The Killing Game (42 page)

Satisfied with his work, Carter slammed the door shut and hurried around the vehicle. Instead of getting inside immediately, he took the time to reach into the backseat and withdraw a jacket that he shrugged in to, though he was still wearing his damned ski mask and hoodie beneath it.

She tried to focus on the inside of the car. Could she lock him out? Find a way to press the lock and . . . no. What about a weapon? Or getting out of the car? Staying in the vehicle, doing what he asked, was certain death.

But she was totally helpless, bound as she was.

Fear pounded in her brain.
Think, Andi, think! You have to save yourself.

Ignoring the bad taste in her mouth, she leaned forward, intent on using the hand bound behind her back to locate the door handle, work the right buttons and somehow escape. Before she could even try the door, he slid inside the driver’s seat, the interior light casting a dim glow before he jerked the door closed again and they were plunged into darkness once more. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned, then leaned over to buckle her in. Not for her safety, she realized, but to disable her further. As he reached across her, she considered biting him, trying to sink her teeth into his arm, but the gag prevented her, and with a
click,
the seat belt was engaged and she had less room to move.

“Time to go,” he said with a smile in his voice and quickly started the engine. “Like my jacket?” He was preening, but a deadly weapon lay across his lap. “It’s the same one Ben wears.”

He was driving them out of the lot. Desperately, Andi tried to free herself, but she couldn’t do it. “Don’t you think we’ll look good on camera? A lot of people saw you walk out with Ben. He’s gonna have a lot to answer for.”

You son of a bitch.

If she could just get free, or find a way to use a weapon and jump him. But right now it was impossible. Her heart sank and she told herself not to give up. Just wait. Be patient. He might just make a mistake.

Then again, he might not.

He hit the accelerator. The car lurched forward. Panicked, Andi tried vainly to struggle.

“You don’t listen, Andi. It’s one of your biggest problems. Try anything and I’ll fuckin’ tase you. Did you hear it that time?” The gun was still on his lap.

She made gurgling sounds, and he abruptly pulled the car to the curb and in one quick motion opened the glove box, removed a roll of duct tape, and tore off a hunk with his teeth. “No more noise,” he warned, yanking the rag from her mouth.

She gasped, drew in a fresh breath, and tried to struggle as he slapped the duct tape harshly over her lips, the very lips he’d licked.

Again her stomach heaved, but she held back the acid burning up her throat.

Leaning so close, she felt his breath against her ear as he whispered, “I’ve waited so long for this. We have a game to play out,” he said, and for a second his voice held a far-off quality, as if he were looking into the future.

Icy fear shot down Andi’s spine. She leaned hard against the door and he caught the movement.

“Oh yes, there’s a game, little bird, and you’ll be an active player, but if you cross me, I’ll kill you.” His eyes found hers for a second.

* * *

Luke’s pickup fishtailed into the hospital parking lot behind the ambulance carrying Peg Bellows. Two more emergency vehicles screamed into the lot, each carrying one of the Carerra brothers. Were they alive? Dead? Mortally wounded? He didn’t give a damn about them, but Peg was a different story. He remembered the blood on her bathrobe, the calm in her eyes, as if she’d already given up.

He skidded to a stop near a light pole and cut the engine.

Two EMTs pulled Peg’s stretcher from the back of the emergency vehicle and met with nurses and docs in the receiving area of the ER. Luke glanced at them, then sprinted across the lot, catching up with the ambulance in the covered ER receiving area. “Peg,” he called as the rescue workers wheeled her in.

“Don’t worry,” she said around the oxygen mask. “I’ll see you later.”

Her final tone got to him. “You’re going to be all right,” he said, as much to convince himself as her. “You hang in there.” He tried to reach for her hand where an IV was already pumping liquid into her body, but the EMT intervened.

“Get away, buddy,” the burly red-haired responder warned before barking Peg’s vital signs to a waiting nurse and doctor. He shouldered Luke out of the way.

“Wait.”

“Not now,” the arriving doctor said calmly. “We’re taking her directly into surgery. OR two,” he said to a waiting nurse. “We’ll keep you informed.”

“But . . .”

“You heard the doctor.” The EMT was all business.

Luke went inside and tried to gain access from a woman behind a wide information desk. Prim and proper, she brooked no argument, and he found himself stymied by a wall of privacy, HIPAA regulations and mountains of red tape. It didn’t matter that he’d phoned nine-one-one, he wasn’t kin of the patient, and the staunch receptionist at the information desk told him she could release no information on a patient. Not that he blamed her.

The wide glass doors of the emergency wing flew open and the Carrera brothers were brought inside. Luke hung close to the doors and listened to the exchanges between doctors and the emergency medical techs long enough to reason out that both Carerra brothers were probably DOA. The medical staff just had to make it official.

He was soon ordered out of the intake area and couldn’t get close to the information area again. He guessed any and all emergency personnel had been called to the scene because of the multiple victims, not to mention those waiting in chairs scattered around the waiting area. A twentysomething woman with stringy hair and a bad complexion was holding a crying baby while a pale two-year-old clung to her leg. Her husband or boyfriend leaned back in a chair too small for him and played some game on his phone. An older man and woman were seated near the windows; she was cradling one arm and staring vacantly into space. Now and again she winced, but she was trying hard not to show her pain. Her husband sat next to her, arms crossed over his expansive chest, lips tight in an unshaven jaw. Other various would-be patients and loved ones whose non-life-threatening injuries were forced to wait while the gunshot victims were either treated, operated on, or pronounced DOA.

Luke’s guts churned when he considered Peg, but knew there was nothing more he could do to help her. Like the others in this drab, cavernous room with its outdated magazines, well-worn chairs, and piped-in music, he would just have to wait.

He decided he had time to find Andi. She was supposed to be here, probably in Emma’s room or a nearby waiting area, so he texted her again. He hung out in the ER area for a couple of minutes and looked at his screen a dozen times. No answer. Had her phone died?

A bad feeling settled in his gut, but he told himself he was overreacting because of what he’d just been through. It looked like the Carrera brothers weren’t about to hurt anyone ever again, certainly not today.

But what about Bobby? Robert Fisher? Who the hell was he?

Ignoring the “No Cell Phones” signs, he tried phoning her, but the call went directly to voice mail. “Come on, come on,” he said before waiting for the recorded answer to finish and leaving a message. “Hey, I’m here at the hospital, too. Call me.”

He decided to leave Emergency and find her. To hell with the phone.

When he reached Emma’s room he found her alone, lying on the bed, an IV in one arm, monitors surrounding her, a few bruises visible on her face. No sign of Ben or Andi.

Emma stirred. “Ben?”

“It’s Luke Denton, Emma. Ben was here earlier, and Andi, but they’re not now . . .”

She faded out again and he waited half a minute before he was in motion again. Andi had said she would be here, or at his apartment, but she sure as hell wasn’t answering her phone.

Luke scoured the waiting areas and the cafeteria, including the separate coffee shop, and had decided she’d already left. Did she catch a ride with Ben or did she take Uber?

He walked out to the main parking lot, searching for Ben’s vehicle, though he wasn’t exactly sure what it looked like. Every muscle in his body tense, he speed-dialed Andi’s number once more and was surprised when he heard it ringing. What?

“Andi?” he called across the dark lot.

The phone kept ringing and he headed in the direction it was coming from. Maybe it wasn’t her phone. Ringtones were often the same. But then her voice mail answered at the same time the phone stopped ringing. Heart pounding, he hit Redial. Sure enough, the phone began chirping again, and this time he jogged past the main area of the parking lot to a more secluded spot.

Once more the rings stopped suddenly. “Son of a bitch.” He pounded the Redial button, and within seconds the ringtone, louder now, began trilling from a clump of vegetation, part of the hospital’s minimalist landscaping. Digging through the vines, he located the phone. Andi’s phone. His whole world stopped for a second as all of his worst fears were confirmed.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Grasping Andi’s phone, he jogged around the building to Emergency and his truck. Before he got there, his own phone jangled. He yanked it from his pocket and saw it was Detective Rafferty’s number.

Oh. Jesus.
Andi!

“Denton,” he answered sharply. He reached his truck and braced himself as he fished into his pocket for his keys.

“It’s Detective Rafferty. I heard you called nine-one-one to report a multiple shooting and that the victims are at Laurelton General.”

“I’m here, too.”

“I’m on my way, so stick around. You can fill me in.”

“An officer showed up with the ambulances; I told him everything I know.”

“But I have more questions. It won’t take long. I’m at the offices of Wren Development and was stood up by Carter.”

“What did you want to see Carter about?”

“Long story.”

“I’m looking for Andi. Maybe she’s with him?”

“He didn’t say so. My partner and I had arranged to meet him, but he wasn’t here when we arrived. The receptionist was here. She thought he might be at the hospital or the resort construction site.”

“I haven’t seen him here.” Luke was starting to feel anxious. Where was Andi?

“Why were you meeting Carter?” he asked again as he slid into the interior of his pickup and jabbed his keys into the ignition.

“A separate case we’re working on. Carter was one of the lake kids who went to North Shore Junior Camp when he was a teenager. My partner and I have been trying to identify human bones that were discovered in a home not far from the lake. We believe the bones belong to a boy who lived on Aurora Lane, Lance Patten, and Carter said he and his brother and sister all knew Lance.”

She was filling him in more than he expected, probably because he’d been a cop and was working the case independently. A lot of connecting dots, and he didn’t like where the link of those connected dots was leading. Warning bells began to peal through his head, sharp clangs that turned his heart to stone.

“Carter said he and his brother and sister knew two of the victims back then, Patten and another girl who initially appeared to have drowned in the lake, though later it was found that she’d actually been strangled.”

Luke drew in a slow breath.
What were the chances? Bodies back then, when Carter was a teenager, and now bodies of women with names of birds, some in water.

The summer camp . . . He’d driven by it so many times. Knew it had been a place where the rich kids from Schultz Lake spent their summer vacations.

“I’ll look for Carter,” Luke told her. “Andi’s probably with him.”

“Look, Denton, I’ve probably said more than I should, but I haven’t gone into everything. Might be best if you leave meeting with Carter Wren to us.”

Fat chance. “
I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Seriously, Denton. This is a police matter.”

And I used to be the police.

“All right,” he said, not meaning a word of it. He clicked off and peeled out of the parking lot.

Rafferty and her partner were working on a separate case that traced back to the Wrens. What were the chances?

Finch. Meadowlark. Wren.

His jaw tightened and he squinted into the oncoming headlights. Traffic wasn’t that heavy because rush hour was over, but he still passed a van decorated in yellow and green piping and proudly boasting University of Oregon stickers on its window and license plate. He drove another two miles and was trapped by an ancient VW that could barely chug up the hill at thirty.

His mind was on the recent killings. The women, all with names of birds who had been murdered. He downshifted and passed the Volkswagen in seconds. His truck’s engine protested as his headlights cleaved the dark night. His gaze flicked to the spot where Gregory Wren had driven, or been forced, off the road.

Had that just been an accident? Who would benefit from Gregory Wren’s death?

The Carreras might have, if Carter had anything to say about it ...

“Carter.”

Luke thought about that hard. His heart squeezed. If Andi was with Carter, what did that mean?

To hell with the two female detectives. If Carter knew anything, Luke was going to get it out of him first. Though he trusted the detectives to do their job, he didn’t have time to wait through all the bullshit protocol. Luke was going to head to the lodge construction site first and meet up with Carter.

And if you’re wrong ... and Carter doesn’t know where Andi is ... and that bastard Robert Fisher, whoever he is, has her?

Luke pressed his toe to the accelerator, his jaw locked in concentration.

* * *

Gagged and bound, Andi watched through the windshield as Carter drove to another cabin by the lake. His cabin, she realized, as the beams of the older Ford’s headlights reflected back from paned windows. Like her cabin, and a lot of others around Schultz Lake, the structure was set back from the road and hidden from the road by a wide swath of trees, but the rear end of the cabin opened to the cold waters of Shultz Lake.