I Can See You (64 page)

Eve clicked, then frowned when a scolding message
popped up. “ ‘You do not have access to this information. Account blocked.’ ”
She looked up at Kane, frustrated. “Apparently, there’s a super-executive
access for credit card info. And I probably just shot a big ole flare to
ShadowCo that I’m here.” Rapidly she logged out. “If they’re any good, they
already know where I’m sitting. Dammit.”

“We’ll deal with the fallout,” Olivia said. “We have
one name. Irene Black.” She pushed her chair away and pulled Eve to her feet.
“Put on your coat. Kane, get her out of here and into that safe house before
Abbott gets back and kicks our asses.”

Eve buttoned up her coat. “You’re not coming?”

“No, I’m going to call Abbott with this, then I’m
going to have another go at Dell. I’ll visit you, bring you a cake with a file
in it,” she joked soberly. “This will be over soon.”

“I hope. Tell Noah…” Eve’s cheeks warmed. “Tell him to
be careful.”

“You bet. Now get out of here. You’re safe with Kane.
I trust him with my life.”

Blinking away her fatigue, Olivia watched them go. Six
dead women, two Lincoln Navigators, a lunatic Farmer, and a drug dealer named
Damon. And now they’d added one Irene Black to the mix. She’d pulled out her
cell to call Abbott when it rang in her hand. It was the DA’s office.
“Sutherland.”

“It’s Brian Ramsey. I’ve got a little good news. I’m
authorized to deal with your dealer, Damon. Meet me in Interview in twenty. I
hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Olivia set out to meet Ramsey,
calling Abbott on her way.

Thursday, February 25, 11:30 a.m.

Eve’s mind was still racing as she and Kane went down
in the elevator to his car. “All right, so we have Irene Black, but it still
comes back to the list. Whoever did these murders had access to that damn
list.”

“Jeremy Lyons did and he’s missing,” Kane said.

Eve sighed. “Donner did and he’s dead. I guess knowing
he was sick puts some of his responses into a different light. He was running
out of time.”

“He wanted to leave a legacy,” Kane said quietly.
“Most people do.”

“True. I wonder if he really believed we were testing
often enough or just convinced himself we were. I tried to tell him that we
were affecting people’s lives, but without the personality testing scores, he
wouldn’t believe me.”

“I doubt it would have mattered.”

She looked up at him as the elevator doors slid open.
“What do you mean?”

Kane shrugged. “He was dying. Desperate. Desperate
people do unexpected things. It’s possible he would have ignored the results
even if you’d done the tests.”

“No, he couldn’t have ignored them. He wouldn’t even
have seen them. The results went straight from the independent third-party
therapist to the committee. It was part of the checks and balances. If
personality tests started showing huge swings, as they would have done with the
red-zones, the committee would have stopped the study.”

“My car’s on the right,” Kane said as they walked
through the parking garage. “So who was this third-party therapist?”

Eve stopped. “I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to know,
just as I wasn’t supposed to know the subjects’ real names.”

Kane had stopped, too. “Would Donner have known who it
was?”

“Yes.” She let out a breath. “And what Donner knew,
Jeremy knew. He told me so.”

“And would that person have had access to the list?”

Eve opened her mouth to reply, then watched in shock
as Kane dropped to the cement floor of the garage like a rock. She looked up,
stunned.

Between two parked vehicles a man wearing a fedora was
sliding a club into his coat pocket. In his other hand he held a gun with a
silencer. “I’d say he almost certainly would have access to that list.”

She stood, staring into a face she knew. But that she
had never quite trusted. Then instinct surged.
Run.
Eve swung her
computer bag at his arm, knocking the gun from his hand. His grunt echoed as
the gun skittered a few feet away.

She turned and ran as fast as she could. Then stumbled
to her knees on a cry of pain when fire bored through her thigh.
Goddammit.
He shot me
. She pushed herself to her feet and had gotten a little farther
when he came from between two parked cars and dragged her backward. His arm was
over her throat, bending her backward, cutting off her air.

Eve grabbed at his arm over her throat, trying to
breathe, trying to drag in air to scream. Then she felt a prick on the side of
her throat. In seconds her body went limp, her vision blurred. From far away
she heard his voice in her ear, distorted and slow.

“Eve. Didn’t your parents teach you not to get into
cars with strange men?”

Thursday, February 25, 12:10 p.m.

Noah burst into the bullpen, followed by Abbott and
Micki. His heart was pounding out of his chest. Eve was gone. “What the fuck
happened?”

Kane sat at his desk, an ice bag on his head. Olivia
stood at his side, pale, but her eyes were clear and focused.

“Status?” Abbott demanded. He’d barked orders into
both his cell and the radio the whole way back from Virginia Fox’s house while
Noah drove like a bat out of hell.

“Garage is locked down,” Olivia said steadily. “BOLO
is out, cars all over the city are on alert. I put a watch on the interstates
and roadblocks at the major arteries out of town. State patrol is en route with
air support.”

Abbott’s nod was tense. “Good work.” He gave Kane a
visual once-over. “You didn’t see him?”

Kane shook his head miserably. “No.”

“What happened?” Noah bit out.

Kane looked up, pain in his eyes. “One minute we were
talking, the next I was waking up.”

Olivia sat next to him. “Kane came to about seven
minutes later and called it in. I looked at the security video right away.
Somebody came up behind him and hit him with a club. Eve slung that computer
bag of hers at him and ran. She knocked the gun away, but he got it back.” She
hesitated and Noah’s heart stopped.

“What? What happened?”

“He shot her in the thigh, then dragged her away.” Her
hands were shaking. “A different camera showed him put her in a black BMW,
plate registered to Donner.”

Noah wouldn’t think about what he’d just seen, the
grotesque butchering of Virginia Fox’s eyes. He wouldn’t think about what a
killer was doing to Eve, right this minute.

Except it was all he could think about.
Don’t hurt
her. Just don’t hurt her
. But he would hurt her. He would kill her.
Stop
it. Be a cop, for God’s sake.
Noah clamped his fingers into his head and
made himself look up. “How badly was she bleeding?”

“Not gushing,” Olivia said, “so it’s unlikely he hit
anything vital.”

He hit something vital
.
He hit Eve
.

“I’m sorry, Web,” Kane said hoarsely.

“Not your fault.” Numb, Noah sank into a chair. “What
did he look like? He was on the camera, for God’s sake.”

Olivia shook her head. “Not when he was hitting Kane.
He came up between a minivan and an SUV. All you can see is Kane dropping. Once
he’d shot Eve, he kept between the cars and when he dragged her he was bending
over. He’s on the short side. I’m guessing he’s five-eight. He was wearing a
beige overcoat with the collar up and a black fedora so you couldn’t see his
face. I already asked for the video to be sent up, so we can look at it again.
I put everything we have in the BOLO. Everyone is searching.”

“How did he get out of the garage? How did he pay?”
Noah asked desperately.

“He was there less than thirty minutes,” Olivia said
wearily. “He put his ticket in the slot and the arm went up. No charge. God,
Noah, I’m sorry.”

“Then he’d parked here before. He knew if he was there
less than thirty minutes that he’d be able to exit without needing a credit
card or going through the attendant booth.”

“I thought of that. Right now security is checking the
tapes for that BMW on other days that it might have parked here.”

“And I put a team in the garage,” Micki added, “in
case he left something behind when he struggled with Eve.”

He nodded numbly. “Dell. He knows something. We need
to make him talk.”

“We tried all night,” Olivia said harshly. “He won’t
talk.”

Let me talk to him
, Noah thought viciously.
He’ll talk to me.

“Don’t even ask,” Abbott warned.

Noah looked away.
Think.
“What did we find on
Dell? In his vehicle?”

“The GPS tracking screen,” Olivia said. “Kurt
Buckland’s cell phone and a couple of untraceable cell phones. A copy of
MSP
.
Newspaper articles about you and Jack going way back. All your cases.
Transcripts of times you’d testified in court.”

“Lots of pictures,” Micki added. “Going back months.
We found cameras in both Dell’s and Harvey’s cars, so they were both
surveilling.”

“Let me see the pictures,” Noah said, his voice flat.

“Noah, just go home,” Abbott said. “We’ve got eyes all
over the city searching for his car. Everyone understands the urgency. We will
find him.”

“Let me see the fucking pictures,” Noah repeated,
hostilely, and Abbott shrugged.

“Fine, let’s see them. Faye,” he called, “get the head
of security up here with a copy of the tapes. I want to review them myself.”

As a group they moved to Abbott’s office and Micki
dumped a stack of photographs on Abbott’s round table. “I don’t know what
you’re looking for, Web,” she said.

“Neither do I. Where are the cameras?”

“In the evidence room,” Micki said. “I’ll get them.”
She left as Olivia’s cell rang.

Olivia grimaced at the ID. “Ramsey’s waiting for me in
Interview with Damon.”

“Go,” Abbott said. “Good luck.”

Noah didn’t look up when she left. He was sorting
photos with single-minded focus. There was something here.
There has to be
.

Thursday, February 25, 12:10 p.m.

Didn’t your parents…
Eve couldn’t breathe. She could only stare up into Winters’s face as
he grabbed the twine and pulled.
Can’t breathe. Going to die. Again. Didn’t
your parents— No. I won’t go there again.

She opened her eyes with a hard jerk and found herself
looking into the amused face of Dr. Carleton Pierce. He smiled at her, patting
her face mildly. She tried to bite him but when her head turned it moved
slowly, as if through molasses.

“What did you give me?” she asked him, her words
slurred.

“Ketamine. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off. And it’s not
addictive, although that doesn’t really matter. You wouldn’t be living long
enough to care if it were.”

“Noah… will find you.”

Pierce laughed out loud. “No, he won’t, my dear, but
you go on thinking that if it makes you feel better. How’s your leg?”

“Shot,” she said, her teeth clenched. She was lying on
the backseat of his car and her thigh burned where his bullet had pierced her
flesh.

“Well, I’ve bandaged you up,” he said, mockingly
benign. “Don’t want you to bleed out. I’m not done with you. In fact, I haven’t
even started.” He smiled and Eve tasted true fear. She’d seen that smile
before, on Winters’s face…
before he killed me
.

“Very good,” he said. “I can see the fear in your
eyes. Did you like my message?”

Pain mixed with fear to back the breath up in her
lungs. “I thought it was Dell.”

“And it suited me for you to think so. But now, I find
I want the credit.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another syringe and
she twisted hard to roll, move, anything to get away. But his knee clamped over
her thighs. “It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight me.” He plunged the needle into
her neck. “That will hold you until I get you where we’re going. Listen, Eve.”
He put a microrecorder near her ear and clicked a button.

And once again Eve heard Winters’s voice. “I stabbed
her, eight times. She tried to claw at me. Feisty little thing she was. So I
slashed her hand, then her face.”

“Why her face?” another man asked. “I mean, you’d
already all but killed her.”

“Because she thought she was pretty. Because I wanted
to. Because I could.”

She was fading fast, faster than before. She blinked
hard, and clicking off the recorder, Pierce leaned close. “I’ll kill you,” he
whispered, “because I can. Because I wish it. Because it will give me pleasure.
But it won’t be quick. You’ll wish you were dead, but I won’t make it as easy
as Winters did. Don’t worry, Eve. You’ll see.”

He stepped back, drawing sweet cold air through his
nostrils. This was going to be so good. He’d been in a constant state of
arousal since he’d forced Eve to the back of his wife’s car. The knowledge he’d
been carrying his wife and Liza in the trunk all this time… This was going to
be so good.