow for the .22, the gun he’d use to put a bullet in his own brain should there be no escape.

He would never go to prison.

He held his breath, listening. Only the rain, he thought. But it hadn’t been only the rain. A click, a click, like the turn of a knob, but . . .

His breath eased out again.

E-mail. He’d left the computer on while he charged it.

He pulled the laptop back onto the bed, studied the unopened e-mail. The subject line read RSKII, and reading it sent a thrill over his skin.

Cautious, he checked the sender’s address against Kati’s contact list.

A new one.

He sat studying the subject line, the sender’s name, while the thrill ebbed and flowed like a tide. And he opened it.

“No. No.” He shook his head, jabbed the screen with his finger twice. “You’re lying. Lying. You didn’t see anything. Nobody sees me. Nobody.”

Except them, he thought. Except the women he killed. They saw him.

A trick, just a trick. He pushed off the bed to pace the room as the tide over his skin rose high and fast. People were liars. Tricksters.

He told the truth, in the end he told them the truth, didn’t he? When he tightened the scarf around their neck, he looked them right in the eye and told them. He gave them his name, and told them who killed them and why.

Simple truth. “My name is Francis Eckle, and I’m going to kill you now. Because I can. Because I like it.”

So they died with his truth, like a gift.

But this EW? He—or she—was a liar. Extorting his work for money.

No one saw him.

But he thought of the man in line at Starbucks. Of the pimply-faced clerk at the gas mart whose eyes had passed over him with boredom. Of the greasy-haired night clerk at the motel who’d smelled of pot and smirked at him as he handed over the key.

Maybe.

He sat again, studied the e-mail again. He could answer it, demand more information before any discussion of payment. That’s what she’d do.

He poured himself a short glass of whiskey and thought it through.

He composed a response, editing, deleting, refining as carefully as he might a thesis. When his finger hovered over
send
, he hesitated.

It could be a trap. Maybe the FBI was poking a finger in, trying to trap Kati. Or him. He couldn’t see it clearly, so he rose and paced again, drank again, thought it through again.

Just in case, he decided. Safety first.

He took a shower, brushed his teeth, shaved the faint shadow over his skull, his face. He stowed all his things in his duffel.

Moments after he hit
send
, he left the room. He bought a Coke at vending for the caffeine jolt, but realized he didn’t need it.

The idea of being seen, the vague possibility of being tricked, energized him. Excited him.

In some secret part of his heart he hoped he had been seen. It made it all the more worthwhile.

He gave the trunk a little pat as he passed it. “Let’s take a drive, shall we, Kati?”

 

 

“JESUS, HE ANSWERED IT.” Mantz leaped toward the tech. “He bit. Can you track it to the source?”

“Give me a minute,” the tech told her, tapping keys.

“Smart enough to know she wouldn’t jump without having more,” Tawney commented. “But curious enough not to ignore it.”

“And not mobile,” Mantz added. “He has to be holed up somewhere with Internet access. Awake but not moving. It took him less than an hour to answer, and he’d have thought about it first. He was on top of her computer when we sent it.”

“Got him.” The tech gestured to the screen.

They set it up on the move. Agents, snipers, hostage negotiators—all with orders to surround, to go in silent.

“The agent who roused the night clerk said four single men have checked in tonight,” Mantz relayed as they raced through the night. “Two paid in cash. He’s got no holdovers from yesterday, or any day. He can’t make Eckle from the photo, didn’t see any of the cars and can’t say if any of them went into the rooms alone. Basically, he’s stoned and could give a rat’s ass.”

“Let’s get a team in rooms next to the four check-ins. Hold positions. There’s always the chance he took her in with him.”

They parked in the lot of the all-night diner next to the motel, donned their vests. As Tawney assessed the lay of the land, he nodded to an agent.

“Cage, give me the word.”

“We’ve got it down to two rooms. The other two have dual occupancy of the consenting kind. One’s got a couple banging like it’s the Fourth of July, and the other’s got a woman ragging on a guy about leaving his bitch of a wife. Teams said the walls are like paper. It’s like being there.”