Tina shook her head.
He made his way to the door. He twisted the handle. Locked. Of course. He padded his pants. No phone. No gun. No mic to call dispatch. He literally had no lifeline.
But he trusted his team.
He took a step back and kicked the door.
Nothing.
He did it again.
Still nothing.
He went over to the boarded-up window and kicked at that, and he made more headway as the wood cracked. He kept kicking, and Tina joined in until the wood splintered, opening a hole and letting the sun seep in.
“Well, it’s still daytime,” he said.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Actually, yes,” he said as he stepped through the open space. He took her hand and helped her. Scanning the area, he got his bearings. “Okay. It looks like we’re not far from Pen Cove Park. You were supposed to meet with Callie at three, right?”
“Correct,” Tina said.
He glanced to the sky. “It’s just after three. I bet that…” The sound of a vehicle approaching caught his attention.
“Oh, my God. That’s her car.”
He recognized the light-blue vehicle that raced by him earlier. “Come on.” He took her by the hand and raced toward the back of the house. “You don’t have a phone on you, do you?”
“No,” Tina said.
Fucking wonderful. He was going to have to find a perfect stranger to help, but first, he needed to find a way to get Tina out of harm’s way. “I want you to run to the park. Don’t look back. Just keep on running until you find someone and call 9-1-1. Tell them that the Langley Chief of Police and Callie Dixon have been taken hostage by the Trinket Killer. Go.” He shoved her. Hard.
She fumbled forward. Glancing over her shoulder she stared at him with wide eyes.
“Just do it. She can only go after one of us, and she’s going to try to take me out first. Go.”
Tina nodded and took off running.
Now all he had to do was stall and hope to fucking God he and Callie didn’t end up dead.
Chapter 17
Callie did her best to control her breathing and her panic. She pushed aside all negative thoughts about how she should have seen that Kara was the killer. It ripped her heart into a million pieces that she not only hadn’t a clue, but that she’d spent the last year crying on her shoulder over Jag and over her sister.
“Stephanie,” she whispered as she stared out the window, her hands bound together with duct tape. “Why did you have to kill my sister?”
“Such a complicated question.” Kara took a turn down a side road heading toward one of the parks on the north end of the island.
“She knew you were the Trinket Killer?”
“No. She hadn’t quite figured that out yet. But she would have considering she had found out I was really Carol Armstrong.”
“How’d that happen?” Callie took a slow breath, expanding her chest slowly. All she had to do was treat this like any other conversation. Kara liked to talk. She liked to express her opinion, and she always had one.
“Remember when Stephanie came to you and said she was seeing someone?”
Callie nodded.
“I was that someone. And I want you to know that I really cared about your sister. I really did. I never wanted to hurt her.”
“Is that why you smashed her face in?” Bile smacked the back of Callie’s throat. Her stomach churned.
Kara reached out, smacking Callie across the cheek.
Callie’s head snapped, crash-landing against the window with a thud. She groaned. Probably not a good idea to fire back with sarcasm. Duly noted.
“Don’t make me do that again,” Kara said.
Callie lifted her bound hands and rubbed the side of her face. “Okay. So how did my sister find out your identity?” she asked as calmly as possible.
“She found an old picture that I kept. And in true Stephanie form, she confronted me on it, and she didn’t let up. Nope. She had to turn into a little Nancy Fucking Drew like you. If she told you who I was, you and that idiot boyfriend of yours would have figured it out.” Kara glanced in Callie’s direction. “Why the fuck did we have to come back here? Why did you make me do this all over again? It’s your fault. Just like it was Renee’s. If I had never come back to this godforsaken place, I could have tamed the beast.”
That circled Callie back to an onslaught of other questions she needed answered. She clutched her chest. Images of her and her sister bombarded her mind. But it was her sister’s voice tickling her ear, telling her to find out everything so that no victim would die in vain.
“What does that mean?” Callie asked.
“Wow. You really are a dumb fuck.” Kara pulled into a side street that looped toward the water. She stopped in front of a boarded-up small house. Or maybe a shed. “It’s amazing you and Jag got anywhere without me.”
Callie glanced to the left. “That’s funny because looking back, once you entered the picture, you directed my reporting. It was subtle, but I can see how as soon as I started opening up, you just twisted it, and I let you, and I, in turn, used it on Jag. You even went as far as to use your own mother to plant evidence and change the DNA samples so that Jag would catch Adam. Why’d you do that?”
Kara rammed the gearshift into park. “Because I planned on leaving Seattle with Stephanie. If we had a killer wrapped up nice and neat, it would be easy to leave, especially for her since she worried so much about you. But no, she had to go find my secret and then my stupid bitch mother had to gain a conscience and mislabel one of the samples on purpose. She wanted to get caught, but before she could confess what she’d done and rat me out, I—”
“You killed
