The 7th Victim

move her kitchen rag, he probably had also removed other weapons of opportunity. Her knives.

“Hancock, show yourself!” She shouted it into the dark air, hoping to elicit a response. Hoping for a chuckle if she were wrong, a voice if she were right. Something to give her a sense of direction.

But before she could plan her next move, she heard a shuffle of feet. She threw her hands up and bent away from the noise bracing for impact—and got what she expected. Whack! Across the hands. Then a swift kick to her left knee. Pain ignited, burst through her leg, like fireworks exploding in her brain. She let out a groan, in that instant knowing there were going to be more fierce, angry blows.

She crumpled in pain and was driven backwards to the floor, as a lineman would tackle a quarterback. And then she felt the weight of a body atop her.

Vail swung her arms hard and hit something, something metal, and heard the object clunk against the floor. She immediately threw her hands up and grabbed clothing—then pushed the man back, away from her. Her eyes were now accommodating to the darkness and could make out what looked like nylon pantyhose stretched across his face.

“Son of a bitch!” she shouted as he grabbed her neck with strong, vice-like hands.

She tried to maneuver her legs to kick him, but he was sitting on her abdomen. Pinning her pelvis to the floor. He had done this before, she was sure. Highly intelligent, excellent planner . . . thirty to forty years old . . . her profile flittered through her mind while she tried to pry his hands loose.

As the air left her lungs.

eighty-one

Bledsoe swerved, his tires crying in protest. He broadsided a parked Honda but continued on, the rear of his car dovetailing as he accelerated.

“We’re close,” Robby said. “Maybe half a mile.”

“I just hope dispatch got through to the sheriff’s office—”

Just then, a police cruiser came speeding up behind them, strobe lights whipping in dizzying rhythm.

“He’s either after us for hit-and-run or he got dispatch’s message.”

“Let’s hope he got the message,” Bledsoe said, “’cause I ain’t stopping for nothing.”

Bledsoe killed the lights a half a block away; the tailing cruiser followed suit. Bledsoe pulled up at the curb with a heavy foot on the brake while trying to avoid squealing the tires. Robby was out his door before Bledsoe and covered the postage-stamp lawn in four strides. Bledsoe motioned the cop in the patrol car toward the rear of the house.

They drew their guns and stood on opposite sides of the front door. Bledsoe nodded to Robby, who stepped up and unleashed a wicked front-on kick.

The door splintered inward. Bledsoe charged in, followed by Robby. They crouched low and moved quickly through the family room, their roving LED flashlights throwing an eerie flicker through the darkened house. Bledsoe tried the light switch. Nothing. He motioned to Robby to move on, toward the back of the house where the bedrooms were located.

Robby started down the hallway—and saw something on the kitchen floor. Vail’s Glock. He knelt beside it, reached into his pocket and pulled out a latex glove, and snapped it on. He lifted the weapon, held it up to his nose. It had not been fired. He removed the magazine. Empty. “What?”

Bledsoe came up behind him.

Robby motioned to the gun. “Magazine’s empty. No shells. Hasn’t been fired.”

Bledsoe squinted confusion. He turned and continued on through the house, his flashlight’s narrow beam bouncing around the walls. Robby remained where he was, trying to piece together what had happened. Why would she empty her weapon? That doesn’t make sense. Unless someone emptied it for her. Concern welled up inside his chest; his blood was pounding in his neck, in his head, in his ears.

He moved toward the garage, using his small but powerful flashlight to peer under boxes and around corners. Vail’s car was still there; the hood was cool to the touch. Come on, Karen, where are you?

He moved back into the house and met Bledsoe. “Anything?”

“House is clear.”

“Car’s in the garage,” Robby said. He rested his hands on his hips. “So where is she?”

Bledsoe held up Vail’s BlackBerry. “Turned off. That’s why you didn’t get through.” He scrolled through the numbers stored in memory. “Three missed calls. All yours.”

“I think we can assume she didn’t leave of her own choosing.”

As they stood there, the looming silence between them was deafening.

Finally, Bledsoe turned and headed toward the garage. “Let’s get these lights back on and take a good look around.”

To Robby, that course of action seemed severely inadequate. But at the moment, he had nothing better to offer.

eighty-two

Vail’s head was bowed. Her shoulders ached and her neck was on fire. As consciousness returned, second by passing second, she realized why she was in pain. Her wrists were encircled by handcuffs secured to a beam, her body suspended above the floor, a few inches off the ground. Her ankles were shackled together, the loose chain dragging impotently beneath her.

And she was naked.

A single bare bulb stared her in the face, a few feet from her head. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from it. The remainder of her body was cold, the air chilled and drafty. A strong mildew scent tickled her nose.

She blinked, trying to clear her blurry vision. She did not know what had happened to her after she fought for her last breaths. She remembered an intense electrical shock ripping through her chest. The only likely scenario was a stun gun.

But there was so much that remained unexplained . . . chief of which was how Dead Eyes could have been resurrected. She had seen Patrick Farwell’s body on the ground. And the most telling evidence of all, the left hands.

But what if the man lying there had not been Farwell? Their only photos of him were mug shots from twenty years ago. What if Farwell had found someone who resembled himself, took him back to his house, and executed him, disguising it as a suicide and expecting the police to draw the obvious conclusions, that the body was that of the Dead Eyes killer?

If it was not, in fact, Farwell’s body, then the crime scene had been staged: making it look like something it was not. Staging was a telltale sign of an organized offender. That Vail did not see this sooner bothered her. Another missed sign. She had never wanted to accept that she was fallible. Yet as the pain in her shoulders and wrists increased, it served as a constant reminder of just how flawed she was. Kidnapped by the Dead Eyes killer, however, her fate was far worse than imperfection.

Such a fate was not something she was willing to accept. Not yet.

She closed her eyes for a moment, attempting to reinvigorate her night vision. The bright bulb, seemingly the only light source, had blinded her, and she wanted to be able to look into the darker recesses around her. Hopefully to gain some clues as to where she was.

Closing her eyes provided a secondary benefit: it focused her senses. She swore she smelled something, a light perfume, more a suggestion than a statement. It was a scent she had smelled before. But where?

When Vail opened her eyes, she looked to her extreme left, where a narrow shelf sat mounted to a bare plywood wall. The space was about eight feet across, the ceiling perhaps eight feet high. It almost had the look of a closet, though slightly larger. She moved her head and looked over her right shoulder. The underside of steps. This was some sort of basement, or dead space beneath a staircase. Dead space for Dead Eyes. The irony was not lost on her.

Also not lost on her were the crime scene photos stolen from her house. Hanging to her right were pictures