Mad Love: Madison (31 page)

It opened an inch and wouldn’t budge any further.

“Madison, please let me in. The fire is getting
closer.”

Using the wrench, she slammed it against the
window sending glass everywhere. She slid the wrench along the edges making
sure to get the shards of glass out before turning around and yanking a couple
of hand towels off the rack. She placed the hand towels across the bottom of
the window and put a foot on the back of the tank.

 “
Madison
,” he called out, still with that
horrible mocking singsong voice, “
I’ve got the keys to the door
.”

She scrambled through the window as the door flew
open. She was half way out when she felt hands grab her feet.

She screamed, her mind going numb as she tried
kicking her way free. His fingers bit into her calves causing her to cry out in
pain. She tried to turn around in order to get a better position, but when she did,
he suddenly released her, causing her to fall.

She let out a painful grunt as she hit the
ground.

Rolling over, she looked up at the window,
expecting to see Alex looking back at her. When he didn’t appear, she grabbed
the wrench and then shakily rose to her feet, ignoring the pain in her arms and
legs.

She backed away from the building and towards a wood
fence that separated the body shop from the train tracks.

She glanced to her right.

Dead end
, she thought, turning her attention to the left
and toward the inn. She started to run but slid to a stop when she noticed a
man’s shadow at the edge of the building.

Fearing it was Alex standing there waiting for
her, Madison turned around and headed for the end of the alley. Once there, she
stacked some boxes together, climbed up, and scrambled over the fence.

Trying to catch her breath, she pressed her back
to the fence.

“Don’t run, Madison,” the voice said from behind
the fence. “I promise I won’t hurt you. You’ve got three more days. You can
trust me.”

She picked up the wrench she had dropped when she
climbed over the fence and painfully came to her feet. She looked up above the
fence. She could see the lights from the inn shining down at the far end of the
field. If she could just make it there, she could slip through the gate leading
to the parking lot and from there it was only a few feet to the inn’s doors.

She picked up her pace, running as fast as she
could. She was almost there when the gate slowly creaked open.

Her breath coming in painful gasps, she bent over
at the waist and held her side.

“What are you waiting for, Madison?” the voice
said from behind the gate. “You’re so close.”

With a groan, she closed her eyes for a moment
before turning and running toward the abandoned train cars.

She ducked behind one of the cars and turned her
attention to the open gate, wondering if he was still behind the fence or if he
had slipped through the gate as she ran away.

She looked up as a siren sounded in the distance.

Feeling pain shooting up and down her arms, she
glanced down at her hands. Bright red blood flowed down her fingertips to the
ground.

“Hey, what do we have here?”

Madison whirled around and held up her wrench.

A big man with a potbelly, short-cropped dirty
brown hair and even dirtier clothes stood behind her. He held up his hands.
“Sorry,” he said with a laugh, “didn’t mean to frighten you.” His smile fell as
he continued to stare at her. “Are you okay?”

Gulping in air, Madison lowered her hands a few
inches. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

He looked around. “I don’t see anyone here but
you.” He raised up on his toes and looked over her head. “The body shop’s on
fire,” he said in amusement. “Winters is going to be mad when he finds out. Do
you hear those sirens?”

She nodded. “Do you have a phone? I need to call
the police.”

“What for?”

She looked at him suspiciously. “I just told you.
Someone just tried to kill me.”

He focused his gaze back on the fence. “Those
sirens are so loud.” He looked back down at her and smiled. “I bet they’re so
loud that no one could hear you scream.”

Before Madison had time to react, the man jerked
the wrench out of her hands and slammed her against the train car.

Madison winced as her head hit the metal car and
she slid to the ground. Stunned, she blinked, trying to focus in on the figure
standing above her laughing.

“You kind of look like little Red Riding Hood in
that purty red coat of yours,” he said as he reached behind his back and pulled
out a knife.

Madison turned her head as the sound of the siren
grew louder and louder.

“Go ahead and scream. No one’s going to hear
you.”

She turned back toward the man just as something
slammed into him, throwing him to the ground.

Dazed, her vision swimming, she rolled to her
hands and knees and tried to crawl away.

A few seconds later, someone grabbed her from
behind. She lashed out blindly, scratching and clawing to get away.

“Madison, it’s me,” Ethan said turning her
around.

Madison immediately stilled in his arms. “Ethan?”
she whispered as she tried to focus on his face. When she couldn’t make her
eyes focus in the dim light, she lifted her hand and cupped his cheek. “Ethan.”
Shaking, she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, desperately trying to
get closer to him.

“Shh,” he whispered into her hair as he cradled
her in his arms. “Everything’s okay. He’s dead. You’re safe now.”

~T
WO
~

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
30
^TH

11:33
A.M.

Madison
leaned over and zipped her boot up. She stood, testing her ankles. Thankfully,
nothing was broken, and other than a slight concussion, a few bruises, and a
couple of deep cuts she had received when she climbed out of the bathroom window,
she felt fine.
Better than fine, in fact
, she thought as she adjusted
her white cashmere sweater over her brown slacks.

Her lips quirked up slightly, suspecting the pain
medication the night nurse gave her a few hours ago had something to do with that.

She glanced over at Ethan who was sprawled out on
the green armchair next to her hospital bed and she smiled.

Ethan hadn’t looked at her yet. For the last few
minutes, he sat scowling at the hard linoleum floor, lost in thought.

He rubbed at his eyes tiredly for a moment but
then returned his tired gaze to the floor. Dark shadows hung underneath his eyes.
She noticed that one shadow was a bit darker than the other, testament to the
fight he engaged in at the train yard last night.

Poor guy
, she thought, her heart swelling with emotion.

Once he had her in his arms last night, he had
refused to let her go. He stayed with her throughout the night. Even when she
was admitted into the hospital for observation, he wouldn’t leave her side, choosing
to sleep in the hard uncomfortable looking chair next to her bed than going
back to the inn.

She glanced at her suitcase lying in the corner
of the room, wondering when he had left to pick up their things. It must have
been sometime after four in the morning when she awoke in a panic, still
trapped in a nightmare. She remembered him slipping into the bed next to her
and holding her tightly until she fell back asleep. When she woke several hours
later, she noticed that he had changed out of the charcoal slacks and white shirt
he had been wearing and into a pair of jeans and a baby blue Oxford shirt that
matched his eyes.

He had beautiful eyes
, she thought. She
shifted her gaze to the side as his gaze came up to meet hers.

“I don’t understand,” he said shaking his head, “why
you’re so positive that guy wasn’t Alex. I saw him push you into the train
car.” He swallowed hard as his voice grew rough with emotion. “I saw him take
out a knife. I heard him laugh as you tried to get away from him.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t Alex.”

“Baby,” he said, his voice softening, “you said Alex
was in the body shop. He called you by name. He told you that you had three
more days left.”

“Exactly.”

He rubbed his hand across his eyes once again
before running his fingers through his dark brown hair.

“I have three, well, two days left. Alex wasn’t
going to hurt me. He had plenty of chances while we were in the body shop to
hurt me, but he didn’t. He’s waiting until New Year’s to kill me. The man you
killed last night had no intention of waiting for anything. That’s how I know
he wasn’t Alex.”

Ethan leaned his head back and stared at the
ceiling. “He chased you out of the body shop and cornered you in the train
yard. Who knows, maybe you’re right and he wasn’t going to kill you last night.
But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t going to kidnap you and hold you until New
Year’s.”

“Alex had no intention of capturing me, at least
not last night.” She kneeled next to his chair. “The entire time we were in the
body shop, he never let me see him. Not once did I get a glimpse of him. He
could have attacked me right then and there but he hung back. He hid in the
shadows. Even when I ran into the bathroom, he didn’t come in until he realized
I was crawling out the window. He gave me time to escape. Then he grabbed my
legs. He had a good enough grip he could have pulled me back in, but he didn’t.
He just held on for a second and then let me go. Don’t you see? He was playing
with me. He had no intention of confronting me out in the open.” She gripped
his wrist, bringing his attention from the ceiling back to her. “Plus, he was
trying to disguise his voice.”

“What do you mean?”

“For one, his accent kept changing. For another,
his voice sounded mechanical. Why disguise his voice if he was just going to
jump out at me a few minutes later?”

“The man wasn’t stable.”

“He’s not that crazy. He has planned this for months…
years…ever since his brother died. He’s not suddenly going to chuck his plan
out the window. He’s having too much fun to do that.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “If he went through that
much trouble disguising his voice, that must mean he thought you might
recognize it.”

“Which means I’ve met him and not just casually. Zach
told me that Alex likes to steal people’s identities. He kills them and then
becomes them. I think Alex is someone I know. He’s just pretending to be
someone else right now.”

Ethan laced his fingers with hers as he thought
about what she was saying. “I spoke to Neal last night.”

“What did he have to say about Alex?”

“Neal said that they don’t really have much to do
with him. The last time he saw Alex was around April of this year when he
escaped from a mental institution Todd had put him in.”

“Todd put him in?”

“That’s what Neal said. Todd had him committed
after he discovered that Alex had killed Laura Ladd. Neal wasn’t sure where
Alex went, but he said he was gone for several years. Neal thought he went to
some private institution half way across the country somewhere. He didn’t know
much more. I got the impression that Neal and Allison have tried very hard to
keep themselves in the dark about what was going on in Todd and Alex’s lives.
He did tell me that Alex has a bunch of different aliases. When he’d get in
trouble using one name, Alex would just adopt another and move out of town.
When it got bad, his brother would hide him. And when it got really bad…”

“Todd would place him in an institution,” she
ended for him.

Ethan nodded as his fingers played with the charm
bracelet around her wrist. “Todd would always find some way to convince him to
go in and then Alex would stay there for a while, but eventually he’d get out.
If you’re right about Alex disguising his voice and trying to hide from you, then
that means he must be someone that you met after April.” He raised his
eyebrows. “Anyone come to mind?”

“Jamie,” she said without hesitation. “I’ve been
thinking about it all night. He’s got long blond hair.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Hair means
nothing. It’s too easy to change.”

“Well, it’s not just the hair. He’s always around
lately. He was the first one to find Rory after he went missing and he was
there when Paul died. I gave his name to the deputy last night so they should
be checking him out as we speak. Hopefully, they’ll find something that ties
him to Alex. Don’t you see?” She squeezed his arm. “He fits Alex’s profile.”

“I haven’t ruled him out as a suspect. In fact,
he’s on the top of my list too, but let’s not write anyone else out at this
point. Remember, we were pretty sure it was Paul doing all this at the
beginning. Think hard. Is there any other men—in their twenties or thirties—that’s
only recently come into your life?”