Count to Ten (51 page)
“Just bumps and bruises. The teachers got control quickly. We weren’t sure if we should push Jeremy back to school so soon, but we couldn’t let him sit in front of the TV any longer. We wanted to get him back into a routine. Please find him.”
Mia rubbed her forehead. He’d taken Bobby’s obituary. “I think I know where he is.”
Monday, December 4, 9:25 A.M.
R
eed’s hands fisted at his sides. “You can’t do this.” They had a SWAT team and every uniform and detective -Spinnelli had been able to muster. They would wait, concealed in unmarked vans, a block away from Annabelle’s house. They didn’t want to spook Kates, so Mia would stroll inside alone, pretending to pay an ordinary visit.
Mia twisted at the waist. She wore a bulky sweater that hid the bulletproof vest and the weapon in her back waistband. “Damn Kevlar itches,” she said, ignoring him.
“Mia, if he’s in your mother’s house, you’re walking into a trap.”
“If he’s still setting the trap, I’ll get him first.” She met his eyes. “He’s got Jeremy.”
That a killer might also have her mother was absurdly absent. She was solely focused on the boy. And on Kates. After her initial shock, Reed had watched her training and skill take over. She was calm, while his heart was beating out of his chest.
“Reed.” Her voice was quiet. Sober. “Let me do my job.”
You’re not a cop.
She’d said it that night he’d wanted to chase Getts. She was right. At the moment he didn’t feel like a fire investigator, either. He was a man, watching the woman he cared for wrapping herself in Kevlar and arming herself like Rambo.
He turned to Spinnelli. “You agree with this, Marc?”
“Not my first choice. But he didn’t take the bait last night, so catching him before he’s prepared is the best plan we’ve got. Mia’s wearing a wire. She’ll have backup.”
“Let me go in with her.”
Spinnelli shook his head and Reed could see the man understood all too well. “No.”
“She’s SWAT trained, Reed,” Murphy murmured beside him. “Let her do her job.”
Reed drew a deep breath. “Ben called. There were two points of origin at the school, so Kates used two more eggs, Mia. He may have one more.”
“I’m counting on it. No pun intended.” She flashed him a distracted smile. “Don’t take this wrong, Reed, but go away. I have to focus and I can’t with you here.”
He cast his eyes up and down the street, looking at the utility markers. This neighborhood had gas lines. Mia could be walking into a fireball.
No, she won’t.
He couldn’t go in at her side. So he’d shore her up from below. Spinnelli and all the others were in deep conversation. Jack was pinning the same wire to Mia’s sweater that she’d used with Wheaton yesterday. Nobody was watching him. He started walking.
“Going somewhere, Lieutenant?” The female murmur came from behind him.
He blew out a breath. “Carmichael. Haven’t you done enough?”
“I haven’t done anything today. And I won’t. I never even saw you.”
He turned, eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going in.” She lifted a shoulder. “Don’t need to be a rocket scientist. I would appreciate a few words when you come out. Just watch Mitchell. Regardless of what you might think, I hold her in high personal regard. She thinks she’s indestructible.”
“I know.” He started walking again.
Bulletproof,
Jack had said.
Lucky,
Mia believed.
All too human,
Reed knew. He slipped through backyards until he came to Annabelle Mitchell’s. The main gas valve would be in the basement. A set of entrance steps went down into the ground. He crouched at the base of the stairs, prepared to break in. But one of the panes in the door was already broken. The door was unlocked.
Kates is here.
Reed cautiously opened the door, slipped inside.
Now so am I.
Monday, December 4, 9:35 A.M.
Mia let herself in Annabelle’s front door with her key, her weapon pointed down behind her leg. The last time she’d been here was the day they’d buried Bobby. Now Bobby meant nothing. Getting Jeremy out unharmed and stopping Kates meant everything.
He was here already.
She could feel it from the moment she walked through the door. There was an eerie stillness to the place. She crept to the kitchen doorway and drew a silent breath. Annabelle sat in a kitchen chair a foot from the stove. Hands and feet tied with twine. Mouth gagged. Dressed in only her underwear, she shivered violently. Her body gleamed, coated shoulder to hips with the solid accelerant Kates had used six times now. The stove was already pulled away from the wall, his intent clear.
Her mother’s eyes met hers, terrified and... full of the furious contempt Mia knew so well. Her mother had always blamed them for Bobby’s violence. Mia supposed this time her mother finally had it right. Kates was here, she was in danger,
because of me
.
No gas filled the air yet. Either Kates was still preparing or he was waiting to spring his trap. She scanned the kitchen, wondering where he’d put Jeremy. Her mother’s eyes followed her, narrowed, as Mia crept into the kitchen, opening the cabinets under the sink. It was the only place large enough to hide a small boy. But they were empty.
“Help me.” It was really two muffled grunts from behind the gag, but Annabelle’s eyes left no question as to the translation.
Mia put her finger to her lips. Then she pulled a knife from the block on the counter and prepared to cut her mother’s bonds. With one less hostage, she could focus on Jeremy. She’d taken a step toward the chair when a voice stopped her in her tracks.
“Put the knife down, Detective.”
Even though she’d mentally prepared herself for exactly this sight, Mia’s heart froze. Jeremy stood trembling in front of Kates, one of Kates’s gloved hands in his sandy red hair and Kates’s long shiny blade at his throat. Jeremy’s freckles jumped out from his white face. His eyes were terrified and... full of desperate trust.
“You’ve seen what my knife can do, Detective,” Kates said smoothly. “So has the boy. Haven’t you, Jeremy?” She watched his fingers tighten in Jeremy’s hair, watched -Jeremy’s small jaw tighten as he struggled to control his own fear. “Put down the knife.”
Mia set the knife down, hilt out so she could grab it quickly if the opportunity arose.
“And the gun.” He yanked Jeremy to his toes. “Now. Kick it over here.”
Again she complied, and her gun went sliding across the kitchen floor.
“Mia.” It was Spinnelli’s voice in the earbud she prayed Kates wouldn’t suspect. The wire she wore gave Spinnelli and the others a view of the inside. The earbud was her link to the command center in the van. “Get him into the living room. I have snipers with a clear shot through the front window. The boy is small. We’ll aim high. Out.”
One flick of Kates’s wrist and Jeremy would die. The snipers couldn’t fire until Jeremy was clear. She had to get him to let Jeremy go first.
“Don’t hurt the boy.” She didn’t plead, didn’t command. “He’s done nothing to you.”
Kates laughed. “He has and we all know it, don’t we, -Jeremy? He told you I’d been there. Led you to my things.”
“No, he didn’t. We found the house on our own. Jeremy said nothing.”
“Impossible.”
“Truth. We found the car you ditched the night you killed Brooke Adler. It had an aftermarket GPS you didn’t see.”
His eyes flickered. He was annoyed with himself. Good. “So?”
“You like animals. You let out the cat and dog before you set the houses on fire.”
His jaw cocked. “I’ll repeat the question. So?”
“And you had access to curare. We checked vet clinics and pet shops and their employees in a one-mile radius of the car we found. And we found Mrs. Lukowitch.”
His mouth flattened to a line. “And she told. I wish I’d killed the bitch myself.”
“No. She lied. But not well and that made us suspicious. We found your stash the old-fashioned way, Kates. Good detective work and a search warrant. Jeremy said nothing. Let him go.” Kates stood still as stone. “He’s only seven. He’s innocent.” She took a chance and prayed. “Like Shane was before your aunt’s husband.”
The hand that held the knife tightened on the hilt. “Don’t say his name.” Kates’s chin came up, eyes narrowing. “I don’t recall seeing a single sweater like that in your closet. I only remember those clingy shirts that you wear to show off your breasts because you’re a tease. You’re wearing a vest. Take off the sweater, Detective. Now.”
“Mia, keep the vest on,” Spinnelli said with urgency, but Kates lifted his knife to the underside of Jeremy’s chin and sliced, just deep enough to draw blood. Then the knife went back to the boy’s throat.
“Take off the sweater or the boy dies right in front of your eyes.”
“Mia.” Spinnelli’s voice held a thread of panic. “Don’t.”
Tears were welling in Jeremy’s eyes. But he never wavered. Never whimpered. Kates’s brows lifted. “I cut Thompson’s head nearly off his body. Jeremy is so much... smaller. You want that on your conscience, Mitchell?” He pulled Jeremy’s head back and the steely look of determination in his eyes left Mia with absolutely no doubt he’d make good on his threat.
“All right.”
“Mia!” Spinnelli barked it. Mentally she tuned him out. The camera was buried in the sweater’s fibers below her left shoulder. If she could drape the sweater on the counter so the camera pointed out, Spinnelli would still have a clear view. Carefully she pulled the sweater over her head and put it on the counter. And prayed.
Kates’s lips curved. “Now the vest.”
“Goddammit, Mia. Do not take off that vest. That’s an order.”
Her fingers were steady as she pulled at the Velcro. “You protected Shane, Andrew. You sacrificed yourself to Tyler Young to keep him safe.” She was pulling at the Kevlar vest slowly, strip by Velcro strip, hoping to make headway before she was completely at his mercy.
“I told you not to say his name.” He straightened abruptly and Jeremy sucked in a breath as he stood on his toes.
Mia wanted to beg, but kept her voice calm. “I’m sorry. I know it hurt you to lose him. I know you’ve been paying back that hurt all week.” Her fingers had paused on one of the last remaining Velcro strips. Kates’s eyes were fixed on hers. She was getting through. “But I also know that it all started when Jeff and Manny hurt Thad.”
Anger flashed in Kates’s eyes. “You don’t know shit.” He clenched his teeth. “
Take off the damn vest.
Now, before this kid’s blood runs like a river.”
Damn.
Her fingers pulled at the last strip. The vest hung loosely on her body now. “I know more than you think I do, Andrew. I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the same sacrifice you made for your brother. My sister did the same for me.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. My father molested my sister and she didn’t fight back so that I could have a normal life. I live daily with the guilt that I didn’t protect
her.
So I understand more than you think, Andrew. You don’t want to hurt this child. Your beef is with me. All along you’ve punished the people who’ve hurt you.” Except for his mistakes, but she’d keep him focused. “You’ve never hurt a child before. Don’t start now.”
He stood, uncertain. Sensing victory, she pressed.
“Your beef is with me, Andrew,” she repeated. “I’m the one who found your real name, found you. I’m the one who took your stuff. I’m the one who’s trying to stop you. Not the boy. Let him go. Take me instead.”
At the top of the basement stairs, on the other side of the door, Reed listened. His heart sank, even though it was what he’d expected her to do from the moment he’d heard the words “Put down the knife, Detective.” He’d had his hand on the doorknob, ready to run to her aid when he heard Kates threaten the boy with his knife. Reed had stood, his own weapon in his hand, waiting for the right moment. She’d get him to release the child, of that Reed had no doubt. At what cost to herself, he didn’t want to consider. Kates had been silent a long time, then he spoke.
“I could kill you both.”
Mia considered Andrew Kates carefully, made herself logic-ally process all that she’d learned over the last week. “You could. But I don’t think you will.” He was a man who for ten years buried the fact that he’d killed his own brother. He would readily accept what he found more palatable than the truth. “You spared Joe Dougherty a painful death. You spared the animals. You’ve punished those who deserved your anger. Penny Hill and Tyler Young deserved your anger, Andrew, but Jeremy does not.”
She took another tack. “If you kill this child, I’ll fight and kill you myself. None of the women you killed this week are trained like I am. You read the article in the paper. I took down a man twice your size all by myself a week ago today. You may kill me, but you won’t walk away, either. I promise you that. Let him go and I won’t fight you.”
“I don’t believe you. It’s a trick.”
“It’s not a trick. It’s a promise.” She lifted a brow. “Call it paying my debt to my sister. Surely you can understand that.”
For what seemed like an eternity he stood thinking. “You take off the vest all the way and I’ll let the kid go.”
Mia peeled the vest from her body, down her arms. She shivered, only a thin T-shirt covering her upper half. “I kept my end. It’s your turn.”
In one motion he withdrew the knife from Jeremy’s neck and pulled a .38 revolver from his back waistband. Mia jerked her eyes from his new weapon to Jeremy, who stood shaking. “Go, Jeremy,” she said urgently. “Now.” Jeremy looked at her, his eyes miserable and her heart cracked in two. “Go, honey. It’ll be all right. I promise.”