Novels 11 Adam Read online

  He glanced at Nate Sinclair. “Get a priest on the line. I need a priest at the hospital when we get there.”

  “A priest?” Lori asked. “This is a disease.”

  “She may not know that,” he shot back.

  Nate snatched up his radio and barked the demand across the open channel.

  The car careened down the narrow asphalt road, leaning with each turn. Daniel wiped his wet palms on his slacks and gripped the wheel.

  “Is she responding?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too early. No, not yet.”

  “Can you give her more?”

  “She needs a transfusion. We’re in a vehicle, not an ICU.”

  “Give her more. Will more—”

  “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”

  Daniel jerked his eyes up and saw what had set Lori shouting. The car’s beams illuminated a man in the middle of the road, walking toward them.

  Nate was on an emergency hotline; his words caught in his throat.

  Daniel was on the gas, muscles frozen solid.

  Lori was screaming bloody murder. “Stop! Stop!”

  He switched his foot to the brake pedal and jammed it to the floor. The wheels locked, sending the car into a long squealing skid. Lori slammed into the back of his seat.

  Still the man walked, deaf and blind, or uncaring that he was facing an onrushing hulk of metal that would grind him into the asphalt.

  Nate spoke into his radio, rushed. “We have a civilian in the road. He’s right in the middle of the road! He’s walking toward us.”

  Everything slowed in Daniel’s mind, minute details popping to life.

  The man was tall and gangly. Dressed in dark cargo pants and a dirty long-sleeved shirt that hung open to his pale, naked chest. He wore brown work boots. His hair was disheveled and thinning. Dirty blond.

  His right arm hung by his side. A metallic reflection. He had a weapon.

  The car fishtailed to the left, then corrected to the right and squealed to a stop fewer than thirty yards from the man. Nate hit the dash, lost his radio. Rummaged about, dazed.

  Still the man came, striding, gaunt face calm and deliberate, weapon held loosely by his side. His eyes were deep-set, hooded by a protruding brow, accentuated by a square jaw and high cheekbones.

  This was Eve, wasn’t it? It had to be.

  For a brief moment he considered shoving that accelerator back to the floor and heading straight for the man, but he knew if he tried, Eve would simply step aside and be gone.

  Daniel had shoved his sidearm between the seat and the armrest in his hurry to get the vehicle on the road, and he grabbed for it now. There was still time for a clean shot.

  But the Kydex holster filled his hand, not the pistol. He had to get the gun out!

  “Shoot him!” he screamed.

  Ripping his own gun from the holster, he saw that Nate Sinclair was still disoriented. Lori was facing the back of the car, working with the victim, who’d spilled to the floor with her. Brit’s voice crackled on the radio, demanding more information.

  He had to get his gun clear of the car for the shot. Shooting through a tempered windshield would deflect the bullet from the target.

  Daniel fumbled with the door latch, shoved the door wide, threw his left leg to the ground, and whipped his gun up and across the steering wheel as he leaned out between the vehicle and the doorframe for a supported shot.

  He was aware of Lori clambering onto the backseat. Aware of Nate, staring silently with his radio pressed up to his lips. Aware of his own heart hammering.

  The killer moved his arm then, while Daniel’s gun was just clearing the windshield for a shot. Without slowing his stride, Eve calmly lifted his gun and fired directly into Daniel’s face from a distance of ten yards. The bullet hurled from the muzzle blast couldn’t possibly miss him.

  Daniel felt no fear, only a split second of regret.

  And then a searing flash of pain as the bullet struck his head.

  In the moment before his life ended, Daniel wondered if Heather would take him back. And then he was dropping into a pool of darkness.

  LORI HEARD THE door open, and twisted on one knee. She couldn’t get a clear view of the killer’s face. Only his body and the gun in his hand.

  Eve.

  The girl in her arms prevented her from any effective motion, but truth be told, she wasn’t sure she could stop him even if she had a gun in her hand already.

  An icy calm settled over her. The girl was too young to have life snatched away just when it had begun.

  An image of Amber Riley, the redhead she’d grown close to in medical school, flashed through her mind. Eve’s fourteenth victim. Before receiving the call that Amber had been murdered in California by a serial killer known as Eve, the Eve case hadn’t even crossed her horizon. Staring at Amber’s fair complexion badly discolored by the disease, Lori’s world had changed.

  And now her world was about to end.

  These are the thoughts of people staring death in the face, she thought. Fruitless thoughts that replaced the ones necessary for survival. This was why so many died when death could have been avoided.

  “Daniel?”

  Her eyes were glued to Eve’s gun as he lifted it. The muzzle stabbed fire, and Daniel’s head snapped back as if it were on a spring. Blood sprayed the side window, which shattered from the impact of the deflected bullet.

  Like a puppet on a string, Daniel went limp and collapsed. His chin hit the armrest on the door as he fell. She’d seen more than a few dead bodies and knew that she was looking at another.

  The killer never broke stride. He veered out of the lights’ glare to the passenger door and shot Nate Sinclair through the side window as the police officer fumbled for his own weapon.

  The side door swung open, and Lori instinctively pulled the girl in front of her. Light splashed on the seat molding. A car was coming up from behind—someone had responded to the call.

  He’s going to kill me, Lori realized. He’s going to kill me and take his victim.

  She moved with only a moment’s thought, shoving the girl up, toward the open door. Her only hope for survival now was to force his hesitation.

  Eve scooped the girl into one arm, tore her from the car as Lori dropped to the floor, cowering.

  Tires screamed behind them. The crash of the killer’s shot boomed through the car, and Lori felt a tug of pain in her left arm.

  If Brit Holman hadn’t arrived when he did, a second shot might have killed her. But the victim was evidently more important to Eve.

  Lori lifted her head and saw him pass from the ring of light cast by the other car’s headlights into the trees, with his victim slung over his shoulder. As if the tactical team, the state patrol, and the FBI were little more than an irritant, an interference.

  And then he was gone.

  Lori clambered out and tore around the car. She grabbed the driver’s door and yanked it wide. Daniel’s body slumped into a pool of blood on the asphalt.

  “Daniel!” Brit Holman sprinted forward, gun gripped in both hands. “Daniel?”

  “Help me!” Lori dropped to her knees and tugged Daniel’s limp body. “He’s been shot, help me!”

  The body rolled. She quickly felt for a pulse on his neck. Found none.

  Brit stared. “What happened?”

  “He’s dead!” Lori screamed. “He’s dead, that’s what happened. Don’t just stand there, help me!”

  She felt the wound on the side of his head. The bullet had left a superficial radial gash, causing instantaneous unconsciousness, but it hadn’t penetrated the anterior medial portion of the skull. The hydrostatic shock of the impact had likely concussed the brain tissue and put Daniel’s nervous system into shock, followed by ventricular fibrillation.

  He’d been shot in the head and was dying of a heart attack.

  Had died of a heart attack.

  Brit dropped to one knee, felt for a radial pulse, then stood. “He’s dead.” He was already
moving, yelling orders at men behind them. “Suspect is in the perimeter. Get the team mobilized. In pairs. Night vision and spread. Now! Report every hundred yards. Get me some light. Move!”

  Brit played his light over the windshield. “We have another officer down!” He hurried around the car to check on Officer Sinclair.

  For a brief moment Lori stared at the body by her knees. Red blood matted the short waves of hair on the right side of his head where the bullet had struck him. Otherwise he looked like a man at peace.

  His skin was smooth, boyish but firm. He was dressed in the same black knit T-shirt and blazer he always wore. Dark-brown slacks. A man who lived with careful attention to detail as much in his grooming as in his work.

  She’d come to know him through his books, watching him from a distance over the last three months, studying every case he’d ever worked on, every lecture he’d ever given. And in the process she’d come to respect his obsession with the Eve killer.

  Lori took a deep breath and let resolve fill her veins. Working quickly, with practiced deliberation, she tilted his head back, pinched his nostrils between her thumb and forefinger, lowered her mouth to his, and flooded his lungs with her breath. Again.

  Then she leaned over him, pressed both palms over his sternum, and pumped at a rate that approximated one hundred beats per minute.

  One, two, three, four . . . thirty times before she would give him more of her breath.

  Come on, Daniel! She set her jaw. Live!

  No response.

  Her own heart beat in her eardrums. His remained stone. She needed a defibrillator, and she needed it now.

  Brit Holman ran around the car, speaking into his radio. “You’re saying he just disappeared? Find him!”

  He pulled up when he saw her working feverishly over Daniel’s dead body. “Anything?”

  She blew into his mouth again. Then pumped his chest. “We have to get him to the hospital.” She grabbed Daniel’s jacket and tugged him up. “Get me to a hospital.”

  “An ambulance just left . . .”

  “We don’t have time to wait for an ambulance. It’s twenty minutes to the nearest hospital. We’ll meet the ambulance.” She dragged his limp body around the hood. “Help me. Get him into the car. Hurry!”

  Brit hesitated only a moment, then grabbed Daniel’s legs. They waddled around the Suburban, shoved him into the backseat.

  “I need someone to take me.”

  “Lori . . .”

  “Now. Now!”

  Brit ordered one of the local officers to the car.

  She climbed in, saw that they’d already removed Nate Sinclair’s body from the front seat, and continued administering CPR on Daniel. It had been five minutes. She knew the statistics: fewer than two percent of adults who suffered cardiac arrest came back after five minutes—and that was in hospitals, under emergency care. Among those, fewer than one in twenty eventually left the hospital alive.

  “Hurry!” She caught herself hyperventilating. He could not die, not now.

  One of the plainclothes police officers who’d accompanied the tactical team slid behind the wheel.

  “There’s an ambulance on the way,” she snapped. “Find out where.”

  “They’ll meet you on 24,” Brit said, filling the door. “Channel 9.” He slammed the door and slapped the side of the car as it surged forward.

  FIVE

  HEATHER CLARK SAT AT the kitchen table at 1:00 a.m. with a cup of mint tea, trying to ignore the haunting voice of the phone call two hours earlier. The Mendoza file lay open, but it refused to offer a distraction.

  How many times had she sat here, staring at a file, telling herself to let it all go, focus on the future, defend the case, get a life, quit being one of those weak women hollowed by divorce? Why walk through the pig slop of life when you could find a new path, walk around?

  Her therapist, Dr. Nancy Drummins, had drilled the best advice into her rather thick skull a dozen times; Heather knew the self-sufficiency mantras as if she herself had written the book.

  She’d been tempted to tell Raquel about the phone call but held off, not entirely sure why. All was fine. Yes, she did get some good information. Thank you, Raquel.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Raquel had to shout into her cell over the bar noise.

  “Of course. Just good to have a friend. I’m fine, really.”

  And here she sat, almost two hours later, knowing that nothing was fine.

  Heather stood from the table, hiked up her gray sweats, two sizes too large after her loss of twenty pounds, and poured herself another cup of tea. The porcelain spout clinked against her cup. The set had been a gift from Raquel, a delicate black pot with a single rose on each side—an image that would have drawn endless analysis from Daniel over breakfast.

  She returned to the table. The voice whispered through her memory for the hundredth time.

  Eve cannot be stopped.

  She should tell Brit. He’d stuck close to their friendship after the divorce—closer than anyone could possibly know. But Eve had come to her, not to Brit. Nor to Daniel.

  The cell phone on the table chirped. She sloshed the tea. Eve?

  She set her cup down and snatched up the phone. Brit Holman. She opened the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Brit.”

  Not the usual tone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s . . . Eve . . .”

  “He took another girl,” she said, half guessing, half knowing.

  “We found him. Yes. He—”

  “You found Eve?”

  “We found the victim. And Eve. But he’s gone. We’re still not sure . . .” The agent’s voice faltered.

  Heather stood up. “Where’s Daniel?”

  “Eve shot him.”

  “What do you mean? That’s . . . what do you mean, shot?”

  “He was shot in the head, Heather. He’s dead. They’re working on him, but it doesn’t look good. I’m sorry. I know—”

  “When?” The emotions started to roll up her chest, first benign, then ferocious.

  “About ten minutes ago. I’m sorry, Heather. I know how much—”

  Heather snapped the phone shut. Her world tipped. She slowly turned to face the living room. All Daniel. The furniture she and Daniel had purchased with the home five years earlier. The fireplace he insisted they needed despite the mild winters. The portrait above that fireplace; the green plush rhinoceros that sat on the sofa, Daniel’s since the third grade; even the shelved set of law books Daniel had purchased for her during her second year of law school.

  All Daniel. And now he was dead?

  Heather forced her legs to take her across the living room, down the hall to the door that led into the basement.

  Confusion and pain washed her mind. The door thudded shut behind her and she stood in the dark stairwell, wavering on numb legs. She flipped the light switch and started down the stairs.

  Eve had taken his sixteenth and seventeenth victims tonight. And now his eighteenth, because she, too, was dead.

  Eve.

  Tears broke through the pain as she stumbled down the stairs. Across the dark recreation area. Into the unfinished room at the southwest corner of the house. She stood in the doorway, pulling at the stale air. Then fanned her hand over the switch on the near wall.

  Lights blazed overhead.

  Long tables with folding metal legs ran the length of each wall. Two high-speed computers to her right, screens now black.

  The concrete walls were covered with corkboard, and the cork board was covered with photographs of Daniel and news clippings. Case files for each of the fifteen victims, provided by Brit Holman.

  Eve. The latest in a long line of killers who had robbed her of her husband. This room was all about Eve. Every move he’d made, retraced here by Heather.

  How many nights had she spent here, methodically combing through the minutiae, searching for a clue to the killer’s motives, his next move,
his identity? She hadn’t been able to win Daniel back from his obsession, so she’d done the only thing that gave her any comfort.

  Unbeknownst to Daniel, she’d joined him in his obsession after the divorce. Eve was as much her enemy as he was the enemy of every victim he’d set out to murder.

  Heather sank to her knees and sobbed openly.

  SIX

  THE OFFICER PILOTED the car like a go-cart on a protected course, but vehicular safety was the farthest thing from Lori’s mind. She continued the CPR, begging with each breath, each pump of her palms against his sternum, that Daniel Clark would climb out of the dark hole he’d been thrown into.

  She would soon have access to the oxygen, epinephrine, and defibrillator that were in every ambulance. She would prefer a cardiac monitor, but time was now more important than the additional equipment a hospital could offer. Resuscitation was a game of long shots in short time.

  And what if you’re wrong? What if he is meant to die today?

  The thought stopped her midstroke. She thrust her hands down. The bench seat shook each time she shoved her palms. She slammed her fist on his chest.

  “Wake up!”

  He did not wake up. She glanced at her watch.

  Ten minutes.

  The siren’s wail reached her as the car tore down Highway 24, halfway between Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. The officer was on the radio with the driver of the ambulance.

  A calm male voice spoke over the speaker. “Okay, we have you. Pull to the shoulder and wait for us. How long has the victim been in arrest?”

  “Just over ten minutes,” Lori snapped.

  “Just over ten minutes,” the officer repeated.

  “Age?”

  “Forty-one. Five foot eleven. One hundred and seventy pounds. We start with defib, and we need to get a shockable rhythm. Have one milliliter of epinephrine ready.”

  The officer conveyed the information. She knew the paramedics could handle the attempt on their own, but she had no intention of letting them.

  The car jerked to a stop on the side of the road, and Lori continued the CPR.

  You’re wrong. He’s gone.